Don't Hang Up

[ashkent]

Well, this has already been on the site as an interactive story, but other that about four occassions the number of valid points to have some interaction were becoming more an more sparse the further in the story went.
Another reason I wanted to end it as an interactive story was that there were more holes in the opening chapters than in a Tombstone salloon door. Also with stories like that I tend to find that I don't get a grip on the story or characters until about ten-fifteen thousand words in. Dean Koontz rewrites every chapter as he writes them, another author I can't think of rewrites each line until he's happy with it. I write a tenth of a book then go back to the beginning and rewrite it!
So, this is the extended and edited version of Don't Hang Up. The first chapter remains pretty much the same, but from chapter two the details are in sync and some important plot points have been corrected.
Enjoy once again.

[ashkent]

12th July 1994 – Dragonville General Hospital

“Morning, David,” Jackie Milburn said, sweeping her hair to the side, her nail-file momentarily pausing in its hectic schedule. “You’re late.”

David flashed teeth as he breezed by the reception desk.

“I’ve always liked that about you, Jacs,” he said. “You’re perceptive. The sign of an inquisitive mind, that.”

Jackie moistened her lower lip with the tip of her tongue. “Thanks, David. If you weren’t late enough I’d tell you to get over her so I could kiss you.”

David pushed the call button the elevator then turned around to face the secretary.

“Jackie, if I ever have a free space then you can come and lie on my couch any time you want.”

“You never have a free space,” she said through a pout. “You’re too damn good at your job to make room on that couch for me.”

“But I’m sure you’ll keep trying, Jacs,” David said, glancing over his shoulder at the neon number above the elevator doors. “How long does this old dinosaur want to take?”

“Oh, I forgot about that.”

David ran for the stairwell before Jackie replied.

The hospital elevators were as touch and go as the patients in ITU, and David remained thankful that his treatment room was on the first floor rather than the sixth.

He took the stairs two at a time, nodding curtly to those passing that he vaguely knew.

A crisp-suited man held the door as he bounded through into the white and green corridor that seemed almost as familiar as his own home.

Having worked for months in a temporary role in the local GP’s surgery, the upgrade to his own clinic in the General had been somewhat unexpected despite his credentials. The ultimate goal leaned more to having his own clinic on his own terms, but another rung on the ladder had been grasped.

He seemed to see more of these green and white corridors than his bedroom ceiling, yet the adrenaline of the job refused to let him appear worn. Between his sessions, the subsequent notations and the commute to and from the hospital, David regularly had five to six hours to touch base with a pillow.

The sacrifice always seemed worth it though. He was making a difference to lives of people he didn’t know, people he would never meet again if he did his job right. A few hours of lost sleep couldn’t really compare to allowing someone to live their life as a shadow of themselves due, usually, to no fault of their own.

David hurried along the corridor, turning at the corner and continuing along what seemed like miles of linoleum. He could remember feeling like a rabbit in a warren the first time he arrived at the hospital. He still did, only now it was his warren and every turn and staircase had been mapped out in his mind.

The Outpatients sign passed over head, and David opened the door bearing the same name.

Outpatients’ reception area rattled with voices and scraping chairs. Most of the waiting room seats were occupied, and as one became vacant it was instantly filled by a new arrival. Behind the “Wait Here” sign, a dozen patients did just that, their eyes passing over the vaccine notices and flu warnings pinned to the walls and posts.

David excused his way through the single file queue and walked through the open double doors into the second waiting room, and through yet another door into the familiar green and white of the short corridor leading to his clinic. The rowdiness of the main waiting area became more distant with every door he passed through, and opening his penultimate swing-door, David allowed the calmness of his clinic waiting area to wash over him.

One regular patient already occupied the small room, a four month old celebrity magazine open on his knees.

“Good morning, Mr Harlan. A bit early today?”

Eddie Harlan looked up from the magazine like a meercat in a shirt, neck stretching, eyes glancing around wide and alert.

“Ah. Morning, Dr Thompson. You know me. I like to be on time. Nothing worse than being late for an appointment, you know.”

David nodded. Harlan had a compulsion to always be on time. No matter what the occasion, he would generally arrive at least an hour before just in case anything held him  up on the way. He had one hour sessions every other week to try and discover the root of his addiction to timeliness, but he was not the most taxing mind to observe and delve into.

At the back of the room another man sat. This one David had not seen before.

“Do you have my files for the morning?” David asked his secretary.

“All there, in order,” she said handing him a pile of light brown folders. “Did they tell you about the addition?”

“Addition?”

“I’ll take that as a no. He’s the one you just looked at, and he needs to be seen before your regulars. He should have been over at East Durham seeing William Hartley.”

“And he isn’t seeing Hartley because?”

“He’s been called away on a family emergency so they’ve had to distribute his urgent patients. That’s the one they added to your list.”

“Just as well we aren’t renowned for our prompt service,” David said with a smile. “You might as well chalk a delay on the board now. And if they try to send anyone else, Grace, tell them I’m going to need therapy myself if they keep piling these files up.”

“I’ll be sure to mention it, David,” Grace said, returning his smile before moving back to her computer.

David opened the door to his treatment room and crossed the threshold into the brightness on the other side.

The large windows glowed yellow and offered much better lighting than the fluorescent strips in the waiting area. It was all a way of making patients feel comfortable, less closed in and therefore more willing to open up. Most times it seemed to work.

