The Visitors
Some light relief after the previous story.
The last thing William expected at six o’clock on a Sunday morning was a visitor. Not out here, in the middle of nowhere. But there they were, two of them, bold as brass, standing in his lounge, sheathed in balaclavas, wielding a hammer and an axe.
“Now we can do this the easy or the hard way,” the smaller one said. William had already surmised that this was the younger of the two, probably still in his teens.
“Oh, I don’t know,” the tall one said, swinging his axe close to William’s head. “We could have some fun here.”
They tied William to a chair. He was then forced to watch as they barged around, stuffing things into bags and pockets. He wanted to shout, “Watch out for that figurine!” But it was too late. An elbow caught it and it smashed on the hearth.
The men stormed out the room. Footsteps thundered upstairs. It wasn’t long before they came stamping back down again. He could hear them in the kitchen. They were at the cellar door, he thought. Then there was a cry, followed by a distant thump.
“Tommy! Are you all right?” a voice called out.
There was no answer.
William stood up and snapped the ropes at his wrists. Tiptoeing through to the kitchen, he saw the cellar door lying open. At the bottom of the steps lay one of the visitors. The other was crouched over him.
“Oh my,” William said. “Is he dead?”
“Don’t come any closer,” the youth warned, picking up his hammer.
“Nonsense,” William said, making a tentative descent. A floorboard creaked under his weight. “He’s probably just had a nasty knock to the head. I’d better check for a pulse.”
The intruder was obviously mulling his options. After a moment, he got to his feet and stumbled back. William examined the body. “You’d better phone for an ambulance,” he said. “Dearie me, this is serious. Do you have a phone? There’s a phone through there.” He nodded towards an open doorway in the cellar.
The young man stammered an incomprehensible answer.
“Now, now. We can’t stand around waiting for him to die, can we?” He pushed the youth through the doorway, slamming and bolting the door before leaning against the cold brick wall. That’s when he noticed a mobile lying on the floor. He gingerly searched the pockets of the man at his feet who also had a phone. Both were switched off. Not knowing what to do with them, he stuffed them in a nearby metal box.
“Let me out!” the youth screamed.
William straightened his pyjamas. A drink was in order. He couldn’t think until he’d had a tipple. And maybe a handful of diazepam.
“There’s a corpse in my cellar,” he whispered over the phone line.
Silence. “A what?”
“A corpse in my cellar.”
Another pause. “What’s it doing there?”
“Well it’s not polishing the silver!” William snapped. He collected himself. “Can you come over?”
“Is it dead?”
“Of course it’s dead. It’s a corpse. Just get over here. They broke in. Thieves. I need some help here.” He slammed down the phone and wondered what to do next. Perhaps he ought to empty the bags of loot and put everything back. Then he struck on the idea of cleaning everything they’d touched, getting rid of fingerprints on the off chance the police might make an unwelcome visit. In the kitchen, he rooted out his Marigolds.
“It’s dead.”
“I told you.”
“Well, there was always the chance.” Anthony got to his feet and straightened his impeccable suit and his long black coat.
Lounge Lizard, William thought.
“We’re going to have to dispose of it,” Anthony went on.
“How?”
They were interrupted by a howling from behind the door at the rear of the cellar.
“What the hell was that?” Anthony drew his coat more tightly around himself.
“That’s the other one. Do you think we could hypnotise him and let him go? He’s not such a bad sort.”
“For fuck’s sake…” Anthony pulled out his mobile and strode up the stairs.
William let out a sigh. The whole dreadful business was about to be taken out his hands. Everything would be fine. Help was on its way.
“Chastity’s coming,” Anthony informed him moments later in the kitchen.
Oh no, William thought.
“Where’s that computer you set up?” Anthony asked.
“Computer? Eh, well, I never actually set it up.”
“We could have emailed the others for suggestions,” Anthony told him.
William gave him a blank look.
“On how to get rid of the corpse,” he explained patiently. “Or is it the concept of emails you’re not familiar with?”
“Never had any use for them,” William sniffed. He liked to see himself as an eccentric, blissfully ignorant of modern gadgets. In truth, he’d been terrified of the computer. So many buttons and plug in bits. So many things to go wrong. And the instructions were not written by anyone who spoke plain English. After a while the sight of the machine, lying around in pieces, had begun to mock him. He’d felt that a malevolent presence had taken over his home. Eventually, he’d piled the bits and pieces onto a trolley and wheeled the thing into a cupboard, locking the door behind it. Afterwards, the whole computer escapade had seemed like a bad dream.
A thought popped into William’s head. “Quicklime!” he said.
Anthony glared at him. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“We could bury him in quicklime. I read about it once. In a detective novel.”
“Or we could bury him in a graveyard,” he suggested later. “No one would think to look there.”
Night had fallen and they sat in the glow of the lounge fire. A faint cry erupted intermittently from the depths of the house.
“The question is,” Anthony said, “will anyone come looking for them? We can’t afford to keep either of them here much longer.”
“Maybe they leave word of where they’re robbing, in case anything goes wrong. Maybe their phones will show where they are. Though they were switched off.” William began to pace back and forth in front of the hearth. “I can’t have the police coming here. They might test me.”
