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Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Letter from the Author
Excerpt (#u9f950490-5baa-5c44-abb8-d6617d383cdd)
Endpages (#ueda27083-bff3-5890-8964-18076db7c779)
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE (#ulink_4dfd3d6a-100c-597c-b26b-2f8a2386bfd0)
ANON
It’s the blood that gets to you first. It’s messy, gets everywhere. Under your nails, in each line, every crevice. It’s a bitch to clean. It’s practically impossible to remove. No matter how much you scrub, on hands and knees, sponge in hand, if you look hard enough, you’ll find a trace.
That’s why I’m careful about where I do it, where I make the final cut, where I end it all.
It’s in a cabin in the woods.
I know what you’re thinking – cliché? Am I right? OK, sure, I can see why you’d think that. Frankly, I don’t care what you think. I never set out to be original. This life chose me. I’m not a product of my environment.
I was born like this.
Now, isn’t that a scary thought?
So . . . the blood.
After the blood, comes the elation. That feeling of pure ecstasy, running through your veins – at least, that’s what it’s like for me. Each of us is different. Someone else like me might tell it differently. One thing we all have in common, though, is the knowledge that we can’t stop.
Doesn’t matter how many times I hear an innocent beg me to spare their life. It doesn’t matter how many times I hear them cry, or scream, or feel them lash out, trying in vain to fight me off.
No, it doesn’t matter.
The result is the same every time.
They are dead and I’m riding that euphoric wave I can’t ever find the words to describe accurately.
They are dead . . . or they are dying.
Like this bitch is right now, her body twitching under my weight. There’s no sound except for the gurgling as her blood gushes out, bright-red, arterial spray decorating the plastic sheeting I’ve pinned up around the walls and floor of the cabin.
Her name is Bryony Keats.
She’s just celebrated her seventeenth birthday. She didn’t listen to her mother about getting into cars with strangers.
*
How many? I’m not sure I can rightly say. It’s either three or four. Reason why I say it’s possibly four depends on how you look at it.
Number four had a fucking asthma attack midway through it all, which, frankly, spoilt the whole thing for me, it really did.
Did she die because of me? Well, yes and no. I’m sure her body wouldn’t have gone into overdrive had I left her alone. BUT, she had asthma – an underlying health problem.
Properly managed, she could have lived another fifty-plus years. So, I can’t take complete ownership of it.
Mother Nature played her part.
She could just as easily have had a fatal attack next week, next month, next year . . . had she not fallen into my path.
Her name was Katie. Pretty sweet little thing she was. She was my youngest, about fifteen. Just.
Young.
Did I mention that I like them young? Well, youngish – I’m not a total monster – but I do get off on that sweet smell of youth. The skin has to be soft to the touch, like a peach. Ripe fruit meant for tasting.
That first sweet bite.
It gets me every single time. That and the precious moment when the light, the life – everything that makes that person them – has slipped away.
Speaking of which, Bryony here has just left us.
Her legs under my weight have fallen still at last, and her nails have stopped trying in vain to claw my eyes out.
I’d kept my face out of harm’s way, head cocked to the side, just so, watching as she bled out.
*
I picked her up on a winding country road in the Chilterns, en route between the county of Buckinghamshire and Kennington, Hertfordshire, not to be confused with Kennington, London, not far from MI6 – I should be so-fucking-lucky – ’cos that’d be pretty cool.
I’d been out on one of the drives I like to do when not at work.
I can literally just drive for miles, with no real destination in mind, just enjoying where the roads take me.
Admittedly this means I can scope out the area, understand my limits, respect the boundaries I have to force on myself so I don’t get caught, but it’s a real pleasure.
A Sunday-morning drive is how I found the cabin in the woods.
It was an old site that used to hire out wood cabins to families, on a self-catering basis. It was supposed to be all about getting back to nature, immersing oneself in the woods, leaving the rat-race behind – that type of shit.
This place thrived in the nineties. Then we hit the noughties, and it went to the dogs under new management.
This place was soon forgotten. It’s not even on my satnav.
Completely isolated, forgotten, broken and unloved. Until I found a use for it.
Anyway, I digress.
So, Bryony . . .
She said she’d had her thumb stuck out for about thirty minutes before I stopped at the side of the road.
When she lowered her head to give me the once-over, her eyes did show a flicker of recognition.
I did the same. I was pretty sure I’d seen her somewhere before.
‘Where you heading?’ I’d asked.
‘Anywhere but here,’ she’d replied, breezily, not seeing me as a threat.
I asked her what she meant. She told me she’d had enough of her mother’s new boyfriend, and was running away. Then she dropped her rucksack on the backseat of the car, and climbed in beside me.
Just like that.
Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly . . .
I admit, my smile was beaming. Ear to ear.
Bryony – she told me her name, with a flick of her chestnut-coloured hair over her small shoulders – was beautiful.
‘Take me as far as you’re going,’ she said.
I felt duty-bound to oblige.
After some small talk, she said she needed a piss. With no services nearby, just narrow country lanes, I pulled over and she ran into the thick of some trees.
I knocked her unconscious with one blow to the back of the head with my heavy-duty torch (top tip, always be prepared) catching her mid-flow, jeans and knickers around her ankles.
Not my greatest or proudest moment, I’ll admit. Necessary, though.
After an initial struggle with her jeans, I got her in the boot, wrists and ankles bound tight.
When we got to the cabin, I waited about four hours before I caved in and killed Bryony, cutting her throat from ear to ear.
It was right after she said she knew where she’d seen me before.
She’d sealed her own fate right at that moment, because just before that I’d been in two minds about whether to let her go or not.
She was a runaway, and I can relate to that and the reasons why she was doing it. We had found some common ground, but then she went and ruined it for herself.
I still don’t quite understand what she had been saying to me – places she said she’d seen me – but she was scared shitless. I doubt many people make much sense when they’ve reached the limits of trying to control such obvious fear.
I look down at her now, at the blood on the plastic sheet. I stare into her glassy green eyes.
With her last ounce of strength, Bryony’s frightful stare had found mine, and her eyelids flickered.
Had that been a silent fuck you?
Too late to ask her now, but I like to think that’s what she meant. Even at the end she had a bit of fight left in her.
I eye the ring in her fleshy lower lip. That’ll have to come out. It’s about the only thing she has that I have considered keeping.
After I’ve carefully removed the little piece of silver, I press my hand, encased in surgical gloves, against her peach of a cheek. She’s going cold already.
Oh, Bryony. You tragic thing, you.
*
