Doc Mortis

by Barry Hutchison

  ‘Yes! That’s her grandson, and he’s—’

  ‘One moment.’

  The speaker gave another brief crackle of static, then a click. Ameena stared at it, slack-jawed, apparently finding it hard to believe that anyone would dare hang up on her. ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Hello?’

  ‘You need to leave,’ said another voice. I looked at the intercom, trying to blink it into focus, before I realised the sound hadn’t come from there. A middle-aged man with a bald head stepped out of the shadows behind us. Even through the blurriness, I recognised him at once.

  ‘Joseph.’

  ‘Joseph?’ Ameena repeated. ‘What, the guy you told me about? From the train? That Joseph?’

  I nodded. The last time I’d seen Joseph had been on the train up to Marion’s house. He’d told me he was looking after me, helping in his own way to keep me safe. I still didn’t know whether to believe him or not.

  The train wasn’t the first time I’d met him. He’d been in the police station Ameena and I had run to while being chased by Mr Mumbles. He’d appeared in the school and freed me from the chair Caddie and Raggy Maggie had tied me to. He was popping up all over the place lately. And now, here he was again.

  ‘That man you just spoke to, he’s phoning the police,’ Joseph told me. His eyes were locked on mine, never once moving to look at Ameena.

  ‘The police?’ I muttered. ‘Why?’

  ‘Someone spotted the fire at Marion’s house and called the emergency services. They found her... remains.’

  I’d have felt sick, if I didn’t feel sick already. ‘They think I did it.’

  ‘They think you did it,’ Joseph nodded. ‘And they are extremely keen to get you in for a chat.’

  Headlights reflected off the glass in the door, making us all look round. A car drove by, not slowing. It wasn’t the police. Not yet.

  ‘Should I turn myself in?’

  ‘If you go in you won’t come out,’ Joseph said. ‘You have to get away from here. Now.’

  ‘But I didn’t do anything!’

  ‘They won’t believe you.’

  ‘How do we know we can trust you?’ Ameena asked. She was supporting most of my weight, but she wasn’t showing any signs of struggling.

  Joseph turned her way for the first time. A look of irritation flashed across his face. ‘Sorry, was I talking to you?’

  I felt Ameena go tense. Her mouth opened. I spoke before anything came out of it. ‘I need to find out where my mum is.’

  ‘I know where she is,’ Joseph said. ‘I’ll take you.’

  ‘You sure about this guy?’ Ameena asked, making no attempt to keep Joseph from hearing.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’m sure of, Kyle,’ he said. He normally looked quite a relaxed character. Mischievous, even. But now there was none of that to be seen. ‘I’m sure that men are coming to take you away and lock you up. I’m sure that they will try you for Marion’s murder and they will find you guilty.’

  He stepped closer to me and rested his hand on my shoulder. ‘And I’m sure that, right now, I’m your only hope of seeing your mum again. One hour from now you can be in a holding cell, or you can be at your mum’s bedside. Your choice.’

  He lowered his hand and stepped back. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed.

  ‘What’s it to be?’

  Rows of orange street lights whizzed by, their glare reflecting off the windows of the car we were travelling in. I half sat, half sprawled on the back seat, my head resting against the cool glass. Whenever we hit a bump, my head would loll around for a moment, then thud against the window again. Maybe it hurt. I couldn’t say.

  I slept fitfully, plagued by nightmares whenever I closed my eyes. When I woke, I’d catch snippets of conversation between Joseph and Ameena. They were both sat up front, but even through the fog in my head, I could tell they weren’t bonding well.

  ‘...can’t believe he trusts you. He’s got no right to trust you. He hardly even knows you.’ That was Ameena’s voice, all cocky and aggressive.

  ‘He doesn’t know you, either.’

  ‘Yes, he does! Besides, I’ve saved his life.’

  ‘So have I,’ Joseph said. ‘Yours too, actually.’

  ‘Shut up, you have not!’

  ‘Have so.’

  They continued like that, bickering and arguing every time I woke up, until the sixth or seventh time, when I awoke to find Ameena leaning round in her seat, watching me. She smiled when I opened my eyes.

  ‘Dead yet?’

