THE GREEN FOG

AN EXTREME HORROR NOVELLA

BY SAM WEST

The Green Fog: An Extreme Horror Novella

By Sam West

Copyright Sam West 2016

Cover Image: luke@lukeahearn.com

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book may not be reproduced or used in any way without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in book reviews. The characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

CHAPTER ONE

“I’m pregnant,” Sarah announced.

Inside, Amber winced. Poor Marjorie.

“That’s fantastic, sweetie, congratulations,” Amber said with a smile, genuinely pleased for her friend despite feeling bad for Marjorie. “So that’s why you’re not drinking. How far gone are you? You’re not showing.”

“Almost three months.”

Amber squinted in the early evening, summer sunshine, glancing over the handcrafted, driftwood table at Marjorie. She was staring out to sea, her striking blue eyes hidden by the big sunglasses, every exquisite line of her tanned face expressionless. Only the slightest tremor of her fingers as she brought the wine-glass to her lips betrayed her hurt to Amber.

“Congratulations,” Marjorie said, with one of her customary, icy smiles. “Someone should see if the boys need a hand.”

“Why? You’ll only get in the way,” Sara said.

Again, Amber winced inside. Sara didn’t mean to sound rude, it was just the way she came across. She was one of those brisk and chirpy types with a loud voice and a braying laugh.

Marjorie scraped back her chair over the newly-laid decking. “Excuse me.”

Amber shot Sara a look. Leave her. Sara just looked puzzled, but to Amber’s relief she didn’t say anything more until Marjorie was a safe distance away on the other side of the expansive lawn.

“What’s crawled up her backside? Apart from the pole that’s always there. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, she’s just so cold. I’m pregnant, for God’s sake.”

Amber sighed, thoughtfully watching her friend over with the men at the other end of the garden.

She’s so beautiful, came the automatic thought. There was no jealousy or desire in it, it was just what she always thought whenever she watched her.

Alfie, Colin and Jeff were busy knocking back the beers and flipping the homemade fishcakes made with fresh mackerel that her husband Alfie had scrounged off the fishermen down on the quay earlier that day. Marjorie looked so out of place standing there, with her waif-like figure in the little black dress and her dyed black hair pulled off her face in an elaborate up-do. She was always so pristine, so perfect, and for the most part she came across as a stuck-up bitch. Sometimes Amber felt like the only person who could see through her cool façade to the warm and kind woman beyond. To the sad woman.

Should I tell Sara that Marjorie has been doing the IVF thing for two years and just last week at the grand old age of thirty-nine and a half she went into an early menopause? Yep, Mother Nature sure could be one cruel bitch…

No, she couldn’t break her friend’s confidence.

“She has her reasons, Sara. She’s really not that bad, once you get to know her.”

“If you say so. And what reasons would they be, then?”

Amber sighed and took a big mouthful of red wine. She stared wistfully over at her glamorous friend, cupping her hand over her eyes to shield them from the glare of the sun. The sound of laughter drifted her way, mingling with the cawing of the seagulls as the four of them shared a joke that she couldn’t hear. Her husband, Alfie, draped an arm over her shoulders, and Amber felt a sudden pang of…

Of What? Jealousy? Don’t be ridiculous, you’re not the jealous type, remember?

“Just reasons, you know, personal stuff,” she said, dragging her gaze away from her husband

(flirting?)

with her friend.

Then she realised what she had just said and mentally kicked herself.

How juvenile am I? I’ve got a secret and I’m not going to tell you?  I can’t believe I just said that…

“No, I don’t know her reasons as it happens, seeing as you won’t tell me,” Sara said.

Great. Now Sara’s got the hump.

A momentary wave of irritation stirred within her – Sara and Marjorie would get on great if they would just open up with each other. She didn’t really understand why they rubbed each other up the wrong way because deep down, they weren’t that different. All they wanted was a man that loved them, and children.

Isn’t that what every woman wants? I’m so lucky to have my husband and daughter.

Yeah, even if he is flirting with my friend.

He’s not flirting.

Amber trusted her husband one hundred percent, she had no idea why she was feeling like this. Her period was due, maybe it was that.

“That’s really great news about you being pregnant. Jeff must be thrilled,” she said, mainly in an attempt to take Sara’s mind off her admittance that she was keeping something from her.

Not only that, she didn’t appreciate the dark turn her thoughts were inexplicably taking.

It really wasn’t like her at all.

Amazingly, her transparent tactic worked a treat. Sara’s face lit up again, thinking about the impending baby. If there was one thing about Sara, she never held a grudge for long.

“He is. We both are. Oh, it’s so exciting, I can’t wait, even though I’m going to be ancient by the time he’s the same age as your Jessie.”

“You’re not old, you’re only thirty-five. Try being thirty-eight. Now that’s old,” she said, but her heart wasn’t in the conversation.

“You have a point,” Sara said.

But Amber barely heard her. Instinctively, at the mention of her ten-year-old daughter’s name, her gaze flickered upwards towards her bedroom window.

I hope she’s okay.

A wave of anxiety caught her off-guard. It was just that one heard so many real-life horror stories about children going missing from their own bedrooms as parents boozed the night away in nearby proximity…

Stop it. She’s fine. Our house doesn’t even have a backdoor and any intruder would have to walk right past us to get inside.

As laid-back and as easy-going as Amber was, sometimes she suffered from bouts of anxiety. She had landed on her feet, and she knew it. Her husband was gorgeous and he owned a thriving business in the form of a chain of surf-shops. Her daughter was perfect. Her house was perfect. Her job as an artist was a dream come true.

Sometimes, like now, when she sat in her vast garden of a warm summer’s evening and gazed out at that view of the Atlantic Ocean, she felt as if she were in the wrong life. The home she shared with Alfie and Jessie was the very last house on a dead-end stretch of gravel-road that was situated in an elevated position behind the cliff-path that wound all the way to the neighbouring town of Zennor.

The four-bedroomed house faced out to sea and had a vast front-garden which more than made up for the lack of back-garden. It was the length and width of half a football pitch and at the end of it was a panoramic view of Porthmeor Beach. The next door neighbours were a good fifty metres away.

Yep, I live in my own private paradise. Whatever did I do to get so lucky?

“You’ve gone quiet. What are you thinking?” Sara asked, her expression unreadable behind her sunglasses.

Amber immediately felt guilty for going off into her own little dream world and she focussed properly on Sara. “Nothing, really. Just about my charmed life.”

“You know your problem? You lack confidence. Why are you so insecure about your existence? You and Alfie have earned everything that you have.”

“I get paid to paint pictures. I make money from my hobby, sometimes I can barely live with the guilt.”

She was only half-joking. Sara’s right. I am insecure.

“You are such a stereotype, Amber Wilson. Stop being such an overly-sensitive artist. You’re successful and rich, so what, get over it. I don’t do fuck all, and believe me, I live with it just fine. Thanks to your hubby, my Jeff can now keep me in the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed.”

Amber snorted laughter. Sara’s down-to-earth, speak-as-she-found attitude always made her feel better. In her moments of paranoia, she was a breath of fresh air.

“That’s because you’re just a gold-digger.”

“I love my husband, the fact he is now loaded is an added bonus.”

She was right. Financially, he was doing fine. Better than fine. Marjorie’s husband, Colin, was Alfie’s business partner but Jeff still had his fingers in their very lucrative pie, owning a small percentage of shares in the business. He was the charismatic front man; he acted as area manager and always stepped in as the temporary shop manager when a new outlet was launched and new staff had to be trained.

Amber gazed thoughtfully over at their husbands who were laughing with Marjorie. Marjorie’s husband Colin looked so out of place standing there with the other two men. To everyone that knew them, Alfie and Jeff were affectionately known as ‘Bill and Ted’. Mainly because they were both keen surfers and Alfie was tall and dark, Jeff short and blonde. They carried on together like a couple of school-boys, constantly bantering and laughing at each other.

Visually, Colin was the polar opposite of the pair of them. Where Alfie and Jeff epitomised the ‘surfer dude’ look, with the almost-too-long hair, year-round suntans and a penchant for baggy board shorts and flip-flops, Colin was, in contrast, decidedly ‘buttoned up’. He favoured chords and shirts teamed with loafers. He wore his hair short, had glasses, and his complexion was whiter than an anaemic goth’s.

He looked every inch the accountant. Which in a way, Amber supposed, he was. He was the brains behind the outfit, a shrewd businessman that was about as into surfing as he was into high-fashion. He had seen an opening, and he had gone for it. As a result, the pair of them now owned eighteen surf-shops across Cornwall, and counting.

“I think maybe Marjorie hates me because our husbands are so close. She feels like Jeff has taken Colin’s place.”

Yeah. There’s more than a grain of truth in that. “Our guys are just so laid-back, that’s all. And Colin is so…”

“Uptight?”

Both women laughed, even though Amber derived no pleasure in ever slagging someone off.

“I was going to say serious. I have to be honest, I never knew why you and Jeff didn’t have kids earlier,” Amber said, changing the subject, uncomfortable with bad-mouthing the guy that had helped make her husband a millionaire.

Sara shrugged. “It’s just the right time now, financially, and everything.”

Amber smiled at her friend, taking in her glowing, plump face with the strawberry blonde, wavy hair cascading every which way over her freckly shoulders.

“I really am pleased for you.”

“Thanks. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Any plans for another?”

Amber smiled wistfully. “We’re happy as we are. Besides, I’m probably too old now, anyway.”

She neglected to mention that she was off the pill for the first time in years, and wasn’t adverse to the idea of falling pregnant. It wasn’t something that she and Alfie were actively courting, but if it happened, then she would embrace the opportunity wholeheartedly. Jessie was getting so big, it would be nice to have a baby around the house again…

“You are not too old,” Sara said. “What about Marjorie? Is she upset because I’m pregnant? Surely not? I always thought she was too busy with her teaching career to worry about kids.”

Amber squirmed in her seat – Sara was too near the truth for comfort. The simple fact was, Marjorie had left it too late to start a family. To her relief, she was saved from answering when her husband Alfie approached the table. Amber’s heart skipped a beat, just like it always did whenever she laid eyes on him.

He was just so easy-going and smiley, and, more importantly, genuinely had no idea how good-looking he was. He strode over, grinning broadly, his dark hair flopping in his blue eyes.

“What’s up, lovely lady,” he said, briefly bending down to plant a smacker on her lips. “Do you girls wanna come and get your meat?”

He waggled his eyebrows lewdly at her and she playfully punched him in the shoulder.

“Hey, what was that for?” he asked in mock, wide-eyed innocence.

“You know perfectly well what that was for.” She leaned in closer to Sara and whispered in her ear: “Can I tell him?”

Sara grinned and nodded, her cheeks flushed.

“Sara’s pregnant,” Amber blurted out.

“What? That’s fantastic, congratulations.”

Sara squealed when he bodily scooped her up and spun her round once in a circle. She looked like a plump ragdoll in his arms; he was well over six foot and she was barely five foot two. Her pink sundress fanned out around her making her look even more like a doll.

Amber frowned as her husband set down a flustered Sara on her feet. It wasn’t really Alfie’s style to do something like that. Sure, he was a friendly guy, but generally speaking, he wasn’t especially tactile, even after a beer or two. She shrugged aside the strange feeling and just decided that he was happy for her and Jeff.

“Grab your plates, ladies, get yourself some meat.”

He waggled his eyebrows again, but this time Amber wasn’t even halfway close to cracking a smile. “That joke’s getting a little old, honey.”

But he didn’t appear to have heard her and was already striding back over to the end of the garden, his flip-flops smacking against the soles of his feet.

“Shall we?” Sara asked, straightening her dress and grabbing a plate off of the stack next to the array of salads and potato dishes laid out on the table.

“You go, I left my sunglasses inside and I want to check on Jessie. I’ll be right back.”

Just to the left of the front-door were the wide French-doors that led into the expansive kitchen. They were open and she strode into her home.

CHAPTER TWO

It was cooler in the kitchen and she shivered in her denim cut-offs and tight, white t-shirt, her arms breaking out in a rash of goose-bumps.

Even after living in the house for three full years, the beauty of it still took her breath away; she had to pinch herself on a regular basis. The sink was right next to the French-doors, and she stopped for a glass of water. As she knocked back the water, she gazed out through the window above the draining-board, across the garden and to the sparkling sea beyond.

Such a beautiful evening, she thought wistfully.

Sunset was around two hours away, and an evening filled with friends and laughter stretched out before her. In that moment, life seemed perfect.

Too perfect. Something bad is going to happen.

She shook her head, almost smiling at her ridiculous flights of fancy.

Turning her back to the window, she flip-flopped across the Italian-tiled floor of the kitchen and out into the hallway, pausing to retrieve her sunglasses off the sideboard. As she did so, she caught her reflection in the hallway mirror.

Not bad for thirty-eight.

Amber was not a vain woman, and was referring to her body rather than her face.

Having a husband as gorgeous, super-fit and as successful as Alfie was a strong incentive for her to take care of her appearance. She spent hours a week in the gym they had installed in the basement, wore her light-brown hair in a long, deceptively tousled style that in reality took far too many hours a week to achieve, and sported the perfect tan.

Like with everything else in her life, she was also mistrustful of her beautiful face. She was aware of how fleeting good-looks were, how they could fade overnight, especially with a sun-worshiper like her. She peered more closely at her face in the mirror. No wrinkles yet.

“Mum? Is that you?”

The sound of her daughter calling out to her snapped her gaze guiltily away from the mirror.

You’re so shallow…

She took the steps of the lavish, spiral stone staircase two at a time and bounded into Jessie’s bedroom.

“Hey, sweetie, how’s it going?”

Jessie was sitting cross-legged on her pink ‘princess’ bed, writing in her pink diary. She slammed it shut as soon as Amber entered the room.

“Mum! You have to knock before entering. I am writing down my most private things.”

A brief pang of sadness twisted in her heart; there was a time when Jessie shared every last little thought that went through her little brain… They really did just grow up so fast.

“Your private things, huh?” she said, sitting down on the bed and ruffling her daughter’s hair which was as dark as Alfie’s. “Too private even for your old mum?”

Jessie rolled her eyes – the same shade of dark-blue as her own. ‘Ocean eyes’, as Alfie sometimes called them. “Yes, Mother, especially for you. Are you and Dad getting drunk in the garden?”

