Authors: James Raven
‘W
hen we’ve put it together it’ll be a masterpiece. The ultimate fucking horror movie. The fear and the dying will be genuine. No actors, no make-up, no artificial gore. Just honest to goodness terror.’
The voice came from behind Temple, along with the foul stench of tobacco breath. The words were as chilling as the images being displayed on the monitors. He had no choice but to watch and listen because they’d tied him to one of the chairs in front of Nathan Slade’s desk above the garage.
‘So that’s what this is all about,’ Temple said, astounded. ‘A big budget snuff movie.’
The man behind him exhaled a loud, exasperated breath.
‘It’s more than just a snuff movie, Inspector. We’re creating a new genre – authentic horror. We’re breaking new ground with this. It’s the realization of a dream, the high point of our careers. People will be talking about it for years to come.’
As the insane rant continued, Temple switched his horrified gaze between the two monitors. One showed an overhead live feed of three people lying side by side on a king-size bed. The mattress beneath them was bare and they were secured to the bed with black duct tape that had been wrapped around their legs and chests. Strips of tape covered their mouths.
Temple recognized two of them – Nicole Keaton and her son, Michael. He assumed that the third person, the girl, was their daughter, Tina. They were fully clothed and their eyes were open. Even from a distance he could see the fear reflected in them.
The other monitor displayed a split screen. It was divided into four squares. Each square showed the feed from a different camera hidden
in the house. There was a wide-angle shot of the hallway, a shot looking down the stairs, another showing the kitchen. And the shots were constantly changing. It seemed the house had almost total surveillance.
Temple was therefore able to watch as Jack Keaton stumbled around the house frantically searching for his wife. His every move was captured and recorded.
‘There are twenty cameras altogether,’ the voice behind him said. ‘All with night vision capability. They’re hidden in smoke detectors, clocks, light fittings, wall sockets, pictures and mirrors. Four cover the outside. That’s how we saw you coming. We don’t like surprises.’
Temple knew he was in deep shit; he should have waited for backup. In spite of all his experience as a copper he had allowed himself to be drawn into a situation that was both bizarre and dangerous. He had no idea what was going to happen.
His heart was still thudding madly against his ribs; it hadn’t stopped since he was yanked by the hair through the loft hatch half an hour ago. The double barrels of a shotgun had been used to prod him towards the desk. The muzzle had been placed against his head as they’d secured him to the chair with duct tape.
Questions had been fired at him. Why had he come to King’s Manor? Why had he left his car beyond the woods? Who else knew he was here? He said he’d been told about the cameras by Nathan Slade’s ex-wife and had dropped by to inform the Keatons. But he’d lost his way and had, by chance, come across the car park. His suspicion had been aroused because Slade’s car had been parked there, so he followed the path and when he got to the property he’d seen the garage door open.
He told them that his colleagues knew he was here and that backup was on the way. But when they searched him they took his phone and listened to a voicemail from Angel which had only just been left. She was returning his call, she said. She asked him where he was and when he would arrive back at the station. She said she wanted to talk to him urgently. His captors had quickly responded to the voicemail with a text message telling her that he, Temple, was following up a lead and wouldn’t be back for several hours.
Clearly relieved, they’d decided there was no need to panic. So
they’d told him to sit tight and enjoy the entertainment. And that was when Temple truly realized he was at the mercy of a pair of psychopaths.
On the desk was a computer keyboard with a games-type console attached. Belinda Wallis, one of the two directors of Filthy Films, sat in front of it operating the cameras with a joystick. She was able to zoom in, pull out and pan left and right. She was also able to operate the
software
that produced what she had just described as their ‘special effects’. Temple had so far witnessed only one example – the scream that had just lured Keaton back upstairs. It was indeed his wife he’d heard, but the scream had apparently been recorded earlier. The audio was simply fed through to one of the hidden speakers concealed in the rooms.
But Keaton didn’t know that and Temple’s stomach churned as the poor man went from room to room calling her name. Temple had never seen anything so cruel.
The other director of Filthy Films, Damien Roth, was the person standing directly behind Temple giving a running commentary. He clearly expected the detective to be impressed.
