Storymania - Amnesia by Ellys Parker

Amnesia
Ellys Parker

   The sirens pierced the night air, breaking the chilled silence of the dark October night. As the sirens approached, bringing with them the interchanging blue and red lights of the police cars that they heralded. As the lights played across the still house, untouched on the outside, light slanted through some of the closed blinds covering what few panes of glass remained, casting interchanging shadows across the motionless form lying at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the house’s second floor. As the illumination faded from the still form...it began to rise, revealing it’s self as a young man, perhaps in his early thirties, with medium blond hair in a disarrayed fashion and clouded blue eyes that could be hiding untold sights. As the light paned it’s way down his body, it revealed the tattered uniform of a S.W.A.T team member, complete with torn bullet-proof vest. As the man stumbled through the house, eventually making his way to the front door complete with broken lock and fractured glass, the approaching cars outside screeched to a halt. Soon the fractured slat of wood, which before could have been called a door, was pushed open, casting the man in a wash of moonlight, illuminating him to the two men who stood at the now barren opening. No longer able to support himself, the man stumbled backwards, only to be caught by the two men who just arrived and eased slowly to the floor.

“ Jeez Larke what the hell happened here, for that matter, what the hell happened to you?”

Larke. That’s right, that was the man’s name. Slowly he remembered a bit about himself. His name was Lyser P. Larke, member of the Majorville S.W.A.T. team. He was a new member, just joined from out of the city on a transfer, and had been on the force for less than a week. No one had developed much of a relationship with him as of yet, no one had seen his personal life or any member of his family for that matter as he had somewhat distanced himself from others, letting them believe that he was just a shy man, not yet familiar with the other members. He had received the day off that evening since they had had a slow evening and could afford to let a few men go home and rest, and left in a hurry, not even bothering to change out of his uniform, he would have time to do that at home. As he was nearing his home, something caught his eye… but he couldn’t remember what. Last he remembered was the moment of waking up at the foot of the stairs in this home.

“I'm… not quite sure what happened here. I think I hit my head. Everything is all a blur.”

The men helped him to a sitting position, then the one who hadn’t spoken yet decided at that moment to utter a few words.

“ We received a phone call from this location, a young woman it sounded like. She seemed almost near mad. Kept screaming that there was a mad man in the house and that he was trying to kill her. She went on like this for a bit, no one could calm her down enough to get much out of her before she screamed that he was here and the phone went dead. We rushed right over as we heard a gunshot before the line gave out.”

That’s right. He saw a figure entering the house. The figure was moving around the door, looking through the window. Soon the being managed to open the door, and quietly snuck in. that was why he had gone into the house.

“Yes, I saw a man break in through the door. I…I followed him in. I'm all right now, I think I can stand. Where is the rest of the team, why aren’t their any of the local police here or at least a paramedic?”

  “There was a situation down at the Regional Bank at the corner of Smythe and Barrack. We were the only ones who could be spared at the moment to go check out the situation, everyone else has their arms full trying to sort things out over there. Here let us help you up, you look like a drunkard wobbling all over like that.”

    As the men raised him to his feet, he recognised their faces from work. The one who had spoke first was Clarence Wright, one of the older members of the team; he’d been on for a while. Wright had introduced Lyser to the team, acted kind of like his mentor. Word was he was soon looking into retirement even though outwardly he looked maybe only forty-three with slight greying at the temples. The next man was a beanpole of a man, who looked more like a librarian than a member of a police unit what with his rimless glasses and pointed nose. His name was Stewart Langdon. He served more as the forensic guy at a scene, helping them out if they needed clues to where a guy was going or who he was.

“Well, I doubt the guy’s still here who broke in, what with you out cold and all for who knows how long. Best we can do is look around and assess the damage, see what clues there are to nailing this guy.”

   “Yeah, you’re probably right, maybe my head will clear as we look around.” Larke dusted off his clothes as best he could, running his hands down his vest to clean the dust from it. As he moved his hands away he noticed a dark shine to them, and as he brought them to his face he saw that his palms were covered in dried blood. Horrified, he quietly checked all over himself to see if the blood had come from him. Aside from a small cut on his head and numerous smaller ones on his arms and legs, there were no wounds that could account for the amount of blood on his palms. At least, not on him.

