by N. M. Brown
After hurrying downstairs, Angela left the door unlocked as it clattered shut behind her. Fumbling with the keys, she unlocked her grey Toyota and climbed inside. It was then, sitting in the darkness of her driveway, that great heaving sobs overwhelmed Angela Blanchette like a dark wave. She gripped the steering wheel with both hands and wept relentlessly. Eventually, when the tears started to subside, she felt a wave of nausea flood her. Her hand flapped around seeking the handle of the door. When she found it, Angela flung the door open and leaned out. The vomit rose in her and fell upon the ground in wet splatter. She stayed in that position, holding the door for support, until the nausea finally subsided.
Angela sat back in the car, and used the back of her hand to wipe the acidic liquid from her face. Her throat burned, and she was barely aware of the hot tears flooding her cheeks. As the sobbing took over, her entire body shook with the force of the sense of loss. At one point, her crying was so strong that it made breathing difficult. Her breath came only in desperate gasps, which were punctuated by an agonising mantra of her daughter’s name.
Chapter Twenty
At roughly the same time as her mother was retching out of the driver side of the old Buick, Tina Blanchette awoke in the claustrophobic darkness of her own strange new home.
At first, in the confusion of sleep, she initially thought she had fallen asleep in her garden, like the time the previous summer when she and her mother had lain on a makeshift bed in their garden to watch a meteor shower. They had placed an old inflatable mattress on the ground and covered it with blankets and quilts. Lying beneath the stars was both adventurous and magical. However, a late supper of grilled cheese and hot chocolate meant that, despite her desire to see the stars, Tina had fallen asleep and awoken beneath the sparkling stars to find her mother curled around her like a contented cat. Instead of waking her mom, Tina had pulled the quilt and blankets over them both and cuddled in.
But this felt different from the garden, and even as the last tendrils of sleep faded away, she knew something was not right. The air was too cool and the sounds of the insects too loud to be the garden of her small neat home.
Tina rubbed her eyes and then pulled her knees up to her chin. It took her a moment to remember where she was. Perhaps this was because she ultimately didn’t want to accept the horror of her situation, or perhaps the situation was simply too strange to accept. It took a while for Tina’s eyes to adjust. The vault of the attic was long and dark. The area at the far end formed a triangle of darkness in which all sorts of horrors might be hiding. Sitting fully upright, she peered into the blackness, and blinked her eyes to try to make it more distinct. It didn’t work. The darkness was so complete that it appeared almost solid. Yet it seemed to be spreading, seeping towards her like oil in water. It was as if she was sitting before a black hole as it spread outwards, threatening to engulf everything in its path. Unable to take her eyes away, she watched in fascinated horror as the darkness expanded, unfolding like some huge black flower.
Annie felt that if she looked away this expanding void would reach her and consume her. At that point, frozen with fear she wished that she had remained outside – whatever the risks – amongst the clambering arms of the black trees. But wishing was futile. Her reality was absolute and immovable. All the wishing in the world wouldn’t get her out of this pulsing world of spreading shadows.
Tina leaned her head against the wooden slats of the wall behind her, but kept her eyes fixed on the tumbling darkness. It was an almost defensive action – as if by actively observing she would somehow hold the restless darkness at bay. Eventually, inevitably exhaustion and emotional trauma overcame her and Tina Blanchette curled into the dark corner of the roof space and wept, face pressed against the arid beams, until she finally fell into a deep and troubled sleep.
Chapter Twenty-One
It was a bright morning in Oceanside and the air coming in from the ocean smelled clean and fresh. But even in the crystal clarity of the coastal air, there was a hint of wood smoke drifting down like a ghost from the occasional wildfires on the distant hills. At 8am it was still early enough in the morning that the sound of traffic on the highway was not yet sufficiently loud to mask the distant sound of waves crashing into themselves.
Leighton got out of his car in the staff parking area at the rear of the station. This was a small parking lot where some older vehicles were sprinkled amongst work cruisers. Behind a single chain-link fence were a number of impounded cars – old and new – all of which were in better condition than Leighton’s battered old jalopy. He mostly parked next to them. Some of the other traffic officers joked that Leighton chose this spot because he hoped that one day his car would be mistaken for an unclaimed impounded one and be towed away to the junkyard. They could not have been more wrong.
As it was, he felt too affectionate towards the old car to ever get rid of it. It had been the only car Annie had ever known – the one that carried her from the hospital to her home. It had been the one all three of them had shared when they had briefly been an okay family. The back seat still featured the sunken lines where Annie’s infant seat had been positioned for three years, the trunk contained the sandy crumbs from a thousand days at the beach, and the glove box – like some sunken treasure chest – still faithfully held a selection of Heather’s favourite CDs.
All of this made the car more of a memory box than a vehicle. Therefore, the real reason he parked at the rear of the station next to the bangers rather than out front, was that he knew that – like him – it looked a mess but was good on the inside. He just didn’t want to have to explain that to anybody else. Here amongst the junk, there was less chance of that.
