A couple of hours had past, Dave had been taken from the house to the police station. They had checked him out first in the back of an ambulance to make sure that he had no wounds. He explained that nothing happened to him, he woke up and it was already over. Whatever took his mum didn’t touch him. Regardless of Dave’s explanation, the paramedics checked him over anyway.
“Hello again Dave” Said Officer Stephens as he sat down.
Officer Sidekick trainee wasn’t with him this time, there was someone else, he didn’t introduce himself or say anything, he just sat there to be, watching. Dave chose to ignore him, he assumed that this guy just had to be there for some legal reason or something like that.
“Hi” Dave mumbled.
“So how are you feeling?” Officer Stephens asked.
“I’ve been better.” Dave answered.
“Yeah I’ll bet” This almost sounded sarcastic to Dave. “So” Officer Stephens continued “Would you care to tell me what happened last night?”
“I, I don’t know” Dave said, his voice quivering as he spoke.
“Come on Dave, how could you not know, you were there weren’t you? The house can’t end up like that without you noticing!”
“No, I was asleep”
“Asleep! You expect me to believe that you slept right through while someone trashed your house and did whatever they did in there last night!”
“YES!” Dave shouted back “I hadn’t slept in weeks! I took some sleeping pills last night, I slept right through till morning, I didn’t hear a thing.”
“Right ok so let’s say you did sleep right through from these sleeping pills, where did you get them from might I ask?”
“I got them from the doctor, I haven’t been able to sleep since, you know, what happened to Lisa, so the doc gave me pills.”
Officer Stephens jumped at this “No! We still don’t know what happened to Lisa do we! All we know is that now your mother is off to join her wherever she has run off too! And the only person who seems to know anything is you Dave!”
“No I don’t I didn’t hear anything I”
“this time, you didn’t hear anything this time” Officer Stephens interrupted “ you heard the screaming the first time remember.”
“yes, I mean, I didn’t hear anything this time. The sleeping pills must have knocked me out.”
Dave knew this guy didn’t believe him, he knew that he was going to be the number one suspect for his mums murder.
The questioning carried on for a long time, Dave didn’t have much to answer as he genuinely had slept through what ever had happened last night. A few of the questions got repeated almost as though the police were trying to catch him out. To see if his answer this time was different from the last. Unfortunately Dave couldn’t be any help at all to the police. His answers never changed, they were a compilation of “I don’t know” and “I’m not sure”. Then he was left with the old clichés of “ok well we’ll be in touch soon for more questioning” and “Make sure to don’t go anywhere as we will want to get hold of you.” Dave had no intention of going anywhere, he had nowhere to go, he had no friends, or relatives that he knew of, besides his dad who it hadn’t seen in years, it was just him and his mum.
Dave was put up in a hotel room for a couple of days, obviously he couldn’t stay at the house in the state it was in, apart from what it would do to his mental state, the CSI team needed access back and forth while they collected evidence. He received a few more visits from Officer Stephens and his various friends to ask him more questions. They were pretty much the same things he had already been asked prior to these visits, his answer was still the same. “I don’t know”.
Apparently a “cleaner” had been appointed by the police to go and sort Dave’s house. This guys job was to go and clean up all the blood and mess that was left in the house so it would be suitable for Dave to move back in. Dave had seen a film about this named Cleaner, it had starred Samuel L Jackson as the cleaner. This had made Dave chuckle, he imagined Jackson at his house cleaning up, how cool would that be.
His laughter quickly faded when he thought about exactly what it was that he would be cleaning. They said on the film they use Listerine to help clean it as it acted as a de-coagulant to the blood. He wondered if this was actually true.
Officer Stephens paid another visit to Dave, the CSI team had gathered all the evidence they needed, there was something strange though. Something they needed to check with Dave.
“So, where do you think all that blood came from?” Officer Stephens asked.
“What?” Dave asked shocked, that bastard. How the hell could he ask him that, he knew damn well where that blood came from. It had come from his dying mother, what kind of sick prick would ask someone a question like that.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dave looked up in astonishment.
“OK Dave, I can tell from your reaction that you definitely knew nothing about this. I may as well put your mind at ease, a little bit at least.” Officer Stephens straightened his posture and raised is head as if to deliver some ground breaking discovery. “We think your mother may still be alive.”
“Really?” Dave asked, a feeling of joy rushing through him, his face broke out into a huge smile. “ have, have you found her?”
“No, I said we think she may be alive Dave, we haven’t found her, not yet”
“Then what do you mean?” Dave felt crushed once again, was this prick just playing with his emotions now?
“The blood in your home did not belong to your mother, Dave. It was pigs blood, we didn’t find anything else other than pigs blood.”
