Gone Too Far 3 Psychological Thrillers about Taboo: A Gripping Thriller Trilogy on Abduction, Redemption and Betrayal

The Shuttered Room

Charles J Harwood

To Keith

Chapters for the Shuttered Room

S Room Chapter 1 S Room Chapter 2

S Room Chapter 3 S Room Chapter 4

S Room Chapter 5 S Room Chapter 6

S Room Chapter 7 S Room Chapter 8

S Room Chapter 9 S Room Chapter 10

S Room Chapter 11 S Room Chapter 12

S Room Chapter 13 S Room Chapter 14

S Room Chapter 15 S Room Chapter 16

S Room Chapter 17 S Room Chapter 18

S Room Chapter 19 S Room Chapter 20

S Room Chapter 21 S Room Chapter 22

S Room Chapter 23 S Room Chapter 24

S Room Chapter 25 S Room Chapter 26

S Room Chapter 27 S Room Chapter 28

S Room Chapter 29 S Room Chapter 30

S Room Chapter 31 S Room Chapter 32

S Room Chapter 33

Chapter 1

JESS sat upon a solitary mattress within a darkened room ten feet square. Her stomach gave a sickening flutter. Footsteps capered at the door spurring a squeak in the floorboards. Fabric whispered before footfalls retreated down the stairs.

A door slammed, a torrent of shrieks splintered the air, crockery crashed. Jess took shuddering breaths. She deduced an infidelity to fuel the ruckus and wondered if she could use it to her advantage. Silence fell like a stone. Jess’s heart thundered in the hope someone would storm out of the house. Not for the first time she’d believed tonight was going to be the night.

She would keep on believing.

Jess had made her first etch upon the woodchip next to her bed after making an estimate of the days she’d missed. Now, a row of scratches overlooked her sleeping space – eight days and counting. Several times, she had played the activist of failed plans to avoid picking at the scabs of childhood memories, of school, family gatherings, of Megan whom she hadn’t thought of in twenty years.

But what else was there to do in this darkened place where shutters permitted but a slit of light? No newspapers, radio or TV. Woodchip had proved the worst backdrop for nostalgia and Jess did not want to get wistful; she did not want the past to gnaw into the present like the creeping gloom as evening advanced upon the shuttered window.

If only her captors knew what a bad choice they’d made with one Jessica Fraser, heir to Knight Business Consultancy and Culson Building Contractors, both the biggest of their kind in Britain. Yes, a big pot was to be had, but her parents’ bovine love of wealth went to unsettling depths, including using charity events to further their prospects. Yes, Jess was a Daddy’s Girl with a tidy price tag. Only, Jess feared there wouldn’t be a price tag to be had.

Jess darted from the bed and pressed her ear against the wall. Somewhere, a door slammed. Jess’s pulse shot into overdrive. Footsteps receded outside; voices. Her clammy fists wrung at her jeans. Tonight was going to be the night. She could feel it.

Jess thought she had done a good job at acting the clueless Daddy’s Girl they had expected. In truth, she nursed a sick dread.

‘I can’t live in these clothes,’ Jess had mumbled two days ago. Her Liberty blouse and leather-trimmed boots no longer represented how she felt and in fact did not feel hers anymore. One of her captors Jake conceded jeans and T-shirts. Jess uttered a thanks, more so to her parents who had been excellent tutors in how to act cool. Two days later, Jess dared to request footwear. In the reflection of the window she saw Jake’s eyes narrow.

The slippers didn’t materialise and the hostage cuisine didn’t help. Cereal, toast, crisps and pot noodles formed the staple. The takeaways were the worst – Indian or Cantonese washed down with coke. The room became a graveyard for fast food. It began to smell like one too. Jess gathered disinfectant from her next trip to the bathroom. Cleaning had a therapeutic value, even though they sneered at her efforts.

That’s when she spotted them: a pair of Reeboks beneath the sink. She stuffed them under her T-shirt before gathering her cleaning kit and exiting the bathroom. Jess tried them on when she was alone. A tad big on the heel but she wasn’t planning on running a marathon.

Jess trembled inside as she made her final request. ‘Couldn’t you give me a proper knife and fork? Those plastic ones keep breaking.’

Two evenings back, her final wish had been granted. Jess messed up her dinner and deposited the previous night’s plastic cutlery onto the plate. She concealed their metal counterparts beneath her mattress. She hoped that Jake would not be serving his hostage this evening for Jess found him too observant. Jess turned over and feigned sleep before her next visitor showed up. She knew by the shuffle that Justin had drawn the short straw. The tinny percussion from his Ipod hissed. She held her breath as he gathered her leftovers. Once done, he made a re-trudge with a moan to the rhythm section. He lugged the door open, likely with his foot, and then let it slam behind him.

Once the bolt had clicked, Jess had stuffed the metal knife and fork through a tear in the mattress. Ready.

Silence had tumbled since the departure of the two-of-three and her soaring adrenalin had reached a plateau. The last embers of sunset now streamed between the shutters. A thin section of trees was all she could see. ‘Not overlooked,’ would be the boastful description of the property if it found its way into an estate agent’s window. ‘Great for keeping hostages.’ Still, Jess hoped someone might notice a woman going flat-out in baggy jeans and ill-fitting Reeboks.

Jess flexed her toes within the trainers. The flannelette inners felt reassuring. With a trembling hand, Jess foraged for the cutlery within the mattress. Once liberated from their den, they gleamed in the gloom – knife or fork? Jess detected movement on the landing and without thinking, cried out. ‘Hello?’

Moments stretched on. ‘Hello? Somebody? I need the bathroom!’

Living to everyone else’s whim was the worst indignity. Kia, the sole female of the trio frequently whinged about having to take Her Highness to the throne during her lunch break. ‘Can’t it wait?’ she’d hollered once. ‘I wanna see the end of South Park!’ She would then hiss some hairspray. Jess kept silent but hoped Kia’s stamina for running could never match her talent with the straighteners.

Jess hunkered behind the door, cutlery lethal only to boiled potatoes in each hand. Footfalls proceeded up the stairs. Jess knew by the clunk that Kia’s stilettos weren’t the cause. The cutlery slipped in her hands along with hope. They are going to betray me, she thought. They are going to bend and break like the take-away versions made from plastic.

The footfalls paused at the top. The bolt rattled and Jess’s face grew still. The bolt slammed back. The doorknob shifted clockwise. A creak and a silent prayer. Jess trained her eyes to the floor where she guessed a foot might emerge.

