Witnesses Read online

  He fastened the band around his head so that the mirror rested in the middle of his forehead. He then removed a device from the box. “An ophthalmoscope,” he explained, “cutting edge stuff, you know!” He came around the desk so as to stand in front of me and, telling me to sit back in the chair and to relax, held the device an inch or so away from my eye. “This will seem very bright,” he warned, “but it won’t do any damage.”

  The light was indeed very bright and I could feel its warmth on the back of my eye. After a few minutes of peering into both eyes he turned away from me and made his way back to his chair.

  “Well, I can’t see anything physically wrong with your eyes, you’ll be pleased to hear.”

  I was pleased to hear the news and smiled accordingly. Then the realisation struck me and the smile faded. “So, the problem is with my brain, then?”

  “It could be.” The tone of his voice was now less conversational, much more matter-of-fact. “Unfortunately, we’re now entering a very specialised area of medicine, one in which I have very little experience. I would suggest we end this appointment now and I shall do some reading up, see what I can find. You can come and see me again when I’ve a bit more information.”

  “But will I be okay?”

  He shrugged. He actually shrugged! “As I say, I’m not an expert. You aren’t displaying any other symptoms, and your health otherwise seems robust enough. My guess is you’ll be fine. Anyway,” he stood, raised an arm to indicate I should follow suit, “it won’t take me that long to do my research. I’ll be back in touch very soon.” He smiled again, this time in a more professional manner.

  I got to my feet, retrieved my cap. I noticed little flashes of red flaring within the blue glow surrounding the doctor. “I’ll get word to you soon,” he continued, ushering me to the door. “Try not to worry too much about it. I’m sure everything’s fine.”

  I left his office still craving the reassurance I had gone there to seek. I left the Town Hall building almost in a daze, wandering through the crowds of soldiers, oblivious to the noise they made, the nervous chatter and small talk as they awaited the commencement of hostilities. Even through the bright sunlight I could see the colours dancing around the men, a combination of tones and shades, blue, green, red and – predominantly – black, clinging like a shadow to most of the men in the square.

  * * *

  The energy-saving light bulb in the kitchen seemed to take even longer than usual to fully illuminate, slowly intensifying from a dull orange glow to a slightly less dull yellowy-white. It was a room Estate Agents would call bijou, but in Dave’s opinion poky was a more appropriate description. Still, it was more than adequate for his needs. Cooking was not one of his talents and the small gas cooker in one corner of the tiny room stood, for much of the time, unused. Occasionally, one of the rings on the hob might be coaxed into life to heat up some baked beans or tins of soup, but the most frequently used item of equipment was the microwave, a silver box with the numbers on the keypad next to the glass door long since worn away from heavy usage. If the kitchen was a shrine to ready meals, the microwave was its altar.

  The back door led directly into the kitchen, and this was the way Dave had returned to the house, cutting along a lane running behind the terrace in which he lived. He tossed the pizza box onto the small area of worktop still visible amidst piles of dirty dishes and empty food cartons and, pushing it closed with his backside, locked the door.

  He opened the fridge and pulled out two bottles of Cusquena, a new beer for him; he’d bought it because it had been on special in the Co-op. He was parched. The events of the evening, and his unaccustomedness to any real physical exertion, had combined to dry his mouth, which currently felt like the floor of a budgie’s cage. He snatched up the pizza box and went through into the living room.

  On the chest of drawers, just inside the doorway, his mobile flashed intermittent blue lights. He picked the phone up and opened the inbox. IN PUB. COMING? The message was from Mickey; his name was displayed at the top of the screen. But the subject matter, and the brevity of the message itself, would have identified the sender as his best mate even had that not been the case. He carried the phone over to the settee, typing in his response as he went. NOPE. BUSY. TA. He could be brief, too. He pressed send and put the phone down on the small coffee table in front of the settee. The device bleeped to confirm the message had been sent.

