Home Intruder: An Extreme Horror Novella (4 page)

Jaz wanted to fly down those stairs, the fact she was near naked be damned. Instead she sprinted to the bedroom, dropping the towel on the landing.

“I cannot believe this
shit,
” she muttered to herself, pulling on a white, knee length sundress and not bothering with underwear.

Dressed in a matter of seconds, she padded barefoot down the stairs, not caring about the fact she was still wringing wet.

She burst into the kitchen, half expecting to see Linda pinning her husband against the fridge and ripping off his trousers…

Instead she was confronted by an entirely calm and collected Linda sitting at the kitchen table like she was actually
welcome.
Ed stood over her, the lines of his body tight and a vein visibly throbbing in his clenched jaw.

“Hello Jaz,” she said, a dreamy smile on her lips. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news and all, but I’m in love with Ed and we’re going to be together.”

In that moment, Jaz realised the woman had flipped. Not only had she lost the plot, she looked pissed too. Her eyes appeared glazed, like she was having trouble focusing.

Ed glanced over at her in wide eyed helplessness.

“Linda?” Jaz said gently. “You need help, and I’m sorry, but Ed isn’t the one to give it. Please just go…”

“No!” she shouted, making them both jump. “He’ll be here in a minute, then you’ll see.”

“Who will be here in a minute?” Ed asked slowly and clearly, every inch the nervous individual addressing someone mentally disturbed.

“I don’t know his name, he didn’t say. But there was just something about him, you know?”

Ed and Jaz exchanged a fleeting look. No, they really didn’t.

“Linda,” Jaz, said, trying one more time. “Who will be here in a minute?”

“I just told you, you dumb bitch, I don’t know who he is. But he said he was going to see to it that me and Ed would be together.”

Jaz’s mouth was suddenly dry and her heart thumped painfully against her ribcage. This was just too damn weird.

“Do you have your mobile, Jaz?” Ed asked her without taking his eyes off of Linda, like she was going to jump up and bite him or something if he looked away.

“No.” Hell, she didn’t even have
knickers
on, and she sure as shit hadn’t even
thought
about her mobile phone when she had chucked on the dress. “You?”

“Nope.”

Shit. Now what?

As the house was a holiday let, it didn’t have a landline.

“I’m sorry for your problems Linda, really I am,” Ed said in that same, slow, clear voice, “but I want you to leave, right now. If you don’t, Jaz is going to go upstairs and call the police. Do you understand?”

Linda lifted her face to gaze up at him, as if seeing him properly for the first time.

“I hope he arrives soon, so that doesn’t happen. It’s just that I believed him. I really want to see how this plays out.”

“Screw this,” Jaz said, acknowledging her growing fear for the first time. “I’m going upstairs to make that call…”

The doorbell chimed, making all three of them jump.

“See? I told you,” Linda said, smiling softly up at Ed.

“What do we do?” Jaz asked her husband, the panic rising.

Ed looked over at her, his expression tender, but determined.

“Don’t panic. Never panic, no matter what. Go upstairs and call the police. I’ll deal with whoever it is at the door, and if you hear
anything
that doesn’t sound right, lock yourself in the bathroom until the police get here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean,
anything that doesn’t sound right? 
Ed, I’m scared, who the
fuck
is at the door?”

“I told you. It’s
him
.”

“Shut up,” they said in unison.

Jaz winced at the sound of the front door opening.

“Shit, I must have left the damn thing on the latch,” Ed said, lunging for a kitchen drawer. He opened it and pulled out a sharp potato knife. “Jaz, I want you to leave, right now. Go out the back door and get help. Find a neighbour with a phone
now.
”

“I can’t,” she whispered, desperately eyeing the door that led out of the kitchen into the modest sized back garden.

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“Because the door’s locked and the key is upstairs on my key ring. We never use the door, do we? The front garden is bigger and has views of the ocean.”

She knew she was gabbling but she was scared and couldn’t seem to stop.

Ed palmed his forehead. “Shit, you’re right. Fine, then take this knife.”

All the while Linda passively watched their exchange, like it was the most every day kind of conversation in the world.

Ed pressed the knife into her palm, closed her fingers around it, and gave her hand a brief, reassuring squeeze. Immediately he picked out another, larger knife, and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans behind his back, his untucked t-shirt hiding the handle.

Ed and Jaz fell silent and still. Whoever was outside in the hallway was whistling. The hairs on the back of Jaz’s neck stood on end. It was some old army song, and it was getting louder and louder, along with the person’s footsteps.

