Page 1 of The Cut
3
Prologue
JULY 1994
It had to happen at night. There had to be a forest, a full moon and a thunderstorm. A masked man chasing through the dark or a vampire hunting its sacrificial prey. Sometimes there had to be both.
The crack of thunder was closely followed by a sudden blinding flash of sheet lightning, tearing open the sky like an atomic bomb. From the top of the imposing tower of Blackstone Mill, the fourteen-year-old boy teetered precariously, trying to hold the video camera steady against the force of the gale. Blinking away the sudden glare of electricity, he pressed his eye back to the viewfinder. A stifled scream cut through the cacophony of noise. At first, he thought it was a fox, but the second time he heard it, there was no doubt: the sound was human and racked with fear.
The scream was drowned out by a car alarm, blasting a warning into the night.
The boy pressed himself into the smoke-blackened wall of the chimney, feet slipping on the narrow ledge. He found his balance and tried to focus the lens of the video camera on the ground, fifty feet below.
The night had been full of pranks. A flank of Stormtroopers in white spray-painted skateboard helmets had pursued him from the school gates, all the way down The Cut to Cheney End. Indiana Jones had chased Sarah Connor out into the thunderstorm, squealing with laughter, towards the flooded river. The reason the boy had sprinted out of the woods and mounted4the makeshift ladder inside the chimney stack was to film the fireworks from the Crow’s Nest. The view from up there was spectacular. Shrieks of joy echoed across the meadow as comets and willows exploded and fountains of golden rain burst into the sky. But the two figures who now appeared in the shot did not seem to be having fun at all.
One of them, dressed in pale chiffon, stumbled out into the mud, pursued by a terrifying demon, heavy black robes billowing in the gale. Sprinting across the footbridge, the apparition in white took the towpath towards the wheelhouse at the side of the mill. This definitely wasn’t part of the festivities. There was a desperate urgency to the chase; it was a real fight.
In the distance, the deafening roar of a motorbike engine ricocheted off the stone walls of the mill. Emerging from the thicket of trees, the beam of its headlamp ignited the scene – and then the heavens opened. A drenched Chewbacca draped in a sheepskin rug stumbled out of the ruined mill, pulling an R2-D2 Henry vacuum cleaner behind him, followed by two Terminators and a bin-bag Darth Vader with dying sparklers. Everyone ran for the cover of the trees as the rain extinguished the last of the Roman candles. In the chaos, the two figures he’d been tracking in the frame of the camera had disappeared over the broken stone wall of the mill race. He’d lost them.
Droplets of rain splattered across the lens, obscuring his vision. The boy tried to shield the camera with the sleeve of his denim jacket. The red body warmer and high tops of his Marty McFly costume had seemed like a good idea earlier, but now he was soaked through, and the clothes were clinging to his skinny body. His trainers slid against the wet stone walls as he braced one foot either side of the narrow chimney and tried to climb higher. He slipped and chunks of crumbling mortar clattered down the5chimney to the first level, fifty feet below. He grabbed the side of the turret and, regaining his footing, he put the viewfinder back to his eye. Panning the camera, he retraced the route of the two figures from the footbridge to the weir, following the swollen stream to the wheelhouse on the far side of Blackstone Mill.
There. He adjusted the focus and zoomed in closer. He had them in his sights. Two shapes moving frantically along the wall that led towards the dilapidated water wheel. He held his breath as they battled against the rain, staggering dangerously close to the edge of the deep water. The black-robed demon reached out towards his quarry, grasping at diaphanous chiffon billowing in the storm. The girl in white was cornered. She grabbed at the rotten wooden frame of the wheel and began to climb. The demon pounced on her, pinning her down. For the boy filming, it was too much to bear.
‘HEY!’ He broke cover, leaning out precariously from the top of the tower. ‘LEAVE HER ALONE!’
A massive volume of water was now rushing into the mill race as the torrential rain flooded the already bloated river. The noise of the torrent muffled the boy’s cry, but the black-cloaked demon turned for a second, scanning the area. Then he looked directly above him and stared right down the barrel of the lens. The boy with the camera froze. Oh shit, he’d been seen. He ducked out of sight, his feet slipping on the iron pitons hammered into the walls and his legs quivering with fear as he began to descend. He had to get out of there. The motorbike engine revved a warning below, and in a flurry of speed the accelerating bike mounted the wall and then disappeared from sight.
