‘Intruder’ – A Short Story

An elusive thief, on the run from the police, gets more than he bargained for when forcing his way into a random house to hide…

 

I’ve found that the more and more I write, the more ideas I keep getting, and that I keep getting them in the strangest ways. This story, for example, came to me one day while I was staying at my Dad’s during the summer (writing ‘Ghost Train’). I was alone, and suddenly I could hear sirens outside. They were gone within a few seconds, but it made me think; what if they were chasing a criminal, and he decided to break his way into the house to hide?

That’s the premise of ‘Intruder’.

What a frightening thought, right?

 

Intruder

By Keelan Berry

His feet thudded hard on the ground beneath him.

Each quick, desperate stomp made it feel as though the soles of his feet were being split open; and the rain that was hammering down around him, leaking into his shoes, did little to remove his growing fears that his feet actually were bleeding.

But still, he carried on, he had to.

His chest heaved as his mouth and nose worked to try and suck in enough oxygen to sustain his escape.

Each sharp, painful intake of the cold air was beginning to feel like a knife to his chest; again, the pouring rain only added to the feeling that his injuries were more severe than they were. With each breath came the bitter shock of a frigid rain drop, as though blood had shot its way into his mouth from the icy blade puncturing his chest each time he breathed.

But still, he carried on, he had to.

How had he let it come to this?

He knew how it had started, it seemed like such a long time ago now, like a different lifetime. The rest? As it raced through his mind, it was a blur, just like everything in front of him as he sped through the rain and away from the red and blue lights that pursued him.

It had started out of necessity. Where would he be now if he hadn’t started? On the street, no doubt; his girlfriend gone and his child taken from them. It was as simple as that. So he couldn’t regret it, even as he heard the sirens ringing in his ears.

They were young and desperate, with no family to go to and nobody else to support them. So he’d done what he’d had to in order to survive. Burglary. It had started small, gathering items from houses or supermarkets that were easily replaceable once found to have gone missing. Then, as he and his girlfriend started to become financially comfortable, the crime grew.

Bigger houses. Richer people. More money.

They weren’t quite rich people living in a big house themselves yet, but they were well on the way.

And that was what he was questioning now: why did he carry on? After they had built solid financial foundations he would have had plenty of time to search for a more… legitimate career. But that’s not what happened. He’d carried on. Why?

For her. She’d asked him to, she’d begged him to. Who wouldn’t? With the money rolling in and luxurious items piling up, who would want it to stop?

Of course, they could have had those things had he gotten a ‘real’ job, but it would have taken longer.

Did he blame her? Partially.

But if he was really honest with himself, he knew that there was a part of him that needed this lifestyle too. Not the money, not the luxury, but the thrill.

Even now, as his feet slammed off the ground that felt as though it was made of nails, as his lungs inhaled air that felt painfully poisonous, as the red and blue lights screamed behind him… he’d never known excitement quite like it.

However, he couldn’t allow his mind to stray and become too wrapped up in his excitement, he had to keep his focus on the task at hand; he could only run from the police for so long, he’d need to find a hiding place if he was to evade capture. This was the first time he had found himself in a situation like this; most times he’d been able to sneak away unnoticed or hide until they were gone.

Now, though, he wasn’t in a house. He had nowhere to hide, all he could do was run. He was out in the open, and instead of the houses concealing him, they were watching him.

That was when the idea struck him; hit him harder than the rain that was smacking against his head.

He had to get inside one of the houses.

What happened after that, when he was inside a house with people, he would deal with when he came to it. For now he had to focus on getting clear of the sirens, making sure that the police could not see him, and then he was free to hide.

He knew that the car was almost upon him – the sirens were getting brighter and louder.

Allowing his eyes to veer from the path ahead for just a moment, he scanned his surrounding through his rapidly blinking eyelids as he tried to block the rain out. The road up ahead twisted to the left slightly, and led to a roundabout. He could see other cars driving around it. If he could make it there it would surely stall the police car pursuing him and allow him to invade someone’s house, using it to fortify him.

If there was nobody home? Good news.

If there was someone home? Good hostages.

