Devil Let Me Go, page 7
Mum and Dad.
They didn’t deserve such monikers as the pair had failed on so many levels of parenthood. In fact every level had been soured, spoiled and fractured by their deviant means. Birthdays, school, holidays, three square meals a day, bedtime stories. Everything else was missed out or neglected in some way. Mum liked her booze and Dad liked to play. Sometimes they swapped. Sometimes they watched each other. Sometimes it was both of them. As soon as he was sixteen, Rixon had paid for off road driving lessons with his wages from washing the pots in a local café. Despite being sixteen, you could have driving lessons away from the main roads; he took his on an abandoned airfield. His plan was to save up and buy a car after he had passed his test. He aimed to do this as soon as possible; he didn’t just want to run away. He wanted to drive away from his problem family at 90 miles an hour. So he washed pots to pay for lessons, every bustling hour he could.
One- it got him closer to his escape dream.
Two- the more time he spent out of the house the better.
Whenever he was at home his parents regularly abused him further. They knew about the part time job and demanded payment from him. If he was earning he’d have to pay rent, even though the rent was paid for by the council. The driving lessons he kept secret. But one day, the beatings, the mental abuse and the strange will his parents held over him had to stop. Rixon never got the chance to pass his test, buy a decent old banger and escape the torturous life his parents had made for him.
On the morning of his seventeenth birthday, he’d taken a bread knife and a steak knife and plunged them both into the chests of his slumbering parents, both drowsy at dawn, still in the queasy flood of a drunken stupor. Then he carried on stabbing.
Their neighbours; the Jefferies, had a daughter called Lindsey, she was the same age as him, cute, though he never talked to her. Caged in by his impenetrable shyness which he wore like a suit of armour to deflect the mortal and emotional blows thrown by his not-so-darling parents, Rixon couldn’t even summon the meagre amount of energy it took to even make eye contact with a beauty the likes of Lindsey Jefferies. Whatever mental elastic had snapped inside him that day, it wasn’t courage that sent him knocking next door. It was something much darker that rages inside all of us. Rixon was still angry at the world, he needed to take this pent up force, all seventeen torturous years, and take it out on something. Something beautiful, maybe that would balance him out, destroy something beautiful and innocent to pay the dark debt off, alleviate the demonic pressures that had been bestowed upon him.
Lust is a fickle thing. It can carry us to the heights of love almighty or draw us deep into the depths of animalistic depravity.
He’d been watching Lindsey for a long time. Dreaming of a better life. Just him and her. She would accept him and all his familial scars. He just needed to convince her.
Her . . .
That was where Mr Jefferies found him. Inside Lindsey, in the house, the living room carpet to be precise. She’d being dead over an hour, yet Rixon had continued his assault with the knife still dripping with a medley of his parent’s vodka and gin diluted DNA. Rixon had pinched Lindsey all over, digging his nails in sometimes, bringing out little bruises everywhere before she screamed too much and he’d ended his fun with the knife. Yet he let the fun continue.
Mr Jefferies had knocked out three of Rixon’s teeth. By the time Rixon realised this, the police had arrived and had him in cuffs. Mr Jefferies’ mind however, like Elvis, had left the building for good. Now, all these years later, his wife, spared the sight of what was left of her daughter, still looked after him, cut his food into tiny pieces, left ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’ on the box through those long and silent afternoons, then into the night where his screams woke them up every single night. Variations of the same dream; The boy next door on top of his daughter, in the centre of a dark red puddle staining his living room carpet.
If Rixon had ceased his slaughter at his parents, the jury might have been more lenient in their sentencing, with the years of abuse from their hands on his shoulders, he could have got away with manslaughter, serve a few years and be out to enjoy the rest of life, free from the oppression of his parents bearing down on him. But for what he did to Lindsey Jefferies, the jury were disgusted by his actions; he’d taken it too far in their eyes.
