The Hostile Game

By Joy Mutter

In The Hostile Game, Manchester-based Serena, now eighteen and pregnant, finally discovers the reason why Tile X befriended her seven years before. She doesn’t like what she hears. Mayhem ensues, with a retired Irish police superintendent becoming more involved than perhaps was wise.

The Hostile Game, book 3 of The Hostile series, is an exciting contemporary paranormal crime thriller. As with all the other books in the series, an audiobook version is also available. It can be enjoyed as a standalone.

“Joy Mutter delivers another wonderfully offbeat paranormal thriller, mellowed with a delicious dark humour.” "Magical realism at its best."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joy Mutter
• Release date: Sep 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781545402467

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

Four years have passed since the last killings. I was fourteen at the time my family and I were on a horrendous visit to my bonkers Grandad Niall’s house in Ireland. While there, I was forced into killing three more. First, I killed dishy, but deranged, Jimmy Poodle, the grandson of my grandad’s best and oldest friend. How was I to know Jimmy Poodle had a large screw loose? The maniac had already killed two women before attempting to kill and scalp me.

After that traumatic nightmare, I swiftly had my long auburn hair cut into a short bob. I don’t want to draw any attention to my hair - after Jimmy had fallen for it so hard, he’d felt the urge to cut chunks out of my scalp to add to his gruesome collection. It appears he had a full-blown hair fetish and had already killed two women to fulfil it; he’d scheduled me to be murder victim number three, but I polished him off first with the help of Tile X.

So, here I am, four years later, still recovering from the trauma of causing and witnessing Jimmy’s bloody end. It had been a case of kill Jimmy before he killed me. I won that battle, thanks to Tile X. Without my tiny tile friend’s intervention, I wouldn’t be sitting here on this beach in Cornwall, five months pregnant, trying, and failing, not to burn my fair skin under the fierce sun’s merciless rays. I’m so uncomfortable, I wish someone would magically transport me back to my home in Manchester. There’s no shade here; it feels like torture.

The other people on the beach are getting on my tits, especially the group of toffs with their super-duper barbeque that’s blowing eye-watering smoke in my direction. Perhaps they’d be more considerate if they knew how much they’re dicing with danger by annoying me with their smoke. A few words from me down the cleavage of my sleeveless top to Tile X and they’d be cremated in a freak barbeque fire. Don’t push me, you knobheads!

I told Mum I don’t fancy a swim, as I’m still suffering from morning sickness, made worse by the smell of that bunch of Hooray Henrys’ barbeque. My boyfriend, Jake, my mum, two sisters, and brother have all left me perched uncomfortably on this beach towel with pebbles bruising my bum. I’m staring out at them frolicking in the sea without me. Tristan is splashing everyone, like the annoying little shit that he is. Eight-year-old brothers are such a pain.

I might manage a paddle later, but I’m glad of the peace and quiet with them all in the sea and out of my way. Gives me time to consider my uncertain future after my surprise pregnancy threw a huge spanner in the works. The heat’s making my head feel like cotton wool. I’ll probably get sunstroke at this rate. Jake knows I’m suffering up here and want to go back to the guesthouse, but the selfish bastard insisted on a swim. The others all joined him, which tells me how much they care about my well-being. At least their absence gives me a welcome chance to think.

One troubling thought is sloshing around in my head as I sit here. Why has Jake been acting so strangely since just before we set off for Cornwall? It had better not be anything to do with when I saw him disappearing into Ritz Nailz bar back home. He’s been looking decidedly shifty from then on. He’s forever glancing at his phone and keeps snapping at me for no reason. I’m not going to stand for it.

Maybe he’s acting weird because of my pregnancy. I know I am. I’d been all set to start studying English at Exeter University when I started throwing up for no reason. It didn’t take long before the reason became apparent; I was pregnant. I still am, despite me sometimes wishing the alien inside my belly would just disappear and make my life more straightforward. I take care not to voice my wish to no longer be pregnant in front of Tile X, or my growing foetus would be killed by him, just as he’s killed everyone I’ve wanted dead.