Knife or fork?

Chapter 2

FORK, she decided and the prongs made contact with ankle. Gristle separated from anklebone. She twisted the handle. Her teeth clenched; nausea slithered in her throat. And then she heard him cry out, ‘Fuck! Fuck!’

Jess shot up and shunted the door. The handle ricocheted against her stomach. A thud returned from the other side. Catlike, she bounded up, scrambled at the doorknob and found Jake prostrate, clutching his face. She stepped over him complete with pronged ankle to dart across the hallway. Jess galloped down the stairs two steps a-go. She grappled at the inward-opening door with mounting desperation before realisation struck.

She burst into the living room. Decorators had abandoned the job with walls of plaster, a boarded floor and wooden chairs. Cornflakes crunched beneath her soles as she spurted for the door. She cursed and kicked the panel. The door flew open. She sprinted for the kitchen. Her sights latched onto the back door. She lunged at the handle, happy to never see another door.

The smell of grass, smoke and damp engulfed her. With renewed force, she sprinted for the gate which bounded against her thigh. Jess veered left to a terraced road. A frantic scan yielded no one in sight. Her breaths snatched and her soles clapped. Jess craved for a turning, even to an alley of dustbins. A deadly urge to look back spouted inside. Cramp stalked her thigh muscles. The pencil-straight road continued like a diagram denoting perspective. Jess took a random left, pushed the gate and spurted to a door. She hammered with her fist. Thoughts of a Zimmer-framed lady inching her way caused Jess to make a sickening re-track onto this endless straight.

TV screens behind net curtains flickered. She glimpsed a news presenter, a soap, a recipe for lamb risotto. Nothing ever happens here, the viewers probably thought. She could make out their torpid shadows within another universe, without any intention of changing the situation. Jess was about to provide a rude awakening from their evening’s trance when she heard a sound behind her. Pat, pat, pat. Oh my God! Time would not permit another random hammer at the door; he would grab her before anyone answered. Jess was losing it; her thighs and elbows flailed, her soles skittered. Where’s the sanctuary of a police station, a pub, anything?

Jess dived for a hiatus in the hedge and pelted between the bollards. Her rhythm had finally gone. Her legs throbbed and her breaths wheezed. Woods opened out where she plunged through the foliage. She pictured herself vanishing from sight like a shadow. Jess eased to a trudge amongst the thicket and doubled over. Her legs jellied up and the ground jarred against her joints. Every sound held meaning: the drill of a woodpecker, the crack of a twig. She crouched within a fern-lined oak and made herself small. She is part of the woods, she decided; she is the fern; she is this oak. A fox or a rabbit could pass nearby without detecting a presence out of place.

She closed her eyes within a sour bouquet. Her heart thrummed to a steady beat. Silence. The boughs creaked.

Jake dropped his jacket over her head. Good move. He could gag her before she could scream. Without moving, her body took a tremendous jolt. On opening her eyes, a brawny arm cleaved her view. No. Not an arm, a branch, an oak branch loaded with leaves. The sight both infuriated and relieved her. She nudged the thing aside, her heart shot with adrenaline. Had she given her position away? The resuming silence suggested not.

Jess had the dangerous notion that no one was in fact following her. She had lost him, perhaps even back at the house. The sound she had heard earlier could have been someone else going about his business – a paperboy rushing the end of his round, a middle-aged jogger’s attempt to chase his youth.

And then she heard it: a purposeful crunch, not of these woods. Dismay trickled into her brain in a cold soup.

She could see him. He was standing fifty yards to her left. In the moonlight, his angular-jawed profile implied tenacity. Jess knit her lip until her vision blurred. How did he know? When he turned her way, his bloody nose brought a harsh reminder of what she had done. She tried not to dwell upon it – she would apologise to him in the police station if it made him feel better. A cloud’s quashing of moonlight took timing with a reality check. She had made the foolish decision of hiding in these woods, and help might as well be on another planet. She jettisoned ideas of what he might do if he caught her. Her breaths trembled in her throat.

As he presented his profile again, Jess lowered her elbows to the dirt. She proceeded to crawl. Her posterior rocked in time with her knees. Stark tableaus of a lap dancer flashed into her head. Great effort, Jess, but don’t you think your pussycat-moves are inappropriate at this time?

A snort escaped her. She proceeded and the gusset of her knickers snuggled into her buttocks. Not a pretty sight, her inner voice came again, especially in those maxi pants you’re wearing!

Jess lowered her forehead to the ground and sniggered in hicks. And don’t you think that sort of thing will be the last thing on his mind with a bloody nose like that! Jess showered spittle. What was wrong with her? Had her adrenalin warped her emotional state? Her shoulders hitched and whimpers blurted out that brought her lungs aquiver. Perhaps he was watching her right now. He had snuck up and was standing over her, pleasuring in her ridiculous performance before grabbing her by the collar. She gritted her teeth against the tears of panic pouring down her cheeks. She willed her mind still before wiping her eyes.

With a lowered head, she allowed the grime and debris to work into her hands, her face, her hair. She muffled a cough.

A blurred hedge materialised. Beyond, a dirt track tempted her. Dusk had bled away, leaving a monochrome of moonlight. Please let it lead to something, she prayed, please let there be light. Jess glanced behind and could see no sign of him. Not knowing agonised her. Was he converging upon her position? In the fading light, she could discern the length of the field where a dirt track cut to a copse fronting a farmhouse. She shifted viewpoint and a beam of light pierced the gloom. Jess pictured herself running across that field. Could she do it? Could she pelt towards those trees and slip away unnoticed? For an instant, she saw Jake in pursuit. Jess blinked the image away.

She edged along the hawthorn. A wrought iron gate permitted a gap to scramble beneath. The bars snagged her T-shirt like Velcro. She backed up, lowered herself into the dirt and pushed. The back of her T-shirt tore. Without heed, she pushed on until she reached the other side. Triumph greeted her when she had done so.

Her heart notched up. She would reach the cover of trees before he saw her. She would make it, and by God, if he interfered, she would make a racket! She was going to make the dogs bark, the foxes retreat into their holes and she was going to make the woodpeckers freeze in mid-drill.

