The Darkest Corners (6 page)

He grinned at me and shifted his grip on the bat's handle. ‘This will not be a pretty death,' he said. ‘It won't be heroic. It won't be noble. It'll be all broken bones and missing teeth and you giving it “Stop, no, please, stop!”.' His eyes blazed. ‘But I won't. I'll never stop. I want you to be very clear on that.'

I swallowed. I straightened my back and held my head high and thought of my mum.

‘Get a move on,' I said. ‘I haven't got all day.'

He roared. His muscles tightened.

And he swung.

T
he bat
whummed
by just centimetres above my head.

I exhaled.

My dad was staring at me. He was still holding on to the bat with both hands, but it pointed down towards the floor now.

From the corner of my eye I could make out shapes in the darkness, half-formed apparitions lurking in the gloom. The things from the Darkest Corners were gathering, watching and waiting, preparing for the moment when the wall would come tumbling down.

I inhaled.

Ameena had her back against the wall, not looking at me. She was focusing on my dad and the weapon in his hands.

I exhaled.

‘He didn't flinch,' my dad said, and it sounded as if he was talking to himself. ‘He didn't even flinch.'

The sparks crawled like ants inside me now, no longer rushing, no longer zipping furiously around. They had finally accepted –
I
had finally accepted – that I was not going to put them to use.

He had gone too far, pushed too hard. Everything, every part of me, was numb. It no longer mattered what my dad did to me, or what any of them did to me. I was done. I was spent. I had seen all the horrors the world had to offer, and I was too sick and tired to see any more.

‘You're bolder than I gave you credit for, kiddo,' he said. He smiled, flashing his teeth. ‘Of course, you get that off your dad.'

‘But you're not my dad.' He opened his mouth to argue, but I jumped in first. ‘My father, maybe. But not my dad. Never my dad.'

Silence filled the hall. They were both watching me, waiting to see what I'd do next, but I just stood there and told it like it was.

‘I can see them, you know? Over there in the Darkest Corners. I can feel them too, waiting for the wall to come down. Waiting to come through here and run riot over this world. I can hear them, and I hope they can hear me too. If they can, I want them to listen because I want them to know something.' I turned my head to the ghostly shapes and raised my voice. ‘I want them to know that this is as close as they're ever going to get.'

I raised my gaze to my dad. His face was in shadow, but I could see the rage building behind his eyes. ‘You can't do anything more to me,' I told him. ‘You can try – I'm sure you'll try – but there's nothing you can do that's worse than what you've already done. There's nothing left you can take away from me.' I allowed myself a grim smile. Despite everything, it was a smile of victory.

‘You've lost,' I told him. ‘Even if you kill me, you've lost.'

I braced myself for an explosion of anger that never came. Instead, my dad slowly turned his head to Ameena and nodded. When he turned back to me his face had changed. Softened somehow.

‘In that case,' he told me, ‘I think you're ready.'

That caught me off-guard. ‘Ready?' I asked. ‘Ready for what?'

His head twitched in the direction of the living room. ‘Doctor?'

‘Doctor?' I gasped. ‘Doc Mortis?'

He nodded. ‘The one and only.'

And in he came, strolling through from the living room like it was the most ordinary thing in the world. Doc Mortis looked like he had always done – short and squat, with wispy white hair and a bloodstained white coat.

But he wasn't exactly the same. There was a red mark round his throat, like a burn, and his face was crisscrossed with fiery scratches. He had survived the attack by one of his own patients, but he hadn't survived unscathed.

He looked over at me, and I saw that a wide strip of his scalp had been ripped away, leaving a mess of half-congealed blood behind. His glasses were bent out of shape, both lenses cracked beyond any use whatsoever. But still he kept them balanced on the edge of his nose. He peered over them at my dad.

‘You called?' said Doc Mortis, drawing the words out in that creepy Eastern European accent of his.

‘He's ready.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘I'm sure.' My dad stepped back and gestured at me. ‘It's time. Wake him up.'

