The Intruder – an elusive thief – races home to save his family from the horror he encountered while on the run from the police.
The Snatcher – an unhinged child abductor and serial killer – is to make one last desperate bid to ensure his resurrection dreams become a reality.
The Policeman – an unfortunate constable – called to the house of the Southumberland Snatcher on that sinister night, who will encounter terror the likes of which man has never seen…
When I wrote ‘Intruder’, I never intended for a sequel. Its cliffhanger finale was supposed to allow the reader to make their own mind up about what happened, as this is something I enjoy doing myself when reading such an open ending. However, there were naturally calls for a follow-up, and a couple of ideas did come to mind about how I could continue the story, so I privately pledged to write one. However, I also pledged to myself that I would only publish it if it added to the story while keeping the mystery of the previous chapter intact.
Obviously, I believe I’ve managed to achieve those targets, considering we’re all here!
Enter the second chapter of the ‘Intruder’ saga, and see what more mysteries and horrors await you on that dark, rainy night…
Intruder: Chapter II
By Keelan Berry
His head rose slowly, it felt heavy, as though someone was lifting it for him. He reached out a hand, trying to grab onto anything that would steady him, because he felt like he was floating. The room seemed to be spinning. His head felt as though it was in a whirlwind. His vision was blurred, but he could just about make out the wooden steps beneath him.
He was still in the cellar.
But how long had it been?
Were the police still here? Had they arrested the Snatcher? Had the Snatcher killed them and escaped?
Or worse…
The skeleton.
He sat up quickly, forcing his body forwards, but all that did was make him dizzier, and he lost his balance. He fell forwards and his feet slid from underneath him on the wooden steps. He managed to save his face from injury by bringing an arm across it, but his elbow smacked onto the hard stone floor, and he grunted in pain.
Using his other arm, he pushed himself up off the floor into a crouching position, resting his back against the wall. His vision still span, it was still blurred, but it was beginning to improve. The metal table was in front of him. It was on there. It. He didn’t want to see it again, but he had to. He had to make sure it hadn’t moved.
What he’d seen before he’d passed out… it was impossible. It couldn’t have been real, it couldn’t have-
“AAAAAAHHHHHH!”
The scream made him jump, and he fell sideways, onto the ground again.
A thud followed the scream; it had come from the hallway above the cellar. He looked towards the door at the top of the wooden stairs. It was closed.
He scrambled to his feet, pushing as hard as he could to stand, and then placing a hand on the wall to balance himself. He didn’t look at the metal table. He couldn’t. He was scared about what he might see. Instead, he stepped onto the wooden stairs. They creaked underneath his black boots, but they remained intact as he climbed.
Halfway up, he fell onto his hands, and crawled up the remaining steps. He thrust himself upwards to pull the door handle down, and then opened the door by collapsing into it.
He fell into the hallway, his head hovering above the ground as he tensed his neck to ensure his skull didn’t smash off the floor, and he came face to face with a pair of wide, white eyes.
The head was cushioned on a police cap (he recognised the pattern and symbol, seeing as he had to be on guard against it constantly given his ‘profession’). Thick, dark red blood spilled from the edges of the cap, and a lot was smeared across the policeman’s forehead, trickling down from underneath his hair which was also matted from the liquid. He’d clearly suffered a devastating blow to the head, and that was confirmed when, after making it to his feet, the Intruder saw a bloodied hole that had been made in the wall. The Snatcher was a large man, and he’d have definitely had the strength to put the policeman’s head through the wall so hard that it killed him.
He stepped around the body to avoid his black boots leaving a trail of blood behind him (he was under enough suspicion as it was having evaded the police earlier that night, he didn’t need an even bigger target on his back). With one body behind him, he immediately stumbled across another directly in front of him. This one was slumped against the wall and the police cap still rested on their head. The head hung down, and so the face was concealed by the darkness of the shadow cast by the cap. He walked over, crouched down slowly to avoid dizziness, and rested a hand gently on the policeman’s shoulder. Even the little amount of weight he’d put on the body was enough to send it sliding sideways against the wall. Before the policeman hit the ground, he grabbed the body by the shoulders, sending the head snapping backwards, resulting in the cap falling off. He involuntarily released the body, his hands seized by the horror of what he’d seen. He turned his head and tried not to vomit.
It seemed that the Snatcher, even whilst on the run, was collecting body parts.
