Nightwatchers: Part One; A Short Story by Tabatha Wood

Part One

My shift finished one hour and forty-five minutes ago. Actually, one hundred and seven minutes and thirty-two... Thirty-three... Thirty-four seconds ago. Not that I’m counting or anything. 

Damian, my boss, said he’ll pay me overtime, but we both know that’s not true. I work more hours than anyone in this place, probably even more than he does, but I never see an extra dollar in my wage packet. Damian’s like a grown-up version of the most annoying kid in the schoolyard. He’ll look you square in the eyes and swear he’s telling you, “God’s own truth,” while he crosses his fingers behind his back, trying to excuse his lies. Most of the time he’s a pretty sweet guy, but as a boss, he can be an asshole. I’d quit, but who else would hire me? Small town problems. They see a weirdo first, ex-con second. I’ve been out well over a year, but shit sticks. 

I dry the last tumbler, stack it on the draining board and flick the wet towel over the sink. 

“I’m off now, D-Man,” I call across the empty kitchen. From the depths of the store-cupboard comes a startled reply. I hear a crash and some curse words followed by a hollow thump. Damian appears, his face and chest white with flour. 

“Chris? Chrissy!” he starts. “Wait up, babe. Can ya just...?” 

I’m out of there before he can finish his sentence. Can I just help him with one more thing? Nah, mate. I really can’t. 

I grab my battered leather jacket from the peg near the door and rummage in its pockets for my smokes. Four hours without a single break and I’m gasping for a hit of nicotine. Bad habit, I know. Don’t much care. The first match flares, then dies in the wind. I strike another, cupping my hands to protect the flame. I inhale, feel my lungs ache, and blow a plume of grey smoke into the sky.

The clock on my phone says 12:06. If I walk fast enough maybe I can get home by half-past. The air is cold and a fine drizzle flecks my cheeks. I turn up my collar and get moving. 

My route is the same one I always take. I’m a creature of habit, what can I say? I walk up the hill away from the bar, past the bus stop to the park. No busses run at this time of night, they’re erratic even during the day, so I cut through the park to the path by the school. After that, it’s straight down the street to my house. 

By now you’re probably thinking, this girl’s a fool, walking home alone at night. I respect your opinion, but that’s bullshit. I won’t go through life always feeling afraid. Besides, I can be pretty fucking nasty if I need to be. 

I walk with my head down and my hands in my pockets. The wind tries to bite me through the leather. The rain gets worse and my hair grows slick, and the further I walk the more pissed off I feel. At the weather. At Damian. At my shitty life. My stroll shifts gears into a heavy stomp; an angry, punk-rock, middle-finger to the world and everyone that’s in it. I head into the park, toss my cigarette butt on the ground and grind it angrily into the dirt with my heel. I’m so furious I don’t even see him at first. 

He’s tall and skinny with dark, shaggy hair a good three months past a decent haircut, with thick stubble on his face to match. He’s not dressed for the weather any better than I, but this dude is soaked to the skin. His jeans are splattered with mud and grass, his jacket ripped and filthy.  He’s holding a dog leash with no dog attached, and I don’t see one anywhere around. He walks quickly, muttering to himself, but I can’t make out the words. 

He stops and stares as if he’s fascinated by me, like I’m an exhibit in a zoo. He takes in my piercings and half-shaved hair. My black jeans, ‘Misfits’ T-shirt and scuffed Doc Marten boots. I see his top lip curl. Yeah, I’m used to that kind of reaction, especially from men. I don’t give a shit. 

We pass and he hisses a slur at me. Homophobic, the D-word. How predictable. I can’t help but chuckle to myself. I’m not scared of his kind, all mouth and no balls. They think they can hurt me with their words. They don’t realise I’ve heard them all, and worse, a million times before. I’m impervious now. Hell, I’m goddamn bulletproof. 

I could round on him and challenge him, ask him what the fuck he called me. But I don’t care enough to start that fight, and this isn’t the time or the place. I carry on walking and ignore him, pretending he doesn’t even exist. You’re waiting for the twist but there isn’t one. Sometimes you just have to keep on moving on. Don’t give them the satisfaction. Don’t look back. 

At the end of the park, when I find her, I wish I’d taken a hold of the bastard and snapped all his fingers clean off. I wish I’d ground my heel onto his throat, and squeezed his eyeballs from their sockets. I could have beaten him to such a bloody pulp, his own mother wouldn’t recognise him. I’d ignored him, certain he wasn't a threat, but that wasn’t true. He simply wasn't a threat to me. 