As Leighton made his way into the building, he passed by the locker area, where Officer Danny Clarke was sitting down on a varnished wooden bench and polishing one of his black shoes. He was wearing it on his hand like a strange glove as he rubbed at some persistent stain with a bright orange rag.
‘Hey, Danny,’ Leighton said with a smile, ‘you getting yourself all fresh for the beautiful day ahead?’
The other officer glanced up and nodded sagely.
‘Sure am, Jonesy. Can’t patrol the highways without some gleaming footwear, can I?’
‘No, not according to the last uniform directive I read,’ Leighton said and pointed to a notice on a cork pin board on a corner wall. It had been issued the previous month and instructed all officers on expected standards of uniform whilst on duty.
Danny chuckled and slipped on his shoe and began tying his laces.
‘Well I guess I’m just about ready to face the public. Hey, I meant to ask how things were working out with your rookie.’
‘You’ve heard, I take it?’ Leighton asked with a crooked smile.
‘Nothing official.’ Danny shrugged. ‘But you know what this place is like – everyone says he’s up to the same old snitching game with you too. Sounds like Teddy doesn’t take well to experienced officers, huh?’
‘No, he does not. I think he’s made six complaints about me – that’s just the ones I know about. Can you believe that?’
‘Six is nothing, Jonesy – I had chalked up eleven by the time I was finally relieved of that particular babysitting duty.’
‘Did you request the move?’ Leighton asked, suddenly interested in the possibility of liberating himself.
‘Actually, I did – on three separate occasions, but that isn’t what got the rookie off my back.’
‘What did then?’
‘I guess the captain finally got pissed off having to wipe Teddy’s ass at the end of every watch. But I don’t care – it all worked out in the end. He’s with a more experienced officer than me.’ Danny winked.
‘Yeah, well I guess your gain is my loss,’ Leighton said with a gracious nod as he moved towards the hallway leading to the administration area.
‘Hey, sorry about that,’ Danny called after him. He sounded genuinely repentant, ‘I didn’t get any say in who he got plac
ed with.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Danny,’ Leighton shrugged, ‘Teddy is the least of my troubles.’
As he entered the bustling office area, Leighton made his way to a small cluttered booth located at the rear of the room. Even though it was only 8.19in the morning, there were already several officers answering calls or faceting information into bulky ivory coloured typewriters.
Leighton eased himself into his temperamental office chair, opened a deep drawer and removed a white incident form. After placing the paper flat on the desk, he rummaged around for a reliable pen. Whilst Leighton did this, his eyes slid over the various photos pinned around his booth – Annie as a baby, wrapped in blanket, Annie on the first day of school, and his favourite, Annie peering into a rock pool over at the Strand Beach.
He tried to avoid looking at the images too intently. If he did, Leighton could easily be overcome by a sudden rising panic that his daughter was someplace else – somewhere he couldn’t protect her. At such times, his body was flooded with adrenaline, and he would rush out to the parking lot where he would pace forwards and backwards until the feeling abated. One afternoon ten weeks earlier, when had been due to take a ‘Driver Awareness’ class for six DUI felons, he had been unable to walk the rising panic away and he actually left the station, climbed in his car and drove to Annie’s school.
When he pulled up in his car on the opposite side of the street, Leighton found that his arrival at the school coincided with recess and Annie was happily running around the playground with her friends. Luckily, she never saw him, otherwise Leighton wouldn’t have known what to tell her.
As he drove back to the station that morning, he resolved to keep his anxieties away from his daughter. Regardless how uncomfortable his own feelings got, he would just have to endure them. But his absence from work that morning had not gone unnoticed. When he returned to work, he was taken into a side room and given a written reprimand from Captain Pierce. Slightly worse was the fact that following the incident some of the other officers would silently stare at him as he passed by in the locker room, as if at any moment he might run off to save his daughter from imaginary threats. It didn’t bother Leighton too much; he figured they were probably right.
Leighton took his notepad from his chest pocket and flipped the cover open to reveal his account of the previous afternoon. He had intended to submit his paper report before clocking off the watch the previous evening, but he had been in a hurry to collect Annie, so he had simply grabbed a form from the numerous shelves in the office and slipped it into his drawer. Three months earlier the district had rolled out a proactive approach called ‘Policing for Prevention’. This included a number of community activities and an increase in beat cops in certain neighbourhoods, but it also required that all police incident reports were submitted within twenty-four hours of the incident occurring. Leighton could see the sense in it but that didn’t stop it being a pain in the ass when trying to reach his child-minder before nightfall.
Not being particularly adept at using a computer or at filling in forms, Leighton looked at the future of policing as looking increasingly administrative, and that was a frightening prospect.
Leighton had only just completed filling in the form when he became aware of somebody behind him. He turned to see Teddy standing with his arms folded.
‘I’ve been waiting out in the cruiser since quarter past,’ he said.
‘Yeah?’ Leighton grabbed his paperwork and stood up. ‘Well I guess you must be pretty keen to get started today.’
‘Our watch starts at 8.30. We should be on the road by now.’
‘I get that, Teddy,’ Leighton said, calmly, ‘I just needed to fill in a report on that RTA from yesterday.’
