by A. J. Roe
✽✽✽
“Wake up. You are no good to anyone dead.” The voice was calm and warm. It was female, well-spoken and eloquent, yet strangely accentless, not that any of that mattered much. In fact, right now nothing seemed to matter much anymore.
An instant later, a rush of warmth washed over Rick’s body, growing first in his chest and lungs before spreading across his extremities to the tips of his fingers and toes, as though he was slowly sinking into a warm bath. It was euphoric. In the midst of his content, it occurred to Rick that his fingers were still wrapped around the smooth grip of the dagger. He was clasping it tight as it pulsed rhythmically, sending tingling vibrations up from his palm and into his torso.
Around him was utter darkness but he wasn’t asleep, nor did he feel any fear. With no warning, Rick rocked backwards, seemingly defying gravity until he was staring down at his slumbering body from above. Only one thought occurred, and as it spawned in his mind, it seemed to echo out loud. “Am I dead?”
“No. However, you will be in about eighteen seconds unless you steer hard left. Your friend Sanjay Adat has fallen asleep at the wheel. He is about to leave the road and you are going to hit a seventeenth-century oak tree, fatally injuring you both. I cannot allow you to die here, not when there is still so much to be done.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Steer left. Now.”
A sickening sense of cold poured down Rick’s throat, as though he was being dragged beneath the surface of freezing waters. After a second of trying to fight it, the force became utterly irresistible and he plunged back towards reality and his own body that waited like an empty vessel somewhere in the abyss far below.
Rick’s consciousness snapped back into his body and the freezing, coffin-like vehicle. He turned towards Sanjay and froze in terror. His friend was slumped back in the chair, his hands clasped on the wheel and his foot still on the accelerator, but his eyes were closed and his head was bobbing up and down against his own shoulder with each bump of the road.
In a battle with overwhelming exhaustion, Rick grabbed feebly at the steering wheel and yanked it towards the passenger side with every ounce of strength his muscles could manage. The tires of the car screamed as rubber burned against tarmac and billowed smoke.
Sanjay kicked his foot down onto the brakes and both men went limp, temporarily weightless under the G-force of the skid. The car slowed fast, but not fast enough. Two pairs of wheels thudded, one after the other as they mounted the grassy bank ahead, the exact scenario Rick had been trying to avoid.
The trunk of a massive oak tree and its limbs loomed into view, like an ungodly gargantuan spider charging at them out of the night. Unable even to raise his arms, Rick held his breath and braced for impact.
A thundering roar exploded from the bonnet as the front driver’s side met the bulk of the trunk. White-hot needles of sound pierced his eardrums as the sound reverberated through the back of his teeth up into his head. A mosaic of glass shards threw themselves forwards from the hole where the windscreen used to be. Two airbags deployed a millisecond later, but the front of the car had already folded the entire way up the steering column.
As they came to a dead halt, the high-pitched squeal and echoes of twisting metal still bounced around inside Rick’s head. He turned to Sanjay and immediately regretted it. His friend’s face was battered and bleeding, his skin grey, his glasses shattered, and blood smeared across the white nylon fabric of the airbag.
A warm swelling once again rose up from somewhere deep within. An acidic mixture of yellow bile and vomit erupted from Rick’s mouth across the dashboard and splashed back across his face and chest.
When control of his own body returned, Rick forced his fingers to the plastic buckle and released the seatbelt. Unsure where the strength came from, he pushed open the bent metal door with a grunt and fell face down onto the cold, dew-covered grass. His left hand fumbled at his side, hoping to find a phone in his pocket, but it was long gone.
‘‘Sorry,” Rick murmured in confusion trying to look back towards Sanjay. His mind was already swirling and clouding, the ringing in his ears grew to a roar. “I just need to rest for a minute.”
5
Strobing blue lights somewhere off to the left shook Rick awake. A balding paramedic with a friendly pink face was leaning over him, talking while he worked. It was a struggle to make out any sounds as the paramedic spoke, just scraps of words falling from his flapping mouth and a distant wail of sirens in the background. Rick’s head was pounding, a sickening thud-thud in time with his heartbeat, as though his skull was being played like a bass drum.
To his right a team of firemen were cutting into the roof of the Ford Focus with an enormous pneumatic blade. The car was wrecked, all that remained was a mangled hunk of steel and plastic. Then he remembered Sanjay in the front seat and tried to shout; Rick’s voice barely made a sound but instead incited a fit of coughing.
The paramedic strapped Rick into a stretcher with soft but forceful hands. At some point, his neck had been braced, when exactly it had happened wasn’t clear. But he was now locked in position, staring up at thousands of glimmering stars in a cloudless sky.
Out of the corner of his eye, Rick could just about make out Sanjay’s body on a similar device. He tried to see if his friend was moving, but it was too dark, too far and he couldn’t turn his damn head. Both men were wheeled into the back of separate ambulances. The blazing white lights stung his eyes, and the sour, chemical scent of cleaning fluid conjured up memories of visiting the school nurse as a child. God, he’d hated that grumpy old bitch.
