Candrah

Hi all

Desperately seeking constructive criticism...

I posted a bit of this before and didnt get much response. So I've edited it and posted the complete story. I really need to know whether this works or not. Should I just bin it?

If you like it, please say so. If not, please say why.

Thanks in advance

candrah



Kate Murray flicked the wipers to high speed. She glared through the windscreen at the pouring rain. It was only mid afternoon, but the clouds were so heavy, she could barely see the narrow strip of road through the driving water. It snaked ahead of her, a pale ribbon that disappeared into a muddy grey gloom. She wished she’d never left the city and seriously considered turning back and telling Frank exactly what he could do with his offer.

But Frank’s offer was saving her life. People in her line of work didn’t last long beyond their sell by date. He had pressed the keys to his dad’s place into her hand and said, ‘don’t come back till your head’s on straight. You’re no good to us frozen.’
Well that was a joke. But he was the best handler she’d ever had and the only one worth listening to in a world where everyone else was full of shit. So she agreed to come out here to the middle of nowhere. For peace and quiet. Rest and recuperation because she couldn’t do her job anymore. That hurt like hell. She knew she was the best. Twenty five contracts. Twenty four completions. And the last one just kept coming back to haunt her. That and the girl.


Two months ago, she’d been on her way back to her hotel, bag slung over one shoulder and not a care in the world. One more and I’ll hit quarter of a century, she’d been thinking when the screech of brakes made her turn round. Just in time to see a kid go flying over a car and land in a heap on the road behind it. Kate didn’t stop to think. That was her first mistake. She threw down her bag and ran for the kid. Looking back, she wished she’d kept on walking. But at the time her instincts were on full alert. They took over and that was that.

‘Oh my God! She just – I didn’t see her – She just ran right out!’ The driver Of the car was standing in the middle of the street. He was staring at the kid like she was an alien. Most people never saw things like this. Broken bodies. Dead bodies.

‘Call an ambulance!’ Kate shouted in his face. Galvanised the man into lumbering action.

A mindless mole just like all the rest. She was right on the edge of pointing out the fact that the kid had been halfway over a crossing with the green man lit up. But she didn’t say anything. No time for arguments.

She knelt down beside the kid. A girl. Maybe ten years old and pretty. Her eyes were open. Huge blue eyes that caught sight of Kate and wouldn’t leave her face. Her body was twisted at an awkward angle, limbs sticking out in directions they shouldn’t be able to reach. One side of her body was completely crushed from where the car had hit her. Kate was amazed the girl was even still breathing. She looked like a rag doll that had been tossed onto the road and left there. No owner to pick her up and cuddle her. And her blond hair was turning a nasty shade of crimson as blood spread from the back of her head. Fuck.

‘Hey sweetie, you had a bit of a bump.’ Kate put on her softest voice and hoped the kid believed it. ‘You’ll be just fine. The doctors are coming and they’ll make you all better again.’

The girl stared at her. Must be going into shock. She reached out and took hold of the girl’s right hand and squeezed it.

‘What’s your name baby? Can you tell me your name?’

‘C – ‘

Kate leaned closer trying to hear.

‘Callie.’

‘Callie? That’s a lovely name. You hear those sirens Callie? That means the doctors are coming.’ Kate glanced up at the end of the street. She could hear the ambulance. It would be round the corner in a few seconds. She could let go of this dying kid and walk away. Not her problem.

Callie gripped Kate’s hand so tight she gasped and winced. Then the hand in hers went limp and she looked down. The girl was dead. Her eyes were still open but they weren’t seeing Kate anymore. They weren’t seeing anything anymore. Fuck.

Kate stayed with Callie till the Paramedics forced her to let go the girl’s hand. She stood up and walked back to the pavement. Picked up her bag and stood watching the Paramedics place the body on a stretcher and cover it with a blanket. She didn’t feel like walking away just yet. Felt as though she should stay till the ambulance left. Felt like she should bear witness. Felt exhausted. Fuck.

The driver was standing next to her. He was watching the Paramedics and Kate saw him try to hide his guilt behind righteous concern as the police arrived. Not her problem. Just walk away now, she told herself. But she stayed where she was. The driver turned to her.

‘She ran out of nowhere,’ he said trying to make her believe the lie even if he didn’t. Kate punched him full in the face and turned and walked away.

