Chapter 3: The Hidden Journey
The police were frozen in place after the rather morbidly impressive feat that the small boy had achieved, and had only come to their senses when that very boy moved towards the exit to the station.
Harry had started to calmly make his way over to the door representing his freedom and dropped the weapon he used to murder his late relatives as he did so. Before he got far, an officer had hastily reacted in the form of grabbing hold of Harry's shoulder. Harry had had a flashback to many moments when people had done that, and in his limited experience it had never boded well for him.
Harry had yelped at being touched, his voice taking on the same pattern as when he had burned himself once on the oven because his late relative had not seen fit to warn the toddler of Harry's past away from the oven. In short order Harry had gotten the officer to unhand him; in shorter order, Harry had started off in decidedly faster pace than before, towards his sunlit freedom.
The lobby of the precinct was unnaturally busy that day, so Harry's work was already cut out for him in the form of manoeuvring through the mass of bodies to the exit, let alone with the added disadvantage of every person there trying to impede his progress.
Even those Harry recognised as Lawyers were attempting to stop the boy from running away which he thought was weird. Didn't one of the Skinny One's "friends" say something about "no good barristers" undermining the justice that was the police force? It hardly mattered at that moment, for all were trying to stop the child from reaching his goal.
Left, right, under and even over Harry had dodged, evading the much stronger and farther reach of the adults. Near the end of Harry's short dash out of the building, there was someone blocking the door, standing in the way of Harry's escape. Harry didn't bother to care who they were, he only wanted free.
Harry saw an opening in the way that the man stood. He had his legs spread shoulder width apart - far enough that Harry could slip through. He ran at the man that was bent slightly forward, preparing to catch him, but at the last moment Harry dropped down onto his knees to slide on through. Harry ducked backwards so that he was out of reach of the man while he slid by, and the man attempted to bend down further and grab him.
Unfortunately for the man, Harry had once seen something rather funny on the telly once, though not without the chance of great harm upon him if one of Them caught him doing so. Harry couldn't help but try to see if it actually worked, so Harry balled his hand into a fist and struck upward betwixt the man's legs.
Thankfully for the constable, he was wearing his athletic's cup and the strike hadn't hurt as much as it would have otherwise. In fact, Harry had shaken his hand after that, to get the sting out of his hand. Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to strike something with a closed fist. Harry took note of this for the future, as well as the fact that perhaps not everything seen on the telly was such a good idea to replicate.
There were people that had given chase for Harry after the four-year-old had run out into the street. The passing vehicles had screeched to a halt and swerved to avoid the boy running across the road. Harry added running across a busy street to the newly created list of things that he shouldn't do. The constable after him had almost been hit by a car, too, so dedicated they were to catch the elusive boy.
Soon enough Harry had led the chase into a crowd, and from there it was relatively easy for Harry to lose those giving chase in the crowd. Harry then began to slowly move away towards a destination, not even he was aware of.
It wasn't long before Harry had begun to become tired. His little legs could only go on so far, and he was quite aware that he was not properly nourished as well as the next four-year-old. So, it was not surprising that harry chose to sit on the bench that he was near to.
It didn't take long before Harry was questioned on what he was doing, and understandably so, considering that it would look fairly odd that a four-year-old would be resting on a park bench alone. True the park was near a residential area, and it was in the early nineties, so these things were normally overlooked. However, it was not so easily overlooked when Harry was so young. Too young, in fact, to be out of sight of a minder for any substantial length of time.
In fact, one such a man had picked up on this very thing and had started to approach the young boy. Harry sensed the man's approach and eyed him warily, yet with a fair amount of very well hidden interest. The man had knelt down in front of Harry and had started with, "Hello there. My name is Will, what's yours?"
The man wore a kind, disarming smile; it was the kind of smile that was meant to disarm those that it was directed at. If it wasn't for Harry's short past, he would have trusted that smile, along with those twinkling eyes. It was from Harry's minimal past experiences that kept him on edge, but he hid his anxiety from the stranger in favour of acting like a normal kid. "My name's Kev'n, but Mum says I'm not s'pose to talk to stwangrrs," Harry purposefully slurred to make himself sound more innocent and normal; the last thing Harry wanted to do was attract more attentions to himself after what he had done at the police station. It was also the reason why he made a name up that would be considered normal in every mainly English speaking country.
He didn't regret his actions, though he knew that others would not look too kindly upon him for it.
"Lucky thing that you know my name, then; that means I'm not a stranger, right?" The man - Will - replied. Harry's response to those words was a hesitant nod. Will had looked pleased with this, and had continued with, "Now that that's cleared up, can you tell me where your parents are, Kevin?"
If Harry was in show business, he probably would have been able to easily gain an Emmy or an Oscar for the act he put up. That was to say, Harry's suddenly wide and terrified eyes frantically searching the area was a very good act to solidify the "Lost Boy" scene he was going for. To add to the effect, Harry started to hyperventilate, and the effect on the man was immediate.
