The Immortal Harvest (7 page)

“Crap! Jerry, I’ve got to go, I’m going to miss my bus!” she yelled as she tugged at her apron and threw it unceremoniously at the basket behind the counter.

She grabbed her hand bag and then dashed for the door.

“Could you please try to call Crystal and ask her to watch Justen for me until I get home,” she yelled almost as an afterthought as she sprinted for the bus stop.

She arrived at the bus terminal a few seconds after her bus had departed. She swore under her breath between gasps for breath and then ran her finger over the faded timetable. She swore again when she realised that the next bus wasn’t due for another hour. To make matters worse, a cold misty rain had begun to fall.

She hunched her shoulders and drew her flimsy tattered cardigan around her as she resigned herself that she would have to walk home.

The sky gradually turned darker and the rain became heavier with each passing step.

She knew that Crystal would look after Justen until she arrived home and the thought gave her some comfort as she plodded through the ever increasing pools of water.

She shivered as she felt the cold water seeping into her shoes. Intermittent flashes of lightning heralded the arrival of a storm. The accompanying thunder crashes pushed some urgency into her step and she sunk into herself as she walked.

The grimy streets made her apprehensive and fearful of every darkened recess and alleyway. She wished that she could become invisible as she hurried past a seedy bar.

The vile stench of stale booze and cigarette smoke clutched at her nostrils as she brushed past a group of clearly inebriated men, cowering together full of false bravado, like a pack of hungry hyenas.

She held her breath and looked away from them. She hoped that she would not draw attention to herself as she could hear that they were clearly involved in some drunken argument about sport.

She ducked under the arm of one of the men who was in the process of poking a smaller member of their group in the chest as if he was punctuating his point with his finger.

She cleared herself from the mob and quickened her pace as she walked further. She heard a shout emanate from the group.

“Hey you – come ’ere!”

She heard the rest of the pack chortle and wolf whistle as she resisted the urge to look back and focused on the street ahead of her.

She scanned the buildings ahead to see if there was a safe haven she could duck into if the moment called for her to escape. She swallowed hard as she realised that apart from those drunken men and herself, there was no one else around.

She contemplated crossing the street, turning around and heading back to the diner but ignored it. She had to get home to Justen and she did not want to go back past the bar and the drunks.

She had begun to break into a run when she suddenly heard an ominous crack. She lost her balance on one side and nearly fell. She had broken off the heel on her left shoe in a crack in the pavement.

She stopped and bent down to pick up the broken heel.

Suddenly, she felt a rough hand enclose around the back of her neck. A bag of some sort was pulled over her head and she suddenly felt herself being thrown forward.

She hit the pavement hard and scraped the palms of her hands as she thrust her arms out in front of her instinctively to protect her face.

“Hey! What the…?” she yelled as she quickly rolled onto her back. She screamed when she felt hands grasp her arms and pull them, dragging her on her back. She thrashed around frantically trying to get her abductors to release their grip.

The rain had now become torrential and it blurred her eyes as she peered into the darkness as she felt the pain of her arms being pulled with force and her head bouncing on the broken concrete and filth.

She could sense that there were multiple attackers. She kicked with her legs, desperately trying to hurt them. She screamed again in terror when more hands grasped both of her legs, and with brute force, wrenched them apart.

She screamed continuously until she felt the sharp sting of the fist of one of the assailants collide with her jaw.

She cried out in pain and then felt the second blow as it smashed her nose. She could taste the blood and gagged as it pooled at the back of her throat. At the same time she felt revulsion as she felt her clothes being torn from her.

The stench of nicotine was nauseating as a wet, greasy hand clamped down on her mouth. She twisted her head and managed to latch onto one of the greasy fingers through the bag. Her action elicited an instant scream of pain from the owner of the hand.

“You fucken bitch! She fucken bit me!

She tensed for the inevitable retaliation. It was swift. The assailant kicked her in the side of the head.

