Chapter Twenty Eight

Savage listened to the man breathe deeply. The woman in the bed next to him stirred, then rolled from her side onto her front. There was no direct light in the bedroom apart from the dull glow around the edge of the blackout curtains.

He crept silently around the room, feeling his way, not in the clumsy manner of a night time adventure to the bathroom. But with a purpose. Mapping out the landscape and features. If Henry, his mentor, had asked him afterwards he would be able to recreate every obstacle in the room, the distances between them, and any possible hiding spots.

He’d taught Savage well. If you want to enter your enemy’s camp, steal their secrets or locate their arms cache, then do it under their noses. Do it without them ever knowing.

There'd been a dog barking earlier. Savage had made it stop. The house had been easy to get into, the alarm easy to get around. He’d collected a boning knife from the kitchen.

Savage held it in his left hand now, phone in his right.

He pressed the blade down on the gangster's throat, then placed the phone face-up on his chest with the torch function on. The man stirred. Savage's hand clasped over his mouth, the knife dug in until it drew blood.

'Wake up,' Savage whispered.

The man struggled out of unconsciousness. His arms came up and Savage pressed the knife in further.

'Be still, be quiet, or your head comes off. I'm going to take my hand away from your mouth.' Savage picked up the phone and pressed play, the volume muted.

In the glare from the phone the gangster's sleepy eyes widened at the sight of his nephew. Savage made him watch it until the end. Then shone the light from the phone on his own face.

'Recognise me, Crystal?'

'Yes.'

'Here's the deal. There's audio to go with the video, your nephew talking about mummy and daddy. Family of yours I imagine. You send any more goons after me, this is all over the internet and in the mail boxes of your enemies. Understand?'

He stared impassively at Savage, then nodded.

'Armstrong’s family are mine now, you do not touch them ever or you'll never see me coming. You understand?' Another nod. 'Good, then we're done.'

Savage put the phone back in his pocket and removed a stinking cloth, soaked in chemicals, and held it by his side.

The gangster's nose wrinkled at the smell. He let out a small chuckle.

Savage took the bait. 'What?'

'This only works in films. In reality, when I wake up in the morning I'm going to find you and torture you until you tell me where the videos are.' His smug grin ate up the dark.

‘Then your nephew goes down regardless,' Savage said and held the cloth over the big man's mouth. He'd soaked it in home-made chloroform, a large amount to take down a large man. And it really wasn't like fiction. Savage held the knife against the big man, he thrashed for over a minute as the vapour took hold and he finally went limp.

The chloroform's effects would last several minutes more at most, Savage stood up to leave, then couldn't move. The knife, already edged with the gangster's blood, spoke to him in the dark.

End it now , it said. He’ll come for you. Kill him now.

It would be easy. He could even do it so that the man's wife didn’t wake up.

He shifted the knife to his stronger right hand and felt a small bulb of blood trickle down the knife edge onto his fingers.

He could even take the man's head without the woman noticing. The power he had.

And, if she woke up, would he kill her too? Tie her up? What?

Down that road only darkness could be found. Michael and the other ungrateful dead could have their revenge on Savage, but not like that. He stabbed the knife point into the sideboard.

The woman stirred.

He waited silently for her to settle.

When all was still again, he left the same way he came in. Quietly.

*

By the time he made it through his front door his phone, still on silent, had two missed calls from Jo and one text message. He opened the text:

John, I'm sorry about earlier. I'm leaving tomorrow. If you are alone tonight maybe we could try again?

The city lights twinkled through his living room window, as they always did. It took his breath away. For the second time in one evening he chose to wake up sane in the morning and fell asleep looking at it.

*

Savage's view of the Wharf was uninterrupted. Although the night time colours flickered, like bad colour correction in an old movie. Then his phone rang. The caller ID: Jo, Echo, Vi, Natasja, names whirred by like the dials on a slot machine.

He pressed green. It settled on Jo.

'Hello?' he said. Silence. Then she screamed.

He threw the phone with all his strength to the other side of the room. It hit the window and the night view shattered into day. Cool air flooded in, smells of the garden, the heat of petrol fumes and people.

'John?' a desperate voice said from the falling phone, he grabbed for it and it shot out of the window.

Cool air hit his body when he stretched out his hand and clamped on. It pulled him up and out towards the Wharf, the train lines filled with commuters passed beneath him, car bumpers kissed, the high speed ferry sped by, it's wake exaggerated and rainbow coloured.

The towers rushed toward him, be-suited ants scurried below. He banked and arced his way through the glass, steel and concrete, the phone slowed.

Then he realised where he was. The top of the tower, balcony patio ahead and a man waiting.

'John?' a man’s questioning voice came through the phone. Savage flew to the man, he held up a hand.

‘Why did you kill me?’ Michael said.

‘I—‘

Michael laughed once, held his eye, then lurched over the edge of the building.

Savage raced after him.

