Gothic

by Steve Hester

CHAPTER 14

  The flashing lights of the police car blinked out for a second as it passed by a van parked on the road before it turned the corner and vanished from sight.

  Jason was stood on his front doorstep watching them and the last few of his guests disappear into the night. Turning on his heels he strode back into the house, slamming the door behind him.

  Rob was sat on the couch eating peanuts from a bowl. Jason sat down next to him and the two stared blankly across at the curtains above the TV, each lost in their own little world.

  “It was just a house party.” Said Jason eventually. “It was a one off. It's not like I'm going to do it every day!”

  “Maybe the speakers were a bad idea..?” Said Rob

  They turned to look at the now silent speakers. Half empty bottles and cans were sprouting from them like a breed of metallic fungus.

  “Maybe.” said Jason, turning back. He sat there for moment looking glum. “Just turned into a brilliant start in this house.”

  “Mate, it was a great party! You've just got crap neighbours who like to complain.”

  “Yeah? Well still ruined my night though.”

  He waved away the bowl of nuts Rob offered to him.

  “Well, I wouldn’t worry about it too much though mate! You won’t have a hangover tomorrow, that’s one thing!”

  Jason slapped the paper he'd been given by the officer on the cheap composite coffee table.

  “But I wanted a hangover! I wanted a massive one the size of Belgium as a reminder of a bloody good night but it’s all gone to shit now hasn’t it?”

  He jumped up and started banging on one of the walls.

  “My shouting not too loud for you is it??” he yelled.

  Rob swapped the bowl for the paper and started to flick through it.

  “Oh give over mate! The nights a write off, let’s just put it down to experience and leave it at that.”

  “They can stick their experience up their arse!! I’ll give 'em experience!” Said Jason, banging a few more times before slouching over to the sofa.

  Rob put a hand on his friends shoulder.”I'm sure you will mate.”

  He stood up and made his way to the front door. Jason sprung up from his seat, a slight look of panic on his face.

  “Where are you going? Don’t go! Just cos everyone else has buggered off, don’t you go as well!”

  Rob turned back with a smile.

  “Calm down! I’m not leaving! I’m just going to my car! I remembered, I think I left a bottle of JD under one of the seats, unless I brought it in and someone’s made off with it! I just fancy some, I’ll be back in a minute!”

  “Oh. Ok.” said Jason visibly relaxing.

  “Put a film on or something, won’t be long.” Said Rob opening the door.

  “Alright. I'll see what mixers we've got left.”

  “Aye, you do that.”

  The air outside was quite chilly. Rob felt the breeze blow up through his t-shirt and he shivered. He hadn't noticed how warm Jason's house had been till now. The 'beer jacket' he'd been wearing thanks to a few cans of lager had now worn off after all the excitement with the police and even more worryingly he was starting to sober up!

  He fished around in his pocket for his car keys and then stopped. There was something on the air. It sounded almost like whispering but every time he tried to focus on what was being said it changed. There was a feeling attached to them, something primeval and far more primitive than words. A small part of him, a part of his brain that had evolved to recognise that the shape of a lion fitted into the hole marked 'predator' was telling him that being out here wasn't safe.

  The car was parked only about a hundred yards away from Jason's house but at the moment it might as well be an eternity. He started to quicken his pace as the whispers in his head started to get louder, they kept screaming to him in languages he couldn't understand but the meanings were simple. He started to run.

  The car was about ten yards away when he turned around. He'd felt like someone had reached out and brushed the back of his shirt. The street was empty. He looked back again and it was the same. Street lights, cars, no people.

  This was getting odd! Must have been something someone had put in his drink! He didn't feel sick or fatigued or even dizzy but rather he felt alive albeit in the same way a deer does when a wolf is hunting it. His nerves were all tingling and the only sound he could hear was the beat of his footsteps and the pounding of his pulse in his ears.

  He finally got to his car, opened the door as quickly as he could and jumped into the driver’s seat, locking the door latch behind him. He sat, out of breath, his pulse racing then he noticed the whispers had stopped.

  He took a deep breath and paused for a moment, shaking the feelings off, before he started to fish down under the passenger seat for his bottle of Tennessee sour mash. It was all in his mind, had to be. Just gotten a little paranoid for some reason.

  There was a click and a sudden roaring as the engine fired into life. Rob jerked upright to see the dashboard light up and the rev counter needle hitting its peak.

