Page 36 of The Cut

The Warren House was an old junk yard near Thurcaston Lacey.

The overgrown winding country lane led to an industrial building on the site of a disused airfield about three miles outside Barton Mallet.

Karine tugged at the rusting chain and padlock wrapped around the wrought-iron gates and texted the farmer who was supposed to meet her there.

She was out on a recce of the location for tonight’s shoot.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket; it was Dani calling.

‘Hey, how’s it going? I’m at the location, setting up now … just muting you for a second … hold on.’

Karine set a foot into the chain of the gate, hauled herself up to the top, threw a leg over and dropped down on to the other side.

It wasn’t the first time she’d had to gain access without permission.

She stepped into a courtyard littered with junk, old refrigerators and scrapped cars.

She unmuted the call. ‘You still there?’

‘Yeah, I’m here. Listen … there might be a problem.’ Dani sounded nervous.

Karine approached the vast corrugated steel barn and dragged open the rusty door. ‘Problem?’ The smell of dank earth mixed with heady petrol fumes hit her nostrils. She flicked the switch on the wall by the door and the buzz of electricity illuminated a succession of sickly orange strip lights.

‘Yeah, it’s Ben. He wants to pull the plug on the whole thing. Lily did get injured quite badly and I …’ Dani ran out of steam, her voice petered out. 194

Karine draped a cable of string lights over an old sign propped up against the wall. ‘Lily seemed fine when she left.’ A pile of dismembered shop mannequins made Karine freeze for a second. ‘Do you think something happened on the way home?’

Dani’s voice lowered to a whisper. ‘I’m not sure … Can we have a quick chat when we get there?’

‘Of course … Are you OK?’

‘Ben doesn’t know we’re coming tonight.’ Dani’s voice was hushed and trembling. ‘I said I was taking them to see Stranger in the Woods .’

‘OK … look, I’m sorry about all this. Let me speak to Ben.

But I’m at the location now and it’s going to be great.

There’ll be a couple of others from Nate’s year, just in the background, but how about you stay with us until we’re done?

You can be their chaperone.’ Karine moved into an older part of the barn.

The cowshed still stank of urine; she covered her nose with her hand.

‘Just text me when you’re ten minutes away. I’ll have everything ready … and don’t worry. You’re going to love this, it’ll be fun.’ Karine ended the call. She glanced to the door where the light was fading and a low mist from the surrounding waterlogged fields was forming.

The location had captured her imagination in the day, but at night it was something else. She jogged back towards the perimeter fence. The farmer who owned the land had unlocked the gate and was glaring at the intruder on his property.

‘Thought we said 8 p.m.?’

Karine smiled sweetly in the face of his scowl. ‘You wouldn’t be able to give me a hand with some heavy lifting, would you?’ She pulled two twenty-pound notes from her jeans pocket.

The farmer snatched them away and grunted. ‘What do you need?’ 195

Karine busied herself in the van while the farmer removed canvas covers from three old dodgem cars and pushed them into the centre of the space.

The handheld rig with a 4K lightweight camera on a gimbal would be perfect for tonight.

She walked the route from the door, positioning small LED lamps here and there to create ambience.

Under the faded ‘Circus’ sign with the blistering paint and the face of a sad, cackling clown – because there always had to be a clown – was another old hoarding of a fairground ride, ‘The Mouth of Hell’.

A gaping scream with peeling painted fangs formed an archway, which she dragged into position over the door to the cowshed.

‘Hey, give me a hand with this.’ Karine beckoned the farmer over as she began to haul naked mannequins from the burn pile.

The midden stalls in the cowshed would work well if she positioned the dummies in strategic places.

She killed the main overhead lights and set about placing lamps into the shadows, caressing the terrifying limbs of the lifelike figures with light.

Finally, Karine rolled out two heavy metal gas canisters and a coil of rubber tubing from the back of the van and began to run a line into the Mouth of Hell. The festoon string lighting flickered as the fuse strained to hold the voltage, but the scene was set.

She went back to her car and braced herself, waiting in silence for it to get dark, going through the motions in her head of what was about to happen. She jumped as her phone buzzed on the dashboard.

The text from Dani landed.

10 mins away.

She reached across and retrieved a torch from the glove compartment and quietly opened the van door. The night was still and silent; a fresh dampness from the surrounding fields filled her senses. She moved back to the main building, killed the lights and called Dani. 196

‘Karine?’

