Rottenhouse (37 page)

As soon as his hand touched the woman’s
flesh he knew the truth of it then. And it was a rotten truth.

The woman that he rolled over and took
out the rag filling its mouth wasn’t Lucy and by the resemblance to
the old woman downstairs he guessed that it was her daughter and
that the men that were fucking her were her brothers.

‘
This can’t be
happening.’ Simon said, but knew that it was.

The woman on the bed looked near to
death, all skin and bone, but she didn’t squirm or try to break
free. She wasn’t pretty and shared an ugliness with her mother and
had jagged features. ‘Are they dead?’ She asked and her voice was
soft, angelic, and it filled Simon’s heart with sadness. Her eyes
were still shimmering though; amber gold and they were her one
redeeming feature.

‘
Yes. If I untie you
can you walk? I’m getting you out of here.’

‘
Out of
here?’

‘
Yes, to a
hospital.’

‘
Aren’t you here to
fuck me? Did they bring someone new to taste my honey?’

‘
No. No I’m not. You
don’t have to do that anymore. You’re safe now.’

‘
I want to be fucked.
I like it.’

‘
What the hell.’ Simon
got up from the bed, almost slipped on the blood and grabbed hold
of the broken wardrobe to his side.

‘
Daddy fucked me the
best. He could go for a long time. Please don’t let him be
dead.’

‘
He’s dead.’ Simon
muttered with a dry throat and wiped away the sweat and blood from
his face with the back of his sleeve

The girl started to cry and Simon went
to leave.

‘
Don’t go. I’m still
tight. Come back and see. You can hit me and cut me and bleed me if
yawant. Whatever yawant I don’t mind. I don’t want to be alone.’
She opened her legs and some of her brother’s semen leaked out of
her poorly shaven vagina.

‘
I’m sorry.’ Simon
said and he turned and walked out of the room and the girl screamed
at him but the words were lost amongst the bestial cries for sex
and the screams from the girl went on and on as Simon walked down
the stairs, through the hallway and out the front door into the
night where the stars shone brightly and the river flowed
freely.

‘
This is a rotten
place. And rotten things need to burn.’ Simon said and headed over
to where a tractor was parked next to a disused diesel pump, and he
was running on pure instinct now. It had consumed him.

Lent against the tractor, trying not to
think about Lucy and where she might be but failing miserably, he
put his hands over his eyes then over his ears and roared at his
feet to try and release the anger he felt at himself and the
situation that he was in. He had killed five people for nothing. He
tried to justify it as self-defence but he had put himself in those
situations. It was his actions that had led to where he was now. No
one else’s. All that he had preached to Lucy and Bob over the last
couple of days about how they should live their lives and what was
happening up here was wrong seemed laughable now, and Bob had been
right, it did depended on your point of view. From the outside he
had killed five people in cold blood. But he knew it was justified.
It was them or him. If he’d of know that Lucy wasn’t here then it
would have been different.

But Lucy hadn’t been there and now he
had to clean things up.

Simon grabbed the jerry can that was by
the tractor, knew by the weight of it that it was full, and walked
with it hanging by his side back to the house.

He made that trip a few times and to
make sure the job was done right he put buckets of the liquid
inside the house. He found some blue gas bottles as well which he
placed next to the buckets of stinking diesel. He did this in
silence and didn’t speak up when the girl called for him to taste
her honey and fill her brown hole from up there where he didn’t
want to go and when he was finished he walked back to the bridge
and carefully slid down to the rushing river where he covered his
face in the cold water and drank deeply and washed himself clean of
the fluids that he was covered in. Then, as promised, he took a
piss in that river, but he was sad because it was too dark to see
trickle in.

6

The moon was peeking
over the roof of the house that was once called The Brew House and
was now called The Rotten House. It was 9pm and the forest had come
alive and on the bridge Simons ears were ringing with the roaring
river below him. He was on the other side of the bridge, the good
side
;
he thought,
and ahead of him the body of Lud was still slumped over like a
drunkard.

He heard a scream from the house, from
the room that he couldn’t see.

‘
I’m sorry,’ Simon
said and with the lighter he had stolen from big brother he lit the
trail of diesel. Simon picked up the torch that he had dropped,
clicked it on and walked away and the forest he had walked through
didn’t seem so scary now and bushes were just that and not haggard
witches and fallen trees were just hulks of dead wood and not
grinning monsters waiting to eat helpless passers-by.

7

By the time he had reached the car park
the sky behind him was an orange glow that was more like he was
used to back home. Only this orange glow wasn’t caused by city
street lights. There were occasional explosions as the buckets of
diesel went up or a gas bottle finally gave in. There were squeals
from the pigs too, pigs that he had locked up tight into their pens
and then drenched them and the ground beneath them in diesel.

Simon was glad that he couldn’t hear
the last moans and cries of the girl he hadn’t freed and he wished
her a quick death, but knew that she probably hadn’t got one.

He unlocked the car, got in and started
the engine. The headlights were bright and they lit up the forest
ahead enough that birds took flight and a deer that had been
standing there ran for cover. He reached into his pockets, took out
the 5 shotgun shells that were digging into his thighs and grabbed
his phone which he hoped wasn’t damaged.

Pressing the button the screen came to
life and he was pleased to see that there wasn’t a scratch on it.
There was, however, another missed call, and clicking to see who it
was he dropped the phone onto the soft carpet and had to reach down
before looking again to make sure he had truly seen what he thought
he had read.

The missed call was from Lucy, and he
cursed her for not leaving a voicemail. Then the phone vibrated
with another call.

