Doc Mortis

by Barry Hutchison

  Turned out he was just like me, after all.

  ‘Listen to me, I.C.,’ I said, leaning forward, ‘we’re getting out of here. Both of us. I’m going to get us out.’

  His face brightened at once. ‘And you’ll help me find Toby?’

  I hesitated. His eyes shimmered, full of hope. I nodded. ‘I’ll try my best.’

  He threw himself forward on to his knees and wrapped his arms round my neck, hugging me tightly. ‘You know what?’ he asked, his head pressed against my chest.

  ‘Um... what?’

  He released his grip and pulled away. ‘You can keep the crisps.’

  He said it with such sincerity that I almost laughed. Despite the horror of the situation, I almost laughed. That decided it. I was getting this kid out. No matter what.

  ‘Thanks,’ I smiled. ‘I appreciate that.’ I reached into my back pocket for Joseph’s map. ‘Now, any idea how we get to—’

  ‘Sssh!’

  I shut up immediately. I.C. was raised up on his knees, his back straight, his finger to his lips. His head was craned round, his eyes on the door. He looked a bit like a meerkat.

  ‘What?’ I whispered.

  ‘“Sssh” means “Be quiet”, “Don’t talk”, “Shut up”, “Listen”,’ he scolded. ‘Don’t you hear it?’

  I turned my ear to the door and listened. I.C.’s breathing was fast and shallow, even more so than my own. But other than that, all I could hear was the humming of the electric light above our heads.

  ‘What? I don’t hear—’

  And then I did hear it. It was so faint as to be barely audible, but I could just make it out. That sound. That sound I’d heard before. The

  squeak,

  squeak,

  squeak of a hospital bed being pushed

  along the corridor.

  I leapt to my feet. I.C. was already on his. ‘They’re coming,’ I said. My voice cracked at the back of my throat and my stomach became a deep, dark hole. ‘It’s them. It’s the porters, they’re coming.’

  Squeak.

  Squeak.

  Squeak.

  ‘They pass by lots,’ I.C. whispered. ‘Up and down the corridor. Up and down. Keep quiet, like mice, they’ll keep moving.’

  Squeak.

  Squeak.

  Squeak.

  The sound was closer now. ‘You sure?’ I mouthed silently. I.C. nodded, but he was chewing on his fingernails again, and I could see that his hands were shaking.

  Squeak.

  Squeak.

  Squ—

  The rusted wheels of the trolley bed stopped on the other side of the door. I held my breath, and prayed that the thunder of my heart wouldn’t give us away.

  Nothing seemed to happen. Not for a long time, at least. I glanced over at I.C., but he was still gnawing on his fingernails, his eyes fixed like a tractor-beam on the handle of the door.

  Like a hunting dog, the thing outside began to snuffle at the gap down at the floor. It was a low, snorting sound, exactly like the one I’d heard when the porter was sniffing at my neck. I’d thought Doc had said it to scare me, but he was telling the truth. The thing had my scent.

  My lungs began to burn, but I daren’t breathe, daren’t move, daren’t risk making a sound. All I could do was stand, frozen like a statue, rigid with fear, waiting to find out what would happen next.

  It lasted for almost a minute, that snorting and snuffling beyond the door. My head had begun to ache with the effort of holding my breath, a dull throb right at the base of my skull. I couldn’t do it any longer. I had to breathe. I had to—

  Squeak.

  Squeak.

  Squeak.

  The porter set off without warning, the bed’s wheels groaning their way past the door and along the corridor. I covered my mouth with my hand and let my breath out in one big burst.

  ‘Up and down, see?’ I.C. whispered. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes were still filled with fear. ‘Up and down.’

  ‘That was close,’ I replied quietly. ‘I really thought we were going to be in trouble there. That sniffing, I thought he could—’

  THUD.

  We both jumped as the door was struck hard from the other side. I.C. let out a cry of shock, then clamped both hands over his mouth.

  THUD!

  The doorframe shuddered. The boy stepped behind me, and both of us took a pace backwards.

  CRACK!

