Home Intruder: An Extreme Horror Novella (3 page)

Linda smiled, but it didn’t touch her eyes. “I’m going out for a cigarette.”

For the first time in her life, Jaz
really
wished that she smoked too.

Great. Bitch face is outside sniffing round my husband and I’m trapped in here with Lurch. Just wonderful
…

Boko smiled at her through a mouthful of noodles and her stomach cramped.

Outside, Ed sat on the wooden bench, illuminated by the watery puddle of light thrown off from the porch light. He found his hand was shaking when he lit his cigarette.

“Room for one more?” Linda said, sitting down next to him and lighting up.

Fucking marvellous.

“Sure. It’s a free country.”

“I’m sorry for what I said in there. You know, about your mum, and you getting married so soon after she died and stuff.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He spoke the truth. It didn’t matter. Ed was just mad at himself. Jaz was right, it was ridiculous these people were in their home.

Okay, so their
soon to be sold holiday home
, but that wasn’t the point. They shouldn’t be here, end of. What he and Jazmine did was none of her fucking business.

“But it
does
matter, Ed. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was upset you. You and me, we go back a long way.”

“Yeah.”

Ed took the second, and final, hard drag of his cigarette and flicked it into the bushes that ran the perimeter of the neat front garden.

“Can I ask you something, Ed?”

His stomach flipped in apprehension.

Shit, I really cannot be arsed with this.

“Sure. You can ask me inside.”

“No, I really can’t. It’s kinda private.”

“Come on,” he said brightly, already at the front door. “Let’s go in.”

“I still love you Ed. I always have.”

And there it was. The omission that was nothing short of his worst nightmare. He wanted to tell her to fuck off, but his inherent decency prevented him from doing so. He shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and counted to three.

When he turned round she was right behind him.

“I love you,” she said, gazing up at him.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Look, Linda, I’m flattered, truly, but it was all such a long time ago. I expect you’re in love with the idea of me, rather than the
actuality
of me.”

“My Ed. Always the brainbox.”

“Linda, don’t do this. I can pretend that you didn’t say what you just said, if we can go back inside and be normal.”

“How can you pretend I didn’t say it? I love you, Ed. I knew you’d come back to me one day. Oh, Ed.”

She stood on tiptoes and wrapped her arms around his neck, planting her lips firmly on his.

The kiss caught him completely off guard. Her lips felt horrible and slug like, and about as welcome as a pair of slugs oozing beneath a doorway into a home. Because that was what this kiss was; a violation of his mental and physical space.

He pushed her away and resisted the strong urge to slap her, subconsciously wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

“Jesus Linda, what the hell are you doing?”

His back was pinned to the door, and she was still in his space.

“I won’t tell Jaz, it’ll be our little secret until we can work out how to tell them.”

“What?” he spluttered, dangerously close to losing his temper.

How dare she put him in this position? For the love of God, he really didn’t need this shit…

A movement over Linda’s head drew his attention, stopping all further thought and words dead.

“Ed? What’s the matter?”

Ed squinted into the darkness, over the road towards the cliff path that was partly shrouded by trees and bushes.

Yes, there was definitely a figure standing beneath the tree. It looked like a man, judging from the height and build. But it was impossible to know for sure, as he or she was entirely in silhouette.

Probably just a dog walker stopping to let Fido crap in the bushes
…

But there was something about the figure that put him on edge. If it had been movement that had caught his eye, it was the stillness that held it.

And Ed got more than the distinct impression that he was staring directly at them.

“Ed? What are you looking at?”

“Over there, on the cliff path.”

“What?” she said, spinning round. “I can’t see anything.”

Sure enough, the person was gone.

Maybe I imagined it. Maybe it was a trick of the light…

“You made it up, didn’t you?”

“What? No, of course not. I’m sure I saw someone under that tree spying on us.”

“You’re unbelievable, you know that? If you don’t love me, all you have to do is say. You don’t have to make up stupid distractions.”

Well, I am fucking trying, sweetheart
...

“Let’s just go in, okay? I’m cool with this if you are.”

Suddenly he was weary. All he wanted to do was get the silly bitch inside the house and pretend this had never happened.

Linda, however, had other ideas.

“You bastard.”

Calmly, she pulled up her t-shirt over pudding breasts. She popped out a breast over the top of her sturdy bra.

Ed’s heart sank.

“Stop it Linda,” he said, but he felt as helpless as if in the grips of a nightmare.

She merely smiled at him and dug her fingernails into the soft flesh surrounding her exposed, saucer like nipple. She dragged her fingernails over the skin, leaving behind angry, red track-marks. One of the lines welled with blood.

