The Turning

6

6

“I think I know you.”

He heard the gurgled accusation in his ear, interrupting his unconscious thought-stream. Kyle, though not entirely awake, began to gradually stir. The first thing he was aware of was the sensation of numbness - his leg was asleep, and his hand had pins and needles rippling through it.

He opened his eyes to fine slits and briefly surveyed his surroundings. Red carpet and beige walls, either concrete or plaster bathed in a murky translucence. A single window to his left showed brackets of deep, pinkish orange sunlight slanting through Venetian blinds. He closed his eyes again, could feel himself drifting once more and then sprang awake again, panicked and alert.

Crap, its sunset!

The words were like a neon sign on the side of a pitch black road in the dead of winter. He’d be in trouble when he arrived home and he hated to think of what his father was going to say or do. He jolted awake and lifted his head, feeling as though it had been filled with concrete. He glanced around and noticed that there was no furniture in this room. In fact, he had the impression that it had been newly vacuumed and the walls wiped clean.

His mind began to undulate gently to waves of lethargy, each surge stronger than the last, coaxing him back to sleep. But the need to get out, to get home was too desperate. He sat up and leaned on one arm and waited for the room to focus.

Where was the old man?

He had heard him, his name muttered from the end of darkened, haunted corridors, corridors that formed nightmares in which he was running from some crazed, drunken lunatic in an army uniform, a rifle poised, screaming. When the dreams had dissipated he had heard the gentle voice, telling him that he was going to be all right, that he had made him drink water and that he knew his name, knew where he lived and would take him home.

Kyle didn't feel threatened by this voice but was rather lulled by it, the maniac with the shotgun of his nightmares a far cry.

He wiped his eyes and then tried to stand. He imagined this was what it was like for people to balance on fake legs. He hoped to the wall and grabbed it for support while he tried to bend his leg back and forth to recirculate the blood. Just as it was returning to life, he heard a sound from out in the corridor, a scuffing of shoes on carpet, that rasping breath growing clearer and closer.

“Wake are yer?” the old man called. Instinctively, the boy drew himself up against the wall, the remnants of the dream and what had happened in the junkyard reoccurring to him fast. He hoped that the darkening room could conceal his shape and that the old man would see that he was gone and wander off again. He supposed it would have been better to flee the room altogether while he had had the chance, but that time had come and gone.

Kyle's eyes fixed on the doorway and suddenly he felt that there wasn't enough air. He closed his eyes, tried to calm himself and when he opened them again the hunched shadow had entered and was looking around. The smell of a thousand cigarettes and hundreds of splashes of beer and bourbon wafted in with the man's presence. Even in the dark, Kyle could see the reflection of his glasses, the cigarette dangling from his mouth. He was dressed in a robe, his cranium sprouting only a few wisps of white hair. For a second he just stood there, squinting, trying to decipher the kids shape. Then he turned to walk out and the boy turned his head without thinking. Kyle closed his eyes, gritting his teeth. Brett Stephens looked up.

“Please,” Kyle whimpered. He took a step back, his shirt catching on the roughened surface of the wall and dragging it upwards. Brett eyed him, frowning.

“What’s the matter with you?” he said, and immediately began to cough.

“What?”

Brett straightened a little from hacking, his eyes watery and rolling up and down in their sockets. For a moment the two were speechless, the only sound being the Venetians rattling against the screen of the open window. Kyle noticed this and thought that if things went pear-shaped, he could always scream. Surely someone out there would hear him and come to look.

Brett cleared his throat.

“You hungry?” he asked. “I made you a sandwich and there’s more water. I poured it from the fridge so it’ll be cold. You interested or should I chuck it?”

Kyle opened his mouth only nothing came out. Here was this man, asking him about sandwiches and water after he had just broken into his yard. Furthermore, he hadn’t awoken tied to the floor or with his clothes peeled off. Brett was treating Kyle like some scared stray dog he happened upon.

“Did you say you have water?” Kyle croaked. The old man nodded.

“Yeah, that‘s why you fell over. Your dehydrated son. Come into the kitchen so I can knock you back into shape.”

For a moment he hesitated, wondering if this was some sort of a trap, but his thirst was too great to allow his suspicions to override it and so he slowly followed. It was the look of the man that made him relax; the bloke was so weary and fragile that Kyle reckoned a feather could have bowled him over. Still, he was suspicious of the man’s kindness after what he’d done. Kyle had trespassed onto his property, had locked his dog out and had been in the process of stealing from him. He should have awoken in handcuffs, Constable Morris hovering low over his face, emitting coffee breath the way his teacher did when he had disrupted a lesson.

Or maybe Brett had Morris waiting out there somewhere. Perhaps he had called him while Kyle had been knocked out. It would be handcuffs and a gaol cell. He would not get away with it this time.

The old man had said something that Kyle had missed.

“What?”

“I said, yer not gonna fall ass overhead like before are ya?”

“I… I don’t think so.”

Brett nodded and continued shuffling. At the end of the hall he stopped and flicked on the light. Suddenly the house was alive and he gazed up at the old bank’s high ceilings, a little imposing but nonetheless merely structural. Glancing back at the window he saw that the light had faded and he knew that he would certainly cop the right hand of the law, if not from constable Morris then certainly from his parents.