Strangers in the Night (16 page)
“A ‘DND’?” Mitts couldn’t help breaking in.
Dag smirked a touch, then gave a slight shake of his head.
He turned his attention downward.
To the tip of his boot.
To a scuff mark.
“ ‘Do Not Disturb’,” Dag eventually stated.
Dag stayed quiet for a long few moments, again fixated by the scuff mark on the toe of his boot.
His smile grew wider, and then, all at once, he snapped his neck upward.
Caught Mitts in his glare.
He thrust his arm through the bars.
Seizing Mitts by the throat.
* * *
Mitts felt the air slowly being choked out of him.
He felt his chest tighten—his lungs tingling.
His heart seemed to beat slower, as if swelling up.
His vision blurred Dag’s features:
His snub nose.
The thin layer of perspiration which clung to his forehead.
Dag squeezed tighter still.
Mitts could feel consciousness leaving him.
Darkness loomed at the fringes of his vision.
All of the visions, all of those dreams, all of them sitting right on the periphery of his consciousness.
Just . . . one more . . . little squeeze . . . that was all . . . all it would . . .
take.
Without warning, Dag released him.
Mitts dropped to the concrete ground.
He landed with a
thump
on his tailbone.
He felt pain reverberate up his back.
As he sat on the floor of the cell, he watched Dag pace about before him, fists clenched down at his thighs. His fingers kneaded the heels of his hands.
Mitts couldn’t help but feel he wasn’t the one trapped here.
Dag finally ended his pacing.
He strode back up to the bars.
Gripped them tight in his fists.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
Mitts swallowed.
Pain flashed through his throat.
“Tell you
what
?”
“About the creatures,” Dag shot back. “The
Strangers
.”
Mitts’s mind swirled.
The way Dag said it—the
way
he spoke of them—he could feel the fear.
It had been a long time since he had heard fear in someone’s voice.
Not since he had left home, seven years ago.
Heard his parents’ panicked voices.
Dag turned his back on Mitts again. “Our nemesis, the reason why we’ve ended up like this, strangers in our own home.”
“ ‘Strangers’, how?” Mitts replied.
Dag remained silent for a long while.
He gazed upward, to the window, once more.
He squinted as he stared into the direct sunlight.
Mitts caught the impression that he was waiting to see who would be the first to flinch:
Himself, or the sun.
Dag shook his head, then threw up a hand.
It wasn’t an act of aggression, though.
More of surrender.
“Aliens,” Dag continued, “beings from another dimension, whatever the
hell
you want to call them . . . the point is that they’re here, and that things changed . . .
everything changed
when they showed up.”
Mitts felt his mind sharpen.
He could feel the strength returning to his body.
His blood seemed to flow with adrenalin now.
He thought of all the questions he had wanted to ask his parents. About
why
they’d had to leave their home. About
precisely
what had happened.
His parents would evade his questions. He had thought it was because there was some deeply disturbing truth that shouldn’t bother a
child’s
mind.
Now, though, he knew why.
They hadn’t known.
Like everyone else, they had seen the news reports.
Panic.
Everywhere.
Doctor Heinmein had offered them shelter.
Told them he could save them.
That he could save
Mitts
.
And so they had gone with him.
What other explanations had they required?
“Come on,” Dag said, his voice a little more insistent now, “we’ve
been up there
, to the Research Centre, we’ve
seen
the creature in the Autopsy room, near where you snuffed that scientist, doctor guy. You had to have seen the creature.” Dag pressed his lips together so hard that all the blood left them, and they turned a faint shade of blue. “Stop
lying
to us.”
“I . . . I . . .” Mitts replied, “I know nothing about them—nothing at all. Only what they look like. I saw one, once. We left our home before I knew anything, before my parents knew anything.”
Dag tilted his head to one side. “And that doctor, he didn’t tell you anything?”
Mitts shook his head. “Nothing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I swear that’s the truth.”
Dag continued to stare hard into Mitts’s eyes for several seconds.
Mitts saw something—a vein?—twitch in Dag’s eye.
It was almost like watching a thought fire through his brain; the track changing.
Dag continued, “And I bet that chewed you up, huh? Him not filling you in on anything?”
“What?” Mitts said, feeling a touch confused at the turn in the conversation.
Dag smiled slightly. “Yeah, I bet it did, and you couldn’t stand it, him not telling you what was going on with the wider world—we saw his studies, those studies on your family; some really
sick
shit.”
Mitts felt his heart sink in his chest.
He didn’t want to hear any of this.
He didn’t want to hear any of this stuff about his
family
.
And, much less, he didn’t want to hear anything at all about Heinmein.
Not for as long as he lived.
“That’s the problem with scientists,” Dag went on, “turn the whole fucking world into some great big science project.”
Mitts give his silent agreement.
Dag shook his head and stared down at the concrete.
He was quiet for a long time.
“Wanna know my theory?” Dag said.
Mitts said nothing.
The question was rhetorical.
Dag smirked, half of his mouth rising up his cheek. “I reckon you just lost it totally—flew off the handle.” He glanced back at Mitts. “You know that doctor of yours, that scientist guy? He kept a journal.”
Mitts shook his head.
“Yeah, he did,” Dag went on, “pretty thorough one too, and—my, oh my—did he ever have a whole bunch of bile to spill about you; about your brattish behaviour, your
stealing
those books from that room.”
Mitts wanted to protest.
He wanted to defend himself.
But, at the same time, he realised how futile it would be to do so.
Dag continued, “Don’t think that we don’t realise everything went tits up on your eighteenth birthday.” He glanced in through the bars, grinned at Mitts. “Happy
belated
fucking birthday, by the way.”
