Confronting The Hostile

By Joy Mutter

In CONFRONTING THE HOSTILE, a retired Irish superintendent and a handsome DCI from Liverpool attempt to rid themselves and the world of their lethal tile masters. Will they succeed in reclaiming their freedom or will the bizarre killing games continue?

Confronting The Hostile is book 4 in The Hostile paranormal thriller series, described as “compelling, strange, and wonderful” by one reader. An audiobook version is available.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joy Mutter
• Release date: Sep 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781974434572

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

What the hell have I got myself into? If only I’d left this small floor tile that’s nestling in my hand where it lay grinning up at me from the blood-splattered tarmac. Tile X had been flung from Serena Drummond’s hand, milliseconds before the Manchester-born teenager, and her Liverpudlian friend, Melanie Scarfe, had died from their deliberate fall from the roof of Lime Street train station’s car park. But, oh no, not me, not John Morris, hell no! Muggins here was stupid enough to pocket the tile, believing it might help me to further my investigations into the growing number of weird deaths in Manchester and Liverpool over the past seven years or so.

If I’d listened to the professional inner voice of my former self, Superintendent John Morris, I’d have left the damned tile on the ground for the attending police officers to find and bag up as evidence. As a retired superintendent, my all-consuming pastime - discovering the truth behind the mysterious deaths - had led to my own wife’s tragic death. I should really call it a murder, not a death, because Paul Barrett had used his speeding motorbike as a weapon. Poor Delia, an Alzheimer’s sufferer, never stood a chance. But I taught that arrogant biker who killed her the ultimate lesson. All I did was tell Tile X to kill Barrett … and he did, spectacularly. Barrett was torn to shreds inside his police cell, to the puzzlement of everyone at the station. Looking back, I know I overreacted, but it’s too late to do anything about my reckless actions now, except to bitterly regret them.

I’ve now returned from my investigations in northern England and am back in my lonely home in Cork, Ireland. I sit in perpetual fear, waiting for a knock on my front door from my old police force colleagues. I’m scared they’ll one day be coming to arrest me for the murder of Paul Barrett, the unrepentant motorcyclist who mowed down my darling wife in the lane outside our once-beautiful Irish home. On that awful day, my wife had wandered out of the house, dressed in her dressing gown and slippers, her mind disastrously confused.

The guilt of not paying adequate attention to Delia’s whereabouts will live with me forever. I’d been too engrossed in working up in my den on my investigations into the cluster of extraordinary killings in the two northern cities. I never heard my wife leave the house on her impromptu walk towards her brutal death. I’ll never be able to forget the pathetic sight of her broken, bloodied body lying sprawled on the tarmac on that incongruously sunny afternoon. The gut-wrenching memory and the guilt are my eternal punishment, but I know the powers that be would use other forms of punishment on me, if they were ever to discover I’d told Tile X to kill Barrett inside his cell.

The authorities will have a hard job pinning the death on me; I was miles away from the crime scene when Barrett was shredded. All it took to render the bastard lifeless were a few words to Tile X and it was job done. Serena Drummond and Melanie Scarfe must’ve done exactly the same as me, time and time again, killing people left, right and centre. Now, I’m no better than them, but each of us had been conned by Tile X, or his counterpart, Joe, into what we became – murderers.

If I’m correct in identifying them as the culprits, and I’m sure I am, the two eighteen-year-old girls’ death toll was impressive. Although neither Tile X, nor anybody else, have told me the numbers, I estimate Serena and Tile X have been behind eight deaths. Melanie and Joe, Tile X’s twin, must’ve killed sixteen people, including twelve random strangers all living in one street in Liverpool. Poor bastards!

According to what Tile X has recently told me, his boss is someone, or something, called The Host. Joe’s boss is apparently called the Hostess. No clue what these two entities look like, sound like, or what they even are. Tile X has told me their real names, their alien names for want of a better word, but the pronunciation is impossible for me to get my tongue around, so I’m sticking with the names Serena and Melanie used for them. Life’s too short to do otherwise.

These two powerful supernatural entities apparently live at the earth’s core, according to my new master, Tile X. I could never call him anything else; this two-inch floor tile is my master, and this fact galls me to the max. Having a boss of any kind doesn’t come easy to me, after years of having so many police officers under my command. It’s so humiliating to be controlled by a small, stone square. I’ve come to despise his vulpine, alien, part-human face, his half-squinting eyes winking at me, taunting me.

How on earth did a sixty-year-old, retired police superintendent, living in Cork come to be the slave of a two-inch floor tile? By picking him up from the bloodied tarmac of a street in Liverpool, that’s how. Now, on pain of an excruciating death at his hands, he is forcing me to be a reluctant competitor in a devilish, obscenely immoral game of death being played out between The Host and Hostess, merely for their twisted amusement. They devised it between them to ease their boredom during their eternal existence in the flaming bowels of the earth. I’ve always been an atheist, but I’m beginning to believe in the Devil and all his works.

