Читать книгу Brotherhood of Shades - Dawn Finch - Страница 9
ОглавлениеChapter Five – Death Day
“Am I dead?”
“Yes.”
“Simple as that? No softening the blow?”
“You are no longer a child; do you wish to still be treated as one?”
“I just thought . . .You an angel then?”
“I have been asked that so many times. No, I am not an angel and, before you ask, I am no devil either.”
“So who are you – or what are you?”
“I am D’Scover. I am here to help you.”
“Sounds dead creepy to me. Why do I need help?”
“Because you are dead and yet you are still here.”
“I had noticed, thought it was a bit odd, but I kinda thought I was dreaming and that none of this is real.”
“Real is a phrase with many definitions.”
“Bloody hell, what sort of answer is that?”
D’Scover walked down the corridor of the hospice, grateful to no longer hold full substance. In this fresh state of death, the world hung between the living and the dead. The living could not see him here because they did not believe it existed – and therefore to them it did not exist.
The boy looked through the window into the room where his body lay. His skin sunk into his half-starved frame making him look more skeleton than boy. His body weighed very little and, though he was fourteen, he looked much younger. Two male nurses lifted his corpse carefully into a black bag, doing it slowly up and moving his wavy fair hair out of the way so it wouldn’t catch in the zip. They placed it on to the lower level of a trolley and covered the whole thing with a clean sheet. Loaded up like leftover dinner, the boy thought, to be wheeled through the corridors without causing any upset. No one would even know the body lay there as the apparently empty trolley rolled through the wards to the mortuary. He watched with curiosity for a moment before realising his companion had walked on.
“Hey, wait up!” the boy called after him.
D’Scover turned and waved his hand. The walls rippled in a wave from his sides all the way to the boy and, before the boy could refocus, he was standing right in front of D’Scover.
“Wow, now that’s cool. How d’you do that?” the boy asked, looking around.
“Practice,” D’Scover replied brusquely. “Do you have a name?”
“I suppose so; I mean, I must have one.” He frowned. “It’s just . . . just I can’t quite catch hold of it. It’s like it’s just out of reach; d’you know what I mean?”
“No one is here to remember your name, so it is not remembered. Do you have a name you wish to use instead?”
“I can’t think of any.” The boy wrinkled his forehead as he tried to recall one. “I’m not really bothered though. I mean, I don’t seem to care.”
“Adam – will that do?” D’Scover suggested.
“OK – Adam, I like it – Adam will do.”
“It is what the nurses put on your admission papers and death certificate; they had to put a name and they chose to name you after where you were found, Adam Street. It is a good enough name and it carried you to death; it seems fitting that it should carry you past it,” D’Scover said.
He turned back to the corridor and began to walk once more. Adam followed at a brisk pace, half running alongside his tall and long-legged companion.
“So what happens now?” the boy continued to babble. “Do I have to do something to get to? Do I have unresolved business – that’s what they have in the scary movies – is that why I’m still around? Or is that just all rubbish? If it is, where will I live?”
“You will not live.” D’Scover strode on. “You are dead; try to hold that thought.”
“No, I know I’m dead, well, I must be. I mean, I saw my body back there so I must be dead, unless someone really looks like me and this is all a set-up. Is it a set-up? No, can’t be, why would anyone bother to set me up?” He continued to flood D’Scover with questions. “I’m just a bit confused about why I’m here, why I’m not just dead and gone. Hold on, is this a dream? Am I imagining all this?” Adam stopped and looked around the corridor. “I mean, this doesn’t even look quite real, does it?”
He was right, it didn’t look quite real: the colours were drained and everything had an almost two-dimensional quality as though they were watching it all on a TV screen.
“That is because it is not quite real; we are currently within the Memoria,” D’Scover explained. “This is a place constructed entirely of your memories and life experiences. The corridors look solid enough until we go beyond that which you have seen. You have never entered any of the rooms off the corridors and so they do not exist because you have no memory of them. In fact, as you were wheeled through the hospital to your room, you only saw the ceiling and because of this the floor does not exist here.”