David dropped the files on his desk, and sat down. He flicked on the PC screen and waited for the welcome logo to load.

He looked at the file on the top of the pile. Every year the same thing happened. Someone had an emergency in their lives and their patients were passed around like unwanted Christmas gifts. It wasn’t professional, but life didn’t always play ball. It was either adapt and move on, or just pack up and call it a day.

After a quick glance over the file, David pushed the button on the intercom.

“I’m ready for Tony Grant,” he said.

[ashkent]

Sorry it's been a little slow getting chapters up. I've been embroiled in entering this in a competition but I needed to have a synopsis written which meant working out something of a continuing storyline which was fine so far but then I hit that wonderful block of solid stone when you think "what happens next?". Wether it follows this path I don't know, but if it does then I'll be happy.

I'll post another chapter later today.

[Burningplain]

Woah... I like this, in fact, correction I love it. So Mr Grant was his patient? Excellent I am so loving this one.

[ashkent]

Ten minutes with Tony Grant and David felt like he had been treating the man for months.

The notations in Grant’s file mentioned periods of depression, and potential for violence if provoked.

“How many sessions have you had so far, Tony?” David asked, the answer already before him among the notes.

“Just one with Dr Hartley,” Grant said. “It’s a condition of my parole.”

“So I see,” David said. “I’m not sure how long it will be before Dr Hartley is back from leave, so I would like to start pretty much from scratch. Is that ok with you?”

“Guess so,” Grant replied, his attention there but only just.

“Tell me about yourself. Nothing too serious, just some facts about you.”

“Like what?”

“How do you relax, for example?” David tried, unphased by the cool reception his question received.

“I don’t know.”

David had not come across a patient he didn’t have to coax into talking. The first rule of good psychology practise could be condensed to five words; the patient is always closed. Rare instances occurred when someone would walk into the room and instantly relay their childhood memories, fears, hopes and their entire family medical history. Tony Grant was part of a majority.

“Do you like music?” David asked, leaning back in his chair.

“Some.”

“Heavy music? Classical? Pop?”

“Heavy metal as much as anything.”

David nodded. “How do you feel when you listen to it? It doesn’t relax you, does it?”

“Are you kidding?” Grant laughed, rocking theatrically in his chair. “Since when did heavy metal relax any one?”

David smiled. All it took was a comment so ridiculous that the patient couldn’t help but respond. At least that could be said of this type of patient. Had he been talking to someone with serious childhood trauma, then another route would need to be sought. Grant wasn’t a sufferer of his childhood; he was just an ex-con with a perchance for using his fists to settle any differences he came across.

People like Grant couldn’t be cured of their issues, they could only be encouraged to control their actions. The first step towards encouraging control came in building a relationship based on nothing more than a common interest. In Grant’s case, that interest appeared to be his sense of superiority.

“I guess it does sound a bit contradictory,” David replied, standing up and walking around his desk. “Then again there are some contradictory people in the world.”

“I’m not one of them,” Grant said. “Heavy metal is heavy metal. I hear those drums and it revs up my engines. You know what I’m saying?”

“Not quite,” David said, pushing his hands into his pockets and raising his eyebrows.

“Nah, don’t suppose you would,” Grant sneered. “It gets me in the mood.”

“It sexually arouses you?”

“Yeah. Gets me good and hard for a piece of tight pussy.”

“Or psyches you up for a fight?”

Grant’s perverse expression faltered for a second, then he answered in a low tone.

“Maybe.”

David knew that the key to unlocking a character like Grant relied as much on entrapment as cooperation. In the end, Grant had been paroled from prison part way through a five year sentence for multiple counts of GBH. If he wanted to remain a free man, then he was bound to attend counselling sessions whether he liked it or not. Getting him to do anything more than try to play the situation took a little more than a gentle slap on the wrist and asking him to promise he wouldn’t be naughty again.

“Maybe,” David repeated. “Does it make you angry at all?”

“Why the fuck would it make me angry? Dumb cunt questions make me angry.”

“I just wondered. Sometimes when people get prolonged periods of sexual arousal that they can’t satiate, they have to vent their frustration in another way.”

Grant leaned forward in his chair. “Why don’t you just ask me why I beat the shit of those kids?”

“Because that’s not what I want to know,” David said. “What I want to know is if it’s likely you’ll do it again.”

“What do you expect me to say? Yes I’m going to fuck up some one else soon so please lock me away?”

“No. The opposite. You’re here so I can find out if there is anything I can do to make sure you don’t end up back in prison.”

David moved behind his subject, purposely keeping his eyes from making contact with Grant’s. Eye contact gained trust, but Grant didn’t seem the type to care about such things.

“Now,” David continued, “according to the notes sent over from Dr Hartley part of your parole conditions was that you would attend a minimum of ten therapy sessions, after which a report is to be submitted to your parole officer with a recommendation to what should happen next.”

“What do you mean happen next?” Grant turned to look at David.

“Exactly what it sounds like. Whatever the outcome of these sessions it will go in that report and your parole officer will reference that in any decisions they make.

“What I’d like to do is start this session again and see if you can convince me that you aren’t going to reoffend if you remain on the right side of the bars.”

David casually walked back to his chair, sat and looked at Grant across the desk. The ex-con’s eyes moved as he contemplated what had just been said, and David waiting until he gave a curt nod of acknowledgement.

