Sleepwalkers (28 page)

Ben was silent, ashamed of the dirty secrets that were about to be exposed.

‘You were a soldier, you said,’ pressed Terry.

Ben nodded, staring at the cigarette burns in the swirly carpet, not wanting to catch Toby’s eyes. He didn’t care what Terry thought, or Anna so much, but he didn’t want the boy to fear him or to hate him.

Terry got up, but kept his distance. ‘Why do you think they’d take a bloke from the army? What do you think they’d make him do in his sleep? That he wouldn’t do when he was awake?’

‘I’m not like that,’ was all that Ben could manage.

‘Tell you what,’ said Terry. ‘How’s about you have that room and us three will share in here?’

‘He’s not like that!’ blurted out Toby.

‘And how do you know that? In the – what is it, four hours? In the four hours that you’ve known him, what’s he done to make you so sure?’

‘Cos he helped me!’

‘When?’

‘In there!’

‘Where?’

‘In the place, the room, in that … in that place …’ Toby stumbled into silence. ‘In the lab,’ said Ben, quietly.

Toby pulled his knees to his chest. ‘We weren’t going to talk about it,’ he said.

Ben went over and sat down next to him. Toby eyed him like a child who’s been tricked into a set of injections at the doctor’s.

‘What do you remember?’ Ben asked gently.

‘White walls,’ Toby began reluctantly. ‘Beds. Some nurses and doctors. Fancy machines. Windows with shutters.’

Ben nodded. ‘Always closed.’

‘Yeah. But you could hear cars outside sometimes, couldn’t you?’

‘That’s right.’

Ben glanced at Anna and Terry who were silent. Anna nodded at him – keep going.

‘I woke up once,’ said Toby, ‘cos of this loud car horn, right outside. Everyone woke up. And one man started shaking and …’ he squeezed his eyes shut, upset. ‘He tried to get up, he was pulling at the straps and shouting and all the doctors were running to him. And then there was blood all over the ceiling.’

Ben put an arm around him, pulled him close and the boy nestled into him.

‘Do you know where it is?’

‘No. You never knew how you got there, you’d just wake up and you were there on a bed, tied down.’

‘You don’t remember going in or coming out?’

Toby shook his head.

‘I think I do.’

‘I remember going down in these big lifts. They had to be big cos they had to fit in a stretcher. And at the bottom there was …’ he paused, trying to remember.

‘A van?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, that’s right, a van. I remember now. And they had to do that code. To open the doors.’

‘The shutters.’

‘A code. It was like a tune.’ Toby hummed a five-tone melody. ‘That was it.’

Those five notes ran clear in Ben’s head like a long-forgotten nursery rhyme.

Terry stepped forward, pulling out his mobile phone. ‘Sing it again,’ he said.

Toby did so, and after a couple of failed attempts, Terry repeated the tune by pressing the right combination of numbers on his phone’s keypad. He turned the screen to face Ben.

‘Nine, nine, four, five, six. That’s your entrance code.’

‘And then the shutters would go up,’ Ben said.

‘What shutters?’ asked Toby, confused. ‘Oh. No, they changed those.’

Ben stared at him – what?

‘Yeah, they had those old black shutters, but then they got changed. Don’t you remember? They got that big metal door instead. Sank down into the floor. Wow, it’s amazing how quickly it comes back. Must be because of you being here.’

Ben tried to remember a metal door. He could have been walking past it, several times, earlier. He could have been standing right outside without realising it.

‘Do you remember him?’ Toby asked, and his voice wavered, as though it were a question he’d nearly not dared ask.

Ben remembered a kindly old man’s eyes that stared down at him. A wrinkled hand that would have nurses scurrying in different directions at the merest flick or gesture. He nodded and his grip around Toby tightened.

‘He was quite kind to us, in a way, wasn’t he?’ asked Toby.

‘Yes, he was.’

‘You kept thinking he’d fall over, he was so old, but his eyes were always, like, twinkling sort of.’

‘I remember that too.’

‘And his hands, always moving.’

‘Like he was conducting that classical music he always played.’

‘Yeah!’ said Toby. ‘And his fingers would twitch along.’ He was pleased with the shared memory. ‘I sort of thought we were special to him.’

‘I think we were.’

