Suffer Hard: An Extreme Horror Novella (4 page)

“Oh, for God’s sake Michael, will you put down your little toy and sort the other one out, she’s running wild.”

Michael grunted and dumped Beth on the stone floor.
She landed on her backside and toppled backwards.

Jessie heard the sickening crack
of the crown of her head bouncing on the floor, and she winced when it happened.

Beth didn’t move and she figured she was out cold.

Either that or dead. A knock like that to the head could easily be fatal.

Michael took a step towards her.

“Stay back,” Jessie warned, brandishing the knife in front of her, her shoulders hunched, ready for combat.

Michael didn’t seem t
o care about the knife. He edged forwards and Jessie swiped at him.

“I’m fucking warning you,” she screeched, not recognising the
high pitched quality of her own voice.

He overpowered her easily. Jessie wasn’t quite sure how it had happened. He just seemed to grab her wrist and twist her hand until she screamed in pain and dropped the knife.

“You bastard,” she cried when he picked her up in the exact same way he had with Beth a few short moments ago.

She writhed and thrashed but he held her pinned tight to his shoulder.

The smell of him was nasty. Her nose was too near his armpit and the stench of rancid, stale sweat assaulted her nostrils. Sweat and something else. She didn’t know if it was her terrified, overactive imagination, but the odour of death clung to him, threatening to undo the last threads of her sanity.

He dumped her
on the work top on top of the dead girl.

In that moment Jessie’s panic was so all-consuming
that she felt the last scraps of her sanity leave her.

She bucked and writhed and screamed and flailed her limbs like a woman possessed. She could
feel
the girl pressing into her back but there was no escape. Michael held her down, one big hand easily spanning the entire circumference of her waist and the other pressed over her face.

“Tie her down, she’s a real struggler,” Margaret said.

Michael grunted, and stared down at her with his tiny eyes. Looking into them Jessie felt as if she was being sucked down into hell.

He let go of her a second to bend over and reach into the shelf underneath the island. That second was all it took. Jessie threw herself off the steel surface, landing miraculously on her feet behind Michael.

She ran for the door that topless Margaret was blocking.

Jessie didn’t let that hinder her. She threw herself at the woman, knocking her sideways.

But that second delay was all it took for Michael to grab her waist from behind and sweep her off her feet.

“
Noooo!” she screamed.

“I’ve had just about enough of your hysterics,” Margaret complained, a frying pan raised high above her head in both hands.

The pan came crashing down across her temple, followed by a brief, excruciating flash of pain.

And then nothing.
Jessie was out cold.

CHAPTER THREE.

Bish led Craig and Tim down the small alleyway that ran parallel to the side of the pub.

“Hey
Bish,” Craig called out to the bald old guy hobbling along in front of them. “Why are we going down here?”

“Car’s parked round back,” he said without turning round.

Craig and Tim exchanged a look, a look that said,
how is that even possible?

Logic dictated that there would be nothing behind the pub besides the wilds of Cornwall. Craig frowned. This felt wrong.

Get a grip, will you,
he chided himself. There must be a back road that ran the length of the village main road and joined up with it at some point. A high, dense hedgerow blocked the view at the end of the alleyway and Craig figured it must be obscuring the view of the parking spot.

E
ven so, he couldn’t shake the sense of unease that seeped deep into his bones.

He knew they should turn around, get the girls and walk back to the main road.

But of course, he ignored his good sense and kept on walking.

Bish
disappeared round the corner at the end of the alleyway.

Craig and Time exchanged another look. It was in Tim’s eyes too.

Let’s just turn round and get the girls and walk…

Craig threw his friend a wonky, sheepish smile, a smile that acknowledged they were being stupid. Tim shrugged and returned the smile, taking the lead and rounding the corner. Craig watched his broad shoulders and dark head disappear round the stone
corner of the building.

No soon as he followed, the
gun fired.

At first, Craig had no idea what was going on. It all happened so fast
, one second Tim was upright in front of him, the next he was sprawled on the grass at his feet, his cries of agony filling the air around them.

Bish
waved a pistol at him.

“I don’t
wanna shoot both of yers, I want one of yers in one piece before I get to work on yers.”

