Witnesses Read online

  He knocked the landing light off as he entered the bedroom. It had stopped revolving now, so finding his way back to the bed was a straightforward enough procedure. The only light in the room was a dim, green glow from the digital radio clock that sat on a small set of drawers next to the head of the bed.

  Before he reached the bed, there came a screech from outside. Loud hissing followed soon after. The sudden noise had startled Dave, but he soon calmed down once he recognised it as the sounds of a cat-fight. He wandered across to the window and pulled the curtain to one side, unaccountably interested in seeing the scrapping animals.

  The street outside was lit with the orange glow of streetlights. The night was misty, so every lamp-post had its own cone of light around it. The nearest light was ten yards or so up the road from Dave’s window, and as he peered into the night he saw a figure standing beneath it. The light was directly above him, and bathed him in an orange glow. In the darkness that otherwise surrounded him, he looked like a performer, spot-lit on stage.

  Dave felt the nausea in his stomach return, the flashes of pain behind his eyes. He took a step away from the window, backing off, and as he did so the man beneath the streetlight raised a hand and waved at him.

  Dave yelped, and fell over. His back collided with the metal frame of the bed, and the pain caused more tears to spring from his eyes. Slowly, wincing at the pain, he dragged himself to his feet, using the bed as support. What the hell was going on? Who the fuck was that? Another bolt of pain cramped across his back. He strode back across to the window, angry now. He dragged open the curtain and stared out through the glass. Was this the ghost of Gary Wallace again?

  He looked up the street to the lamp-post, but no answer would be forthcoming to his question tonight.

  The man had gone.

  * * *

  The sound of a distant explosion drowned out the shouts and screams momentarily, that of its aftermath. Carl Dreschler was oblivious to them all. He stood at the window of a plush apartment gazing out at the city below. He was not alone. Sharing the room with him were the apartment’s tenants.

  Its former tenants.

  The bodies lay alongside each other, together in death as they had been in life. An elderly couple, the woman plump and grey-haired, the man thin and bald. His spectacles lay on the floor beside him. Blood, their blood, pooled around them, around their bodies, slowly cooling and thickening, soaking into the carpet. Both bore the same wound, throats gashed from side-to-side, mortal injuries through which their life had ebbed.

  Dreschler held the murder weapon in his hand. Slowly, he lifted it to examine its serrated blade by the light coming in through the window. As he watched, blood ran in a rivulet along the length of the blade to pool at the hilt. He tilted the bayonet slightly to one side and smiled as the blood dripped onto the floor.

  He heard a movement behind him, smiled again. “You’re taking a risk,” he said, “coming out in the daylight.”

  “The risk is a small one,” a familiar, guttural voice replied. “One I am willing to take.”

  Dreschler wiped the blade on his trouser leg, cleaning away the blood, and turned to face his visitor. “Are you pleased?” asked Dreschler. “Are you satisfied with how things are… progressing?”

  A low, throaty chuckle. “You have done well. Your activities are most impressive. You are ready for your confrontation, I assume?”

  Dreschler tossed the bayonet from hand to hand as he replied. “I’m more than ready. I am impatient for the moment to arrive. Our informant did well. My scouts tell me the British unit will be here within the hour. Pity they weren’t a bit faster, they could have prevented all this. Still, it adds a dramatic backdrop to our meeting, I suppose, and it has been very enjoyable…” He paused in his juggling of the blade. “Most enjoyable.”

  Gunshots echoed outside and the screams continued.

  “I feel the urge to kill some more.” The words were spoken matter-of-factly. “If you’ll excuse me I have an itch that requires scratching.” He stepped over the bodies on the floor, felt his boot stick in the congealing blood, made his way towards the door past the dark, cloaked thing that stood in the middle of the room. “Plus, I have a meeting to prepare for.”

  He made his way down the staircase of the apartment building, strode out into the ravaged streets of Leuven. Though still morning, an early dusk had fallen over the city as smoke filled the air, drifting from burning buildings, from fires set in the road, darkening the skies. Dreschler breathed deeply, filling his lungs with smoke, relishing the taste of it, the feel of it as it burned its way inside him.

