Читать книгу Straight Jacket - Adrian Deans - Страница 8

I’m among these people.

We’re upstairs in someone’s house — a bit like a bar. I’ve been here before, because I know the way the late afternoon sun flows red over black and white floor tiles, and the shadows cast at Picasso angles by iron lace furniture.

Instead of music, there is the sound of rushing water.

The girl with the dirty claret hair is watching me. There can only be one reason for her interest.

As I knew she would, the girl comes and sits at my table. She is younger than I remember.

She doesn’t speak and the roar of water seems louder. I feel myself drawn into the dead black depth of her adolescent stare, but before I lose myself completely, I see movement reflected, and I know they’re behind me.

I leap from my chair, and I’m flying through a window — landing on the ground in a shower of shards, unharmed, and racing through familiar but unfamiliar streets, as though someone had torn to shreds the suburbs of my experience and reassembled the pieces at random.

In my confusion, I run across a field, making for the back lane home. But instead of home, I see the old public toilet block at Kenley Park — an eerie sanctuary in the violet gloom before the street lights come on.

Then I hear the baritone drone of motorbikes in the distance.

They are coming.