SYNOPSIS

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THE LOCKUP

Edgar Hydeford, a once popular but now struggling artist, shares a lockup with an obnoxious and dangerous bully, Henry.  Edgar’s life is on the skids and he is desperate for a chance to break back into the art scene, however, his co-habitant of the studio lockup seems hell bent on destroying any chance of Edgar achieving the heights of his previous success.

Angela Worthing , a well-known art dealer with a string of artists and galleries in several towns, appears at the lockup looking for new talent and is delighted with the samples Edgar shows her.  Just as life seems to be on the up, Henry puts into motion a series of violent and horrific events that will destroy Edgar’s life forever.

In a desperate struggle for survival Edgar searches for a way out of his horrific situation and in a final shocking twist we uncover the unbelievable truth about Edgar and Henry’s relationship

 

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FIRST CHAPTER

CHAPTER ONE

 

The fingers slowly bent backwards, snapping one by one with a sickening crack, hanging like pale ribbons tangled in a breeze.

“No!” Edgar cursed under his breath as he watched the fruits of his labour fall apart in front of him. The clay continued to crack along the length of the arm and torso of the figurine.

He sighed and stared at the window, sunlight streaming in and slashing its way across his latest creation. It was the heat and light that had caused the clay to dry too quickly on the outside, forcing it out of shape. Angrily, he pulled the shutters back across, convinced he had shut them when he had left that morning. The whole thing was ruined, nothing but scrap.

“What the fuck do ya think yer doin?” The grating voice crawled up Edgar’s spine and he froze. He was back.

“The eh… the light…”

“What about the goddamn light?”

“It’s damaged my work, too hot, and the clay…”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about your pathetic hobby.”

“It’s not a hobby, it’s my livelihood.” Edgar stood straighter and stuck out his chin in defiance at the shadowy figure lurking in the gloom of the doorway to the other side of the lockup.

“Yeah, whatever, fruit loop.” The hulking shadow slid into Edgar’s side of the shared unit, the cruel features of Henry illuminated in a sickly yellow-white glow cast by the single lamp above the workbench, making his face distorted and inhuman.

“When I’m working, I need all the light I can get in this shithole.” Henry continued.

Edgar shrunk, deflated, and intimidated by the overwhelming presence of his co-inhabitant. Moving back, he began to dismantle the figurine and break up the now useless clay, hoping to at least save the frame it was built around.

Henry watched his every move with hungry, malice-filled eyes. “Want to see what I’ve got to play with?” A grin cracked its mirthless way across Henry’s face.

Edgar paused, his back to the doorway. He could feel the eyes boring into the back of his head and his heart was gripped in ice. Schooling his features from fear to interest, he turned and smiled weakly, nodding, and indicating that Henry led the way. He followed at a distance into the darkness that was Henry’s workshop, a row of ancient lights casting a ghastly, sickly yellow glow over a vehicle shrouded with a tarpaulin.

Edgar paused as a chill crept up his spine. Henry slowly pulled the sheet from the damaged vehicle, dented and broken at the front, its bonnet crumpled like the wrinkled face of Henry, who was grinning manically, his eyes revelling in the horror that Edgar tried to hide.

“Where did you get that?” Edgar tried to control the tremor in his voice as the words squeezed themselves through his tight lips. Flicking off a piece of mud stuck to the buckled roof support of the rusted and dented car,

Henry took his time in replying. “Well, I was looking for a new project and hey,” he gestured at the wreck, “this came up in a junk sale.” Trying to hide his smile, he slowly walked around the car and leaned across to Edgar. “It was cheap. They say it was pulled out of a ditch on some godforsaken back road. Police had it a while, think it was involved in some hit and run incident.” Henry didn’t miss the flinch and flicker in Edgar’s eyes, despite his attempt at keeping his features schooled.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, never did catch the driver. They say a couple of people died, but hey, you know how stories grow arms and legs.” The grin was humourless. “Can’t say that about the victims though, can we.” Henry laughed a grating, vicious cackle.

“You’re a sick individual, Henry.” Edgar could feel a cold sweat break out on his brow.

“Maybe, fruit loop, but not as sick as the fucker who mashed up two pedestrians then drove off.” His face twisted in mock innocence. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

Edgar swallowed hard, his heart racing as he backed away to his own side of the unit. “I’m not playing your stupid games, Henry, I’ve got to go home.” He turned and fumbled with his keys as he stumbled towards the door.

“Just lock the whole fucking unit, Edgar. I’m pulling an all-night stint, want to get some answers from this hunk of metal.”

The steel lockup door slammed shut and with trembling hands, Edgar turned the key in the old lock. He was furious with himself for letting Henry get to him; he had truly hoped the shithead had gone for good. It had been a few months since he had disappeared from the lockup that he had asked to share.