Dave was baffled. “what the hell? Why would someone come into my house and cover it in pigs blood? Where the hell is my mum then!”
“We are not sure, we do know that whoever took her is the same person that took Lisa, that was pigs blood as well.”
Dave sat back overwhelmed with this news, he didn’t know how to feel. He was more confused than anything else. Was his mum alive?
Officer Stephens went on to explain that the most likely reason for the pigs blood was to make it look like the victims had in fact been murdered in their homes and then the bodies taken away. Perhaps who ever had done this wasn’t very intelligent and they didn’t know about the capabilities of police investigation teams and scientists now a days. Maybe they didn’t know that these teams would be able to tell where the blood had come from almost immediately. Or maybe they had done this to shock people. Maybe they were one of those crazed attention seeking criminals and wanted their story plastered all over the paper. None of this mattered, what mattered was there was a chance that Dave’s mum was alive and they were going to find her.
Dave was told that his house had been cleaned now, well they said cleaned, what they made was it wasn’t covered from head to toe in pigs blood anymore. He could return home when he liked.
He returned home the next day, he was under strict instruction from Officer Stephens not to be straying too far away, he was still a suspect and he had to be readily contactable for more questions at any time. Dave had no intention of going anywhere, his mum was alive, he had to find her. The only thing he had to go on was that whoever had taken Lisa had come back to take his mum, so there was a chance, hopefully a big chance that they would come back for their next victim. Dave just had to make sure he was around when they did.
He didn’t bother to tidy any of the mess that was left, the furniture had been thrown around but besides that the place didn’t look too much different from before, the blood was gone and that’s all Dave was concerned about. OK now he just had to wait, when this sick psycho came back Dave would be waiting for him. He was going to find his mum.
Chapter 12
No more sleeping pills. That was Dave’s first decision. If this person or thing came back, he wanted to make sure that he was ready for it. It had been to his neighbours house and then his, he was sure that it would come back to another house close by. If he was awake every
night, stayed really quiet and kept a look out. He would be able to catch this thing. He decided to stock up on coffee, energy drinks, milk and cereal. The stimulants could keep him awake through the night, the cereal and milk gave him food when ever needed. He didn’t need to leave his post (a chair by the window) to have to go and cook food. Cereal was quick and easy. Coincidently it was also cheap and with mum not around Dave didn’t have much money.
With his supplies at the ready he spent his first night sitting up, waiting. It was a really long night. Dave had underestimated just how difficult it would be to sit in silence waiting for the whole night. He had gone through a ridiculous amount of coffee, at least ten cups and he had gone through three energy drinks. Still he felt like he was going to fall asleep. By 3am he did.
This wasn’t going to work. He needed to change his approach.
He decided to sleep through the day, he knew that this thing wasn’t going to come and take people while it was still light. So he allocated himself the hours between 10am and 7pm to sleep. That gave him a good six to nine hours sleep depending on how easily he went off. Then he would be set to sit up for the night, he wouldn’t be anywhere near as tired. It still wouldn’t be enough though, he needed something to hold his attention. He couldn’t have the TV on, apart from the fact that it would distract him from his “guard duty”, the noise from it might make him miss anything that was going on outside.
Books were the answer, he could sit in silence reading a book, it would hold his attention more than staring into the empty night, he could get them for free from the library. He knew were the library was but he had never been in there, who knows he might even learn something from reading a little bit as well.
“Hello can I help you?” The cheerful librarian asked.
“Hi, yeah um I’d like to join the library” Dave asked nervously sounding like a fifteen year old asking for cigarettes at a shop counter.
“OK just fill this in please”
The librarian gave Dave a laminated sheet of A4 paper and a felt tip marker. The form asked for all the usual information, Name, address, age, date of birth. Dave filled in the form and handed it back. The librarian quickly entered his info onto the computer, grabbed a library card and wrote his name on the back of it. She scanned the barcode, which was followed by a beep from the computer then handed the card to Dave.
“Ok you’re all set” She said.
“Thanks” Dave said, he noticed her wiping his details off the laminated form as he walked towards the bookshelves. “Saving the planet I guess” he thought to himself.
Dave had never been a reader before so he wasn’t entirely sure what exactly he would like to read. He guessed that if he chose books that were similar to his taste in films he couldn’t go far wrong. Horror was his favourite film genre so he decided that’s what he would go for with books. The horror section in the library was a lot smaller than all the other sections, maybe horror isn’t quite as popular as the other stuff he thought, maybe there were some horror like books in the thriller or Sci Fi section? Oh it didn’t really matter there were still enough books in the horror section, there must be something he will like. He scanned the books for a while then decided it would be safest to go for authors he had actually heard of. He chose Dracula by Bram Stoker, Watchers by Dean Koontz and IT by Stephen King. This should be more than enough he thought, although he was pretty sure that he probably would even get much further than IT, it looked like a mammoth of a book and him not being used to reading it would probably take him a month to read, he had loved the movie though so decided this was definitely the book for him.
