 RELEASE DATE: May 25th 2018 Genre: Horror/thriller — in the tradition of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hostel and Saw. Synopsis/blurb: It’s a big night. Denmark is in the finale. Everybody is watching the game. At the gas station out by the highway, the two young women working the nightshift are expecting a quiet evening and very few customers. However no customers means no witnesses. They have been chosen to star in a completely different show. Author bio: STEEN LANGSTRUP Award winning author of more than twenty five books, the majority of which are horror and thrillers. Nicknamed the danish king of horror. His work has been filmed, Kat (2001), Finale (2018), made into radio plays and translated into English, German, Spanish, Norwegian, Finnish and Swedish. ‘Finale’ will be his fifth novel published in English. FINALE is told in short chapters, crosscutting between the terror later in the night in a basement somewhere close and earlier that same evening on the gas station by the highway. A FLOFFY SEA OF GREEN CURLS She squirms in pain, screaming as she’s pulled by the hair over the concrete floor, desperately trying to free herself. She scratches the hand pulling her along, tearing if, pressing the nails into the skin. But all in vain. The hand is merciless. She has nothing but a faint idea of how long she’s being pulled along—three maybe four meters?—but it’s far enough for the raw concrete to rip the skin on her hips, legs and feet. The light is still a blinding explosion of white when she gets forced into a standing position and the grip in her hair is released. She blinks her eyes, trying to open them against the bright light and in a daze, she glimpses a dark shadow moving closer and then she’s hit by a fierce punch in her stomach, driving all air from her lungs. She doubles over, gasping for air. A hand is placed on her forehead. A firm push of the hand sends her stumbling back into a chair. And even before she manages to get her breathing back to normal, she’s been tied to the chair. Sitting there, she slowly opens her eyes, still panting for air but with less pain, she finds her eyes have finally adjusted to the bright light. It’s less blinding now. She sees white walls, the plaster hanging loose here and there. She sees the mattress where she woke up less than an hour ago. She sees dark stains of what must be dried blood on the floor, the walls and the mattress, even though that can’t be possible, not here, not in Denmark. This is a torture chamber. Shackles on the walls and everything. Dried blood everywhere. This can’t be happening. Not in Denmark. No way. She sees Benjamin lying on the floor, pressing her T-shirt against the wound in his thigh. She hears him grunt, “No!” She sees him struggling to get up but not succeeding. The wounded leg not cooperating. She tries to turn around to look at the man standing behind the chair but the ropes around her arms and legs are too tight. Her hands are fixed the the back of the chair, her legs to the chair legs, making it impossible for her to move an inch. Still, he’s right there, behind her, she catches glimpses of his dark shape from the corner of her eye. Him. The man who pulled her by the hair over the concrete floor, who hit her hard in the stomach, who tied her to this chair. The man who must have stabbed Benjamin in the thigh with a knife. The man who must have captured them both, beating her up badly. Her memory is clouded. She recalls the slow evening on the petrol station, Belinda and the finale, she remembers the words on the wall in the carwash, the moving air pump, her thesis, the love doll on the backseat of the BMW, and some of what happened later. The beatings, the pains, the darkness. But no faces. She recalls no faces. “Who are you?” Her mouth is dry, her lips swollen, making the words hoarse. “Who are you? What have we done to you?” She wriggles her body, struggling to turn the chair. It doesn’t move that much. She sees a white painted iron door that looks like something out of a nightmarish prison cell, covered in bloody handprints. She sees cameras under the ceiling. She sees a large mirror covering the major part of one wall, figuring as she sees it, that this is not a mirror. It’s a one-way window. She imagines the man sitting behind the glass watching his victims suffer. She starts crying. “Please, let us go? We haven’t done anything to you! Please! Please!” Still, deep within her soul, she knows pleading for life won’t help them any. They’re not the first victims he has brought into this hellish basement, and he’s not about to stop. She sees Benjamin roll to his stomach and try to push himself forward. The T-shirt left behind, blood is flowing freely from his wound. It’s only now she notices the pool of blood under him. So much blood. He drags himself forward, pulling a track of bright red blood behind him. At that moment, the man leaves his spot behind her, moving around the chair, he steps in front of her. He’s wearing white clothes, like the overalls slaughterhouse workers would wear. The white clothes are covered in blood, from neck to toe. His face is hidden behind a clowns mask. Only, it’s not a regular clown, not like the clowns in a circus. It’s a distorted clown. A sad clown. The face of the mask is pure white. The eyebrows are thin, arched slashes high on the clown’s forehead. The hair’s a fluffy sea of green curls. A sparkling silver tear under one eye completes the image of a