Looking over my shoulder at Michael, I said, “If any cops turn up here, tell them I took your statement and left about an hour ago.”
“Okay,” he shrugged, still looking confused at my sudden change of mind. He added, “Will I see you again, Officer Sydney Hart?”
“Unbelievable,” I sighed under my breath and left the farmhouse.
I raced down the path towards my squad car and didn’t look back once. With the engine roaring, I sped away and down onto the single-lane track. I pulled my radio from my belt, scanning the signal bar. It was blank. I pushed on, taking the tight bends in the narrow country roads faster than I knew was safe. I wanted to be as far away from that farmhouse as possible before I came across my father. Taking one hand from the wheel, I cupped it around my mouth and breathed out. I sniffed my hand.
Whiskey!
How had I been so stupid? I cursed myself.
Taking my eyes off the road for just a moment, I leant forward and pulled open the glove box in search of some chewing gum. I hadn’t even opened it when I felt the car lift off the road. The world seemed to spin and turn all around me. There were scraping and tearing sounds, like branches being dragged down the side of the patrol car. There was another sound, too, and it was awful – it was the sound of an animal screaming in pain. The patrol car flipped over more times than I could truly know, until it settled on its side in a narrow ditch. The seatbelt was tight across my chest and I gasped for breath. There was something hot and wet dribbling into my right eye and turning the world crimson. I knew I was bleeding from the head – how badly, I didn’t know. The mewing and screeching sound came again, filtering into my mind as if I were hearing it from underwater. I looked to the right, a sudden splinter of pain knifing its way through my shoulder. The windscreen was a spider web of cracks. Even so, I could see the bloody devastation spread along the road before me. A horse lay on its side, its giant head twitching left and right on its long, veiny neck as it fought to stand. From where I lay trapped in my crumpled squad car, I could see that the horse would never stand again. Further along the road, crushed against a bracken-covered wall, I could see what looked like a wagon. There was a giant wheel which spun lazily around and around. At first I couldn’t make out what I was looking at. With a set of trembling fingers, I clawed the blood from my eyes. It was then I saw what looked like a series of jet-black sheets billowing in the wind. But they weren’t sheets, flags, or sails. They were the dresses and clothes of the family who had recently moved onto old Farmer Moore’s land. The family which the locals had named the witches now lay scattered, bloody, and lifeless along the remote country road. I closed my eyes on the nightmarish scene.
Blindly, I fumbled for my radio and pressed the talk switch with my thumb. Please let there be a signal, I whispered to myself.
“Zulu-Control from Romeo-Three,” I gasped in pain and shock. “Urgent assistance...I need urg...”
My world went as black as those witches’ robes fluttering around the dead bodies in the road.
Chapter Four
The whoop-whoop sound of approaching sirens faded in and out, like waves crashing over me then retreating again. A dull thud beat at my temples and I just wanted to throw up. My eyelids flickered as I peered through the broken windscreen of my patrol car. The world looked as if it had been tipped over onto its side. There were congealed pools of black blood beneath the spinning wheels of the overturned cart, and its occupants, who now lay lifelessly, their black clothing fluttering in the breeze.
Had I caused this? My mind screamed.
The world started to fade again, part of me relieved that I didn’t have to look at those bodies, the mewing horse, and the spinning wheels of the cart. I wanted the darkness to come and take me again. I wanted it to drown me, wash me away from here and never bring me back. I closed my eyes, drawing deep, shallow breaths into my chest, which was crushed flat against the steering wheel.
Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!
The sound of the sirens growing closer now, bringing with them my father. In the darkness of my own semi-consciousness, I could see him, stiff-backed behind the wheel of his immaculate squad car. His uniform, crisply ironed, the creases down the sleeves and across his broad shoulders, sharp as razors. His keen grey eyes staring straight ahead, finely cropped hair and bushy moustache making him look more like an army sergeant major than a cop. I could picture him stepping from the car, his black boots so highly polished that they glinted like diamonds in the winter sun. I could see the disappointment – the anger – in his face when he surveyed the scene and realised what I had done. It wouldn’t take him long to figure this mess out – he would know this was one of my fuck-ups. But I had done nothing like this before – this was the fuck-up of all fuck-ups!