A lost and forgotten chapter of the ‘BITE’ universe, telling a similar tale of tragedy and revenge, with a new spin on the series’ established werewolf lore and some familiar faces…
As with most authors, when I wrote my first novel I looked to books I’d read for inspiration, and two Stephen King works laid the blueprint for ‘BITE’: Cycle of the Werewolf and Carrie, which were coincidentally the first two King books I’d ever read. Just like King’s ‘Carrie’, my first novel explored the struggles of a teenager with an abundance of social issues alongside grappling with a growing power within themselves, all culminating in a prom night bloodbath; except rather than telekinesis, my teenage terror was the same monster seen in ‘Cycle of the Werewolf’.
Also as is the case with a lot of authors, I never intended the first book I wrote to spawn any sequel or spin-offs, and yet I find myself here eight years on unable to leave the world I created in that initial novel alone.
If ‘BITE’ was a mixture of Carrie and Cycle of the Werewolf, then this story is almost certainly a blend of Thinner and Christine (all with a lycanthropic twist, of course). When I originally came up with the concept, it wasn’t supposed to be a serious story that I’d publish, it was just meant to be a little fun for myself. While it undoubtedly maintains some silly elements, I found a way to work it into the ‘BITE’ mythos in a more serious manner than first intended.
B1T3: A ‘BITE’ Short Story
By Keelan Berry
From a section of Dr Felix Peterson’s Discarded Notes on ‘Werewolf – The History of the Lycanthrope’
During my research surrounding the beast that had infected Kevin Baxter with the werewolf curse, I happened upon an incident some four decades prior that bore uncanny resemblance to the case of the teenage werewolf which culminated in the ‘full moon prom’. However, this older case also contained some marked differences; namely, the vehicle (quite literally, in this case) through which the vengeance curse was executed. Despite this, I endeavoured to get to the bottom of the matter, and through mine and my fellow hunters’ increasing connections with police constabularies up and down the country, was able to get hold of some evidence previously unseen by the public which linked this case directly with that of Kevin Baxter. Unfortunately, much like the aftermath of the ‘full moon prom’, I suspect the incident of which I am about to retell was quashed by the responding officers or their higher-ups and subsequently misreported in the media. Perhaps the truth of this particular and peculiar incident will never be truly known, however the following piece of evidence – an excerpt from the diary of an elderly traveller – sheds new light on the previously closed case, and brings it into direct contact with a series of events that ends with Kevin Baxter’s massacre at the ‘full moon prom’, all through one familiar face.
*
From the journal of Reuben Gray, accessed by Dr Felix Peterson from police archives
I met a man once. Tall – really tall – with long black hair and light brown skin. At first glance you’d have placed him somewhere in his thirties of forties, but by then I’d been around long enough to know that eyes give a person away, and this man was nowhere near thirty or forty. He was much, much older. But I didn’t ask questions, I could see in his eyes he’d been through an ordeal – no, that’s putting it lightly… this man had been through hell. He’d just arrived back in England after some time in America, he said, and was passing through our camp on his way somewhere (he wouldn’t say, and I don’t ask questions). Of course, we fed him and gave him shelter for a night, but I could see that to let him continue his journey would be dangerous. He’d suffered, but was still marching on to whatever the next checkpoint of his mission was, which meant the execution would be sloppy. Not only that, but I could see this man had once been just like me, surrounded by people just like us. I won’t lie: I was interested in him. I wouldn’t ask questions, that’s not my way, but I did hope to find out more about his story. So I offered for him to stay longer, and though he took some convincing, in the end he relented and stayed with us for a few more weeks until we had outstayed our welcome on that particular section of unused land and went on in search of new pastures.