  He settled down into the settee, felt the cushions sag beneath him. He’d plump them up later, probably when he finally got around to hoovering, giving the place a general tidy-up. Such activity was uncommon, usually precipitated by the realisation that he could no longer live in the mess and disarray that had built up around him. The pile of dirty dishes in the kitchen had still not reached critical mass, there was still space on the worktop alongside the sink to carefully place another couple of plates or bowls before a session of washing-up was necessary. Even better, he thought to himself as he flipped open the lid of the pizza, inhaled deeply of the aroma of cheese, tomatoes, and processed meat, there would be no dirty plates generated tonight. Meal over – box in bin, no messing. (Although it would probably be tomorrow before that particular trip was made). Pizza, truly the king of takeaway food. He reached into the box, detached the biggest of the six slices and took a bite from its apex, savouring the instantaneous salty hit of the food. Sorry arteries, he thought to himself, then took another bite.

  No further messages had come through on his phone by the time the first slice of pizza had been devoured, likewise the second. The temptation to join Mickey in the pub was growing stronger with each mouthful, but Dave knew that he had to resist. He really did need to work tonight. A meeting at the Uni with his supervisor next week meant he would have to put some hours in on his PhD. His lackadaisical approach to life in general did not usually extend to his academic commitments, but just lately he’d been finding it hard to focus, to concentrate on the work at hand. Plus, there was the worry about the things he was seeing…

  He’d started seeing the auras about two weeks ago. Indistinct at first, as time had progressed they had become more solid, more definite. Their presence had been a distraction, which soon became a source of worry. Paranoid, and a worrier by nature, it hadn’t taken long for the spectre of a brain tumour to arise in his mind. The worry was there all the time, growing stronger as the auras themselves did. And yet, fearful as he was, he still hadn’t plucked up the courage to seek medical advice.

  I feel okay, he would tell himself, reassurance enough not to face the ordeal of finding out potentially bad news.

  He took a swig of beer, enjoying the taste of “the Gold of the Incas”. A few more of these, he thought, and I could build a pyramid myself. He helped himself to another wedge of pizza, eating this one a tad slower than the first two pieces, though still at a pace consistent with the consumption of any takeaway food. Maybe that’s why it’s called fast food – nothing to do with the speed of preparation, all to do with the speed you can get it down your neck.

  He would call in and see Ali tomorrow. He still felt shit about what had happened earlier, guilt transforming – as it always did – into self-loathing. Yeah, call in tomorrow, maybe even try to make light of what had happened, but at the same time showing how seriously he took it, show some solidarity.

  He took another bite of pizza but the food had lost some of its tastiness. He dropped the remains of the wedge into the box and picked up his beer. He took another deep swig and collapsed back into the settee with a sigh.

  * * *

  In darkness he walked.

  Slowly, he made his way to the crest of the hill, following the narrow track that wound its way up the gentle slopes. The moon was little more than a sliver, hanging low in the sky, visible through a gap in the clouds that had been gathering all day. They had made the sunset glorious, reflecting the reds and purples of the sun as it slowly sank below the horizon, but now they added to the darkness, hiding the stars behind them.
/>   He made the journey alone. His men were camped at the foot of the hill, resting after their exertions, preparing for the days ahead. He smiled as he remembered the events of the morning. The dawn raid on the village had been a stunning success; the mere thought of it quickened his heartbeat, pumped the blood around his body so hard he could feel it pounding in his temples.

  His progress was sure-footed, unaffected by the darkness that surrounded him, and he soon reached the top of the hill. As the ground beneath his feet levelled out, a shape emerged from the darkness to loom over him. He approached the wooden cross, reaching out with his left hand and leaned against the structure. The cross now bearing his weight, he used his right hand to unbutton the flies of his trousers.

  He sighed as he began pissing, his smile widening to a grin as he heard the fluid spattering against the ancient wood.

  “Respectful as ever, I see.” The voice, low, guttural, came from behind the cross.

  He didn’t reply, continued urinating.

