Becoming... Read online

  Alfred grinned and pulled out the cleaver. He would finish Daddy quickly so he could get to Jane. He was eager to get his hands on the little bitch.

  His pulse starting to skyrocket at the thought of what he was about to do, he moved closer to the bed.

  He lifted the cleaver above his head and brought it down hard. The heavy blade sunk into the man’s throat.

  Blood sprayed out, hitting the ceiling and raining down onto Alfred. He relished the feel of it on his painted face.

  The man convulsed, already dying. The last of his blood jetted out of the wound in his throat.

  Alfred could wait no longer. He turned away from the body, which was already starting to fall still, and approached Jane’s room.

  The room was dark and silent as he made his way across to the sleeping form in the bed. A pale foot poked out from beneath the bed covers.

  Alfred grinned at the thought of his murderous fantasies becoming reality.

  He pushed the dripping cleaver back into the waistband of his pants, intending to smash Jane’s body with the hammer.

  The hammer in his trembling hand, he crept over to the bed. His breathing sped up at the thought of his next actions. He paused for a long second, his eyes glued to the girl who had caused him such pain and anguish.

  Then he brought the hammer down hard on her exposed head.

  The blow gave him greater pleasure than any orgasm he’d ever had. A thin ribbon of blood flowed out from the dent in her skull.

  She awoke, screaming, panic hewn into her young features.

  Smiling, he brought the hammer down again.

  Chapter 21

  Under the bed, Luke froze. He knew that there was nothing he could do against the clown. All he could do was wait and pray that he wasn’t discovered.

  His sister’s screams pierced through him but he was too scared to do anything. The wet smacking noises that had started off the nightmare scene had stopped for the time being, but the sounds that now came from above were arguably worse.

  The bedsprings creaked beneath the clown’s weight. It sounded like he was jumping up and down on the bed. Accompanying the creaking bedsprings were liquid slurping sounds and muffled cries from his sister.

  Luke was too young to know what the noises meant but he knew that it wasn’t good.

  He lay, his hands clamped over his ears, his eyes tight shut, praying for an end to the noises that threatened to obliterate his innocence.

  Alfred leant back when he was finished, grinning as he took in Jane’s blood-spattered body and horrified face. Then he raised the hammer. Her eyes widened and he felt himself growing hard again.

  The hammer smashed into her forehead, drawing a splash of blood from the circular indentation in her skull.

  Laughing, he brought the hammer down again and again. Bone splintered beneath the merciless assault.

  Dripping gore covered the walls, the ceiling, the bed and the grinning clown. When her head was a bloody husk with the occasional gleaming shard of bone poking through, he stopped hitting her with the hammer.

  He stood over her, admiring his handiwork. For the first time, he registered a blaring noise from outside the window.

  Sirens.

  Some fucker must have called the cops.

  ‘Bastard,’ he hissed, realising that he was caught red-handed.

  Annoyed that his fun had been interrupted, he dragged the limp body by the arm. The corpse made a wet thud as it hit the floor.

  He shoved it under the bed with his foot, grimacing as he saw the lake of blood which was starting to spread from the shattered skull.

  He shoved the body in as far as it would go, then pulled the bed covers down so it hid the space beneath the bed.

  It wasn’t perfect but it would have to do.

  Leaving a trail of bloody footprints, he ran to the bathroom and picked a hooded dressing gown off the hook on the door. He slung it on over his blood-soaked clothes, pulled the hood up to hide his face and raced out of the house.

  Chapter 22

  Luke found himself pinned against the wall by his sister’s body. Her dead eyes stared into his. One of them bulged out of her skull like a bloody boiled egg. The mangled remains of her head were still pumping out blood which was slowly creeping towards him. He tried to inch away from it but had nowhere to go.

  The fluid felt warm and sticky against his bare arms. He pulled in fast, panicked breaths, trying to remain calm. The feel of Jane’s blood on his skin made him puke. He cried out as the blood soaked into his pyjama bottoms, making them cling to his skin.

  He screamed and tried to push her away, but he was pinned against the wall and had no leverage. All he could do was close his eyes and hope that he would wake up from this nightmare.

  Chapter 23

  Alfred saw a yard with a broken gate to his left and snuck inside.

  Just as he did so a couple of armed cops ran past. Breathing a sigh of relief, he crawled into the shadows. He’d give it a little while then make his escape.

  Hirst groaned as he saw the broken lock on the Miller family’s front door. He didn’t like where this was leading. The trail of bloody footprints along the corridor deepened his dread.

  He moved cautiously inside, his gun drawn. If this asshole was still here he was going home in a body bag, consequences be damned.

  His mind was a jumble of thoughts as he traced the footprints back to the stairs. He feared what he was going to find.

  There would be no survivors, of that he was sure. This psycho was nothing if not thorough.

  He stepped to the door marked with Jane’s name plate. The door was slightly open, a bloody handprint adorning the white glossed wood.

  He shoved it open, moving his gun around in case the killer was still lurking inside.

  A glistening pool of blood was spreading from beneath the bed.

