‘Work faster.’
‘Why don’t you think of something?’
There was a long silence eventually Denny spoke.
‘We have a real problem,’ he said.
Then the power went out.
* * *
The candles flickered and flared in the darkness. The tall, thin man walked to the head of the table and addressed the figures sitting around it.
There were five of them; a “cabal” would have been an appropriate description, although, any sort of description would have been difficult to achieve in the half light. None of them looked directly at any of the others.
‘Gentlemen,’ said the thin man. (This was a disputable description; some of them did not even look human). ‘We have, as you are aware, hit a problem. Our – agent – is in need of assistance. I know – I know,’ he held up a hand. ‘But our enemies are moving faster than anticipated. There is one,’ here he nodded, and his audience murmured. ‘Yes, you know who I mean. So, do any of you have any suggestions?’
There was a long silence, and then one of the cabal spoke. ‘Uh, what was the problem again?’
The thin man sighed. This could take some time.
~ Chapter Six ~
Tamar was getting frantic; two days and no ideas, it was ridiculous. On reflection, it had probably been a bad idea to restore the power, but the hostages had panicked, whereas their captors had taken it calmly, as if they had been expecting it.
There seemed little chance of the Stockholm syndrome developing. The terrorists said little to their hostages. After the filming, they had tired quickly of bullying and all they did was watch silently in shifts. The leader had taken a few strolls among the hostages. He seemed to have a fascination with Tamar. On one occasion, when she had been pretending to sleep like the others, he had lit a large cigar and then deliberately dropped it on her. Without opening her eyes or moving a muscle more than was necessary, she caught it between her fingers and took a long drag before opening her eyes and smiling at him. After that, he avoided the hostages entirely and insisted that they all be tied up. Denny, who had seen this parlour trick, was annoyed and berated her at length – in silence of course. Until she explained, that she was trying to divert his malice toward herself to spare the others.
‘I want him to hate me,’ she explained. ‘Really hate me.’
Denny had to concede that it appeared to be working.
They had still made no demands or any threats that the hostages knew of. Their calm demeanour suggested that they were simply following orders, and those orders seemed to be simple enough. Keep the hostages tied up and watch them. All in all, the overriding feeling, even among the hostages, was boredom.
As far as Denny was concerned the whole thing had a surreal quality to it. He was conversant with the behaviour of bullies, and boredom usually resulted in bloodshed – as Denny’s hospital record from his schooldays would testify to. In the circumstances, then, their behaviour was abnormally restrained. And then there was their attitude towards Tamar, (and one other very pretty girl, come to that). There had been no leering, no suggestive remarks or fumbling hands. In fact, they seemed almost wary around her as if they somehow sensed or had been warned that one false move and she would break every bone in their face.
* * *
On the third day another man arrived, he carried no weapon and wore no mask. He had bleached white hair and, apparently, a bleached face, which contrasted sharply with his very dark eyes. ‘Like pissholes in the snow,’ as Tamar observed. He looked over the hostages and disappeared into an adjoining room without saying anything.
About half an hour later one of the others came in and started to untie Tamar. ‘Boss wants to see you,’ he said.
‘No!’ Denny cried out. Instinct told him that he did not want Tamar, even with all her power, to be alone with that ghoul. Something was dead wrong here. Incredibly he struggled to his feet and interposed himself between Tamar and the man, who immediately clapped the gun to Denny’s head and ordered him to sit down.
Denny froze automatically. Then he remembered that the guns were inert. On the other hand, he was tied up, wrists and ankles, and there was nothing to prevent a gun being used as a blunt instrument.
Tamar put out a hand and gently pushed the gun out of the way. She turned to Denny and smiled reassuringly. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll go.’ She smiled, kissed Denny’s cheek, and held out her hand to the man. ‘Shall we?’
As she reached the door she turned and snapped her fingers, she winked. Denny felt his ropes loosen suddenly.
What? Then he realised the moment had come. The man had left the door unlocked only two guards remained, and one of those was sleeping. It was probably a trap but what the hell? It was now or never. He did not stop to wonder what Tamar was going to do; he just hoped that his feeling about the white faced man was wrong.
* * *
The watcher was stationed in a dark alley waiting for Stiles who often used this route as a short cut home. The dark figures were clustering more thickly around him lately, and the watcher was worried. Time for some action
From an interesting vantage point, positioned in a handstand above the street on some handy scaffolding, the watcher could see that Stiles had picked up another stalker, a large, muscular man who moved with surprising stealth for someone so large.
Stiles himself was oblivious to all his shadows. He was staggering – drunk as a prom queen – that was something at least.
As Stiles turned into the alley, the dark figures attacked. The watcher was ready for this and swung down form the scaffolding pole in a smooth motion knocking two of them aside. The muscular man ran forward and grabbed another by the neck, flinging it easily into a wall. The watcher now recognised him as a friend and colleague of Stiles one of his subordinates. The watcher broke an iron bar off the scaffolding with amazing ease for such a slight person, and began batting heads with incredible speed and dexterity.
Stiles struggled from his stupor and recognised his friend. ‘Finchley?’ he said. ‘Is that you?’