There was a
snap
as Doc pulled on a pair of thin rubber gloves. From nowhere he produced a syringe with a long slender needle fixed to the end.

‘What are you doing?' I asked. ‘What is he doing?'

‘Relax, Kyle,' said my dad, and I suddenly couldn't remember him ever having used my name before. He caught me by the arm and held me in place. ‘It'll all be over soon.'

There was a sensation like a wasp sting at the side of my neck as Doc stabbed in the needle. My dad smiled, and there was something like concern there in his eyes. That was another first. ‘We're bringing you back to us,' he said. ‘We're bringing you home.'

And at that, the last of the blue sparks faded, and a calming darkness fell in their place. The pain that stabbed through my limbs became soft and fluffy like candyfloss. It tickled across my skin before being carried off on the wind. I felt my heart flutter like a rabble of butterflies and a tingling spread out from where the needle had pierced my skin.

And then nothing but darkness.

And then no one but me.

And then...

And then...

A sound somewhere in the nothing. Far away. A sound I recognised. A sound I knew.

BEEP.

BEEP.

BEEP.

The sound of a heart monitor.

The sound of a hospital.

BEEP.

BEEP.

BEEP.

And in the darkness, a giggle. A child's voice, soft and high-pitched.

‘Oh, look, Raggy Maggie. Mr Lazy Bones is finally waking up.'

L
ight. It brightened the space beyond my closed eyelids, easing me awake. I lay still, unable to move, and immediately thought of my first encounter with Doc Mortis. He'd drugged me and strapped me to an operating table. I hadn't been able to move then, either – only been able to watch silently as he'd drawn closer with his bag of rusty tools.

But I
could
move now, I realised. As my body began to wake up, my hands twitched and my arms raised to pull against the straps holding me down.

Only there were no straps holding me down. Not on my arms, not on my legs, not across my forehead like last time.

I opened my eyes. The room I was in was stark and bare, but it was clean. There was no flaking paintwork or bloody streaks on the wall. In fact, there wasn't much of anything. The walls and the ceiling were white. There was no furniture, aside from the bed I was lying on. The place looked less like a room than a template for a room, like something that would eventually become a room when the owner decided what he or she wanted to put in it.

I tried to sit up and regretted it immediately. The room spun and a sharp pain hacked at my skull. There was a thin white sheet covering my body. I threw it off and saw that my legs were bare. From the knees up I was covered with a hospital gown, which I could feel was open at the back. Despite the situation, I was relieved to note that I was still wearing underwear. If I was going to have to run away from something, I didn't fancy doing it with no pants on.

I lay back on the pillow and the pain in my head subsided to a level I could cope with. There were wires attached with sticky pads to my chest, but the other end of each wire hung loosely over the sides of the bed. It was a hospital bed, with raised metal guards at either side to stop me rolling out. A proper
modern
hospital bed, not the rusted old contraptions in Doc Mortis's hospital.

There was a
click
as a door was opened somewhere behind me. I twisted my head round and saw two men stepping into the room behind me. It was my dad and Doc Mortis. They approached in a rush, side by side, until they reached my bedside.

‘Where am I? What have you done to me?' I demanded.

‘Relax, Kyle,' my dad said. He was wearing a long white coat with a badge fixed to the left-hand breast pocket. The badge displayed the little logo of the National Health Service and a name: Dr Feder. ‘You will be very disorientated. You've been through a traumatic experience.'

He shone a small torch in my eyes, but I batted it quickly away.

‘Oh, you think?' I snapped. ‘And whose fault is that?'

He raised his eyebrows towards Doc Mortis, who made a hasty scribble on a clipboard he carried. Now that I looked at him, there was something very different about Doc. He was the same short, squat shape, but his scars were gone and his broken round glasses had been replaced by black-framed rectangular ones. His hair was still thin and wispy, but the strip of exposed flesh across his scalp had disappeared.

His clothes were different too. Or rather, his clothes were the same, but they were now clean. His white coat was exactly that – white, without a single bloodstain to be seen. He had an NHS badge pinned to his chest too. It read: Dr Morris.

