Human.4

by Майк Ланкастер

  He said that we were the last four left.

  But what did that mean?

  Did it mean anything at all?

  I thought maybe it did.

  Mum and Dad were getting on with each other. Not just getting on, though, they were behaving as if the cold war of the last few months hadn’t happened at all.

  So what had happened to bring them together so suddenly?

  So unnaturally?

  What had changed?

  What could have changed?

  It wasn’t as if watching me behaving like a hypnotized numpty was going to make them forget their differences.

  And then there was that odd thing that Dad had let slip when I told him what had happened. First had been that dismissive, Well, Kyle, that’s just not the way we remember it, and then that confusing account of the end of the talent show.

  Danny woke you all up, Dad had said, and we all went home.

  It didn’t fit.

  Danny had been the sixth act.

  There had been a whole lot more acts to come after Danny.

  Danny woke you all up, and we all went home.

  I could imagine some of the horrors that would have come after Danny: lame Karaoke; awful dance routines; someone playing the recorder; a kid with a new electric guitar who thought he was the next Jimi Hendrix.

  Danny woke you all up, and we all went home.

  Then there was the inevitable prize-giving that always took half an hour longer than it needed to.

  Then a repeat of the winning act.

  Polite applause.

  The end.

  Danny woke you all up, and we all went home.

  The contest had been, at best, a quarter of the way to being over.

  There was a whole lot more to enjoy.

  Or endure.

  They didn’t even stop to announce a winner.

  Danny woke you all up, and we all went home.

  Liar, I thought.

  What had really happened?

  Mr Peterson said: "It means that . . . we are the only . . . the only ones left . . . four . . . four against all…"

  I realized then that this wasn’t over yet.

  It wasn’t happy-ever-after. And it certainly wasn’t everything back to normal.

  This, I realized, was just the beginning.

  But the beginning of what?

  Chapter 16

  I wasn’t going to get any answers from my parents, that much seemed certain. They either didn’t know what had happened, or weren’t saying.

  The first explanation was scary because our parents are always supposed to have the answers to our questions.

  The second explanation was worse still.

  That they knew exactly what had happened and were keeping it from me.

  But what reason could they have for lying to me?

  The questions kept circling around in my head, and I would have given anything for them to stop. But they wouldn"t.

  What had really happened to us all?

  I couldn’t sort this out on my own.

  I tried the TV I’ve got in my room, which meant hunting for the remote control in the chaos that covered the floor. I turned over books and comics, clothes and papers, finally finding it hiding under my pillow.

  I stabbed the "on" button with my thumb and the TV was all white.

  Still no way of seeing what was going on in the rest of the world.

  I found myself wishing that my parents had bought me the laptop I’d been asking for. The one I’ll get when my schoolwork improves, or when I stop daydreaming, or when I start keeping my room tidy.

  The only computer in the house was my dad’s, in his study, but I didn’t trust my parents and was pretty sure he wouldn’t want me using it.

  So who could I trust?

  There were only three names on my list: the three people who had been with me when the rest of the village played musical statues.

  Top of that list was Lilly.

  Sure, she hated me because I dumped her and never gave her a reason.

  But. But. But.

  Why should that get in the way?

  She’d never know how much it hurt to let her out of my life, or how much I’ve regretted it every time I’ve seen her and Simon together.

  We’d been through the same events.

  I needed to speak to her.

  I sat up.

  If I saw Lilly, then Simon would most likely be there too, and maybe I could see if he was acting oddly too.

  I could find out what he remembered about the talent show, and see if it matched my parents" memory or mine.

  I’d made up my mind.

  I was going to get to the bottom of this.

  ***

  I got downstairs to find Dad standing in the hall, seemingly studying the wallpaper.

  And, more importantly, he was blocking the front door.

  He made a show of pretending he wasn’t waiting for me, but had no other reason for standing where he was. He turned when he heard me on the stairs and his face lit up as if he was pleased to see me. Didn’t make it to his eyes, though. They looked at me coldly.

  "Ah, Kyle," he said. "Are you feeling better?"

  I nodded.

  "I’m fine," I told him. "Lying down seems to have cleared my head a bit."

  "Good." Dad nodded, perhaps to demonstrate that this was indeed good. "There’s someone here to see you."

  I hadn’t heard anyone arrive, but then I had been sort of lost in my own thoughts.

  So who was it?

  Lilly? That had to be who it was. She probably had a whole bunch of questions that needed answers too. Well, she’d beaten me to it.

  Dad opened the living-room door and ushered me in.

  Mum was sitting in her chair, the one with the various remote controls in pouches on the arm, while the other chair was occupied by our local GP, Doctor Campbell.

  The last time I’d seen him had been months ago, when I’d injured my wrist playing tennis with Simon.

  Dad followed me in and pointedly shut the living-room door behind him.

  "Hello, Kyle," the doctor said, his old face watchful.

  "Hi," I said, my mind racing.

