“Oh, don’t worry! I understand your uncertainty now. But he’s not going to be easily persuaded. At least not by me it seems. You could make a complaint. Get the hospital to get some uniformed officers in. I would rather not be involved in an official capacity. I want to keep my head down for a bit after being involved with everything at the Chambers. I can’t get over how he is acting though.”
“Oh, the strangeness doesn’t stop there.” There was a twinkle in Rachel’s eye as though she relished a mystery. “I told you about the equipment in here playing up regularly. Oh, and when I visited Cat’s flat the devastation seemed far more than she could have made alone…”
“You think she was attacked?” Kelly interjected wanting to be clear on where Rachel was taking them.
“Yes.” She held up a warning finger. “But not in the sense that you will be happy with. Have you ever heard how hurricanes can do things that seem to deny physics, such as perforate metal with pieces of straw? Well there were anomalies like that in Cat’s flat – picture frames pushed into the plaster board, but largely intact, furniture that was not just broken but pulverised. It was said that Cat had some kind of fit or episode that resulted in her ransacking her flat. Whether it was a physical or a mental episode the damage was beyond her capabilities.”
Rachel allowed a few moments for what she was saying to sink in. “I also found that Cat had a cat. I saw it in a photograph at her flat, and it was identical to a cat that turned up at my flat weeks before. You have to understand that I have been out of Cat’s life for some time. I never knew she had a pet, and it certainly shouldn’t have been able to find its way to me.”
Coincidence. Kelly needed to say but couldn’t bring herself to.
“The most disturbing was a vision that I experienced here, Cat’s face screaming at me, then her face changed into that man’s, Malik’s, face. It gave me the idea that he has some kind of hold over her. It startled me so much that I spilt my coffee and it spelled out ‘HELP ME’ as it ran and made a puddle.”
Ridiculous. If it wasn’t for other people being affected by equally strange events, and witnessing one herself then she would be questioning Rachel’s mental health. Unless it was folie à deux?
Rachel’s university friend David had recorded what she had seen, when he eventually got his recordings back there would at least be physical evidence to support the strange lights she had seen at the Chambers. Even though her instinct was to dismiss Rachel there was a nagging insecurity behind it. If only it was mass hysteria. There was something happening at The Heights and Kelly could not dismiss that so easily.
As if realising Kelly’s struggle Rachel deflated and sunk resignedly in her chair. “Oh, I know how much this is to take in, but it happened. I was definitely awake. I don’t expect you to be able to explain any of this but you must see why I think there’s more than mere coincidence at work here. There is a connection!”
Kelly was distracted from Rachel’s delivery of yet more mystery by stern voices muffled by the wall of glass. She shushed everyone and scooped a curtain of her hair away from her ear and listened close to the blinds. After a few minutes she looked up and whispered what she had heard to the others. “A nurse has just got security to remove Malik… I think he’s gone…”
The door burst open an inch from Kelly’s face. A petite blonde nurse stood in the doorway looking as startled by Kelly as Kelly was by her.
With a hand on her flat chest to steady her nerves, the nurses questioning eyes flicked over each of them. “We do try to limit visitors to one or two… Are you all relatives?” she sounded cautious, but Kelly had just heard her being firm with Malik, and she could see red blotches on her face and neck from her frustration.
Rachel stood up. “I am a relative of Cat’s, not blood, but I am the closest she has to family.”
The nurse seemed to step down her wariness. “Even so we do prefer just two visitors per patient at any one time.”
“These are some people that know her from where she lived.” Rachel flustered. “I hoped that familiar voices might get a reaction… Silly really.”
The nurses resolve softened fully. “No of course not, the hearing is thought to stay receptive.” She winced, “you’re probably appealing to the only sense available to her at the moment. I was just taken aback by there being so many people in here. Do you know the man that was outside this room a moment ago?”
Rachel shook her head. “I’m glad you mentioned it. I felt a little uncomfortable with him always being here, I’m quite sure Cat didn’t know him, and you hear such grim stories these days.”
