The Red to My Grey

by William Dudley Berridge Tuckey

  “You’re really going to town on that cake, aren’t you?” Dan called from the sink.

  “It’s really good!” she screamed as she shoved another piece into her mouth.

  “I’m glad you like it because I’m the one who made it,” he said to us as he dried off his hands and came and sat down with us. He helped himself to a piece of cake and happily wolfed it down. Dan gave off such a friendly vibe; it was easy for us to relax around him.

  “I didn’t know you baked, Dan,” I said after a sip of my coffee.

  “I don’t normally, but today’s been pretty quiet, so I thought I’d try something new.”

  “I noticed the place wasn’t nearly as rowdy as usual. Why do you think that is?” Angel asked while casually grabbing another piece of the cake. Dan laughed as he watched the heartbreak on Nami’s face as she discovered almost all of it was gone.

  “It’s quiet because everyone’s out cleaning after all the damages from last night. People have better things to do than sit around and drink coffee. Sigh. You could have told me that you were planning to confront the detective, none of this might have even happened otherwise,” I had no hesitation in following up on his statement since that was a pretty serious claim to make.

  “Have you been talking to the detective while we’ve been away Daniel?” Angel asked in a firm, assertive tone. To her, he made it sound like he had set the whole incident into motion. I tried not to jump to any conclusions before hearing what he had to say.

  “Woah, calm down, Angel. About fifteen minutes from now the detective has been frequenting this café every day for the past week while you were away. I didn’t say anything about the two of you to him. He didn’t even mention your names. If you stick around you can hear him out, he’s actually a pretty righteous kind of guy.”

  Angel stood up and took Nami by the hand with her umbrella in the other. She went to the door and looked back at us.

  “Come on, Nami. We’re leaving. I have nothing to say to that man.” She stormed out and Nami ran out after her while she chomped down on her last piece of cake. I really love Angel, but I really wished she wouldn’t hate people as fiercely as she did.

  “I’ll talk with the detective for a bit, then I’ll go home to cheer up Angel,” I said with a pained look on my face. Dan apologised for stirring her up so much and I was glad I chose to stick around. Sure enough, the detective visited the café a few short moments later and ordered some coffee as he sat down beside me.

  “I’m surprised you’re here alone, Wade,” he said to me as Dan handed him his coffee.

  “I wasn’t alone at first, but when my girlfriend heard you might show up soon, she stormed out the door. What’s up with you Mr Swan? You seem pretty down.” He looked to me and laughed after I said that. He took off his overcoat and laid it over the counter. He let out a deep breath after a sip of his coffee.

  “That really takes the edge off. To answer your question, I’ve had better days than the ones recently. I know I was wrong to do what I did last night, but I didn’t have any other choice and after everything that happened it still wasn’t enough.” We both were quiet after that as we tried to think of what to say next to one another. Dan placed another coffee in front of us and went back to washing up dishes.

  “How about you tell him what you told me detective?”

  “I suppose I owe that much for confiding in you over the past week.” The detective swallowed his pride and told me everything as I listened carefully to every word.

  “I really needed this case. If I brought Sinclair and all parties involved to justice, two things I needed desperately. It was all for my daughter, she’s sick…it’s not cancer or heart disease or anything like that, but it may as well be. I might have been able to pay enough people off to have them really look into her treatment.”

  “What do you mean? So, you’re saying she’s not going to be okay?” I asked softly.

  “The doctors don’t know what it is and she’s not getting any better…I’m really running out of ideas.”

  Suddenly Dan started coughing as he started choking on some coffee he made for himself. We both got up to help him out. I rubbed his back while Mr Swan held his arm steady, so he wouldn’t spill any of his coffee.

  “Are you okay, Dan?”

  “I’m fine Cough. Cough. I just had a thought that could fix your problem. I remember overhearing something at the wedding about Sinclair, that he could heal people with his blood. There’s your answer! You were searching for the solution the entire time!” He was on the right track; the same thought crossed my mind when I heard the problem also. However, David had already taken this into consideration and wasn’t big on the idea.

  “Sigh. I already know about all that Daniel. I’ve seen the doctor’s notes and journal that described the procedure. He used a very painful process for both him and the patient that underwent the procedure, it doesn’t always work either. The horde of beasts running around Fellbroke is proof of that and every success he has managed so far has been sheer luck. Besides…”

  “If it does work his daughter will turn out like Sophia, Risk and Anne. Red eyes, pale skin and a freak,” I explained and knowing all of this didn’t make me feel any better, but it was as Angel said. It was better to confront the truth than to ignore it.

  “There’s also the trouble of finding him, he’s almost impossible to keep track of and even if I did manage to find Sinclair, there’s no guarantee he would cooperate. He would sooner murder me in cold blood.”

  I pulled out my phone and brought up Sinclair’s number from when he called me the night after the pool party at Johnson’s house.

  “Let’s see about that, it couldn’t hurt to ask. If Sinclair is true to his word, I think he would rather help save a life than end one.” The phone rang for about thirty seconds before Sinclair answered it. I could hear the waves crashing against the shore behind him; he was with the Orwell family still.

