The Nostradamus prophecies

71

Bale awoke shivering. He had been dreaming and in his dream, Madame, his mother, was beating him about the shoulders with a coat hanger for some imagined slight. He kept on crying out – ‘No, Madame, no!’ – but still she continued hitting him.

It was dark. There were no other sounds from inside the house.

Bale shunted himself backwards, until he was able to prop himself against a beam. His fist was sore, where he had lashed out to defend himself during the dreamed attack and his neck and his shoulder felt raw – as if they had been scalded with boiling water and then scrubbed with an emery board.

He cracked on his torch and checked out the loft. Perhaps he could kill a rat or a squirrel and eat it? But no. He wouldn’t be quick enough anymore.

He knew that he didn’t dare venture downstairs yet to check out whether any food had been left behind in the kitchen, or to draw some water. The flics might have left a watchman behind to protect their crime scene from ghouls and curiosity seekers – it was comforting to think that such people still existed and that not everything in this life had been relegated to normalisation and mediocrity.

But water he did need. And urgently. He had drunk his own urine on three occasions now and had used the residue to disinfect his wounds, but he knew, from lectures with the Legion, that there was no earthly sense in doing that again. He would be contributing to his own certain death.

How many hours had he been up here? How many days? Bale had no idea of time any more.

Why was he here? Ah yes. The prophecies. He needed to find the prophecies.

He allowed his head to drop back on to his chest. By now the blanket he had been using as a pressure pad had congealed to his wound – he didn’t dare separate the two for fear of starting the blood flow up again.

For the first time in many years he wanted to go home. He wanted the comfort of his own bedroom and not the anonymous hotels that he had been forced to live in for so long. He wanted the respect and the support of the brothers and sisters that he had grown up with. And he wanted Madame, his mother, to publicly acknowledge his achievements for the Corpus Maleficus and to give him his due.

Bale was tired. He needed rest. And treatment for his wound. He was fed up with being hard and living like a wolf. Fed up with being hunted by people who were not worthy to tie his bootlaces.

He lay on his belly and dragged himself towards the hatch cover. If he didn’t move now, he would die. It was as simple as that.

For he had suddenly understood that he was hallucinating. That this temporary helplessness of his was just another strategy of the Devil’s to unman him – to make him weak.

Bale reached the hatch cover and dragged it to one side. He stared down into the empty bedroom.

It was dark. The windows were open and it was night. There were no lights anywhere. The police had left. Surely they had left.

He listened, through the rushing of blood in his head, for any inexplicable sounds.

There were none.

He eased his legs through the hatch cover. For a long time he sat on the lip of the hatch staring down at the floor. Finally he cracked his torch and tried to estimate the total drop.

Ten feet. Enough to break a leg or sprain an ankle.

But he didn’t have the strength left to let down the chair. Didn’t have the agility to hang from the hatch and feel for it with his legs.

He switched off his torch and slid it back inside his shirt.

Then he twisted on his good arm and dropped into the void.