Rachel could think on her feet, Kelly was impressed.
“Well, rest assured, we take the security of patients very seriously,” the nurse pressed. “I will leave you to it.” She withdrew and closed the door behind her.
“Well Malik’s gone now anyway,” Kelly stated. “My ‘I’m-a-police-officer’ line installed no leverage in that situation. I would have thought Malik would have bolted.”
“Perhaps you need the uniform. Yes. Definitely the uniform.”
Kelly laughed, blushed and was flattered and conscious of herself all in one go at Craig’s remark.
“Well, that proves it. If describing myself as being the closest Cat has to family doesn’t wake her, then nothing will.”
“She really has no one else?” Jason’s quiet voice seemed to surprise everyone.
Rachel pursed her lips. “No. It was only Cat and her mum, and then her mum died.”
Rachel yelped, and Kelly found herself startled again. At first glance Kelly didn’t register what had happened, but then she saw the pale hand clamped to Rachel’s wrist. Cat’s hand.
Rachel was momentarily transfixed by it and then composed herself and looked up at the others as if to check that they saw what she saw. “Cat? I’m talking about your mum. Think about your mum. Remember your mum. You had each other. She loved you so very much.”
Rachel continued to talk to Cat about her mum and their affection for each other and Cat’s eyelids fluttered in response, as if her very words were teasing her out of the coma’s mire.
Cat sprung upright from the bed, her eyes snapped open and she drew in a deep wheezing breathe, she registered Kelly and the others and scrambled up to the head of the bed. She saw Rachel at her side and released her arm the instant she realised she had it in her grip. Kelly found the blinds at her back and realised that in her surprise at the sudden eruption of activity she had leapt backwards. The lads looked equally startled, but none so much as Rachel who had slumped back in her chair and was nursing the arm that Cat had snatched at from her deep sleep.
Suddenly registering the flimsiness of the gown and her nakedness beneath, Cat tugged at its hem to cover her legs before making a grab for the bedcovers, pulling them around her and up to her chin. Her attention darted from face to face in wild panic. “What the fuck are you doing here?” She stared at Rachel then snapped back to Kelly and the others. “Who the fuck are you?” Her voice had been slow to form but the word ‘fuck’ and the anger behind it seemed to help her voice return. “What the FUCK am I doing here?” She screeched like a mad dog yapping at the moon before her mouth snapped shut, animal fear wild in her eyes.
The look of sheer terror on Rachel’s face was greater than it had been when they had watched Amy disappear off of the monitors, it was clear she wasn’t going to be able to pull herself together quick enough to settle Cat down. Kelly stepped forward, patting the air before her in a gesture for Cat to calm down. “Hey, hey. You are okay. Just settle yourself down. You are okay.” Cat fixed Kelly with a vicious stare that left her wondering if she should be holding a chair before her lion-tamer-style to fend her off. Kelly halted and held her hands up in surrender. “You are okay. You are in hospital…”
“No shit, Sherlock! I kind of fucking got that!” Cat hissed. She yelped as she snatched the IV needle out of her hand, it was followed by a pulse of blood that leapt onto the white sheets. She pull
ed the heart monitor clip off her finger and a shrill alarm lanced from the bedside monitors.
“You had some kind of episode at your flat. You have been here for a few weeks. In a kind of coma. You can hear that alarm…” She pointed to the unknown instrument on the trolley making the noise. “Well, I’m sure a nurse will be coming in any minute. So let us just relax.”
The door of the room ripped open and slammed against the wall, fracturing a glass panel opaque with a crunch. She saw the large butcher knife first, then saw that it was Malik who brandished it. He ran at Kelly, but somehow Kelly knew she wasn’t the intended victim, and he was taking the most direct route to Cat – through her. He was on Kelly before she could rush at him and cancel out his force with her own momentum, and she staggered backwards under his charge. Her trainers squeaked against the linoleum. She gripped at his scrawny arms and forced them up, keeping the knife away from her and shoved him away.