He opened the front door and the cold night wind blasted into the house. He couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a minute or two; the Snatcher had answered the door to the police, let them in, killed them and ran… or had he? He turned around and expected to see him standing at the end of the hallway, as silent as he had been when they’d first faced one another, but there was nobody there. He must have ran, or surely he’d have come straight back to the cellar.
He left the house, and sucked in the fresh air. It helped to clear his head, and he felt a little better.
If the Snatcher had ran, where would he go?
The Intruder looked up and down the street, there was one police car outside the house. Empty. But there were sirens in the distance, coming closer and closer. At the start of the night, they had been for him. Now they were blaring through the night in search of a greater threat. One of the dead policemen must have been able to speak into their radio before being killed, which would have prompted the Snatcher to run rather than stay.
But where had he gone?
Just as the Intruder’s thoughts were switching to where he should go now, another police car pulled up across the road, and he realised where he had to go…
Because that’s where the killer would have gone.
He didn’t know how, but… he knew it, he felt it.
Two thieves is all we are, the Snatcher had said, and why do we do it? He had asked.
We do it for the people we love, he – the Intruder – had replied.
The Snatcher had known who he was. The Snatcher knew he had a child. How did he know? He knew because he stalked and snatched children; it was entirely possible they had seen one another before this night, perhaps they had crossed in the street, or the Snatcher had witnessed them at the park with their child when he was searching for a victim.
Whatever the answer, the Snatcher knew who he was, and he knew he had a family, and probably where they lived…
“Sir?” A policewoman approached him.
“You need to take me home.” He blurted out, rushing towards her.
“Sir, calm down, what’s-”
“Oh my God. Jesus Christ. You need to see this.” A policeman said, pushing the front door to the Snatcher’s house open.
More sirens rang out in the distance, but still the policewoman said, “Call for backup,” as she approached the front of the house.
He could run now. Just turn around and run home. But he wanted the police with him, he wanted strength in numbers. Also, they had a car, and would be able to get him home more quickly. He just had to persuade them…
“Please take me home.” He requested again, walking towards them, “He knows who I am. He… he took me hostage, he knows my family, he’s going to-” He stopped, because the policeman walked up close to him, a puzzled look on his face, as though he was trying to work out who he was.
He knows, oh God he knows who I am.
The policeman looked him up and down, saw his black clothes, and the puzzled look disappeared from his face.
“Please,” He pleaded again, “He’ll kill them. My girlfriend… My baby…” He teared up.
“You’re sure that’s where he’s going?” The policewoman asked.
“We’re not helping him. We’re arresting him.” The policeman said, and walked forwards, his hand reaching down to his belt.
The policewoman stopped him with her arm.
“You know who this is,” The policeman said to her, “We nearly got him earlier tonight. We’ve been after him for-”
“I know who he is, but-”
“Yes.” He interrupted them both, “I’m ‘The Intruder’.” He waited, because he thought they might arrest him there and then, but they didn’t. They just listened, “But you haven’t just been after me for a long time. You’ve been after him too.” He nodded towards the house, “He’s ‘The Snatcher’.” They looked at one another, and then back at him in disbelief. “Go and look in the house if you don’t believe me. Body parts of children… everywhere.” He looked down and shook his head. “Right now you need to ask yourselves who is more of a threat: me, right here with you, or him, out there and killing at will. I’ll help you get him. After that, when my family is safe, do what you want with me.” They looked at one another again. The police. He had ran from them for so long, feared capture for so long, and he had just revealed himself to them.
The sirens were coming closer.
“Please.” He begged.
“You’re sure he’s after your family?” The policewoman asked.
“I’ll check the house first. Make sure his story is true. You watch him.” The policeman disappeared into the house, checking the bodies of his dead colleagues before disappearing deeper inside.
Don’t go into the cellar…
The policewoman looked him up and down, she tried to make her face look stern, but there was kindness in her eyes. Kindness he had already seen from her when she’d attempted to defend him earlier and when she’d asked about his family.
“Don’t try anything.” She warned.
“I’m not going to.” He replied calmly, “I just want my family to be safe.”
She stared at him.
“If I wanted to run I’d have done it by now.” He said, shrugging to show it would have been easy, “I’ve managed to elude you for this long.” Maybe that hadn’t been the best thing to say, it could have made her angry and arrest him, but he was desperate, and he knew she could see that.
She didn’t say anything, but she looked back towards the house, and the policeman walked out, slowly and keeping himself on his feet by holding onto the doorframe.
“Well?” She asked.
All he could do was nod.