Adam looked down and the floor was not there. It was not that it was a hole, but it just simply did not exist. It was rather like trying to look at stars: the harder you stared, the fainter the image became. The effect made Adam feel slightly sick.
“Hey, how come I can still feel sick, even though I’m dead?” he asked. “Shouldn’t all that sort of thing stop?”
“You feel sick because you can still remember what feeling sick is like. You know what would have made you feel sick, you remember, and it does make you feel sick. You do not actually feel sick, you just think you do.”
“Easy for you to say,” Adam grimaced, “but I feel like I could make a proper mess of your shoes, real or not. So, what now?”
“Now I have to take you through some of your memories so that you understand yourself and your life.”
“Really? God, that’s a bit depressing, isn’t it? Can’t I just skip on to the next bit?”
“That is rather a rash request,” D’Scover said, “considering you do not know what the next bit is.”
“Ah,” Adam nodded, “now that’s a fair point. OK, lead on, Mr Spooky. Let’s get on with this.”
The corridor began to fade and was replaced with a large open green space surrounded by a blurry green wall. The green began slowly to pull itself into focus and showed itself to be a large park ringed with tall trees. A small brown dog appeared from nowhere and ran off into the trees, hotly pursued by a young girl calling for it to stop. Other details of the park smudged into existence – a set of swings, a slide, a paddling pool full of children – all fulfilled the illusion that the park was real. D’Scover looked around at the environment gradually forming about them both.
“What is this place?” D’Scover asked. “It must be an important memory of yours.”
“It’s the park where I lived last summer when I ran away from that bunch of nutjobs who called themselves my foster parents,” Adam replied incredulously. “It’s so real! Is it real?”
“That all depends on your definition of the word real,” D’Scover replied enigmatically.
“If I can touch it – it’s real,” Adam grinned, pleased with his cocky answer.
“Ah, but if something is out of reach, too high up to touch, does it mean it is not real? A mountain top, the sky, are they not real?”
“Now you’re just messing with my head,” Adam laughed. “No, this place looks too real to be in my imagination, just like it did when I was here last summer. Everything’s the same, the ice-cream van, the kids in the paddling pool, the park keeper telling off the kids for riding on the grass, it’s all the same as it was back then.”
“We have not travelled in time, and so how do you suppose that we can be here last summer?” D’Scover quizzed.
“OK, let me think,” Adam said, walking round the grass in front of the paddling pool. “Well . . . I suppose . . . this is my clearest memory of the park . . . and so that’s how I’ve recreated it in my mind?”
“Excellent, a brilliant supposition and quite accurate.” D’Scover was relieved; the boy did indeed show promise.
“Why are we here?” Adam asked, bending to touch the grass beneath his feet and marvelling as it smudged like wet paint. He watched as it settled and once more became lush green turf.
“This is one of your good memories shown here in the Memoria, but you may have to let it go,” D’Scover answered. “You must listen very carefully to me now. We should sit down; this may be a difficult stage for you.”
He looked around for a bench to sit down, but there were none visible.
“Hey, that’s not right,” Adam grumbled. “There were loads of benches in this park. I should know, I slept on most of them.”
He closed his eyes and screwed up his fists, concentrating hard, and a grey mist began to take shape beside them. The blur struggled in and out of focus for a few seconds before settling into the shape of a shabby bench. It was just about wide enough for two, but still much smaller than a normal park bench. D’Scover watched in amazement; no one had ever mastered such object control their first time in the Memoria – no one.
“What?” Adam was staring at D’Scover. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
“You like to joke, do you not, Adam?” D’Scover composed his sombre face once more.
“Suppose so,” Adam said, “and I’m guessing you don’t? So why aren’t I freaked out? Why aren’t I running around doing the whole spooky oooooh thing and clanking chains like other ghosts? Why aren’t I scared stiff? I feel kind of . . . well . . . chilled.”
“I imagine that in life you had a somewhat pragmatic character, and that has traversed with you.”
Adam stared at D’Scover blankly for a moment. “Nope,” he said. “You’ve lost me, brainiac. What did all that mean? Prag what?”
“Pragmatic. It means that you were down-to-earth, practical, well grounded.”