“What the
fuck?”
was all Craig could say.

Tim groaned and curled up in a ball on his side, clutching his walking boot.

Craig saw that the old git had shot him in the right foot.

“I
coulda done yers in the pub, but I wanted a bit of fun with yers in my workshop first. Besides, you kids are more manageable when yers separated, divide and conquer and all that.”

“You old
fuck,”
Craig shouted.

“Watch
yer mouth, young man. C’mon, get over to my workshop, I don’t want to but I’ll shoot yer if I have to.”

Bish
gestured with his pistol, indicating the brown shed.

I knew there was no road back here,
Craig thought abstractly.

“Tim,” he said, leaning over to gently touch his friend on the shoulder, “are you alright?”

“What the fuck do you think?” his friend groaned.

Craig quickly assessed the damage. Maybe the boot had absorbed some of the impact.

Maybe.

It was impossible to tell without taking off his boot. His foot could be completely blown off, or
Tim might’ve got lucky and the old fuck could’ve just scraped his toes.

Craig wasn’t about to find out now.

“Get the fuck away from him,” the old man said. “And get over to the shed.”

Craig righted himself. He discovered he was trembling so badly his legs were in danger of collapsing beneath him.

He focussed on the shed. It was a properly constructed, wooden outhouse, not your typical garden shed. Behind it there was absolutely nothing, not even a farmhouse to break up the endless rolling fields and clusters of trees.

The gun was trained on him as he made his way over to the building.

“Open the door, it isn’t locked,” Bish said.

Just as Craig pushed open the door, another gunshot rang out.

Craig stiffened, sure for a moment that it was him that had been shot.

Tim’s ear splitting scream reverberated in the air, and Craig spun round.

“No,” he cried, taking a stumbling step towards his friend.

“Stay back,”
Bish ordered, waving the gun at him once more. “I only shot him in the other foot so he don’t run off.”

“You sick
bastard.
”

“Get in the fucking shed, boy.”

Craig was crying as he pushed open the door.

Inside it was dark. There were no windows and the only light followed Craig in through the door.

It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust.

Then he wished they hadn’t.

When Bish came up behind him and flicked on the fluorescent tube lighting, the space was more frightening than Craig could ever have imagined in his worst nightmares.

On the face of it, it was just a common tool shed
with plenty of cluttered shelves. Big hooks were screwed into the walls and some from the ceiling too. Various sharp tools hung from these, chainsaws, hammers, pliers, power drills, garden shears…

It wasn’t the sight of the tools that terrified him as such. It was the fact that they were covered in blood
.

It was that which sent his imagination into overdrive.

In the centre of the space was an empty, wooden workbench.

It looked long enough for a person to lie down on and not hang off either edge.

That thought wasn’t exactly comforting.

“Hop up onto the bench, young man.”

“Jesus,” he gibbered, not giving a shit about the tears that streamed down his cheeks and the sobs that hitched in his chest. “Why are you doing this?”

“Get a hold of yourself, boy. The whining and
the moaning really pisses me off. And you don’t wanna piss me off.”

“Oh God, please, don’t do this. Do you want
money, I can get you money, however much you want…”

His hysterical pleading was cut short when
in one swift movement the old man swivelled round the gun and smashed him across the temple with the butt.

“
Lie the fuck down, boy.”

Craig saw stars and his head exploded with pain. He lay down shakily on his back, his head throbbing in a mix of terror and pain.

“Don’t do this,” he sobbed, not caring how pathetic he sounded.

“See
them straps either side of your waist? I want you to buckle yerself up nice and tight for old Bish.”

Craig lifted up his head and through his blurred vision he saw the straps. He hadn’t noticed them before. They were attached to the sides of the table and hung down to the floor. They looked like two thick, leather belts.

His hands trembled when he reached for them.

I can’t do this,
he thought.
I can’t willingly tie myself up for this crazy old coot…

But he did, going against every natural instinct he possessed. With trembling hands he buckled up the two straps, making him f
eel like a fat man doing up a super long belt.

“Just to stop
yer slipping sideways off the table when I get going,” he explained.

“Please,
Bish, you don’t have to do this. Just let me go,
please.
”

“Lie back down, son.”

