Acolyte (The Wildermoor Apocalypse Book 1) (3 page)

Chapter Four

February 18
th
2002

The rattle and splutter of the coffee machine did little to please Dr. Lorraine Thacker.  The pathetic drip-drip of the black liquid into her Brookdale University mug do nothing but test her patience.  It had been a long, late night and she was in no mood to be tested by the office equipment.  Patience was the one thing that she could not afford to leave the house without, since this was the one quality she needed to offer to her other kind of patients; the ones that paid her what many of them probably felt was an extortionate amount of money for an hour of her time.  In this case it was the ones that Wildermoor Brook Psychiatric Unit could not deal with or figure out on their shoe-string budget so passed on to her.

With a final gasp and strain, the last of her coffee filtered through to its receptacle and Dr. Thacker retrieved the mug and took her first gulp.  It burned her throat but warmed her senses and relaxed her a little, enough to provide the current patient with her undivided attention.

Colin Dexler had been a particularly complex case. Forty-three years old, no job, no family of any recent record. Found one night, locked in his one-bedroom dwelling in the centre of Wildermoor town, screaming maniacally about a phantom, his hands covered in blood that traced from where he stood in the lounge back through to the kitchen, smeared across the floor and walls and ending at the kitchen sink.

Within minutes Dexler was face down on his tattered and stained shagpile carpet as his hands were manacled behind his back and he was hauled away.  Despite three intensive days searching, the police could find nothing.  No weapon.  No body.  No victim.  No missing persons reported. No motive.  No case.  So Dexler was freed but ordered to live his days under psychiatric observation.

That was when Dr. Thacker had been introduced to him.  Wildermoor Brook was deemed to not have the manpower to commit itself to the care of Colin Dexler, which was another way of saying that they wanted no part of his case.  Henceforth there would be no blood on their hands if they could not control him or cure him.  Nobody wanted to shoulder that responsibility.

Dexler had been put into Dr. Thacker’s care five months previous.  There had been very little in the way of recent criminal activity on his part but his ramblings were causing concern for the medical staff and law enforcers alike; concerns for
his
safety and ultimately, their own.  Lorraine had been tasked with trying to crack the origins of his paranoia. Some had suggested trying to lure him into committing a violent or abusive act so that they would have enough evidence to elevate his case to the point where he could be incarcerated.

Lorraine had been horrified by this suggestion, for fear of putting herself in danger and also because she believed that Colin Dexler was not the monster others perceived him as.  He was scared, she could see that.  She believed the act of possessing a fear should not be exploited or manipulated.  Colin had started to open up lately and she believed that whichever Colin Dexler the police had found that night, was not the one who sat before her today.

Colin sat on the edge of the padded chair, his feet crossed, hanging down and both hands clasped together, his arms hanging limp into his lap.  He had lost weight in recent weeks; she could tell.  His eyes looked to be receding into his skull and his skin appeared to be hanging from his face.  She had never seen him smile and wondered how dramatically his appearance would be alter if he simply raised the corners of his mouth. The hair on his head was closer-cut than before, and greying.

Lorraine grasped her coffee mug as she turned and walked back to her chair opposite the one in which Colin slumped.  She looked at him with pity. He reminded her of a wounded pet that she felt unable to offer help.

‘I would offer you some coffee,’ she offered, ‘but I believe the caffeine would interfere with your medication.’

Since his arrest Colin had been on a course of antipsychotics.  Colin looked up to meet Dr Thacker’s face, his eyes drooping at the sides before sinking once more towards the floor.

‘How do you feel today?’

Colin shrugged his shoulders and mumbled something which Lorraine couldn’t decipher. ‘Are you sleeping well?’

‘Sleep?’ Colin replied surprising himself as much as he did the doctor.  His voice was slow and his speech slurred.  ‘No.’ He concluded.

‘You’re having problems sleeping?’

‘It never comes.’

‘Why is that?’

‘He tells me that I can’t sleep. I’m not allowed to.’

‘Who’s He?’ Lorraine prompted knowing that she was making ground as she had done in the early stages of their first meetings.  She also knew who He was but it was a sure-fire way of enticing Colin to talk.  He was like a clam that would only open with encouragement. Once he left her office the shell locked tight again and the cycle would repeat in a week’s time.  She had been trying to secure a daily or even bi-weekly programme for Colin. She believed it vital to his treatment that he not be given a chance to descend back into himself.

‘You know,’ he replied curtly. Colin did not like to be asked to repeat himself nor did he enjoy having to discuss the horrors that visited him every night.

‘I want you to tell me.’

‘No.’

Lorraine could see Colin was beginning to become agitated at the questioning.  She wasn’t sure if he even remembered what they discussed in their previous sessions from one week to the next, but she knew it was definitely a sensitive area.

‘Are you afraid, Colin?’

He looked at Lorraine, his eyes parting wider to reveal the bloodshot whites, showing how little rest he receiving. 
The medication cannot be working
, she thought.  The man is constantly on edge and is at risk of a heart attack or stroke if he does not calm down.  He looked frail as he stared at her, as if he might crumble to ashes at any moment.

Colin was looking past Lorraine, over her right shoulder, staring into the far corner of the room.  Lorraine felt eyes boring into the back of her head; she was being watched.  She turned her head over her left shoulder but saw nothing but the empty space between the two tall grey filing cabinets in the corner of her office. 

Apprehensive but now convinced that nothing was lurking behind her, she turned back to Colin, but jumped with a start to find that he was now sat mere inches from her, on the pine coffee table. His eyes were drawn wide into an unnerving stare as if they were drilling a hole through into her head.