Until their recent suicide pact, Serena and Melanie had found themselves in the same completely hopeless position as I now find myself. They’d been lucky enough to quit this diabolical game, by asking their respective tiles to kill their competitor. Melanie told Joe to kill Serena. Serena told Tile X to kill Melanie. Genius! I, on the other hand, sadly have no known competitor to do me the same favour. If I knew of one, I’d immediately try to contact them to arrange a meet-up, like Serena and Melanie did. Then we could sentence each other to death through the tiles, like those two clever girls had done. Why would I want to die? Because, like the girls, I’ll never be comfortable with killing people, just to win someone else’s game, which I have zero interest in. Being a tile’s slave isn’t much to shout about.

I sometimes wonder if Tile X’s competitor, an identical evil-looking tile called Joe, will try to forcibly enlist someone like me to continue the deadly game. At some point, I reckon they’ll try to recruit someone else through trickery. This is because nobody, except the Host and Hostess, know the deadline for the end of the game. The Host has me and Tile X on his team. It would surely be too risky for The Hostess to merely rely on Melanie’s old score of sixteen killings? Now Melanie is sadly dead and buried, it’d be foolhardy for Joe not to find someone new to take her place, to carry on challenging me and Tile X to a killing competition. I’m sweating at the thought of the deaths I’ll be forced to instigate.

Speak of the devil, the little swine is giving me another lecture. ‘Pay attention, John, or I’ll be forced to punish you again.’

‘Sorry, I was thinking about something important.’

I suddenly feel a hot pain in my genitals, his favourite target for gaining my attention and compliance.

‘Ouch! What the fuck? I said I was sorry. You’re going to hospitalise me if you keep on zapping my balls like that.’

Tile X is sighing with irritation. He does that a lot. ‘Something important? If I’m talking, there’s nothing more important than my words. Understood?’ His hissing voice is enough to drive me crazy. It’s like talking to Kaa the cobra in The Jungle Book, only much scarier. I’m already being driven insane by all the unbearable pressure of the killing lying ahead of me, and the guilt over the deaths behind me.

‘Yes, boss. I understand, but please lay off my genitals.’

The sharp pain in my boxers is fading to an almost pleasurable tingle. Wonder if I’ll ever eventually almost enjoy my tormentor’s sadistic punishments? Who knows? I might be retired, but at least it proves there’s some life in this old dog, although there’s no woman in my life now Delia resides in a ceramic jar in the living room. Tile X dominates and controls my life. Maybe I won’t live long enough to find out if I’ll ever get to fully enjoy the aftermath sexual tingles from his punishments. I could be joining my wife in death at any point.

In one way, it’s just as well I’m single, now Tile X has entered my life and completely taken it over, destroying it day by day. At least I’m not endangering a partner, only myself. I don’t even bother to hide the accursed tile; I’m alone in my house these days, so there’s nobody around to ask me awkward questions. While I sleep, the little shit usually resides inside a glass bowl on my bedside table. I’ve tried to put a lid on the bowl, but he’s having none of it. He lives on my mantelpiece when I’m downstairs. I’ve no wish to comply with his order for me to carry him on my person each day. I’m too traumatised by my predicament to set foot outside this house, so the damned tile is always within easy reach. I’m at his demanding beck and call night and day and it’s driving me crazy.

Chapter 2. A Tricky Friendship

John is deep in conversation with Tile X on a cold, rainy Saturday morning when his mobile phone rings.

Tile X says, ‘Don’t answer it. Leave it to ring. We still have so many pressing matters to discuss.’

His words anger John so much, he defiantly picks up the phone. Damon Flint’s name appears, so he slides his thumb across the screen to answer the call. Damon, a DCI in the Liverpool police force, is John’s only friend, but John can never confide in him now as he’d like to.

Flinching after Tile X shoots electricity through John’s gonads for disobeying him, he attempts to speak. ‘Hi Damon, mate … how’s tricks? Still giving all your women the run around?’

‘Are you okay, John? You sound a bit strange. Thought I heard you wince. You’re breathing kind of heavy.’ Damon sounds concerned. Please don’t let him ask me too many questions, thinks John. I obviously didn’t hide the pain from Damon well enough. Maybe I should’ve waited and rung him back when the pain had faded to its usual delicious tingle.

John decides it’s safer to lie to him. I’ve no option. ‘Yeah, I’m fine, Damon. Just knocked my shin on the coffee table. Great to hear your voice. It’s been a while.’

‘Yeh, sorry about that, mate. Been rushed off my feet at work. So many unsolved crimes to solve, and so few of us to solve them. Never known a time like it. Getting my arse kicked every day by my boss because we’re no closer to getting to the bottom of those twelve fatal stabbings in Kirkley Street. The media’s going mental with their coverage of it. Wish that damned street had been in Birmingham or Timbuktu, and not on my patch in Liverpool.’