Edgar remembered the dark and drizzling day Henry walked into his life. It had been a couple of weeks after the… Edgar stopped his train of thought, shuddering. He had been unsure of Henry from the start; there was something repulsive about him, a darkness, like black mould eating through a wall.

But things had been tough; there was an economic downturn, his art wasn’t selling as much as it used to, and he wasn’t exactly an ‘A-lister.’ So, he had reluctantly agreed, letting Henry use the old garage section that still had a pit and small office. It was dark and unsuitable for Edgar’s work – ironically, he usually needed full light to work the details into the models, but not today, not for this work. He gritted his teeth at the destroyed figure. That would cost him. He would have to start again and use more of his rapidly dwindling clay supply.

Sticking his hand into his pockets, Edgar fished out some small change – there was enough to buy some of the overprocessed gloop that passed for burgers in the fast-food place on the corner of his street. He crossed the road in the diminishing light and pulled his hood up over his ponytail of greying hair, stray strands catching on the stubble peppering his thin chin. Standing at the counter waiting for his plastic burger, he mused on his forty years on this beautiful world.

Almost all of it had been torturous in one way or another, his artistic temperament allowing him to not only see the glorious detail in everything around him but also the stark horror and desperation that flowed through a deprived area in a backwater town. Everything stood out in harsh details; he could see the good and the bad that existed side by side in the polished images of everyone – everyone, that was, except himself. Edgar was the epitome of the struggling artist, gaunt with a pale complexion and haunted-looking eyes.

Dotty leaned over the counter, pressing the wrapped box into his hand. “Gave you some extra fries, sweetie, you need some meat on your bones.” She smiled kindly, her blood-red lipstick unable to hide the cracks and wrinkles of her lips.

“Thank you, Dotty, I will pay you back, I promise.” Edgar took the bulging box and nodded, trying to hide his shame. This is what he had been reduced to; grateful for charity from an old lush working a late-night burger joint.

 

He crossed the street to the run-down apartment building and climbed the stairs to his attic studio room. He squeezed through the door and leaned against the wooden frame, rotten with flaking paint, his meal still clutched in his hand. Taking two steps to his right brought him into the ‘kitchen,’ which was a worktop, two cupboards and a tiny hotplate, set stupidly close to the tiny refrigerator lurking under the work surface.

He pulled out a plate and gave it a cursory rub to remove the thin layer of dust, emptying the contents of his meal box onto its surface. The fries threatened to fall off the edges, but he skilfully stacked them up as he fished out a knife and fork. Edgar surprised himself sometimes; most people would have eaten right out of the box, but no, he was determined to maintain civilised behaviour.

Walking a further two steps, he reached the single armchair with the small table pulled up close and sat down, placing his plate gently on the scratched and scored wooden surface. To say the flat was bijou would be wildly exaggerating; it was a glorified attic which miraculously managed to squeeze in the kitchen separated by a paper-thin wall from a shower room with a toilet.

To free up space, Edgar had fitted a cabin bed recycled from an old boat. It could be folded up against the wall for extra room and it was just big enough for him alone. Not that Edgar was expecting any company, no; his life in that respect had been one failure after another until he had decided that a companion was never going to happen. Hell, he would have settled for male or female at one point, but not anymore; he just didn’t have the energy for anything other than his work.

The only thing Edgar liked about this shitty place was the ceiling-to-floor window which took up the entire wall on the far side of the tiny room. He loved that window. Often at night, he would sit with no lights on to pollute the view and gaze across the small town to the distant mountains, marvelling at the myriad of stars glistening across the sky unencumbered by light pollution from the sparsely lit town. Edgar didn’t possess a television – life was his entertainment. Sitting in the dark, no one outside could see him watching them act out their personal dramas for his amusement.

Leaning back in his chair, the dirty plate pushed to the side, Edgar gazed at the stars and tried to quell the niggling fear inside of him. Henry was up to something; he could sense it as surely as a mouse senses a cat lurking in the dark. How the hell had he found that car? Could it just be chance? Such things were possible, but knowing what Henry was like made him uneasy; the odds against him finding that particular car, the costs of recovery, then bringing it back here, were astronomical. If he didn’t know better, Edgar thought that all the time Henry had been away he had been looking for that car, as if he knew his dirty little secret.

Taking a deep breath, Edgar stood up and washed his plate and cutlery before carefully putting them away. He needed to paint. A wooden board on an easel always had paper pinned to it, but tonight Edgar needed oil, not watercolour – no pastels or subtlety was required here. He rifled through a stack of old work and found a canvas that he placed on the easel, lit by the faint streetlights and starlight from outside. The canvas had an old work still adorning its surface, a pleasant but cliched pastoral scene of trees, meadows, and cows. Picking up his palette, he used a flat knife to score a streak of blood-red paint across the blue sky and grazing oxen. This was going to be an abstract, a reflection of his mood, and his mood that night was dark.