Neighbourhood Watch

by Lex Sinclair

  ‘Yeah, okay,’ Joe agreed. Then he pushed the door open a little wider, poked his head in and yelled at the top of his voice: ‘Hugh! HUGH! HUGH!’ His throat burned, but if his friend was inside there was no doubt that he would have heard him loud and clear. Probably the whole street heard Joe’s shouts.

  Joe crossed his fingers, hoping, praying the old man would answer or cry out in anguish... burp, fart... anything to indicate he was inside and still very much alive.

  Instead they were met with a resounding silence.

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘It’s your call,’ Michael said in response to Joe’s question.

  No one spoke for a good few moments while Joe thought things through. ‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘Here’s what we’re gonna do: we’re gonna go in there and check every room in the house. If we find nothing suspicious, then we’ll come back outside, phone the authorities, tell them what’s happened, and that’s all we can do... really.’

  ‘I don’t wanna go in there,’ Jake admitted.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Joe said. ‘I don’t think Michael and I want to go in there uninvited, either. But it’s up to you. I’m not gonna force you to do something you don’t wanna do. This isn’t an obligation. Although, if you do decide to stay outside - do us a favour and keep an eye out for anyone else coming to find out what’s going on. The last thing we need is a panic over nothing.’

  ‘I’ll stand in the foyer,’ Jake said. ‘Just in case.’

  Joe nodded. ‘Okay.’ Then he turned to Michael. ‘I’ll check upstairs, you check downstairs. That all right?’

  ‘Whatever.’

  Nervously, Joe stepped over the threshold into the dim, stopped at the foot of the staircase and peered into the gloom. Michael was right behind him now. They glanced at each other, nodded in silent agreement, and then went about their neighbourhood watch duties.

  Joe held onto the banister firmly as he began his ascent, trying to make as little noise as possible, in case there was an intruder still lurking somewhere in the house. He’d never have thought that before hearing Michael’s tale and after the incident with the callous voice giving him explicit details of his ex-wife’s infidelity. But now he believed anything was possible, even the impossible - which to the residents of Willet Close no longer existed.

  The door directly in front of him, as he reached the landing was the bathroom. Joe knew from hearing gruesome tales in the newspapers and on TV that a lot of horrifying deaths occurred in the bathroom, where a person is at their most vulnerable. Being naked in the bath or shower on a slippery surface invited catastrophic, unthinkable possibilities when you were alone, never mind if someone broke into your home and attacked you. But, fortunately the bathroom was empty. Furthermore, nothing looked out of place. Both the bathtub and sink were spotless. Nothing bad happened here from what Joe could see. He moved on.

  He crossed the landing and opened the white timber door, his hands tightening on the brass knob and tentatively went inside. The room with clean white walls was practically empty, save the cardboard boxes and stacks of DVDs, CDs and old paperback books with yellow pages and creased spines to emphasise their usage.

  Nope, nothing wrong in this room, either. Thank God. Nevertheless, seeing all these clean, normal rooms was neither comforting nor foreboding. The ventricles still pumped ice into Joe’s heart and his eyes were still protruding from their sockets, on guard, ready - as ready as anyone can be - for any horror he’d not yet detected.

  There was one more room to check before he could go back downstairs and step outside. It was the master bedroom. Hugh’s bedroom. Joe had never been in another man’s bedroom before. Something about entering a man’s sleeping area felt awfully uncomfortable. It was privacy, in Joe’s humble opinion, that shouldn’t be invaded by anyone, except a woman. Yet, he had to go in there and give it the “all clear”; otherwise, it would play on his mind for hours later. He supposed he could not go in there and head to the ground floor none the wiser, phone the police and let them look for themselves, but while he was up here, he might as well fight the fear factor and chance a surreptitious glance.

  The brass knob was cold to touch in his trembling hand. Joe took a deep breath, preparing himself (probably for no reason) for the worst, and then turned the knob, entering the bedroom.