She bunched her hands with a forwards lurch. Her legs spurted. With each stroke, she lifted her thighs parallel to the ground. Her feet pounded corn, the wind roared at her ears and woodsmoke filled her lungs. In an instant, the beam of light faltered behind the foliage. But moonlight took its place and flooded her fully-dilated pupils.

At that moment, Jess realised how visible she really was. The corners of her mouth turned down into a deathly grimace. She glanced behind, knowing what she was about to see before the dreaded image pressed upon her eyeballs.

He was fifty yards behind. His shuffling gallop did not stop him gaining upon her and in fact brought sickening determination. A whimper scoured her throat. She had been right. He had been waiting for her; in his profession, patience was mandatory.

Why couldn’t it have been Justin, she lamented, he, the addict of takeaway food with the plastic knives and forks! He would have collapsed in a sweaty heap by now, begging her to stop.

Jess’s legs floundered at the limits of exertion. Only the light existed now. Corn splintered from her trainers. The light drew closer. Jess opened her lungs and screamed a non-word, an expression unrecognised by the dictionary, but the oldest sound in human language, a screaming lament from deep within.

The thud of claws scrabbled wood; growls assaulted her ears. Oh, my God. Was she about to be ripped to shreds before being dragged back to her prison? Barbed fencing offered assurance but her heart turned to stone anyway. She had no choice but to keep on running. Keep running past the copse, past the farmhouse and to God knows where.

Lactic acid clawed at her thigh muscles. Agony contorted her face. And to mock her, trees capered at the far end of the field. She staggered towards them and made the grave decision to look behind.

Jake wasn’t giving in, pronged ankle or not. His hair had flattened against his skull and his face had contorted to a terrible sneer. Despair crushed her. Within, she found the grim satisfaction that he was suffering too. From the set of his jaw, she could tell he was gritting his teeth and making grunting sounds. Blood gushed from his nose and probably from the gash in his ankle. In the present situation, Jess knew he would catch up with her before she reached the trees. And that’s when Sam flashed into her mind.

Since her capture, Sam had become an invisible force like gravity or air. Sam came to her in her sleep, for she would awaken hugging her pillow. Black hair, a downy forehead and syllable-muddles of complex words like hippopotamus left a residue in her head.

Jess knit her mouth. She fixed her gaze upon the trees and a strange detachment billowed from within. Her hands no longer clutched into fists, but curled like shells; her lungs no longer snatched in desperation, but sipped at the air like a stork at a water’s edge, and her legs…she hadn’t a clue, they seemed to melt into a cloud. Only the wind whipping at her hair suggested she was moving at all. Jess did not have to look back to know that she was pulling away. The trees advanced and their canopies enclosed her.

Jess exploded through a maze of trunks. The dogs had hushed up and silence fell. So much for neighbourhood watch. Jess could only hope that the farmer or his wife had noticed a disturbance. Her thoughts broke off when the scent of spoiled apples prickled the air. A bad feeling tumbled over her. If this was an orchard, then…Jess didn’t want to think it. But no sooner had she done so, could see them – fences, tall fences, and brambles – huge, thorny brambles, complete in their barricade.

She swallowed resentment. She would have got away. She would have made it to the main road on the other side of this orchard and possibly to a pub. Frantically, she grabbed hold of a branch and pressed her Reebok onto the trunk. She hauled herself up. The foliage rocked. Desiccated bark showered down. She lifted her other foot onto higher purchase and the back of her throat pounded with the effort. The tear in the back of her T-shirt snagged a nodule. She twisted her torso and grappled around the back of her neck. Cramp set in. Damn it, she was going up this tree as surely as this T-shirt’s going in the bin when this is over!

A hand grabbed her foot. Jess looked down and saw Jake’s sweaty face glaring up at her. Jess grit her teeth and pressed her foot onto the side of his head. He pulled her foot towards him. Jess wriggled her foot about. The tree pitched and apples pounded to the ground like bombs. Jess clenched her teeth and wrenched her foot from the trainer. She forced herself upwards and a tear peeled the air. She forged on, mindless of exposing her bra strap.

Jake lodged his heel against the trunk. Jess grabbed a cluster of apples and pounded him with them. One glanced his forehead. Jess continued to climb, the back of her T-shirt flapping in the breeze.

Jake wiped his bloody nose on the back of his sleeve and watched her. Jess shook the branch just above to release a shower. The pelting sound afforded her satisfaction. And then she reached across for more.

‘Come down,’ she heard him utter.

The nodule of earlier snagged the stitching on her sock and cut into her big toe. Jess yanked her foot away and quickly learned that pulling was not the thing to do. The tree pitched but Jess didn’t care. The only thing that existed was the tourniquet strangulating her big toe. She grappled at the ribbing and vertigo washed over her. Twelve feet seemed more like a hundred. The moon caught her eye and the landscape lurched. Her free hand grappled for something and found only twigs. The stitching pulled tight; the tree whispered. Jess slipped. Foliage gave way to her. She fell backwards, downwards and into thin air. Her hair and the newly-formed flaps of her T-shirt, useless as wings, eddied in the wind. She gazed at the stars. When the ground came up to meet her, air exploded from her lungs. For an agonising second, she could not breathe. The foliage above settled after an eternity.

Jess blinked. The grass teased her fingers; the breeze chilled her face. For the first time in her life, she could see the Milky Way. Hippopotamus, she thought and her breaths promptly resumed.

Jake’s head appeared over her. He observed her. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

She stared up at him. His ordinarily grey eyes appeared black. He had a handsome face, she hated to admit, but he often had a sneery expression, desperate, as though nothing good ever happened to him. He would never get the girl or win the day, but he might meet a sticky end. She spat at him. ‘I hate you!’

Jake wiped the spit onto the back of his arm. Unrattled, as always, he uttered, ‘Get up.’

Jess didn’t defy him exactly, she just made the decision not to move.

Chapter 3

THE lower landing retreated. Her feet brushed against each riser. He continued upwards with a rhythmic clunk. Jake only had to retrace his steps out of the orchard to complete the last section to the house. She hoped half-a-mile would feel a hundred when burdened with a woman. He had stopped to adjust his shoulder-carry whereupon she noticed an inverted ‘The Red Lion’ sign across the road. The village pub just as she’d imagined. Jake adopted the tantrum restraint once in an alleyway. She supposed an onlooker might think they were a couple engaged in horseplay, if only she could see someone. He then dragged her up the stairs. His laboured breaths gusted against the back of her head.

