The Dark Messenger (9 page)

Kaine and Regina both laughed.

Kaine then looked at his half-naked gorgeous
wife sitting up with the silk sheets wrapped round her waist, and
realized that she still wasn’t dressed.

‘Darling, please. Can you get dressed and be
ready in five minutes? We need to leave urgently! I am going
downstairs to sort out the guns.’ He looked sternly at her. ‘We
leave in twenty minutes,’ he said, heading quickly toward the
doorway, which led through into the kitchen.

‘
Yes, Mr. Bossy Boots,’
came her reply.

Chapter 7 -
(Turned)

The journey to the hospital had passed
quickly, but not without a sudden turn of events. Within minutes of
the start of the journey, Becky’s heart rate had returned to
normal—perfect, actually. The ambulance man in the back had been
puzzled, but Jenny had been relieved that her friend was getting
better. She had thought the worst, thinking that maybe she had lost
her back there in her bathroom. The ambulance man had radioed the
situation back to the hospital and she had heard him say that he
had just witnessed the impossible. She hadn’t understood, but
hadn’t cared either; she was just happy that Becky was alive.

The driver had shouted back at one point of
the journey, asking, ‘Are you alright back there, Paul?’ He hadn’t
replied instantly; after a lengthy pause he had said, ‘There’s
holes in her neck that are infected, Dave, and they look like bite
marks. Her skin was warm and a normal color a couple minutes ago.
Now she looks quite pale and her skin is freezing cold.’

The driver started laughing, even though he
knew the situation was too serious for it. He then said, ‘Next you
will be saying you think she’s been bitten by a vampire.’

As he said this, he suddenly had to swerve to
avoid hitting something and the ambulance rocked violently.

‘Sorry!’ he shouted back at his passengers.
Jenny wondered if that ‘sorry’ was meant for them, or maybe for
some innocent cyclist or something that he’d just nearly run over
on the street.

Jenny returned to staring at Becky¸ who still
hadn’t moved.

‘What's wrong with her? Do you think she is
getting better now?’ Jenny asked.

Paul replied, ‘I don't actually know what’s
wrong with her…sorry. But she seems okay at the moment, I think.’
He looked up at Jenny and smiled sympathetically. ‘I know she’s
your mate and that, but…Well we will just have to wait until we get
to the hospital. They’ll be able to tell much better when we get
there. Well I hope they do, anyway.’

Jenny stared at him, quite
shocked at hearing what he had just said. His words were not at all
what she would have expected from an emergency worker.
What’s with this ‘I think’ stuff? Surely he
should know everything--he’s a bloody ambulance
man
, she told herself.

A couple of minutes later they finally
arrived at the hospital. The journey had seemed like it was going
to last forever, but then to Jenny’s relief the back doors of the
vehicle were suddenly flung open and there were four nurses
reaching in, eagerly trying to take over. The first two quickly
unlatched the stretcher and lowered its legs down to the ground.
Then, together with the ambulance men, they slid the stretcher out
of the ambulance just enough so that the other two nurses could
then lower the other legs. The paramedics gave the nurses an
assessment of the situation as they quickly rushed Becky
inside.

Jenny hurried out of the ambulance and
followed through the set of double doors that her friend had just
been taken through. Inside the doorway, a tall thin man wearing a
white coat was standing right in her path, holding a clipboard full
of papers.

‘Sorry, madam, but can I ask where you are
going?’ he asked, smiling down at her with very shiny white
teeth.

‘Yes, my friend and I came here together in
an ambulance just now. The nurses took her this way. Becky Barker
is her name.’

‘Is that your friend over there?’ he asked,
pointing across to Becky, who was now wide awake and chatting with
the nurses.

Jenny’s jaw dropped. She was so amazed to see
that her mate was awake that she could barely stutter out,‘Y-yes!’
She looked back at the tall man, her eyes glistening. ‘Can I go and
see her please?’

