The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1962 by Angharad Copyright © 2013 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I left Henry sitting with Monica and he called his chauffer to take me home. The same taciturn fellow turned up and opened the door of the car for me. I took my place behind him in the Mercedes and left him to negotiate his way out of London. Even at this early hour there was quite a bit of traffic and I felt so grateful that I didn’t live here.

The car has radio, CD and DVD with which passengers can entertain themselves, but I was tired and trying to decide how I would deal with a potential threat from Jerry. I was pretty sure the overdose the girls had helped me resolve with Jacquie was her ex-partner’s work and I expected any attacks from her to be like that, rather than full-blown Harry Potter special effects. A case of people’s minds being affected rather than dealing with thunderbolts and monsters–that’s definitely fiction, although people enjoy reading about vampires and werewolves, if they exist at all they are far more likely to be anomalous behaviour by deranged individuals, than people turning into bats or furry things. Mind you, that kitten might be one of the latter and she draws blood quite regularly, though she claims it’s accidental and due to her forgetting to withdraw her crampons when climbing us.

I was in a sort of trance as I mused about the past day or two, and suddenly realised we were out the Metropolitan area and heading for the M25 and home. I wondered about how his area must have changed from farmland to acres of concrete and tarmac which constitute the London orbital motorway, which in places seems to have about five lanes in each direction and they always seem to want to build more. It was scary, especially to an ecologist, and I considered that the future belongs to those species which can cope with change caused by humans, of whom there are far too many, and the number seems to be growing exponentially. It was a sad conclusion that we are spreading over the face of the planet like an out of control rash, without any strategy for stopping it. Nature presumably will resolve it with disease and famine which will be unfortunate for those it culls.

I was locked into my maudlin thoughts about the future of the planet when I realised we were on the A3 and heading down towards Petersfield. I’d hopefully be home before the hour was out.

Suddenly, the driver gave a cry of pain held his head in both hands and collapsed over the steering wheel. The car continued to travel along what was fortunately a straight piece of road. It was an automatic, and I leant over the seat trying to steer it while pulling the driver away from the wheel. I began to wish I’d worn brown trousers.

I put the car in neutral to reduce the speed, we were likely to crash eventually, and wriggled my way into the front passenger seat, where I managed to reach the hazard lights and switch them on.

I steered the car with one hand as I tried to get my leg down into the driver’s foot well and step on the brake. In the space of about a minute perhaps ninety seconds, I managed to stop the car safely, albeit probably the worst bit of parking I’d achieved since learning to drive. I had a flash back to that when my instructor declared during a fit of exasperation, ‘For god’s sake, Charlie, you drive like a bloody girl.’ I burst into tears–well it was in keeping with his opinion.

I felt like bursting into tears now, as I scrambled out of the car and tried to revive the driver. He was groaning, so he was alive, and with the cool air coming in through the open door he started to come round. With some difficulty he staggered from the car and I helped him into the back of the car where he lay down, and I hope, went to sleep. It was awfully quiet, so I hoped he hadn’t died on me. Meanwhile, I got into the front seat and after resetting it for leg length and so on, switched on the engine and drove home as quickly as I could.

I don’t like driving automatic gearboxes, my left leg keeps stepping on the brake when I want to change gears, however I was trying to keep it out of the way. Not far from home, we had another problem, the driver seemed to wake up and he then tried to grab me from behind.

“Get off me you fool, you’ll kill us both.” I struggled to free myself then braked extra hard and he was thrown backwards into the rear seat, which stopped him momentarily. I glanced at the rear view mirror and his eyes seemed to have a glazed look about them, as if he was in some sort of trance. He moved towards me again and I stamped on the brake, this time he pitched forward and fell into the foot well of the rear seats where he lay groaning.

I had just about enough time to get into the drive and stop the car when he came round again. Simon came running out as I sounded the horn and he helped me subdue the chauffeur and get him inside.

He had a lovely bruise coming up on his forehead where he bashed himself falling into the foot well, and while I called Henry to report what happened, Trish began healing on the man’s head. He muttered something about, ‘Mistress’ and I stopped Trish for a moment.

“Who is your mistress?” I asked him and he spoke in a monotone. He didn’t know her name but she was an unusually tall ‘coloured lady.’ He was suffering from possession–Jerry had obviously got wind of what was happening and tried to kill me. I must admit, I felt a trifle miffed about it, but I had survived her efforts and now had to deal with this man, who was still under her control to some extent.

I surrounded him with blue light–even I could see it, and told him he would see and do whatever I asked him to. He nodded. I then told him he was driving the car and I had fallen asleep in the back seat. He nodded. I told him he was now building up speed and straight ahead of him was a bridge which he was going to drive straight into, hitting it at seventy or eighty miles an hour, but he would survive. I then guided him into the crash and told him as he scrambled out of the wreckage he could see a dead woman in the rear of the car. He started to become agitated, saying that Henry would kill him, as he’d just killed his daughter in law. He broke down in tears and I made him sleep.

“What was the point of that?” asked Simon watching the man grow increasingly distressed before I made him sleep.

“He was being controlled by Jerry.”

“What? You get more weird by the day?”

“He was, she gave him a severe head pain which caused him to go unconscious, I had a hell of a job stopping the car.”

“Was he driving?”

“Of course he was.”

“How did you manage to pull that off?”

“By pure luck, if we’d been in traffic or still on the motorway, I’d probably have been killed. I’m hoping by making him think he’s killed me, I’ve bought us some time.”

“Just what the hell is going on?” demanded Simon.

“We’re under psychic attack.”

“Don’t be ridiculous–you’ll be telling me she’s flying a broomstick, next.”

“How I wish she was, then I could shoot her down–this is going to take a bit longer.”