“Oh, Jesus Linda, please don’t do this…”

“Help! Get off me! Boko!”

Her scream pierced his eardrums, and in less time than it took him to think
oh fuck
, Boko and Jaz were outside too.

“What the fuck’s going on?”

Boko’s voice. And he sounded mad. Ed continued to stare at Linda who still had her scratched tit poking out of her bra with her flabby stomach exposed. In that moment, he hated her so passionately he would have danced for joy if she were to suddenly drop dead.

“I was just out here saying
how sorry
I was about what I said in there, and he grabbed me and said he would forgive me if I fucked him for old time’s sake.”

Ed shook his head in disbelief. “You need help Linda. And now I’d like the pair of you to get the fuck out of my house.”

Boko threw a punch.

“You
arsehole.
Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Pain exploded in the side of his jaw and he staggered sideways, clutching his injured face. Jaz screamed and went to him, screaming at Boko as she did so.

“Just go! The pair of you! Get the fuck out of my sight!”

She stood before Ed, defying the bigger man to come any closer. Ed silently watched him, clutching his face. He wasn’t scared. He would fight him if he had too, but by God, he would rather not.

To his relief, a flicker of doubt passed over Boko’s face.

“Hit him,” Linda said with a smile, straightening her clothes. “Hurt him, baby. Make him pay for what he did to me.”

“You see this?” Jaz said, waving her mobile phone at them. “If you cunts lay one finger on him I swear to God I’ll call the police and we will drag your sorry arses through every court of law we have to until we get justice.”

Boko hesitated, his fists uncurling.

Ed had never heard Jaz use such
earthy
language before and he couldn’t help but smile, even if it did hurt his face.

“Fucking
hit him.
” Linda complained, a note of desperation creeping into her voice.

“You have prior, don’t you Boko?” Jaz said. His silence answered her question. “Yeah, I thought as much. Not going to look too good for you, is it, if you beat an innocent man to a pulp because your
girlfriend
came on to him.”

“That’s bollocks,” Linda said.

“Look at Ed’s hands!” Jaz shouted, grabbing his hands and stretching them out towards to Boko. “Do you see blood under those fingernails? I bet your bitch of a girlfriend has blood under her fingernails. Why don’t you look, Boko?”

“Let’s just go if you’re not going to hit him,” Linda said, tugging at his arm.

“Yeah, fuck off and don’t come back,” Jaz added.

“That’s enough, sweetheart,” Ed said, gently touching her shoulder. “Let’s go in and let them go home.”

He didn’t want this. He didn’t want to get into a juvenile fist fight with his ex’s bloke. Besides, he actually felt sorry for Boko. Poor bastard, getting saddled with that loony. Fleetingly, he wondered what had happened to Linda over the years to turn her into such a fucking
nutter
.

Shaking his head sadly he pushed Jaz inside, closing the door on the whole sorry scene. Because Linda and Boko’s problems were nothing to do with him.

Nothing at all.

Jaz lay in the crook of Ed’s arm and he held her close, thinking of nothing apart from how good she felt and how much he loved her.

“I love you,” he mumbled into her hair.

“Yeah, I know,” she said, stretching luxuriously against him. “I’m tired.”

“Me too. I’m one lucky bastard, you know that?”

He sighed in satisfaction and closed his eyes. Making love to Jaz never got old.

“Yeah, and don’t you ever forget it, buster.”

Sleep claimed her quickly, her breathing turning deep and regular. Ed remained wide awake, the disastrous evening weighing heavy on his mind. He couldn’t stop thinking about Linda. Had she always been that loopy and he had just never noticed?

Sleep was a long time coming.

CHAPTER THREE.

Ed opened his eyes to the sound of scraping and banging. It took much effort to prise open his sticky eyelids, it felt as though a bucket load of treacle had been smeared over his eyes while he slept.

Groggily, he sat up.

Yes, definitely banging sounds. Creaking sounds too.

Sounds like someone climbing a ladder.

He got out the bed and peered through a gap in the bedroom curtains.

“Shit.”

It
was
someone up a ladder. Boko up a ladder, to be precise, the length of which ran parallel to the bedroom window.

“What the
fuck,
” he grumbled, casting around for his clothes.

“Mmm,” Jaz said, stretching her arms above her head so the duvet slid off her naked body. “Wos goin on?”

Ed tripped, his foot trapped in the leg hole of his jeans. He lost his balance and almost fell face first into the floorboards but caught his balance just in time.

Jaz rolled over onto her side, throwing a thigh over the bunched up duvet so that her rump was displayed in all its glory. Under normal circumstances, Ed would have been on that arse, but there were more pressing matters at hand.

Yeah, like a guy that wanted to kill me yesterday pissing around up on my roof.

