Read Flesh and Blood for Free Online Page A

wall.
    I thought, at first, that I’d dreamed the blood-chilling scream that came from outside.

Chapter Four
    It shook me like a slap in the face. It was some distance away, and heavily muffled by the double glazing, but it was so sharp, so filled with terror, that it cut into my mind like a razor blade. It was a howling shriek of pain.
    I flinched, and my eyes popped open. I blinked and squinted in the sudden rush of light from my lamp. Fumbling, I switched it off.
    What the hell was that?
    I lay absolutely still. There was silence, not even the occasional ticking of the heating.
    Lying there, in the calm and the darkness, I wondered if I could have dreamed it. Surely, a sound like that…? Was it one of those vivid dreams you have to consciously shrug off, one of those nightmare impressions that leaves you doubting that you’re back in reality when you wake up? I wanted it to be a dream. After all, a scream in the dead of night was…
    My sleep-fogged mind circled groggily around the idea of getting up to investigate. I twisted around on the mattress and looked over at the dim glow of my alarm clock. I’d put it over by the door, so that I couldn’t roll over and switch it off in the mornings.
    2:12 a.m. My heart was thumping. How long I lay there for, I don’t know. Several minutes, at a guess. Not a single sound came from outside. With every passing moment, the urge to fling my duvet aside and rush to the window grew stronger. But, at the same time, the continuing silence fuelled my doubts.
    Instinct told me that the scream was real. It had knocked me out of sleep. The only time such a thing had ever happened to me before was when a car windscreen had been broken down in the street below my bedroom, years ago. On the other hand, plain common sense said it was nothing but my own imagination.
    What if…
    Another murder? Like the body by the river? No, we were too far from the territory of any gangs for that to be the explanation. Elton Gardens was almost half a mile down the hill. The scream hadbeen distant, a lot further away than the Giffords’ house, or the Daltons’, but it had still woken me. It had been distinct. It couldn’t have come from anywhere near the river. It could only have come from the Priory.
    I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t hear something like that and not act. Someone had screamed for their life, someone…
    …female. That was a female voice.
    Emma! What if Emma was in danger?
    I rubbed the last of the sleep from my eyes and quickly clambered to my feet. The room wasn’t cold, but still a shock after the warmth of my bed. I rushed over to the window and peered out nervously. There was a very faint glint of light visible from the street lamps on Maybrick Road, largely obscured by the trees on the Priory’s land. For the first time, it struck me that there was no street lighting in Priory Mews, none at all.
    Call the police? More indecision clawed at me. No, if it
was
Emma who was in trouble, then even a slight delay could have terrible consequences. I had to act now! Fumbling in haste, I wrapped myself in my dressing gown and pulled on yesterday’s socks.
    I turned and hurried down to Mum and Dad’s room. The door was slightly ajar. A brief glimpse inside told me that they hadn’t heard anything. They were dead to the world.
    I said I would write this account as objectively as I could. That’s what a responsible journalist would do. So, in the interests of objectivity, I must record, here and now, that the decision to leave my room that night was a profound mistake.
    If only I’d woken my parents, if only I’d listened to the silence and my own doubts, if only I hadn’t been in such a rush to do something heroic, then everything would have turned out differently. Leaving the house that night was the spark that lit the fuse. My suspicions would still have been aroused. I would still have asked questions, and investigated, and tried to find out where that scream had come from, but