“Ok,” David said. “So tell me a bit about yourself.”

[Chinaren]

Ah, I seem to recall this before too.  We were further along than I realized.

[ashkent]

David watched the last few seconds of his official day tick by, still thinking about the morning session with Tony Grant.

Grant joined an ever growing number of prisoners, ex-prisoners, young offenders and petty criminals to have spent time in the chair. He also joined an even less exclusive group of people who attempted to bull-charge their way through their first session believing they were the first to have thought they could pull it off.

Tony Grant seemed no different on the surface. After the initial ten minutes of stubborn banter were over he willingly answered all of the questions asked, more by necessity than choice. Grant’s freedom relied on cooperating in the sessions and coming out the other end with a glowing psychological report recommending that he no longer required incarcerating.

David never felt entirely comfortable with the pilot scheme behind such assessments. They were contrived in their making and execution, and the resulting reports may as well be taken from a template with an “add name here” line at the top.

The crux of the assessment came down to just one matter; how much of the session could be taken at face value. There were no hard and fast rules written on how to spot the signs of a liar, although anyone claiming to have a decent education in behavioural psychologies would no doubt have their own personally developed methods.

Grant wasn’t lying. David didn’t believe he was lying or playing out an act to get his report signed and sealed. His first impressions were rarely wrong, but he wasn’t about to sign Grant off as a done deal just yet. There were still more sessions before he was expected to submit his conclusion.

David pushed back from his desk, but the desk intercom crackled before he could stand.

“David, there’s a DC Steve Pemberton to see you.”

The clock continued to tick away the seconds, now on the wrong side of clocking off. David closed his eyes and rubbed the lids with his finger tips.

With the intercom button pressed, David said, “Send him in, Grace, and you can get yourself home.”

“Thanks, David. See you tomorrow.”

The intercom clicked off.

David waited for the compulsory knock to come. It didn’t. Instead the door opened and the casually-suited DC walked in.

“Evening, doc,” he said, closing the door behind him. “Busy day?”

“What’s Grant’s story?” David asked.

“Why do you make it sound like I personally send these people over to you?”

“I sometimes think you do.”

Steve Pemberton took the seat Tony Grant among others had occupied during the day. He crossed his legs and scratched his head through short hair.

“You know I can’t help but analyse the people who sit there?” David said.

“Please tell me you haven’t waited ten years to analyse me?

“Hell no. I did that the first time I met you.”

“You were drunk the first time you met me,” Steve said.

“What can I say? I was good back then too.”

“In that case, you must have already made your mind up about Tony Grant.”

“You still didn’t answer the question.”

“Grant? There isn’t a story. He put five people on the critical list within a few hours of each other because he felt like it.”

“And that’s it? In his interviews he didn’t give any reasons, or excuses? He just felt like it?”

Steve rested his hands on his knees and leaned forward.

“Not everyone has had trauma in their past, David.”

“But he gave a reason why he did it.”

“Yes,” Steve sighed. “But I don’t intend telling you until you give me your initial thoughts.”

“He’s cocky, sure of himself for the most part and can probably handle himself. Anything more than that, I don’t know yet.”

Steve opened his mouth but David stopped him with a raised finger.

“But I do know that a few days with me, talking about why he thinks he did what he did isn’t going to make him the next Geldof. When you have someone who likes violence for violence’s sake, it takes months, maybe years, of therapy to make any progress in finding the true root cause behind it.”

“You really don’t like having to do these, do you?”

“What gives it away?” David said standing up. “Are you on duty?”

“No, I just wanted to get a heads up on Grant. Why?”

“I was going to ask if you fancied a drink?”

“Ah, well I would but I’m already booked tonight.”

“Anyone I know?” David asked, pulling on his jacket.

“I don’t think so,” Steve said. “She’s called Jennifer, works on our reception as a temp.”

“Don’t make her like the last few.”

“If I remember right, you dated a couple of them after me. One of them before I’d finished it with her.”

“You told me you already had finished it. Anyway, water under the bridge. See how it goes with this one.”

Steve rose from the chair. “What about you? Still eyeing up that secretary of yours?”

“Grace?” David laughed.

“Why not? Is there some rugby playing boyfriend lurking in the background?”

“Not exactly,” David said smiling down at his shoes. “More a high street shop-loving girlfriend.”

“Grace?” Steve asked. “How did I not know that?”

“I’m a psychologist not a barmaid. Gossip doesn’t go well with the whole private and confidential clause.”

“Grace is your secretary, not your patient.”

“But Tony Grant is, so no more previews of his report. Once it’s with his parole officer, then you can find out all you need to know. I still think there’s something you’re not telling me about him?”

Steve turned back from the doorway. “What makes you say that?”

“You never normally stop by to ask about them after one session.”

David watched from across the room as Steve pulled a face.

“There’s really nothing special about Grant,” he said after a moment. “I was just passing and wondered how he’d gone on this morning.”

“Fair enough,” David said. “Don’t keep that new woman of yours waiting.”

“I’ll see you later, David,” Steve said. “Maybe we can have that drink and catch up properly one night. It’s been a few months since we set the world to rights.”

“Give me a buzz,”

Steve closed the door after he left, leaving David watching the grain of the wood.

Grant seemed to be every inch the regular prisoner, and that was how he had to think of him. Until he decided different, Tony Grant was just another patient.

[Chinaren]

Nice!   

[Burningplain]

That is really good. The plot thickens. I like it.

