Hunted by Darkness

After All That Happened

Sarah

The water ran hot over her skin, dissolving the tears and the congealed blood that had settled on her hand and wrist. The images of Lucy and her cousin dead, unnoticed, was engraved in the back of her mind. She could not shake the mental picture. Wishing she hadn’t seen her friend’s face didn’t improve the situation much. Her hands hadn’t stopped shaking since she came out of the house, yet she felt an unexpected sense of control. There had been something strange around the house, she had felt it, and Gabriel said he had too. A tingle started at the bottom of her back and had climbed up her spine, an almost electrical feeling. Whether it was that, or something else, she suddenly knew what to do. Nothing much registered, at the time, other than the position of the bodies, the injuries, and this need she had to go to Lucy’s room. The picture had caught her attention almost immediately, partly because Gabriel was on it and he seemed to be her only ally left, but there was something else in that picture that was important, and she couldn’t figure out what it was.

She wrapped herself in a bathrobe and sat on the edge of the bathtub towel-drying her hair, the images of that morning running in her head like a movie she couldn’t pause. A knock at the door snapped her out of her momentary nightmarish state. She cracked it open. Gabriel was holding out the brand new toothbrush he had gone to buy for her.

‘Are you ok?’

She nodded, a weak smile on her lips.

‘I’ll be out in a minute. Thanks for the toothbrush.’

‘Right. I’ll… I’ll be out here.’

She smiled again and closed the door between them.

In a pair of jeans and t-shirt that felt too tight on her, Lucy had been at least a size smaller than she was, she finally came out of the bathroom. Gabriel was at the kitchen counter, making coffee. He lifted the mugs and then swore out loud as the hot liquid splashed over his hands. Sarah watched as he ran cold water over them. She grabbed a sponge from the sink and cleaned up the mess, drying the bottom of the ceramic mugs. Her hands were still shaking a bit, but she managed to hold them steady to the coffee table. She sat, gathering her legs under her, grateful when Samson came to snuggle against her. His warmth and his weight on her legs soothed her nerves. She scratched him behind the ears distractedly. A thud made her and the dog jump out of their skin. Gabriel had sunk into the other end of the sofa, his weight making the furniture shriek. She was about to say something, ask him how he was feeling. Surely finding dead bodies wasn’t easy for anybody, but he didn’t look at her, he just dived for the remote control and switched on the TV. He changed channels fast and she knew he wasn’t taking in the young men denying fatherhood of their children or the old men in tweed jackets pointing at half-broken porcelain figurines. His coffee sat untouched on the table in front of him, his head resting on a closed fist. She could still see the tremor on the hand holding the remote control. With soft fingers, she rested her hand on his outstretched wrist. Slowly he turned to face her, his eyes shining with tears he wasn’t letting fall. He let go of the remote and took her hand in his, watching her small fingers in his big hand.There was a sense of the familiar that was beyond their short acquaintance or even the fact that they had been friends before her accident. His hand felt rough against her palm, and she realized she didn’t know anything about him. His age, what he did in life, where he came from… yet she had accepted to leave her house and everything she had come to know since she had woken up because of his belief that her parents were… what? Gone? She was sitting in this apartment with a complete stranger and absolutely no proof, other than the picture now folded in her pockets, that they were friends. Even if they were, so was Mary, and there was definitely something wrong with her. Yet, now, as she sat here, her brain feeding her these very reasonable concerns, she couldn’t but feel safe. The touch of his skin, the smell of musk and unvarnished wood that sipped from his pores made her feel at home, somewhere she had been before, unlike her so-called home. There, she had felt in danger, watched and cold. Here, she felt warm and secure.

Gabriel’s pressure on her hand grew in intensity. She could feel the acceleration of his heartbeat and she had to look away as not to stare at the redness now creeping up his collar. His eyes, however, didn’t look away from her hand. Nothing moved for what seemed a long time until Gabriel jumped off the sofa and dropped her hand. He rubbed his eyes and sniffed once.

‘I’m going to heat up the coffee,’ he explained as he grabbed his untouched, by now cold coffee.

As Gabriel walked away, Sarah felt he had left a void larger than his body on the sofa. A slap of cold air generated from his movement, and she wrapped her arms around Samson, who cuddled closer to her, to fill in the void. She watched the TV blindly, a woman explaining the pros and cons of a house she was showing to a newlywed couple. Gabriel sat back down but didn’t say a word.

