The HUM: The complete novel

by Michael Christopher Carter

  At first she assumed the nurse had returned, coming to tell her the room was clean—a disadvantage of staff wearing no uniform—it didn’t take long to work out who the patients were, though. This particular woman made it clear by loudly declaring herself to be God.

  She invited Carys to pray to her and was very offended by her reluctance. She was then torn away by another distraction, the entrance of Carwyn declaring himself to be an alien again. Mike and ‘God’ flew for him, forcing him back into the corridor.

  “Don’t you piss in here, you stupid fucker!” Mike yelled at him. ‘God’ was compelling him to leave in the power of her name (which Carys thought she heard was actually Helen) and inviting him to kneel before her for forgiveness.

  They forced him into the corridor where he was intercepted by Raymond who grabbed him by the throat and proceeded to try to choke him to death.

  It took four nurses, three of them hefty looking men, to prize weedy Raymond’s hand from Carwyn’s throat. Once they prevailed, one of them helped Carwyn limp, choking the while, to a side room whilst the others tried to subdue Raymond.

  He skipped out of their grasp and ran back down the corridor, pausing only to play with the light switches as he went.

  Carys couldn’t stay here. She would speak to the doctor, and find out how she could get back home. And then she remembered home, with no Ebe, no mum, a dad planning to leave the country because he couldn’t deal with the memories in his marital home; and a hideous reptilian husband. Where even was home for her now?

  Chapter Thirty-five

  The Visitor

  Carys was called into a small room for Doctor’s ward round sometime after breakfast, having stayed in her room after the events of the nights before.

  “Come in, Carys. Take a seat,” the soft spoken doctor invited. “Are you settling in okay?” he asked. Carys burst into tears. He didn’t try to stop her, but passed her a tissue to wipe her eyes and blow her nose.

  When sobs subsided, he carried on as though it had never happened.

  “I’m Doctor Lewis,” he introduced. “I want to get a sense of how you’re feeling, so we can decide what treatment is going to be most appropriate for your rehabilitation.” Carys nodded. “So, how are you feeling?”

  Carys had no answer. She shrugged.

  “You’re on quite a high dose of chlorpromazine at the moment. Do you know why?”

  Carys shrugged a second time.

  “You had a bit of a violent outburst, didn’t you? Do you remember?”

  Carys remembered the UFO, and Marco’s transformation. She didn’t know how to put it into words, so she shrugged again. Undeterred, Doctor Lewis explained for her.

  “Your husband says you’re troubled with visions of extra-terrestrials? That you even believed he was an extra-terrestrial. Is that right?” he asked calmly.

  Carys was about to answer that it was right, wondering if the most reasonable explanation wasn’t that she’d hallucinated everything. But then a thought struck her

  “How did Marco know I thought he was an alien? A reptile to be precise?” she demanded. “I never said to him why I had to get away from him. How did he know?”

  Doctor Lewis looked unperturbed by her outburst, and suggested that perhaps she’d accused him of being an alien, but didn’t remember. Carys sighed. There seemed little point arguing it was real. No-one would ever believe her.

  “I think I’ll try you on Quetiapine. It works as an anti-depressant combined with a mood stabiliser and anti-psychotic in one. I’m not sure if your symptoms present as bipolar, or not, but I can see you are prone to depression. We know you’re prone to psychotic episodes, and they seem linked to your depression, but perhaps more to your anxiety,” he said in a monotone.

  “I see from your notes you’ve had ‘borderline personality disorder’ mentioned to you before. The hallucinations, and ultimately your psychosis could be connected to that.” He closed the file and seemed to be preparing to excuse Carys, so she felt compelled to ask.

  “How long will I have to stay here?”

  Doctor Lewis remained silent for a while. He leaned back in his chair as steepled fingers prodded his chin, as though the question was a new concept to him. He sighed before speaking.

  “Well. It will take a while for the medication to take effect. Give it some time and we’ll talk again.”

  “But I don’t need to stay here for the medicine to work, do I? I feel okay now, apart from the fact that everybody here is nuts!”

