Calloused A Collection of Thrillers

By Tabitha Swann

Two estranged sisters who show up at their missing mother's estate to settle her estate and collect the proceeds. But as they sift through her belongings, they find a board game that holds a connection to their mother's disappearance ...and deadly consequences for anyone who plays it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jul 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201543327

Book preview

CALLOUSED

TABITHA SWANN

table of contents

CALLOUSED

BROKEN GLASS

SCALPED

ONE DARK PARTY

THE LAST VICTIM

COMPULSION

Chapter 1

The house had collected a thick layer of cobwebs and grime, but the building otherwise remained unchanged since the last time Bethan saw it over ten years ago, shortly after her grandmother’s disappearance. It sat at the highest point on Dinas Galath, a small island off the coast of Wales, looming over the fishing village below with its ten-foot tall, iron-infused windows and stone dragons carved above the oak door. Dinas Galath was idyllic in the summertime, as Bethan remembered it, with fields of deep, green grass, small woodlands filled with life and a pebble beach that wrapped around the island. As the taxi brought Bethan and her mother, Jayne, up to the house, she couldn’t help but notice the extreme deterioration of the grounds. Nothing grew. The flowers were gone. The trees were dead. Withered vines curled around the corners of the house and smothered many of the windows.

It looks like a tomb, Bethan said.

I don’t think anyone’s been up here in years, Jayne said.

Someone’s up here now, Bethan said, nodding to a lone figure in an upstairs window.

That’s your Auntie Norma, Jayne said. Do you remember her?

I remember she’s a miserable cow.

Jayne laughed. That’s about all you need to know.

Mum, Bethan said, thinking it was her last chance to say what she’d been thinking the whole way over on the ferry, do you really think grandma’s dead?

Jayne took Bethan’s hand.

I mean, Bethan said, "I know she’s gone, but maybe she’s not gone gone. Do you think Auntie Norma is being...? I don’t know. Do you think she’s rushing it?"

It’s been ten years since your grandma disappeared. I think Norma just thinks... She went quiet for a moment. It doesn’t matter, she said, finally.

Bethan studied her mother’s face. She had aged quite badly since it happened. Her hair was beginning to grey and under her eyes were the dark rings of hundreds of sleepless nights. She was nine years old when her grandma went missing, so Bethan could clearly remember the sound of her mum sobbing in the next room.

Thank you for coming with me, Jayne said, kissing Bethan’s hand. You didn’t have to.

I wanted to see the place one last time, Bethan said, nodding to the dark shadow of Norma in the window, before that vulture sold it.

Oh, my gosh, Norma said, coming out of the house with a wide grin and her arms outstretched. Look at my little niece! How old are you now, cariad?

Bethan forced a smile and hugged her.

You must’ve doubled in height since the last time I saw you, Norma said. And look at that make-up! Don’t you look pretty? Spill it, young lady. How old are you now?

Yeah, I’m nineteen, Bethan mumbled. You owe me a lot of birthday presents.

Norma cackled and then looked at Jayne. Bethan grimaced.

You’ve raised a terror, Norma said, that’s for sure.

Norma and Jayne hugged lightly and briefly before moving away from one another.

Bethan walked ahead, up onto the porch, watching where she put her feet for fear of broken boards and rats. She pushed open the front door. It was heavy and creaked as it swung inwards, revealing the darkness inside. She could remember running around this house in her underpants as a kid, with not a care in the world. She had crawled into every space big enough to be a hiding place and investigated every inch of its three floors and its gloomy attic, desperate to discover all the house’s secrets.

Now, she looked back over her shoulder for her mum. Bethan was almost too afraid to even set foot inside the door alone.

