by Morgana Wray
“There she is-Clarice Dearlove. She did not show up for work today. Her row is unticked.” The guy in the Apron tapped on the face of the book, brandishing it in Diane’s face.
The kid soon broke down and sobbed. She cried louder than I had ever heard anyone cry before. I soon rushed to her side and pulled her closer to me. I tried to soothe her pain with some kind words. I held her head in a delicate way while raising my head to address the harbinger of that unsavoury news.
“Thanks for pulling our arses out back there, Mister. You’re a legend.” I reached out to shake our helper’s hand. “You could have been gentler with telling the kid something like that though.”
“Forgive me. I was brought up to be as direct as I can be in all circumstances. By the way, you can call me Sal. Sal Jones.” The dark-haired young man’s eyes widened with relish, as he gripped my hand in his gloved hands. "My family owns this place. Not that there are that many of them left. We truly are a rare bread. Yep, that's my name on top of the building. In case you guys were wondering."
Observing Sal's habits and his seemingly peculiar behaviour of avoiding any real direct contact with anyone, a nagging question creeped up my throat. “Are you some kind of doctor?”
“I wish! I am just a tad bit germophobic! The gloves give me comfort! One of my many vices!” Sal pulled back his puffy lips, baring yellow, stained teeth at me.
“Rest up you lot!”
“I shall just go fetch you fine people some refreshments. If you need me I’ll be in the lunch room, keeping busy.” He flashed a broad smile at us.
Miss Maple chased hastily after him with her hand raised as she trailed behind our new host. “Hey wait up, Sal. I’d like to give you a hand with putting those refreshments together.”
“Are you sure it won’t be a bother?” I heard Sal gurgle.
Miss Maple shook her head in the negative. She seemed to be enthused to be around the guy. Maybe she had a thing for weird-looking guys that creep the hell out of you.
“Yuck! Now that was a belly-churning thought!” I shuddered in revulsion.
He was handsome in a creepy kind of way. His charm seemed rehearsed and he seemed a bit too keen to cosy up to us. He had an apron draped over a white long sleeve shirt. I never trusted a guy in an apron. He certainly wasn’t no Mary Berry. The woman exuded warmth and had the most adorable grin when she made some bonkers remarks about pastry. But this guy evoked nothing but a total vibe of weirdness.
Miss Maple and Sal were gone in a blink, disappearing behind a white door. I tinkered around with the threads on the spinning machines. They seemed fun to play with and were a welcome distraction. My quiet fiddling was soon interrupted by Diane’s very noticeable pacing. She certainly knew how to suck the fun out of a guys fiddling time.
Her nails were stuck between her busy lips and she beavered away at them with her gnawing teeth. She seemed so hopelessly lost in a cocoon of her own private thoughts. Her fingers scratched her elbows nervously. Those blue eyes of hers seemed genuinely distraught. The sadness in them spoke volumes of the heavy chip the poor kid was carrying on her fragile shoulders.
I pretended not to notice Diane’s fretting. I feigned complete interest in the metallic contraptions in front of me. Diane approached me. She flippantly ignored my antics with the machines. With her head leaned sideways and her hair flung backwards, she attempted to start a conversation with me.
“That guy. I have never seen him before. Something doesn’t feel right about him.” Diane scratched her arm nervously.
“You can say that again. The guy gives me an off vibe.” I pinched at some of the spinning machines in the large factory room that we were in. “Do you think he broke in?”
“He seems to know the place. I don’t think that he did. I think he is who he says he is, but I don’t trust him one bit. There was always some woman bossing everybody about. She was old and her breath smelt of garlic. I always made sure to put some distance between her foul breath and myself.” Diane flipped her head sideways.
I tried not to look too unnerved by the fact that our new host may be some sort of nut job. He was already spewing out a lot of crazy out of his gob and he looked like someone that had just escaped from some sort of jail. He always had those blasted gloves on and his body language did not exactly exude an aura of saneness.
“I swear that guy could whack us in our sleep. His eyes were proper shifty, they were.” Diane flinched, as her lips sagged downwards.
