Mindscape

by M. M. Vaughan

  • • •

  Dulcia was waiting for Ernest when he entered the playroom. He checked the clock, and for a moment, before remembering that everything had changed, he felt himself tense up on seeing that he was five minutes late.

  “You are lucky that I am in a forgiving mood,” said Dulcia. “Take your seat so we can begin.”

  “No.”

  Ernest watched his mother’s eyes widen in surprise. He felt his heart thumping against his chest and hoped that she wouldn’t notice.

  “Excuse me?” she asked.

  “I said no. I’m not here to study.”

  Dulcia stared at Ernest, and her look of confusion gave him confidence. There was no turning back now, and for the first time in his life, he truly had nothing to lose.

  “What are you here for, then?” asked Dulcia. “To play? I leave for a few days and you think you are in charge? Sit down this very second or else—”

  “Or else what? I don’t think you are in any position to threaten me.”

  “Of course I am,” said Dulcia, folding her arms. “I am your mother, and—”

  “No,” said Ernest. “I thought you were. I thought you loved us, even though you didn’t really show it, but I was wrong.”

  Dulcia said nothing, her face not displaying any emotion, as Ernest tried to stop himself from shaking and waited for a response.

  Finally, Dulcia spoke. “Very well. I can see that you are angry. I understand—you’ve lost your brother, and it’s made you emotional. So, tell me, Ernest, what do you want from me? Clearly you want something or else you could have left me in prison.”

  The coldness in his mother’s response sent a wave of hatred through him—so forceful that all the fear he had been feeling about this moment disappeared. He stood up tall, and his face hardened.

  “I want to enter your mind,” he said.

  Dulcia raised her eyebrows. “Really. And why would you want to do that?”

  “I have some questions, and I don’t trust you to answer them honestly.”

  “I see,” said Dulcia. “What kind of questions?”

  “About your time at the school—when they trained you to use your Ability. I want to see what it was like.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “No.”

  Dulcia thought about this for a moment. “And if I say no?”

  “Then I don’t help you. You need me more than I need you. I can manage on my own—the last two weeks have proved that—but you, you need me to carry out your plan.”

  Ernest stared at his mother in surprise as her lips slowly curled up into a smile.

  “It seems I have underestimated you,” she said finally.

  Ernest nodded. For once, he was in complete agreement with her.

  “Very well,” said Dulcia, putting down the pen she had been holding in her hand. “When do you want to do this?”

  “Right now.”

  “Can we go somewhere more comfortable?”

  Ernest looked at the two child-sized desks that his brother and he had spent so many hours studying at. He nodded. “We’ll do it in your study.”

  Dulcia said nothing. Instead, she walked past him and out the door. Ernest turned to follow her, amazed at how simply she had accepted his request. If only he’d known how easily the position of power could be reversed, he thought, he would have done it years ago.

  Dulcia turned the handle of the door and stepped inside, and Ernest, his heart pounding harder than ever, his mouth dry, followed her. The room was one of the smaller ones of the house but just as soulless and impersonal, its shelves lined with leather-bound books that had never been read and gold-framed paintings of unknown aristocrats that had been chosen not for their beauty but for the air of importance and wealth they added.

  “Let’s get this over and done with,” said Dulcia, taking a seat in an armchair by the unlit fireplace.

  “Yes, Mother,” said Ernest, who realized, as he was saying it, that this was the last time he would ever call her that. “Sit back and relax. This shouldn’t take long.”

  Ernest sat in the armchair opposite Dulcia. For a brief moment, he felt an uneasy stirring in the pit of his stomach—guilt? uncertainty? Then he looked up, and there on the mantelpiece was a photograph of him and his brother, side by side two Christmases earlier, and immediately the anger that had been consuming him for the last two weeks came flooding back. Ernest looked away, his eyes cold and vengeful, and stared directly at his mother. The last thing he saw as he let his mind go blank was a brief look from Dulcia, one that he had never seen before—her eyes wide, her face even paler than usual. It was, he thought, as if she knew that this was the beginning of the end.

  Ernest stood in the vast room that was the Reception of his mother’s mind. It was no different from any other Reception he had visited; the darkness of her mind, he knew, was waiting for him behind the simple wooden door at the other side of where he was stood. Ernest walked over to it quickly, in case his mother decided to have a last-minute change of heart and began to block him. He placed his hand on the handle and took a deep breath, summoning up reserves of courage he hadn’t expected to need.

  • • •

  The moment Ernest stepped into the mind of Dulcia Genever, he knew this was not a place he was welcome. Black clouds hung low in the sky, obscuring the tops of the decaying buildings, and a hostile wind whistled and howled around him, snapping at him as if it were a vicious dog protecting his master’s home. Ernest knew, from his mother herself, that any thoughts beyond the conscious thoughts in a person’s Reception could not be blocked, but that was little comfort—a block wasn’t needed in a place so filled with anger. The anger was almost deterrent enough.

  “I am doing this for Mortimer,” said Ernest to himself as he took his first steps along the street, his eyes darting from left to right as if expecting someone or something to jump out at him from one of the dark alleys between the near-derelict buildings.