His footsteps. Whoever
he
is. A man that wants to do us harm and I don’t know why. I’m a good person, stuff like this doesn’t happen to people like me and Ed, I don’t understand, who would want to hurt us...

The footsteps and the whistling stopped outside the closed kitchen door, along with her feverish thoughts. Because it was a holiday let, the doors were fire regulation spring loaded, which meant the doors throughout the house were permanently closed.

Jaz and Ed jumped when whoever it was behind the door rapped three times. Ed pulled Jaz unceremoniously to the back of the kitchen and twisted her hand that held the knife behind her back.

“Hide the knife,” he whispered so softly in her ear that she doubted even Linda heard.

Ed picked up a frying pan off the stove on the way to the kitchen door and stood behind it, his makeshift weapon held aloft.

The breath caught in Jaz’s throat.

What if it’s not a lunatic on the other side of that door? What if Ed knocks out someone innocent?

Or
kills
them.

But it
is
a lunatic the other side of that door. A normal person would shout hello. A normal person wouldn’t walk up the hallway whistling…

You sure about that Jaz?

Linda remained sitting where she was at the kitchen table, seemingly oblivious to Jaz’s terror filled confusion. Eagerly she stared at the door, her cheeks flushed and a small smile playing on her lips.

The door opened a crack.

“Ed’s behind the door and he’s going to knock you out with a frying pan!” Linda shouted.

Bitch,
was all Jaz could think.

Jaz screamed when she saw a nozzle of a long, thin gun sticking out through the gap in the door.

And it was pointed right at her.

“Oh my god Ed, he’s got a fucking
gun,
” she screamed.

“That’s right,” said the stranger from the other side of the door. “And I will shoot you unless Ed drops the weapon and moves over to the kitchen table and sits down with his hands on his head.”

Ed didn’t have to be asked twice. His face looked contorted as if he was in physical pain, but he did as instructed, the frying pan dropping to the floor with a loud clatter. He sat down opposite Linda at the table.

The man came into the room, gun held out in front of him. Jaz had seen enough movies to know the long, thin part was a silencer.

“You,” Ed said, sounding every bit as surprised as Jaz felt.

She recognised the good looking man straightaway, although it took a moment to dredge up the man’s name from her memory banks.

Jason Jacks,
she thought in confusion, the name coming to her in a flash.
Jason Jacks, our god damn wedding photographer… What
the fuck
is going on here
?

CHAPTER FOUR.

The sense of unreality was all consuming. Ed gazed up at the intruder in total disbelief.

Jason Jacks? Their wedding photographer? What was this shit?

“What is this? What do you want? Why are you here?”

“Questions, questions. Always with the questions.”

Come on Ed, don’t freak out, you have to keep it together
.

Jason Jacks just looked so
normal
,
none of this made a dot of sense. Ed mentally fast tracked back to the wedding. This was the very same, outgoing, charming guy that had flirted with the bridesmaids and joked with the guests. The same man that had effortlessly rounded up the wedding guests into their designated groups for photos through force of personality alone.

If ever there was a stereotype of a serial killer, it sure as shit wasn’t him. He was Mr Charm-Personified. Mr Handsome-As-Fuck.

And now they were going to die.

“You don’t have to do this,” Ed said calmly. “Just walk out the door and we’ll pretend this never happened.”

Jason Jacks stared at him, his expression unreadable. Ed tried not to flinch with the gun trained on his face. The sound of his wife’s soft sobbing reached his ears, but he did not look at her, refusing to break eye contact with Jason Jacks as if that would somehow attest to his masculinity and save them.

“They have weapons.” Linda said helpfully. “Ed has a knife tucked into the back of his jeans and Jaz is holding one behind her back.”

Jason Jacks turned to look at her, like he had only just noticed that she was in the room with them.

“Thank you, Linda.”

“How do you two know each other?” Jaz asked.

How, indeed.

Jaz wiped her soggy eyes on the back of her hand. In that moment he was so proud of her for reigning in the tears, and for the briefest of seconds their eyes locked. He nodded his head ever so slightly in approval.

Be strong, baby. Can you do that for me?

“It doesn’t pay to air your dirty laundry in public. I was watching last night. I saw you go to kiss Ed, Linda. I saw and heard everything. And then I followed dear Linda and her lumbering boyfriend home. Or ex-boyfriend, I should say. They were so busy arguing they didn’t notice the man
right
behind them. ”

“It was you over on the cliff path,” Ed said. “I
knew
I saw someone.”

