Catharsis [Novel]

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

            He is five feet in front of me, and I am in the middle of the open backyard.  I have nowhere to go.  Nothing I can do.

            His flashlight leaves the window and begins a slow sweep to his left as his head begins to turn with it.  I drop to a crouch (At some point I had stood up as I approached him.  I have to work on this focusing-on-what-I'm-doing thing.), and I know he has sensed someone behind him.  I know it.  But he is turning so slowly.  Agonizingly slowly.  His turn is slower than what I've seen in horror movies when the pretty blonde knows the evil monster is standing behind her in the empty house. 

            Why?  Is he messing with me?  I ask myself.  Is he trying to give me time to escape?  Is he scared of what he'll see?  Why turn like that?

            And then it hits me.  The guy in the alley who tried to attack me that first night.  The same thing happened with him.  He moved slowly, too.  Everything moved slowly.

            Wait a minute.

            Turning around, I look at the trees behind me that had been gently swaying in the wind before.  They are motionless.  No swaying.  No wind.  No sound.  No...nothing.  Everything has stopped. 

            Looking back at the policeman, I see he is about halfway turned towards me.  He'll see me any moment.  Unless I move.  Now.

            Straightening my legs with a burst of energy, I hurl myself sideways (away from the direction of his flashlight) and into the shadow of a hedge next to the edge of the house twenty feet away.

            As I land, I turn my body so that I can see the officer complete his turn behind me.  The beam of light passes through the patch of grass where I was just standing without pause and continues in a circle as he sweeps it across the backyard.

            And he is not in slow motion.  Not only is he not in slow motion, but he appears to be pretty agitated as he swings the flashlight back and forth letting the creamy light rest on anything in the backyard that begs the slightest tickle of his attention.

            Then I notice that his right hand - the hand that isn't holding the flashlight - is resting on the firearm strapped to his hip.  It’s a hand that is one good twitch from putting a bullet through me and quickly putting an end to any exciting fun I thought I’d been having.

            That gun helps drain some of the excited energy I had been feeling.  Not all.  But some.

            And I'm really glad I hadn't chosen to jump straight backwards when I moved.  If I had, then I would have plopped myself straight into middle of his current furious investigating.

            The curiosity and fear and anger (I suspect at himself, but I don't know for sure.) runs off of him in nauseating waves.  His emotions went from neutral and tasteless to overwhelmingly strong in mere seconds.  I'm definitely glad I'm somewhere he isn't searching now.  The last thing I need is a scared, twitchy policeman with a large caliber handgun pointed at me.  I'm not sure what's happening to me right now, but I'm sure that addition would not improve my situation.          

            As I finish that thought, the policeman finishes waving his flashlight around the backyard.  "That was just plain creepy," he says out loud and shudders.  "I could have sworn someone was behind me."

            I recognize the talking-to-myself-to-get-rid-of-boogeymen tone to his voice, and I smile.  I've been there before, but it's not often I get to be the cause of it.  Especially to a trained officer of the law.

            And then my smile drops as I realize the folly of my once ingenious position next to the bush.  When I had jumped away from his flashlight, I had jumped further along the path of the house that he had not explored yet.  Now that he is done shaking off the willies, he is preparing to complete his circuit of the house.  A path that will take him directly past me.

            "Double crap," I mumble through clenched teeth and prepare for the worst.