‘How are you getting on?’

‘I’m just turning into Thurcaston Lacey Lane now.

It’s pitch dark. I can’t see a thing.’ Dani crawled along the single-track road and stopped the car.

She glanced into the rear-view mirror. Nate was half asleep, his head lolled back on the headrest, and Lily was into her phone, her face illuminated in the darkness.

‘Listen to me carefully, we only get one shot at this. I only want one take. I’m set for close-ups, but I want it to be real.’ Karine was all business.

‘What do you need me to do?’ Dani’s voice was shaking on the other end of the line. There was a sense of subversion about this whole thing. Outside, the fields were absolutely pitch black, no moon and not a breath of wind.

‘When I hang up the call, I want you to kill your headlights and wait for my instruction.’

‘OK.’ Dani’s heart was racing.

Karine could hear her breathing hard. ‘On my signal, send Nate and Lily towards the cluster of torches in the distance.’

Dani felt like she was on some kind of sting, an accomplice to a crime. She felt like Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween .

‘They will be home and tucked up in their beds before you can say “Candyman”. Whatever you do, whatever noises you hear, do NOT get out of the car. I’m shooting towards you, and it will break the take.’

‘Right.’ Dani braced herself. ‘Don’t move, don’t react.’

‘Exactly. Ready?’

Dani’s palms were sweating and her heart racing. ‘Ready.’

The line went dead. Dani turned into the back seat. ‘Karine says we have to wait here and when we get the signal, you have to walk towards the lights … She’ll tell you what to do next.’ 197

Dani had fully immersed herself into the role she was now creating in her head, her voice was quivering at an unusual pitch.

Lily yawned and Nate rubbed his eyes. ‘All right, Dani, chill out.’

Lily’s phone buzzed. She opened her Instagram: ‘Euugh! Whitney Briggs is here …’

‘Give her hell, Lils. Don’t let her take you down again,’ Nate teased, laughing at his dig.

‘Sod off.’ Lily huffed into the glass and drew daggers on the window.

They waited in the car for what felt like an eternity.

None of them spoke. In the distance, about two hundred metres down the pitch-dark lane, three small beads of light flickered on and started to move towards them.

Torches. Dani closed her eyes for a second and listened to the wind and a distant car on the main road.

She was about to nod off when her Muppets ringtone buzzed.

‘Oh my shitting shit!’ Dani leapt out of her skin and fumbled for her phone. A text dropped.

Send them now.

‘OK.’ She took a deep quivering breath. ‘I’ll see you both on the other side.’ Dani turned to the back seat, Meryl Streep’ing the crap out of this moment. ‘I love you.’

‘Wait … Dani, are you crying?’ Lily screwed up her face, and Nate stifled a giggle.

‘Come on, Lils, let’s get this over with.’

The rear doors opened and a distant flickering beam from the end of the road signalled the way. Dani watched as Nate and Lily headed towards their fate, brother helping his limping sister as the two silhouettes disappeared slowly into the darkness. 198

The scene was set, Karine’s Wonderland of Terror was waiting for them. As the distant shrieks from the darkness began, Dani gripped the wheel and squeezed her eyes shut. She’d wound herself up into a state of dramatic tension.

‘Don’t break the take … you mustn’t break the take.’

A single tear fell from Dani’s eye. She glanced at herself in the mirror, the perfect image of a loving stepmother. If only there had been someone to witness this performance.

But there was a witness. A figure stood in the dark on the unmarked track.

He had followed her there, followed the car, parked up at the main road and continued on foot.

He saw her crying in the car, and then moved off across the field towards the glow of light and the screams of terror coming from the junk yard.

Ben watched as his children played on rusty old dodgem cars and chased through the maze of mannequins into the Mouth of Hell.

The face of John Maddock at the carol concert flashed into his mind. ‘The whole village knows what this film’s about … it’s not right.’

Lily and Nate at 2 a.m. in the kitchen, nursing their wounds from a scene set in the Brecon Beacons.

The clandestine hushed conversation he’d witnessed between Karine Mickelsen and Chris Davis at the Red Lion.

And now this.

It was all starting to make sense but as answers formed, more questions arose. Was this just his paranoid brain joining irrational dots? No, there were simply too many coincidences.

As realisation hit, the blood drained from Ben’s face and an odd feeling of calm descended over him.

How the hell did this stranger know all their secrets? His secrets. There was only one way to find out.