Time’s Up.

Chapter 4

“Hello. Yes, police please. Hello, well yes, I do think this could be of interest to the police, yes. Emergency? No! Not an emergency, but quite urgent I would think. Yes this is my own phone. Yes that is the number. So many questions! Well we are at Sundown Cove, doing a little ice fishing from shack twelve. We do hold a current permit. No I haven’t got that permit number on me right now. Please! Dear Lord!

“Will you please just listen! My hands are freezing off here. The gentlemen from shack eleven have caught . . . No, not a protected fish. Stop and listen to me please! Listen to me!

“The gentlemen from shack eleven have caught a badly mangled human arm, maybe a shoulder and three ribs too. Yes human! That is correct, human.” She looks to Bob and Jim. “Would you say that best describes this situation properly, gentlemen?” Then, into the phone, “No I’m not making a crank call or taking the mickey, as you put it. How rude, I will report you for that, yes I will.”

Bob holds up the arm and shakes it around, the woman inspects it, then the other pieces attached. She speaks into the phone again, with a shrill voice, her red face contorted with utter frustration.

“Yes this is a serious report. Yes, we I need someone to attend, that would be about right. Finally you actually listened to me! Oh, and it has a hand attached to it, a lady’s hand and most probably a ladies breast. I am not joking!”

The woman puts the phone to her ear, nods silently then places it back in her pocket and pulls her mittens back on. She shivers. They all stand motionless and silent, staring at each other for a very long time. The snow falls steadily down, covering them.

Jim lets out a huge breath of billowing steam into the night sky. He looks at Bob, pats him on his shoulder and speaks quietly. “Maybe a quick one before they get here hey, calm things down a bit? A chance to put our affairs in order.” He points to the shack.

Bob looks at Jim, then at the arm he is holding. It swings stiffly in the falling snow. “Do you think we should take it with us, or leave it on ice for a while? He lowers it slowly to the ice. “I think that will do.”

The two men shuffle back to the shack. They kick the thick snow off their boots on the solid shack foundation — large sled runners, for moving the building.

“That woman sure had a tongue in her head Jim. I almost dragged her in here, to cut that flapping thing out. Shame she was on the phone. Oh I forgot, she had her man with her. Oh well. The arm could cause us a little trouble too. It looks like that cop woman, I was talking of earlier. I think the blood hounds could of brought some of her around into the cove, unfortunately.”

The couple stand staring at the strewn out arm, frozen in disbelief. The snow is dropping down in waves across them. Their dark clothes get thicker, they turn whiter and more rounded, like snowmen. When they reach their shack, Bob heaves the door open. It squeals loudly. The two men shuffle inside with their fishing rods, the door squeals close with a thud.

In the distance come the echoes of police sirens. The shoreline trees light up with magical blue and red flashing lights. The whole cove looks like a Fairy Tale Christmas Kingdom. Lights appear from the other shacks as their doors open wide. Elves wander out onto the snow with their cozy glowing lanterns.

Two police patrol cars drive to the distant cove edge. Their bright searching lights shine across the frozen lake. The cars stop. Back and forth the beams move like outstretched arms blindly feeling their way into the falling snow. They focus on the green shack. Matilda sits in the rear of the police car, looking out. Jacqueline is at the driver’s wheel, Leon is in the front seat, as a passenger. He has his hand out of the open window, stretched up to the roof working the powerful beam. The frozen lake cove, with many small shacks lined up on top of the ice, is now fully revealed. The searchlight spots shines first on shack twelve, then back to eleven. The large white numbers are painted on their sides.

Matilda gets out, and opens the door for Jacqueline, who speaks to her with excitement. “From the report, let’s treat this as a possible body. It may be connected, it may be one of the missing parts. HQ said the person reporting it, is from shack twelve, but the two men who hooked the body up, are from eleven.”

Leon gets out of their police car and goes over to speak with the two uniformed police officers in the other vehicle, parked next to them. The blue and red flashing lights are switched off and all three make their way to the trunk of the patrol car. They remove two chain saws, a black plastic body bag and a heavy canvas gray holdall. Leon calls over to Jacqueline and Matilda as he pulls on his thick all weather clothing. The two other officers are quickly wrapped up, in thick overcoats.

“Ladies, ready when you are.” Leon directs his torch light towards the iced lake edge. His black padded coat, matching leggings, black boots and hat, make him look like a seal as he moves across the frozen ground, heading towards the magical looking shacks. Matilda pulls on her red mittens. She stamps her feet on the ground and shivers as she puts on a thick padded red overcoat and switches on her long silver torch. She speaks to Jacqueline.

“Out of the frying pan into the freezer.” She laughs. “Crikey hey. When I got on the plane yesterday. You know, the temperature back home, it was a thirty nine degree day. Blue skies. Pelicans flying up high. That was in the flaming shade. Now I’m going blue with cold!”

Matilda is nervous and shaking from the biting cold. Jacqueline wraps a thick long red scarf around her own neck and moves close to Matilda, she puts a thick red scarf around Matilda’s neck and puts both her hands on Matilda’s shoulders then speaks to her calmly.