The watcher turned to Finchley. ‘Take him home – I’ll deal with this.’
Finchley nodded; he was not, from the watcher’s observations, overly bright. But even he could see that the mysterious hooded figure, whose face he could not see, could handle this alone, and he should get his boss, who was his priority anyway, to safety.
In any case, Finchley was programmed to take orders without question – not one of life’s leaders.
The watcher called out after them as they lurched away. ‘Make sure you stay with him, and for God’s sake don’t let him sober up.’
‘What?’ Finchley was shocked. But the watcher was busy; Finchley shrugged and took his boss by the shoulders and guided him, swaying, away from the carnage.
* * *
They had treated Denny like a hero – there’s a first time for everything. Yet it had all been surprisingly easy, too easy really – or was he just being paranoid?
He had shaken off his ropes, lunged at the guard and hit him with a telephone; the guard had gone down with a grunt and lay still on the floor; Denny had grabbed his knife.
Then the sleeping guard had woken up and fired his gun at Denny with no discernible result. He had shaken it and looked down the barrel in confused fear, backing away as Denny rounded on him pointing the knife threateningly. He collapsed in a corner whimpering. Just to be sure, Denny took the gun from him and brought it down on his head with a sharp crack. The hostages cheered and Denny shushed them, pointing meaningfully at the door. He then cut their hands and feet free, and they stood up painfully cramped and crippled with pins and needles.
‘Come on,’ he whispered. In the outer room, they found the third guard lying dead over the bar.
‘Tamar?’ wondered Denny. The way was clear, however, so he sent the others out into the cloakroom and looked around for her. There was another door; it led to a small office. He went in; Tamar was there, white faced and sh
aking, there was no sign of the man with the blanched face and Denny did not ask. ‘Later,’ he thought.
Outside the police wrapped them in blankets and gave them cups of tea. A strangely orange complexioned TV journalist interviewed Denny, but, as he knew that Tamar would futz up the film in the camera, he was not overly worried about that.
When the news crews finally left, the police insisted that they all go to the hospital to be checked out, and they were bundled into ambulances. They slipped out at the hospital and Tamar teleported them home. In all the confusion, they were unlikely to be missed and, even if they were, hospital staff are far too busy (sneaking out to the car park for a crafty smoke) to go chasing after patients who don’t want to be helped.
* * *
‘That’s not journalism,’ said Denny switching off the TV, ‘that’s lying with style.’
‘I especially liked the part where the big bearded guy took your place as the hero of the hour,’ agreed Tamar laughing. She had completely recovered her equanimity, but had so far refused to discuss what had happened in the small room with the white faced man.
‘I’ll tell you sometime,’ she said evasively. ‘Just not now, don’t worry about it, he didn’t hurt me.’
‘But something happened,’ Denny persisted. ‘You were in a right state.’
Tamar looked shrewdly at him. ‘It wasn’t your fault you know. I don’t blame you; it was my choice; I knew what I was doing.’
Denny subsided; it would have to do, for now.
‘I wonder who those guys were – really,’ Denny was saying. ‘I don’t believe for one minute that they were escaped convicts like the TV said, we’d have heard about it before.’
‘I don’t think they know who they were either, they just have to say something.’
‘It makes you wonder.’
‘What?’
‘How much of what’s on TV is just a load of drivel.’
‘All of it, I’d say.’
‘At least entertainment shows are honest about the fact that it not supposed to be true.’
Tamar glanced outside; it was getting dark.
‘I have to go,’ she said, she held up a hand as Denny opened his mouth to offer to go with her.
‘I’ll see you later.’
She was not to know just how much later.
~ Chapter Seven ~
‘What do you mean, he’s gone?’
Finchley was backing away from the infuriated figure. Just because he could not see a face, did not mean that he could not still tell that the person inside the hood was snarling.
‘I – I couldn’t help it, he let them in and they took him. It was like he was in a trance.’
‘Damn it! You idiot, all you had to do was … you let him sober up, didn’t you?’
‘Of course. He’s an alcoholic – I … wait a minute. It was you, wasn’t it? You put him back on the drink again. Who are you? Why would you do such a thing?’
The figure pushed back the hood and Finchley gasped.
‘I had good reason; you’ll just have to trust me. Now, which way?’
Finchley pointed automatically then he suddenly moved himself into the figure’s path.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘You tell me what’s going on. What did you do to him? What are those …?’
The figure sighed. ‘I haven’t got time for this. I really am very sorry about this.’
‘About wh…?’ said Finchley before he sailed off to dreamland on the end of a right hook
* * *
D.C.I. Jack Stiles was flying. He had sobered up some time ago, but his head felt like it was full of pink cotton wool. He was feeling no surprise that he was up in the air. All he felt was a sense of calm contentment; it was like being drunk, only better. The world felt – right somehow. Everything was how it should be.
There were three of them, he thought through the fog in his head, beautiful women – angels perhaps. They were supporting him carrying him; they would not let him fall. They would protect him; it was wonderful; everything was wonderful. It did not matter that he could not even remember his name let alone where he was or how had got here. It was a familiar state of mind for him anyway.