Then she’d been stood in front of a mark while he snored in blissful ignorance. Two months on and she couldn’t get the girl out of her head. Dead Callie. Dead blue eyes staring. People don’t see things like that every day. But she did. It was her job. Just not a ten year old kid dying in her own blood on the road because some fat fuck wasn’t watching where he was going. The man in the bed snorted and turned on his side. She sighed and turned and walked out of the house.


Something flashed in front of the car and brought her back to reality with a start. She yelped out loud, slammed on the brakes and swore. In this rain, she didn’t have a hope in hell of avoiding a skid. The car began to slide sideways on the wet road and she struggled to bring it back under control. It finally came to a stop sitting broadside to the road. By sheer luck, in a wider part where two cars could pass each other without taking the other’s mirror off or ending up at the bottom of a cliff in a ball of fire.

She stared out the windscreen at a small signpost that stood two feet in front of the car. It was topped by a white diamond shaped sign that read Passing Place. Beyond the sign, the ground fell away down an almost vertical slope. Over a hundred feet before it flattened out onto a brown moor. Huh, nearly passed over myself. She snorted at the irony of the thing and turned to look at a solitary sheep standing not far off on the grass verge. The flash of white. It gazed back at her from unfathomable eyes, then turned and walked off into the murk and disappeared from sight. Creepy things, sheep.


It was dark by the time Frank’s dad’s place appeared at the end of a rough track. It was a typical croft, built long and low with white washed walls, slate roof and deep set square windows. It looked like something straight out of a history book. And the track wasn’t built for cars. Tractors maybe. Nothing more than a scraping in the grass. She pulled up outside and got out of the car, stood for a while getting a feel for the place. You weren’t joking about the isolation. She remembered Frank’s grin when he described it.

‘You’ll love it. No people for miles.’

He was right. Nothing but sheep cropped grass and glittering black sea. A fat yellow moon hung low over the horizon to the south of the house. The rain had stopped and a cold wind sent clouds scudding across the sky and quick shadows racing across the ground. It was quiet. The only sound was the wind through the grass and the distant pounding of waves against the shore. She lifted her bag from the back seat of the car and turned towards the house.

Footsteps sounded on the track and she swung round frowning, ready to confront whoever was sneaking up on her. There was no-one there. But she could hear the footsteps coming closer. Someone or something passed right by her. She felt the air move against her face. She jumped back against the solid metal of the car and scanned the darkness. Nothing. Weird. Must be the long drive. Making me see things. She shrugged and carried on to the house.

Inside it was pitch black and freezing. She dumped her bag in the hall and felt for a switch. The flood of bright light from the bulb was a welcome sight. The house was barely furnished and as she walked into a small kitchen, her shoes thudded from wooden boards onto stone flags. She flicked on the fluorescent light and looked round for a kettle. Coffee would be good right about now.

While she waited for the kettle to boil, she wandered round the house. It looked like it had been cleaned recently. No dust on the furniture. Not that there was much furniture to dust. The windows were black squares against the blacker night outside. Not even any curtains to block it out. She sighed and figured she might as well get used to it. And who the hell’s going to be looking through these windows? Out here in the wilderness.

There was wood and kindling next to the small grate in the living room. She lit a fire, curled up in a nearby chair with a steaming mug of coffee and watched the flames leaping and crackling over the wood. She must have nodded off because she woke with a start as coffee splashed onto her leg. It was cold. She put the mug on the floor and rubbed her hands over her face.

She had dreamt about the girl. Dead Callie. She had chased Kate along a dark corridor with a stone floor that hurt her feet as she tried to run on it. There was a door at the end and she ran towards it, but running was the last thing she was doing. Like wading through waist deep sludge. When she finally did reach it, the door was locked and she was trapped and she couldn’t get her arms or legs to work. She turned round just as Callie jumped on her and clung to her like a monkey. Her eyes were huge and staring. Kate tried to get free. Tried to speak. Her voice came out in a tiny wheezing squeak. Like one of those old whistling kettles. She could still hear the echo of it in the room when she jerked awake.

She sat huddled in the chair in front of the fire for the rest of the night, afraid to sleep. Afraid of what she might see if she closed her eyes. She stared hard at the fire. Put more wood on it and kept her back to the window even though she hated not knowing what was behind her. Even though the back of her neck prickled the whole time. She was more afraid of what she might see looking in at her through the black squares. She hugged her knees and waited for daylight.

Candrah

Rest of the story. Sorry it's so long. Maybe too long.... Thanks for looking.