“No, we’re just talking to our friends.”

“You mean a party, and you’re getting drunk.”

Amber tried not to go on the defensive; rule number one of child rearing, never show weakness. She decided to get Jessie off of the subject of her and Alfie’s inevitable hangovers tomorrow.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come downstairs and have something to eat with us?”

“Well, I was going to eat a burger and stream that film in the living-room like you said I could, but I can’t get internet.”

Amber frowned. “Well, did you try switching it off then turning it on again?”

“Yes.”

“You should have told us there’s no connection, sweetie.”

Jessie shrugged. Her diary was one of those kids’ toys that came with a lock and a key, and she put on a theatrical show of locking it up before placing her key carefully inside the top drawer of her bedside table.  “I’ll know if the key moves, Mother, so please don’t even try and read my diary.”

“Sweetie, I’m not going to read your diary.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. Can I see your computer, please?”

She reached for the laptop – pink, of course – that was perched on the edge of the bed. Sure enough, when she opened up the lid she couldn’t get a connection. She moved the cursor around, trying different things when the screen suddenly blinked out. Sighing heavily, she saw the damn thing wasn’t plugged in.

She plugged it in at the wall but the screen remained black.

Amber’s frown deepened. That’s strange. Instinctively, she got to her feet and strode over to the light-switch. She flicked it and nothing happened. The same with the bedside-lamp.

A power-cut. Just wonderful. Her first thought was of the all meat and fish in their sizable, free-standing freezer. Well, hopefully it’ll come back on soon. The food should last a fair few hours before it defrosts.

“We have a power-cut,” she announced. “I have to go back outside now and tell Daddy. You’ve got your battery night-light, haven’t you? And your old Disney Princess torch?”

Amber crouched down and peered under the bed. I really need to hoover under there. She spotted the torch amidst the forgotten toys, and pulled it out along with a stray sock.

Now where the hell did I put the torch and candles, she wondered as she got to her feet. She was pretty sure that the candles were in a drawer in the kitchen. God only knew where the torch was.

“Don’t worry, it won’t get dark for a few hours yet and you have your torch, but the power will probably come back on again in a minute, anyway.”

She walked over to the door.

“Mummy?” Jessie said softly.

“Yes, sweetie?”

“Be careful.”

It struck her as a strange thing to say and when she smiled at her daughter, it felt forced and unnatural.

“Always, sweetie. It’s only a power-cut, there’s nothing to worry about.”

Something bad is going to happen.

There it was again, that pre-menstrual angst. She hovered in the doorway and watched Jessie walk over to the window. Her bedroom was next-door to theirs, and had sea-views. Jessie pressed her face to the glass, peering downwards.

“Daddy’s being weird.”

Instantly, Amber was on edge without knowing why. She went over and joined her daughter at the window, gently placing her hands on her shoulders.

“That’s a funny thing to say, why do you think he’s being weird?”

“Because Daddy is always so gentle. I’ve been looking out the window sometimes, and Daddy is being funny.  He’s laughing too much and speaking really loudly and he won’t stand still.”

Only when she properly looked, did she see what Jessie meant. She was right, even from this distance it was clear to see that Alfie was far more animated than usual. He was usually the epitome of laid-back cool, he didn’t go in for expansive hand gestures and very rarely raised his voice. Even when they argued, he generally kept his cool which – she remembered with some shame – usually had the effect of further inflaming her temper. Right now he was holding court, waving his arms around and hopping from foot to foot. The window was ajar and she strained her ears, trying to catch what he was saying. The wind in the trees and the cawing of seagulls drowned out individual words, but the occasional raucous laugh drifted her way on the light breeze.

The more she looked, the more uneasy she felt. On the face of it, the scene was entirely innocuous – just five friends drinking around a barbecue – but she had never seen Alfie act so loud.

He’s just blowing off some steam, he works so hard…

She told herself that, but she didn’t quite believe it.

Her gaze strayed to Jeff and Colin. They too, were acting out of character. Especially Colin. Of the three of them, Jeff was the one most likely to act the boisterous fool, but Colin was pretty straight-laced. He most definitely wasn’t the type to carry on as he was. He was currently thrusting his hips as if he were acting out some crap, deeply unfunny joke. The boys appeared to think it was hilarious, especially when Alfie joined in with the hip-thrusting.

Sara and Marjorie certainly didn’t seem to find it funny. They looked distinctly uneasy and were as rigid as statues as the men calmed down for a second to dish up fishcakes and burgers onto their plates.

“Mummy, what’s wrong with Daddy and Jeff and Colin?”

The sound of Jessie’s sweet voice made her flinch as she had been so engrossed in the scene unfolding at the bottom of her garden.

“Nothing sweetie, they’ve probably been hitting the beer a little too hard.”

It struck Amber that Jessie very rarely called them ‘Mummy’ and ‘Daddy’ anymore, deeming it ‘babyish’. Only when she was upset about something did she revert to such language.

“Oh. I knew you were all drunk.”

Amber barely heard her, her gaze was helplessly drawn back to her husband and friends. She watched Marjorie and Sara hurry back over to the table on the patio that extended out from the double kitchen-doors.

“Everything’s fine, sweetheart. I have to go downstairs now and tell Daddy that there’s been a power-cut.”

She stepped away from the window, feeling distinctly off-kilter, like she had just stepped off a fairground ride. Her head swam but she plastered on a smile for her daughter.

Out in the expansive, dark-wood hallway, her smile dropped like lead. Quickly, she made her way back down the stairs. Once in the downstairs hallway she picked up the receiver of the landline on the sideboard.

It was dead.

Of course it’s dead, there’s a power-cut, remember?

She strode back through the kitchen and out onto the patio, wincing as she passed the large, free-standing freezer.

Squinting in the bright light, she remembered her sunglasses and put them on. Marjorie and Sara were sitting eating at the driftwood table. Marjorie was daintily eating her fishcakes with a knife and fork and a generous side-helping of salad like she was at restaurant and Sara was eating with her fingers, inelegantly wolfing down a burger in a bun.

That about sums them up, she thought with a ghost of a smile.

“Hey girls, is everything alright?”

Even as she asked it her gaze was drawn to the men at the end of the garden. She could hear them laughing and shouting and carrying on from here.

“Apart from our fellas acting like they’re on a stag-night or something,” Sara said. “I don’t know what’s got into them.”

“Beer,” Marjorie said.

All three of them laughed, but it sounded hollow and insincere to Amber’s ears. She grabbed an empty plate and made her way over to the three men. As she approached, she could make out fragments of what they were saying amidst the raucous laughter.

“The tits on it and tightest pussy ever...” came her husband’s voice.

Her toes curled in disgust. In all their eleven years of marriage she had never once heard him speak like such a sexist, sleazy pig. They stopped talking as she neared, and she was painfully conscious of three sets of eyes on her. They were smiling, but their expressions were far from friendly.

Oh my God, are they actually leering at me?

No, she had to be mistaken, they weren’t like that. Feeling dream-like and strange, she plastered a smile on her face.

“You look like you’re having a good time.”

“Always, baby,” her husband said, staring openly at her breasts.

She resisted the urge to fold her arms over her chest. He knew she was conscious of her breasts, that she thought they were too large for her slim frame, and there he was, openly leering at her and objectifying her in front of their friends.

What the hell is he playing at?

A vision of slapping him round the face flared in her mind.

“Honey, can I have a word? In private?”

She felt Jeff and Colin’s eyes on her as she walked over to the opposite corner of the garden, but she refused to look at them. Alfie followed.

“We have a power-cut,” she said when she had reached the hedgerow.

“Have you been down the basement to check the trip-switches in the fuse-box?”

“No, I haven’t, and you know why.”

Amber was scared of the dark. Even at the grand old age of thirty-eight, her childhood phobia had stayed with her. She was fine with a moonlit night, or a shadowy bedroom; she was fine as long as she could see something. It was total blackness that terrified her, and due to the lack of windows in the basement, it was pitch black down there even in the middle of the day.

I can’t believe he even asked if I’d been down there.

“You took me to one side to tell me there’s a power-cut? Why couldn’t you say that in front of Jeff and Colin?”

She glared up at him with her hands on her hips.

He looks different, she thought with a shiver. It wasn’t anything tangible, nothing she could put her finger on, but the expression in his eyes was just different, somehow.

He looks cold and hard.

“I took you to one side to ask you what the hell is going on. Whose tits and pussy were you talking about just now? I’ve never heard you talk like that before.”

“Like what?”

“Like a disgusting fucking pig, is what.”

As a general rule, Amber tried not to swear. She saved it for the few times she really wanted to drive her point home.

“I think you need to lighten up. We’re supposed to be having a good time, remember?”

For a moment, Amber simply didn’t know how to reply.

“What the fuck has gotten into you?” she hissed.

He raised his hands in the air. “Whoa, baby, why the drama? I was just having a laugh with the lads. I was telling a joke.”

She looked at him sceptically. “A joke? What joke?”

He looked at her and smirked, but it was far removed from friendly. That urge to slap him was back again.

“The one about the naked woman opening the door to the blind man. Except, you know he’s not blind, he’s selling blinds.”

She didn’t believe him for a second. “Don’t think we’re done here. Now would you please go and quickly check the fuse-box?”

Alfie looked her up and down, making her skin inexplicably crawl. “Sure, baby, I’ll do it right away.”

She turned her back to him and strode back over to Colin and Jeff at the barbecue. She found she was trembling and close to tears.

Damn him, the lying fucking bastard.

She felt herself tearing up as she held out her plate for the fishcakes and burgers, and she fought to get herself under control. Colin appeared not to notice – he was too busy leering at her chest while he dished up the food, further darkening her mood. She couldn’t get away from them quick enough.

“I can’t get reception,” Sara said as soon as she joined the girls again at the table.

Marjorie too was pressing buttons on her phone. “Me neither.”

“That’s strange,” Amber said, hovering over Sara. “It must be something to do with the power-cut.”

“A power-cut? You never said.”

“Didn’t I? Sorry, I must have been distracted when I came downstairs. Alfie’s gone down to the basement to check the fuse-box.”

“But that shouldn’t affect mobile-phone reception,” Marjorie piped up.

“Yeah,” Amber said. Her phone was somewhere in the house – she really should go and find it. “Can you get radio on your phones? There’s probably something about the power-cut on the local radio station.”

“Good idea,” Sara said, pressing more buttons.

“I’m just popping back inside to take Jessie something to eat and find my phone. I’ll be right back.”

Hastily, she piled salad and a burger with all the trimmings onto the plate and retreated inside the kitchen, stopping at the fridge to pick up a can of coke.

“Honey?” she called out once she was in the hallway. “Where are you?”

“In my room,” came her distant reply.

Just as Amber headed for the stairs, Alfie’s voice from behind her almost made her jump out of her skin.

“There’s nothing wrong with the fuse-box, I’m guessing everyone is affected.”

“Christ, Alfie, you scared me half to death,” she said, spinning round indignantly.

He stood there leaning casually against the hallway wall, a torch swinging from his fingers. He was smiling at her, but it was far from friendly or loving and in that moment he reminded her of a wolf about to devour his prey.

He came right up to her and curled his hand round her waist. She flinched in his grip, sickened by his touch and automatically took a step backwards to evade the contact. He didn’t seem to take the hint, for he matched her step backwards and his hand snaked upwards, giving her tit a hard squeeze.

She swatted his hand away with hell in her eyes.

Even after twelve years of marriage, they were still very physical together and she loved it when he came in for a cuddle and a kiss.

But not now. Now she just wanted to slap him. She had never dreamed of the day when his touch would repulse her.

She wanted to scream at him to get the fuck out of her face, but instead she just glared icily at him. Something deep inside, some long-buried, primal instinct warned her not to confront him.

“I have to take Jessie up her dinner,” she said, turning her back to him.

She climbed the stairs, balancing the plate in one hand. She was painfully aware of her husband standing at the foot of the staircase, watching her ascent. She could feel his eyes boring into her back.

Or my arse, more like.

He laughed, and it was a low, throaty chuckle that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

“Nice arse.”

His words had a paralysing effect, and for a second her legs just wouldn’t work. Thankfully, the sensation quickly passed and she hurried up the stairs away from his prying eyes.

Something’s wrong. Something’s really badly wrong…

This time when she thought it, she didn’t try to deny it. Something was wrong.

Something’s wrong with Alfie. And with Jeff and Colin too.

She let out a shaky sigh of relief and slumped against the wall when she heard his footsteps retreating.

Amber was scared, and she didn’t mind admitting it.

What the hell is going on?

That bad feeling didn’t leave her for a second as she entered her daughter’s room.

CHAPTER THREE

Outside in the garden, Sara frowned in puzzlement at her phone.

No radio reception. That’s really bloody weird.

She glanced across the table at the Stuck-Up-One. She too was fiddling with her phone and didn’t look up to meet her gaze.

Why is she so cold with me?

If Sara was honest with herself, Marjorie’s cool attitude towards her was hurtful.

Amber was warm and kind and she loved her like a sister, but Marjorie was resolutely cold.

I expect she’s jealous of me.

You are you trying to kid? It’s the other way round.

Marjorie was so thin and beautiful, so successful in her teaching career.

But she has no kids.

She thought of the life growing inside of her and her heart melted. Unconsciously, she hugged her plump stomach.

Am I showing yet, or am I just fat?

Fleeting thoughts of the future she was going to share with her child popped into her mind; her baby’s first steps, his or hers first day at school, the long, lazy summer holidays they were going to spend together down the beach…

“Is something funny?”

Sara suddenly realised she was probably smiling softy to herself in the most beatific, smug kind of way.

Why is she such a cow?

“Not funny, Marjorie, I’m just sitting here thinking about my unborn child and the wonderful life we’re going to have together. I guess I’m just happy.”

Marjorie’s expression was unreadable behind her glasses and if her words had hurt her, it didn’t show.

I can’t get radio,” Marjorie said coolly. “Can you?”

Why do we rub each other up the wrong way?

Fleetingly, she wondered if it was her fault, and not Marjorie’s. Was it because she had to ‘share’ Amber with someone else, or was it because she secretly quite liked Marjorie and was hurt that she was so cold towards her? That Marjorie blatantly preferred Amber’s company to hers?

It can’t be that. What have I ever done to her, anyway?

“No. No radio reception.”

