Cuckoo in the nests by John Jones (best sci fi novels of all time .txt) 📖

Salted peanuts, carrots, and he would put his ear to the spyhole and hear them arguing over it: 'Well it wasn't me', 'and it wasn't me!'.

Tonight though, he could see Chantelle in her bed, reading, Philip downstairs.

He couldn't work out their routine, but still, he got some good things out of it. They had a penchant for organic food. One of them must have been a vegetarian and he would help himself sometimes to them as despite not being vegetarian, he quite liked the food. The bathrobe he always wore had belonged to Phil.

 

He wondered when he was going to go back down there, but there was no rush, and went back to his makeshift bed.

 

After another week, business was as it was, careful not to step loudly up there, but in Rutherford's case it didn't matter too much because he probably wouldn't have been too aware anyway, but as it was he was out as usual in whatever pub took his money, and Dale was lounging on his sofa channel surfing.

 

Suddenly he heard the gate outside open and footsteps. Dale panicked, but when he heard the letter-box slam he breathed a sigh of relief. Sometimes that happened, someone would knock, or the postman would deliver. It always produced fear in Dale and he would search for a hiding place in the time it took for him to realise it wasn't the occupant.

 

He saw it was a small envelope, and wondered if he should open it. Leave the door ajar so it looked like somebody let themselves in and read it. Why not? this can be his little joke while he was in the house, so he opened the envelope, saw it was a card inviting him to a funeral. If he's sober, Dale thought. Must be an old friend of his. He put it back in the envelope and threw it on the floor, then opened the front door slightly, and went back into the loft.

 

When the sky had thrown its blanket of dark over the houses, Dale was spying on Barbara as she sat on the edge of the bed, taking her tablets. It seemed like she was taking more than normal, but she lay down and switched off the bedside lamp.

Soon she'll be in slumberland, he thought, and it wasn't long before he was going through her kitchen, rustling himself up a supper of chicken noodle soup with slices of wholegrain bread, and after he'd sat and watched some television he went back up in to Barbara's bedroom. He put on the bedside lamp, and the first thing he noticed was all the tablets around a half empty glass of water. She must be getting worse, he thought as he went around the bed and got in beside her. He lay down and snuggled up, putting his arm over onto her stomach. Despite never really having much in the way of affection, from anybody, he did, at some level, desire company. Somebody who really knew him.

 

Something wasn't quite right though. Barbara was cold, and very still. He flinched and quickly got off the bed. It didn't take him long to work out she was dead.

 

He left the room and walked around and around, down the stairs, up the stairs, down the stairs, anywhere but the bedroom, until he finally knew he had to go back in there, once his anxiety had burned to a manageable level.

 

What am I going to do? he thought, staring at her. He was never going to call anybody, but he wanted to, to let somebody know.

So after much deliberation, he worked out what to do. It would probably involve more people around for a while, but still needs must, and he gathered what food she had left in her kitchen into a few plastic bags to take into the loft, and then set about doing the only thing he could think to do whilst retaining his secrecy.

 

He pulled the duvet back and grabbed her feet, then dragged her out to the top of the stairs.

 

He went down to the front door and opened it, feeling a breeze on his skin, something he had not felt in a long time. He wanted to check there was nobody around. At 2am all he could hear was the faint sound of an engine, probably a distant taxi, and on the corner of the road there was the street lamp that lit up most of next door. For now, all was muted, and he worked quickly, and dragged Barbara down the stairs, out onto the pavement and into the pathway of Rutherford's. He had already opened the front door, so opened it wide, and placed Barbara at the gate. Half on the pathway, and half on the pavement so she could be easily spotted.

 

He also decided to go and grab all of her pills and scatter them on the pathway, in the hall, up the stairs and around Rutherford's still sleeping form on the bed, creating some form of half-cocked crime scene. The police could scratch their heads trying to decipher it.

 

Dale decided to take Mr Rutherfords food, what little he had of it, along with Barbara's back up into the loft, where he knew he would stay for a long while.

 

Despite feeling sad for Barbara, he did fall asleep and was woken in the morning by the sound of a police siren.