[ashkent]

27th February 1995 – Dragonville General Hospital

The last scheduled session with Tony Grant ticked into its final minutes. David had prepared everything he needed to produce his report for the parole officer, and only a few formalities remained to close off.

He had spent most of the last hour hovering behind the chair in which Tony sat, but now he returned to his desk.

“Well, Tony, this is the last time you need to come to these sessions. I’ll be speaking to,” David glanced at the name scribbled on the file next to him, “Sally Jones and she’ll no doubt go through it with you in your next meeting with her.”

“Sure,” Grant said. “I don’t suppose that you could tell me now what it says.”

“Sorry,” David said with an apologetic smile. “I can’t do that. It has to come from your parole officer.”

“Thought as much.”

More than a dozen sessions had been conducted with Grant, some good, others less successful. The man had a caginess about him which he rarely let slip. Everything said during the hour-long meetings seemed to have been thought out long before the questions were asked, and the sincerity of his answers only occasionally appeared beyond doubt.

David’s work frequently threw up people who disliked exposing their secrets and their souls, expecting to be undone in some way by allowing a stranger to know what they held deep inside. Grant brought with him a new level to members of that group. He spoke, he explained and he passed all the tests, but something in what he didn’t say stuck in David’s mind every time they met.

He never tried to excuse the incident that had led to his incarceration. Neither had he given any insight into what had led him to beat up five random strangers. One purpose of the sessions should have been to find the answers to those questions among many others.

David couldn’t decide whether it was intentional or just a quirk in Grant’s makeup causing him to suppress his memories and reasons. Usually after so many sessions with a patient some sign became apparent with time if they were acting out a well rehearsed deception. That hadn’t happened with Grant, but something still just didn’t sit right.

The file of notes lay on the corner of David’s desk, closed. He would update the final record sheet when Grant left, then compile a report at the end of the day. With a little luck, Sally Jones would have the report the next day and she could finalise her end of the process.

“I’m sure it couldn’t hurt though.”

David opened his mouth to question Grant’s comment, but Grant sprang from his seat before the words came out.

Grant’s hands grasped the file and pulled it across the desk.

David shot out his hand and grabbed Grant by the wrist.

“Tony, that file is–”

David was too slow to avoid Grant’s swinging fist.

Papers scattered and pens clattered to the floor. David staggered back against the wall, his head bouncing off the frame of his Degree with the sound of splitting glass.

Lights flashed in his vision but he blinked them away, aware of how important the file Grant had claimed was. He pushed away from the wall and stretched out to snatch back the file.

Grant turned away, sidestepping along the edge of the desk and leaving David with a fistful of air.

“Tony, this isn’t going to help you,” David said. “I’ve written a fair assessment of our sessions and that’s what the report will detail. I’ll have to include this if you don’t close the file now.”

“Fuck you, cunt,” Grant spat, flipping through pages. “You’re not sending me back to prison. Neither you or that slack-pussy bitch. I’ll fucking kill both of you.”

David slammed his hand down on the intercom.

“Grace, call security and the police!”

“Motherfucker!” Grant screamed throwing down the file and launching himself across the desk.

David tried to move but Grant was too quick, slamming into him and sending them both sprawling on the floor. The intercom smashed next to David’s head, followed quickly by more paper. David tried to push Grant back, but he was too strong.

Fingers closed around David’s throat and Grant’s leering face moved closer. David smelled stale breath on him as his own airways were crushed and air wheezed out of him in a trickle.

His vision started to flicker. Grant said something but he couldn’t understand it through the haze of unconsciousness taking over. He tried feebly to wrench the fingers loose, but couldn’t gain purchase on them. There was nothing more he could do.

Suddenly the pressure released and air rushed to David’s lungs. Sound flooded his ears: curses, shouting, his name being spoken. He opened his eyes to find a shadow just overhead.

“Get off!” David shouted, lashing out.

His hand went astray, striking nothing but air.

“David! David, it’s me.”

David stopped thrashing, lowering his arms and blinking away the blurriness from his vision.

Grace stood over him with concern on her face. David didn’t need to ask how bad he looked. Instead raised on his elbows, turning in the direction of the other voices in the room.

“Let go of me. Get off fuckwad!”

Grant pulled against the restraints firmly clamped to his wrists. Security on either side held him tight, dragging him towards the door.

“I’m not going back inside,” Grant bellowed. “I’m going to kill them all.”

“Pipe down,” one of the guards said. “You’re not killing shit for a long time to come.”

David watched Grant vanish through the door then collapsed back on the floor.

He closed his eyes.

Grant had known what was in the report otherwise he wouldn’t have launched his attack.

David’s recommendation that Grant still posed a threat to the public and should continue rehabilitation programmes rather than being released into the community had received the justification he had hoped for.

Grant had been playing a game the whole time, working the system and providing answers from behind a deep disguise which he believed would fool the psychologist into clearing his release. David couldn’t tell what had led Grant to believe that his charade had failed, but it no longer mattered.

The game was over.

Grant had lost.

[Chinaren]

Ahh ha!  We move on, and the plot thickens!   

[ashkent]

Yes...moving again. And a Grim Reaping Chapter on the same day! Must be the alcohol!:D

[Chinaren]

Yes...moving again. And a Grim Reaping Chapter on the same day! Must be the alcohol!:D

"Alcohol.  The cause of, and the solution to, all life's problems." - Homer Simpson.

