Suffer Hard: An Extreme Horror Novella (2 page)

“I’ll make that call,
I’ve still got that local firm’s number on my phone from yesterday,” Craig said, swinging a leg over the long bench to retrieve his mobile in the front pocket of his rucksack that was propped behind him. “No signal in here, I’ll try outside.”

It was a relief to be outside.
The threat of rain had passed and Craig closed his eyes for a second, lifting his face to the watery, late afternoon, September sun.

“Shit,” he cursed under his breath.

No signal out here either. He wandered down the road a little, staring at the screen of his phone.

Still no signal bars.

He walked a little further down the road that meandered off inland. It wasn’t really much more than a dirt track and he wondered how the hell any kind of car got down it.

A movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention. He spun round. He was
sure
he’d seen movement in the upstairs window of the pub, directly above ‘The Dirty Swallow’ sign. Maybe it was just the low sun reflecting off the glass.

And so what if it wasn’t. Somebody was watching him. It was no big deal.

He didn’t understand why he was suddenly so uneasy.

He walked back to the pub. One of the others
were bound to have a signal.

“No signal,” he said, waving his phone at them when he walked through the door. “Maybe someone else can try. Where’s Margaret gone?”

“To help her husband in the kitchen,” Tim said, retrieving his mobile, just like the other two were doing. “Shit. I haven’t got a signal either. Do you guys?”

Jessie and Beth shook their heads.

“We can try outside,” Jessie said.

The three of them trooped outside, leaving Craig alone.

He took a big gulp of his warm beer, wondering why the hell he was so jittery. He could faintly hear their voices and crossed his fingers under the table that they had got through to the taxi rank.

“You here on holiday?”

Craig sprayed out his beer.

“Jesu
s! You gave me a fright!”

“
Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare yer.”

Craig stared at the old man that had apparently appeared out of nowhere. He was stooped, skinny and had a walking stick. Sparse white hair decorated his mostly bald head and his skin was yellow and wizened, like parchment paper.

“I’m Margaret’s Father. We don’t get much passing trade nowadays. In fact, you’re lucky you caught us open.”

Craig noticed the
door behind the bar was opened and a dark staircase could be seen ascending into darkness.

“Oh. Yeah, we’re here on holiday, we’re staying in Penzance.”

“You hiked here?”

“Yeah.”

Craig could only just understand him as he had a thick Cornish accent.

“Used
to be a popular trail. That’s ‘til folks started disappearing when they walked it. Some say it’s haunted. Killed our passing trade stone dead, I can tell yer. What brings you folks here?”

“Old Jake.
We’re staying at The Jolly Sailor. He said it was a walk to die for with the best pub in Cornwall at the end of it.”

“Ah, yes,
dear old Jake. Me and Jake go back a long ways.”

He
smiled at Craig, displaying a gaping maw.

Jesus, didn’t anyone here have teeth?

There was one thing Craig knew for certain. When they got back to the B and B, he was going to ram the out of date bus timetable down ‘Old Jake’s’ neck. The stupid old fuck.

The other three walked back in.

“Any luck?” Craig asked eagerly.

“Nope.”

“Are you folks having some kind of a problem?” the old guy asked.

“We’re trying to call for a taxi, and none of our phones can get a signal,” Jessie answered.

“Ay. Hanow and the surrounding area is a dead spot for your there mobile telephones.”

“Do you have a phone we could borrow?” Craig asked the old man.

“No. Tree fell down on one of them telephone wires over by the old main road few days ago.”

Craig’s mouth was suddenly dry. “
Does
anyone
here have a working phone?”

“No son, I told you, phone line’s
dead. Besides, ain’t no one that lives in Hanow now ‘cept me and my family.”

“I do not believe this
shit,
” Beth said.

She actually stamped her foot and there were tears in her eyes.

Margaret burst backwards through a door by the side of the bar. She was holding a big tray piled high with sandwiches. Craig caught a glimpse of an old, grubby looking kitchen, then the door swung shut again.

Christ,
he thought,
I really don’t want to eat anything that comes out of that kitchen…

“Lunch,” she said brightly, placing the tray of sandwiches in front of Craig.

The others came back over to their seats. No one looked too thrilled to see lunch, despite a collective ravenous appetite.

Beth was the first to speak.

“So what are we going to do?”

Craig was painfully aware of Margaret and the old man who had edged closer.

A bit of privacy right about now would be nice, he thought.

“We could walk back to the main road,” Craig suggested.
“It can’t be more than a few miles and I’m sure we’ll pick up a signal before we even hit the main road.”

“It’s five miles to the main road. But it will be at least that before you get a signal on your mobile telephones. Here’
s a dead spot,” Margaret said.

“Ay, it’s a dead spot alright,” the old man intoned.

Craig bit down a wave of irritation.

“I’m not walking
five more bloody miles. And it’ll be dark soon.” Beth said.

“You’re right there young lady
,” Margaret agreed. “Ain’t really nothing but a dirt track leading out of Hanow.  Gets dark as a dog’s guts at night.”

“Ay. You wouldn’t see jack shit out there.”

“Do you perhaps have a torch we could borrow for the walk?” Tim asked the old man.

“I am
not
walking anywhere more today. You can go alone and order a taxi to pick the rest of us up,” Beth said.