  “Good afternoon boy, is there something you need? Chuckle. Or perhaps you need me to bail you out of some detestable situation like last night?” I hadn’t even said anything yet and he was already trying to get under my skin. I asked him if he could help the detective’s daughter and he just laughed. “So, that’s why he was able to face death so enduringly last night. He stubbornly refuses to let fate take what’s precious to him. We might be more alike than I originally anticipated. Very well, I will assist him. However, the blame is his alone if things go astray.”

  He told us he would be at the café shortly and that we should make any arrangements needed for Mr Swan’s daughter. The detective began making several phone calls and I called home to let Angel know I probably wouldn’t be home until later that night, she was pretty pissed off with me.

  “Try not to cause any more trouble, you two; I don’t think Fellbroke can handle anymore wild nights like last night,” Dan said to us as he started to close up the shop. Sinclair walked through the door wearing his heavy beast taming gear with his green hooded jacket over the top and his face in wraps. His machete was sheathed on his right arm and was loosely concealed by his jacket.

  “Well, shall we go?” he asked with his eyes glowing their distinctive shade of crimson beneath the shade of his hood. Mr Swan threw on his overcoat and ensured his chrome revolver was in a position where he could draw it as fast as possible. I followed behind the pair as they walked side-by-side, looking dead ahead. Their eyes would flick to the side every so often to reassure that they weren’t trying to kill each other.

  We drove to the hospital in the centre of Fellbroke and withdrew the detective’s daughter; it was a sad sight. She was no older than Nami and she didn’t even have the strength to walk. David put her inside the car and leaned her against me to hold herself upright. She was beautiful even though I found it hard to look at her while she was like that. Her hair was pure white, and she had pale blue eyes. Her face was feminine and refined.

  “A-are we going home now, Daddy?” she asked as she passed o
ut against me. The detective looked down at himself before he shot his eyes back directly ahead of him to face reality.

  “Sigh. This is my last chance. I absolutely will not fail you, Laura.” He then put the car into full throttle and we flew through Fellbroke with a siren screaming atop of the car and a normally very long drive out of the city to the hospital on its outskirts was cut quite short.

  When we arrived at the hospital, Sinclair was greeted by his beasts as they licked, roared and stared at him. He went off to start gathering equipment and supplies for the procedure. Even though we were allied with Sinclair for the moment, it wasn’t any less unsettling to see packs of abominations sprinting past us as we walked through the blood-stained halls of the hospital, the only light around us was coming from underneath the floorboards of the bottom floor, but that soon disappeared as we made our way to the third floor. Sinclair collected some medical equipment from a storage room and then we went back down to the examination room on the first floor. He had one of the beasts pull up the floorboards and we jumped down into the tunnel below. The detective flicked on his flashlight and in the darkness, was an abundant garden on strange abnormal plants growing from moss and vines growing along the walls. There were pitch-black flowers and juicy large fruits and vegetables that I had never seen before. This produce is what sustained the beasts, rather than devouring one another. When Sinclair let them loose on the city, flesh must have been a delicacy to them. At the end of the room, it didn’t resemble anything like a surgery room or anything like that. It was just a bedroom, it was Sinclair’s. He laid a light blue mat on the cold concrete floor and we carefully laid Laura on top of it. To start, Sinclair injected her with a strange yellow liquid that apparently was a sedative. He then cut an incision directly to her heart. The sheer amount of blood that spilled out onto the mat was terrifying, but it was too late to turn back. He then took a large needle and stabbed himself until he filled a vial with his own blood. He was looking a little woozy after he did that, but he continued by injecting the needle into the exposed heart, no amount of sedative was going to numb the pain that followed afterwards. Sinclair quickly sewed the open wound shut and quickly grabbed a bottle of what looked like saliva and using a brush, he applied it over the wound. The gash in her chest rapidly healed before our very eyes, but once his blood was inside her bloodstream, she woke up screaming in horrible pain as she grabbed at her chest.

  “Calm yourself child, endure it,” Sinclair said sternly as she cried and screamed some more. David gritted his teeth as he watched his daughter riving in agony, but he stayed quiet and looked on. Her screams of pain and suffering suddenly became screams of pleasure and relief. The young girl’s agony was replaced by a heated sensation as new blood ate away at her clotted veins and allowed them to start flowing normally again. Her eyes began to glow that shade of crimson red we had all become accustomed to and she began to drool and sweat uncontrollably.

  Sinclair on the other hand was struggling to stay on his feet and fell back against the wall of the room. Some of his beasts came to his side to comfort him while two others dragged a body into the room. It was pretty much a fresh kill, probably from the chaos that went on in Fellbroke. They threw the body on the ground in front of her and her eyes were drawn to it. Thin streams of blood formed claws on the end of her fingers and a thick red row of teeth formed in the same way inside her mouth. She dragged herself over to the body and feasted on its flesh, savagely tearing chunks of flesh from it and swallowing them nearly whole only after a few bites. Both David and I watched in horror as the weak little girl devoured the corpse like an animal on the verge of death. David drew his revolver and aimed it at her; she didn’t even react as he held the gun, crying his eyes out.

