Written In Blood

by Alex R Carver

  “Half-six,” Zack answered. “And no, I’m not out of my mind, at least not as far as I know. I’m going for a run because I’m awake and I’ve got energy to burn, now are you coming or not?” Before Sophie could respond, he said, “I’m going to put the kettle on and finish getting myself ready; I’ll be heading out the door in about fifteen, with or without you.” He exited the room, leaving Sophie staring after him with an expression that would have killed him, were it possible for a look to do so.

  Sophie leaned over and retrieved the duvet, which she pulled up until it covered her so completely she was no longer troubled by the light filling the room. She remained like that for a little over a minute before deciding to give in to what she knew was inevitable; as much as she wanted to go back to sleep, she had promised Zack she would stick with him until his troubles were over, and that was what she was going to do.

  Reluctantly, she threw back the quilt and got to her feet so she could head to the bathroom and get herself ready. It didn’t take her long, and she was soon in the kitchen doorway, accepting a mug of coffee from Zack, who handed it to her with an amused smile on his lips.

  “I hate you,” she said, though that didn’t stop her sipping eagerly at the drink, desperate to wake herself up.

  “No you don’t,” Zack told her “You just hate mornings. You’re like Garfield, you hate mornings and Mondays, and you love Lasagne. Now hurry up and drink your coffee, I want to get going.”

  Sophie regarded her friend over the top of her mug. “Why don’t I just break your leg or something and then go back to bed?” she asked.

  “’cause you’d have to catch me first.” Zack dodged past her and headed for the front door. He stopped just outside to do some stretching exercises while he waited for Sophie, who didn’t take long to join him. Despite his joking, he knew that if Sophie wanted to catch him, she could, and probably without too much effort; his injuries aside, he was a fairly fit person, but Sophie was one of those blessed people who remained in great shape no matter what they ate or drank, and without the need to do any exercise at all.

  “Can I ask you something?” Sophie asked as she set off down the road at her friend’s side, Zack’s spare water bottle in one hand.

  “Of course you can, anything, you know that.” Since he wasn’t sure how his ankle was going to hold up, it felt fine while walking but running was different, he started them off slow, which meant they had plenty of breath for talking.

  “Where were you last night?”

  Zack frowned as he looked ahead, keeping an eye on the road. “What d’you mean?”

  Sophie turned her head to study her friend for a moment. “I woke up in the night,” she said. “Must have been around one, needing a pee, so I got up and went to check on you while I headed to the bathroom. You weren’t in bed, and you weren’t anywhere in the house, I checked. And just when I was heading back to bed, worried obviously, I heard a car head up the road.”

  “You can’t have looked very hard,” Zack remarked. “I was in the back garden.”

  “What the hell were you doing out there? It must have been freezing.”

  “It wasn’t too bad,” Zack said with a shrug. “A little brisk, but nothing more than that. I was sitting on my rusty old bench, contemplating everything that’s happened since I moved here; trying to decide what I’m going to do.”

  “And?”

  A ghost of a smile touched Zack’s lips. “I decided that moving here is just about the worst thing I’ve ever done; few people have made any effort to get to know me, I haven’t been any more productive with my writing than I would’ve been if I’d stayed in Southampton, and the first chance they got, just about everyone who lives here decided I’m a rapist and a murderer.

  “I can understand them wanting to believe it’s me, a stranger, rather than someone they’ve known for most, if not all, their lives, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about it. Worst of all, being here makes it tough for me to see Joanne, and I miss her.”

  Sophie didn’t need to be told that last, she knew just how much Zack missed his daughter, she also knew why he had moved away – to escape the situation with his ex-wife, where she had made it almost impossible for him to see his daughter. She didn’t agree with Zack’s decision to move away, she thought he should have stayed and fought, but she could understand it.

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “What can I do? I’m stuck,” Zack said unhappily. “Between paying for the house and the cars, and my other bills, and the child support Cathy convinced the judge to set, I’m only just making ends meet. Moving here took what savings I had, it’s going to be a while before I’ve got any spare cash I can do anything with, especially with the royalty cheques only coming in every quarter.” His frustration was obvious. “I’d move back to Southampton if I could, but it’s going to take at least a year to come up with the money to do that, assuming I can find a buyer for the house, which is doubtful after everything that’s happened here. I definitely won’t be able to find a quick buyer, not one who’s willing to pay the full value of the house, and without that I’m stuck here.”

  “Why don’t we sit down with a nice, big fry-up when we get back and see if we can’t figure out a way to get you back to Southampton quicker than that,” Sophie said, reaching out to give Zack a reassuring pat on the arm. “If it comes to the worst, you can always borrow my spare room.”

  51

  Tara climbed the stairs slowly, carrying a pile of washing she had just taken from the dryer. The washing had been there since Sunday but she hadn’t given it a thought, she was only doing anything with it now because her brother wanted her to empty the laundry baskets and put the washing on before she headed off to school.

  School was the last place she wanted to go, she couldn’t keep her mind on the things she wanted to do, let alone the things she didn’t, but Kieran was insistent, and while their dad was away he was in charge.