  He drew in breath sharply and stumbled backwards simultaneously, crashing into the wardrobe, staring with a horrified expression masking his features at what he saw in front of him, clapping a hand over his gaping mouth.

  Hugh!’ he gasped. Joe crossed the room, on legs that may as well have been stilts, to the bed where his neighbour lay motionless in a crumpled heap. The headboard snapped in half hanging loosely from its splintered post.

  ‘Michael! MICHAEL! Joe screamed, shattering the eerie silence in the whole house.

  In the background he heard thunder on the stairs. The door slammed against the wall as Michael burst in, not knowing what kind of atrocity he was about to witness.

  A trickle of dark blood stained the white bed sheets and dripped on the rug beneath. Crumbs of plaster cascaded down the wall where the old man had presumably been rammed before the fall that had knocked him unconscious.

  Joe wasn’t trembling any more; he was shaking like a tree being assailed by a strong wind. He faced Michael and said, ‘Call for an ambulance, now!’

  Dutifully, Michael dashed out of the room, flew down the stairs at roughly the speed of light to the small table where a phone and the yellow pages sat side by side, dialled 999, while Jake rushed up stairs with some wadded kitchen paper, hearing what Michael told him about there being blood.

  They managed to stop the blood seeping out of the crack in the man’s skull, feeling a very faint but unmistakable pulse in Hugh’s neck.

  Jake went back outside to wait for the ambulance, which in their emergency seemed to be taking its time. But within a few minutes, he could already hear the distant wailing siren growing louder as it neared. When Jake saw the white vehicle with its flashing blue beacon, he waved them to come to a halt outside the door where he was standing. Then he darted back inside and yelled up the staircase: ‘The ambulance is here!’

  Michael stepped out of the bedroom allowing the paramedics to rush up the flight of steps and into the room where Joe was still holding Hugh’s floppy head in his lap, pressing the wadded tissue against the wound. They told Joe that he’d done all he could, and kindly asked him to get out of the way in order for them to do their job. Then they proceeded to check Hugh’s blood pressure, tried to get him to answer when they spoke his name aloud... and after the sixth attempt, checking his pupils, feeling for a pulse, they heard a faint grunt.

  In less than ten minutes the paramedics got Hugh onto a stretcher, carried him down the flight of stairs, slowly, careful not to bump or drop him, got him onto the ground outside and wheeled him down the path and up the ramp into the back of the ambulance.

  The emergency vehicle pulled away from the kerb, spun around at the end of the cul-de-sac, its wailing siren deafening on their normally quiet street and sped away down the hill on its way to Neath and Port Talbot General Hospital.

  ***

  Emma, Naomi, Corrie, and Martha were standing by their front doors, expressing deep concern for what they’d just witnessed. Seeing Hugh being wheeled into an ambulance, unconscious, sent a jolt of terror through them.

  When the ambulance rounded the corner and was out of sight Naomi approached Joe. ‘What happened to Hugh?’

  Without even glancing in her direction, Joe stared abstractedly at the main road the ambulance had just taken and said in a dull, faraway voice, ‘I don’t know.’

  In spite of the radiant sunshine, today was not going to be a splendid day for the residents of Willet Close; on the contrary. Today was going to be a very bad day, indeed.

  13.

 
That afternoon at 2:00p.m. they decided to congregate at Martha’s house to discuss what the hell was going on, which had something to do with the disappearances and gruesome deaths of the Sheldon’s, Detective Inspector Reeves and Homer.

  There was no denying these awful facts any longer. If they continued to live in denial, they would have to do so at their own peril. No, something had to be done. They had to try and work out what the hell this craziness was all about.

  What did GET OUT mean, precisely?

  Once they were all sat in the Martha’s living room, they began by explaining the nightmares some of them had been having. Then Michael apologised for being so sceptical initially, until last night when he could have sworn he saw a distinct shape going past his kitchen window in his back yard when he was trying to find his way around in the dark the power cut caused.

  Joe also explained that the electricity was not working in his house, either: that was, of course prior to the TV coming to life seconds after the stroke of midnight, where he heard a lucid voice speak to him through the crackling distortion.