“I wouldn’t go that far as to say that kid. Sure, the guy looks like he has a few issues but that doesn’t make him Peter Sutcliffe. He would definitely make a terrible Sutcliffe.” I rested a finger under my chin, propping up my weary head on it.
Diane gave me an awkward look. She seemed to be perplexed at my remark. I knew she wanted not to feel so anxious but there was this desperate look in her eyes. It was a desperation to get me onside. She lightened up her mood slightly and managed to push a forced smile unto her edgy face. “What do you mean by that? Why exactly wouldn’t that guy make a decent Yorkshire ripper?”
“His eyes just aren’t dead enough. They look more like goofy hamster eyes, rolling around in that nutty head of his.” I chuckled. “Yup definitely more Elma Ford than Sutcliffe.”
Diane laughed with me. I seemed to have succeeded in temporarily distracting her from all the crazy shit that had been happening outside. Everything that we had witnessed and had been through was enough to break anyone. The kid was already in bits on the inside. Not knowing where her mom was-that was disconcerting enough given the circumstances around us. Rosewood was going to shit and there wasn’t anyone doing a damn thing about it.
The town was probably a backwater that didn’t mean much on the map to those that wielded power. Yup, the politicians wouldn’t dig their thumbs out of their pampered arses to do anything unless it helped to score some sort of political point. There was no advantage to be gained from helping out a small town like Rosewood very quickly. So I guess, help wasn’t really going to come very quickly.
The only help they probably would render would be to send the ambulances out late to scoop up the casualties of this hellish carnage that surrounds us in body bags. This was complacency. The only question in my mind was whether or not the authorities were choosing to be deliberately complacent. To this, I was non the wiser. Could Sal's conspiracy theory have some truth to them? Could some powerful pricks in the ministry of defence be yanking strings to keep everything happening in Rosewood under wraps?
CHAPTER 10
Conspiracies were usually just what they were-a pack of well told lies wrapped around a few loose strings of logic. What Sal had said. What we had seen. Those didn’t seem like a couple of loose strings. They were more like a barnyard full of strings. For the moment, we were sheltered and safe from what was beyond the factory gates.
“Those refreshments are taking a while to show up.”
“You don’t think that he is, you know?” Diane moved a straightened finger across her throat.
“Don’t be ridiculous. If he wanted any harm to befall us, he could have left us to burn in the bus, back there.” I sucked my lips and hissed dismissively.
Diane and her bellyaching was becoming unbearably annoying. She seemed to carry on with her ceaseless litany of theories about Sal. Honestly, she was like a human mosquito. I felt like slapping her away. My poor ears were starting to ring from all the yacking.
Finally, the white door swung open. Every millisecond it took for that door to open was complete agony for me. My head ached and I was very keen on passing the kid on to Miss Maple. I was sure that they would have plenty to natter about together. I just put on a blank face and nodded as if I had the slightest interest in what Diane was droning on about.
Miss Maple came out alone. She seemed to have a napkin draped over her shoulder. There was an awkward, sheepish, girly smile floundering across her face. Her hands rubbed together gleefully, as she trotted towards us.
“Guys! Hop
e you are absolutely famished?” Miss Maple raised her brows.
“Completely starved, I am. I could eat a pigging horse.” I rubbed my gurgling flat belly.
“Diane? What about you?” Miss Maple tilted her head and went all wide-eyed.
Diane simply shrugged her shoulders. There wasn’t much interest on her sour face. She seemed not to like Sal very much. She didn’t seem to be shy about showing that dislike either. I wasn’t really expecting Diane to be particularly fond of anything cooked up by that guy either.
“Come on, Diane! Its not as if we are serving pig’s insides!” Miss Maple nudged Diane playfully.
“You never know.” Diane bobbed her head, erupting into a sarcastic giggle. “I am just saying.”
“You know what they say about looking a gift horse in the flipping mouth, kid. Not a pretty sight.” I joked, slapping Diane on the back.