  When she reached the top of the stairs she crossed to the door of her sister’s bedroom, or rather the doorway since there was no longer a door, and stopped. A voice in her mind, which sounded a lot like her father’s, told her she was being silly, but she couldn’t bring herself to enter the room where her sister had been attacked, just the thought of doing so made her shiver uncomfortably.

  Standing in the doorway, she threw the pile of laundry. It landed untidily on the bed, at least most of it did, two pairs of socks went astray, they fell off the bed and rolled under it. Tara swore, and immediately regretted doing so, if her father had been there to hear, he would have threatened her with his belt. She hesitated in the doorway, reluctant to enter, after all it was going to be a while before her sister was back and in need of her clothes, but her father’s voice in her mind kept her from doing so - he would never approve of her not tidying up a mess she had made.

  It took her a few moments, but finally she did what her father would have wanted, she entered the room and got on her hands and knees so she could retrieve the socks. She found them easily enough, though it was a bit of a stretch to get the second pair, but that was not all she found.

  Dropping the socks onto the bed, Tara sat and stared curiously at the pink mobile phone she had discovered; it wasn’t her sister’s, she knew that, Emily’s phone was on the bedside cabinet, which left her wondering whose it was, and how it came to be under her sister’s bed. She pressed the power button on the top of the phone and watched the screen while she waited for it to turn on.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  Tara’s head whipped around. “Nothing,” she said quickly, flushing under her brother’s gaze. “I brought Em’s clothes in and some of the socks fell under the bed.”

  “So what are you doing sitting on it, and what’s that in your hand?” Kieran went cold when he saw the pink of the object in his sister’s hand and realised what she was holding. “Where did you get that?” he wanted to know.

  Tara looked down at her hand. “I found it,
it was under the bed. It’s not Emily’s.” Automatically, she pressed the power button again.

  “Give it to me.” Kieran held out his hand expectantly.

  For a brief moment, the phone turned on and Tara saw who it belonged to before the almost completely dead battery cut out again. “This is Georgie’s phone,” she said in surprise. “How did it get here? We should call the police, tell them we’ve found it.”

  Kieran ignored that suggestion. “Give it to me. I’ll deal with it.” He stepped closer to his sister, hand outstretched. “I said give me the phone.” When Tara continued to hold onto the phone he lunged for her.

  Tara was not the brightest kid in her class, let alone her year, but nor was she was a dummy, far from it. When Kieran lunged for the phone in her hand, her brain made a connection between Emily being attacked, her finding Georgina’s phone under Emily’s bed, and Zack Wild being released by the police.

  “It was you!” Tara couldn’t keep the horror she felt from her voice, though it did freeze her in place momentarily. Only when she felt her brother’s fingers on her hand as he sought to pry the phone from her grasp did she react physically. Snatching her hand away from Kieran’s, she scrambled backwards across the bed; she reached the other side quicker than she expected and fell to the floor before she could stop herself. She got back to her feet as quickly as she could and darted for the doorway.

  “Why are you doing this?” she sobbed when Kieran interposed himself between her and the door, forcing her to halt abruptly and hurriedly jump back out of reach.

  “You’re just like all the rest,” Kieran told his little sister in a voice that was so harsh it was almost unrecognisable. “A nosey, whiney, ignorant, little bitch, who won’t do what she’s told. Give me the phone, that’s all you had to do, that’s all Em had to do as well, if she’d done that I wouldn’t have had to hurt her. I didn’t even realise Georgie dropped it in my car till Em found it, which she wouldn’t have done if she hadn’t been a nosey bitch.”

  As he talked, he advanced on his sister, a crazed look on his face that made her think him a stranger rather than the brother she had known all her life. It didn’t seem possible that she could have known him for so long without seeing this side of him. Fearful, she backed away from him, her eyes darting left and right as she tried to figure out a way to escape; she couldn’t come up with any possibilities while he was between her and the door, and she almost threw the phone she held at him as a distraction so she could slip past and out of the room. Some instinct told her she needed to keep hold of it, however, to show the police.

  Tara’s retreat came to a halt when her legs hit Emily’s bed and she tumbled backwards onto it, sprawling in an inelegant fashion. Before she could recover, Kieran was on her.

  Kieran leapt onto the bed to stop his sister getting away, and reached quickly for the hand that held the phone which had caused him so many problems. Tara held onto it with a strength and a tenacity he wouldn’t have expected of her, it forced him to use both hands to try and pry her fingers away from the phone, which prevented him defending himself as she struck at him again and again and strove to push him off and away.

  When she failed to accomplish anything that way - her brother showed little concern for her flailing fist - Tara groped blindly with her free hand for something she could use as a weapon. She was desperate, certain that Kieran was going to get the phone from her at any moment, and her hand closed around the first object it touched, her sister’s radio alarm clock. Tara swung the clock with all her might, smashing it into the side of her brother’s head.