  When Martha asked what the voice told him, Joe flushed.

  ‘It’s rather personal,’ he said, hating himself for feeling embarrassed, even though it wasn’t his fault.

  ‘Couldn’t you just give us the gist of it?’ Naomi said.

  Joe sighed. ‘Basically, it was regarding my ex-wife, Jenna-Marie.’

  ‘I’ve had some bad dreams, too,’ Martha announced. ‘Any of you had the same?’

  Everyone, save Sherri shook their heads.

  ‘Sherri? What’s the matter?’

  The second-hand bookstore clerk’s face had gone pallid. There were dark circles underneath her eyes, and her lips were cracked and as dry as sandpaper. Jake, who was sitting next to her, put a comforting hand on the woman’s shoulder, only to jerk back when she flinched unexpectedly.

  Martha studied her friend, and didn’t need to be told the obvious, that something dreadful had happened to her, as well. ‘Sherri there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. We’re all in the same boat. That’s why we’re here today; to try and help each other get to the bottom of this.’

  Slowly, almost mechanically, Sherri lifted her head and glimpsed them all. ‘Their not human... They’ll find us, and then they’ll kill us. There’s no stopping them. We could have the military outside our homes - but it still won’t stop them from doing what they want to do.’

  ‘Does everyone agree that our intruders aren’t human?’ Martha asked, not allowing what Sherri said to send a jolt of terror through them all by letting it hang in the air.

  They all agreed that it was a supernatural force they were dealing with.

  ‘What did they say to you?’ Joe asked Sherri.

  For a short while no one thought the woman was going to answer and were about to discuss other matters related to the strange goings on when she said, ‘They knew something about my past that no one else is aware of, because the only other person who knows what happened that day twenty years ago is... dead!’

  ***

  It felt like he was swimming in a dreamy lake of mixed thoughts. The water wasn’t cold. No; not at all. But it wasn’t warm, either. The water grasped him in its unfeeling depth, all the way up to his chin, allowing nothing beneath the head to rise above the surface.

  The first thing he heard was the wailing siren, and he thought he was dreaming of the day the accident that inevitably would change his life drastically, for the worse. Here he was again being carted into the back of the ambulance, although this time the voices of the paramedics sounded different to the ones he usually heard in his recurring dream. Why was that?

  Also, he could literally feel the vehicle moving about, swinging round sharp corners; a hand pressed palm down on him, straps holding him onto the stretcher, and the beep... beep of a machine somewhere by his head, above him.

  He always assumed that recurring dreams of things that had actually occurred years ago, eventually faded from memory, not became vivid, until it actually felt like you were back inside an ambulance on your way to hospital, for God knew how many painful operations to mend you.

  In what seemed like seconds, he felt the gurney he was occupying being wheeled down a steep ramp, and then being pushed onwards. He heard the hydraulic hiss of automatic doors sliding open and then the interior heat wafting over him. The paramedics made a right turn (and so did he) through a doorway and into a room that smelled of what he associated with death... or soon to be dead, anyway. The smell was a strong aromatic of disinfectant.

  Somewhere in the near distance a shrill scream caused his heart to skip a beat.

  The straps holding him to the gurney were undone; then a male voice said, ‘On three. One... two... three.’ And just like that he was floating in midair again, same as he was that day the white transit van knocked him down, shattering his hip (and his life thereafter). A firm mattress met his back, followed by a ripping of material. Only when he felt his own nakedness did he realise that they were his own clothes being cut open. He knew what came after this. A world of pain. Pain so great it felt as though you were going to die.

  Fingers peeled his eyelids back. If he could meet this person’s gaze he could see for the first time who it was that had saved his life all those years ago. Instead a piercing light blinded him, and yet in spite of the discomfort he couldn’t wince or show his inner emotions.

  ‘Have we got a pulse?’ someone asked.

  ‘Yeah. But this one’s taken a helluva bump on the back of his head, though.’

