THE BLACK HOUSE

 

          

 The Black House

This is a discarded section of a chapter where I got carried away and strayed off track into the paranormal. I still like it though so thought I would post it here. The main character Bernie, has just committed a double murder and is fleeing the scene of the crime. 

Five minutes later Bernie was on Manor Road and trying his best to ignore the voice in his head which was screaming run. Bernie didn’t run, he might, Bernie didn’t. No one ever saw Bernie Run. They were used to seeing him shuffling around the borough with his head bowed to the floor. It would be totally out of character if he ran. Anonymity had always been Bernie’s friend and he needed it to stay that way. It wouldn’t matter once he reached the T junction at the top of Manor Road, all he had to do then was cross the main road and lose himself in amongst the allotments on the other side. He’d done it before and knew exactly where to hide in his neighbour’s plot. Mr Edwards having constructed a shed out of some galvanised steel sheeting which Bernie felt sure would hide him from the Police Helicopter’s sensors.

Whether it would or wouldn’t became immaterial when he heard the first siren racing toward him and he started panic knowing full well he would never make it to the top of the road before the Police arrived. In desperation he looked from one side of the road to the other and back again for somewhere to hide. Then he saw it, what looked to be an overgrown garden on the other side of the road. He couldn’t remember seeing it before which was strange, right at that moment however, it was a minor detail. He crossed the road and jogged toward the garden gate which as an added bonus was lost in the shadows well away from any streetlamp.

            The gate was a rickety wooden affair which scraped noisily across the concrete path when he opened it just in the nick of time. As soon as he was through, he flung himself down behind an overgrown privet hedge. Seconds later the strobe lights of a fast-moving Police car illuminated everything with an eerie blue light. Bernie could feel himself shaking with fear when the car roared passed, quickly followed by another. He had to get away, he had to…

            He rolled over and looked along the dimly lit garden path behind him, barely discerning the dark silhouette of a house against the night sky. It was set back further than the rest which was unusual, the houses in Manor Road and the streets surrounding it being built to the same uniform plan. Bernie hadn’t time to dwell on the vagrancies of suburban housing though, he needed somewhere to hide, and he needed it quick. The Police helicopter could already be overhead and searching the area with its infra-red camera’s. Bernie had seen all those videos on YouTube where minuscule monochrome figures tried desperately to escape the crosshairs of the Helicopters Cameras. He hadn’t seen one yet where they’d succeeded.

            He got to his feet and with his back bent low picked his way up the garden path toward the blacked-out house. Along the way he stumbled over a pile of garden rubble, falling heavily and hitting his head on the frozen concrete. He groaned and rolled onto his back temporarily stunned by the blow. In the distance he could hear another siren heading toward him, this one had a different tone to the previous two, probably an ambulance he thought, making a conscious effort to get back onto his feet and move.

            Gingerly raising himself up from the concrete path he staggered in a semi dazed state toward the blacked-out house at the same time wondering who, if anybody lived there? From what little he could see the place looked like it had been empty for an age. He tried the front door and felt it move as he leant his weight against it. Should he go in? Somebody could still live there, and there was another consideration, what if they had a dog? Bernie didn’t like dogs.

The siren was getting close now and once again the street was illuminated by a harsh, flashing blue light. He swallowed and looked up to the sky, imagining the helicopter up there somewhere. He had to get off the street; he had to get inside. He reached into his right-hand coat pocket. The one he had specially adapted and felt the familiar feel of his Kukri’s handle. Hopefully, the house was empty.

            He eased the door open just far enough for him to slip through and waited whilst his eyes became accustomed to the dark hallway. Fortunately, there was a skylight above the door which allowed a little ambient light to filter through. Gradually he began to see shapes. The floor appeared to be strewn with all manner of detritus and against one wall there was an old-fashioned sideboard canted over at an angle against a wall.

            He sniffed the air, it was damp and musty, as you would expect with a house which hadn’t been lived in for some time. He let out a long sigh of relief, the house was empty, and he wasn’t going to have to deal with any of its occupants. Once his eyes had acclimatised to the gloom, he tentatively picked his way down what at one time had been a spacious hallway. The house was a bit of an enigma, and he felt the need to explore it. Bernie had lived in the area all his life and knew every street; every footpath and he thought every house and garden. Only he didn’t know this one and given its size he was at a loss as to why he’d never noticed it before.

            He was half way down the hall when to his horror a light came on in a room which lay beyond a partially opened door way to his right. Bernie instinctively pulled his blood-stained Kukri free from his coat and held it in the ready position. He really was confused now; he could have sworn there wasn’t a light on before.

            “Ruby, is that you?” A wavering voice called from behind the door.

            Bernie tightened his grip on the big knife; it was an old person’s voice. He closed his eyes. Bernie didn’t like hurting old people.

