by Lee Hayton
With my heart now pumping so loudly it drowned out all other noise, I observed the perpetrator for a minute. When Arnie next leant forward, pulling aside the curtain, I tiptoed at speed across the hall into the target room.
A single mattress lay on the floor, a heap of pillows forming a smaller safer space within it. And there lay a sleeping toddler, thumb inserted as a pacifier in his mouth.
Back out the way I’d come, or exit through the window.
The window was a metre off the ground, but if I was quick and quiet, I could signal someone to come and pick the boy out of my arms. Get him away to safety even if it left me in the firing line.
I bent down, and then a voice rang out, baritone and echoing, “Get away from my son.”
I ignored him, of course, but then I was never one for obeying a direct order. Pushing the pillows aside, I pulled Jason into my arms. Good luck attacking me while I’m holding your son.
Feeling slightly ill I’d managed to have that thought, I backed away and looked at the suspect closely. Arnie Pouakai was so nondescript it made him hard to see. Average build, average hair, average stature, average eye colour. I’d have better luck identifying him from his voice.
“Don’t come any closer,” I warned. “We all want what’s best for the boy.”
Jason wriggled in my arms, and the man’s eyes seemed to glow and change shape and colour. I backed away another step, my shoulders now scraping the wall.
Nowhere to run. No way clear to the exit. Not unless I went straight through the man who glared at me so hard I felt a shrill siren of fear splinter open my head.
Once again, Jason jerked violently in my arms. I struggled to keep hold of him as his skin seemed to ripple and morph under my hands. In front of me, Arnie tore his eyes from mine to focus on his son. As I watched, he began to change.
My back already flush with the wall, there was nowhere to run to. I jerked my eyes toward the window, but Arnie took a step forward, blocking that way off as well. Suddenly Jason punched at my stomach, feeling like he was dragging talons across my blouse. He twisted out of my arms, and I looked down to see the tangled edges of my untucked shirt torn into strips, dotted with blood.
Where Jason had been, now there sat a fat eaglet. Blinking eyes composed solely of pupil, jerking his head with interest to get new snapshots of my face.
As the room seemed to shimmer with menace, I heard the cacophony of a thousand instruments blasting through my eardrums again. I closed my eyes and dug my fingers deep into my ears. A trick that might've worked had the sound been external, rather than writhing and resounding in my brain.
I fell to my knees, looking up as Arnie morphed into a taupe coloured WereEagle. He stretched his wings out, unable to extend them full-length in the confining space of the room. Still, he flapped them, and a gust of wind strong as a tornado blew a mournful sound across my face. Keeping one beady eye fixed on me, the bird nudged its fledgeling out the door into the hallway.
I should follow, I thought. But I couldn't put the thought into action. My legs were jelly, sinking into a puddle on the floor. I heard the swingers the back door opened, the fly screen nudged aside by a head covered inches deep with feathers. A cry of wonder echoed back from the street as I heard the wings lift the man up into the afternoon sky. The world in front of me kaleidoscoped into a jumbled mess of colour and sound.
With too much sensory input to organise, my mind blew apart.
#
When I sat up in bed later that day, I felt confused for a moment. I must've fallen asleep and had a strange and alienating dream.
I was fully clothed, no memory of returning home the night before. The good liquor must have poured its amber joy all night long for my mind to be this empty.
Music pulsed in the air of the room around me, and I felt liberating warmth spread across my chest like I was hugging a hot water bottle.
Looking down, I realised the pocket of my jacket had twisted across the centre of my bra. Putting my hand into my jacket, I drew out a lonely feather enclosed within an evidence bag.
I frowned, trying to place it, but couldn’t grasp the context. Then I heard flapping wings, saw a hair extend and morph into a feather. Saw that repeat a hundred, a thousand times over.
Alarmed, I lurched out of bed in shocked surprise and tried to make my way to the kitchen. I must be hallucinating, maybe in the grips of fever. Underneath my feet, the carpet sucked at me like quicksand, pulling me down so that each step took a gigantic effort of concentration and aim. The world meanwhile was spinning, tilting from one access to another. Vertigo that had me jerking like a puppet with a madman pulling strings.
My stomach burned with ulcers, sharp teeth nibbling into my stomach lining. Lights. The sunlight was an assault of brightness. Too many colours to see, especially since my eyes were already closed. I squinted one open, but the flood of images made my brain feel like it was melting. I collapsed to the floor, sinking into the blistered release of unconsciousness again.
#
Rising up through layers of sleep, I tried to turn away from the hard corners that suddenly made up my bed. As I opened my eyes a sliver, I realised I was lying in the corner of the dining room having somehow fallen hard against between the wall and a straight-backed chair.
I shook my head, my thoughts not forming into memories. Using the back of the chair, I managed to stand on shaking legs and looked around for clues to what I’d been doing.
My mouth was dry, I must've been going into the kitchen for a glass of water. The world lurched, I felt a pressing rush of nausea, and I closed my eyes until my stomach began to settle. Feeling with my hands, I slid around the corner of the doorway and through into the kitchen.