Her question was apparently rhetorical, if her heavy breathing was anything to go by.

“Jaz. Wake up. You need to get dressed.”

“Huh? No.”

She buried her head in the pillow as if to pretend his voice was a figment of her imagination.

“I mean it, baby. Boko’s here.”

That woke her up. She sat upright, clutching the duvet to her chest.

“He’s
what
?”

Her eyes were wide and sleepy all at the same time, lending her the appearance of a sleepy, startled owl. She looked so adorable with her sweetly beautiful face and her long, blonde hair all mussed up, that he felt an actual physical pain in his heart.

If anything ever happens to her…
he thought irrationally. And not for the first time since they’d arrived in Treeve. He figured he was still in mourning for his mother, that had to be the reason why he kept experiencing such bouts of overprotective love.

“Just get dressed, sweetheart,” he said, pulling on a t-shirt and sliding on his glasses which he always kept next to him on the bedside table when he slept. “I’m going to sort this nonsense out. You stay inside.”

He didn’t give her a chance to reply.

Ed stood at the foot of the ladder. It was eight in the morning, and sunless. He wrapped his arms around himself, shivering slightly in the thin t-shirt. Boko’s white transit van was parked behind Ed’s hire car, blocking him in.

“Boko?” he called up to the man who was on the tiled roof on all fours. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Cleaning my teeth, what does it look like I’m doing?”

Ed bit back the urge to scream at the stupid oaf.

“Please come down,” he said calmly. “I think we need to talk.”

“Quite a bit needs doing, Ed. Gonna take me at least a week.”

“
Fuck,
” Ed muttered under his breath, then, in a clear voice; “Come down now. I
really
think we need to talk about this.”

“You’re the boss, boss.”

The big man descended the ladder with surprising grace, every inch the scaffold monkey. Ed took deep breaths, doing everything in his power to keep his temper under control.

“Quite a lot of damage up there,” Boko was saying before his feet even touched the ground. “Don’t reckon the roof will survive if a storm hits. Gotta be fixed as soon as.”

“Why are you here, Boko? What’s going on?”

“To fix your roof, like we arranged yesterday.”

“Like we arranged
before
you wanted to kill me?”

The big man shrugged. “You were right, I was wrong and I need the work.”

“Ed? What’s going on?”

Jaz stood in the doorway wearing a baggy t-shirt that came to mid-thigh and nothing else.

“Go inside honey, me and Boko have things we need to sort out.”

Ed caught the way Boko was looking at his wife and he did not like it one little bit, no siree. Jaz hesitated for a second, and retreated inside.

Ed regarded him thoughtfully, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“Are you seriously telling me that you believe Linda came onto me and
you don’t care
?”

“Of course I care. We had a big argument last night and I moved out. Should have done it ages ago. It’s never been
me
that she wanted.”

His meaning was clear and Ed’s bad gut feeling intensified.

“Look, Boko, I appreciate you turning up today to do the roof and everything, but I don’t think it’s appropriate, given the circumstances.”

“I came to apologise, it’s not your fault Linda’s still in love with you. You’ve moved on, right? Plus I need the work. I figured you and me could both be real men and put that sorry misunderstanding behind us.”

Sorry misunderstanding.
Was this guy for real?

But he sure had put him on the spot. How much of a wanker would he be right now if he told him to piss off? The way he was looking at Jaz aside, (and let’s face, he reasoned, what guy didn’t look at her like that?) he had no legitimate reason to tell him to do one.

Ed raised his hands in despair, mentally kicking himself for being so god damned insipid.

But he
had
to give Boko the benefit of the doubt.

Because I’m just that kind of a guy,
he thought sourly.

“Okay then, fine. So let’s talk rates.”

Boko threw him a huge grin, revealing yellow stained teeth.

I’m doing the right thing.

So then why did it feel so wrong?

Jaz watched the two men talking at the foot of the ladder through a tiny gap in the living room curtains.

Oh my God, Ed. Please tell me you’re not giving Lurch the job of fixing the roof…

“Shit,” she said, letting the curtain fall back into place.

He so had, she just
knew
it.

The front door creaked open, making her jump. The rumble of their voices drifted her way and she gritted her teeth in annoyance when she actually head Ed
laugh.

Oh, for pity’s sake Ed
…

“Honey? Where are you?” Ed called from the hallway.

“In here,” she called back, scurrying away from the window.

The two men entered the living room.

“Boko has something he wants to say to you.”

Jaz subconsciously crossed her arms over her chest, making her look surly when really she was just desperately uncomfortable under Boko’s gaze.

Shit, I should have got dressed when Ed told me too, how fucking stupid am I?

