Sufferer's Song

by Savile, Steve

  An island, off centre in the lake, offered its own secluded quietness, with a pagoda style suntrap on top and a cavern entrance to what Jason assumed to be the boathouse, below.

  From where he was the slope ran away to the left and right, the left taking him around to the front of the house, the right, the back. Rather than risk the dash between where he was and the shelter of the pagoda, he ducked low and scrambled along the ridge. He covered the perimeter running low and fast, darting from hiding place to hiding place until he hit a stand of spruce level with the back of the complex.

  What he saw was an even more confused jumble of styles than those of the front; outhouses, kitchens and stable blocks cluttering the yard in an open horseshoe. It struck him then that these odd looking additions had been stuck here, out of the way, simply because they were that. Out of the way. Necessity yes, but an eyesore nonetheless. In their favour though, they did provide him with good cover for most of the run up to the house itself.

  He gave himself time for one last check both ways before scrambling to his feet in a flat out dash.

  Even if someone had seen him then there was no way he could have stopped himself. So he ran and he prayed between pumping gasps to the God of whoever looked after would-be cat burglars and Peeping Toms, and didn't stop doing either until he was twenty feet from the back of one of the outbuildings. Even then, he hit the wall hard enough to jar what little breath he had left out of his burning lungs. Hands on knees, Jason struggled to catch his breath.

  He checked his watch. He had about seven minutes before he had to meet Kristy, and that left precious little time to dig around, less for pictures.

  At the corner, he slipped the little Cybershot out of his pocket and snapped off two quick shots of the courtyard interior of the complex.

  He tried the nearest door handle, one of the stable doors. It was locked. He didn't waste time trying it again. He edged along the wall. The windows were shuttered, giving nothing away.

  He fired off a single shot of the stable, crouching to get both window and door in the frame. A series of high bins lined the kitchen wall.

  The bins smelled of over-ripe fruit and something else. He didn't much fancy rooting around in someone else's rubbish, but that was exactly what he did. The first was filled almost to overflowing with squashed fruit and the sludge of uneaten meals congealed into a gloopy soup. He slipped down and boosted himself up for a look in the second bin. What he saw had him reaching for the camera and retching.

  Small fur-matted bodies piled among the fruit slices and chicken gravy. A dozen or more. Rats.

  Jason snapped off another still, and then slipped his camera back into his pocket.

  Someone had done a thorough job on the rats all right. He poked one to confirm his suspicions. Each one had had its back broken before it died. Some were scarred. Others had had their fur shaved away in places, more than half with monkish skull caps where the razor had been.

  “WHAT THE HELL?” someone yelled, the shout followed by the clatter of footsteps.

  Jason felt the beginnings of an odd sort of relief, but then the fist slammed into the small of his back. His face mashed into the metal drum. He lost his grip and balance at the same time as a second punch jammed into his solar plexus. His legs buckled.

  Gagging, he stumbled and almost fell.

  Dizziness swam in the sunburst of white behind his eyes.

  He felt hands on him, lashed out blindly with his arm. He felt his elbow ram into his attacker's face. That brought him a precious second.

  Jason span.

  The man had his hand to his face; His nose was bleeding through his fingers. He didn't think about anything in that second. The frantic panic in the back of his head a distant fear. He threw himself at the man, slamming a fist into his face and again into his stomach, face again. Again.

  Panting hard he pummelled his erstwhile attacker with a series of rabbit punches in the gut until he doubled up. The heat inside his head had grown to a fever. He wanted to laugh, it felt so good.

  Grabbing a tangle of hair, Jason rammed his knee into the man's face, relaxed his grip and backed off a step. He slumped face first into the dirt. Jason toed his face enough to get a plain sighting, and then backed off quickly. He stopped at the corner and looked back long enough to satisfy himself he was clear, squeezed off a rapid-fire succession of shots to take in his attacker, bins and all, and then ran for all he was worth.

