Strangers in the Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

anything else —to close his eyes and return to sleep.
    Then this might all go away.
    When Mitts crossed the threshold of their home, he heard himself calling out to his parents: the two of them already trotting across the driveway, headed for a battered, grey-blue estate car.
    The car sat on the curb, idling, its exhaust puffing white smoke into the night-time air.
    Its windscreen wipers slashing back and forth— double-time —attempting to keep the rain from completely covering the glass.
    Mitts called out for the key.
    So he might lock the front door.
    But neither of his parents responded.
    They lugged the bag between the two of them.
    No time to use the wheels on the bottom to drag it along.
    Mitts trudged after them, glancing back over his shoulder with each step, to the still wide-open front door of their home. Staring back into his house now, he saw that the welcoming, yellow light continued to shine.
    Inviting him back in.
    Inviting them all back in.
    Back to their place of safety.
    The rain drenched his clothes.
    Hammered down on his head.
    It drummed the car’s metal roof.
    Even as his parents loaded their suitcase into the back of the car, even as his father grabbed hold of Mitts’s sports bag and threw it in too, he knew they would never be returning home.
    Nobody had said anything.
    Nobody had told Mitts what was going on.
    But he knew.
    He just knew.
    That was all there was to it.
    And then there was only the stench of cheesy feet.
    Of rotten oranges.
    Doctor Heinmein at the wheel.
    Expressionless.
    Driving Mitts away from all he had ever known.
    Forever.
     
    * * *
     
    Mitts could hear their voices now.
    Mumbling.
    Garbled.
    Mixing and fading.
    One into the next.
    When he crooked open an eye, the whole world which surrounded him was bleary. He breathed in and caught an aftertaste of the basil-flavoured tomato sauce.
    And those same cheesy feet.
    That sweet stench of rotten oranges.
    His chest felt tight, and he could feel something clinging to his wrist.
    He breathed in, trying to regain his senses.
    And really knowing that he was helpless.
    That he had been . . . rendered helpless.
    When Mitts finally did get his eyes open all the way, when he managed to distinguish forms from the blindingly bright, white light, he realised that he was back in his bedroom.
    The twitch of the springs in the camp-bed mattress beneath him.
    The plastic container.
    His wristwatch lying beside his bed.
    He blinked again.
    Trying to draw the scene clear.
    Three figures— three of them.
    One sat on the bed.
    The other two hung back.
    Just shadowy blurs for now.
    But, with another few blinks, Mitts drew them clear.
    He made out his mother and father.
    His father supporting his mother.
    Both of them with anxiety strewn across their features.
    Anxiety for him .
    He felt a warmth pass through his blood.
    And then he turned his attention onto the foreground.
    Onto Heinmein who perched on the edge of the mattress. His fingers coiled about Mitts’s wrist. Taking his pulse.
    Heinmein’s palms were a touch sweaty.
    He wanted Heinmein to release him.
    But when Mitts looked beyond the ragged, white lab coat, and up into those black eyes, he couldn’t help but see the determined drive staring right back at him.
    The doctor counting out the beats of Mitts’s heart within his mind.
    Measuring Mitts’s health, comparing it to whatever cold, hard statistics he used to keep tabs on human-life signs.
    Finally, Heinmein released Mitts’s wrist.
    Heinmein retreated from the bed. Without another word to anybody, his clipboard dangling down from his fingers, he limped out of Mitts’s bedroom.
    Brought the metal door shut behind him with a distant clang .
    Mitts turned his attention back to his parents. His brain still felt somewhat foggy. And he could feel a tingling sensation dancing its way all across his skin. He tried to sit up, but it was impossible, he only slunk back down onto the camp-bed mattress.
    Felt the springs jutting into his