The boy’s legs buckled as he reached the first level, landing on the scaffolding that was keeping the whole structure of the mill from collapsing. He found the ladder and began to climb down.6As he reached the middle rung, the ladder dislodged itself from the platform, swinging out over the void and hitting the wall on the other side. The camera slipped from his grip and clattered on to the ground below. He hung from his arms and dropped on to the flagstone floor, twisting his ankle as he landed. He cried out in pain but didn’t stop; there wasn’t a second to lose. He had to move. Now.
He grabbed the camera and sprinted to the exit, his ankle burning and already swelling inside his trainer. Outside, the gale was driving the torrential rain sideways. He braced himself, raising the viewfinder to his eye as he crept through the cavernous doors out into the darkness of the meadow.
BOOM! A demonic grey face punctured with rusty nails suddenly lurched into the shot. Holy shit! The boy jumped back in shock. The mask was torn, menacing eyes staring directly at him. The boy backed away in fear, stumbling in the mud, then turned and sprinted for his life. His heart punched at his ribcage as he pelted towards the cover of the trees. Bare sapling branches whipped his face as he dodged through the looming arms of the birch trees.
As he reached the ditch at the edge of the thicket, fenced in with chain link, he could see the lights of the motorway in the distance. He launched himself over, hitting the bank too short, and began to slide into the waterlogged brambles. Waist-deep in rising water, the boy tried to keep the camera dry. Sharp thorns caught in his hair and scratched his face as he fought to climb out. Then, out of the darkness, a hand reached over his face and grabbed his jacket, hauling him up the bank. His left fist cracked against the skull of his attacker as he broke free and scrambled over the fence, tumbling down the other side. The steep cutting of the motorway, covered in shale, broke his fall as he skittered7down towards the glare of oncoming lights. His head hit the tarmac of the hard shoulder and he lay there, motionless.
The distant roar of traffic melded with a ringing noise in his ears and even the wind and the rain didn’t seem to touch him anymore. Maybe this was it. The end. Suddenly he could feel someone breathing, very close to his face.
‘Give it to me.’ A hand grabbed at his throat, holding him down. ‘What did you see? Huh? GIVE ME THE CAMERA.’
The boy tried to hold on to the evidence of what he had just witnessed, but a balled fist slammed hard into the bridge of his nose and his head whiplashed against the ground. He released his grip, and the camera was gone. All the tension began to drain out of his body, leaking across the hard wet tarmac of the motorway, and as the ground became soft and fluid, he melted into oblivion.8
9
1
SEPTEMBER 2023
Benjamin Knot gripped the steering wheel and chewed on the small cut on the inside of his mouth. This trip had been as frustrating as the last one. Ben was CEO of the Ignis Fatuus Group, an award-winning architecture firm based in Stockholm. He had once made the list ofFortunemagazine’s ‘40 Under 40’ and graced the cover ofGQas ‘The New Architectural Innovator’. His star had risen, along with the jaw-dropping glass skyscrapers he was famous for, but those days were well and truly behind him.
He glanced up to look at his face in the rear-view mirror. He was still handsome … just about. Greying at the temples and in decent shape for his age, but his eyes were red from lack of sleep and deep indelible frown lines ran across his forehead. His phone rang and he tapped the touchscreen on the dash. Dani’s face appeared on the video call.
‘Oh, sorry, love. I didn’t realise you were driving.’
Ben watched as she flitted around their Italian high-spec kitchen, stopping at the mirror on the way out to touch up her lip gloss. Dani was fifteen years younger than him, and her Scouse spirit was like an adrenaline shot. He was instantly dragged out of his stupor.
‘Just landed. I’m en route from Stansted. The guidance is saying 5 p.m., but you know what Fridays are like.’ He glanced at the road map as he glided past Peterborough.
‘I’m heading out now to watch Lily at the football.’ Dani was bending down, trying to pull on a pair of pristine white10Reeboks while holding the phone close to her face. ‘Will you want to eat later?’