It was at that point we went our separate ways, but I was confident that some of his wounds had healed, and that he would proceed with more caution than if I’d have let him go on his way after one night. As for me and my family, and our people, we set up camp on an abandoned car park just outside of a recently gentrified town. We went largely unnoticed, and became comfortable. I’d travelled with my people my whole adult life – the better part of fifty years now since they took me in – and I couldn’t remember the last time we’d stayed somewhere for so long. Nobody had any desire to move on anytime soon. The car park was situated in such an area that it was hidden from the newly renovated town; people didn’t really have to pass through it and there were no residential areas around it, which meant no funny looks and no angry locals. We were comfortable, and with the worst of the winter around the corner (nobody likes travelling in winter), we were happy to stay for many more months to come.
Once we had decided to stay, and the first signs of winter arrived, the trouble began. It was naïve of us, perhaps, to believe that we could get so comfortable somewhere. At first it was just some low-level security officials from the town who we could mostly just ignore or turn away without much of an argument or discussion. Apparently we were ‘taking up private land’ (the usual line, even if it wasn’t true). Well, we knew our rights better than anyone; it would be foolish not to when you live life as we do, and we knew that we were well within them in staying on that abandoned car park. Still, the security persisted, and when they saw they weren’t getting anywhere, came back in bigger numbers with some volunteer police officers – again, not enough to budge us or even register with us as a threat, no matter what kind of strong lawful language or intimidation tactics they used.
Now usually, we’d have moved on before things escalated, but as I say nobody likes travelling in the winter, and we’d taken umbrage to the attitude of these people: we’d been on that land for a couple of months and nobody had bothered with us, so why now? Our answer came one day in the form of a Mr Jules Kilbane, who I afterwards discovered was a local businessman responsible for much of the local regeneration, and he’d clearly set his sights on the old car park to further his interests and expand his reach. He came to us – flanked by a couple of the security guards who’d been visiting us previously – all smiles and charm, striking a very different tone to the one we’d been receiving in the weeks prior, and told us there must be a way to ‘cut a deal’ and come to ‘some sort of arrangement’.
Well, we were not material people, and it was all too easy to turn him down and watch that charming smile simmer and boil before melting away into unbridled rage. He was not a man used to being told no, or not getting his own way, and he stormed away from our camp like a scolded toddler. At this point, we readied ourselves for serious trouble. It had been many years since a stand-off or any sort of violence had broken out. I’d probably been a youth the last time it had. Either way, there was a new atmosphere in the camp, one of anticipation. Some of us older ones, truth be told, were excited. The younger lot a bit more apprehensive, but no less up for the fight.
And so we set about moving our vehicles, positioning them in a way so that they were harder to get in amongst, using the vans and cars that nobody lived in as a sort of barrier or wall so that if they were attacked first nobody would be harmed. We all made sure we were armed and had weapons ready to fight should it come to that – baseball and cricket bats, even steel pipes were propped up next to doors so that they could be picked up at a moment’s notice on the way out to fight. We had the numbers, of that we had no doubt; this was too small an issue for actual police to come and bother with us, so we’d just be up against Kilbane and whatever cronies he could patch together by paying his security a bit extra. He would have had the locals on his side, too, if any of them had been bothered by us, but as there were no houses around the car park we were confident that none of them would feel strongly enough to get themselves into a pointless fight.
As the next week started to roll by without incident, the feeling of anticipation grew, and then subsided. It appeared that Kilbane and his men weren’t coming back. We thought that he was just banking on us moving on eventually. Another week went by, and we started to relax. Without a punch being thrown, without a weapon being brandished or a single drop of blood being shed, we appeared to have won. We thought we could live out the rest of the winter season on that car park before moving onto our next location.
But then winter ended in flames.
One night, about three weeks on from Kilbane’s visit, I was woken up in the middle of the night by screams, and then the realisation that I was being torn forcibly from my bed by something clamped around my leg (similar to what I imagined being stuck in a bear trap feels like). I squirmed and tried to fight, but whatever was pulling me was strong – fast, too. Within seconds I was dragged out of my van and into the centre of bright, bursting orange flames exploding into the night sky. The heat licked at my exposed skin, and I was dragged beyond our camp and into a nearby patch of greenery which had been untouched by the flames.
