The Thin Ice

By Sarah McGee

Susan Lenahan. An ordinary woman whose dreams have been all but crushed by the daily grind of a boring job. Alone, unloved, and past caring until the night she encounters a man called Vulgrun, who leaves her scared and scarred. Over the next fourteen days, her life is turned upside-down and torn apart. Driven by revenge, and unaware of the lengths she will go to to get it, she finds like-minded people, unaware that they are little better than the man who harmed her.
She finds love, but what are loved ones in a world thats riddled with unseen danger?
She also finds that she too has a dark secret, one she doesnt understand, and that nearly costs her life at the hands of her new friends. She finds help from an unlikely source, but at what price? And when it all goes to Hell, will she manage to emerge unscathed?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: May 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493194681

Sarah McGee

Sarah McGee is from Derbyshire, and used to work as a computer programmer. She now lives in London with her fiancé, and enjoys spending time on their allotment when not writing. Her other interests include rpgs and science fiction.

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Copyright © 2014 by Sarah McGee.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 05/07/2014

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W ell, what can I say apart from it’s been a rough couple of weeks. My name’s Susan Lenahan and until recently I had a job at a pharmaceutical company. I was going to say the world’s different, but it isn’t. The world’s the same as it ever was, it’s just that…

Let me start again. I’d worked at a local pharmaceuticals company here in Manchester since I got my degree in Chemistry from UMIST. It wasn’t a big company, and the pay was… well, it wasn’t not too bad actually. It was enough that I had a decent sized flat, two bedrooms, big kitchen… two freeloading house guests. But I’m getting ahead of myself again.

So, I was at work when I noticed that we were shipping a whole load of faulty product. It seems that the people in quality control had slipped up. Either that or somebody had decided that testing was what we got the customers to do for us. And that’s not good. I went to see my line manager. His response was to try and shove a small wad of cash in my hand. In full view of everybody. I looked round and realised that I was one of the few, if not the only one there who wasn’t taking bribes. Now I may have been a… bad girl in the past. The words, ‘Things break, stuff happens,’ may have passed my lips on more than one occasion. But no way was I going to take his money. I told him as much.

And then I made what may, on reflection, have been a mistake. I went to the guy in charge of production and I told him what I knew. He seemed genuinely concerned, and told me that he would take the appropriate action. If I’d known what he meant, I’d have been concerned too.

When I came in to work the next morning, there were a lot of people not there anymore. It seems they’d been fired. And of the people who were there, quite a few of them weren’t talking to me anymore. I guess they knew what I’d done. I never expected anybody to lose their job over it. It was shortly after that that I started receiving death threats. I would have laughed them off, said ‘oh, they’ll get bored,’ and carried on with my life… Actually, apart from the laughter, that’s exactly what I did.

I headed off to one of the local bars on my way home for a quick drink or two. Or maybe three. Definitely not more than four. Anyway, I was sat at the bar when a wholebuncha guys from work came in and started making threats. I looked at the bottle in my hand, realised it was half full and sighed. Then I smashed it on the bar and leapt towards them. Like I said, I wasn’t always a nice quiet little chemistry student. And no, I never hurt anybody. Well, not too severely. Not that didn’t deserve it. Not that anybody can prove anything. So yes, I felt sure I could look after myself. They ran off. Well, almost all of them did. One of them looked at me with a ‘like you’d use that here’ look in his eyes. He was a big guy that I’d never seen before. I made it clear that, yes, I bloody well would if he didn’t back off. He did. Oh yes, I nearly forgot one guy thought it’d be funny to blow me a kiss before he left. Yeah, really funny. I nearly laughed, but that was because I remembered an old episode of Red Dwarf. Oh yes, and then they threw me out of the bar. Or rather they tried to, because I just walked. It’s not as if I didn’t have any beer at home, but sometimes you’re feeling more sociable, you know?

Anyway, I was heading home again when I realised I was being followed. I started walking a little faster. Not running, that’s the worst thing you can do, just walked a little faster, and then, when I passed a convenient alley, I ducked down it and readied my bottle. When I stepped out, the big guy from the bar was waiting for me. I smiled and lunged at him with the bottle. For someone so large he was very light on his feet, indeed, he moved so quickly It was as if he’d vanished. And then I noticed that my right arm was on fire. I couldn’t even begin to guess how that had happened, never mind when. I heard a voice saying something about ‘duck, roll and cover’, so I dropped to the ground and did what I could to put the flames out.

