The Exchange

by Park, J. R.

  ‘What kind of problem?’ Byrne grunted, angry for the distraction.

  ‘I can’t get through. It’s just static on all channels,’ Wallis called back. ‘My phone’s the same. Try yours.’

  Byrne grasped his radio in annoyance and made a call to the station. Just as Wallis had described, radio hiss faded in and out with a mixture of half spoken words. Feedback and broken sentences flooded together to produce an incomprehensible sea of babble that seemed to undulate like the flow of coastal tides.

  ‘Good. We are close,’ Taal broke his silence.

  ‘So you can speak English!’ Byrne snapped.

  The furious policeman strode over to Taal, his feet pounding the ground with anger, his hands balled into fists, ready to vent his violent frustrations.

  ‘You fucking little shit,’ he screamed in the direction of the old man. ‘You Paki fucker, I’m goi-’

  His insults were cut short as he halted in his tracks, frozen like the universe in Taal’s vision. The aged Servant of the Sacred Whisper had risen to his feet and calmly outstretched his left arm. Four of his fingers were held in differing angles and his lips moved slowly, recounting unheard words. Byrne’s eyes widened to an unseen terror and his skin drained to a marble white. His legs began to shake, desperate to take him away from where he stood, but powerless to comply with this command. The policeman’s stomach gurgled and his crotch grew damp, a darkening patch spread across his trousers revealing the urine that escaped his bladder. As piss ran down his leg he blinked and found the strength to break free from the trance.

  Byrne ran to the police-marked BMW for protection, in the midst of a wild panic, and dropped to his knees. His stomach convulsed expelling its bile saturated contents. He tried to wipe the expelled stomach juices from his cheeks but vomited again. As it jettisoned from his mouth the repulsive cocktail of stomach acid and semi-digested food splashed onto his trousers; remnants hung off his lips in strands. He tried to spit them away, but to no avail.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Wallis knelt down beside him, torn between feelings of sympathy and disgust.

  Byrne turned to face his colleague, tear stains marked his cheeks whilst snot dribbled from his nose. He spoke with a mouthful of saliva, his syllables lacking definition as he kept his jaw half open at all times, anxious to avoid the acrid taste of stomach lining.

  ‘Put them in the car,’ he motioned to Wallis with exaggerated movements, his speech rendered to the pronunciation of a small child. ‘Put them in the car and take them into the city. Drop them by the fountains, they’ll make their own way from there.’

  ‘But they were headed to Newcastle,’ Wallis questioned.

  Byrne spat out another mouthful of vomit. ‘The truck was, they weren’t.’

  ‘Huh?’ Wallis looked at his sickly partner in bewilderment. ‘How did you know-’

  ‘Just do as I say,’ Byrne snapped before turning and vomiting again. ‘Leave me here and get them into the city.’ The pathetic mess of a police officer pointed a puke covered hand at Taal but turned his head, not daring to look directly at the small Indian figure, ‘I’m not going anywhere near that freak again.’

  Grinning as he spoke, Knight’s voice snaked through the darkness leaving a wake of unease. ‘Of course you want our help. Of course you want to know,’ his velvet tones licked the air.

  Kayleigh placed her back against the wall and slid into a sitting position, cowering as her trembling hands half covered her ears. His words gripped her stomach, making it churn with the echo of every syllable, but still she listened, torn between a hypnotic fascination and thought-numbing dread. She thought about leaving, imagining herself running back up the stairs, into the daylight and the protection of Ollie, but her curiosity rooted her to the spot.

  How did he know me?

  How did he know about my dream? I hadn’t told anybody, but he knew details. Things only I…

  Knight was still tied firmly to the chair with his left hand brutally hacked from his wrist. But despite being captive and wounded his presence held a threatening grip in the cold, disused basement. An air of menace radiated from the hunched figure, whilst his stocky frame appeared to swell in size like a creeping shadow, the edges of his faint silhouette flickered in the dark, like black fire against a starless night.

  ‘Who are you?’ Kayleigh cried out as her eyes widened, trying to make sense of the half sights she caught in the gloom.