I saw my people – trying to escape through their windows or fleeing through their doors engulfed in flames – all of them screaming and dying. Once the thing at my leg released the pressure I jumped to my feet, but my old bones combined with whatever damage had been inflicted on my leg brought me quickly to my knees, and looking at the ring of fire that had been created around our camp, I knew that there was nothing I could do.
Still, I wanted to be with them, even if it was in death. I would burn with them, die with them, spend eternity with them. Except when I determinedly got to my feet, that hulking black mass of a monster that must have dragged me from my bed and out of the flames stepped in front of me, yellow eyes even brighter than the flames behind it and teeth bared. The sight of it, and everything that had happened, sent me again into a land of unconsciousness.
When I woke, the beast had taken me even further away, into a woodland. Except it wasn’t a beast anymore – it had taken the form of a man.
“You rescued me once,” He said. “And now I have done the same for you.”
I won’t lie: in that moment, I wanted to kill him. What if I didn’t want to be saved? And why hadn’t he tried to save any of the others? Of course, I know the answer to those questions now, but in that moment there was nothing I wanted more than to kill that tall man with long black hair who could turn himself into a wolf.
“Teach me.” I said instead, knowing that my future now mirrored his own: my life had been taken from me, but that would not stop me from wreaking vengeance upon those who had taken it.
He shook his head.
I wept, I wailed, I walloped the green ground with my fists. If I could have killed him, I would have, but I was an old man; so was he, but he had somehow preserved his youth, and was a shapeshifter. I couldn’t touch him. He was fully healed now, I could see that, and nothing was coming in between him and his mission. If he would not teach me his ways, then the best I could do was take inspiration from him, even if I did hate him for saving me and then depriving me of the tools to enact my revenge in the same way he had been doing.
We spent a couple of days together, not talking much, but he looked after me, clothed me, fed me and watered me, kept me alive until I was ready to go it alone. He gave me some money (I didn’t ask how he got it; I don’t ask questions, even after losing everything), and set out to a cheap hotel not too far from the town where my people had gone up in flames.
The one good thing I had to cling onto was that Jules Kilbane had never laid eyes on me. When he’d visited our camp with his false charm I’d been in my van watching everything unfold from the window. And so I knew what I had to do.
I’d seen it in my companion’s eyes: revenge took time. It could not be exacted instantly, and to try to do so would simply be to fail instantly. However hard the path, however long it turned out to be, that was the price to pay for karma.
Over the years after the ‘tragic accident’ (as the authorities and the media referred to the fire) I started doing odd jobs in and around the town, and eventually rented myself a little place, staying just close enough to find out all I needed to about Kilbane. He had a pretty wife and two kids – a boy and a girl – the boy was nearing adulthood and clearly being groomed to take over from his dad, but in the tough, ‘you have to make your own way – I did’ style some parents opted for. The kid, like me, did odd jobs around the town, working in retail and customer service at some of his dad’s businesses to build up his experience.
I kept watch and waited for my opportunity, until one day it came to me. At that point I was one of the town square cleaners, which gave me opportunity to move around outside the shops and make what acquaintances I could to try and find out about what was going on in Kilbane’s life. Of course, most people didn’t even know who Kilbane was, but store managers did, and to get talking to them was like getting lucky on the lottery. One day, though, I hit the jackpot.
I’d just started cleaning outside of one of the clothing retailers, when I heard some kid talking about how he was about to take his driving test and needed to find a car to buy – the catch was his dad was making him pay for his own car, out of what he could scrape together from his own wages and savings.
Yeah, it was Kilbane’s son, and it gave me an idea.
The shitty apartment and years of odd jobs had allowed me to save money, too. So I bought a car, quite cheap, just broken down enough that I could get some repairs and aesthetic jobs done on it; in fact I had the whole thing spray painted from the scratched and faded blue it had been to a new and shiny silver.
