The Hostile

By Joy Mutter

In a rundown area of Manchester, inside the bathroom of a terraced house overflowing with children and dysfunctional parents, a small but powerful entity befriends young Serena with disastrous results. This unlikely enigmatic force not only dramatically affects introverted Serena’s life but also threatens the safety of everyone she knows, especially those who've earned the strange girl’s displeasure. It soon becomes clear that nobody should ever upset Serena if they know what’s good for them. "Compelling, strange, and wonderful".

The Hostile is a “refreshingly original” contemporary paranormal crime thriller. “A bizarrely captivating” read. It’s book 1 of The Hostile series. Book 2 is Holiday for The Hostile, and book 3 is The Hostile Game. The final book is Confronting The Hostile. Each of the four books in the series has an audiobook edition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joy Mutter
• Release date: Jul 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532717093

Joy Mutter

I was born in Jersey and lived there for eighteen years. I worked in Kent as a professional graphic designer for over twenty years after gaining a Graphic Design Degree at Coventry University. I moved to Oldham in 2012 and have been writing books full-time up north ever since.I’ve written, designed, and published more than twenty books since 2007. The first three, A Slice of the Seventies, The Lying Scotsman, and Straws are third-person memoirs that form The Mug Trilogy.My fourth book, Potholes and Magic Carpets is contemporary, character-led fiction. I’ve also published one illustrated nonfiction book called Living with Postcards.Random Bullets was published in 2015. It is a contemporary crime thriller with a paranormal twist.Her Demonic Angel contains fourteen of my best short stories in different genres. Between 2016 and 2017, I published The Hostile Series of four contemporary paranormal thrillers. They consist of The Hostile, Holiday for The Hostile, The Hostile Game, and Confronting The Hostile. The Hostile Series Box Set contains all four books in The Hostile series.In 2018, I published a psychological thriller called The Trouble with Liam. The Trouble with Trouble, Trouble in Cornwall, and Troubled, all explicit standalone erotic thrillers in The Trouble series, were published in 2020 and 2021.Novellas The Brothers Grimshaw and A Sunny Day in Oldham were published in 2022.Between 2021 and 2023, I published the Nuru and his Crows Series consisting of Nuru and his Crows, The Storms of Padstow, and Punishing the Innocent.Nine of my books are also available as audiobooks.

Book preview

The Hostile

Book One of

The Hostile Series

Joy Mutter

The Hostile

Copyright: Joy Mutter

Publisher: Joy Mutter at Smashwords

Published: 2016

The right of Joy Mutter to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without prior written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

Contents

Contents

Chapter 1. The Weirdness Begins

Chapter 2. A Fateful Meeting

Chapter 3. Trouble

Chapter 4. Could It Get Any Worse?

Chapter 5. An Unfortunate Trip

Chapter 6. Grief And Guilt

Chapter 7. A Shoulder To Cry On

Chapter 8. Stepping Out Of Line

Chapter 9. Good Riddance

Chapter 10. The Pounce

Chapter 11. Passion On The Moors

Chapter 12. Firming Up Relationships

Chapter 13. The Threat

Chapter 14. Confrontation

Chapter 15. No Time Like The Present

Chapter 16. A Deliberate Accident

Chapter 17. A Wrong Move

Chapter 18. Vengeance

Chapter 19. Serena’s Choice

Chapter 20. So, It Goes On

Books By Joy Mutter

About The Author

Chapter 1. The Weirdness Begins

Serena observed the two-inch stone square at her feet in disbelief. She could have sworn the parted lips on the bizarre face on the floor tile were moving. She wriggled forward on the toilet seat, leaning closer to hear what it was saying. Open-mouthed with puzzlement, she heard a faint whisper, laced with menace.

A strange voice drifted up from the mottled tile. With an ominous, drawn-out hiss, it said, ‘It’s on its way.’

As a twelve-year-old girl plagued by regular constipation, Serena spent more time than the average human sitting on the family toilet. Directly in front of the toilet in the cramped bathroom was a deteriorating walk-in shower. The slightly raised floor was laid with hundreds of mottled tiles in random shades of brown, cream, ochre and grey.

Serena had plenty of time to study them while straining on the white toilet. The rest of her large family often hammered in turn on the door in frustrated, futile protest at being prevented from using the bathroom.

