The Sight
By
Nick B

 © Nick B 2008
Gabi has done a totally sweet job on this--as always

“A baby-sitter?” he asked, incredulous. “Go . . . Before I change my mind.”

Chapter 8

“Are you going to be alright?” Doris asked as she and Paul stood in their glad-rags in the doorway.

“No problem. Go and enjoy yourselves. For some reason I’m really tired anyway, so I’ll just read a bit and then crash I think. It’s weird, I don’t do anything, yet I’m dog tired at the end of it.” Darryl said smiling at them.

“You sure?” she asked again, giving Darryl a critical look. “I can always ring Carole.”

She was a neighbour’s daughter and about the same age, or a bit older than Darryl. Doris had offered to call her over to give him some company.

“A baby-sitter?” he asked, incredulous. “Go . . . Before I change my mind.” He flashed them a big cheesy grin and picked up his book. “Honestly, I’ll be fine.”

It wasn’t long before he was nodding off. He knew this as he seemed to be reading the same paragraph over and over and hadn’t turned a page for some time. He lay the book down on the chair by the bed, turned off the bedside light and was asleep before he knew it.

Some time later, he became aware of someone grabbing him under his arms and dragging him across a hard, rough floor. His bare heels chattered over the sharp ridges and pitted surface and he could feel the pain as it shot up his legs each time his heels found more of the protrusions.

“Come on, love, don’t make it any more difficult than it is already,” a gruff voice said, thick with a foreign accent.

He tried to struggle, but he felt almost powerless to do anything–tired or just drained he didn’t know, but he just didn’t have the energy. In addition, bindings around his wrists prevented it. He tried moving his legs into a different position to stop his heels being cut and scraped on the abrasive surface but found that that too was not possible as he just didn’t have the energy, nor it appeared would the bindings around them allow it.

It was difficult to focus his eyes. It was dark and something rough seemed to be covering them. All he could see was a kind of outline and indistinguishable shapes as they passed under faint lights.

Then they reached somewhere where he could smell salty air and feel a cool breeze as it wafted silently up and across his bare legs and arms. He could smell too the aromas of fast food being prepared nearby, the sound of a radio or cassette playing in the background.

“Let’s take one last look at you, darlin’,” the man with the accent said and removed a course piece of cloth from about his eyes, looking at him through dark eyes, his greased-back hair, shining under the sodium lights of the alley.

He turned his head and saw only twenty or so yards away, people milling about. Some carried the white bags with the red logo of some burger bar or other fast-food outlet. The frontage of a shop–a hairdresser’s perhaps, stood in the background, its glittery sign the last thing he saw before he was hauled into the back of a van, the doors closed and once again, blackness engulfed him along with such fear as he had never felt before in his relatively short life.

Gasping and sweating, his hair flattened to his head, he sat bolt upright, a twinge of sharp pain shooting up his leg from the gash that had suddenly been pulled tight. He looked about him, the dim light from the hallway filtering through the door that had been left ajar. The clock on the wall showed it to be less than an hour since Paul and Doris left.

The vision had showed him somewhere other than where he was, yet at the same time, it was so familiar. Was what he had seen something that was actually happening, about to happen, or had it already happened?

He sat for minutes that felt like hours, debating what to do. He ought to stay in bed, but at the same time, this nagging feeling told him that he shouldn’t; told him that he needed to get to the phone and call that detective fellow; to tell him what he’d seen.

The phone though, was at the far end of the lounge and it hurt enough just going to the toilet. He wasn’t supposed to do anything like that, but he couldn’t stand the thought of Paul or Doris having to deal with his waste and although difficult, he had elected to hobble out of the bedroom to the toilet next door on his own.

That compared to the distance to the phone was child’s play, but somehow, he knew that if he didn’t do something soon, another Suzie Croft was going to show up in the next day’s paper and this time he was not going to let anything like that happen if it didn’t have to.

He pulled back the covers and gingerly swung his legs to the edge of the bed. Despite the bandaging, his right leg could bend–although not far and the further he tried to bend it, the more painful and dangerous to the healing tissues it became. Nevertheless, he had got out of bed several times and this wasn’t going to be any different.

He grabbed the policeman’s business card from next to the light and pushed himself into a standing position, the majority of his weight he tried to put on his plastered leg, as that one just ached, where the other one hurt. In a series of hobbles, lurches, grunts and squeals, he made it sweating and panting, to the doorway although in considerable pain.

The next part was to negotiate the hallway. It wasn’t far, but if it had taken him minutes to make his way ten feet across the room to the door, this wasn’t likely to be any quicker.

He lurched towards the stairs and stumbled. It was only a step, but in his current state, one step was like a pigeon step, the front foot, only just past the back one and down he went, bending his right leg almost all the way under him, causing him to scream loudly. Tears stung and his breath was taken away as he grimaced and fought back the urge to go no further.

He passed on the idea of getting up again and tried instead, to pull himself along the carpet of the hallway into the lounge. His right leg hurt so much that waves of nausea threatened to envelope him. As he clawed his way along the carpet, inching his way further down the silent corridor and closer to the phone, the searing pain–almost akin to being burned, caused flashes before his eyes, already stinging from the sweat and tears.

He was whimpering as he crossed the threshold of the lounge and continued to inch his way across the floor to the phone on his stomach and elbows, clutching tightly to the policeman’s card as he did so.

Soon, the sweating, the pain and the effort will all have been worth it and he lunged at the phone lead that dangled from the window sill. It clattered down in front of him, the dialling tone buzzing at him through the ear-piece.

