Doc Mortis (5 page)

My throat went tight, stifling a scream before it could start. Trembling, I swept the light back along what I now knew to be an arm, and up and over a shoulder until it picked out a bright red shock of curly hair.

I hesitated then. It wasn't too late to run. To drop the light. To get away. I could leave this room, go back the way I'd come, find Ward 13, get home. I didn't have to be there. I didn't have to look.

But I did.

The face, like the hand, was as white as snow, but with a swirl of red round the lips. The mouth was drawn back into a twisted mockery of a smile, the cheeks stretched almost to the point of splitting.

A single black tear had been painted on one of his cheeks. Beside it, his nose was a ball of soft, spongy red foam.

The clown's bloodshot eyes were wide open. They swam in their sockets, before finally settling on me.

He made a strangled, gargling sound, as if something was stuck in his throat. I glanced down and saw that his neck was swollen, the muscles standing out like knotted ropes. His chest, too, seemed enlarged. It pushed outwards, stretching the satin shirt, threatening to make the top pompom button pop off.

Another sound came from within him, like the hissing of a bike tyre slowly losing pressure. The fixed grin on his face pulled higher as he fought to speak.

Two words, that was all he said. Two words that I knew would haunt me for ever. Two words I'd give anything not to have heard. Two words, spoken in a voice that had suffered all it could.

‘
Help meeeee
.'

Chapter Seven
FACES IN THE FOG

T
he lamp slipped from my hands and crashed to the floor. The bulb shattered and blackness rushed to fill the void. Even in the dark, I could still see the clown's eyes. No matter which direction I turned, they were still there. Staring. Pleading.

‘Help meeeee!'

His voice was a low wheeze, as if it were taking all the air in his body just to push out the words.

‘Help meeeee!'

I grabbed a handful of my hair in each hand, pulling it tight, hoping the pain would distract me from the horror dangling above. It didn't. My own voice cracked and became a whisper. ‘I... can't. I don't know how to... What can I do?'

A sound that was somewhere between a sob and a howl came at me through the darkness, anguished and angry and every other emotion in between.

‘
Killll meeeeee!
'

‘What? N-no!' I cried, louder than I'd meant to. ‘I... I'll get you down. I'll h-help you, but I can't... I can't... do that.'

My trembling hands reached out, searching for the lamp. I'd heard the glass break, but maybe – somehow – it was still working. Maybe, if I found it, the lamp would magically be fixed again.

I found it by my feet, picked it up, clicked the switch. Nothing. I clicked it again, back and forth, a dozen times or more, as if I could will it to spring back into life.

Eventually, I let it fall back to the floor, cursing myself for having dropped it in the first place. I stood in the dark, unable to hear anything but the burbling, clicking and wheezing from up above me.

Maybe having no light was a blessing. It meant I couldn't see the clown, or the pain that covered his face more thoroughly than the paint ever could. So much pain he'd rather die than endure it a moment longer. He wanted me to kill him, but I couldn't do that. I couldn't. But I could help him, though. I
had
to help him.

‘I'm going to get you down,' I said. My voice sounded shrill and childish. ‘You're going to be OK.'

He gave a strangled cry. I tried not to hear it. Feeling my way to the desk, I clambered up on top of it. The clown was too high for me to reach from the floor, but if I stood on the desk I'd be able to get to him and... and...

Well, I'd concentrate on getting to him first. Then I could figure out what to do next.

The desk wasn't well put together. It lurched violently to the left as I climbed on to it. I held my arms out to the side to steady myself as I slowly straightened up. The desk wobbled beneath my feet, and I felt like I was balancing on a surfboard.

Now I was higher, I could smell him. He stank of candy floss and toffee apples and stale, salted popcorn. I was also now close enough to hear the swishing of liquid through the tubes, and close enough to hear every groan and whimper the clown made.

Suddenly, everything seemed too big. Too much for me to deal with. Back home, back in the real world, I'd had Ameena helping me, urging me on. Nothing seemed impossible with her around, but here, now, I was on my own and I was out of my depth. Way, way out.

The table began to shake even more and my eyes began to sting. I didn't feel the tears until they tickled my cheeks and trickled from my chin.

