Chapter 11: Unhoped For Preparations
08:06 hours
Dash's POV
Since the events of the night before, I hadn't slept. I don't even remember myself blinking or breathing for the rest of the night either, considering of how terrified I still was after being stalked for several hours by a supernatural creeper who stood in my room. I didn't want to take my eyes off of the wall, labelled with the haunting message that still sat clear as day scribbled aggressively on the cement wall of my cell. Two words that were too strange to be any words of English I knew, I studied them with my eyes to try and figure out what they meant. That ghost, or whoever the hell that was, he said the words out loud but never gave me any clear description about them. It was just "Carpe diem, carpe diem, carpe diem..." and poof, he was gone. Either that, or he just sat in silence behind me. I refused to move at all since I'd laid down late last night, scared to turn and find two glowing eyes etching out of the darkness of the room. Luckily, this torment was about to be finally over with.
I listened as I heard a guard outside of the door stop in front of my cell to wake me up for the morning. I waited with anticipation, hoping that he'd get the key to my cell off of his belt and get me out of this room. After a few seconds, I heard the sound of the key enter the key hole, turning and unbolting the door from the outside to open it. The guard who greeted me wasn't the same jerk who was teasing me the night before about my problem with the wall, I could tell just by his voice. I sat still, not moving at all to even look at him just then as he'd entered my quarters. But, I was stuttering submindedly.
"Rise and shine, kid." He muttered, quickly realizing that I was petrified on the floor. "Whoa, what the heck happened in here?"
"C,C,Carpe, d,diem..." I stuttered horrifically, causing the guard to kneel at my side to figure out what was going on with me. The guard put his hand on my arm uneasily.
"You feeling okay, kid? The guard who was on nightshift said that you were screaming nonsense all night long." He said calmly. Instantly, I felt my senses come back to me a bit. In shock of what I had witnessed the night before, I pointed aggressively to the wall above my bed, hoping to get the guard to notice the reason for my state.
"Look, look at that! This is why I was screaming! Look at the wall and tell me that that doesn't freak you out, please!" I panicked, pointing vigorously to the wall. The guard gazed at the wall cluelessly.
"What was keeping you up? The wall?" He mumbled questionably. I could see the message on the cement as clear as water. I couldn't understand what the heck was so hard about seeing chalk on a grey wall in the dark.
"Can't you see the message?" I asked. "It's written in chalk right above my bed! Was that there before last night, or what?" Okay, now I could tell in the guard's facial expression that he thought I was going nuts. The guard took the flashlight off of his belt and scanned the wall carefully, looking for the remnants of any kind of writing on the wall that could of been lingering to scare a teenager right out of his bed in the middle of the night. The guard suddenly shone the light over my eyes, causing me to cover them from the intense light he shone across my face.
"Kid, their's nothing on the wall. I just checked the whole thing." He sighed. "I don't know what was bothering you, but it sounds to me like you were having some pretty serious night terrors or something. Besides, their wouldn't be any writing in here from anybody. All messages and prophanity are washed off of cell walls immediately after they are discovered. This place looks pretty clear of any chalk messages to me." The guard's response suddenly caused my to have an uneasy pit in my gut. He couldn't see it? He couldn't see any of it? The white chalk which I could even see, he somehow was completely oblivious to it?
"How can you not see this?" I asked with a slight tone of fear in my voice. "It's right there in front of your eyes!" The guard gazed at the wall with confusion, still unable to see what I was blabbering about. I stood up with weak knees and grabbed the guy's head, pointing it gently right in the direction of the writing to try and get my point across. Still, the man sat dumbfounded.
"Maybe that message you're talking about was just a figment of some crazy dream you were having last night." He pondered.
"It's right there!" I said hysterically. "Why can't you see it?! It's right there in clear, white chalk! You've gotta believe me!" The guard suddenly glared at me impatiently.
