The Dark Messenger

by Milo Spires

  ‘Hmmm never knew you worked as a journalist, how long have you been doing that for?’

  ‘Sorry to cut you short, Christine,’ Regina interrupted. ‘I have just realized that I am going to be late for the office!’ She felt bad about lying, and added, ‘Hey do you fancy grabbing a coffee soon though? We can catch up on gossip.’

  ‘Sure! When would you like to?’ Christine asked.

  As Kaine’s strong telepathic thoughts were now booming in her brain:

  ‘Ask her which hospital they are going too, baby. We need the hospital’s name.’

  She replied to him by hurling a pillow in his direction, telling him that she was going to ask which hospital—it was just that she was going to do it the woman’s way. She was afraid that Christine might get a little suspicious otherwise.

  ‘I don't know exactly when we can meet for coffee, but soon. I will call you, okay? Hey, what hospital are they going to anyway?’ she asked.

  ‘They are on their way now to Brighton. I don’t know where inside though, but will text you later when she’s been allocated! Oops, gotta go, boss is coming. Call me!’ she said hastily as she disconnected the call.

  Kaine and Regina both laughed.

  Kaine then looked at his half-naked gorgeous wife sitting up with the silk sheets wrapped round her waist, and realized that she still wasn’t dressed.

  ‘Darling, please. Can you get dressed and be ready in five minutes? We need to leave urgently! I am going downstairs to sort out the guns.’ He looked sternly at her. ‘We leave in twenty minutes,’ he said, heading quickly toward the doorway, which led through into the kitchen.

  ‘Yes, Mr. Bossy Boots,’ came her reply.

  Chapter 7 - (Turned)

  The journey to the hospital had passed quickly, but not without a sudden turn of events. Within minutes of the start of the journey, Becky’s heart rate had returned to normal—perfect, actually. The ambulance man in the back had been puzzled, but Jenny had been relieved that her friend was getting better. She had thought the worst, thinking that maybe she had lost her back there in her bathroom. The ambulance man had radioed the situation back to the hospital and she had heard him say that he had just witnessed the impossible. She hadn’t understood, but hadn’t cared either; she was just happy that Becky was alive.

  The driver had shouted back at one point of the journey, asking, ‘Are you alright back there, Paul?’ He hadn’t replied instantly; after a lengthy pause he had said, ‘There’s holes in her neck that are infected, Dave, and they look like bite marks. Her skin was warm and a normal color a couple minutes ago. Now she looks quite pale and her skin is freezing cold.’

  The driver started laughing, even though he knew the situation was too serious for it. He then said, ‘Next you will be saying you think she’s been bitten by a vampire.’

  As he said this, he suddenly had to swerve to avoid hitting something and the ambulance rocked violently.

  ‘Sorry!’ he shouted back at his passengers. Jenny wondered if that ‘sorry’ was meant for them, or maybe for some innocent cyclist or something that he’d just nearly run over on the street.

  Jenny returned to staring at Becky¸ who still hadn’t moved.

  ‘What's wrong with her? Do you think she is getting better now?’ Jenny asked.

  Paul replied, ‘I don't actually know what’s wrong with her…sorry. But she seems okay at the moment, I think.’ He looked up at Jenny and smiled sympathetically. ‘I know she’s your mate and that, but…Well we will just have to wait until we get to the hospital. They’ll be able to tell much better when we get there. Well I hope they do, anyway.’

  Jenny stared at him, quite shocked at hearing what he had just said. His words were not at all what she would have expected from an emergency worker. What’s with this ‘I think’ stuff? Surely he should know everything--he’s a bloody ambulance man, she told herself.

  A couple of minutes later they finally arrived at the hospital. The journey had seemed like it was going to last forever, but then to Jenny’s relief the back doors of the vehicle were suddenly flung open and there were four nurses reaching in, eagerly trying to take over. The first two quickly unlatched the stretcher and lowered its legs down to the ground. Then, together with the ambulance men, they slid the stretcher out of the ambulance just enough so that the other two nurses could then lower the other legs. The paramedics gave the nurses an assessment of the situation as they quickly rushed Becky inside.

  Jenny hurried out of the ambulance and followed through the set of double doors that her friend had just been taken through. Inside the doorway, a tall thin man wearing a white coat was standing right in her path, holding a clipboard full of papers.

  ‘Sorry, madam, but can I ask where you are going?’ he asked, smiling down at her with very shiny white teeth.

  ‘Yes, my friend and I came here together in an ambulance just now. The nurses took her this way. Becky Barker is her name.’

  ‘Is that your friend over there?’ he asked, pointing across to Becky, who was now wide awake and chatting with the nurses.