He tapped in the number on the card and waited as it rang and rang.

“Hello?” he said as the telephone at the other end was finally answered. He was starting to tremble; the effort, the pain and fear of being rejected by the copper all playing their part. Plus, he was still lying on his stomach and uncomfortable.

“Who’s that?” a woman asked.

“My name’s Darryl Groves. May I speak to Detective Cummings, please?”

“Are you alright? You don’t sound it.”

“Don’t worry about me. I really need to speak to him. It’s urgent,” he breathed and waited as the line went quiet.

“Cummings?” said the detective.

“It’s Darryl, sergeant. I have some information I think may be useful to you, but I don’t know how long you’ve got.”

“Is this some kind of a joke?” he asked.

“No, sergeant. I have just seen one of the women being loaded into the back of a van. I can’t tell quite where–it might come to me, but I did see some things that I think may well point you in the right direction.”

“This is another one of your “visions” isn’t it?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“Look, I know you think you’re doing the right thing, but it’s gone nine and I was in the middle of my dinner. I can’t just jump up because you think you’ve seen something.”

“I can tell you that you’re no more than ten minutes from the place I saw. I think it was Waterloo Street, but I can’t be sure,” he said, breathing hard from the pain in his leg.

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine. I stumbled trying to get to the phone is all and bent my leg. It’s hurting rather a lot, but I had to get to the phone and there’s no-one else here at the moment.”

“You don’t sound so good.”

“It’s nothing. Just please go and take a look will you?”

Darryl did his best to answer the policeman’s questions with as much information as he could remember from the dream–if indeed dream it was–and Cummings promised to go and check it out.

Darryl put the handset down on the cradle and rolled over onto his back. The pain still felt like a whole bunch of red hot needles being poked into his leg around the gash and he sat up to take a look.

The bandage was red–solid red and he had left a trail from the hallway into the lounge in trying to get to the phone. Moreover, the spot where he was currently sitting was wet with the blood that was freely flowing from his wound.

Suddenly he felt very faint at the sight and smell of all that blood and keeled over sideways.

---

Doris and Paul walked arm in arm towards their house, giggling and laughing after having enjoyed several drinks in their local–The Cliftonville. It wasn’t until they passed the post office and the phone box a couple of doors up from their house that they noticed that someone was waiting at the door.

“Can I help you–oh you’re that detective chap aren’t you?” Doris asked and then started giggling again.

“I am madam and I’ve come to see if Darryl’s alright. He didn’t sound too good on the phone earlier and once I’d been to Waterloo Street, I thought I had best check. I can’t seem to get any reply.”

“Well you wouldn’t. He can’t walk at the moment and . . . Wait a minute–did you just say he phoned you?”

“I did.”

All traces of semi-drunkenness had disappeared and both Doris and Paul seemed to have sobered up.

Their carefree and rather lackadaisical attitudes gave way to something much more urgent and Paul couldn’t open the door quickly enough. Switching on the light, they immediately noticed the trail of blood from beside the under stairs cupboard, leading into the lounge.

“Oh my God!” shouted Paul and ran into the lounge, stopping just inside the door and causing a pile-up of himself, Doris and the policeman who all bumped into one another in the doorway. “Darryl.”

All three rushed to the still figure lying on the floor, the telephone just inches away and a wide pool of blood emerging from under him.

“Quickly, phone an ambulance,” said Paul, rushing to the young man’s side and lifting one of his wrists to check for a pulse.

“How is he?” asked the policeman.

“Doesn’t look good,” said Paul. “I’m no doctor, but his pulse feels pretty weak and he’s obviously lost a lot of blood. Whatever he was phoning you for must have been bloody important.”

“As a matter of fact, sir, it was, which is another reason why I’m here.”

“You’ve found the women?”

“Sadly no, but thanks to Darryl, we do have much more now to go on. The lads are down there searching the place,” Cummings said brightly. “We may have a chance of getting those women out alive.”

“I’m glad to hear it. What’s happening with the ambulance, hon?” Paul asked Doris.

“They’ll be here as soon as they can. How is he?”

“Doesn’t look good, but I think he’ll make it–well I hope so anyway.”

---

The ambulance arrived some ten minutes later and Darryl was taken out on a stretcher to the waiting vehicle. Doris suggested Paul go with him.

“I’ll follow if you don’t mind,” Cummings said.

“Are you family?” asked the ambulance man.

“Of course, he’s my nephew,” Paul spat.

Paul climbed into the back and the driver closed the doors, before jumping in the front and with sirens wailing, they set out across Hove to the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton–the nearest place with A&E facilities.

The traffic was quite light at that time of night and the paramedic* in the back was concerned over the blood loss that Darryl appeared to have suffered. Paul had to keep out of the way as he put him on a saline drip and monitored his heart-rate.

Paul could only watch and hope as the paramedic did his thing. Through the centre of Brighton they raced and just as they reached the Old Steine, Darryl started to shudder.

His face paled and as Paul looked on, the paramedic bustled about, shouting things at the driver. Paul noticed acceleration and as the paramedic continued to do things, they screeched to a halt at the entrance to the hospital and a bunch of people in uniforms came out to whisk Darryl away amidst much shouting of this that and the other–especially “stat”.

Paul was requested to wait in the waiting area as Darryl was wheeled further into the hospital with some very concerned looking people running after him down the polished corridor.

“Is he alright?” Cummings asked, his voice full of concern for the young man.

“I hope so, sergeant. I hope so.”

---

To be continued . . .

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* Not what they were called in those days, but it’s better than calling him an ambulance man.