A Life To Waste (8 page)

“So, where do you think all that
blood came from?” Officer Stephens asked.

“What?” Dave asked shocked, that
bastard. How the hell could he ask him that, he knew damn well
where that blood came from. It had come from his dying mother, what
kind of sick prick would ask someone a question like that.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”
Dave looked up in astonishment.

“OK Dave, I can tell from your
reaction that you definitely knew nothing about this. I may as well
put your mind at ease, a little bit at least.” Officer Stephens
straightened his posture and raised is head as if to deliver some
ground breaking discovery. “We think your mother may still be
alive.”

“Really?” Dave asked, a feeling
of joy rushing through him, his face broke out into a huge smile. “
have, have you found her?”

“No, I said we think she
may
be alive Dave, we haven’t found her, not yet”

“Then what do you mean?” Dave
felt crushed once again, was this prick just playing with his
emotions now?

“The blood in your home did not
belong to your mother, Dave. It was pigs blood, we didn’t find
anything else other than pigs blood.”

Dave was baffled. “what the
hell? Why would someone come into my house and cover it in pigs
blood? Where the hell is my mum then!”

“We are not sure, we do know
that whoever took her is the same person that took Lisa, that was
pigs blood as well.”

Dave sat back overwhelmed with
this news, he didn’t know how to feel. He was more confused than
anything else. Was his mum alive?

Officer Stephens went on to
explain that the most likely reason for the pigs blood was to make
it look like the victims had in fact been murdered in their homes
and then the bodies taken away. Perhaps who ever had done this
wasn’t very intelligent and they didn’t know about the capabilities
of police investigation teams and scientists now a days. Maybe they
didn’t know that these teams would be able to tell where the blood
had come from almost immediately. Or maybe they had done this to
shock people. Maybe they were one of those crazed attention seeking
criminals and wanted their story plastered all over the paper. None
of this mattered, what mattered was there was a chance that Dave’s
mum was alive and they were going to find her.

Dave was told that his house had
been cleaned now, well they said cleaned, what they made was it
wasn’t covered from head to toe in pigs blood anymore. He could
return home when he liked.

He returned home the next day,
he was under strict instruction from Officer Stephens not to be
straying too far away, he was still a suspect and he had to be
readily contactable for more questions at any time. Dave had no
intention of going anywhere, his mum was alive, he had to find her.
The only thing he had to go on was that whoever had taken Lisa had
come back to take his mum, so there was a chance, hopefully a big
chance that they would come back for their next victim. Dave just
had to make sure he was around when they did.

He didn’t bother to tidy any of
the mess that was left, the furniture had been thrown around but
besides that the place didn’t look too much different from before,
the blood was gone and that’s all Dave was concerned about. OK now
he just had to wait, when this sick psycho came back Dave would be
waiting for him. He was going to find his mum.

Chapter 12

No more sleeping pills. That was
Dave’s first decision. If this person or
thing
came back, he
wanted to make sure that he was ready for it. It had been to his
neighbours house and then his, he was sure that it would come back
to another house close by. If he was awake every night, stayed
really quiet and kept a look out. He would be able to catch this
thing. He decided to stock up on coffee, energy drinks, milk and
cereal. The stimulants could keep him awake through the night, the
cereal and milk gave him food when ever needed. He didn’t need to
leave his post (a chair by the window) to have to go and cook food.
Cereal was quick and easy. Coincidently it was also cheap and with
mum not around Dave didn’t have much money.

With his supplies at the ready
he spent his first night sitting up, waiting. It was a really long
night. Dave had underestimated just how difficult it would be to
sit in silence waiting for the whole night. He had gone through a
ridiculous amount of coffee, at least ten cups and he had gone
through three energy drinks. Still he felt like he was going to
fall asleep. By 3am he did.

This wasn’t going to work. He
needed to change his approach.

He decided to sleep through the
day, he knew that this thing wasn’t going to come and take people
while it was still light. So he allocated himself the hours between
10am and 7pm to sleep. That gave him a good six to nine hours sleep
depending on how easily he went off. Then he would be set to sit up
for the night, he wouldn’t be anywhere near as tired. It still
wouldn’t be enough though, he needed something to hold his
attention. He couldn’t have the TV on, apart from the fact that it
would distract him from his “guard duty”, the noise from it might
make him miss anything that was going on outside.

Books were the answer, he could
sit in silence reading a book, it would hold his attention more
than staring into the empty night, he could get them for free from
the library. He knew were the library was but he had never been in
there, who knows he might even learn something from reading a
little bit as well.

“Hello can I help you?” The
cheerful librarian asked.

“Hi, yeah um I’d like to join
the library” Dave asked nervously sounding like a fifteen year old
asking for cigarettes at a shop counter.

“OK just fill this in
please”

The librarian gave Dave a
laminated sheet of A4 paper and a felt tip marker. The form asked
for all the usual information, Name, address, age, date of birth.
Dave filled in the form and handed it back. The librarian quickly
entered his info onto the computer, grabbed a library card and
wrote his name on the back of it. She scanned the barcode, which
was followed by a beep from the computer then handed the card to
Dave.

“Ok you’re all set” She
said.

“Thanks” Dave said, he noticed
her wiping his details off the laminated form as he walked towards
the bookshelves. “Saving the planet I guess” he thought to
himself.