  A low moaning sound came from under the bed, accompanied by frantic breathing.

  This is it, Sergeant Hirst, he thought. Show time.

  He approached the bed in a crouch, his gun trained on the space between the mattress and the floor.

  He grabbed the bed covers and pulled them up. The sight of the girl’s limp body made him blanch. Her pale skin was in sharp contrast to the blood which seemed to coat every inch of her.

  The low moan became louder, the breathing faster and more ragged than before.

  Hirst grabbed the girl’s leg with one hand, keeping the gun trained under the bed with the other. He paused for a second and pulled the body back.

  His finger almost pulled the trigger, but he saw how young the blood-smeared face that stared out from under the bed looked and he dropped the weapon.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Luke, are you ok?’ he asked, pulling the bed up.

  Luke didn’t say anything, he just stared straight ahead, saucer-eyed.

  Then he shook his head and burst into tears.

  Chapter 24

  Hirst cradled the boy in his arms for what seemed like hours. The poor bastard had already been through enough without this happening.

  Luke cried so much that Hirst was surprised he had any tears left. Hirst stroked his hair and did his best to comfort the boy until finally he stopped crying and fell asleep.

  Footsteps from the hallway made Hirst dart for his gun.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Brent said as he took in the scene.

  Hirst dropped the gun. ‘Poor bastard was hiding under the bed the whole time,’ he said. ‘God only knows what he has seen and heard.’

  Brent shook his head at the thought. ‘There’s blood all over the ceiling in there too,’ he said, pointing down the corridor to the master bedroom.

  ‘I haven’t been in there yet. I didn’t want to leave the boy.’

  Brent nodded. ‘Fair enough. The father’s in there. Throat cut. He probably suffered less than the two kids. Jesus, how old was she? Twelve?’

  ‘Sixteen. Luke’s only ten.’

  ‘Poor fucker.’

  They both watched
the sleeping, blood-covered child then took him to the station.

  Luke woke with a start. The mattress beneath him was hard and cold. He flinched when he saw someone standing over him.

  ‘It’s ok,’ Hirst said. ‘I’m here to help you, Luke.’

  Luke relaxed when he recognised the kind-faced policeman. Then he tensed up as the memory of what had happened resurfaced.

  ‘It’s ok, Luke. Let it out. Let it all out.’

  Luke curled up in a ball and sobbed until his eyes were dry. Hirst watched him the whole time, feeling anger and sorrow for his loss.

  ‘Do you have any family who can look after you?’ Hirst asked when Luke had finished crying.

  ‘A grandma, but I hardly ever see her.’ Luke sniffed and wiped away the last of his tears.

  ‘Do you know her phone number?’

  Luke shook his head.

  ‘I’ll find it and give her a call. She’ll need to look after you. You can stay here until we get in touch with her.’

  Luke didn’t react. He was staring at Hirst, but it was like he was looking through him.

  ‘I don’t want to rush you, Luke, but I would like to take a statement from you when you’re ready to talk about what happened.’

  Luke nodded and resumed staring at the wall.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  Luke let out a low moan and shook his head emphatically.

  ‘Ok, I’ll stay.’

  Chapter 25

  Alfred found himself in the old woman’s bed with no recollection of how he had gotten there. The journey from the kid’s house to the old woman’s was a total blur.

  His memory of the night stopped with the flashing blue lights ruining his fun. He smiled at the thought of what he’d done to the little whore. She’d lived just long enough to regret her actions.

  Alfred chuckled as he pictured her terrified face. The memory was going to keep him smiling for a long time. The only thing he regretted – apart from his time with the girl coming to a premature end – was that he hadn’t found the boy.

  Alfred was tempted to go and check the hospital, tie up that particular loose end, but he knew that the police would be highly suspicious of anyone approaching the boy and decided to leave it for now. No sense in getting himself locked up.

  He drifted back to sleep, eager to relive last night’s fun in his dreams.

  Hirst was furious that Luke’s grandmother still wasn’t answering the phone. He’d left her half a dozen messages but it seemed he was wasting his time.

  ‘Is there anyone else who could look after you for a while?’ he asked.

  Luke thought about it and nodded slowly. ‘Bryony, my friend from school,’ he said.

  Bryony and her mother had heard all about what had happened to Luke and his family and they were only too willing to take him in until he’d found his feet again.

  ‘Hey, don’t worry, they’ll catch him,’ Bryony said.

  Luke didn’t say anything but smiled at his friend’s concern.

  ‘We’ll look after you, Luke,’ Norma, Bryony’s mother, said. ‘Are you ok?’

  Luke shook his head without lifting his eyes from the floor.

  The sounds of his sister’s torment were on a loop in his head.

  Nothing seemed to shift them.

  Chapter 26

  A week later the police were no closer to catching the lunatic responsible for the deaths of the Williams and Miller families.

  Luke was settling into life at Bryony’s house, but he was becoming increasingly withdrawn. The incidents had destroyed his confidence and his trust in strangers.

  Norma was deeply concerned about her young lodger, and did her best to make sure he had an outlet for his anger and sorrow.