She’s slumped in the bushes, unconscious, bleeding badly from a wound in her head. A streetlamp on the opposite side of the path throws down a sliver of pale light, just enough to make some sense of the scene. She’s slim and petite with long, blonde hair.  The total opposite to me. Despite the shadows, I see straight away what’s happened. The horrors this woman has seen. 

Adrenaline hits me and I run to her side, skidding in the mud. My knee knocks her shoe as I kneel down beside her, discarded and covered in filth. I put two fingers to her neck and check for a pulse. It’s there, but only barely. Her chest rises and falls with a flutter, like that of a baby bird. I remember my first aid training, old skills from what feels like another life. I should put her in the recovery position, but I don’t really want to move her. I’m unsure if any of her bones are broken and I can’t take any chances. 

I take my phone from my jacket pocket and start dialling. The line connects. A voice on the other end asks me what emergency services I need, then she sits straight up and knocks the phone right out of my hands.

“No,” she says. “No police. No ambulance.” 

I almost fall back in the mud in shock, and I scramble to retrieve the handset. I can still hear the tiny voice in the darkness asking if I’m okay, if I’m still there. I grab the phone, take a look at the girl, and kill the call. 

“You’re hurt,” I say, aware I’m stating the obvious. “You need medical help.” 

She laughs. Her voice is high-pitched and almost musical. Like the notes of a tin whistle blown by a child. “No. I’ll be fine.” 

I stare at her ripped dress and damaged face. I’m not convinced. “Did someone...Was it..” I struggle to find the words at first before they smack me in the gut. “You’ve been...assaulted?” I don’t want to say the word I mean. She knows it.

She nods. Far too calmly. Like I’d simply passed comment on the weather. I know this state. Only a few steps up from catatonia. A defence response that kicks in when the brain is struggling to process trauma. 

“Yes. He took me by surprise. I was walking Bridgette...” Her expression changes from blank to panic. “Oh, shit! Where is she? Where’s my dog?” She struggles to her feet and I reach out an arm to steady her but she shies away. She calls out the missing animal’s name, puts her hands to her mouth to throw her voice. I remember the man with the empty dog leash. 

“The man who hurt you, I think I saw him. Was he...” I begin. She turns and looks at me so intently my cheeks flush with discomfort. I feel strange. Naked. Like she can see right through my clothes. Like Superman with his x-ray vision.  

“Here, let me show you,” she says. She steps towards me, one arm outstretched, and before I can move away she presses her palm to my forehead. Instantly, I see his face in my head, so detailed he could be standing right in front of me. I see his messy hair and red-rimmed eyes. I see the wrinkles and lines on his skin. He leers at me and I see missing teeth; deep cracks on his lips where the skin has gone dry. There’s a pimple by his nostril, almost hidden amongst his stubble. A whitehead, fat and ready to pop. 

Then she takes her hand away and the image disappears. 

My breath comes fast and shaky and my heart pounds like a jackhammer. I need to take a second before I can trust myself to speak.  

“What the fuck was that?” My words sound angrier than I intended, but she doesn’t even flinch. 

“I apologise,” she says, and shrugs. “It’s what I do.” 

I stare at her, incredulous. “It’s what you do?” I parrot. “What the fuck does that mean?” 

She shrugs again. “Like I said, it’s something I can do. Something I’ve always been able to do.” 

I flounder, feeling totally overwhelmed. I’ve seen enough weird shit in my life to be at least half-way used to it, stuff most people wouldn’t ever believe, but this is a whole new level of crazy. She straightens her clothes and rescues her shoe, then sets off further into the park. 

“Hey! Where are you going?” 

She doesn’t stop. “I’m going to find him and I’m going to kill him,” she tells me, without breaking her stride. Her cheery, upbeat tone turns my blood cold. A sudden wave of panic washes over me. 

“What? No, wait! You can’t do that!”

“I can and I will,” she replies. I run after her, reaching out to touch her shoulder, but she sidesteps and moves away. “Please don’t try to stop me, Chris. It won’t work.” 

I feel all the colour drain from my face and the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. 

“How do you know my name?” 

She continues walking. 

“Hey!” I shout. “How the fuck do you know my name? What is going on here?” 

She finally stops and turns to me. “I’m sorry. Again.” She sighs. “It’s another thing I can do. When I touch you…” She gestures vaguely, as if trying to pluck the right words out of the air. “The information goes both ways.” 

I can see her apology is genuine, but I still feel pretty pissed off. She got into my head without asking. But if she can take as well as give... Does that mean…? My thoughts lead me down a dark rabbit hole. I’m not sure I really want to know, but the question pops out anyway. 

