CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Alan was lying ashen-faced on his bed. His right arm was crushed awkwardly under his body, as if he'd rolled onto it then hadn't had the strength to move. He was sweat-drenched and shivering weakly. A puddle of drool that would have made a dog proud had formed on his pillow. The sickly silence of his room was disturbed only by his short, shallow, gasping breaths.
Of course, it wasn't like I'd just knocked on the door and introduced myself to the step-monster. I was currently standing in Alan's room thanks to my not-so-graceful cat burglar skills. Tweaking open the gap in Alan's window, I'd managed to clumsily climb (okay, fall) inside. I was now standing next to Alan's bed, feeling like a helpless fool.
I should have brought a water bottle with me.
I'm no first-aider, but with that amount of sweat and drool lying around, it didn't take a genius to work out that Alan must be dehydrated. Apart from that brain wave, I wasn't really sure what to do next. Talk about unprepared. I'd spent that whole car trip stressing, yet hadn't bothered to think of an action plan.
Unfortunately, that wasn't my only problem. The moment I'd hit about a one kilometre radius from Alan's house, I'd started feeling a little queasy. The feeling had grown progressively worse as I'd approached Alan's bedroom. Now that I was standing at his death bed, I felt like curling up into a ball and making my own little pile of drool. I compromised and crouched beside the bed. Where were Chris and Ella? I knew there had been a ghost here a few minutes ago from the interference on the phone call, but they were nowhere to be seen.
'Alan?' I whispered.
No response.
I gently touched his hand. Ugh! A river of sweat cascaded down his palm and onto my fingers. If I didn't feel like throwing up before, I definitely felt like a chunder now.
'Do you want me to call an ambulance?' I whispered weakly. I could use one myself.
No response.
I lay down on the floor. There was no law against having a lie-down while you planned how to save someone's life. I felt slightly better as my head touched the ground. Somehow, through the haze of nausea, I had an idea. If Alan was seriously sick, we might be able to communicate telepathically, like we'd done at the pool.
'Alan, are you okay? What's happened?' I willed the thoughts in my head.
'Ughhh,' his weak response popped into my head. Not very helpful, but it was more of a response than I'd been getting before. I had to find out what had happened. Before I could ask, though, an external sound now pounded into my head. It was the floorboards.
Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop.
Someone was walking down the corridor.
Summoning my strength, I slid myself under Alan's bed. Yuck. I found myself covered in dust, hair and dirty socks. Just in time. Alan's door creaked open. I saw a pair of pink stiletto-clad feet.
Ridiculous! Who wears stilettos around the house? I mean, I'm willing to break my ankles wearing them to our formal this year if it means I'll look extra hot in my dress, but to wear them at home as well? Crazy! Who was she trying to impress? At least they made it easy for me to identify Alan's visitor. It was Sharelle for sure. I'd recognise her nasty clip-clopping anywhere after the way she'd wrenched Alan home from the pool last week.
'Hmph!' I heard an exasperated sigh. 'Lazy slob. As if I don't have enough to do without looking after you as well,' Sharelle complained. Alan didn't move a muscle. 'Do you think you could sit up in your sweat-nest long enough to eat this?' Sharelle snapped nastily.
Still no response from Alan.
Glad he doesn't have favourites.
'Alan,' Sharelle commanded sharply. 'Sit up and eat. You'll feel better. Hurry up! I don't have all day.'
Sharelle was trying to drug him further! But if Sharelle was drugging Alan, then what was Shane up to? Why had he raced back to Canberra? I desperately hoped that Sharelle wouldn't supervise Alan's eating, and just leave him to it. 'Make her leave. Tell her you'll eat it soon,' I willed Alan from under the bed.
'Alan! I'm talking to you,' Sharelle commanded again. The bed groaned slightly above me. I heard a coarse whisper. 'I'll eat it, I promise. You don't need to wait,' Alan rasped obediently.
There was a long pause as Sharelle decided what to do. After what seemed like forever, I heard her sigh. 'Fine. Just make sure you do,' she demanded, and clip-clopped out of the room.
I waited until I heard her footsteps disappear down the corridor, then slid back out from under the bed. Sharelle had placed a bowl of what looked like stew on the bedside table, next to Alan's head. His eyes were shut. He hadn't touched it. Not surprising. It looked like dog vomit.