The floor felt sticky under my feet, and not just from my failings as a housecleaner. I opened my eyes a sliver, to see individual dust motes dancing by. I watched entranced for a moment, then turned my attention to the taps. Turning on the cold water, a river flooded out towards me. I screamed and ducked, while the waves crashed onward about my head. Although drowning in a never-ending press of water, nevertheless I managed to continue drawing breath.
Is this what crazy is? Have I gone screaming around the bend?
Either that or I’d dropped a shitload of acid.
That thought calmed me down. LSD didn't agree with me but coming out the other side was just a matter of time. The discordant noise pummelling my eardrums began to filter out into notes and melody. I pressed my hands against my stomach and turned over, brushing off my wet legs even though I was now certain the waves and sand were nothing more than an illusion.
I inhaled a deep breath, then opened my eyes fully. With my back pressed against the kitchen wall, I let the scene wash in despite its growing size until finally, the overload of information started to ebb.
I tilted forward onto my knees and crawled forward a few paces before reaching up and grabbing hold of the countertop. Dragging myself upward, I realised the tap was still flowing. A reached out blindly for a glass and put it under the stream, no matter that its position on the bench meant it was probably used.
I drank greedily, swallowing crystalline water. Each cell bursting with taste and motion upon my tongue.
If this were madness, perhaps I'd stay just for the ambient symphonic music and the refreshments.
#
I didn't know how long I'd been out of that until the station called to check up on me. Although I was sure I'd swum through a mire of sensation for days on end, apparently, I'd been home less than three hours.
My sergeant’s voice was gruff as he ordered me back to the Theas’ home. Perhaps the days spent in the company of his protégé had opened his eyes to just how much he'd expected the rest of the team to bare.
“Now the mother's gone walkabout,” he said. “She left a note. Apparently, they're having some sort of loving family reunion. Pity her legal husband wasn’t invited.”
Sure, that it would be unsafe for me to drive I ordered up an Uber. An
overly chatty man who talked non-stop in an accent I could barely decipher. Some mix of deep brogue Scottish with a twist at the end of each line that reminded me of Kylie Mole.
Thankfully, this new-age system meant I didn't need to decipher the costing. Just nodded to the driver as I got out of his car and walked up the path to where Lindsay was sobbing on the door.
“She's gone,” he said, his voice full of mournful monks chanting. “I don't know what to do. They were my life.”
Even in my line of work, a man openly crying was a bit of a departure. With an adequate slap on her shoulder, I turned and escorted him indoors.
Even in his dim lounge, the light seemed swollen full of colour. I rubbed my arms and felt a shiver of delight at the range of sensations that sent up my spine. My senses felt new and exciting, as though I was a butterfly crawling free of the cocoon.
With knowledge more innate than my intuitive detecting, I began to talk to Lindsay Thea in a voice that soon calmed him down.
Nonsense words, a Lewis Carroll lexicon of oddly juxtaposed syllables. As his eyes widened and his breathing slowed, I realised I was hypnotising him into calmness.
I realised it even though I didn't understand how.
I bagged up the note that Ariana had left as evidence. Closing it off for a case that the police would never touch again.
And maybe my intuition hadn't been spot-on for this one, the brown shit stain of failure I'd thought covered it from the first moment, turning out to be compost in which a new family had grown.
I recorded a few critical notes, amusing myself by creating little ditties from my recollections. As I switched the voice recorder off and tucked it into my jacket pocket, I smiled at the thought of someone listening to that evidence in court.
On the front berm, I ducked under a tree for shelter enough to read my smart phone screen and order another taxi home. While I did so, a powerful black sedan nuzzled up to the curb in front of the house.
It shining black curves attracted not a single glance of curiosity. The family liaison crossed the road only a foot away but didn't acknowledge its lurking presence at all.
The back door opened, and I saw the tip-tapping head of a cane emerge to clump down upon the footpath. A moment later the elderly woman from the marae followed it, looking at me with sharp intelligence singing out from her cataract-clouded eyes.
Without a word, she gestured toward the open door of the back seat. Without bothering to ask a question I obeyed and slid into the cave of black leather seating.
#
I paced the apathetic waiting room of the airport. Mostly cursing the powers-that-be. These shadowy figures that had so recently come to my attention.
As a couple stood up to amble over to the warm greeting of the bar, I nipped in to secure one of the depressing, plastic chairs they’d vacated.
How I hated airports. The sad and wet goodbyes, the happy long-tongued greetings. Watching the detritus of a domestic flight emerge, my eyes boggled at a couple who breathed each other instead of air.
Gag.
In my hand was a photograph of a tattoo. I’d asked—reasonably enough—for a picture of a whole person. In return I’d received a stern warning about authority and status.
Guess who didn’t have any in this new-fangled made-up organisation?
Yup. Congratulations. You win a beer.
When the sleek town car pulled up outside at an entirely different marae to the one where I’d first met Dr Huakoi—the elderly woman—the information on the signs out front passed me blindly by.
I wasn’t included in the generation that learned Maori at school. At least not past counting to ten and the first verse of the national anthem.
Please welcome our latest student, Lou, to another round of schooling.
