- The_Starasp
- |
- Honorable Member
"Run coward, I am Sinistar. I hunger coward!"
-Sinistar
It had been a close call. Lyle had used more effort than he thought he had in him to reach the train and as the doors closed behind him he had been racked with pain, his lungs burned and his temple throbbed.
Lyle had been in his seat now for half an hour and finally, with a whisky down him and a steaming coffee in front of him, he had begun to relax, occasionally nodding his head as he tripped in an out of sleep.
The train was busy but not full. Business people tapped on laptop keyboards, students laughed and drank, children read and coloured, people using up time, waiting for a destination.
The job had been easy. Lyle had a routine. Surprise, subdue, extract information or exact revenge then finish things.
He caught the guy unawares as he came out of his bathroom, just dressed and ready for a night out, hair still damp from the shower, relaxed and unguarded. A trademark blow to the neck brought him down. Lyle handcuffed and gagged him then bound him into a kitchen chair and waited for him to come ‘round. He stared at the man’s confused then frightened face, explained to him why he was there, who had sent him. He showed him the large pair of pliers he had brought then removed the man’s right index finger with a single clip. As his victim struggled, fought against his restraints, tried to scream through the gag, Lyle slipped a length of piano wire around his neck, tightened it and fastened it hard with a practiced twist. As he waited for the man’s life to finish Lyle lit a cigarette, he picked up the severed finger and placed it carefully into a sandwich bag, this was his timecard, his proof of a job well done. Job number thirty complete and that was it. Self promise about to be realised, thirty kills and out: a change of scene; a different life; an anonymous 47 year old man in a Suffolk seaside town.
Stephen Lyle had not always been a killer. He had not come from a violent background. A middle class boy, well schooled, a good university but he was a bad choice maker. He had begun his working life in banking, sorting out the finances of the wealthy, advising on investments, pensions, tax. His clients were not all legitimate but he didn’t shy away. Lyle soon realised that he had a taste for danger and an elastic morality. He was dazzled by the gangland culture, the fraternity, the easy money, the women and the drinking. He had not allowed himself to drift into crime, he had sought it, put himself forward for it. First some small stuff, money laundering, using the bank as a front for sharp practice then more direct activity, collecting money, threatening late payers and that led to aggression and soon violence became his drug of choice.
His first kill had been a huge rush. He had been alone with a nasty little drug dealer in his stinking Deptford squat. The dealer owed twenty thousand and was twisting, whining, trying to buy more time. Lyle had hit him a few times but he still droned on and it was clear there was no money. The wire had been an accident, a piece of chance left on a table in the dingy squat. He had picked it up in his leather gloved hands while the man squirmed on the floor. At first Lyle just wanted to frighten him, he had whipped it around the scrawny neck and pulled it just tight enough to make the guy splutter, but once he had him in his control an immense feeling of power and serenity overwhelmed him. He kept tightening the cord, kept it tight while the man struggled and thrashed beneath him. When the man was dead he let go of the wire and the body slumped to the floor, the wire was almost embedded in the neck and Lyle had taken satisfaction from that, seen it as a warning sign to others. There had been no police, his new friends had seen to that, and his kill gained him status and respect. The rest was history, he liked killing, criminals want people killed and he began a career as hired hit. It had made him rich, feared and a target.
Now it was time to change. The thrill of killing had diminished and each new job brought another worry, fed his growing paranoia that he Stephen Lyle was the next victim. So he had decided to stop. He had enough cash and though an elaborate process that kept his name off the deeds he had bought a house in a respectable Suffolk town. A gentile and mild mannered place, close to the sea, and a million miles from his current life.
Lyle yawned. He was sticky, the sweat had dried on his forehead and his hands felt unclean. He looked to the sign at the end of the carriage, the bathroom was occupied and checking first that his bag was safely stowed, he got out of his seat and walked back down the train, past the travelling public though the cheerless buffet car until he found a vacant sign.
At the washroom door he paused slightly, allowing himself to rock with the sudden jolting motion of the train, his hand anchored on the door handle for a moment before he twisted it open then instantly recoiled, gasping , breathless with shock.
The dead eyes stared out at him from their puffy sockets, accusing, spiteful. Lyle stumbled back, steadying himself on the door’s metal frame.
The body was propped up on the ugly steel toilet. The face was grotesque, purple and bloated as though inflated with foul air. Around the neck a biting ligature of thin wire formed a cruel halo above the semi-clothed torso. Lyle swallowed hard; incredulous he reached forward and almost touched the corpse. His gaze was drawn to the body’s right hand, to the stump, black with congealed blood, which marked the position where a finger had once grown. There could be no doubt: this was the man who a few hours ago had slumped in front of him, whose life Lyle had squeezed away with a twisted wire. The dead man’s shirt had been ripped open revealing a patchwork of tattoos. Pictures of dragon-like reptiles merged with twisting female forms, and in their centre, cut deep into the chest, was a crude pentangle, its lines blurred by darkening blood.
Lyle turned and started to run, back though the carriages past half empty cans and foam-stained plastic glasses, past newspapers vying with cheerful children’s books for space on the narrow tables. He charged though the now desolate buffet car and on past suddenly vacant rows of chairs. Lyle was panicking now, he could feel his chest tighten with fear, logic failed him, where had all the people gone? They couldn’t have disappeared, it was impossible. Who had placed the body? How had they got hold of it?
He stopped running as he reached his seat, his chest heaving as he sucked air into his lungs his need for oxygen fuelled by the massive surge of adrenalin in his blood. He tried to collect himself, to stem his rising fear. Concentrate, he thought, who has done this? Worry about how later.
Lyle began to calm. His instinct for survival was winning and he was back in control. He surveyed his surroundings: tables as before but no passengers. His coffee had stopped steaming, his bag was unmoved and he noticed that opposite an abandoned laptop’s screen now traced a pattern of complex pipes. He listened. The train sounded faster than before but strangely its movement had become less marked. The familiar rocking of a train at speed was all but gone, as though the train were floating above the rails.
Kneeling on a seat Lyle pressed his face to the window and cupped his eyes, blanking out the fluorescent glare of the carriage lights. It took a few seconds for his eyes to become attuned to the dark but, even when he was sure they must be, he saw nothing. Through the window he stared into an abyss. There was no night sky, no hint of a tunnel wall or even of the train’s own lights radiating into the void, just total blackness.