Suddenly it became a man by Daniel Scott (book club books .txt) 📖

sound came from downstairs suddenly.

I fell silent and waited, then a moment later a whisper hissed out that span me round muted.  

Alert I stared back into the dark room and listened scrutinizing every sound, analysing shapes, coaxing breath gently in and straining it mutely out.

The light from Lorna’s room went out and the tension in me the seemed to dissipate, I sat down letting out a sigh full of relief and bizarre disappointment.

Even travelling this many miles away wasn’t enough to free me from the haunting paranoia the maniac instilled.

 

As I attended the window suddenly from out of the darkness in the muddy walkway a whisper came again, this time I heard it.

A strange voice restrained and menacing “I don’t care I’m doing him.” Suddenly I felt my heart swell beating faster inside my chest and my ears throbbed as a disturbing steady dull thud downstairs became audible.

 

Compelled, I took the dreaded step through the threshold of my room out on to the landing, I didn’t stop walking until I reached the top of the winding staircase. Instinctively I stared down into the darkness, petrified of what lurked beneath

 

My vision was weak, the only thing I could clearly see was the bottom half of the thick front door. It was open and still swinging languidly on its steel hinges like an insolent child, and as I stared at it angrily it slowly stopped open, as if unashamed of its thick locks inglorious deception.

 

There isn’t darkness like that which conceals a predator.

 

Unable to see enough of the room I edged down two of the steps without a sound and watched for movement below but saw nothing but the small cabinets and coats hung against the wall. As I my eyes scrutinised the shadows they became focused and fully adjusted, my breathing quietened too, the hallway was perfectly devoid of life but

I couldn’t see into the rooms that the hallway led to so decided to take one more step down.

As I moved slightly the floor moaned, automatically my ears followed the sound with my eyes.

To my horror they snapped not to my feet but to the stairs, the one place I realised my attention had neglected because of the broken front door and the dark the hall.

And there I saw it, a black oily figure stooped over, it was a man, he was there, no more than a few metres away, close, low on all fours, motionless at the curved concealing middle of the staircase.

He had been watching me looking for him and creeping closer to surprise me, and now he knew I had seen him.

I spoke out without thinking ‘I can see you! What do you want?’

He reached for something from behind his lower back

‘You shouldn’t have woken up. Recognise this?’

It was a hammer, the second I saw it I ran for the bedroom, he gushed up after me like living oil, with the hammer stiff in his stride.

 

The door I tried to fling shut behind me didn’t lock and he was coming to kill me. If he caught me by his strength alone he could smoother me but worse with a hammer he’d snuff me out with jarring pain, smooth down my head and spread it across the floor boards like human butter.

I dashed clumsily madly scrambling past and over loose boxes to get to the window to jump out, I heard him closing in doing the same mad dash but seeking me.   

I saw the window and sprang over the bed but it was shut and no time to open it.

I turned and he was there, falling toward me, his hand fighting back the hammers weight from the last missed swing only a breath from reaching me because of the bed.

I couldn’t allow another, I dived on him off the bed he managed to brace himself except the boxes below scupper his bracing step back and he fell onto his back with me on top.

 

Constricting his dangerous hammer hand cost me I somehow restrained it as he threw frantic withering punches off his back at my face but I absorbed the punishment. Fear became incredible fury, I strengthened as he seemed to weaken and I fought the fight out of him with fist and elbow bashing him down flat and breathless.

He tried he couldn’t get me off him, at last I grabbed the hammer with both hands trying to wrestle and wrench it from his, he scrambled to stop me but being on top I had greater leverage to win it and then keep him below clawing like a desperate animal.

I raised the hammer up ‘stop it!’ I cried.

The violent clawing reached my face tore into my eye

‘Stop it!’ I cried and threw my head back in hot stinging agony I felt my weight come off him and in panic blindly I swung the hammer down and it struck him hard.

Its connection made a haunting noise like dry tree bark breaking away.

Our battle ceased suddenly and utterly, he lay flat and still.

He wasn’t dead but he wasn’t moving either, but neither he or the hammer was important anymore only my bloody eye as I stumbled away out to the bathroom.