   As the three moved onward through the house, the mystery deepened. Not a thing was disturbed downstairs, everything looked as it should.

   Langdon moved over to a shelf in the living room, looking at the golden ornaments aligned neatly in a row. “Funny that a burglar would pass up the chance to take these.” Langdon reached out and took one of the small ornaments off the shelf. “Each one of these must be worth at least a few hundreds. Nice and light too, easy too carry.”
Everything down here seemed so out of order, not at all like how a crime scene involving a robbery should look. Which only brought to mind, was this really a robbery? Why would the burglar risk the chance of breaking into a house to steal something, only to pass by all of the easy, in reach items that could easily be snatched and taken away.

“Well boys I don’t think were going to get any answers down here. Whatever this guy was planning he obviously didn’t want to steal anything, or at least he didn’t want to go for the easy stuff and opted for a challenge, risking the chance of running into someone by going upstairs to conduct whatever business he was planning. I think it’s time we headed to higher ground and found out more about the mysteries this person was up too.”

For some reason at the mention of going upstairs, Larke’s blood froze in his body. He didn’t know why but something in his head was telling him… no, more like screaming at him, not too go up those stairs to what awaited them. As the two other men moved up the stairs towards the unknown, Larke remained where he was. Only once Wright looked back at him and asked if he was coming did he take a hesitant step up the stairs, soon following the others up to the top.

Once at the top, Langdon let out a soft whistle “well would you look at that…” at the top of the stairs was a long hall with three doors along it’s walls. One at the very end and one to each side of it at different locations. But it obviously wasn’t the doors or the walls that drew their attention but the long trail of crimson blood that went from the door nearest them to their left to the last one directly ahead at the end of the hall. Intermittently placed along the walls were splashes of gore and red handprints, as if some young child had run through with a set of finger-paints but had run out of other colours besides red.

  Larke again looked down at his hands, starring at them as if they had taken control of his thoughts, possessing him to wonder if the horror on the walls was the same as the one on his outstretched hands.

“Well, I'm no psychic, but I can pretty well guess that the young woman we seek, sad enough to admit, is behind one of those doors.”

Without looking up from his hands, Lyser answered, “She’s in the one at the end of the hall.” Realising what he just said, and not knowing how he knew, he quickly looked up to see both of the other men starring at him. Surprised he stammers out how he knew, or what he thought was the reason he knew. “I thought the same as we did down stairs, that it was odd that the guy didn’t take anything of value. I figured he would be upstairs, doing something maybe of a more…devious nature. As I went up I heard noises coming from the room there at the end. I drew my gun and went to the door, tried the handle and found it unlocked. I shoved the door open and found the guy in the process of…” Larke paused for a minute, revolted by what he remembered the man was doing to her. “He was… he was ravishing the poor woman. I pointed my gun at the guy and told him to back off, but I guess he was too quick or I was too slow. I got off one shot but he managed to somehow still get to me. He wrestled me to the ground but took off when I was out of his way. I guess I got him good cause he stumbled down the hall, fell against it a few times. I caught up too him as he made it to that door. He was pretty worn out by then so I managed to get him to the ground, where he appeared to blackout. I got up and leaned towards the wall to catch my breath and that’s when I guess he got up and knocked me on the head.”
Langdon and Wright stood there looking over their fellow officer for a long while, but then let whatever they could have been assuming of him slide. Out of the few days they’d known him he’d proven to be a capable officer and they had no reason to question his word.

“Then I guess we see what evidence we can gather if were going to catch this guy. Langdon you come with me, we’ll check the room at the end of the hall where the woman was last seen. Larke, you check the room there where the guy was last before he knocked you out. Maybe he left something behind in the struggle.”

Larke nodded his head in agreement “Alright, I’ll see what I can find.”