Nga Tari O Tipua was the government department responsible for… Well… Okay, I didn’t quite understand that yet. But whatever the confusing hell Arnie Pouakai and Jason Thea turned out to be.
They were also responsible in some way for me and whatever I was. Another thing my addled brain didn’t quite understand.
The warmth of the waiting room and the heat of my bum caused sweat to build up in a place too unseemly to itch. I wriggled from cheek to cheek, my feet getting in an early protest in case I thought to stand on them again.
I gritted my teeth together in frustration and tried to whisper to myself. Whatever the effect of my voice on others, talking to myself had no effect apart from making me look mad.
One sideways glance from the woman seated in front of me, and I felt frustration and indignation well up as sour spit inside my mouth. The call of the bar was pretty strong now. The hum of hops, the sweet soaring lilt of wine, the vibrant throat singing of whisky, dark amber with notes of smoky peat. I closed my eyes and leant forward the better to hear their siren call. Then I jerked back and quickly checked the photo when a new plane load of people spewed through the arrival doors.
There!
I angled my way through the crowd, one hand waving at the guy striding about like he owned the place. With my other hand, I pulled away the wet fabric of my trousers and tried to give my arse a surreptitious scratch.
The look of disdain on his face far outweighed that on my own. I almost felt a grudging respect.
“Thalius Jardine?”
Grey eyes deep set beneath a hulking brow turned and looked me up and down. I couldn’t tell if the curl of the man’s lip was a smile of appreciation or a sneer.
“Call me Thal or call me Jardine,” he muttered gruffly. My head stirred up images of prowling bears.
“Rather not call you anything,” I muttered under my breath as I turned to follow him out of the terminal.
Me. Following him.
He acted so confident. As though he already knew where my damn car was waiting.
“What sort of tin shed operation is this?” he said as I fumbled with change for the parking machine. “And where the hell are you from, in any case?”
“Nga Tari O Tipua,” I said, then hesitated. “At least, they sent me.”
He sniggered and turned to look back from where he’d come as though he wanted to head straight back.
“You know that translates as the offices of weird, right?” This time the lip curl was definitive. A mocking smile.
The twang of his oddly shaped vowels hit a discordant note in my head. Ire rose at the thought of being lumped in with whatever the hell Nga Tari O Tipua represented just because we coexisted in the same sad country.
Not as great as the anger at picking this lowlife up from the airport, though.
I accepted the ticket from the machine, roughly pulling it from the metal mouth.
“Get used to it, mate,” I said as I stalked inside the parking building. “We’re all weirdness, all the time, here.”
- The End -
Coming Soon . . .
About the Author - Lee Hayton
Traveling is a great expander of ideas and the understanding of other cultures, and Lee Hayton finds traveling in other writer’s worlds the most exciting and fruitful journeys of all.
She’d love for you to join her and explore these new worlds together, never knowing for sure if around the next corner is a sight ready to curdle your blood or make you explode into laughter.
Stay in Touch
You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google Plus. Keep on top of every new release by clicking “Follow Me” on my Amazon Author Page, or visit http://leehayton.com and sign-up to my newsletter to receive New Release information and Free Content exclusively available to newsletter subscribers.
Also by the Author
Coming soon… Gun 2 (Gun Apocalypse Book Two)
When Dr. Rachel Harraday is called upon by the CDC to catalog and treat a developing epidemic, she can’t foresee the disease will catapult its sufferers into a spree of gun violence. Join the excitement from the sidelines and see if Rachel can cure the deadly disease.
Gun (Gun Apocalypse
Book One)
When a neurological virus triggers an epidemic of gun violence, five survivors struggle to find refuge as their world fractures into chaos. Accompany them on their journey and imagine how you might fair in their brave, new world.
Writing as Katherine Hayton
The Tide
Winter Solstice
The Second Stage of Grief
The Three Deaths of Magdalene Lynton
Breathe and Release
Skeletal
Found, Near Water
About the Author - Paul C. Middleton
Paul C. Middleton has worked several jobs but has had most of his working life in Security. Patrolling dark empty places gave him much time to think on many things. It was not conducive to finding the time or place to write. Then his partner was diagnosed with severe epilepsy, requiring him to reduce his work hours to care for her.
Never one to let the grass grow under his feet, he found that writing enabled him to be available when she needed him and left him feeling like less of a drain on his friends and the world. He also has to thank his two beagles who have become an efficient Epilepsy warning system. When they 'make tongue' he knows to find his partner and get her into a lounge chair or onto a bed.
He tries to bring an uplifting undertone to his stories but is happy to admit he has a somewhat dark viewpoint on the world.
Note from the Author
This one was fun, pure and simple. Lee Hayton asked if she could write something in my universe. Considering Michael had accepted my request when I asked him, I would have felt churlish not to.
This was a fun project. I was considerably more involved in the writing of this work than Michael was in “Evacuation” or it's sequels, but I still think it's turned out well. And, despite having a cold for more than half the time we were working on this and “A Mongrel, A Bard and Witches, Oh My!” I had a lot of fun doing this project. It is my sincere hope that we can continue to work on collaborative novellas from Lou's point of view.