  A child ran from a side street towards him, a boy in short trousers and boots two sizes too big for him. He clomped across the cobbles towards Dreschler, arms held out in front of him, pleading for help. Dreschler felt the boy crash into him, throw his arms around him. The child was babbling away, crying, and he felt relief as well as pleasure as he withdrew his bayonet and drove it into the back of the boy’s neck. The boy collapsed to the ground, limp as a ragdoll, his spinal cord severed by the serrated edge of Dreschler’s blade.

  The Hauptmann wiped the fresh blood on the bayonet off on his trousers and strode onwards. His next victim was an old woman, kneeling on the cobbled ground, arms stretched out in supplication, in defence. One thrust of the bayonet did the job. Next a man, already bleeding from a cut in his forehead. Next two women, huddled together for safety.

  As his own personal death toll increased, a feeling of euphoria filled him. He was becoming transcendent. The killings became automatic, striding through the streets of Leuven, swinging the bayonet blade, thrusting, slicing… his movements becoming a dance, the music in his head the screams of his victims as they died, the sounds of distant gunshots and explosions.

  This truly was his destiny, and soon the next steps towards its fulfilment would be taken, just as soon as the British captain and his band of heroes arrived.

  Passing out through the end of a narrow alley, he entered a large square. Bodies were strewn around the cobbled surface, left where they had fallen. A fire crackled in one corner, thick, black smoke rising up into the clear blue sky. An imposing building stood on the far side of the square, the library.

  Smiling, Dreschler made his way towards it.

  * * *

  Pale morning sunlight filtered in through the venetian blinds that covered the windows on the east wall of the room. The blinds were white, as were the walls of the room, but were covered in so much dust that they absorbed, rather than reflected, the sunlight, lending the room an air of gloom. The room was full, but the only sound was the ticking of a clock hanging high on one wall: tick…tock…tick…tock… A metronomic record of the slow passage of time.

  Large double doors took up most of the space on another wall. The third was bare of decoration, a slab of white plaster, though it was covered in tiny pockmarks from numerous drawing pins which had, in the past, secured posters and notices to it. The last wall, opposite the windows, bore a solitary crucifix, the cross made of dark oak, the figure of Jesus that hung from it carved from plaster. Evidence of previous trauma, intentional as well as unintentional, our Lord and Saviour a prime target for the vented frustrations of some of the more emotional (or less medicated) guests at this particular institution, clearly visible. A missing nose and foot revealed the white plaster beneath the painted exterior.

  Tables were set out across the wooden floor of the room, fifteen in all. A woman sat at each of the tables, upon which were laid materials for therapeutic activity. Some had paint and paper, others mixing bowls and the ingredients for a variety of baking tasks.

  Today, Dilly had been given flower arranging as her activity. This was something she had done many times in her life back at home. She had prided herself on the arrangements she had made, placing them around the house to make it look pretty. She’d enjoyed it and had known that Mama had appreciated the gestures, even though she would never admit as much to Dilly.

  I wonder
how Mama’s getting along? she thought, somehow still able to feel concern for the woman who had done this to her. The thought distracted her momentarily, and she felt the sting of a thorn as it dug into her finger. The pain was sharp, but not as much as it would have been had she not medicated as much as she was with tranquilisers. Almost distractedly, she watched as a drop of blood welled up from the tiny puncture wound, smiled as it dropped to form a circle of red on the pale yellow table-top. She would have welcomed the pain. At least it would be a real experience, something to savour in this clinical, emotionless place.

  “Why, Dilly! You’ve cut yourself!” The voice came from behind her. Nurse Roberts was hovering at her right shoulder.

  “Oh, I’m okay,” Dilly replied, her voice sounding in her own head like it was a hundred miles away. “It’s nothing, really.”