After that, I spread word as far as I could through the town via the connections I’d made that I was looking to sell my car. No need for it anymore, I said; I wasn’t getting any younger and was happy to settle down in the town now, I said; it was in good shape but I’d sell it for a good price, I said. Obviously, it didn’t take long for word to make its way back to Kilbane’s son. He came to me one day while I was cleaning, all sheepish, talking about his upcoming test and how he needed a car and heard I was looking to sell.
“Need a guarantor.” I said, as I carried on sweeping outside the shop as though I wasn’t really interested, and he got even more desperate, telling me about how he needed to find a car quickly because his dad wasn’t going to buy one for him and he wanted to be able to drive to his girlfriend’s as soon as he’d passed his test. Eventually, I relented, and told the kid to meet me at the old car park that night with the money in hand.
To my surprise, he turned up.
To my delight, his father was in tow.
By that point, the old car park was a construction site, so of course any transaction taking place there was probably dodgy. The boy had likely tried his best to keep it from his father, but in the end spilled the beans. I wasn’t complaining, I wanted him to be there, it’s why I’d demanded a guarantor in the first place; I got to take the measure of the man in the flesh. He was aggressive, getting in my face and even grabbing me at one point, trying to intimidate me into making a confession about either the car being faulty or having more sinister intentions. I took it, and calmy convinced him that neither was true. When he was satisfied with my performance (and had tested the car out for himself), he turned on his son and told him that if he was stupid enough to do deals with old fools like me, he deserved everything he got afterwards.
Well, the boy paid in cash just like I’d asked and started driving away in the car with his father in the passenger seat, giving me an exasperated raised eyebrows look as he drove off into the night, while his father berated him and told him to keep his eyes on the ‘fucking road’ otherwise he’d fail his test instantly.
Once the headlights had faded from view, I collapsed to my knees probably not somewhere too far from the spot I’d done the same thing in years ago; back then I was watching flames engulf my family and my people, now I was watching them chase down the man responsible for that crime.
Except this time, I was laughing.
Not only had I spent the years working odd jobs and keeping tabs on Kilbane and his family; I’d spent them studying the gift the tall man with the long black hair had. If it could work on people, I was sure it could work on objects too; at least those that were powered by something. And a car seemed to be the perfect vehicle for that vengeance.
Remembering the kid’s face as he drove off with his prick of a father in the passenger seat, knowing what was coming their way, it almost made me feel sorry for him.
Almost.
*
From a section of Dr Felix Peterson’s Discarded Notes on ‘Werewolf – The History of the Lycanthrope’
Taken in isolation, the reminiscences of Reuben Gray probably seem like the ramblings (albeit somewhat experienced and educated in manner) of an elderly and bitter man looking for revenge; the sort of thing we’d normally write off or talk about in conjunction with conspiracy theories without anything else to support it as being actually calculated and sinister in intent. The next two documents I reprint here will prove it to be as such.
*
Entry #1 from the diary of Dominic Kilbane, accessed by Dr Felix Peterson from police archives
I wish dad wasn’t such a prick.
He wants me to ‘make my own way’ to the point where it’s basically his catchphrase, but then when I make my own deal to buy my first car (which he wanted me to do in the first place) he gets all upset and involved. It’s a good job the old guy who sold it seemed understanding, or maybe he just felt a bit sorry for me, either way it doesn’t matter: I’ve got my first car!
I passed my test this morning, and on my first attempt too. Even dad found it difficult to pick any fault in that. Not that I cared what he had to say, the first thing I did after passing was drive straight to Amelia’s house. The car roared and sputtered into life, which was a bit weird because it had run smoothly when I first drove it on the night I bought it, but I tried not to worry too much about it. It was my first, cheap car after all, it was supposed to have some faults (something dad didn’t seem to understand).
