Spookshow 7 by Tim McGregor

Author:Tim McGregor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tim McGregor
Published: 2018-01-10T00:30:25+00:00

~

There was no flatline, no tell-tale whine of the electrocardiograph monitor.

His father died en route. The attempt to resuscitate performed by the team in the ER had been perfunctory. Crashing the stretcher through the doors, the old man’s ashen pallor told the doctors all they needed to know.

Detective Mockler had tailgated the ambulance all the way to the hospital, almost rear-ending it more than once. Racing inside after the stretcher, he already knew it was too late. He had witnessed Emergency Room chaos before, and could decipher the frenetic energy of a team trying to save a life. Before anyone broke the news to him, he knew by their muted response that his father had perished on the way over.

“The guy’s a cop,” he heard one of the doctors say, glancing back to where the detective hovered near the door, close enough to observe but still be out of the way. “Maybe we should try.”

As a homicide detective, Mockler had seen more dead bodies than he cared to remember. There was something unmistakable in the way a body lay, a stillness so deep, so unnatural, that it commanded the attention of everyone present. Even those who averted their eyes from it, it was there, almost deafening in its stillness. The figure on the stretcher lay like that as the team went through the motions of resuscitation before giving up. One of them shook his head and crossed the room to tell him that his father had perished. Nothing we could do, he said.

Words that should have dropped like an anvil onto his heart were just words in his ear, meaningless and without context. Mockler stepped toward the stretcher.

“Wait,” the doctor said. “Let us clean him up first.”

“It’s okay,” Mockler replied, brushing past him.

Seeing was believing, wasn’t it? If the words meant nothing, then surely seeing his father dead would ferry the impact Mockler felt was missing. The nurse stepped aside as he approached, but the hollow pit in the detective’s gut remained. The old man on the stretcher bore little resemblance to his father. An older, frailer impostor, the mouth gaped open horribly.

He still felt nothing. Why should he be surprised that his heart registered no emotion at all? The old man was dead, something he had wished for more than once in his lifetime.

The doctor had the graciousness to gently push the dead man’s jaw closed, giving the deceased a slightly less ghastly appearance. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said.

“Don’t be,” he replied and left the room. Making his way back through the waiting room, there was one small flicker of emotion that bubbled up and that was relief at not having to endure the turmoil of grief. It simply confirmed what he already knew in his heart, that he felt nothing for the man at all.

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