AncilChapter 28: Old Friends. New Problems
I woke up in a dark room rife with the smell of mold and rot tied up to a chair. The walls in the room were concrete but they blinked randomly with different colors alternating from blue, to green and red. Even the floors blinked with colors eerily showing off sporadic body parts strewn across it. The blinking lights were somewhat hypnotic and my head spun more and more with each passing second. Where the hell was I?
“Neeeeigh!!!” There was a black horse tied up in the left of the room. The horse kept raising its front legs off the floor, neighing and wouldn’t stop until the door to the room was flung open. The animal quieted down and heavy boots hitting the floor was the next thing I heard. A tall white man with chains forming an X across his bare chest walked in. He had a long whip around his neck like a scarf and long red baggy pants that met his tall boots which stopped at his knees. He wore a general’s hat that had the number “1962” engraved in gold at the front. He didn’t appear to be a mere man. He looked like one of the characters created by the Midnight Robber. His pitch black eyes gave it away.
He didn’t do much talking after he entered the room. He just said a few words to his horse and started sharpening a cutlass that he had on his belt.
“You want to see some more blood?” He asked his horse in a British accent but if you listened closely you could have heard a hint of the Trinidadian accent in his voice. His horse neighed. “I thought so my boy,” he said, then came to me with the cutlass. “Okay Mr. Balfour I should let you know that it is my human duty to tell you that I have direct orders from the Midnight Robber not to kill you,” the man said. “But it is also my duty to tell you that I’m not a human and human duties do not apply to me and that taking orders just isn’t my forte. It was never my forte actually. I would have loved to end your measly little sorry excuse of a life in your sleep after all the trouble you put us through to find you but then I wouldn’t have gotten to see your eyes as my cutlass rains down on your flesh,” his voice became more gruff and grim. “And see the last remnants of what remains of you drain out in a nice warm flow of red blood as you suffocate in your own sins. So today I make it my duty to tell you, Mr. Balfour — Goodbye.” He raised the cutlass to the sky readying himself to swing it at my head.
“Put it down Baba!” A female voice shouted, stopping the man in his tracks. The voice sounded familiar. It sounded like Megan. It was Megan. She stood in the doorway with her gun pointed at the man.
“Megan!” He spat. The very name sounded like it tasted disgusting in his mouth. “I told the Midnight Robber not to trust you. I knew you were a traitor the first time I saw you. You and all those people that the Midnight Robber capture back in San Fernando.”
“Just put down the blade and nobody would get hurt Baba,” Megan said, her teeth gritting.
“You really feel that you could hurt me? DEE BABA!!!”
Megan fired a shot at Dee Baba but instead of bursting into a million pieces the force of the gun only propelled him through the wall. Megan quickly untied me but she seemed to be more concerned about what happened to Dee Baba. “That shoulda incinerate him into a million pieces,” she said
“Well it didn’t,” I said, my voice sounding hoarse and dry.
Suddenly a loud cracking sound was heard and the walls around the room began to crumble. Behind the crumbled walls Dee Baba stood up with a 20 foot long whip in his hand. He swung it at Megan and myself but luckily he missed, giving us the ability to run out of the room.
I didn’t know where Dee Baba was but I still heard the sound of the whip cracking like thunder. I followed Megan up a staircase that led us up to the roof of the building we were in. There was an old rickety helicopter waiting for us there and as the pilot saw us the engines roared on with a cough. We quickly got in and it took off into the night sky. Dee Baba flung his whip at the helicopter but thankfully within seconds we were out of his reach.
When we were a safe enough distance from Dee Baba I made myself comfortable on the chair that was reserved for me. Unexpectedly, right next to me a pair of startling huge eyes almost scared me out of the helicopter. It was Bookman. The same one Megan and I had met back in Tobago. Next to Bookman, Melanie sat and she greeted me with a smile. Megan sat on the other side of me and in the front Sam looked back and greeted me with a smile as well.
“Welcome back kid,” Cornell, who was flying the helicopter, said.
***
“Back on the ship we managed to get the Midnight Robber to believe you were dead. They had come in the ship and captured us but it had so much going on that they didn’t even bother to take you when we tell them you were dead. They assumed that you was just another dead body like the one’s floating around San Fernando. It was Sam’s idea,” Megan said to me while wrapping bandages over my bruised wrists. Having your wrists tied up to a chair for a whole day can take its toll.