Jake seems as disappointed by my pregnancy as I am, although he’s never admitted as much. I often catch a wistful look on his face, as though he’s piecing together smashed dreams of what might’ve been. At least he’s standing by me and has reluctantly cancelled his immediate plans to study engineering. When we return to Manchester after our Cornish holiday, he’s starting work at his dad’s graphic design agency.

Lucky Jake to have a dad. I managed to kill mine off, after Tile X took advantage when I let slip a few careless, angry words about my dad after he’d cheated on my poor mum. Tile X took my ‘wish Dad was dead’ literally. Tile X is a tricky bugger. He had no compunction about tricking an eleven-year-old girl, before I’d understood the bathroom tile’s powers – not that I fully understand them seven years later.

The sweat tickles my skin as it trickles in rivulets down my bare back. Maybe I’d be cooler twiddling my toes in the sea. Despite my moaning, it was kind of Mum to take us all on holiday to Cornwall, now she’s come into some money after Grandma Julia died a slow, painful and undignified death from bowel cancer. For once, I had nothing to do with Grandma’s death. Chalk that one up to God, in all his merciful wisdom. Merciful … my arse!

It’s the first time this family hasn’t been forced to scrimp and save to get by. We’ve even managed to rent out a large house for the week here in St Ives. I could do with it being even larger, so I could better avoid my siblings, especially Lizzie, who’s always been a thorn in my flesh.

Mum’s much happier now that creep, Stefano, is out of her life, all thanks to Tile X and me. The Italian serial cheat died in a literal blaze of glory shortly after our return from Ireland, four years ago. On our return to Manchester, Mum had been beside herself with rage after discovering Stefano had been seeing numerous women behind her back while we’d been suffering a holiday from Hell at Grandad’s Irish shit hole.

The day after our return, Mum had returned home in a foul mood, still dressed to the nines, after storming out of Stefano’s flat. I’d managed to piece together what had happened from overhearing her raging in the kitchen to Grandma Julia, who was still alive back then.

Mum had sneaked a peek at Stefano’s phone while Stefano was in the shower. His fate had been sealed after he’d foolishly forgotten to delete the incriminating text messages from the other women. It had echoes of when Mum had discovered texts and photographs from Dad’s mistress on his phone. Just as I’d done in Dad’s case, a few words from me to Tile X asking him to kill Stefano and the Italian love rat immediately fell victim to a mysterious, inexplicable kitchen fire in the restaurant where he’d worked.

After much eavesdropping on Mum’s conversations, I found out that the doors to the restaurant kitchen had wedged shut, preventing Stefano from escaping his painful fate. The police had been baffled why only he’d been killed, and none of the other workers in the kitchens.

The blaze was too intense for the flames to be doused before they’d destroyed Tile X’s target. The more the water had been thrown onto Stefano, the more ferocious the flames grew, as though the water had been turned into oil as it was flung onto the screaming man; it had been oil, thanks to Tile X’s interference. Stefano had been well and truly flambéed, far more than any crêpes Suzette's he’d served to diners at the restaurant.

After his death, Mum had visited Stefano’s workplace to assuage her curiosity, and possibly to try to allay her suspicions that I might have had something to do with his demise. She told Grandma Julia she’d questioned a few of the kitchen staff who’d witnessed the strange events. They’d told her about the unusual, unsettling last minutes of her ex-lover. The staff said the police were as confused as everyone else over how or why he’d perished.

Some might say I over-reacted to Stefano’s cheating, that he didn’t deserve to die. Possibly so, but nobody gets away with disrespecting my mother. She’s all I have to protect me and my unborn child now my father’s no longer around. I try to pooh-pooh it every time Tile X tells me Dad and his mate Carl’s ghosts are still floating around in our house, but I’m beginning to wonder if he might be right.