"Look, I didn't come here to play twenty questions." He said sternly. "I came to pick you up so I could take you to see the judge this morning in her office. Your parents are here already to hear your sentencing this morning, happening in about an hour." My fear of last night's episode quickly subsided as my real life quickly took its toll again. I forgot for a minute that I was actually here because of the events of yesterday. A kid was killed, a family was torn. Everything was buzzing in my head, but instead of feeling the guilt pressing into me like it was before, it felt like my brain was attempting to accept the damages of my mistakes. I still felt like crap about it all. About accidentally killing Danny and taking his life prematurely. I sighed helplessly, knowing that I might as well hear what was about to be made of this now instead of later.
Recuffing my hands in front of me, the guard walked me out of my cell and pulled me around through the hallways of the building. I watched the eyes of some of the officers we passed as we walked, which aggressively glared at me everytime I tried to make eye contact with them. I sighed, feeling an uneasy feeling rattle in my spine. Nobody I looked at was impressed with me. Every person I tried to look at, they all looked at me like I had two heads. They looked absolutely disguisted with me. I rolled my eyes and continued walking on as the guard pulled me by my wrists into a part of the precinct I've never been in before. It was labelled, Courthouse, on the door frame above the room's entrance. To me, the courtroom felt to me more like some kind of torture chamber as we stepped inside of it, as I began thinking of how the events of talking to this judge would make me feel literally like I was being tortured. Guilt would be my noose. The judge's words, daggers. My sentence would be like being shot at the stake for what I've done. And jail? I didn't want to think of it. I know it seemed a bit overly dramatic to be thinking like this, but was it really? In my shoes, you'd probably feel the same way. The guard pulled me into the room justly, stopping as we came through the entrance and stood on the carpet in the center of the pews like benches which sat to my left in right. The coutroom was empty, not a soul sitting anywhere yet. Me and the guard seemed to be the only ones inside, until a voice suddenly spoke from behind us.
"Welcome, to the courthouse."
I tried to turn my head, but suddenly the guard pulled me forward, causing my head to jerk back to looking ahead of me.
"Eyes front." He muttered, tightening his grip on my handcuff chain he still clenched in his right hand. The guard turned around to see who exactly was speaking to us, smiling a small grin as he met the person's face with his eyes.
"Pretty early to be hanging out in here, don't you think Stevenson?" He asked, causing my eyes to shift to the right at the sound of his voice. The guard sneered. "Dash's hearing doesn't start for another fourty minutes."
"I followed the judge in here this morning. I've been here for about twenty minutes waiting for you to show up with Mr. Baxter." Stevenson sighed, shuffling around in his uniform a bit as if he was turning around or something. "You can drop Dash off with me, Douglas. He's got nowhere he can go if he tries to run off. Besides, he's a fifteen year old. How hard can he be to contain?"
"Are you sure you don't need anybody here to help you keep this kid under control?" Douglas asked. The Constable growled impatiently.
"When I say you're dismissed, I don't need any further questioning from you. I just told you to beat it." He scowled. "Now, get back to the holding area."
Officer Douglas, the guard who was grasping my handcuff chain, sighed defeated at Stevenson's request. Without another word, his grip on my shackles loosened as he slowly let go of me. The guard unhappily waltzed away from me, leaving the room with a distasteful huff. I grinned lightly as he stormed off. He kind of reminded me of a frustrated kid stomping away because he didn't get what he wanted.
Being a little smarter this time about my movements, I stayed still with my eyes in front of me just in case the Constable was going to bark at me for moving like Douglas had. At least nobody was holding me anymore like a dog on a leash, which was a relief. Stevenson chuckled behind me hilariously, as if he'd just thought of a good joke as Officer Douglas left the room. I swallowed nervously at his chuckling, which felt unsettling to my ears like nails on a chalkboard.
"You don't look, or sound too ready to face the judge this morning kid." He smirked. "You look terrible, Baxter. For one, you're shaking like a leaf. Two, you look like you haven't even closed your eyes yet since yesterday and three, you're as pale as a ghost. Heard you were screaming all night long in your sleep."
