The Collector Book One: Mana Leak (49 page)
“Yes, Glenda,” he said, tenderly climbing into the back of the cab. “Thank you, Glenda.”
Eleanor sat down beside him and pulled the door shut. Glenda stood in front of the house, waving goodbye.
“My God,” said Joe. “That woman.”
“I know she’s hard work,” said Eleanor, giving her friend a polite wave as the car pulled away, “but at least we have a roof over our heads.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
They watched the world go by through the windows. The driver, a bald man with large bushy eyebrows, broke the silence. He looked over his shoulder at them.
“Samhane hospital, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you,” said Eleanor.
“Right you are, love.” He slowed the car, the traffic lights ahead changing to red. “Not sure how long it’ll take though. Heard there was a right smasher on the ‘58. Might take a little bit longer. Gotta go the long way ‘round to avoid the traffic, see.”
“That will be fine, driver.”
“Just sayin’.” He faced forwards. “Just in case you were late for your appointment.”
“We don’t have one,” said Joe. “We’re going to visit a friend.”
“Oh, okay. Just when I saw the crutch and everything…” He shrugged his shoulders.
The light turned green.
I wish he’d shut up
, thought Joe. He hated the inevitable chat you always had in the back of a cab.
Wish I still had my car. Who knows where that ended up?
“How are you feeling?” asked Eleanor.
“Nervous. I don’t want to see her, yet at the same time I do. Know what I mean?”
“You’re anxious. We all went through an awful lot and we haven’t really talked about it together. No one has seen Jake, and Anne’s been in the hospital ever since.”
“Did you tell Glenda we were visiting her?”
Eleanor chuckled. “No. Certainly not! I said you had a check-up on your ankle.”
“Nasty business, wasn’t it?” chirped up the taxi driver.
Joe rolled his eyes,
“What was?” asked Eleanor, casting Joe a deflated look.
“Those murders,” said the driver, relishing the word. “I don’t get many calls out here now. I’m glad for it. Just think, he’s still at large with those kids. Saw an update on the news this morning.”
He paused to stick a finger up his right nostril and rummage around. He pulled out his prize and lowered his hand. Joe tried not to think of where it had ended up.
“Yeah. The mother made an appeal. Imagine that, having a psycho steal your kids and then having to go on national television and beg for their return. Horrific! Still, she was a mighty fine looker.”
Joe looked at Eleanor, who placed a calming hand on his knee.
They had both watched Anne’s appeal on the breakfast news that morning in silence. The police believed some lunatic had attacked Penny Crescent that night, dispatched some of the residents and abducted the children. The Collector was right: no one would have believed the truth. The Prowler bodies had vanished, same as parts of the machine that attacked the Deans. Telling the truth would have had them all sanctioned. Better to live a charade and just
know
the truth.
“How long ago did it happen?”
“A week,” Joe told the driver. “One week exactly.”
“Oh,” said the driver, picking up on Joe’s cold tone. He kept his mouth shut for the rest of the journey.
3.
The lift doors opened and they stepped into the corridor leading to ICU. Joe hesitated.
“Is this such a good idea?”
“She asked to see us,” said Eleanor. “After all this, I don’t think a visit is out of the question.”
Joe nodded and limped to catch her up. His crutch thudded against the floor.
“I’ve just been dreading this moment.”
The corridor ended in a double door. Through the windows, Joe spotted a nurses’ station on the other side, then rows of widely spaced beds running to the end of the room.
“Here goes,” he said. He pushed the doors open.
The smell was stronger than in the corridor. The sickening mix of death and sterile surfaces hung heavy in the room. It was louder too; several patients were attached to various machines that beeped and hissed constantly.
Eleanor approached the nurses’ station, behind which a pretty young girl was sitting. Joe hobbled over and stood beside his grandmother.
“Excuse me,” she said.
The nurse looked up and smiled. “I’m sorry. I’m snowed under at the moment and didn’t see you there. Can I help you?”
“We’re here on visiting. Harper?”
The nurse tapped at the keyboard in front of her.