Alan slumped back down into the bed. His eyes were shut. He'd obviously used his last ounce of strength to speak to Sharelle, and had nothing left for me. I really needed to find out what had happened so I could work out what to do.
I sat on the bed this time. Ugh. The sheets felt damp on my legs. A part of me hoped Alan was being drugged rather than having some hideously contagious disease, because I was sure to catch it from the pool of sweat that I was sitting in.
'What happened Alan? Why are you so sick?' I willed. Alan's voice popped into my head.
'I … don't know. I just … since last night … felt so sick … ughhh,' he finished his unhelpful telepathic message with a groan. Like I needed to be reminded how sick he felt. I could feel it myself.
My thoughts raced, despite the nausea that was taking over my body. Alan had started feeling sick last night. If Shane had left Bateman's Bay after I'd spoken to him at the restaurant, he could have paid Alan a visit last night. I had to find out more while he was still responding.
'Hang in there Alan,' I begged. 'Stay with me. This is important. Did you see Shane last night?'
'Yee-es,' Alan responded weakly. 'He stayed the night.'
I almost fell off the bed.
He'd stayed the night with Sharelle? I knew he'd done it before, but the image still made me want to scratch out my eyes. However, before I started gouging, I was distracted by a chilling thought.
Shane could still be here in the house! I'd been so focussed on rescuing Alan that I hadn't noticed whether there were any cars in the driveway when I arrived. My stomach filled with dread.
Frantically, I willed Alan again.
'Did he make you dinner?' I asked.
'Yes,' Alan replied. Then came an apologetic whimper. 'I'm sorry. … You told me not to eat their food. … It was really late. … I didn't want to. … I've been feeling strong … since I stopped … but he forced me! Felt okay first … then … later… so sick.'
Shane was no celebrity chef, but I'm sure his cooking wasn't so bad that it would send Alan to his death bed. I was completely sure of it now. Shane and Sharelle were drugging Alan.
I heard two pairs of feet stomping down the corridor heading for Alan's room. It was Sharelle's unmistakable clip-clop, partnered with what sounded like an athletic stride.
They were only two metres away. I didn't have time to get under the bed! Especially considering how unresponsively slow my body had become since I'd entered Alan's room.
I glanced around frantically for a hiding space. They were going to be here in one second!
Clip-clop, thud thud.
There was no time.
I leapt off the bed and pressed myself against the wall beside the doorframe.
Just in time.
The door swung open, stopping just short of me. Lucky I'd skipped dessert last night. I held my breath. I could almost feel Shane's presence on the other side of the door.
'I'll check on him,' I heard him call out to Sharelle.
I heard Shane walk towards the bed. My heart was racing. I hoped he wasn't going to hurt Alan.
Silently, I moved towards the edge of the door and peered around. I stifled a gasp. Shane was leaning over Alan, examining him. He looked angry. I watched as Shane reached for Alan's neck. He was going to strangle him!
I stopped myself from screaming, just in time.
Shane's hand, which h
ad been reaching out to throttle Alan, suddenly landed gently with two fingers resting on his neck. Shane wasn't trying to strangle him. He was checking Alan's pulse. I bottled up my sigh of relief.
My relief was short lived however.
Shane glanced at his watch, angrily.
'Aargh!' he groaned. 'What's wrong with you?' he said. He ran his hand through his hair in exasperation, before he turned around and walked out of the room.
Obviously, Alan wasn't dying fast enough for him. Cold-hearted devil. Thank goodness he hadn't decided to speed up the process by strangling Alan. Shane had bought me some time. I'd seen enough. It was time to go to the police.
I was about to step out from behind the door, and cat burglar my way out of there, when a vision materialised next to the bed where Shane had just been standing.
It was Chris.
The poor guy. I felt bad for him, having to watch helplessly as his younger brother endured such pain. Chris had relied on me to help Alan, yet I'd failed him miserably. I decided to wait behind the door a bit longer. The last thing I wanted to do was intrude on Chris' private moment with his brother. I watched while Chris leant over Alan. He reached over and felt Alan's pulse, then glanced at his watch.
I had a strange sense of déjà vu. The way Chris moved, checking Alan's pulse. It was almost like he was trying to re-enact Shane's motions, but I was pretty sure that Chris hadn't been in the room when Shane was here. After all, even if I hadn't noticed Chris from my position behind the door, Shane could see ghosts, so he would have noticed him.