Dave had never been a reader
before so he wasn’t entirely sure what exactly he would like to
read. He guessed that if he chose books that were similar to his
taste in films he couldn’t go far wrong. Horror was his favourite
film genre so he decided that’s what he would go for with books.
The horror section in the library was a lot smaller than all the
other sections, maybe horror isn’t quite as popular as the other
stuff he thought, maybe there were some horror like books in the
thriller or Sci Fi section? Oh it didn’t really matter there were
still enough books in the horror section, there must be
something
he will like. He scanned the books for a while
then decided it would be safest to go for authors he had actually
heard of. He chose
Dracula by Bram Stoker, Watchers by Dean
Koontz
and
IT by Stephen King.
This should be more than
enough he thought, although he was pretty sure that he probably
would even get much further than
IT,
it looked like a
mammoth of a book and him not being used to reading it would
probably take him a month to read, he had loved the movie though so
decided this was definitely the book for him.

Ok he was all set, he had slept
solid from around 11am right through until 6.30pm, that had given
him seven and half hours sleep. He drank an energy drink, followed
by a cup of coffee. Then he sat himself down with his bowl of
cereal and
IT
, now he knew he was going to be able to stay
awake, so he could wait and be ready for this thing whenever it
turned up. Then a terrifying thought entered his mind, what exactly
was he going to do when it did?

Chapter 13

Three days of Dave’s “night
duty” had passed. He kept to his schedule as planned, sleeping
during the day so he had the energy to stay awake through the
night. He had heard and seen nothing so far, each night he sat in
silence in a barely lit room. The only light was the lamp he placed
on the table next to him so he could see his book. Outside was
dark, there had been no movement apart from the odd car driving
past or one of the teenagers that lived somewhere down the street
stumbling past at early hours in the morning.

Dave started to wonder if he was
wasting his time, was this thing really going to come back to the
same spot
three times?
Would he be that cocky, or stupid? It
didn’t matter, he had to keep hoping, this thing
had
to come
back, it was the only way that he would be able to find his
mum.

After a toilet break Dave
returned to his table and opened up his book, he was a couple of
hundred pages into it now, he had been struggling a little bit with
not being used to reading, but overall he was following the plot
quite well and was enjoying it. It was another really quiet night,
so quiet that it started to make Dave feel on edge. There is
something eerie about complete silence, noise is comforting, Dave
would be a lot happier if he lived on a busier road where there was
a constant flow of traffic, the silence was starting to get to him.
He heard a noise.

“What was that?” He said to
himself, then sat almost as if he were waiting for an answer.

“there it is again!”

The sound of scurrying footsteps
came from one of the other rooms.

“oh shit someone’s in the house”
Dave whispered to himself.

“Who’s there?” He shouted,
trying to hide the fear in his voice.

He heard the scurrying again, it
sounded like children running around in one of the bedrooms.

“I said who’s there?” This time
with more authority.

The running stopped. Dave walked
very slowly across the room, he reached around the door and turned
the light on to the next room before entering. There was no one
there. He checked his bedroom, his mum’s bedroom, the kitchen, the
bathroom. There was no one anywhere to be seen. Unless they were
hiding? He stood for a second taking deep breaths, trying to build
up the courage to go and look. He checked his mum’s room first,
checking the cupboards, behind the door and under the bed, all the
usual “hide and seek” places he could think of. Then he checked the
bathroom, besides behind the shower curtain there was nowhere to
hide in there. Again nothing. That left his bedroom, he checked his
cupboard, there was nothing there. That only left one place, under
his bed. He heard giggling.

“Oh shit!” he shouted, louder
than he meant to.

“Ok you bastard get out from
there before I kick your ass!”

He heard the giggling again.
Dave felt his stomach tighten, he felt like he was going to puke,
he was terrified. Who the hell was this hiding under his bed, it
sounded like a child, he didn’t have to be scared of a child did
he? Where did the child come from? Why were they here? What if it
wasn’t a child, what if it was the
thing
that took his
mum?

“OK that’s it!” He shouted

He grabbed the side of the bed
and in one swift motion lifted it on one side and threw it upwards.
It rolled over and landed upside down a couple of feet next to
him.

“What the.....but, I heard.”

There was no one there, he must
have been hearing things. All this sitting alone in the dark, in
silence all night must have been playing with his mind.

“It sounded so real” he thought
to himself.

Dave walked back to his chair,
sighed and sat back down with his book.

There was the giggling again,
followed by hurried footsteps running from room to room.

“Right that’s it!”

Dave jumped up and sprinted to
his room, this time filled with more courage. He was tired of being
messed with.

“Come on out you bastard! Come
out!”

He ran round the house from room
to room screaming like a mad man, he was throwing things around,
tearing open cupboard doors so hard that the wood splintered. There
was still no one there, he sprinted from room to room again, making
sure there was no way anyone could sneak past while he was checking
another room. Eventually he stopped, leaning over to catch his
breath.

“shit Dave you’ve lost your
mind.” He said to himself puffing for air.

Another try, he sat down and
opened his book. He started to question whether his choice of book
was a good idea. What it really his best plan to sit alone in the
dark all night in complete silence and read a horror story? So
what, it was just a story, it wasn’t like a killer clown was going
to jump out and get him, he hoped. No don’t be stupid, whoever it
was he waited for would just be a human being. Perhaps a sick
deranged human being but still, there would be no killer clowns
chasing him around the house.

He opened his page and started
to read again. He heard something else.

“Oh you have got to be kidding
me, what now?”