Hybrid Read online

  Hybrid

  Shaun Hutson

  Copyright © 2002

  LIVING DEATH

  The fly was caught in the web. He watched it writhe helplessly, tangling itself even more surely in the sticky strands that ensnared it.

  The web had been spun across one of the windows of his office and it was the frantic buzzing and struggling of the fly that had first alerted him to its plight.

  Now he sat back in his chair and watched.

  And waited.

  The spider emerged slowly from its hiding place. A bloated, corpulent specimen that barely seemed able to haul itself along the gossamer snare towards its victim.

  But it came with lethal intent.

  He watched as it stretched out one leg and placed it on the struggling fly. Then, with surprising speed, it hugged its swollen body to the insect, drew it close and injected venom from its fangs. Clung on tightly as its victim was immobilised.

  As living death took over.

  Finally it began to weave a silken cocoon around the fly before hauling itself back to its hiding place.

  It would feed later. On the still-living fly.

  Christopher Ward watched for a moment longer then looked back at his desk.

  The screen of his computer was blank. It had been for the last two hours. He hadn't managed one single, solitary word since he'd wandered out of the house at ten that morning.

  The cup of coffee he'd drunk at eleven hadn't sparked any thoughts. Neither had wandering backwards and forwards in the office.

  It was like that some days. Most days.

  He stared at the screen. He placed his fingers on the keys and he waited.

  And nothing happened. No outpouring of creativity. No flood of story-telling genius.

  Just a blank screen. And a blank mind.

  It wasn't writer's block. He knew how that felt. This was something new. More painful.

  This was living death.

  He glanced at the" fly still suspended in the web. It twitched helplessly every now and then. He wondered if it was aware of its impending doom. He doubted it. Man was alone in being able to contemplate his own end. The only species able to appreciate the finality and inevitability of death.

  Christopher Ward was caught in a web of his own.

  LIVING IN THE PAST

  Ward was in his early forties. Some people told him he looked younger. That on a good day he could pass for thirty-eight or thirty-nine.

  But good days had been in short supply for the last two or three months.

  Most mornings when he looked in the bathroom mirror the face that looked back at him was tired and pale. There were dark rings beneath his blue-grey eyes. Hair that had once reached his shoulders had recently been cut to just above his collar. And now there was a little too much grey in those once-lustrous locks.

  Twelve years ago it had all been so different. He'd greeted each day with optimism. Life was worth living then. So much happening. So much to look forward to.

  And now what? Every day was a battle. It was a struggle to get out of bed. A battle to work. To force himself into his office for each day of a life that had changed so drastically.

  Twelve years ago he had known only success. There had been more money than he knew what to do with. Exotic holidays. Parties. Expensive lunches. Exorbitantly priced dinners.

  And women. Lots of them. All eager. Wanting him.

  He had seen no end to it. Why should there be an end?

  But that end was looming. Waiting over the horizon.

  Waiting like a bloated, hungry spider ready to devour him. To suck the life from him. The life he had loved so much. The life he had never really stopped to appreciate.

  He'd read that life is like a tram journey and the trouble with most people is that they rarely get off the train to enjoy the sights.

  Ward had been one of those people. And he regretted that now.

  Regretted it because he knew that those days were gone for ever.

  And he knew why. From deep inside he felt a twinge of a welcome and long absent emotion.

  Anger. Anger at what he was about to lose. From anger grew hatred. From hatred rose fury.

  He would use these feelings.

  He glanced at the blank screen of the computer once more.

  Ward pressed his finger down on one of the keys and held it there.

  At least, he mused, there was something on the screen at last.

  He got to his feet and wandered over to the top of the stairs. His office was a converted garage about ten yards from his house. A white door led into the side of the building, and fourteen steps led up to the place where he had worked for the last twelve years. The room was about twenty feet long, half that across.

  Within these confines Ward had positioned two black ash desks, one supporting an old manual typewriter and the larger one a computer, several bookcases, a small stereo system and a sofa bed. A second door led to a toilet and shower.

  He had a sink in one corner. A kettle stood beside it with tea bags, coffee and a jug of milk. He was self-sufficient inside his little kingdom.

  He walked out of the house at ten in the morning and he walked back in at four in the afternoon. Same routine every day.

  It was all he knew. All he had ever known. No matter where he had lived.The one-bedroom flat over a billiard hall at the beginning. The two-bedroom terraced-house he'd bought after the success of his first half a dozen novels. The four-bedroom house with the tiny paved area at the back, sandwiched between a bakery and an old woman who he had known only as Mrs B.

  And what he had now. What he'd had for the last twelve years. Financed with his success that seemed a hundred years in the past.

  All that mattered now was the present and the future.

  If he had one.

  MARKET FORCES

  Ward opened the back door and walked in. The house was silent.

  He crossed to the sink, filled the kettle then plugged it in and waited for it to boil.