  Jenny’s jaw dropped. She was so amazed to see that her mate was awake that she could barely stutter out,‘Y-yes!’ She looked back at the tall man, her eyes glistening. ‘Can I go and see her please?’

  ‘Sorry, but you will have to wait,’ he said. Jenny’s heart immediately sank.

  ‘That area your friend is in has recently been restricted to hospital staff only. If you go through those double doors to your right over there, you will find a waiting room for friends and relatives,’ he said pointing to her right. He smiled sympathetically. ‘Don’t worry, I will let the nurses know that you are there.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jenny replied.

  As she started away, the man called after her, ‘Miss I nearly forgot. I will also need your name for our records.’

  ‘Barker. My name is Jenny Barker,’ she replied, and then turned to walk through into the waiting area.

  She knew that the fact that she and Becky had the same surname would probably confuse him. He would think that they weren’t friends as she had just told him, but sisters instead. Many times in the past, they had introduced themselves to people using their full names and often the reactions had been the obvious: ‘Oh, you are sisters.’.

  Maybe it was their joke on society. The two girls had known each other from birth and had been best mates all their lives. Sometimes they felt like they were sisters though because they seemed to always be together. Maybe they should just say they were sisters to avoid any confusion, she thought.

  This ‘’coincidence’ of the same last name had been anything but though. What had happened was that all of the babies that were adopted in the same week from the children’s home where the girls had started their lives had gotten the same surname. Jenny and Becky had both been left on the steps of the orphanage in the first week of September in 1981, and so were given the same name--Barker. The friends did wonder sometimes if maybe they were really sisters, but the matron in the home had promised that they weren’t.

  Jenny was actually left twenty minutes later than Becky, and was always considered to be the older one. The matron told them that she remembered she had taken Becky in first, but just as she had placed her down in a cot, she had felt icy cold air blowing past her ankles, making her think she had left the doors open. When she had gone back to close them, she had been shocked though, because there was another baby lying there in the exact same place, only this one was wrapped in a green parker jacket.

  Inside the hospital waiting room, Jenny grabbed a magazine and sat down. As she did, someone behind her said, ‘Mizz! Mizz!’

  Turning round she could see there was a nurse standing there. She was a petite-looking woman in her fifties; Jenny thought at first glance by her looks that she might have been Filipino.

  ‘You are Jin-ny, Becyee’s friend?’ the woman said.

  ‘Y.yes…’ Jenny replied, after pausing for a second to work out what the woman had just said
in her broken English.

  ‘Woud you lik come see her, she want yu and big happy, she say you beist friend.’

  Jenny jumped up, and the magazine that had been on her lap fell down to the floor. As she picked it up and saw the Vogue model on the cover, she felt slightly embarrassed at the comparison between herself and the magazine picture. It dawned on her that she looked a complete mess in what she was wearing. She had on old hand-me-down clothes from the charity store in the high street and a pair of cheap worn-out Primark runners on her feet.

  The nurse smiled, turned, and started walking back through the doors. Jenny put the magazine back on the table and quickly followed her. As she got through the waiting room doors, she saw Becky sitting up and looking across at her.

  ‘Oh my…how are you?’ Jenny cried as she approached the bed. ‘You scared me so much! She said as she leant down and put her arms round her for a big hug. ‘You know, I love you so much! Please don't get sick again!’ she said in near hysterics.

  A nurse quickly pulled Jenny back, saying, ‘Careful, miss. We still don't know what happened to your friend.’

  Jenny released the death grip she’d had on her friend, and realized that she could feel tubes stuck across Becky’s chest underneath the hospital nightgown. Suddenly it became all too much to bear seeing her mate like that, and she burst into tears.

  Becky reached across for the box of tissues on her side table and handed them to Jenny, a soft smile on her face.

  Jenny took them gratefully. ‘Sorry, but I do love you so very much,’ she mumbled as she dabbed at her eyes. ‘I really thought you were going to die earlier. I think my heart needs looking at now too, because it was nearly broken!’ she said, sniffling and wiping her face.

  ‘I love you too,’ Becky said, smiling up at her friend.

  ‘How do you feel? I nearly fainted, I think. Seeing you unconscious in your shower, you gave me such a fright, you know! Your neighbor’s nice, isn’t she? What a way to meet her though, how are you?’ Jenny sat down on the chair where the nurse had just been sitting.

  ‘Not so many questions!’ Becky said, laughing a little. ‘Oh, and you have asked me how I am twice,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry, I just panicked. You know I am a bit neurotic, don't you, hun?’ she replied and they both smiled at each other. Becky started to say ‘I love you’ but Jenny said the same line at exactly the same time. They laughed, real laughs this time, and hugged each other but softly because Jenny remembered about Becky’s tubes this time.