Now he was lying on a cloud, the angels were there too. Was he in heaven? Had he died? Did it matter? Nothing mattered anymore this was bliss. ‘What’s in this stuff and where can I get some more?’
He noticed, as the fog in his head cleared a little, what appeared to be a door opening before him. ‘Uh oh, chucking out time.’
Snow blew in through it, and a figure appeared, silhouetted against a starry night.
The figure advanced, and his head cleared a little more. He struggled to focus – aware, now that it was weakening, that a strong influence was being exerted on his mind.
The figure raised both arms; enough focus had returned by now that he could see that he was in a large barn of some kind. Well, he thought philosophically, he’d sobered up in worse places.
He saw that the figure was small and that in each hand it held a large heavy looking crossbow. It fired them both at the same time. Two of the women at either side of him exploded in a shower of ash as the third one took off – literally, into the air, and the figure fell forward onto its knees in exhaustion. Stiles reclaimed his mind and darted forward to catch what he could now quite clearly see was a young woman. She collapsed into his arms and passed out. He stared down at her. What the hell?
She was dainty and beautiful although her face showed signs of a terrible strain; her hair was long and dark, and he found himself wondering, abstractly, what colour her eyes were. It was easier than trying to piece together what the hell was going on, who she was and what had happened he was not ready for that yet. It was like he was stuck in a nightmare, his worst trip ever.
Her eyes were dark blue. He saw this when they suddenly snapped open, and she simultaneously shot out an arm. She was not looking at him, but focussing over his shoulder; in her hand was a sharp stick. There was a shriek behind him and an explosion of ash, which landed all over both of them. The mysterious girl met his eyes briefly as she dropped her arm and then closed her eyes again.
The whole thing had taken about five seconds. ‘Those are some reflexes,’ he thought.
She seemed to be out for good this time, so Stiles laid her gently on a pile of hay and covered her with his jacket. He felt suddenly tired; he glanced at his watch, a little after one. Then he noticed the date, somehow he had lost three days. He noticed the snow blowing in the door and went to close it. Outside he saw miles and miles of empty snow-covered countryside. He was then, apparently, in the middle of nowhere with a comatose girl who had probably saved him from the proverbial “fate worse than death”. Tomorrow was going to be one of those days – the kind he had every day.
He wanted desperately to close his eyes, but a strange feeling was resurfacing from the past; was it – integrity? And he felt it incumbent on him to stay awake and keep watch while the girl recovered her strength. After all, there might be more of those – things out there. He reached into his pocket and drew out the whisky bottle and deliberately poured the remains of its contents away into the snow, what a waste. He then closed the door and lit a small fire with a pile of straw separated from the rest with a ring of small rocks, thoughtfully provided by the god of convenient coincidences, and settled down to wait for morning. Tomorrow he was going to want some answers, or, at the very least, a lift home and a lot of therapy.
~ Chapter Eight ~
Denny was worried; Tamar had been gone for three days with no contact, and it was the longest she had ever been away without so much as a message. He knew where she had gone and why but he could think of no reason why she should be silent. He had tried calling for her – nothing. She had telepathic abilities and normally she would have spoken to him by now. (She also carried a mobile phone, so she really had no excuses.)
She always called in one way or another, after the time he had lectured her about being inconsiderate and how
he worried etc. She had told him that she didn’t need a wife, given him curlers and a rolling pin to brandish and had followed him around for days making irreverent clucking noises until he almost decided to go to work. She still referred to him occasionally as “Mother hen”, but she had taken the point which was all that really mattered to him. He even thought that, deep down she was rather gratified to have someone who would worry about her.
He wished that he could get the face of the pale skinned man from the nightclub out of his mind. He had a bad feeling about him. If only she had talked to him about it; it was not like her to be uptight; it only made him even more nervous about the situation. Whatever the situation was.
The dreams had been getting worse too; he would have liked to talk to her about that as well. He wondered if the white faced man was the mysterious ‘He’ who was apparently coming.
He glanced at the clock; it was now almost four days since she had left. She had to be in trouble.
Well, he knew where she had gone; he would just have to go after her and try to trace her. To hell with the premonitions of doom, he was not getting anywhere trying to work it out anyway; he just did not have enough to go on. Action, that’s what he needed, to do something.
He grabbed a jacket, his wallet and a phone and stalked purposefully out of the flat; he got as far as the outer door when he turned back to get his shoes only to realise that he had forgotten his key.
He had picked up quite a few skills in the last year including opening locked doors with a credit card. The only problem was that Denny did not command the kind of salary that permitted having a credit card. He had a video club card, but, unfortunately, it was cardboard. He tossed it on the floor in disgust and kicked the door in. In a testament to shoddy workmanship, the door fell off its hinges in one smooth movement. Denny hoped that it was not a bad omen that he would be starting his journey with a foot full of splinters.
He had hobbled halfway to the station before he gave in and hailed a cab. The driver was disgusted at the small fare (only two streets) and by the fact that Denny spent the journey with his shoes off picking bits of wood out of his toes and bleeding all over the seat. Denny gave him a tenner to appease him.*
Reality Bites Page 3