*

Her grandmother’s room, save for a thick layer of dust and a veil of spider webs, was exactly as Bethan remembered it. The same gormless, badly painted porcelain children and animals lined the shelves of her grand old cabinet. The same books lay stacked in one corner, from floor to ceiling: histories of the British Empire, biographies of members of the royal family and other such sentimental, nationalistic nonsense that Bethan had always railed against. On a mantelpiece above an old fire place was a row of commemorative plates featuring pictures of Princess Diana, her grandmother’s all-time favorite royal. Bethan remembered her grandmother more as a presence than a person. She couldn’t claim that she ever really got to know her, but, all the same, she felt like she knew her inside and out. Her grandmother was predictable, safe and completely uninteresting.

Just like mum, Bethan thought.

You could figure out everything you needed to figure out about her in about as short a time as it took you to glance around her bedroom. She was a nice lady – she had always been kind and gentle with Bethan – but, even though it disappointed her a little to think it, Bethan knew that her grandmother was nothing special. She was a dime a dozen, as the Americans would say. Her whole family was the same way: unexceptional.

The only thing interesting about the whole lot of us is this spooky house, now that it’s all decrepit and falling apart, Bethan thought. And they’re gonna sell that off, anyway.

Bethan caught sight of herself in the mirror on her grandmother’s dresser. She immediately looked away. With her dark eyeliner and her straight, jet black hair, Bethan knew what she looked like, at least to herself. She looked like someone who was trying too hard to look different. And maybe that was true, she often told herself, but there’s nothing wrong with trying to be different from all of these nobodies, people who have spent their lives just coasting, without any passion of any kind.

The closest thing any of them have to any emotion at all is Auntie Norma, Bethan thought. And she’s just a greedy bitch. She’s going through a divorce and it’s more expensive than she bargained for, so she’s hoping to claw some it back from her dead mum’s house.

Bethan could hear her in the hallway. She and Jayne were talking in strained voices, managing to only just stay civil. Bethan walked to the door and listened, staying out of sight.

What if mum comes back? Jayne said. What will we do then? We’ll have to buy her a new house.

It was the first time Bethan had heard her mum express doubts about Norma’s actions. She felt oddly comforted that her mum was having the same doubts she was. She supposed that it was only natural that her mum was cautious about this, though. That’s how she is, Bethan thought. Careful and cautious and predictable.

Norma sighed. She’s been gone ten years, she said. The police didn’t find anything, but even they said she could’ve gone into the sea. Some people, they never find them.

Mum wasn’t like that, Jayne said, her voice shaking. We’ve talked and talked about this.

She was always wandering off in the night, Norma said. Nobody ever said she killed herself. Those cliffs are dangerous.

She might come back.

Look, I’ve started the process.

What process?

"The process, to have her declared."

Dead? Jayne sounded shocked. You’re declaring her dead? You can’t do-

I’ve started it. Relax. We need to move on with our lives.

Bethan turned back and looked around at the room one more time.

She’s gone, she heard Norma saying. It doesn’t matter what anyone says. It doesn’t even matter what happened. She’s been gone ten years. That tells us one thing for sure.

Bethan noticed something on the floor in the corner of the room. It hadn’t caught her attention before because it was coated in spider webs and its colors had faded over the years.

It tells us she isn’t coming back, Norma said.

It was a board game of some sort. The pieces were still laid out. It was a game her grandmother had been playing the night she disappeared. Bethan had seen her through the doorway as she had crept down the stairs for a glass of lemonade in the night. She didn’t dare go in, not after midnight, but there was something else that kept her from disturbing her. She looked as she always did, half-asleep and utterly harmless, but Bethan remembered feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Her grandmother was playing the game alone, yet it was set up for two people.

Her grandmother had said something aloud, seemingly to no-one.

What was it? Bethan thought. What the hell did she say?

She walked over and brushed the cobwebs aside. In the middle of the board was an illustration. It was a five-pointed star inside a circle, with the head of a goat drawn inside the star. Around the circle were a series of letters. The spelled it out for her. Bethan remembered what she had heard her grandmother say.

Bethan said it herself. She said, Baphomet.

