Cucumber Coolie Read Online Free PDF Page B

mind.
    —Hose.
    I closed the letter and put it back in the envelope. Felt sick to the core. James Scotts came to me for help. He was being serious when he said he couldn’t go to the police.
    “We can safely assume Mr. Scotts here didn’t save his wife,” Lenny said.
    He pressed play on the camcorder.
    “And we can safely prove that he didn’t save his wife after watching these tapes. Go on.”
    I got a nasty taste in my mouth of regurgitated Cheerios. I wasn’t sure I wanted to look into the eyepiece of the camera. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what was on the tape.
    But I owed it to James Scotts. I owed a shit ton more to James Scotts, sure, but this was the least I could do.
    I pressed my eye to the eyepiece and watched.
    The tape was of the inside of a house. All dark and grainy. Someone was walking through the dark, looking through a black-painted door, then looking at a mantelpiece covered in rusty photo frames.
    And then this camcorder holder started climbing the stairs. On the tinny speakers, I could hear wind, as well as the creaking of the stairs.
    They made their way up.
    Looked inside a bathroom, a Donald Duck towel resting over the rail.
    Then looked inside a kid’s bedroom, with teddy bears lining the bed.
    My stomach turned. What was this shit?
    I forced myself to keep watching as the camera drifted into a master bedroom.
    I watched as this first person viewpoint approached the bed. As it held out a rope, or something like that, over this brunette woman’s sleeping face.
    And then I watched as the camera was placed on the side and the camera-wielder rammed something—a syringe—into the woman’s neck.
    I was stunned. So stunned I was barely breathing. I’d tried to get a look at the camera-holder, but all I’d seen were black gloves and a black coat.
    The camera-holder lifted the camera again. Turned it around to their face.
    And then the tape cut to static.
    I kept on staring at the static. “That’s… that’s it?”
    “That’s the tape that James Scotts received with the letter yesterday morning, we believe.”
    He hit eject. The tape popped out, and he put the second one inside.
    “Have you eaten today, Blakey?”
    “I, erm… You’re not asking me for lunch, are you? Just I’ve—”
    “No. I’m asking you whether you can stomach this next tape.”
    Oh, great. Just go and make me feel even more guilty for turning James Scotts away when he really needed help.
    I took a few deep breaths. A few deep breaths in through my nostrils.
    And then I nodded, and moved back in towards the camera.
    A different room this time. A bigger room. A cellar, some kind of warehouse by the looks of things.
    Dead centre, there was a big black object. A black, rectangular box.
    The camera moved towards it.
    I could hear something through the tinny speakers. Mumbling, or a drill screeching, something like that.
    I fast realised that these were the sounds of screams.
    The camera wormed around the room. Looked at some old tap, some tools. But always, it returned to this metal container, where the screams were coming from.
    My stomach tightened up. I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch the rest of this tape.
    The camera stopped right outside the container.
    A hand reached out and pulled open a hatch.
    I jumped back away from the lens when I saw what was inside.
    It was a woman. Only it took me a few seconds to recognise it as a woman because of the state she was in.
    Took me a few more seconds to recognise her as James Scotts’ wife.
    Her head was shaven. Shaven so close that there were cuts all over, the trace of any hair long gone.
    Her face was covered in little nicks too, which cried blood down her cheeks.
    But it was her mouth that made me want to vom. Her mouth that made my throat tighten.
    It was open wide. Open so wide that it was unnatural. There was something metal attached to her chin, which held her undoubtedly broken jaw on to her neck.
    And her teeth. Well, her lack of teeth, and the bloody stumps