Joe noticed her name badge said ROSE. It was pinned on her blue uniform just above her left breast. He quickly looked away as she glanced up.
“It’s the bed at the end. Would you like me to accompany you?”
Eleanor looked down the room.
“I can see it from here, dear. We’ll be fine.”
The nurse nodded and returned her attention to the computer screen.
His grandmother took his hand. He tried to stare forwards, focusing on the far wall. He refused to stare at the other patients they passed. The multitude of gory injuries and crippling diseases would feel like a walkthrough freak show.
White curtains masked the bed at the end of the ICU. Only the foot of the bed was visible, a bump in the sheets showing the feet of the patient. Arriving bedside, they parted the curtains.
Sitting in a red, plastic chair, Anne looked up.
“You came?”
Eleanor nodded.
“Thank you.”
Anne stood and walked down the side of the bed to greet them. She threw her arms around Eleanor and gave her a fierce hug.
“How are you doing?” said Eleanor.
“Coping, I suppose. The hospital gets to me. It’s like Katie all over again. The waiting, the worry, the damn helplessness! And of course, there are the children…”
She released Eleanor and approached Joe.
“Hold on there,” he said, raising a hand in mock defence. “I’m fragile!”
“I don’t care,” said Anne, also giving him a tight squeeze. “You came.”
She stepped back and wiped her cheeks.
“How is he?” asked Joe, studying the figure in the bed.
“Alive. Just.”
“I’m so sorry, Anne. The state he was in, I thought…I thought he must have been dead.”
Frank lay slightly propped up with pillows. He was wrapped completely in bandages, only two small squares cut out for his eyes. They reminded Joe of the peepholes they’d cut in the barricade. A tube protruded from the bandages over Frank’s mouth, which was connected to a large, white machine at the side of the bed. Some kind of pump, which looked like the centre of an accordion, rose and fell within a glass chamber. It systematically released a gaseous hiss, followed by an electronic beep. A drip containing a clear solution stood next to the machine. Its narrow tube ran down into Frank’s forearm.
“Dr Holland says he has lacerations on ninety percent of his body. Some are tiny, others life-threatening. He said he’s never seen anything like it. The specialists think some knife or scalpel was used along with scissors. The time taken for all this damage would have been hours. You said it happened in seconds?”
“Yes,” said Joe. “Then they came after me.”
Anne turned back to her husband. “It’s a miracle he’s alive.”
“They patched him up well,” said Joe.
They watched Frank for a few minutes, listening to the wheeze of the machine. No one noticed Nurse Rose until she politely coughed.
“Mrs Harper? Could I borrow you for a second?”
“Erm, yes…of course.” She turned to Joe and Eleanor. “Excuse me.”
She walked back up the ward, talking quietly to the nurse.
“I take it you haven’t told her about Frank yet?” whispered Eleanor. “What he tried to do?”
Joe stared at the injured man, at death’s door and looking like H G Wells’s
Invisible Man
.
“I couldn’t. She has enough to deal with. She doesn’t need to know what happened. Besides, look at him. Do you think he’s going to pull through?”
Eleanor bit her lower lip.
“Exactly,” said Joe. “What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.”
“Joe,” whispered Eleanor. “She’s coming back.”
Anne walked back up the ward to the bed.
“Dr Holland is doing a round soon,” she said. “So we don’t have long.” She sat back in the plastic chair and gave her husband a long look. “I wanted to see the two of you because you’re the only people I can trust. There’s that, and I need your help. Especially you, Eleanor.”
“Anything,” she said. “We saw the appeal on television this morning. We know how hard it must be to deal with all this and play along with the story at the same time. We can offer all the support and comfort we can.”
“Comfort?” Anne snorted. “Comfort won’t bring Charlie and Bronwyn back. I need your help. I need to follow him.”
“What?” cried Joe. “Follow him? How?”
“I don’t know,” said Anne. “But you, Eleanor. You might know.”
“But I don’t know, Anne. I’m sorry. I don’t want to upset you, but I don’t know!”
Anne swallowed, holding back tears that made her eyes shimmer.