He was willing to go to any lengths to ensure the police did not capture him.

He remembered one job he was on; a burglary early in his career, in which the family had come home as he was scouting the upstairs rooms. He had been sloppy, anticipating that the family would be out a couple of hours having watched them leave the house together not long before, he had left the front door unlocked and the living room a mess after he’d searched in there for valuable items to steal. The family had of course called the police, and instead of risking climbing out of a window from such a height (a skill he learnt later in his career), he had opted to hide in the closet of the children’s bedroom. He had climbed up onto the highest shelf, shut the door and covered himself with blankets and toys. He spent the entire night there and left early the next morning while the family all slept together in the parents’ room.

That was the first scare he’d had, and he’d found that the adrenaline from the thrill of nearly being caught had enabled him to not fall asleep while he hid in that closet.

He allowed himself to turn his head around as he bounded across the roundabout. He heard cars brake and horns blare as he sped over the roundabout, and he saw the police car come to a stop before reaching it so as to avoid a crash, although it began slowly moving forward again soon after as it tried to manoeuvre around the traffic.

He turned forwards again and felt his feet land on the pavement. To his left was a small shopping court, and beyond that a construction site where some houses were already fully built but looked empty.

Perfect.

He changed direction to start running left, and allowed his speed to drop to a jog and his breathing to slow after he had passed the shops and entered the freshly built neighbourhood.

His legs struggled to adapt to a walk after running for so long, and his feet felt heavy; pains started to shoot from his toes up through his legs, but he managed to keep his balance. Thankfully, apart from the people driving, there had been nobody else around. The weather had clearly acted in his favour as a deterrent.

As he took deep breaths and walked slowly through the neat rows of houses, he listened out for the police sirens and heard them in the distance, as though they had carried on past the roundabout and the houses he was now walking past. But then they stopped. They hadn’t faded away into the distance. They’d stopped. The police car had stopped and turned its sirens off.

Calling in backup? Had someone seen him running and pointed out the direction he’d ran in? Were they going to knock on doors searching for witnesses?

Those thoughts confirmed it – he still had to hide, not run.

He had to be absolutely certain that the area was clear before he could return home.

Realising the muscles in his legs wouldn’t allow him to travel much further, he started to walk down the pathway to the house nearest to him.

The street he was on looked isolated in the large construction site; it seemed as though it was the only built-up row of houses, all the others were simply foundations or partly built. As he walked down the small garden, he noticed that there were cars outside some of the houses. Had people moved in already? As he pondered the question and examined the silent street, he approached the front door to the house he had picked, and realised his question was about to be answered.

Suddenly, he heard sirens again. He froze and listened – it was all he could do. They were coming from behind the row of houses, and the sound was getting closer…

The police car… Had it turned around? Was it coming his way?

Sparking into action, he battled against the crippling shots of pain in his legs and bounded across the garden and around the side of the house, dodged the car, manoeuvred around the small garage it was parked in front of and was then forced to leap as high as he could to stop himself from running into the tall wooden fence that had appeared in front of him and make sure he jumped over it instead.

His momentum was stopped but he’d managed to get half of his body over the fresh wood, and so shifted his weight slightly and allowed his tired body to simply fall into the back garden, cushioned by wet grass.

Over the trees that separated the back garden from the main road, he saw the faint flicker of red and blue lights; they sounded closer than they looked. Maybe they weren’t for him, but he wasn’t willing to take any chances, the police would still be looking for him either way.

He rolled over onto his front and pushed himself up onto his knees so that he could start crawling towards the back of the house. Reaching the glass patio doors, he used the handles to pull himself up and slipped slightly before steadying himself to make sure he didn’t fall. Looking up again, he realised that the doors had opened; they had been unlocked.

He stared into the brightly lit house and saw that someone definitely lived there: the kitchen and the living room were plain and quite bare, but furnished.

He looked and listened, but nobody appeared or made a sound, and so he stepped into the house and shut the doors carefully and quietly behind him.

The house was spotless aside from that day’s edition of ‘The Southumberland Gazette’ on top of the kitchen table, and even that was neatly placed as though someone had been sat there reading it (or intended to).