  “And just as respectful to me, it seems.” The words carried no hint of annoyance, however, were said jokingly. A low chuckle, like bones rattling in a sarcophagus, reinforced this impression.

  Dreschler finished pissing against the crucifix, removed his left hand from the wood and refastened his flies. “My Lord,” he said, “you know my allegiance to you is unwavering…”

  The chuckle became a laugh, the sound echoing through the still night.

  “How very touching.” A movement, a disturbance in the air, but no more than that. The speaker remained in the darkness behind the cross. “May I commend you on your… work this morning. Most satisfactory.”

  Dreschler bowed of his head slightly. “It was an honour.”

  Another chuckle crept through the darkness from behind the cross. “You have set a high standard, one that must be maintained.”

  “And it will be. I find the work… gratifying.”

  Dreschler was aware of movement, sensing it rather than actually seeing or hearing it, a subtle alteration in the air around him, the very nature of the darkness somehow changing. The presence had become an absence, but the emptiness it had left behind was just as profound.

  Dreschler sighed, drew a deep breath of the cool night air. Reaching into his pocket he withdrew a packet of cigarettes. Using his thumb, he pushed one from the packet, leant forward slightly to place it in his mouth. Replacing the packet, he retrieved a box of matches. As he struck one, the pungent smell of sulphur pricked at his nostrils, a foreign smell out here in this pastoral idyll, and yet so familiar, reassuring even, to him. He felt the warmth of the small flame as he lifted the match to light his cigarette.

  That warmth spread to his lungs as the hot smoke made its way into him. He relished the sensation, so too the rush of light-headedness the nicotine brought with it. He leant back against the wooden cross, felt its rough surface against his back even through his tunic.

  Closing his eyes, he gave himself over to sensation. The calming influence of the cigarette, the hardness of the wood pressing into his back, the cool of the air on his face.

  As he stood, shapes began to emerge from the darkness. Little more than shadows themselves, they congregated around him. He was aware of their presence, though his eyes remained shut. A whispering filled the air; every now and then an occasional low murmur could be discerned. He smiled, took another drag of the cigarette, this time exhaling the smoke so that it drifted amongst the wraith-like figures surrounding him, mingled with them, adding weight to their substance.

  Somewhere in the distance an owl screeched. Even in darkness, life and death struggles carried on. The endless cycle.

  And yet, he thought, all things must end. All things would end. He threw the remains of the cigarette to the ground, watched as sparks flew from it as it tumbled through the air, casting brief illumination over the shadowy forms that were his companions.

  As another owl-screech echoed in the distance, he began his descent of the hill. Behind him, his companions followed, a shadowy procession whose whispers drifted away into the darkness.

  * * *

  Clutching the last of his beers, and with a stomach full of pizza, Dave made his way upstairs to the spare bedroom. He’d converted the room into a study, the “conversion” consisting of sticking a desk in the room, upon which sat his laptop amidst a pile of reference books. Reams of A4 paper were scattered haphazardly over its surface. Shoving some of the paper aside with the base of the bottle, he placed it in the small space he had created. He flipped open the lid of the laptop and turned the machine on.

  As the computer booted up, he pulled out the chair from beneath the desk and settled down onto it. The laptop was still fairly new, so it didn’t take long for his desktop display to appear on the screen. A multitude of icons were scattered over his wallpaper image, the poster for Friedkin’s The Exorcist, one of his favourite films, albeit one he had only ever managed to sit through once. Most of the icons were the blue W’s of Word documents and, resisting the temptation to open his internet browser, he clicked on one of them.

  The file he’d called PhD slowly opened and, as it did so, he reached around the side of the laptop to retrieve some of the A4 sheets piled up there. The papers were covered in lines of typewritten text, here and there interspersed with handwriting in a variety of ink colours. Notes were scribbled in margins, lines were crossed out, arrows connected one section of highlighted text to others. Boxes and circles had been drawn around sentences and paragraphs, some of which contained multiple exclamation marks or, occasionally, question marks. Skimming through the papers, he sighed deeply; the evidence of his last burst of enthusiasm and activity over his thesis would now have to be interpreted, the frenzied scribblings which had made absolute sense at the time he’d done them would – he knew from past experience – require some degree of effort to de-code and interpret so long after the fact. He sighed again, dropped the papers onto the desk and took another swig of beer.