  I tried to shake my head, but the pain was too much. ‘No,’ I said. It came out as a croak.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘How much further?’ I asked.

  It was Joseph who replied. ‘Not far. Three, four minutes, maybe. Your mum’s in room forty-two. You’ll see her soon.’

  I struggled into a slightly more upright position and looked out through the windows. Tower blocks stood like giants on either side of the road. There was a lot of traffic about, but it didn’t seem to be slowing us down. We crossed a bridge, passed a corner shop, a restaurant, a pub. I didn’t recognise any of it.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Ameena asked.

  ‘Been better.’

  ‘You’ve looked better,’ she said, studying my face. ‘The whole pale and sweaty thing isn’t really working for...’

  Ameena stopped talking and just stared at me.

  ‘Whoa,’ she eventually whispered. ‘That was freaky.’

  ‘What?’ I asked. My lips felt cracked and dry. I licked them, but there was no moisture on my tongue.

  ‘Nothing, just a trick of the light or something,’ Ameena said.

  ‘What was it?’ Joseph asked. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Nothing. It was just... For a second there it looked like I could see right through his head.’

  Joseph swore loudly and slammed his hands on the steering wheel. ‘No, no, no, not now,’ he hissed. ‘Not already. It’s too soon.’

  We both turned to look at him. ‘What?’ asked Ameena. ‘What’s too soon?’

  Joseph didn’t take his eyes off the road. I felt the car beneath me speed up. ‘He’s slipping away.’

  Ameena’s eyes went wide. ‘What, you mean... he’s dying?’

  ‘I’m dying?’

  Joseph shook his head. From here I could see his hands on the steering wheel. The knuckles were white. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Something worse.’

  ‘Worse?’

  Joseph didn’t answer.

  ‘You seem to know a hell of a lot about all this,’ Ameena growled. ‘What’s going on? What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘He’s infected.’

  ‘Infected? Infected with what?’

  ‘No time to explain,’ Joseph said. He sounded irritated. ‘We need to get him to the hospital.’

  Ameena turned to look at me. Her head moved as a series of jerks. Her face looked blurred and hazy. When she spoke, her voice was muffled and faint. ‘Is there... Can they help him?’

  He may not have spoken, but I couldn’t miss Joseph’s reply when he glanced over at Ameena. It was written all over his face.

  ‘You holding on in there, Kyle?’ he asked, looking at me in the rear-view mirror. My mouth was too dry to speak, but I managed to hold up a thumb for him to see. ‘Good lad,’ he said. I was jostled sideways as the car pulled round a corner and on to a much narrower road. ‘Not long now, it’s just up— No, no, no!’

  ‘What now?’ asked Ameena. Before Joseph could reply she said, ‘What happened to the engine?’

  The car rolled slowly and silently to a stop. ‘They’ve killed it.’

  ‘Who has?’

  ‘I don’t know! Someone!’ Joseph roared. His voice was so loud it made even Ameena jump. ‘We need to get him in there,’ he said, a little more quietly. He nodded ahead, to where the hospital stood. ‘It can’t happen out here.’

  Ameena began to speak, but he cut her off. ‘When I say, get out of the car and help Kyle up. We’ll both c
arry him. No arguments, we need to move fast.’

  After a quick glance at me, she nodded.

  ‘OK. On three. One. Two.’

  ‘Three!’ Ameena cried, throwing open her door.

  My door flew open next, and hands reached in for me. They caught me by the front of my jumper and dragged me out into the chilly night air. The blast of cold cleared away the cobwebs a little.

  Now that I was a bit more alert, some of what had been said in the last few minutes began to sink in. I suddenly felt scared – a feeling that wasn’t helped when Joseph and Ameena hooked my arms round their necks and began hauling me along the darkened road as quickly as they could.

  The large building ahead of us wasn’t, in fact, a large building at all. It was a collection of smaller buildings, every one of which seemed to come from a different period in time. Shiny glass and metal stood beside moss-coated stone. A low, squat grey granite structure lurked in the shadow of a red brick tower block. The hospital must have started off small, then been gradually added to over the years since then.

