Teacher's Pet
Two white clouds settled below the Sun as a small red van drew up beside a 1960s bungalow in Bellvedere Crescent. Two children ran past pulled by a golden labrador. Dave Gardner sighed as he turned the engine off and pulled the key out of the ignition. He ran a hand through his thick brown hair and opened the driver's door.
The electrician headed along a path which split the front garden of the house into two perfect halves. Reaching the door he peered into a large darkened window as he rang the bell. After a moment a dark-haired man in his mid-thirties answered.
“Mr. Leakey?” Dave asked.
“Ah yes! Come in.”
“You wanted an extra socket in the living-room?” Dave asked as he passed the man, who then closed the front-door.
“Yes, in here,” said Leakey striding into a large room at the rear of the property. “So many electrical things these days. Could you put one here please,” he said pointing at a spot on an inner wall.
Dave hammered on the wall with the side of a clenched fist. “No problem, I'll take a spur off one of the other sockets.
Back at the van, Dave grabbed his tool bag and a reel of cable. His mobile bleeped, and he skimmed a text before heading back into the house.
After knocking a hole in the chosen spot Dave fed the cable into the founds of the living-room. He removed a socket from another wall and headed off to find a hatch. In the kitchen he pulled up the lino in a cupboard and prised up the sawn floorboards, then with a torch he lowered himself into the dark.
The electrician crawled through an opening in the foundation-wall of the kitchen into the hallway area and then through an opening into the living-room. He saw the cable dangling in the gloom just where it should be.
Brian Leakey stumbled over the piece of lino discarded in the kitchen and, noticing the open hatch, he retrieved a hammer from a drawer.
“Someone could get hurt with this open,” he said to himself as he hammered the floorboards back into place. He then placed the lino back in the cupboard.
“What the fuck!” Dave shouted on hearing the hammering.
He abandoned the cable and wriggled about then crawled back across the living-room area, through the hall and into the kitchen foundation. Reaching the hatch he battered on the under-side, but couldn't put much strength into it because of the limited space.
With growing panic and claustrophobia he shouted, but bizarrely heard the muffled strains of John Lennon's 'Imagine'.
Above, after tidying up and making sure everything was in place, Leakey had stretched his fingers. Then, sitting at the upright piano in the lounge, he played.
Below, Dave stopped shouting and reached for his mobile. Panic ensued when he couldn't find it in any pocket. He must have absent-mindedly left it in the van after reading the last text.
After what seemed like hours the music stopped. He shouted at the top of his voice while hammering on the floorboards. He crawled around under room after room looking desperately for a way out. An appalling hour later Dave stopped and stared into the darkness of despair; his torch had given up earlier. He turned on his side in disgust. In the foundation's corner he was in lay a heap of rags. He wriggled over hoping that a workman had mistakenly left tools; but as he pulled on the rags, a skull swung round causing him to jerk back. He then felt bony arms in old sleeves. “A body!” He shouted to himself as the terrible consequences of the situation struck him.
“This bastard's done this to somebody else!”
As darkness fell Leakey walked past a front room window and glanced at the electrician's van.
“Oh,” he said as he left the room.
Outside he opened the driver's door and slipped into the seat. He started the engine with the key he had found in the jacket in the living-room. After a drive across town, he parked the van in a street of semi-detached houses, threw the key over a hedge and walked home.
Leakey entered his house and, ignoring the muffled shouts, he went through the routine of checking and re-checking that all the windows were shut. Next, he checked that the front and back door were locked.
Before retiring for the night he checked that all electrical appliances that were supposed to be off were off. Satisfied that everything was locked or off Leakey entered his bedroom and peeled off his clothes. He switched on the small transistor radio on the bedside table and climbed into bed accompanied by the sounds of Brahms.
The next day a blond-haired woman gazed at the Leakey bungalow before heading along the path to the front-door. Dressed in jeans topped by a khaki jerkin she pressed the doorbell. After no response she rapped on the glazed section on the upper door.
A shadow passed by a window.
“I know who you are and what you've done!” Karen Gardener shouted.
The front-door opened slowly, and she pushed it open and walked in.
Leakey gazed at her before closing the door. “What can I help you with...? I remember you... Karen Napier!”
“And I remember you from the High School... always tidying up and being teachers pet.”
She watched as a darkness flashed across his eyes and she stepped back. “Where's my Dave?,
“What... oh, the electrician. He was here yesterday and never showed up today. I need the job finished.”
“Well, he never came home last night. His van's in the street, but that's strange because he usually parks it in our driveway. And, he's not answering his mobile.”
“I'm sorry, I can't help.”
“Look Leakey you'd better not have done anything to Dave!”
“I don't know what you mean,” he growled, “you'd better leave.”