Five days later, he wasn’t in any better a mood. She had the impression that, had he had the use of his own bed, he wouldn’t have gotten out of it. He was calling in sick everyday, she heard him on the phone, although she wasn’t sure where he was calling to. He caught her staring once, as he rang off and explained he didn’t want to leave her alone, but that didn’t sound right. He barely talked. He got up, he walked the dog, she made breakfast, he sat on the couch, watched TV until it was lunchtime. Sometimes she cooked, sometimes he did. They had started to get a singular rhythm that didn’t require communication. At first, it hadn’t bothered her so much, she wasn’t much in the mood for talking, the images of the dead bodies still floating in her mind like dead flies in a pool. They were still there, hiding at the back of her mind, pushing against a door she was trying to keep closed, sure they would make it through eventually.

But by now she was ready to talk about it and she found she had nobody to talk to. It was very much like when she had been at home with her parents. She wouldn’t be able to bear the loneliness if it wasn’t for Samson, but they had been cooped up in the house for almost a week now, and she was starting to feel claustrophobic.

The sound of keys outside the door alerted her to his return from walking the dog as she set Gabriel’s coffee on the table. He made a quick grimace that was meant to pass as a smile as he threw the keys on the counter. The thuds of Samson running up and down the apartment, ball in his mouth, reverberated between the naked walls and the tall ceiling.

‘Did he pull much today?’

Gabriel had mentioned before that Samson pulled from the lead quite a lot and, because he was so heavy and strong, it might have been difficult for her to control him. She had a funny feeling that he wouldn’t pull so much with her, but she didn’t argue.

‘No,’ was his answer.

Sarah sighed. Monosyllables was about the only reply she had had to any of her attempts at conversation.

‘Is there anybody you know out there? Any neighbours walking their dogs?’

‘No.’

‘Anything interesting to report?’

He looked up for a second, then shook his head, his eyes dropping back down to survey the surface of his coffee. Sarah jerked up, her chair sliding back a few inches, scratching the floor.

‘You know what? To hell with this!’

She crossed the apartment and grabbed the travel bag and pulled out a shirt and jeans and locked herself into the bathroom. It didn’t take long to get changed. She was tired of Gabriel’s grumpiness and bleak mood, and she couldn’t stand being in there with him any longer. He knocked at the bathroom door as she was brushing her teeth. She spat the excess toothpaste, ran a brush through her hair and stumped out of the bathroom.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Look at that,’ she sat down to put her boots on, ‘you can say more than one word at a time…’

Gabriel raised his eyebrows, almost taking a step back.

‘I’m going out… shopping.’

‘Shopping! Shopping for what?’

‘I don’t know,’ she didn’t look at him. ‘Make-up, I don’t have any make-up.’

She walked from one surface to the next, trying to find her phone, which she stuffed into her jeans’ pocket before putting her jacket on.

‘And how do you think you’re going to get to wherever it is you think you’re going?’

‘A bus, I’ll walk if I need to…’

‘Stop jumping about!’

She turned to face him, her cheeks burning.

‘Look, this is… not right. We’re here, like an old married couple, struggling to even look at each other and I don’t think I’ve done anything to deserve that. I am grateful for your help, and I can appreciate that what we witnessed the other day was… gruesome, traumatizing even, but if I have to spend one more day stuck inside this house, one word every three hours, I will go insane. I already have enough of that, so I am going out. Now,’ she took a breath, ‘you can come with me if you want to, but I am going one way or the other.’

Gabriel stood frozen in front of her. She could see the cogs turning behind the grey wall of his eyes, his face red, his hair falling in burning locks over his forehead. The seconds ticked almost audibly in the room. Even Samson stared at him, waiting for an answer, yet none came.

‘Fine!’ she rolled her eyes, patted Samson on the head, and walked out of the apartment with the confidence of somebody who knew the town like the back of their hand.

Truth be told, she didn’t, something of which she was very much aware as she stepped out to the street, but she was so fired up by her recent surge of annoyance that it didn’t matter, at least not for the time being. She wanted to be on that bus and get far from there for a while.

The bus stop was only a few yards from the apartment, out of the alley, to the left. She stood alone under the roofed space and watched out for the bus to come. A few minutes later, as she looked down the road, a hand closed around her arm and pulled her softly away.

‘What are you doing?’

Gabriel didn’t answer but guided her across the road, a few yards farther down and stopped under the opposite bus stop.