“What’s in there?”
He shook his head this time, and opened his mouth to speak, it was a couple of seconds before any words actually came out. “Take him to his family.” He said, “I’ll wait here for backup.”
She hesitated for a moment, then turned and started towards the car, “Get in the back.” She opened the door for him and then shut it behind him, before getting in the front of the car herself.
“Your address.” She said.
He told her.
“If you do help us catch him…” She left her sentenced unfinished. “What’s in that house?” She asked as she started driving.
He sighed, and told her the story.
*
He wouldn’t run.
The Intruder ran.
But he was the Snatcher, and the Snatcher doesn’t run, people run from the Snatcher.
He held a hand out. The rain was still coming down, but very lightly.
His hand reached out further, and came to rest on a tree. The thick trunk concealed him as he stalked his destination. It was only across the road. The Intruder’s house. He’d made it in just over ten minutes. If the driver he’d threatened hadn’t hesitated so much, he could have been here sooner.
He looked down the road at the car, which was parked under a street lamp, making the driver all the more visible. He was slumped over the steering wheel. At least the blood wasn’t visible…
It was probably dripping. Dripping like the rain from the leaves above him. Dripping and forming a pool of red around his feet.
He stepped from behind the tree and started to cross the road. He’d been here before. He’d known the Intruder for months, and had been following his work for even longer. The Intruder fascinated him because of the similarities they shared; we do it for the people we love. He had understood.
When he first read about the Intruder in the paper, he knew he must have had a family. He had profiled the thief in his mind, and then one day found him. He did what the police had failed to do, and by coincidence – much similar to the way the Intruder had found himself inside his house that night – he ran into him one night.
Quite literally.
He had been walking the streets one night after one of his first failed attempts to resurrect his brother (attempt two, was it? Or had it been the third?), when he heard the footsteps of someone running. He had slipped quickly into an alley, using it to shield him from view while looking down the street (just as he had used the tree to cover him from being seen by anyone in the Intruder’s house seconds ago), and waited until the footsteps came closer.
Then, he’d stepped out onto the footpath, grabbing the black figure by the arms and staring into his frightened face. His eyes were wide with terror, the streetlamp illuminating him like a cat caught in a car’s headlights. A black cat – all of his clothes had been black, even the beanie pulled tightly over his head. He had been caught, and like a captured cat, he struggled.
So he let him go.
The black-clothed figure continued to run, and suddenly more footsteps became audible. He turned, saw someone walking quickly down the street, shaking their fist in the air and shouting abuse at the “fucking thief”. That was when he had known. So he followed the Intruder, all the time walking, relying on the sound of his footsteps and his voice (he had called someone at one point – it sounded like a girlfriend). The victim of the Intruder’s burglary that night had shouted after him as he began his pursuit of the thief, but he ignored him and was away from him within seconds. It had sounded like an old man.
A few minutes later sirens sounded in the distance. He was certain he’d heard the Intruder say “shit”. After that, the thief fell silent and he lost him for a while, but his search brought him to a neighbourhood of nice, expensive-looking houses. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the dark figure rushing inside a house, and his first thought was that the thief had continued his work for the night, but he soon realised that it was the Intruder’s home.
He stood there for almost an hour, until the lights in the house went off. Then he found the nearest field – not far down the road, and sat in the grass cross-legged for hours until the sun rose, until the Intruder and his girlfriend came out of the house with a small child in a school uniform clinging onto each of their hands.
He considered following them and taking the child, but for some reason he didn’t. Now he knew it was because he felt that he and the Intruder were the same; stealing from others in order to benefit themselves and those they love.
Only a few months after that incident, the Intruder had found himself inside the Snatcher’s house, and now – just an hour or so later – the Snatcher was about to enter the Intruder’s house.
Maybe this was the key. The thing he had been missing. Forget more developed organs, as he had explained to the Intruder earlier that night. He needed someone like his brother, someone loved, someone who had someone looking after them just as he looked after his brother.
Yes.
He would take the Intruder’s child. He would harvest the child’s organs. He would bring his brother back.
This time it would work.
*
He stood in front of the fridge-freezer, staring at the whiteness, but also noticing the specks of red on the handle. A part of him needed to look again, but he had never seen anything like it, and he was scared that he’d throw up.
Instead, he looked back to the kitchen table, where that day’s edition of ‘The Southumberland Gazette’ was neatly placed like a trophy, with the front page detailing the latest missing child in the case of the ‘Southumberland Snatcher’. He had known of killers like this before. Those who were proud of their work and revelled in the fame.