  From what I could see, the buildings all seemed to be interconnected, but every single one of them looked out of place. It wasn’t like any hospital I’d ever seen before.

  So why had they moved Mum here?

  I was about to ask Joseph when I heard the whispering again. The same whispering I’d heard earlier in the night. It was louder this time, audible even over the laboured breathing of Joseph and Ameena as they ran with me towards the hospital entrance.

  ‘Voices,’ I said, the word coming out as a squeak. ‘Hear voices. Whispering.’

  Joseph swore again. ‘How close?’

  ‘Close.’

  ‘He said he heard something before,’ Ameena chipped in.

  ‘What are they saying?’

  I listened. The whispering came from every direction at once, hundreds of voices, all overlapping and tumbling together.

  ‘Kyle, can you hear what they’re saying?’

  The closer we got to the hospital, the louder the voices became. They weren’t whispers now. They were more like a series of murmurs – low at first, but becoming higher pitched all the time. In moments the night was filled by their excited, hyena-like squeals.

  ‘Y-yes.’

  Joseph gave a grunt of effort as he tightened his grip on me. ‘Well? What is it?’

  ‘Hungry,’ I croaked. ‘They’re saying hungry.’

  I was pulled sideways as Joseph suddenly picked up his pace. ‘Move, move, move!’

  ‘What? He’s hallucinating, right?’ I heard Ameena say. She sped up too, but struggled to keep pace. ‘Tell me he’s hallucinating.’

  ‘He’s not hallucinating. We need to get him inside now. If it happens here he won’t stand a chance.’

  Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. They were screaming it now. Their voices came from the left and right, from behind me and from up ahead. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry.

  Some of them were close. Closer, even, than Joseph and Ameena. A voice screeched right by my ear and I felt a blast of warm breath on my face. But when I squinted through the dark, I saw nothing there.

  ‘Wha’s happ’ning?’ I slurred. Pain clawed through my skull like five fiery fingers, beginning where the Crowmaster had scratched me and reaching all the way down into my chest.

  The hospital wasn’t far ahead – I couldn’t tell how far, exactly – but I suddenly felt that we weren’t going to make it.

  Hungry hungry hungry hungry! The voices had been whipped into a frenzy, screeching and howling like wild animals. Ameena and Joseph showed no signs of hearing them, but Joseph made sure to shout when he next spoke.

  ‘Listen to me, Kyle,’ he bellowed in my ear. ‘When we get inside, there won’t be long before it happens. The Crowmaster infected you with a virus and it’s about to kick into top gear.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ a voice asked. I couldn’t even say if it was mine or Ameena’s.

  ‘It means you’re going to slip through into the Darkest Corners,’ Joseph told me. ‘Those voices you hear, they’re from over there. Those... things must know you’re coming. They’re waiting for you.’

  Hungryhungryhungryhungryhungry.

  The Darkest Corners. It was the place all imaginary friends went when they were forgotten about – an alternate reality filled with pain, suffering and unimaginable horrors. A bit like my last visit to the dentist, but without the free sticker at the end.

  I’d been to the Darkest Corners a few times and had barely survived each time. Fortunately, I was able to flit back and forth between here and there just by concentrating hard enough, so an escape route was never far away.

  ‘He can come back, though. He can just come back. Can’t he?’

  ‘Not this time. It doesn’t work like that,’ Joseph answered. ‘It’s the virus. When he slips over, he’ll be stuck there. He’ll be trapped in the Darkest Corners.’

  I felt my head spin faster as the enormity of Joseph’s words sunk in.

  ‘Trapped,’ he added, hammering the point home. ‘With no way back.’

  Chapter Three

  THE OTHER OTHER HOSPITAL

  I didn’t notice the door flying open at Joseph’s boot, didn’t even realise we were inside the hospital until Ameena staggered and fell to her knees, and we hit lino instead of concrete.

  Joseph was beside me right away, turning my face so I was looking up at him. The five stabbing pains clawed all the way down into my stomach and a shock of agony shook my whole body.

  An indescribable sound burst across my lips – not a scream or a howl, but something from deeper within than that. Something I didn’t even recognise as human. From my head to my toes, my muscles went rigid, amplifying the hurt a hundred times over.

