Truth or Dare
Authors: Tania Carver
Published by Sphere
978-1-4055-2017-1
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Tania Carver 2014
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
SPHERE
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
Table of Contents
D
arren Richards opened his eyes. Closed them quickly as an intense light shone straight at him.
‘Back with us again?’ said a muffled voice. ‘Good.’
He opened his eyes slowly once more, blinking all the while. The light was still as bright, like a film or TV arc lamp directed right at his retinas. Like he was the centre of attention. So bright it hurt. He closed his eyes again. Saw veins flash and throb on the inside of his eyelids, then the ghosts of veins. Then back to blackness once more. He chanced opening them again, for longer this time.
His head swam as his eyes took a while to focus. His head was heavy, his arms and legs tingling, his stomach nauseous, like he felt coming down from a massive skunk bender. He blinked away the brightness, tried to squint beyond it.
A figure moved about on the fringes of the light, creating sudden eclipses. Darren couldn’t make much out beyond a black body and a grey/white face. No, not a face. A head. Eyes too big and round, mouth… what was that instead of a mouth? He blinked again. Was he still on that bender? No. He tried to peel back layers of memory. He hadn’t been on one, hadn’t had anything. Well, he’d had a can of lager or two on the walk to Wayne’s crib but that was nothing. He frowned. Wayne’s crib. What had happened at Wayne’s crib? Had he actually arrived there? He thought some more, tried to ignore the pain in his head, the shining light, the moving figure. Tried to think. No. He hadn’t.
‘Ah, Darren…’ said the muffled voice.
Darren tried to rise from the chair, found that his arms and legs wouldn’t move. He was held firm. He looked down. Heavy-duty silver duct tape was wrapped from his wrists to his elbows, his ankles to his knees, right round his torso. He was secured to the chair, near-mummified. He tried to move, stand.
‘No, don’t get up,’ said the voice.
The chair wouldn’t budge. Darren looked down. Bolted to the floor. Darren was getting really scared now. The fear focused his mind, cleared it. He could hear his own breathing, the blood pumping round his body. And something above that. Another muffled sound, like a trapped cat trying to meow, to call for help.
Darren found his voice. It was a small, insecure thing. ‘What… what you doin’?’
The figure didn’t answer, just moved slowly to the side of the light. In shadow, cocking its head on one side, it studied Darren.
‘Whuh… what? What you doin’?’ Darren tried to pull against his bindings. They didn’t budge.
‘Justice,’ said the muffled voice.
Justice
, thought Darren, or
just us
? What had he said? What did he mean?
‘What you on about?’ he asked.
‘Justice,’ the figure repeated. No mistaking the word this time, despite it being muffled. ‘Payback. Fair play. Righting wrongs. Balancing things out. That’s what I’m on about.’
Too many questions bombarded Darren’s mind. He picked one at random. ‘How did I get here?’
‘I brought you here. Took you off the street.’
Darren tried to remember. The walk to Wayne’s, then… blackness. He looked around once more, tried to make out his surroundings. The place looked old, derelict. Felt cold. Something fluttered at the back wall. The night sky. How could that be? ‘Where am I?’
The figure made another muffled sound. Darren thought it was choking. Then realised it must be laughing.
‘You’re developing an inquisitive mind,’ the figure said. ‘So many questions. But still not the right ones. Just the old boring, prosaic ones.’
‘What… what should I be askin’, then?’
The figure moved slowly towards him. The mewling sound was still there, faint in the background. Darren could just hear it over the throbbing inside his head.
Approaching, Darren made out the figure’s features. A bone-grey, close-fitting rubber gas mask made its head appear smooth and skull-like. It was dressed all in shapeless black, like a boiler suit. Big, strong boots. Gloves. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman but thought it might be a man. He remembered seeing a heavy-metal group who all wore masks and boiler suits. It looked like one of them. He thought they looked good at the time. Scary. The music was still shit, though.
‘Ask your question, Darren.’
Darren thought. Hard. This was important. He had to get the right question. That way he might get the right answer.
It came to him. ‘Why… why am I here?’
The figure stopped advancing. Darren wasn’t sure, but he imagined the person smiling behind the mask. ‘Is the right question. Well done.’
Darren waited. ‘So?’ he said eventually.
‘You know,’ the figure said, turning and walking back to behind the light.
Darren thought once more. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I don’t.’
Movement from behind the light. Something being pulled along the floor. Positioned to the right place.
‘You know,’ said the muffled voice. ‘It’s what you did. What you got away with.’
‘What?’ said Darren. ‘What did I get away with?’
‘You killed two people, Darren. You were never punished for it.’
Darren screwed up his face in concentration. Killed two people? When? He wasn’t a murderer. And then he remembered. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That.’
‘Yes,’ said the masked figure, a note of controlled anger coming into its voice. ‘That. You stole a car. With your mates. Remember?’
‘Yeah, all right,’ said Darren. ‘That’s it, is it? That’s what this is all about? Fuck’s sake, I can hardly remember it.’
‘You stole a car,’ continued the figure. ‘Off your heads on whatever you could get. That’s why you can’t remember it, Darren. And when you were driving that car, full of skunk and alcohol and E and cocaine and God knows what else, you mounted the pavement and killed two pedestrians. Didn’t you?’
Darren became defensive. He remembered now. Or at least he remembered the aftermath. The cell. The police station. Remand. The trial. Once he’d come round and been presented with what he had done he felt terrible about it. Not the deaths, although yeah, they were bad. But he knew he could go to prison for a long time for that. That had been terrifying. He’d done time for other stuff when he was coming up, but that was just small bits of things. Drugs, street robbery. Little stuff, here and there. Nothing much. Few months in a YOI then back on the street with bragging rights and a better rep. But this, he knew, had been serious.