 

Dale had retreated into Chantelle and Philip's loft, setting up his bed in the corner. He had covered both dividing holes as best as possible, and had listened as the police had come around, loud footsteps, loud voices, and in both other lofts somebody had come up and shone torches around, but he had kept quiet as a mouse up there, and Phillip and Chantelle had also been interviewed, and he had tried to listen at the hole in the ceiling, but all he could hear was muffled voices. Muffled voices that sometimes grew louder, and when it seemed that they had wrapped up their investigations with Mr Rutherford and Barbara, the police seemed to take an unnatural interest in Phillip and Chantelle, having found a separate lead or reason to raise suspicion.

 

At one point when the police were not around, the couple were in the bedroom arguing, and he could hear everything:
'The police have got nothing on us. We can sue them'
'Look if they find out though that our business is illegal, then we're getting put away' said Chantelle.
'Not if we're careful. I can create a temporary internet file where all the accounts will be stored and our hard-drives clean, and I can make it password locked, encrypting it with only administrator permissions'
'But the police can get round this stuff'
'Not all of them, certainly not if I use a dormant emulator programme to scramble the information inside, and when we get back to it I can just unscramble it. It'll be fine'.
'Yes, alright then'.

Still, for the next few days, they were visited by the fraud-squad, and on a few occasions the police came into the bedroom and he would watch as they would rifle through their cupboards and drawers like legal burglars.

When one of them looked up, although he didn't catch his eye, Dale realised that with the police being unnaturally thorough, using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, sending in the army and riot-squad to rescue a cat from a tree, he guessed soon they would be up into the loft, and he didn't want a torch in his face, being recognised and sent back.

 

So into Mr Rutherford's loft he went, setting up his bed, and the next day the police came into Chantelle and Phillip's loft, but found nothing of any note, and they soon lost interest, then he heard raised voices, almost screaming:
"....can't do this to me...", then:
Silence.
For two days, Dale stayed and barely moved much, until he realised, everything was quiet from all the houses.

 

It seemed as if they had all moved out, and Dale decided he would brave a trip down into the couple's house.

 

Some of the commotion he had heard must have been removal men because the place was more sparse than what it used to be. All the electrical items had gone and it was just furniture and some crockery. He wasn't to know they would spending time locked away for fraud. Their business was in website design with a few hidden trojan horses in the programming design to hijack personal information such as bank details and passwords, so they could covertly relieve whomever was using the sites of thier finances, and the blame would come directly to the person who had had the site built. It was only when police were making investigations regarding Barbara that when they came in to ask a few questions, people's bank statements were seen printed out and scattered around the place, so they had more questions to ask.

 

Yet, the removal men had not finished, not in any of the houses, and what food he had he had to make last, because there was no more. Decorators and landlords came, and in Mr Rutherfords workers were there for several days. They even cleared out the loft, and, quiet as a midnight lake, Dale huddled in the corner of Phillip and Chantelle's house, and waited.

He had made more of a thorough job with Mr Rutherford than he could have comprehended. The finger of suspicion was pointed at him and he was charged with murder and put away for two years. His house was since repossessed, and after a while, there was complete silence for several days in all the houses.

 

He decided to go down to Barbaras and felt rather sad as he looked at the bed where she used to lay, and standing at the bedroom window he could see the front gardens of all three houses, and in all of them there was a 'for-sale' sign, and it dawned on him that he would be getting new neighbours, new people to kind of get to know, to embrace.

 

Yet he knew he could just leave, could rustle together some clothing from up in the loft and take his chances out there. Would they still be looking for him? he thought. His case would probably not be closed, so there maybe someone who would recognise him.

He knew he wouldn't be on the most-wanted list, but still, had visions of police-cars screeching up and guns being pointed at him.

Yet, being in the loft wasn't so bad. It was a roof, a bed, regular food.

He wondered if he could perhaps live down in one of the houses until it became occupied.

 

For a few days, he tried living in Barbara's house, as it was the most furnished, but in none of the houses there was a television, and he wasn't used to sleeping on a bed, and it was of a morning that he heard the front door open and voices filter through.

This snapped him awake, and he knew what it was. It was a potential buyer being shown around. There had been several in all the houses.
He walked out onto the landing and the voices were too close.
"...ok, so through here we have the lounge.." That was Dale's opportunity to clamber back up into the loft and close the hatch quickly trying to be as quiet as possible.

 

Soon the buyer was on the landing having looked through all the rooms.
Dale could hear them clearly, literally being around seven feet above them.
"Well, yes, this house would be ideal for me and the wife, our three kids and two dogs. I would love to buy it".
New neighbours, thought Dale, and smiled in the darkness.