At the top, he kicked the bedroom door open and deposited her on the mattress. He heel-ended the door behind him before collapsing to the floor. She could make him out in the dark. His eyes rolled back into his eyelids and sweat sheened his face. His nasal disgorgement had twice the lustre to the stain on his ankle. Jess glanced away, unsettled by the sight. Jake’s breaths settled before he stirred as though from sleep. He lugged himself up and turned to the door. He pulled the handle. A moment later, the bolt engaged on the other side. And then silence.

A slit of light burned her retinas. Had her sleep lasted but a blink? It felt late – nine or ten. Without a watch, Jess couldn’t tell but right now, the desire to unclothe herself of her body took over. If someone had been standing over her sad bones and laid kicks, the next day would probably feel like this. Everything ached; her joints ached, her eyeballs ached, even her teeth ached. She stirred with a wince. She found, not to her surprise, that she had been clutching her pillow again.

A banging downstairs eclipsed her thoughts. Jess prised her head from the pillow and images of last night rushed back. She pushed the pillow aside, her elbow complaining and forced herself up. The tatters on her T-shirt teased her spine.

She tried to make haste, but her body wouldn’t comply. Her legs hurt the most. Cramp clawed through her calves to her groin. She hobbled to the window. The door below thrummed with more urgency. Bang, bang, bang!

Jess peeked out between the shutters and wondered what she was hoping to see. She lowered herself to the floor and pressed her ear to the carpet. Perhaps the farmer had reported a disturbance after all. An image flickered in her mind: police in their fluorescents, sniffer dogs in the fields and then someone calling out to converge upon her Reebok size six. But her mother would merely shrug at this. ‘It can’t be hers, it looks more like a cheap import.’ Bang, bang, bang! Jess balled her hand and pounded the floor in reply, thud, thud, thud!

She waited and deduced before she heard the same banging further away that no one could hear. She closed her eyes in despair and nestled into the carpet fibres. She imagined her neighbours making toast or hanging washing, little more than a pet snake to interest the police. Her foot caught something. A box of Weetabix, a carton of milk and a pee bowl. First class service at the Deluxe Hotel. Jess whimpered. It wasn’t going to end here. She had made a fuss all right, and someone has reported something. Someone is coming back to find her.

Her initial capture had been nothing as dramatic. She had been taking her route through the park from Ambrose and Brown where she worked as SEO in software design. Her husband Harvey’s Queen upload had provided respite from a death by PowerPoint. At the point of when Freddie sang about having a great time and having a baaall! two hoodies dashed out from behind a rhododendron bush and forced a paper bag over her head. One of them snatched her handbag, dislodged her earphones and teased her arms around her back. They then bundled her into a vehicle, a transit, she imagined, for the oily smell.

Jess’s tailbone had fallen onto a bench. The diesel rattled up and anthem music permeated the bag. Surprisingly, she did not experience panic, but anger – and not at the hoodies, but at herself. She felt stupid, incredibly, insurmountably stupid. The hoodie sitting next to her told her in economical terms to ‘do as she was told’, and to ‘try nothing clever’. Jess felt naked without her handbag. She imagined Hoodie of same looting through it: house-keys, mobile, cash, credit cards, lipstick, mascara, Sam’s stegosaurus comb and tampons – regular. She envisioned Hoodie ham-fisting these snow bullets before showering them over the floor.

Nothing but the thrum of the engine for half-an-hour – Jess could not be sure. She resented the paper bag. She felt de-humanised but pride impeded any utterance. The worst part was being guided out of the van to the bedroom where she had been de-bagged. The hoodies greeted her with blank stares from behind ski masks before they conferred in hushed tones. Everything seemed to project upon her like a movie screen, only the light was solid, and she was being squashed up against a wall.

Her new abode consisted of two mattresses, one lying on top of the other, a careworn carpet, woodchip wallpaper and a wooden box next to the mattress. Nice shutters, too, she thought, as she eyed the plywood nailed to the window frame that she would grow to hate more with every day. Jess could not believe that these thoughts would permeate her brain whilst at the bottom of a deep well of terror. For all she knew, their next action was to rape or kill her.

If she were asked to give a description of her offenders, she could only reply: two white male, both mid to late twenties, one just over six feet in height, the other, a little shorter and stouter. One had a local accent; the taller of the two did not have an accent. This, it remained for the first two days of her stay due to the ski masks they wore during hostage duty – that was until Jess pulled the ski mask off one of them after he’d placed food on the floor. Grey eyes, dark hair, collar length, angular jaw, angry dark eyebrows; the features of the archetypal criminal, she thought. The other hoodie followed suit, arguing they’d be far away with the money before she could do anything. Whatever you say, brown eyes, porcupine haircut, snub nose and pock-marked face. She loathed to imagine how they had selected her as their target. Databases had become the public domain it seemed. They probably surfed the Net or gleaned the papers where her parents’ charity events likely drew attention.

She got her bag back – minus her money, credit cards and mobile. Her tampons had been squashed back into its box. No sign of her Ipod. At least her makeup remained intact; invaluable at time like this.

An hour, a pee-break and Weetabix marinated in milk later, Jess opened one eye. She peeked over her duvet. A gouging sound on the other side of the door cleaved the air. This was followed by chiselling squeaks interspersed with the thrum from an electric drill. Jess did not move – she had no wish to inflame her sore muscles, but observed the door through slitted eye. The noise stopped. Jess was about to close her eye when the bolt slammed back and the door squeaked open.

Justin breezed in and appraised her with mock pity. ‘Aren’t you the lucky one!’ he proclaimed.

Jess knit her brow. Justin smiled a charming smile that dimpled his acned cheeks evocative of porridge. He crossed his arms as though waiting for her to say something. ‘Well, come on, take a look!’

Jess was bewildered. Justin had exchanged little more than a grunt of command to her since her stay and had shown less concern. Now, he had not only smiled at her, he had wanted to show her something. Jess had yet to ease her joints, when Justin disappeared behind the door. Spuming water cut the silence. Baffled, Jess struggled to her feet, her sour odour catching her nostrils. Conscious of her posterior, she draped a duvet around her body and followed the sound. A knot of unease tightened within her ribcage.

Through the door, another door confronted her. She blinked.

Justin appeared from the bathroom. ‘What do you think?’

Jess made a shrug.