  “I am doing this for Mortimer,” repeated Ernest, louder this time, trying to block out the sound of the howling wind. But as he stepped out into the middle of the junction he had been heading toward he knew that something wasn’t right.

  This isn’t Emotions Street, thought Ernest. To his left, where he would have expected to see a long row of buildings, each housing the memories relating to different emotions, there was nothing but a tall, single tower surrounded by wasteland.

  “Where am I?” Ernest wondered as he stepped off the cobbled street and onto the rubble that filled the vast, flat space. Ernest leaned down and picked up a piece of shattered stone. He turned it in his hand, staring at it, his mind racing through all that he had learned about people’s minds to find something of an explanation. It was then that he noticed, from the corner of his eye, a sliver of yellow sticking out from a nearby mound of rubble. Ernest dropped the stone in his hand and walked quickly over to the mound. At first, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but as he began to kick away at the rubble beneath his feet a familiar shape began to appear.

  Ernest stared at the door lying on the ground—its once-bright yellow paint faded and peeling and suddenly everything made sense. He was not lost. Even before he had knelt down to brush away the thick layer of dust that covered the brass sign on the door, Ernest knew what he would find: HAPPINESS.

  Ernest looked down and realized that the fine dust now coating his shoes was almost certainly all that remained of Dulcia’s happy memories. If this had been the mind of any other person, Ernest would have felt a deep sense of pity. Instead, he felt nothing. He kicked the rubble back over the door and continued forward, past the remains of the buildings that had once stored the memories and thoughts of fear, surprise, and excitement, until he reached the single tower, which, as he had already guessed, contained all thoughts and memories of anger. He stopped for a moment at the heavy wooden door of the vast building towering above him, its dark stone walls broken only by a few barred windows. How many of the memories housed insi
de those walls, Ernest wondered in disgust, were of him and his brother? Then he looked over at the scattered remains of the building opposite, the one that should have housed memories of love, and all his questions about how his mother really felt for him were answered. If he had had any doubt before, he had none now. Dulcia Genever was not a person worth saving.

  Ernest walked back onto the road and continued forward. This time, however, there was no feeling of trepidation or fear, only a sense of resolve that was immune to the darkness of this city that he was walking through.

  There was only one building on Locations Street, and lucky for Ernest, it was still standing. Whatever damage had been done to Dulcia’s mind over the course of her life, her memory of events and places had not been affected. This discovery was a relief: he hadn’t had a backup plan.

  Ernest walked through the revolving doors into the large, high-ceilinged room that looked like an old, abandoned library. The folders in here were arranged on bookcases that ran in rows parallel to each other. At each end, a dark-green-enameled sign with gold lettering jutted out, indicating which letter of the alphabet the memories were stored under. Ernest breathed a sigh of relief. The only thing he knew, from what his mother had told him in the past, was the name of the school. He looked around, saw the sign for M in the distance, and walked over to it, the sound of his shoes hitting the dark wooden floor echoing eerily about him.

  Housed at the far end of the long room, the files for the Myers Holt Academy took up an entire bookcase. Ernest, however, needed only one simple piece of information, and that, he hoped, would be filed under the summary sheet at the beginning of the Myers Holt folders. He pulled out the folder he had been searching for, a black file identical to the thousands of others lining the shelves, and opened it up. There, in bright-black ink that was as clear as if it had been written that morning, was the information he needed:

  Myers Holt Academy

  40 Montague Street

  London WC1 6JO

  United Kingdom

  It was interesting, Ernest thought, that at that very moment, he had added this information to a similar folder in the Locations building within his own mind. He placed the folder back in the bookcase, unnecessarily, given what was about to happen, and made his way back toward the entrance, glancing every once in a while at the names of the folders he was walking past; Mexico, Machu Picchu, Manchester, Maureen Smith’s house—all places that he had never heard his mother speak of and would certainly never hear of from her in the future.

  Ernest stopped when he reached the doorway. He turned to face the bookcases, his back against the glass of the revolving door, and closed his eyes. There, in his own mind, was the memory of his twin brother, Mortimer, standing in front of him. Mortimer, who, despite having never shown Ernest any kindness, was the one person who had really known him. Mortimer, who should never have died. There were two people responsible for his death, and now the first of those was about to suffer the consequences.

  This is it, he thought, taking a deep breath.

  “THIS IS FOR MORTIMER!” he shouted.

  Ernest opened his eyes, and staring directly at the bookcase in front of him, he willed it to ignite by placing in his mind an image of the bookcase in flames until, after a few minutes, smoke began to appear. Ernest watched, breathing heavily, as the files in front of him started to smolder, their edges slowly disappearing as the orange line spread outward. Suddenly, flames exploded into the room and made their way, fast and furious, along the bookcase. Ernest imagined them getting bigger, and the flames obeyed, rising up higher and higher, licking the ceiling and leaving trails of soot that circled in and out of each other until, having consumed the entire bookcase, they jumped onto the next one and then the next. Soon the flames joined together to create a single, giant ball of fire. Ernest turned and stepped calmly through the revolving doors, knowing that, as real as the scene appeared to be, this was not his body and he could choose to leave at any time he liked.