  Becky’s face grew puzzled. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me, Jen. I’ve always been fit, I never smoked--I don’t know what’s wrong with me, except I feel really strange.’

  Jenny paused, not knowing what to say. She was torn as to whether or not she should reveal what Becky had said in the bathroom.

  ‘They took a blood sample, you know, and they are going to do some tests.’

  Suddenly she grabbed her stomach with both hands as pain surged up within her.

  ‘Becky? Are you okay?” Jenny cried.

  The pain passed as fast as it had come. Becky nodded.

  Jenny decided she had no choice; Becky had to know what had gone on while she was unconscious. She picked up Becky’s hand and stroked it.

  ‘Becky, there’s something you should know. While you were passed out, you were mumbling about someone called Longinus, and you said something about vampires. I was really scared--what was all that about?’ Jenny asked.

  Becky immediately froze. She let go of her stomach as she heard the name Longinus, and Jenny was horrified by her reaction and facial expressions too. Becky’s face distorted, her eyes grew dark in color, and the veins on her temples began to grow and pulsate.

  Jenny quickly apologized, hoping that somehow it would fix her now very strange mate, but it didn’t.

  Becky immediately sat upright and shouted, ‘Longinus! Where is my Master?”

  ‘Er…’ Jenny said, panic rising and totally lost for words.

  She grabbed Becky’s shoulders and shouted in her face, ‘What do you mean, “where is my Master”? What the hell are you talking about? Becky! You don’t have a master… as far as I know. Do you?’

  A few minutes ago, the machine behind Becky had been beeping slowly about once every second, but now it was screaming its head off and the display was flashing violently.

  Four nurses came from nowhere and grabbed Becky, forcing her back down flat onto the bed. Incredibly, as if she was possessed, she threw two of them off though.

  ‘Out!’ one of the nurses screamed at Jenny without looking at her. She was wrapped up entirely in the emergency before her.

  Suddenly Jenny felt someone tapping her on the shoulder, and she looked over to see that it was the same Filipino nurse from before.

  ‘Com wiv mi’ she said, but Jenny ignored her. She didn’t want to leave; everything had been okay till she had just mentioned that name, ‘Longinus.’

  ‘Why did I have to say that bloody name?’ she asked herself, cursing inwardly. She was sure that that had just triggered off her wild fit. How strange, though, she thought.

  The floral curtain round the bed was quickly drawn by two more nurses who had just arrived on the scene.

  Inside she could hear the strangest of sounds coming from her mate. Becky was making what sounded like wild animal noises and swearing, using every word possible that she knew. It was really quite embarrassing, Jenny thought, as other patients and relatives started to look across at her distastefully.

  ‘Use the drugs!’ she heard one of them say.

  ‘I did! I used the whole syringe!’ came the reply.

  ‘Restrain her hands then, and call that emergency number from the red phone!’ one of them shouted.

  Jenny froze. What emergency number? What red phone? she thought to herself. They are not suggesting that she has signs of schizophrenia, are they? They are a hospital;, why should they call an emergency number? You’re the emergency people--deal with her you idiots! she thought.

  The Filipino nurse then said, ‘Come yi now, you stand ere no day all starring, you wiv me go, go av nicey cup tea, nicey.’

  Jenny wanted to refuse though--to say, ‘No! Go away, leave me alone. That’s my mate in there, and she needs me,’ but strangely she found her legs had already started walking off with her, as if they had a mind of their own. The nurse led her back through the double doors into the waiting room and Jenny sat down, shaking slightly. This time even though she felt like grabbing a magazine, she made sure she didn’t pick up the Vogue one though.

  -------------------------

  Some hours later, Jenny opened her eyes. She was startled and disoriented for a moment, surprised that she had fallen asleep. The last thing she had remembered was that she was drinking a cup of tea that the Filipino nurse had given her. How could she have fallen asleep?

  How embarrassing, she thought as she looked around herself.

  She was in the same red leather chair, and the tea that she had been drinking was now on the small table beside her. She picked up the brew and tasted it; the tea had gone cold, and coupled with the taste of the plastic cup, it was now rank and bitter. She spat it back out.

  She then looked down at her watch and couldn’t believe the time. It was 3.46pm in the afternoon, and she had been asleep for about six hours.

  At that realization, she leapt up, rubbing her eyes. How could I have slept for six bloody hours? she thought to herself. Her eyes slid to the tea, and she wondered if something had been put in it. She recalled now that it had had a funny taste to it and not the strange plasticky taste either, there had been something else too.

  Turning, she hurried to the double doors again. She opened them and couldn’t believe her eyes.