Free Heathen/Nemesis by Shaun Hutson Page B

pushed the door a fraction, still listening.
     
    The silence was total.
     
    All he could hear was his own breathing and the sound of the blood rushing in his ears.
     
    He pushed the door open, reaching for the light switch.
     
    ‘Oh my God,’ he murmured.
     
    The room had been ransacked.
     
    Everything it was possible to smash had been smashed. Damage of some description, it seemed, had been done to every single object in sight. The sofa was torn apart, the stuffing spilling from it like entrails from an eviscerated corpse. Chairs had been overturned. The television lay in the centre of the room, its screen shattered and holed, as if a heavy object had been thrust into it. Cupboard doors had been torn off their hinges, their contents scattered across the floor. Shattered. Destroyed.
     
    Records had been pulled from their sleeves, the black vinyl broken and scattered amongst the other debris. The video lay ruined against the opposite wall, as if thrown there with great force. The plug it had been attached to was still in the socket. The stereo too had been smashed, the turntable itself prized out and hurled to one side. CD cases, tape cases, videos and even books had been torn open. Mercuriadis could scarcely move without treading on some broken object.
     
    His heart pounded harder, his head spun. As he looked around it became obvious that nothing had been taken.
     
    The object had been destruction pure and simple, not robbery.
     
    He felt a cold breeze against his hot cheek and realized that the bedroom door was open a fraction.
     
    With infinite slowness he moved towards it, prodding it open slightly, just enough for him to slip inside. He fumbled for the light switch but when he flicked it nothing happened. Looking up, he saw that even the lightbulb had been smashed.
     
    The duvet had been ripped to shreds; the pillows, too. Wardrobe doors, those that hadn’t been simply torn from their hinges, hung open revealing the devastation inside: clothes torn and ripped, pulled from their hangers and tossed into the centre of the bed. A framed photo of Mel Gibson had been pulled from the wall and smashed, the picture snatched out, the frame smashed. Drawers had been upended, their contents dumped on the floor.
     
    Mercuriadis felt a growing tightness in his chest, a sickly clamminess closing around him. He tried to control his breathing, aware of a growing pain around his sternum.
     
    Sucking in deep breaths, he realized where the cold breeze was coming from.
     
    The room’s single sash window had been prized open, paint scratched and gouged from the frame where entry had been forced.
     
    He swayed slightly and moved towards the window, wincing as the pain in his chest became more acute.
     
    The bedroom door swung gently shut behind him, the sound causing him to turn quickly.
     
    The figure loomed out of the darkness at him, stepping so close until Mercuriadis could feel the intruder’s breath on his cheek.
     
    His eyes bulged madly in their sockets as he stared at the intruder.
     
    A heart already strained swelled and burst; the shock was too great, too intolerable.
     
    His vision was clouded red as several blood vessels in his eyes simply erupted.
     
    As he fell backwards onto the bed the intruder stood over him for a second, looking down. In his final minutes of consciousness Mercuriadis was conscious of its presence, and what he had seen – a sight he could not have imagined in even the most depraved nightmare. A sight which questioned his sanity as surely as it took his life.
     
    The figure headed towards the window and clambered over the sill, disappearing into the welcoming darkness.
     
    Mercuriadis felt one massive surge of pain envelope him, spreading with staggering rapidity from his chest, along his left arm and up into his neck and jaw.
     
    He felt the darkness descending upon him and he feared it but, after what he’d seen, the oblivion which awaited him was to be welcomed.
     
    The flat