Strange, illogical things have happened; papers blowing about on a still day, lights on our washing machine whizzing around and acting weird when it’s been switched off, crazy stuff like that.

Tile X has no reason to lie. My little ‘friend’ doesn’t say it to make me feel better, because he knows I’m freaked out by the thought of the presence of ghosts of two men I’ve killed—one accidentally, the other not. I can’t see them, but sometimes sense their presence. Considering that I killed them, they seem friendly presences. I doubt they mean me harm, which is big of them.

Jake is just an adolescent, like me. He may be my boyfriend and father of my future child, but he can’t protect and provide for me like a parent can. It scares me to death to think that, in a few months, I’ll also be a mother, a protector of my own child. What a bloody nightmare! I’m no ordinary teenager. With Tile X in my life, I have worries, burdens and responsibilities no other human can imagine. Nobody knows of my involvement with him, except Tile X, and nobody must be permitted to know. It’d ruin my life, which already is far from blissful.

To add to my woes, Mum’s started looking at me even more warily than usual, after she’d learned how Stefano had died. I fear she suspects I had something to do with his Towering Inferno impersonation. Her suspicions began towards the end of the Irish holiday, after Tile X killed the two busybody detectives on the case, after I’d instructed him to do so.

The nets of the two mismatched DCIs were closing in on me and Tile X, concerning our involvement in Jimmy Poodle’s violent death. I couldn’t have that. As I was the only suspect in the deserted monastery when the Irish boy with the eyepatch, who I’d fallen for, attacked me, it was only natural they’d think I had something to do with it. They had no means of proving it though, ha! How I must have boggled those silly bastards’ minds.

When DCI Alan Broom and DCI Susan Cahill had worked out I was the common denominator behind the inexplicable deaths of my father, Keith, then my mother’s lover and Dad’s best friend, Carl, followed by Jimmy Poodle, they’d started asking me awkward questions. I grew bored with trying to answer them without incriminating myself. As I had a get out of jail free card in the shape of Tile X, I used it. Goodbye detectives.

My mother started to put two and two together when the two detectives lost their lives under inexplicable circumstances over in Ireland. She’ll never get to the bottom of it all. Neither will the police. Tile X and I are too smart for them … hopefully.

Mum has never had the courage to confront me with her fears over my involvement in the deaths, but she treats me differently to her other three children, but then, she always has done, probably because I was the quiet one of her brood. Her green eyes, so like mine, have often looked at me warily ever since that accursed Irish so-called holiday. One afternoon, I even caught her searching my bedroom. I could tell she’d rifled through all my drawers and cupboards. She brushed it off with some excuse about spring cleaning. She never was a good liar, unlike me. I have to be to survive. Mum was probably looking for the tile I mentioned to the detectives as I lay in the Irish hospital bed recovering from a badly injured arm, sliced into by Jimmy Poodle’s scalpel while he’d been attempting to kill me with it. Mum has never discovered Tile X, because I always wear him in a purse on a velvet ribbon around my neck, hidden under my clothes; he’s as safe as I can make him.

When I’d surprised Mum in my bedroom on that afternoon, she was on her knees looking under my bed. I was stunned to find she’d pulled out my collection of special tiles, among some of my other possessions. She obviously couldn’t tell how crucial these tiles were, and are, to Tile X and me. After she left the room, I locked them in my suitcase, just to make sure they aren’t thrown into the dustbin by anyone. That would be disastrous.

Whenever someone is injured or dies due to Tile X, the abstract patterning on the surface of the relevant tile disappears, leaving it just plain. Gone are the abstract orange, brown, grey and cream shapes and squiggles that represent the manner of my victim’s death. The orange swirls, with the brown shape enveloped in it, had changed to plain cream after Stefano’s death, much as I’d expected it to. The orange shapes obviously represented the flames in the kitchen, the brown shape must have been that wanker, Stefano.