The grouting in between many of the tiles was patchy and discoloured, with widening gaps where the grout had washed away altogether. The entire shower room floor badly needed replacing, as did all the fixtures and fittings throughout the house; although jobless, Serena’s father, Keith, was not a natural handyman. He ignored all the many flaws that required fixing, preferring to laze on the sofa watching daytime television in a haze of pungent cannabis smoke. Beatrice, his wife, sometimes joined him on the sofa to share a joint, but, more often than not, she was busy dealing with their four children, or throwing together unimaginative, bowel-clogging meals.

There was another, smaller bathroom leading off from Beatrice and Keith’s dingy bedroom, but with four children in the family, ranging in ages from eighteen months to seventeen, the bathroom Serena favoured was in frequent demand. She scarcely ever made use of her parents’ bathroom, because of her powerful, growing connection with the other one at the far end of the dark, shabby landing.

Serena’s hideaway conveniently adjoined the bedroom she shared with Lizzie. The frizzy-haired, over-excitable girl was two years younger than Serena, and took immense pleasure in annoying her elder sister at every opportunity. The entire landing was perpetually dark, even in the day; the sole window looking out from the end of the landing was overshadowed by a nearby, intrusive pine tree. When the wind was high, the branches would whip and scratch against the pane of glass like a cat demanding to be let indoors.

Serena wished her father would cut the tree down, or at least prune it. The din of the tree bashing and scraping the glass would sometimes wake her up at night. Her imaginings of demons and ghosts would then keep her awake, making her tired for school the next day. Her father was usually too spaced-out on his home-grown cannabis to do anything more productive in life than father children and watch television.

Beatrice was Keith’s second wife. While with his first wife, Carole, he’d sired a pair of twin boys and a daughter, all now in their twenties. The couple had married when they were both eighteen after Carole fell pregnant with the twin boys. Another child, a sickly girl, joined the family a year later. Nursing the new, constantly ill baby put an impossible strain on the couple. They soon realised they didn’t really like each other. They’d married before they were mature enough to deal with the stressful problems of parenting a sick child plus demanding twins with scarcely any money to survive on.

The couple divorced fairly amicably three years after their wedding day. Their relationship sadly deteriorated, due to Keith visiting his first family far less frequently after meeting Beatrice and starting his new life of making babies with her.

Serena’s mother, Beatrice, became Keith’s second wife a year after he’d moved on from Carole and his children. Although Beatrice had been a vibrant, vivacious redhead when Keith had first met her in a rundown local pub, once she’d bagged her man and didn’t have to try too hard anymore, Beatrice became depressed, lacklustre and shabby. Beatrice soon became as downbeat and hopelessly chaotic as her new spouse. She was permanently exhausted from being forced to deal with running the household with scant money available, and with no help from permanently stoned Keith.

The three older children from Keith’s first marriage tried to visit his new household in an attempt to re-establish their bond with their father. The cramped house became a warzone whenever they visited Keith and his new offspring. Serena always made a point of spending even more time in the bathroom whenever the other older children visited. The noise pollution alone was enough to drive her upstairs to seek sanctuary. Serena was scarcely missed as she never said much when she was downstairs with them all. The jabbering and larking about of the children, especially the crying of toddler, Tristan, drove her to distraction.

It was a constant struggle for Beatrice to manage on the meagre unemployment benefit she and Keith had both been claiming for years, long before Serena’s birth. Keith was only too willing to let his wife take care of all the financial and household matters, as he was too bone idle and irresponsible to do anything resembling work. Most of his energies were spent on ensuring the cannabis farm up in the loft was thriving to keep him, Beatrice, and several regular customers in their area of Manchester, constantly supplied.

Her parents seemed barely present in Serena’s life. They were far too preoccupied with themselves, the cannabis farm and with their more demanding children. Whichever child screamed loudest eventually gained their attention. Due to being drowned out by her siblings, Serena became a solitary child who’d wisely learned to become self-sufficient. This was just as well, because scant help or spare love came her way from any family members.

In Serena’s lonely world, the inscrutable face on the tile in the bathroom was fast becoming her closest confidant. At first, she couldn’t decide whether the face belonged to a male or female, because its hair was missing. Over time, she came to think of the tile as being primarily male, but something other than human. Her powerful imagination led Serena to see that its mouth was open in a half-snarl, one eye was wide open and the other squinted and was almost closed. Serena was neither stupid nor naïve. She was aware it was a random accident that had formed the pigment in the abstract, tonal tile into a face. Nevertheless, to Serena it was undeniably a distinct face looking back at her, transfixing her with its gaze.