She felt a warmth surge through her, up from her legs to her fingertips, travelling up her arms until she could feel burning in her head behind her eyes.  Colin stared still, without as much as a sound that would suggest he was breathing.  Not moving his eyes, he spoke once more.

‘I shouldn’t be here.  He says I shouldn’t be here,’ he uttered slowly, calmly.

Feeling her breath catch in her throat she asked again.

‘Who?’

The question seemed to bounce off of him like a rubber bullet. Colin did not appear to acknowledge that Lorraine had spoken.  She was scared now too; his eyes were wild and his body rigid, a coiled cobra ready to strike.  Lorraine instinctively reached out her hand to try and calm him.  She had worried about him these last few weeks and went into every meeting not knowing if he would make it through the following days alive.  Now he was scaring her to the point where she could not breathe.  The warmth in her head was becoming unbearable and beads of sweat now formed on her brow.  Was she now the one at risk of her body shutting down from fear?

Lorraine’s hand carried on reaching for Colin resting on his left shoulder.  As soon as she touched him his eyes came back to life as if she had flicked an invisible switch.  Colin shook his head twice as if awakening from a dream and looked around the room frantically trying to regain his bearings.  He started to pant and whimper, his eyes glistening as the tears formed. 

Lorraine had suffered another start herself when the mannequin figure before her came back to life. She placed her hand once more on Colin’s shoulder, with more force this time, in an attempt to comfort him.

‘Shhh-shhh, it’s okay, Colin,’ she said calmly, ‘It’s only me.’ But it was no use. His breathing was out of control and his head was thrashing from side to side with such force she worried his neck would snap.  His eyes were clenched shut as he started to sob.

‘Colin, it’s Dr. Thacker, you’re in my surgery and you are safe…’ she pleaded with the authority of a pre-school teacher trying to calm a distressed boy.

‘Just go away,’ he pleaded, ‘Leave me alone.  What do you want from me?’  His voice started to break into a scream as he struggled for breath through the tears. ‘WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!’

Dr. Thacker started to shake him gently to snap him from his trance and within seconds the light faded as Colin opened his eyes.  He looked around the room once more but it had changed.  He was no longer sitting or standing.  His duvet cover lay crumpled on the floor and his bed sheets were torn from the mattress at one end.  The light was straining in through a crack between his bedroom curtains.  He did not want to face the light of another day but was terrified of spending another second in the darkness.

Chapter Five

As Thomas Laing unlocked his car, he knew he would regret opting to spend yet another lunchtime in what had become a portable diner over the last few weeks.  As he opened the door to his trusty 1992 Vauxhall Astra, the warm, stale air rushed out and embraced him.  As tradition required, Laing quickly grasped the handles on the inside of the doors and wound the windows down.  A year of police training meant that he could not afford himself a new steed, with automatic windows and decent seals to prevent the damp or air conditioning. This new-fangled technology was beyond his reach for now, but he vowed that he would press on and ruthlessly clamber to the top of the ladder, or even a few rungs from the bottom in order to kit himself out with these luxuries.

For now, Laing had to make do with a driver’s seat as comfortable as a mattress stuffed with bricks, and having to sit for half of his lunch break with the door open to let the stubborn and rank air escape the car, allowing any passers-by of Exeter Street a glimpse into his lunchbox.  Every day this consisted of the same contents: a flat peanut butter sandwich, a somehow-melted chocolate biscuit and a packet of DIY Ready Salted crisps (the ones that came with salt in a blue wrapper and required you to shake salt onto the crisps yourself, then to realise that the salt was laying at the bottom of the bag having only tickled a few of the crushed crisp particles.)

Today held no promise of being any different than the other ten that Laing had spent with the Wildermoor Criminal Investigation Department so far.  In essence, he was a tarted-up tea boy and data-inputter.  Sure, Chief Detective Inspector Darke was a great mentor, but he had a reputation of putting all of the new pups through every menial task imaginable before they were let loose and able to shadow one of the other more experienced officers on the day job.  Laing knew that was where the real action was.

For days so far he had sat and listened in awe at them all coming back into the stuffy office on Percy Street, regaling tales of their travels.  They were far from beat-bobbies; this was CID and they were the big boys called in to provide the muscle and the brains after the blues had laid the groundwork.  It promised to live up to all of Laing’s expectations, but he knew that patience was a virtue he must embrace if he was to succeed and join the elite.  For now he just needed to remember who took milk and two sugars.

Laing unpeeled his sandwich from its film wrapping and gobbled it down.  Breakfast was also not a luxury he afforded himself since his love of sleep and 6-am starts did not see eye-to-eye.  Lunch would serve as his first and most hearty of meals.  Once his hunger was satisfied Laing sat back in his driver’s seat, his knees just brushing the sides of the steering wheel in an attempt to get comfortable.  He glanced at his watch.  It was 12:07pm.  His lunch had successfully lasted four minutes.  Now he had forty-nine minutes to himself to satisfy his need for sleep.

The rising mid-day warmth meant that Laing’s eyes already sat heavy and catching forty winks would not be a problem.  He pulled his door shut and manually locked it from within. As ropey and rusty as it was, he cherished this car. It had been his father’s and held many fond memories. He couldn’t stand to see his Dad sell it for a mere few hundred quid, so had given him the last of his savings the previous summer and bought it from him

  Laing let his head fall back against the headrest and sleep soon came.  He dozed on every lunch break believing it prepared him for the final push at the end of the day and would prepare him for the moment that DI Darke decided to throw him in at the deep end, which would only happen if an officer was unwittingly taken out of action and Laing found himself at the front-end of a drugs raid or bank-hostage situation.

Visions of grandeur danced before his eyes and within seconds he was asleep.