Sam: A Novel Of Suspense Read online

  ***AN SG HORROR RELEASE***

  Part of the SALGAD PUBLISHING GROUP

  www.SALGADPUBLISHING.com

  Sea Sick copyright 2012 by Iain Rob Wright

  www.IAINROBWRIGHT.com

  Cover Art Copyright 2012 Stephen Bryant

  www.SRBPRODUCTIONS.net

  Editing provided by Faith Kauwe

  www.FAITHKAUWE.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  OTHER BOOKS BY IAIN ROB WRIGHT

  The Final Winter (Silk Raven Associates, 2011)

  Animal Kingdom (Grand Mal Press, 2011)

  ASBO (Silk Raven Associates, 2012)

  The Peeling Novella Series (Iain Rob Wright, 2012)

  Sea Sick (SG Horror, 2012)

  This book is dedicated to my fans and horror-lovers anywhere. You are the best bosses I have ever had and I love working for you.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Sam (main Story)

  SAM

  By Iain Rob Wright

  ---

  CHAPTER ONE

  “He’s a scam artist, a conman.”

  Tim Golding faced his accuser and sighed. The silver-haired gentleman was large and overbearing, but Tim wasn’t about to stand there and be insulted. “Sir, it was your wife that contacted me. If you’d like me to leave then I will. To be honest, I’d rather be home watching The X Files anyway.”

  “No, please,” said the man’s wife. “Help us.”

  Tim looked at the woman and could see she was emotionally battered. After ten years in the business you could detect the bullshitters fairly easy, and this woman wasn’t spinning him a line. She was genuinely terrified (either that or she was one hell of an actor). The charcoal bags beneath her eyes were proof enough to confirm her story of sleepless nights.

  “Okay,” Tim said to her. “Why don’t we take a seat and you can tell me what’s been happening.”

  The woman’s face almost crumbled into sobs then, but somehow she forced a weary, thin-lipped smile. She led Tim into the dining room, where a set of leather-backed chairs lay tucked up against a polished oak table in the centre of a plush, beige carpet.

  Tim slid a chair out and plonked himself down on it. The silver-haired husband did the same, but made no secret of his cynicism, huffing and puffing with every breath and rolling his eyes like marbles.

  Tim rolled his own eyes. Okay, asshole, I get it. You think I’m a charlatan and you’re a tough guy that won’t be scammed. If only you knew the truth, buddy…

  Tim clasped his slender hands together on the table and gave his most reassuring smile to the frightened woman. She’d taken the seat opposite Tim and was staring at him intently.

  He started with an obvious question. “When did this all start?”

  She was just about to answer when the lights in the room flickered. The woman let out a whimper, but the husband was quick to offer an explanation. “Dodgy wiring. Happens all the time.”

  Tim nodded and then turned back to the man’s wife. Eventually she began her story, in a voice that was sickly and timid. “It started about a month ago,” she explained, “when our dog, Buster, brought something home.”

  Tim glanced around the room. There was no evidence of a dog. No family pictures featuring a lovely pooch or pet bed in the corner. In fact the room was devoid of anything aside from the table and chairs. “You have a dog?”

  The woman shook her head solemnly. “Not anymore.”

  “Stupid mutt got himself trapped in our fishpond,” the husband added.

  Tears welled up in his wife’s eyes, but she did her best to go on with the details. “He was a little Jack Russell. We were always on at him to stay out of the pond but he would never listen. Must have dived in it a dozen times, but always got back out okay – just stinking like a swamp. Then, a few weeks ago, I went into the garden and…and…and I found him dead at the bottom. His collar had caught on a tree root sticking through the pond’s lining. He couldn’t get his head back above the water. He must have really suffered.”

  The woman started crying. Tim handed her a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his scuffed leather jacket.

  “Oh, nice,” said the husband. “Is that one of your props?”

  Tim ignored the man. “So tell me,” he said to the wife. “What was it you said your dog brought home the week before that?”

  “A bone.”

  Tim raised one of his eyebrows. “Was it human?”

  “Of course not,” the husband answered. “Don’t you think we would have reported something like that to the police?”

  “You could have, for all I know. Until your wife called me, I didn’t know a thing about you.”

  The man scoffed. “Yeah, I’ll bet.”

  “It was a chicken bone, I think,” the woman said. “It was small and sharp. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but then everything started happening.”

  Tim mulled it over. If it had been a human bone then it could have caused a poltergeist to haunt the house, but not from a chicken bone. Never heard of a malevolent chicken spirit before – at least not this century.

  Chicken bones were often used in Voodoo rituals, but Tim had never seen any evidence of it this side of the Atlantic. “So what was the first…occurrence?”

  The woman took a breath and seemed to shudder. “It was during the night while we were sleeping. It was about 3AM and I suddenly opened my eyes, wide awake.”

  “What woke you?”

  “The light in the bedroom was on. My husband was still fast asleep, snoring. I’ve never known him to turn the light on during the night so I assumed it must have been left on by accident. I got up and went over to the light switch to turn it off, but then realised that the hallway light was on as well. We always turn off all the lights before going to bed, so it was all very strange. I walked through the house and found that every single light had been switched on – even the lamps.”

