Blood Men: A Thriller

Then the voice is gone.

I walk straight in the beginning, my legs are solid, but then I stagger a little, then a little more, and by the time I get to the car I’m holding my stomach, the world swaying out of control. I drop to my knees and hold the ground in probably the same way my dad described when me and Belinda would finally climb off the merry-go-round. I don’t think I ever threw up back then, but this time my stomach tightens, my throat catches, then hot vomit gushes from my mouth, frothy beer and bile splashing into a puddle next to my car door. I get back to my feet, this horrid, burning taste in my mouth, and I wipe a hand across my mouth, and then I realize two things at the same time—first of all, I don’t know where my keys are, the second thing is I’ve dropped the bag again. The sobriety that the monster brought with him has just as quickly left with him too, abandoning me, and suddenly the world is spinning one way while my mind sways another, the mixture not good, and I feel very, very ill.

The bag is a few meters away. I head back and snatch it up. I pat down my pockets but my keys haven’t appeared since I patted them down twenty seconds earlier. I reach the car and there’s a black and white cat sitting on the hood, staring at me. It watches me peer inside the car in case the keys are hanging from the ignition, but they’re not. I realize I’ve dropped the bag again. I move around the car and the keys are on the ground next to the puddle of vomit. I snatch them up, then fumble them then drop them right inside the bile-beer stew. Jesus. I pick them up and they drip, and when I try to wipe them on the grass I almost fall over and my hat falls off. I pick up the bag and the hat and spend too long unlocking the passenger door. The cat takes off and hides behind the closest bush it can find. I toss everything into the backseat.

The night has darkened considerably since I arrived, making the Christmas lights on the surrounding houses appear brighter. They’re not bright enough to light me up as I stand against the side of my car finally relieving the pain from my bladder by emptying it on the lawn. It’s either that or piss myself in the car. A half dozen plastic Santas stare down at me, mounted on roofs, all thinking the same thing—that they’d rather be somewhere else.

When I’m done I slouch in the driver’s seat and discover there are two steering wheels ahead of me and two roads, but they merge into one when I put my left hand over my right eye. Small drops of rain appear on the windscreen. Gerald Painter is still inside his house with his family, and he’s probably still crying. I put a hand on my chest to check my heartbeat, thinking that it ought to be racing, but it’s not. I could have been a killer right now, and if the monster had his way, I would be. The question is, how long can I keep it quiet for? No, wait—the real question is, do I want it to be quiet?

I fold my arms onto the steering wheel and rest my head on them. I close my eyes for a few moments, and when I open them again it’s to the sound of tapping on the driver’s-side window and it’s pouring with rain outside.





chapter twenty-one


“What the hell are you doing here, Edward?” he asks, and part of him, a small part, already knows. Or suspects. The warning Benson Barlow gave him has been stuck in his head all day, a warning that hasn’t been easy to dismiss—especially since Edward visited his father today and now he’s parked only two houses away from the security guard injured during the robbery.

“Who . . . who’s that?” Edward asks, and he lifts his hand up to shield his eyes even though there’s no real light.

“Come on, I’m giving you a lift home.”

“What?”

“Get out and move into the passenger seat,” he says, and opens the door for him. “And hurry up. I’m getting drenched out here.”

Edward gets out. He gasps in a lungful of air which pains him, he doubles over, then he gets onto his hands and starts gagging. A puddle of vomit appears. The rain is coming down hard and from nowhere—certainly nobody in the weather forecasting world predicted it. The back of Edward’s shirt is already soaked through. He waits a bit while Edward coughs, and when it seems like the man is never going to get back up, he reaches down and grabs his shoulder. “Come on, we have to go.”

He helps Edward to his feet, careful not to step in any vomit. Edward twists his body so he can see up the street. There is a patrol car parked about twenty meters away. Schroder leads him around to the passenger side where there are more rain-washed puddles of vomit.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Schroder asks.

“I was sleeping.”

“Are they the same clothes you were wearing at the bank?”

“Maybe.”

“They’re covered in your wife’s blood.”