“What the hell happened?” Minnie sighed, coming towards them. “Jesus, I let you out of my sight for what? An hour?”
Zach scowled at Lloyd, “someone couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.”
Lloyd looked as though he might cry, his heart pounding hard inside his chest in grim anticipation of what was to come. He was right to be afraid. In what felt like less than a second, his mother was on him, dragging him up by a clump of his greasy hair with surprising strength in her slender arm. With her other arm, she swung her fist hard into the side of his face, instantly splitting open her son’s nose, causing a gush of blood to trickle from his nostrils.
“Mum! No!” he howled in pain, but Minnie was not listening. Again and again, she pounded her fist into the teenager’s skull until the flesh on one of his cheeks started to resemble a bloody pool of ground mincemeat. At last, she let go of him, and his body crumpled pathetically onto the ground like a broken rag doll.
The colour drained from Zach’s cheeks, his entire body rigid with guilt as he watched his brother’s beating. He wished he hadn’t grassed him up, almost as soon as he’d seen the light in his mother’s eyes switch. He shouldn’t have been so shocked. All four of the Garnet children knew full well that, whilst there wasn’t a lot their parents were morally adverse to, any kind of sexual violence always seemed to cut deep. And whenever their boys had ever even shown the faintest glimmer of interest in perverse behaviour, it had been rewarded with severe punishment.
Minnie breathed out and wiped her bloody knuckle on her trousers. Usually beautiful, her face was contorted so that she looked ugly and terrifying so that not even Flo could find comfort in her presence anymore.
“If I ever catch you or hear of you pulling shit like this again…” she spat at Lloyd, “I swear to fucking god, I will chop your bollocks off myself.”
Apparently indifferent, Ronnie stepped forwards then and squatted down beside Destiny’s body. The girl had been knocked out by Flo’s kick, so her head was limp and useless as he roughly pulled it up and tightened his grip around her neck.
“What are you doing to do?” Minnie asked him gruffly, putting her hands on her hips.
Ronnie didn’t reply, his face tensing as he squeezed harder and harder until Destiny’s spindly body began to convulse and shake against the ground. Sambuca cried harder, her body quivering helplessly as she watched the monster strangle her best friend to death, just mere centimetres away from her.
Destiny died quickly, disappointingly so. Ronnie preferred it when his victims put up more of a fight. However, he knew this was no time to be prolonging the inevitable.
“We need to get out of here as soon as possible,” he said, feeling for Destiny’s pulse. “The pond runs into a stream,” he nodded towards the direction behind Zach, “we’re better dumping them in there. Once the corpses start to bloat, they’ll be exposed quickly enough, but by then, we’ll be a good few hours away.”
Sambuca let out a loud, high-pitched cry of terror as her body instinctively curled up tightly into a protective ball.
“Where’s Stella?” Minnie asked then, glancing around, suddenly aware that they were one family member down.
Zach groaned and rubbed his temple, “she went to rob some drug dealer we found.”
“What? Where?”
“I know where the caravan is,” Sambuca blurted out suddenly, her pupils wide and manic as she suddenly scrambled upright. “I know where the other girl was going. She was going to Neil’s place.”
Ronnie raised an eyebrow at her, then glanced over at Zach.
“You mean to tell me you’ve sent your sister off to rob a drug dealer, with no backup, and not even any fucking idea whereabouts?” he growled at his eldest son, his eyes crinkling at the sides.
“Dad, I…”
“Spare us the bullshit,” snapped Minnie. She glared furiously, “I’m so disappointed in both of you,” she told both of her sons, her voice a disgusted snarl. “Lloyd, you help your father get rid of that body. Zach, you come with us to find Stella.” She lunged forwards and dragged Sambuca up by the crook of her skinny arm. “And as for you, well, I’m only going to warn you once not to fuck with us, girly.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Summer, 1999
Inside the house, the warmth was like a tight-fitting cloak resting on the tiny bumps of goose flesh that ran up and down Minnie’s arms. As soon as the front door was firmly closed behind her, and she was enveloped in the thick, smoky atmosphere of the dark hallway, a finger of unease probed the base of her spine. It was hot but uncomfortably so. Like the stagnant air inside a closed coffin, as opposed to the pleasant glow of a homely fire.
“This way,” the blonde drawled, the hot steam from her mouth penetrating the skin on Minnie’s neck.
Wordlessly, Minnie forced one foot in front of the other, her pulse quickening with every step further and further into the suspiciously dark and gloomy house.
“Where’s Ronnie?” she asked, her voice coming out in a high-pitched squeak. The corridor seemed to go on and on, never coming to an end, yet growing increasingly darker as they progressed.
“Steve!” the blonde barked, the sudden rise in her voice making Minnie freeze. “Steve, we have a visitor. The girlfriend!”
From further down the passage, there was a small click, and suddenly the space was flooded with a murky orange glow of light. Minnie clasped her hand over her mouth and felt bile churn in her stomach as she caught sight of a man standing in the doorway at the end of the hall. He was tall and very slim, with thick black stubble