“So when that man… ” Jesus, for someone who is usually such a gobshite, no topic out of bounds, I’m struggling. She knows what I mean.

“No. I’m strong enough that I could keep him out. I closed off. Found a safe space, you know?”

I don’t know. I have no knowledge of this stuff at all. But maybe that’s why she’s so calm about it all. It’s a defence mechanism. But she still needs help. I know from experience that she needs help. 

“Look, stop a minute, okay? My ex, they…she’s a police officer. I know you said no police, but will you at least talk to her, show her what you showed me? She can look out for him, try to make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone else. How does that sound?” 

She purses her lips and screws up her face. “I want to kill him,” she says again. 

“And I understand that, I totally do, but there would be consequences. Don’t risk your freedom for one asshole. Trust me. Linda, my ex, she can deal with him in a better way. Will you at least let me call her?” 

I can tell she’s not keen, but eventually she nods. “Okay. Call her.”

I scroll through the contacts in my phone. Linda’s my ex, but not because we stopped caring, and nothing to do with my past. I’m sure there were eyebrows raised at the station. At an officer of the law dating a reformed prisoner. Like either of us gave two shits about that. No, what we did care about was how our work shifts meant we hardly saw anything of each other, and when we did we were always so tired. We drifted unintentionally. Our relationship went from furious and fired-up to completely fizzled out. It happens. We moved on, with no hard feelings, but we kept in touch. I’m always going to be grateful to her. 

I find her number and push the button. The line rings and connects. 

“Hey,” Linda answers. She sounds slow and a little fuzzy, like I've pulled her out of a deep sleep. “It’s pretty late. You okay?”

“I’m sorry, Linds. I didn’t mean to wake you. I’ve got a situation here.”

“What’s that mean? Are you in trouble? Are you hurt?” There’s concern in her voice.

“No, not me, I’m okay. But there’s a girl with me. She was attacked in the park. She says she’s fine, but, well…” I take a deep breath. “She’s got powers, Linds.”

“Powers?” 

“Yeah.”

“What kind?”

“I don’t know, some sort of mind-reading thing. What do you call it, telepathy?”

Linda laughs. “Girl, did you take some freebies from the bar tonight?”

“No, Jesus! I’m not drunk, Linds. Look, can you just come?” Another deep breath. “I really need you.”

This time she doesn’t miss a beat. “I’m on my way.”

“Thanks. We’ll wait by the gates.” I pocket the phone and nod to the girl. “She’ll pick us up. Let’s go back to the entrance.” I’m unsure if she will follow me, but as I start to walk, she does, too. “So, what do I call you?” I ask her. 

“Anita,” she says, with enough of a pause that I have to wonder if she’s bullshitting me. It doesn’t matter, she can call herself whatever she wants. None of my business. “You told your ex-girlfriend I have powers,” she says. I nod. “And she wasn’t fazed by that. Why?” 

Good question. “Well, you see, Linda is pretty special herself.”

“Right,” she replies. "That makes sense. That’s how I knew you were safe.” 

I slow my pace a little. “What’s that?”

“I knew you were safe. When you took my pulse, I could feel it. I thought maybe you had powers too, but now I realise that you’ve been exposed to them instead.”

Oh. Okay. That’s not weird at all. I give an awkward laugh. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Yeah. I’ve been ‘exposed’. Linda is...well, maybe she’ll tell you herself.” 

We walk to the gap in the hedges that marks the entrance to the park and wait underneath the streetlight. I see Linda’s bright blue Mazda in the distance. Neat and tidy, just like her. She pulls up beside us and winds down the passenger side window. 

“Get in the car, bitches! No time to explain!” 

Anita looks confused. 

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “This is Linda. Trying to be funny, eh?” I open the rear door for Anita and she slides into the back. I take the passenger seat up in front. 

“Hi,” I say. 

“Hey,” Linda replies. 

Her hair is brushed and shiny, and her sweatpants are clean and crease-free. Even when woken unexpectedly she manages to look immaculate. I notice the T-shirt she’s wearing is one I bought her. The one with Lucy Lawless dressed as ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’. I wonder if she was sleeping in it. If she still misses me, like I miss her. “Thank you for doing this.” 

She dips her chin in acknowledgement. “It’s all good.” 

So she says. But really, it’s fucking crazy, right? Three girls thrown together in the middle of the night. Two with powers, one with secrets in her past. Like a punchline, but no one is quite sure of the joke. And if they were, they wouldn’t find it funny anyway. 

“Okay, let’s talk,” Linda says. 

By Tabatha Wood