At that moment, Peter opened his eye. Jess didn’t notice at first, but when he started to moan it startled her. He continued moaning until the strangled noises eventually began to form words. “Jess…ica.”
Jess nodded and smiled, tears gushing down her cheeks. “Yes, yes, it’s me. I was so worried about you, Peter. What on Earth happened to you?”
Peter focused intensely on her for a moment, lips puckering as if preparing for some great speech. She hoped it wasn’t going to be a final one. “Jessica…” he grimaced, “listen…to me.”
She put a hand against his cheek. It throbbed heat like a radiator. “I am, Peter. I’m here.”
“Get away,” he said, “out of here.”
Jess blinked. “What do you mean?”
A hiss of air whistled in Peter’s nostrils as though forcing its way past a blockage. He repeated himself, but more weakly, like he was going to lose consciousness again at any moment. “Get away. They are…coming.”
Peter’s good eye rolled back in his head and then disappeared behind his drooping eyelid. He was gone again. Maybe forever, Jess contemplated sadly. Before she had time to consider what Peter had been trying to tell her, she was alerted by a crash.
Followed by cries of pain; screams of agony.
What is happening now? I don’t think I can take any more.
Jess felt numb and moved sluggishly. Making her way over to the bar area, she could see that a commotion had already begun to take place. Harry, Damien, and the old man were missing, but Lucas, Steph, and Nigel were milling around the bar looking concerned. She searched for Jerry and found him on his own, sitting at a table in the corner. He was shivering and didn’t seem to be paying much attention to anything that was going on. She made a mental-note to check up on him later. Kath sat nearby too, also seemingly uninterested in anything that was going on. When Jess reached the bar she found herself face to face with Lucas, who was making his way through the bar hatch to the staff side. He stopped when he saw her.
“What’s going on?” she asked him.
“Dunno, lass. The menfolk went downstairs to get us something for a fire. Next thing we know there’s a load of caterwauling.” Lucas moved into the doorway behind the serving area that led into the back of the pub, leaving the candlelight of the bar and fading into the shadows. Before disappearing completely, he turned back to her. “You coming or not, lass?”
Jess stood for a moment then nodded. She followed after Lucas into the unlit corridor, groping against the wall to keep herself steady. Further on down, the sounds of someone in pain became clearer, and so did other sounds…people bickering. It sounded like Harry and Damien. She hoped everyone was alright, but worried that Damien had lashed out and hurt somebody; broken Harry’s nose or worse?
Lucas sparked his lighter and the corridor lit up in a flood around them. He reached out to stop Jess before she bumped into him. “I think they’re down there,” he said.
To their left was an open doorway leading to a narrow staircase. A breeze seemed to wisp up from the cellar and tickle Jess’s cheeks and the inside of her nostrils.
Lucas placed his hands either side of his mouth and shouted down the stairs. “You fellas okay down there? We heard yelling.”
After a few seconds a voice that Jess recognised as Harry’s floated up the stairs. “We need help. Graham is hurt. It was my fau-“
“Just get some light down here and some blankets.” The new voice was Damien’s, cutting off Harry mid-sentence. “We’ve had a slight fuck-up but everything’s going to be sound.”
Jess couldn’t help feeling that things were most definitely not going to be ‘sound’. Peter was on death’s door and now the old man was injured.
Two down… How many more to go?
Jess gut told her they were all in for a long night and that their troubles were not yet over.
Not by a long shot.
###
Kath almost felt bad.
Almost.
It had, after all, been Peter’s decision to run off to look for the stupid girl; no one had made him do it. Ironically, Kath was the one who ended up finding Jess anyway, and that had just proved even more how idiotic the boy was for not listening to her. Still, she couldn’t help but ruminate about what had happened.
Someone messed him up real good. Probably crossed the wrong people; Polish Mafia or something. Kath suddenly had another thought: Or there really is a psychopath stalking us all?
If there was a sadistic madman running amok out there, was she going to be safe here in the pub? It didn’t feel like it. The Trumpet was full of degenerates from what she’d seen so far.
You had Lucas, prancing around like a drunken leprechaun; Nigel, an ugly man that lacked any personality she could discern of; Steph, a low-class tramp; and that insufferable girl, Jess. Of all the people Kath could be trapped with, Jess would have been last on her handwritten list. Her little buddy from the video shop was no less irritating, backing up her absurd stories just so he could get into her filthy knickers – if the slut even wears any. Next was Damien, a walking billboard for dysfunctional youth and petty crime. Finally, you had the pensioner, stinking of piss and beer, and the alcoholic loser, Harry. She could tell Harry was a drunk because he had that same weathered look on his face that her father used to have. A slow, draining sickness that killed a man one drink at a time; made him neglect everything important.