‘Kyle,' said my dad, and his voice was more gentle than I'd ever heard it. ‘Do you know where you are?'

‘Not really,' I admitted. ‘The Darkest Corners? Although probably not. I'm no use to you over there, am I?'

Both men shared a confused look. Doc quickly wrote something else on his clipboard.

‘You are in hospital,' my dad said. ‘Do you remember why?'

‘Because you threw me down the stairs and he stabbed a needle in my neck,' I retorted. ‘At a guess.'

There was that look of confusion again, with a dose of concern mixed in. ‘You were assaulted,' he continued. ‘On Christmas Day. Do you remember?'

‘Of course I remember! Mr Mumbles. How could I forget that?'

Doc's pen scratched furiously against his paper. My dad looked down at the notes and gave a faint nod.

‘I'm afraid I don't know what that means,' he told me. ‘I don't know who Mr Mumbles is.'

‘Yes, you do,' I growled. ‘You sent him.'

‘You were alone in your house,' my dad continued, a little flustered. ‘And became aware of an intruder trying to gain entry. He tried to come through your bedroom window at first. Then he tried to come in through the doors.'

He spoke slowly and deliberately, pausing at the end of each sentence to give me an encouraging nod.

‘Finally he gained entry through the window in your living room. You tried to escape, but he caught you.'

‘I know all this,' I said. ‘Why are you telling me? What are you doing? What's all this about?'

‘He caught you and... he hurt you, didn't he? He was strong, and he was violent, and he wasn't holding back. He beat you badly. He was the one who threw you down the stairs.'

‘No! It was you!'

‘That's not true, Kyle. I would never hurt you. I'm your d—'

‘You're not my dad!' I cried. ‘Stop saying you're my dad!'

He stopped, and I could see from his face that he was taken aback. He cleared his throat. ‘Doctor,' he said. ‘I'm your doctor.'

Something tingled at the base of my skull. It nestled back there, an itch I couldn't quite scratch.

‘What?' I said. ‘What are you talking about? What are you trying to do?'

‘You received a severe head trauma, Kyle,' he continued. ‘There was serious bleeding in your brain and we believed there was a very good chance you were going to die. We had no choice but to operate. Afterwards we induced coma, in order to allow the brain to recover.'

The word came out of me all by itself. ‘Coma? What... what do you mean “coma”?'

‘You have been asleep for almost a month, Kyle.'

‘What...? No, I haven't. No. I've... I've...'

‘You were lucky. We almost lost you several times.' He finally smiled. It was a smile of relief. ‘But you pulled through. You're a real fighter.'

‘Pulled… pulled through?' I mumbled.

‘Your mother is waiting outside,' said Doc Mortis. It was the first time he'd spoken since entering the room, and I noticed immediately that his accent was gone. ‘Would you like to see her?'

‘My... my mum?' I said. The inside of my head was reeling like a roulette wheel. ‘My mum's dead.'

Again that pen, scribbling on the clipboard. My dad – my doctor? – patted me on the arm. I flinched and drew back, but he didn't seem to notice. ‘You've been dreaming, Kyle,' he said. ‘It's very common. Your mum's fine.' He nodded to Doc Mortis, who smiled at me, then scuttled off towards the door.

My dad turned back to me. ‘He'll go fetch your mum.'

‘What is all this?' I demanded. ‘This isn't a hospital.'

‘What makes you say that?'

I tugged on the wires sticking to my chest. ‘Well, these aren't attached to anything for starters.'

A puzzled frown furrowed his brow. ‘Yes, they are,' he said. ‘They're all attached to these.' He gestured to an empty space beside the bed. ‘Monitoring equipment mostly, for keeping track of how you're doing.'

‘Are you mental?' I scowled. ‘There's nothing there.'

He stared at me, and there was that expression of concern again. ‘Yes, Kyle. There is. Look. It's all right here.'