  “Like I said,” the husband chimed in. “Dodgy wiring.”

  Tim nodded, but was beginning to get tired of the man’s short, clipped tone. An educated guess suggested he was some sort of mirthless military man. Tim didn’t have a great deal of respect for overly macho gorillas, so decided to focus on asking more questions. “So did anything else happen that night?”

  The woman shook her head. “I was freaked out, of course, and didn’t sleep another wink, but I still didn’t think too much of it right at that moment. It was the next day when I really knew something was wrong.”

  “Go on,” said Tim.

  “Well, the whole house is like the Arctic Circle as you can probably tell. Most times I can see my breath in front of me. You can feel how cold it is, right?”

  Tim nodded. It was indeed chilly.

  “I turn on all the heating but nothing seems to do any good. One night I was absolutely freezing, so I decided to take a bath to try and warm up. But, when I…” A short sob escaped the woman’s lips. “Sorry, just give me a second.”

  The husband butted in. “Daft mare thinks she saw blood coming out the taps.”

  Tim took a deep breath and made some mental notes. Then he addressed the husband, making sure to look directly into his steely blue eyes. “Did you see this yourself, sir?”

  “Did I? Hell. There was nothing but a bathful of water when I got there. Told her it was probably just rust from the pipes she’d seen. This is an old house.”

  Tim nodded. “With both dodgy wiring and plumbing, it would seem. Okay, so how long after that di
d your dog die?”

  “A few days,” the wife answered, now weeping without restraint. “There were some other weird things that happened up until then but nothing like what happened afterwards. We buried Buster in the garden, but that night I was woken up again. All the lights were on, just like they had been before, but this time there were noises outside, too. It was Buster barking in the garden. I know it sounds crazy, but I swear it was him. I know my own dog’s bark and it was definitely him. I ran into the garden in just my underwear. I was so excited, but when I got there he was…hanging.”

  Tim leant forward against the table and paid close attention. “Hanging?”

  “From the top of the old fern tree behind the pond. He was hanging by his collar.”

  “Sick bloody kids,” the husband spat.

  Tim wasn’t convinced. “This is a pretty nice neighbourhood, isn’t it? Do you usually have a problem with youth crime in this area?”

  The man shrugged his shoulders. “There are no nice neighbourhoods anymore. You get troublemaking kids everywhere. Police don’t do a thing.”

  “Okay,” said Tim, avoiding a political debate. “I think I should take a look around. There’s a good chance that this is all a sick joke by somebody, but I won’t know more until I conduct some experiments; starting with this room.”

  “Here we go,” said the husband. “The theatrics are about to begin.”

  Tim once again ignored the insult. He took off his trainers and climbed up on to the dinner table. Once his footing was stable, he pulled a small leather pouch from his back pocket.

  “What’s that?” the husband asked. “One of your new-age gizmos?”

  “No,” Tim explained. “It’s a set of screw drivers. I’m going to take a look at your ‘dodgy’ wiring.”

  The light fixture had been replaced with a modern studio light that coiled around a rail in a semi-circle. It was aluminium and easy to unfasten. Once the fixture was loose and hanging by its wiring, Tim poked a finger inside.”

  “Be careful,” said the woman. “The electricity is still on.”

  Tim tapped the switch wire and the lights flickered. He prodded it a few more times and the lights flickered once again. He reattached the fixture and hopped down off the table. He turned to the husband and smiled. “You have a loose switch wire. I would suggest an electrician.”

  The silver-haired man seemed confused, as if he had expected some fanciful explanation that would result in Tim charging him money. That wasn’t the type of game Tim was playing though.

  The next thing Tim did was reach into his pocket and pull out a spool of cotton thread. He unravelled a length of about 10cms then held it in the air, observing which direction it dangled towards. The thread rose sharply to the north side of the room, which meant the breeze was coming from the south side of the room. Tim walked over to the wall and knelt down beside the skirting board, holding out his palm to sense for air currents. It didn’t take him long to spot a hairline crack running a length of about 30cm along the base of the wall where it met the floor. He held his fingertips in front of it and felt the cold air flowing in from outside.

  Tim stood up and turned around. “You have a crack in the masonry. This time of year it’s letting in an icy draught. A good plasterer will sort that out for you.” He clapped his hands together in punctuation. “Right, shall we go take a look at that bathtub now?”

  The husband and wife seemed dumbfounded. They led Tim upstairs without a word spoken, and showed him over to the second door on the right of the hallway. The light was already on inside and crept out beneath the doorway.

  “Is this the bathroom?” Tim asked.

  They both nodded to him, still being silent.

  Tim grasped the doorknob and turned it. Then he slid inside the room and looked around. The bathroom was nice: stone-tiled with an art-deco suite. If anything, the bathroom was a little bit too sterile for Tim’s taste. It was like a showroom at a DIY centre. It lacked the soapy odours of a well-used washroom.

  There was an L-shaped bathtub at the far end of the space and Tim pointed to it. “This is where you say the taps ran with blood?”

  “Yes,” said the woman. “It was coming right out of the hot tap.”