  Well, duh! Whad’ya expect? I was just knocked into the air by some asinine driver only to smack the back of my skull on the road. You don’t exactly have to ask who won between the concrete and the skull, do you?

  ‘Do they know what caused this concussion?’

  I just told you ya dumb fuck!

  ‘His friends say he was attacked, and that he hit his head on the headboard snapping both the timber and his cranium.’

  Attacked? I wasn’t attacked, you dopey bastard. I was knocked down. Wasn’t I?

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Hugh. His friends are comin’ down shortly to bring him some clothes.’

  ‘Good. How’s his heart?’

  ‘Strong pulse, now. But I think it’ll be a couple of hours before he comes to, though.’

  ‘Okay. Can we flip him over? I wanna see the extent of the damage. Take an X-ray.’

  Hugh felt numerous arms on either side of his body from head to toe lift him up then turn him over, before being lowered down again. After what seemed like ten minutes and could well have been for all he knew, the doctor said, ‘There’s no internal damage. He’ll need to be stitched up, though, and kept under observation as soon as he wakes, just in case. Other than that, he seems all right. One lucky son of a bitch.’

  Huh, that’s easy for you to say, doc.

  ‘Once the wound has been healed take him to the X-ray lab, then straight to ICU until he regains consciousness.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Yeah, it’s not your head, that’s why it’s not a problem, dick-wad.

  ***

  Joe and Jake arrived at Neath and Port Talbot General Hospital at 6:30p.m. Joe had phoned the hospital earlier on to ask where Hugh Green had been taken and if it was all right to visit, because they were going to bring him some clothes from the house. They were informed that Hugh had at last come to, but was understandably feeling groggy, and would be for sometime. Nevertheless, providing they were quiet and didn’t bombard him with questions, they could stay for half an hour.

  Side by side, the two men walked down the long corridor, the linoleum gleaming from its daily wash. When they saw the sign for the ICU there was a notice on the board above the hand cream dispenser asking them to apply some prior to entering to kill an
y germs on their hands they might otherwise unintentionally spread.

  The lady at her desk watched them doing this; then smiled, offering the door leading into the bleak interior.

  Both men scanned the room until they saw Hugh sitting up in bed, his face heavy with wrinkles and sagging at the jowls, as though he hadn’t slept a wink for an entire week. His eyes resembled racoons. There were tubes sticking out of him wired up to the heart monitor at the side of his bed... and apart from the sickly pallor and purple lips, Hugh appeared to be all right (or better than they expected under the circumstances, anyway).

  Joe put the bag of clothes at the foot of the bed, out of the way, like the nurse had advised, then took a chair alongside the bed next to Jake.

  ‘How’re you feelin’ now?’ Joe asked, keeping a close eye on the uniformed nurse, studying the clipboard with interest.

  ‘My head feels as though it’s by in the freezer for a fortnight... but other than that and the usual soreness, times ten, I’m good. Could’ve been a lot worse if it hadn’t been for you, I guess.’

  Joe glanced at the nurse. Piss off will you.

  Hugh smiled at him, able to read his thoughts. ‘I know what you mean,’ he said.

  ‘We got you spare clothes when you get transferred to a recovery ward, so at least you’ll be a bit warmer and comfortable.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The nurse wearing the navy uniform, ticked a box on the sheet of paper attached to the clipboard and moseyed on towards the far end of the room to check on another patient, who looked ready to check out any time now.

  Keeping his voice low as possible, but loud enough so Hugh could hear him, Joe asked: ‘What happened?’

  ‘What d’you think happened?’

  Joe and Jake shrugged simultaneously.

  ‘I opened my eyes... and there were four hooded figures standing over my bed. One with the glowing red eyes grabbed my neck, slammed me against the wall, choking me to death. And this fucker’s grip wasn’t like a fierce human grip; it was like a two ton lorry crushing my larynx. Then at the stroke of one, he vanished; I fell... and that’s the last I remember, properly.’ Hugh raised his head so they could see the bruising where he’d been grabbed, but no fingerprints or nail indents.