‘You were going in the wrong direction,’ he said, burying his hands in his pockets.

She sighed in relief, though she might never admit it to him. In the heat of the moment, it wasn’t important, but as she waited for public transport, a knot of anxiety had taken hold in her stomach. She didn’t know where she was going and if she would meet Alex or Mary by chance, or not so much chance. Or, indeed, if she would find the way back.

They made it to city centre in one piece, though, but still in silence. Gabriel, after all, might have felt obliged to come out and didn’t seem to be keen in ending his vow of silence or moodiness. It bothered her, but at least she was outside of the house, and there were things to see, windows to look at and make-up to wear. She had convinced one of the girls in the shop to try some of the new make-up palettes they had on sale and was feeling pretty sharp as they walked down the high street later on.

‘Are you hungry?’

To her joy, he was, because she was starving. They stepped into a KFC at the corner. Once at a table, Sarah polished her chicken wings and her chips as if she had been deprived of food for a month, ruining the lipstick that had been so carefully applied by the girl in the store.

‘You haven’t bought anything,’ Gabriel finally said.

‘I don’t have any money,’ she shrugged.

Gabriel watched her in silence, his eyes dark and foreign. And then, without any warning, he threw his head back and started laughing. It was loud, it was deep and hearty, and it lit a light into Sarah’s chest that she didn’t know was possible. The tension on her shoulders dissolved, a tension she hadn’t even been aware that was there until it left, and everything seemed brighter. 

‘Sorry,’ he said finally, tears pooling in his eyes, ‘it’s just… you were so determined to go shopping…’

She smiled back, the first genuine smile she had given that she could remember.

‘You should have said, I’ll get you the stuff,’ he put a hand up before she could argue, ‘as a loan, even if saving my life well deserves some rewarding and gratitude.’

‘You do enough as it is,’ she replied, still with a smile. ‘Where do you get all this money?’

‘I do have a job, you know?’

Sarah raised an eyebrow, a spark in her eye.

‘I work for my uncle as a car mechanic.’

‘Have you done that for a long time?’

‘Twelve years.’

‘You must have been five when you started!’ she laughed.

‘Fourteen, actually. And no need to count in your head, I’m twenty-six.’

She smiled again, but not for long. Looking away, somewhere far, somewhere where he wouldn’t see the shiny, watery surface of her eyes.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘You were starting a profession twelve years ago, I don’t remember what I was doing last year,’ she gritted her teeth.

She could feel him watching her, but she refused to return his gaze. She didn’t like this self-pity. Or, more specifically, she was tired of it. She had basked in it for long enough now, it was tiresome. She wanted normal, although normal had been elusive so far.

‘Well, let’s see. Twelve years ago you were six, so it’s very likely you were in P2 or P3, learning to read. P2 actually.’

‘How are you so sure?’

‘You were born on the fifteenth of August, so you wouldn’t have started P3 till you were seven.’

Sarah wasn’t sure what that meant, but she was stunned at his knowing her birthday, a date that she had difficulty remembering because, well, she didn’t remember ever celebrating one. She had a birthday shortly after the accident, but she hadn’t been conscious at the time.

‘I’ll turn nineteen this year, then,’ she said almost to herself.

‘Yep,’ he smiled, ‘so we better go and get you that make-up!’

Gabriel had become much more chatty as they roamed the shelves in the shops. The fit of laughter might have unblocked him. He was a patient shopping partner and was honest when she asked him what he thought, even if every shade of lipstick seemed red to him.

As she debated whether spending fifteen pounds on lipstick was reasonable or not, a familiar voice called her name. It wasn’t, thankfully, the giggly sound of Mary or the sticky voice of Alex. Rose almost ran to her, followed, more slowly, by Vivian, who saw Gabriel and proceeded to look her up and down before stopping right behind her friend.

‘I’ve been trying to talk to you for, like, ever! Did your phone die or what?’

Sarah pulled out her phone and noticed that, other than the incessant messages of Alex and Mary, her phone was still devoid of any activity.

‘The police has been looking for you!’

She physically felt the colour drain from her cheeks. She didn’t even dare exchange looks with Gabriel. How could the police know it was she who had found the body. Gabriel was the one to call 999, and he had withheld his number, not to say that the police had no way to identify those calls, maybe, she didn’t know. Did somebody in Lucy’s neighbourhood have CCTV?

Panic-stricken, she dropped everything and grabbed Gabriel’s hand.

‘Let’s get out of here.’