It didn’t matter to Mr Jefferies what had happened to his daughter. What mattered was that he had been there to witness it. If he, like his wife had been spared the horrific sight, maybe his mind might have been saved. But Rixon had done a thorough job of forever polluting his sleep and every waking thought.
Mr Jefferies would have killed himself long ago had he the cognitive ability, but nowadays he couldn’t even tie his own shoelaces.
Rixon knew none of these facts, for he was ignorant of everything that had happened in the past twenty years of the outside world.
But now he was out.
His plan was to get as much done as possible before they brought him back here.
Well, there.
It was past tense now as he’d escaped his forced bondage.
He’d been amazed at how easy the human body came apart under pressure. We’re just lumps of meat that pretend to care about one another in order to gain attention to ourselves.
As heavy as the rain poured, it still wouldn’t wash out the ingrained blood from under his fingernails. His own and the orderly’s. The rain however did make light work of his paper pyjamas, the heavy droplets pounded through the thin material like miniature meteors, shredding the fibre from its place on his body. By the time he reached the tree line, his shoulders and legs were fully exposed to the elements. Once beyond the safety of the tree line, into the bramble bushes, away from the crafted lawn, the suit had deteriorated to nothing more than paper rags that clung to him like a shedding skin. By the time he climbed over the barbed wire fence, cutting his arms and back to ribbons leaking crimson, and reached the road he was near nude except for a few straggling creases of wet pulp.
Rixon was a survivor. He survived. He didn’t feel the pain, didn’t want to, didn’t need to.
His calm, predatory eyes spied a glare of headlights along the road, they were heading towards him.
Rixon stepped into the road. And waved.
***
Joe Croft offered a weary smile and shook the car out of gear as the hitchhiker opened the door and glared inside. He was naked, and this at first surprised Joe, but on closer inspection by the sparse interior light that had blinked on from the door being opened, Joe could see that the man wore rags for clothes. Something had torn them from his body, tearing his skin into thin red raw lines. From the zoned-out look on his face, the alabaster skin, the bruises and various injuries he sustained, Joe strangely reasoned that the guy had escaped a cellar or dungeon of some kind. He’d been held against his will and whipped every day of his life. Somehow he’d escaped. He’d heard about it in the papers, Mad Dads that kept unruly kids locked up beneath the house.
‘But the boss won't seem to let me. I swear sometimes that man is out to get me.’ Dolly sang. Joe Crofts’ gaze shot over the naked stranger’s shoulder and to the lights of the big house that stood illuminated through the trees. His gaze darted back to the man who was stood by his passenger door. Barely five seconds had passed when what happened next, again took Joe Croft by complete surprise.
The sentence that emerged in his head was “are you alright there mate?’ But as the first open mouthed syllable began to form on his lips, the stranger pounced forward, clearing the passenger seat and landed practically on Joe Croft’s lap. At first Joe thought the stranger was trying to cuddle him, maybe, just simply in need of human contact after years, maybe decades locked away from the light of day and basic mechanics of society.
An immediate heaviness built up in his throat, he protested in clicks and gurgles. The naked stranger’s eyes trembled in front of his. They edged closer, free of menace or any emotion for that matter. Boredom perhaps? Apathy? Maybe he’d been possessed by aliens judging from his dislocated stare.
As the pressure spread up from his throat to his face, Joe grabbed hold of the stranger’s rain slickened wrists, clamping hold, trying in vain to push him away, but couldn’t gather any firm purchase as he was still locked in behind the safety of his seat belt. The battle for breath had begun, but this instinctive function was replaced by a bizarre sense of panic. Was this a dream? Was this really happening to him? Was he being . . .?
An intense compression built up in his skull, as if all the blood in his body was surging upwards into his brain, filling every artery and capillary with oxygen starved fluid. A roaring whistled through his ears. The mounting pressure made him feel like an erupting volcano, the worry bloomed that his blood, devoid of a continuous and clear passage throughout his person, might suddenly burst forth from his eyes, ears, nose and mouth in a gory geyser.
