Strangers in the Night (6 page)

Finally, he caught the courage to stand by himself.

Though he didn’t feel one-hundred-percent natural standing on his own two feet, he could keep himself more or less still.

That was the important thing.

Just stand up.

All for now.

After what must’ve been a minute, Mitts eased himself along past his camp bed, headed for the door of his bedroom. Although he had no destination in mind beyond that, he couldn’t help but make it his goal. It was only when he’d got about halfway across his bedroom floor that he realised he had a strong urge to urinate.

He glanced toward the en-suite bathroom, realising he would need to make a detour.

It took him the best part of what must’ve been a minute to reach it.

When he got done in there, he realised he could hear voices out in the corridor.

Outside his bedroom.

Still standing in the bathroom, Mitts concentrated his hearing onto those people, trying to separate the voices into identities.

He recognised one voice as belonging to his father.

Feeling that same queasiness coming on—that same
giddy
sensation—Mitts blinked several times, managing to clear it away as best he could.

As his father’s voice droned on—Mitts could make no sense of the words—he realised that he must be out in the corridor with Heinmein.

Mitts held his ground, wanting to see where this conversation was headed. But he realised, from where he stood, there would be very little he could make out distinctly.

So he headed back to his bed.

He slumped down.

Sent the springs of the camp-bed mattress creaking all over again.

Mitts drew his blanket back over himself, only then realising he was wearing the black fleece he would often put on for those unexpectedly cold early mornings.

He supposed either his mother or father had decided he needed the extra warmth and had dressed him in it.

Mitts could still hear his father’s juddering voice in the one-way conversation. He willed it to stop. It was almost as if every word his father spoke was a hammer pounding his skull.

He could feel the giddiness returning.

Perhaps it had been a mistake for him to get up out of bed.

But he had gone and done it.

Too late for regrets . . .

Outside, Mitts was aware that the conversation had come to a halt.

Neither his father or Heinmein spoke.

Mitts could hear the sound of footsteps—of that
sweep-plod
—heading away from his bedroom.

There was a pair of—almost apologetic—knocks up against his metal bedroom door.

And then the hinges creaked.

Mitts’s father appeared there.

He was dressed in a clean shirt now.

If Mitts hadn’t known it was a new day from the fluorescent strip lights powering on, he would’ve known it from his father’s lime-green, chequered shirt; the sleeves rolled up just above the elbows.

He wore the same loafers and jeans as the day before.

Or, at least, Mitts believed he did.

His father held one of the metal bowls from the kitchen. That was strange in itself seeing that his father was the mouthpiece for Mitts never—
ever
—eating outside the kitchen.

As his father approached, things got blurry again, but Mitts managed to keep his brain together.

To keep reality somewhat present before his eyes.

“Dad?” Mitts managed to get out.

If his father smiled, Mitts didn’t see it.

Just like before, his father perched down on the edge of his camp bed. He passed the bowl toward him, and said, “Good to see you’re awake.”

Mitts raised a smile, then took the bowl. He saw that it was cereal with powdered milk. He didn’t like cereal at the best of times, and much less with
powdered
milk, but he felt strangely ravenous.

He seized hold of the spoon and dug in.

Only when Mitts had got about three quarters of the way through his cereal, and he looked up at his father, did he note the extreme concern in his face. How his father’s eyes seemed almost as if they were strung with hair-triggers, and that they were scoping out every one of Mitt’s movements as if any one might be his last.

Mitts tried to smile but found himself shaking almost uncontrollably.

It was a challenge for him to finish the cereal.

But he did.

He handed the bowl back to his father.

The two of them sat on the edge of the camp bed for a long time. Mitts realised he could hear the strangest of sounds. Coming from his father’s throat. A sort of croaking sound. Like his father was trying as hard as he could to keep something inside.

In the end, Mitts decided to break the silence.

“Dad?” he said.

His father remained detached, staring into the air right before his nose, still clutching the cereal bowl. His hands were shaking lightly.

Mitts could see that—in the process of bringing the bowl of cereal here—his father had spilled a little milk on the belly of his shirt.

Mitts continued, “I’ve been having dreams, strange dreams.”

His father continued to stare out in front.

Apparently distracted by something which Mitts would never be able to see.

“It’s a dream about a man—and a woman—and it’s New Year’s Eve, and they’re standing up on a balcony, with the sounds of a string quartet in the background, and it’s all dark . . . and then . . .”

In a single, swift,
violent
gesture, his father arced back his arm and tossed the metal cereal bowl hard against the wall.

* * *

The bowl bounced back with a metal
clatter
.

It tumbled down to the laminate flooring.

The spoon tinkled as it landed.

And then, all of a sudden, everything was still.

Everything was quiet.

Mitts stared in horror at the bowl.

Stared at the large dent in its rim.

Mitts could feel his cereal returning up his throat with a burning sensation.

But he swallowed it back.

He tasted those oats one more time, and the sour flavour of the powdered milk there too.

When he breathed in, he noticed the air stunk strongly of disinfectant.

Of radiation.

His father sat still for a very long time, staring in front of himself, clutching his knees as tightly as—
it seemed
—he could possibly manage.

Mitts felt a quick, uncontrollable tension seize his chest. His breaths came in gasps. When he examined his father’s face in profile, he saw that he was mouthing along something.

That he was speaking words.

Words which Mitts was never meant to hear.

It wasn’t until after a little while that Mitts’s father seemed to remember Mitts was there at all.

When his father did, he turned his head around and looked closely at Mitts. “I’ve been thinking about how to . . .” his father lost his stream of thought for a moment then continued, “. . . what I should say so that it’s clear so that to a . . . to a
child
it should be clear.”

