The Debt Read online

  The Debt

  Mark Lumby

  Copyright © Mark Lumby 2018

  The right of Mark Lumby to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior consent of the author.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Edited by Lisa Lee

  Dedicated to my wife, Sonia, who is a treasure to me, her family and her friends. Thank you for being there, for being you, and for all your support. And to our five children, Chloe, Jack, Samuel, Aaron and Isabelle aka ‘the Beast’.

  You are amazing.

  I love you all.

  1

  All was quite.

  Just the hum of street lighting and the calming sound of rain glistening the footpaths. The road had been empty for some time. There would be no one to find her, not until the morning.

  Her screams never had the chance to fill the air, were never heard echoing through the streets for a help that didn’t arrive.

  In the dark, the true colour of her blood couldn’t be seen. It had been diluted into the ground, washed down the alley, and only when it reached the road side and under the street lighting, red was vivid in the water. At this point, as diluted as it had become, it still looked glutinous as crimson washed down the drains like syrup.

  By the time her body would be discovered, there would be nothing left of her but shredded skin.

  When she was alive, her name was Lorna Richards. She shared an apartment with her friend, was two months behind with her rent and owed $200 to the man in the apartment below. She had been considering accepting his offer for sex so that her debt was settled. She had made up her mind to do it…tomorrow.

  Lorna had been torn apart, bones broken and consumed for the marrow they offered. Fragments of bones still littered the ground like tooth picks. Flesh clung desperately to the steps of the outside fire escape, stretched and ripped from her body.

  Further down the alleyway her head had been severed and crushed into the ground, her skull smashed and her brain removed.

  Eaten.

  Black hair lay flat to the ground underneath a garbage container, her scalp still attached. The skin on her face was like a latex mask, wrinkled under the collapse of her skull, but huge teeth marks were in view, her nose being the first assault of its bite. Her jaw ripped away, red lipstick still pristine being the only clue of her gender.

  The rest of her body had been in several pieces, the meat on her bones since eaten along with the clothes she wore. Her torso had suffered the same fate as her skull, crushed, ripped apart, her spine broken into their individual pieces.

  By the morning, rats would have taken their share of meat, and other rodents that dared to challenge them.

  By the morning, she would be just another missing person.

  By the morning, no one would know about the creature out of a bad fairy tale who shouldn’t exist at all.

  2

  Jack charged his fist into the door, cracking the panel hard. “They’re going to fuckin’ kill me! You don’t understand.” He paced the room, fist cradled in his other hand. He had scarlet painted splinters hanging from his knuckles, but as he tightened his hand around them, he squeezed them further in. He wanted to feel the pain. He figured that if the pain was so great then everything else wouldn’t matter, like a voice being drowned out by the noise of a crowd. “I can’t breathe,” he admitted, grabbing his throat, eyes wide and desperate. “I’m choking in here!” He pounded at his head, and then with the same hand that splinters protruded from, he palmed the wall, sending shocks into his hand as the wood dug deeper. It served like alcohol and, for a second or two, he forgot about his problems. He stared at the crimson hand print on the wall, his mind distracted by the descending blood. It spoke to him, brick and mortar, with whispers he dared not listen to.

  They’ll cut you up, Jack! Kill you until you’re almost dead, keep you alive but in pieces. So many pieces. They’ll cut your arm right off, make you watch. And if you don’t, they’ll slice off your eyelids, too, so you can’t close your eyes. That’s how they work, Jack. You’re a dead man.

  A Dead Man!

  Jack covered his ears to stop the voices, closed his eyes so he couldn’t see the handprint that had formed a mouth. It was speaking to him. But he couldn’t shut them away; the voices rattled around in his brain like a game of pinball, reverberating against his skull.

  “Hey, calm down! Must be some other way,” Sam urged. He started to approach his brother, hands raised in surrender. The blood would clean away, although seeing the crack in the door made him anxious about what his landlord would say. “You look like shit, Jack. When’s the last time you ate?”

  “Ate? Jeez, I can’t afford shit!”

  “But you find the money to drink?” Sam reminded him. “How much you had this time?”

  “Not enough,” his voice was raised. And then a little sombre, “Besides, it makes me forget.” He touched his throat again. It felt like huge hands were wrapped around his neck, squeezing him into despair, tighter like a hangman's noose. He salvaged a few deep breathes and tried to relieve the pressure in his chest that worried him less than his debt.

  “Well—you look ill.”

  Jack looked at himself through a mirror, pulling down the bottoms of his eyes with his good hand, noticing the redness around the rims. They were bloodshot alright. He didn’t look well. A man in his thirties? Hell—he looked like he was approaching his fifties. He was pale and gaunt. He was fatigued, and his only source of nourishment was the liquor he poured down his throat every day.

  But as Sam was about to place a grip on Jack’s shoulder, he spun around and grabbed his brother by the neck, and with his hand dripping blood, Sam thought he was going to grind his fist into his face like he did with the door. But he stopped short, instead, resting his hand on Sam’s chest, blood staining his shirt. “You have no fuckin’ idea!” Spittle exploded from his mouth. Sam had to turn away as the smell of alcohol from Jack’s mouth hit him. Sam didn’t have the courage to wipe his face dry. He stood rigid and numb, afraid of what his older brother would do to him next. “If drink helps me forget, that’s all I need. Take that away and I’ll kill myself!”