Hearing it aloud, for only the second time in her life, it sent a chill down the back of her neck. She didn’t know the word, but looking at the face of the goat on the board, she felt like it was a name.

The board was arranged with spaces all around the center in a circle. In each space was a symbol. Bethan leaned over the board and picked up one of the pieces. She moved it along a space. She couldn’t figure out the rules. She sighed.

What a weird little thing, she thought.

As she looked down at it, another one of the wooden pieces, all by itself, started to move to the next space.

Chapter 2

I don’t know why you’re so interested in that silly game, Jayne said, as casually as she could manage through the trembling rage that had engulfed her after they left the house and her sister behind.

I just wanted it, Bethan said.

Bethan held the box on her lap as the taxi drove them back into the village, to the kind of bed and breakfast hotel which described itself as charming to buy a little goodwill for its many flaws. The box was wooden. It seemed handmade, to Bethan’s untrained eye. It was certainly heavy. The board folded in half and fit on top of a hollow which contained the wooden pieces, chunky figurines with clumsily carved bodies and oddly detailed, rather well-done faces. Only the faces had been painted, and the rest was left. These, too, looked handmade.

I’d never seen that game before, Jayne said. Not before we couldn’t find her. It was out in her room, I remember. I’d never played that with her, anyway, and we played everything together, usually. God knows what she was thinking when she bought that. Creepy little thing.

Bethan stayed quiet and waited for her mum’s bad temper to subside. It never usually took longer. They were good at burying things, her family. They had effectively buried Bethan’s grandmother when they moved away to Ireland. Her name rarely came up in conversation and there was no further speculation about her disappearance. It was as if she was still alive, waiting for them in Wales should they ever want to return.

Now that they were back and had stood in the house once again, to Bethan, it really felt as if her grandmother was dead. She had no grandparents on her dad’s side - they had died before she was born - so she had no elderly relatives elsewhere to remind her of the kind of relationship she might be missing out on.

Do you think dad’s OK? Bethan asked.

I’m sure he’s fine, Jayne said.

Falling asleep in front of the television, covered in crumbs and tea stains, Bethan thought. Predictable to a fault, just like the rest of the family.

What was granddad like? Bethan said. I never met him, did I?

No, Jayne said. He died just a few months before you were born.

What was he like?

He was a nice man. You’d have liked him.

The wild, green, Welsh countryside rolled by for a few minutes, and Bethan assumed that was the end of the discussion. Her mum could offer small talk for hours on end, but when asked for an opinion on anything, she tended to stay chipper and quietly back away from the conversation. As Bethan was watching the world go by, feeling the smooth surface of the wooden box, her mother looked at her. Bethan saw this moment out of the corner of her eye. She didn’t know what it meant, or what her mum was weighing up before speaking, but she caught it.

Your nan loved him, Jayne said. Loved him more than anyone’s ever loved anyone, as far as I’m concerned. You don’t see that kind of love so much anymore.

Bethan looked at her and smiled sympathetically. She’s talking about dad, she thought.

It was the war that did it, Jayne continued. "You send your husband away to some foreign country, against people like that - people with real power, I mean, not just some farmers in the Middle East who found a rocket launcher - and if you don’t know he’s coming back... Well, to go through all that and to get him back at the end... I can’t imagine how happy she was."

Bethan touched her mum’s hand.

I can’t imagine, her mum muttered, looking down at her hand.

*

Her mum was taking a bath when Bethan opened up the box and took out the board game. It was dark out, but Bethan left the curtains open so she could hear the rain tip-tapping against the glass. In the day, there was a view out of the window over the small fishing village, across the narrow strip of sea to the mainland beyond. In the night, she could only see back into the small bedroom she and her mother were sharing. Two beds, a small desk with a wobbly chair and a single dresser topped with a twenty-year-old combo TV-VHS player comprised the entirety of the furniture.

On the walls hung paintings of seascapes, which Bethan supposed