“Indeed. And now, we’re all going to play a little game. But first of all I’d like you both to lay the knives on the table. Come on, chop chop.”

The man waved the gun at him and Jaz. Jaz was the first to act; she removed her hand from behind her back and took a step towards the table, dropping the knife onto it with a clatter.

The bastard turned the gun back onto Ed.

“Get on with it or I’ll cut your wife.”

Ed’s blood ran cold.

I will fucking kill you for this,
he thought when he lay his knife on the table.

“Very good, now we can start the game. Tell me Edward Sullivan, do you love your wife?”

Ed glared at him, a fireball of hatred burning inside his chest. “Yes, I love my wife.”

“With all your heart?”

Ed looked at the man, and he looked at the gun.

“Yes, with all my fucking heart. What the fuck do you want with us?”

The anger was burning out of control, he could feel it.

“This is your last warning, Ed. Be nice.”

Ed took a deep breath in an attempt to still his wildly beating heart and reign in his temper.

“You’re looking very beautiful this evening, Jaz. Are you auditioning for a wet t-shirt competition? We can all clearly see your tits.”

Inside, Ed seethed. His wife’s state of attire had been the furthest thing from his mind since she had entered the kitchen, but now it was pointed out to him, he realised the fucker was right. The thin material of Jaz’s dress clung wetly to her body, entirely see-through in places.

For the briefest of seconds he was angry at her for coming down here blatantly underwear-less and with the wet dress plastered to her lush body. Her nipples were clearly visible, straining the flimsy, almost invisible material.

“Please don’t hurt us. We won’t tell, will we Ed? Please just go…”

Ed knew his wife’s pleading wasn’t helping any. Playing into the shitty situation and making things worse. The high pitched quality to her voice threatened to spill over into hysteria and he threw her what he hoped was a stern look.

Suck it up, baby…

“As I was saying,” Jason continued, casually pointing the gun at the three of them in turn. “I like to think of myself as bit of a love guru, if you know what I mean.”

Ed didn’t. And by the looks of his wife’s terrified expression, neither did she.  Linda just looked curious and not at all frightened.

What is it with her? Why isn’t she frightened?

Because she’s fucking nuts, is why.

That fact scared him almost as much as Jason Jacks did.

“So the thing is, I would like to test the love you have for your wife, Ed. And the same for you, Jaz. I’ve never done it like this before, not with a bona-fide love triangle. Tell me Jaz, do you think you love your husband more than Linda does?”

Jaz didn’t reply, she was sobbing softly. Linda watched her cry with her head cocked to one side, her eyes gleaming with some inner madness that Ed couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

“I love him more, Jason,” Linda said with the simple self-assurance of a young child.

The hairs on the back of Ed’s neck stood up on end at the plaintive quality to her voice. A sudden rush of hatred for the woman coursed through him. In that moment he felt with cold certainty that he would do anything to protect his wife from these two loons.

He would fucking kill the pair of them in a heartbeat.

“Well, dear Linda, that’s what we are about to find out. But we’re not starting with you. We’re starting with Ed.” Jason turned his full attention to Ed, his blue eyes glinting with the kind of mirth that would leave any sane person terrified for their life. “Ed, I want you to choose between two simple tasks. Cut off Linda’s little finger or tell your wife that you hate her.”

“
What?
”

Give me that fucking knife,
was his first thought.

But it was fleeting, and no real competition to his inherent decency.

Jason instinctively homed in on the cutlery drawer and opened it. He pulled out a long bread knife with a serrated blade.

“Well? Which is it to be?”

Ed regarded him levelly. “You evil cunt.”

“Watch your mouth,
mate
.”

Ed glanced from his wife to Linda. Both looked terrified. A small part of him revelled in Linda’s suddenly pale complexion.

Yeah, so you should be scared, bitch
.

He turned his full attention to his trembling, quietly sobbing wife.

“I hate you.”

She managed the tiniest of smiles which gladdened his heart.

“I hate you too.”

“Enough!” All three of them flinched. “Enough of this fooling around. Let’s get the games
started
. Jazmine, it’s your turn. You can cut off all four of Linda’s fingers on her right hand with this knife, or you can come over here and give me a kiss.”

Ed saw red.

“You fucking bastard! We’re not playing your sick games anymore.”

“Do you have a death wish Edward? Because I am more than happy to oblige you. I will start with your wife, of course.”

“Ed,” Jaz said softly. “It’s okay, I love you.  I don’t want to hurt Linda. I don’t want to hurt anybody. But I love you so much, I’d do it for you.”

