Dead Like You

1998

45

Tuesday 6 January

He had never seen a dead body before. Well, apart from his mum, that was. She’d been all skeletal, wasted away from the cancer that had been on a feeding frenzy inside her, eating up just about everything except her skin. The little bastard cancer cells would probably have eaten that too if the embalming fluid hadn’t nuked them.

Although they were welcome to her. It had seemed a shame to hurt them.

His mum had looked like she was asleep. She was all tucked into bed, in her nightdress, in a room in the undertaker’s Chapel of Rest. Her hair all nicely coiffed. A bit of make-up on her face to give her some colour, and her skin had a slightly rosy hue from the embalming fluid. The funeral director had told him that she’d come up really nice.

Much nicer in death.

Dead, she couldn’t taunt him any more. Couldn’t tell him, as she climbed into his bed, that he was as useless as his drunken father. That his thing was pathetic, that it was shorter than the heels of her shoes. Some nights she brought a stiletto-heeled shoe into the bed with her and made him pleasure her with that instead.

She began calling him Shrinky. It was a name that quickly got around at his school. ‘Hey, Shrinky,’ other boys and girls would call out to him. ‘Has it grown any longer today?’

He’d sat beside her, on the chair next to her bed, the way he’d sat beside her in the ward of the hospital in the days when her life was slipping away. He’d held her hand. It was cold and bony, like holding the hand of a reptile. But one that couldn’t harm you any more.

Then he’d leaned over and whispered into her ear, ‘I think I’m supposed to tell you that I love you. But I don’t. I hate you. I’ve always hated you. I can’t wait for your funeral, because afterwards I’m going to get that urn with your ashes and throw you into a fucking skip, where you belong.’

But this new woman now was different. He didn’t hate Rachael Ryan. He looked down at her, lying naked on the bottom of the chest freezer he had bought this morning. Staring up at him through eyes that were steadily frosting over. That same glaze of frost that was forming all over her body.

He listened for a moment to the hum of the freezer’s motor. Then he whispered, ‘Rachael, I’m sorry about what happened, you know? Really I am. I never wanted to kill you. I’ve never killed anything. That’s not me. I just want you to know that. Not me at all. Not my style. I’ll look after your shoes for you, I promise.’

Then he decided he didn’t like her eyes looking at him all hostile like that. As if she was still able to accuse him, even though she was dead. Able to accuse him from some other place, some other dimension she’d now arrived at.

He slammed the lid shut.

His heart was thumping. He was ru

He needed a cigarette.

Needed to think very, very calmly.

He lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, thinking. Thinking. Thinking.

Her name was everywhere. Police were looking for her all over the city. All over Sussex.

He was shaking.

You stupid dumb woman, taking off my mask!

Look what you’ve done. To both of us!

They mustn’t find her. They’d know who she was if they found the body. They had all kinds of techniques. All kinds of science. If they found her, then at some point they were going to find him.

At least by keeping her cold he’d stopped the smell that had started to come from her. Frozen stuff didn’t smell. So now he had time. One option was just to keep her here, but that was dangerous. The police had put in the paper that they were looking for a white van. Someone might have seen his van. Someone might tell the police that there was a white van that sometimes drove in and out of here.

He needed to get her away.

Throwing her in the sea might be an option, but the sea might wash her body ashore. If he dug a grave somewhere out in a wood, someone’s dog might sniff her. He needed a place where no dog would sniff.

A place where no one was going to come looking.

46

Saturday 10 January

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all, Mandy thought to herself, her courage suddenly deserting her as she handed her token to the man in the booth of the ghost train ride.

‘Is it scary?’ she asked him.

He was young and good-looking, with a foreign accent – maybe Spanish, she thought.

‘No, is not really scary. Just a little!’ He smiled. ‘Is OK!’

‘Yeah?’

He nodded.

She tottered along inside the railings to the first car. It looked like a wood-panelled Victorian bathtub on rubber wheels. She clambered in unsteadily, her heart in her throat suddenly, and sat down, putting her bag on the seat beside her.

‘Sorry, you can’t take bag. I look after for you.’

Reluctantly she handed it to him. Then he pulled down the metal safety bar and clicked it home, committing her.

‘Smile!’ he said. ‘Enjoy! Is OK, really!’

Shit, she thought. Then she called out to her friends. ‘Char! Karen!’

But the wind whipped her voice away. The car rumbled forward, without warning crashing through double doors into darkness. The doors banged shut behind her and the darkness was total. In contrast to the blustery sea air, in here it was dry and smelt faintly of hot electrical wiring and dust.

The darkness pressed in all around her. She held her breath. Then the car swung sharply right, picking up speed. She could hear the roar of its wheels echoing around the walls; it was like being on a tube train. Streaks of light shot past her on both sides. She heard a ghostly laugh. Tendrils brushed her forehead and her hair, and she screamed in terror, clenching her eyes shut.

This is dumb, she thought. This is so stupid. Why? Why did I do this?

Then the car crashed through more double doors. She opened her eyes to see a long-dead, dusty old man rise up from behind a writing desk and swing head first towards her. She ducked, covering her eyes, her heart pounding, all the courage the alcohol had given her deserting her now.

They went down a sharp incline. She uncovered her eyes to see that the light was fading rapidly and she was back in pitch darkness again. She heard a hissing sound. A hideous, luminous, skeletal snake reared out of the darkness and spat at her, cold droplets of water striking her face. Then a brightly lit skeleton swung out of the darkness and she ducked in terror, convinced it would hit her.

They crashed through more doors. Oh, God, how long was this going to go on for?

They were travelling fast, downhill, in darkness. She heard a screech, then a horrible cackle of laughter. More tendrils touched her, like a spider crawling through her hair. They crashed through more doors, swung sharply left and, quite suddenly, stopped. She sat for a moment in the pitch darkness, shaking. Then suddenly she felt an arm around her neck.

A human arm. She smelt warm breath on her cheek. Then a voice whispered into her ear. A voice she had never heard before.

She froze in blind panic.

‘Got a little extra for you, darling.’

Was this some prank from Char and Karen? Were they in here messing around?

Her brain was racing. Something was telling her this was not part of the ride. That something was badly wrong. The next instant she heard a clang as the safety bar jerked up. Then, whimpering in terror, she was jerked out of the car and dragged quickly over a hard surface. Something sharp bashed into her back and she was pulled through curtains into a room which smelt of oil. She was dropped on her back on to a hard surface. Then she heard the door clang shut. Heard a click that sounded like a switch, followed almost immediately by the grinding sound of heavy machinery. Then a torch was shining into her face, temporarily blinding her.