As the two older officers moved down to the room at the end of the hall, Larke went to his assigned door and opened it. Instantly he was hit with the metallic scent of blood as the aroma assaulted his nostrils. Larke stood in place, confused and horrified at the same time by what lay before him, a scene that according to what he remembered took place that night should never even exist.

“What in god’s name is this!” Before Larke the room was a disaster scene, a scene taken straight out of a horror film. Blood was everywhere, drenching the carpet he stood on, splattered on the walls that he was now moving away from, moving towards the bed near the windows across the room. The bed sheets were all torn from the bed, pulled off into the direction of the windows. All that remained, lying across the bed almost as if it was alive and decided to take a rest from it’s deadly deed, was a pump action shotgun. Afraid of what he might discover, Larke moved around to the side of the bed where the sheets were heaped on the floor. And as a result almost was granted a sight of what he ate that morning, although that would have been a welcome sight compared to what was before him. The body of the man who Larke had seen enter through the house lay in a sprawled position on the floor; it’s limbs all askew in awkward positions. But the sight that most made him sick was that the man’s face had been completely removed, almost as if… Larke once again glanced at the shotgun, knowing instantly what had happened to the man’s visage. Larke couldn’t take any more; he near ran out of the room, slamming closed the door as if it could also close the horrible images that kept flooding into his mind even after he left the room.

Suddenly Langdon’s voice rang out. “ Hey Larke! We’ve got a pulse! The woman’s still alive, get you but in here!”

Stumbling down the hall, Larke opened the door to the room, what he saw was more of a shock to him than what he a previously seen of the faceless man. Before him lay the still form of his wife, her blond hair fanned out around her, tinted brown where some blood from a wound on her head had flowed onto her hair and dried. Her pale skin obviously flushed from blood loss almost was as pale as the blanket Wright had draped over her shapely form. As he gazed upon her, her eyes flickered for a moment then opened. For a brief time she stared around in confusion, but as her gaze locked onto her husband’s, fear replaced the confusion in a heartbeat.
“Oh God please help me! Someone get that killer away from me, please someone help, don’t let him get me! How could you Lyser? I thought you loved me, we’re married for Christ’s sake! Please someone help!”

The two men on the floor stared in total confusion at the ranting of the woman, before turning their bewildered faces to gaze at the man above them.

Suddenly, Everything came rushing back to him. Everything that had happened that night returned in an instant to the forgotten mind of Lyser P. Larke. And what he remembered made his knees weak and his heart quicken. Larke had seen a man enter a house on his way home that night, that was certain. But what he now remembered was that it was his house the man had entered. The very same house that he stood in now. But the man had never broken in, no… the door had opened for him, his wife had let the man in quite on her own free will. Realising what his wife was obviously up too, Larke stopped his car before pulling into the driveway and ran the rest of the distance to the door. He didn’t even bother turning the handle, instead opting for a more brutish method of slamming the obstruction open as he ran past it, breaking the glass window at it’s center. Heading for the stairs, he went up them two at a time. Once at the top he guessed where the man and his sleazy wife were and bolted for the door to the room, not even pausing as he threw open the door, catching his wife and the man in the beginning process of love making, not rape. No, his wife was not in any discomfort, none whatsoever. She sat there on the bed in her night-gown as the man sat next to her, his jacket removed and draped over the bed as he sat on the other side of her, his arm around her. Without thinking Larke drew his gun and shot the man, who then rolled off the bed and cried in agony as he clutched his bleeding side. As Larke turned to finish his task, his wife sprang from the bed and hit him across the head with their bedside digital clock. Reeling from the blow, Larke turned and, using the hilt of his gun struck her a ghastly blow on her head, letting her limp form fall to the floor. He turned to continue his task of the man on the floor, only to discover that he had gotten up and was stumbling down the hall, splashing blood everywhere. Larke soon closed the distance between the man and himself, throwing open the door to the nearest room and tossing the man in before entering himself. The pour soul staggered to his only way of escape, the windows by the bed, falling twice unto the floor as he made his way across. Larke would have none of that, grabbing the shotgun he always had in case of emergencies behind the dresser, he proceeded to follow the man around to the side of the bed. Once there, he grabbed the man by his hair and lifted him partway up from the floor. Th man then made many pleas for his life, saying odd things like how he was only comforting her, how he was only being there for her, how he would never do it again. At that last comment, Larke let a slight smile escape from his lips, then replied in a clearly mocking voice, “Your damn right you won’t” and placed the muzzle of the weapon against the man’s nose, pulled the trigger, and erased the man’s existence from the face of the earth. Still reeling slightly from his blow to the head, he threw the gun on top of the bed, and exited the room. He stood for a minute to catch his breath at the top of the stairs, then remembering his wife, turned to go finish her. But his foot slipped on the blood-strewn hallway and he lost his footing, somersaulting down the stairs till he stopped, unconscious, at the bottom.