  Knight’s smile grew as he tasted her fear.

  ‘Who am I? What does it matter?’ his mouth curled beneath the sunglasses that rested on the bridge of his nose. ‘What am I?’ he sneered.

  His voice clawed at her thoughts as the sound bounced off the cracked plasterboard and exposed brickwork, echoing round the room in a disorientating fashion; his final sentence emanating from behind her.

  Shocked by the unnatural approach of Knight’s whisper, Kayleigh tried to scream but her breath was lost in fright, leaving nothing more than a muted gasp. Narrowing her eyes to force a better focus through her glasses, she made him out in the gloom. He was still in front of her, still captive in the chair. The sight both reassured and unnerved the confused seventeen year old.

  ‘What are you…?’ Kayleigh’s voice struggled to rise from her throat and trailed off, unsure of her own words.

  ‘The things we do, Kayleigh. The things we know,’ Knight’s speech came at the girl from every direction, drifting from the right, then left.

  Above her, behind her, below her, his voice bled through the black, seemingly coming from everywhere at once; from the furthest corners of the room and, simultaneously, a gentle brush behind her ear.

  ‘The things we have seen,’ he continued. ‘We can show you. I can show you. It’s all behind my eyes.’

  A trail of thick blood, black in the dim light, had pooled on the floor from Knight’s wound and edged its path towards the girl. It lapped against her fingers as they rested on the ground. Kayleigh pulled her hand close as she felt the liquid on her skin. Immediately her digits began to sting with a deep, cold burn, rapidly spreading into the flesh and penetrating to the marrow of her bone. Shaking off the thick, black substance, she wrapped her hand in her sleeve and held it close to her chest, warming it against her own body heat.

  She shook her head in disbelief. Fear was distorting her mind, warping her senses to the point of insanity. Sound was bending direction, shadows were growing in the dark, blood was burning cold.

  What was happening?

  ‘You’re curious, aren’t you?’ Knight cooed with a soothing tone of temptation.

  Kayleigh cautiously rose to her feet and looked around for the stairs. The darkness either side eclipsed her view, concealing what lay only a few feet away.

  Which way had she come in?

  She tried to cast her mind back to when she’d fumbled down the steps, when an unnameable calling, a curiosity that sung on the breeze, pulled her from her fear and back to the darkened belly of the building.

  That had been only been a few minutes ago.

  Why couldn’t she remember?!

  ‘I know you, Kayleigh.’

  Knight’s voice saturated the young girl’s mind, flooding her frustrated thoughts. She looked one way, then the other, but could see nothing through the darkness.

  Which way was the stairs?!

  Unable to pin-point the exit, Kayleigh took a chance, turned to her right and ran, desperate to leave the basement and flee Knight’s presence; desperate to get him out of her head.

  But escape was not so easily found as she slammed into a solid brick wall.

  Recovering from the collision, Kayleigh groped wildly for a doorway, finding nothing but impassable masonry.

  ‘I know you want to know,’ Knight’s voice trickled into her ears, past the thumping sound of her own heartbeat as it echoed through her skull. ‘I can feel your desire.’

  She turned and ran in the opposite direction, colliding into the cold, hard stone of another wall. Her chin caught a jagged edge
of plasterboard that still clung to the remains of the building’s inner shell. It grazed her skin, causing blood to seep, slowly from the wound.

  ‘You want to know about your dream.’

  Kayleigh ran her hands along the scuffed and damaged wall, but found no exit. The staircase simply wasn’t there. Confused and disorientated she banged her fists against the fired clay.

  ‘What’s going on? Ollie!’ Kayleigh called out, hoping her friend would hear her. ‘Ollie!’ she screamed as she fell to the floor.

  Unable to leave, she tried to block out her hostage’s words but she found it impossible, and as if she were futilely trying to fight the tide, she finally gave in, letting his words wash through her.

  ‘I can help you, Kayleigh,’ Knight’s poisonously mellifluous rasp continued. ‘I know about your dream last night. I know how you dream of unicorns. How you dance with them in the forests of your thoughts. But last night was different. Last night the unicorn didn’t dance with you.’