How did you get blood stains out?
Cold Water?
That was it.
I think.
A fading Joe Croft kicked out, his feet jammed on the accelerator and the brake at the same time in spasms of abandon. The engine roared, the car’s red eyes glowed like coals in the slanting rain. He started to rock in effort to shake off his assailant, but it was useless, the safety belt held him back and to release himself would give the stranger further purchase upon his person.
He’d have to let go.
Joe released his grip, fumbled for the buckle release by his side, but his dexterity betrayed him, his fingers might have well been boiled worms for all the cognitive grip they offered. Instead his fingers glanced upon his phone which lay in the beverage holder. He pressed what he thought was CALL twice then dropped it back into the empty beverage holder.
A river rushed into his head, a crimson waterfall fell before his eyes as he fell into a dark tunnel, at the end of which the only light came reflected from the emotionless face of his gormless attacker.
A devastating crack exploded in his ears as he went over the waterfall, yet his nerves told him that the pain was in his throat. He tasted a mouthful of burning copper as he drowned in himself.
The river slowed.
The rush and flow abated.
A trickle.
The stranger smiled, and then pulled the manhole lid over the tunnel which he menaced so coldly, so calmly.
Somewhere, in reality, Dolly Parton wasn’t getting the credit she deserved, or so she sang.
The river stopped, still wet, not dried up in drought, but the tributary that fed in to it was no longer a source of divine aqueous.
His last fading thoughts were of cold water washing the blood from his bones and of Meredith, reaching into the still waters, reaching out to what was left of him.
The house phone was picked up.
‘Hello?’
***
Rixon let go. Blood rushed into his aching thumbs.
Two horn marks lay pressed into the driver’s throat, angry red shadows, reminding him of where his tenacious grip had just been. The driver’s eyes were open, staring left of the interior light behind Rixon. They looked like decorated marbles, nothing more. Pink spittle ran in a gruesome sheen escaping down the chin and spoiling the crispness of his white shirt.
Maybe he’d bitten his tongue, maybe he‘d snapped his windpipe. Who cared? The country and western song he hadn’t been paying attention to, ended. Rixon guided an aching index finger over to the radio and pressed power.
Silence, except for the beating drum of the rain.
He had a vehicle, transport, a way forward.
Momentum would carry him through.
Rixon looked at the controls of the car.
Could he remember how to drive?
He’d had a few lessons, but that was years ago.
It should be easy.
He could drive, but first he needed clothes.
Between the driver’s legs, he reached under the seat and grasped the lever, pushing the seat back as far as it would go, then using the small circle of plastic on the hip of the seat, he turned it and reclined it as far as it would go.
He unclipped the belt, then climbing back he dragged, pushed and shoved the driver onto the back seat. He wasn’t too heavy so all it took was time. The engine hummed idly and the rain drummed down on the bodywork. Then Rixon heard the little voice.
‘Hello, Joe? Are you there?’
He stopped, pausing to locate the direction of the sound.
The voice was tinny, it spoke again, ‘Joe, I can hear you you’ve called me by accident.’
A pleasant glow of plastic emerged from the cup holder. Rixon reached forward cautiously and picked up the device. A woman’s face stared back at him; she was in another world, smiling, bathed in sunlight. A tight red top and a little black skirt that showed off her curves.
Rixon didn’t know it, but he was smiling.
‘Okay Joe, I’m hanging up now, you’ve clearly called me from your pocket,’ the woman said without moving her lips. Rixon knew it was her. The voice matched her face. It had to. Above her was the title HOME.
Rixon held the phone closer, his panting breath caught in the aural catchments of the microphone for a second.
He liked the look and the sound of this woman. He guessed it was the driver’s wife. He’d been a lucky man.
The pretty lady vanished, and was replaced by a picture of a sunset. Pretty, as it had been a while since he had seen one. But it still wasn’t as pretty as her.