As all the memories and thoughts played across his face from the night and realisation of what he had done came in an instant to his horrified mind, so did the two men on the floor realise what had come to transpire in the house as well.
Larke turned to run, and made it almost to the stairs before he heard the sharp crack of thunder from the guns and the sting of lightning from their bullets as they penetrated his flesh and sent him crashing to the floor. The last thing his eyes saw were the two blurry images of his former partners, radioing in for an ambulance, then everything went dark.

Two weeks later, at the Majorville cemetery on a sunny, Sunday afternoon, a group of people stood around a coffin as it was slowly lowered into a freshly dug grave. No tears were shed that day for the man being buried, no one wished to even remember the awful night in which he passed away, and had only shown as a customary sign of respect for the deceased.

As soon as the coffin was placed into the ground and the first shovel of dirt was thrown into the hole. The gathering quickly dispersed, going on to live out whatever tasks they needed to get done. As the crowd soon thinned out, two men in matching S.W.A.T. Team uniforms, who had been closest to the casket, turned and slowly headed towards their waiting vehicle. As they walked the two began a conversation, obviously to any prying ears, about the recently buried man.

“It’s a shame that it had to end up like this, he showed such potential as a S.W.A.T. member.” The older looking one with the greying hair said.

The one with the glasses turned his head to him and replied, “ I know what you mean, I never would have guessed that beneath his shy looking exterior he was so violent.”

As the two continued their walk towards the vehicle, the older one pulled out a photo. “Do you know who this guy is?” he asked his companion.

The other took the photo and looked at it for a moment before handing it back. “Nope, haven’t got a clue.”

“It’s the guy from the scene of the crime, the guy who was missing his face. We managed to find out a lot about him. For instance, he was the father of the wife.” Ignoring the look of shock on his friend’s face, the other continued. “ Yah, we managed to get the rest of the story from the wife after she recovered. I t ends up that she was pregnant, found out that afternoon. She was hoping to keep it as a surprise for her husband till later that night but she had to tell someone. She called her father and he said he’d be right over. As he got to the door she let him in, and soon he was congratulating her and telling her how proud he was of her. That’s when the husband had arrived home and found the two of them together. He had had no idea it was her father because they had never personally met, the father had been out serving time in the war at the time and had completely missed their wedding and everything that preceded it. He had only recently made it back on leave.”

The two men walked in silence. Finally reaching the vehicle and opening the doors. As the younger one was getting in, he paused for a moment, considering the information that he had just received. After a second, he turned to his partner and said something that had been bugging him since finding out all that had happened that twisted night. “Do you remember how he had said how he had hit his head, and how he couldn’t remember what had happened that night?”

“Yeah what about it?”

“Well, I just thought, If he hadn’t remembered what he had done that night, and still couldn’t after we had clued into what he had done, he would never have run and we wouldn’t have had to stop him. I guess some things are better left forgotten.”

“No argument there.”

Both of the men get into their vehicle, and after waiting for a passing car to go by, pull out of the cemetery parking lot, and drive down the road, soon disappearing around a corner, focusing on their day ahead and all the paperwork waiting for them. The thoughts of that day two weeks ago, already forgotten.