But Mitts thought that he already knew.

Mitts swallowed hard, making sure his cereal wouldn’t make another reappearance, and then said, “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

His father didn’t seem to hear him at all, he just continued to stare into nothingness.

Finally, his father stiffened slightly, turned to meet Mitts’s eye, and said, “Yes.”

His voice cracked about the edges, but the word was spoken strongly enough to be understood.

The two of them sat for a long while in silence.

For so long that Mitts wondered if his father even recalled that Mitts was there.

If his father recalled that
either
of them were there at all.

“Dad?” Mitts said.

No response.

“There’s something else too,” Mitts continued, “something else, along with those dreams, of the man and the woman.”

Again, his father gave no indication of having heard.

But Mitts knew that he needed to tell him.

“When I fell from the stool,” Mitts said, “from between the time when I fell off and the time that I hit the floor, and blacked out, I saw
things
. . . there was . . . I don’t know how to explain it . . . some sort of . . .
different
place.”

Mitts studied his father’s face for any sign that he might’ve heard a word of what he had just said.

But his father just kept on staring. Apparently none the wiser.

“These dark-purple hills,” Mitts went on, “these
winds
, really strong winds.”

His father sniffed a couple of times.

His shoulders shook a touch and then, all at once, buckled completely.

His father crumpled over himself, his hands rushing up to cover his face.

But Mitts could still see the tears creep out from between his father’s fingers.

Mitts wanted to be able to say something to reassure him, to tell him that everything was going to be okay, to have him
stop
what he was doing, but, at the same time, he knew that there
was
nothing he could say, nothing he could do.

Because, soon enough, Mitts wouldn’t exist any longer.

He would return to . . . wherever it was he had come from in the first place.

The two of them sat like that, with his father crumpled up over himself, and Mitts wrapped up in his blankets, shaking all over.

Mitts wondered if someone might come along to interrupt them.

If his mother might appear in the doorway.

But Mitts knew his mother was too sick to come and see him.

That she had another child to take care of.

The one inside her belly.

Smelling the salt of his father’s tears on the stilted air of his bedroom, and feeling the warmth slipping out through the surface of his skin, Mitts wanted to tell his father all about his dreams.

All about those visions he’d been having.

About those purple hills.

Those cutting winds.

But his father wouldn’t hear him.

Not now.

Mitts could see that.

With the taste of the oats from his cereal still in his mouth, and the smell of that slightly sour-flavoured powdered milk thick in his nostrils, Mitts managed to keep his voice clear and straight, and directed at his father, “Dad?”

His father didn’t react.

“How long have I got?”

Nothing from his father.

Mitts thought he might have to repeat his question.

But he didn’t think he had the strength.

And then, quivering, and reedy, but
there
, his father replied, “. . . Doctor Heinmein, he thinks . . . thinks you might have about a week.”

Mitts breathed in deeply, neither really absorbing the words or the true depth of their meaning.

He gave a nod, unseen by his father.

A week.

He could get
a lot
done in a week.

* * *

About half an hour later, there was a knock on Mitts’s bedroom door.

Those twin
clangs
of human knuckles on metal.

Heinmein appeared there, in the doorway.

Feeling a little more clear-headed, Mitts reached out and gave his father a prod in his upper arm.

His father, apparently having drifted off, stirred with a slight mumble.

He seemed to recall where he was.

He blinked away his daze.

Looked over to the doorway.

He got to his feet, allowing Heinmein to take up his position on the camp bed.

As Mitts looked over Heinmein, he saw that he had brought a serrated metal case with him.

Heinmein laid the case across his lap.

For some reason, Mitts’s hatred for Heinmein—for the man who’d taken them away from their home—faded somewhat.

He almost took the man in with cool detachment.

Almost as if Mitts could
pretend
that he didn’t smell those cheesy feet of his, or that rotten stench of oranges.

Couldn’t
taste
those things in his mouth.

Feel them suffocating him.

Heinmein popped open the case, and Mitts examined the contents.

The interior of the case was lined with a gunmetal-grey foam, separated into compartments.

Each compartment held a tiny glass vial or else a metallic component.

As Heinmein popped the pieces out of their places and assembled them with expert precision, he appeared to cast off the shell of his previously detached personality. “It shouldn’t hurt,” Heinmein said, “I have spent the time in the past few hours perfecting the dosage, creating a bespoke formula based on your own blood.”

Mitts just nodded, feeling detached from the scene.

It had taken the most part of his strength to speak to his father. About his dreams. About the
visions
. Now he was paying the price.

So Mitts just sat still.

Like a good boy.

Heinmein constructed what Mitts recognised to be a syringe.

He filled it with a light-orange liquid from one of the glass vials.

He turned to Mitts, looked into his eyes.

And, even then, in that moment, Mitts realised even Heinmein’s black eyes couldn’t hold him at a distance any longer.

Mitts had some feeling inside, one which he would never be able to shake.

The feeling told him he needed to trust Heinmein now . . . if not ever again.

Mitts glanced over Heinmein’s shoulder, to the door, to where his father stood.

His father propped himself against the wall, chewing on his knuckles.

Just staring into mid-air as he had done earlier.

How could Mitts expect his father to understand?

How could his father
know
what it might be like?

To see these things in his own mind, and so
clearly?

But some things, Mitts supposed, could never be explained.

Having prepped everything that needed to be prepped, Heinmein examined the syringe.

Flicked the needle.

“This,” Heinmein continued, stone-faced, and looking Mitts in the eye, “needs to go into your spine.”

With a slight nod to Heinmein, Mitts turned his back.