The next thing Rick knew they were moving. The ambulance streaked forwards, bouncing up and down and rocking side to side along the winding country roads. He tried to recall the seconds before the crash, hoping for reassurance that Sanjay was still alive. Rick remembered the electric pulse of the dagger in hand, glimpses of the trees coming out of the darkness, then nothing. The overwhelming urge to rest swelled up once again and his eyes closed.
✽✽✽
For a long time, Rick faded in and out of drugged up, lucid dreams. There were flashes of figures in green hospital uniforms moving around him, their silhouettes illuminated beneath the pulsing white lights. He realised at some point that he was making nonsensical conversations both with the staff and himself, but it was all distant and disconnected.
Whenever someone got close, Rick tried to ask about Sanjay, but most of the time it was impossible to even tell whether he was dreaming or awake. It felt like just minutes were passing by, but with each stolen glimpse at the clock on the far wall, the hours seemed to lurch forwards.
When Rick next awoke, the drugs had started to fade from his system and reality had become a great deal clearer. Pulled up to his chest were the itchy, sterile sheets of a hospital bed. It was dark all around, except for white light spilling in through the glass porthole on the door to his right, throwing long shadows out from the corner of the room. People were passing up and down every few minutes and stopping at a nearby station. Besides muffled footsteps and low chatter, the blip of the heart monitor to the left rang out every few seconds.
Rick followed the wires with his fingers from the machine down to his chest. Another tube from the back of his hand ran up to a bag suspended above the bed, feeding him a clear liquid drip by drip. Upon seeing the solution trickling downwards into his bloodstream, his mind kicked back into action. You need to find out if Sanjay’s okay.
The matted knot of cords and cables made it impossible for Rick to roll over. He tugged on the insertion in the top of his hand and a jolt of pain gave him second thoughts about trying to remove it on his own.
Finding a red switch encased in a white plastic cone at the end of one the wires, Rick traced it back to the wall. There was an outlined figure of a nurse in green on a placard. He pressed it several times and a yellow LED bulb flashed in acknowledgement, but no one came. He hammered away for another few minutes before a youn
g, plain-looking nurse rushed in, the shadowy room emphasising the dark circles under her eyes.
“What is it?”
“My friend, is he alive?”
“Oh Jesus,” she said, “I thought you had a serious problem or something.”
“Sorry, but can you help me please?”
“You came in with the older man, mid-forties, right?”
“Yeah.”
“As far as I know, he’s stable. Some mild head trauma and broken bones in his arm, but he’ll live.”
“Ah, thank God.” Rick dropped back down onto the bed. His head hit the cheap sponge pillow, awash with the overpowering chemical stench of industrial detergent, and he let out a sigh of relief.
“Now get some rest,” the nurse said, “You’ll need to be checked over in the morning, then if everything is okay you can be discharged and go see him yourself.”
Rick lay back trying to ignore the twinges of pain in his shoulder and chest. It was uncomfortable but nowhere near as bad as he should have received from a crash of that magnitude. It couldn’t just be luck that both he and Sanjay had escaped with such minor injuries. Could it? What was that voice? It had all seemed so real.
✽✽✽
As fingers of warm morning sun stretched out across the room, Rick was shaken awake by a male nurse in green scrubs. A few seconds later, a young woman entered with a clipboard under her arm and a stethoscope around her neck. Despite looking about fifteen years old, with a braid hanging off the back of her head and big round glasses, the badge on this girl’s white coat proclaimed her to be a doctor.
The young woman shone a light in his eyes and took his blood pressure, then prodded at his neck, shoulders and upper back for the next few minutes. Moving down to the end of the bed, the doctor examined a series of MRI images clipped to a brown paper file and asked him an endless checklist of questions about his medical history and health. As someone who spent most of his time outside, Rick was in pretty good shape for his age.
Despite the numerous superficial injuries—aches, bruises and cuts—his body appeared to be near enough unscathed. He had no headache, no neck injuries, no broken bones at all. Even so, it took him off guard to be given the all clear so soon after a horrific wreck.
“It’s extremely lucky neither of you were killed,” the young doctor said as she wrote up a prescription and patted it down on the bedside table.
Luck had nothing to do with it. Rick’s own actions had either saved both his and Sanjay’s lives or had caused the accident in the first place. Honestly, it seemed that the latter was probably more likely.
“Just make sure you take it easy for a few days and keep an eye on your health,” she said, “some injuries might not always appear right away.”
“Okay, will do. Thanks.”
It was ten-fifteen when a policeman, roughly the same age as Rick, wearing a white shirt and a black stab vest, shook him back awake. From the look on the officer’s face, he had reluctantly been taken off a patrol somewhere to come and take a statement. Rick immediately asked about his things, making it look like he cared about the coins and his phone, trying not to draw too much attention to the one thing that really had him excited.
The policeman sidestepped the question and insisted on taking a full account of the events before the crash. Rick explained as best he could while deliberately omitting Sanjay being asleep at the wheel and his insane out-of-body experience, while the officer scribbled his words in a notebook and nodded along.