  Jason slouched into the kitchen and in an act of childlike sulking brushed a selection of beer cans off the counter top and onto the floor. They could wait till morning. A still sealed bottle of whiskey sat on the counter next to a bowl of rapidly decomposing fruit. Rob must have brought it in after all, he thought.

  He picked up the bottle by its neck and started to peel the plastic away from round the cap as he made his way to the front door.

  “Rob!” he shouted as he walked out onto the street. “I've found your J.D.!”

  He pocketed the plastic wrapper and felt something brush his fingertips. Pulling it out he saw it was the chain Rob had given him earlier and with all the excitement he'd not given it back.

  He stepped out onto the road staring at it. There was a definite glow coming from it now, a pale sheen that was contrasting completely with the yellow light of the street lamps. The glow started to move along his arm and light up his whole body as a roar filled his ears.

  He looked up a fraction of a second before the car hit him.

  Rob screamed as his friend was caught on the thighs by the low nose of the bonnet and he flew up, tumbling over the roof of the car and smashing his head with a sickening crunch on the windscreen as he did.

  Rob spun round in the driver’s seat as he watched his friend land in a twisted, bloody heap on the pavement behind him and lie still.

  “Jason!!” He shouted.

  He turned back and tried to hammer on the brake pedal but it had all the effect of a butterfly trying to stun a bull. There was a twitch and the steering wheel turned itself. The car caught the rear end of a Citroen before the throttle opened on its own and Rob was flung back by the acceleration.

  The steering wheel twisted again, the car lurching left and causing Rob to hit his head on the door pillar and his world was suddenly full of stars.

  ...

  Colin and Anthony were busy this evening. Strings of coloured light bulbs hung across the road, ready for the Christmas switch on in a month’s time. Colin was at the moment up in the basket of a cherry picker that was attached to a council transit van, putting the final touches to this stretch of road. A stabilising prop extended out on one side to balance the van out on the roads awkwardly steep camber.

  Colin was muttering away in his basket. Anthony caught little snippets from above as he rubbed his hands together to keep warm.

  “... I dunno, they get us to set this up earlier and earlier each year. I promise you! Next year they’ll be going up just after Easter, just you wait!”

  Anthony just nodded. It was complaint he'd heard every year for the last twelve years.

  There was a commotion further up the road; a lot of honking and the sound of tearing metal. His eyes narrowed as he stepped off the curb and out to the edge of the van to get a better look round the corner.

  A battered silver Hyundai came tearing round it and through t
he lights at the junction ahead of it. The car’s front had been caved in and the windscreen was damaged with a big round smash where something solid had bounced off it.

  It was straddling the white lines in the middle of the road occasionally twitching to swipe into another car that wasn't quick enough to pull over. The ones that were faster mounted the pavement in an attempt to escape the rampage, causing the few pedestrians out in the early evening to scatter while others crashed into vehicles parked along the roadside.

  Anthony suddenly realised that it was heading towards them.

  “COLIN!”

  “What?” Came the reply.

  “BRING THE BASKET DOWN!!”

  Colin looked up the road where his friend was pointing.

  “...shit...” He whispered and hit the button on the baskets control panel to lower it.

  It wasn't fast enough. The car passed them and clipped the stabiliser bending it back with a horrific screech of metal. Colin felt the van tip as the weight was suddenly shifted causing the hydraulic arm to swing out which upset the balance even more.

  The van started to list and fall over, basket and all. The Christmas lights got caught up as it went down, tearing from their brackets and causing a wave of cables and glass ornaments to rain down on the road.

  Anthony ran out into the street as cars behind him screeched to a halt. Colin had rolled out of the basket on impact and was curled up in ball on the Tarmac. He looked up at his friend.

  “What the bloody hell was that??”

  …

  Rob's heart was pounding. The breaks refused to work and not even the hand break seemed to be having any effect. He tried to hammer on the driver’s side window but every blow was just shrugged off. He was trapped.

  The tyres squealed as it took a sharp turn behind a row of stores. Security lights blinked on in rapid succession as he passed and then his eyes widened in horror as he saw what was ahead.

  An HGV was slowly pulling out after making a delivery from one of the stores along the street. Rob's mind filled with images of his own decapitation and barely registered the frantic waves of the driver in the truck cab up ahead.