  I sat down at one end of the sofa, while Dad took a seat at the other end, leaving plenty of distance between us. The three adults looked dreadfully serious, and if I didn’t know better I’d have thought I was in a great deal of trouble for something I had done.

  Doctor Campbell smiled at me, but it was a controlled smile. He smoothed out some wrinkles from his trouser leg.

  "Your parents asked me over," he said. "They thought that you might be feeling . . . ill."

  I smiled back.

  "Me?" I said. "I'm fine."

  "Good. Good." The doctor nodded. "So you don’t feel feverish? Or disorientated?’

  "No, I really am fine."

  "Your parents are quite worried about you." His eyes narrowed to slits and it looked like he was watching for my reactions to his words. "That was quite a story you told them earlier, wasn’t it?"

  I didn’t like this.

  I didn’t like it at all.

  My mouth was dry and I felt panicked. I didn’t answer. I just sat there looking at the doctor, wondering where this was going.

  Doctor Campbell sighed.

  "Tell me what happened today," he said, and his voice had a coaxing tone to it.

  "I don’t know," I said. "I mean, I’m really not sure."

  "But your parents told me what you told them; that everyone in the village turned to statues for . . . how long did you say?"

  He raised an overly furry eyebrow at me.

  I shook my head.

  "I didn’t." My throat felt scratchy.

  He was scrutinising me as if I were a germ under his microscope.

  "You didn’t say? Or you didn’t really experience it?"

  I nodded. Evasive.

  The doctor frowned, turned to my dad and said, "I’m getting nowhere. Perhaps you could try…?
"

  Dad tried to give me a reassuring smile.

  "C’mon, Kyle," he urged. "Just tell the doctor what you told us. Maybe he can help."

  For some odd reason I got the impression that helping me wasn’t very high on Doc Campbell’s list of goals here. So I made a deliberate show of massaging my temples and squeezing my eyes shut, as if I were desperately trying to remember something. It wasn’t an Oscar-worthy performance, but it wasn’t half bad.

  "I . . . I can’t remember," I said after a few moments. "I think I nodded off upstairs and it’s all just slipping away."

  The doctor shrugged.

  "I suspect that you have had some kind of reaction to the hypnosis," he said gravely. "A dream, if you like, while in a highly suggestible state. Your mind has invented an alternative version of reality where it was everyone else who got hypnotized , while you and other volunteers were the only ones that were really awake. It’s a kind of inverted version of the way things really were."

  He brushed at his trouser leg again, his eyes never leaving mine.

  "You need to sleep," he said. "It will give your mind time to sort itself out, allow it to put fantasy and reality back in their proper places."

  He smiled widely.

  "Doctor’s orders," he said.

  "I do feel very tired," I lied.

  "Then that’s settled," the doctor said brightly. "You rest. Stay in bed the rest of the day. I’ll stop by tomorrow to make sure that everything is OK. I’ll leave a couple of pills with your parents in case you find sleep difficult."

  "Thank you, Doctor Campbell."

  "It’s what I’m here for," he said.

  No, it’s not, I thought instinctively.

  I had to get away from the house. To find Lilly. Maybe Mrs O’Donnell. Talk to them about what they remembered, and find out their impressions of the village now the event was "over".

  Then I needed to find Rodney Peterson and find out exactly what he thought he saw.

  "I think I’ll go and lie down a bit more," I said.

  "Good boy," Doctor Campbell said. "You’ll soon see that it was all just a horrible nightmare."

  Liar, liar, I thought. I know it. You know it.

  I had a sudden flash of intuition and decided I’d play a hunch.

  "I’m glad Mum and Dad called you," I said.

  "So am I, young man," he said.

  "Lucky you were by the phone on a Saturday too."

  "I’m always on call," he explained. "I guess it’s the curse of being the only doctor in the village."

  I got up and crossed the room towards the door. The telephone was on its cradle on a table nearby. I feinted for the door, went for the phone instead, picked it up and switched it on.

  I got a dial tone.

  Doctor Campbell was on his feet, starting towards me, but not before I punched in those three numbers.

  999.

  The doctor reached me and tried to get the phone from me, but I held him off for the few seconds I needed. When he finally wrenched the phone from my hand, I had already confirmed what I had suspected: there was nothing and nobody on the line.

  Just those clicks and hisses I knew would be there.

  "I’ll be in my room," I said quietly, and made my way up the stairs.

  Chapter 17

  My experiment had proved that Doctor Campbell had lied—Mum and Dad couldn’t have called him: the phone wasn’t working—but past that I couldn’t go.

  I needed to get out of the house.

  The question now was: how?

  I’d talked myself up into my room, where I was now a virtual prisoner.

  There was the doctor who was here to "check on me". And there was Dad blocking the door when I went downstairs.

  This was all madness. An ordinary life turned upside down.

  I was going to have to improvise.

  I sat down on my bed.

  The sunlight coming through the window made my eyes hurt.

  I stood up, went over to the window and opened it. My bedroom occupied the space directly over Dad’s study, with a view of a small front garden that nature was busy taking back from my parents.

