Through Your Eyes Read online

The next memory was of being airborne and free. I had often had dreams of falling and this was initially pleasant. However, that pleasant free fall sensation was replaced by the realisation I was being lifted bodily and thrown through a window, subsequently landing on something hard. Jeez that guy must have been strong.

  I awoke with a start. Is it possible to feel the physical pain again when you remember a painful memory? At that moment I thought so. It was about ten in the morning. So had I been asleep, or perhaps sustained a head injury to be out so long? The news, I thought. Surely, there might be something on the local radio or TV? Or was it too early? Or had the body not been found? Or had I dreamt it? I felt around the back of my head and felt a large, fluctuant lump. I looked at my hand, and it was smeared with my own blood.

  Maybe it was real.

  I checked the local news and radio but there was still nothing, and at that point I made a decision that in retrospect started this whole roller coaster ride, and would ultimately change my life for ever. I could have just stayed at home and left it all alone, just lie low for a while. It would have all blown over, and I could have returned to work, continued my life as a researcher, but I just couldn't resist.

  And it was all because of her. I couldn't get her face out of my mind, and I had to make sure she was alright. For the first time in my life, I was utterly compelled.

  From fornicator to investigator, I thought, just like a private dick.

  I grabbed a sandwich and showered quickly, the warm water stinging the back of my head. I changed, and opened my front door, looking carefully down the street in case I had anyone with their eyes on me. I approached my car, climbing in cautiously, and drove back to the flat. Gemma's flat. I pretty much followed the same route as the taxi cab had taken in the night, but this time watched every car and person on my journey there. As I got closer, I approached slowly in case the place was crawling with police, and decided to park about two hundred yards before the taxi hut. I got out and continued down on foot towards the alleyway.

  Nothing. No police. In fact, there was nobody. It was a Sunday so it was quiet anyway, but this was dead. The taxi hut had its shutters fully down. I walked past the alleyway and there was my favourite rubbish bin. No sign of life. I looked up and the lights were off. Somebody had been here to switch it off, presumably. If they had found a body, then the place would have been a full on scene of crime investigation, and cordoned off.

  Unless, Gemma had not called the police.

  Was I brave or very stupid? What should I do, go home or have a look? I thought about it for a couple of seconds.

  So I went inside. Stupidity was the conqueror of my senses and once again, I was doing my usual impersonation of a gold plated plonker. This really was the story of my life. Somebody had once referred to me as brave.

  A brave idiot.

  The door to the flats had been propped open by a cardboard box. I didn't remember this bit first time round. Actually, I didn't remember anything. Maybe someone was moving in, or moving out. The interior was bare and furnished with cheap wood. To the side of the stairs were arrays of lockers, with numbers on them presumably for the post. The numbers went up to ten and were subdivided into letters; a through to e. There was a picture of a red flower at the bottom of the stairs; a watercolour print of a poppy, perhaps. A sweet smell maybe of cooking apples from upstairs? Otherwise, there was no sound. Peace.

  I climbed up the first flight of stairs, and remembered her flat as Number 4c at the end of the corridor. So something was still functioning in my head. There was still no one around, nor any sign of life. Not a sound. I was feeling my bowels swirling and churning. What if he wasn't dead and was still there with Gemma? What if she was in trouble?

  I reached the door and listened. Nothing.

  With a trembling hand, I knocked on the door and took three paces back, waiting to get the crap beaten out of me.

  It could have been one minute or two, but nothing happened, so I pushed the door and it opened. It appeared to have been unlocked rather than broken, which was somewhat interesting, I thought. But how could that be? Had she left in a hurry and forgotten to lock the door to a dead body? I entered the flat and it was not at all what I had expected. I had anticipated broken chairs and vases, with chunks knocked out of the walls, but it was immaculate. It smelt of flowers and was just missing the smell of coffee being freshly brewed in the kitchen, after all, I was a prospective buyer, or at least that was what it felt like. This was the same flat, and yet it was unrecognisable as it looked like it had undergone a major makeover, but overnight? I moved through the hallway and saw her bedroom door. It was closed. I reached it and listened and, to cut a very long story short of waiting, trembling and listening that may have lasted twenty minutes, slowly opened the door. It cranked open with classic movie squeakiness.