The pain was intense. Tears streamed from her eyes and mixed with the blood and rain.

She thought of her little boy waiting for her at home. The anguish was unbearable.

Mercifully she did not feel the second kick, there was only nothingness.

Justen felt proud as he sat on the school bus and gazed out through the streaky glass at the many people who were hurriedly making their way to do whatever it was that grownups did.

His feeling of pride was primarily caused by the fact that his Mother trusted him to make the journey to and from school by himself. He felt that at the age of six he was pretty much grown up and by allowing him to ride the bus alone, his Mother must have felt the same way.

He lurched forward in his seat as he felt the bus stop at an intersection. He smiled when he saw an old lady being tugged along the street by a large woolly looking dog. The bus pulled away from the intersection and then
whack!
He felt something hit him in the back of the head.

He looked around the bus and all he could see was the raucous behaviour of thirty children. The noise was deafening and it somehow blended into the grinding and groaning noises made by the dilapidated old bus.

He turned back around and amused himself by tracing the graffiti on the back of the seat in front of him with his finger when –
splat!

Something hit the side of his face.

His cheek stung from the impact of a stale sandwich, the evidence of which was resting on the top of his back pack which he had placed by his feet.

He bent down and picked up the soggy sandwich and turned again to face his unknown attacker.

He fought the urge to cry and rubbed at the stinging in his cheek as he looked around and stared at each of the many faces on the bus. He felt a sudden flush of anger as he stood and screamed at the crowd.

“Who threw this? It’s not funny!”

The crowd of children all stopped talking at the same time at the sound of Justen’s voice and then as if on cue they all burst out laughing at him.

He felt outrage and then humiliation as a piece of ketchup ridden salami slid slowly off the top of his head. He spun around quickly in his seat, grabbed the soggy salami and threw it out the window.

The stinging in his cheek combined with the stinging in his eyes as tears welled up and streamed down his cheeks.

The sudden lurching movement of the bus provided his escape as it had pulled up at the bus stop outside of his building. He hurriedly brushed the tears from his eyes, grabbed his bag and strode to the front of the bus.

He kept his head down as he walked and mumbled his thanks to the driver as he exited the bus. He deliberately ignored the jeering children as the bus pulled away and left him alone on the sidewalk.

It wasn’t until the bus had departed, that Justen understood that he was, in fact, alone.

His Mother was absent. He felt a flutter in his chest and his breathing quickened as he looked around and then towards the front of his building as if any moment his Mother would appear beside him to hold his hand.

He did not understand why his Mother was not there. He was also confused as to why Crystal had not shown up to take her place.

He felt a sudden rush of panic and sprinted towards the main door of the building. He burst through the door and almost tripped over the body of a man who was lying on the floor of the building’s foyer. Justen recognised him.

“Hi Leroy, have you seen my Mother or Crystal? They were supposed to meet me at the bus stop.”

There was no response.

Justen leant in closer to Leroy. He had never seen a dead man up close and wondered whether Leroy was dead.

He bent down and gently grabbed a handful of tattered coat and shook him.

Leroy reacted violently as he shrugged his shoulder away from Justen and clutched desperately at a crumpled brown paper bag.

“Goway! Leave mmelone,” he managed to slur before falling back into unconsciousness.

Startled by Leroy’s aggressiveness, Justen jumped backwards and ran towards the stairwell beside the lift.

He did not use the lift because his Mother had told him that lifts were dangerous. He did not understand why his Mother had forbidden him from using the lift.

It didn’t matter; he had fun counting the stairs as he climbed the eight flights of stairs that led to Crystal’s apartment.

As he climbed, he gazed at the walls of the stairwell. He could see strange pictures and lots of ugly looking words and numbers scrawled across them. He did not understand why someone would write on walls.

Didn’t they have paper?

He gave up counting the steps after the first thirty and sprinted up the last remaining flights. He opened the door at the top of the eighth flight and entered the corridor. He always felt a little scared walking alone in this corridor.