  Doctor Lewis reddened, stumbling on his words.

  “Carys. You are not here voluntarily.” She looked shocked. That hadn’t occurred to her. Of course she wasn’t! She wasn’t here after a long drawn out fall from sanity. Just a rapid disagreement about what sanity is, because she was still absolutely sure she had it right.

  There had been a spaceship, and Marco had shown a side to himself she’d never seen before. But it sounded crazy. Even to Carys, it sounded crazy. In fact, a voice in her head made her inclined to believe it was crazy: she was crazy.

  Gratitude for a change in medication was the only glimmer of hope. Perhaps that would be the answer.

  “You have been sectioned under the mental health act.” Raising her eyes to the ceiling, she had gathered that already. “Until we deem that you are safe to be allowed out, or there is someone willing to care for you at home… well, like I say; give the medication a chance to work, and we’ll see.”

  Carys got up silently and left the room.

  Helen/God stood along the corridor arguing with the coffee machine. Frantically pressing buttons, her hair wafted in the movement of her burgeoning rage. “Bloody thing!” she screamed, grabbing the brightly coloured machine in both hands and shaking it from side to side.

  “Leave it alone, Helen,” one of the female CPN’s ordered. She walked over and pressed buttons, as if Helen might have been doing it wrong. “I’ll have to call someone. Shaking it won’t do any good,” she admonished. “Go and use the kettle for now.” As she walked away, Helen stuck her fingers up behind her back and mouthed some obscenities.

  She saw Carys approach and indicated for her to follow her. Helen put the kettle on in the small kitchen for patients, and leaned back on the worktop, arms folded.

  “What are you in for?” she asked. She made it sound like a prison sentence. Carys shook her head and shrugged. Satisfied for now, Helen began to tell her story.

  “I’ve been in this shit-hole for… how many years is it? Probably getting on for ten,” she answered her own question. Carys swayed in her disbelief.

  “What on earth has kept you here for so long?”

  “I’m not safe on my own. That’s what they say. I get delusions of grandeur, suddenly think I can fly and stuff. I’ve been pretty messed up.”

  A huge crashing noise stopped them dead. Peering from the safety of the kitchen, they could see down the corridor through the small wired window in the door.

  The coffee machine lay on its side. A large man was being wrestled to the floor by two other men. Carys gawped as an injection was produced and stabbed into the man’s leg. His struggling abated, and he groggily accompanied the other men away from the corridor through key coded doors to the secure rooms.

  “He always has to break everything!” Helen fumed.

  Without further word, she shuffled away to another side room, leaving Carys alone in the kitchen. Helen hadn’t offered her a drink. She probably would have declined, no-one here was hygienic enough to be allowed to make anything for Carys.

  Rinsing an already washed cup under the tap, she re-boiled the kettle. As she turned to find teabags, she heard someone enter the room.

  “Do you want a cuppa?” she asked whoever it was, without looking round.

  “Carwyn is an alien,” the other occupant announced.

  “Do you ever say anything else?” Carys muttered.

  “Carwyn is an alien,” he repeated, wandering from the kitchen again. The kettle boiled and Carys pop
ped a teabag in her cup, and spooned in a couple of sugars.

  She heard Carwyn re-enter the room, but didn’t bother speaking. As she turned to fetch the milk from the fridge she was startled not to see Carwyn, but Raymond standing there.

  He began fiddling with the light switch. Carys ignored him and opened the fridge. There was a small dribble of semi-skimmed in a four pint bottle. As she closed the door and turned back towards her cup, Raymond’s hand thrust forcefully into her throat. Carys grabbed at his arm with both hands to prize him off, but he was too strong.

  Eyes bulging, she could see her life slipping away. How was he so powerful?

  As he choked the life from her, she grabbed around instinctively for something to hit him with. It was her only hope. Her hand grasped something, and she thrust it round to hit him before she’d realised what it was.

