by Mark Gordon
Chapter 5
Bodies
Matt screamed and fell backwards as the animal jumped from beneath the bed. With his eyes closed tightly, he flailed his arms around to protect his face from a savage attack, as he hit the bedroom floor. The animal pounced on him as he tried to punch it away with his unprotected fists. He braced himself as he waited for the beast to sink its teeth into his bare throat. In his terrified state it took Matt a couple of seconds to realise that he was only in danger of receiving a severe smooching from a large frightened Labrador.
“Shit! Elvis boy! You nearly gave me a friggin’ heart attack.”
Matt cuddled the hysterical dog and scratched him behind the ears until he started to calm down. “Elvis, where is everyone boy? What’s going on?”
The dog just wagged its tail as the pair looked at each other. Matt certainly felt a lot better about having a companion now, even if it was only the neighbour’s dog, but he still had to solve the problem of where everybody had gone. He knew that he needed to check that last bedroom before he left the house, if only to satisfy himself that he wasn’t scared. He stepped out into the hallway.
“C’mon Elvis, let’s go,” he coaxed.
But the dog remained behind him, staring towards the closed bedroom door. Matt grabbed Elvis by the collar and tried to pull him along gently, but even then dog wouldn’t budge. 'Looks like I am doing this on my own,' he thought, as he walked towards the last door. He looked back at Elvis, who was now peeking sheepishly around the doorway, and took a deep breath. He had always thought of himself as a reasonably brave person, but this day was doing its best to ruin that illusion. He had almost wet his pants when Elvis tried to kill him with affection, and now he was having second thoughts about opening this damned door. Maybe he didn’t need to. After all, this was not his house and he really had no right to be poking around in here when the owners weren’t home. But while it was within his power to turn around, walk out of the house, and go home to wait for his parents, Matt knew that it was never going to happen. Something was wrong, and he had to prove to himself that he was no coward, despite being scared stupid by an overfriendly Labrador three minutes earlier. He had made his decision. He turned the knob, pushed the door open and took one step into the Thompson’s bedroom. There was nobody in the room, and the only thing that seemed unusual to Matt was the unmade bed, because he’d heard his mum say that Mrs Thompson was tidiness freak. That bed should have been made by now. He went over to it and sat down to think.
He looked at himself in the mirrored wardrobe opposite the bed, and keep moving and head into town to try to find out what was going on. The Thompson’s house had been a bust. Matt was about to stand up and leave the room, when he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. Elvis had crept quietly up to the bedroom door and was now prostrate on the floor, head down on the carpet staring at the bed. Matt walked to the dog, who was now emitting a high-pitched whining sound as it continued to stare at the bed.
“What is it boy? What’s the matter? Is there a cat under there?”
Matt knew there was no cat under the bed, as much as that would have been his preferred choice. He crouched down, from the safety of the doorway, with one side of his face flat on the carpet. The bedspread reached almost to the floor, and in the small gap underneath he could see only darkness. Damn! He was going to have to look under another bed.
Matt edged into the room as Elvis’s whining became more frantic. Many thoughts were going through his mind as he attempted to work up the courage to lift the bedspread and peer beneath it, all of them unpleasant, but he needed to get it over with, and get out of that house as quickly as he could. He inched toward the bed, grabbed a handful of the cover and yanked it off the bed as he leapt backwards toward the doorway, but nothing jumped out at him, despite his heart thumping like it was going to burst. At the door Elvis continued to whine, and Matt knew that he still needed to look under the bed. From his position alongside the dog in the doorway he crouched down on all fours and peered into the gloomy space once more.
For a second Matt thought his eyes were deceiving him. The vision before him made no sense.
Mr Thompson was lying on his back under the bed. Dead.
Without taking time to think, Matt moved to the motionless form and began to shake him and call his name. When there was no response, he grabbed the man by the arm and, with considerable effort, dragged him out into the open, while Elvis whined frantically in the background. Matt’s head was spinning from shock. Then, as he bent over Mr Thompson’s seemingly lifeless form to try to feel a heartbeat, he noticed, to his horror, another body under the bed. It was Mrs Thompson. He lay down on his stomach, grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her out, until she was lying alongside her husband.
Now Matt was not only totally confused, but also extremely panicky. He needed to act. Luckily, his farming background had given him an excellent understanding of first aid practices, and he decided to use them now. He ripped open Mr Thompson’s shirt and put his ear to the big man’s chest, and was relieved to find that there was a very faint, but slightly irregular heartbeat. Clearly he was alive. He checked Mrs Thompson and found that she was in a similar condition to that of her husband. Deciding that he needed some kind of medical assistance, he ran downstairs to the phone to call for help. Matt picked up the phone in the kitchen and put it to his ear. It was dead. He ran his hands through his hair as he tried to work out what to do. He realised that he had very few options. He knew there was nothing he could do for the Thompsons other than monitor them, but he also needed to go into town to try to find out where his parents were. Was it right to leave the couple alone upstairs while he went for help? As he thought this through, he knew that it was really his only option, given the crazy circumstances he found himself in. He would feel bad leaving them behind, but he knew he had no choice. He needed to find help. Matt ran to the car and noticed that Elvis was right behind him. As he opened the door and climbed into the cab of the ute, the dog jumped up and over his lap into the passenger seat. He closed the door, patted the dog on the head and headed into town.
