Dead Broken - Psychological Thriller / Horror

by Gerard Gray

  I hadn’t even known her name.

  “I don’t understand? I thought she was in a critical condition.”

  “She was,” interjected one of the officers. “She was gone. Someone up there must be looking after you.”

  “What?”

  “Just before she died, she came to, just for half an hour. She told us that you had nothing to do with her attack, that you were responsible for helping her escape.”

  “I was,” I replied, utterly numb. “I told you I was innocent. I told you.” I started to sob again. I hugged my boys tight. The girl with the black bunches had saved me.

  “A small miracle,” the officer said.

  I opened my eyes, a shiver drifting down my spine. It was a good feeling, though, like listening to a beautiful piece of music, like listening to Pavarotti. I opened my eyes wide, trying my best to focus through the tears. Was it a coincidence? Surely it was a coincidence.

  The memory of my last ever meeting with my dad floated across my eyes once more. It wouldn’t be long now – the morphine packet would make sure of that.

  “Dad?”

  Nothing. He was finally gone.

  “Goodbye, dad.” I leaned over the bed and kissed him on his forehead, and then I kissed him on his cheek. “I'll see you in heaven. Thank you for being a good dad.”

  Chapter 25

  The Monster Always Comes Back

  Karen got up from her seat and walked over to the blinds. She flicked one of the blades to reveal a couple of nocturnal journalists hidden away in a car at the far side of the street. She walked back over to the TV and sat herself down. She had watched the news constantly for the last three days, ever since we had gotten back from the station. I on the other hand hadn’t even glanced at the news; I didn’t have the stomach for it anymore.

  “Karen, can I ask you something?” I was somewhat apprehensive, scared to ask the question. “Why do you think the doctor wants to speak with me? You must know about this kind of thing. Do you think it might be alright?”

  Karen didn't move, but for some reason I felt as though she had brushed herself down, sat herself up straight, and prepared herself for an honest discourse.

  “You say the scan showed up black dots on the spine.”

  I nodded.

  “The spine is one of the places where secondary tumours appear. And the patient can suffer from a lot of pain in such cases.”

  I appreciated her candour. But I wasn't going to take it lying down.

  “I'm not sure about the dots being on the spine. It might have been on the bones in general.”

  “Same thing, really.”

  I nodded, my hopes slipping away before my eyes. I think I had known all along. I had just needed someone to confirm it.

  I spent the rest of the evening lost in my thoughts, trying to keep myself busy. On occasion a numbing fog would descend robbing me blissfully of my mind. At other times I would be going over my mum’s funeral arrangements, or selling her ornaments on eBay. And then there was the problem of my sister, the dog and the house. “Dear God, what am I going to do?” A plume of molten magma gushed into my stomach, the problems mounting before my eyes. This woman was needed badly.

  I walked over to the window in our bedroom and found myself doing blindly what Karen had done religiously for the past three days: I flipped down one of the bars of my cage. I cringed in the darkness as the street lamp spilled into my bedroom staining the dark contents orange. A policeman was standing guard at our front gate, supposedly to deter the press.

  As I stared at the policeman my eyes began to blur. Slowly, steadily, a girl’s face appeared out of the mist, but it wasn’t the frightened face, the face that had fear in its eyes. It was that look of recognition, the moment she had realised that there was still hope.

  “Thank you.”

  My eyes slowly came back into focus. Most of the journalists had gone in the last twenty-four hours, but a couple of them were still waiting for an up to the moment picture, patiently parked in cars. I shook my head. They were like a flock of starlings, a headless, nebulous mass of impunity. How could they do this to me? I wondered if they would still be sitting outside my house if they knew what I had been through. Only a week ago these so called human beings were dragging up my past and printing it all over the papers. I was a child murderer already convicted. The whole land had thought I was guilty, and all because of these vampires before me.

  The part that made me sick, though, was the book deal. I hadn’t been home five minutes before some agent had contacted me. They wanted the rights to my story. I have to admit, for ten seconds, I had considered it, but no way in hell was I going to do that. No way was I going to profit from all those dead kids.

  “Fucking vultures.”

  My thoughts slowly turned to the priest. They had released him in the end. In fact, the police had let him go right after questioning me, which I found highly suspicious. They had given the press no explanation as to why, just that he was no longer a suspect. On asking the police if the two incidents were connected, they were handed a cold, reticent silence.

  It was scandalous. The press had all but crucified the priest. A picture of him with his hair wind swept appeared before my eyes. It had made him look like a Satanist, and the headline had been equally as damning. On learning that he was innocent, not one of them had apologised for dragging his good name through the mud? Not one. They had simply dropped the story and moved onto the next, which just happened to be mine. Some of them had started to link the two stories together, but they were clutching at straws. The police had refused to say anything about either of the murders, even to me.

  I did learn one thing, though, from the papers. The priest was suffering from terminal cancer.

  Do you believe in coincidences?

  I returned my wearied eyes to the photographers across the street. I shook my head in disgust. Just like with the priest, not one of them had directly apologised for the things they had done to me, for the things they had said. Even my next-door neighbour had thought that I was guilty there for a while. I think he still did.