  And I looked into the familiar room, and judging by what I had seen in the rest of the flat, was not surprised in the slightest.

  Clean white sheets. Clean white room. Nobody. In fact, no body. No builder. No Gemma.

  I like my movies. But this was really happening. But why was someone trying to screw around with my mind?

  I turned and walked out of the room, to get away from the madness, and it was at this point that something caught my eye. It was only just poking out from under the side of the bed, as if someone had tried to hide it in a hurry.

  I got down on my hands and knees and carefully reached out to the bed cover, slowly lifting it up to see. It was a hat, a pork pie hat to be precise. I was no expert but it looked very familiar, maybe it belonged to the guy from last night. I looked further behind and there was something else. I grabbed it and pulled it out. It was a smashed up remote controller, all plastic and glass, but curiously this one was covered in green and golden liquid, possibly some sort of corrosive fluid from its batteries, although I couldn't see any left inside. This was freaking me out so I jumped up, leaving both items behind, wiping my hand on my jacket, and running out of the flat as fast as I could, without looking too suspicious.

  He turned and ran out of the building. When he returned to his car, he stopped and looked over his shoulder, as if he had heard something from a small road behind a food takeaway. He walked carefully down the road listening for the sound. It sounded like a man groaning in pain...

  3.

  So I got the heck out of there without looking back. As I ran out of the building, I ran straight into the cardboard box and tripped over, landing on my arse on the verge. Twice in twelve hours was becoming a bit too coincidental for my liking, I thought to myself.

  I looked around the street nervously, and put my hood up, walking quickly towards my car. As I approached it, I wondered whether I needed to call someone; but what would I tell them? I didn’t have a phone, but even if I did, who was I really going to call anyway? The police? My auntie? And then I heard something nearby that was bizarrely familiar and simultaneously, utterly unique. Perhaps it was the sound of something I had experienced from another life? Moaning, or was it groaning? But there was definitely an intermittent low pitched sound coming from behind the takeaway. Maybe it wasn't just me throwing up here, but a customer of this fine establishment?

  I got out of the car and looked down the road behind Mr Fo Wang's 'Quality Chinese Dinning Experience.' Good typo, although the silence this Sunday was deafening. I walked down the road and followed the sound. It was muffled, but definitely from a person. Was it the sound of pain? Was someone in trouble? Was it the dead builder coming back to life?

  As I reached the end of the road, I saw something on the ground at the end of the thoroughfare. At first, I thought it was an old pile of clothes dumped in the street, commonly seen in this part of London. But these clothes were moving, or more like writhing around.

  I got closer. The clothes moved a little more. Maybe there was a large family of rats underneath them having a little party, not a completely implausible idea outside a restaurant of this quality. I passed a green door with two hor
izontal metal bars, which would allow you to open it from the outside; it must have belonged to the takeaway. For no reason at all, I tried them but they were shut. There was a faint smell of stale noodles coming through the door that was equally enticing and disgusting, yet I could feel my gut rumbling with pangs of hunger. In the distant heart of the restaurant, I could hear the faint and monotonous thud of a large knife, bashing through unknown meat and vegetables, landing on a wooden chopping board within the depths of the building's kitchens.

  I got to the pile of clothes and rags and looked down realising there was a person rather than a rodent groaning under them. At first, my initial instinct was to jump in my car and get the hell out of there, but something was compelling me to investigate this peculiar situation further. As I explained before, I just couldn’t leave things alone. I raised my hand and slowly reached out to the rags, lifting the material up. It was a piece of leather that may have been a proper, wearable jacket once, rather old and cracked, with pieces of the outer fabric peeling off, as if it had been dragged through a hedge a few thousand times. The sound was no longer a groan but actual words, but I couldn't understand them. As I pulled the jacket, or whatever it was, I jumped backwards with shock, and my heart seemed to expand and twist like it was a sponge being squeezed and wrung.