“Oh yeah,” Adam grinned. “I was that, I suppose. Not easily scared, seen a few things that should have scared me, but I always figured that as long as I could always be quick on my feet, I could outrun most things. Mind you, not much chance of me outrunning death!”
“More jokes?” D’Scover asked.
“Not that you’d notice!”
They both sat on Adam’s bench and, for a number of quiet minutes, they did not talk and instead watched the park evolve around them. More people walked past and an ice-cream van jingled its noisy way along a narrow road dissecting the green field.
“The next issue is always a difficult one.” D’Scover broke the silence. “I will not deceive you on this. These memories are here to ease you through this state into the Passing,” he told Adam in a serious tone. “You must decide what you wish to see before you move on. Many of these memories will be lost to you for ever once they have played out here. It is important you discard any deep woes you may be harbouring as these can trap your spirit in one place.”
“The Passing? What’s that then? Is that the proper deadness kind of thing?” Adam asked.
“You could say that,” D’Scover replied coldly. “Grossly simplified but, basically, yes.”
“And what if I don’t want to go there? What if I just want to hang around the living and haunt someone?”
“Do you?” D’Scover asked.
Adam shook his head. “Nah, not really. I suppose I just don’t feel as though I had enough time to do anything, to really live. Like my life was over before it really got started and now I’m just going to fade away. D’you know what I mean?”
“I do.” D’Scover looked around at the verdant greens of the park and marvelled at the accuracy of this particular Memoria. “There is another way.”
“Another way?” Adam gripped D’Scover’s arm and was surprised that it was solid; somehow he had expected to pass through it. “Don’t mess me around here; if there’s something else I should know or do to stop from just . . . well . . . ending and me being proper dead, why don’t you just say it? I can handle it.”
“I will tell you, but you are not ready yet. The Memoria has not finished; you have more to explore.” D’Scover stood up and took a last look at the park. “Show me more.”
Adam stood up too and shoved his hands deep into his pockets.
“I don’t know what you want,” he shrugged. “How am I supposed to give you what you want if you don’t tell me? This is all way too much for my brain to cope with.”
“Just let your mind go, let the memories flow.” But as he spoke, the green of the park began to drift out of focus and was replaced with a dull red mass that wavered as though in a heat haze.
“I know where this is too!” Adam said as the image became clearer. “It’s the town centre, and that’s the library building.”
As he said these words, the building snapped into sharp focus. Again D’Scover was impressed with the detail. The Memoria was as clear and vivid as if they were standing on the busy street looking at the building. People streamed past them in a hectic flow to and from their work. The road ran with car after car in a steady river of motorised metal. Adam stepped out into the road and walked briskly towards the library entrance. The cars coming towards him just passed around him, as though engaged in an effortless and well-choreographed dance.
D’Scover watched this, pleased again at this boy’s seemingly natural ability to accept the Memoria and to understand its capabilities. He seemed to have no fear. D’Scover followed Adam into the entrance hall of the library and through its squeaky turnstile on to the main floor.
“I loved this place,” Adam said as he entered the building. “Always warm and safe. No one could try and rob you or sell you drugs in here. The librarians liked me and I could just read all day or use the computer, even have a bit of a kip if I wanted. Best place in the world. Look,” he said, in an almost reverential tone, “my favourite chair.”
He ran over and patted a low chrome-framed chair that stood tucked away deep in the maze of book-filled shelves.
“I’m gonna miss you, old friend,” he said solemnly to the piece of battered furniture.
“You will miss a chair?” D’Scover asked.
“I don’t have anything else to miss, do I?”
The library faded and was replaced with another building, the homeless hostel where Adam had spent Christmas. After this came the Salvation Army soup kitchen and the smiling faces of the Army handing out food and blankets. Then images of cold alleys and rainy nights fading into the doorway where he had spent his last night and finally the hospice and its quiet, darkened corridors.
“I have to show you something,” D’Scover told him when the Memoria settled once more. “I am afraid this may be painful for you.”
“Why do you have to show me?” Adam asked nervously. “Don’t show me if it’s horrible.”