He could still remember the first night he had stumbled out of Crystal’s apartment and entered a room that looked like it was falling apart.

He shuddered when he remembered hiding from the bad man behind some old boxes. He did not know why he felt that the man was a bad man. He just remembered that the man had a really big gun and had fired it out the window.

Did he shoot someone?

When he saw that the man had fired the huge gun and was about to turn around, he saw a flash of the man’s face. It had a crack in it.

Scared out of his wits, he ran from that room as quick as he could. His heart was beating really hard. He was petrified.

What if the man had seen him? Would he shoot him too?

He remembered his urgent need to get back and find his Mother. It was whilst he was running back down the corridor and into the stairwell that he ran into Crystal. She had hugged him and told him that everything was okay.

He remembered how relieved he had felt when Crystal had taken him back to his Mother. He had seen his Mother’s face and how scared she looked on that night. He decided that he would not tell her what happened with the bad man. He did not want her to look so scared again.

He suffered with bad dreams ever since he had seen the bad man fire the gun and one night he had to break his vow and tell his Mother what had happened.

He had sobbed when he told her of what he had seen. She had cuddled him and told him that she would always be there to protect him. After he had told her his secret he slept without the night mares.

Justen shook his head to clear away the bad memories of the night mares as he reached Crystal’s apartment. He put his bag down and reached into his shirt and pulled out the chain with the key on it. He inserted the key in the lock and was about to turn it when the door moved forward. It was already open.

With a puzzled expression on his face, he shrugged his shoulders, pulled the key out the lock and tucked the chain back into his shirt. He picked up his bag and entered the room.

The room was dark, only a thin sliver of light filtered in through a tear in one of the blinds. Justen squinted against the darkness and fumbled with his hand on the wall near the doorway, feeling for the light switch.

He shivered as his fingers brushed against an old cobweb as they hovered over the switch, instantly causing the light to come on.

He enjoyed the fact that he could control electrical items without touching them. It wasn’t a big deal to him. He thought everyone could do it until his Mother had seen him do it.

She told him that he was a special boy and he had to keep it a secret so that the other kids wouldn’t get jealous. He was puzzled by his Mother’s reaction but he made sure that he told no one of his gift. He had not told his Mother that his gift was becoming stronger; he did not want to worry her.

His eyes squinted as the single bare bulb which hung suspended from the ceiling lent a small degree of illumination to the hovel. It wasn’t a hovel to Justen.

He loved the fact that Crystal wasn’t a neat freak. He loved the tatty old carpet and the thread bare sofa. He was a kid, he didn’t care about decor.

He even liked the weird smell. His Mother didn’t like the smell and told him that he should keep his window open in his room. Apparently his lungs needed fresh air.

The pain from the sandwich attack had subsided and he soon realised that he was hungry.

He felt upset that his Mother had not been at the bus stop to collect him because she always had a glass of milk and some yummy cookies waiting for him.

He decided that Crystal wouldn’t mind if he raided the refrigerator.

The fridge was nearly empty except for some blue furry looking cheese and a large carton of milk.

He struggled with pulling the heavy milk carton out of the fridge and was proud that he had only managed to spill a single splash of milk over the counter.

He ran his index finger through the milk puddle and made a smiley face. He sucked the milk from his finger and reached for the cookie jar.

Grabbing a handful of cookies he proceeded to the sofa to watch cartoons on the television. He slumped heavily onto the sofa and almost tipped out his milk. He leant forward and carefully placed his glass and pile of cookies on the coffee table.

He fumbled in the folds of the sofa looking for the remote. He frowned when he couldn’t find it and had to go over and point at the power button on the old style set to bring it to life.

By concentrating really hard he could flick through the channels. He finally settled on the Cartoon channel when he noticed the flashing red light on the phone’s answering machine that was on the small table next to the television.