“Hey! I’m right here, you fucking bitch.”

Ed ignored Linda’s indignant squawking.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. There isn’t a choice, is there? We both know this. I love you. ”

As he spoke, a plan of action hatched in his mind. A crap one, albeit, but at least it was
something.
If the bastard was pawing his wife, then he would be vulnerable.

Oh yes, bring it on.

“That’s more like it. Come to Daddy, baby.”

Jaz’s face visibly blanched. She glanced at Ed, as if seeking reassurance. He nodded slightly, imperceptibly. His heart sunk down to his trainers when she went to him.

Jason Jacks grabbed her, drawing her close to him. When the man planted his mouth on hers, Ed felt sick to his stomach. He watched the unfolding, nightmarish scene, tears stinging his eyes.

“I wouldn’t have done that to you,” Linda said. “I’d fucking
kill
anyone before I’d let another man touch me.”

Her words jolted him out of the stunned trance he had fallen into. Jason Jacks held his wife close and his hands snaked up under her dress, clearly moulding her bare buttocks.

Adrenalin coursed through his body and he acted on it. Rashly. Unthinkingly. Impulsively.

And stupidly.

He threw himself at the man groping his wife and the two men staggered sideways with Ed’s arm around Jason’s neck. Jason’s hip bone cracked into a worktop counter, and Ed, despite being a fair few inches shorter and significantly slighter, managed to crack the hand holding the gun against the work surface so that his fingers uncurled and the gun clattered to the floor.

Jason hissed in pain, completely caught off guard. Ed took full advantage and curled his leg around Jason’s, easily toppling him in the most basic of Judo moves he had learned many years ago off a mate that had been a bouncer.

Jason lay sprawled on his side on the ground, the knife dangling uselessly from his fingers, staring up at Ed in disbelief.

If it hadn’t been for Linda, the whole sorry evening might have ended there. Ed was about to stomp on the man’s stomach. And he wouldn’t have stopped, he felt sure of it. He would have stamped on the bastard over and over until he was beyond screaming for mercy.

As it was, Linda picked up the nearest heavy object, in this case a cast iron wok, and launched it over the back of his head with an almighty crack.

Why she did it, Ed would never understand. Why she would aid the lunatic that had mere seconds ago casually ordered the lopping off of her fingers, was entirely beyond him.

That was his last thought before his knees buckled and he passed out.

“That was really fucking stupid now, wasn’t it?” Jason Jacks said when he came round a few seconds later.

The moment had passed. He had lost. Now he was on the floor and Jason was the one standing, reunited with both the gun and the knife.

Ed went to sit up, the back of his head throbbing like holy fuck.

“Jaz.”

“Ed, oh Ed,” she sobbed.

Ed twisted his head to look up at her and Jason kicked him square in the chest.

“How’d you like it, motherfucker?” he asked as Ed rolled onto his side in the foetal position, pain flaring in his chest and rendering him immobile.

He couldn’t breathe. The pain was so intense he wondered if the blow to his chest had triggered a heart attack. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, praying that the pain would pass.

Thankfully, it did, leaving a dull, throbbing ache in its wake that matched the throb in the back of his skull.

“Stand up, we have a game to play. If you pull a stunt like that again I will slit your wife’s throat. I said up.”

Jason kicked him again, lower this time, just below his ribcage.

Ed bit down the indignant howl and gritted his teeth. He
would not
let the cunt see his pain.

Shakily, he hauled himself to his feet, clutching the back of a kitchen chair for support.

“Better. Now, the game. Ed, you have a choice to make. Would you rather flay the skin on Linda’s back or let me fuck your wife?”

“I just saved your life, you miserable bastard,” Linda piped up.

Ed noticed for the first time she was still holding the wok, which dangled loosely from her hand. Her expression was indignant, rather than scared, and Ed felt another wave of hatred for her so strong that he had to hold his chest because it made his heart beat painfully hard against his battered sternum.

Jaz looked beseechingly across at him, her eyes red raw from crying and her chest hitching with the silent sobbing that she was doing her best to supress.

“Be quiet, bitch.” Jason admonished. “You agreed to come here tonight.” He turned his attention back to Ed, pointing the gun at him. “It is easier to flay the skin on the back rather than anywhere else on the human body. The back’s solid muscular structure gives good resistance and it is easier to peel off the skin.”

“Fuck you,” Linda said.

Jason stepped towards her and clonked her over the temple with the butt of his gun. Linda half gasped, half wailed, and staggered sideways, the wok clattering to the floor.