  The Word document was now open on the laptop screen and he scrolled down to the last page. An hour or so should do it, he thought, make the corrections, save the changes and then email the updated document to his supervisor.

  The section he was working on was causing him problems and he was very close to abandoning it completely, but the thought of losing a whole chapter was depressing. He’d already spent a lot of time and effort on it, and the thought of having to not just re-write, but to also have to find another line of research entirely, was a daunting one.

  From Extortion to Terrorism: Hijacking as a Bargaining Tool was the, so he thought, rather nifty title of his thesis in progress. It was to be an examination of the history of plane hijackings, from the first recorded instances in the 1940s to present day (largely unsuccessful) examples, an attempt to understand the rationale behind such dramatic examples of blackmail, to get inside the heads of the perpetrators. It was the extortion part of the research that was causing the current headaches. In particular, the case he’d discovered in the course of his research of D B Cooper, the hijacker of a Boeing 727 out of Portland, Oregon in 1971. Cooper had extorted the ransom and then parachuted from the plane. It was a great story and one Dave desperately wanted to include, but finding sufficient in-depth information was proving difficult. The case had never been solved, the hijacker never found. D B Cooper was simply the name on the passenger manifest, undoubtedly not the perpetrator’s real name. Analysis of the psyche and motivations of the hijacker would be difficult, if not impossible, and would be conjecture rather than reasoned analysis.

  He picked up the papers again, riffled through them. One of them had a number, 653, written at the top, the numerals underlined and ringed twice in red. Alongside the number he’d scrawled c.f. Cooper, motivation? real facts??? The numbers referred to another unsolved hijacking, another case from the 70s, this one the hijacking of Malaysia Airlines Flight 653 in 1977. The only similarity to the Cooper hijacking was that it, too, remains unsolved. The hijacking of Flight
653 had been attributed to a terrorist organisation. He’d thought the unsolved nature of the two hijackings was a strong enough link to get another chapter for his thesis, but the more he looked into it the more he was uncertain that it would actually work.

  Dave took another drink from the bottle.

  Still, he reasoned, that was what his supervisor was for. He would type up the notes anyway and then discuss it. Right now he was too tired, too full of pizza, and probably too drunk to make any kind of decision. Using the mouse, he positioned the cursor at the top of a new page.

  “Let’s roll” he said, and began to type.

  * * *

  The shopping mall – or what remains of it - is surrounded by emergency vehicles, the air filled with the howling of sirens from ambulances and police cars alike. Flashing lights, amber, red, and blue illuminate the darkness, casting coloured shadows against the white building, the shattered remnants of windows. Illuminate, too, in a multi-coloured strobe more appropriate to a funfair or a nightclub. The plumes of black smoke drifting up from the broken building, into the night sky, darkness merging with darkness.

  You pull up at a hastily erected checkpoint, lower the car window, and flash your ID card at the armed guard, who stares at you with the grimmest of expressions. He does not take the card from you, instead holds the machine gun tight across his chest, merely nods to acknowledge the card, then quickly tilts his head to one side, granting you access to this vision of Hell.

  You drive another twenty or thirty yards before pulling up alongside another police car. You switch off the ignition and open the door to step out into the maelstrom of light and noise.

  Another soldier, carrying the same machine gun and grim expression as the guard who granted you access, stops you as you make your way towards the shattered building. You show him your card and he nods. He tells you to follow him, but you see him mouth the words rather than actually hear them, lost as they are amidst the din of sirens. You pass groups of men, soldiers, emergency service personnel, on your way to the mall. Some stand simply gazing at the devastation in front of them, many smoking cigarettes. Others talk to one another, no doubt formulating their own theories as to who has done this, and why.