"Well, you're not too far off..." I mumbled, shocked by the Constable's assumptions. His observation of me, it was spot on. Until he mentioned my shaking, I hadn't noticed it at all. But the sleep and paleness in my face? That he got like he'd just read my mind or something. I thought deeply for a second, remembering the events of the night before and what happened this morning with the guard when I tried showing him the chalk written message. He couldn't see it. Why he couldn't see the words on the wall was a mystery to me, but maybe the words would maybe have some kind of hidden meaning that I didn't understand. Would the Constable be able to see the message? I didn't know. But the words, Carpe and Diem stayed locked in my brain. I had to figure out what they meant, before it drove me crazy. I took a deep breath, hoping maybe that somebody could tell me. It was a long shot to ask the hotheaded cop who stood just feet away from my back about something like this. But, it was worth a try to maybe shed a little light about what happened to me last night.
"Hey, Constable..." I asked, trying to sound calm as I changed the subject. "Have you ever heard of these two words before?" I heard Stevenson shuffle around behind me, as if he had just crossed his arms questionably at me.
"Have a bad dream or something last night, kid?" He sneered justly. I sighed at his remark, struggling to find words to say to explain what I was talking about.
"You could say that." I muttered. "Couldn't sleep a wink, if that's what you mean." Suddenly, the officer's tone of expression changed from impatient, to straight up annoyed with me in the blink of an eye.
"Well, how unfortunate..." Stevenson said with an aggressive tone. "You better suck it up and stop whining before the judge and prosecutor get here in about, thirty five minutes. You're in a lot of trouble kid. Beyond trouble. You took a life yesterday."
"You think I haven't realized that?" I growled back, trying to get him to answer me. "Look, I just asked you a simple question. You don't have to go off on me."
"Then stop asking me stupid questions..." He snarled. "I'm here to talk to you and prepare you for Judge Emery. Not to listen to you ask me about words. You wanna know words? You'll learn a lot of new ones while you're in custody." I rolled my eyes at him restlessly.
"Well, could you at least fake being interested in our conversation?" I scowled. "I asked you one easy to answer yes or no question! Is that too much to ask?" The Constable suddenly walked from behind me, to in front of me, getting right into my face as he spoke.
"Look, I'm not here to listen to some bratty teenager try to play Jeopardy with me." He grunted miserably. "I'm here to help get you ready to talk to the judge before we throw you up on the stand and watch you cry again like you did yesterday. I'm not your good cop, and I ain't your bad cop. I'm your neutral cop. I don't like you, and I don't like the system, But guess what? I'm forced to work for both of you. Why? Because putting people like you behind bars is something I enjoy. But, I also like helping your kind see a path to a brighter future. You see? I'm not here to answer questions. I'm here to get answers, no questions asked."
I sighed hopelessly as he finished speaking. Looks like I wasn't getting any kind of answer about my night from him anytime soon. The Constable grabbed me by the link of my cuffs and pulled me down the aisle of the courtroom, to the left of the judges stand to a stand all of my own, labelled 'defendant'. Releasing me, the Constable pointed for me to stand in my place, hoping to get me ready for my hearing.
"This is where you'll be standing, kid." Stevenson muttered. "You know, usually we don't have to show the criminals how to stand when being presented in front of a judge. They usually learn all on their own."
"So why am I so special?" I questioned, only to get an eye roll from Stevenson who still seemed a little pissed from our little arguement.
"I'm only showing you so you only have to learn the behavior of court once. Once so you don't forget." He said monotonely. "Let me tell you the basics of how you are to behaved in the walls of this room. One, you are not allowed to speak, unless you are directed to by Judge Emery. You will not interupt, backsass, belch or the like unless she states otherwise. Rule two, you're not allowed to leave this room. This is just a hearing, Dash, so their will be no prosecutor. Their will be no sort of jury, verdict or anything like that until your next court appearance. This will merely state your conditions, charges and what's about to happen to you."