  * * * * *

  “Welcome to Havendene,” Richards proclaimed rather pompously as he took to leading them through the white-washed halls. Metal tap-ins on his shoes clinked dully on the tiled floor. Ahead of him the slim figure of a girl walked out from a doorway marked G13.

  “Jenny,” Richards called, then to everyone else: “I'd like you to meet our resident dietician, Jennifer Nolan. Sergeant Doyle. And? I'm sorry; I don't recall your name Miss?”

  “French, Kristy French. We spoke this morning.”

  “Ah, yes. Mizz French, the reporter. A pleasant surprise.”

  Jennifer Nolan's hair was a tidy auburn, pulled up into a practical bun and bobby-pinned to compliment her look of absorbed concentration.

  “Hi folks, you'll excuse me if I dash, but the old slave driver's here and it doesn't do to be seen slacking.”

  Doyle chuckled. “Pleased to meet you anyway ma'am. More's the pity it wasn't a happier time, but such is life.”

  Nolan's frown asked the question to which Richards supplied the words.

  “Is there some sort of problem, officer? Perhaps we should discuss this in my office?”

  “I suppose there's no nice way of saying this,” Doyle said as Richards closed the door behind them. “Do you have a Monk Sanders working for you here, doctor?”

  “Monk? Why yes, though he has not turned in for work this morning. He usually helps with the physical fitness program.”

  “I wonder if you would be so kind as to accompany me to the hospital, sir. We need someone to identify a body we believe to be Mr Sanders.”

  “Oh. . . a body? Dear God, you mean he’s dead? But how?”

  “That we don't know yet, but rest assured we will soon enough. Did Mr Sanders have any family? Someone we might contact?”

  “A sister, in America, I think. Do you want me to come now?”

  “If you would, please.”

  “Of course, of course. I will just fetch myself a coat first. You've got me all at sixes and sevens I'm afraid, officer. I don't know, it's terrible. . . Such a shock, you understand. I would say I felt numb, if there was anything to feel. . .”

  “Were you and Mr Sanders close?” Kristy asked from the window, without turning.

  “Close?” the doctor mused. “Yes I suppose we were at that.”

  As she stood watching, a fox loped across the lawn, its movements capturing that curious lupine fluidity of all such hunters, and stopped to stare at the house. Its stillness lent it perfection; its eyes, catching the sun, gleamed like oiled marbles, its ears pricked. It paused a moment only, sensing danger on the wind, before turning tail and bolting for the cover of the undergrowth.

  And then the dogs went berserk.

  * * * * *

  The racket of the dogs hounded him, venom and anger hot in their voices snapping at his heels.

  Jason looked back just once to see the black and tan flurry of fur and muscle racing his way, then stumbled on across the fifty yards of no man's land between the pagoda and the forest skirts; not that they offered any more protection than the open ground.

  Fear and adrenalin hit him like a breaker. Fear of nothing more powerful than the fear itself had his legs stumbling and churning at the ground. The air burned painfully in his lungs. His head was dangerously light as dizziness swooned. The baying of the dogs ate up the ground between them. Fifty yards became twenty five. Twenty yards from the trees he thought he was a dead man. The intensity of their fury burned the skin from the back of his neck with all the physical presence of a blowtorch. He stumbled, tripp
ed. Pushed himself back to his feet without breaking his stride. Breath rasped in his throat. And still he ran waiting for the tackle to take him down from behind.

  Ten yards and his vision swam out of focus. His throat burned, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, lips like sandpaper - and he couldn't swallow. The muscles in his legs hit the cramps.

  Fever-fear burned in his veins. He was slowing while the world accelerated around him. The suddenness of the cramps tied him up almost as if the blood itself had thickened to molasses and his feet were staggering through drying cement.

  Got to run. . . Got to. . .

  His legs had him veering in a crazy zigzag that stole precious feet.

  Run!

  Ten feet and the darkness of the trees - The full force of the impact punched Jason off his feet. The Doberman catapulted squarely into his back, jaws impossibly clamping around his upper arm. Tearing. He hit the ground like a sack, the dog's momentum carrying it clear with a bloody mouthful of sinew from Jason's arm.