From the moment Serena heard Tile X hiss the words, ‘It’s on its way,’ all her attention was naturally devoted to this special tile. Unable to ignore such an odd occurrence, she paid its surrounding abstract companions little heed. All the other tiles didn’t initially resemble any recognisable objects or beings. Months passed after she’d first realised Tile X, as she’d begun calling him, was something extraordinary. Serena then started to delve deeper into the significance of the other surrounding tiles.

Her extraordinary tile friend was paler than most of the others, with a greyish-cream background and dark brown colours marking out its features. As far as Serena knew, only she seemed to have recognised the abstract shapes and accidental squiggles as facial features. To the rest of her family, it was just a tile with random splodges on it like all the other ones, the sort of uninspiring objects that could be found in any DIY shop across the world. It, and any other tile, was unworthy of a split second of their attention.

If Serena had bothered to point out the face on the tile to any of her siblings, they would have doubtless agreed it was indeed a sinister, alien-looking face. It looked mostly inhuman to Serena, a cross between a pale wolf and a grimacing ape, yet she could also discern a grain of humanity in its makeup. The mystery creature was partly turning towards Serena, looking at her intensely over its shoulder. The unblinking eyes seemed to follow her wherever she happened to be in the room, much like Mona Lisa’s eyes follow her worshippers visiting her shrine. What world the tile creature came from was unknown, but it obviously could not be from Serena’s normal, humdrum world. There were no clues from whence it came or why it had spoken to her.

In a crowded house, Serena wanted something of her own, that only she was a part of. One reason why she was loath to discuss the tile with another living soul. She’d also have been risking the derision of whoever she told. They would probably even have considered her to be unhinged if she started to babble about a bathroom tile having spoken to her.

At some point over the months since first making her connection with her special tile, Serena discovered she had dreamt up a name for it. It just popped up into her mind as she looked down at it from the toilet seat. Unusually for a girl with such a vivid imagination, she’d not chosen a particularly imaginative name for it. In fact, it did not feel like she’d chosen the name at all, but more like the tile had chosen its own name. It had become second nature to address her stone-faced companion as Tile X, and to think of him more as a male companion rather than a female or androgynous one.

Serena never remembered catching sight of the unused tub of Tilex in the small, neglected shed at the bottom of the garden. Her mother had bought the DIY product years earlier in the hope Keith would at some point fix some of the loose tiles in the two bathrooms, but he’d procrastinated as usual. Keith was king of procrastinators and always turned a deaf ear to his wife’s nagging.

One morning before school, Serena found herself saying, ‘Good morning, Tile X.’ After a day or two, she was saying, ‘See you later, Tile X,’ ‘You’ll never guess what happened at school today, Tile X?’ It had become clear her new friend was indisputably going to forever be called Tile X.

A diet of cheap, unhealthy food was the main cause of Serena’s severe constipation. It was rare for her mother to ever serve up a green vegetable or piece of fruit to the family. The repetitive ping of the microwave was the most frequent noise in the kitchen, apart from Beatrice’s shrill voice nagging one or other of her children and her mostly unresponsive husband.

When Serena’s parents rowed, it would usually be on an epic scale. It would occasionally bring the police around to their rented house in a rundown area of Manchester whenever their neighbours complained about the commotion. The constant domestic chaos served to make an already introverted Serena increasingly withdrawn. To avoid the bedlam, she stayed upstairs as much as possible, either in her shared bedroom, if Lizzie was not in there, but more often her preferred hidey-hole would be the adjacent bathroom.

Serena was just as withdrawn at school as she was around the home. Her left leg hadn’t functioned properly since birth. Her left foot would turn markedly inwards as she walked. This had resulted in her usually being the second from last in her class to be picked for team games in the playground or during any sport activity. The very last to be selected was always Seymour Lightfoot. He was unfortunate enough to have been born with two game legs, not just one impaired limb, like the one Serena limped on.

She felt pity for Seymour, not least because his feet were anything but light as his surname suggested. Fate and genetics had served him a double whammy, because Seymour also had carroty ginger hair sprouting in all directions from his head. Both of these afflictions were often commented on cruelly by boys like gang leader, Jake Forsythe, or his unwanted shadow, Patricia Blunt.

Patricia would always inflict the worst of her bullying whenever Jake was within earshot. Her displays of cruelty were performed mostly to impress him, because she’d been harbouring a powerful crush on the tall, blond, blue-eyed sporty hunk for well over a year.

