The Doctor (3 page)

The corridor was deserted, save for the bodily fluids. A number of open locker doors to our right suggested it had been vacated in a hurry. There was a wailing sound coming from one of the rooms up ahead so we moved in that direction, taking care not to disturb anything. There was no sign of any monsters here so far, but the college was pretty big, so he could be hiding out of sight, or more likely he’d already disappeared and we would be getting a call about a new crime scene shortly.

I had my camera out and was taking photos of everything as we went. We didn’t collect evidence at crime scenes, we let the
serva
CSIs do that. We just accessed their databases once their results were in. Saves a heck of lot of time. I prefer taking my own photos though. Knowing that those responsible could have any number of paranormal abilities has you looking at a crime scene a little differently to a
serva
.
 

Both Tez and I were recruited specifically for the job because of our abilities. I was able to access the minds of others, to see and manipulate memories that they often didn’t even know they had; telepathy the
servas
call it. Tez was telekinetic; he could manipulate objects with his mind. It had pulled us out of a tight spot on more than one occasion.

We reached the room the noises were coming from and opened the door, keeping out of sight, just in case. I peered around the doorframe and found a group of young women huddled together in one corner. Clearly there was no threat in there.

‘It’s okay,’ I said gently, ‘we’re investigators.’ I pulled off my badge and showed it to the nearest girl who barely glanced at it. The girls all looked like they were in shock, which was understandable considering what they had most likely witnessed. The room looked fairly clear, but there were spots of blood here and there amongst the tables and chairs.
 

‘Is anyone hurt?’ Tez asked, entering behind me. I swear a couple of the girls instantly looked a whole lot better. One was even checking her hair was still in place. I turned to Tez and raised my eyebrows at him questioningly, but he just grinned. I wish I knew how he did it.

In answer to his question, most of the girls shook their heads but two came forward from the back and showed their injuries. The first had superficial scratches all over her and a broken wrist from the look of it. The other was a little worse. She had deep cuts across her face and arms, and her hand was clasped tightly on her shoulder. Blood was seeping through her fingers and she just shook her head, tears running down her face.

‘Come on,’ Tez said softly, placing a hand on her back and leading her to the other side of the room, ‘Let me take a look.’

She’d be fine once Tez had manipulated the wounds and stopped the bleeding. He had to leave her injured still, to avoid suspicion from the
servas
, but she would be out of danger at least. I turned my attention back to the other girls.

‘Can anyone tell me what happened here?’ I asked, trying to ignore the fact that they were all concentrating on what Tez was doing. I cleared my throat and asked the question again.

They seemed to snap back to the present and a deluge of responses came at me as they all tried to talk at once.

‘It came out of nowhere…’

‘The monster, he just attacked us…’

‘We ran and hid. He was attacking everyone in sight.’

‘Can we go home?’

I put my hands up to stop them talking. ‘One at a time ladies, I’m not a mind reader.’ Okay, so that was a bit of a lie. I focussed on the girl nearest me. She was petite, with blonde hair and blue eyes, a pretty girl. She was chewing her nails nervously, and looking like throwing up was not totally out of the question. I motioned that the other girls should sit down and I would speak to them individually. Taking the petite girl to one side I sat her down and promised we would have a quick chat and then she could go home.

‘I—It was,’ she looked like she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. I encouraged her, with a little help of the paranormal persuasion, and she continued with more confidence, ‘We were attacked during class. One of the students started yelling, screaming in pain, and then… Then he changed. He grew hair all over his face, his hands. He didn’t look like a person any more. His fingernails turned into huge claws and he left the classroom, but he attacked Charlotte and Jessica first.’

As she was talking, I could see images in my mind. They were her memories of the event. Some she could remember, others I had pulled from her subconscious. She was crying now from the effort of reliving the attack and I decided that was quite enough. I’d got a clear idea of what had happened so I wiped the memories and told her there had been a break in at the school and ambulances were on their way to make sure everyone was okay. I sent her to sit with either Charlotte or Jessica, the girl who Tez had taken care of, and who was looking much better already. Before the petite girl reached her I made sure her memories were wiped too.