  “Here, let me have a look.” The nurse grabbed Dilly’s forearm and raised it closer to her face. She squinted at the punctured finger through spectacles whose frames looked as if they’d been made from the bottoms of two Coca-Cola bottles. The movement caused small spatters of blood across the table. Two landed on Dilly’s dress, soaking into the blue and white checked gingham almost immediately. Dilly felt pressure on her finger as Nurse Roberts began squeezing it. “There, there, it’ll be fine. Nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m not…” Dilly stopped before the sentence was complete, realising there was no use at all in trying to communicate with the woman. There was no point in anything, really. Glancing around, she checked if the little scene she was involved in had drawn the attention of anyone else in the room. It hadn’t. All the other women – and girls, for there were girls here far younger than Dilly, some little more than teenagers – were focussed on their own activities, oblivious of her. Nurse Roberts continued to fuss. Dilly guessed that she was probably glad of the distraction, too. Something different in the mundanity of her own existence.

  I am in Hell, Dilly thought.

  * * *

  It wasn’t a noise that awakened Dolores Chambers from her slumber, rather than an awareness that she was not alone in the bedroom. Though sleeping, somehow her senses had become aware of a presence there in the darkness with her. She awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright in the bed. Her heart hammered, not only in her chest but also in her temples.

  “Who’s there?” she asked, the words tumbling from her automatically, her subconscious speaking for her before her conscious mind could stop them with the reality that there couldn’t possibly be anyone else in the room.

  Except there was.

  Dolores gasped as she saw a movement in the shadows at the foot of her bed. Another movement, this one accompanied by a scuffling noise, made her shriek.

  “Who’s there?” She shuffled up the bed, pulled the covers tighter around her. “Who’s that?”

  A low, throaty chuckle came by way of reply, the sound sending ice water through Dolores’s veins. Another scuffling noise, and she felt a weight press down at the foot of the bed. She screamed, and as she did so she saw two red eyes flicker into life above where the weight had settled. She screamed again.

  “Scream away, you old hag.” A voice like sandpaper scraping across wood rasped the words at her. A smell like rotten food – rotten flesh – filled the room. “It’ll do you no good.”

  In a movement that betrayed the woman’s years and state of health, Dolores flung back the bedcovers and swung her legs out of bed. Her momentum carried her upright, and she was already taking her first steps towards the door when she heard the bedsprings creak once more, as a second weight was lifted from the rickety iron frame. She had no time to emit a further scream before a hand clamped around her mouth and a strong arm pulled her backwards. She sprawled on the floor, felt the rough fibres of the long-worn carpet scrape against her face.

  A weight fell upon her, pinning her to the floor. Through her nightdress, she could feel the roughness of the thing’s (that’s what it was now, not a person, a thing) legs straddling her hips. A roughness like the scales of a snake, but that was preposterous…

  “Get off me!” she managed to croak before she felt the weight on her shift, smelt once more that foul stench of death and decay and felt sharp claws pierce her back.

  She tried to scream but nothing came out, other than a bubbling sound, as the thing ripped open the flesh of her back, rupturing her aorta, which spouted blood in a crimson fountain, and tearing through her lungs.

  Three days later her body would be discovered by the police. Forensic examination would confirm the massive trauma to her back as the cause of death, but would offer no explanation for the organs discovered to be missing from the body.

  * * *

  I look good in a glass pack…

  Michael Stipe’s voice awakened Dave from restless slumber, blasting out from his bedside radio/iPod dock. Peter Buck’s crashing chords accompanied the lyrics, blowing away the last vestiges of sleepiness, dragging him into the harsh reality of another day. He let The Wake Up Bomb play on, resisting the urge to lean over and hit the snooze button. Yesterday it had been Wake Up by Arcade Fire that had roused him from slumber, the day before that The Senators’ Good Morning World had done the trick. He lay back in bed, congratulating himself on how clever he had been with his choice of wake-up alarms. God bless iPods and their shuffle function.

  My head’s on fire, Michael sang, and Dave nodded in agreement, instantly regretting the movement. Pain flared behind his eyes, took a tight grip on the back of his neck. “Shit,” he groaned, scrunching his eyes tightly closed in an effort to ameliorate some of the agony. Unsuccessfully.