‘You have ensuite,’ Justin averred as though he were unrobing a work of art, and waited for a response. A frown crept over his face instead. ‘My God, you look like shit.’ His dimples deepened. ‘Methinks that bath would be like using baby soap to treat the Black Death. Let me repeat what I have just said: You have ensuite.’ More emphasis upon the word, but to no avail. Jess’s mouth remained still. ‘You know what an ensuite is, don’t you? It’s an annexed bathroom, in case you didn’t know.’ Justin parodied a wry look. ‘Of course you know what an ensuite is! Bet you have a dozen of those at that mansion of yours. The wind hath just blown into your sails, oh mangy-one. No more calling down the stairs and no more disturbin’ us lot from our prime-time viewing. You can powder your nose and pretend you’re off to the ball like Cinderella. It will make things easier around here, and no more nonsense from you!’

Jess didn’t bother to point out that if he would let her go, he wouldn’t have to put himself to such trouble. The word ‘thanks’ could barely conjure itself from her lips.

Justin gave a nod. ‘Well, go on, then.’

Jess gawped at him. ‘Go on, what?’

‘The bath,’ he said as though she weren’t ‘with it’. ‘I’ve run you a bath, for Christ’s sake. Have a soak. You’re looking jaundiced, and that T-shirt due an appointment with the bin, or it will go walkies by itself.’

Jess wondered what Jake had said about last night and refrained from asking. She shuffled into the bathroom. Dismay deepened when he followed her in. Jess found that the bathwater was already bubbled-up. She swished her hand in the water.

‘The water’s fine,’ he said killing the power. ‘Now get in, why don’t you!’

Jess turned to him. ‘Aren’t you going to leave?’

Justin shrugged. ‘Oh, don’t mind me. I’ve seen worse.’ He chuckled as though she should know him by now. ‘Don’t worry. I’m harmless really. Girls are forever walking naked around me because they know I ain’t gonna try anything. I certainly ain’t gonna try anything on you. Here, I’ve got you clean stuff ready for when you come out.’ Justin bundled up a pile of clothes from the floor and placed them onto the shelf by the sink.

Jess hesitated before taking the towel from the rack. She turned away and undressed beneath the duvet. She felt him watch. ‘Allow me,’ he said and assisted her with the towel. She dropped the duvet to the floor. Warily, she lowered herself into the bath with the towel still wrapped around her. At the last moment, Justin removed the towel. The bubbles offered obscurity, but not enough. She had to admit, the water felt good. Her body seemed to undo itself from inside out.

Justin folded the towel into a cushion and parked himself on the edge of the bath. ‘You know what I saw yesterday?’ he asked, to Jess’s further dismay.

Jess shook her head.

‘I saw a crow dive-bomb a sparrowhawk.’

Jess’s lips twisted but no words came.

‘I saw it happen out the back there, near the farm. There’s a pool and a pair of sparrowhawks. I’ve watched ‘em hover. It’s amazing how they do it.’ Justin gave her a direct look as though waiting for her to respond.

Jess hugged her breasts even though he wouldn’t be able to see beneath the bubbles. ‘You’re into birds?’ she found herself asking.

‘Not just any birds,’ he said. ‘Wild birds, like eagles and kestrels. Tits aren’t my thing – too domesticated, boring. I like birds of prey, the grace of ‘em, the way they hover and swoop, like this.’ He re-enacted the scene with his hand coming down into the bathwater. ‘The crow came out from nowhere and took a pop.’ His finger prodded her thigh the second time his hand entered the bathwater. ‘And as I was telling you before, seeing a crow dive-bomb a sparrowhawk is a sight to behold, Jessica, otherwise I would not be boring your pants off telling you about it, wouldn’t I?’

He pronounced her name Jesseca, the i as an e. Jesseca. She felt sick inside. ‘And that is unusual because…?’ she asked.

Justin’s chocolate-fudge eyes solidified into stone. ‘Because the sparrowhawk is king of the crows, stupid. It’s like seeing a cat chase a dog or a mouse chase a cat.’

Jess’s fingertips tightened into hooks.

Justin’s dimples re-emerged. ‘Don’t despair over it. Not everyone knows about sparrowhawks. But if you ever see one hovering in the sky at the edge of motorways, think of Justin and of what I’ve just told you.’ Justin got up, giving the towel a pat. ‘I’ve got a book on wild birds for beginners. You can borrow it if you want.’

Jess cleared her throat. ‘Thanks.’

He sighed. ‘Well, I’d love to stop and chat – it looks lovely in there, but I don’t think there’s room for two, so I’ll love you and leave you.’

Jess nodded.

‘Enjoy the bath,’ he chirped.

As he left, Jess wondered if he had used the crow story as a metaphor for her.

Chapter 4

JUSTIN’S ensuite was the best thing that had happened for Jess since the beginning of her stay. She no longer had to anticipate her bowel movement or to check the reflection in the window to see whether she was still human. And she didn’t have to speak to Kia anymore. Since there was nothing else to do, she indulged in tea-tree baths once the occupants had left. She assumed they robbed houses or went for a stint of shoplifting.

The food remained dire including the takeaways, which she no longer ate. Justin took umbrage to the curry situation. ‘That cost me a pack of fags!’ he complained. ‘I don’t know why I bother. If you ain’t gonna eat it, you can bloody well go without!’

Jess suggested that couscous, Mediterranean tomatoes and a drizzling of olive oil is easy to prepare and very nutritious.

‘Couscous?’ Justin echoed, as though it were a made-up word.

‘Or wholemeal pasta with tuna and parsley,’ Jess elaborated. ‘It might help clear your acne.’

Justin’s eyes narrowed. ‘That is a nasty thing to say, when I’ve been so nice to you. Stuff you! You can...you can couscous my A double S!’ Jess did not get her book on wild birds for beginners. She blamed him and the others for subjecting her to these four walls and worse, her thoughts. She blamed them for the nights.

A week in captivity had educated her on their routine. Jake and Justin would leave at the same time, around eight o’clock and then return at around five. Since the coming of the ensuite, Justin and Kia no longer needed to stop by at lunchtime to supervise Jess’s bathroom routine and to exchange gossip about work. So they did earn a wage, it seemed. Jess imagined Justin as a slimy sales rep in an electrical shop or perhaps a lifeguard at the baths where he would get paid to leer. She could picture his approach with an intimidating flirt. ‘Hello, girls,’ he would gush, ‘you look like you’re on a mission! My name’s Justin. Anything you need, I got!’ he would then chuckle at how that sounded. Jess imagined Jake work in a grim warehouse, packing boxes or driving a forklift. He was probably on some government initiative to integrate criminals back into society. He would intimidate the foremen with little effort and use his notoriety to do and get what he wanted.