  As the object arced in the air to make contact with Raymond’s head, Carys found she was burned by a scolding splash. Raymond squealed out in agony as the full kettle of near boiling liquid emptied over him.

  Releasing his grip at once, Carys shoved him away, rubbing at her neck, gasping for air. She made it almost to the door when she was blocked.

  “Carwyn is an alien. Carwyn is an alien.”

  “Oh just fuck off, Carwyn,” yelled Carys, before suddenly feeling very light-headed and drowsy. She hadn’t seen the injection, nor felt it penetrate her leg and relinquish its liquid load. Staggering forward, supported by two indiscriminate figures either side, she recognised the route.

  She wasn’t going back to her room, which used to be Carwyn’s, but the other side of the key coded door. The secure section. Soon she would wonder no more what secrets it held. As the doors opened, her limbs lost all function, and the nurses dragged her through.

  She was woken by the aroma of food on a tray. The secure section seemed much the same as her usual room, except there was no storage to keep sharp objects, and no privacy through the glass wall.

  While she ate a surprisingly tasty curry and rice, she was watched. It was in the guise of company, but Carys knew the CPN wasn’t sitting on the edge of her bed for fun. When she had finished she made to clear away the plates and cutlery.

  “I’ll come along a bit later and take you outside, if you like.” Carys nodded.

  “Raymond attacked me. I was just defending myself,” she grumbled, by way of indignant explanation.

  “We do know. We have cameras everywhere. Having seen the situation unfold, we were on our way to assist, but your way of dealing with it, well, we have our concerns.”

  Days of the same solitary confinement passed before she returned to her former room. She didn’t care. Time away from the other patients, particularly at meal times, was welcome. They hadn’t proved to be the most relaxing dinner companions. Thrown food, tossed tables and loud shouting from less than pleasant smelling comrades had become the norm.

  She was beginning to give up hope of her lot improving when a nurse popped into her room.

  “You’ve got a visitor. Follow me.” Carys did follow her, all the way down the corridor, through more key coded doors and to the interview rooms. Anticipation of who it could be turned to distress when she recognised the figure of her husband waiting behind the glass.

  The nurse unlocked the door, this time with a key and encouraged Carys inside. She went in with her, beamed at Marco, and announced that she’d leave them to it.

  Before Carys could even think to object, she was alone with Marco in uncomfortable silence.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. Carys didn’t know what to think or what to say. Was he the person who had supported her for twenty plus years, or was he… what she saw that night?

  “Are you settling in alright?” he asked. Carys looked sardonically at him before answering.

  “No! It’s horrible. I don’t know what I’m doing here.” Marco looked thoughtful. “Do you remember what happened? You attacked me whilst I was driving, and then threw yourself from the car. You narrowly escaped being killed by an on-coming Range Rover!” Carys didn’t remember much and raised her eyebrows in mock concern.

  “You were pretty hurt. You told the ambulance men I was an alien! That a massive UFO flew overhead, and that I had morphed into an alien! Insane!” he added tactlessly

  They sat in uncomfortable silence for a while before Marco revealed his true purpose.

  “The reason I came to see you today… well… promise you won’t flip out?”

  Carys promised nothing.

  “Well. Enough of this nicey, nicey nonsense,” he declared. “Just to let you know, I’ve filed for divorce. I was reluctant. I didn’t know how my father and the church would react, but they are all in agreement: that you have made things impossible. We couldn’t possibly carry on.”

  Carys was stunned. She stifled tears and looked away from his gaze.

  “Furthermore, I will be moving. To Alaska.” Carys looked at him again, mystified.

  “Alaska! That’s a bit different to your plans to move to Italy.”

  Marco nodded. “An opportunity has arisen. I just have to take it.” Smiling a cold smile, he added, “You won’t like this, but Ebe is coming with me.”

  “What? Why?! Why on earth would he do that?”

  “I’m working there on a project, and Ebe will be a big part of that project. He is a genius you know.”

  Carys did know. “Where does that leave me?” Marco smiled.