  His face buried into the ragged wound as he brought his arms up to protect himself from the fall, the pain of it yet to slam home.

  The weight of the second dog on his back was inconsequential against the sudden agony from his right ankle.

  In the second before it broke clean, his trainer turned upwards, his foot twisting too far with his ankle taking the full weight of him, the dog, and the fall until it broke with an audible crack! That lanced a flaming brand the length of his leg.

  Pain roared through his skull.

  And all the while the screams were ripped from his clenched teeth by the muzzles tearing at his body.

  * * * * *

  Of the three of them, Kristy reacted first, and despite the fear clutching at her gut, she ran all-out.

  Her eyes were riveted on the grizzly tableau resolving itself on the edge of the woods. A man she didn't recognize was standing ten feet from two dogs, and Kristy suddenly realized how close she was to witnessing a massacre.

  “FOR GOD'S SAKE!”

  Jason was on the floor. The dogs were everywhere, at his legs, at his chest, tearing at him. And this other man was standing still, watching.

  “Jesus,” Doyle gasped between gulps of sorely needed air.

  The dogs were berserk, tearing at Jason with all the fury they could muster.

  “Call them off, Robert,” Richards shouted, still twenty yards back.

  “Stand! Saul! Stand! Duke!”

  Despite the intensity of their attack both dogs reluctantly relinquished their victim on the single command. They fell back a pace, hackles up, ears flat, eyes locked firmly on the body on the floor.

  Jason was a mess. His shirt was ripped and torn in a dozen places, where skin was exposed, blood thickened. His trainer had soaked through red with blood from his shattered ankle. Bite marks chewed a path up his legs to his blood soaked groin. The flesh of his bicep had been bitten through. Blood pumped through his clutching fingers onto the grass. It was a miracle he wasn't dead, though from the glazed look in his eyes death wasn't all that far away.

  “Keep them back,” Kristy said, meaning the dogs, as she pushed through to his side. “Hang in there, Jace,” she whispered as she crouched. “We need to get him to a hospital now, Doyle, or he's dead.”

  “Bring him back to the house,” Richards said. He spoke as if he expected to be obeyed. “We have facilities there. Robert, help sergeant Doyle carry him.” The man seemed completely unfazed by the sudden twist in events.

  Saul and Duke, the two dogs, still circled them ready to renew the assault should the word be given. Saul bit down on a streak of sinew that had caught between his incisors, and then sucked it back.

  “And then, perhaps, Mizz French, you would do me the kindness of explaining what this young man was doing prowling around my grounds in the first place? As it seems you obviously knew he was out here.”

  “His pulse is very weak, doctor,” The dog-handler Richards had called Robert said matter-of-factly.

  “Fuck that. I'm calling for an ambulance and we're getting him out of here.”

  “He's bleeding to death, young lady. And an ambulance will take time to get here. Time he hasn't got.”

  “We'll take our chances on that one thank you, doctor. Doyle, will you help me get him into my car?”

  Jason moaned once as they lifted him into the sitting position and hooked him into a carry, and then despite the obvious intensity of his pain, it was the only sound he made all the way back to the cars.

  Kristy mopped sweat from his brow. “C'mon. Tough it out, kiddo. Not long now.”

  While Doyle and the dog-handler propped up Jason in the back of the car, Kristy raced to the boot for the travelling blanket. Jason had slumped to his side, curled up weakly. Kristy leaned into the car and spread the blanket over him.

  Doyle had clambered into the police car and fired up both the engine and the siren. Richards sat next to him, no longer able to intimidate. She caught a strange flicker of something in his eyes, like the shadow of a bird flying between them, and then it was gone and he seemed annoyingly pleased with himself. He gave her a small, precise wave. She slammed her own door and gunned the engine, revving hard. The dogs stood at the steps.