Anyway, Amelia knew I’d bought a car and that I’d be ready for my test at some point, but I didn’t tell her when it actually was, so it was a cool surprise for her when I turned up at her door with my new car parked on her drive.
She was super excited, and went and got herself dressed properly so she could come for a drive with me. That took the better part of an hour, of course, but then we were finally on the road together. We talked about where we could go and what sort of road trips we could take together now, but the whole time a bigger dream was taking shape in my mind: just running away with her. Like they did in all those romantic comedy films. Getting away from the parent holding me back and just going away with the girl I love.
That was the dream, but it wasn’t like in the films unfortunately: first I’d have to convince Amelia to go along with it, and then I’d have to make sure we actually had somewhere to go and be safe. I’m going to work on it I think. I don’t want to be working for and being watched by dad for the rest of my life. I know the future is a promising one under him, and I’ll be rich, but what does that mean, really? It doesn’t make him happy.
For now, I’ll stay. I wouldn’t want to leave mom and Jess alone with him anyway. I remember when Jess was first brought home and mom told me how I had to be a big brother and look after her. I took that to mean against anyone – even our dad – even though she didn’t get the brunt of his verbal assaults. They were reserved mostly for me.
Today was a good day either way, and even though I took mom and Jess for a drive too to get some lunch, it will be the feeling of driving to Amelia’s house to pick her up for the first time that I’ll cherish forever.
*
Entry #2 from the diary of Dominic Kilbane, accessed by Dr Felix Peterson from police archives
Mom woke me up about fifteen minutes ago. She was gently shaking me and speaking softly to me. When I finally came to she was telling me that she thought I’d left my car running in the garage and that I should go and turn it off before it woke dad up. I grumbled a thank you and asked if it had woke Jess up too – she said no – and so I headed downstairs with my keys, going into the garage through the adjoining kitchen door.
In my tiredness I didn’t register any sign that the car was running until my bare feet landed on the cold stone floor of the garage. They started to vibrate. Focusing on the car, I heard it then, like a low hum. I made my way around the front of the car, kneeling down in front of the grill and listening. There was a sound coming from inside, but it was barely audible, it was the vibration that was the worst bit and that must have woken mom up.
The strangest thing, though, I didn’t fully register until I was making my way back into the house after getting in the car and making sure it was fully turned off (it was, so I suppose it must have just needed turning on and off again, I’ll put it down to faulty wiring or something). The strangest thing was the red light in the front left headlight. I only noticed it out of the corner of my eye at first when I was getting to my feet after listening to the grill, but then I looked directly at it, even rubbed my eyes to make sure it was real. It was dim, like the dying embers of a fire, but it was there all the same. I don’t know how bulbs work in a car headlight, but this was like looking at one of those optical illusions. The redness didn’t look as though it was actually part of anything, it was more like it was just floating on its own, like an orb. Not worth telling anyone because they’ll put it down to me being tired and seeing things in the middle of the night, but that red light was there, just the same as the sound coming from inside the grill was.
Oh well, hopefully I only have to put up with the thing for a few months before I can save for something better.
Don’t they say you always love your first car? I’ll struggle to love this old silver girl if she keeps playing tricks in the middle of the night like this…
Or is it that you never forget your first car?
Who knows?
Back to bed.
*
Entry #3 from the diary of Dominic Kilbane, accessed by Dr Felix Peterson from police archives
I hope to God (not that he’ll help me anyway, he never has before) that I keep you hidden well enough and that my dad never gets hold of you and reads you.
Two nights after the incident in the garage I snuck out the house a little after midnight. I made sure to park the car on the street rather than in the garage so I could slip away as quietly as possible and drive to Amelia’s. Even though we’d planned it all out, it still felt exciting, sneaking out of our houses and driving around in the car. It gave me another taste of what our life could be like if we just ran away from everything together.