Kia would arrive separately to the others. She probably worked as an office junior, spending the day loitering around filing cabinets, bitching. Jess had half-heard snippets as they drifted through the bathroom: moaning, swearing, tittering, whispering – and every now and then, something revealing. ‘I’m gonna hit that slimy bastard,’ Jess heard Justin complain once. Jess knew the slimy bastard to be his boss, Jaffacake Jeffries, a small-team player averse to shirkers. A day later, Jess had heard Kia whispering about the cow at work who kept calling her aside to honour the rota. Maybe you should stop bitching by the filing cabinets, Jess thought, and do the first honest day’s work of your life.

Jess roused from a shutter-snap of sleep. Vocal, she thought as her brain floundered into focus – to spout on and on. From the violet at the window, she judged the hour to be four. Since her stay, her sleeping pattern had gone haywire: lie-ins, fitful dreams, insomnia. And now, Jess knew sleep would elude her for the next eighteen hours to suffer the meandering threads of her mind. Vocal, she thought again – a word people often used to describe her father. Funny how some people can spout yet have nothing meaningful to say. Jess sensed a pervading envy from others. How does it feel to have such a successful, powerful, rich and vocal father? Isolating, she thought. Her childhood had wilted beneath her parents’ absences; no siblings, a paradise laid in waste, a child at its centre. And yes, Father did speak to her, only to warn, lecture or castigate. Jess’s friends didn’t see it this way, considering the endless corridors and fountains ideal for giggling, hiding and barrelling through.

Ellie and dinner-parties excepted, the mansion did not take guests. Ellie was Jess’s nanny, the housekeeper with a vice for gin shots from Father’s drinks bar. She would disguise it in a banana smoothie then she would snack on Mother’s Belgian chocolates before working off the calories in Father’s gym. Funny how she acquired the same haute couture blouse Mother had ordered last week, not to mention a Bezel diamond pendant that resembled a birthday gift. Jess did not let on. Mother would stalk off to talk shop into her mobile before Jess had even reached the point.

Jess had long-since grown immune to Mother’s pursuit of more. She would lob stuff about in a frenzy if she lost a contract. The worst part was the ‘just read a self-help book’ phase, where Mother would try to ‘make sense of it all’. Father made himself scarce during her fits, brawling at the White Feathers with his contractors. Mother’s success owed a lot to her temperament.

Jess had hoped that she was fostered or sold as a baby from a distant country. Perhaps photos of her had adorned newspapers long ago in a quest to reunite a missing infant with its rightful family. Jess did not think she resembled her statuesque, Nordic parents who looked more like each other than their skulking shadow of a daughter. But no. Jess had seen a photograph of her great-grandmother – her mother’s grandmother at the top of the stairwell and who bore a striking resemblance to Jess.

And then one day, Jess had said to Megan, ‘What d’ you think of that toad inside Mrs. Cockrell? God, I’ll bet the croaking keeps her awake at night!’

Megan had laughed until she encountered Jess’s sincerity. The ever gregarious Megan was lost for words. ‘C’mon,’ Jess ventured, ‘look at that belly! Rotund my father would call it! My uncle Fred ain’t got warts as big as that!’ Jess giggled. ‘It’ll take more than a few pizzas to keep that toad happy. Croak! Croak!’ Mrs. Cockrell, Jess’s form teacher, virtually ran the school. When Mrs. Cockrell retired, the school lost funds and went down the chute. Jess knew the school didn’t have Mrs. Cockrell to thank, but the thing that lived within her.

Megan went home crying and said things about Jess – she’s a weirdo, she’s on drugs. Jess didn’t understand why Megan would do such a mean thing. Couldn’t she see it? Couldn’t she see the toad? To Jess, it was as clear as Ellie’s fake tan, although the toad was more taupe than bronze. From thereon, Jess had the feeling the others gave her a wider berth than the circumference of the ‘thing’s’ corpulent belly. The teachers explained it to a vivid imagination. Jess’s mother took this sincerely, saying that the tendency for daydreaming runs in the family. Jess found her mother’s analogy idiotic.

Jess did not think she had a wild imagination. How come she could see them – toads or gargoyles, as they sometimes resembled – living inside people? Well, if truth be told, Jess could not see these creatures in the conventional sense, because if Jess looked directly at the person, she could not see the creature within. She could only view them from the periphery of her vision if she stared into space the way one does so when faced with a book on Geometry. Half-light seemed to bring these visions into focus. Jess found herself wondering if she could see into people’s thoughts, or their spirit.

Acting out far-removed lives such as the Tsars and Ming dynasty with her dolls likely formed the genesis. Little wonder she would adopt such coping mechanisms for isolation. Naturally, these voices evolved into characters, breathing life into imaginary scenarios within fantasy locations, such as Twilight Island or The Tenth Kingdom.

In a fit of solicitude, Mother invited Jess’s friends round. Perhaps they would bring Jess out of this mania. Megan et al did the maternal thing and role-played their mothers, bathing, nappying and swaddling her dolls. Jess equated their role-play to telling Picasso to draw a stick man or Beethoven to play Chopsticks. Jess put her dolls away and conceded her father’s gadgets, but her friends could not swaddle her dolls. They had things to say; vital things.

Jess discovered that giving voices to people a greater thrill. Ellie paved the way. Jess watched with resentment as Ellie slugged gin into the smoothie-maker. A mental broadcast on what Ellie might be thinking emerged from Jess’s lips. There we are – just a few little drops of the good stuff. Ellie followed this through with another slug. Make it a double – long day ahead. She poured a third now, looking a tad guilty. Need nectar, need nectar to quash my guilt, oh how I require it! Go, on, then, wouldn’t say no. The gin slopped over the worktop. Whoops, not too much, don’t want Her Majesty noticing! Jess stifled a snigger. Gotta work it off later. Posterior betrays of your indulgence.

Ellie turned to appraise an apparently empty kitchen. Jess slunk away. The following day, Jess received a reproval from her History teacher for muttering throughout his lesson. Jess found she could little more hear what he was saying than recite the dates on the discovery of the Americas. All she could see was his lips shifting about, as they had done so during his lesson.