The sound of their husbands approaching saved Marjorie from having to answer, and they both looked up. Alfie appeared at the French-doors at the same time.

“I got you your food, mate,” Colin said to Alfie, balancing a plate in each hand.

Sara stared at her husband, a frown creasing her forehead.

What is up with him tonight?

Of the three guys, her husband Jeff was naturally the joker, but he was really pushing it tonight, even by his standards. He was laughing so hard as they walked to the table that he was in danger of dropping his plate which was piled high with meat.

She frowned. That’s a lot of meat.

As the three men sat down, she noticed that each of them had foregone the fishcakes in favour of a lump of steak and burgers. Of the three women, Sara was the only one that had opted for meat and that had been a good old-fashioned, burger in a bun. She and Jeff weren’t really big meat-eaters, and Jeff always went for fish over meat if he had a choice.

Not only that, but each one of their plates positively dripped with blood. It really wasn’t like him at all.

“Rare steak, Jeff?” she asked, keeping her tone light.

He sat down next to her, perching his sunglasses on top of his blonde head and smiled. The sight of it made her heart stop beating for a second before resuming at twice normal speed. His green eyes glittered, but not with his usual, easy-going mirth.

He looks evil.

The thought took her by surprise, knocking the breath out of her lungs. Instinctively, she glanced over the table at Marjorie to see if she perhaps had picked up on his expression, but she couldn’t even begin to guess what she was thinking because of those damn, wraparound  sunglasses.

She was still reeling from earlier, when Alfie had picked her up and spun her round so violently. That hadn’t been like him at all, either. He was so devoted to Amber, but she was sure he had copped a feel of her tits as he had set her down.

What the hell was with them tonight?

The guys began to eat with a ferociousness that left Sara stunned. Even Colin, whose impeccable table manners usually rivalled his wife’s, was ripping into his burger with wild abandon. They were attacking the bloody meat like starved dogs, and her husband had actually picked his up with his fingers, forgoing the burger-bap entirely. The tips of his fingers glistened with blood in the slanting, evening sun.

“Jesus Christ, Jeff, what the hell are you doing?”

Marjorie got to her feet, scraping her chair back across the wooden decking. “Sara, will you help me in the kitchen?”

She didn’t have to be asked twice. “You got it.”

Once in the kitchen, Marjorie removed her glasses for the first time that afternoon and Sara did the same.

“What’s wrong with them?” they said at the same time, then laughed together uneasily.

“God, I could murder a drink,” Sara said, cupping her plump stomach with her hand.

“Yes, well, so could I, and I fully intend to.”

She opened the fridge door and the light didn’t come on. She reached inside for an un-opened bottle of Pinot and got to work on it with a corkscrew. Sara watched her longingly, her mouth watering at the sight of the glistening, golden liquid sloshing into the frosted glass.

“Mmm, that’s good,” Marjorie said, her eyes closed in bliss.

Bitch.

The sound of laughter drifting from the patio filled the kitchen, and she flinched. Instinctively, both women moved away from the French-doors and over to the window above the sink. They gazed out at their husbands, safe in the knowledge that from this position they could see the men more clearly than the men could them. To anyone outside, they would have just been shadowy silhouettes in the window.

Marjorie broke the silence, her voice as cold and as matter-of-fact as it always was where Sara was concerned:  “When I was over with the boys earlier, your husband slapped me on the bottom and whispered in my ear that if I ever got horny, I knew where to find him.”

Sara’s stomach dropped and her heart twisted painfully in her chest. Her words cut her deep.

Bitch, she thought once more.

No, your husband is the cunt, not her. I knew he secretly preferred skinny women…

She shook her head to dispel the paranoid thoughts. If she gave into them, they would run away with her and she wouldn’t ever be able to think straight. When she spoke, she made a huge effort to keep her voice steady. As much as she wanted to slap the bitch, good sense prevailed. Something didn’t feel right here, and the men were acting so fucking strange, it was untrue.

“Has my husband ever hit on you before?”

Sara stared at Marjorie’s profile and a knot of jealousy twisted in her guts. She really was quite beautiful with her icy blue eyes and angular jawline. She reminded her of a slightly older Keira Knightly and in that moment she hated her with a passion.

Come on, get a grip.

Marjorie continued to stare out of the window as if unaware of Sara’s gaze boring into the side of her head.

“No, it’s never happened before. Jeff loves you and he makes no secret of it.”

And that had to be the warmest thing that had ever come out of her mouth. To Sara’s frustration, Marjorie still refused to turn her head and look at her.

“When Amber told Alfie I was pregnant, he picked me up and spun me round. It was weird. And when he set me down, he groped my chest. Of course, I might’ve imagined it…”

Her words trailed off as she watched the men sat round the table. They’re acting like pigs.

“That’s not like Alfie. Maybe you did.”

Sara bristled. “So you’re saying that when a man gropes me, I had to of imagined it because I’m so fucking fat? Or that Alfie has so much integrity, and my husband has none?”

“No, that isn’t what I said at all. I just said that doesn’t sound like Alfie.”

Sara’s shoulders sagged and she leaned against the draining-board. She felt oddly deflated, like the fight had been knocked out of her.

“Why do you hate me?”

The question seemed to startle Marjorie as much as it had herself; she truly hadn’t expected to ask such a thing.

Marjorie’s head snapped round and she stared at her in surprise. She opened her mouth as if about to say something, when both their gazes were drawn back to the window.

“What are they doing now?” Sara said.

The sudden movement had grabbed their attention – Alfie had jumped on top of the table and was grabbing his cock through his long shorts. All three men were laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world. Invisible icy fingers tickled the back of Sara’s neck and despite the warmth of the summer evening, her forearms broke out in a rash of goose-bumps.

“Oh, Jesus, are they on drugs?” Marjorie gasped.

Sara conceded it was a distinct possibility. They continued to watch dumbstruck as Alfie groped himself.

“We need to get Amber,” Sara said.

But she couldn’t move, her feet were rooted to the spot.

“Yeah,” Marjorie agreed, she too apparently glued to the scene unfolding beyond the window.

Sometime during this bizarre display, the sun had gone in. Sara was suddenly aware of the cloud coverage and the fact that it looked like as if it were about to rain.

She looked past the men and out to sea. It was foggy – she could no longer see the horizon.

“Weird weather,” Marjorie said, as if she could read her mind.

“Yeah. Weird fucking everything.” As she said it, the day darkened further. “Looks like a storm’s coming.”

At first, she thought she was imagining the fog, that her eyes were playing tricks on her. But no, the air appeared to be thickening with every passing second. It swirled around the garden and obscured the view of the sea completely.

And it was fucking green. Not a light green, or a muddy green, but a bright, pure shade of mid-green.

“What is that?” Marjorie said, so quietly that Sara barely heard her. “I mean, it’s green. This isn’t bloody London.”

“How’d you mean?”

Marjorie went into teacher mode. “I mean that London is prone to the type of fog known as pea soup, or just plain old smog. It can be very thick and often greenish or blackish in colour. It’s caused by air pollution, namely soot particulates and the poisonous gas, sulfur dioxide. But this is St Ives and we’re right on the coast, I can’t even begin to imagine why such a phenomenon would happen here, and the colour of the fog is just wrong…”

Her words trailed off when they saw Alfie had his cock out. Sara gasped, her hand flying up to her mouth in shock.

“What the fuck is he doing?” Sara said.

It was as if the men had heard her.

But that’s impossible.

Alfie stood still, holding his stiff shaft which poked out of the fly of his board-shorts. All three heads swivelled in their direction and three pairs of eyes latched onto them.

Sara shivered, disturbed on the deepest, most base level.

They look like they want to eat us.

But just as quick the moment passed, and Alfie resumed spinning his cock round. The other two remained sitting where they were, laughing at his antics.

“I’m going to get Amber,” Marjorie said, turning away in disgust from the window.

Sara saw red. “Fuck that, someone needs to reign the stupid bastard in.”

“Sara, no, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Sara barely heard her as she strode over to the French-doors. It wasn’t the fact that Alfie was swinging his cock round like a fucking windmill that was upsetting her, it was that her husband was doing nothing to stop him.

“Hey, Alfie, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she said as she strode purposely over to the guys.

Dimly, she was aware of Marjorie in the doorway, calling her name, ordering her to come back into the kitchen. But there was no stopping Sara now – she was on a roll. A distant part of her mind acknowledged that she was being a hot-head, but it was who she was and she couldn’t help it; she was quick to blow-up and quick to forgive. So it was with no fear that she approached the men, with nothing else in her head except the desire to give Alfie a good ticking-off.

Nothing could have prepared her for what happened next. One second she was standing there with her hands on her hips, glaring up at Alfie, the next her husband and Colin sprang up from their seats and flanked her, each of them grabbing an arm.

Sara was stunned. She was beyond stunned. She could only twist her head to stare at Jeff in utter disbelief.

“What the fuck?” she managed to get out before they picked her up, sat her down on the edge of the driftwood table and pushed her backwards.

Her head hit the wood with a resounding smack, and stars danced before her eyes. Hands pulled and tugged at her dress and she was aware of air hitting her skin where previously fabric had covered her. She kicked and flailed her arms, writhing in their grip but it just seemed to have the effect of inflaming them further. She lifted up her head and stared down at herself, too shocked even to scream. Her pink sundress was hanging off her body in tatters, her sensible, flesh-coloured underwear on display.

With a smile, her husband curled his fingers inside a stretchy cup of her bra, and pulled hard. Her big tit popped out of the ruined bra, and she watched the wobbling flesh in horror. He did the same to the other cup, freeing her other breast.

She renewed her efforts to escape, twisting and writhing like a fish on a hook, but she was no match for their strength. Colin inserted his body between her legs and placed one hand on the centre of her chest to prevent her from sitting up. Her husband proceeded to rip her knickers clean off her body. The ripping fabric cut painfully into her skin, and she felt a rush of air on her exposed vagina.

At last, Sara found her voice and she cried out on a mix of indignation, horror and shame. The scream was cut short when her husband slapped her hard across the face. Something was rammed into her mouth and a distant part of her mind realised it was her shredded knickers. She felt a pressure against her vagina and her blood turned to ice.

She lifted up her head once more to peer down her near-naked body. The sight which greeted her made her eyes bulge above the makeshift gag, and her vision blur with tears. Colin had pressed his face against her pussy, and was sniffing her.

The strangest image slammed into her mind – that of a dog with its nose buried up another dog’s arse. Colin lifted his face away from her vagina, and they locked eyes over the length of her body. His top lip was curled up in a snarl and he looked more animal than human.

Like a rabid dog…

The deepest, guttural scream was wrenched up from her gut, partly muffled by the knickers rammed into her mouth. Dimly, the sound of someone else screaming nearby reached her ears.

Marjorie.

But the scream did not sound feminine. It sounded more like a man bellowing in rage.

But all thoughts of Marjorie were forgotten when her husband let out an almighty howl that made her skin crawl and her insides shrivel. She felt her bowels constrict when her husband reached for her exposed breasts and dug his fingers in deep. He was leaning over her, his expression identical to Colin’s. Saliva from his curled lips dripped onto her chest, and she stared up incredulously at the man she loved – at the man whose child she was carrying.

Agony exploded in her chest because he didn’t stop squeezing.

“Our baby,” she cried, but it came out muffled and incoherent.

He roared in anger and the infernal pressure lifted from her chest. When she glanced down at herself, she saw five perfect fingerprints on each breast – fingerprints ringed by blood.

A movement above her head drew her eye and she glimpsed the glint of a fork before it came plunging down at speed towards her face. She went to raise her hands, but her husband had her pinned down by the arms as Colin delivered the blow.

Sudden agony blazed in her eye and everything went black. The pain flooded her mind, washing away every last thought and every last little thing that made up who she was. Now her entire existence was one of suffering. Dimly, she was aware that her face was hot and wet, and that other, smaller hurts were joining in with the big hurt on her face.

Now pain completely blanketed her mind as every nerve-ending in her body twitched with the sudden onslaught of violence inflicted upon it. At first, the small hurts felt like annoying insect bites, but then they grew hotter and wetter and throbbed into fiery agony.

The tiniest, still comprehending part of her mind recognised that she was being stabbed over and over, probably with whatever cutlery that had come to hand on the table. But then even that part of her mind blinked out, too.

Everything was already black in Sara’s world, but now she was floating, as well. The searing pain lost its intensity and she felt herself drifting. She welcomed the sensation and let herself fall into it.

A few seconds later she was dead.

CHAPTER FOUR

By the time Amber had reached Jessie’s room, she was badly shaken. “Here’s your dinner,” she said, doing her best to keep her tone light.

Jessie was over by the window, staring down at the garden.

“Daddy’s just gone back out into the garden, and now everyone is sitting round the table. Daddy’s eating funny.”

“Move away from the window, sweetie. Come and have something to eat.”

She placed the plate and ice-cold can of coke on the bed and went over to Jessie. Refusing to look out of the window, she pulled it shut and instantly everything was silent. She was glad she could no longer hear the men laughing – the sound of it sent a chill down her spine. Placing her hands on Jessie’s shoulders, she steered her over to her bed.

Thank God for double-glazing…

“When is the power coming back on? Can I watch the film on the living-room telly later?”

“Yes you can, as soon as the power comes back on. Now eat.”

With a sigh, Jessie plumped up her pillows and scooted up the bed so that she was leaning against the headboard with her legs tucked underneath her. Balancing the plate on her lap, she took a bite of the burger.

“Why is Daddy being so strange?” she said through a mouthful of food.

Amber had to curb her natural instinct to lie, to say that there was nothing the matter with Daddy. But looking at Jessie’s sweet little face, she decided to be honest.

Well, not completely honest. Because the truth is I don’t know what the hell is wrong with Alfie and I’m bloody terrified.

“I don’t know, I think he’s just had a little bit too much to drink.”

“I don’t like it.”

No, me neither.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll be fine tomorrow, but he’ll probably have a hangover.”

She reached out for her shin to give it a reassuring pat. It suddenly occurred to her that the bedroom was getting darker.

But it’s ages ‘til sunset.

She glanced over towards the window and her eyes widened in shock. From this position on the bed all she could see was sky – sky which was now a bright shade of green.

Perhaps something’s burning on the barbeque and it’s filled the air with green smoke…

No, since when is barbeque smoke green?