[Burningplain]

  The plot thickens... Well done, it is a book most excellent.

[ashkent]

Part Three – Awakening The Past

Chapter Twenty Six

“It’s been fifteen years since he was my patient,” I said.

The memory of my final session with Tony Grant stuck vividly in my mind as though it happened only hours ago.

“Have you had any contact with him at all?” Steve asked.

“Why would I? The last time I heard of Tony Grant was as he was being cuffed and taken away from my office when…”

Steve didn’t need to ask the question. “When he tried to kill you. Shit.”

“But this doesn’t make sense,” I said. “That was fifteen years ago. Do you think he sat in prison for fifteen years thinking that the first thing he would do when he got out was track me down again?”

“People do. Fifteen years gives you quite some time to plot revenge.”

“So what about the phone call? He couldn’t be in my house and be on the phone at the same time.”

“Then he has someone working with him.”

“Had,” I corrected. “He had someone working with him. Something just doesn’t fit though.”

My head throbbed with the thoughts bouncing around inside. There were too many loose ends, nothing certain, and questions I couldn’t answer. That was the worst part.

“When Grant came to the door, the man on the phone said I had to get rid of him,” I said. “That’s why I didn’t pay much attention to him. The phone call was more important so I just…tried to get rid of him.” I put my head in my hands for a moment, then looked up at Steve. “If I’d looked at him a little closer he might still have been alive.”

“You don’t know that for certain,” Steve said. “You said before that the man on the phone told you that you’d set things in motion. If it hadn’t happened the way it did, what would you have done if he told you to kill Grant?”

“I wouldn’t have done it.”

“Not even for Jen? You know he would have used her. What would you rather? Kill him by accident defending yourself, or murder him in cold blood because you were forced to?”

The answer was obvious. Grant shouldn’t have died at all, but I preferred to think that I hadn’t consciously chosen to kill him.

“What am I going to do?” I asked. “I need to go to the police with this don’t I?”

Steve opened his mouth but something stopped him from speaking.

The ringing from my pocket.

We looked at each other as I leaned to the side. The phone came naturally into my hand, the monotone ringing louder now it was out in the open.

“You need to answer it,” Steve said. “You need to try and get something out of him. Is there a number on the display?”

It was a dead question. Whoever wanted me in this situation didn’t seem likely to make such a simple error as to call from a traceable line.

I shook my head once then answered.

“Hello,” I said.

“Well it seems you are quite resourceful,” the voice at the other end said. “I knew you would be a good choice.”

“A good choice for what?”

The voice didn’t reply.

“I said a good choice for–“

“You can only get out of this by doing exactly what I say,” the voice cut in. “Listen to me and your wife will be fine.”

“How do I know she’s alright?”

Steve moved towards me, sitting beside me and moving closer to try and hear the conversation.

“Don’t ask questions, David. You know by now it doesn’t lead to anything but trouble.”

“But I–”

“Just listen to what I say and do what I tell you.”

The line went silent for a few seconds. A strange sense of frustration had started to grow inside me. Who did he think he was to order me about?

“There is an empty property on the outskirts of Dragonville that you know rather well,” he said. “I’m sure you know the one.”

“What–”

“I want you to go there now, without your friend.”

“Why do–”

“When you get there I’ll be in touch, although I’m sure there will be something to occupy you. Just remember, David, this is about you and me. Oh, and I think you are right not to have spoken to the police about this. I’m assuming you haven’t as you answered the call. I have the feeling they will be keen to talk to you about the body they found in your house.”

“I want to know Jen’s ok!” I yelled into the mouthpiece.

“I have something to show you and I want you to remember, speaking to the police won’t help her. Get to the property and we will talk again.”

“What do you mean –”

The line cut off.

The urge to smash the phone into the wall almost overwhelmed me.

I have something to show you…

What did he mean?

“What did he say about a property?” Steve said.

I looked up from the phone, my expression blank while I replayed Steve’s words in my head.

“He wants me to go somewhere,” I said finally.  “Alone.”

I stood and moved across the room. My mind was whirling again. I could have been back in my house looking at the corpse of Tony Grant and questioning why I was looking at a dead body in my own hallway.

At least I knew something this time though. I knew he wanted me to go somewhere. But why there? Why…?
The phone chirped in my hand. A single burst of noise, and the word “Message” flashed on the screen.

My fingers automatically opened the phone, flipping the cover without the slightest thought as to what it could reveal.

The message loaded automatically, the image appearing on the screen.

I know I made some kind of sound, and Steve’s mouth opened and closed like a silent movie character. The words were coming out but I wasn’t hearing them. The only thing in my head was a monotone buzz, like the sound of a lost reception.

And once again I found myself looking at my wife.

[Chinaren]

  Finally we're moving on into new territory here!  Seems like it's been an age. 

[ashkent]

Not quite an age yet...more like a millennium!

[ashkent]

My hand instinctively rose to my mouth and déjà vu swept a hand over my face.

Within a couple of hours I had been forced twice to look at pictures of my wife in pain, suffering at the hands of someone I knew only as a voice on the phone.

Except this time I wasn’t looking at a picture.

He had sent a video message.

Sound rushed me, the buzz draining from my head and being replaced by the sound of Jen’s gagged, pleading tone emitting from the small speaker of the phone.

“Fucking hell,” Steve said beside me.

