Chapter 11 – Fleeing into the night
In the middle of the kitchen, the light shining down upon him, he opened his mouth in such a way and Danni caught sight of two sparkling white teeth hanging over his bottom lip.
That was all she needed. She jerked the door handle down, threw open the glass doors and sprinted out into the cold of the night at top speed. The sky outside was a deep blue being chased away by the approaching oranges and yellows of dawn, turning the midnight to a deep shade of indigo, the faint twinkle of stars she had once admired vanishing one by one as the sun rose to outshine them all.
She was never the fastest person, nor did her stamina last for very long. She was built for mental tasks, for sitting in a chair and letting her eyes race over miles of text, not for the track. But now, her arms pumped furiously, pushing her legs onwards through the snow and slush that soaked her feet through her socks, the wind whipped across her cheeks, turning them as red as Rudolph’s nose, her hair sticking to her suddenly sweat slick skin or… maybe it was tears streaming from her eyes. Was that why she couldn’t see? Not because she wasn’t wearing her glasses but because the wind was making her eyes burn, the cold biting into her feet like she was running on needles.
Joey’s grocer was the first place she saw and perhaps it was relief at the sight or the terror of the reality of her situation crashing down upon her, she opened her mouth and let out a scream.
“Joeeeeeeey!” The sound echoed around the street, shattering through the silence of the early morning like dropping a china teacup.
A light from the upstairs turned on and Joey came down, his hair tousled, wrapping a thick coat around himself. The moment he saw Danni, he charged over to her, looking just as horrified as her face must have betrayed her to be.
“Miss! What happened?” He tried to wrap an arm around her, but she shrank back from the attempted to embrace. Instead, he removed his own coat and wrapped the thick warm wool around her. “What were you thinking? You’ll catch your death of cold out and… are you wearing socks? Lord above, where are your shoes?”
“Joey! Please! I need your help! Someone broke into my house and- I- please!” She stammered, holding the coat around her.
“Hold on a moment!” To her dismay, Joey left her for a moment, returning to her side with a pair of thick wellington boots. “Put these on before you catch something.” With his strong arm holding her forearm, he forbade any argument until she finally slipped them on with his head. Unlike when she had worn wellington boots before, these slid over her feet without a hint of struggle. What was more, the coat was like being wrapped in a warm hug, covering her in his lingering body heat. Had her thoughts not been elsewhere, she surely could have melted all the surrounding snow with the ferocity of her blush.
“Now. Take a deep breath and calm down.” His hands closed around her upper arms, grounding her. “What happened? You said someone broke into your house, walk me through it.” At the same time, his hand rested on the small of her back, warm even through the coat. Without her thinking, her legs carried her back towards her house as the words tumbled out of her mouth. It began with waking up to a strange sound in the house, losing her glasses off the side of the bedside table, arming herself with her hairbrush, going downstairs and finally hauling her weapon. As soon as she mentioned that there were three men in her kitchen, Joey’s feet moved quicker.
A figure appeared ahead of them and she froze, sure that one of the men, as she refused to accept that they could be vampires, had come to track her down and prevent her from telling anyone. She would have bolted again but Joey’s arms were warm and strong around her, setting flutters through her whole body to chase away the goosebumps brought up by the cold. Why did his hands feel so nice?
“It’s okay, it’s only the vicar.” Though she couldn’t see to be sure until the man had jogged up to them, looking red in the face, what little she could see past the thick scarf he had wrapped around his neck. It matched his overcoat and she silently hoped that he had not charged down here in his pyjamas like she had and how Joey was surely standing through this cold. She made a mental note to make him something to thank him for this.
“I saw… Your light was on.” The vicar came up to them; his wizened face dotted with red on his cheeks like a clown.
“Yes, please. Let’s go before they get away, I’ll explain on the way.” Danni explained, wrapping her arms around herself and picking up her feet. The treads on the boots made traversing through the slush and grime saturated sludge on the side of the road far easier than her trip down towards the village.
“So, you came down and found three men in your kitchen? You’re lucky that you managed to get out of there alive.” The vicar exclaimed, he and Joey walking a pace in front of her, their feet surer on the icy streets.
“I managed to slip out through the door but… Oh God! I left the door open! What if they escaped?” Danni cried, the realisation hitting her like a blow to the head.
“Then we would catch them. There’s only one road and we’re on it. We would see them coming down from your house.” Joey assured her, his hand reaching out to help her get her balance when her foot slipped on something she couldn’t see. Her eyes were burning now, and Joey was sticking close to her, having no doubt realised that she was walking around half-blind.