  She bought him a guitar as a present. He was touched by her kindness and it became one of his favourite pastimes. He and Bryony would jam on their guitars long into the night.

  Norma also enrolled him in a kickboxing class to give him a way to get rid of the latent aggression he displayed with the vast majority of people.

  Despite his new hobbies and the time he spent with his best friend, Luke found it impossible to forget the incidents with the clown.

  The time he had spent trapped under the bed with his sister’s bulging-eyed corpse seemed to have sucked the fun out of his life. He found that he still saw her wild, staring eyes both in his nightmares and in reality. They didn’t go away no matter what he did.

  Soon he would come to the conclusion that his sister wanted company.

  Chapter 27

  Everyone bar Luke seemed to forget about the incidents that had caused such terror in Marshton town.

  He became depressed and withdrawn, only talking to Bryony and Norma, and Hirst when he made his weekly visit to check up on his young charge.

  The kids at school didn’t know that he was one of the clown’s victims, and for that he was grateful. But the gap between him and his peers – already large because of his mother’s untimely demise – became a gulf after his two run-ins with the killer clown.

  He found it hard to make friends and avoided the other kids as much as possible.

  Instead, he found he spent most of his waking hours thinking about death.

  He came out of one of his trances to find he was walking on the waste ground near Peth Vale, the huge house on the hill that overlooked Marshton town like a malevolent sentinel, with a stray dog in tow.

  The animal had been in the back lane outside his new home and he’d teased it with a stale piece of beef from the Sunday roast, leading it onto the outskirts of the land.

  Deep down, he’d known it would work – the dog’s ribs were on the verge of poking through its skin – but he’d still been surprised and elated when the dog had followed him towards the ominous house.

  Luke jolted as if coming awake, and let out a cry of dismay as he stared down at the dog which lay at his feet.

  The animal’s head was a raw, bleeding mess. One of its eyes bulged out of the shattered, blood-clogged eye socket.

  He looked around himself, unable to remember anything about coming out here with the dog.

  He glanced down to see that there was a blood-covered half of a brick at his feet. His hands and clothes were covered with thick smears of gore.

  After bringing up his breakfast, he stared at the body for a few moments, feeling a strange mixture of fascination and disgust, then hid it in the binbag he’d brought with him and hurried home.

  As he tried to get to sleep that night, he thought about what he’d done, smiled as he pictured the dog’s dead-eyed stare.

  That night, Jane’s sightless eyes stayed out of his dreams.

  Chapter 28

  Alfred had grown bored of the town in which he had spent the last few months. The scruffy, foul-mouthed women were no fun. He had attacked a few of them, but hadn’t felt the thrill of his previous attacks.

  He’d even come close to being arrested while with one of the hags. That would’ve been disastrous in more ways than one. Getting nicked was embarrassing enough, but he would never have lived down being caught with a munter like her.

  He shook his head at the thought.

  It was time to find a new home, somewhere where the women didn’t look like they’d had their faces slammed repeatedly in car doors.

  Pulling a map out of the glove box of his car, he turned to a page that showed the north east of England and closed his eyes. His finger circled over the map for a time then came down.

  Where it landed he would go. Opening his eyes, he saw the town’s name. It was a place he’d never heard of, but it had to be better than his current haunt. He turned on the ignition and set off for the town.

  Chapter 29

  Luke found that if he kept looking at the dead dog it kept the nightmares away. It was as if his sister was happy at the pet he’d provided for her. He became upset when the body began to putrefy as it stunk to high heaven.

  He could not risk being discovered, so he reluctantly
took the body up to the woods and buried it. Without it to look at, he feared that his sister’s dead eyes would return to torment his sleep.

  The nightmares stayed away for a few months but the gulf between Luke and his classmates had further widened.

  They all called him weird behind his back, but none of them would dare say anything to his face. They’d seen his temper in action when he’d given a good kicking to Rory Simmonds from the year above.

  Rory had been taken straight to hospital, with suspected brain damage. After that, no one dared say anything to him, derogatory or otherwise.

  This was fine with Luke, he had nothing to say to them either.

  Things were going well for Luke. He and Bryony were becoming close. He had an intense crush on her, but he wasn’t sure how she felt about him. They were more than friends, that much was clear, but they weren’t going out.

  Bryony felt the same way about him but neither of them was bold enough to risk ruining their friendship.

  The nightmares stopped until the anniversary of his family’s deaths rolled around, when the dead eyes returned in his dreams. Sometimes he’d be awake when they appeared, seeming to stare into him from beyond the grave.

  He knew there was only one way to get rid of them.

  Chapter 30

  Over the next few years Luke’s obsession deepened. He found plenty of worthy subjects. The feeling of killing the animals was addictive and it added to the thrill of having the dead bodies to play with.

  He found that he enjoyed inflicting pain more and more. It was a way of banishing his sister’s dead eyes from his thoughts and dreams and it helped to free the pain he still bore from his two encounters with the clown.

  He kept the animals alive longer and longer so he could extend their exquisite agonies as much as possible.

  His collection grew. But the urge to play with something larger was impossible to ignore.