Playing Dead: Book One of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Chapter 21

I had never expected to get this far.

The bathroom. The very top step maybe. But not here. Not outside the front door with the moonlight drenching me in a spotlight that almost forced me back into the house, scared it would trip some kind of alarm and have Harper on my tail before I could reach the end of the road. How far would I get before I felt his arm around my throat, his hand muffling my cries as he dragged me back into the pit, forever destined to languish there in the filth and the shadows.

Yet now, here I was, standing on a narrow set of crumbling stone steps outside the house that had been my prison for what seemed like forever, standing in a street that I did not recognise.

If you don't expect for one minute that you might escape, you don't even begin to formulate a plan as to what you might do if you were to succeed. And apart from running like crazy until I found a pathway home, I really hadn't devised any concrete notion of what  in the Hell I would do if I did happen to escape. Running like crazy had seemed like a good idea, only now I was here, I realised immediately just how difficult running was going to be.

Sounds enveloped me. Noises that I should not have been able to hear, assaulted my ears like a thousand nasty little pinpricks. Small movements made my eyes dart here and there, seeking out their source. A rat scurrying along the gutter foraging for some tasty morsel. The ghostly rustling of leaves as the wind whispered through nearby trees. A bat flying low overhead, swooping down as it homed in on its prey in the darkness. In the distance, the sound of a car, far away and yet rumbling like the growing rage of thunder. A moth dancing under the streetlight, its furry body hitting the glass of the lamp again and again and again. On and on it went until I could take no more. My legs gave way underneath me and I grabbed at the railing, half-sprawling on the steps as I tried to manage the bombardment to my senses that had me reeling in horror. I almost wanted to hammer on the door and beg Harper to let me back in.

I clapped my hands over my ears and screwed my eyes tight shut, feeling the stab of pain in my left eye as I did so. Counting to ten slowly, I breathed in and out, trying to control the wheezing racks of pain in my chest as I fought against the panic that was threatening to wipe me out before I had even started. Carefully, I opened my eyes again, trying to focus only on the road ahead, urging myself to not let them wander to every small movement that plagued the field of my vision. When I just about felt able to stop the muscles pulling my eyes in every direction, I cautiously removed my trembling hands from my ears, whimpering slightly at the crescendo of noise that threatened to have me curling up into a ball again.

Gritting my teeth, I concentrated on pulling on the boots, almost breaking down in sobs when my fingers wouldn't remember how to tie up the laces in a bow and had to settle on tucking them into the tops of the boots. Using the handrail as support, I hauled myself to my feet and stood surveying the road ahead warily.

In the back of my mind, I could hear that tick-tick-tick of the alarm clock that was threatening to go off any second and alert Harper to my disappearance. The image of his furious and vengeful face in my mind was enough to get my feet moving and I began walking away, devoting all my energy and will-power on focusing only on a point in the distance.

Every house seemed to mirror Harper's house. Run-down, dilapidated shells, the skeletal remains of a road that had probably once housed good honest working class families, flowers in pots, children playing in the street and the smell of Sunday roasts. Now it was devoid of colour, empty of life, just a grey rotten landscape filled with rubbish-strewn gutters, the smell of sewage and scavenging animals roaming the shadows. There was barely a light on in any house. Even many of the streetlights had abandoned this place to the dark.

My footsteps echoed, the crunch of grit and crushed glass under my feet as I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, staring at the junction at the end of the road. If I could get there, I was one step closer to my old life. I could do this. With every step, I felt the energy growing inside me, pushing me forward, urging me to keep going.