  I clutched my chest, an old familiar pressure beginning to build. Was it always there now, even when I didn’t realise it? I winced on remembering my neighbour’s cat. No matter which way I looked at it, I was guilty. But why did I do it? Did he make me somehow? Did the book make me do it? I still couldn’t bring myself to believe that I did it.

  You did it alright.

  The insidious pressure in my chest began to grow, to move, threatening to reveal the morsel of food I had just eaten. I pushed the heel of my hand hard into my trunk in a bid to halt the inexorable onslaught, but it was no use. I cast the corner of the room a frightened glance. I thought I saw something move. Was it a cat? I wasn’t taking any chances. I quickly began to walk out of the room. I didn’t want to talk to any more dead cats.

  *

  By the time I spoke to the doctor I was frantic. My chest felt like it was about to explode, my stomach churning battery acid. I just wanted it all over and done with.

  I had to go into work that morning to get a handover from my project manager. He was heading off to Australia come the weekend, so I had no choice in the matter. I almost wept with relief on him telling me that he had already given the presentation, the one I had so feared. He said that it had gone well and that I wasn’t to worry about my job. I thanked him for this, but I had decided to look for another job anyway.

  I only intended on staying at work until lunchtime. An officer had arranged to pick me up at 12 – my own personal bodyguard. This had unfortunately coincided with my arranged telephone call to the doctor.

  I couldn’t find a quiet office to call him from, so in the end I opted for the stairwell leading down to the canteen at work. I had used this same location to talk to my friend about his relationship crisis.

  I dialled up the doctor’s secretary and she put me straight through. He was professional: cold and precise, almost mechanical. I suppose he had
to be. I managed to hold myself together for approximately 5 minutes. He told me the facts and I simply replied with the words “yes” or “OK”.

  I remember removing myself from the conversation at one point, to take a look at my countenance. I was surprised at how matter of fact I was taking this. Here I was, on the cusp of being told the worst thing I had ever heard, and I was for the most part calm. In saying that, there was something chaotic and manic just on the edge of my periphery. It was Tinkerbell. She was buzzing around my head in an agitated, angry state, hidden in a subconscious haze. I think I knew she was there, but I was trying my best to hold it together, so I ignored her.

  “Hello, doctor. It’s Peter Murphy here, Mary Murphy’s son. You… asked me to give you a call.”

  “Ah yes, Mary Murphy’s son. Before I talk to you, what do you know so far about your mother’s condition?”

  Deep sigh. “Well… I know that she’s had a number of scans and that one of them has shown up black marks on the bones. I think you thought it was Paget’s disease, but then you decided it wasn’t, but that you still don’t really know what’s going on.”

  I paused, suddenly tired.

  “OK. In truth, we’re still not 100% clear on what has gone wrong with your mother, but we have a rough idea. There are a number of factors that have led us to our decision. First of all she has had scans relating to her intestines, and we have found patches of tightening and stretching. Secondly, the bone scan has revealed a number of anomalies, patches if you like, distributed throughout the body. Thirdly there are markers that we look for in the blood that help us to determine the actual nature of the illness we’re dealing with. All of the markers we’ve found point to a malignancy. I believe that the primary cause is in the intestine and that the anomalies shown up by the bone scans are secondary tumours.”

  “OK.”

  “Unfortunately, looking at all the signs, I would say that at this stage the condition is incurable.”

  “OK.”

  “The best we can do here is attempt to ameliorate her symptoms, to keep her pain free and comfortable. I have spoken to your mother about it and she understands her situation.”

  “Right.”

  “There are a number of options open to her. We will move her down to Alexander Unit, which is a much more comfortable place to be – not like a hospital ward at all.”

  “Sorry, sorry, you said you weren’t actually sure if it was indeed cancer? Could you be wrong?”

  “We could, but if I were a betting man I would stake all my money on it.”

  “Sure,” I said, releasing a giggle at his unintentional joke. I hoped he didn’t think I was being callous. Perhaps he did; I had been just as cold and mechanical as him in my replies. Perhaps he thought I didn’t care.

  It’s funny how you can have several thought processes running at once. All the time I was thinking this, Tinkerbell was buzzing around my head, getting more and more agitated. I think she wanted me to ask the big question, but for some reason I found it difficult to bring myself to ask it. I was embarrassed at the thought. It sounded like a cliché, but at the same time I was confused. Why hadn’t he already mentioned it? If I were to list the top three questions to ask a Doctor in this situation, this would be right up there at number one.

  “Doctor,” I didn’t know how to say this without sounding like someone from a movie. “How long… what sort of time are we talking?” The Doctor’s reply didn’t ease my embarrassment. By the sound of his voice I could imagine him holding the phone away from his head, staring at it as though I were a moron.

  “Well… we’re not talking days. But I would be guessing if I gave you an actual time limit. Months perhaps, but whatever I say will turn out to be wrong. We just don’t know.”

  “OK.” I was still holding it together.

  “There’s the question of your sister. Your mother wanted me to tell you first. Would you like us to tell her? I know she works here in the hospital.”