Seymour was the complete opposite of Jake. The unpopular boy was forced to drag both feet as he made his way laboriously from classroom to classroom. Cruel jibes would often resound in Seymour’s ears from the mouths of crueller, fitter Jake, or attention-seeking Patricia. Other members of Jake’s gang would sometimes chip in to make Seymour’s life even more hellish. Serena would shoot a withering glare at whichever smart-arse was striving to belittle Seymour, be it Jake, Patricia, or one of their gang members. However, she was too scared to speak up for the victim in case the intimidating bullies focused their hurtful remarks on her.

‘Heaven knows, there’s more than enough wrong with me to supply ammunition for those two bullies in particular to pick on. I do feel guilty for not sticking up for poor Seymour, though,’ she confided to her friend, Tile X.

It had become a habit for her to tell the silent face on the tile whatever had upset or troubled her on any day. She naturally never expected him to respond, but he seemed to be closely listening to her every word. Serena also unburdened herself to him about how distressed she felt from witnessing her parents shouting at each other, or how much her siblings had aggravated her. She’d tell the distorted face, in faint whispers, about whichever bully had picked on Seymour that day, or about who’d shot her dirty looks on the school bus. As she was a hyper-sensitive girl with a deformity, there were a myriad of ways for Serena to be emotionally wounded.

As she sat hunched on the toilet after school one day, Serena whispered to her stone-faced friend, ‘Poor Seymour was deliberately tripped up today by Jake Forsythe when he was limping through the canteen. Seymour turned crimson with embarrassment after falling flat on his face in front of the entire school. To make matters worse, the poor kid actually cried, and so did I. I could’ve punched bloody Jake right in his smug face. Patricia was egging Jake on as usual. I wish Jake knew just how hard life can be for kids like Seymour and me. It’s enough of a struggle having dodgy legs without being picked on as well. We didn’t ask to be born this way.’

Even though the face on the tile permanently looked aghast, Serena thought it suddenly appeared to be even more aghast after hearing her words. It seemed to open its jaws a little wider and to stare more intensely into her green eyes.

‘Even though my stupid leg didn’t make it any easier, I managed to help Seymour clamber up off the floor, which seemed to surprise him. I’ve told you before how I tend not to get involved for my own safety. The mob of evil kids who hang around with Jake and Patricia at school can be really scary,’ she said.

The face gave her a look that said, ‘I understand perfectly.’ He seemed to be thinking deeply.

‘Jake is definitely the ringleader of that gang. As you know, he’s picked on me several times, but nowhere near as badly as he’s tormented poor Seymour. Do you know what happened during this morning’s swimming lesson when the swimming teacher wasn’t looking? Jake held Seymour under the water for so long, I thought he was going to drown the poor bugger. When Seymour was allowed to resurface, he was spluttering so much, he had green snot bubbling out of his nose.’

She was particularly constipated that day, so her stay in the bathroom was longer than usual. Serena had already been shouted at by her seventeen-year-old sister, Emily.

‘For Christ’s sake, Serena. When are you thinking of coming out of there, you freak? I need to use the shower. I’ve got a date tonight. Who are you talking to in there?’ Emily shouted through the locked door whilst banging on it.

‘Nobody,’ Serena replied. She looked at the face on the tile. I really should whisper more quietly to you.

Serena thought she heard a whispered, ‘Yes,’ coming from the floor, but dismissed the ludicrous notion.

She shook her shoulder-length, conker-coloured hair. No, it’s just my imagination. Tiles can’t talk. There seemed to be a slight curve at the corner of the tile’s mouth that hadn’t been there a minute before.

It was then the face distinctly whispered, with a hiss, ‘It really is on its way you know.’

There was no mistaking it. The mouth had spoken again. ‘What do you mean? What is on its way?’ Serena asked, suddenly feeling less constipated as fear made her bowels efficiently empty into the toilet.

There was a smug, knowing look on the face on the tile. The random patterns on the surrounding tiles seemed to swirl, but Serena thought it must be her eyesight playing tricks on her after straining for so long on her porcelain throne. This can’t really be happening.

Tristan, her youngest brother, had taken Emily’s place outside the bathroom door, insistent he be let in. ‘I need a wee. Let me in!’ he shouted, urgently rattling the doorknob. The child was not long out of nappies and the potty was nowhere to be found in the cluttered house.

‘Okay, I’m done!’ Serena said, for once