With the phone to his mouth, Michael looked back at Savage, buildings blurred around them as Savage tried to keep up. Michael’s hand reached up and pulled Savage close. Michael screamed, a high pitch that turned from small child to animal into a laughing, 'Ah-hah-ha-haahhhh—'

They hit the car together, full force. The metal crumpled, then everything was still.

He felt Michael’s hand on his shoulder. It squeezed, then Savage found himself watching the car from the pavement where he’d seen the real Michael smash into pieces.

A part of him wanted to run away, wake up. Instead he moved to the car and reached for the gun on his hip. It wasn't there. The laughing started again. Dream Michael peeled his face from the wreckage and spluttered wet chunks of lip at him.

'Aw, Bless. You weren’t listening were you? Why did you kill me?'

Savage backed away. Michael peeled the rest of his body from the wreckage, the metal carcass of the car pulling at strands of flesh as he stepped off it and onto the street. He stalked straight towards Savage, bloody beaming grin on what was left of his face.

'Let's do it again, shall we? It’s fun.'

Savage fell to the ground as the ghoul closed the gap in an instant. Then dream Michael walked past him, unseeing. He hadn’t even been looking at him.

Savage turned and saw a younger version of himself, rooted to the spot on the pavement, staring at the car, phone to his ear. Young Savage couldn’t see dream Michael hold his phone to his exposed skeletal jaw, turn, then give him a bloody wink.

Young Savage couldn’t hear when Michael started screaming, 'Are you listening? Are you listening? Are you listening?’ into the mouth piece.

Michael rocked back on his feet, clearly enjoying himself the way only a dream demon can.

Savage felt a physical stirring. His phone ringing, but it had a real quality to it, like it might wake him up.

He couldn’t leave, not now. He remembered something he’d read once, to stabilise a lucid dream look at something unchanging.

He looked down at his fading hands.

The phone kept ringing, willing him to wake up. He concentrated only on his hands. The ringing stopped. His hands solidified.

He clenched them and glanced back at the devil tormenting his younger self, still oblivious to the screams and the pain to come. Hadn't he also read that a nightmare was always a part of you?

You had to destroy it or befriend it.

He reached for his gun again, looked down when he felt it's cold handle in his palm. It had lived so long on his side it had become an unchanging part of him. He clasped his hand around it and levelled it at dream Michael's head.

'Saa-vage!' A voice shrilled behind him. Not a voice he recognised but one that made his legs weak and his grip falter. He let his anger flare and turned.

The young girl in the pink dress clambered over the shattered car. Her eyes were raised in their sockets and bloodshot, her mouth open in a children-of-the-night grimace.

'Guns don't kill people, John,' she said, her tongue flicking. 'You do.'

She pulled her brother's AK into position and opened up. The pedestrian suits around them dropped, ran, fell, their heads, arms and chests exploded.

The terrified wails of the dying filled the air, grasping for that last taste of life.

The tortured he hadn't saved.

The men, who only wanted goodness for their families, whose lives he'd taken.

Bystanders every one, and their fingers all pointed at him.

Focus on your hands John. He saw the gun, moved to face the girl, aimed, pulled the trigger.

Dead man’s click.

He ran his no-fire drills and kept moving forward. The dream girl gritted her teeth when she fired.

'Look at me,' she shouted, ''I'm John Savage. Come get some.'

He squeezed the trigger. Click-click.

'Enough,' he said, and ran at her. She laughed at him.

'You're not taking this,' she said and turned the gun on him.

He grabbed the hair on top of her head and pulled. Her head came off in one move. The body staggered, fired once, then dropped.

'Arrrrwk,' her head screamed. 'You've killed me John. Why did you—'

'Shut up,' he said. He strode back to dream Michael, the girl's head swinging at his side. The AK's bullets had torn his own stomach open and blood oozed out. He ignored it.

He'd been told as a child that if you died in your dream, you died in real life. It was a lie.

Then he was beside Michael, who was still spouting obscenities into the electronic ear of his younger self. Savage looked at the man he'd once been. Recognised him, but knew that it was no longer him, this man frozen in time.

Savage swung the girl's head at the ghoul, she whimpered when it struck Michael’s forehead. Michael recoiled, betrayal on his face when he hit him again and the girl's shriek filled the air.

'But you need me,' Michael said.

And then Savage pulverised them both, smashing one skull against the other until nothing was left of either except the gore that trickled down his arms.

His younger self, stood on the pavement waiting. What for? The younger Savage stared into space, unseeing. He put his own phone to his ear. An automatic reaction. There was nothing there.

But Savage the elder knew what he was doing, didn’t he?

He longed to hear Michael's voice again, to remind him of what he had done. To replay the act, the event, the shock, the trauma, the guilt – to revel in the misery. Then Savage the younger looked up into his eyes.

Sometimes you just had to let go.

The elder raised his Glock and aimed. This time, when he squeezed, bullets flew out of the barrel until the magazine emptied.