  “Hold on tight back there, this is going to be the quickest trip to Hexham in the history of man. Enjoy.”

  * * * * *

  Kristy sat in the waiting room alone, waiting for the news that Jason was dead.

  The hospital fairly hummed with a life all of its own. Down the corridor to what she guessed was the Children's Ward she could hear the brash notes of the Flintstone's theme tune.

  She wanted to be up and pacing. Wanted to do something with her hands. Most of all, she wanted to know. A cluster of noisy, squalling seagulls had descended, picking aggressively at the scraps put out by the cook. A door opened behind her. She continued to watch the primitive dance of the gulls, drawn by their naked display of savagery.

  The nurse who came in had a cup of coffee in one hand and sachets of milk and sugar in the other. “Savage little buggers, aren't they?” she commented, seeing the birds over Kristy's shoulder. Kristy turned to take the proffered cup with quiet thanks. “Kitchen's closed, I'm afraid, but if you want anything else, petal, it won't be a bother.”

  Kristy shook her head. “No thanks, I'm fine. . .”

  The pudgy faced nurse wore her show of compassion comfortably, a look she had no doubt offered others on countless occasions. That said, she felt the better for it right now. “I'm sure your friend will be fine. Dr Boreman's one of the best.”

  The nurse could be sure of no such thing, Kristy knew, but she appreciated the sentiment and the words for what they were.

  When she was alone again she turned back to the window.

  Jason could be dead right now.

  She hated being here, having come this far, and not knowing. He had been unconscious by the time they reached casualty.

  He'll be all right, she told herself. He has to be.

  She saw herself crying through her reflection in the glass.

  She stood like that for a long while, watching the redness gradually steel over the landscape, and waiting. The crash cart clattered by. The tunes on the television changed and changed again before the view from the window lost its appeal, and then she sat in one of the leather look loungers, fidgeting uncomfortably as the sticky upholstery picked at her clothes. Rogue thoughts tripped and stumbled through her mind like blind runners charging towards the finishing tape. Regains Consciousness will be. . . All right. . . Will be. . . Can't die. . . My Fault, all my. . . Damn Richards. . . Stinking clinic. . . To Hell. . . Jason. . . Please. . .

  Kristy lurched to her feet as the waiting room door swung open. The pudgy faced nurse came in bearing a second cup of coffee.

  “Is he?” Kristy closed her eyes, numbness steeling over her.

  “No one's been in to see you?”

  She shook her head.

  The nurse looked surprised. �
�He's been out of surgery an hour now. Dr Boreman's had him moved to ICU. He was sleeping when I last looked in.”

  Dead?

  No, not dead. Please God not dead. Her heart was thumping like a bird trapped in a cage. “Sleeping?”

  “Like a baby, love. All be it a poorly one. He's a strong one that man of yours.”

  Thankyou,thankyou,thankyou,thankyou,thankyou. . . Kristy's mind swirled until it latched onto a single need.

  “Can I see him?”

  “In the morning lovey. He's had a hard day. Why don't you go home and get yourself some sleep. You look like you need a good night's sleep as much as your friend does.”

  Kristy nodded. “Yeah,” she mumbled.

  The awful tightness that had clutched her stomach from those first sounds of barking seemed to be melting, ice going soft as the warmth flowed through her body, soothing. Making her weak.

  She was tired.

  Exhausted.

  He's going to be all right. . .

  “Will he be. . ?”

  The nurse must have known what she was going to ask, because she shushed her with a: “Good as new, lovey. Given time.”

  And for a few hours, at least, her words made everything better.

  - 30 -

  Sometime early that evening, Ellen Tanner's father came upstairs to talk to her. She was lying on her bed, listening to the shouts and catcalls of older children playing in the schoolyard across the street. Comfortable dog flopped on her chest, legs splayed every which way, his baggy face looking sadder than sad.

  The happy noises sounded a million miles away.

  “How are you feeling, sweetheart?”

  “Okay,” Ellen mumbled into the dog's mouth.