  “But—” Sam eventually uttered, stepping back, although his brother still held his shirt, like he would never let go as he breathed toxic air into his brothers face.

  “This is the way, bro! This is the way. I’m real desperate,” Jack’s voice was breaking. Sam had never seen him this way before, not even when they were kids and he’d purposely poured juice over Jack’s Nintendo 64. He’d been angry then, had even pinned him down to the bed and slapped him a few times. But the rage in Jack’s eyes now wasn’t just anger; it was fear. “So—if I don’t do this shit, they’re going to kill me. And besides,” he shrugged, his head low as he pushed away from his brother, “already accepted their offer, try to pay off some of it, at least.”

  “Drug trafficking? That something you wanna start?” he asked incredulously. He went over to the window. The breeze that cut through the blinds was cool and welcome. Sam parted the blinds with his fingers and peered through.

  Jack sneered, “Oh, yeah, bro! At the top of my freakin’ bucket list!”

  Sam glared at him. The blinds snapped shut again, rattling like they would come away from the window they were set in. “I’ve seen what happens when things go wrong. The bag can burst inside.”

  Jack shrugged like a sulking boy; he had already made up his mind. “Least the debt will be clear!”

  “I’m serious,” his voice raised. “What if it goes bad
? It can happen! What if they come looking for next of kin? Like me?”

  Jack backed away, silent because he knew that Sam was right. He turned around; couldn’t let him see the anguish on his face. There was no denying his brother was right; he always had been the sensible one, and not the fuck up of the family. Jack muttered, with the intention that Sam wouldn’t hear, “Fuck next of kin. I’m screwed and you think of yourself.”

  Sam did hear. “Fuck, Jack. You cynical bastard! The Brown brothers don’t give a shit about anyone. They just want their money, and if you die trying to pay them back, they’ll come for me. And if I can’t do anything for them, they’ll go for my next of kin, too. They won’t stop until they’ve got their money.” He sighed. “Jeez, Jack. What the fuck were you thinking getting involved with these guys? What did you think would happen?” His eyes were following Jack around the room as he couldn’t ground himself to one spot; couldn’t stop moving; couldn’t stop twitching. Sam knew it was nerves. He finally said, sounding abruptly sarcastic, “So, yeah, you’re right; fuck next of kin!” waving his hand as if swatting away a fly.

  Jack glanced apologetically at him, then locked his fingers on the back of his head, elbows joining to hide his face away from the world, away from responsibility. “I know, I know. I’m a freakin idiot! Anyway’s—” he huffed, and sucked on his bottom lip, “—been two weeks. Ain’t going to happen.” He felt a comforting warmth on the back of his head, absorbing into his hair until he realised it was his hand. It still dripped blood. Sam threw him one of his old t-shirts for him to use as a bandage, which he loosely wrapped around his hand. He nudged his chin by way of a ‘thank you’.

  “I might’ve been able to help. Got a couple grand put aside.”

  Jack laughed, shaking his head. “Bro! Your heart is pure.” He knew if he did take the money, it would be gone in a few bets.

  “Get your head straight,” Sam pleaded. “This is no way to live.”

  “No fuckin’ shit.” He pulled out a cigarette from a packet of ten, lit it, inhaled deeply, smoke fluidly exhaling through nostrils as though he was giving away his soul to the devil. In a funny way, he felt like he was.

  “I know my two grand wouldn’t cut it, but I gotta know.” He went over to him.

  “Not sure you do Sam,” he shook his head. “It’s not good. In fact, it’s fucked!” he forced a smile, but then it faded and looked like it would never return. “Just like me.”

  “Try me.”

  Jack watched the ash burn from the tip of the cigarette and squinted at Sam through a film of white smoke. “Five hundred—and three zeros.”

  Sam couldn’t say anything about the debt; he didn’t know what to say even if he could find the words, and although he was thinking, ‘stupid asshole’, his heart opened up to how pathetic his elder brother looked to him right now. Without the respect he once showed in abundance, he saw his brother as a shell of the man he knew. A worn-out man who had nothing else to give. So, he actually understood the logic behind Jack’s mayhem, and a part of him agreed. “You hear what they do to you?”

  “Folklore, that’s all they are,” Jack said, straining the smoke from tightened lips.

  “They tied this woman to a chair.”

  “Oh, that old chestnut,” he laughed.

  “It’s true. Her daughter was tied too, back to back, hands retrained.”

  Jack nodded, grinning because he’d heard it before with the same ignorance as he showed now.

  “They wedged both their mouths open. The child had acid poured down her throat first. The mother was forced to listen to her daughter’s screams. And it wasn’t until her daughter had died when her mother had the same fate.”

  “Yeah, I heard that their throats were burnt all the way through.”

  “So you believe the stories?”

  “Yeah, well.” Jack did believe in the story, as with all the other stories that had gone through the papers or the news. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.”