“But you might be able to find out. You always knew more than any of us about what was going on. All that research you did… There might be a way to open the door again. We just need to learn how!”
“My books were ruined. The Prowlers…” She glanced around and lowered her voice. “The Prowlers shredded them! I couldn’t possibly…”
“Then we’ll buy more,” shouted Anne, attracting a few looks from the other visitors and conscious patients. “We’ll get them and read every word!”
“Please,” said Joe. “Keep your voice down.”
“I’m going to find a way to open that door,” said Anne. “And I’m going after that bastard alone and getting my children back!”
“No, you’re not,” cried Joe.
Anne jumped out of her seat and ran over to him. She pushed Joe in the chest. He winced and tottered on his crutch.
“Anne,” said Eleanor. “Stop this!”
“I’ve been told what I can and can’t do all my life! I’m telling you, I am going to that goddamn City. Hear me?”
“Yes,” gasped Joe. “But that’s not what I meant.”
Anne raised her eyebrows, her tears now flowing freely.
“I mean you’re not going alone,” he said. “If we find a way to open that door, I’m coming with you.”
4.
A lone van, its occupants done for the night, slowly reached the end of Penny Crescent. The tyres rolled over the solid road, passing over a small crack in the tarmac.
From a tiny circular window, high up on the Dean house, a figure sat and watched the van reach the head of the street, paying particular attention as it passed the centre. Satisfied the road was still solid, Jake sat back down.
The attic was dark, filled with shadows that kept Jake from sleep. Several times in the night, he awoke screaming, sure that a horror of tapping limbs and snapping claws had crept from the darkness. Still, he refused to light the room, revealing his whereabouts to the constant stream of police that flowed through the street.
Jake knew they wouldn’t hang around for ever; only so much evidence could be collected, bagged and analysed. He’d stay hidden, sneaking down into the house in the dead of night for food, until they were gone.
He also believed The Collector’s door would stay closed while they were still here.
Jake pulled his blankets tightly around his body. The nights were cold up in the attic.
It’s been a week. They can’t be here much longer. When they go, and that door opens…
He lay down and closed his eyes.
I’ll be waiting.
About the Author
Daniel I. Russell has been featured publications such as The Zombie Feed from Apex, Pseudopod and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. He was nominated for two Tin Duck Awards in 2011 for best novel (Samhane, from Stygian Publications) and best short story. Also author of
Come Into Darkness, Critique
and
The Collector,
Daniel is also the current vice-president of the Australian Horror Writers’ Association and special guest editor of Midnight Echo.
Free Preview of ‘Critique’
by
Daniel I. Russell
Published January 2012 by
Dark Continents Publishing
Copyright © 2012 Daniel I. Russell
For Clive Barker, Paul Kane and Marie O'Regan
CRITIQUE
By Daniel I Russell
Desolation was a strange monster. It operated on different scales, on varying shades. It could be plain or beautiful, imposed, self-inflicted, but always…empty.
Carlos, snug in the driver seat and trying to bleed the last from the dying air con, stared out the window.
The sun had collapsed into the horizon, and the surrounding desert was cast into a fiery pit. Scrub and scrawny cacti poked from the ground like hairs from a mole.
Rocks and heat.
Desolation.
Still, better than a six-by-ten concrete cell with a cellmate who cried in his sleep. And as for the heat? Preferable to the eternally cold floor, which made three-hundred pound armed robbers tiptoe better than ballerinas. Shouts in the night and long, empty corridors.
A different kind of monster.
Carlos turned back to the road and ran his hand across his slick forehead, wiping it on the leg of his jeans. Not the best choice of clothing for a day-long drive through the desert, but without the luxury of an extensive wardrobe, he’d had to manage. His few items of clothing lay in a sports bag on the frayed back seat. His arms felt sore, sunburn probably, but his dark skin showed no signs.
His unmarked cardboard box rode shotgun, secured by the seatbelt.
He cast it a side glance, trying to imagine the street value.
White gold, they’d told him as they weighed, bagged and stashed, and if any goes missing on transit, bro, you got yourself one motherfucker of a problem.