  Ward wandered into the hall and saw that there was mail lying on the mat. Bills. Junk mail. The usual.

  Instead of returning to the kitchen he took a detour into the study. A huge bookcase lined one wall and in the centre section were his own books. Twenty titles under his name and the same number again under the various pseudonyms he had used over the years.

  He looked at them blankly. They all counted for nothing now.

  It was these books that had made him his money. Given him the lifestyle so many others could only envy. And it was these books that he still wanted to write but which no one wanted.

  No publisher. No agent. They had told him that sales had not been good. Markets had changed. Same old shit.

  Well, fuck them. Fuck them all.

  Something different was needed, apparently. Something original but easily pigeon-holed.

  Books by celebrities were very popular. Models,

  second-rate comedians, has-been soap stars (those that weren't trying to make it in the music business), even footballers were writing books. Any talentless cunt with enough money to pay a ghost-writer and a good editor was capable of churning out a book and earning shit-loads of cash for it.

  And then there were the household names who milked their own brand of repetitious bullshit while fawning publishers knelt at their feet to push ever-larger cheques into their grasping hands.

  Add to these the comfortable middle-class writers who lectured on real life from the security of knowing it was a world they would never have to inhabit. People with millions in the bank who crowed that money wasn't everything, who complained about invasion of privacy during their six-page interviews, who were proud of how they'd been single mothers or record-shop employees or advertising men before they'd made it big. And who whined about how hard they'd h
ad to work to get published when all it took was a generous publisher and an even more generous publicity department.

  Ward despised them all. Even when he'd been successful he'd despised them. The whole fucking business stank. It stank of cowardice. Of duplicity. Of betrayal.

  He heard the kettle boiling. Fuck it. He needed something stronger than coffee.

  GASPING FOR AIR

  Ward poured himself a large measure of Glenfiddich and swallowed it. He felt the amber liquid burn its way to his stomach, waited a moment then poured himself another.

  It was cool in the sitting room despite the heat outside. The sun was shining and he could hear the sound of a lawnmower in the distance. One of his neighbours cutting the grass. Or perhaps one of their gardeners.

  He smiled to himself.

  He'd have one more drink then he'd go back out to the office. See if the break had released some trickle of creative juice.

  It took two more drinks before he could bring himself to move.

  Ward stood at the back door and peered towards his office. On one side of the building was a huge oak tree whose branches brushed against the windows and stonework like skeletal fingers. The sun glinted on the roof windows and he shielded his eyes. It really was a beautiful day.

  He thought about the fly trapped and paralysed in the spider's web.

  A beautiful day.

  Ward ran a hand through his hair and set off across the garden towards the office.

  As he reached the door he heard the fax machine ringing, and hurried inside and up the stairs in time to see paper oozing from it.

  Anything important?

  No. It never was. Not any more.

  He looked at the blank screen of the computer for a moment then sat down almost reluctantly in his chair.

  'Come on, come on,' he murmured to himself. He could smell the whisky on his breath when he spoke.

  Again he rested his fingers on the keys. Again he pressed one key a little too hard.

  jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj

  It wasn't funny this time.

  He got to his feet and crossed to the bookshelf on the far side of the room.

  Look at a book. There might be inspiration in there somewhere.

  He stared at the titles.

  Who Killed Hanratty?

  Helter Skelter

  Beyond Belief

  Cannibalism: The Last Taboo

  The Shrine Of Jeffrey Dahmer

  The Encyclopaedia Of Serial Killers

  Something clicked. Ward frowned. He read a few pages of Hunting Humans then put it down and returned to his desk.

  There was a small plastic carriage clock on his desk. It showed 1.36.

  He was still staring at it two hours later.

  ROUTINE

  One of the things that Christopher Ward had discovered during twenty-three years of professional writing was that routine was vital. Treat the whole thing as a job. Nothing more.

  Despite what the pretentious bastards on The South Bank Show said, it was a job. End of story.

  Every day he set himself a target of three thousand words. Ten pages.

  At the beginning, he'd written fifteen, sometimes twenty in a day. That time of fresh enthusiasm and burning ambition, when the desire for success was paramount.

  Once that success had been attained, the urgency faltered. He went from writing five novels in a year to just one. Earning that kind of money didn't require him to burn the candle at both ends.

  He had had it all. Big house. Big bank account. Big reputation. He was at the top of the tree.

  But from the top there's only one way to go. And it was the most uncomfortable ride Christopher Ward had ever experienced.

  Now he was lucky if he completed five pages a day. But the routine still had to be adhered to. He could not

  leave the office without having written something. At least one page before he would allow himself to move from his desk and return to the house. Or to wherever else he went to forget about what he'd just been through in the office.

  It was important to keep the job and normal life separate, and never to think about the job when you weren't behind the desk. Never.

  He stared at the blank screen. Then at his notes. Then at his synopsis.