  My parents and Doctor Campbell were talking in the living room, which we called the front room even though, technically speaking, it looked out across the back garden. If they stayed there for a few more minutes, and if I was brave—or foolish—enough to climb out of my window, there was a chance I could be well away from the house before they even realized I was gone.

  I sized up the drop.

  It was somewhere between four and six meters, I reckoned.

  Risk assessment: a broken leg at least, probably worse.

  But if I lowered myself down, so I was hanging from the window frame with my arms fully extended, it would cut about two meters from the drop.

  Risk assessment: still a possible broken leg; more likely a twisted or sprained ankle.

  The problem with both of these courses of action was that I needed to be certain that I could still walk when I reached the ground.

  The risk was too high.

  Off to the right side of my window, touching the side of the house, was an old tree. In high winds the branches would often tap against the panes of glass in my window. The branches were a good meter away from me. I could, however, jump across and then climb down the tree.

  A meter jump.

  The simplest of leaps.

  If I was on the ground.

  But I wasn’t on the ground, was I?

  I was four to six meters up and if I missed the tree, or missed getting a good grip, or got a good grip on a branch that decided to give way, I would fall the whole distance.

  And get the "worse" from the first risk assessment: broken legs, possible broken back, with the added chance of cuts, grazes and bruises.

  A one-meter jump.

  I took out one of the cans of Red Bull from my jacket pocket, opened it, downed it in one and then clambered out through the window.

  I put my feet on the narrow, sloping ledge, had my bottom sitting on the frame.

  The window opened to the right and was blocking any jump.

  I took a deep breath and stood up, feet braced on the ledge, arms using the window frame to pull myself up and through. Holding on to the left side of the frame with my left hand, I used my right to grab the concrete base of the guttering that passed overhead and I turned my body through a hundred and eighty degrees, so I was facing back towards the house.

  I used my left hand to close the window behind me.

  I reckoned that I had just passed the point of no return.

  Another deep breath, and I shuffled, bit by bit, to the ledge closest to the tree.

  One meter. Easy on the ground.

  The tree was an aging beech with rust-colored leaves. It had branches pointing upwards from a thick, gnarled trunk that someone, many years ago, had stopped growing too high by sawing it off about three meters from the ground. It made a platform for me to aim at, if I could make it through the screen of branches that surrounded it.

  One meter.

  I held on to the gutter concrete with my right hand and shuffled my feet around so I was facing the middle of the tree; swallowed a ball of spit that felt about the size of a satsuma; gritted my teeth; bent my knees and then jumped.

  Chapter 18

  My legs threw me forwards, and suddenly I was rootless, at the mercy of scientific forces like mass and velocity, resistance and gravity. It was terrifying and exhilarating. I threw myself at the tree and opened my arms to catch it.

  I hit a tall, upright branch full-face, crashing into it, hard. It made me dizzy—the pain I ignored for now—and I felt myself starting to fall.

  I thrashed my arms and clawed for the tree, feeling the hardness of the wood slipping from my grasp. Leaves and smaller branches whipped at my face as I started to tumble downwards. The moment stretched out in perfect slow motion.

  I’m dead, I thought calmly, far more calmly than I would have expected und
er the circumstances.

  I think it was that calmness that saved my life.

  It allowed me to give survival one more go.

  I made a last, deliberate grab for a branch and it felt as if my arms were being torn from their sockets. My head was thrown backwards and my back arched at a painful angle. Twigs slapped my face and I could taste leaves in my mouth.

  But I held on, sweating and trembling, hugging the branch to my chest. My legs fought for even safer purchase and found it.

  A few breaths to calm myself down, and to get my heart beating at a more normal rate, then I inched myself down the branch, towards the trunk. Evolution was all well and good, but a monkey would have made a far better job of this than me.

  In time I reached the sawed-off "platform" I had seen from my window and tried to lower myself on to it. The angle that the branch met the platform was difficult, but I adjusted my position on the branch and pretty much slid on to it. It was a small area, but wide enough for me to catch my breath and prepare for the next phase of my descent.

  I was crouching there, braced on all sides by branches, when suddenly the front door opened and Doctor Campbell stepped out, on to the path, off to my left and only a short distance below me. I felt certain that he would see me, but there was no way to conceal myself further, so I waited with a leaden feeling in my stomach.

  Doctor Campbell was speaking to one or both of my parents, who remained inside the house. His voice was loud enough for me to hear everything.

  "Make sure he stays where he is," he said grimly. "I’m sorry, but it is clear that he is one of the zero-point-four. There is nothing that can be done for him. He will have to be dealt with."

  My mother uttered a strange, strangled sound.

  "I will return soon," the doctor said, ignoring her. "Drug him if you have to."

  He turned and walked away from the house and his route brought him even closer to my hiding place. I crouched lower as if making myself fractionally smaller would stop him spotting me if he decided to look my way.

  But he didn’t look my way, and I watched him go, and heard the front door of my house close. It sounded loud and hollow like the door of a tomb.