I turned in a daze, barely comprehending Steve’s presence beside me until he spoke. My eyes fell back on the screen, unable to disconnect from the moving image of Jen, her shirt ripped open exposing her breasts, a hand roughly caressing her before it and the camera dipped lower and those vile bastards fingers vanished inside Jen’s knickers.

Steve put a hand across the screen and tried to close the phone. I pushed him away, hard. A black rage filled my mind. I wanted to lash out at someone, anyone, to vent my frustration and anger.

“David,” Steve said, coming at me. “David, stop it. This is what he wants. He wants you to react. You’re the fucking psychologist. You should know how he knows you will react.”

“He’s raping her!” I shouted, my voice tight and breaking. “The bastard is raping her and I can’t do a fucking thing about it!”

The video went dark then was replaced with a screen with the word “replay”. I almost pressed the button, but the small part of me Steve had been speaking to broke through the anger clouding my mind.

I slammed the phone cover closed, and threw the phone down onto the sofa. It would have been easy to smash it into the wall and watching it shatter with my hopes of finding Jen had I not been able to control myself. Steve was right. I was the therapist who claimed to be able to help people through rages and breakdowns, yet I could barely control myself.

It had been years since I had been this volatile. Years since I had found myself at the bottom of the pit struggling to find a way out and suddenly someone was pushing me back down to that dark place I had seen too many times before in myself and many other people at…

A wall collapsed in my mind, exposing something forgotten.

The piece of paper I had taken from Tony Grant’s pocket. The one word written there.

I heard the voice of my tormentor playing through my memory telling me to go out to a deserted building on the edge of Dragonville. Alone…

“How did he know?” I said quietly.

“What?” Steve asked, watching me carefully like a mouse watches a sleeping cat.

“He said I had to go alone. Why would he say that if he didn’t suspect I was with someone now?”

Steve thought a moment. “Maybe he was guessing. Assuming that you would go to someone rather than try and do this yourself.”

“I suppose,” I said. “If he’d let me speak I might have found out. He just kept talking over me. Like he wasn’t really listening.”

“So where does he want you to go?”

“Somewhere no one will hear what goes on. He wants me alone, out where there will just be me and whoever he has waiting there for me.”

“I’m not letting you go alone. You might as well just shoot yourself and have done with it.”

“You can drive me out there, but you can’t come with me. If anything goes wrong, I want you to be able to get the police on to him. I want them to find Jen if I can’t.”

“I don’t like this, but ok. Where are we going?”

“Oakshade,” I replied.

“Oakshade?” Steve asked. “But it’s deserted now?”

“I know, so whatever he wants me to find there he knows no one is going to find by accident.”

“But why there?”

“Because he’s showing me he knows things about me. Whoever this bastard is, he knows me.”

[Chinaren]

   Wow!  That was short but intense! 

[Panda-Brain]

Just started reading. I understand nothing. It was pretty good though! =D

[ashkent]

  Wow!  That was short but intense! 

I think that quote could apply to most of the chapters in this

[ashkent]

Just started reading. I understand nothing. It was pretty good though! =D

I don't think anything i write has that "step in and know what's going on" feel. They are all quite fast moving. Although, I'm sure China will agree on this, if you read Grim Reaping from the start still wonder what's going on

[Chinaren]

I think that quote could apply to most of the chapters in this

Lol!  Short but more intense then!

[ashkent]

There were few other cars in the streets, and once on the twisting country roads on the outskirts of town, we barely saw another vehicle.

“I still don’t like this,” Steve said. “I like it less the more I think about it.”

“He didn’t give me a choice,” I said, looking out of the window into the night.

The glow of the Dragonville lights had ended a few miles back and only the moderate light of the moon kept the darkness from being total beyond the car’s headlights.

“Exactly,” Steve said, turning briefly from the road. “He didn’t give you a choice because he knows you’ll do anything he says. What do you think you’re going to find out here?”

“I don’t know,” I said, continuing to stare out at the pale hedgerows and fields. “But I have to do what he says.”

It struck me as ironic that I had gone to Steve looking for support and advice, yet so far I had disregarded everything he had said. I knew that whoever sat on the end of those calls had plans for me, but that gave me the reason I needed to follow his instructions. Whatever I had become part of, my role had only begun. He wasn’t going to let anything happen to me yet.

At least I hoped not.

Steve pulled up the car in the side of the road. The headlights lit part of the long, narrow driveway ahead but not the house that stood at the end of it like a grey-white ghost of a structure.

“When were you last here?” Steve asked.

“It will be ten years,” I replied. “The last time I was here…” I paused just briefly. “The last time was when Kate Parker killed herself.”

“Do you think that has something to do with it?”

“I’m not sure of anything anymore. As soon as he said he wanted me to come here, she was there in my mind. There’s nothing else it could be.”

“So it couldn’t be anything to do with another patient of yours? Or maybe just because you worked here?”

“No,” I said, slamming my hand against the dashboard. “Kate has to be the reason.”

“So how does Grant fit?”

I couldn’t reply. Discovering Grant had been the man in my house had been like a punch to the stomach. Now I had another name from my past and as far as I knew she had no connection to Grant which left me at a loss to explain who was behind this.

I took hold of the handle and opened the door.

“Wait!” Steve said, grabbing my arm.

I turned back but just gave him a look. I couldn’t say anything that would make any difference.