‘Sorry, but you will have to wait,’ he said.
Jenny’s heart immediately sank.

‘That area your friend is in has recently
been restricted to hospital staff only. If you go through those
double doors to your right over there, you will find a waiting room
for friends and relatives,’ he said pointing to her right. He
smiled sympathetically. ‘Don’t worry, I will let the nurses know
that you are there.’

‘Thank you,’ Jenny replied.

As she started away, the man called after
her, ‘Miss I nearly forgot. I will also need your name for our
records.’

‘Barker. My name is Jenny Barker,’ she
replied, and then turned to walk through into the waiting area.

She knew that the fact that she and Becky had
the same surname would probably confuse him. He would think that
they weren’t friends as she had just told him, but sisters instead.
Many times in the past, they had introduced themselves to people
using their full names and often the reactions had been the
obvious: ‘Oh, you are sisters.’.

Maybe it was their joke on society. The two
girls had known each other from birth and had been best mates all
their lives. Sometimes they felt like they were sisters though
because they seemed to always be together. Maybe they should just
say they were sisters to avoid any confusion, she thought.

This ‘’coincidence’ of the same last name had
been anything but though. What had happened was that all of the
babies that were adopted in the same week from the children’s home
where the girls had started their lives had gotten the same
surname. Jenny and Becky had both been left on the steps of the
orphanage in the first week of September in 1981, and so were given
the same name--Barker. The friends did wonder sometimes if maybe
they were really sisters, but the matron in the home had promised
that they weren’t.

Jenny was actually left twenty minutes later
than Becky, and was always considered to be the older one. The
matron told them that she remembered she had taken Becky in first,
but just as she had placed her down in a cot, she had felt icy cold
air blowing past her ankles, making her think she had left the
doors open. When she had gone back to close them, she had been
shocked though, because there was another baby lying there in the
exact same place, only this one was wrapped in a green parker
jacket.

Inside the hospital waiting room, Jenny
grabbed a magazine and sat down. As she did, someone behind her
said, ‘Mizz! Mizz!’

Turning round she could see there was a nurse
standing there. She was a petite-looking woman in her fifties;
Jenny thought at first glance by her looks that she might have been
Filipino.

‘You are Jin-ny, Becyee’s friend?’ the woman
said.

‘Y.yes…’ Jenny replied, after pausing for a
second to work out what the woman had just said in her broken
English.

‘Woud you lik come see her, she want yu and
big happy, she say you beist friend.’

Jenny jumped up, and the magazine that had
been on her lap fell down to the floor. As she picked it up and saw
the Vogue model on the cover, she felt slightly embarrassed at the
comparison between herself and the magazine picture. It dawned on
her that she looked a complete mess in what she was wearing. She
had on old hand-me-down clothes from the charity store in the high
street and a pair of cheap worn-out Primark runners on her
feet.

The nurse smiled, turned, and started walking
back through the doors. Jenny put the magazine back on the table
and quickly followed her. As she got through the waiting room
doors, she saw Becky sitting up and looking across at her.

‘Oh my…how are you?’ Jenny cried as she
approached the bed. ‘You scared me so much! She said as she leant
down and put her arms round her for a big hug. ‘You know, I love
you so much! Please don't get sick again!’ she said in near
hysterics.

A nurse quickly pulled Jenny back, saying,
‘Careful, miss. We still don't know what happened to your
friend.’

Jenny released the death grip she’d had on
her friend, and realized that she could feel tubes stuck across
Becky’s chest underneath the hospital nightgown. Suddenly it became
all too much to bear seeing her mate like that, and she burst into
tears.

Becky reached across for the box of tissues
on her side table and handed them to Jenny, a soft smile on her
face.

Jenny took them gratefully. ‘Sorry, but I do
love you so very much,’ she mumbled as she dabbed at her eyes. ‘I
really thought you were going to die earlier. I think my heart
needs looking at now too, because it was nearly broken!’ she said,
sniffling and wiping her face.