"How many times will I have to go to court?" I asked uneasily.
"Depends how many times you're gonna say that you're not guilty." He mumbled. "If you just plea that you're guilty, you may only have one or two more court appearances and you'll be thrown in prison or juvinelle hall. However, if you wish to plea for your freedom by saying that you're not guilty, even though you're slightly beyond that point, then your court appearances will turn into either an inquiry, or a full out trial to prove your innocence. But your next appearance won't be in this courtroom." Stevenson gave me a stern look. "How does it feel standing there?"
Calmly to his question, I placed my cuffed hands onto the wood of the stand and took a deep breath. How did it feel to stand there? As I tried to proccess an emotion to describe how I felt standing, a cold wind blew across my face as I tried to absorb enough information from my surroundings to give the Constable an answer. It was a familiar breeze. It was the same cold air I'd felt the night before that swept across my cheeks. Ignoring it, thinking that maybe it was just a breeze coming from one of the ceiling fans which bore above my head, another cold reminder of the night before suddenly brushed past my ear.
"Danny..."
Instantly, I froze. It was the voice. The voice from the last night! I felt like I was unable to breathe for a second as the moment came and passed. Looking at Stevenson, he was still wondering how I felt about standing behind the defendant's stand. I looked at him nervously, feeling a knot build in my stomach as I opened my mouth to speak.
"Did you, did you hear something?" I asked with a shiver. The Constable raised an eyebrow skeptically at me.
"Hear what, Dash?" He pondered. "All I can hear in here is the sound of the fans above our head rotating, and the sound of you babbling more nonsense."
Worriedly, I gave the cop a stare. Did I just, imagine that? As quickly as the voice and the air came, it was gone, Just like last night. I listened closely to the air for a minute, listening for anymore noises. It sounded to me like the person who was watching me, had found me once again. Only this time, he said "Danny..." Danny?
"Swear I just heard something..." I muttered. "Didn't you? Something just said, 'Danny'. Didn't you hear it?" The Constable gave me a concerned glare, probably thinking that I was going crazy or something.
"I think one night of solitary confinement really has done your head in." He said sternly. "Better make sure that the judge doesn't think you're going off your nut, or she'll never let you out of here. All you'll be getting for talking about voices in your head will be a restraint chair or a rubber room. Your choice." Stevenson laughed harshly, but I just ignored his ignorant statement about my strange questions I kept asking him. My attention was locked about the voice. "Danny..." it called. "Danny..." I knew it could only of been talking to me about Fenton. Their was really no other explanation for it. Fenton. His name, the name that kept haunting me because of what I'd done to him. Was it now, following me?
"Ugh, stop thinking about it..." I groaned, sounding like I was talking to myself again in my cell. Stevenson gave me a weird look as I just thought to myself outloud. Quickly, I shook it off and smiled fakely, hoping that he wouldn't draw too much attention to my sudden outburst. Stevenson looked to his right, spotting a clock on the left hand side of the room which read that it was quarter to nine.
The Constable muttered. "Before this hearing starts, Judge Emery was requesting to see you about ten minutes in advance. She wanted me to write an incidence report about your behavior here and, she wanted to talk to you personally as well. Consider the fact that you walked in here a minor battery assailant and are now walking out a unintentional killer, she wanted to check up and see what kind of a person you really are."
"So, she's evaluating me?" I asked uncertainly. Stevenson sighed.
"Yep. Just to see if you're as dangerous as the crime you've so-called, 'accidentally' commited." He growled. "Come on, kid. It's only going to be for about eight minutes that we speak to her anyways. So, try not to act too nervous around her. You seem to kind of, freak out, under pressure from what I've seen."