Steve released his grip. “Ok. But I’m waiting here. My mobile is on if you need me.”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

My feet crunched on the stony drive as I stepped out of the car, and I tried to close the door as quietly as possible.

A breeze rustled the trees lining the road, disturbing the frail leaves that remained on the branches. The temperature dropped with the movement of the air, making me want to climb back into the warmth of the car against my better judgement.

Instead I started walking away, towards the place once called Oakshade where I had run my first independent psychoanalytical practice and where I came across Kate Parker.

Oakshade no longer looked like a place of healing; it looked ready to be given its last rites. Even in the weak moonlight I could see the state of disrepair the building had fallen into. Some of the windows were boarded up; the rest had been broken, probably by children with nothing better to keep themselves occupied at night. Part of the roof seemed to be missing, presumably collapsed inside, and I suddenly wanted to look over my shoulder.

I resisted, keeping my eyes focussed on the building and my thoughts on my reason for being there.

Something moved to my right. This time I swung around, but discovered nothing but a bag caught on one of the bushes along the roadside.

Why was I out here? The question was rhetorical. Well, maybe not but its answer came with so many consequences that it was better not to answer at all. I was here because I needed to be, had to be.

I continued walking, the crunch of my feet echoing in my ears, accompanying the sudden presence of my heartbeat loud and throbbing in my head.

Standing before Oakshade, everything seemed to turn in on itself. None of it seemed real, just for a second it all could have been illusion, then it became a living nightmare all over again.

One of my ghosts lay inside the ruins of Oakshade and someone knew it.

As I put my foot on the first step of the rotten rise to the stained, broken door, I prayed without hope that I would find nothing more.

[Chinaren]

Cripes, that was fast!  I just thought you'd put in a reply, and there was another chapter!

Anyway, the tension mounts! 

[ashkent]

Cripes, that was fast!  I just thought you'd put in a reply, and there was another chapter!

Well it's one of those "here's something i prepared earlier" moments - I have written a few chapters ahead of what I posted...somehow I just forgot they were there.

[ashkent]

Opening the doors of Oakshade felt like opening the cover of an old book. Something immediately struck me as familiar, yet so much remained unknown; lost or forgotten from memory.

Cobwebs brushed my face as I stepped inside. I swatted them away with more urgency than necessary. The sticky silk clung to my fingers until I rubbed the remnants against my clothes. At that moment I wanted to turn and leave as quickly as I could. If it had only been my life at risk perhaps the door would have remained unopened.

Instead, I stood in the open doorway surveying the Welcome Room of the condemned building. Maybe once upon a life that name had meant something in Oakshade; it just seemed like a mockery now, a sinister mockery.

I dug into my pocket for my phone, then remembered I didn’t have it. I had been about to get it when the two cops arrived outside the house. It had a torch that would have come in handy in the near dark of the old building.

Instead I found the kidnapper’s phone in my hand. I turned it away from me and opened the cover. The light from the screen didn’t illuminate much beyond a couple of feet but combined with the dim moonlight let me see any obstacles in my path.

Surprisingly, there were still items of furniture inside the room although their lifespan had come to an end some time ago. Broken chairs littered the floor along with shards of glass and cracked ornaments. Everything seemed to be covered in a greyness of age and dust, while nature had decided to claim areas in its own way. I had no doubt that much of the floor would be rotten, mice and rats would be nesting in the wall insulation and insects infesting the wooden shafts and beams.

I walked carefully across the room. The boards beneath my feet creaked and bent under my weight and I wondered if the decrepit, dangerous state of the place had been considered by my tormentor. Perhaps Oakshade had not been chosen as a reminder of my past but a swift and certain death in my future after all.

Directly opposite the main doorway, the reception desk occupied a large section of the internal wall. The desk itself had been partially buried beneath the rubble from the collapsed ceiling, yet in my mind I could still see it as it used to be. I raised the light to the vertical struts, smiling weakly when I saw the old health posters still attached behind the dirt and web.

I closed my eyes, feeling the years slip away and the decay and debris lift to reveal Oakshade’s reception clean and sharp. In my mind I could see the patients coming and going, staff passing by entering a door here and emerging there, and through it all one person remained constantly at her post behind the desk.

A crack echoed through the room, startling me from the vision. The floorboard below me dropped away into the foundations and I pulled my leg quickly to one side. Somewhere in the moment I tightened my grip on the phone in my hand, subconsciously aware that to lose it in the darkness would be virtually suicidal. I shot a glance at the broken wood, trying to steady my thumping heart by repeating the same words in my head and finally in a whisper of breath.

“It’s nothing. It’s nothing.”

 I shone the phone light on the floor around me, looking for any spots that appeared rotten. I walked carefully through the path I thought safe, stepping over dark, damp patches on the wood, chunks of stone and broken furniture. The creaks and groans in the air as I walked became less disturbing the closer I drew to the door by the reception desk; less warnings than just the sounds of an old building making its age known.

I reached the door without breaking through any more of the boards. If I was honest to myself, I knew I shouldn’t have been venturing any further into the death trap, but if anyone was waiting for me here then no way in hell was I leaving until they had told me everything they knew about who was behind it all.

I took hold of the door handle by my side, twisting it around to the left. The cold metal broke loose in my hand then slipped from my grasp and clattered to the floor. The stub of metal poking from the door gleamed with damp corrosion, and I didn’t waste time looking for the remnant on the floor. The door pushed open without too much effort and only a short series of low cracks from within the damaged locking mechanism.