Craig cautiously sheltered Jason in the corner and from there he made a move to tackle Malik, but stopped himself as Malik’s knife arm flailed out in his direction as he stumbled backwards from Kelly’s push. She didn’t allow Malik to recover but charged in with a jab from her right fist that connected hard with the ridge of his bony cheek. His face snapped away from the blow and cast a ribbon of blood from his mouth that dashed against the blinds. She lifted her foot for a kick at Malik’s shins, but in mid-swing Kelly’s head rocked and the side of her face erupted in a storm of pain as Malik lashed out an arm to balance himself and caught Kelly fully in the face.
The force of the blow and the shock of it coming unbalanced her and sent her following the swing of her leg. Instead of a kick she had to stamp that foot to the ground to stabilise herself, but Malik had recovered and shoved at the back of her head pitching her into Craig.
Craig caught her with one arm, yelped then let go of her and she realised he had caught her with his bad arm. She fell against Craig and he went down with her in what must have been an attempt to cushion her fall. She ended up draped against Craig, leaving the whole of her back prone to Malik’s knife.
The knife didn’t come.
Despite her face being mushed uncomfortably into Craig’s shoulder, she saw from the corner of one eye that Malik had decided to press on with his attack, and was advancing on Cat, his knife raised. Cat squealed and floundered, apparently caught up in the sheets she had cocooned around herself only moments ago. Kelly regained her bearings and balance, pressed her hands flat to the ground, sprang herself from Craig and flopped to the floor bridging the gap between her and Malik. He shifted his weight to one leg so that he could pitch his weight into a stabbing arc. Kelly kept herself low, and she hoped out of striking distance of the knife, and tugged sharply at his other leg. Unbalanced, his swing broke from a strike into another flail. Cat’s legs found their way free of the covers and bunny-kicked over the side of the bed, connecting forcefully with Malik’s side sending him careening across the room and crashing against the Venetian blinds. Jason took his chance to escape and dashed past him through the door, and hung back in the corridor shouting for help.
Kelly clambered onto all fours and Craig was at her side helping her up, shakily she stepped one foot then the other to the ground and stood up herself, she briefly took her eyes off Malik to check on the two women and found that Rachel was the other side of the bed, still in her chair but with a blank stunned look, while Cat was half-standing and half-propped against the wall several feet away from her. Suddenly a dark shape charged into Kelly’s peripheral vision, Rachel cried out from her stupor and Cat went rigid as Malik charged across the room with his knife ready to thrust.
A sound split the air in a tone that cancelled out the whine of the heart monitors alarm. It was like the choral wail of inhuman voices that built and peaked uncomfortably in Kelly’s ears, and in a second it was gone leaving only a ringing wake. A current of air followed on the last dying note of the cry, and the briefest of seconds later it was followed by a crash so loud that Kelly felt the room shake beneath her feet.
Cat was still propped up against the wall. Rachel was still seated. But no Malik. Kelly thought it strange that she could see all of Rachel instead of just the view of Rachel’s torso as she had had moments ago, then she realised that the hospital bed that had obscured her view was now gone. Craig staggered away in an uncoordinated fashion, clearly startled by the wail and the crash, but it was only as he moved away that she gained a clear view of the other side of the room.
Malik was pressed against the glass wall with blood bubbling from his mouth. A Venetian blind had come loose from the window and hung off one of his shoulders, and it revealed the toughened safety glass fractured into a fine sparkling web. The whole glass wall and its splintered wooden frame seemed to bow into the corridor from behind Malik. It was then that Kelly registered the hospital bed jutting out from Malik’s middle. Seeing the scene as a whole it appeared that somehow and with some-force the bed had been sent across the room with enough momentum to sweep Malik off his feet and slam him into, and very nearly through, the glass wall at the opposite side of the room.