She was reluctant but I scooped her up in my hands and carried her past the white door. She didn’t come willingly. She kicked and rocked herself in every possible direction. I almost lost hold of the kid but I persisted. Miss Maple wasn’t far behind us.
“Stop fighting kid. You could do some damage to yourself. We are only trying to get some good old fashioned food into you.” I smirked cheekily.
“You couldn’t have let me choose to come to the table?” Diane frowned.
“You’re underweight for your age. Your cheek bones are popping out. Sure. I could have given you that option but I doubt that you’d have taken me up on that offer.” My hands retreated from her sides.
Diane folded her hands and sank into one of the seats at the table. The heels of her feet knocked tenaciously against the legs of the chair she was sat on. She threw her gaze elsewhere and avoided eye contact with everyone in the not so spacy lunch room. That was what the place looked like-a place where people came to take a nap or bung a meal into the microwave.
There was a feast before us, masterfully garnished and placed in disposable plastic plates. There was even some bottled wine on the table. Sal was already seated at the head of the table. He had his fingers on some silver cutlery. Those awful gloves of his were still on his hands. I was beginning to think the guy couldn’t even take a leak without having those damn gloves on.
His grinning face drooped lower at the table, as he crushed some green peas between his teeth. He seemed to have this sophisticated table etiquette. He held his fork and knife in a certain way. I was sure that he was accustomed to all that fine dining nonsense. I didn’t care much for all that. I was just hungry as fuck and was happy to see some good old fashioned English grub on the table.
The potatoes were piping hot. The gravy smelt divine. I caught a whiff of the subtle smells of the sumptuous meal in front of me, breathing in deeply.
“The spuds look pretty good.” I dug my fork into a potatoe. “Tastes pretty good too.”
“It gladdens the heart to know that you enjoy my offerings of food. I truly am glad that you find my food adequate.” Sal gulped down some wine from a tall transparent glass cup.
“Yeah! These are definitely man-sized portions!” I chewed ravenously on the chicken parts in my hands.
The rich taste of gravy stock on the chicken melted away on my tongue. It was a delightful taste that put a gleeful, childish smile on my face. Some of the chicken juices dribbled down the side of my face, staining my shirt.
“Goddamn it! This was my favourite shirt too!” I moaned, tugging at the spot on shirt that was stained.
It stung a little. The gravy was still a bit hot. I collapsed backwards into my seat and bent my head low. I could feel a single hot teardrop roll down my eye. I looked and acted like a tough guy. I didn’t want to be seen as anything other than that so I just crossed my feet and took the momentary sting of the heat from the hot gravy.
“Uh, are you okay there, mate? You haven’t got anything broken in there, have you?” Sal reached forward from his seat. “Cos we’ve got kit in here to help patch you up.”
“I am just peachy. So that will not be necessary. You can save the bandages and the morphine for someone who needs it.” I pushed a forced smile up on my face, as I knocked back some wine.
I took in the subtle bitter-sweet taste of the wine, rinsing the inside of my palate with the alcoholic drink. I swirled the wine from side to side once more before pushing it down my throat. I had to give it to Sal. He did know his wine. It was rich and aged to perfection. I thought he would have been serving us some cheap knock off wine made by some amateur winery.
I hadn’t tasted a strong drink of such quality in a while. Not since I had been made voluntarily redundant from my old job with the military. I hadn’t mentioned that I had served the country to either of my doughy-eyed companions. They were non the wiser. I didn’t like to talk about my past life. Not with anyone I had met recently. I had worked at the school for just two years now. My business was my own while I was a driver there. I did nothing to attract anyone’s attention and I got none in return, except the odd shameful batting of the eyes from Miss Maple. The woman was definitely a bit crazy sometimes.
Here we were, eating dinner with some guy we barely knew. We were too tired and too exhausted to raise questions about his ties to this town or the reasons behind his seemingly noble intentions towards us. I wasn’t used to people doling out help out of the goodness of their hearts. In my experience, biting on a dangled carrot often came with a hefty price tag. I wondered what the smooth talking guy in front of us would demand from us in recompense for his so called assistance.