We drove for miles, just talking and listening to songs (she put some of her CDs in my glovebox), until we found a nice spot near one of the local parks. In the open space, we had an amazing view. Above the treetops, the night sky was a dark purple-ish colour, and it held so many stars. The moon was big and bright, not quite full, but probably only a few days away from it.
I turned the car off and we sat there in silence for a while, just holding hands and admiring the sky. Eventually we ended up on the back seat. We’ve done stuff before, loads of times, but always in our houses. There was something different in the car. It was more difficult to move around and there was a lot of clumsiness, but once we got going it was just… the best ever.
Except when we were done there wasn’t much chance to bask in the ecstasy. I don’t know if I can describe it properly, but the car made a noise, sort of like the engine was being revved, but with a guttural quality to it, as though it had been made by an animal and not a machine. Anyway, it made that horrible sound, and lurched forward as though it had been jolted into action… except that too was different. I don’t know, I’m probably not doing it justice written down, but the car didn’t just roll forward or anything like that. It was like it bounced.
I covered myself quickly and climbed into the front but by the time I had the car had stopped whatever it had been doing, and it was definitely off – the key wasn’t even in the ignition. “I don’t know what’s going on with this fucking thing.” I think I said, and Amelia asked what was wrong. I told her about what the car had done a couple of nights ago, nearly waking the whole house up, and she suggested that maybe I should speak to the guy who sold it to me.
I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that already. The old guy had clearly sold me a dodgy car, but he’d seemed nice enough, and he wouldn’t have sold it at that price if there wasn’t something wrong with it, but if I could find out what then maybe I could get it fixed, or maybe there was a knack to getting it to stop being so temperamental.
The thing is, I spent the rest of this week keeping an eye out for the guy at work, and then actively looking for him about town, and then asking after him in all the shops. Anyone who knew who I was talking about said they hadn’t seen him for about two weeks – about the time he sold me the car.
So maybe this is one example where dad wasn’t overreacting. The deal was too good to be true. I’ll have to get rid of the car. I haven’t drove the car or even taken it out of the garage since the incident with it at the park. It scared me a bit. What if it did that while I was at work and slammed into another car, or even a person?
I’ll have to talk to dad about the car at some point and how it’s no good, but I may have found my excuse: that red light in the front left headlight isn’t going away. I know that if it keeps staying on like that it’ll run the battery down eventually, and maybe that’s how I’ll be able to say the thing is fucked rather than the other stuff. I don’t really want dad knowing either of the real stories about how I found out its faulty: even mom hasn’t told him the first one and I definitely don’t want to share the second story about me and Amelia being in the car when it suddenly seemed to take on a life of its own.
We’ll see what the weekend brings.
*
Entry #4 from the diary of Dominic Kilbane, accessed by Dr Felix Peterson from police archives
“Get the fuck up.” Those were the words he used. No soft whispering like mom had done earlier in the week, and no gentle taps, just an aggressive ripping back of the duvet and his hand grabbing my shoulder and pulling me upright.
My adrenaline kicked in pretty quickly, chasing away my grogginess and allowing for anger to take hold, but the explosion had to wait too because I heard it: the car. That same humming, rumbling rhythm from a few nights before, except much louder this time.
Dad started ranting about how he told me no car was as cheap as the one I’d bought, unless there was something seriously wrong with it, which there clearly was with this one. He went on and on as he marched me across the upstairs landing where I could just about hear mom and Jess speaking in hushed tones, before tailing me down the stairs still droning on, and the inevitable ‘if I can’t trust you to do something as simple as buy your own fucking car, how can I expect you to one day run my business?’ lecture was in full swing by the time we stepped foot in the garage, except by then the rattling of the car’s engine was loud enough to drown out most of what he was saying.
I got into the car and repeated the same action as I had done in the week, twisting the key around in the ignition until the rumbling stopped. It didn’t work the first time, so I tried again. When that didn’t work I started to panic a bit to the point where my chest tightened, what would we do if it didn’t stop? And surely it would have to stop at some point, but how? Would it blow up? Start a fire? Puff out a load of smoke and suffocate us?