  I looked into the eye of a person. I say eye, as where the other eye should have been was a mass of scar tissue and thready broken veins. The eye was surprisingly bright and blue. He looked at me and then reached out with his hand. He looked a little like a very pissed off Michael Biehn in the 'Terminator' movie, with his long trench coat and greasy hair. That was apart from the eye of course. On the other hand, the overcoat made him look like he was either a vagrant or a pervert from the dirty mac brigade. However, the coat and eye combined made him the spitting image of mad-eye Moody from 'Harry Potter' fame, as he looked pretty grumpy despite the bright, blue eye. I may have mentioned something about me and movies.

  The movie thoughts rapidly disappeared as I looked at the man more closely, as he really did look like he had been locked up in a trunk for a few weeks. He looked weak and hungry, and the smell coming from him was extraordinary, making the smells from my favourite alleyway last night seem like an offering from Chanel. His trousers had huge holes in them, but these were not from chronic wear and tear because they had singe marks on them, as if this guy had survived an explosion. I saw his skin through these holes on his thighs and calves, and they had huge ulcers which were bleeding and exuding pus. When I looked more closely, I realised they were not ulcers, not traditional breaks of the skin like that. He had actually lost bits of his skin and muscle. Bite sized marks. And then to my horror, I realised why they were bite sized, as I recognised the perfect impressions of teeth embedded in some of the wounds. Forget about an explosion, this man had been in a war and this looked like torture. What on earth had happened to this guy?

  "Pardo," he said.

  A staring eye.

  Was it a question or a fact? Intriguing, I thought. Spine tingling. Bowels moving again.

  "Pardo?" I said.

  Was he asking or telling me something? I reached out to his hand; it was incredibly strong and surprised me, almost as if an electric shock sort of feeling had gone through my body. As quickly as I had felt his strength, it seemed to suddenly dissipate from his body, as he fell back on to the ground, as weak as a rag doll. It was as if his battery had run flat. I crouched down and helped him up again.

  I continued, "Who are you? What has happened to you? How can I help you?"

  I realised I was now talking very loudly, almost shouting. Like an Englishman abroad, speaking English to someone who can't speak it. He looked down at his other hand, but this one was withered and deformed, half the size of the strong hand. He had a small, black, plastic looking box in it. It looked like a remote control for an electrical appliance. He noticed that I had seen it and tried to hide it. He started to shake his head at me. This time when he spoke, his words were clear and intelligible.

  "No. Not yet. Not for you. Not yet," he said.

  He was still shaking his head at me and looked like he was going to pass out, as his eye and head started to roll in opposite directions to each other. He was almost comical, but for the terrible pleading look in his face.

  "Is this pardo?" I said, looking at the box.

  He immediately tried to move the box, but the withered hand could barely hold on to it. Was it a fancy tobacco holder? Or maybe it was his drug stash? The box did look like something I had seen before, perhaps like the broken device I had noticed underneath Gemma's bed. A bit of an odd coincidence, I mused to myself.

  "Pardo," he said, but this time with the pleading look again.

  Tears were running down both his cheeks, yet only the single eye, I thought. He was pointing with his strong hand to the back of the box, as if he was giving me some sort of message.

  Did he want me to take it, or was he showing me something?

  Or was it a warning?

  I gently put two fingers on the box, and his weak hand put up absolutely no resistance. I examined it.