“I’m sorry ‘bout last night,” Boko mumbled.

“That’s okay,” she replied, knowing there was nothing else
she could
say.

“Me and Linda split up last night, on account of what she did, and all. And your husband has very kindly given me the job of fixin’ the roof.”

Yeah, real nice of him to consult with me first
.

“That’s good. Now if you boys don’t mind, I’d like to go and get dressed now.”

She swept out the room, not missing the opportunity to glare at Ed when she passed him.

Linda had no intention of opening the door, but whoever it was, they weren’t giving up anytime soon. The louder she cranked up the TV, the more insistent the knocking became.

“Fucking hell,” she moaned, glancing over at the bedside clock from her position on the bed where she lay fully clothed.

The time blinked ten a.m.

Maybe it’s Boko,
she thought, her heart lurching in hope.
Maybe he’s come to say sorry for walking out on me last night…

It’s not like she had any friends, and her mother didn’t speak to her anymore, not since their big fall out the Christmas before last.

Boko was all I had. And now he’s gone too
...

So why are you ignoring the door? Let him in and make it up, for fuck’s sake. It’s not like Ed wants you, is it?

With a massive sigh, she walked the short distance to the door and flung it open, talking as she did so.

“Next time you storm off, why don’t you remember your keys…”

The words died on her lips.

“Hello Linda.”

Linda looked the stranger up and down.

“Who the fuck are you?” she asked, as charming as ever.

Linda fancied herself as one of those ‘salt of the earth, take me as I am’ types. The reality was she was just plain rude. Subconsciously she patted down her thinning, currently tangled, dyed blonde hair. She looked like shit; her eyes were red raw from crying and she had a big spot on her puffy nose. The handsome stranger was making her painfully aware of her physical defects and she longed to rush to a mirror and tidy up her sorry face.

“I’m a friend of Ed’s.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Edward Sullivan? I do have the right Linda, don’t I? You were his first girlfriend, weren’t you?”

Linda frowned in confusion, all her worries about how the fuck she was going to pay the bills now Boko was gone and the fact she was once again an unloved, single woman, temporarily departed from her brain.

“Yeah, I guess. What’s this about?”

The stranger smiled, revealing even, white teeth. Once again she was struck by how good looking he was. Classically tall, dark and handsome with a square jaw and deep blue eyes.

“Do you believe that you belong with Ed?”

Perhaps normally, Linda might have slammed the door in his face. But right now, in her heartbroken, unstable state of mind, that question was exactly the one she wanted to hear.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I’m going to help you make it happen. Just meet me at Ed’s house this evening at eight.”

“Wait, I don’t understand, what do you mean, you are going to help me be with him? Why? Who
are
you?”

But he was already halfway down the pathway of the tiny, ground floor flat.

“Don’t be late, Linda,” he called over his shoulder.

“I won’t,” she said in a daze, but the man was gone.

Jaz emerged from the bathroom at a quarter to eight wearing only a towel, her long hair clinging damply to her back. Her skin felt heated, just a shade on the burnt side of tanned thanks to a restful day spent on the beach, swimming and sunbathing.

She was about to shout down the stairs to Ed if he knew where the aftersun lotion was, when the doorbell chimed.

Her stomach flipped. Thankfully, Boko had been gone by the time she and Ed had arrived back from the beach early evening. It had taken her all morning to forgive Ed for giving Boko the job of fixing the roof in the first place, she
really
couldn’t face seeing him
again
today.

And don’t even get me started on Linda. Oh God, what if it’s her? That’s even worse than Boko
…

She waited with bated breath at the top of the stairs, praying fervently that it was neither of them.

Jaz was shit out of luck. She placed her hand over her mouth to stifle the groan of despair when she heard the front door open and with it the voice she had come to hate.

“Hello Ed, mind if I come in?”

Bitch! Just fuck off out my house, you complete fucking psycho.

“Linda,” came Ed’s voice, drifting to her up the stairs. “It’s late, and me and Jaz are kind of in the middle of something.”

“It won’t take long.”

“Linda, please, I mean it, there’s nothing left to say. You really need to go home.”

You go, Ed.

“I need to come in.”

“Just go away Linda, you mean less than nothing to me and I can’t be bothered to humour you anymore.”

“I’m coming in. This is important.”

“Linda. Oh, for pity’s sake.”

From her position on the stairs, Jaz couldn’t see what was going on, but the direction of the voices had changed. Linda was inside the house, and it sounded like she was heading for the kitchen.

“Linda! For the love of God, come back here right now.”

“No Ed, I told you, this is important. This is fucking life changing…”

Her voice drifted away into the ether, swallowed up by the kitchen.

Fucking life changing? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?