Know your place, Pecker, Jess uttered over Mr. Dunbar’s censure as he gesticulated towards her. I am the chief round here. The pecking order must never crumble into chaos or the unknown shall engulf me! Mr. Dunbar wagged his finger at Jess and puffed out his chest as a proud pigeon. Now scamper back to your little hide and remain at safe distance where I may keep vigil. Jess gawked at Mr. Dunbar. ‘Now run along,’ she actually heard him say.

From behind a wall after the finishing bell, Jess watched Mrs. Jessop the PE teacher emerge in the firing line complete with slacks and weighted gloves. Mrs. Jessop glanced about as she warmed up. Look at you, Fattie. Keep on running. The wobble will never cease. Mrs. Jessop scuttled past a shop front. Go on, take a peek, watch your extra tits say hi to each other, ha! ha! Mrs. Jessop glanced at her reflection in the window. What did you expect to see, Four-Tits? Curse you for peeking. You’ve just turned yourself into a pillar of lard.

Jess turned to see Megan and her friend Betty staring at her. Jess realised with discomfiture that she has been uttering these words in a mawkish croak.

Betty’s lips quivered. ‘That was funny, Jess. Do it again.’ Megan shot a disapproving look at her friend. Jess shrugged and submitted to the itch. Mrs. Cockrell emerged from the building, and a wheezing vitriol came to her. ‘Why must this filthy rabble be a necessary evil upon my domain!’ Mrs. Cockrell balked a supply teacher who beckoned towards her. ‘Why must I walk amidst the filth? Most unfair!’ Mrs. Cockrell paused at the head-teacher. She simpered. ‘Hmm, knowledge is power, power cleanses the filth, power keeps the filth at bay.’

Megan and Betty let forth a salvo of snorts.

Mrs. Cockrell nodded frantically with a hatchet expression, oblivious. ‘I am like thee, the mover and the shaker, I am the taskmaster.’ Miss Barrs, the young maths teacher joined the two-way conversation. Mrs. Cockrell appraised the apprentice teacher with a frown. ‘Buzz off, Greenhorn, retreat, or I shall vaporise you into a walnut!’ Mrs. Cockrell cocked her head and turned away from Miss Barrs. She walked alongside the head-teacher to the edge of the car-park. ‘Take heed, Imposter. My dispatching shall never cease. My kind must stick together!’

‘Stop it,’ Betty begged. She was hugging her stomach. ‘Buzz off, Greenhorn!’ she mocked. ‘I shall vaporise you into a walnut!’

‘You are such a wicked bitch,’ Megan’s voice came with a waver. Walnut became the word of the following day, a word that kept finding its way into paper aeroplanes and on the whiteboard. Mrs. Cockrell went home early that afternoon.

Other words trickled into the school courtesy of Jess and her monologues. Following the Walnut and the Greenhorn, came the Scrubber, the Creep, the Control-Freak, the Man-Eater, the Loser, the User, the Doormat, the Narcissist and the Peacock. Jess sensed the principal take alarm at what these words implied. He might have preferred the usual sex expressions graffiting his wall.

Mr. Dunbar bided his time. Amidst an audience, he grabbed Jess’s arm and marched her to the principal’s office. The ensuing inquisition bounced off Jess like sound waves from a padded wall. Jess’s father complete with vocal told her she should use the time off to reflect upon her deeds.

Jess’s return found herself with new company. ‘Do the voices,’ they would say. ‘Please do the voices.’ Megan’s label ‘wicked bitch’ began to bother her. Was she really a bitch? Was she that wicked? Jess just felt the itch, and it came out. She tried to block the voices; they had after all taken on a recurrent theme and had become somewhat tedious. Things like being in control, seeking approval, being noticed, looking stupid, being praised, being the best, avoiding rejection, being recognised, not being good enough, deserving bad luck and what the world owes them. The voices would regurgitate phrases, poor grammar, mixing the first and the second person – contemporary to slang. The tone would be needy, whiney, peppered with expletives, like nasty mantras. Jess tried to go back to playing with her dolls but the life had gone out of Twilight Island and the Tenth Kingdom. She suspected she had overstepped a threshold. Jess decided to stop. They weren’t after all, what people were really thinking but a canted version of what she thought people thought – to make them look ridiculous.

That’s when the visions started.

Chapter 5

‘HOW’S the ankle?’ Jess asked from her dark corner as Jake presented breakfast. Her eyeballs weighed like lead in their sockets. She glanced at this morning’s fare. Hmmm, Weetabix, what’s the occasion?

Jake made a seat for himself on the floor opposite. He stretched his legs and rested one over the other. A bandage had been applied to his right ankle and a mere graze at the bridge of his nose evidenced anything had happened the other night. He appraised her with one of his sneery looks. ‘You’ve been making stuff awkward for Justin,’ he said.

‘Guess what?’ Jess chirped and narrowed her gaze, ‘I heard someone banging on the door the other day. They’re in the area and they know I’m here. They’ll come knocking again. Your days are numbered.’

‘It’s been taken care of,’ he said in his special brand of self-assurance and scrutinised her.

She returned his gaze despite an inner flinch. ‘How much am I worth, then? Agreed a price with Father yet?’

Jake’s upper lip curled up.

‘You’ll never get a penny.’

‘We’ll see.’

Jess turned away.

‘Which brings me to the reason of why I’m here,’ Shadowed eyes bore into her. ‘Making stuff awkward ain’t wise, see. You’ve gotta start thinking about your position here. If you make things awkward for us, your situation ain’t gonna improve. D’ you understand what I’m trying to say?’

Jess resented this dressing-down from a criminal who was probably illiterate. ‘Have you ever heard of an avocado?’ Jess asked, peeking at him.

Shadowed eyes did not budge.

‘It’s a vegetable. Broccoli is a vegetable too. You steam it in an inch of water for no more than two minutes or it will go mushy. In case you don’t know, it’s green.’

‘You’ve gotta stop making life awkward for Justin. And that counts for the rest of us.’

‘Just as I thought; you see everything as yours for the taking, don’t you? I bet your life is full of excess in things that rot the soul because you don’t know the difference – all-nighters, violent films, porno mags, junk food, love bites and…and…blow jobs. I’ll bet girls are always smacking your face for the way you treat them.’

Jake exploded into a belly-laugh that reverberated against the walls.

‘Don’t laugh at me.’