The adjacent room led directly into a long, narrow hallway that branched off to a half dozen rooms and the area behind the reception desk. Somehow the floor of the hall and reception room had not suffered as much as the Welcome Room, with carpet still intact but frayed in many areas.

I had walked along that carpeted floor for just over three years after leaving Dragonville General. I had been on that carpet the first time I met Kate Parker.

I looked across to my right as another memory glimmered before me.

Jen. I asked Jen on our first date in that carpeted corridor. That couldn’t be a simple coincidence, not now, not here.

Someone wanted me here and whether part of the plan or not, they had awakened memories of Oakshade I’d kept locked inside for ten years. I moved into the corridor, allowing so many old feelings and images to run free, and in the blink of an eye everything I remembered about Oakshade was there and vivid in my mind’s eye.

[ashkent]

Forgot to add on the end of this chapter that this is the last of the "already written" chapters I mentioned but hopefully my new rotation system might make sure it isn't three months before there's a new one !

[Chinaren]

Mmm, I don't remember this chapter, but still...looking forward to the new new chapters!

I must admit, carpeted floors are rare here in China too.

[ashkent]

The first thing I noticed about Kate Parker was her piercing eyes and the way she watched me with them.

Every man wants to have a young, attractive girl flirting with them. Kate Parker was nineteen, slim built and had a face that most women would kill for. She was one of those people who caused clichés to become clichés. Bright blue eyes, delicate features and skin that could have been permanently airbrushed.

“Hi,” Kate said when I passed the desk.

I looked up from the papers I was reading to find wide, alluring eyes staring at me from within a frame of raven hair.

“Er…hi,” I said, distracted by just how blue her eyes were, while part of me wondered who she was.

“It’s Dr Thompson, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling a little odd. “I’m sorry, you are?”

“Oh, ha,” she said with a giggle. “I’m Kate Parker, I have an appointment with you.”

“Ah, right, Kate,” I said, hiding the fact I still had no idea who she was. “What time is your appointment?”

“Four o’clock.”

I glanced across at the clock on the wall behind her. It was just after ten.

“A little early, perhaps?” I asked, trying to gauge her problem.

“I don’t like to be late,” she said quickly, holding eye contact as though her life depended on it.

We stood for a moment, the people of Oakshade coming and going around us. The surgery had been open for just over a month but already had a large list of clients. If it hadn’t I wouldn’t have been able to get a job there, and if I hadn’t worked there I wouldn’t have met Kate that day. Or Jen for that matter.

“Always a good thing in my book,” I said, turning to the reception desk just behind Kate.

“Margaret?” I shouted over the counter.

I waited a moment, smiling at Kate in what I hoped to be just a pacifying way. I surmised that Margaret must be organising some of the medical records she kept in order meticulously to the point of OCD.

“Marg-”

“Not quite but will I do, doc?” said an unfamiliar voice coming from an unfamiliar, but strikingly beautiful face.

The young woman stepped through the doorway of the records office and approached the desk with her hand outstretched.

“Jennifer Campbell,” she said, smiling broadly enough to give me déjà vu. “I’m the new receptionist.”

I took her hand and received a surprisingly firm shake from her delicate fingers. It was turning into quite a morning for meetings with attractive women intent on smiling at me.

“And I’m Kate Parker,” said my newest patient beside be, taking Jennifer’s hand from mine and giving it a shake.

“Hello, Kate,” Jennifer said with the same smile on her face and gentle tone in her voice. “You’re a little early for you appointment.”

“I don’t like to be late,” Kate replied.

“Better to be early than late,” Jennifer said. “You want to have a seat over there and I’ll see if I can get a few new magazines for you to read through.”

“Sure,” Kate said, then looked at me with those intense eyes. “See you soon, Dr Thompson.”

“You will, Kate,” I said as she walked across to the chairs in the waiting room. “Does she always come in this early for appointments?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea,” Jennifer said. “It’s my first day.”

“But you sounded like you knew her,” I said.

“I’m just very good at my job, Dr Thompson,” she smiled. “Now, you’ll find your client files for the day on your desk with a cup of coffee, two sugars and a dash of cream.”

“How did…”

Jennifer raised an eyebrow.

“Because you’re good at your job,” I said with a laugh. “Well, it’s good to have a new face on board. Has anyone suggested having a welcoming drink?”

“Not until now,” Jennifer said, picking up one of the files beside her and dropping it in an out tray. “Is that an Oakshade tradition?”

“More of an “any excuse for an after work drink” tradition,” I said.

Jennifer smiled the kind of smile I knew she had used on many patients over the years to pacify their complaints and demands.

“Sounds like a good tradition,” she said, “but I’m already doing something after work tonight.”

“I’ll repay the coffee favour later today then.” I said, heading for the office, then stopping. “How do you take your coffee?”

She laughed out loud. “Just as well you’re a doctor. You’d never make it on reception. I don’t drink coffee and I have my tea black. Make it around about three and I’ll make sure there’s a spare Blur Ribband for you.”

“You are good, aren’t you?”

“The best,” Jennifer said. “And you need to hurry up because you have forty seconds before your first appointment. Malcolm Daniels, his file is ready on your desk.”

“The best indeed,” I said as I hurried down to my room. “See you at three.”

[Chinaren]

Well.  That was interesting.