  Ernest looked back and saw that the fire was barely evident from the street. Small flickers of flame flashed across the thin, rectangular windows. This, he knew, would not be enough.

  Ernest stepped back off the sidewalk and onto the cobbled street until he was far enough away to be able to take in the entire building. He started with the door, staring at it until it exploded and sent a whirlwind of glass and metal up into the dark skies and then continued with the stone walls, imagining their destruction until they also began to burst, revealing the savage fire within.

  Ernest continued along every street and alleyway in Dulcia’s mind, making sure not to miss a single building or cabinet as he followed the route he had planned out a few days earlier. He left a trail of smoldering stone and metal behind him, and finally, there was only one building left. A tall, wide building in the midst of a blanket of flames and dark clouds with a simple sign on its front door: FAMILY.

  Ernest considered, for a brief moment, entering the building and finding his own file—a final chance to see for himself what his mother really thought of him. But he decided there was no point in it. He didn’t have to see a file to know that she didn’t love him. For that reason only, anything else she might have thought of him became irrelevant.

  Ernest let his eyes glaze over, and filling his mind with all the rage and anger he had been holding back within himself, he let his mind go to work. The building began to shake from its foundation upward and a long, low moan, as if the building were actually crying out, began to fill the air. Ernest watched while the walls started to bow outward as the force of his mind literally pushed at them from the inside and then, in one gigantic burst of energy, the stones broke free in a tremendous explosion that rocked the ground. As the stone disintegrated with the force of Ernest’s Ability, giant fireballs appeared and shot upward and outward in all directions across the now-flattened cityscape of Dulcia Genever’s mind.

  Ernest turned and walked calmly back to the door leading out to the Reception. He put his hand on the knob, then stopped. He turned his head and looked out over the burning streets and dark mountains of stone one last time before stepping out and closing the door behind him.

  • • •

  Ernest stared at Dulcia, her eyes closed, sitting in the armchair next to the fireplace, exactly as he had last seen her before entering her mind, and wondered if what he thought he had done had really happened.

  “Dulcia? Dulcia, wake up,” said Ernest without getting up.

  Dulcia opened her eyes slowly and blinked. She looked around the room, then back at Ernest. When she finally spoke, any concerns that Ernest had had about his plan not working were forgotten.

  “Hello. Who are you?” Dulcia spoke in a gentle voice, apparently confused and with a softness that he had never heard.

  “It’s not important,” said Ernest. He could tell her, he thought, that there was no way she would ever be able to remember anything anybody ever told her again, but there was no point.

  “Where am I?”

  “That’s not important either,” said Ernest as he helped Dulcia to her feet. “We have to go.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Ernest didn’t speak. Instead, he took Dulcia by the hand and led her out the door, along the corridor, and down the stairs. There, by the front door, he collected Dulcia’s coat and helped her into it before leading her out onto the driveway where the taxi he had ordered was waiting.

  The driver rolled down his window as Ernest opened the door, guided Dulcia into the back, and placed a plain white envelope in her hand.

  “I’ve been waiting half an hour,” said the driver, annoyed. “I was about to go.”

  “This should cover it,” said Ernest, placing a wad of notes into the driver’s hand.

  The driver looked surprised, though still clearly annoyed. He opened his mouth to speak, but Ernest raised his hand to silence him. Then, his eyes glazing over, he implanted the suggestion he had prepared into the driver’s mind.

  Mi
nutes later, the taxi drove away toward the destination that Ernest had instructed him to take Dulcia to—the only information the driver would remember of his journey.

  Ernest stood and watched as the taxi disappeared from view. He wondered if he should feel something—relief, perhaps—but there was nothing except the urge to rush back inside to prepare for the second and final part of his plan: the death of his brother’s killer, Christopher Lane. And now he knew exactly where to find him.

  • CHAPTER TEN •

  The lobby of the police station was busy and filled with the chatter of people waiting their turn to be seen by the single officer on duty behind the counter. Standing in line, looking confused, was a striking tall woman wearing a long black coat that matched the black of her eyes. In her hands she was clutching an envelope that had been handed to her at some point by somebody—she couldn’t remember who.

  “Next,” called out the officer.

  The woman approached the counter slowly, as if unsure as to what to say or do.

  “Yes?” asked the young officer in a clipped voice. There was a long line behind the woman, and the officer was already late for his lunch break.

  “Who are you?” asked the woman quietly.

  The officer rolled his eyes. “P.C. Hyland. How can I help you?”

  “I don’t know. Who are you?”

  The officer sighed. Another crazy one, he thought. He noticed the envelope in the woman’s hands.

  “Shall I take that?” he asked.

  The woman looked down at the envelope, as if surprised to see it.

  “I don’t know.”

  The police officer held his hand out, and the woman passed him the envelope. She stood watching as the officer silently read the note, a look of shock passing across his face.

  “Who wrote this?” the officer asked.