‘
P-p-please
.' The clown's voice was barely a whisper, but there was no mistaking the tone. He was pleading. Begging. ‘Kill... me.'

I sniffed noisily and wiped my nose on my sleeve. Reaching up, I felt for one of the tubes. ‘I'm getting you down,' I told him, forcing the words through my tightened throat. ‘I'm getting you down and we're getting out of here. What's your name?'

What I thought was a reply turned out to be just another whimper.

‘Your name,' I repeated encouragingly, ‘tell me your name.'

‘W-W-Wobbleb-bottom.'

For just a fraction of a second I paused. ‘Right. OK.' I said. ‘Um... It's a good name.'

‘Killl meee!'

‘Oh, come on, it's not
that
bad,' I said, joking to hold back the tears. ‘I've heard worse names. Can't remember any of them right this minute, but I've definitely—'

The back of my hand bumped against the tube and the clown gave a sharp squeal of pain.

‘Sorry, I'm sorry! I'm sorry!' I babbled, pulling my hand away. Even while the words were forming in my throat, four red bulbs flickered into life with a dull
clunk
, casting an eerie crimson glow across the room.

I pulled back when I realised how close I was to the clown. His face was hanging down just a few centimetres from mine. I could see every pore of Wobblebottom's white skin, every track his tears had taken through the make-up. His teeth were a rotten marble of yellow and brown, with dried blood filling the lines between them.

His eyes sparkled, wet with tears. Beneath the moist, shimmering surface, though, they looked empty, like there was nothing there. They were the eyes of a dead man, with nothing worthwhile left within.

I turned my gaze away. The red lights dimmed and brightened again. They weren't flickering, though. It was a regular rhythm, dim and brighten, dim and brighten, stretching shadows back and forth across the floor.

‘The lights,' I said, feeling too scared and too guilty to look at the clown and address him directly. ‘Why are they doing that?'

Something wet rattled in Wobblebottom's throat. He muttered something too low and garbled to make out. I had no choice but to turn back and face the horror of him.

As the light dipped and rose, I saw that his expression had changed. Something was different. His eyes no longer looked dead.

They looked afraid.

‘What does it mean?' I asked, my voice shaking.

The clown wheezed and spluttered again. His eyes crept sideways until they were fixed on mine.

‘What is it?' My voice was an urgent whisper now. ‘The lights. Do they mean something?'

He nodded slowly.

‘What? What does it mean?'

The answer came in a hiss, soft and matter-of-fact. ‘They're coming.'

Terror dropped like a lead ball into my gut. ‘Who? Who's coming? What do you mean?'

‘Killlll meeee.'

I looked to the door I'd entered through earlier. The bubbling and hissing in the room was loud, but there was another sound now from beyond the door – a sound I'd heard before. A high-pitched squeak, like the turning of a rusty wheel. It was faint, but steadily becoming louder.

‘Who's coming?'

‘Killll meee,
p-please
!'

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak
. Did I hear the footsteps now too?

‘No!' I snapped. ‘Who is it? Who's coming?'

‘
Killll meeee.
'

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak
. And footsteps. Definitely footsteps. At least one set, maybe two.

‘Stop saying that!' I cried, reaching up and taking hold of one of the tubes. ‘I'm getting you down. You're coming with—'

A small vent on the ceiling by the clown's head slid open and a blast of warm air hit me in the face. I coughed as a thick green smoke billowed out from within the vent. It burned my eyes and swirled into my airways, turning them raw and painful.

The shock of it knocked me backwards. The table toppled to the right as I went left. By the time I crashed down on to the floor, the room was already lost in a haze of dark-green mist.

More tears sprang to my eyes, diluting the pain, but blurring my vision. I couldn't even see the clown now, but I could still hear his wheezing and groaning and his low, desperate sobs.

I heard a single
squeak
. It was muffled by the mist, but it was close. Close enough to be there with me in the room. I stood up, one shaky foot, then the other, and looked to where the sound had come from.

The fog was still spewing from the vent, choking the dull red glow of the bulbs, but I could just make out their silhouettes. There were two of them, both tall and thin. They were human-shaped, but they didn't move like real people. Each movement was awkward and jerky, like a bad stop-motion animation. Their heads and arms twitched and convulsed as they shuffled on skeletal legs towards me.