“You really ran all the way down here? Without your glasses?” The vicar paused and Danni made a distressed noise. Every time one of them stopped, she was positive that those three intruders are doing something unthinkable in the house Tawney had entrusted to her. “You’ll need some eyedrops in the—”
“Father, we really need to—” Joey insisted, pointing in the direction of the house.
“Yes! Yes! My apologies.” They moved in silence until they reached the house and Danni could have cried. True to the Vicar’s word, the lights of the cottage were still on inside, but she swore under her breath when she realised the door was wide open. Thankfully, the windows were all untouched, erasing the visions that had been dancing through her head of smashed glass and destroyed furniture. Together, they crept up the driveway, crouching out of sight of the kitchen door, just under the window the three had supposedly taken as an invitation.
Danni first instinct was to step inside and look around but Joey and the vicar moved to go forwards, Joey’s hand resting on her shoulder. “Let the Vicar go first. Where are your glasses, he’ll search the house and get them for you.” He explained.
Going against her every instinct that told her to go inside, to push past them both and demand that the three reveal themselves, but the adrenaline that had been keeping her warm for the last few minutes was fading fast and the sun was coming up. If, by any possible chance, those three were actually vampires, they would be taking shelter from the sun. As far as she could see, they only had one place to hide and that was somewhere inside the house.
“Okay, my glasses were on my bedside table, but I knocked them off. They might be under my bed now.” Looking between the two, taking in Joey’s youthful strength and the Vicar’s determined face but, she had no doubt he had been strong as a young man, there was no knowing how much of it lingered, she sucked in a tremulous breath through her teeth. “Please, be careful. There’s three of them and I’m worried they might be armed. I’m also worried they might have done something to the house. Please check, I can’t afford to fix anything they might have broken.” She begged.
Without a word, the pair nodded,
Keeping low to the ground, she watched the vicar disappear into the house first, hunched over to keep out of sight, into the house. Resting agains the wall, the stones digging into her back and watching her breath coil in front of her face whenever she exhaled. Slowly, the sun rose higher, painting the sky a brilliant golden and the first hints of blue, promising a clear sky. The coat kept out the worst of the chills, but she kept blowing warm breaths against her palms, blinking furiously to keep her eyes open. Without her amygdala pumping panic through her brain, her whole body was demanding rest and recovery. She was already probably going to have to bandage her feet but the longer she spent out here, the louder her bed was singing for her to return to it. Hoping to stay alert a little longer, she dug the nail of her thumb deep into the palm of her opposite hand, the pain bringing her back to the present. Beside her, Joey was breathing warm exhales into his cupped hands, looking in every direction as if expecting the intruders to walk around the corner. The image of this wiry, straw-haired man leaping on three grown men and beating them to a pulp warmed her down to her toes. But not enough to ease the feeling of fathoms deep fear that had settled itself in her chest.
How she wished she liked coffee.
Just as she was about to try sneaking inside, the Vicar reappeared, looking out of breath but relieved.
“I searched the whole house and didn’t find a soul. But I did find these.” In his hand, he held her glasses out to her. She took them and placed them on her face, the world coming into sharp relief around her and the pain began to recede. She would need a few painkillers before it would go completely but those wouldn’t do anything about the three intruders, she was positive they had to be inside the house still.
“Thank you. But I don’t understand, they have to be in there. There’s nowhere else they could have gone!” She stood up, finally looking the man in the face, taking in the reality of his tired eyes, tousled hair, the clouds of air forming in front of their mouths. He looked exhausted.
“I hate to say this miss,” The Vicar began, rubbing his hands together and she was overcome with the urge to offer to make them tea and guilt washed over her. “But I think that you might have been seeing things. You didn’t have your glasses on and… we think that you might have been seeing one of those intruders that have been breaking in recently.”
“No. I’m convinced I saw three. I heard their voices, they all had distinctive voices and there were three of them.” Danni insisted, rising to her feet and a blistering morning wind tossed her hair into her face.
“Let me check,” Joey interjected, before things could escalate any further. He went past the vicar who leaned back against the wall next to Danni and rubbing his hands over his neck and arms, trying to warm himself up. Danni, herself, was letting her leg jump violently in that way that always seemed to warm her. The coat was nice, but she felt awful that she was taking warmth away from Joey. She thought about going to the shed and feeding some more logs into the heating. Maybe she should suggest looking in the garden? Something that might help them warm up even a little.