‘That report should’ve been submitted last night.’
‘Yeah? Well it’s done now.’ Leighton stood up. ‘I guess it’s just a little late.’ Leighton said with a shrug. He then sauntered slowly across the room to where the wire baskets for various reports were lined up on a long metal desk. In a move that was intentionally designed to irritate Teddy further, Leighton deliberately placed his paperwork into the wrong basket. ‘Okay, that’s the fun stuff over,’ he said with a smile, ‘let’s go to work, partner.’ Teddy said nothing but turned and walked out of the room.
As Leighton crossed the parking lot, walking slightly behind Teddy who was striding purposefully to their designated cruiser, he caught the eye of Danny Clarke loading stacks of orange road cones into the open trunk of his own vehicle.
He grinned and offered a thumbs up to Leighton who responded by silently mouthing ‘thanks’ and flicking a middle finger.
Danny laughed and busied himself with his work.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The stranger made his way stealthily through the wide field of dry grass on the northern side of Old Mill Way. Drifting slowly in his colourless clothes among the lingering wisps of mist, he looked like a scarecrow that had somehow come to life and clambered down from his perch. It was still early in the morning, but he had awoken with a sense of urgency – partly as a result of the last time he had been forced to leave a kid – that he was compelled to seek out the girl. Even though the temperature was still relatively cool, the stranger was already soaked with sweat, and his damp hair hung across his eyes in greasy strands which he regularly had to brush aside.
Being out the wild like this was both problematic and beneficial for the stranger. It was difficult terrain to navigate; several months without rain had left the ground compacted and hard. In addition to that, when he finally found the girl he would have to leave her body behind rather than risk carrying it all the way back to civilisation. On the plus side, the pursuit was not impossible, he knew that the girl couldn’t have gone far, particularly on such uneven ground. But there were places to hide out here, especially for kids. That meant that he would have to think from her point of view – see the place through her eyes if he was to locate her before anybody else did. It would be a fun game. In any case, there was nowhere to get food or water out here, so even if he couldn’t find the girl all he needed to do was keep her from getting back to civilisation and she would shrivel away to nothing like a raisin under the hot sun.
Stepping through the arid ground, he occasionally stopped and remained utterly still. At such times he slowed his breathing and closed his eyes. He would listen as all of the sounds around him – the chirp and creak of insects, the song of lonely birds in the nearby trees – began to fade into nothingness. Then he would feel himself no longer as a man, but as something more – or less. He became everything and nothing. This moment of meditation gave him the clarity he needed to consider his next move, without his thoughts being clouded by emotions. Whenever he came back to reality, he felt refreshed and carried on his grim journey with a renewed sense of purpose.
He had started his journey by entering the countryside at the place where he knew the girl had escaped. However, given the earlier presence of the cop, he didn’t want to leave his car parked at the edge of the road in case it drew any unwanted attention, so he had left it back at the trailer and took a cab ride instead.
Once he was away from the road, he started walking in a very deliberate direction. He followed the easiest path, knowing that a desperate person running from a threat would most likely opt for the easiest path to safety – at least that’s what he would do. He doubted that a seven-year-old kid would be any different, but it was possible. The landscape did little to support the stranger in his quest. The ground was too baked to absorb any footprints and the entire area was dotted with trees and long grass. There was no sign of a specific path. And yet he continued undeterred. The prize was too great to give up.
The low flatland eventually began to sweep up on to a gentle slope that was studded with more trees and cacti. The stranger figured that this hillside must have had more water in it than the surrounding area to support the increased amount of growth here. This incline became gradually steeper, causing him to slow
his pace.
Eventually, after walking for a little over three hours, he found what he had been looking for. He had reached the top of the hill, and gazed down on a small valley. A wide grin spread across the stranger’s face. He found himself looking at a small cluster of run-down buildings. They would provide the perfect place for a kid to take shelter for the night.
The stranger licked his lips and then began creeping quietly down the slope towards the structures.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The burning sensation in Tina’s lower stomach had been steadily increasing since she had awoken in the cool light of dawn, cold and disoriented. She felt as if she didn’t pee soon, she would have no choice. Her first instinct was simply to climb down from her perch and run off in any direction. But part of her – the part that she was trying to listen to – understood that the stranger might have spent the night nearby, and be sitting… waiting. Tina sighed, pulled the rough canvas tightly around her and sobbed quietly. Gradually, the pain in her bladder subsided enough that she could partly ignore it.
However, the sensation returned a couple of times. But when it came back for a third time it was at a level of intensity Tina could no longer ignore. She knew it would be impossible to wait until darkness to go pee. But the risk didn’t seem too great.
All she needed to do was drop the large coils of the belt, descend it and then quickly scamper off into the long grass. If she could make the trip in the blackness of night out here, she could easily do it during daytime – maybe even running for part of the way. And yet despite the simplicity of her plan, Tina was not entirely certain that the stranger had gone. She kept a silent vigil, peeking through the gaps and knotholes in the corner. She moved her eyes from plank to plank, searching the golden landscape for any sign of threat.