***
Meredith dropped the phone. It clattered noisily on the kitchen floor, the hardness of the tiles caused the battery cover to jump off and skitter beneath the kitchen table. The battery pack was dislodged but remained attached to the phone.
At first, after saying the traditional “hello”, she had listened. She heard gasping noises; sometimes Joe accidentally called her from his pocket. He affectionately called these, “bollock calls”.
Beneath the commotion she could make out a Dolly Parton tune that for the love of her she couldn’t remember the title of.
The gasping had continued, as had the rapid shuffling. It sounded animalistic. The horrid thought hit her that Joe might be having sex with someone else, and what she was eavesdropping on was orgasmic gasps. But she could hear no pleasure in what she heard. The rapid and sudden shuffles sounded more like someone fighting.
A guttural crack silenced the commotion.
She listened intently. She could hear the engine idling, then more shuffling.
‘Hello, Joe? Are you there?’ she asked hopefully.
Silence, except for the uneasy hum of the patient engine.
‘Joe I can hear you you’ve called me by accident.’
Again, nothing.
‘Okay Joe, I’m hanging up now, you’ve clearly called me from your pocket,’ Meredith waited a moment, expecting Joe to talk to her. Maybe Joe had stopped for fuel and the shuffling was simply the phone in his pocket rubbing against the lining? Maybe he was changing a tyre? Maybe. . .
‘Ahhhhhh.’
The noise caught her off guard, it was subtle, yet noticeable, someone had breathed onto the phone. Somebody was listening to her.
Meredith Croft stared at the broken handset for a few minutes, a bubble of unease and wariness shielding her from whatever her mind could imagine had happened to her beloved Joe.
Meredith dropped to her knees and began to reassemble the phone with shaking fingers.
***
Rixon had the driver stripped down to his underwear. He was unsure of whether or not to take the boxer shorts as the driver’s last act of defiance had been to piss his pants.
Rixon took his trousers, shoes, socks and shirt and put them on himself. They were a baggy fit on his bony frame, but he looked less conspicuous than he did ten minutes ago. He went through the man’s wallet, finding money and credit cards. He took out the driver’s license and discovered the driver’s name.
Joseph William Croft.
Rixon knew his age and where he lived.
Where she lived.
How to find the place though? He had a town name, but not a clue of how to get there. He didn’t fancy asking for directions or stopping to buy a map.
A second glow, this time from the dashboard caught Rixon’s eye. It was a small screen built into the charcoal veneer, maybe four inches across and three high. A green arrow sat in the middle on the screen pointing straight ahead.
Rixon had never used a sat-nav, but he’d seen them on television and advertised in some of the magazines they allowed him.
Rixon looked down on Joseph William Croft as he now knew him.
He’d been going home. Joseph Croft had set the sat-nav for home. If he followed the route, more than likely it would take him straight to her.
This was too perfect. It was fate. He was to have her. It was his gift for escaping. Thank you Father.
Rixon picked up the piece of plastic and looked at it. It was a mobile phone; her picture had lit up the screen when she called. Rixon guessed that other pictures of her existed within it, yet he didn’t have the technological finesse in which to operate it. He hoped that Mr Croft held nude snaps of his wife on this device. He could have a look at them before he got home. Get himself revved up.
Light swayed out from the building from where he’d just come from. Sweeping torch lights scoured the grounds. He had to move.
He looked into the rear view mirror, catching sight of his face for the first time in many a long year. He didn’t recognize the creature that stared back. His skin was white and his eyes bulged unconventionally from their sockets whilst his cheeks appeared sunken and deflated. He didn’t look like he imagined himself. They didn’t allow mirrors in the home, once a week a barber came round and shaved their heads and their faces. Always with a guard on constant watch.
He wished he hadn’t seen himself now.
Disappointed at how his appearance had changed over the years without him realising it, Rixon leant across and grasped the passenger door and closed it. The interior light went off, darkness prevailed.
