The toolbox was at her feet, tipped up on its side from where Steve had hurled it against the wall the previous evening, lying half open. An array of razor-sharp edges and lethal-looking points spilled out invitingly.
BLOOD!
The voice went virtually unnoticed as she snatched up a screwdriver and, with a howl, thrust it between the woman’s shoulder blades, the tool sinking into flesh almost to the handle.
To Sam’s surprise, it was Steve who screamed in response, kicking the sales woman’s head away, a fountain of blood spurting from a ragged stump between his legs.
The woman fell to the floor, her eyes wide as she gasped for breath. Dark red fluid dribbled from her lips as the dismembered organ lodged in her throat disgorged the blood that seconds ago had been throbbing in its veins. Within a few seconds, it had shrivelled enough that she was able to choke it down, air once more filling her lungs, whistling through the hole in her back. Sam pounced on her, stabbing the screwdriver repeatedly into her chest, perforating her breasts over and over, puncturing both lungs in several places before finally stabbing her through the heart, a fountain of pumping blood spurting into the air.
As the sales agent slipped away, her blood pooling around her on the polished floorboards, Sam turned her attention to her wayward husband.
Steve had crawled up to the far end of the bed, his back pressed tight against the wooden headboard. His hands were clasped tightly around a white pillow between his thighs, dark blood soaking right through it.
MORE BLOOD!
The voice reverberated around the gore soaked bedroom, Sam’s frenzied rage suddenly increasing as the booming imperative flushed her mind of all thoughts and emotions - other than the desire to kill.
She hurled herself onto the bed, the screwdriver thrusting into Steve’s neck. Her husband’s hands flew up from the pillow between his legs to protect his throat. As his life spilled in dark rivers between his fingers, Sam plunged the tool into his right eye, the orb bursting under the assault, the sharp point of the screwdriver smashing through the orbital bones before driving into brain. As she withdrew the implement she twisted it slightly, pulling the eyeball from its socket and flicking it across the room, blood and brain matter seeping from the empty hollow. Sam stabbed again at Steve’s neck and throat, eventually piercing his corotid artery, a cascade of blood spraying over the cracked wall behind the bed.
As her husband’s lifeless body slid down the headboard, redundant blood still pumping from the gash in his neck, Sam’s mind began to clear. She looked around the bedroom, screaming when her gaze found the body of the sales woman - as if seeing the corpse for the first time. Memories of the frenzied past few minutes suddenly flooded back – images of blood-spraying slaughter playing out on the retina of her mind’s eye like a bad movie on a grainy screen.
Oh, fuck! What the hell had she done?
She tried to run from the bedroom, her legs like jellied lead, the door slamming shut before her. She leapt at the handle, pulling and twisting, her efforts shaking the wooden frame.
The door stayed closed.
A loud ‘crack’ behind her jerked her body around and she watched in horror as lumps of plaster flew from the wall, a snake of grey electrical flex bursting from a cloud of pink dust, writhing through the air towards her. The cabled quickly coiled itself around her throat, pulling her back towards the wall from whence it came, secondary and tertiary cables erupting from the plaster at her back, winding tightly around her torso and hips to hold her in place.
28
Lisa kicked off her shoes and flopped onto the bed.
Glancing at the digital clock on her bedside table she saw the time was 9:36 AM. She had just come off a night shift at the hospital, and, while experience had taught her that hitting the hay immediatley would play havoc with her body-clock, she was just too damned tired to worry about it.
The emotional stress of the past few days had given her sleepless nights and appetite deprived days, the bags she had so recently acquired beneath her eyes adding a decade to her looks. She had booked time off work in the hope that she would be home when – if - Roger walked back through her door, but a sickness bug had been sweeping through the wards, affecting both patients and staff alike and she had been ‘asked’ to come in.
She wondered if it was worth ringing the police station to see if they had any news, but, as she lay on top of the quilt, still dressed in her uniform, she felt her eyes growing heavy and quickly succumbed to sleep.
*
After a leisurly shower, Roger dressed in a clean set of clothes from his motel room’s flimsy wardrobe and headed toward town.
He recalled spotting a sign for a library on his trip to the supermarket the day before and was keen to learn more about the history of Chillingworth House. After all, he’d tortured and killed a man in the name of the entity that inhabited the building’s bricks and mortar, which, combined with his fiery experience at the pub, had more than piqued his curioisity.
Turning left out of the Deanery’s carpark and walking towards the town, Roger paused as he approached Chillingworth Mews. The building was on the opposite side of the road, a steady stream of late commuters and through traffic the only thing between them. As he stood and studied the architecture he suddenly gasped, a tug at his guts squeezing the wind out of him.
For a second he thought ‘the dead’ were giving him a new mission, but this pain in his bowels was softer – an invitation rather than an order –