When I looked up, I saw that I wasn’t alone. There was a guy there who I hadn’t seen before. He spoke, and I realised that it had been him who’d told me what to do earlier. We looked at each other, and then back to the big guy. We both attacked him, I can’t remember whether it was both together, or whether I got the first shot in, either way, it didn’t do any good, because he was just too quick.

I heard a woman’s voice yelling ‘He just fucking disappeared,’ and that was when I noticed a young woman standing on the pavement. She looked a little disturbed like she’d seen something weird. And I don’t mean what had just happened. The guy had wandered off and he now came back with an old carrier bag which he told me to wrap around my arm. And then he introduced himself as ‘Dave.’ Yes, like the TV station. I was just introducing myself when we noticed that the wall next to us was bleeding. Dave started poking at it with a pencil, whereas I ran my finger down it. Well, it looked like blood on my finger. Tasted like it too. Before we could say anything to the young woman, four of the guys from the bar came back. I recognised one of them as Richard Marrin. I grabbed the bottle again, and the other three ran off. Well, all four of them ran off, but the other three got away. Dave and the young woman, who said her name was Louise, pinned him down. I confronted him with the bottle. I’d had enough of all the stupidity that night, I wanted answers. The weird thing he seemed more scared of something else than he did of me. I told him that if he didn’t start talking, that, well, he’d regret it. Probably not for very long, but still… And then he head butted the bottle. Stupid suicidal idiot. Got blood all over the place. All he’d had to do was talk. Dave searched him and found a driving licence in the name of Martin Peters, a bundle of notes, and a card with the word ‘Vulgrun’ written on it in a sort of flowery writing.

I realised that we couldn’t just leave him lying there. No, we had to chuck him in the river. Why? Because otherwise we’d be implicated in his death. The cops would ask all kinds of awkward questions. One of my old friends had joined the police. Well, I say friends, she’d been the leader of the gang I was in. Dunno why she did that. Possibly wanted to make amends for the stuff we did.

Anyway, we put my hat on him to cover his face, and between me and Dave, we walked him down to the nearest bridge. Yes, we pretended that he was dead drunk. Ignoring that there was a fairly significant comma missing from that sentence. And then we made it look like he’d just lost his balance and fallen into the river. Dave said something along the lines of ‘Oh no, we’d better go and see if he’s alright. Get him out of the river.’ He turned to Louise and said ‘Quick, call the police.’ I think I may have said something like ‘Oh no, somebody think of the children,’ in a really flat tone of voice. And then after getting away from there, we headed back to my place. If I’d known then that it wasn’t just for the night, I might not have invited them back. But it wasn’t too far, and from what Louise was saying, her flat probably wasn’t safe. So I did. And we all met up there and had pizza. I had a beer or two. Oh yes, and I threw our bloodstained clothing in the washing machine. Neither Louise nor Dave drank beer. We talked about what had happened. Louise told us about the man with no eyes at her flat, the book she’d been writing and what had happened with the files on her computer. I decided it would be safest if we did nothing till the morning, so we called it a night.

The next morning, I headed off to work. After what had happened the night before it was surprisingly quiet. Possibly because the people who’d been sending death threats weren’t there anymore, or maybe they just thought they’d be better off leaving me alone. I don’t know. Oh yes, I forgot, the boss asked if I’d seen Richard Marrin recently. Apparently he should have been in, and wasn’t. I don’t know why he asked me, because it wasn’t as if he was somebody I’d talked to much. I told him that, no, I hadn’t.

I met up with Dave and Louise at the food court in the Arndale Centre for lunch. Louise was talking to somebody who I assumed was a friend. What she was talking about worried me, because after all, we didn’t know who was listening. Well, other than her friend. She was talking about last night. Before she could say too much I put my left hand over her mouth, and whispered in her ear. Tell me, do you want to end up in an asylum? I asked her. Or maybe you’d like to spend time in prison. No? Well, if I were you, I’d stop talking. People don’t know… don’t want to know about weird stuff like that. I mean, we didn’t did we?

I realised that her friend was looking at me strangely. I laughed.

It’s alright, I said. It’s just my little joke.

