David Watkins lives in Devon in the UK with his wife, two sons, ridiculous dog and psychotic cat. He has currently released four novels and a short story. Each book is well rated and reviewed on Amazon and beyond.
His most recent release is The Exeter Incident, from D&T Publishing.
He hates referring to himself in the third person, but no-one else is going to write this for him.
Dave can be found on Twitter so drop by and say hello @joshfishkins, where you'll find him ranting about horror, the British education system and Welsh rugby, but not usually at the same time.
The Exeter Incident: https://mybook.to/exeter
The Original’s Return: https://mybook.to/TheOriginalsReturn
The Original’s Retribution: https://mybook.to/originalsretribution
The Devil’s Inn: https://mybook.to/devilsinn
Rhitta Gawr: https://mybook.to/rhittagawr
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Sunday May 23rd
12:01 am
Charlie Monroe glanced at his watch and groaned, his considerable bulk sagging. Looking around the room again, taking in the amount of blood, he knew he wasn’t going to bed anytime soon.
“This is a mess,” Danielle Brent said as soon as she entered. It was a massive understatement. “It looks like a fox has got all the chickens.”
He didn’t reply. Danni was just talking, filling the silent house with noise to take the edge off. They were both dressed from head to foot in white coveralls, and under strict instructions not to touch anything. The two uniforms – first on the scene, poor bastards – sat outside, in an ambulance, having a cup of coffee with the paramedics. Charlie would speak to them later, but right now he would much rather be with them.
A teenager’s idea of a party lay on the table: popcorn, crisps, chocolate, a jar of processed salsa, twenty cans of the ever-classy Stella, one nearly empty bottle of expensive vodka, and an equally expensive, but full, gin. Charlie wished he could afford those sorts of drinks.
The dead were all teenagers, so there would be a problem if, or when, the parents turned up. Somebody back in the office was trying to track them down, but none were answering. Charlie was glad he wasn’t making those calls.
The forensic guy – fat, bald, smelly – said there was only one dead person in this room, but, for the life of him, Charlie couldn’t see where. Apart from the head, of course. Girl, approximately fifteen, on the table, in the bowl of popcorn. There were no traces of the rest of the actual body anywhere. The trail of blood had started just inside the doorway and whilst it looked like the girl had bled in the hallway, it seemed she had exploded in here. Red gore coated every conceivable surface. There were two more bodies upstairs so, with a sigh, Charlie started the ascent, feeling every second of his forty-five years.
This is not why I became a police officer, he thought. This is not why I became a detective sergeant. Charlie had been to many crime scenes in his career, seen many murder scenes, but none like this.
Danni trudged up the stairs behind him, babbling away. She was ten years younger, and two years on the team had not dampened her enthusiasm. It was all crap, so he tuned her out.
He pushed open the door to the first bedroom. The techs had not been in there yet. He leaned in from the doorway and shook his head at the sight. Here, too, blood covered everything. It even dripped from the ceiling. Nine pints in a human woman on average. Nearly five litres: enough to paint a room that size, and it looked like someone had given it a good go.
Danni touched his arm, and he jumped.
“Sorry Charlie,” she said and smiled at him. Her face lit up with the smile, despite the surroundings. Condescending or genuine? He never could tell. Probably why his wife was moving out.
“This is bad.” His turn for massive understatement.
“Yeah, don’t go in the bathroom. The kid in there was taking a dump when he got got.”
And that was it. Why did she insist on talking like a bad American TV show? She had a Home Counties accent and sounded ridiculous.
“Great.”
“Whoever did this, took the head off, and threw it into the loo.” She sighed, bewilderment writ large across her face. “So, is this a nutjob? Ex-boyfriend? Serial killer?” She paused, tilting her head to the side in that alluring manner of hers.
Charlie thought back to all the other murders he’d ever investigated. The sheer devastation in the house and the amount of blood was incredible. He always found it hard to believe any human capable of such rage, but his years on the force had only highlighted just how crazy people were.
“No,” Charlie said. “This is something else. Something new.”
12:02 am
Kennedy watched the humans from the end of the road. So many bright lights: so beautiful. He wanted to study them, perhaps take some back to Father as a souvenir. He dismissed the idea – too many people. Father might not be happy if they found out about them now, not after so long in hiding.
Father would ask about the lights, and then Kennedy would have to tell him where he saw them. Explain why the humans had vehicles with lights. That would mean revealing he had eaten again, and Father would not be so forgiving this time.
With huge reluctance, he turned away and slunk into darkness.
12:15 am
Danni peeled off the overalls, revealing a smart trouser suit, and was given a mug of coffee by a uniform. The fresh air in the street outside the house was a welcome relief from the stench in the house.
“Cheers,” she said, earning herself a smile. Charlie took a cup from the man without a word. Why is he so miserable? Danni shook her head slightly and caught Charlie looking at her. He turned away to avoid eye contact. “What’s our next move?” she asked, more out of a desire to break the silence than necessity. Charlie was a hard man to get a conversation out of at the best of times.
“Usual,” he shrugged. “Back to the office. Cross reference the MO, check what flags up here or abroad. Work the neighbours, see if anyone saw anything.” He sipped his coffee and pointed at the houses. “This is a decent part of town; we shouldn’t get the usual stonewall.”
