Cover of Darkness by Rory Westgarth

Author:Rory Westgarth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Published: 2019-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

When Cole didn’t answer his phone the third time at the third hour, she began to worry. It was a woman’s instinct to worry, her father had always said. She didn’t believe that though, amongst the lies of men that were told to women by them, their sick follies, and masculine absolutes which had a song of deceit and violence hidden there. She thought that the whole world seemed anxious and angry sometimes. It was everywhere. And the media didn’t help with its marketing of the never-ending funnel of products, items pushed on consumers, and its portrayals of night-time news; violence always involving drugs, knives, sex-offenders, death, and the murder of small innocent children like the falling of angels and the debased regression of a human race. Maybe the socialist left had it right in some ways, she mused, with their community focus, their equality, and their censoring of the media. Although she did not really believe that either. There was no utopia, she thought, or any right way; any true way.

She held at her stomach, distended, and pushed in the belly button starting to push out for lack of room. Its growing neighbor silently grew larger each day and she rubbed coconut butter into the under parts of her belly, sensually and softly. She gently pushed against the forming bones in her belly, perceiving the smallest or imagined pushes back, and then adding to her anxiety by worrying she may cause accidental harm to the growing thing.

She made a wheatgrass and chia seed smoothie and sank into the old worn sofa in the front room. She tapped the mobile phone against her teeth. Twice. And then suddenly, determined and with grace, swung her feet onto the floorboards of the old house, stood, and called the station; but Cole was not there. Cole hadn’t returned and he hadn’t called in. She told them Cole hadn’t come home and she hadn’t been able to reach him on his mobile.

“When was that?” Sergeant Bosco asked.

“I called a few times over the time,” and she read out the times from her mobile. It was beautiful the way phones now recorded those kinds of things, she thought.

“Thanks,” Bosco said. “We will send someone out. I’m sure he’s fine. No need to worry. We can send someone over if you want.”

“No, I won’t need that,” and suddenly, she flushed although Bosco couldn’t see it and she felt embarrassed and foolish.

After she’d hung up, Bosco was worried and he sent two officers out, looking up and down the isolated roads out direct north and north-west because Cole was consistent, if anything, and he didn’t neglect coming home. He figured maybe he’d just had an accident and gone off the road somewhere and due to it being isolated, maybe no one else had passed by.

The two officers left after failing to raise Cole on his radio. The static of the radio was like a timeless, black void and Cole was not.

They took a special emergency rescue pack out of the stores, signed it out, and packed it in one of the cars’ boots.

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