“Thank you mate,” he said, seeming satisfied when the story was finished. “Just so you know, there were some personal items collected from around the crash site, a bag, a phone and a few other things. Most of them were handed in to the hospital and you can collect them this morning. However, the coins you mentioned have been taken for review under the Domestic Treasures Act. I’m sure someone’ll get back to you once they’ve been examined.”
“You can’t be serious?” Rick flared with anger; he knew the policy well. Legally, all items that could be classed as ‘treasure’ had to be reported but it was basically an honour system and most people who made small finds would skip it. Unfortunately, this decision had been taken from him. If Rick ever heard anything about his coins again it would probably be from some government office years from now. They’d offer him a paltry sum to decline or accept, losing his find either way.
“It’s out of my hands. Besides, if you want to walk out of here and not straight into a cell for the night, I’d advise you to calm your tone.”
“Fine.” Rick ground his teeth. “What about the knife?”
“I think it was left with your bag. Rusty old tools don't hold their value quite as well as gold.” The officer smiled, obviously amusing himself with his own wit, or lack thereof. Rick’s lower jaw clenched even tighter. Fucking Thieves.
“Your friend’s wife has been notified about the accident; she’ll be here in a few hours. Would you like to wait with him until she arrives?”
Not a chance in hell, Rick thought and winced. Misha wasn’t exactly keen on him to begin with and definitely wasn’t going to let this one slide. “I suppose so.”
“Of course, the car’s a write-off too. Is there someone I can call to come and collect you?”
“No.” He was a little embarrassed to admit it, but probably the only person he could count on to help him out was lying dosed up on morphine across the hall.
Sitting sat at Sanjay’s side, lost in thought, three hours rolled by fast. His friend was heavily sedated, his face was badly bruised, there were gashes beneath his eye and on his jaw and his right forearm and wrist were both fractured, but things could’ve been a lot worse.
It was twenty to four when the infamous Mrs. Misha Adat arrived. Rick could hear the approaching shitstorm long before she even got close. Rather than postponing the inevitable, he advanced like a soldier on a suicide mission to meet her head on in the corridor.
The very best of Rick’s apologetic arsenal wasn’t nearly enough to appease the furious, overweight Kerali woman. Fortunately, just fifteen minutes of ranting and raging, coupled with threats of ejection from the hospital security staff, passed before Misha began to meet what would be considered a normal volume.
The young doctor from earlier in the day arrived soon after. She informed the pair that Sanjay would need to stay in for at least two or three more days of observation before discharge could even be considered.
Rather than hang around where he clearly wasn’t wanted, Rick reclaimed his belongings and left, taking the shuttle bus from the hospital into the nearest town.
After finally managing to locate a station, Rick bought a ticket on the cheapest coach heading vaguely in the direction of Reading. He was soon slumped down on a sticky, Velcro-like seat, lost in a swirling current of relief, excitement and regret at the prospect of making it home.
Between bouts of something almost like sleep, Rick struggled to make sense of the moments before the crash. Something about the voice was too real, too lucid to have been a dream. He toyed with the idea of God and divine intervention for about thirty seconds before dismissing it as sentimental horseshit. He had to find out what had really happened, and there was only one way to do that, no matter how much it scared him.
6
Rick got to the door of his building at six-fifteen on Tuesday morning. He was exhausted, pissed off, and in pain. Yet despite all this, a sense of excitement wouldn’t abate.
It took a good ten minutes to drag his bruised and battered body up the steel staircase to the third floor. Rick let himself inside and threw his backpack down onto the coffee table in the living room.
The moment the weight was off his aching feet, Rick’s mind was suddenly racing. Instead of getting the food, rest and recuperation he badly needed, Rick was right back to it.
He scoured the spare bedroom—that had basically become his tool shed since Ellie had stopped staying over—scattering books and hardware across the floor in a frenzy. It didn’t ta
ke long to locate the item he was looking for. Rick lugged out a white plastic rectangle, about the size of a microwave from where it sat covered with dust and cobwebs at the back of an eight-foot pile of boxes.
He brought the small chemical bath unit through to his living room and took the retaining tray to the kitchen for a quick rinse in the sink. It should have been sterilised with boiling water and methylated spirits, but there was no way he had the patience for that.
Rick dried off the tray and reassembled it on the coffee table, running the electrical lead into a socket by the window. He donned a pair of bright yellow washing up gloves from the kitchen and filled the inside tray with a mix of nitric acid and caustic soda—two items that every good scavenger was practically required to store by the gallon.
In an attempt not to come into contact with the metal directly, Rick gripped the handle using a pair of surgical forceps. With the tip of his tongue clenched between his teeth, he lowered the blade into the solution with everything above the hilt sitting upwards out of the liquid.
The chemical bath instantly fizzed and bubbled—a promising sign. It would take at least two hours for the solution to work its magic, so Rick flicked on the TV.
He’d been hoping for a sufficient distraction but knew from experience, this was hard to come by on Tuesday morning. Normally, he didn’t mind watching people trying to flog their old crap at auction or look for holiday homes but today he could barely even focus on the screen.
Deciding the time would go faster with the sweet punch of caffeine, Rick brewed a pint of bitter black coffee and forced half a packet of soft chocolate digestive biscuits down his throat with it.