It took another ten minutes to speak with the remaining girls but they had very little to add. This was definitely the work of the serial killer. There was no doubt about it. After the fourth crime, his methods had earned him a nickname, the Doctor. We just didn’t yet know how he managed to complete his surgery. All the victims had been physically fine, before the transformations. Those who had returned to human form didn’t have a scratch on them.

By the time we were done talking to all the girls and wiping their memories, the ambulance crew had turned up. Jake and Mel appeared at the door to the classroom, grinning as usual. Like us, they were always first on a paranormal scene, but they worked at a
serva
hospital. We couldn’t have
serva
paramedics turning up before we had finished with a scene, so the agency made sure we had people stationed at every hospital in the country.

Mel swiftly checked out all the injuries and confirmed there was nothing life-threatening. With a quick wave to us, she led them all outside to the waiting ambulance, and Jake stopped behind.

‘Another Doctor case I’m afraid,’ Tez told him, ‘Looks like most of the kids made it out safely, but we have to go and check the rest of the building.’

‘Alright, we’ll take those who are injured to the hospital and pop back in case you need us. Give me a call once it’s clear, and I hope you don’t find anyone else.’ Jake shook hands and left, following Mel and the girls back outside.

‘Okay,’ I said with a deep breath, ‘Let’s check out the rest of the place. I hope we don’t find anyone, or anything, else either.’

‘Better not. I’ve got my good shirt on today,’ Tez said gruffly as he walked out the classroom. I chuckled and followed him out. Every time he wore his good shirt he always managed to get it messy. Usually with blood. Mama Tez was not impressed when he went home dirty, and you do not want to mess with Mama Tez.

We walked down the empty corridor listening carefully for any more sounds. It was so quiet, we could just hear our own footsteps echoing as we walked. Checking every room as we passed, we made sure there were no others hiding, or hurt, anywhere. There wouldn’t be much time left before the
serva
police arrived. The alarm must have been sounded by now.
 

In the fifth classroom we found our first fatality. This one hadn’t been as lucky as the girls. It looked like he had been attacked, there were fresh claw marks across his chest, but they weren’t that deep. The head wound was quite bad and there was blood on a nearby desk; most likely the werewolf had startled him, he’d fallen and cracked his head on the way down. Tez made a call to Jake who was already on his way back to the college from the hospital.

Deciding there was nothing more we could do for him, we made our way back out into the corridor and continued our search. The next five rooms were all clear and I was feeling a little less tense.
 

‘These students were very lucky,’ Tez said, ‘This could have been so much worse.’

‘Tell that to the guy in classroom five,’ I replied, stepping past him.

Tez grunted and moved on to the next classroom. I followed, snapping pictures as we went. All the remaining rooms were clear; the students had actually been very lucky. Usually these crime scenes contained more victims than this. Tez’s phone rang and he picked it up.

‘One fatality, a handful injured, and a lot of scared students… Okay, we’re almost done.’ He put the phone back in his pocket. ‘Let’s finish up with the pictures and get back to the office.
Serva
CSIs are on their way, we’ve only got fifteen minutes until they’re here.’

‘Fine, I’m almost done,’ I said, putting my camera away, ‘I want to have a final look around before we leave, I feel like we’re missing something.’

Tez sighed, ‘You know we’re not Jack. We never miss anything, because there’s never anything to bloody find at these scenes. The Doctor never comes himself, and half the time the werewolf or other creature has already left. Give it a day or so and it’ll turn back up. Hopefully before it kills anyone else.’

I shrugged and started to look around. I really did feel like we were missing something, but I couldn’t place my finger on what it was.

Suddenly there was a creak of a door from the corridor behind us and we stopped in our tracks. The hairs on my arms raised warningly. Someone, or something, was back there.

‘What was that?’ I whispered, turning around and looking behind Tez. He was quite pale. Creepy werewolves were not his favourite thing. Couldn’t say I cared for them either.

‘We’ve just checked back there and it was clear. Wasn’t it?’ he whispered back, a little more worried than usual.