I pushed down hard on the key, and twisted it slowly, quickly, forcefully, gently, until the car spluttered and finally shutup a few seconds later (though it felt like I’d been sat there doing it for about an hour with dad’s eyes on me the whole time). I looked up at him front the driver’s seat, where he was preparing to launch into another rant, and he’d even started to move around to the front of the car to better scold me.
As he started to tell me how I needed to use my head more and not trust everyone I met, his lower half became coated in a red hue that was coming from the front left headlight. I got out of the car and nodded at it. His rant faltered, and he stumbled over some of his words before he finally stopped talking and looked down.
“It keeps doing that.” I said, pointing towards the headlight and moving around the front of the car to have a look at it myself. Same thing as the other night: the light inside was like an orb, except it was bigger now, casting a bigger and brighter light than the dull one it had a few nights ago. If the battery was dying, or playing up, or something like that, should it be happening the other way around? Why was the light getting stronger?
Either way, it doesn’t matter now, because my dad didn’t say a word as he picked up a hammer from the tool bench in the garage and smashed that light in.
“I’ll buy you a fucking car, seeing as I need to do everything around here.” He said as he charged back into the house.
Well, I don’t care how shitty the car was, I’m not going to let him get away with smashing my things like that. I don’t want him to buy me a car. I don’t want to work for him. I don’t want to take over his business. I don’t want to share the same house as him.
I’m leaving. Not tonight. But I’ve already packed one bag. I know mom and Jess will be okay, and I’m sure I’ll still see them. I just hope I can convince Amelia to come with me.
I’ll talk to her, and hopefully soon we’ll be on the road and riding off into the sunset together.
*
Entry #5 from the diary of Dominic Kilbane, accessed by Dr Felix Peterson from police archives
I’ll trade the sunset for a full moon, it’s just as beautiful on a clear night like this.
I’ve packed a few bags with everything I need, and I’ve been transferring them to the boot of my car over the past couple of nights. I haven’t been sleeping much, so every time the car’s started acting up in the middle of the night I’ve been able to just go down and sort it out straight away. It made me think, though: that first night when my mom woke me up, it was only rumbling a little, which meant she must have heard it early, because the last few nights it’s been doing the same low rattling rather than the full-on growling when dad woke me up. So it’s like the car works itself up into a frenzy, almost, if that makes any sense? It starts with that low rattle and vibration, and at some point bursts into a furious roar, and then of course there’s the night when it seemed to jump when me and Amelia were on the back seat.
It’ll get me away from here, anyway. Once I’ve found somewhere to stay and sorted a job out I can look at getting a new car.
I think I might leave this diary here. If dad finds it and reads it maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing after all. He’s not the kind of person who reflects on his behaviour, but maybe that’s because nobody’s ever challenged him. If he sees this, and reads about himself from somebody else’s point of view (his son’s, at that), perhaps he can start to make changes.
I better go now, while the moon is big and bright enough to guide me away from here, and before that grinding of an engine I can already hear starts to get any louder…
*
Initial police response report from the Kilbane residence, unredacted, accessed by Dr Felix Peterson from police archives
Me and my partner responded to a call in the early hours of the morning following up on reports of dangerous driving on a quiet street, followed by a loud bang afterwards and with several witnesses saying they saw the car in question crash into the front of a house.
By the time we got there, we knew that we were unlikely to find anyone involved in the incident – whether in the car or in the house – alive. Having seen incidents similar to this before, the damage a single car crashing into a house does depends on several factors: size of the car, age of the house, for example. This was a small, old car from what we could initially gather, and the house was quite large. At its least impactful, the car would probably have knocked a few bricks out of the wall and done more damage to itself; however, at the right angle and speed, it might have been able to crash partially into a room of the house (the living room, for example).