The petite nurse skidded back into the doorway flanked by two rakish porters. She froze and blinked as she took in the scene of impossible devastation. A broken Malik slumped forward onto the bed and one of the blinds punctuated the quiet by falling noisily from the wall and onto the bed before clattering to the ground.
The nurse said it for everyone: “What the fuck…”
Kelly rested on a bench several doors down from the room where the two porters were sweeping up glass from the aftermath of the skirmish. While she waited with Craig and Jason for Rachel to emerge from Cat’s room they had watched Malik being carefully removed from the room. Taken away for emergency treatment for his mangled legs. Even with her distance from Cat’s private room she could still hear Cat shriek the occasional obscenity at the Doctor and nurse that were probably attempting to persuade her to stay for observation and tests. She couldn’t hear Rachel, but then Rachel had withdrawn within herself since the fight, although Kelly suspected it was the shock of the return of Cat’s spite and not the sudden outbreak of violence that numbed her: Rachel was enduring a crushing rejection from Cat.
Craig dropped to his haunches before her. “Let’s see what the damage is.”
“It’s nothing.” She shrugged.
It didn’t deter him and he held a wave of her hair from her face and studied her. She was instantly uncomfortable and conscious of their prolonged look into each others face and she averted her eyes. She was grateful to have Jason sitting beside her. With him there the touch couldn’t possibly be anything more than a demonstration of concern. She probed the inside of her mouth with her tongue and found stinging lumps on the inside of her cheek where her teeth had raked at the flesh.
“It’s okay.” His fingers passed gently down her cheek. “Your eye’s a bit blood shot, but you don’t have any cuts. He gave you quite a whack.” He let her hair fall back into place, maybe realising the lingering touch seemed longer than it needed to be. “You might get a nice shiner as a trophy though.”
“Joy! Typical. I never even got punched out on duty.” She held her face as her smile was met with stiff resistance from her cheek muscles and a brief sharp pain lanced into her eye and jaw. Her pride ached more, she was feeling sorry for herself because once again she had been involved in an incident outside work that needed police involvement, and she had had to give a statement to an officer she knew. At least she hadn’t done anything wrong and PC Sharon Ellis had been informal enough with her, she didn’t even seem to write down much of the details that she had given her, and closed the interview by asking her if she was coming out with the girls Friday night.
Sharon had said it was a services night out, she recognised the names of those going from her station but had only recognised Zoe Sampson’s name from those that worked in A&E, the nurse that had led her to Craig when he had dislocated his arm. Kelly was surprised to have b
een asked after declining so many similar invites before, and when she made her excuses again there had been genuine disappointment on Sharon’s face that almost made her consider taking the offer up in the future, until her discomfort at the prospect had settled in and convinced she had made the right decision.
“You got a good hit in there. I don’t think I will be challenging you to an arm wrestle any time soon.” Craig hauled himself into the chair beside her and his tone grew more serious. “I wasn’t much help in there. Sorry.”
“Hey, you did okay. You gave me something soft to land on.” She dodged a playful jab. “No. I saw you keeping Jason safe, you were doing your bit. I hope this isn’t some macho reaction to having a ‘little woman’ to protect you is it?”
“No. Even if it was I wouldn’t tell you, you might use that right-hook on me.”
“I wouldn’t need to bother with the right-hook, just a girly slap.” She laughed as he flashed a sarcastic smile in retaliation. “Seriously, it all happened so quickly I am surprised I managed to do as much as I did. I have training for situations like that but I had my defences down, I guess. I wasn’t prepared for a fight.” She couldn’t talk around the outcome any longer. “And what happened in there? Things went all ‘Carrie’ for a moment. I didn’t see it, but the bed. That flew across the room didn’t it?” She asked hesitantly.
“Yes, it did. I wouldn’t believe it unless I hadn’t have seen it with my own eyes. It just shot out from in front of Cat, slammed into Malik and drove him into the wall. It’s not every day you see a bed used as a weapon,” he joked nervously.
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