I nodded, my eyes searching for any sign of the creature. This wasn’t usual behaviour for a werewolf, they normally attacked right away; they didn’t tend to sneak up on their prey. I swallowed hard. I really hoped we weren’t about to become prey. Both Tez and I were more than capable of restraining a werewolf, but only when we could see it. Only when we knew where it was.

Another sound came from further down the corridor.
 

‘It’s this way,’ I said a little more confidently than I felt. We had to find the creature before the
servas
arrived.

CHAPTER FOUR

Daniel's Story

Beth and I were very nervous now. We couldn’t enjoy the ride and every little thing was making us jump, which on a Haunted House ride was pretty much everything. The carts moved through the next few rooms with nothing unusual happening at all and I started to relax. Maybe it was Jeff’s idea of a Halloween joke. Then suddenly the carts stopped dead on a downward incline and all the lights went out. Beth screamed and grabbed hold of my arm with a death grip. I pushed myself back with my feet to stop my stomach being crushed by the bar in front. I was starting to sweat now, it was getting pretty hot in here.

The mechanical voice started up again. ‘Think this is a Halloween joke do you Daniel?’

Beth clutched tightly on to me and whispered, ‘That voice just said your name.’ I didn’t quite know what to say. This had to be a joke, didn’t it?

‘You too Beth. Don’t think you’re getting out of here.’

The ride started up again as Beth started crying. I tried to reassure her, but couldn’t quite find anything to say. I tried pushing the safety bar but it was doing its job and holding us securely in place. There was no way this was a prank of Jeff’s, he would never scare us like this. And as for the other three, surely they wouldn’t have been able to pull this off?
 

‘I want to get off,’ Beth said in between her sniffs.

‘Me too, but this bar won’t budge. We’re going to have to ride this one out. Maybe it’s just Rex, Ty and Zach playing a joke on us,’ I said, not very convincingly. I gave the bar another shove in frustration. Putting my arm around Beth we moved closer together, and as far away from the edges of the cart as possible. It felt reassuring to have her next to me.

The carts entered a huge banquet room and levelled off. The table was laid out with all kinds of plastic foods and drinks, and the decorations were grand but made to look old, covered in spiders’ webs. I always liked this room as it was the brightest on the whole ride. The carts headed towards the great doors at the other side of the room and I breathed a little easier. Only two more rooms and the ride would be over.
 

As we neared the doors, I suddenly saw a skeleton face hanging silently right by the side of the cart and my heart thudded painfully, as I tried to suppress a yell. Unfortunately Beth was looking in the same direction as me and she saw it too. We both scrambled away to the other side of the seat, and soon wished we hadn’t when we looked the other direction and saw another face suspended in mid air. This one was lit from the inside and glowed like a lantern. It was a hollowed out pumpkin with an evil face carved in to one side, but the other side was completely missing. This time we both screamed and shrank back as far as we could into the seats.

The voice came once again as the carts moved through the doors into the second to last room, ‘Watch out, you don’t want your heads chopped off.’

Before we could react water started pelting through the air at us—at least I hoped it was water. It knocked the hat off my head and into the room. We ducked down into the cart as low as we could with the restraints and tried to escape the freezing cold water that was now landing all over our backs. I could feel it running down my neck and soaking my jacket. My breathing was very erratic now and I was going into full panic mode. Beth wasn’t faring much better beside me.

Okay, so clearly this whole night had been a bad idea. A very bad idea. I just wanted to get out of here now. My heart was practically beating out of my chest and I was feeling sick. Beth was so quiet beside me I squeezed her hand to make sure she was okay. She barely returned the squeeze.

The carts stopped and we wrenched up the safety bar, tumbling out of the seat. The panic had taken over and we ran full pelt towards the exit. I tried to calm down. Panic was the one emotion that seemed to take over my body, and the last thing we needed tonight was for me to lose control. I probably should have mentioned that I’m… shall we say, a little different to most people. Okay, a lot different. Losing control for me is a bad thing, but it’s even worse for the people around me when I do.