“You know. If the other bodies are anything to go by, this will not be pretty. I hope you are used to seeing hideous things Matilda. It may feel cold out here right now, but I believe you are jumping straight into the fire with us today. A bad fire! Something really nasty is happening in his city. This is more than just drugs, I know it. I have never seen or heard of this before, ever. Who, or what is killing the people here is beyond sick. What we have discovered so far, I believe, pardon this pun, is just the tip of this bloody Iceberg. What is hidden beneath this awful madness, is pure evil.”

Jacqueline takes out two large electric lanterns from the trunk of their car and switches both on, then passes one to Matilda. The five officers walk cautiously across the iced lake surface making their way out to the two live snowmen in the distance, following the path laid down by the search lights. All covered in thick snow, after a short time, they arrive at the scene. Breathing heavily.

Matilda crouches down and shines her torch, taking a close up look of the arm. The female witness speaks to her police colleagues. Matilda uses her pen to lift up the skin on the arm which lays alongside the hole, then blows away the freshly fallen snow from the hand and whispers.

“Oh yes, here we go. This is another body alright, it’s covered in the same weird wounds. White. Female about twenty five, well groomed by the condition of the nails and fingers. She stretches out the skin of the breast. Oh shoot, that is well chewed up. Yep, there is the collar bone, ribs, not sure what part that is.” She inspects other parts of the frozen flesh. Matilda moves to the drill. She wipes away the fallen snow from the ice around the hole with her mittens, then shines her torch light down against the surface into the black of the lake below.

“Here!” She shouts out, jumping back in shock. Underneath the murky ice is the illuminated face of a young woman. She stares up blindly at Matilda with empty eye sockets, her mouth is wide open, revealing a half severed tongue. Black mascara lines, run across her cheeks. She looks like a real and horrific Halloween mask! Her mouth delivers a scream which is silent, a scream which is frozen. Matilda shouts!

“We have a body here! Here, in the ice!” Leon, Jacqueline and the others slip and fall as they quickly gather around the hole together. They all shine their torch lights down.

A dead woman can be seen in her full form. Her arms and legs are outstretched like a snow angel, face up under the ice. The hole cutter is resting through her torso. She is naked.

Her long red hair flows out from her face of pain and fear.

The fisherman bends over, he staggers and slides away loosing his footing, turns around and vomits. He calls out. “Oh God have mercy! I have never seen such an awful thing. Dear God this can’t be true, not here, not here.” He vomits again and drops to his knees. His lady companion slides over to assist him back to his feet, she bursts into tears hugging the man tightly. They both shuffle slowly off into the heavily falling snow, to their shack, not looking back, then disappear inside.

Jacqueline takes a large camera from the holdall. She presses the buttons on it, a high pitched tone sounds out and a bright red light flashes from its front. The show begins. She aims and takes photographs of the surrounding scene, then moves to focus on the submerged body. Her hands shake wildly.

The flashes of light freeze frame the snow flakes, a moment of time. Jacqueline moves from angle to angle, she points down at the dead woman. Death strikes its last pose. Matilda watches Jacqueline at work.

“Far out. This is one sick photo shoot. You are not wrong Jacqueline, this is not a pretty site, not pretty.” Matilda speaks, her freezing words are caught and muffled by the snow. The two uniformed police officers take hold of the ice drill and heave it up. A disgusting loud sucking noise comes up from deep in the hole as Jacqueline kneels down and starts clicking with her camera, close up.

The drill slowly appears. Matilda moves in too. She holds up her lantern. Leon shines his torch onto the blade. They wait. A crack echoes out as the drill breaks free. Matilda gasps loudly, as the full horror of what has been caught is completely revealed. Entwined around the blade is a human heart, lungs, a long length of intestine and an empty broken stomach. A bladder and human offal hangs down from the steel blade. It swings and drips brown fluids onto the perfect white snow beneath it.

The other ends are still attached to her frozen body which is captured by the ice. Her insides are stretched out tight, pulled over the snow as the officers move the drill away.

They place it down gently to one side of the empty hole and stare at the presentation in disbelief. Matilda moves away and surveys the whole scene. She coughs up and leans forward resting her mittens on her knees. She struggles to breathe. She sways, her legs buckle. Breathe! Faster! Faster! Breathe!

“Oh no! Here I go! Oh no! Not now. Not here!” In a panic she rips open her overcoat and pulls sheets of kitchen roll from her pockets. Tears stream from her spinning eyes. She turns away from the human mess, the dismembered entrails like elastic break free from the corpse, flopping quickly from the hole to the drill. Slipping to her knees she hides her face away into her tissues.

One of the uniformed police officers starts up a noisy chainsaw and begins to cut the ice around the frozen corpse, sending a shower of crystals high up into the air. The awful extraction begins.

Jacqueline continues to take photographs hidden behind the flashing camera. In a robotic trance she records the crime scene, immune to the story being silently told, by the frozen, butchered woman. Beautifully patterned snow flakes fall over her gruesome face. Matilda staggers to her feet wiping kitchen roll across her nose. She shakes her head in disbelief at the mess before her and whispers.

“How could this perfect, peaceful, winter scene, end up like this?”

Leon walks slowly over to the green shack, number eleven. He bangs on the door. The chainsaw screams through the ice behind him. With a squeal, the heavy, small shack door opens. Leon smiles, brightly.