  The third blow split the wood up near the top of the door, where a rusty hinge held it in place. We retreated right to the back of the little room, the blanket tangling round our feet.

  ‘They’re coming in,’ I said, my voice shaking. ‘The door’s not going to hold.’

  With a swipe of his leg, I.C. kicked away the stack of cardboard boxes, revealing a dark, narrow hole in the wall. It was perfectly square, a few centimetres above the floor, and looked to be just about large enough for me to crawl through.

  CRACK!

  ‘You’ve got an escape route?’

  The boy nodded sharply. ‘Every hideout needs one. Toby told me that.’

  ‘Go!’ I urged, shoving him towards the hole. A series of hollow, metallic booms reverberated around the room as I.C. clambered into the air duct.

  ‘Now you,’ he called, his voice already sounding distant.

  Dropping to my knees, I scrambled into the crawl-space, just as the wood splintered, and the door swung inward with a final deafening CRASH.

  Chapter Eleven

  A TASTE OF HIS OWN MEDICINE

  The thin metal floor of the air duct sagged as I crawled inside. Cold air – colder, even, than the air in the freezing store cupboard we’d just left – swept towards me, ruffling my hair and making it difficult to keep my eyes open.

  Not that my eyes were of much use. Just a few metres into the vent, the darkness began to tighten around me, and I.C. became nothing more than a vague moving shape up ahead.

  Once again, his size helped him. He raced along the duct, the sounds of his hands and knees on the floor becoming further away with each passing moment.

  I was too big to be able to crawl on my knees. Instead, I lay flat, dragging myself along, commando-style, with my elbows. I kicked out with my feet, trying to give myself some extra speed, but my toes slipped on the cold steel, and I had to leave it to my arms to do all the work.

  The duct was filthy, the metal ragged in places. It tore through my clothes and ripped at my skin as I hauled myself onwards into the beckoning dark.

  I must’ve travelled eight or nine metres before I dared look back. The entrance to the crawl-space was a rectangle of light, with nothing to be seen but the wall directly across from the opening.

  I.C. crawled on at top speed, the crashing of his movements becoming ever more distant as he left me behind. I stopped, my muscles already cramping painfully, my breath already rasping in my chest. I didn’t take my eyes off the rectangle of wall, waiting for something to appear, but praying that nothing did.

  I stretched my arms out, trying to ease the cramp that burned my muscles from the inside out.

  Five seconds passed. Seven. Ten. Nothing moved in I.C.’s hideout. I couldn’t hear the boy himself now. Maybe he’d stopped, or maybe he was just too far away for me to hear him. I’d find out soon enough. The pain in my arms had eased and I prepared to move again.

  Then I saw it, the vague blur of a shadow on the wall inside the store room. My limbs became rigid. My splayed fingers gripped the floor.

  Another few seconds passed in silence, before four long, scarred fingers wrapped round the edge of the rectangular hole. A head ducked slowly down into view. Most of its features were lost to silhouette, but the light picked out the edge of a dirty yellow button stitched over an eye socket, and the mass of scar tissue across his bald head. A tingling heat crept up from my toes, finishing in my chest and making my heart contract and my lungs swell.

  Stupid. Stupid. I turned away, cursing myself, and scrambled along the duct as fast as my aching arms could pul
l me. I shouldn’t have stopped, should’ve kept going, kept moving, kept crawling. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Every movement I made along the metal passageway boomed like thunder. It drowned out the sound of the thing behind me, making it impossible to tell how close it was.

  It was thinner than me, much thinner, impossibly thinner. It’d move faster than I could. It could be right behind me even now. It’d be on me at any moment.

  I threw another glance over my shoulder, not stopping this time. The porter was just inside the mouth of the duct, its long arms and legs folded tightly round it, its hands and feet pressed against the metal walls so it was suspended above the floor.

  Like a spider it scuttled towards me, covering the first metre in half a second. It moved with the same jerkiness as before, but it was less obvious here, less pronounced, as if crawling came more naturally to it than walking.