‘You should have gone to prison, shouldn’t you?’ said the figure. ‘For a long time. A long, long time.’
‘Yeah, but I didn’t, did I?’ said Darren. He felt once more the cockiness he had experienced in the courtroom that day. When his defence barrister had picked up on the mistake in the police procedure that made the arrest unlawful. The judge had been given no option but to reluctantly stop the trial. Darren had walked free.
‘No,’ said the figure. ‘You didn’t.’
The cockiness was still there within him. Carried over, even in his present situation. ‘Nothing you can do about it, mate,’ he said. ‘Stood trial for it, got off. End of. Solicitor said it should never have gone to trial.’ He looked down at his arms. ‘So you can’t touch me. Got to let me go.’
‘Is that so?’ said the figure.
‘Yeah,’ said Darren. ‘I know my fuckin’ rights.’
The figure didn’t reply. Just went behind the light, threw a switch. Another light came on, next to the one shining on Darren. He looked at what it illuminated. And found the source of the mewling. His girlfriend Chloe and their daughter Shannon. Their baby daughter, not yet a year old. Chloe was taped to an identical, floor-bolted chair next to him. Shannon was taped to Chloe.
Chloe looked at him, her mouth gagged, her eyes filled with tears and terror.
‘Wha’… wha’ the fuck’s goin’ on?’ said Darren.
‘Justice,’ said the figure. ‘What I said. You killed a woman and her child. Innocent victims of yours. You didn’t even know you’d done it.’
‘But I didn’t mean to, though, did I? It was an accident.’
‘Nevertheless, you did it. And you need to pay for what you’ve done. You deprived the world of two people who should be living. And you think you got away with it. But you haven’t. So what are we going to do about it?’
Darren looked at Chloe and Shannon. The baby girl was terrified. Completely uncomprehending. Struggling to escape, held fast by the tape, unable even to cry. Her struggles making the tape pull tighter. She looked to her father, eyes wide, expecting him to reassure her, put things right. Darren just looked helplessly back at her.
‘You’ve got a choice,’ said the figure, moving something else into place beside the lights as it spoke. ‘Someone has to pay for what you’ve done. For the lives you’ve taken. And it should really be you, shouldn’t it?’
‘Whuh… what?’
And then Darren saw what the figure had been moving. A crossbow. Tripod mounted, it pointed first at him, then at Chloe and Shannon.
‘Your choice,’ said the figure.
Panic rose within him. He caught sight of Chloe’s imploring eyes, his daughter’s uncomprehending ones. He tried to pull against the restraints once more.
‘This is a joke,’ he shouted, ‘a fucking joke, right?’
‘It’s no joke, Darren. It’s deadly serious. You deprived two people of their lives. And that wasn’t all. There were ripples from your actions. You took away a wife. A mother to two boys. A daughter. You didn’t just kill two people that day. You ended so many other lives. Devastated so many more.’
‘Mental,’ shouted Darren, ‘you’re fuckin’ mental.’
‘I’m deadly serious, Darren. I’m not joking. You either pay for what you’ve done with your own life or…’ The figure gestured towards Chloe and Shannon. ‘Choice is yours. But you will pay.’
‘You’re goin’ to kill us all anyway,’ said Darren. ‘Why mess about?’
‘No, no, no… You’re wrong. I’m not going to kill you all. That’s what you do, not me.’
‘What then?’
‘I just dispense justice. If you choose to accept the consequences of your actions and take the shot, it’ll kill you and you’ll have paid for your crimes. Then Chloe and Shannon can just walk away.’
‘Or?’
‘Or they take the shot. And you walk away. But someone has to pay. There will be justice.’
Darren couldn’t look at Chloe. He knew she was trying to get his attention, craning her neck against the tape restraints, shouting through her gag, trying to pull herself free. And the baby, sensing her mother’s ramped-up discomfort, was trying to scream too.
No, he thought, don’t look at them. It’s easier if you don’t look at them.
‘You’ve made up your mind,’ said the figure.
‘Yeah,’ said Darren. His pulse was racing. He was sweating. It was horrible, yes, but it would be over in a matter of seconds. And he couldn’t do it, could he? What was the point of that? ‘No brainer, innit? I mean, really.’
Chloe’s muffled screams increased. Darren turned his head away from her.
‘Just remember,’ said the figure, getting behind the crossbow, ‘this is what you wanted. This is your justice.’
‘Just get on with it. Then I get to leave, yeah?’
Darren closed his eyes. He would miss them. But really, when he thought about it, it wasn’t too bad. Yeah, he told himself, not too bad. Chloe had been getting on his nerves for a while now. Whining and whinging, on his back the whole fucking time. And she wasn’t taking care of herself like she used to. Her arse was getting bigger and she didn’t seem to care. And the kid… well, to be honest, she was a fucking accident. If Chloe hadn’t messed up her pills and let herself get pregnant none of this would ever have happened. He’d been planning to ditch her anyway. Hayley had been giving him the glad eye. And he’d already given her something, too. And there was still Letisha to go back to if everything else went tits up. And besides, he wasn’t cut out for fatherhood. Not really. Better as a free agent, a lone wolf. Yeah.
Next to him, Chloe was still trying to scream. Darren ignored her.
Yeah, he thought. Bit drastic but still.
The figure readied himself. Darren closed his eyes.
The crossbow fired.
Darren couldn’t help himself. He opened his eyes, looked. Saw Chloe and Shannon.
And began to scream.
He didn’t stop.