  “Fuck!” Kieran’s curse carried equal parts surprise and pain, and he abandoning his effort to get the phone from Tara so he could focus instead on disarming her, before she could hit him again.

  Tara tried to hit her brother with the alarm clock for a second time, and when she failed she dropped it in favour of another tactic. She had never been in a fight before, certainly not one where her life was in danger, but some instinct told her that her best chance of getting away involved going for the eyes, and with that in mind she reached for his face. At the same time she struggled to get out from under her brother, moving her body in ways she wouldn’t previously have thought it capable of managing as she sought to heave him off her; she didn’t think much of her chances, he had her well and truly pinned, so it came as a complete surprise when he suddenly fell away, leaving her free.

  Her body reacted to the situation before her brain could fully comprehend that the weight pinning her down was gone. She rolled off the bed, going in the opposite direction to that in which Kieran had fallen, and darted for the doorway. She made it out of the bedroom before she heard her brother give chase, and that gave her enough of a lead to make it downstairs and to the front door ahead of him.

  She was moving with such haste that she hit herself with the door when she yanked it open; it bounced shut off her foot, forcing her to open it a second time to escape the house.

  Kieran leapt the last half dozen or so steps, one hand outstretched towards his sister. His fingers closed on empty air, however, as he missed Tara by the thinnest of margins. By the time he recovered, she was across the yard and at the gateway. He set off after her but stopped almost immediately, even if he had been closer, he doubted he would have been able to catch his sister, at least not on foot – she was much faster than him. Instead of continuing the pursuit as a footrace, which he was bound to lose, he altered direction and hurried over to his Land Rover.

  It started the moment he turned the key in the ignition – given how temperamental it was usually, he took that as a sign that he was meant to catch Tara and keep her from telling anyone about the things he had done. Shifting into gear, he raced out of the yard and down the road after his sister.

  Tara couldn’t help looking back over her shoulder when she heard the Land Rover start up, in doing so she lost sight of where she was putting her feet and stumbled. She hit the ground heavily, bashing her knees on a stone and scraping the skin from her palms, leaving them raw and bloody; she was too stunned to cry out, in pain or otherwise, she simply pushed herself to her feet and continued down the road, albeit with a limp. Her pace was much slower than before, and she was afraid her brother was going to catch her, which was almost certain since he was in a Land Rover and she was on foot, but there was nothing she could do except keep going and hope for a miracle.

  She had gone just a couple of slow and painful steps following her fall when she saw something that gave her hope. A distance away, but getting closer, were two people, a man and a woman.

  “Help!” she called out. “Please help!”

  52

  Zack was almost home, having abandoned his usual five-mile run after less than a mile of jogging because of the pain from both his ankle and his back, when he heard the cry. He halted abruptly, which prompted a fresh spasm, and looked around for the person calling for help; almost immediately he saw the girl running towards him, he also saw the Land Rover speeding down the road behind her.

  He started up the road at the same walking pace he had used to get home, but quickly sped up when he saw that the Land Rover was angled in a way that would see it run down the young girl, whom he suspected was Tara Wright. The pain that had cut short his morning run magnified the moment he accelerated, reaching a crescendo as he hit sprinting speed, but he ignored it and focused on reaching the girl who appeared to be in danger.

  Somehow, and he had no idea how, Zack managed to reach Tara before the Land Rover did. Grabbing her, threw her over the wall into the field on the other side of it; he launched himself over right after, landing heavily just beyond the ditch at the edge of the field before rolling to place his body protectively over Tara’s. He barely had time to do that before the Land Rover struck the wall, almost exactly where he and Tara had gone over it. A section of the wall was knocked down by the impact and Zack felt several pieces of debris hit him in the back, adding to his pain.

  Zack continued to protect Ta
ra with his body until he heard the Land Rover drive away. He pulled himself off her then and slowly and painfully got to his feet so he could look around; when he saw the Land Rover was heading down the road towards the village, he reached down to help Tara to her feet.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, and immediately felt like an idiot for doing so – she had just been picked up and thrown into a field to keep from being run down by her own brother, at least that was who he guessed had been behind the wheel; he very much doubted she was alright.

  Tara didn’t answer the question because she couldn’t. Now that she was back on her feet, and no longer running for her life, she was overcome by shock; she began trembling uncontrollably and couldn’t stop. Even when Zack wrapped her in his arms to try and comfort her, she continued to tremble, she trembled so violently her teeth chattered.

  Zack knew enough about shock to realise that he was unlikely to be able to help the teen while they remained in the field. “Come on, let’s get you out of here. My friend, Sophie, will make you a nice cup of tea while I take care of that knee,” he said with a glance down at the bloody mess he hoped had not been caused when he threw her over the wall, “and you tell me what’s going on.”

  Tara allowed herself to be led through the corn towards the gate. It would have been easier if they had climbed over the wall and made their way along at the side of the road, she baulked at doing so when Zack suggested it, however. It was just as well she did, for they had not gone far when the Land Rover raced back up the road. A fresh tremor, this time caused by fear rather than shock, went through her as Kieran fixed her with a look of pure hatred on his way past.