  Kayleigh closed her eyes tightly and covered her ears, trying to block out his words once more. As she squeezed her eyelids closed, patterns swirled in her enforced darkness.

  Flashes of eyes.

  Red and hateful.

  Then black.

  Cold and evil.

  The muffled sound of hooves galloped in the air between her ears and palms. Her hands clamped harder against her head in an effort to silence it.

  The harder she tried to block it out, the louder the sound grew.

  ‘When exactly did you wake up, Kayleigh?’ Knight’s words found their way through too.

  She felt warm breath on the back of her neck.

  Her stomach hurt.

  ‘Did you wake up before the long horn between its angry, evil eyes pierced your flesh? Or did you stay asleep that little longer? Did you feel the horn drive through your stomach? Did you feel it raise its head and puncture your lung? Did you feel your breath go shallow and the blood drain from your body? Did you feel it pierce your heart?’

  Kayleigh clutched at her stomach.

  ‘Did you feel yourself die?’

  A tear gently crept from her eye and rolled down the pale skin of her cheek as she remembered scrabbling through the grass, clawing back the undergrowth as she tried frantically to out run the chasing beast.

  Kayleigh opened her eyes and uncovered her ears.

  A haunting stillness filled her mind. Like watching an explosion in slow motion, she felt at once terrified and at the same time captivated by the memory of the vision she had first encountered in her sleep. Although stood at its centre she was like an impassioned by-stander, unable to exert any influence, but painfully aware of what was to come.

  ‘Do you know why that happened?’ Knight spoke as he watched her get to her feet. ‘I can show you. It’s all in my eyes. Take a look. Lift up my glasses and see. Look into my eyes.’

  ‘I could have sworn I saw them.’

  Ollie was pacing back and forth, trying to recall the blurred events that had got them here.

  The chase from the cops.

  Stumbling into the guys in suits.

  Guys and girls.

  He swore there had been two women but looking across the construction site he could only see one at the meeting point. Where was the other one?

  Had there even been another one?

  The adrenalin had reduced his memories to a series of half remembered flashes. Snatches of faces and fists. Screeches of tyres and deafening gunshots. It had been a matter of minutes, maybe even less before they’d bundled into Sam’s passing van. No time to capture detail.

  Why the hell were they packing guns anyway? And what was in that case?

  They’d tried so hard to open it. Bricks, metal piping, even a hacksaw from Sam’s van had all been used as tools in attempts to open the briefcase, but the locks refused to give. They were strange locks too, a series of holes and symbols dotted the metal fastenings making them seem more decorative than functional.

  Whatever was in that case the owners wanted it back, badly.

  It was all such a mess.

  If the man with the briefcase handcuffed to his wrist hadn’t accidentally been pushed into the van and knocked unconscious as they clambered for their escape, they wouldn’t even be in this situation.

  If Sam’s tool bag had been packed with anything more than a hacksaw and some loose screws maybe they could have armed themselves.

  If Laura hadn’t been taken, if Sam hadn’t acted so wild, they could have all just walked away.

  Ollie berated himself for going over the what-ifs; they weren’t going to help him and his friends now.

  He thought back to the man tied up in the basement and shook his head as he recounted the psychotic mania that had filled Sam. Did it really happen? Was his friend really capable and willing to cut someone’s hand off? He still couldn’t believe it.

  And throughout the whole thing the guy didn’t stir; not once. That kind of pain should have woken him up; driving him from his unconscious state with an ear splitting scream. But if he did come round he didn’t show it. He didn’t make a sound; didn’t move a muscle.

  The whole, blood soaked episode just didn’t feel real. Like the chase and gunshots before, the detail had rapidly dissolved making it feel more like a dream.

  Sanity had long since left them. Reality seemed to be doing the same.

  A shriek echoed through the disused building, pulling Ollie from his fragmented reflections. The scream made him jump with fright, its tone of pure terror resonating with the inner fear he’d been trying hard to suppress.