Chris groaned and ran his hand through his hair. At his motion, I felt an even stronger sense of déjà vu. It wasn't just that Shane and Chris had the same mannerisms. It was the resemblance between the two. They were the same height. Although Shane had the muscular build of an athlete, compared to Chris' more wiry physique, their frames were mirror images of each other. Chris' hazel eyes, and dark hair, clashed with Shane's blond curls, and bright blue eyes, but the almond shape of their eyes, their big noses and square faces were almost identical.
I shuddered and tried to dismiss the weird sensation. Despite the similarity of their actions, their motivations were completely different. Whilst Chris was upset that Alan was so sick, Shane was annoyed that Alan was dying too slowly.
I watched to see what Chris would do next. I half expected him to walk out of the room to find Sharelle, like Shane had done. However, now Chris' actions started to diverge. He turned to Alan's bedside table.
I was getting a little nervous now that Chris was moving around. There was a chance he might turn to the door and see me. I'd been watching him for too long now to expose myself. I didn't want Chris to think I was a voyeuristic freak. Luckily, Chris' attention remained on the bedside table. He pulled open the bottom drawer, and…
Drew out a single sock?
He cupped the sock delicately in his hand and smiled at it.
Weird. I'd heard of foot fetishes before, but a sock fetish? I'd better warn Ella that her boyfriend had some strange habits. Although, she would probably be pleased to hear that her boyfriend had acquired the skill of touching physical objects and that he wasn't an amateur translucent ghost anymore.
Then I realised it wasn't a sock fetish at all.
Instead of feeling relief, I desperately wished my first instinct had been right.
There was something inside the sock. Chris poured the contents out onto the bed. Two small tablet containers tumbled out. I recognised one of them instantly. It was Shane's rugby injury painkillers. I couldn't make out the name of the other one, but it looked like serious medicine from the warnings on the label.
I watched in horror as Chris poured five tablets from each bottle onto the bedside table, making a small pile. He took the fork from the plate of food that Sharelle had left out, and began crushing the tablets. After he'd transformed the tablets into a fine white powder, he scooped it off the bedside table and poured it into Alan's dog food casserole. He then proceeded to mix the powder into the casserole.
All the while, Alan slept feverishly, unaware of the food contamination occurring beside him.
I couldn't believe it. I was so shocked by what I'd just witnessed that, without thinking, I jumped out from behind the door.
'What are you doing?' I asked accusingly.
Chris jumped, mid-stir. His face registered surprise. He looked like he'd been caught with his pants down. His surprise changed quickly to anger.
'Oh, so you caught me, you little sneak. As if things could get any worse. Alan's taking long enough to die, thanks to you and Shane sneaking him fresh, undrugged food all the time. Now I have to waste time killing you as well!' he snarled.
So this is what it felt like to be flabbergasted. I could barely comprehend what Chris was saying. My mind struggled to process his confession. Chris was trying to kill his own brother using Shane's missing painkillers!
A surge of rage swept through my body and I was thrown out of my stupor. Red flashed before my eyes. I mean, not only was he trying to kill his brother, but he'd treated Ella and me like fools! And I still had no idea why.
'Get away from him!' I screamed at Chris. I lunged at his ghostly form with an almighty shove. Unfortunately, my anger hadn't blessed me with supernatural speed, because Chris saw me coming and moved out of the way. He was so fast that all I saw was a blur flash past, then he was behind me. I felt two strong hands shove me from behind. I was already unbalanced from my lunge towards thin air, so the shove sent me sprawling head first onto the bed … and Alan.
My face ploughed hard into Alan's side. At the same time, my shins clunked painfully against the bedframe. I pressed my hands into the mattress and attempted to stand up to face Chris. Unfortunately, that's when I felt a forceful hand pressing down on the back of my head, smothering me further into Alan's stomach.
It was impossible that Chris had learnt all these ghostly skills so quickly—the flashing speed, disappearing and reappearing, being able to crush tablets. The last time I'd seen him he'd been an incompetent, translucent, beginner. He'd obviously been faking his ghostly inexperience this whole time so that Ella and I would underestimate him.
I struggled to lift my face, but Chris leaned his weight into it. Suddenly, the pressure on my head was released as Chris grabbed my arms and, with brutish force, locked them behind my back. My shoulders felt like they were going to rip out of their joints. They were already tender from when Shane had done the same thing to me last night. Chris jerked me up from the bed and pushed me roughly towards the door.