  It looked like a TV remote control, and the back had a latch that could flip open where you could place a battery ordinarily. This didn't look like it took batteries. It was like nothing I had ever seen. The front had a glass screen that looked like a smartphone, but there were no images to view. Was it a new kind of phone, perhaps? At the top left corner was a symbol that was unfamiliar to me. It looked like a stick man or a star, but was very worn and difficult to make out. On the underside next to the latch, there was a raised marking that resembled an eye rather similar to the Egyptian Eye of Horus, but for one difference; it had two ornate circles underneath it.

  I said to him, "What do you want me to do with this? Do you want me to take it and get it fixed for you? Do you need me to call somebody to tell them where you are?"

  He had stopped talking and was just staring at me, no facial expressions.

  I said, "I'm going to call you an ambulance. We need to get you somewhere to get treatment. You are badly injured."

  He shook his head and was pointing at me. He really didn't want my help, but he must have been in agony. How long had he been lying here, and why did I get the strange feeling that he knew me?

  "They come. Run!" he gasped.

  He was pointing behind me. He looked scared and I nearly dropped the phone.

  "Who are coming?" I asked.

  I looked around, nervously, but couldn't see or hear anything.

  "What is this box? Do you want me to have it? What does it do?" I was shouting again, but having a bit of a panic attack.

  Screech of car tyres. Loud and clear. Had the police finally rumbled something nearby? They didn't have any sirens on, so maybe not. My panic attack now became a fully-fledged paddy and I realised I didn't have much time, so I jumped round the corner to hide behind a large metal container on wheels that belonged to the takeaway. As the sound disappeared, I turned round to see if it was safe. I crouched down and scurried back, hiding behind the takeaway, and then moved further up near the taxi hut, emerging from behind it, so that I could see the top of the alleyway where it joined the main street, and into the alley itself. I could see a single green car near the alleyway below 'Gemma's' flat, parked outside the taxi hut on the double yellow line.

  Two men, one small man, dark clothes, but I couldn't see the face. The second, a large man. Built like a builder? With a hat. Two hats in twenty four hours. It was a pork pie hat.

  Christ on a bike, what was going on? I sprinted back behind the takeaway and further up the road, back to where I had found the origin of the groaning. I was in full panic mode. Who were those guys, and what was so interesting about that flat? Had they taken Gemma? As I approached the wheelie bin, the noises and groaning had gone.

  Just a pile of leather and clothes. One eye Biehn had scarpered.

  I looked up and down the road. How had he got away so quickly? And more importantly
, why hadn't he remembered his clothes?

  What was I saying about the movies? This appearing and disappearing was now becoming quite tedious, why couldn't people just stay put for a while and give me some answers?

  Now you see me, now you don't.

  And then the old man vanished as if into thin air.

  This other man held the device and placed it into his pocket. He was visibly scared and walked quickly back to his car. Driving back in his car, he thought about still water without ice. I saw the other two jump in to their green car, and watch him leave. They then started their engine, and started to follow the man down the street. I didn't like the look of this, and decided it would be best if I followed to see this all through. After all, I had a vested interest in the man's future.

  And his past.

  4.

  I drove home like a madman, checking my mirrors obsessively all the way to the door. I was wondering about the two men looking up at the flat, with their dark suits and hats, maybe looking for me or returning for Gemma. Talk about stereotypical baddies, they could have walked out of a multitude of TV shows. But the big scary guy, he looked just like the builder man, the same jaw and teeth, I was almost certain of it. Did that mean I had dreamed the previous night; the man, the body and his blood? He had then disappeared into thin air, so maybe I really was losing touch with reality?

  I got home, looking anxiously down the street for anyone watching me. My street was fairly open, and there were very few hiding places for anyone to lurk in the shadows. I felt that the coast was clear, so rushed over to my front door, fumbling my keys into the lock. Once I got in, I closed all the curtains, and checked the news again. Was no news really good news under these circumstances? I was clearly losing my mind, what had just happened in the last day or so, and had it really happened to me? Dead bodies, beautiful women and vanishing one eyed men speaking nonsense; it was an awful lot of confusion to take in all at once.