Quickly, the Constable grabbed the link of chain between my handcuffs and pulled me away from the defendant's stand of the courtroom. He directed me to walk towards the left wall of the room into another large door of the precinct, into yet another area I've never been before. Through the doors, three more doors sat in a hallway which lead to an emergency exit. On one of the doors, which seemed to be the one we were supposed to go through to talk with Judge Emery, a note sat on the ground in front of it.
"What the heck is this?" Stevenson muttered, picking up the piece of paper smugly. I sat quietly as the officer read the note thoroughly, grunting distastefully as he dropped the note impatiently back onto the ground in front of him.
"Change of plans, kid." He said sternly. "Judge Emery won't be able to talk with you before your hearing. I guess you'll just be forced to freeball this without her, blessing, as you might call it."
I shuttered startledly. "What? She's not talking to me before this?"
"Fraid not." Stevenson sighed. "Oh well. Looks like she's in a bad mood by the sound of the note she wrote for us."
"What'd it say?" I asked, only to be cut off by the Constable.
"None of your god damn business..." He scowled. "She doesn't sound too happy with you, that's all. Then again, you just murdered an innocent kid. I wouldn't be too happy to exactly say, hello to you either." Keeping my chains in his hand, the Constable dragged me back towards the courtroom through the doors again. But this time when we walked in, it looked like people were starting to come in to watch my, hearing. I looked carefully at the audience, hoping that I'd see my parents slumped somewhere within the crowd of police, suited people and what appeared to be, journalists? The press?
I scanned the people's faces carefully, but it wasn't long before Constable saw what I was doing. He pulled my chains hard, lurching my head forwards back to looking straight ahead.
"Stop sightseeing, and follow me." He growled, pulling me away from the room through yet another set of doors on the west side of the courthouse. Pulling me into the hallway which was lead through those doors, same as it did in the east side, the Constable pushed me up against the right wall of the hallway.
"I guess you'll be having a harder hearing since Emery is refusing to see you as of now." He mumbled. "Good luck trying your cards without eyes. At least without my behavior report about you, she can't exactly play the 'going crazy' card with you yet. You better pray she'll go easy on you kid. Otherwise, you and I will be spending a little more time together."
I looked into his beady little eyes as a numb feeling suddenly crept over me. I took my glance away from his face and stared down the hallway away from the coutroom door hoping to think a little before my hearing started. Stevenson backed off, walking slightly away from me and letting go of my handcuff link so I could have a small amount of freedom. What was I going to say when I walked in there? Was I going to freak? Were more voice going to taunt me as I tried to plea my case? Was that even one of my options at this hearing? Giving into the maybe, four minutes before I would have to speak, I zoned out. I really wanted to leave this place, I didn't want to stay here. Would that woman go easy on me? As I turned my head back to face Constable Stevenson, a small whisper hissed in my ear unsettlingly. Undoubtfully, I recognized it's sick tone and rasp as it dug into my eardrum. It was the voice, taunting me again for what I hoped would be the final time.
"Good luck..."
As my blood ran cold again, I knew only one thing.
This would not be the last of these whispers...
Sorry for the, three week wait on this chapter. Or two. I don't know. :)
This chapter took me some time, but I'm glad it's done. :)
Also on a related note...
I know I don't really say a heck of a lot on these final authors thoughts plot bubbles I leave at the end of every chapter, but this time I have a little bit of a request I would like any reader of this FanFic to assist me with.
You see, I have a poll set up on my profile page that I would seriously like some people to answer for me. It's been there for a while, but I took it down recently and have reposted it. I've been contemplating the idea of creating a deviantART fan club sort of group with this story. Of course, this is just so far an idea, not anything really of it yet other than a beta group I've created for it that's a little glitchy on the actual site. I was just curious if anyone might be interested in joining and/or drawing stuff based on this story. The poll is on my profile if you'd like to answer it. It'd be greatly appreciated if you did. :)
Well, next chapter should be posted soon. I'll try to work on it as soon as possible.
SilverRaven16