What was in the fridge… were they trophies? Or were they for something else? Were they… to eat?
He shivered.
Southumberland had already had one cannibal killer years ago – the teacher – surely there wasn’t another one?
He rubbed his eyes and turned back into the living room.
He could still hear sirens in the distance, but were they even coming here? And if they were how long would it take them?
Why hadn’t he called for backup yet? He didn’t fully know himself. A part of him wanted to wait until his partner and the thief had caught the Snatcher first, a part of him wanted to explore the house and get the full picture first, a part of him was just curious.
There would be dozens of people in and around the house within minutes if he called for backup, and as disgusted and scared as he was, he wanted to scout the entire house freely and ensure it was secure before calling in backup.
As he moved through the hallway, he looked at the floor but only to ensure he avoiding tripping over one of his dead colleagues. Other than that, he looked nowhere else; he couldn’t bring himself to look at them.
He was familiar with the houses in this area. It was a nice neighbourhood – so nice that these houses had cellars – and new, meaning it was in the path of the Intruder. They’d never suspected that the Snatcher was a resident of one of them. Perhaps he’d needed the cellar for something…
As that thought entered his mind he came upon the open door to the cellar. He felt vomit rising and swallowed. He didn’t want to imagine what was down there…
But he had to see…
He had to.
*
He didn’t waste time; as soon as the car reached his house he flung his seatbelt aside and tried to open the car door. It was locked.
“Calm down.” The policewoman urged, braking heavily.
“Come on!” He cried impatiently.
She didn’t argue with him. She knew the situation he was in, and he saw that she sympathised, and that she was now personally invested in this particular chapter of his life. Afterwards, yes; she would probably arrest him, it was her duty to do so.
But he didn’t care anymore. He just wanted to know his family were safe.
He tried the door again and it opened, he sped out, nearly tripping and falling onto his face in the road. He managed to keep his balance, though, and was soon sprinting towards his house.
“Wait!” The policewoman shouted, but he didn’t listen, and her footsteps quickly joined his in splashing along the rain-soaked road.
He reached the front door and almost knocked (he never took his keys out with him on a work night), but then stopped himself. He had to be smart about this. The Snatcher could already be inside the house, and if he hadn’t already… done the worst… then he would either be holding them hostage or hiding. He’d been there. He knew what it felt like. He couldn’t knock the door. He had to try and trace the Snatcher’s steps, think about where he could be, and then stop him.
That was when the door opened.
He looked up and took a step backwards, preparing to launch inside his own house and attack whoever was answering the door. He waited to for the child killer to answer the door to his own house, for the abductor’s giant frame to block the entrance, for the eyes shielded by thick-lensed glasses to stare deeply into him.
Instead, the small figure of his girlfriend barely concealed any of the light from the brightly-lit hallway. He launched anyway; but into a hug rather than an attack. His girlfriend said his name, and from the tone he knew that she had seen the policewoman behind him. He pulled away, but still held her by the shoulders.
“It’s okay. It’s fine. Where’s-”
“In bed. Asleep. As normal.” Her eyes darted between him and the policewoman.
“You’ve checked?” He asked, moving her aside and stepping towards the stairs.
“Yes-” She said his name again, and for a moment a strange fear seized his body and made him cringe – she had said his name in front of the policewoman twice now – but then he realised that the policewoman was in his house anyway, and that he had already made peace with the likelihood that he was to be arrested at the end of the night. “What’s going on?” His girlfriend asked.
“Stay downstairs.” He said, and saw the policewoman begin to comfort her out the corner of his eye, before she started following him up the stairs.
If the killer was hiding, the element of surprise had gone, but he could still use his experience to gain the upper hand. He knew all the tricks – he had performed them all himself – and he would find him. If the serial abductor hadn’t arrived yet, then they had a better chance of preventing his entry and catching him – he knew all the tricks when it came to breaking into houses too.
He reached the small bedroom, stopped to catch his breath and signalled for the policewoman to wait behind him. Then, he twisted the door handle and slowly pushed the door open, watching the light from the landing spill into the bedroom and push the darkness back. He stepped onto the light, and looked into the dark bedroom. He waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust, and then could make out a figure in the bed, the blanket rising and falling with each breath his child took. That was all he could make out in the darkness, but it was enough.
He held onto the door with one hand, and very slightly (just with one finger) gestured for the policewoman to enter the room.