The old man kept the gun trained on him and edged backwards. Without taking his eyes off him, he reached behind himself and felt along the wall for something.

He threw a pair of thick handcuffs at Craig.

They hit him square in the chest and he winced slightly on impact.

“Put these on. And these,” he said, throwing a second pair at him.

“Two pairs? How am I supposed to put on two pairs?”

“You attach each of
yer wrists to that there belt round yer waist so’s yer arms are secured to yer sides.”

Craig’s head reeled. There was
no way
he was going to do that. Such a relatively simple action would render him completely immobile.

Not completely,
he reasoned.
All I would have to do is undo the belt and I would be free and the handcuffs would be nothing more than bracelets.

Besides, what choice do I have?

Shakily, he did as instructed. The click of the handcuff snapping around the first wrist filled his heart with dread, like it was the sound of his own impending death.

Once his wrist was attached to the belt he slid his hand along the strip of leather towards the middle, doing the same to his other wrist on the opposite side of the buckle.

Discreetly his fingertips grazed the buckle. Yes, he could easily undo this in a heartbeat. All he had to do now was wait for the chance.

“Very good son, I’ve got a feeling you and me are
gonna get along just fine.”

Craig’s tears had dried up. He wanted to live. He wanted to badly and his survival instinct had gone into overdrive.

“Whatever you want from me Bish, I can give it to you willingly, there’s no need for all of this.”

The old man’s pale, watery eyes gleamed with humour. “Sorry son, I’m afraid that there is.
Because it’s
this
that I want. Slide your hand along to your sides, there’s a good boy. We don’t want yer fingers anywhere near that belt buckle in case you get any funny ideas.”

Fuck you man,
Craig thought.

He glared at the old bastard and
felt his stomach clench in renewed terror as he stared down the barrel of the gun.

“Close your eyes son, or I’ll pop a bullet through
yer eye. Old Bish has a surprise for yer.”

Craig hesitated for a second,
then squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

“Please don’t hurt me,” he whimpered.

“No peeping now.”

The sense of helplessness was all consuming. He could hear
things, things that made his blood run cold. Clanking sounds. Scraping sounds.

The sound of tools being lifted off hooks and shelves…

He didn’t dare open his eyes. He turned his face away from the madness and let his mind drift to other places. Like the time he had locked himself out the house when he was ten years old and he had sat in the back garden on a freezing January afternoon, waiting for his parents to come home so he could get in. He had felt then like he did now. Lost. Scared. Forgotten.

Damned.

Jessie’s face flashed before his eyes, eyes that were pooling with salt water behind the closed lids. He loved her so much, he really did. He should’ve told her.

Then
came the pain.

It w
as so intense it had a colour. The colour white. Pure, brilliant and blinding.

He sat bolt upright on the table, his arms straining uselessly against his binds.

One of them anyway. This was a hard concept for Craig to grasp through his haze of agony. He could see his left hand was still cuffed to the belt at his waist, but his elbow rested on the table top. He didn’t understand how that could be. Because he could
see
that his elbow was not attached to his arm.

He looked down at his arm.
At the spot where his arm just
stopped
above the elbow. And the blood. So much blood.

Craig lost his mind, right there on the table. It was to come back to him, albeit damaged beyond repair, but at that moment, he was crazy.
Completely gone. Out of it with delirious terror that bounced around inside his skull like a madman in a padded cell.

The agony was unspeakable, but in a way his insanity cushioned him from the worst of it.
The brilliant white light faded to grey and somehow, he didn’t know how, or care, he was lying on the table once more.

Bish’s
voice drifted to him from very far away.

“Have to make a tourniquet
and seal it up, can’t have you bleeding out on the table.”

Craig panted and stared up at the slatted ceiling which was
now looking a little grainy and rapidly swimming in and out of focus.

It was getting darker in here by the second. His body thrust back and forth over the table top with whatever the old man was doing to his arm and he could no longer hear what he was saying, his vo
ice was so faint and the whooshing noise in his ears was so loud.

Craig sank gratefully into blissful nothingness.

When Craig came to, his nightmare was only beginning. He had no idea how long he’d been out. Ten minutes?
Half an hour? Three hours?

He didn’t remember
a thing, not at first.