‘Stay b-back,' I warned, but the smoke had tightened my throat so much that even I barely heard the words emerge.

The closest of the figures raised one hand to the level of his head. Even in silhouette there was no mistaking the object it held between its fingers. It was a syringe. A syringe with a long needle attached.

‘Keep away!' I croaked, stumbling backwards. ‘Keep away or—'

A bee sting to the side of my neck silenced me. It pierced my skin and pricked the muscle just below my ear. I felt the side of my face tingle and my brain become jelly. The last thing I saw before the world went dark was the third figure.

And the hypodermic needle in its hand.

More figures loomed at me through the darkness, their faces impossibly twisted and deformed. They coiled round my wrists, pinning them to my sides. Their weight went to my ankles, binding them together. They made no sound as they held me there, trapped and helpless.

The clown hung above me, arms and legs spread in an X shape. His body glowed brightly, shining like a star against the black void above him. His fixed grin stretched further as he spoke.

‘Kyle,' he said, but the voice wasn't his. I tried to kick and struggle against the weights pinning me down, but my body didn't respond. I tried to shout, to scream at him to shut up, but all that emerged was a slurred mess of half-formed vowels.

Mum's voice. He was speaking in Mum's voice.

‘You did this to me, Kyle. This is all your fault. All of it.'

‘N-no,' I managed.

‘You let them hurt me.' The clown's face had changed now too. Mum stared back at me from behind the greasepaint. ‘And they're never going to stop hurting me, Kyle. They'll never,
ever
stop.'

There was a
crack
as my mum tore one painted hand free of the strap that secured it to the ceiling. ‘You let them hurt me,' she said again, pulling her other hand free. ‘And now I'm going to hurt you.'

And with that she dropped from the ceiling, teeth bared, fingers curved like claws as she plunged towards me.

My eyes opened and Mum faded with the dream.

Row after row of damp polystyrene tiles rolled by, scarcely visible in the flickering half-dark.

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

The slow turning of rusty wheels was right below me now. My brain itched. It was the only thing in my whole body I could feel. I tried to turn my head, but my view remained fixed on the spot above me. My eyes were open, but I couldn't move them. I could only watch the tiles slide slowly by.
Squeak, squeak, squeak.

Minutes passed. How many I can't say. Corners were turned, doors were held open. Once, I caught sight of my reflection in the cracked screen of a television mounted on the wall above a set of doors. I saw myself briefly, just long enough to spot the straps across my head, chest and legs, securing me to a hospital bed. I glimpsed hands too, pushing the bed along, but then I was past the TV, trundling round another corner and along yet another corridor.

Nobody spoke. I heard echoing footsteps and the occasional rustle of clothing, but other than that – and the squeaking of the bed's wheels – my journey through the hospital took place in near total silence.

Finally, I was wheeled into a much brighter room. Four fluorescent tubes burned steadily on the ceiling. The light stung my eyes, but I found myself powerless to close them. With a final
squeak
, the bed came to a stop. I heard footsteps retreating and a door swinging closed, and I knew that whoever had been pushing me had now left.

‘Well, well, well,' said a voice from close beside me. It was a man's voice, with a strange sing-song accent that I couldn't quite place. German, maybe? It was hard to say. ‘Here's my new patient. Oh, how I
love it
when the new ones arrive!'

From the corner of my eye I saw a shock of wild, white hair. It was dirty and greasy, matted in places with flecks of red.

‘You have found your way to my hospital because there is something wrong with you,' said the voice. The accent wasn't German. It might have been Russian. It was high-pitched and wobbled a little, getting higher towards the end of each sentence, as if he was three words away from a fit of the giggles. ‘Something... broken. Something wrong. Nasty, nasty.'

A face loomed above me. Lit from behind, it was cast almost entirely in shadow. I could make out a pair of round glasses perched on the end of a crooked nose, and a bristle of white, wiry hair sticking out from each nostril.

With an elastic
snap
, he pulled a thin rubber glove over each hand. The rubber
creaked
as he flexed his fingers in and out.

‘And I am very much going to enjoy finding out what it is.'