‘You’re privileged,’ Roth was saying. ‘You’re getting a preview of what will become the most sensational underground movie ever.’
‘You’re fucking mad,’ Temple sneered.
‘And you’re a narrow-minded plod. I wouldn’t expect you to understand. Your creative juices have probably remained dormant since the day you came into this world.’
Temple was about to respond when his attention was drawn back to the screen. Jack Keaton was standing in the master bedroom, his fists bunched at his sides, his face screwed up. He continued to shout his wife’s name, his voice quivering with anger and frustration.
Temple had never seen someone in such a state. Keaton looked like road kill. He was bruised, battered and bloodied. It was almost too painful to watch. He knew the image was locked forever inside his mind.
‘You have to stop this,’ he said. ‘It’s fucking cruel.’
Roth showed no trace of emotion. ‘His suffering is almost over. Just a few more pages of the script to go.’
Temple was gobsmacked. His eyes narrowed to slits he could barely see out of. ‘You’re working to a fucking script?’
Roth let out a single bark of laughter. ‘All good horror movies have a developing plot, Inspector. You build the tension gradually, scene by scene. That’s what we’ve been doing over the past couple of days. Scaring them, confusing them, making them think the house is haunted.’
Roth stepped forward and leaned his large frame across the desk. He stared intently at the screen as Jack Keaton collapsed in a tearful heap on the bedroom floor. The spectacle pleased him. A grin crawled across his mouth, sleazy and unpleasant.
‘Think about it,’ Roth said. ‘A real family, terrorized, tortured and eventually murdered. Every reaction is recorded. Every scream and drop of blood is genuine. There’s intrigue, tension, shocks, outrage, panic. This will raise the bar and set a new standard. It’ll put to shame every other horror movie that’s ever been made.’
T
emple knew now that they were going to kill him. Not just because they enjoyed murdering people, but because they would need to cover their tracks. If they let him go their insane movie would never be made.
Roth and Wallis continued to stare at the split-screen monitor, as though willing Jack Keaton to get up from the floor and do something. But the American looked like a broken man. He was still sitting on the floor of the master bedroom, his face in his hands, his shoulders heaving as he sobbed. He was totally wrapped up in his own despair.
‘You must know you can’t possibly get away with this,’ Temple said.
Roth let out a sneering laugh. ‘Is that right? Well it might interest you to know that we’ve been making snuff movies for three years and we’ve killed twelve people. I don’t see anything stopping us from carrying on for years to come. Do you?’
There was shameless pride in Roth’s voice. He was boasting. He wanted Temple to know that they were special, and gifted, and not subject to any law or moral code. In that respect they were like those serial killers who yearn for recognition. They want others to look up to them as they look up to themselves. That was why they were forcing him to watch them do their thing now. They were showing off; trying to prove they were brilliant and untouchable.
There had been others before them who had recorded on video the death throes of their victims. And there’d been plenty of serial killers who had worked in pairs – from Myra Hindley and Ian Brady to Fred and Rosemary West. But Temple thought this duo were in a class of their own when it came to sheer ambition and creativity. They were committing recreational homicide on a spectacular scale.
‘Keaton has had about all he can take,’ Roth said. ‘Maybe it’s time we moved towards the final scene.’
‘Not just yet,’ Wallis said. ‘This is emotive stuff. We should make the most of it.’
She was grinning as she spoke, and her features were taut with anticipation. Temple could see that she was in her element, enjoying every second of Keaton’s agony. In fact he was amazed how absurdly relaxed they both seemed, as though they had all the time in the world to carry out their plan.
‘Try flushing the chain again,’ Roth said, with a malicious sparkle in his eyes. ‘See how he reacts this time.’
Temple watched, spellbound, as Wallis tapped the keyboard in front of her. A second later he heard a toilet flush.
‘It’s in the en-suite bathroom,’ Roth explained. ‘Nice touch, eh? A device in the cistern lets us trigger it from here.’
On the screen Keaton leapt to his feet and dashed across the room, pulling open the door to the en-suite. Wallis tapped the keyboard again and there was a shot change. Another camera and another
viewpoint
– this one looking outwards at Keaton as he peered into the empty en-suite.