‘Even though he told them to do those things to us.’

‘He can’t do them to you any more,’ Ben said. ‘He’s gone. You’re free.’

But Toby didn’t seem reassured by this. He sat there, withdrawn, as though he didn’t believe the nightmare really was over. And Ben felt the same unease and doubt. He sat quietly for a while before he spoke again.

‘I think I know where it is.’

They all looked at him, amazed.

‘And now we know the code to get in,’ he added.

‘You’re saying that like it’s good news,’ Toby said. ‘What the fuck do you want to go in there for?’

‘To get answers.’

‘You go in there and they’ll catch you. Mash you up.’

‘It’s okay, Toby.’

‘Are you on crack? You can’t go back there.’

‘I have to. Where else can we go? You want to live here for the rest of your life?’

‘I don’t mind. It’s alright. Bound to be loads of hippy chicks in here and they’ll be into free love and shit.’

Ben looked at Terry. ‘We go by car first. Check it out. If I’m right, if it really is where I think it is, then we can have a think about how we get in.’

‘And then what?’ shouted Toby. ‘Once you’re in, then what’ll you do?’

‘I’ll do to them what they’ve made me do to others.’

He felt absolutely calm as he spoke the words. There was silence in the room. He could tell they were scared of him. He’d talked about murder as though it were something casual, practical and easily done. Ben would never have talked like this, he thought. He found he was shivering again.

There were three wards inside the lab. They took you up in a lift from the basement. Ben remembered a long corridor and that the wards led off it. There were other rooms and offices further along, but neither he nor Toby knew what they were for. Two of the wards, with white walls, hard-rubber floors and shuttered windows, could house ten or twelve beds. Doctors and nurses were always around checking on their patients, monitoring them, gauging their progress. It was normally quiet in there. The medical staff’s footsteps were muffled by the floor and there was rarely much noise from outside. It was a place for recuperation, rehab and rest.

The third ward was different. It was smaller, and divided into three operating rooms. There were no windows here and the walls were lined with strangely shaped foam bricks that deadened all sound. And when you were brought in here, you’d be blindfolded and they’d put headphones on you. There were lots of machines in here; big, complicated beasts, covered in dials, switches and flashing lights. They made no noise. There was never any noise. When Ben and Toby spoke of this third
ward they were noticeably quieter and more reticent. Whatever happened in there had scared them more than anything else had. In here was the man they spoke of; the old man who would control everything. This was his kingdom.

Sometimes things would go wrong in the third ward. Ben couldn’t explain it properly, but he was sure that men and women had gone in there after they had become anxious or troublesome and they hadn’t come back out.

Anna shuddered at the story, at all the tales that Ben and Toby had told that day as they steeled themselves to go back there: to see if Ben was right and the place really did exist as they said it did. She wanted him to be wrong. She was scared again, nauseous from it, and wanted all of this to be a stupid misunderstanding, a hilarious mix-up that could be happily explained away.

Ben had gone off alone later that night, returning with sleeping bags and other gear to make their stay more comfortable. And a car. Anna had expressed surprise that a rent-a-car company was open that late at night and had felt stupid when his wry stare revealed that he’d stolen it. She would have protested that she didn’t do this sort of thing, but then again she’d stolen Toby.

The next day they ate cereal from cheap plastic bowls in silence, then prepared to go. Anna had delayed them by insisting on washing up. Even Terry had seemed nervous, moaning about computer access and wanting a couple more minutes before they headed off. Toby said nothing, pacing about the room, pale and fidgety. And Ben just stood by the door, lost in thoughts that Anna was happy for him to keep to himself.

They drove off once rush hour had passed. Ben and Toby sat in the front, Anna and Terry in the back. Terry had a laptop perched on his knees and he tapped away at it throughout the journey. Anna had no idea what he was up to, but she would have welcomed the chance for some distraction. Instead she stared out at the people, the shops, the cars and buses. Locked inside the car with this ragtag collection of strangers, she felt terribly alone.

They drove on, and after half an hour they stopped at a set of traffic lights. As they waited patiently for them to turn green, a police car drove up next to them and everyone stiffened.

‘Just remain calm and look straight ahead,’ said Ben, staring hard at the lights. Anna tried to do as he said, and no one spoke. The lights remained red. It seemed to go on forever.