Shadows of disdain persisted beneath his eyes. ‘Wanna know a secret?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘I enjoyed chasing you the other night. It was like the best sex. I slept like a baby afterwards.’

Jess turned her nose up.

‘I’ve gotta hand it to you,’ he said, his gaze intent now. ‘You worked me hard. And when you sprinted to the orchard at the top of that hill, I thought, shit, where did she get that from? I thought I had you, even though you stuck one on my leg.’

His mockery enclosed curiosity. She smiled thinly. ‘I saved the best till last so that I could watch you lurch up that hill like a prime idiot with blood spurting from your nose. And when I got you to carry me all the way back, I thought, this is better than sex.’

Jake’s smirk faded to an offhand shrug. With that, he uncrossed his legs and moved to stand.

‘I want books,’ Jess blurted. ‘I want something to read up here. And…and don’t let Justin choose, he’s a moron.’

His eyes arrowed her with contempt. ‘I’m not your fucking errand boy.’

Jess’s cheeks flushed.

Jake continued to the door indicating the conversation closed. Jess wrapped the duvet around her shoulders and took to her feet.

Jake turned to her, perplexed.

‘I…’ she began.

His hand paused at the doorknob.

Jess pinched her lip, agonising over the wording of her request which had been weighing heavily since yesterday. ‘I don’t want Justin coming up here,’ she mumbled. ‘I mean…what I mean to say is…. I want you to take care of me, with things up here.’

To take care of me? Bad wording: an invitation to humiliate her with a tardy reply and then leave the room with the last laugh. And who could blame him?

But Jake seemed to measure her request seriously. His gaze flickered over her face, trying to decode clues within, and then his eyes settled upon hers. He nodded slowly. ‘Okay,’ he said.

Jess averted her eyes. ‘Thanks,’ she said and moved away.

Jess considered the situation when Jake had left. She thought she had made a wise move with Jake; he seemed to exert a stabilising effect upon the household, a sort of leadership, particularly with Kia, whom Jess could have requested as her ‘buddy’. She was the same sex, after all, and might possess female empathy. But not one Kia, Jess suspected. Kia’s demands and her swagger told Jess Kia viewed her boys as territory. She carried chaos, the consequences of which seldom entered her mind.

Green’s debut came that evening: peas with potatoes and a steak pie. She wondered if Justin had taken offence at his redundancy. Maybe not. He could now spend more time with his bird-watching. On finishing she took the plastic fork and completed her task for the day: nine scratches.

Drugs, she thought. They made me take drugs – to stop the visions and the voices. A mild anti-depressant, the doctor had assured her. Mother approved; anything to stop Jess from wittering to herself. Her schoolwork nosedived. Father kept saying ‘let me finish’ in his vocal way.

The medication subdued the visions and the voices. She disliked the numbness they instilled within, so she secretly stopped for a while. The visions came back as vividly as before. Where did she get the idea for the toad? They did not always look like toads. Yes, sometimes they had flattened heads and rounded bellies, as Mrs. Cockrell’s had, but some had stick-shaped bodies and spindly feet. Others had spiny backs and a turtle-like head. The toady feature, Jess supposed came from their big mouths and the sightless coal-like eyes. Jess would refer to their croak when she spoke the mantras. Some of these creatures possessed a distinct feature, such as a warty spine or a pointy chin. Jess assigned types: trolls, goblins, groblets, gonks, gargoyles, parasites or simply ‘thing’. Toad provided a colourful label for a child who didn’t understand what she was seeing. On beholding such diversity, she settled for entity or thing.

She noticed no parallel to the sex, race or age of the person they inhabited. One prating through a bespectacled manageress of the Heart Foundation bore a striking resemblance to an inhabitant of a Cuban who worked for the Arts Council: gourd head and webbed feet. Spotting two of similar appearance was rare. Their individuality equalled that of facial features or a fingerprint.

On that matter, her mother’s must have felt like hugging a porcupined troll. Father’s had a perpetual yawn on its head: the classic toad. And, does one really need to think of Ellie’s parasite? Put it this way, it has a horn. No wonder she needed a shot of gin to numb the sensation.

Jess was struck by the absence of a thing within babies. Jess supposed this forging spurred the terrible twos. By the age of five, a colourful toad could be seen within. But the death of innocence lurked and teen-hood had a bilious tinge, like the sea clag drifting over funfairs. No wonder this stage of life caused the shuffling of feet, the boredom and the lie-ins.

Jess wondered at her own ‘toad’. Countless mirrors yielded nothing regardless of lighting, viewpoints, filters and proximities. She tried reflections of her reflection and reflections of distorted reflections. Nothing.

Her visions did not impede upon TV-images or photographs – why only reality? Jess didn’t want to consider what this implied. Perhaps it was not the light hitting her retinas, but the part of her brain that visualises, as in REM – dreams, wakeful sleep superimposed over reality like an overlay. Perhaps her visions sprouted from the subconscious as in hallucinations. No. Jess decided to stop it there. She was not crazy. These things were real, she could speak through them, and the words garnered seemed to accord with their hosts’ behaviour. They held a sort of logic.

An entity must exist within her – she just cannot see it. She imagined her quest as trying to view one’s face in a world without mirrors. Smooth, spiky, wrinkly, green, yellow, horny, thorny, warty, or scaly, none felt right. And what about the voices? She certainly did not narrate-out the vitriolic rantings within her head that she dubbed over people.

Jess had not seen the entities she shared this house with. The idea of seeking them out was insane, but since adolescence, the visions along with the itch had mostly vanished anyway. Jess suspected she could call her visions forth but refrained in fear of the nasty creatures she might find. But hers, as she sat in her corner, festering within these thoughts, felt like a spiny lizard bristling against her innards.

Jess dragged herself from the mattress to sit in the middle of the floor. Her brain rebooted and the poison fog cleared. She lay back. She pulled herself up in a crunch.

Memories of an elephant-herd stampeding over her midriff on Sam’s birth came back. Jess did another rep as per Pilate. Press the spine into the floor and breathe out on the lift. As she went for the third, a light flickered in the corner. She lifted her head and scrambled to her knees. Something hard and cool caught her fingertip within the skirting. She fished out the object.

The metal knife glinted in the gloom.

Chapter 6

A DOOR gave a thud beneath. Jess bolted for the mattress and pushed the blade through the hole. Movement throughout the house terminated at footfalls on the stairs. It was Justin. She knew by the shuffling. He