Читать книгу See Through Me - Kevin Brooks - Страница 12

Dr Reynolds kept it as simple as possible. Partly, I think, because he assumed – correctly – that I wasn’t in the right state of mind to deal with anything too complicated, but also because – as he freely admitted – he barely understood it himself. All he really knew, and all he could really tell me, was that it wasn’t just my skin that was transparent, but that other soft tissue was affected as well, and that the extent of the transparency – the degree to which it could penetrate my body – was dependent on the level of light I was exposed to.

‘So, for example,’ he said. ‘In this kind of light . . .’ he gestured vaguely at the surrounding dimness ‘. . . the transparency doesn’t generally reach beyond the superficial layer of muscles. It seems to penetrate further in some places, but that’s only because some places are closer to the body’s surface than others, so the light doesn’t have so far to travel. The one exception to all this is your bones. It seems that no matter how close to the surface they are, or how bright the light is, your bones aren’t affected by the transparency.’

He paused for a second, glancing round at Dr Kamara who I realised had moved across to the control panel by the door again. He gave her a quick nod, then turned back to me.

‘When the intensity of the light is lowered . . .’ he said, waiting as the light in the room grew even dimmer, ‘. . . well, you can see for yourself what happens.’

My belly was still exposed, and as I looked down at it again, it was immediately obvious that something had changed. I could still see inside myself, but not as much – not as deeply – as before. A few strips of muscle were still showing here and there, but the bulk of it – the covering of fibrous red bands that had been so visible before – was itself now covered by the layers of tissue above it. Most of this covering was a thinnish coat of fat – a vile-looking yellow jelly that was simply too sickening to look at.

I swallowed hard, took a few steadying breaths, then turned back to Dr Reynolds.

‘What happens if there’s no light at all?’ I asked him.

‘We don’t know.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because if it’s too dark to see anything at all . . . well, obviously, if we can’t see anything, we can’t see anything. And if we use a torch, or any other kind of light – no matter how faint – you won’t be in total darkness anymore, which defeats the whole point of the exercise.’

‘How bad does it get?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I mean, if the light’s really bright . . . it’s going to get worse, isn’t it? That’s why you dimmed the lights before showing me anything, so I wouldn’t see all the really bad stuff straight away.’

‘We were just being cautious, Kenzie,’ Dr Hahn said. ‘If we’d shown you too much at first, it might have been too much of a shock.’

‘I need to see it,’ I said. ‘I need to know . . .’

‘Are you sure?’

I nodded. ‘If I don’t see it, I’ll just keep thinking about it.’

‘You’re going to keep thinking about it anyway, I’m afraid.’

‘Yeah, but at least I’ll know what I’m thinking about.’

She smiled at me, but it was the kind of smile that’s too fragile to hold, and by the time she’d turned to Dr Reynolds it had disappeared without a trace. She didn’t say anything to him, and he didn’t speak either. He just nodded, then looked back at me.

‘We’ll do it gradually again,’ he said. ‘Just like before. Whenever you’re ready, I’ll ask Dr Kamara to start turning up the lights. We’ll begin with the small one on the wall, and if you still want to keep going when it reaches full brightness, we can start fading up one of the main ceiling lights. Is that all right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘We can slow things down or stop completely whenever you want.’

‘Right.’

‘Are you ready to start?’

‘Yeah.’

He signalled Dr Kamara to go ahead, and the near-darkness of the room slowly began to lift.

It wasn’t anything like I’d imagined . . .

It wasn’t anything like I could have imagined.

It was infinitely worse.

Unimaginable.

The stuff inside your body doesn’t look anything like those see-through illustrations of the human body you see in biology textbooks, or those plastic anatomy models with their nice neat innards, all in exactly the right place. That’s not how it is. In reality, it’s just a jumbled mess of soggy red stuff and thick globs of meat, all shoved together in whatever way they’ll fit. And it’s not inanimate either. It’s a living thing, a mess that moves – pumping, pulsing, throbbing, twitching . . . keeping itself alive.

I know it for what it is now.

But back then . . .

All I could see was a repulsive stew of guts.

Entrails . . .

Sickening coils of intestine, knotted together, fold upon fold, like parasitic worms . . .

Tubes, greyed pink, the colour of rotted meat.

Foul things.

Too much.

‘Stop,’ I said.