  “Jack, this woman owed them money, too. Do you know how much that was?”

  “No, but I’m sure you’re going to remind me.”

  “She was a waitress at one of their nightclubs. Apparently, she had asked Tom Brown for an advance. He declined, but lent her some money anyway, in return for a favour. He said that he would waver the interest if she gave him a blowjob. She did—”

  “She did!” Jack scoffed. “Wow—must’ve been a slut. And you know this—how?”

  “I knew one of the girls that worked there. And no, she wasn’t a slut, just desperate. She had a kid. But she gave him what he wanted anyway and the next day a grand was delivered to her doorstep. Although, she never could afford to pay him back.”

  Jack was listening intently, the cigarette between his fingers an inch long in ash. He dreaded to think what they’d do to him. Acid down the throat times five hundred. But he couldn’t imagine what they would have planned for him. Eventually, he stubbed out his cigarette in the glass ashtray, went to the door, looked at the crack in the panel. He whispered an apology for the damage, but deep down he was apologising for being his brother.

  3

  Jack lived on the third floor of an apartment block twenty minutes walk away from Sam. The rain was beating the pavements outside, and the road with the absence of traffic shined like a placid river under street lighting. He let himself inside, pushing through the door that protested against the floor. He strolled down the ground floor corridor, passing the peeling blue door of apartment five where the door sounded as if it would vibrate away from its hinges. Normally, he would have joined the party, but on this occasion, he wasn’t in the mood.

  The elevator hadn’t worked for a long while, so he took the stairs, holding his breath as he tried impossibly to ignore the smell of piss. When he exited the stairwell onto the third floor, it wasn’t much of a tradeoff as the pungent smell of burnt cooking and marijuana almost instantly made his face contort. From his floor, he could still hear the music humming in the distance. He stopped at his door, studied the beatings the wood had taken in recent months, the boot marks, the cracked framework.

  As he entered his apartment, he couldn’t help but feel relieved as he became a part of his own familiar smell, but as he closed the door behind him the relief turned to loneliness. Not even a cat to welcome him home as he watched his apartment like he was waiting for someone. He locked the door, sliding across six heavy-duty bolts, and lingered on the last. He was thinking of the mother and her daughter, and couldn’t release the vision from his mind.

  Acid. What a way to go.

  He removed his jacket and hung it over the back of the chair, near a computer. He would always routinely check his emails. It was his ritual after arriving home. Just like he would glance at his mobile phone in case he had missed that one call or that message, a contact that would make all of his problems disappear. Mostly the emails would be junk. But tonight, as he woke up his computer from a peaceful slumber, there was this one message with the subject:

  ‘I WILL PAY YOUR DEBT’

  Although sceptical, because he had seen false promises like this before, his curiosity was stirred. He opened the file regardless and the message read:

  ‘I am ready to talk. Open the link’

  He took a seat, checked over his shoulder like he was doing something he shouldn’t in his empty apartment. He accessed the link expecting the front page of a porn site at the very least. The screen went blank for a few seconds. Jack waited patiently listening to the static of a dormant screen and, through the night of the monitor, he saw something shift.

  A shadowy figure of a man. A woman?

  More silence followed. Jack wondered whether who was on the other end could see him. He cleared his throat. “Hello?” Jack asked inquisitively but in the fear of sounding ridiculous. He checked nervously over his shoulder again, although he knew he was alone. “What is this shit?” he mumbled to himself, before turning back to the monitor, shuffling his chair closer to the screen. He s
tared closely into the LCD void and, although he couldn’t really see his reflection looking back at him, he had wondered if the shape on the other side was actually his own or the person who wished to speak with him. “Hello?” He squinted, trying to make out the shape, to see a face.

  “Mr Monday? Mr—Jack Monday?” a voice asked from the black monitor. It was a man’s voice, clear and sharp.

  Jack didn’t speak at first, couldn’t speak. He checked over his shoulder again, he guessed out of nervous habit, and couldn’t help but chuckle. “What?” he whispered.

  “Jack Monday? That is whom I am speaking to, if you would please confirm.”

  “Yes—yes, that’s me.”

  “That is I,” he corrected. “Good—” There was more silence.

  “Can I help?”

  “Help?” he laughed, although not sounding obnoxious, Jack found it warm and reassuring. “I think you can reverse that question, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know.” Do I? “It kind of depends on what this is about. I can’t see you for starters.”

  There was a pause like he was thinking. “I like my privacy.” The silhouette didn’t move, as still as a mannequin. “This is about you, Jack Monday. This has always been about you.”

  Everyone wants a piece of me. And for a moment, the walls seemed to close in on him, squeezing out the life he had so little of, the part for which he was trying so desperately to hold onto.

  “It must be difficult,” the man said.

  “You have no idea,” Jack told him. He shuffled closer.

  “I know everything, Jack Monday. I know about the money; I know what will happen if the debt is not settled. I know about the trafficking; and do you think this will solve your problem? Your debt will be infinite. Don’t you realise this?”

  “How do you know all this—” and he thought for a moment: Is this the Brown brothers? A test?