Witch (3 page)

He moved lower still, and taking his hands from my breasts, he started t
o work my trousers down and over my thighs. I reached out, clawing my nails over his shoulders like a set of rakes. He groaned and pulled my trousers free. Michael climbed up onto the table, slowly pushing my legs apart with one knee. I buried my face into his bare shoulder, nipping at his flesh with my teeth. With one finger, he hooked aside my panties and let his fingers work slowly through the fine knot of hair between my legs.

I shuddered against him, arching my back off the table, as his fingers began to slowly, gently stroke me.

“Is this wrong, officer?” he whispered, glancing up at me from between my thighs.

“Very,” I gasped, as his fingers quickened.

W
ith his free hand, I watched him fumble his jeans open and let them drop to the floor. His cock stood almost upright from the middle of his body.

It was then that the dog started to howl.

Leaning back, I closed my eyes, trying to block out the sound of the dog. The noise of its barking, bringing me back to the sudden, unwelcome realisation that I was a cop who was still on duty.

I screwed my eyes shut as Michael’s strokes grew faster and faster, as did my growing excitement.

“Do you want me to fuck you, officer?” Michael teased.

B
eginning to feel more anxious than turned on, the knowledge of where I was, what I was doing, and everything I was risking, made me freeze up and turn cold. It suddenly all felt so wrong. But wasn’t that the whole point? Wasn’t the fact that everything I was doing was so forbidden the reason I was so aroused in the first place?

Yap-yap-yap!
The dog howled.

I tried to block out the sound of the dog by concentrating on what Michael was doing to me.

“So, are you gonna punish me, or what?” he whispered, reaching down and taking a condom from his jeans.

“Stop,” I gasped. “I can’t do this anymore.”

Michael glanced at me. “Is this part of the game?”

“There is no game,” I said, pushing myself up onto my elbows and closing the front of my shirt.

“You are kidding me, right?” he asked, sounding unsure as if I were messing with him.

“No, I’m not kidding,” I said, sliding from the table and snatching up my trousers. As I tugged them back over my legs, all I could see in my
head was my father’s disapproving glare. “This should never have happened,” I told Michael.

“So you’re not going to arrest me?” he said, and I couldn’t tell if he still thought all of this was some part of the fantasy we had been acting out.

“I don’t think so, do you?” I said back. “I’ve got to go.”

Realising
the game was over; he hurriedly pulled up his own jeans. “Perhaps we could do this again sometime – you know, when you’re not on duty?” he asked. 

“I doubt you would find it as much fun,” I said, tightening my utility belt about my waist.

“I guess not,” he said thoughtfully.

I looked back at him as I fixed my police radio to my belt. Before I could say anything back, my radio made a hissing and then a crackling sound. I snatched it from my belt and held it close to the side of my face.

“Zulu-Control to Romeo-Three...” the voice of the operator in the control room came over the radio, then cut off. 

“What’s that...
” Michael started.

“Shhh!”
I scolded him. “My control room is trying to get hold of me.”

“Zulu-Control to Romeo-Three nothing heard from Romeo-One...” the radio operator cut in then died away again.

“Shit!” I barked, heading for the door.

“What’s the problem?” Michael called after me.

“They’ve been trying to raise me on the radio but because there’s no bloody signal out here, they think I’ve had an accident or something,” I explained. “I need to get into an area where I can contact them before they send out the search party – if they haven’t already.”

R
eaching the kitchen door, I remembered I’d put in the office diary that I was out taking statements all afternoon. I only had one outstanding crime in my tray at the moment, and that was this so-called burglary at the farm. It wouldn’t take my father – Sergeant Hart – too long to figure out where I was and come in search for me – if he hadn’t already.

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 unde
r 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.

T
aking 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.

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!

I glanced once more through the web of cracks in the windscreen, hoping that perhaps the dead and the horse and cart had somehow magically disappeared. They hadn’t, and in those cracks, which did little to mask the carnage spread across the road, I saw the flicker of luminous blue lights as my father’s patrol car arrived on scene. I could see the word ECILOP written in blue across the bonnet, and through the cracked windscreen it looked distorted out of shape. Over the sound of the squealing sirens, I could hear his boots pounding quickly over the gravelled road as he raced towar
ds my upturned patrol car. Today his boots weren’t glistening with polish, but with flecks of blood. I closed my eyes against the pain in my head and chest. I couldn’t bear to look into his eyes. I didn’t want to see the disappointment I knew would be in them.

“Sydney! Sydney!” I heard his deep voice thunder.

A hand grabbed my shoulder. Without having to open my eyes, I knew it was my father’s. I knew his touch.

“Sydney?”
he barked, but his voice didn’t sound angry; it sounded confused – scared.

I opened my eyes and twisted my head to look at him.

“Sydney, what happened here? Are you okay?” he breathed beneath his thick, black moustache.

“I’m sorry, dad,” I whispered, trying to fill my lungs with enough air so as to speak.

My father’s face was just inches from mine as he kneeled, peering through the driver’s window at me. My breath covered his worried face and he recoiled as the stale whiskey fumes wafted beneath his nose. They were unmistakeable. Just as I knew it would – and could I have really expected anything different – that look of fear and concern left my father’s eyes and was replaced with something close to despair and disgust for me.  

“What have you done?” he said, sounding as
if he was going to choke. He looked back at the road, the bloody bodies, screeching horse and cart, then back at me.

“Oh, sweet Jesus, Sydney, what have you done?”

“I’m sorry...” I started to murmur, but the sound of his radio squawking garbled messages cut over me.

My father left me in the car, lying on its side in the road. I heard the crunch of his boots over gravel. Murmuring in pain, I twisted my head to the left as I followed the sound of his footsteps. Had he left me to sort out this mess on my own? I wondered. I heard him speaking, but even
through the foggy haze of my pounding mind, I knew he was talking to someone on his mobile phone and not his radio. How did I know? His voice was hushed, and there was no garbled reply from whoever he was speaking to.

The world started to swim before me again like I had just stepped off a spinning roundabout. There was a scraping noise and I twisted my head again and could see my father yanking open the driver’s door of my squad car. The bottom portion of the door scraped across the gravel, leaving what looked like white claw marks on the road. I winced in pain as my father struggled to free me from the car. He released my seatbelt, and at once it felt like a heavy weight had been lifted from my chest. I gasped in a lungful of breath, and instantly, that hazy feeling left my mind. Slipping his arms beneath mine, my father levered me free of my wrecked vehicle. He held me by the shoulders, helping me stand. My legs felt rubbery and I gripped his strong arms. Blood dripped in a thick stream from my forehead, spattering my white police shirt crimson. I looked down at the ground and it was covered in
a crisscross maze of tyre marks where a vehicle had braked suddenly.

“Are you okay?” he barked, his face so close to mine that the tips of our noses almost touched.

“Yes, I’m okay,” I whispered, dabbing at the cut on my head with my fingertips.

He looked into my blue eyes, like a doctor checking to see if I were truly conscious. When he had satisfied himself I wasn’t going to drop to
the ground, he let go of me and roared, “Look what you’ve done, you stupid girl!”