by Uc Amalu, Jr
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Everything in his body was screaming that something was
wrong. Danni had said that she would be at Bluey’s
tonight, and according to Tadpole she had even asked for
the night off. Jay slipped his cruiser into overdrive and
pressed his foot down a little harder. The needle on the
speedometer rose. With the phone clamped between his
ear and his shoulder, dialling out, he made another turn
and hit the accelerator again. The adrenalin was pumping
through his veins and his heart was thudding against his
chest.
Answer the damn phone, Danni, ‛ he cried into his mobile.
It rang out and the call ended. Jay slipped it back into
his breast pocket and gripped the steering wheel with
both hands. Thoughts of Kylie-Anne and Marla were
running through his head. He envisioned their naked,
ravaged bodies lying still on one of Augie’s metal
gurneys. The visions frightened him almost to the point
of madness. He made one last turn onto Cloverdale Street
and slowed the cruiser to a snails pace. Jay rolled to a
stop in front of Danni’s house, the lights were all off apart
from a dull glow emulating from her bedroom window at
the side of the house. He scanned the yard for signs of
anything out of the ordinary, apart from the fact that the
spare pavers she had sitting next to the steps were gone,
all appeared to be as it should be. His hand pulled the
phone from his pocket and he dialled her number again.
He let it completely ring out before hitting the end button.
His eyes kept a close watch on the glow in her bedroom
window. It was still there. Maybe she had fallen asleep
watching T.V in her bedroom, he didn’t even know if she
had a television in there, but now wishes he did.
It only took a few more seconds to make the decision to
knock on her door. He figured it was far better to wake her
and know she was alright, than to leave her and find out
that she was not alright. Jay opened the cruiser door
and stepped out onto the roadside. He turned and faced
the house just in time to see the dim glow in Danni’s
bedroom fade out completely. Alarm bells sounded in his
head and tingles ran through him. Something was
definitely not right, he could feel it. He reached back into
the cruiser and hit the button on the glove box. It fell
open and his gun lay inside. Jay grabbed it out, opened
the chamber and checked the bullets. They were all
loaded. With his gun in hand he wiggled back out of the
cruiser and onto the road, leaving the driver’s side door
open he made his way onto the footpath and into Danni’s
yard.
In the darkness, it was difficult to negotiate the unsteady
pavers of the pathway beneath his feet. Once or twice he
nearly stumbled and fell before he eventually managed to
reach the steps. One step at a time he climbed up to the
porch and stopped dead at the front door, his eyes
peered through the tiny pane of bubble glass on the
front. He could see nothing but darkness. His hands
began to sweat around the body of the gun, he took turns
at wiping each one on his jeans until they felt drier and
sturdier around the weapon. With one ear pressed firmly
up against the door, Jay listened intently for any sound
but heard nothing but the chirping of summertime
crickets and the wind howling through the camphor laurel
tree around the side.
His mind was fighting a battle of it’s own. Should he bang
on the door and then look around or should he just look
around? If he banged on the door it would wake Danni
and she could let him in, no problems there. But if he
went snooping around and peeking through windows he
might frighten her and that could end up causing her to
panic and do something rash. In her condition, he
certainly didn’t want to frighten her, but he didn’t want to
simply walk away and dismiss her absence as nothing
either. He decided on the first option, bang on the door
and see what happens.
His fist thumped loudly against the timber of her front
door, three times. There was still nothing, not so much as
a stumbling sound of her tripping over anything in the
darkness, fumbling for a light switch. Again his fist beat
down hard on the door, he called out her name.
“Danni, it’s Jay.” He listened and still heard nothing. “Are
you in there? Are you okay?”
Something was really off, his thumps on the door were
enough to wake the dead and if she was in there, surely
she would have woken and answered the door.
“I’m coming in,” he yelled through the door. “Hold on,
Danni.”
Just as he was bracing himself to charge at her door, Jay
heard a faint thump and then the sound of glass
smashing. He peered through the bubble glass again and
saw a dark figure moving toward the back of the house. It
appeared to be slumped over or doubled up because it
was too short to be Danni. She must be injured. Jay
tightened his grip around his revolver and turned side on.
He took a couple of steps back from the door and then
pushed off his back foot and ran shoulder first, directly at
it.
Jay found himself laying face down on the hallway floor,
splinters of timber and glass below him and all around
him, the door barely hanging on the frame by it’s hinges.
His revolver was lying on the floor in front of him, just
inches away, his phone not far from it, smashed to pieces.
Shaking his head, he rose up onto his hands and knees
and began crawling like a baby in the direction of his gun.
Within seconds he gripped the butt and wrapped his
fingers around the trigger. A sharp, searing pain pierced
his hand. He looked up and saw a foot crushing his hand
back to the ground. His fingers spas-med under the
pressure and he lost his grip on the gun. The foot then
kicked the weapon away from him and moved behind
him, coming to rest in the middle of his back and pinning
him to the floor.
