The Beast. Barry Hutchison

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ me up if anything happens,’ she answered, rolling on to her back and interlocking her fingers behind her head. ‘Hey, cool,’ she said, looking past me, up towards the cloudy night sky. ‘It’s snowing.’

      I raised my eyes in time to see a tiny white dot drift by on the other side of the glass. Another fell a moment later, then another, and another. In just a few minutes, the sky was filled with a hundred thousand falling flakes.

      ‘It’s heavy too,’ I said, but Ameena’s only reply was a soft snore. ‘No stamina,’ I muttered, then I yawned, rested my chin on the windowsill, and settled in for a long, lonely stakeout.

      I woke up with my forehead against the cold glass and soft January sunlight in my eyes. Several centimetres of snow were piled up on the window ledge, so white it was almost glowing.

      ‘Crap!’ I cursed. I tried to stand up but my legs were numb from being folded beneath me and I quickly fell back down again.

      ‘What? What’s wrong?’ Ameena asked, wide awake and on her feet before she’d finished speaking.

      ‘I fell asleep,’ I explained, furious with myself. ‘I missed them coming out!’

      ‘Um... no you didn’t.’

      I looked down at the front of my house. The police car was still there. Its headlamps were dim and the blue light had been covered by the snow that continued to fall. The car hadn’t moved all night.

      ‘That’s weird,’ I said. I looked to Ameena for reassurance. ‘That’s weird, right?’

      She nodded. ‘That is definitely weird.’

      The lights were still on in the house. I studied all the windows in turn, trying to make out any movement within them. Nothing. As far as I could see, the house was completely still.

      ‘Why would they still be there?’ I asked, not really expecting an answer. ‘It’s been hours. They should’ve come out long before now.’

      ‘Kyle.’ Ameena spoke the word quietly, but I couldn’t miss the tremble in her voice.

      ‘What?’

      She didn’t reply, just nodded towards the back garden. Towards the streaks of dark red that coloured the snow.

      I was out of the room in a heartbeat, bounding down into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. The electricity tingled across my scalp, and this time I didn’t resist. I imagined the board being torn from the front door, pictured the wood and the rusty nails being yanked sharply away.

      The board gave a crack and fell outwards as I approached and a dim, watery light seeped in. I hurried outside and found myself stumbling, knee-deep, through snow. I hesitated, just for a moment, wondering how this much of the stuff could possibly have fallen in one night, but then I was running again, heading for the fence, no longer worried about being seen.

      Ameena crunched along behind me, struggling to keep up. The snow slowed me down, but I reached the fence in no time and vaulted over it.

      I plopped down into the marshmallow whiteness of my garden, staggered forwards, then set off running again, making for the back door. The snow was falling heavily, making it hard to see more than a few metres in any direction. I was running through the red streaks almost before I saw them. Their slick wetness sparkled atop the snow, slowly taking on a pinkish hue as more flakes fell.

      I looked up, blinking against the blizzard, and saw the back door stood ajar. Not bothering to wait for Ameena, I crunched up the stone steps, through the open door, and into a blood-soaked warzone that had once been my kitchen.

      an? Nan?’ I raced through the kitchen, past the upturned table and the broken chairs, past the blood-spattered cabinets and the shattered glass.

      ‘Good grief !’ Ameena muttered, appearing at the back door just as I charged through into the living room.

      ‘Nan, where are you?’ I called. My voice was absorbed by the silence of the house. The living room was a mess, but not in the same league as the kitchen. The coffee table was in pieces and the TV was face down on the carpet, but there was no blood. No Nan, either.

      I made for the stairs, then pulled myself together enough to collect one of the legs of the broken coffee table. It was a short piece of wood – about forty-five centimetres from top to bottom – but it was thick and it was heavy and I’d be able to do some damage with it if I had to.

      ‘Any sign of her?’ Ameena asked, joining me at the bottom of the stairs. She’d had the same idea as me, and now carried a knife she’d lifted from the wooden block in the kitchen. She held it with the blade flat against her wrist, half-concealed, but ready to strike.

      ‘Not yet,’ I said. I called up the stairs. ‘Nan? Nan, are you up there?’

      A groan. A whimper. Faint, but there. I was halfway up the stairs when I heard it again, three-quarters of the way before I realised it had come from the living room.

      I turned, bounded back down half a dozen steps, and that’s when I realised I had been wrong. There was blood in the living room. So much blood.

      It started on the wall just by the kitchen door, a metre and a half off the ground, and streaked straight upwards – a thick smear of it in one continuous line across the ceiling.

      The trail stopped almost exactly above the couch. The whimper came again and I took the last of the stairs in a single leap. Ameena was already pulling the couch aside. I saw the police uniform before I was halfway there.

      She lay on her back, her hands on her belly, one eye wide open, one battered shut. Blood pumped through her fingers, ran down her arms, seeped into the carpet, drip, drip, drip. Half of her face was a swollen mess of purple and black. Her one open eye stared upwards, but not at the ceiling, at something beyond the ceiling that only she could see.

      Her breathing came in shallow gasps, two or three a second, in-out, in-out, in-out.

      ‘What do we do?’ Ameena asked.

      ‘Call an ambulance.’

      ‘What? But... they’ll bring more cops. You’ll get—’

      ‘Call an ambulance!’ I shouted. ‘She’s dying!’

      There was a moment’s hesitation, and for just a fraction of a second I thought she was going to refuse. But then she was clambering over the couch, reaching for the sideboard, picking up the phone.

      I knelt down by the policewoman, wishing I knew how to help her. Her eye was bulging, the pupil fully dilated so there was no colour left, just a circle of black. I had been right last night – she was young. Late twenties at the most.

      ‘It’s dead.’

      I looked up. Ameena was standing over us, the phone in her hand. ‘No dial tone. Weather, maybe?’

      Maybe.

      Maybe not.

СКАЧАТЬ