I looked in the mirror too angry to cry, just as I thought, it was gone, lost in the blood.

When I rang for an ambulance, they asked me if I needed the police I said yes, then I said no.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Ten: Identity crisis

 

 

One small water wet towel stemmed the bleeding enough, but for all the pills I swallowed from inside the medicine cabinet, the sickly pain that engulfed my eyeball only spread deeper in behind the socket.

Enflamed on the same side my cheek had become puffy and fluid swollen, its brow also and all of it numb except for the heat, it was like fire.

Of it all the throbbing headache was the most troubling.

It ached as an angry rotten tooth does, burrowed deep frustrating me with an itching pain there was no freedom from.

I wanted to so much to sit down, stay relaxed and wait for the ambulance to arrive, I’d already told them the emergency, described my injuries the watery blood was an obvious concern to them.

Surely they’d be coming as soon as possible but I couldn’t relax, something didn’t sit right about the fight, the maniac I remembered was much stronger than the one I fought in the bedroom. I knew instantly I shouldn’t have been able to over power him the way I did.

I began to doubt my self, did the adrenaline affect my mind? I’d heard about what it can do, desperate mothers bending car doors open to save their children trapped in the wreckage.

Thinking back when I took the hammer from him, his hands were smaller than mine or was I imagining that too, maybe the adrenaline made them seem smaller, maybe that’s how it worked to cancel out the fear, but then maybe it changed other things too, like whether he was knocked out or just dead.

I had to go back into that bedroom turn on the light and be sure once and for all.

With the hammer in hand I walked back in the room still nursing my eye with the other and hit the lights switch on with my elbow.

The room was a mess, trampled boxes and clothes soiled by my own blood trail.

Brushing a few items aside with my feet I went to the bed where I left him, I needed to know, and make sure he stayed put.

Surprise was the first reaction, the man lay there was not who I expected him to be, because he was very young.

He was in his twenties and worst of all he had normal eyes there was no way he was the Tom Baker maniac, though I recognised him.

His face stood out, the memory jumped into my aching brain. He had been on the news pleading, asking for his brother’s killer to hand himself in, Tom Baker’s brother.

The surprise preceded a familiar dread inside me, the kind I used to feel walking into an unlit room on my birthday.

The lights were on, the pain, guilt and dread increasing, the blood everywhere mine and his, I thought about how to wake him up, but he was lay exactly where I had left him, paused in the final animation of the struggle, his eyes were open his head was split open and his body looked dead.

He was dead.

I think I had already realised it the moment I saw him, my adrenaline killed him.

What next and why was this happening to me, the only suspect in an ongoing murder investigation? This is out right murder, a jury wouldn’t see it any other way.

It was self defence but who’d believe me?

Faint blue and red sirens distant outside the window the ambulance was near, probably coming down the long drive as I stood over a dead body.

The minute they find out what happened they’d inform the police, I’ll be arrested the second I’m well enough to leave the hospital.

That means incarceration; locked a cell like the one at the police station but worse this time it will be full of real criminals, real murders, rapist and evil men.

Everyone would know I went down for killing a boy, two boys, brothers and whoever else they pin on me. I’d become a target and the guards wouldn’t help, they’re supposed to protect the inmates but child killers get what they deserve that’s the real motto.

Any sentence is the death sentence and I’m innocent this was self defence but who’d believe me that is the most important thing.

I am an actor that’s what they’ll say, and their right I am an actor.

What if when they pick me up I’m in too much agony to tell them what happened, delirious even.

That would give me enough time to figure out what I needed to do next because I was smart enough to know they couldn’t find out what I did, no one can.

After the dust settled, there wouldn’t be anyone to remember any of this and if the memory of him remains to haunt in my dreams, I’ll feed the crocodile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Eleven: Accident and Emergency

 

Inside the ambulance, bright light and a clean white inner sanctum, its three man crew attended me with haste.

They removed the blood soaked towel carefully poker faces engaged, straight away replaced it with a sterile bandages, I saw gauze come down on my cheek and with enough tape to keep it in place, then I felt the sting of the