And then we had something to eat and headed off to Louise’s flat. When we got there it was very neat and tidy. Too neat and tidy, apparently. I headed to the kitchen to see if there was anything in the fridge. As soon as I opened the door, the smell hit me. Every single thing inside had gone mouldy. And not just mouldy, very mouldy. In fact it was less rotting, and more just plain rotted. The food in the freezer was more normal. And then Louise came in to say that her laptop was gone as well. There wasn’t much we could do so I headed back to work.

We all met up again in the evening and headed over to the address on the guys driving licence. It was an ordinary terraced house, and, perhaps unsurprisingly it looked as if there was nobody home. From the front window we could see through to the back, as the living room and kitchen had been knocked through. We hopped over the gate and went round the back. The key to the back door was underneath the mat, and we unlocked it and went inside.

There didn’t seem to be anything special in the various cupboards. And on the front window sill was a range of jade fertility goddesses. Or at least, that’s what Louise said they were. In the fridge was a wholebuncha pizzas, but that was it. Upstairs was a bathroom, although it didn’t have a bath in it, just a shower, and another room with the word ‘Vulgrun’ written on the door. Dave tried to force the door, as did Louise. But this was what I do best. I gave it a savage kick and it broke. As it did so, the writing on the door, and also on the card changed to ‘Vul’. Which seemed a little odd.

Inside there was just a desk and a cupboard. I checked out the desk. As I did so, Louise opened the cupboard. There was a sort of rushing noise, then the doors slammed, and a burglar alarm went off. I quickly opened the drawers and grabbed what was inside. The left hand drawer was empty, but the right hand draw contained a straw doll with a hair tied to it, and a notebook with a black leather cover. And then we got out of there as quickly as we could, not forgetting to lock the door and put the key back under the mat. And then we walked back to the car—I think it was Dave’s, and drove slowly away till we were a safe distance before he put his foot down.

We got back to my place again, and after having more pizza, we examined the notebook. I tried rubbing a pencil over the top sheet to see if anything had been written on a sheet that had been torn off. It hadn’t. Also when Dave wrote on it with a pen, nothing happened. I sighed, nicked the end of one of my fingers and let it bleed into a small glass. Then I took a pin and used it to write on the notepad. Still nothing happened. It was increasingly looking as if it was just an ordinary notebook. Which was annoying, as I’d hoped we’d get a lead from it.

And then Louise examined the doll. There was a brown hair tied to it. The same colour as Martin Peters. Although as Dave pointed out, it was probably a coincidence. Apparently it suddenly changed colour to blonde and Louise untied it. When she did it was brown again. So who knows?

I went to the kitchen to get a beer. When I came back, Dave had the doll and, it seemed, had tied one of Louise’s hairs to it. He tried to untie it again, but couldn’t. I popped into the kitchen and got a small knife. When I cut the hair, Louise winced in pain. So, there had been some sort of sympathetic connection between her and the doll. I was just glad that I hadn’t cut the doll instead. Who knew what might have happened. So, we had a strange straw doll and an ordinary notebook. What we didn’t have were any ideas as to what to do next, so we called it a night. And yes, they stayed in my home again. Louise in the spare bedroom and Dave on the sofa. I just hoped he didn’t expect me to get a sofa bed for him.

The next morning, I went into work the same as usual. I heard shouting in the boss’ office. I snuck over to drop a few eaves, but although they didn’t notice me, I didn’t manage to hear anything beyond the words ‘unacceptable standards’. But who it was that said it or to who I didn’t know. I found myself wondering what was going on. But other than that, the day was pretty quiet. I picked up some big pizzas and headed home. It was a good job I did, because Dave and Louise were there waiting for me. Yes, not only did I have two freeloading houseguests, I was buying them pizza.

Louise had two new books, one black, one red. Apparently they were about the occult. I wasn’t too sure about that. On the one hand, we needed to know what we were dealing with. On the other, I didn’t think that it was the sort of thing we should be getting involved with ourselves. On the gripping hand we didn’t have to use it ourselves, so that was alright.

Dave said that, as we had nothing else to go on, we ought to go back and investigate the house again. I agreed, after all, there had to be something in the cupboard, didn’t there? Louise said she’d stay behind and get on with reading her books. Well, one of us had to learn stuff I suppose, and while I’m fairly bright, and academically inclined… somehow I didn’t want it to be me.

And so we went back to the old house. The key was under the mat where we’d left it, and so, when we went inside we went straight upstairs. After all, that’s where the cupboard was. On the landing we found that other people had been here since yesterday. Probably a man, going by the size 12 boot