“Test you for what?”
“I don’t know. Sperm samples or something.”
Anthony opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head and rubbed a weary hand over his eyes. They’d been drinking for hours, fresh bags, straight out the fridge, last night’s delivery. Anthony stretched and yawned. “Not enough excitement any more. Not like the old days.”
“You look ghastly,” William told him. “You haven’t been filing your teeth again?” He was interrupted by the sound of a car engine.
Anthony was at the window in seconds.
“Is it the police?”
“No, it’s Chastity.”
Nell climbed out of the car first. In William’s opinion, she was dressed inappropriately for the disposing of bodies - a fitted jacket and a long slit skirt showed off her voluptuous figure. She was a common harlot, a strumpet, thrown out of Glasgow by the old city fathers. Since then she’d come up in the world.
The adolescent form of Chastity emerged from the passenger side. William had long been appalled by her fashion choices. In this case, a skimpy top and mini skirt with thigh-length dark socks. She was also chewing gum.
“It was awful,” William began, “they just broke in. He had an axe. He fell down the cellar stairs. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Have you been drinking?” Chastity leaned forward. Her hair was in two long plaits. “At a time like this?”
“Especially at a time like this,” Anthony said.
“Do you want us to leave, or what?” Chastity said, pausing to blow a large bubble. “Because I’ve got other things I could be doing.”
“Yeah, like homework,” Anthony muttered under his breath.
“What was that?”
“They’re in the cellar.”
“Yes,” William said to Chastity, “you’re old…”
“Positively ancient,” Anthony elaborated.
“...you must know what to do,” William finished. He shot Anthony a look. You’re not exactly helping here, it said.
Chastity looked down on the corpse. “I thought you said you had nothing to do with this,” she said to William.
“I didn’t. I was nowhere near him.”
“So where did all this blood come from?”
“He must have split his head.”
Anthony bent down, lifted the body up by the waist band, and pulled out the axe. “Nasty.”
“Tommy! Are you there? Will someone let me out of here?”
“What are we supposed to do with him?” William whispered.
Anthony stepped closer to the door. “There seems to be a problem getting you out. You’re locked in. Don’t worry, we’re waiting for a locksmith.”
“Tommy!
“Eh, Tommy is fine,” Anthony said. “Quite well, actually. But lying down right now.”
“Never mind him,” Chastity said. “Get the bin liners and wrap the body in them.” Her plaits whipped around as she turned to William. “Get every scrubbing brush and every bit of cleaning fluid down here and remove every drop of blood. And when you’ve done that, go to the car and get the cleaning materials there and start all over again. Dump everything you use into a bin bag and put it in the boot of the car.”
Hours later, the body lay mummified in bin liners on the floor of the refrigeration van. Nell had called the driver up for a late run. Just after one o’clock, the vehicle backed up the driveway.
“Give me a hand with the other one,” Chastity said to the driver. The two of them disappeared into the house.
Anthony leaned towards Nell, taking the opportunity to look down the plunging neckline of her jacket. “How old is Chastity passing for these days?”
“Fifteen,” Nell said. “It’s a nightmare. She turned up out of the blue, saying it was my turn to foster her. Well, she obviously can’t live on her own.”
A brief scream erupted from the house.
“So she’s barely through the door before I’m having to explain to the neighbours who she is. My niece, parents travelling abroad, etc, etc. Then the family next door is offering to let her babysit. I mean, she still prefers to drink live. I had to tell them, as soon as her back was turned, that she had an infectious rash. Now she’s wondering what I said because every time they pass her on the stairs, they give her a wide berth.”
The driver appeared with the second body, also wrapped in a bin bag. “Bet this bastard would have thought twice about breaking into William’s house if he’d known what was in store!”
Chastity turned up. “We’ve got the phones. We’ll dump their van somewhere. And as for you,” she said, turning to William. “It’s time you had a refresher course on how to dispose of a body. How you’ve survived this long is beyond me. That’s what drinking out of bags does to you. You get everything delivered, consequently, when faced with a real dead human, you haven’t the slightest idea what to do. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.” She was looking at Anthony now too.
“What?” he said. “You can’t afford to slip up these days. Not with forensics. Don’t you watch television?”
“Just get back in there and remove every trace of their presence. We’ll pick up the car later.” She marched over to the thieves’ van and unlocked the passenger door.
“I’ll be seeing you,” Nell said to them sweetly. “Looks like I’m going to get my independence back. Hope there are some good schools around here.”
Back inside the house, William chewed on a few diazepam. “Maybe I should move house. Emigrate.”
“It won’t be that bad.”
“Won’t it? She’s been through physics and chemistry so many times, she could probably build the bomb. And I’m to share a house with her.”
“Here,” Anthony said, tossing William a bag of blood, “2019 vintage.”
“Why me, Anthony? Why me?”
Anthony reclined on a sofa, sucked on his straw, and then shrugged. “Life sends us these little trials to test us.”
“Yes,” William paused. “But we failed the test. We’re not predators any more. We’re… we’re straw suckers!” And he pulled on his Marigolds, got out his scrubbing brush, and set to work cleaning up the cellar.
Art from Aleksandra at Fusion Dream.