‘The Snatcher Strikes Again’ read that day’s headline.

Snatcher? He wondered, and his first, egotistical thought was that the papers had got his own media-given nickname wrong. During his career, when he’d started burgling more expensive houses and so gained some substantial media coverage, he’d hit a new house every day for a little over a week, and the papers had named him ‘The Intruder’. After that, he’d had to lay low for several months until the hype and police surveillance died down.

However, as his eyes moved to the sub-heading he saw that it was not about him, but something different entirely.

“Serial Abductor Claims Sixth Child”.

He scanned the article. This ‘Snatcher’ had been kidnapping children – young boys to be exact – in the local area over the past few months. That week he’d taken a sixth child, and it sounded as though the kidnappings were starting to happen at an alarmingly more frequent rate.

None of the children had yet been found, and by the sounds of it there was little to go by in terms of leads and no suspects.

He thought about his own child at home and forced his eyes away from the newspaper.

Which is when his gaze rested upon the person sitting in the living room staring directly at him. Dark eyes, shielded by thick, round glasses.

He, the intruder, began to search for a weapon. His hesitance was short lived, though, as he realised that the man looking at him did not feel threatened and appeared to pose no threat. In fact, he was calm and looked as though he was waiting for his intruder to sit down, which became definite when he slowly extended a hand towards the sofa opposite him.

He put one foot out and stepped into the living room, and tried to keep his eyes on the man opposite him but felt that his dark eyes were unsettling, his gaze like laser beams tearing into him.

He tried to remind himself that he was the intruder here – The Intruder – and that he was the one who held all the power.

However, this was a new situation to him. He’d entered a house not to burgle, but to hide; and he’d encountered the owner of the house, something that had never happened before. He’d envisioned it many times, but always in his imagination the person who stumbled upon him ended up unconscious due to their panicked state, not sitting calmly across from him.

He lowered himself onto the sofa, and even though he was nervous he almost exhaled in relief; it was an amazing feeling to finally rest his tired legs. The shooting pains disappeared and the tension in his muscles eased, but he knew that would make it all the more difficult to get to his feet again.

He couldn’t bring himself to look directly at the man sitting across from him – his presence, his stare, was unnerving – so instead he studied the living room and hoped that the sirens he could still just about hear outside would disappear soon.

The walls were completely bare, there was no paint, no wallpaper, no shelves, no mirrors; nothing. There were some small tables with coasters on next to the chair the owner of the house was sitting on, but apart from that there was nothing else; no TV, no cabinet, nothing.

Finally, with reluctance, he brought himself to look at the man who was still staring at him.

A large man. Although he couldn’t quite judge his exact height from sitting position, the intruder guessed that the man would be above six feet tall. His body was bulky, his chest wide and his shoulders broad. He looked at the face again – a face that looked as though it hadn’t been shaved for a number of weeks – looked at the eyes behind those thick glasses. The beard alone made it difficult to work out how old the man was – he could have been twenty, he could have been forty, the features that would have given his age away were well hidden.

He’d made a mistake, either way. He was nowhere near as big as this man, and knew that he was nowhere near as threatening; even though he was the one who had stormed into the house uninvited, even with his all-black uniform on, the man’s presence was more heavy, more unnerving, more threatening, and there was nothing that he could do now to shift the balance of power.

“You’re running?” The man queried, and finally sat back and relaxed slightly, his eyes becoming slightly less dark and frightening. The atmosphere was less intense. But only slightly.

The intruder nodded. He felt he didn’t have the ability to speak just yet.

The dark eyes studied him, as though the mind behind them was weighing up its options.

The lips tightened but the head nodded, “I don’t care what you did. I don’t care for this inconvenience. But I’m sure you’ll be moving along after those red and blue lights have gone.” The man’s voice was low and deep, but clear.

The intruder nodded, but knew that he had to speak now; this man was going to give him temporary shelter, he had to settle his nerves (if he even had any, but it was better to try and get on his good side, at least). “Thank you… I’ll be out of here as soon as possible.”