Just as she thought that, she heard a scream. Amber flinched, her fingers involuntarily tightening around Jessie’s leg.

“Ow, Mummy, you’re hurting me.”

“Sorry,” she said, removing her hand.

That wasn’t a scream, you silly cow, it was a seagull.

But when the noise came a second time, there was no mistaking it. Jessie stared up at her, her face pale despite the tan.

“What was that, Mummy?”

“I don’t know. Don’t move.”

She hurried over to the window and peered down at the patio, her heart thumping hard in her chest. At first, it was hard to make out anything because of the swirling green fog and her husband and friends were nothing more than indistinct shapes amidst the dense, green air. As for the rest of the garden, it was completely smothered by the green mist.

What the hell is it?

She had never seen anything like it before. A primal sense of dread curled deep in the pit of her stomach. Whatever it was, she just knew it didn’t come from nature.

Two possibilities flitted through her mind: A terrorist attack? An alien invasion?

The last one almost made her smile, and if her face hadn’t of been frozen in fear, she might have done so.

It’s just a bit of fog...

If only she could believe that.

Then the swirling green fog parted a little, just enough for her to see what was happening on the patio below.

What she saw defied comprehension, and at first, her brain simply didn’t accept what her eyes were seeing. She went to open the window, wanting to hear as well as see, then stopped herself.

It’s the fog that’s making them do it.

She understood this on the most base, primal level, even if the rational part of her mind didn’t believe it. Even so, she kept the window firmly shut.

She stared down in horror at the writhing shapes that were still largely obscured by the fog; at poor Sara forced onto her back on the table, being stripped naked by Jeff and Colin… And was Colin giving her oral sex?

No. This was no orgy, it was rape, pure and simple. Frantically, she scanned the patio for her husband and Marjorie, but there was no sign of them.

She staggered back from the window, clutching her chest as if to still her pumping heart.

“Mummy, what’s the matter?”

“Stay on the fucking bed!” she screamed at her daughter.

Jessie froze in shock; her mum never spoke to her like that and tears instantly sprang into her eyes. Amber was about to say something soothing to soften the blow of her harsh words, when – despite the double-glazing – another scream reached her ears. This time there was no mistaking it for a seagull.

Sara, oh God, Sara…

Except the scream was too deep to be a woman’s.

Alfie?

If it was her husband, it sounded like he was in pain. She rushed back over to the window, but now the fog was a thick carpet, obscuring everything including the branches of the tree that were right next to Jessie’s bedroom window.

“Amber!” a voice shouted from far away, from the downstairs of the house.

“Marjorie,” Amber gasped, but so quietly that there was no way the sound would have escaped the bedroom.

She stumbled out into the hallway to be met by the sight of Marjorie lurching up the stairs. Her little black dress was torn at the neckline, exposing her small breasts in the black lacy bra. She was sobbing hard, her eyes red raw and her cheeks streaked with mascara. Her usually immaculate hair stuck out every which way and she looked crazed. Subconsciously, Amber took a step backwards – what if Marjorie had gone insane like Jeff and Colin?

“They’ve gone crazy,” she sobbed as she took the last step and collapsed onto her knees. “Alfie tried to kill me.”

Amber stared blankly at the hunched over woman. This had to all be some horrible mistake. A bad nightmare. This couldn’t be happening.

“Where’s my husband?” she said.

“He attacked me but I managed to get inside the kitchen and lock the French-doors. I hit him over the head with a pot-plant and managed to roll inside the house.”

“You hit Alfie?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes, because he was trying to kill me.”

It was too much for Amber to take in and an irrational wave of hatred for Marjorie washed over her.

Stop it, it’s not her fault, it’s the men, Oh God, Sara.

“Sara,” she managed to get out.

Marjorie raised her tear-streaked face to hers, her hands clasped together in front of her chest. It looked like she was praying.

Perhaps she is.

Marjorie opened her mouth as if to say something, but then the sound of shattering glass permeated the air around them.

“What the fuck is that?” Amber gasped, even though deep down, she knew.

Her husband had smashed in the glass of the French-doors.

And he was coming to kill them.

Marjorie scrambled to her feet and grabbed Amber by the shoulders. “Shit we’re trapped, why doesn’t your stupid bloody house have a back-door?”

Amber prised away her friend’s fingers and lunged for Jessie’s room, ignoring the stupid question.

“Come here. Now,” she barked at the frightened girl from the doorway.

“Mummee, I’m scared.”

Me too, sweetie, but we have to move now.”

We need to barricade ourselves in somewhere, she thought frantically.

She had to decide where, and quick, because she could hear her husband crashing around downstairs. Not just her husband, but Colin and Jeff, too.

The noises they were making made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. They whooped and cheered, reminding her of men at a football match. But this was wilder sounding, more animal.

“Come on,” she gasped, dragging Jessie by the arm to her own bedroom with Marjorie right behind them.

There was a heavy vanity chest in there, but it was still light enough for the women to drag over to the door. There was also a lock on the en-suite, bathroom door and the bedroom window was big enough to climb out of. An image of tying together the bed sheets and of escaping out the window sprang into her mind.

All this raced through her head in a matter of seconds as they ran into her marital bedroom and slammed the door shut behind them.

“Help me,” she barked at Marjorie, going straight for the vanity chest.

In one expansive sweeping motion, she swept away all her make-up and beauty products. They landed with a loud clatter on the floorboards, and beyond the bedroom door she could hear footsteps pounding up the stairs.

Shit, we’re not going to manage it in time.

Thankfully, Marjorie understood her intention immediately and together they half-carried, half-dragged the piece of furniture over to the door. The large, four-panelled mirror attached to the back of the white-washed dressing -table fitted nicely under the door-handle and as soon as they let go of the dresser, the door-handle swept downwards.

Marjorie let out a short, sharp shriek, her hands flying up to her mouth.

“Marjorie!” Amber snapped. “Keep it the fuck together. Chest of drawers.”

The chest of drawers was slightly heavier than the dressing-table, but not impossible to drag. Marjorie nodded, seeming to pull herself together.

Fuck, it’s heavy, she thought as she and Marjorie dragged the thing over to the door. Her muscles trembled with the effort and she gritted her teeth against the discomfort, determined to do it as quickly as possible.

The bedroom door began to rattle in its doorframe and for a second Amber froze in fear.

They’re going to bash the fucking thing in, she thought in horror. She renewed her efforts, staring grimly across the chest at Marjorie. Together, they managed it and both women flinched as the door continued to shake and rattle, the door handle sporadically jerking up and down. Thankfully, the door was top quality, thick oak and she knew there was no chance of them shouldering in the panelling…

Or at least she hoped so.

Suddenly, everything fell quiet. The door had stopped rattling and the men had fallen silent – she could no longer hear them laughing like hyenas and whooping like escaped mental patients. The only sound that now filled the room was that of Jessie sobbing.

That’s because they’ve gone to find something to break the door down with.

She pushed aside the terrifying thought and went to her daughter who was curled up on the bed by the headboard. Amber pulled her to her chest and rocked her gently.

“It’s going to be okay, sweetie. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Except it wasn’t fine. Nothing was ever going to be ‘fine’ again.

“Where have they gone?” Marjorie whispered.

Her face looked chalk-white, as if her tan had washed away with her tears. Amber cradled her daughter’s head and absently stroked her hair, her mind reeling in horror.

“No, Mummy, don’t leave me,” Jessie sobbed as Amber gently prised herself out of the little girl’s grip.

“It’s okay, Mummy and Marjorie just need a chat in the bathroom.”

“Can I come?”

“No, darling, it’s grown-up talk, just stay here and relax on the bed, we won’t be two seconds.”

Jessie stared up at her with big, soulful eyes, eyes that were so much like her father’s.

Except there’s nothing soulful in Archie’s eyes right now, seeing as he only seems to have rape and murder on his mind.

Amber shuddered. She didn’t want to confront her husband because she was afraid to see the expression in his eyes. Nothing that he could do to her physically could even begin to compare to the pain of him looking at her like that.

Yeah, like he did to me just now downstairs.

“I doubt we have much time,” she whispered urgently to Marjorie once they were in the bathroom with the door pulled to. “We need weapons and we need an escape route. I’ve got a horrible feeling that they’re in the toolshed round the back of the house looking for weapons. I think they’re going to cut their way through the door.”

Marjorie’s eyes widened and she swayed slightly on her feet. “Weapons? Do you keep a gun in here, or something?”

“No, of course not. I was thinking more along the lines of aerosol cans.”

Marjorie let out a harsh laugh. “We’re going to fight them with fucking hairspray?”

Amber sighed in exasperation. “If we don’t manage to climb out the window in time, then yeah, a squirt of an aerosol-can in the eyes will disable them enough for us to do some more serious damage.”

She was fully aware of how pathetic it sounded and a wave of despair engulfed her.

Damn you, Marjorie, you’re supposed to be the strong one, not me.

“They’re going to kill us, aren’t they? The look in Alfie’s eyes… I thought he was going to rape me, he ripped off my knickers, and shoved his face between my legs, but then it was like he changed his mind, or something, like he went into kill-mode…”

Hearing her talk about Alfie like that made her feel sick and the small bathroom swam in and out of focus.

No. Concentrate on what you have to do, not what Alfie has turned into. Oh God, what the fuck has happened to him?

Marjorie began to sob and Amber grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and shook her.

“Listen to me, Marjorie, we don’t have time for hysterics. We are going to go back into the bedroom and we are going to tie the bed-sheets together to make a rope that we can use to climb out the window and into the garden. But we have to wait until the men are at the bedroom-door because otherwise we are going to meet them on our climb down seeing as we have to pass the only entrances into the house.” She spoke fast without breathing and gasped in a lungful of air. Dropping her trembling hands from Marjorie’s shoulders, she opened the little white cupboard above the toilet and grabbed a pair of small nail-scissors and tucked them into the front pocket of her cut-offs.  “For Jessie. Come on, let’s do this.”

Marjorie nodded, her hitching sobs seeming to have eased a little.

Back in the bedroom, Amber guided Jessie off the bed and gently sat her down in the wicker-chair in the corner of the room. She pressed the nail-scissors into her hand.

“In case anyone gets too close to you,” she said. “Put them in your pocket.”

Marjorie was already stripping the bed and tugging the duvet out of the duvet-cover. Amber joined her, and silently they got to work, tying the bed-linen together. When they had used up every last item of linen, Amber rushed over to the window.

This better be long enough.

“Grab some aerosol-cans,” Amber barked to Marjorie, gesturing to all the beauty-products that were scattered on the floor from where they had moved the vanity chest a few minutes ago. “One for each of us.”

For a second she dithered by the window, the end of the makeshift rope dangling from her fingers. The only logical thing to do was to drag over the king-sized bed and wedge the side of it against the wall with the window. She proceeded to push and pull the bed until it was in position and knotted the end of the rope around one sturdy, wooden bed-leg. Satisfied that the knot would hold, she crouched on the bed and peered out of the window, the length of the rope cradled in her arms.

Marjorie tapped her on the shoulder, and she flinched. She handed her a deodorant spray which Amber wedged down the back of her cut-offs, then she kneeled down next to her on the bed.

“Where are they? What are they doing?”

Amber stared at the swirling fog, ignoring her question. It showed no sign of thinning and she strained her eyes, searching for signs of the men.

The fog undulated in the air like smoke, parting for moments at a time to reveal more fully the patio below. In the moments of relative clarity, she saw Sara half-naked and sprawled out on the table. She tried not to look at her, because every time she did she felt her mind spinning out of control.

“Jessie, come over here,” she said softly, not taking her eyes off the window for a second. “But don’t look out the window.”

Jessie came to her and curled up against her on the opposite side to Marjorie, her face buried in her shoulder. For a short while all was quiet, Amber and Marjorie as watchful and silent as guards standing sentry.

CHAPTER FIVE

Come on, where are you?

Marjorie was beginning to fidget, making the bed creak and shift beneath them. Only a minute or two had passed but it felt like an eternity, crouching there on the bed and staring out of the window at the unnatural green fog.

“Where are they?” Marjorie whispered. “Maybe they’ve got bored and have gone away.”

“Maybe,” Amber replied, not believing it for a second. Gently, she nudged her daughter. “Have you got the scissors? And the aerosol can?”

“Yes.”

“Good girl. Don’t be afraid to use them, not on anybody. Do you promise?”

Especially not Daddy, she silently added.

“Yes.”

“Now, when I say so, you have to climb out of the window and down this rope, okay darling?”

“I can’t,” she said in a small voice.

“Sure you can. It’s just like gymnastics at school, and you’re good at gym. Your PE teacher told me you were one of the best in the class.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but she desperately needed for Jessie to believe it was.

“I’m scared, Mummy.”

Not taking her eyes off the window, Amber wrapped an arm around the girl’s trembling shoulders and pulled her close.

“It’s really important you do this, sweetie, I’ll be right behind you, I promise.”

If your daddy doesn’t kill me first…

“Is that them?” Marjorie gasped, her forefinger pressed against the plane of glass and pointing down at the patio.

Amber’s gaze snapped downwards. Momentarily, she had been staring heavenward to stem the flow of tears, but now her gaze fixed on the patio.

It could only be them – three figures in the swirling fog, walking in single file in the direction of the smashed-in, patio doors.

What the fuck is the one in front carrying?

Even though the fog obscured the finer details of the bulky item that the man in front had slung over his shoulder, she just knew.

It looks like the chainsaw… The fuckers are going to hack their way through the bedroom door.

She was surprisingly calm as she watched them cross the patio. Every muscle in her body was coiled tight – not so much in fear but in ‘fight or flight’ mode. She was on high-alert, her mind focussed.

They disappeared from view, through the smashed-in patio doors that were invisible from the bedroom window.

She sprang into action, shoving open the sideways-opening window and chucking out the rope. It unfurled at speed, the end of the rope swallowed up by the fog.

“Now, Jessie.”

“Mummy, I can’t.”

She clung to her like a limpet, and Amber fought down her rising panic. “Sweetie, you have to.”

“Why don’t one of us go down first? That way one of us can catch her and the other one can help her out the window.”

Is she just saying that so she gets to go out the window first? And does it really matter if she is?

“Mummy, don’t leave me,” Jessie wailed.

I guess that’s that settled then.

“Fine, just get on with it,” Amber said.