‘I love you too,’ Becky said, smiling up at
her friend.

‘How do you feel? I nearly fainted, I think.
Seeing you unconscious in your shower, you gave me such a fright,
you know! Your neighbor’s nice, isn’t she? What a way to meet her
though, how are you?’ Jenny sat down on the chair where the nurse
had just been sitting.

‘Not so many questions!’ Becky said, laughing
a little. ‘Oh, and you have asked me how I am twice,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry, I just panicked. You know I am a
bit neurotic, don't you, hun?’ she replied and they both smiled at
each other. Becky started to say ‘I love you’ but Jenny said the
same line at exactly the same time. They laughed, real laughs this
time, and hugged each other but softly because Jenny remembered
about Becky’s tubes this time.

Becky’s face grew puzzled. ‘I don’t know
what’s happening to me, Jen. I’ve always been fit, I never
smoked--I don’t know what’s wrong with me, except I feel really
strange.’

Jenny paused, not knowing what to say. She
was torn as to whether or not she should reveal what Becky had said
in the bathroom.

‘They took a blood sample, you know, and they
are going to do some tests.’

Suddenly she grabbed her stomach with both
hands as pain surged up within her.

‘Becky? Are you okay?” Jenny cried.

The pain passed as fast as it had come. Becky
nodded.

Jenny decided she had no choice; Becky had to
know what had gone on while she was unconscious. She picked up
Becky’s hand and stroked it.

‘Becky, there’s something you should know.
While you were passed out, you were mumbling about someone called
Longinus, and you said something about vampires. I was really
scared--what was all that about?’ Jenny asked.

Becky immediately froze. She let go of her
stomach as she heard the name Longinus, and Jenny was horrified by
her reaction and facial expressions too. Becky’s face distorted,
her eyes grew dark in color, and the veins on her temples began to
grow and pulsate.

Jenny quickly apologized, hoping that somehow
it would fix her now very strange mate, but it didn’t.

Becky immediately sat upright and shouted,
‘Longinus! Where is my Master?”

‘Er…’ Jenny said, panic rising and totally
lost for words.

She grabbed Becky’s shoulders and shouted in
her face, ‘What do you mean, “where is my Master”? What the hell
are you talking about? Becky! You don’t have a master… as far as I
know. Do you?’

A few minutes ago, the machine behind Becky
had been beeping slowly about once every second, but now it was
screaming its head off and the display was flashing violently.

Four nurses came from nowhere and grabbed
Becky, forcing her back down flat onto the bed. Incredibly, as if
she was possessed, she threw two of them off though.

‘Out!’ one of the nurses screamed at Jenny
without looking at her. She was wrapped up entirely in the
emergency before her.

Suddenly Jenny felt someone tapping her on
the shoulder, and she looked over to see that it was the same
Filipino nurse from before.

‘Com wiv mi’ she said, but Jenny ignored her.
She didn’t want to leave; everything had been okay till she had
just mentioned that name, ‘Longinus.’

‘Why did I have to say that
bloody name?’ she asked herself, cursing inwardly. She was sure
that that had just triggered off her wild fit.
How strange, though,
she
thought.

The floral curtain round the bed was quickly
drawn by two more nurses who had just arrived on the scene.

Inside she could hear the strangest of sounds
coming from her mate. Becky was making what sounded like wild
animal noises and swearing, using every word possible that she
knew. It was really quite embarrassing, Jenny thought, as other
patients and relatives started to look across at her
distastefully.

‘Use the drugs!’ she heard one of them
say.

‘I did! I used the whole syringe!’ came the
reply.

‘Restrain her hands then, and call that
emergency number from the red phone!’ one of them shouted.

Jenny froze.
What emergency number? What red phone?
she thought to herself.
They are not suggesting that she has signs of schizophrenia,
are they? They are a hospital;, why should they call an emergency
number? You’re the emergency people--deal with her you
idiots!
she thought.