“Hold your horses, young lady, I was
gonna offer you folks a lift to the main road seeing as y’all so keen to leave. But I hope ya alls understand that you’re more than welcome to stay with us tonight.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Jessie said
to the old man, “and we appreciate it, but we really have to be getting back. We’re going home tomorrow and we don’t want to miss our train.”

That was a barefaced lie, but the three of them kept a poker face, even Beth.

Looks like none of us want to stay here tonight,
Craig thought.

The old man nodded gravely. “
I can only transport two of you’s. I have a two seater Land Rover so I only got the room for two.”

“Thank you so much,” Jessie gushed, “that’s awfully kind of you
. We can pay you for your trouble.”

“
Ain’t no trouble young lady. If you really want to pay us then you can start off by eating those sandwiches my son-in-law has so kindly prepared for yous.”

Jessie flushed. “Of course,” she said, picking one up.

She took a bite and everyone watched her. Those sandwiches didn’t look at all appetising. At first glance they were a pile of ordinary, white sliced bread cut into triangles.

But on closer inspection, the bread had
a greyish tinge and looked stale. And God only knew what the filling was, Craig’s stomach turned just looking at it. It looked like ham, except it was too thick to be ham.

Jessie’s face said it all. Even the most polite out of their group was having difficulty swallowing.

“What meat is this?” she asked.

Margaret and her father exchanged a look.

“Pork,” they said in unison.

Jessie took a big gulp of orange juice. “Lovely.”

“Come on,” the old man said, clapping his hands together and sitting down on the long bench to Craig’s left. “Tuck in. You have to eat something before I give the two of yous a lift.”

So they each took a sandwich. Craig figured they all wanted to get the hell out of there as soon as possible.

Tentatively, he took a bite. It didn’t taste as bad as it looked. The meat was a bit chewy, and pungent somehow, but not altogether unpleasant. He certainly had never tasted pork like it.

“Margaret, get these fine people another drink.
On the house.”

“No, really, there’s no need for that…”
Jessie began, then gave up when Margaret went behind the bar.

Craig wasn’t about to protest too much. He’d drained his pint and another wouldn’t go amiss.

Hell, he thought. He might as well get pissed.

“So tell me a bit about
yourselves,” the old man said. “My name’s Barry, but everybody calls me Bish.”

Now that he was sat next to him, Craig noticed that he smelled a bit funny.
It wasn’t something that he could put his finger on, and it was only faint. But it was sweet and rank, reminding him of the smell of shit lingering in the bathroom. Perhaps it was just the odour of old age. Maybe the old guy hadn’t wiped his arse properly.

Discretely he shuffled closer to Beth.

Tim was the one that introduced them all.

“So what do you do, Tim?”
Bish asked.

“I’m a university student. We’re all
third year university students. Well, apart from Beth, that is.”

“And what do you do, young lady?”

“I’m an actress and model,” she said.

Code for barmaid and waitress,
Craig silently added. Unless you count going to endless auditions and getting fuck-all-nowhere at the end of them.

“Now I can say I’ve met a real life model and actress. What are you folks studying?”

“I’m reading Law,” Tim said.

“Training to be a primary school teacher,” Jessie said.

“Reading English Lit,” Craig said.

“
Yowzer. We’ve got us a real bunch of bright young sparks here, ain’t we Margaret?”

“
Ay, that we have, Dad.” she said, placing their drinks in front of them.

“How did
y’alls meet?”

“Halls of residence,” Jessie said, “the three of us just clicked so we rented a house together in the second year, along with a couple of others.”

And that’s when my best friend hooked up with the girl I was in love with. It should’ve been me,
Craig thought miserably.
And that’s how much I love her. Even when I’m stranded in the middle of nowhere with the local weirdos I still think about how much I love her…

“
How old are y’alls, if you don’t mind me askin’?”

Bish’s
question struck Craig as odd. Why on earth would he want to know that? Then he figured he was just worried about them being underage. All pubs nowadays abided by that ‘think 25’ policy. Craig never set foot inside a pub without his driver’s license.

“Don’t worry, we’re all old enough to drink,” Tim said, obviously coming to the same conclusion as Craig. “We’re twenty one.
Would you like to see our ID?”

“
Don’t worry son, I was just checkin’. Can’t be too careful nowadays.”

“The under twenty
fives are so much fresher,” Margaret said.

Fresher?
What the hell was
that
supposed to mean?
Craig thought.

Craig picked up on the warning look
Bish threw her.

“Ay Margaret, tis nice indeed to have some young blood around, liven the place up a bit.”

The four of them sat there in awkward silence, which was eventually broken by Bish.

“Well, it will be dark in less than
half an hour, would a couple of you fine folk care for that lift to the main road now?”

Tim got to his feet while the old man was still speaking.
“Sounds good to me. Does anyone want to come?”

Craig wished that Beth would volunteer so he could be alone with Jessie but he guessed there was more chance of hell freezing over.

“I’ll come,” Jessie said.

“No, I think I should go,” Craig said. “It will get cold when the sun goes down
, you girls should stay here. You must be shattered,” he said to Jessie.

“No more than you,” she replied. “Tim?”

Tim looked from one to the other. “Craig’s right. C’mon mate, let’s go call us a taxi.”

The two lads followed
Bish out of the room. Craig saw the shadow that passed over Jessie’s face that her boyfriend had chosen him over her. He felt a pang of guilt when it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps she was a little disturbed by these people and didn’t want to be separated from her boyfriend.