However, we instantly called for support upon arriving at the scene because practically the entire house had caved in around the car. The car wasn’t big enough to have inflicted such damage, regardless of the speed it was travelling at, and after speaking to witnesses at the scene we determined that the car did not have anything attached to it and that it was the only vehicle that had crashed into the building; but they said it had done so repeatedly.
Pressing the matter, the story remained the same, and from several residents: one had seen the car exit the garage of the house it later crashed into, before speeding and skidding up and down the street, which woke several of the others. They then watched as the car seemed to disappear from view, before revving repeatedly in the distance, and then firing towards the house at a high speed. One of the residents said it was like watching a tape on fast-forward, so quick was the speed of the vehicle. According to them, the car ripped clean through the entire house and came out the other side – slower, but out of the other side all the same.
They recounted that the car looked heavily damaged, including the front bonnet squashed almost to nothing and the windscreen exploded in on itself, as well as at least two of the tires being flat. The car rolled away onto the next street, and at this point several of the residents exited their own properties to move across the road after having called 999. However, they heard the sound of a revving car again and rushed back to their homes, believing there to be a second car and that perhaps they had been involved in racing through the streets.
Residents reported their shock at the very same silver car returning to the scene at high speed, crashing into the same house again. The residents were adamant that the car was the exact same as the one that had initially crashed through the property, despite claiming that it had miraculously fixed itself in the space of a few minutes: the windscreen was intact, and the bonnet was normal again, they said that in some places the paint was scratched, revealing a dull blue beneath, and that the headlights now seemed to be giving off a red hue, but were certain in their assertions nonetheless that this was the same car.
Upon the second crash, residents said the car came in at an angle which allowed it to hit the corner of the house, resulting in a more blunt impact which brought the car to a halt rather than flying clean through the house again. However, this second hit took out one of the corners of the house, as well as the kitchen/dining room, which destabilised the foundations and by the time the car drove off again, the house had started to crumble by itself.
The cycle repeated one last time, the residents claim: the car revved in the distance for some moments, before hitting the house a third and final time. The residents claim that this time, they saw the car’s headlights many moments before the car itself, and that they were emitting a strong, bright, red beam stretching out several yards in front of it.
The third crash completely destabilised the house, and according to the residents it fell within the next couple of minutes. The car’s engine, they said, continued to run at a low, rumbling volume. Several of the residents told how they thought they could hear a man moaning, and that the car seemed to shuffle from side to side and lurch forward slightly, but was impeded by the mound of bricks. There was a crunching sound, as though gears in the car were clawing against the machinery, before the car sputtered and finally died, a cloud of black smoke blowing out from its exhaust.
Two bodies were found beneath the rubble of the house: a woman and a young girl, later identified as Valerie and Jessica Kilbane. Death was determined several hours later to have likely been caused by repeated blows to the head and body of falling bricks and other items from the house. They do not appear to have been hit or run over by the car on any of its three crashes into the house.
One body was found in the car, unidentifiable at the scene but later confirmed to be Dominic Kilbane. Death was determined to have occurred upon the car’s first crash into the house. Dominic’s body sustained further injuries – these the ones which rendered the body immediately unidentifiable – as the head had been almost entirely crushed during the subsequent two crashes.
A fourth and final body was found. Identified immediately as Jules Kilbane.
I must now continue this report in a personal, rather than a professional tone, because of all the strange occurrences of that evening, the finding of Jules Kilbane’s body, and how it got to be where it was and in the state it was, is undoubtedly the most unanswerable question of them all.
Jules Kilbane’s body was found hanging out of the grill of the car, his lower half engulfed in the vehicle. His eyes were open unnaturally wide, and his mouth gaping as though in a silent scream, his face a mixture of eternal shock, pain and terror.
I must report the scene as I saw it, for Jules Kilbane was held within the grill of the car as though by a strong set of teeth which had pierced through his body so violently that they had emptied it of its innards.
August, 2024
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