Too good to be true…

The large man scratched his beard, clapped his hands on his knees and stood. “Toilet is through there.” The man gestured to the door next to him and into the hallway, “You shouldn’t need any of the other rooms, and believe me there’s nothing much for you to steal here.” The man cocked an eyebrow and looked him up and down; I don’t care what you did, he’d said, and apparently that was because he already knew. “I’ll be…” He turned and stood in the doorway, his frame almost filling it, his head only a few inches from the top, “around…” And with that he disappeared into the darkness of the hallway.

Freaky… but too good to be true.

Maybe it was good that he’d encountered a weirdo – a normal person would surely have tried to call for help or throw him out of their house.

Still, he’d have much preferred the houses to be empty as he initially thought they would be.

He listened for the man whose house he was in, but could no longer hear him moving around. Instead, he decided to move his focus back onto the police pursuing him. In one swift movement, he pushed himself up from the sofa. He almost fell back down from the shooting pains that seized the muscles in his legs, but he kept his balance despite wincing out loud through gritted teeth.

He limped into the kitchen and leaned on the counter while looking out the back window. He studied the trees, squinted through the darkness to scan for the red and blue flashing lights. He could no longer see them, but he could certainly hear them, although more distant now. Were they leaving, or just searching?

He turned around again, half expecting the odd owner of the house to be standing there, but he wasn’t.

Instead, he faced the fridge. A fridge that should have been completely white. So why were there tiny specks of red on the handle?

He looked closely, and saw that the dots and lines made the vague outline of a fingerprint.

Paint? He asked himself. But it couldn’t be, and he knew it couldn’t be; the house was undecorated and bare.

He walked forwards, his arm outstretched to place his hand on the cold surface of the fridge door to more closely inspect it.

Something squelched underneath his boot. It was only a faint sound, but in the fog of quietness that consumed the house he heard it clearly.

He looked down.

He was standing in a small pool of dark, red blood.

There was more; lines of redness – some thin, others thick – that travelled all the way up the freezer and ended just beneath the fridge door.

Dizzy – from fatigue, shock, anticipation, he didn’t know – he gripped the fridge handle and opened the door. He had to see.

Bags. Dozens of clear bags. Each of them holding something different. Limbs. Organs. Skin.

He stepped back slightly, mouth open, and fell to one knee. He watched his own shaking hand as it took hold of the freezer handle, and opened that to reveal the same horrors.

Worse still, when he looked – really looked – at the limbs and the organs in front of him, he saw that they were small. Much too small to have been taken from adults.

He thought of the newspaper he had seen upon entering the house, and turned to rush back to it, only to be met by blackness…

“Ten years ago…”

Where am I?

“I made a mistake.”

Am I still in the kitchen?

“There was a tragedy… an accident.”

No… I’ve moved.

“It was my fault.”

Knocked out… How long for?

“I was only a teenager. A young teenager. My brother… just a child.”

He opened his eyes, but whatever room he was in was very dark, he started to blink to try and get his eyes to adjust.

“I told him not to play on the ice.”

Ice… He realised just how cold it was in the room he was in. They might as well have been outside in the rain.

“But he was a child, and children don’t listen, it was my fault.”

He felt his hands on cold floor, and he lifted them up and felt his own arms with them to make sure they were not bound together by anything. Then, he reached down and touched his legs and his feet. Nothing. He was free.

“I assume you have children, Intruder?”

Flick!

A light turned on, but at first had very little effect. He closed his eyes, shut his eyelids together tightly, and then opened them again.

The Snatcher stood in front of him, still obscuring any view of the room he would have had. He stood almost casually, hands camped in the pockets of his jeans and his head cocked slightly to one side as he awaited an answer.

He thought of the newspaper on top of the kitchen table, and was about to lie, when it seemed that the owner of the house had read his mind: “Don’t worry. I’m just making conversation.”

At this point, he assumed he was going to die anyway. He could at least die talking about what he loved, and die protecting them, for he would give no details or clues as to their whereabouts if requested of him.

“Yes.” He forced himself to speak and his head to nod, “A child. Yes.”

The man nodded back at him, “I thought so. You must be providing for someone with your chosen profession.”