  Oh, that did it. Tinkerbell had suddenly kicked me right in the side of the head. My sister? My God, what was this going to do to her? Thoughts of her killing herself sprung to mind. This was going to kill her; my mum was all she had.

  “No,” I said, barely whispering.

  “We could support her through this.”

  “No she’s… delicate.” My voice was breaking now, fighting back the tears.

  “Do you want us to leave this to you?”

  I tried to speak but nothing came out. My words were frozen. The doctor was saying something on the other end of the line but I couldn’t answer him. I was teetering. I tried to say that I was sorry but nothing came out. I let out a tearful whimper. This wasn’t working; I wasn’t going to be able to talk to him for the next couple of minutes without crying. I stared at the phone. The doctor was talking sporadically. And then I was crying. God, what must he think?

  I lowered the phone for a second so that he wouldn’t hear my sobs. I must have held it by my side for about 30 seconds. I raised it to my ear once more, and proceeded to walk deeper into the building. A beep sounded warning me that the battery was running low.

  “I’m sorry about this,” I said, the words barely audible. I heard what sounded like movement on the other side of the line, as though someone were replacing the receiver, and then the line beeped and went dead. Did he hang up on me? Was he embarrassed? Surely he was just giving me the time I needed to recover? I looked down at the phone. I no longer had a signal. He hadn’t hung up on me after all; I had lost the signal.

  I headed towards the toilet. It was a disabled toilet at the bottom of the stairs. I eventually managed to get the light to work, but I was crying uncontrollably. My eyes looked terrible – bloodshot and shipwrecked. I looked like Christopher Lee out of one of those old Hammer House of Horror productions. I splashed my face with some cold water and stared into nothing.

  *

  I must have stayed in the toilet for a good ten minutes. On finally plucking up the courage to leave I decided that I had to get out of the building. I had twenty minutes before the officer arrived to take me home. Perhaps I could try to eat some food, maybe a Macdonalds? No, there had been a big push on the TV to make us all feel guilty about eating processed meat. Apparently it caused… cancer.

  Fuck that.

  I walked into the game shop and started to run through my daily routine of examining all the XBOX bargains. Nine times out of ten I would do exactly the same thing, leaving the shop about five minutes later with no purchases. It was strange. It felt like any normal day. I felt quite calm, except for the ever-present pixie, Tinkerbell. Although invisible, she was still there, just out of sight of my peripheral vision, buzzing frantically around my head.

  A sudden moment of clarity made me stop dead in the middle of the shop. He had gotten away with it. The police didn’t have a clue who he was. He had disappeared in a puff of smoke. They said they would find him, but I knew they wouldn’t.

  Just then I caught something out of the corner of my eye. It looked like someone surreptitiously taking a photograph? I spun around to get a better look. A young boy and his girlfriend were looking down at a phone. The girl was giggling; the boy had a grin smattered across his face.

  Had they just taken my photograph?

  For a second I thought I heard her say: “We’ll get money for this.” I could have been mistaken, though. My stare lingered a bit too long. On catching me looking at him, the boy turned around to face me and said: “What’re you looking at, mate?”

  I turned my head back to the rows of games before me. Perhaps I had been mistaken. I started to walk towards the exit, but just before getting to it I heard something that made my blood run cold.

  “Fucking paedophile.”

  I stuttered in my step, but then continued to walk, my mind blank. What had he just said? I didn’t understand the implications of what he had said. What had he just said?

  My phone began to ring. Karen’s name appeared on the screen. I answe
red it. “Hello.”

  “Any news?”

  I tried to speak but I couldn’t. I was standing in the middle of Sauchiehall Street, the tears streaming down my face. I quickly walked into an alcove of a shop.

  “Are you there?”

  “Yes,” I croaked.

  “Have you spoken to the doctor?”

  I couldn’t talk; the tears were clogging my throat.

  “Are you there?” Karen was beginning to sound scared.

  “Yes…’

  “What did the doctor say?”

  I tried to speak, but only managed a whisper.

  “Sorry?”

  Again I tried. “Cancer.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Cancer.” This time I managed to get it out, but I was crying.

  “Awe, Pete. I’m so very sorry. Come home.”

  “I’m coming.”

  “I’m at my mum’s but I’ll see you back at the house.”

  “OK.”

  *

  I was scared of breaking down in front of my colleague, but I had to tell him I was going home. I had toyed with the idea of telling him over the phone, but he deserved better than that. My fears came to fruition; I burst into tears as I gathered my things together. For once the project manager didn’t know what to say. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  I stared at my computer in a bid to figure out if I needed to do anything before I left, but I didn’t. “There’s nothing I need to do here,” I said, laughing through the tears. And with that I headed for my ride.

  I almost cried on several occasions on the way back, but I managed to take my mind slightly off things by reading a two-week-old Observer. Before reaching the house I asked the officer to stop at the chip shop. I wanted to get Karen and myself two rolls and chips. I think this was a tribute to my dad. I hadn’t had any chips in a long time, but I knew my dad had loved them. As I waited for the chips I wondered to myself whether the people standing beside me were looking at me. Did they know who I was? Did they think I was a child murderer?