  “Don’t do it detective, giving up some of your humanity is sometimes necessary to defy death. My blood will eat away at her entirety if not given some fuel to burn,” Sinclair called to him as he brought himself from the wall with the help of his beast.

  “She’s a monster now! She wouldn’t have wanted this for herself!” he yelled as the gun wobbled in his hands as they shook.

  “Then would you really cut her life short to the point of that her last experience was being a monster? She’ll pull through this; it won’t be much longer now.”

  The detective lowered his firearm and it was only after the young girl had devoured the corpse entirely, her hands covered in blood and her eyes still burning bright, that her consciousness came back to her. She didn’t have a clue of what was going on and the blood on her hands frightened her, but she wasn’t in pain anymore. However, her body was still too weak to move on its own. Sinclair told her to look down at herself; she saw her skin was now pale. Her hair was still white as snow and did not deepen to black which Sinclair found strange. The claws and teeth that formed disappeared and apart from her deep red eyes, she wasn’t much different from before.

  “What’s going on here? Where are we, Daddy? Who are those people? What are those things! What happened here!” she screamed as she laid her eyes on the gore-ridden floor and the monsters. David wiped the tears from his eyes and had a giant grin on his face.

  “Sniffle. H-how do you feel, Laura?” he asked her, ignoring her questions.

  “I feel better…I feel better! I feel better!” she yelled triumphantly.

  “We’re really glad to hear that. Your dad’s been causing a lot of trouble trying to look after you,” I said as the horror from before began to wear off.

  “Sigh. You had better take a better look at yourself. Wade, mind handing her your phone, so she can see herself now?”

  When she saw her reflection, she dropped the phone after discovering her now burning red eyes. She couldn’t believe it; their presence was almost overwhelming as she admired them. She asked Sinclair about them.

  “I truly don’t know the reason for it, but when my blood reaches the brain it turns the host’s eyes red, that’s how we cured you by injecting a heavy dose of my blood into your heart.” The girl looked down at her chest to see no scar which confused her further.

  “We don’t really have time to explain everything. We should consider going home, it’s getting dark.”

  “I suppose you’re right, Wade, the girl’s rehabilitation can start tomorrow. I must tend to my beast; bring her to your home, Wade. I trust the detective has to go back to his job shortly.”

  “He’s right, I have a lot of dead to account and investigate for from the other night, pick her up and I’ll drive you home,” the detective said in an exhausted tone and just like that all the responsibility was dumped on me, like usual. I spoke with Laura for a little while on the drive back home. She was a well-mannered, polite young girl. It was obvious she felt guilty for what she put us through.

  “So, Wade was it? Who are you? How did you end up helping me out?”

  “Well it’s a little hard for me to explain, it’ll be easier once you’ve met my family. I guess you can say I’m the middle man in all of this, the one that brings everyone together.”

  “Giggle. That sounds kind of interesting. I’m looking forward to meeting everyone.”

  “What about you? Who were you before you got sick?” I asked curiously.

  “I was living with my Dad in Aubrey. I had heaps of friends at school and I was the top of my class.”

  “Well I’d say I believe you on that, you sound very mature for your age.”

  “Thank you. Hopefully I can recover soon. I miss playing with my friends back home. Fellbroke is such a loud and wild place compared to Aubrey.”

  “Come to think of it Nami and Sophia said they were from Aubrey. Maybe you’ve already met them.”

  “Nami? Oh, I remember her. She was really funny!” Laura said cheerfully. I couldn’t really imagine Nami as someone who was described as funny though. I came to the conclusion that it was probably the way she would often act out and do whatever she wanted that got her that kind of praise.

  We arrived home around eight o’clock, Dad, An
gel and Sophia greeted us at the front gate. I held Laura in my arms and the detective spoke with them except for Angel; her eyes widened as she caught sight of the young girl. Dad and Sophia were bitterly cold to Mr Swan as he tried to explain the situation.

  “Can’t she stay with her mother? Wade and Angel have taken too much time off work recently. I doubt they have the time to look after a sick child,” I heard Dad say as the detective pushed on with his negotiations.

  “Sigh. She doesn’t have one, she passed away a few years back. Please, I’m just asking she stay somewhere that I can trust her to be safe. She’s too weak to travel right now and I’ve had people breathing several different cases down the back of my neck for a while now. I can’t keep putting them off.”

  “Alright, she can stay here,” Dad said bluntly after hearing him out.

  “Jason!” Sophia yelled in shock from how easily he caved. To me it made sense though; Dad knew how hard it could be on kids without a mother. Not only that, but he must have felt a great deal of empathy for the young girl. He could see that she had been through a lot, more than any one person should. Sophia came over to me and Laura. She placed her hand beneath Laura’s chin and examined her in detail. Sophia’s glowing red eyes made Laura nervous as she was inspected head to toe. Laura buried her face in my shoulder to hide from her gaze.

  “Why is your hair white? Was it white before Sinclair changed you?” Sophia asked impatiently; she nodded nervously but stayed quiet.