sad clown. However, the blue eyes glaring out of the eye holes in the mask are anything but sad. They are alive, exited, lecherous and intense. She’s seen those eyes before, she thinks, unable to place them. Maybe, the terror's deluded her mind? She turn her eyes to Benjamin. Lying face down on the concrete floor, panting, he has stopped pulling himself toward them. The clown reaches out to touch Agnes’s naked breasts with slow and fumbling fingers. “Don’t,” she begs him. “Please, don’t.” The clown says nothing. She can see his eyes staring at her breasts as his clumsy hands press, squeeze, feel, touch her two breasts. A new wave of terror rushes through her as he starts to pinch her nipples, softly, making sweat roll down her sides. She wails. “Don’t.” He continues to squeeze and pinch her nipples as tears, sweat and snot drops from her chin. To his hands. To her breasts. Picking the left nipple to squeeze hard, tormenting her as he twists it around, his nails digging in, the glare of his eyes shifting as the pupils gets larger. A ray of bliss sparkles deep within their darkness. Then he releases his grip. Gasping out loud, Agnes collapses against the back of the chair. Her head slips forward, stretching the neck muscles. The next thing she knows, a heavy bag is pulled over her head, making everything dark again. ON THE DISPLAY, THE NUMBERS 911 TOnIGHT YOU SHALL BOTH DIE The letters are red as Agnes knew they would be. Block capital letters. All but the single n. A cold wind is blowing through the carwash gates. Agnes huddles against the cold. Belinda bites her lip, looking both scared and reflective at the same time. Agnes’s still holding her cell phone in one hand. On the display, the numbers 911. Still, she hasn’t made the call. She’s not too fond of the darkness outside or the threat on the carwash wall. The muscles in her hand holding her cell phone are stinging with tension. She tries to relax a bit but it’s hard. Her eyes move to the surveillance camera high above them. “The recordings from that camera will show who did this,” she says softly. However, they don’t have access to the hard disk where the recordings are stored. It’s locked away somewhere. She doesn’t even know where. “I’ll call the police and then I call Arni.” Arni is the owner of the petrol station. The only person she knows for sure to have access to the recordings. He needs to come around. He made the system this way in effort to avoid robbers or shoplifters from destroying evidence of their crimes. Belinda scales the darkness outside. “I got this feeling we are being watched.” “Let’s go inside and call the po…What? What is it?” “Someone’s out there! By the billboards!” She points out of the carwash, to the two large billboards on the left side of the petrol station. One of the billboards advertises a brand of cereal that mostly consists of chocolate, the other one advertises a movie about Swedish crime. Between the two billboards, she glimpses a person. “I see him,” Agnes whispers, her heart moving up her throat. “I’m calling the cops right now. I don’t like this.” Belinda is silent. Agnes hesitates, finger lingering above the call button on the display. “What’s that in his hand?” “A cell phone,” Belinda says. “He’s filming us.” Agnes pushes the call button as the guy steps forward, moving towards them. The cell phone connects, then beeps once, and then Belinda snatches it from her hand and cuts the connection. “Why did you do that?” Tears are filling Agnes’s eyes. She’s afraid now. Outside, the guy is strolling toward them, holding up his cell phone, making no attempt hiding the fact that he’s filming them. “It’s Christoffer,” Belinda says, a tormented expression on her face. Agnes feels her mouth open as all the anxiety, all the fear, the tingling sense of being watched melts into a ball of anger. “Your boyfriend? Mr Happy Slapping?” “It’s not my fault, okay?” “Did I scare you girls?” he shouts, laughing. Agnes looks at the words on the wall. The lowercase n among the capital letters. “You recognized his handwriting. That’s why you told me not to call the police before we’d examined the carwash!” No answer, Belinda has left the carwash, rushing to her boyfriend. HE KEEPS STANDING THERE A FEW LONG SECONDS “Are you fucking insane or what?” Belinda yells, pointing her finger at Christoffer. He’s still filming. Still laughing. Struggling to speak through his own laughter, he says, “You thought…it…was…real!” He points the camera at Agnes, coming out of the carwash with a grim look on her face. “That!” Agnes points at the words on the carwash wall. “That is just so not funny! I’m calling the police.” She’s got the cell phone ready in the hand not pointing at him. “I will not tolerate this!” Christoffer kills his laughter. “Oh, get real. It’s a joke! You can handle a joke, right?” They just stare at him. Agnes dialing 911 on her cell phone, not taking her stare off him. “Stop filming us!” Belinda says, trying to grab Christoffer’s cell phone. “Now!” He lowers the cell phone and kills the camera. “Wait a bit,” he says to Agnes. “Please, don’t call the cops. I can explain.” She stares at him in silence, as he quickly types something on his cell phone. “What are you doing?” Belinda reaches out to snatch the phone but he’s faster than her. “Okay,” he says, sliding the cell phone down his pocket. “I’m ready.” They are standing there, the three of them, illuminated under the canopy of the petrol station, looking at each other. The