Mitts gritted his teeth.
He glared out from between the bars.
“No,” Dag went on, “my theory is that you caught yourself a touch of cabin fever, and that was all it took for you to go crazy, tumble the place the hell over. Kill that doctor, that scientist, your family too.”
This time, Mitts couldn’t resist.
He felt heat rising up in his cheeks.
Before thinking, he rushed upward, and toward the bars.
He made a grab for Dag.
But Dag was too quick for him.
With a swift couple of steps backward, he was away from the bars.
He pulled his sidearm up and out of its holster.
Pointed it at Mitts’s forehead.
As Mitts looked beyond the tiny black hole of the pistol, he saw that Dag was smiling widely.
He was grinning, as if this was just some sort of entertainment.
Dag held the gun on Mitts for another few seconds, before—still grinning all over—he holstered it. He reached up to his chin, and rubbed his fingers through the days’ old muzzle of stubble. “Don’t you worry about it, though. We can always use a couple of crazies . . . make pretty effective security men in days like these.”
With a fat-lipped smile, Dag shook his head and trudged out the door.
It slammed with a steel
clatter
.
Mitts felt himself slip down to the floor.
He could feel the tears well up behind his eyes.
But he pushed them down.
* * *
Mitts spent most of his time in the cell staring at the concrete wall opposite.
He thought about how the conversation with Dag had gone.
Not well.
It seemed that everyone suspected Mitts was crazy.
That he had killed his own family.
That he had killed Doctor Heinmein in cold blood.
The smell of cooking chicken was too much to bear.
No matter how much Mitts reasoned with himself, told himself that he had zero prospect of getting anything to eat, he couldn’t stop his mouth watering.
He could hear people talking, too, on the other side of the door.
To begin with he had tried to channel into their words, but had found it impossible.
As Mitts sat slumped up on the floor of his cell—resting his back against the wall till it went numb—he tried to think how he might prove his innocence.
He thought about the plethora of cameras back in the Compound.
And immediately shot that idea down.
No power.
It seemed hopeless.
He was the sole survivor.
About an hour or so later, he heard the door creak open.
He turned his attention front and centre, wondering what torture would be coming to greet him.
As it turned out, it was Luca.
As always, she was dressed in her dark-green tank top and black jeans.
He took in afresh her cropped, black hair.
The pinkish glow to her cheeks.
This time, though, she wasn’t smiling.
She seemed nervous.
She hung back from the bars.
Mitts’s gaze slipped down to her hand. She clutched a folder; one of those padded ones someone might use for a thin laptop, or for especially important documents.
Luca brought the folder up to her chest and clutched it tight.
She managed a thin-lipped smile, but that was all.
Politeness
.
Mitts slid his knees up to his chest and then wrapped his arms around his legs.
He glanced away from her, for some reason unable to look her in the eye.
“Hey,” Luca said.
Mitts didn’t reply.
He could feel her gaze upon him.
On the air, he caught a slight whiff of lilacs: the perfume Mitts had smelled right before the truck had arrived . . . before he had been knocked to the ground.
Taken away.
“Do you remember the drawings?” Luca said, a slight hop to her voice.
Mitts could tell, even without her standing close, that she was trembling.
She was
terrified
to be in the same room.
Mitts turned his head.
When he spoke, his voice was gravelly. “What’re they going to do with me?”
Luca pressed on another smile.
Equally as false as the last one.
“Would you like to see the drawings?” she said.
Mitts glanced to the folder she held in her hand. Then he looked away.
He gave a nonchalant shrug.
As Mitts stared at the grey concrete wall before him, he heard Luca crouch down on the outside of the bars and unzip the folder.
The scent of lilacs was like poison in his lungs. He wished she would just go away. He wished that she would just leave him
alone
. He could wallow here, in his self-pity.
Waiting for . . . whatever they intended to do with him.
“I started about three, maybe four years ago,” Luca said, “when I first arrived to the Village. I’ve never shown them to anyone, until now. I thought that they were just
stupid
dreams, you know? But, for some reason, I feel like I can share them with you. That you won’t laugh about them.”
Mitts felt like he wanted to roll his eyes, like he wanted to laugh in her face.
Did she not understand what he was going through right now?
How he was locked up for the
second
time since he’d arrived here?
That he was a suspected
serial
killer?
Mitts turned to Luca, looked into her eyes, saw her earnest expression and he realised—right there and then—that he would never be able to speak a cross word to her.
It would be like scolding a puppy.
Mitts turned his attention downward, to the folder. He could make out the pieces of paper within.
Simple sheets of white A4.
Apparently reading his mind, Luca said, “When I got here, I took it out of the photocopier, no one seemed to miss it.”
Despite himself, Mitts couldn’t help but smile.
There was something so light—almost
childlike
—about Luca’s manner.
Then he turned his attention to the drawings themselves.
Luca had drawn them using a blunted pencil.
The first one was awash with grey-black carbon.
Night
.
Within the darkness, Mitts made out a pair of figures.
Barely visible.
It took him another couple of moments to recognise them as a man and a women.
Both of them wore party clothes:
The man a tuxedo.
The woman a cocktail dress.
There was a splash of light toward the edge of the picture.
A big party going on . . . off-stage.
Mitts absorbed the picture. Thoughts scattered around his brain.
The details were returning.
The details which, if he’d been asked about them—not five seconds before—he would’ve had
zero
chance of recalling.
But he recalled them now.
The smell of the rose garden.
The fragmented song of the string quartet.
The taste of champagne.
That cool, night breeze.
A tingle of excitement as the New Year approached.
A fresh start . . .
But those thoughts—those feelings—none of them came from Mitts himself.
They came from his subconscious.