“I must show you because it is important and because you have not shown it to yourself. It is a condition of the Memoria that you expel all emotional dead weight,” he explained. “I can sense that there is a memory long hidden deep in your psyche; you may not know you even possess it, but it presses on your consciousness and so must be seen.”
“You can see inside my head?”
“No, but you are still here in this Memoria, and so there must be something stopping you from releasing these images. I shall attempt to unlock them, if I may?”
Adam nodded and D’Scover lifted his arms and spread them wide as though opening curtains. The hospice whirled from view, torn away to be replaced with a small room full of sunshine. Dust motes hung in the afternoon sun, slowly spiralling in a fluid pattern in the languid air. Sunlight cut through the shadows above a desk where a young woman, no more than a girl, sat opposite an ashen-faced middle-aged woman. The girl clutched tightly at a chubby baby that lay sleeping peacefully across her tiny lap. His thick pink legs hung down over the edge, occasionally twitching gently in his sleep, deep in his innocent dreams.
“He should go to someone who can take care of him,” she pleaded as slow tears rolled down her cheeks. “You will make sure, won’t you? I just can’t look after him myself. He needs a proper family. I can’t be a mother to him, and I never even wanted him. It was an accident and his father’s no good. I can’t be with him and I just can’t have a baby – it’s not right. He should be with someone who actually wants him. He’ll be safe with someone else, someone who can feed him properly and give him everything he deserves, someone who’ll actually love him because I don’t. You will make sure of all that, won’t you?”
The older woman walked to a tall grey filing cabinet and pulled a file out of the top drawer. Slapping it down on the table, she pulled out a number of sheets of paper and pushed them across the desk towards the girl.
“You must sign this release for the boy, and the other paperwork is all just standard.” She smiled a grim smile. “And we’ll take care of everything else. You mustn’t worry; we have a number of families who are keen to take good care of such a bonny baby.”
The girl leaned forward and looked at the sheets of paper, scanning them through, but not reading them.
“It’s all very standard, I can assure you,” the woman said.
“And you’re sure I’ll never have to see him again?” the girl asked, hesitating as she reached out for the pen. “It’ll be just as if I never had him, as if I’d never had a baby at all?”
The woman nodded and the girl took the pen from the desk and signed a childish and unpractised signature at the bottom of the page. A button was pressed on the desk, a sharp buzz could be heard through the wall and a gangly woman in a nurse’s uniform entered.
“She’ll take good care of him, won’t she?” the girl pleaded.
The older woman nodded and the girl stood up with the still sleeping baby lying oblivious to his impending abandonment in her arms. She kissed him on the forehead and held him tight.
“I’ll always remember you,” she whispered. “You might not believe me, but one day you’ll know I did this for you, for the best.”
She handed the baby to the nurse, and he did not even stir from his slumber. The nurse walked from the room, letting the door swing shut heavily behind her. The noise it created ran like a gunshot through the room, and the girl crumpled into the chair, torn apart by great sobs that she could barely breathe through.
“STOP!” Adam screamed and the Memoria froze.
D’Scover had never seen it do this; it faded out but never stopped with such a clear image like this. He swung his arm out and the room looked as though a thick veil had been pulled across it. Adam turned his face away.
“I did warn you it would be emotionally painful,” D’Scover said. “But you needed to see it.”
“That was my mother,” Adam said blankly. “My real mother, that was her, wasn’t it?”
“Her image lay deep in your memory from when you were a baby.”
“I want to see her now. I want to see her and . . . and tell her . . . and just say that . . .” He slid down and sat on the floor, or rather on the grey smudge that currently represented the floor. “Who am I kidding? I don’t know what I want.”
D’Scover walked over and sat down next to him.
“She thought she was doing the best for you,” he said gently. “It may not mean a lot to you now, but she did do it for what she thought were the right reasons, you have to understand that.”
“NO!” Adam stood quickly and turned his tear-stained face away from D’Scover. “I have to know for myself why she gave me away. Please, I have to know. I want to see her NOW.”