  ‘Kayleigh!’ he cried and ran into the darkness of the building.

  Turning left, down the corridor, he headed towards the stairs of the basement but was knocked to the floor by a powerful blow. Ollie landed hard on his back, the wind forced from his lungs. As he climbed to his feet he felt the panicked hands of Kayleigh, trembling and gripping his arms tightly. Her pale white face, stripped of colour by fear, faintly glowed in the surrounding gloom.

  ‘Kayleigh, are you okay?’ Ollie put his arms around her but she wriggled free of the attempted hug. ‘I didn’t mean to run into you.’

  ‘His… his… his… his eyes,’ she spluttered in barely coherent syllables.

  Ollie gripped both her arms in an attempt to stop her shaking. The terrified teenager looked directly into her friend’s face with a stare that looked straight through him.

  ‘What’s up?’ Ollie asked.

  ‘I can’t stay here. I’ve got to go,’ Kayleigh pushed past him.

  Ollie caught her hand, trying to stop the terrified girl, but she pulled herself free from his loose grip and ran down the corridor, out of the abandoned building and into the light.

  He scratched his head in confusion, unsure of what had gotten into her. Maybe it had all been too much. She was only young.

  Leaving his friend to find her own comfort he turned back towards the point where the corridor fell to its most inky black. This was the entrance to the darkened stairwell; the descending passageway that led to the basement. Something inside him responded to an invisible call, a yearning to understand what Kayleigh had saw. It was a ridiculous notion, and yet it was impossible to fight. He took his phone out of his pocket, using the screen as a makeshift torch. It did little to light the way, but did enough to show him the edge of each step as he made his way down to the depths of the building, following a curiosity that gripped at his heart.

  Rasping interference wrestled with the sound of a panicked and fraught female voice.

  ‘Plea- -elp uh-,’ crackled from the speaker of a stolen police radio amidst the whir and whine of static. Her words were lost in the swamp of sound, resulting in barely intelligible syllables.

  Scullin squeezed the radio tightly and looked towards Jake, watching the horror grow on his face as he slowly recognised the terrified voice that fought through the white noise.

  ‘Her partner was left to die. To bleed out in the back of a car,�
�� Scullin said throwing the radio to the ground. ‘But your sister will do it in front of an audience.’

  Regretting he’d ever listened to Scullin and let the woman live, it didn’t take Duell long to stride with purposeful steps up the dusty slope of the building site and back to the limousine. It had been parked in haste, by the side of a condemned and crumbling two storey building; concealed enough to keep it hidden, but allowing for an advantageous view over the agreed meeting point. He kept his vision focused on the metallic black, luxury vehicle as he made his approach.

  If it had been his decision the policewoman would have been killed outright a long time ago and left on the side of the street. At least now, finally, his murderous desires would be indulged.

  Everything looked just the way he’d left it. Both cars had their doors shut, and trying one of the handles of the limo, he found it was still locked. He smiled as he glanced towards the Audi before pressing his forehead against the glass of the limousine. Duell peered through the window but was unable to see past the tinting.

  Taking the key from his pocket he pressed a button. A whirring from the car indicated the doors were unlocking. Cautiously he gripped a door handle and, pulling it up with controlled patience, he waited a moment.

  Waiting for a reaction.

  When nothing happened he slowly opened the door.

  Blood trickled from the car and onto the ground, splashing the polished leather of his shoes. Duell looked at the dead policeman slumped over the back seat. A cracked and broken radio lay on the lap of the corpse, rasping an undulating hiss through its speaker. Ducking down, Duell edged his head into the limousine to get a better view of the scene.

  With no time to defend himself, the heavy boot of Special Constable Forrest caught his cheek, knocking him to the ground. Rising to his feet, he didn’t have a chance to look up and watch his assailant step from the car before another boot struck him directly between the legs. Duell landed on his knees as his mouth screwed into a grimace. Forrest kicked again, but this time he was ready for her. Thrusting his hand out, he caught her ankle, twisting it over and deflecting the blow. Fluidly, he followed the motion and threw her to the ground.