Marjorie sat on the windowsill and swung out her legs. Her high-heels had long been kicked off, and she very gingerly lowered herself out of the window, clinging onto the rope for dear life.

All three of them screamed when sudden noise exploded the other side of the bedroom door.

Jessie’s hands flew up to her ears. “Mummeee!”

“Hurry!” Amber screamed over the roar of what sounded very much like a chainsaw revving. Behind that wall of sound, she could hear whooping and laughter.

The circular, revving tip of the chainsaw’s blade broke through the thick panelling of the door and Amber hugged her daughter tight, her soggy face buried in her chest. She peered out of the window – Marjorie was halfway down the wall, her descent surprisingly agile and graceful.

“You have to be a brave girl for Mummy,” Amber said over the noise, pulling the little girl away so she could look at her in the eyes. “You have to climb down the rope.”

As she spoke, she tugged on the rope; it was still taught, so Marjorie wasn’t at the bottom yet. Even so, she sat her protesting daughter on the window-ledge in preparation.

The hole in the door was widening at an alarming rate, then the metal blade disappeared from view. A pair of eyes appeared in the small hole.

Alfie’s eyes?

The rope was slack now, and she half-helped, half-pushed her poor daughter out of the window.

“You can do it, sweetie,” she said with what she hoped was an encouraging smile, although she had the feeling it was more of a rictus grin. “It’s just like climbing rope in gym class, except this is easier because you have a wall to rest against, too. Go on, go.”

Now her entire body was out of the window with just her scared little face hovering above the sill. At that moment, the noise of machinery started up again, louder this time, thanks to the widening hole.

Amber steeled herself to look at the door… and was powerless to stop the scream of terror. The small hole was now a big hole and the damn chainsaw was hacking right through the mirror of the vanity chest. A million shards of glass erupted in a glittering, volcanic spray and instinctively she covered her eyes even though the rainfall of glass was nowhere near her.

To her relief, Jessie had begun her ascent. She reached out a hand to lightly touch her face.

“Be quick, darling, you’re doing great, Marjorie will help you at the bottom and I’ll be right behind you.”

The chainsaw was making light work of the door and vanity-chest and when the hole was big enough, the revving chainsaw cut out. Two pairs of hands reached inside and pushed on the furniture. The chest of drawers and the remains of the vanity-chest scraped over the wooden floor and Amber closed her eyes in terror.

When she opened them again, they men were in.

Her husband and Colin were standing there in the newly revealed space. Alfie had the chainsaw slung casually over one shoulder with his legs apart, and sweet, ineffectual Colin was brandishing a large, claw-head hammer, the head of which he smacked rhythmically into the palm of his free hand.

Her gaze flitted to the window to check on Jessie’s progress – she was half-way down but she couldn’t see Marjorie because the fog was too thick.

Her gaze snapped back to her husband and Colin.

Where the fuck is Jeff?

Except she knew full well where Jeff was, and her heart lurched in misery and terror.

He’s gone to get Jessie.

Tears sprung into her eyes and she willed her legs to move but they were like jelly. She could only stare at them in mute terror, knowing she was trapped.

Knowing that her darling Jessie was also trapped.

“You bastards!” she screamed at them. “Why are you doing this?”

They looked at her in silence, their heads cocked to one side like dogs. Their eyes were empty, devoid of anything except for the glint of animal hunger.

They want to rape me. Or kill me. Or both.

In that moment, the full realization hit her that this was no longer her husband. It looked like her husband, but the man that she loved was gone. This thing masquerading as him was a monster.

It’s the fog, it’s turned them into this…

And then they were on her like a pair of wolves. They whooped and hollered, ripping the cut-offs and t-shirt clean off her body, the aerosol can that had been tucked into the waistband of her shorts clattering to the floor.

“Get off me!” she screamed, but her objections only served to inflame them further.

They ripped and clawed at her underwear until she was completely naked.

“Alfie,” she sobbed, staring up into her husband’s face. “Why are you doing this? What’s happened to you? Darling, it’s me.”

He was straddling her chest with her wrists pinned to the mattress high above her head, leering down at her with spittle dripping from his snarling lips. She flinched when he actually growled at her, like a rabid dog.

“Alfie! Please…”

Her words gave way to sobbing when her thighs were suddenly and violently wrenched apart by Colin. Alfie was obscuring her view of him, but she could feel his face buried in her bared vagina. His breath was hot and moist and she squirmed in disgust. Then the pressure lifted from her vagina and Alfie’s torso jerked forward, like Colin had shoved him hard from behind. In the brief second that he lost his balance, she was able to yank her wrists free and she brought her knees up hard, ramming Alfie in the stomach. She scooted up the bed away from them, but her newfound freedom lasted all of two seconds.

Colin threw himself at her husband, landing on top of him so that he in turn landed awkwardly over her leg, pinning her to the bed.

It suddenly occurred to her that they were fighting over her.

“Please,” she sobbed, kicking and writhing beneath Alfie’s weight.

The fourteen stone bulk of solid muscle that was her husband bore down on her, causing sharp pain to shoot up her crushed leg.

Mustering together every last scrap of strength, she rolled free, landing with a thump on her side on the floor. As she lay there, a high-pitched scream from outside reached her ears.

Oh God, please not Jessie, please let that be Marjorie.

She crawled away from the bed and got to her feet. Fragments of broken glass glittered on the floor and she winced in pain when she trod on some.

On the bed, Alfie was straddling Colin with his hands around his neck, squeezing hard. Colin bucked and writhed beneath him, his face a bright crimson. Just when Amber thought Alfie was going to throttle him to death, he removed his hands and turned to look at her.

She froze in terror, her legs refusing to budge.

It’s because he wants to rape me before Colin, whispered the dark little voice in her mind.

Well, fuck that.

Her gaze latched onto the chainsaw right by her feet and she scooped it up.

“Stay back,” she shouted at her husband, brandishing the cumbersome and heavy piece of machinery before her.

Now how the fuck do I turn the damn thing on?

She screamed and almost dropped it when her finger happened upon the switch embedded in the inside of the handle and the circular blade whirred into life.

Alfie froze in place, one leg off the bed, one leg on. Behind him, Colin coughed and spluttered on the bed and rolled into the foetal position, nursing his traumatised windpipe. Alfie took a step towards her, his top lip draw back in a snarl. She jabbed the chainsaw at him.

“Stay back.”

No matter what her husband had become, she knew full well she didn’t have it in her to kill him, and tears blurred her vision.

“Don’t come any closer,” she screamed.

She edged backwards, keeping the chainsaw going, trying to ignore the shattered glass that split open the soles of her feet.

Oh, fuck me, that hurts…

She cried out when her bare rump bumped into the chest of drawers and she edged around it, heading ever closer towards the door.

At last she was in the doorway, the distance between her and her husband widening with every step. The hallway and freedom beckoned…

She screamed in shock when one strong arm suddenly snaked around her wrist and another hand clamped around her right forearm and tugged it sideways.

It was a good job that Amber was left-handed because instead of dropping the chainsaw or resisting, she simply went with it and allowed her hand to be dragged off the handle. She clung onto the chainsaw with her left hand which was the hand that held the thing on, and it dipped dangerously low. She would’ve dropped it or worse if she hadn’t of pushed into the motion instead of fighting it, and she pirouetted in her assailant’s arms, allowing the weight of the chainsaw to spin her round.

It shuddered violently in her hand when it made contact with the pair of legs standing behind her and a blood-curdling scream reached her ears. The arm around her waist and on her forearm disappeared and she regained control of the chainsaw, clamping her right hand on the handle with grim determination.

She stumbled backwards into the hallway, staring in disbelief at the damage she had wrought upon Jeff. He had collapsed on the floor, his right leg streaming blood from the gaping wound just below his knee. His screams of agony made her skin crawl – he didn’t sound human. It sounded computer-generated, like a load of screams of different frequencies had been lumped together for effect.

“Stay back,” she screamed at her husband above Jeff’s wailing and the chainsaw’s engine.

She edged backwards to the top of the stairs, her heart pumping hard. Once at the top of the stairs, she let go of the ‘on’ switch and bounded down the stairs two at a time. She stumbled out through the shattered patio-doors, yet more glass viciously slicing into the soles of her feet.

The fog was as thick as ever.

Will it affect me too?

Terrified that her husband was right behind her, she ran onto the grassy lawn.

“Jessie!” she screamed.

She stopped and hunched over her knees. Her body was a trembling wreck and she could hardly catch her breath. The fog swirled around her, caressing her bare skin. It felt a little cool and damp, but otherwise no different from the air on a drizzly day. She twirled around on the spot, searching for signs of her daughter but the fog was so thick she couldn’t see a damn thing.

She realised she could no longer see the house.

Shit!

Fear clenched around her chest like a giant fist, making her go weak and dizzy.

I’m going to die here. My husband’s going to creep up on me and then he’s going to rape me and kill me…

She sobbed in relief when the fog parted for a second like curtains in a theatre to reveal the house. Just as quick the vision vanished again, and she half-ran, half-stumbled in the opposite direction towards the front gate…

Until she went sprawling face-first into the damp grass. Something had tripped her up, something solid and heavy. She lay there unmoving in the grass for a second, dizzy and confused and hurting from head to toe. She raised her head, the handle of the chainsaw a few inches in front of her nose.

Thank God I didn’t land on that.

It took every last shred of willower to haul herself into a sitting position.

“Oh, Jesus, no,” she cried, kneeling over the body of her friend.

She picked up a limp wrist and felt for a pulse. Nothing. But that was hardly a surprise, considering there was a large pair of garden secateurs sticking out of her throat. Her wide-eyes stared lifelessly up to heaven and her mouth was twisted open into an ugly, silent scream. Amber’s gaze travelled the length of her slender body.

She’s still wearing her dress.

The dress, however, was rucked up around her waist, revealing the fact that her knickers were missing. Instinctively, Amber reached out to gently push her friend’s legs together. She had the strong sense that Marjorie hadn’t been raped. With a shudder, she remembered how Colin had buried his face in her vagina and sniffed. Marjorie’s lack of knickers suggested that the same thing had happened to her, but there was no other sign of rape – no bleeding or swelling around her vagina, no signs of trauma to her flawlessly smooth inner thighs.

A thought she couldn’t quite catch danced on the peripherals of her mind before vanishing again. But she was too muddled and terrified to dwell on the hows and the whys – there were far more pressing matters at hand like the fact her daughter was missing.

Oh God, what if Jessie’s lying dead somewhere in the garden?

“Jessie,” she cried, picking up the chainsaw and scrambling to her feet.

Please let her be hiding somewhere, just please God…

The fog had thickened again, disorientating her, leaving her with no idea from which direction she had come. She scanned the garden for signs of the narrow path that ran down the middle of the big garden to the front-gate, stifling the rise of panic when she couldn’t see a damn thing apart from her dead friend.

On legs that felt as sturdy as jelly, she lurched in what she hoped was the general direction of the gate. She screamed when something heavy slammed into her back, sending her sprawling to the ground once more.

The air knocked out of her lungs, and she panicked, unable to draw in a breath. Twinkling lights danced in front of her eyes, and her midriff blazed in agony.

Landed on the fucking chainsaw, could’ve cut myself in two…

She was beginning to hyperventilate when she reached under her stomach and dragged out the chainsaw, grunting in pain as she did so. Holding grimly onto the handle with both hands, she pressed down on the starter button.

As soon as the thing screamed into life, it was wrenched out of her grip. She heard the engine splutter then die, then the only thing she could hear was her own ragged, terrified breathing and whimpering.

That, and her husband laughing.

Oh no, please no.

Strong hands fisted her long hair, pulling her throat taught and she felt the wet heat of a mouth on the side of her neck, followed by the sharp graze of teeth. She tried to claw her way forwards on the wet glass, but the hand in her hair pulled tighter, making her scream out in pain when her head snapped even further back.

“No, Alfie,” she cried, but it came out as a low moan.

Weight pressed down on her back and bare rump, making the air whoosh out of her, effectively ending her struggles. Still laughing, her husband bore down on top of her, pressing her front into the dewy grass. He writhed on top of her, dry-humping her backside, his cock rock-hard and straining against the scratchy material of his shorts.

Suddenly, his weight lifted and she could breathe again. One arm snaked around her middle and scooped her up, the other hand pressed down on the back of her head, pushing the side of her face into the grass. She tried to wriggle free, but he held her firmly in place with her arse in the air and her face in the wet grass.

The familiar sensation of his hard cock probing between her butt-cheeks made fresh tears spring to her eyes.

Just relax and go with it, a voice whispered in her mind.

How many times had they done it in this position? A thousand? Two thousand? Three? Snot bubbled in her nose and the tears just wouldn’t stop.

It’s just sex with my husband, it’s just sex with my husband…

Except it wasn’t and was impossible to convince herself that it was just that. Alfie was no more her husband right then, than the green fog was something that came from nature. She felt only one thing as he pounded away on top of her and it wasn’t pain, or fear, or hatred. It was loneliness; an overriding feeling of soul-crushing loneliness that left her bereft.

It was over quickly and as soon as he let go of her, her body flopped to the ground. She closed her eyes, bracing herself for the first blow. She just prayed that he would be merciful, that she would die quickly.

She waited. And waited some more. Nothing happened. Tentatively, she lifted her head. The sound of the front-gate creaking on its hinges reached her ears.

He’s gone. Why didn’t he kill me?

The realisation that he had spared her life left her light-headed and weak. A strange noise escaped her lips – she thought that perhaps she was trying to laugh, but the sound was nearer the high-pitched mewling of a dying cat.

Clumsily, she hauled herself up onto her elbows, wincing in disgust at the feel of Alfie’s hot semen trickling down her inner-thighs. And then she was on her feet, swaying like a drunkard. She bent over to pick up the chainsaw and pressed the switch – the bloody thing no longer worked. Grunting in frustration, she chucked it to the ground.

The fog cleared a little and warily she eyed the house. Should she go back inside, pick the glass out of her feet, find some shoes and clothes and something to protect herself with whilst she was searching for her daughter?

And then she thought of Colin and Jeff, still inside the house. Perhaps she had caused sufficient damage to Jeff, but Colin must be recovered by now from Alfie strangling him.

No, she couldn’t risk going back inside, it would be suicide. Gingerly, she lowered herself back down onto the grass and picked up one foot, peering at its underside.