I now have only eleven tiles remaining with abstract patterning on them. The rest have turned blank as the deaths mounted up. I hope it will stay at eleven patterned tiles … I don’t want anyone else to die because of me, although I can’t rule it out. It’s all too easy to allow Tile X to fight my battles. He does it with such ease, and revels in each destructive act. But then, he’s not human. I’ve yet to discover what he is and why he’s turned me, a young, innocent girl, into a killer of six people. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that, with Tile X’s help, I killed Tony, the disgusting old pervert, a local newsagent who’d made a pass at me a few years ago. Boiled him alive in his shower after I told Tile X to kill the scumbag. Serves him right!

I can’t risk anyone finding Tile X. Jake saw the purse one night while we were having sex; it might even have been the time I fell pregnant. I’d carelessly left the purse around my neck, not removed it like I normally do when I’m in bed. But, Jake has no clue how powerful the contents of the silver satin purse are. Jake just thinks it’s an old, strange memento of mine, one of my little quirks. Luckily, he’s never pressed me on the matter, and didn’t ask to look inside the purse at the time. I’d love to confide in him about everything, but dare not do so, because I’d be sure to lose him. I daren’t reveal to Jake, or anyone else, how vital my tile friend’s become to me over the years. Never know when I might need Tile X’s services again, as people can be troublesome.

There’d be endless ructions if anyone found out my colourful history with Tile X. I need everything to be as calm as possible while I await the arrival of our baby. Fat chance of keeping serene with a noisy, argumentative family like mine. Tristan, my youngest sibling, has grown into a belligerent, obnoxious eight-year-old. He runs amok without any masculine influence in the home, which is down to me.

It takes all my concentration not to accidentally condemn Tristan to death while Tile X is hanging around my neck. It annoys me how Tile X takes my words so literally, although it’s come in useful occasionally. I’d be dead now, courtesy of Jimmy Poodle’s scalpel blade, if Tile X hadn’t taken my words literally.

If I were to whisper in Tile X’s presence, ‘Oh, drop dead, Tristan, you annoying little sod,’ Tile X would jump at the chance to see to it that my brother died, probably in as gruesome and overly dramatic a manner as the other killings. So, I must internalise my annoyance with my boisterous, tormenting brother if he’s to survive into adulthood. Same goes for everyone else I know, or will know in future. I’ve learnt through bitter experience to try to think before speaking, but accidents can happen, and have done with frightening frequency since I was eleven and Tile X first introduced himself to me while I was on the toilet in our grotty bathroom.

My head’s thumping in this sun. Look at Jake, masterfully swimming the crawl through the choppy water. He swims better than he walks, although his crushed legs have repaired well enough for him to no longer need to use his crutches. We both limp, for different reasons, and this has drawn us even closer together. I hope our baby won’t also have a limp, because I was born with a dodgy leg. Don’t fancy being known as The Limpy Family.

My disability wasn’t the result of being run over by an alien vehicle without wheels, which is how Jake, then a school kid like me, had his life changed, thanks to me and my tile ally. Why couldn’t Tile X have used a less way-out machine to mow Jake down? Why couldn’t it have been a Vauxhall Vectra, or something less showy? Jake still swears the vehicle had no wheels, seven years after his ‘accident’.

Mum had looked at me oddly again, when he’d related the tale for the umpteenth time of how his legs had been crushed. Her little wary looks tell me that she suspects me of unspeakable things. I fear it’s all beginning to add up in that cotton wool brain of hers. I’m increasingly on tenterhooks, waiting for her to gain enough courage to confront me with her suspicions. It’s painful to feel a mother’s love draining away.

Jake looks even more handsome here in Cornwall than when we were at school together. The sun’s turned his skin an edible brown, unlike my porridge-coloured skin. It’s set his blond hair and blue eyes off a treat. I’d lose him forever if he were to discover I was behind his legs being crushed in the first place. Jake, father of my unborn child, was Tile X’s first victim, back when we were both studying at the same school. I still can’t forgive myself for mentioning to