Night Prowler

Chapter 10

Tracey didn't see or hear from Reece after Dale took her home in an older styled Holden Ute. She had complete radio silence, even when she opened and set up the phone Reece had bought her, she had heard nothing. Tracey couldn't exactly contact Reece either, as she had lost his number on her broken phone. It did bother her not speaking to the biker, because despite everything that had happened and she had been scared of him, she really missed him. From that day of being dropped off, Dale had reminded Tracey as she walked up her stairs, that she had 7 days before he would come back for her. He would come back to Warragul and if he had to, take her kicking and screaming just so she could talk to Reece. Tracey wasn't sure if Dale was joking, but she didn't want to test the theory. From that day, Tracey's arm grew sorer and her health seemed to go downhill. Having been to her local GP and back, twice, put on two different types of antibiotics, she didn't feel herself getting any better. The wound on her arm had a festering infection and almost smelt foul whenever she took off the dressing to clean it with saline. She had no energy, barely any just to get up and walk around her house and she was extremely tired.

With each day that passed, Tracey told herself if she got worse, she would go to the hospital. But day after day, she didn't take herself there and she didn't call herself an ambulance. She just stayed at home, eating nothing more than some toast and laying in bed all day. She had never felt so lousy and sick, not even when she had the flu. Coming onto a week later, all the days seemed to merge into one big one and Tracey was in and out of sleep more than anything. She had a terrible fever and pain medication and the antibiotics had not done a thing. Cocooned in her blanket, she slept with no dreams; it was just like she was mentally staring out of a dark window while she slept. It was very unusual. It was like her brain was too sick to even come up with anything interesting.

Hearing a banging noise, Tracey let out a muffled sigh and slowly opened her heavy eyelids. Staring up at the ceiling with a blurred vision, Tracey had trouble keeping her eyes open. She felt like she had been awake for days and was trying not to fall back to sleep, but the realism was, Tracey had spent more time sleeping over the last week than being awake. Thinking that the knocking was just in her head, Tracey shut her eyes and drifted back into her deep slumber.

Outside standing on Tracey's porch stood Dale. Like he had promised, he had turned up on her doorstep a week from dropping her off. Dale had been knocking on Tracey's door for the last fifteen minutes, he knew she was home and he couldn't understand why she wasn't answering her door. He could hear her inside, he could especially hear her heart rate... which was slower than usual.

"Oi Blue Eyes, are you gonna answer your door or what?" Dale sung out, knocking twice as hard on her wooden sliding door.

Not getting an answer or a response of any kind, Dale tried to pull on the door handle to see if it would budge, but it wouldn't. Looking around to see if Dale could find a key anywhere, he let out a grunt in annoyance. He had never met anyone who locked up their house so tight. Walking back down the stairs, Dale walked pass the Yaris in the driveway and up to the old tin gate. Breaking it open, he walked through the surprisingly tidy backyard and around to the back door. Unfortunately for Dale, everything was locked tight. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, Dale searched through his contacts to find Tracey's number and rung her phone. Listening to the phone ring inside the house, it kept going to voicemail and Dale started to get worried.

Looking around at the windows of the house, Dale's mind pondered on to what he was supposed to do. Going with his first thought, Dale broke the lock on the back door with ease and watched as the door swung open. Walking in through the laundry, Dale took a moment to gaze around to see how dark it was inside the house. Most of the blinds were down and the only light that was coming in was through the lounge room window.