  Tim leant over the tub and placed his hand on the tap marked with a calligraphic H. He turned it clockwise and water immediately appeared in a steady torrent. There was nothing unordinary about it. “All looks pretty fine to-”

  Suddenly the plumbing began to clunk and rattle. Tim looked closely at the hot tap and saw that it was vibrating. A viscous stream of brown-red liquid appeared and began to fill the tub.

  “There,” said the woman. “Just like that. It’s blood!”

  Tim reached forward and allowed his palm to fall beneath the running stream of liquid. It was warm, the mysterious substance mixing with the hot water from the tank. Tim pulled back his hand before it started to burn and then raised his palm to his face. He sniffed the substance, then he licked it.

  The husband grimaced. “My God, man. What are you doing?”

  “It’s not blood. Tell you the truth, I don’t know what it is, but it’s not blood and it’s not rust. Tastes kind of sweet.”

  “So what do you suggest?” asked the woman.

  “A plumber,” said Tim, washing his hand in the nearby basin. “Let me see where you found the dog.”

  The garden was at the back of the house and was lit by a pair of floodlights attached to the brickwork of the house. The pond was set back about fifteen feet from the house and sat amongst some flowerbeds. Tim would have expected to see koi or goldfish beneath the surface of the water, but the pond was empty.

  The fern tree, from which the Jack Russell had allegedly hanged, was standing just beyond the pond. The woman pointed at it. “Buster was hanging from the top of there by his neck. It was so horrible. Probably the worst thing I’ve-”

  Tim cut the woman off. “Where did you bury him?”

  “What?”

  Tim looked around the garden. The lawn was short and well kept. “You said you buried Buster in the garden. Could you show me?”

  “You leave that dog be,” said the husband. “My wife is upset enough.”

  “I don’t want to dig the dog up, sir. I just want to know where you buried him.”

  The husband and wife stared at each other. They seemed confused, but more between themselves than by anything Tim had said. It was as though they were trying to conspire without saying any words.

  “I can’t remember where I buried him,” the husband answered.

  Tim huffed. “Really? Is that what you’re going with?”

  “Look here,” said the husband.

  “No, you look. What are you up to here? Why did you hire me? Are you looking to discredit me? Are you writing a book or something?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” cried the wife. “Why are you being like this?”

  Tim laughed. “And you, my dear, you almost had me fooled. Bravo.” Tim clapped his hands sarcastically. “This is all very well done. The loose wiring to make the lights flicker; the broken skirting board; the food colouring in the water tank – all good stuff. What really gave you away though was the dog. This lawn is perfect. There’s been no digging or burying in this garden at all. This whole thing is a setup. I don’t even think this is your house. There’s not a single photo of the two of you here, or even any toiletries or towels in the bathroom. Your acting was good, granted, but I think you failed to truly become your characters – plus the age difference between you two is a little hard to buy into. Now, perhaps you’d like to tell me why the hell you brought me here.”

  The husband started nodding his head and a wide smile crept across his lips. It was almost as if he’d allowed a veil to drop from his face, revealing the menacing, silver-haired figure underneath. Tim suddenly worried. His Sherlock-Holmes scene of deduction had been satisfying, certainly, but now he was alone with two people who had brought him there under false prete
nces. He was still yet to find out what those pretences were.

  The husband pulled a phone from his pocket and dialled a number. He placed the handset to his ear, still smiling widely like a lion about to make a kill. After a few seconds, the man spoke into the receiver. He said, “Guy passed the test. What do you want me to do with him?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Angela Murs stared into the bottom of her whisky glass and felt her head spin. At forty-years of age, she was beginning to wonder if the time had come to spend her evenings some place other than the grimy, student hangouts of the city.

  Wolverhampton was a University town and the bars were packed every night. It was easy to disappear inside any one of them; easy to be alone amongst strangers. The bars were also student-prices-cheap and crammed full of eye candy. In fact, there was a slender young thing currently propping up the bar beside her right now. The brunette’s legs went on forever, beginning at a pair of perfectly manicured feet in open heels. There was a tattoo of a rose on the left ankle that got Angela’s juices flowing.

  It was unlikely the young girl was gay, but that didn’t mean Angela couldn’t appreciate the view. Most of the senior students knew Angela well and would often direct any newly experimenting young girls her way. As it turned out, Angela got more than her fair share of dalliances for a forty-year old woman. Not bad for an ex-priest.

  Angela hadn’t left the clergy because of her sexuality (although it had perhaps made it inevitable). It had more to do with the church itself. Her years there had shown her that it was an institution run by hypocrites and politicians. They couldn’t even decide on what to believe in themselves, let alone what everyone else should. Some priests supported homosexuality (or were even gay themselves) while others derided it. Some vicars were kind, decent souls, while others were judgemental pricks. The more time that passed, the less Angela believed her colleagues were on the path God truly wanted. She had decided to leave, three years ago, to follow the Lord in her own way. But things hadn’t turned out as planned. Somehow, she’d devolved into the exact kind of hypocrite she’d once detested. Even if God did condone homosexuality, Angela knew that he would not support her drunken, debauched ways. She wore Sin around her shoulders like a comfortable cloak.