“Soft chicken, posh wine, napkins, shiny silverware and bottled water. Seems like you’re pretty comfortable in here. One would almost think that you have your own personal bunker here.” Diane fiddled with the food before her.
Her face was brazen and her countenance held a hint of subtle hostility in the coy barb that she was spitting at Sal. Shyness certainly was not Diane’s mantra. She wasn’t one for wearing her heart on her sleeve. She was turning all that heart and passion into a blooming nutcracker which she wielded mercilessly. Her objective was shaping out to be busting Sal's balls.
Sal kept his face bowed. He did not let her undermining questions put him off the sumptuous meal before him. His eyes were steadfastly focused on his moving fingers. His busy hands pressed hard on the cutleries as he ripped through the chicken drumsticks, tearing them apart with great finesse. How did he manage to block her out? That kid was the ultimate nattering machine.
His level of concentration was enviable. Maybe he was into some sort of Buddhist mediation stuff. I mean, that guy wasn’t even stopping for air while he was chowing down on all those drumsticks. He must have been boiling under his skin. He must definitely have been furious at the way in which the kid was making suggestive comments even though I did not see him show it. Not even once.
“How did you even find us by the way? What were you doing out there armed with a rifle?” Diane stuck a pea in her mouth with her fingers.
“I was running low on some supplies. I needed to restock. That was when I happened upon your wrecked bus.” Sal wiped his lips with a napkin. “the rifle? That was for my own protection! I got mugged recently and police didn’t to shit about it!”
His eyes were focused on Diane. He did not flinch. Even for a second. The confidence oozing from that guy seemed off the charts. He was genuinely unruffled by the kid’s line of questioning. And Diane? Well Diane wasn’t pulling any punches either. She seemed to be going out of her way to pin Sal in a corner. She seemed to think being weird was a justification for associating the guy with being guilty of something.
“Supplies huh? You seem pretty stocked up for a guy that needs supplies!” Diane pointed a fork at our clearly unimpressed host. “I wonder why that is? Why would you venture out from somewhere like this with all the mad stuff kicking off out there?”
“You seem to have a very sceptical mind. That is good. That will keep you breathing longer than any of us.” Sal clasped his hands together. “But d
o not construe foolish directness to be an admirable trait. It would be most unfortunate if someone less accommodating to such outbursts were to take offence.”
“Okay! Okay! That is quite enough of the Robert De Niro wannabe grandstanding!” I raised my eyes, thumping my fist on the table.
Someone had to intervene and break those two up. We did not need things escalating in here. There had been enough bloodletting for the day. Locking horns was hardly going to do us any good. Besides, Sal had his rifle close. The gun’s long, metal barrel was leaning against his foot. I had a feeling he wasn’t just keeping it close because he loved the feel of the cold, metal parts of the gun against his skin.
His words seemed laced with very subtle messages. Messages that didn’t seem very friendly. He appeared to be accommodating but the cold indifference in his intonation said different. I was starting to trust him even less. The chicken bone fell from my hands. I had had enough of the fine dining.
“So have you got anywhere we can rest our heads? Any blankets? Anything we can throw on the ground?” I snuffled and sucked scraps of meat from the gaps between my teeth.
A sullen, uncomfortable look soon adorned Sal's face. He shuffled from side to side on his seat. I could hear his fingers tapping away on the sides of his chair. Pouring himself more wine, he leaned forward and said, “Sure. We have got a couple of bunk beads. There aren’t too many rooms so you guys are going to have to make do.”
“Hey, we are not complaining. This isn’t Hilton. We’ll slum it in whatever room you can spare. We are just grateful not to be out there. At least for tonight.” I stared at Sal with genuine gratitude behind my thankful eyes.
Sal plucked a pair of keys from the left side of his plate on the table. He made himself upright and kicked the chair backwards. He proceeded to push a narrow door open. He shook his head sideways suggestively. We knew to follow him. We formed an orderly straight line behind our apparently generous benefactor. There was no snickering or chatting behind Sal's back this time. We all wanted to put our weary feet to rest.