The man turned around, “And now… my chosen profession.” He walked forwards and looked down at something that was still not yet visible. “After he drowned, my brother, I determined that I would bring him back using whatever means necessary… At school, I focused my work on the sciences, and then again at college. Finally, university and a part-time electrical job gave me everything I needed. Then, when these new houses were built, it presented me with the perfect opportunity. I bought one immediately and moved in as quickly as possible. One night, I went to the cemetery, hoping it wasn’t too late. I dug him up. And there he was. So small… Still a child. There was little left of him… Some hardened, dry skin, but he’d mostly decomposed. Still, I’d planned for that eventuality. It was more complex, and the one I hoped for the least, but I was ready. I required children, and so I took them, snatched them. One by one. I used their skin, their organs, and recycled it.” His hand patted on something, a surface, and the metallic sound it made echoed around the room.

“Where are we?” He asked.

The man turned slightly, and in doing so revealed a waist-high, solid metal box. He stared at it, and as he did realised it wasn’t a box, but a table.

“Downstairs,” the man replied, keeping his eyes fixed on him, “In the cellar.” The man didn’t seem to be blinking at all. “Wine cellars are so convenient for this kind of thing,” the man began to ramble, “but you don’t get them everywhere, not in this country at least, no hurricanes you see. Only these kinds of people, you know, old and rich with nothing to do but collect fine wines and aged cheeses, are gullible enough to pay through the nose for their house only because it has a cellar.” He finally blinked. “Besides,” He started again, “A kidnapper, a killer, couldn’t possibly live somewhere like this. Could they?”

Slowly and cautiously, to show he was not going to try and run or fight his way out, the Intruder stood.

Instantly, he became dizzy, and steadied himself by leaning against the wall. He felt drunk, sick, and knew he wasn’t going to be able to walk; he would either fall over or throw up. So, shaking and unsteady, he leaned against the wall, and realised he suddenly had a better view of the tiny room they were in. It was more furnished than what he’d seen of the house; a wardrobe, drawers, a desk, the metal table. And, from what he’d heard so far, he guessed that the room wasn’t just being used for storage – these things were meant to be in the cellar, holding different dark secrets in each of them.

On top of the desk, splattered in blood, was an array of knives, saws and other lethal instruments.

He looked away, and turned his attention back to the man, he wanted to see what was on the table behind him.

“Turn around.” He said.

“What?” Was his automatic, angry response.

“I’m not going to do anything. Just… Turn. Around. NOW.”

What other choice did he have? Reluctantly, he shuffled against the wall until it was his forehead leaning up against the wall instead of his back. He listened, and heard the man walk around the room and begin to move something – drag something – across the floor.

He was bringing it towards him.

Closer and closer came the screeching sound.

Nearer and nearer were the footsteps of the Snatcher.

What was he going to show him now? What more sick, twisted stories did he have left to reveal? Or was this it? Was this where he ended it all, now that he already had revealed his story?

“Okay.” He said, “Turn around, and sit down.”

He did as he was ordered to do, and saw that what had been brought over to him was a wooden chair. Looking at it almost made him salivate, it made him realise once more how much his legs hurt. He let his legs drop and fell onto the chair, and felt some of the dizziness leave his head now he was sitting down.

“I built this,” The killer began his story again, and ran a hand along the metal table, the top of which was now exposed.

He should have expected it – the story had been leading to this point – and yet the sight of it still made him feel as though his stomach was going to throw itself up into his throat. He gagged and held a hand to his mouth, whilst also shutting his eyes.

“Charged by car batteries,” He patted the side of his machine, as though showing where they were, “it works just like a car; turn the engine on,” He pointed to a small, black, circular switch embedded into the metal, “and it will power the machine… and bring him back to life.” As the final part of his tour, he rested his hand upon the black, skeletal figure on top of the metal table. He did it so affectionately, that it was as though he didn’t realise it wasn’t long dead.

The Snatcher turned to look at him again, and he realised his mouth had dropped open at some point, he shut it quickly.