Danni nodded. The uniforms were already knocking on doors and getting sworn at by tired people. The commotion had woken some; the rest were soon awake with the noise and lights.
The press would be here soon, and the news full of soundbites. Statements would be logged, and Danni and Charlie would spend most of tomorrow trawling through them. A murder case like this would need a large team and by tomorrow morning, there would be at least twenty officers assigned to the case. Forensics would be on site for a lot longer tonight and tomorrow, eking every bit of evidence and DNA from the scene. In the meantime, there would be CCTV to watch.
“Ok, let’s bounce,” she said, silently resolving to stop watching The Wire.
01:23 am
Mike Baxter inched closer to the edge of the warehouse roof. He felt a tug on his jeans, warning him against going any further. He ignored it, looking through the viewfinder of the video camera.
“Got you,” he muttered.
“Quiet,” the woman behind him whispered. “They’ll hear you.”
Mike resisted the urge to point out she had said more than him and turned the camera on. He focussed on the two men in the distance and started filming.
His partner, Linda Carter, tensed, and he imagined her terse lips and stern expression, due to him ignoring her. Actually, he imagined a lot more than that, but forced himself to focus on the job at hand. Below him sat a large white lorry, parked but with engine running. The driver was one of the men he was filming, but Mike wasn’t interested in him.
The other man was Jason Hamilton, ex-military, now a businessman. He had his fingers in many pies, but mostly focussed on property in and around Exeter. He was a regular in the tabloid press, always stepping out with whatever pretty young thing was the flavour of the day. Hamilton’s past was mostly secret, but as far as Mike had worked out, he’d been frontline in most of the conflicts of the previous decade. His largely redacted military background was not why Mike was filming him.
That reason was in the lorry.
People.
Hamilton was bringing them into the country illegally, and he and Linda were about to get proof. This was a story which would be worth thousands and possibly win them some awards.
He held the camera as steady as he could, despite his rising excitement, and, with his free hand, gave his partner the thumbs up. The driver was leading Hamilton to the back of the truck. Earlier, he had placed a small microphone on the wall of the warehouse. It was a white dot, about the size of a penny, and yet had a fifty-metre range. He could hear the men breathing as they opened the doors.
“This is it,” Linda whispered.
Mike didn’t reply as he focussed on the scene unfolding in front of him. Also, he was still annoyed she had turned him down that morning. What did she expect, though, walking into his hotel room, wearing just a towel? Seriously, talk about mixed signals. He’d got as far as touching her arse before she slapped him. Too devoted to her dick of a husband, that was her problem. She hadn’t mentioned it since, so Mike had stewed all day.
“What are you doing?”
The voice was so loud, and so close to his ears, that Mike started and nearly dropped his camera.
“Hey… hey, sweetheart, what are you doing up here?” Linda said, standing and turning in one smooth motion.
That made Mike turn. Lights dotted the roof in regular intervals, but he and Linda were in a dark zone between two sets. Ten feet away from him, bathed in a neon glow, stood a small child. He was dressed in dark clothes and looked like he could spend an hour in a shower and still not be clean. The boy’s accent was weird, too posh for his appearance, as if he’d learned to talk listening to Radio 4.
The boy tilted his head towards Linda. “You are pretty.”
Linda blushed, despite the strangeness of the situation. “Uh, ok.” She paused, trying to gather her thoughts. Her mouth was dry. “Honey, I don’t know where you came from, but there are some bad men down there and they know we’re here now, so they’ll be coming for us. You need to hide.”
“No.” The boy smiled at them both. Mike grabbed Linda’s shoulder, but she shook free.
“Please, poppet—”
Screams reached them from below, then gunfire. The noise was incredible, echoing from the tall buildings surrounding them. Mike looked down into the car park and saw some men running away from the warehouse. Five of them sprinted across the car park, occasionally firing over their shoulders at something Mike couldn’t see.
He turned back to the boy. “We really need to go. You coming, little man?”
Another scream pierced the air as the gunfire faded. Mike looked again and one man was on his back, wrestling with a figure. The screaming turned into a gurgle and then stopped. The figure was up and running again in seconds.
“The Scouts are with me,” the boy said.
“Scouts? Here?” Mike frowned. Whatever was happening here had nothing to do with boys in short trousers and sexually dubious older men.
“Mike, I think we should go.” Linda edged away from the boy. Another scream filled the air, followed by more gunfire. It sounded like a war zone, not a city in Devon.
“That’s a good idea.” Mike stepped backwards, keeping his eyes on the child. He didn’t want to turn his back on him again.
“You can’t leave,” the boy said. “I want you to stay with me.” He held his arms out, like he was on the cross. For the first time, Mike noticed his eyes were black pits: no white in them at all. The dark was astonishing, even against the night sky.
“What’s wrong with your eyes?”
The boy’s expression changed to a sly smile. “What’s wrong with yours?”
“Run,” Linda screamed. They turned and fled as a low buzzing filled the air. It increased in pitch and they sped up. She hadn’t run that fast since school. Pressure built at the back of her head, like being deep underwater or on a plane. The edge of the warehouse roof was rapidly approaching. Static electricity crackled around them and the noise rose in pitch, like a jet engine before take-off.
“Jump!” she yelled as they ran out of roof.
(C) David Watkins 2022