Like any normal person, when Will was confronted with a clearly frightened child, he sought to remedy the situation. With a very soft voice, Will started, "Hey now, there's no need for that. Here, come with me, we'll find your parents." Mildly, Will had extended his hand for Harry to take. With very exaggerated hesitance, Harry reached out and took the man's rough hand.
When Harry felt the hand, his mind went into overdrive into what that would mean, and analysing everything else that was new about the man. His mind told him that the roughness of the hand meant he often used his hands, so that meant the man could have a job where menial labour was a requirement. The grip was strong, which supported that assumption. However, from the man's actions and age, it suggested that he was probably retired and continued to work or had laborious hobbies, and was familiar with how to treat children. When Harry had positioned his tiny finger over where he knew to be where he could feel the heartbeat, his brain told him that the man would have a high stamina; if Harry needed to run away from the man, he would not be able to outrun him.
Harry had no way of knowing that his instincts had interpreted the slow, strong beat of the man's heart as a sign of high stamina, nor that it was his instincts that made him place his finger at the right spot to read it.
It was interesting to note for a proper analysis as to what kind of person, exactly, Harry was dealing with. So far, he had not found any hint of the man being anything other than exactly what he proposed to be, but he knew that the most dangerous of people tended to be the ones that tried their hardest to look innocent. He was living proof of that; at least, he intended to be.
It didn't take long before the two males had made it to the elder's home. During the route, when the man had noticed the subdued pace that Harry had been walking, he had correctly assumed it was from tiredness and had then picked the diminutive boy up to carry him the rest of the way.
When they had arrived, it was late enough for the evening meal to be served, and so Will had put something rather simple together in the short time allotted to him. He had made soup and had served both Harry and himself, before both he had set Harry to bed.
So Harry had lain there in a rather large, empty bed alone in a strange man's home, waiting to go to sleep. He had gone over the events of the day and had only then realised that he had not a drop of blood on him when logistically speaking he should have been covered from the arterial spray from the Dursley's necks being sliced open.
He distinctly remembered the surrounding people being covered, but miraculously somewhere between putting the two monsters down and escaping the notice of the police, he was cleaned.
He would have to look into this later, but at that moment, his young body demanded rest.
Sometime after Harry had fallen asleep - rather early for an adult, but a normal time for a young lad, Will had joined him in the only bed in the house. After hearing a slight whimper from the boy he had picked up earlier, he had held him to offer some comfort. The man had fallen asleep rather easily, within the comfort of his own home, and had slept easily through the night.
It was only in the morning that things had gotten a little troublesome for him.
When Harry had woken up in an unfamiliar place and had a strong man's arm around him, he had been thrown into a state of panic. In this panic, his mind had rationalised the arm as restraining not comforting, which had only fueled his panic. It did not help that he was assaulted of memories of the harm The Fat Man would do if he had restrained Harry for a punishment.
Then, Harry's instincts took over. He knew that there was a rather sharp object in the nightstand drawer, and he had immediately reached for it. He pulled out the knife that was kept there, and had then stabbed wildly behind him, unwittingly but instinctively going for vital areas so that the man his stabs were directed at would die as quickly as possible.
With this kept in mind, it was an understatement that Will had a rather rude awakening the morning of his death.
When sense returned to the young Harry, he was not horrified by his actions, more annoyed that he now lost a rather good asset for no good reason. Then again, at least now he would not have to deal with sneaking away from, or directly running from the man as he had earlier planned. He was not stupid, he knew that a good person like the man he had just killed would have called the police as soon as possible to inform them of the lost kid now found.
He had had time to think last night, though, about where he wanted to go. He used the bussing system to travel to surrey, seeing how it was convenient and free for rather young minors, and to where he knew his late Aunt and Uncle had called home, and his personal prison. There were some things in that house that he had a rather personal attachment to, that he could not just leave behind.
When the police had investigated the crime scene in one William Jones' home, they had found enough evidence to get a good idea as to who had killed the respected man. The bloodstains, size of the fingerprints, and how the man was stabbed indicated that the murderer was quite small.
Further investigation of the immediate area indicated what the motive the child might have had for killing the man in the bed. Found within the closet of the deceased was a collection of damning photos of a rather illicit subject matter. It was suggested that perhaps the child was a victim of such subject matter, and had taken it out on the man in the bed.
This theory was supported by the fact that the bloodstains were concurrent with the child having laid in the bed, and the man was not wearing normal pyjamas when he was found.
At one point it was suggested that the man was killed off by the same boy that had killed the Dursley pair. The evidence supported that the Dursley's were complicit with extreme child abuse, and they had been killed off by a child themselves; this case seemed rather similar to that one, and the man was killed in a similar manner - by way of a blade to the throat.
Someone - a rather inebriated fellow at the pub - had been the one to propose the idea that it was the same boy. It was only after a thoughtful serjeant had looked over the circumstance and had determined that it was within walking distance for a young boy to walk.
These rumours whispered both in cop bars and shady pubs alike would only gather steam as time went on, until finally, it would become a full blown legend and superstition for criminals to fear and police to dread. The police would be dreading the paperwork required from such things, of course, as they wouldn't really care if some scum was killed off.