            “Ruby?” the voice called out again, this time with a hint of alarm. It was no good he couldn’t take the risk of discovery. He mentally counted to three then in one swift movement burst through the door into the room beyond. To his dismay it was empty save for a high back chair, a table and an old-fashioned radio which reminded him of one his mother used to have in her front room when he was a boy. The source of the light being a single naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling There was no other exit and there was nowhere to hide. So where had the voice come from? More to the point who had turned the light on, or was it his imagination? He swallowed nervously and backed out into the hall wondering whether he was better off taking his chances out on the street.

            “Ruby?” It was the same wavering voice, only this time it seemed to come from upstairs. Bernie felt a shot of adrenaline course through his body as a cold irrational fear started to take hold. He took three quick strides toward the front door and had just put his hand on the door handle when he heard the buzz saw of rotor blades overhead. Bernie was trapped.

            “Ruby is that you?” Again, from upstairs.

            Bernie steeled himself, whoever it was he was going to have to deal with them. He gingerly put a foot on the first stair and with his back to the wall inched his way up, one stair at a time.

            It was surprisingly owing to a large panoramic window overlooking the head of the stairs which meant he could see far better than he could on the ground floor. The first thing he noticed was much like the downstairs hallway the floors were devoid of carpet. He could also see the walls were decorated with an old-fashioned floral wallpaper belonging to a bygone age. There was nothing else, no pictures hanging on the walls or furniture, nothing. If it weren’t for the voice persistently calling out for Ruby, he would have said the place was derelict.

            “Ruby?” the voice called again. It seemed to come from behind a door at the end of the landing. Once again Bernie steeled himself and moved stealthily forward before taking hold of a heavily patterned brass doorknob. This time he didn’t bother to count to three and lunged forward into the room, knife at the ready. It was a little darker in what was once a bedroom than it was in the hallway, his eyes taking a second or two to adjust. He could see there were some dark shapes hanging on the walls which he took to be pictures. On the back wall were two shelves, the bottom of which sagged in the middle. There was nothing else no carpets, no furniture and more importantly no living, breathing human being.

            Mystified he went back out onto the landing and checked out the remaining three rooms comprising of two bedrooms and a bathroom. Every one of them was empty. Bernie started to wonder whether it was his imagination, he’d heard voices before when he was a kid. Had they come back to torment him? He let out a low whine and retraced his steps back to the first room he’d been in. He noticed a light switch and, on a whim, flicked it down. Much to his amazement the lights worked revealing what he’d taken to be pictures to be sheets of newspaper print pasted onto the walls.

            The sheet nearest to him had long since turned yellow with age and bore a picture of Winston Churchill addressing troops in front of a desert back drop. Bernie took a step to his left and studied the next page which was from the Evening Standard and dated March 1956. Unlike the previous page there wasn’t anything of historical interest and he wondered why anyone would have wanted to keep it. Then he noticed a column on the right-hand side of the page. It was only two short paragraphs detailing the discovery of a woman’s body on the Thames foreshore close to Lovell’s Wharf.

            Something registered in Bernie’s still semi concussed mind. He stepped back to the first page he’d viewed. Ignoring the picture of Churchill waving his hat from the back of an armoured car he scanned down the page until he saw another article concerning the out of character disappearance of a landlady from a pub in Deptford. With a nervous glance toward the open doorway Bernie moved to another sheet of newsprint. This one was from 1952 and featured an article detailing the brutal murder of a sixteen-year-old shop girl called Mary Hollis.

            Bernie swiftly moved from page to page and on every one of them saw stories of rape and murder covering a span of twenty years, the last of which was in 1962. Only this one didn’t cover a murder as such and instead ran the headline “Police bring in the big guns.” Under the heading was a black and white picture of a man wearing a light-coloured suit and old-fashioned Trilby hat. Underneath it bore the caption Superintendent Walters to head up the Riverside Strangler murders.

            Bernie felt himself being drawn to the two shelves behind him. When he turned around the first thing, he noticed was a dust covered trilby looking exactly like the one Walters was wearing in the Newspaper. Next to it was an equally dusty women’s shoe. He shuffled across to get a better look. All along the bottom shelf were women’s shoes, handbags, and jewellery, including a gaudy fake gold necklace. Bernie knew straight away what he was looking at, he had one after all. Only his trophies were kept out of sight.

            Bernie’s eyes drifted back to the trilby. Was it the one Superintendent Walters had worn in the photograph, in which case what was it doing here? There could only be two answers, either the killer had taken it from Walters or, he shuddered, Walters had been the killer. The thought of a high-ranking Policeman being a murderer frightened him. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t black and white, it was…? He didn’t know what it was, but he knew he had to get out and get away, Police Helicopter or not he had to go.

            He bolted for the top of the stairs just in time to hear the radio he’d seen downstairs burst into life with a song about kittens and mittens. The last thing he heard when he exploded out of the front door was an old infirm voice calling out “Is that you Ruby.”