Ok he was all set, he had slept solid from around 11am right through until 6.30pm, that had given him seven and half hours sleep. He drank an energy drink, followed by a cup of coffee. Then he sat himself down with his bowl of cereal and IT, now he knew he was going to be able to stay awake, so he could wait and be ready for this thing whenever it turned up. Then a terrifying thought entered his mind, what exactly was he going to do when it did?
Chapter 13
Three days of Dave’s “night duty” had passed. He kept to his schedule as planned, sleeping during the day so he had the energy to stay awake through the night. He had heard and seen nothing so far, each night he sat in silence in a barely lit room. The only light was the lamp he placed on the table next to him so he could see his book. Outside was dark, there had been no movement apart from the odd car driving past or one of the teenagers that lived somewhere down the street stumbling past at early hours in the morning.
Dave started to wonder if he was wasting his time, was this thing really going to come back to the same spot three times? Would he be that cocky, or stupid? It didn’t matter, he had to keep hoping, this thing had to come back, it was the only way that he would be able to find his mum.
After a toilet break Dave returned to his table and opened up his book, he was a couple of hundred pages into it now, he had been struggling a little bit with not being used to reading, but overall he was following the plot quite well and was enjoying it. It was another really quiet night, so quiet that it started to make Dave feel on edge. There is something eerie about complete silence, noise is comforting, Dave would be a lot happier if he lived on a busier road where there was a constant flow of traffic, the silence was starting to get to him. He heard a noise.
“What was that?” He said to himself, then sat almost as if he were waiting for an answer.
“there it is again!”
The sound of scurrying footsteps came from one of the other rooms.
“oh shit someone’s in the house” Dave whispered to himself.
“Who’s there?” He shouted, trying to hide the fear in his voice.
He heard the scurrying again, it sounded like children running around in one of the bedrooms.
“I said who’s there?” This time with more authority.
The running stopped. Dave walked very slowly across the room, he reached around the door and turned the light on to the next room before entering. There was no one there. He checked his bedroom, his mum’s bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom. There was no one anywhere to be seen. Unless they were hiding? He stood for a second taking deep breaths, trying to build up the courage to go and look. He checked his mum’s room first, checking the cupboards, behind the door and under the bed, all the usual “hide and seek” places he could think of. Then he checked the bathroom, besides behind the shower curtain there was nowhere to hide in there. Again nothing. That left his bedroom, he checked his cupboard, there was nothing there. That only left one place, under his bed. He heard giggling.
“Oh shit!” he shouted, louder than he meant to.
“Ok you bastard get out from there before I kick your ass!”
He heard the giggling again. Dave felt his stomach tighten, he felt like he was going to puke, he was terrified. Who the hell was this hiding under his bed, it sounded like a child, he didn’t have to be scared of a child did he? Where did the child come from? Why were they here? What if it wasn’t a child, what if it was the thing that took his mum?
“OK that’s it!” He shouted
He grabbed the side of the bed and in one swift motion lifted it on one side and threw it upwards. It rolled over and landed upside down a couple of feet next to him.
“What the.....but, I heard.”
There was no one there, he must have been hearing things. All this sitting alone in the dark, in silence all night must have been playing with his mind.
“It sounded so real” he thought to himself.
Dave walked back to his chair, sighed and sat back down with his book.
There was the giggling again, followed by hurried footsteps running from room to room.
“Right that’s it!”
Dave jumped up and sprinted to his room, this time filled with more courage. He was tired of being messed with.
“Come on out you bastard! Come out!”
He ran round the house from room to room screaming lik
e a mad man, he was throwing things around, tearing open cupboard doors so hard that the wood splintered. There was still no one there, he sprinted from room to room again, making sure there was no way anyone could sneak past while he was checking another room. Eventually he stopped, leaning over to catch his breath.
“shit Dave you’ve lost your mind.” He said to himself puffing for air.
Another try, he sat down and opened his book. He started to question whether his choice of book was a good idea. What it really his best plan to sit alone in the dark all night in complete silence and read a horror story? So what, it was just a story, it wasn’t like a killer clown was going to jump out and get him, he hoped. No don’t be stupid, whoever it was he waited for would just be a human being. Perhaps a sick deranged human being but still, there would be no killer clowns chasing him around the house.
A Life To Waste Page 6