‘You really drew the short straw with that one. You have my sympathies.’

Normally, before using Tile X to do his dirty work by killing off the monster who killed his wife, John would have mentioned his prior investigations. But, he knows if he did so, it might alert Damon to link Tile X with him. Damon’s already mentioned how forensics have been working on a tile found in Melanie’s dead hand. He’s unaware John has an identical one in his own house and has used it with great effect to kill Paul Barrett. John prays Damon doesn’t mention tiles to him now.

His prayer is immediately ignored. ‘I really need to pick your brains, John.’

‘Christ, you must be desperate, ha!’

John’s in no mood to laugh, far from it, but he makes a feeble attempt, to allay Damon’s concerns over his well-being. John thinks, I despise liars with a passion, and now I’ve become one … and far worse. It’s all down to Tile X, Joe, and their two scary bosses.

He hears a weary sigh coming from Damon and thinks, The poor bugger must really be under the cosh.

Damon says, ‘It’s all your fault for talking to me about that bathroom tile Serena Drummond flashed at your officers and her mum a while back. The fact a strange-looking tile was found in Melanie Scarfe’s hand is just too much of a coincidence for me to ignore. It’s all I can think about. It’s the only damned lead I have, but, now both girls are dead, I’m at a loss to know where to go from here. There’s nobody to ask about the tile except—’

‘Me? No, I guess not, but, on reflection, my theory was way out … a crazy hypothesis that was probably best left unsaid. I was talking out of my arse, Damon. Reckon you’d be better off just concentrating on identifying the killers the conventional way; forensics, DNA, CCTV footage etc. You know the drill.’

The sweat is breaking out all over John. He prays his words deflect his friend, but Damon is like a bulldog with a juicy bone. ‘But the Drummond girl had actually admitted she and the tile were behind several deaths—’

John’s patience snaps. ‘Oh, come on Damon. Serena was high on prescription drugs in hospital at the time.’ John thinks, I wish my deceased officer, DCI Broom, hadn’t written Serena’s confession in his notebook. I’d not be in this stinking mess if he hadn’t bothered.

‘Yeah, I know it’s all too easy to write off her words as crazy ramblings, but all the recent deaths, and the ones possibly linked to her, were crazy too, with no logical explanation whatsoever. I hate to admit it, but all I’m left with is the theory of some type of paranormal involvement.’

Thinking fast, John throws him another lie. ‘Got to dash, mate … someone’s at the door. I’m expecting a delivery.’

‘Oh, right,’ says Damon, bristling with frustration. ‘I’ll phone you back in fifteen minutes or so, if that’s okay with you.’

Hearing the desperation in his friend’s voice, John’s heart sinks as he realises he’s not going to be fobbed off that easily. ‘Sorry, but can you make it this afternoon? I’ve got a dentist appointment in an hour or so.’

John thinks, I’m clutching at straws and need some time to work out how to wriggle free of his particular line of questioning. He’s too near to the truth. I know he’s an excellent detective. His prying mind is the last thing I need, what with me having killed the damned biker, with more killings to follow in the future if I’m to keep the boss happy. It’s the only way to prevent the damned tile from eternally frying my gonads, or worse.

‘Sure, my call can wait until this afternoon. I can see you’re busy.’ There’s disappointment in Damon’s voice, but John doesn’t care.

‘Speak later.’ John hangs up on him with a huge sigh of relief, resolving not to answer the phone when he rings later. It’s tough knowing I’m probably going to lose my only friend when it’s the last thing I want. In my perilous situation, I could do with his support.

Sitting inside the noisy incident room, Damon stares at his phone in bewilderment. Did John just hang up on me? What the devil’s got into him. He’s completely changed his tune. A few months ago, I couldn’t shut the daft Irishman up from voicing his pet theory about possible supernatural forces being involved in the murders. Now, he’s clammed up on me, and is being almost rudely defensive.

‘Damon, I’ve just had the report in from forensics over in Ireland regarding Paul Barrett. They say there was no relevant or useful DNA found in the prison cell where his body was found. Duty officers at the time heard no noises that would’ve alerted them to his dismemberment.’

Damon looks up at DCI Paula Miles as she stands, so tantalisingly, beside his desk. He tries to hide his bitter disappointment at her news, but fails to muffle a sigh and a curse word. ‘I suspected forensics would come up with zero, but I was still hoping there might have been something useful for us to go on. Wish we’d never been given this case to look at. The powers that be over in Ireland reckon it could be another of these unsolvable cases that are plaguing our force and Manchester’s too. Wish they’d keep us out of it.’

His colleague’s bodacious appearance elevates his mood, as it always does. Recently, the one shining bonus of him coming into work is to be able to admire her slim yet shapely form, her gorgeous face perfectly framed by long, glossy, dark hair that she wears swept up in an intricate topknot.

There’s always been an underlying crackle of electricity between the pair, which they’ve tried to ignore; Paula has a fiancé, much to Damon’s