When it finally got light enough, she went outside and wandered aimlessly round the house, not sure of what to do or where to go. She had come up here to rest but she felt worse now than she did before. She wanted to hurt someone. She couldn’t even look at herself in the mirror. She was so mad. At herself, at the world, at that little girl for messing with her head. Should’ve been on twenty six by now. Instead, she was stuck in the middle of nowhere being haunted by a dead girl that she didn’t even kill. She spent her life killing people and the one time she did the opposite, it slapped her in the face for her trouble. Should’ve kept walking. This is what happens when I try to do the right thing.

There wasn’t much of a sunrise. It was cloudy and a cold wind blew from the north. It whistled eerily over the short grass that covered the ground up to the edge of a cliff. There was a sound like distant thunder from below and she wandered over to the edge, looked down onto a small crescent shaped cove. There was a tiny beach covered in white sand and dotted here and there with black, seaweed covered boulders. Waves pounded the shore in a deep hissing boom and covered everything in spray thrown off their tops by the wind. It was beautiful and completely hidden from the house and the road. The sharp smell of seaweed and salt filled her nostrils and she looked for a way down.

Off to her left was a set of steps cut into the black rock of the cliff. They led in a zigzag to the bottom. She was careful going down, didn’t want to slip on the wet stone and fall to her death. Once on the beach, she headed straight for the edge of the surf and stood gazing out at the horizon, hypnotised by the noise of the waves. She stood like that for a long time, hair whipped back by the wind. It was wild and noisy and lonely and she’d never seen anywhere like it. Like she was standing at the edge of the world, the last person on Earth. For the first time in her life, she was quiet inside. No thoughts, no rage, no images of dead little girls behind her eyelids.

Once, a wave swept in further than the others and she had to run to get away from it. She laughed as she danced on tiptoe up the beach, her shoes dripping seawater. It was a strange sound. She realised she hadn’t heard her own laughter for years. It felt good. Like she had released something she had been holding onto for so long she didn’t remember any more what it was.

A grumbling in her stomach reminded her she hadn’t eaten yet and she turned to leave. There was a man sitting on the bottom step blocking her way up the cliff. If she wanted past, she’d have to ask him to move, and that bugged her. The anger came back with a vengeance. Who fuck is this arsehole? She walked towards him, eyes narrowed, fingers itching as she imagined twisting his neck till it snapped.

He looked up at her as she got near. Looked right at her like he knew what she was thinking. Like he could see inside her head.

‘You’re hands are bloody.’

That stopped her in her tracks. She stared down at her hands. They were perfectly clean. What the fuck? Maybe she’d heard him wrong because the man was smiling at her. He was scruffy with longish black hair that looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in years. He wore faded jeans and a grubby green parka. And he looked like he fitted in here. More so than she did. A right choochter, this one. She expected a ragged collie to appear at any minute.

He didn’t appear threatening but there was something about him, the way he looked at her with those freaky eyes. They were as black as the rocks on the beach and she couldn’t see any expression behind them. No thoughts, no humanity. The smile seemed painted on his face. Skin deep.

‘What did you say?’

‘There’s a little girl following you,’ he said instead.

She whirled round, but saw nothing. She frowned, suddenly nervous and tried to ignore the crawling worms in her stomach. She opened her mouth to say something, tell this strange smiling man to shut the hell up because how could he know something like that?

‘She’s angry with you. She says she wants to be with her mummy and daddy but you won’t let her go,’ the man said looking at a point directly behind her.

‘Who are you? An escapee from the local loony bin?’

She only said it to hide her fear. Even though she knew there was no-one behind her, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled and all her instincts screamed at her that someone was there. Won’t let her go? What the fuck does that mean? She decided she didn’t need this cryptic shit. Decided Frank must have talked to the guy, which really pissed her off. Her business was her own and sure as shit, she wasn’t about to let some backward Hicksville Highlander freak her out with his clairvoyant malarkey.
She walked forward, went to shove past him up the steps. The man reached up and touched her on the arm.

‘Won’t you sit down?’

Kate paused and frowned, looked up at the top of the cliff and wondered what was so important that she couldn’t sit down for a while. She forgot she was angry. Forgot everything she had just been thinking. She sighed. She was tired, and the steps were steep and slippery.

She sat down next to him on the bottom step without once wondering why she did it. She stared blankly at a small clump of seaweed that floated in a nearby puddle of seawater. The water sparkled and glittered in the dull light and the seaweed looked like it was glowing. The whole world suddenly looked like it was glowing. As if everything had its own special spotlight focused on it. Every rock, boulder, wave, cloud. Shimmering dully under a grey sky.