Earlier that night, while he was on the run, planning to fortify himself in someone’s house and not knowing what horrors awaited him, he had remembered a burglary early on in his career. That had been when he and his girlfriend were childless and still living in a small flat. When he had recalled that burglary, he had thought of how he would go to any lengths to ensure he was never captured, even if that meant taking a hostage when he finally broke into a house to hide.
Now, here he was, looking at his child, working with the police, knowing that he would be going to prison when this night was over.
Such a radical change of mind in just a few hours.
He dug that memory up again, that night when he had been sloppy, that night when he didn’t yet know how to jump or climb out of an upstairs window, when he had been forced to hide in a child’s closet, concealing himself underneath a pile of blankets and toys.
Now, as he watched the policewoman enter the room, he nodded towards his own child’s closet. She nodded back and took position at the side of it, readying her baton. He tried to make eye contact with her to make sure she was ready, but she never took her eyes off the closet door, which told him all he needed to know.
He gripped the handle and opened it quickly.
Nothing.
He opened the door more widely and looked inside. He had been wrong. So where…?
He turned around quickly and looked at the policewoman, who turned herself upon hearing movement across a bed mattress. A figure sat up on the bed, a black silhouette amidst even more blackness, a figure much too large to be his child.
His breath caught in his throat and something shiny glimmered against the darkness in the Snatcher’s rising hand.
Maybe it was better that the light wasn’t on; if there was blood dripping from the blade, he didn’t know how he would have reacted.
Not knowing was painful, but there was hope in the unknown.
As he exited his thoughts, the Snatcher was already on his feet, brandishing his blade.
He rushed forward and grappled with him, blocking him from bringing the blade down with his arm. He arched his elbow upwards, drawing the steel even further away from him. However, his focus on the knife-wielding arm of the Snatcher’s took up all of his attention, and the larger man’s strength was too much. The Intruder felt his foot slip from underneath him, and before he was able to struggle or attempt to balance himself, he was on his knees.
He saw the blade rise.
Except it wasn’t the knife, it was the policewoman’s baton, and it crashed into the back of the Snatcher’s head.
So where was the knife?
He panicked as the Snatcher’s massive body began to collapse onto him.
He didn’t want to roll aside or push himself out of the way; that would just mean the Snatcher could get back up and continue to kill, or he would be arrested and one day be free again. This was his chance to end it all, to make sure the Snatcher’s terrifying presence was destroyed, to allow parents in the neighbourhood to feel free and let their children enjoy themselves again.
He took his chance.
He reached out and grabbed the Snatcher’s hand, twisting it, before letting the body fall.
The weight of the man winded him, but he felt warm liquid spilling between his fingers, and heard the groans of pain from the body on top of him. He pushed, and felt the blade slide deeper into the Snatcher.
“Push him off.” The policewoman said, helping him. Together, they were able to turn the Snatcher just enough so that he toppled off him and onto his back. “Turn the light on.” She said towards his girlfriend, and a second later his eyes were stinging from the brightness. “Jesus.” She sighed.
The Intruder opened his eyes and looked around, “Where’s-”
“Daddy!” An excited voice shouted.
His eyes followed the sound, and settled upon his child, who was crawling out from underneath a pile of blankets and toys inside the closet.
*
The wood creaked beneath his feet, and his hand clutched to his radio.
There was something down there, he could feel it, there was definitely a presence. Had his partner and the thief been wrong? The Snatcher could still be here, in the house, hiding and waiting to strike. Or… was there a child down there? Is this where he kept them?
His grip tightened on his radio, but he didn’t push the button, not yet.
He had to see.
His feet landed on the stone floor, and his eyes rested upon a metal table, connected to what seemed like hundreds of wires. Apart from those, there was nothing else on top of the table. It looked as though they had been wired up to something, but whatever it was had been moved.
What had he been doing down here?
He approached the table, rested a hand on top of it, and looked around the room.
He still felt the presence, so heavy that it felt like it was clinging onto his back, weighing him down.
He walked around the table slowly, examining every corner of the room, scanning every brick.
Something gripped – or slid against, he couldn’t tell as his skin turned cold with fear – his ankle, something smooth but sharp, something that seemed like it was cutting or about to cut into his skin.
He grunted in shock; was the room booby-trapped?
He looked down.
Two empty sockets stared back at him.
And the teeth seemed to smile.
His scream left the cellar, filled the house, and rang out into the night, enveloping the empty neighbourhood.
August – October, 2018
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