Jesus, what a mess.

She began to pick out the little pieces of glass, wincing at every single extraction.

I really need some bandages on these…

But there was no way on God’s earth she was going back inside.

When she had seen to her poor feet as best she could, she went against every natural instinct she possessed and placed one foot on Marjorie’s chest, pulling out the garden-scissors that were rammed in her throat. They came out with a wet pop that made her want to vomit. Turning her face away in disgust, she closed her eyes and took deep, shaky breaths.

Wincing in pain, she hobbled in the general direction of the front-gate. She was going to find her daughter.

CHAPTER SIX

On the ground next to the barbeque grill was a discarded black apron. Luckily, it was material rather than plastic, and she wrapped it sideways around her body, using the strings to secure it firmly against her torso.

Her new dress in place, she let herself out of the gate. Next to the gate was the double-garage, but she couldn’t open the sliding door without a key. Not that it mattered, for all the power-tools were kept in the toolshed round the back of the house, anyway.

Which way would Jessie go?

To her left, the gravel-road abruptly ended, a hedgerow separating her house from the wild clifftop beyond. Opposite, a short path led down to the narrow cliff-path which hugged the coastline. Could Jessie have gone onto the cliff-path and either turned right into town or turned left and taken off into the wilds of the Cornish coastline?

It’s so foggy, she wouldn’t be able to see, what if she plunged over the edge?

Her blood ran cold just thinking about it. If she was scared enough, she might have turned left to get away from Jeff and from people in general. Had it occurred to her that if her dad and Colin and Jeff had ‘turned’, then maybe it had happened to other men, too? Was she mature enough to make that connection?

Or maybe she had turned right and gone into town to seek out the safety of others. Or maybe she hadn’t gone on the cliff-path at all and had stuck to this road…

Her head throbbed going over the possibilities, trying to put herself in her daughter’s place. Some innate instinct told her that Jessie probably went into town on this road to seek help. Despite thinking this, she headed for the cliff-path – she had to check out every possibility.

The rocky path cut her feet to ribbons and each step was agony. She stumbled onwards, the green fog showing no sign of abating. She stopped walking and strained her ears. All she could hear was the roar of the ocean.

Where are you, Jessie?

“Jessie?” she called out.

Her voice sounded dull and muffled by the fog – even if she was nearby there was a good chance she wouldn’t even hear her calling.

No, she couldn’t think like that.

She called her name a few more times, stumbling blindly onward. Then she stopped dead.

She didn’t come this way. I’m wasting time.

She headed back the way she had come, being very careful not to turn around on the spot because it would be all too easy to lose which way was town. She went back up the path which took her onto her road, pausing at the gate of her first neighbour in the row of six.

Would Jessie have run next door for help?

This house was mainly used as a holiday-let. The owners, Mr and Mrs Greaves very rarely made an appearance, and usually only in the winter. As with her house, the double-garage was right next to the front-gate. The garage-door was rolled-down, so there was no way of knowing if anyone was home, or even if the house was currently occupied.

She couldn’t remember seeing anyone arrive next-door, but then, it wasn’t like she paid attention. People came and went all the time in St Ives, and her own house was sufficiently isolated so it didn’t affect her.

She stared hard at the place where the house should be, but all she saw was the swirling green. Fresh tears of frustration welled in her eyes; this was all so bloody hopeless, there was no way she was going to find Jessie, she could be anywhere…

A thumping noise made her jump and she staggered backwards, holding the secateurs away from her body at a ninety-degree angle.

Oh God, that sounded like my gate opening.

Sure enough, a figure loomed towards her from the direction of her house, their identity obscured by the fog. But Amber could see enough of them to know who it was; the silhouette was tall and gangly and could only be Colin.

Her paralysis broke and she turned heel and ran. Behind her, she could hear male laughter. Every time her damaged feet connected with the gravel she wanted to fall to her knees and howl to the invisible sky. But she didn’t give up. Jessie was the only thing on her mind, she had to find her…

She could feel herself slowing down; her ruined feet betraying her. She powered forward through the pain, but it wasn’t enough. The laughter was now a hot gush of air on the nape of her neck and she felt fingertips graze the expanse of her naked back that the apron didn’t cover.

Hands grabbed her and she stumbled – she would’ve nose-dived to the ground and smashed up her face if Colin hadn’t of been holding her tight, his front pressed against every inch of her back with his powerful arms wrapped around her middle.

Oh no, not again.

She struggled in his arms, dropping the garden-scissors in the process. He lifted her right up off the ground.

“Get off me!” she screamed, kicking her legs and writhing in his grip.

But her legs alternatively peddled thin air and dragged across the ground as he half-carried, half-walked her over to one of the waist-height, flat-topped concrete posts that framed either side of the wooden gate of the last house at the end of the street.

He bent her over it and she cried out in pain as the unforgiving concrete dug into her stomach. The thick material of the apron protected the skin of her stomach and breasts from being ripped to shreds, and for that small mercy she was grateful.

She thrashed on the post, scraping her knees as she tried to scramble off it. Colin continued to push down on her back, mashing her tits painfully into the surface.

It wasn’t long before she gave up trying to propel herself upwards as all it achieved was for her forearms and elbows to get cut to ribbons.

“Why are you doing this,” she gasped, clawing the side of the post and shuddering in revulsion as she felt the all-too-familiar sensation of a hard cock probing her arse-crack, guided by a hand.

Colin just grunted in reply, intent on the job at hand. His cock shoved past her anus, heading straight for her vagina and without ceremony it plunged into her dry centre.

The rape was perfunctory and over in less than a minute. There was very little pain, but inside she felt as if her heart might break. Tears slid down her face as Colin simply pulled out of her, zipped himself up and left her there, dangling over the post.

She went to right herself, but her legs wouldn’t work and she crumpled to the ground. She hugged the post like it was a person and gave in to the gut-wrenching sobs.

“Why,” she gasped between choking sobs that gave way to a bout of hiccups.

Using the post to haul herself to her feet, she straightened out the pathetic excuse for a dress and fought to get herself under control.

Amazingly, her secateurs were in the same place where she had dropped them, less than a foot away from where she stood. She hobbled over towards them, wondering why the hell Colin hadn’t used them on her like Jeff had used them on Marjorie.

It didn’t make sense.

Nothing makes sense. Nothing will ever make fucking sense ever again…

Why aren’t I dead, she wondered, as she bent down to retrieve the secateurs. Yes, her body ached and burned from head to toe, yes she had been brutally raped, not once, but twice, but there was no real physical damage done. She hadn’t been tortured or beaten up for the sake of it. Neither of them had attempted anal, and each encounter had been over in seconds. Each and every injury was self-inflicted; if she had of cooperated with them instead of fighting them, the only sore part of her body now would be her vagina.

Not like Sara and Marjorie…

I’ve been impregnated.

The strange thought slammed into her mind and was the equivalent of a light-bulb switching on. She thought of how both men had disappeared as soon as they’d orgasmed without so much as bruising her...

The more she thought about it, the more sense it made, in a really fucked up kind of way.

Marjorie was menopausal and Sara was already pregnant. I’m the only fertile one.

But where would Jessie fit into this theory?

Thinking of her daughter reinvigorated her and she forced herself to move in the direction of town.

She came out on Porthmeor road with the beach on her right and The Tate Modern on her left just a few feet ahead. Not that she could see these landmarks, but she recognised the railing and bench she was currently leaning against.

Distant screams reached her ears. At first she thought it was seagulls, but a fog like this would trick them into thinking it was night and they would be silent.

That isn’t seagulls….

She was reminded of being in Jessie’s bedroom less than an hour ago, when she had initially mistaken Sara’s screams for seagulls.

Just thinking about her daughter caused her heart to give a painful lurch and she resisted the urge to cry out her name. She was on the outskirts of town now, there were people around.

There were men.

The screams came again, louder this time, the unmistakable cries of women. Half of her wanted to run in the opposite direction – she was here to find Jessie, not help strangers – but the other half knew she would never be able to live with herself if she ignored those cries for help.

For the first time that night, she was grateful for the fog. Silently, she followed in the direction of the screams, the secateurs brandished before her, unable to see no more than a metre in front of her face.

The fog distorted noise more than she realised, for she happened upon the source of the screaming much quicker than she had expected to.

She found herself at the foot of the stairs that led up to the Tate Gallery and through the fog she was able to discern four figures close together. Going from past experience of this hellish night, she quickly grasped what was happening; two men were on top of two women.

Abruptly, one set of screams stopped, and the woman on the left stopped thrashing. The spare man joined the other man, and the three figures writhed together in the thick air.

Amber saw red. She was sick of this and without thinking she lunged for the man that was thrusting on top of the screaming woman. Mustering together every last ounce of strength she possessed, she rammed the secateurs into his back. The man jerked, then went slack.

Not wanting to lose her weapon, she tugged out the garden-scissors and stood there panting, staring in disbelief at what she had done. The sobbing woman beneath him must have pushed him off her because he flopped onto his back next to her on the steps, his lifeless eyes staring into space.

He looks so normal, came the fleeting thought. He was a middle-aged guy in spectacles and a tweed jacket – one of those arty, academic types that St Ives was stiff with.

For a split second, Amber had forgotten about the other guy. She soon remembered him when he roared at her like a wounded animal, and lunged for her down the steps.

“Stay back,” she cried, jabbing the blood-soaked secateurs at him.

The sight of the weapon made him pause for a second, then suddenly he wasn’t standing there anymore.

“Move!” cried a feminine voice, hoarse from crying and screaming.

The man’s legs crumpled, then he was tumbling headfirst down the steps. Amber only just managed to dodge him in time.

She pushed him she had time to think before the woman grabbed her by the arm. “Come on, let’s go, now.”

Amber allowed herself to be pulled along by the naked stranger, almost losing her footing on the steps, more than pleased to put some distance between her and the man she had just murdered. Fleetingly, her gaze settled on the older, naked woman lying dead next to him before the fog swallowed her whole.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The two women lurched forward, clinging clumsily to each other.

“Where are we going?” Amber panted.

“For help,” came the breathy reply. “It’s only the men, the women are helping each other.”

“I need to find my daughter.”

Amber skidded to a halt, her feet killing her. She was disorientated, confused and badly winded. The woman jerked on her arm, but right then, Amber was done.

“We have to keep moving, the bastards are everywhere but we’ll be safer in town. There are women that will help us.”

“My daughter,” she repeated, hunched over her knees.

The naked woman gently placed an arm over her defeated shoulders. “Look at me.”

Slowly, taking deep breaths, Amber straightened up and looked into the woman’s kind eyes. She was her age, perhaps a few years younger. She had a short and funky, bleach-blonde hair-cut, and if it wasn’t for the black-eye and scratches on her face, she would’ve been a beauty.

Amber dropped her gaze, and found herself staring at the woman’s small, bare breasts. Despite everything that had happened that night, she looked away, embarrassed. It just wasn’t bloody right.

“We need help, and we need shelter. It will be getting dark soon and can you imagine this fucking fog in the dark? We won’t be able to see a thing. The side-road just up ahead will take us into town. We need to get inside a house, and quick.”

“Where are we?” Amber asked, frantically searching for familiar landmarks but seeing nothing.

“At the end of Porthmeor Road. Look up, I think that’s the sign for the café on the corner.”

When Amber looked up, she recognised it too.

“You go, I have to find Jessie.”

“How old is your daughter?”

“Ten. Why?”

The woman smiled and gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “I was out drinking with my boyfriend in The Sloop beer-garden when all this happened. Every single man just turned, it was chaos. Me and a few women managed to get away and barricade ourselves in the Sloop’s office opposite the pub, and this one woman had her kid with her, a girl, about your daughter’s age. Anyway, some men broke into the office. They raped me, killed the other three women, and let the little girl go without harming a hair on her head. I was chased out here after I was raped the first time and I’ve been raped three times now. But I don’t think they touch the children.”

I don’t think they touch the children…

The stranger’s words made her knees buckle in relief. That statement was something she had not even dared to hope before. But it made sense – if Jeff had wanted to kill Jessie, then he would’ve done so. Amber felt sure she would’ve found her daughter’s body near Marjorie’s.

But he hadn’t killed her, he had let her go because the men simply weren’t interested in children.

“They’re impregnating us,” Amber whispered. “Infertile women are just slaughtered…”

“And the children aren’t old enough. Yet,” the woman finished for her.

Amber’s blood ran cold – that was something she hadn’t thought of.

Because it’s going to happen again when the little boys and girls are all grown up...

“So come on,” the woman said, “can we please bloody go now?”

Amber, strengthened by the new-found hope that Jessie was, God willing, still alive, managed a smile for her new friend.

“Sure.”

Together, the two women pushed on, lurching down the side-street that led to the town-centre. This street had lots of houses on it – mainly cottage holiday-lets – and so far no men had chased them.

“Help us,” her new friend cried.

Immediately, a female voice called to them through the fog: “Over here, quickly.”

Both women ground to a halt, searching the fog-laden air for the source of the voice.

“Over here,” came that same voice from somewhere off to their right.

They stumbled in that direction, a cottage with a stable-door looming into view. A plump, shadowy figure stood in the doorway, waving her arms in the air.

Once Amber was sure that the woman would make it to the door and that she would be safe, she gave her the briefest of hugs.

“Go. Look after yourself.”

“What? You’re not coming?”

“I can’t.”

“There’s nothing you can do for your daughter right now. Do you want to stay out here, and be raped, over and over?”

Amber extracted herself from her grip. “Good bye,” she said firmly. “And good luck.”

The woman smiled sadly, like she knew she was beat.  “Okay. Thanks for trying to help me, and everything. I hope you find your daughter.”

Amber stumbled blindly away, chiding herself for not going into that cottage. She was done in – she needed to drink some water before she passed out from sheer lack of fluids and she needed to do something to her feet. But her mother’s love spurred her on and she knew she would sooner die before she stopped searching.

Where are you Jessie? Please be safe…

She heard movement behind her, and she cringed in terror – it was the unmistakable sound of male laughter and approaching footsteps. She picked up her pace, lurching blindly on.

But the very same sounds were coming from in front of her, too and she ground to a halt.

I’m surrounded.

Maybe she could retrace her steps, seek help from the woman she had just parted ways with. She bit down the howl of sheer frustration.