And suddenly he was right. I could see them there – three little screens all blinking and flashing their reams and reams of data. Two were built into a tall narrow trolley; the other was attached to a metal pole. A clear bag hung at the top of the pole. Liquid dripped along a tube that I now realised was inserted into the back of my hand.

I made a grab for the tape that held the tube in place, but my dad put a gentle hand against my head and held it there until I stopped struggling.

‘Relax,' he said. ‘Like I say, you've been through a lot. All these reactions are understandable. All this must come as a shock.'

I watched the liquid trickling down the tube. ‘Trust me,' I croaked. ‘You have no idea.'

The door opened and Doc Mortis poked his head round the frame. He raised his eyebrows expectantly.

‘One moment,' said my dad. He turned back to me. ‘Your mum is waiting to see you,' he said. ‘But before I bring her in, I need to be confident you're OK. You can… You can see the equipment now, right?'

I looked over to the screens that hadn't been there a few moments ago, and gave a slow nod of my head. ‘Yes.'

‘And what about the rest of the room? What can you see, Kyle?'

The rest of the room was empty. Same blank walls. Same stark ceiling. ‘Nothing,' I told him. ‘There's nothing here.'

His hand squeezed my arm. ‘Try,' he encouraged. He motioned up towards the corner of the room. ‘What about the television? Can you see the TV?'

I followed his gaze. ‘No.'

‘It's there, Kyle,' he said. ‘It's important that you see it before we bring your mother in. It's important I know you're OK.' He pointed to the corner up by the ceiling again. ‘The TV. Do you see it?'

‘No. I... I...'

‘It's a flatscreen, twenty-eight inch, black frame with silver writing at the bottom,' he pressed. ‘Try to see it. You must try.'

A tingle buzzed at the base of my brain.

‘I... I can't,' I began.

‘Flatscreen. Twenty-eight inch. Black frame with silver writing at the bottom,' he insisted. ‘Concentrate.'

‘It's not… There's not…'

But now there was something there. It appeared between blinks of my eyelids: not there one moment, fixed to the wall the next. A flatscreen TV, twenty-eight inch, with a black frame and silver writing at the bottom.

‘I see it,' I said, and a sensation of relief washed over me.

‘What else?' asked Dr Feder. ‘What else do you see?'

From the corners of my eyes I saw the rest of the room appear, as if being painted into place by some invisible brush. There was a sink in the corner, a bottle of bright orange liquid soap mounted on the wall just above the silver taps.

Over there, beneath the TV, was a chair with wooden arms and a tired-looking fabric back. There was a window beside it. The blinds were closed, but a dozen or more “Get Well Soon” cards sat on the sill. A dozen or more! I couldn't think of a dozen people who'd want to send me a card, but there they were all lined up in a row.

‘Everything,' I said. ‘I see everything.'

He looked around the room, as if seeing it through my eyes. Then he rocked back on his heels and gave a satisfied nod. ‘Excellent. You've done really well, Kyle. Would you like to see your mum now?'

My head gave a slight jerk up and down and my eyes went to the door. Doc Mortis, or whoever he was, looked happy as he pushed the door fully open and stepped aside.

And there she was. My mum. Standing in the doorway, her eyes glistening with tears, her whole body trembling. She ran at me and her arms and her smell were suddenly around me. Her hair tickled my face, and my dad and Doc Mortis no longer mattered. Nothing mattered except her, and that moment, and that hug.

‘You're OK,' she sobbed when she finally pulled away, and they were tears of happiness and relief. Just like mine.

‘So are you,' I said, sniffing loudly. ‘You were… I mean, I thought you were…'

She hugged me again, and all my doubts drained away in her arms. It was her. She was real. She was mum.

When we pulled apart I looked over at Dr Feder. ‘I thought… My dream. You were my dad.'

My mum gave an embarrassed laugh and her cheeks tinged pink. She glanced at the doctor, with his broad shoulders and square jaw, then quickly looked away.

‘You woke up a few times before we operated,' he explained. ‘You would've seen me then. Doctor Morris too. That would explain how we got into your dreams.'