A Lock Of Blue (Part One- Prologue)

The crisp daylight had given way to a bruised, timeless black, cut up only by the weak lights from the cars that dared to pass between the fields at night. The plain, hilly landscape was silent save only for a dog barking in the far distance and the lowing of nearby cattle. 1

A young fox pitter-pattered down the side of the road, leaping to-and-fro onto crisp packets and bottles thrown from passing car windows.2

A fine smattering of icy rain blew down across the fields and the skid-marked tarmac as the wind changed direction, baring down upon the open wilderness as if to ruin the perfect night. The fox growled angrily, sinking low to the ground and shaking her dark russet pelt dry before darting over a crest and disappearing into the welcoming blackness of her dug-out.3

The rain fell still heavier and the nearing gale flipped several of the chucked bottles over, rubbish littering the surrounding countryside like a hundred plagued rats fleeing a burning ship.4

A dark shape was perched on an abandoned, mouldy couch that had been dumped sideways onto the ditch that the polluted, rain water slopped down into from the road. It moved. A man stood, sleet dripping from his trench coat, dribbling into the puddles that’d already fallen like blood from a wound. 5

He stared down the hilly embankment, across the foremost field, towards a huge gutted pipe that stuck out of the ground like a gaping, fanged maw. He could remember exactly where it was, although in this windy, chilled darkness, it was hard to make out. He remembered the ragged, stained mattress, tossed onto the damp floor of the underground tunnel. He could almost make out the long-gone image of Marianne’s childlike figure crouched on it, jade eyes wide, sandy blonde locks hanging down over her barely clothed body. Her brother, Darnell, standing in the corner, laughing, his nose smeared in some odourless, white powder. Nicky, naked, huddled against the older boy’s legs, licking the bottom of offered shoe soles, body bruised from Darnell and his cronies. A fat, old man sitting in the corner, bottle in hand, grinning at everything around him, cheering on Darnell, and pointing and jeering at the subservient children’s’ humiliation. Kiki, tall and beautiful, a stunning version of a teenage supermodel, perched in the fat man’s lap, rubbing her tiny, denim-glad pussy against his crotch.6

It was a terrifying image to recall, but the stranger on the hill seemed unaffected, his hooded eyes emotionless and cold. He deftly picked a cigarette from his pocket, lit it, and climbed over the fence towards the piping, boots crunching through the frost-dusted grass and humming a sad little tune to himself. 7

He smiled slightly but it wasn’t a happy smile. It was more of a sneer, irony filling his blood at what had happened and why it happened. It was time to go back to the beginning and find what went wrong.8

First off, the obsession with The Pipe began all those years ago with what happened to little Melody Bishop.