‘Oh come on …’ gasped Toby.

Anna couldn’t help but glance across to the police vehicle. The driver was a woman, a WPC, and she was talking to someone via the car radio. Anna watched her. Was she talking about them? Were they checking out the registration plate of the car? Why the hell were they driving around in a stolen car? And then the WPC turned and looked at Anna, looked her straight in the eye. It was as if she knew her. And Anna was about to shout out in panic, when the car jerked forward and took a right-hand turn, leaving the police car behind. It didn’t follow. But still, Anna was shaken by that stare.

‘See?’ said Ben from the front. ‘Just a cop car, driving around, not interested in us. We’re fine.’

But she didn’t feel fine. She felt that they were being played with.

Ben had explained to them how he’d worked out the rough location of ‘the lab’, as he’d started calling it, from a memory of a statue in a square. Soon they drove past this statue – a crouching lion, painted gold, on a tall marble plinth. It was just as he said. And although it meant nothing in itself, the mood in the car was buoyed enormously.

Toby had a map on his lap, but was rubbish at reading it and offered less-than-helpful directions. Terry, in frustration, used his computer to offer different instructions. The two boys would bicker and shout at each other as Ben would drive round and round, cursing when they hit a one-way system that slowed their progress even further.

But every now and then they’d reach a back alley, a quiet road that might be ‘the one’. And then they’d all be silent as they drove along it and they’d all stare out, looking for those silver doors. At the end of the road, when nothing was found, Terry and Toby would resume their bickering. It was hard to tell if this was frustration or relief. As much as Toby said he wanted to know the truth, he had squirmed and argued hard against them trying to find it. It was just too dangerous.

Round and round they drove. Slowly Anna’s fear faded, but it was replaced by car sickness. She began to believe that they’d never find these doors.

They found another quiet back street. Ben indicated right, took the turn and drove slowly along. Anna looked out at what must be the backs of office blocks or shops – the uglier, concealed back entrances which were hidden from public view. They passed a stack of large plastic bins and then the car stopped. Anna was confused for a moment, then she saw that Terry’s face was turned away from her, pressed against the
glass. She looked over his shoulder and saw a steep drive that dipped away from the street, leading down to a thick metal barrier, spotless and shiny. A metal door, close to the square with the lion statue, off a steep drive. Just as Ben had described it.

No one moved. The engine purred as they all stared at the metal door. Next to it was a small keypad on the wall. A digital keypad.

‘Fucking hell,’ whispered Terry. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’

No one else spoke.

Anna looked at Toby. She could see that he was shaking. She leaned forward and put her hands on his shoulder, but it had no effect.

‘Let’s go, just go,’ Toby pleaded.

But Ben didn’t move. His eyes were locked on the door.

‘Come on, let’s get out of here!’ shouted Toby.

‘They’re in there,’ said Ben. ‘It’s all in there.’

‘Yeah, great, well done, cool. Now let’s go!’

Toby was twisted and contorted in the chair, writhing with fear.

‘Have you seen the keypad?’ Ben said, turning to Anna. He seemed absolutely calm. She nodded. It was as close as she could get to speaking.

‘Don’t go down there!’ Toby screamed.

‘But it’s the only way to find out the truth.’

‘Fuck the truth!’

‘Toby.’ Ben put a hand on the boy’s arm. ‘We have to be sure. This could be the wrong place. Some rich guy’s garage.’

‘Or they could be there. Just waiting. You open the door and they’ll get us.’

Ben seemed to have no answer to this. Anna watched him as he turned to stare back at the metal barrier. The silence was painful. The engine ran, idle. She looked back behind them, but there was no one there, no people, no police car. Terry started typing something new into his computer, but Anna just stared back at Ben, waiting for a decision.

‘Come on,’ he finally said, unbuckling his seat belt.

‘No way,’ Toby replied.

‘Yes. Yes, come on. You have to do this.’

Anna could see tears forming in Toby’s eyes.

‘Why doesn’t he just wait in the car with us?’ she suggested. ‘You know what the code is.’

‘Toby,’ Ben said, ignoring her.

‘Come on, Ben, look at him,’ she said. ‘He’s absolutely terrified.’