He answered it and the robotic girl on
the other end gave him the options he knew so well. He pressed 1
for new messages, and waited…

The voice on the other end was Lucy’s.
She sounded calm; not panicky, or like she had been crying. There
were no other voices behind hers, no sounds to isolate where she
was even though Simon had a pretty good idea where that was.

‘
Si, I’m waiting for
you. I don’t know what they want from me and I’m not sure why I’m
here. I’ve got to tell you that I’m not going anywhere until I see
your face again. You have to understand I’m not just anyone. I’m
the one you are going to love someday and I’m gonna wait her for
you. Don’t fight it, you’ll be fighting destiny. You must know
that? You must know that you are going to love me someday? It’s
been written and we are the ones writing it. We are getting close
and I’m not going to leave until you say my name. Not till you say
you love me. Look into my eyes when you find me and say you love me
and say my name.

‘
I love
you.

‘
And you will love
me.

‘
One day.’

The Working Man’s
Club

1

Simon drove the car back to
Rottenhouse. He kept a window open so that cool air swept through
the car. It was hot tonight, or maybe he was hot, burning with rage
and fear and it seemed to take an age to reach Rottenhouse but
eventually Simon pulled into the car park in the centre of the
village and parked the car outside the club.

There were no other cars in the car
park. There was no one milling around. A mist was rising and
rolling in from the stream and Simon got out of the car and all
around him was silent.

There were many lights on in the club.
They invited Simon in. He had no weapons, only the torch and the
lighter which wouldn’t count for shit when it kicked off. Simon
wished he could lie down and sleep, perhaps over there on the cool
steps leading to the club. Maybe the mist would cover him and he
would vanish for a little while and time would freeze; keeping his
Lucy safe, but again Simon started to believe that whoever had
taken Lucy didn’t mean to harm her. She was taken for other
reasons.

At 9-45 on that hot summer evening
Simon walked up the stairs and opened the big door of the club. The
light stung his eyes and for a moment he was blinded and then the
blindness faded and he could see again. The lobby was empty and
quiet and behind him the door slammed and echoed like booming
thunder.

Simon opened the door to his right,
where he had heard men playing snooker on his first night here and
wasn’t surprised to find the room deserted. He then walked over to
the door to the bar and the door screeched when it opened but it
didn’t matter because the bar was devoid of life and not a drink
was being drunk or a crisp being crunched.

‘
The lights are on but
nobody’s home.’ Simon said.

Then there were footsteps behind him.
Soft ones made by bare feet. There was something wet about them
too. Simon turned to see who they belonged to and let the door to
the bar close and then he stepped behind the small desk as if to
protect himself.

A girl appeared from the stairs leading
down to the basement. She was naked and her long dark hair was wet
and clung to her head, neck and shoulders like paint, and as she
turned the corner Simon couldn’t see her face because the wet hair
was covering it. She was tall and slender and had skin that had
once been milky white but was now streaked with dirt and grime.
Across her arms and legs were bright red blemishes that looked like
marks from a whip and down her arms there were pot marks which
looked red and sore, they looked like an addict’s autograph. Her
nipples were erect and she was physically shaking. There was
something familiar about this girl, but he didn’t know what.

‘
Follow me.’ She said
with a pretty little voice. A voice that didn’t belong
here.

‘
I don’t want
to.’

‘
But you have to. They
are waiting for you. Please.’

‘
Who’s waiting for
me?’

‘
You’ll see.’ And the
girl turned and headed back down the stairs where in his dreams all
was dark and there were things down there that wanted to grab his
feet and pull him down.

His legs went stiff, trying to fight
every step taken, Simon headed over to the stairwell. His hands
were clenched tight and he was sweating heavily. He could hear the
little wet footsteps as they went down the concrete stairs and
peeking around the corner the girl had stopped, waiting for him on
the first landing before the stairs turned to the right and headed
down to the basement.

‘
Come on.’ She said
and when Simon started down the stairs she started walking again;
her wet hair reflecting the light like oil. Her buttocks wobbled
slightly and a small cut on her right thigh oozed a little
blood.

Reaching the landing Simon noticed that
the paintings that had been on the walls were gone. There were
lighter coloured patches of wallpaper where the paintings and
frames had protected the wall and little lights shone down onto
nothing. Below him the stairs led down but not into darkness like
in his dream. What was down there was well lit and the girl was
once again waiting at the bottom of the long stairway where a
corridor led off out of Simons view. Her little footprints had left
wet patches on the concrete and when he reached the bottom Simon
found that he was standing in a small lobby, straight ahead was a
long corridor and to his sides there were two rooms which had
massive pad locks fixed to them. Everything was in a state of
disrepair. Paint peeled off the walls, doors hung crookedly on
busted frames and windows that peeked into dark rooms were either
smashed or their glass had faded to an odd grey colour. The floor
was tiled and was once the colour of clay but now it was dirty and
smeared with filth and puddles of rank water. Water dripped from
the ceiling and from pipes that ran along the walls. Electric
cables were tacked in place and hung down like heavy spider webs.
Down the corridor were six rooms; three on each side. All but one
had their doors closed and they looked as if they hadn’t been
opened in a long time. The fluorescent lights which clung onto the
ceiling with shoddy screws and plastic ties weren’t doing a good
job in lighting the far end of the corridor. There was a bright
light coming from an open door and shadows danced on the floor
there.

It was hot down here and he felt as
damp and as dirty as the girl in front of him. He was close enough
to her now that he could smell her. She smelt of the earth, a rich
earthy stink like after a rain shower. There was sweetness there
too, perhaps her natural scent that still lingered like a scar, and
he knew that smell from the petrol station.

‘
Who are you?’ He
whispered but knew the answer.