This is all a big mistake, I should’ve gone inside that cottage when I had the chance.

It suddenly occurred to her that it was getting lighter.

My God, I actually think it’s lifting.

She stopped dead. No, she wasn’t imagining it; the sky was definitely clearing and she could see far more than she could just a few short minutes ago. She turned around on the spot, taking in the familiar surroundings. She walked down this narrow, cobbled street most days on various errands into town, but right then it felt like a different world.

It wasn’t until the fog lifted some more that she saw the figures standing statue-still in the swirling air. She panicked – most of them were men, but none made a move towards her.

Then she saw the dead bodies lying on the cobblestones. She counted four of them; all were women and all looked to be over fifty.

With every passing second the air was clearing, like speeded up footage from a nature documentary of a flower unfurling or day and night merging. The low, evening sun broke through, the cottages casting long shadows in the street. Everything still had a green tinge as if she were looking at the world through green-tinted sunglasses.

Everyone remained motionless, squinting in the slanting sunlight. The men looked confused and disorientated, like they had awoken from walking in their sleep. The women just looked terrified.

The air felt charged, making the tiny hairs on the back of her neck prickle.

Something’s about to happen. Something bad…

Although for the life of her she didn’t know what. No one made a move to communicate, and no one moved.

They all feel it too…

The air began to hum. At first she thought it was just her, that she was suffering from a bout of tinnitus brought on by severe trauma, but it got louder.

There was a subtle, but distinct vibration in the air around her, reminding her off the buzzing of an electricity pylon. The air seemed to shimmer, and suddenly she was aware that the sky was much brighter than it was before. Too bright. The green-tinge had gone, and in its place everything glowed a brilliant white.

She raised her hand to shield her eyes, her heart beating uncomfortably hard and fast. There was the strangest sensation deep in her gut; a squirming and a tugging, like a mix of nerves and hunger and…

And something else she didn’t understand.

That’s when it happened – the moment over ninety-million women the world over disappeared into the sky.

All along the length of the street, doors opened. Women stepped out onto the cobble-stones, blinking myopically. Women that, up until this very moment, had survived the horrors of the night.

Amber wanted to run, but her legs refused to obey the command that her brain sent. This was more than mere paralysis brought on by fear – her legs simply would not work. Somehow, she just understood that the invisible force that drew those women out of their houses was the same one that kept her rooted to the spot.

Helplessly, she stood there, watching.

Waiting.

But waiting for what, she did not know. That pulling sensation in her stomach intensified, like she was thundering down a rollercoaster ride.

A naked woman just a few feet from her was the first to go up. She was a plump brunette and wore the exact same expression that Amber could feel in in her own eyes; one of helpless terror.

A tube made of light encircled her. That was the only way Amber could think to describe it – a tube. The end of it stretched as far as the eye could see, narrowing to nothing high up in the sky.

It was almost like the woman was under the glare of a beam of a giant torch, but Amber had never seen light shimmer like that.

Within this tube, the woman’s form ever-so-slightly undulated, like Amber was viewing her through a crystal-clear sea dappled with sunlight that made her body stretch and distort. Whether this was from the glittering, distorting effect of the light, or whether it was actually her changing shape, she couldn’t tell.

With her mouth agape, Amber watched the woman slowly rise up. The woman’s mouth was wide open as if she was screaming, but no sound reached Amber’s ears. The distorting effect grew more pronounced, then when she had reached perhaps six feet off the ground, she disappeared.

No more beam of light. No more woman.

She looked wildly around herself, still unable to get her legs to move. Her gaze suddenly locked with the woman with whom she had parted ways with just minutes earlier. Like the others, she had been shucked from the shelter of the house that she had sought refuge in like an oyster from its shell.

I didn’t even ask her name, she thought abstractly, before she too found herself surrounded by that very same tube of light. The world shimmered and undulated beyond the confines of her tube and when she tried to pass through it, an invisible pressure pushed her back. She could see other women, similarly trapped.

Looking up gave her vertigo, the damn thing stretched on and on forever until it disappeared to a point the size of a pinhead. She wrenched her gaze away, forcing her mind back from the brink of madness.

It didn’t hurt, but at the same time, it was unlike anything she had ever felt before. Every cell in her body tingled, like they were being manipulated and altered.

There was no other way to describe it, she was being prepped to fly up that tube of light at the speed of light. She knew this on an instinctive level, and there was something else that she knew as well:

They’re impregnating us.  Infertile women are slaughtered.

Her own words echoed in her head, and it was this mix of clarity and instinct that saved her life. In one tingling hand she still held the secateurs, and she positioned the tip of the blades at the entrance to her vagina. The tingling sensation that penetrated every last inch of her body intensified, accompanied by the fact her feet were now peddling air.

Gritting her teeth, she plunged in the blades with as much force as she could muster. Fiery agony exploded in her lower gut before the ground rushed up to meet her.

Dimly, she was aware of the heat of her blood erupting from her vagina and gushing down her legs.

And then there was just blackness.

CHAPTER EIGHT

TWO MONTHS LATER:

Time was a great healer. Or so they said. Amber didn’t think so. Amber thought that was a crock of shit. Time merely glossed over the horrors and stored them up so they could play over and over again in her nightmares.

Amber was snuggled into the crook of Alfie’s arm, watching a debate on some news show on TV – it was the only type of programme they watched nowadays. Hell, it was the only thing ever on. A University lecturer, and a journalist, both in grey suits with grey personalities to match, were discussing the state of the world under the watchful eye of the host. The lecturer was speaking to the journalist:

“So you’re telling me that you really think this is all a big conspiracy? You idiotic conspiracy theorists are in overdrive.”

“How is it even possible that NASA claim to know nothing? How can an alien invasion leave no trace whatsoever? It’s impossible,” the journalist said.

“No, not impossible,” the lecturer said. “Millions of people the world over reported the same phenomena, that is, a tube of light that came down and made the woman disappear. If these women travelled at the speed of light, they could disappear before the naked eye when in reality, they were simply transported to another galaxy.”

“To another galaxy far, far away?” the journalist spat. “Do me a favour, this isn’t Star Treck. It’s some mass extermination performed by the government, a massive cull to do away with women of reproductive age to keep the population down.”

“That’s utter poppy-cock,” the lecturer said. “I’ll go along with you that NASA aren’t being entirely straight with the people of the world, but it’s not out of malice. It’s not a bloody conspiracy. I think that NASA possibly knows more than they’re letting on. Rightly or wrongly, I believe they are protecting us.”

“Protecting us? From what?”

“Not from what, from whom. They’re protecting us from ourselves, from mass panic.”

The journalist barked laughter. “Mass panic? It’s a bit late for that don’t you think? Almost one hundred towns and cities the world over were hit by the green fog.  Almost ninety million women were exterminated and their bodies were somehow vaporised. And that figure doesn’t take into account the millions of elderly women that were brutally murdered, or the million plus men that the women killed in self-defence.”

“No. The women were not exterminated, they were taken. I think that the real question here is what do these aliens want with our women? It is blatantly obvious to me that this alien race has been studying us for who knows how many years, watching our every move until finally they struck. I am not alone in thinking that they wanted to splice their genes with humans. Hidden within the green fog was a form of Viagra, turning every man that breathed it into a rapist. Along with this aphrodisiac, each man’s sperm was spliced with alien DNA.”

“It wasn’t aliens. It was the government. It was some state-of-the-art drug that turned men into murderers to cull the population.”

“How can that possibly be true? It doesn’t even make sense, men raped women of reproductive age and killed those that weren’t fertile. Men had the ability to sniff out fertile women. Children were spared for the next time.”

“Children were spared because government was playing God, because they decided they should live,” the journalist said.

“No, the children were spared because the aliens will come back for the girls when they are adults. Technically, most females are still growing until the age of seventeen or eighteen. Obviously, the aliens didn’t want the carriers of their babies to be still growing themselves. A sixteen-year-old girl may be menstruating, but she hasn’t reached full developmental maturity.”

“Obviously,” the journalist replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“They wanted pregnant women, pure and simple. Maybe I’m wrong about them infusing their genetics with ours, but I know I’m right about them wanting twenty million babies. Maybe these babies will be alien-human hybrids, or maybe they will be pure human, but one thing I know for sure, the aliens want those babies. Who knows why, perhaps their race is dying out, or they want to create a source of cheap labour. Maybe those kids will grow up to become the planet’s slave race. Hell, maybe they’ll just be sold as sex toys, or food. Or maybe the aliens just fancied experimenting on twenty million pregnant women to better understand humans.”

“You’re sick.”

“I’m sick? I don’t wish to be flippant – this is a catastrophe of epic proportions. How can we fight an enemy that we cannot see, that attacks without warning and will undoubtedly be immune to bullets? Yes, the government has issued gasmasks to pretty much everyone on the whole planet, but who’s to say that that will make any difference?  Life, as we knew it, is over, we are having to rebuild the world in which we live…”

“Can we turn this off?” she said, reaching for the remote. The TV went black.

“Sure. How are you feeling?”

A wave of irritation stirred within her. Why did he always have to ask that?

“Fine.”

The truth was, whenever she looked at her husband, all she saw was a rapist. They hadn’t had sex since before that night, and given what she felt right then, she doubted that they ever would again.

Just give it time… She smiled humourlessly. Time. The answer to everything.

“Why are you grimacing?”

“I’m not grimacing.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“What for?”

“For what I did to you.”

Immediately, she felt guilty for the stirring of hatred she occasionally felt towards him. It wasn’t his fault. None of this was his fault. Every single man that was affected by the green fog claimed to have no memory of the atrocities they committed. Like Alfie, each of these men had to live with the guilt of what they had done.

The world was in a bloody mess and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

“Do you want to talk about that night?”

Inside, she balked.

“I don’t remember much, you know, after what I did to myself.”

That much was true. The events that followed after she had destroyed her womb and the life that was supposed to grow within it were a blur. A nice woman in a nearby cottage had taken her in. Many hours had passed before she was able to get to a hospital because of all the chaos, and it was lucky she hadn’t died of blood loss.

“I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about what I did to you.”

Her thoughts strayed to Marjorie and Sara, brutally murdered by their husbands. She wondered how many women her own husband had gone on to murder or rape after he had left her in the garden. She thought of Colin, alive and living with the guilt of what he had done, just like Alfie. Then she thought of Jeff, who had died from blood loss that night after she had attacked him with the chainsaw.

“No, I don’t want to talk about that,” she said.

“Mummee, I can’t sleep.”

Jessie’s voice, coming from the doorway made her jump.

“Sweetie, I’m sure I just put you to bed.”

She looked so sweet standing there in her nightshirt with a picture of a snowman plastered across her front that Jessie’s heart gave a lurch of pure love. She padded with bare feet over to her mother, completely blanking her father, like she always did nowadays. Alfie pretended not to notice just like he always did.

Just give us time, she thought bitterly.

Jessie snuggled in next to her and Amber held her tight. Clearing his throat, Alfie got to his feet.

“Why don’t I make us a cuppa,” he said, heading for the kitchen.

Mother and daughter held each other, not speaking. Amber stroked her hair, thinking for the millionth time how brave and amazing her daughter was. How she would have sooner died that night than give up searching for her.

I just wish I’d had the brains to look round the back of the house…

Jessie had been hiding in the toolshed the entire time. It was so heartbreakingly logical and simple, and every day she kicked herself for not thinking to look there.

“Mummy, will things ever get back to normal?”

Amber hugged her tighter. Oh, how she wanted to lie, but the world was different now.

“No, sweetie, things can’t be the same anymore.”

She closed her eyes and thought of Alfie. Of how she was still secretly terrified of him. Of Sara and Marjorie, brutally murdered by the very people who were supposed to protect them. Of her wider circle of female friends and acquaintances who were somewhere ‘up there’.

“Will it happen again, Mummy?”

Inside, her heart broke.

Yes, she thought instinctively. It will happen again when you’re all grown-up. When all the little girls are women. You’ll be with the next batch to be carted off into the sky…

“I don’t know, sweetie, but we can’t worry about something that might not even happen.”

It wasn’t a complete lie, not really.

“What time does it get dark, Mummy?”

“About nine. Why?”

“Because it looks dark outside.”

Amber’s heart lurched. On shaking legs, she extracted herself from her daughter’s grip and went over to the window. She peeked through the blind – Jessie was right, it was overcast. The horizon out to sea was distinctly foggy.

She shivered.

Yeah, and that’s all it is. It’s just a little bit overcast.

Jessie joined her at the window and Amber pulled her close, all her senses on high-alert.

What if he’s changed?

Stop it, of course he hasn’t, it’s over.

“Everything’s fine, don’t worry.”

Together, they silently watched the grey horizon.

Together, they waited.

The End.

Hello, you reached the end of The Green Fog. Thanks for reading, I appreciate it more than I can say. Below, I have enclosed the first chapter of my book, Victim: An Extreme Horror Novel.

I love to hear from you with any thoughts you may have, so please feel free to drop me a line – my email address is over on my author page at Amazon. Thanks again, dear reader.

Sweet nightmares,

Sam.

CHAPTER ONE

Victim: An Extreme Horror Novel

Greg sat on the edge of the bed, his heart hammering at the enormity of what he was about to do.

You can’t read her diary, it’s deceitful, it’s a breach of her trust, it’s horrible, it’s…

Necessary.

The hiss of the shower coming from the en-suite bathroom did little to soothe his jangled nerves – just because she wouldn’t know he had had read it, it didn’t make it right.

His fiancée’s diary – although it wasn’t strictly a dairy and more of a personal account of ‘that night’ – rested accusingly on his lap, taunting him, daring him to open it. His ran a trembling fingertip over the cheap, cardboard-like cover, hating himself for being so bloody weak.

I’ve only read the first page, I don’t have to read the rest.

But after reading the first page, he knew that he didn’t have a choice. Written on that page were the words: May 31st 2015: THE NIGHT MY LIFE CHANGED FOREVER.

On reading that, he had slammed shut the exercise-book, his heart pounding like a heart-attack victim.

But I have to know what really happened, what she went through and how she feels about it…

Yeah, okay. Or maybe you’re just a nosey, snooping shithead.

Sighing deeply, he stared at the offending diary.

I wish I hadn’t found it. It was a stupid place to leave it, anyway. I mean, who leaves something so private just sitting there on the bedside-table? This is her fault, she should’ve remembered to hide it.