‘That little girl you mentioned? She got hit by a car. But I couldn’t help her. She died and I couldn’t save her.’ She stared out at the waves. They rolled in and out of the cove. Relentless. Hypnotic. ‘I kill people. I’ve killed twenty five people for money. And I never regretted any of them. I wouldn’t have my life any other way, you know? I only got one regret. Not saving one fucking kid. Weird huh?’ The words came out in a rush and she was surprised, but felt better for having said them. Like a weight had been lifted from her chest and she could breathe again.

The scruffy man stayed quiet for so long she began to wonder if she’d spoken out loud at all. Maybe he hadn’t heard her. Maybe he was deaf. He finally turned to look at her.

‘It’s time to go,’ he said quietly and stood up.

She looked up at him. ‘Go where?’

He stared back at her from those blank black eyes. He reminded her suddenly of the sheep on the road last night. Maybe his collie herds him about. He kept looking at her.

She forgot what she’d been saying. Was sure she had told him something important. But he wanted her to go with him. So she nodded, stood up and followed him without question along the base of the cliff. He led her toward the rocks that enclosed the cove on its western end. He leaped and bounded over them just like that sheep. It was hard going but she followed easily enough. After about an hour or so she found herself standing on a narrow ledge that led into a huge cave. The mouth of it split the cliff in a jagged tear.

The ledge ran along the on their side and disappeared into the cave. Into damp, stinking darkness. The smell of rotten seaweed and other things drifted towards her. The smell of dead things. She knew that smell. Sweet rot and rusted blood. She clenched her stomach against the sudden nausea she felt.

Waves swept back and forth along a deep channel below her. It led into the cave too. The sound of the waves boomed an eerie echo back out at her. She glanced up and realised the road must veer over the top of the cave. Directly above the mouth she saw one of those white diamond shaped Passing Place signs sticking up above the grass. The cave faced west. She could see the sun setting through broken clouds behind her. Something about that niggled at the back of her mind, made her stomach turn a somersault. Something was wrong. Really wrong.

‘What’s in there?’ She pointed into the gloom.

‘Don’t you know?’ the scruffy man pointed up at the signpost. ‘You died back there on the mountain. You have to come with me now.’

Kate stared at the man in open mouthed horror. Not many options. Either he was an escaped loony and he had her hypnotised and isolated, not that getting him out of her face would be a problem. No, it was the other option that had her scared. He was telling the truth. A shudder slid down her back like someone just dropped an ice cube down her spine.

‘What’s in there?’ She whispered the question again.

She didn’t want to know but some bloody minded kernel of curiosity made her ask. The cave loomed at her like it wanted to swallow her up. An open black mouth with jagged obsidian teeth. Shiny and sharp. Like the scruffy man’s eyes.

‘You know what’s in there.’

Faces of the people I killed. The thought popped up in her mind like a mushroom. A bright little flash of insight. She clamped her teeth together until they hurt and shut her eyes. Behind her eyelids, she saw the sheep again. Saw it through a blaze of red flames and twisted black metal. It was looking down at her. And then she felt the pain. Fuck.

‘Who are you?’

The man’s face didn’t change. Same expression all the time. Like he was made of stone. Maybe he was. He shrugged.

‘I’m here to make sure you get to where you’re supposed to go.’
‘Huh, so you’re Death?’ Stupid fucking question. Stupid fucking place. What the fuck am I thinking? If I’m dead…

‘But what about the girl? I tried. I fucking tried. I walked away from a mark. Doesn’t that mean anything?’

‘Not here. There’s no forgiveness. That’s just a myth the Christians made up. You need to come with me. Now.’

Fuck. Something clicked inside her and her shoulders slumped. She was going to have to face that little girl. Face all of them. It was all the same. No discrimination. She’d hung onto Callie’s ghost and now she’d have to pay for that along with all the others. There’d be no more denying what she’d done. All the killing, the pain she’d caused. She looked into the scruffy man’s black eyes and knew there would be no walking away from this one. She glanced back at the setting sun. It threw a ray of golden light towards her and spread a strip of sparkling fire across the sea. She’d never seen anything so beautiful. Sighing, she turned her back on it and walked forward into the dark.

Truth-Teller

Where is the horror?

Truth-Teller

Running over a kid, is that horror?

Again, where is the horror?

Make me care; I'm bored.