air tense with anger. He glances at his worn shoes, sagging his shoulders. “I’m sorry, okay? I thought, this would make us all laugh our asses off. But, hey, okay, I was wrong…it seems.” “Right now, I don’t know if I want to see you again,” Belinda says. “Who’s going to remove that paint from the carwash wall?” Not aware of it herself, Agnes steps closer to Belinda. “Come on. I’ve said I’m sorry, right? It’s not like it was my idea in the first place.” A car appears in the distance on the highway. The blueish light from the headlights sweeps the tarmac. Agnes let’s her eyes follow the car. It’s a big car. The engine has a deep, hollow sound to it. Maybe, the exhaust muffler is broken. She has time to wish the car to stop at the petrol station before it passes them by. Belinda struts, saying, “Christoffer, I’m not the mood for any bad excuses right now. Why don’t you just fuck off?” “Some guy offered me a grand to do this, okay? I told you, I was broke. I sent him the recording just a minute ago when you tried to grab my cell phone. It wasn’t my idea. I just figured we’d all laugh about it afterwards, like, a prank or something.” Agnes pushes her cell phone down her back pocket and sends Belinda a short glance. “I’m going inside. It’s windy and I’m cold.” Belinda nods her head and then turns to Christoffer. “I want you to fuck off right now. I don’t want to hear any of your little stories, get it? Just fuck off.” She turns on her heel and follows Agnes to the shop. As the automatic doors close behind them, Christoffer looks a little like a scared sheep that has lost its flock. He keeps standing there a few long seconds. Then he turns around and walks back to the billboards. He disappears into the darkness between the two billboards, where he’d appeared moments earlier. Shortly afterwards, the silence of the evening is broken by the sound of his scooter, as he heads out on the highway and speeds toward town. “How come we didn’t hear the scooter when he got here?” Agnes wonders, sitting on the counter, watching the red dot of his taillight moving away from the petrol station. “It’s pretty noisy, that scooter.” “He may have pulled it along.” Belinda toys the string from her white hoodie. “I know how this sounds, but he’s really—“ “Fucked up,” Agnes finishes her sentence, and suddenly they’re both laughing. Still, the laughter dies quickly this time and silence takes over. “You think he was telling the truth, claiming someone paid him to scare us?” “He’s so full of shit.” Belinda seems to shrink before her eyes. For some reason she pulls up the hood, hiding most of her head under it. “Who knows? It might be true. You never know. I just think he’s very insecure. He has problems with his self-esteem. He doesn’t mean to hurt anybody. He just gets these weird impulses and sometimes he acts on them, not really thinking about the consequences. I don’t think he can handle it. Couldn’t you tell he was sorry for what he’d done? Maybe I was too hard on him? I don’t know. Why does everything has to be so complicated?” Agnes’s dangling her feet, sitting on the counter, watching the deserted petrol station. “I wonder if the finale is over by now,” she says in a low voice. THE EXPECTATION OF PAINS TO COME The bag closes tightly around her head. She can’t see. Hardly breathe. Gasping for air. Panic building inside her. Heart beating like crazy. The ropes cutting into her wrists and ankles. The back of the chair hurting her shoulders. All though she can’t see anything, she jerks her head toward the sounds of the clown moving. He circles the chair slowly. Then he goes to Benjamin and starts manipulating him about. Benjamin stays silent. Maybe he’s unconscious, maybe he’s too scared to speak, maybe he has given up pleading with the clown. Maybe he is dead? She’s suffocating under the bag. Can’t breathe, the bag’s too tight, her body too stressed, the panic inside her too severe. Sweat oozing off her, despite the cold of the basement. She hears the iron door open and the rustle of a few people entering the room. They talk in low voices, not much louder than whispers. She’s unable to catch more than loose words and fragments of their conversation. Her breathing under the bag is too noisy. She wheezes and hisses for air. She feels dizzy. Then a bare hand touches her skin. It’s not the clown, it’s a small hand, a female hand, maybe. She tries to pull away from the hand as another hand, this one larger, more masculine, closes around her left breast. They are still talking. She understands that she herself is the topic of the conversation, still, her ears only catch loose words. “…better with Danish girls…illegal whores…Thai…intense…looking forward to this…” There are several voices blending in but all so low and the situation so horrifying, it’s impossible for her to even determine how many people are in the room, or if it’s men or women, or separate one voice from the other, it all blends in and becomes a blur of panic and terror. And the expectation of pains to come. LINKS: AMAZOM: https://www.amazon.com/Finale-Steen-Langstrup-ebook/dp/B07BLZGCMT BLOG: https://langstrup.com/finale/ IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5039416/ FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/steen.langstrup TWITTER: https://twitter.com/SteenLangstrup GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3300117.Steen_Langstrup  FILM REVIEW: #SCREAMERS
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