Wallis cackled loudly, like a witch. ‘This is so fucking easy,’ she said. ‘He still can’t be sure that he’s not witnessing paranormal activity.’
‘Let’s try the voices again,’ Roth said, and Wallis tapped again at the keyboard.
This time Temple heard what sounded like a muted conversation coming from the monitor. Keaton must have heard it as well because he pricked up his ears and rushed out of the bedroom. His progress down the stairs was captured on various cameras.
He came to a halt in the living room, at which point Wallis tapped the keyboard again and the voices stopped, leaving Keaton looking angry and confused. He collapsed on the sofa, closed his eyes and started mumbling to himself.
‘We’ve rigged up the house so that we can override the electrics and the phone,’ Roth said. ‘We can turn the lights and the TV on and off, bypassing the switches. As you can see we can also introduce sounds. Footfalls on the floorboards are so creepy.’
‘Plus, we can squirt foul odours into any room through the air
conditioning vents,’ Wallis said. ‘I wish we’d done that more than once. The reaction we got provided some cracking footage.’
‘It’s all quite simple,’ Roth explained. ‘A few cables and gadgets strategically placed under floorboards and inside wall cavities. It took a bit of time and money but it was a worthwhile investment.’
‘So you’ve been here since the family arrived and they haven’t spotted you,’ Temple said.
‘The cameras have been rolling all the time but we’ve come and gone,’ Roth said. ‘Keaton saw me earlier at the edge of the woods when I was leaving here to come into town to meet you. I was careless, but I quickly lost him. Another time he and his wife broke into the garage looking for their daughter, but they didn’t notice there was a room up here.’
Temple clenched his jaw. ‘They told me they found a snake in one of the beds.’
Roth nodded. ‘We thought it would be a great way to set the scene. An attention grabber. It just so happened that there was an adder nesting in the back garden. All we had to do was give it some poison and lay it to rest.’
‘So the daughter’s disappearance was part of this … script.’ He spoke the last word as though it had a foul taste.
‘Indeed it was – designed to put them through hell and to stop them leaving the house. We sent the text message from her phone to keep you lot from getting too involved.’
‘But how did you do it – take her, I mean?’
‘We injected a sleeping drug into the groceries we bought them. We avoided what they would most likely eat and drink for breakfast. Didn’t want them going to sleep before we were ready to snatch the kids.’
Temple lifted his chin towards the monitor showing Keaton’s family. ‘So where are they?’
‘In the basement,’ Roth said. ‘The American doesn’t know that the house has one. We concealed the entrance. It’s how we’ve been able to get in and out with all the doors and windows locked.’
Temple was appalled and yet fascinated. The amount of planning and effort that had gone into this whole depraved set-up was just
staggering
. Despite himself he found it hard not to feel a grudging
admiration for what they had done.
‘So where does Nathan Slade fit into all this?’ he asked.
Roth pursed his lips and said, ‘Slade gave us the idea. One evening when he’d had too much to drink he told us about his hidden cameras. He’d installed no less than ten to spy on guests. It started us thinking about how great it would be to use the whole house as a film set. So Belinda and I worked up a script. Since the house is supposed to be haunted we used that as the theme and it grew from there. It quickly became an obsession with us. We added our own cameras and made some changes to the King’s Manor website then waited for the
bookings
to come in. Unfortunately for the Keatons they were the first to get in touch by email. After their booking was confirmed we stopped checking the emails so I have no idea how many other families were interested.’
‘So Slade gave his blessing for all this?’ Temple asked.
Roth shook his head. ‘Nathan Slade has been dead and buried for almost two months. The creep knew nothing about our plans and we didn’t want him to get in the way. So we snuffed him out.’
‘But Jack Keaton said he received a call from Slade.’
‘That was me. Keaton was getting over anxious. I wanted them all relaxed enough to have dinner and an early night, so I could get the daughter out.’
Temple arched his brow. ‘So now you’re setting Slade up? It’s you who’s been withdrawing money from his bank. You also bought the airline ticket. You want to make it look like he’s been planning to flee the country.’
Roth smiled. ‘And why not? That way nobody will suspect us. Sadly we won’t be able to bask in the glory, but we will be free to make more and even better movies.’