  I wish I could have said the same. My arms were aching, my legs were bleeding, and my back was killing me as I dragged myself on through the void. I nearly called out to I.C., but stopped myself just in time. It was my scent the porter had, not his. It was me the monster was hunting, not him. If I kept my mouth shut, the boy might be able to escape, if he hadn’t already.

  The duct gave a loud, hollow boom when my head thudded against another wall. It was directly in front of me, blocking the way. I reached out in the dark, running my hands over the cold metal. A spasm of terror jerked through me. Dead end. It was a dead end!

  Thuk-thuk-thuk.

  Now that I’d stopped moving, I could hear the porter’s splayed fingers pulling it along the duct. It moved quietly, almost silently, as it hurried to close the gap between us.

  Thuk-thuk-thuk.

  It couldn’t be a dead end. It couldn’t be. If it was a dead end then I’d have found I.C. here too. He wasn’t, which meant there had to be a way past. I just had to find it.

  Thuk-thuk-thuk.

  The duct was shaking beneath me, vibrating as the porter scurried along it. I slid my hands along the walls by my sides, starting by my ribs and moving up past my head. My left hand slid all the way to the wall that blocked the way. My right hand slipped off into empty space. It was a corner, that was all! A turn in the duct.

  Thuk-thuk-thuk.

  I pulled with my right hand, pushed with my left, kicked with my legs and squirmed my way round the bend, the duct rattling and quaking around me.

  The porter lunged. I didn’t hear it move, just felt the grip on my right ankle before I could pull it round the corner. My hands squealed on the metal floor as I was dragged backwards. I reached down, grabbing for the monster’s hand, but the narrow walls stopped me bending far enough.

  It hauled me until my whole bottom half was back round the corner. I wedged my arms against the walls, trying to stop myself being pulled any further. The grip tightened round my leg, until it felt like my bones would be crushed to powder. I cried out in pain and brought my left foot sharply down. It crunched against some part of it – its arm, I think, but maybe its head – and it made a sound that was part hiss, part whistle, like the boiling of an old-fashioned kettle.

  Its grip relaxed and I kicked again. This time it was barely a glancing blow, but its hand uncoiled from my right leg and made a grab for the left. I was too quick, and scrambled round the corner before it could catch hold of me again.

  I fumbled forward, kicking furiously against the wall. Less than a metre along I felt the floor fall away into a steep downward curve. I crawled on, pulling myself on to the incline and finding it coated with a layer of frost.

  The ice made the metal slippery, and I quickly lost my grip. Raising my arms and feet, I surrendered to it, and began a rapid slide down towards whatever might be lurking in the darkness ahead.

  In the sudden silence, I could hear the porter manoeuvring round the corner. The duct shook as, with a resounding boom, its grip slipped on the frost-coated walls and it crashed to the floor. Or maybe it’d dropped down on purpose, because a moment later I heard the soft swish of it sliding after me.

  The further down the slope I went, the colder the air became. The front of my body, from my chest to my knees, was soaking and numb. When I breathed in, my lungs burned with the chill. Something up ahead was radiating cold, and I was beginning to wonder if freezing to death might be just as bad as whatever Doc would do to me if the porter caught me.

  Then I remembered the scalpel, the drill and the rusty hook, and the cold didn’t seem quite so bad after all.

  A spray of light flashed across the floor of the duct half a dozen metres ahead of me. The sudden glow was disorientating, but the half-second it lasted was enough for me to see the slope was about to come to an end.

  I braced myself, determined to start crawling the moment I stopped sliding. The light flashed again, right ahead of me this time. Through the slatted bars of a rusty vent I caught a glimpse of a room below me. I hit the vent hard and metal began to screech. Then I was in darkness again, and the floor was opening up to swallow me.

  I opened my mouth to cry out, but the ground hit me hard, turning the shout into a whimper. A fluorescent light blinked twice, flash, flash, like lightning. I saw snatches of the room: filth on the floor, blood on the walls, an operating table adorned with leather straps.

  The light flickered again and I saw the dark hole in the air duct by the ceiling above me, its metal edges buckled and torn.

  When the light flashed again, the hole was no longer empty. The porter’s head and shoulders spilled over the edge, one long arm reaching into the room.