“I thought using the skin and organs from children of a similar age would work.” He said, and walked around the other side of the table, and tipped the skeleton slightly towards him. The empty, black eyes looked at him. He turned his eyes away from the head and saw that within the ribs, held in place by interconnecting wires, was a heart. The skeleton was placed on its back again. The Snatcher walked to the head of the table, and delicately twisted the top of the skull from the rest of the skeleton, revealing a brain that was also connected to wires which were worked into the skull through the opening he had created. “I think I may have been wrong.” He claimed, as he put the top of the skull back into place, securing the wires. He followed the wires to trace where they came from, and saw that they travelled along the skeleton, but where they ended up was obscured by the skeleton. He presumed they went into the machine, powered by the car batteries held within it. “Perhaps the organs of children are not what this project requires… Perhaps… To bring him back to life, it requires more… developed… parts.” The Snatcher looked him up and down, making his intentions clear.

“You can’t really think-”

“No. I don’t. I know it will work. Eventually. This is attempt number six. I am trying a different approach: no skin, and not all the organs. You see, maybe I’ve been putting too much pressure on him.” He stroked the skull. “Maybe it needs to be done in stages. The heart and the brain need to be brought to life first, and then, bit by bit, the other organs can be added. Then, after that, eyes, tongue, skin – the little things. And my brother will be back.”

“When that doesn’t work?” The Intruder tested.

“Like I said: I have you now. Should attempt number six fail, attempt number seven will see an older, more developed brain used.”

They stared at one another for a few moments.

Then he started talking again.

“‘The Intruder’, you. ‘The Snatcher’, me; two thieves is all we are, and why do we do it?”

He knew the answer as soon as it was asked of him, and he unhesitatingly answered.

“We do it for the people we love.”

The Snatcher nodded, “You do understand. I knew you would.”

The two thieves, the Snatcher and the Intruder, continued to stare.

The larger man turned his back on the black-clothed man, and turned the machine on. The hum of electricity began, and the skeleton began to vibrate. The movement and the sound were brought to a sudden halt when the machine was turned off again.

“Stages.” The Snatcher explained. “Little by little.”

He stared down at the skeleton, a calm silence descending on the cellar.

Like a blade, it was cut through by three loud knocking sounds coming from above.

Someone at the door.

A chance to escape.

In one swift motion, the Snatcher swung around and sent the back of his hand crashing against the Intruder’s cheek, knocking him off his chair and onto the floor.

“Do not make a sound, unless you want to be responsible for their deaths.”

Who the maniac was talking about, he didn’t know; the people at the door? His family?

He watched him disappear from view and heard him ascend up some stairs and lock the door to the cellar.

There was still time, still a way.

As quickly as he could – which was, due to his numb legs and dizzy head, not very fast at all – he dragged himself across the cellar floor. The room wasn’t very wide, and if he could just make it up the stairs and draw attention to inside the house… He had a chance.

He tried pushing himself up onto his knees but his legs would allow it. So he carried on clawing at the hard, cold, stone floor. He made his way around the metal table and could see the stairs. The room was not very wide and they were nearer than he expected – and shorter.

I’m going to make it!

But as his desperate hand clutched the first wooden step, he heard voices from upstairs. Muffled slightly by the door, but close, as though the front door was not very far away.

“We’ve been searching the local area for-”

Shit.

It was the police.

Was it worth living, knowing that he was going to lose everything?

He turned over onto his back, and sat against the stairs. He didn’t have long to make a decision.

He looked at the skeletal figure on the metal table, and knew that he had to see the people he loved again. They would surely be better with him, even if he was in prison.

He turned his head to look up the stairs, but froze and felt his heart thud against his chest before he could continue his journey up the steps.

It had moved.

The skeleton.

He was sure it had.

Just a flicker of movement – and there was nothing else down there with him.

The electricity?

He felt his eyes tear up in fear, and he turned to look back at it.

Was the skull facing his way before?

The empty sockets looked at him.

The teeth seemed to smile at him.

He felt his eyes roll back into his head and his vision go black again. His head dropped, but he heard one last thing before he passed out. The voice of a policeman.

“Sir, I’m going to have to insist that we come in and look around.”

January, 2018