  The room was light. He’d managed to leave a gap in the curtains last night when he’d opened them to look for the cat.

  And then he remembered what he had seen from the window, standing beneath the streetlamp.

  He shivered, felt his stomach do a back flip, and had to breathe deeply through his nose to prevent the sickness gushing upwards. The memory had lodged itself deeply into his thoughts, though, and his mind desperately searched for the man’s identity, freed now – mostly – from the befuddling effects of the alcohol that had so hindered its functioning when he’d looked out of the window in the early hours.

  His head throbbed even more as he desperately sought the identity of his nocturnal visitor. Stalker, don’t you mean? It wasn’t Gary Wallace. His drunken assumption was incorrect, he now knew. But he had seen the man somewhere before. A car drove past outside, wheels thrumming on the cobbled surface of the road. His headache slowly intensified, his brain’s petulant response at having to do some work. Reluctantly, he pushed back the quilt, which had rucked up around him, and slowly swung his legs out of bed. Pain flared once more in his head and he winced. Pinching the top of his nose between thumb and forefinger, he applied pressure in an attempt to relieve some of the pain. Unsuccessfully.

  Shuffling his feet into his slippers, Dave retrieved his dressing gown from the floor, where it lay in a tangled heap, and made his way downstairs to the kitchen. On autopilot, he switched on the kettle and got a mug out from the wall cupboard above. The mug clattered loudly against the laminate worktop as he miscalculated the distance between cupboard and bench, and another dagger of pain skewered through his head. He pulled a one-cup filter from the open box that stood alongside the kettle and placed it on the mug. The kettle switched itself off and he poured boiling water into the filter. The aroma of fresh coffee filled the kitchen immediately, and he breathed deeply of it.

  “Hello dark roast, my old friend…”

  As the coffee filtered through into the mug Dave retrieved the milk from the fridge. His drink was soon ready, and he took a huge mouthful of the steaming liquid, feeling the hit of the caffeine and ignoring the burning in his mouth and throat. The price you pay…

  A semblance of humanity slowly returned to him. The first coffee lasted no more than thirty seconds, the second he savoured for longer. It was Dave’s considered opinion that some strange shit was goin
g down right now. In the relative clarity of a new day, and with caffeine ploughing its way through the cobweb shrouded recesses of his mind, he began to reconsider the previous night’s events. Had he even seen the bloke beneath the streetlight? Perhaps the potent mix of (fairly extreme amounts of) alcohol and the subject matter of his pub conversation with Mickey had conspired to create a waking dream of sorts. His imagination had been poked and prodded to such an extent that he’d externalised everything that was going on in his mind, and had projected those images – that image – onto the real world outside his window.

  But if he’d done that, why hadn’t he projected an image of Gary Wallace? God knows, he’d done it plenty enough before. Except they weren’t projections, were they?

  Dave groaned and took another mouthful of coffee. There were alternative explanations for what was happening to him, but none of them were good, or reassuring. Either he was seeing the ghost of a dead soldier or he was cracking up.

  Shit.

  He stood, pushing himself away from the kitchen bench against which he’d been leaning, and made his way to the window. Opening the blind, he craned his neck to look at the lamp-post beneath which his visitor had stood last night. There was no one there of course. Had there been, it would have probably pushed him over the edge. Another car passed by, another neighbour on their way to work.

  And then the memory popped into his head, and he knew who it was he had seen in the night. The image of a man stood beneath the statue of an angel, a man staring at him, smiling at him. The man he’d seen in Newcastle. The man with no aura.

  “Bollocks” said Dave, and took another sip of coffee.

  * * *

  Dreschler stood alone in the library. Thousands of books surrounded him, spread over two floors of the impressive stone built building, the air around him filled with the musty smell of old leather. He breathed deeply of it, relishing the smell, the history contained within it. Works of fiction, of imagination, works of philosophy, of learning, centuries of knowledge distilled into the written word. The building itself was like a church; tall, buttressed ceilings, divided into sections by pillared archways. A shrine to literature, to history, to art.