  “I think you’re better off in here. Don’t you?” Carys was agog. “You believe in aliens; that your own husband, soon to be ex-husband, is an alien, and you’ve always said Ebe has a questionable father! Oh yes. You’re definitely better off staying here, I think?” he said in a questioning tone, as if fishing for agreement.

  “The least I owe you though, as I have condemned you to stay here, is the truth.” Carys pricked her ears.

  “I know you think I haven’t believed you and your alien nonsense all these years, but the truth… the truth is that it isn’t nonsense.” Carys’s eyes widened to saucers

  “You are right. You were visited by creatures from another planet, another dimension as well if you want to know, as was your mother. We were genetically acquiring Ebe. I love the name by the way, Extra Biological Entity! Brilliant.” Faintness threatened to take her away. Gripping the arms of the chair so tight, the ends of her fingers were numb.

  “You weren’t the only one. But you were my project.”

  “Project?” she mumbled. “Did you ever love me?!”

  “Of course!” Marco sneered. “I still do love you. But it’s difficult. Because, although you haven’t imagined your alien encounters, you are still… unhinged. I don’t like treading on eggshells, or worrying when you might attack me, or worse, attack yourself…” His tone lowered as he took a deep breath.

  “You have been a liability over the years, but Ebe needed you.” He shrugged and pursed his lips. “He doesn’t need you anymore. It’s time for him to fulfil his purpose, along with all the other ‘Ebes’ we’ve made.”

  “Other Ebes?” Carys breathed.

  “Yes! Not as clever as my Ebe, and none of them with such an appropriate name, might I add. We are preparing for the supreme race to come again.”

  “If they’re so ‘supreme’ why do they need me?”

  “A sensible question,” Marco nodded. “They are indeed supreme. They’re much closer to God than humans. They know God. They use God. And they’ve been here before, and utilised minerals, and left a legacy of structures like the pyramids around the world—all used to create a portal allowing them access.”

  Carys was unaccustomed to someone else talking in this way. She struggled to ask the questions she’d had tormenting her brain for more than three decades

  “The pyramids are still intact. Why do they need Ebe?” she eventually asked.

  “Ah! They aren’t intact. And the Supreme Arian beings…”

  “Arian!? You mean like Hitler, and Nazi’s, and their obsession with the Ar
ian race?”

  Marco chuckled. “There are no pure Arians here. Not without a disguise anyway. They’re over seven feet tall!”

  He continued his explanation. “They use maths. Everything of God is mathematical, from the shell of a snail, to the turning of the Earth and its distance from the Sun and the Moon, and it’s the same story throughout the Universe. They use maths, but they don’t understand it! Ebe understands maths!”

  “If Ebe is so good at maths because…” she couldn’t bear to say his father, so instead, she settled on, “he is biologically predisposed. Then why can’t they do the maths without interfering?”

  “Oh, they can do the maths, but they lack a certain…” he frowned, “human understanding. They have no capacity for love. They’re quite robotic.” He was in his stride now “The Arians find humans far easier to manipulate. Wait. Manipulate is perhaps the wrong word… educate, to their way of thinking. My species, and the Greys, we get our own rewards that I won’t go into now, if you don’t mind,” he said almost politely.

  “Why have you not told me all this before? I’ve been plagued for years and you knew all along, I was telling the truth?”

  “Sorry my love. I shouldn’t even be telling you now…”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, you see… One of the reasons the pyramids won’t suffice anymore is that the Arians have evolved. They vibrate at a whole new frequency now and… basically, you wouldn’t be able to cope with the new frequency. No human would. So you might try to stop us.”

  It took a while to sink in. “No human?” Marco shrugged his sympathies.

  “No. I’m afraid not.”

  “Why don’t I stop you now then.” she announced. “I could tell someone…” It sounded ludicrous even to her, and Marco guffawed to show his contempt at the idea.

  “We choose people with your ‘condition’ for two reasons, my love. Firstly, no-one will believe you. Example: Carwyn really is an alien! And he’s been telling them for twenty years!” He laughed. “No-one will trust a thing you say.”