'Let go of me!' I yelled, as I struggled helplessly against his grip. I didn't care if Shane or Sharelle found me now. I was terrified. If Chris was willing to kill his own brother, I doubted that he'd have any qualms about murdering me. I guess the thing about being a ghost is you've got nothing to lose.
I screamed loudly then stopped when I saw the intense look of malice on Chris' face. He meant business. He shoved me aggressively into the wall. With my arms pinned behind my back, I had nothing to protect myself from the impact. Let me tell you, walls are hard. I managed to tilt my head backwards so that my face wasn't the first to connect. My ribcage and hip bones smashed painfully into the concrete. That was going to bruise. For the first time in my life, I wished I had a thick layer of fat on my front.
'Shut up, or I'll knock your voice out of you.' Chris hissed into my ear.
I felt dazed from the impact of the wall, and my body ached all over—not to mention, I was still feeling weak from Alan's nausea. I glanced at Alan. Despite my vigorous face ploughing, he was still unconscious. He was in a really bad way. He needed immediate medical attention. Using my last ounce of energy, I ignored Chris' warning and let it rip.
'Shane! Help! Help!' I screamed at the top of my lungs. Where was he? Why wasn't he here yet? Surely he'd heard the commotion!
'Right, that's it. I warned you,' Chris hissed. He smashed me violently into the wall again. This time I didn't have the strength to resist, and I hi
t it with full force. The pain was intense. My head was throbbing. I felt like every bone in my body should be broken. Yet somehow I was still standing, and conscious. I felt Chris brace himself to smash me into the wall once more.
I cringed and tried to struggle, but my body wasn't responding. I barely had the strength to keep my head up. Then Chris did something surprising.
Instead of the pummelling I was expecting, he grabbed me by the waist and dragged me out into the corridor. I felt a glimmer of hope. We might run into Shane and Sharelle.
Chris dragged me down the corridor, past a closed door. I could tell we were heading towards the front of the house.
Then I heard it…
The unmistakable hiss of a shower. Two muffled voices echoing around a bathroom. A high-pitched squeal of joy.
I felt sick. Alan and I were going to die while Shane had his way with Sharelle in the shower. There's no way they would have heard my screams through the noise of the water and their own moans of ecstasy. I was appalled on every level.
We were almost at the front door. I felt my spirits lift again. Perhaps Chris was going to let me go free!
I noticed the flight of stairs a split second before Chris pushed me down them. Completely off balance, I tumbled head-first down the staircase, banging painfully on the tiles. The sharp edge of one stair scraped a cut on my arm as I flew past. After what seemed like an eternity of bone-crunching tumbling, I hit the bottom. Dazed, I looked up at Chris. He was standing at the top of the stairs smiling menacingly down at me. He'd obviously enjoyed watching my fall. He cracked his knuckles threateningly.
It was time to get as far away from him as possible. Going back up the stairs was not an option while he blocked my path.
I looked around frantically. I was sitting beside a door. It must be the internal door to a basement garage. Maybe I could escape through there.
Ignoring my throbbing body, I dived for the door. It swung open on my impact. I sprawled onto a concrete floor beside a red Ferrari convertible. Scrambling back to the door, I slammed it shut. I exhaled a shaky sigh of relief. I was alone in the garage.
Click.
The lock on the door behind me snapped shut. Chris had locked me in.
I wanted to kick myself. I'd just voluntarily walked into my own jail cell in a foolish attempt to escape from a guy who can walk through walls. The smug face of Chris materialised in a cocky supine position on the bonnet of the Ferrari, showing off the supernatural skills he'd so cleverly been hiding until now.
'And I thought it was going to be difficult to get you in here,' he drawled sarcastically. I felt like smashing the smirk off his face. Unfortunately I'd used up my last ounce of energy escaping to my not-so-brilliant hiding place.
'I suggest you enjoy the next few minutes,' he sneered, 'because they're going to be the last moments of your life.'
I blanched. 'You'll never get away with this,' I threatened him, unconvincingly. Chris dismissed my warning.
'See you soon. I've got two brothers to kill.'
I pulled my protesting body up into a painful sitting position and stared at Chris in confusion. Why did he say he had two brothers to kill? Alan was his only brother.
That confirmed it. The boy was completely out of his mind.
Chris narrowed his eyes maliciously. 'And then I'll be back to kill you.'