  ‘Help him! Do something!’

  My jaw was wrenched open and a leather wallet shoved in. My teeth clamped round it, stopping me biting my tongue off.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do.’ That was Joseph’s voice. He sounded a long way away. ‘It’s too late.’

  ‘There’s got to be some kind of cure!’ Ameena cried. ‘This can’t be it. It can’t end like this.’

  They were talking about me as if I wasn’t there. Outside, I could hear the other voices still screeching. Hungryhungryhungry. Hungryhungryhungry.

  ‘Not here. Over there. There’ll be a cure there, if he can find it.’

  Ameena’s face suddenly filled my vision. Sparks of blue flickered like fireflies around her head.

  ‘Did you hear that, Kyle? There’s a cure over there. There’s a cure in the Darkest Corners. Find it, OK?’ I closed my eyes, but she shook me until they opened again. ‘Find it and come back to me.’

  ‘You’ll be better there,’ said Joseph urgently. ‘Not like this. The hospital will be barricaded, so you’ll be safe from the things outside. At least for a while.’

  He nudged Ameena aside and leaned in close to me. His face was a mess of flickering sparks. They scurried across his skin like insects.

  ‘But it’s not what’s outside you need to worry about, it’s what’s inside. There’s someone in the hospital. Someone worse than anything out there. Worse than anyone you’ve had to deal with so far. You’ve got to stay away from him. You hear me, Kyle? You’ve got to stay away from—’

  I never caught the end of the sentence. The entrance hallway exploded in a shadowy spray of blacks and greys, and a tumbling torrent of electric sparks came crashing down on top of me.

  The last thing I heard before I passed out were those voices, louder and clearer and more excited than ever before.

  Hungry, hungry, huuuuuuuungry!

  The clanking of metal woke me. I leapt to my feet, startled, no real idea what was going on. The wallet was still wedged in my mouth. I spat it out, and realised at once that my body no longer hurt.

  I prodded gently at my head. The Crowmaster’s scratches were still there, but there was no pain. Nothing. In fact, other than a dull ache where my knees had hit the hospital floor, I felt
in perfect health.

  Relief made me snort out a laugh, but another metallic crash soon wiped the smile from my face.

  The sound was coming from the door, or rather, where the door should have been. Sheets of heavy corrugated iron covered the entrance, wedged in place by thick metal poles and thicker wooden beams. Rolls of barbed wire were strung across the entire barricade, cupping it like a sling and keeping it pressed against the door.

  Everything – the metal, the wood, the wire – shook as the creatures on the other side of the door hurled themselves against it. I could make some of them out through gaps in the blockade, battering against the small windows with clawed, misshapen hands. The glass looked to be long gone, but a wire mesh and half a dozen strong bars stood in its place, keeping everything outside from getting in. Everything except their voices.

  They giggled and shrieked. They spat and swore. They hissed and howled and hollered like all the demons of hell. And all the while, the barricade shook and the chanting continued:

  Hungry, hungry, hungry!

  I turned away and tried to get my bearings. A putrid, mouldy stench caught me right at the back of the throat, and I had to pull the neck of my jumper up over my nose to stop myself being sick.

  I was in a long corridor that stretched away into the distance, ending in shadow. Fluorescent strip lights hung from the ceiling overhead. Most of them didn’t seem to work, but four buzzed and flashed erratically, casting a cold, flickering glow along parts of the corridor.

  Those bits of the corridor I could see were in bad shape. The tiles on the lower half of the walls were filthy, cracked, or crumbled away completely. Above them, on the top part of the walls, it was impossible to tell what colour the paintwork had once been. Damp had seeped through it, marbling the surface with shades of black and brown. Large flakes of the ruined paint had peeled off, revealing patches of raw brickwork below.

  Doors lined each side of the corridor. Some stood open. Others hung in pieces, the wood rotten and decayed. More light flickered from beyond some of the doors, suggesting this corridor wasn’t the only one to have power.

  Dark puddles covered parts of the floor, fed by the constant drip-drip-drip of water that leaked through the decomposing ceiling tiles. At least, I hoped it was water. The rest of the floor, where the puddles didn’t reach, was a mess of debris and junk.