Mum bounded forward before I could grab her. I stayed put with indecision, my brain not able to compute the sight. I called out as she grabbed Steve by the shoulders, hysterical, screaming, calling as if she was in dire pain.
Her sound changed in an instant. She stopped her wailing, looking at the blood trickling from a wound on her hand. She staggered backwards, stumbling as she tried to slow, but landed on her bum on the road.
Everything seemed to stop.
She went silent, as if the fall had knocked out all her breath. I couldn’t bring myself to look at where Steve still leaned on all fours over the Focus driver.
Mum stared my way, her eyes wide and bloodshot. She called out with a shrill wail.
“Run! Just run!”
I turned to look at Steve and he glared back with blood smeared around his mouth and down his white shirt.
As more people streamed from their houses, rushing to encircle the scene, I ran away to the sound of Mum’s weakening voice.
“Run!”
3
I kept on running, knowing help would take a long time to get to our sleepy backwater, which had a visit from the police maybe once a year. Crime had always passed us by; like life, I used to think. Somewhere in the back of my mind I seemed to remember the charity box going missing from the bar at the Old Crow Inn. It was the talk of the village for weeks.
In my early teens I’d wanted to move to somewhere with more excitement, somewhere where the most interesting event wasn’t the roof blowing off the church two years ago, almost killing half the parish council.
Now I’d give anything to go back to that quiet place and hold the Xbox controller in my hand.
With my breath pumping hard, it was as if I could still hear Mum calling in the distance. Her words weren’t to draw me close, but to make sure I still ran away as fast as I could.
I followed the long line of houses sweeping around the village before turning down a side street by the Mabel family’s house to stop and wait, listening to the screams joining Mum’s call.
The sound grew too much for me to listen to and I picked up the pace again, crossing between the houses to the road bisecting the village. I slowed, staring at the flow of more people rushing to the sounds, their eyes wide with concern and mobile phones to their ears.
I watched Dan Spence leave Cowithick’s only shop, a newsagent with a tiny post office, and I stopped, my mum’s distant call holding me from rushing with what looked like the rest of the village as they headed toward the terrifying sounds.
It wasn’t long before I was on my own, the noise still so loud I couldn’t pick out her voice amongst the others anymore. Holding my hands to my ears as if the drums were about to burst, the calls just went, silencing as if someone had flicked a switch.
I waited for the stream of people to return. I waited for what seemed like an age for everyone to head back to their houses and for someone to give me an explanation; to tell me it was all going to be okay.
But no one returned. People didn’t file back. The owner of the shop, Dan Spence, didn’t head through the newsagent’s door he’d left wide-open in his hurry.
I couldn’t help thinking perhaps everything was okay. Perhaps they were each standing around drinking coffee whilst they sorted out the mess. Perhaps comforting Steve, the driver of the Focus too, and hugging Mum.
With the terrible shouts falling silent, I convinced myself normality had returned. The panic, the nightmare, was over.
Taking slow steps, I retraced the route to peer around the corner of the Mabel family’s place to the empty street, the only unusual features of which were the open front doors of a few houses. If it wasn’t for the early hour, the last time I’d checked it was just gone eight, even that wouldn’t have been so unusual.
I looked down at my sweat-soaked pyjamas and couldn’t help wondering if I’d just woken from a terrible dream.
After walking along the street shivering for a few moments, I picked up the pace. Our house was around the sweeping bend and I half expected to see it had all been a trick of my mind. I’d walk back and knock on the door, but there’d be no one to answer because they’d both be at work.
With growing annoyance at my mind playing such tricks, I imagined a day of hanging around the village in my pyjamas, freezing cold.
I turned the corner, jumping close to the front wall of a house as I saw Steve stumbling along in the middle of the road. Then I spotted his untucked white shirt covered in splashes of blood.
I turned away, running back down the side of the Mabels’ house and across the road, through the newsagent’s open door, dashing between the aisles to the tiny room at the end and shutting myself away as I checked with a last glimpse that no one followed.
As my breathing slowed, the sound of police sirens rose in the background, building my excitement with every moment. About to leave the dark confines and rush to the arriving cars, calling out all that had happened before submitting myself to their protection, I stopped, pulling back from the handle as the screams rose in the air once more.
The sirens silenced moments later.
They stayed quiet for such a long while, the stillness of the air only broken