  I rolled to the side, wincing when something sharp scraped across my back. The rusty air vent that had collapsed and pulled me down into the room was beneath me. I stood up and grabbed for it. It was metal, but light enough to swing. Parts of the edges where the metal had torn were razor sharp. It’d be a much better weapon than the snooker cue had been. But then, that wasn’t saying much.

  Another flash brightened the room. In that half-second of light I saw that the hole above my head was empty once more. Behind me, something dropped softly to the floor.

  I twisted, bringing the vent cover round in a wide arc. It whummed through the air, but found nothing. Thrown off balance, I staggered forward, only stopping when I thumped against the side of the operating table.

  More fluorescent lightning danced across the room. The porter was crouched on the table in front of me, perched on his toes, legs bent, knees up round his deformed ears.

  A single yellow button stared out from one eye socket. In the other socket, the button was a dark purple and shaped like a flower. The snout-like nose and circular mouth were similar, but this wasn’t the same porter that Doc had set loose on me. This wasn’t the one who’d taken my scent.

  I realised this without any flicker of emotion. It didn’t matter that this wasn’t the same one. It was here for the same thing.

  The darkness engulfed us again and I heard the rustle of its clothing. Stepping back, I held the metal grate in front of me. He slammed against it with the force of a charging bull. Even if I’d had time to brace myself, I’d have struggled to stay on my feet. Like that, without any kind of warning, I crashed backwards to the floor right away.

  I clutched the vent tighter until the ragged edges threatened to slice through my palms. I’d expected the porter to leap on top of me the moment I fell, but he hadn’t. For the first time, I was grateful for the darkness. I couldn’t see him, but that meant that he couldn’t see me either...

  Flash.

  The light flickered and he saw me. At the same time I saw the hypodermic needle poking through the bars of the vent, just a few centimetres from my face. A bead of bluey-brown liquid hung like a tear drop from its point. It must’ve tried to stab me with it, but the bars had been too narrow for it to fit through.

  The porter bounded towards me, its freakishly long legs covering the gap in a single stride. It dived, mouth open, arms outstretched, reaching for the syringe. I flipped the vent, turning it ov
er in my hands so the side that had been facing me was now facing him.

  It screeched as the needle pierced its skin, right in the centre of its stomach. Its weight pressed down on me, squashing the plastic syringe between us, forcing every drop of the liquid up through the needle and into its bloodstream.

  The effect was instantaneous. Its body went limp and its head lolled down over the edge of the vent. Unconscious, or paralysed, or whatever it was, it somehow felt much heavier, and I had a struggle on my hands to get out from beneath it.

  When I did crawl free, I stood up and gave it a kick to see if it would move. It didn’t, but that didn’t stop me kicking it again, just to be sure.

  ‘Whoa, you beat one!’

  I looked up at the sound, but saw nothing in the dark. ‘I.C.? Is that you?’

  ‘No one’s ever beat one. Never ever.’

  ‘Where’d you go?’ I asked him.

  ‘Ran away, super-fast.’ He made a sound like a racing car whizzing by. ‘Neeeeee-ow!’

  The air duct groaned as the boy shifted his weight, and a breath of cold air rolled down from within it. When I.C. spoke again, he was standing beside me.

  ‘I’m fast, but I’m not tough. Not tough like you.’

  ‘How long were you there for?’ I asked him. ‘How much did you see?’

  ‘Lots!’ he chirped. ‘You were ace! One thing I want to know, though.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  The light crackled to life again. I.C. turned on the spot. I followed his finger as he raised it in the direction of a second operating table, right at the far end of the room. On top of the table, straps and buckles held the hulking frame of a man securely in place.

  ‘Who’s that guy?’ asked I.C.

  And, like that, the bottom dropped out of my world.

  Chapter Twelve

  FRIENDS REUNITED

  Ididn’t approach the table. Not right then. Not right away. I walked sideways instead, like a crab, until I was by the door. The light had fizzled out and it was dark again, but I needed the light. I needed the light so I could find out if I’d really just seen what I thought I had.