  At the last moment rob flung himself as flat as he could across the passenger seat. There was a horrific screeching as the metal of the car tore, showing him with glass and removing the roof. He risked a look up and saw the edges of the buildings whip by above him before they vanished and there was nothing but the night sky.

  He sat up gingerly. The car was almost unrecognisable now; just a twisted and distorted wreck but still it showed no signs of stopping. He looked over what remained of the driver’s door. The central white lines of the road flickered by below him like a strobe light. He didn't like the thought of jumping out at this speed but there was no option, he knew in his bones that he HAD to get out of this car or he would certainly die.

  He grabbed the door handle and started to brace himself to spring out. He could already feel the scraping of the asphalt against his body. There would be broken bones. He tensed.

  The seatbelt whipped out of what remained of the restraint system and slapped him back into his seat. Rob could feel the edges digging into him tightly as the buckle clicked into place on its own.

  Sirens could be heard in the distance. No doubt by now most of the mobile officers of the Greater Manchester Police Force would be on their way. The car lurched and turned again towards the gates marking the entrance of Vernon Park. They buckled and tore from their hinges, clattering against the car as it smashed its way through.

  Dark trees flashed past Rob on either side, the moonlight blinking through them like they were in an old black and white movie. The car turned, drove past the former Victorian house that was now a museum, tearing divots in the bowling green by its side before it disappeared along a path downhill.

  Rob grabbed the steering wheel and braced himself as the G-forces pulled at him. He remembered coming down here on his bike with his friends when he was younger. The path on the hill was steep but smooth and he'd enjoyed every minute of the speed as he freewheeled down it. Now though he could only feel the nearly overwhelming fear.

  The car's back end fishtailed wildly on the wet grass and as it reached the bottom it swung about and stopped.

  A small electricity substation sat on the other side of a gravel path about two hundred yards away. The engine gunned itself a few times as Rob, realising what was about to happen, fumbled uselessly with the seatbelt.

  The car slipped into gear, its wheels spinning for a moment before gaining traction and it shot forward.

  Rob could see the inevitable ahead of him. There was no way out. No help. No rescue. He suddenly felt a huge surge of emotion explode within; anger, hate, despair; they all compacted down inside his gut, churning and writhing before they reached critical mass.

  A calmness suddenly descended on him like he'd sailed into the eye of the storm and could see the clear sky in the middle of the maelstrom. Time seemed to slow and distort around him as he raised his hand and, trance-like, held it out in front of him.

  “No.” He said.

  There was a rumble in the ground. A few of the pebbles on the gravel path shook like they were on a speaker with the bass turned up and a mound of earth shot upwards. It caught the driver side wheel of the car as it sped forward tipping it over onto what remained of its roof. Rob felt the belt mechanism break as it tipped and he was flung out and onto the grass verge nearby, rolling over and over, the wind knocked out of him. He came to a stop and looked through bleary, tear filled eyes at the car as it skidded for a short while before clipping a large rock.

  It flipped over and over again as the momentum sent it crashing through the chain link fence and finally into the substation. There was a moment’s pause before the damage shook loose one of the cables that fed up to a nearby electricity pylon. It dropped, sparking and spitting like a wild cobra before landing on the car.

  Thousands of volts of electricity coursed through the damaged vehicle until, with a deafening roar, the leaking fluids from the engine caught fire and exploded. Pieces of red-hot shrapnel flew through the air and landed around Rob as he scrambled for the comparative safety of a nearby bush. A cloud of acrid smoke billowed up from the wreckage, the flames casting odd shadows in it as it mushroomed up into the sky.

  Away from the explosion, lights flickered and died as the houses and nearby streets were plunged into darkness.

  Rob hobbled out from the bush and looked at what remained of the car. His leg was throbbing and his ankle could barely hold his weight. Something wet dripped across his eyelashes. He reached up and winced as his fingers found a deep, bloody gash across his forehead. He felt numb. He stood there for a few moments as shock rooted him to the ground. All he could still see was Jason's face as the car ran him down. The horrible, horrible impact...

  The sound of sirens woke him from his thoughts. They were close. Rob's mind spun as he worked out what to do. They would arrest him on sight, that was a given and what could he tell them? His car came alive? He was in more trouble than he had ever been in his entire life and with a story like that he'd be lucky if he ended up being sent to a mental institution. Fear started to override his common sense and he did the only thing that seemed right to his guilt-wracked mind.

  He ran for home.