“I’m not saying that we don’t believe you,” Joey began but Danni lifted a sceptical eyebrow at him. “But we think that when you threw your hairbrush at him, you scared the ruffian off. We found the hairbrush, by the way.” From his pocket, Joey withdrew the instrument and Danni’s disbelief only grew worse. There were so many parts of this that didn’t make a lick of sense. She was positive she had seen and heard three people so… where had they gone? Was it possible that Joey and the Vicar had simply missed them?
A hand closed around Danni’s shoulder and this time; she didn’t shake it off. “We’ll come around and see you again…. At a more respectable hour.” How did he manage to make that sound like a reprimand with his gentle voice?
“I… I understand. Let me—” Danni moved to remove Joey’s coat, but he shook his head.
“Keep it. I’ll come and get it later. I think a good lie in, and a hearty cup of tea will do you some good.” Joey insisted, gesturing for her to go in through the door. Despite the trepidation growing in her stomach, the positivity that they must have missed something.
“Wait! Before you go anywhere, please do one more thing for me?” Danni begged, a sudden thought springing fully formed into her head. The two men paused on the spot. “I want to go inside and check for myself, just to be absolutely certain before I go to sleep. But would it be alright for you to check the perimeters?” She gave them her sincerest, most pleading looks.
“Of course we can. We’ll come and find you when we’re done.” Joey reached out and squeezed her upper arm, the warmth seemingly to spread all the way up her shoulder, her neck and over her face.
Stepping inside and closing the door, Danni considered that she had never realised just how cavernous and cold the kitchen was. Moving carefully, removing her feet from the boots as quietly as she could manage. Despite what Joey and the Vicar had said, she was positive that those three strangers had to still be in this house. She just had to find them. Stepping out into the living room, she crept around past the tv, up towards one of the spare bedrooms. She placed one hand on the door, she pushed it open, peeking inside but the room inside was as immaculate as when she had left it. She searched under each of the beds in every room, then, in a fit of inspiration or, perhaps, madness, she checked behind the curtains, ran her hands under the couches, bent low to check under every table and desk, even pulled open each cupboard in the kitchen in turn.
But there was not a sight of them. If not for the hairbrush in her hand, and the ache in her feet and head, she would have thought it was all a horrible dream. Pressing the ball of her palms into her eyes, counting to 10, inhaling and exhaling with each count. She was so tired, she couldn’t pull together a single coherent thought other than how badly she wanted to go to bed. But first there was something important she had to ensure.
Going room by room again, she checked every window and door, thanking her lucky stars that her pyjamas had pockets for her to tuck the keys for each lock into after securing every possible means of entry. The last one she checked was the kitchen, locking the door, both of the windows before she finally gave into her need for sleep. Divesting herself of her boots and hanging up Joey’s coat by the door. Her socks were soaked through, and she was quick to remove them as well, tossing them into the washing machine to be worried about in the morning but after tonight, she didn’t want to even think about wearing them again. She almost hoped that they would have a hole in them so she could have an excuse to throw them away.
What more could she do… all the doors were locked. The windows too. But she was positive that, somehow, those three intruders were lurking around here still. But where? This house didn’t have a basement or an attic, as far as she knew. Going in the living room, more in a haze of sleep-induced paranoia than for any understandable reason, she examined the ceiling, searching the rafters with her eyes, sweeping her bare feet over the floorboards in search of a latch or a a hinge. Then she noticed the cupboard under the stairs that would lead to her room.
That space was bare, she was certain.
But… when had she checked it before? Last week? Or maybe it was yesterday? She couldn’t remember and that dug a deep pit in her stomach. With shaking fingers, she reached for the handle and threw open the door, bracing herself for a sneak attack, for something to lunge out at her. But when she opened her eyes, there was only the vacant space of the airing cupboard facing her. It was scarcely big enough for one person, much less three.
Could she possible be wrong? Had they escaped through the front window? What if they were hiding somewhere in the garden? Maybe the vicar was right… maybe she had only seen one and imagined three?
Nothing made sense and her head ached behind her glasses. The dawn sun was already streaming through the living room and dining room windows, filling the rooms with beautiful orange lights that stung her eyes to look at. Maybe tomorrow… or today… whichever it was would be one for staying inside and getting more sleep. Sleep… that was the next move. Sleep, maybe a cup of tea if she felt like even losing her head in the morning. She locked the airing cupboard and pressed her forehead against the cool wood of the door.
“That’s a very clever idea, miss. Now you won’t have to worry about anyone breaking in or hiding in there.”
The floor came up to meet her all too quickly as her vision went black.