Karen felt the reassuring shape of the big knife she had slipped into her jeans. Her mind flashed back twenty years to a side street in the centre of town. Two teenage boys were taunting Leakey of being soft and being teachers pet. Suddenly Leakey jumped on them and beat them with such fury that Karen, watching from a close after visiting a friend, had to look away. He eventually left them for dead. She never forgot the demonic look in his eyes as he walked away.
Karen knew she should have phoned the police about Dave been missing, but that's not the way her family did things. “Do you mind if I use your toilet... I can't wait I'm afraid.”
“Okay,” grunted Leakey pointing toward a door at the end of the corridor.
Sitting on the toilet seat Karen heard a tapping sound. Glancing up at the frosted glass window she expected to see the shape of a bird, but there was nothing there. She pulled up her jeans when she heard a muffled voice calling her name. She realised the tapping had been coming from the pipes of the wash-hand basin. There was someone under the floor: Dave was under the floor.
“Dave, is that you, honey?”
“Karen get out; the guys a nutter! Get the police,” came the muffled answer.
She flushed the cistern and strode out of the toilet. Looking around, she ran to the front-door, but it was locked. There was no key in the lock.
“Going somewhere?”
Karen spun round to see Leakey approaching along the hallway. “Why's the door locked? Let me out, now!”
“Tut, tut... Karen,” Leakey said shaking his head. “I remember you mocking me with those morons.”
“Let me out you mad fuck! Let me out... teachers pet!”
Leakey flew at her and grabbed her around the neck. He threw her back along the hallway.
She screamed as he approached her with threatening, demonic eyes. Muffled shouting and thumping came from below. He lifted her up by the neck.
“Don't hurt me,” she sobbed.
“I'm not going to hurt you. This is what I wanted to do to you all those years ago,” he said as he grabbed her between the legs.
A brief smile passed over her face and she saw her chance as he relaxed; she kicked him in the balls with all her might. As he doubled over she thumped him on the back of the head. Then, with Leakey lying on the floor, she ran into the back room.
Looking around for something suitable to throw through the locked window she heard Leakey growl. He was coming! Rather than face him she did the only thing she could and opened a large, heavy fitted wardrobe door. She closed the door behind her and stumbled through the darkness while pulling out her knife. Karen heard Leakey laugh as he bolted and locked the door. This can't be right, she thought, from outside it looked like a fitted wardrobe, but inside it was another room with no windows. A room which went on into the dark distance. She fell over something making her hold out her hands to restrain the downward motion. Pushing herself up to a crouching position she pulled a lighter from a pocket, and a small bubble of light pierced the dark. She pushed the item over and screamed as she revealed a body or more of a skeleton in a police uniform.
Suddenly there was a crash, and she yelped again.
“Karen,” said a familiar voice.
“Dave, is that you?”
“Over here!”
She ignited her lighter again and headed over in the direction of the voice.
Peering into the gloom she saw the broken end of a floorboard sticking upright.
“This bit of board is rotten. I found a bit of brick and bashed it.”
Karen tugged it as hard as she could and it broke. Dave hit other bits of neighbouring boards. “It's no good!”
“Wait a minute,” she said making her way back to the body. Searching around with one hand she found what she was looking for beside an arm of the corpse.
“This might help!” she said holding up her knife with a serrated edge in the flame's light.
“You're a wonder babe,” said Dave peering through the broken floor.
Karen searched around for electric lights, but finding none she sawed as best she could at the surrounding floorboards. “How d'you know I was here?”
“It's the footsteps. The loudest thing you hear down here are the footsteps.”
After Karen sawed through two boards Dave could squeeze through the gap. He stretched and dusted himself off, then he hugged her.
“What now?” she asked.
They moved through the dark in the direction of the door. Dave toed the skeleton of the policeman as they passed. “That's two bodies!”
“What?”
“There's a skeleton of a workman under the boards.”
“Leakey's been a busy fellow. You would have been the third.”
“Yeah, three we know of Karen!”
Karen held her lighter up, and they found the door in the semi-light. Dave hammered on the door and it swung open. He was about to stride through when Karen pulled him back. “Wait, this could be a trap. Why's he unlocked the door?”
“Oh, come on, let's get out of here!” he said pulling her by the hand.
They crept through the room and peered out into the darkened hallway. “Seems okay, come on” he said striding out into the corridor. The couple crept toward the front-door looking from side to side. To Karen the front-door seemed miles away. Her breathing became erratic.
Finally, they reached the door and Dave was going to put his hand on the handle when a figure appeared and battered him over the head. Karen screamed and tried to run but she was held by a hand while another put a cloth over her nose and mouth. She entered the dark.
Dave shook her. “Karen wake up!”
She peered into the darkness. “Dave, where are we?”
“Would you believe it? When we were unconscious, that bastard put us under the floorboards.”
“Oh, no!” she cried.
And they looked at each other and, despite their situation, they burst out laughing.
Above, Leakey moved around the house dusting and humming.