  Christopher Ward began to type.

  Fresh Skins

  by Christopher Ward

  PREFACE

  JANUARY 23rd, 1991:

  The grave was no more than three feet deep but it had taken over an hour to dig using the small shovel they'd given him.

  They'd watched him toiling in the frost-hardened earth, and when he'd paused every now and then to catch his breath, they'd urged him on, forcing him to finish the task quickly.They were anxious to be out of the freezing night and back in the warmth. Away from this place.

  Despite the cold he was sweating. Not all of it was due to his exertions.

  A wreath of condensation clouded around him like a shroud.

  Perhaps he would have been able to dig more quickly had one of the bones of his right forearm and several of his fingers not been broken. The cuts and bruises on his face and the cigarette burns on his arms weren't helping either.

  He hurled another shovelful of earth on to the pile before pausing for a second.

  He could see them moving about agitatedly in the gloom. One of them visible only by the glowing tip of

  his cigarette. The other was pacing back and forth in an attempt to keep warm, stopping every so often to stamp his feet, trying to revive his circulation.

  Christ, it was cold.

  The sky was cloudless. There'd been snow showers during the last twenty-four hours and a thin powdery layer was still covering the ground, hardened by the frost that dug icy barbs into everything.

  The man standing in the grave had not seen the snow fall. The blindfold that had been over his eyes had ensured he saw nothing. It had only been removed an hour or so earlier. Then they had pushed the shovel at him and told him to dig.

  One of the men wandered to the edge of the hole and peered down into the depths. His companion glanced in too. They murmured something about it being deep enough. Three or four feet would do.

  One snatched the spade from him. The other told him to stand still.

  The man in the grave looked up but couldn't make out their features in the blackness.

  Not that it mattered any more.

  He heard the slide on the automatic being worked. A metallic click in the freezing silence. He knew a round had been chambered.

  The shot came seconds later. It caught him in the back of the head.

  So did the second. And the third. The fourth was hardly necessary. Or the fifth.

  The muzzle flashes erupted vividly in the blackness. The boom of the discharges were deafening in the stillness.

  They waited until the sound had died on the wind then one reached for the shovel and the other began kicking clods into the freshly dug grave.

  It would take a lot less time to fill it in, and for that they were thankful.

  It was so cold.

  One of them hawked and spat on the body then they continued covering it with earth.The other flicked a spent cigarette butt into the crude resting place.

  Three or four feet was enough to hide the smell from carrion creatures. Foxes wouldn't dig down that deep. And even if one did, who cared?

  At least the job of filling in the grave warmed them up a little.

  One of them looked at his watch.

  Soon be done.

  It was a start.

  He glanced at the plastic carriage clock, then at his watch. He switched off the power and sat gazing at his own reflection in the blank monitor for a second.

  Three pages. Better than nothing.

  He got to his feet and headed for the stairs.

  ESCAPE

  Christopher Ward had found that one of the prerequisites for being a writer was a liking for solitude. He'd never been a very sociable person anyway, preferring his own company
to that of others from an early age. Even so, when he wanted he could be as gregarious as the next person and actually appear to be enjoying it. But, deep down, Ward needed time on his own.

  Even when he wasn't working days would pass without him speaking more than ten words. These days a few muttered syllables on the phone was the full extent of his social interaction. And, of course, his visits to the cinema.

  He had loved the cinema for as long as he could remember. Ever since his mother first took him to their local fleapit, somewhat inappropriately named The Palace, to see Planet of the Apes.

  Like everything else, his cinema-going had changed over the years too. Now his local was one of the sixteen-screen multiplexes that had sprung up in most large towns.

  Ward spent a large amount of time in the one that was just ten minutes' drive from his house. So much

  time in fact that many of the staff spoke to him as if he were a friend.

  He watched everything. He had endured films like Pearl Harbor, he had tolerated pictures like Shakespeare in Love, and he had marvelled at masterpieces such as Gladiator. They offered an escape for him. A chance to sit in darkness for two or three hours and concentrate on the images before him.

  Anything to forget his present predicament.

  This particular day was cheap day. It was also pension day and most of the auditoria were populated by pensioners, usually complaining about how loud the sound was or muttering damning comments about the films shown in the trailers.

  Ward parked his car in the large car park outside the building and walked in, glad to feel the air-conditioning after the heat of the sunshine. He took the escalator to the first floor where the cinemas were housed.

  There were a number of restaurants and coffee bars on the same floor and he glanced over at them as he strode towards the box office.

  He saw couples sitting talking. Laughing. Everyone, it seemed, had someone.

  Except him.

  He ambled into the short queue behind two pensioners and a couple of students and waited, scanning the electronic board behind the cashiers that displayed show times.

  The pensioners were having trouble choosing between Captain Corelli's Mandolin or Hannibal. Both based on bestselling books, Ward noted with annoyance.

  They were still deciding when the students slipped