Adam looked back to the veiled Memoria and curled his small fists at his sides; turning his face upwards, he began to scream. Above the two of them a swirling black mass began to descend and envelop them both. Adam’s scream became the noise of the wind and in the middle of the black cyclone he stood with his eyes closed and his hair whipped around by the rush of air. D’Scover grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him hard, trying to snap him out of the hurt rage that possessed him.
“ADAM!” D’Scover yelled. “THIS WILL NOT WORK. YOU CANNOT FORCE
THIS!”
Adam opened his eyes and looked hard at D’Scover and the wind fell like a stone. D’Scover stared at Adam through the stillness and realised the boy was looking past him at something behind. He let go of the boy’s thin shoulders and turned slowly. Behind him there was another green space, a garden this time with a smaller swing set and slide and a tiny weedy pond. Next to the pond sat a young woman in a deckchair, a discarded book in her lap. Time had passed, but there was no mistaking the face of the young girl who had given up her baby over fourteen years earlier. She carried a thin but content smile as she stared down the garden, watching something. A child of about three years old played in a sandpit a few metres away, driving a bright red truck backwards and forwards, scattering sand over the edges into the grass.
“Adam,” D’Scover said softly, “you cannot stay here; we have to move on.”
Adam crouched down by the child and looked into his face. The child remained unaware of Adam’s presence and carried on playing his simple digging game.
“This should be me.” Adam looked over his shoulder at D’Scover. “If I’d not been born when I was, if I’d not been an accident, I could’ve been this kid.”
“No,” D’Scover said gently, “that is not the way it works. You were you. This child has a different spirit and will live out his life. Your life is over and however tragic, brutal and short your existence was, it was still your existence. You have had your time; this is his time,” D’Scover explained. “We have to leave now.”
Adam ignored him, and instead walked over to where the woman sat.
“My mother.” He said the words carefully, experimentally. “I don’t think I’ve ever said that out loud before. I’ve cried it in my sleep, and wished it in my dreams, but never said it out loud. It sounds strange.” He looked closely into her face. “Mother.”
Leaning forward, he kissed her cheek lightly. He reeled back as she shuddered and her hand flew to the spot where his lips had briefly rested. Staggering back a few more steps, he reached D’Scover.
“She felt it!” he gasped, turning to stare into D’Scover’s face. “How the bloody hell did she feel it? This isn’t real, is it?”
“This is not real; you are imagining what she would do and have constructed this to suit what you imagine will happen,” D’Scover said, but he sounded unconvinced. “We have to leave this place.”
His voice was cold as he once more reached into the air and pulled across the veil and they were standing in another dark room.
“Where are we now?” Adam asked.
“Where we always were,” D’Scover replied. “The place in which you died.”
Adam looked around and realised that they were in the hospice. The room was still empty and the bed had been stripped, but Adam recognised it and, inexplicably, he felt safe here.
“I have to leave you here for now,” D’Scover said. “I have some work to do at my offices, but I will return shortly.”
“Leave? But what am I going to do while you’re gone?”
“I will place you in Dispersal so that you do not disturb anyone here.”
“Dispersal? You make me sound like weedkiller,” Adam said sullenly. “What’s Dispersal?”
“We can only hold our substance for a few hours at a time. After that our solid appearance is affected and we start to look too, well, faint and ghostly,” D’Scover explained. “We need to Disperse, to scatter ourselves into the ether, allow ourselves time to build our substance again. You will not be able to control your own substance yet and so I will have to put you into Dispersal.”
“I thought it was over. I thought I could do that Passing thing now and be done with it?”
“Not quite yet. I need to confirm some details first. You will not be aware of the passage of time whilst in Dispersal,” D’Scover explained. “Sister Goodman will watch out for you whilst you are here.”
“Whatever.” Adam shrugged and turned away, his face deep and sad.
D’Scover watched the boy’s thin shape in the darkness and decided against trying to talk to him about what had happened in his Memoria. Instead he stood behind him and held his hands out, palms facing towards the boy. He took a deep breath and the boy began to break up into angry red pellets that swirled in the room like scattered blood before they exploded into nothingness, absorbed by the black shadows of the room.