Fuck it, was his final thought before he opened it and began to read…

May 31st 2015:

THE NIGHT MY LIFE CHANGED FOREVER

My therapist thinks that writing about that night will help. I guess it’s worth a try, it’s what I do, after all. I write therefore I am… God, that sounds so lame. (What would my darling Greg think of me if he knew what I really went through that night?)

I thought it might be a good idea to write about it in the form of fiction. I thought that maybe, if I attacked it like I would one of my novels, it will be easier for me to come to terms with what happened. This way, perhaps I will be able to make sense of it all, I’ll be able to look at it objectively. Maybe, If I’m really lucky, I might even find some kind of closure.

Who’d have thought that when I started writing extreme horror fiction, my life would turn into something from straight out of one of my novels?

I feel sick at the thought of writing this down, but here it goes anyway. This is what really happened that horrible night exactly one year ago today…

NEW BEGINNINGS

“So, here we are,” Scott said, silencing the engine of the blue Audi A3.

It was so quiet here.

Too quiet. Spooky quiet.

“Yeah. Here we are,” I said.

“Hey, you’re not nervous are you? Just relax and be yourself, they’re gonna love you.”

His hand on my knee did little to soothe my nerves and I let out a shaky breath. “What’s not to love, right?”

“Exactly.”

My smile felt tight and unnatural as my gaze flitted from my fiancé’s warm brown eyes to the imposing barn conversion in the middle of nowhere. It looked like the ‘after’ of some property-conversion, dream-home documentary that seemed to be on every TV channel going nowadays. I mean, when Scott had said his parents lived in a barn conversion, I had pictured a converted row of stables or something, not this glass-fronted, architect’s wet-dream.

The big glass window which was divided into eight panels that ran from floor to ceiling was easily as big as our terraced house in the heart of Canterbury.  And it still only made up less than a quarter of the property’s frontage.

With a shiver, I thought about Mr and Mrs Jones waiting for me inside.

They’re gonna hate me.

No, they’re not.

How can his dad not love me? He writes, I write, we have so much in common…

Yeah, keep telling yourself that. You write extreme horror, his dad writes Philosophy text books. He’s gonna hate you…

“Ground control to Chloe Fox? Are you receiving?”

I dragged my gaze away from the imposing building and forced another rictus of a grin. “I’m receiving just fine. Just a bit nervous, that’s all.”

“I told you, don’t be. You’re gorgeous, funny, intelligent, kind… I could go on.”

“Then what’s stopping you?”

“The fact we have to get inside and meet my mum and dad. Come on, I’ll grab the bags.”

“No,” I said, a little too sharply. I softened my voice for him. “I have a present for you I just dumped on the luggage, I didn’t have time to wrap it.”

“What kind of present?”

“I guess you’ll just have to wait ‘til later to find out.”

“I love surprises.”

I giggled and coquettishly batted my eyelashes, twirling a strand of long blonde hair around my forefinger. “You’re going to love this one.”

Just then, my mobile rang inside my shoulder-bag. “Sorreee,” I said, fumbling for the offending machine. “Shit, it’s my agent, I have to take this. Hello?”

“Darling, great news, you’ve been optioned,” said the incredibly camp, speed-talking male voice on the other hand.

“Hang on, Justin,” I said, clamping my hand over the receiver. “It’s about the film-rights, I’m sorry, I really do have to take this.”

“I know baby, it’s fine. I’m gonna go in, give you some privacy. Come in when you’re ready?”

“Sure. I love you.”

“I love you, too, my brilliant, writer fiancée.”

I blew him a kiss and turned my attention back to Justin who was rabbiting on about my book, an incredibly fucked up version of Aladdin and the Lamp.

“…so they’re dead keen, this is very exciting…”

I only half listened, as thrilling as the news was. Instead, most of my attention was focussed on Scott, who had disappeared through the opened, heavy oak, front door.

Didn’t they lock their doors here? How could they be so trusting?

For fleeting seconds I glimpsed Scott through the window that was as big as my house. This part of the house was in darkness, and I watched his shadowy figure walk straight past the window and into the unseen room beyond.

The conversation took the best part of fifteen minutes and I drummed my fingers impatiently on the dashboard.

Taking a deep, shaky breath, I got out of the car.

This is it, I thought in horror. The moment of reckoning.

I walked to the door beneath the darkening sky, a friendly smile plastered on my face.

I knocked on the door before entering.

“Hello?” I called out tentatively.

Where was everybody? I took a wary few steps inside until I was in the part of the house I had seen from outside. Now that the sky was darkening it was hard to make out Scott’s car and the woods beyond though the glass.

Nice space, I thought, turning round slowly on the spot. It was a mix of old and new, a perfect design marriage that must have cost many thousands to execute. The high, vaulted ceiling with criss-crossing oak-beams was the nod towards ‘the old’ and the minimalist, modern furnishing was most definitely ‘the new’. I wandered into the gorgeous space, trailing my fingers over the long red sofa in the middle of the room. Big, abstract oils that looked like they belonged in the Tate Modern adorned the white-painted, pointed stone walls and my gaze was drawn to one in particular – a huge canvas over the post-modern, blocky fireplace that looked like a sea of blood.

Hey, perhaps these guys will be cool with me being an extreme horror author, after all...

Suddenly, the vast room was plunged into light and I jumped in shock, spinning round.

“I see you admiring my favourite painting. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Beautiful yet ugly, repulsive yet compelling, a real juxtaposition .”

The man extended a hand and I took an awkward step towards him to shake it. So this was Mr Thomas Jones. The love of my life’s father. All I could think in that moment was he was so much younger than I was expecting.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you at last, Chloe. Scott has told us so much about you.”

I realised I was staring at him; I could feel myself going bug-eyed being caught off-guard like that. He was a good-looking guy. I had been expecting some fusty old fart in a tweed jacket with round spectacles and white hair; instead I was met with a man that couldn’t have been a day over fifty.

Scott never mentioned his parents were so young.

But on reflection, it wasn’t entirely out there. Scott was thirty to my twenty-seven, so his dad could easily be a youthful looking fifty. And according to Scott, they had a ton of money tucked away so were able to take early retirement.

“It’s lovely to meet you, too,” I gushed, finding my voice at last. “I’ve been looking forward to it all week.”

“Oh, so have we.”

His gaze slid down my body in a not-exactly paternal way and I felt myself blush. With hindsight, maybe the knee-length, black dress I had opted for had not been the best choice. It had seemed a good idea at the time – classy, grown-up and just on the right side of slutty – but now it felt too clinging.

“Scott also never mentioned how beautiful you were.”

I blushed all the harder and waved my hand in front of my hot cheeks to deflect his compliment. “Oh, stop, really. You have a beautiful home.”

“Thank you. Would you care to take a seat?” he said, gesturing to the long red sofa. “Can I get you a drink? I’m having a whiskey.”

“That sounds nice. I’ll have one too.”

“A girl after my own heart,” he said with a wink.

I watched his broad back as he busied himself pouring the drinks over by the art-deco, glass cabinet which was next to the huge window.

How on earth can they be father and son? I found myself wondering. They were just so different. Both men were tall, but that’s where the similarity ended. Scott was blonde, with friendly brown eyes and a lanky body that never seemed to gain an ounce of fat despite his voracious appetite. His dad, however, was thick set, just on the right side of fat. His wide shoulders strained against the plain black jumper and every inch of him looked solid and worked out. His hair was black and cropped close to his scalp. I found myself wondering if he dyed it – it was strange that a bloke his age didn’t have a single grey hair.

“So, Scott tells me you’re a writer,” he said, spinning round suddenly and catching me staring at him.

I felt my cheeks heat again under his gaze; he was going to end up thinking I fancied him or something with the amount of times I kept blushing.

“Yeah, I just self-publish, nothing grand,” I said, cringing at my false modesty. “Not like you.”

He raised one thick, black eyebrow. “Like me? How’d you mean?”

“You know, an academic. I’m no retired university professor who writes high-brow literary articles and academic textbooks. I write to entertain myself, and hopefully to entertain others. But I’m no Hemmingway, put it that way.”

Shit, my mouth was running away from me.

Way to go, Chloe.

“What do you write, Chloe?”

Shit, I thought, hadn’t Scott told him? Had he made me out to be more mainstream than I actually was? Was Scott ashamed of me because of what I wrote?

“Horror.”

His blue eyes flashed something, although I wasn’t sure what.

“I know that, but I don’t know the details, Scott just said I’d have to ask you.”

Thanks a lot, Scott, I thought, somewhat uncharitably. You could’ve warned them…

“I write extreme horror, I guess you could call it pretty dark stuff.”

“I have a soft spot for extreme horror.”

I looked at him in surprise. “You do?”

“Sure, I love a dose of guts and gore now and then.”

This conversation was not going as I expected it to. Scott had painted his parents to be kind people, but somewhat staid and old-fashioned in their values. He said they were cool with what I did for a living, but at the same time they wouldn’t want to actually read it.

“I’m surprised,” I said.

“Why would you be surprised? People are multi-faceted, do you not think, Chloe? No one is ever quite as they appear.”

“No, I guess not.”

“I’m thrilled my son has met a girl like you, you are perfect for each other; his practicality and your creativity go so well together.”

“Yes, I suppose so. I think Scott’s quite brilliant doing what he does. Being an electrical engineer is nothing short of genius as far as I’m concerned. He’s so clever.”

I was gushing smarmy crap again, but the truth was, my future father-in-law was making me distinctly uncomfortable. I shifted slightly on the red leather sofa, conscious that the edging of the cushion might ladder my black tights.

He is very clever to land a girl like you.”

“Where are Scott and his mum? I’m so looking forward to meeting your wife” I said to deflect the compliment.

Or come-on, whichever way you looked at it.

I was in a quandary over whether to call Scott’s mum ‘Mrs Jones’ or ‘Elizabeth’. The first was too formal, the latter too familiar, hence the generic ‘your wife’.

Oh God, Scott, where are you? Please save me from this awkward social hell…

Yeah, well, maybe if he hadn’t given you completely the wrong impression of his dad then this wouldn’t be so bloody difficult…

“Scott and Elizabeth had to pop to the shops.”

“What? Really? When? I didn’t hear them leave.”

“They went in our car, we keep it parked round the back. They went just before you came in. Scott said you were likely to be on the phone for a while and he’d probably be back before you were finished talking.”

I stared at him in confusion, my heart suddenly thumping. He was still standing over me and for some reason that made me nervous. I took a large gulp of whiskey and savoured the soothing heat slipping down my throat.

“I thought there weren’t any shops around for miles.”

“Yes, four and a half, to be exact. We may live in the Lake District, but there’s still an Asda superstore on the outskirts of town.”

I laughed, but it sounded hollow to my own ears. “We’re more about the Tescos down south.”

Why did I say that? I thought. It sounded so god-damn lame.

“Indeed. Elizabeth forgot the ingredients for the salad. Speaking of dinner, I promised I would keep an eye on the casserole while they’re gone. I’ll be back in a moment.”

He stood up and strode over to the door that I had watched Scott disappear through earlier. I breathed a shaky sigh of relief; it was nice to be left alone for a moment to collect my thoughts. Mr Jones, or Adam as I supposed I should call him, shut the door behind himself and I jumped to my feet. My tumbler was empty – I was sure he wouldn’t mind if I helped myself to a refill.

Over by the drink’s cabinet my gaze was drawn to a framed photograph, lying face-down next to the silver drink’s tray. I frowned at it, suddenly more uneasy than I could say. My hand trembled and my breath caught in my throat as I picked it up and turned it round to look at the photograph…

I just managed to catch the scream in time and swallowed it back down. But inside I was screaming my fucking head off.

Oh shit, was all I could think, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

The snapshot taken on a sunny day was old; Scott couldn’t have been a day over twelve. His blonde hair, broad grin and lanky body was unmistakable. With her matching broad grin and sparkling brown eyes, the blonde woman on his right could only be his mother.

Unfortunately, the laughing man on Scott’s right with the greying, receding brown hair was not the man who had gone to check on dinner. I stared in disbelief at the stranger squinting into the sun, my mind whirring.

Perhaps it’s an uncle, or something?

But as nice as the thought was, I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe it.

“Helping yourself to the whiskey, I see?”

I dropped the frame like it had scalded me and grabbed the whiskey bottle. Composing my features into what I hoped was a passable imitation of a normal, calm human-being, I twisted my head round to smile at him.

“Sorry, I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Of course I don’t, you’re obviously a girl after my own heart. I think I’ll have another one, too.”

He came up behind me and I willed my hands not to shake. A whiskey was a bloody good idea right about now. When he plonked his empty glass down next to mine I tried not to visibly cringe at his nearness. I could feel him directly behind me, in my personal space. I pretended it didn’t bother me and poured out two generous measures of whiskey.

It took every inch of willpower not to breathe a sigh of relief when he took his drink and retreated to the couch.

Mentally, I ran over my possibilities at the speed of light.

Where was my phone?

Phone was in my shoulder bag on the passenger seat in the car.

Shit and double shit.

I contemplated making a run for it but then the game would be up – he would know that I knew he was a….

A what?

The unspoken question seemed to hang in the air around me, as ominous as a storm cloud. But the most important question had to be; where the hell were Scott and his mother?

I had no choice; I had to bluff it out.

“They’re taking a long time.”

Mr Jones, or whoever the hell he was

(the psycho, he’s a fucking psycho)

stretched out his long, jean-clad legs.

Black jeans, I thought. That’s why he’s dressed head to toe in black, because he’s a fucking intruder.

“They’ll be back in a minute. Come and sit down, you’re making the place look untidy.”

I remained standing where I was, every muscle in my body coiled tight.

“Actually, I need to use the bathroom, if you wouldn’t mind.”

He regarded me levelly, a smirk tugging at his mouth. Now that I knew he wasn’t Scott’s father, it was like I was seeing him properly for the first time. He didn’t look fifty because he blatantly wasn’t anywhere near that age. I felt a complete fool for choosing not to see that from the offset.

“Bathroom is through the door and up the stairs.”

“Thanks,” I said, turning to leave.

“I just told you where it was, I didn’t say you could go.”

And there it was. The Pivotal Moment. Knowing he wasn’t who he claimed to be was vastly different from him actually admitting to it….

End of sample.