by Fred Crawley
Nathan smiled and turned away, hoping Chester would get the hint.
“Oh yes, terrible place that one. I suppose that’s why he was only there for six months. I bet he had to keep paying the lease for it mind, but I suppose he has to think about his clients. No good saving money on office space if everyone just up and leaves, is it?”
Nathan looked at the door and wished that someone would come and get either him or smelly Chester, but there was no sign of the receptionist. There wouldn’t be any other clients coming either, it was getting near the end of the day and Dr. Romero had barely managed to fit him in for a last minute appointment.
“I tell you what, though,” Chester said. He leaned forward as if he was about to tell Nathan a secret. All that it seemed to do was add the stink of his breath to the overall smell in the room. “That last place was paradise compared to his first clinic.”
Something about the phrasing caught Nathan’s attention. For a moment, everything seemed to freeze and he had to force himself to turn and look at Chester. Something was different about him now. His voice was still the same but somehow cold. When he spoke, Nathan wanted to forget about his appointment and leave.
“Of course you know all about that, don’t you Nathan.”
Nathan started to respond but then he saw that Chester’s gums were bleeding. “Your mouth,” Nathan said.
Chester smiled. His face seemed to change so that his eyes were dark circles and his nose a sharp point. He started to laugh, but it wasn’t a happy sound.
“Who are you?” Nathan said.
“You know who I am Nathan,” Chester said. He began to rise and Nathan really might have run out of the room but for the fact that he was suddenly paralysed. He couldn’t stand up. He couldn’t even turn away from the horror that was approaching him.
The smell wasn’t the worst of it. Chester had begun to ooze and as he crossed the room he left behind a grimy trail of puss and blood.
Nathan knew that he wasn’t real and he tried to hold onto that knowledge, but he couldn’t be sure. It felt real.
“What do you want?” Nathan said.
“I’m here to warn you, boy,” Chester said. He had somehow grown as he crossed the room so that he now stood wedged between the floor and the ceiling. His head bent down and his long gangly limbs flapping like a puppet. The smell was still just as strong, but even his voice had changed.
“Warn me about what?” Nathan said.
Chester loomed over him. His face split in half with a grin that revealed a mouth full of tombstone grey teeth. “That will be you one day,” he said.
Nathan frowned. He didn’t feel scared because a part of him realised that this wasn’t really happening. Soon he was going to find himself back at home, probably in bed but possibly just about anywhere. Or he might still be in Dr. Romero’s waiting room, a momentary loss of concentration responsible for the thing that was standing over him. Maybe the man who smelled would still be sitting opposite him but maybe he wouldn’t. It wasn’t possible for him to know when the fantasy had begun.
He considered whether or not he should engage with the creature that had been an old man who smelled of sweat and piss. If he didn’t then maybe this would all be over much sooner. Then he would just have to decide whether he told Dr. Romero about it at their next meeting. Probably he wouldn’t. As Leland had often said to him: the important thing was not to stop him having vivid daydreams (as he called them) but for him to realise that is what they were. Nathan had no trouble understanding that what he was currently experiencing wasn’t real.
“What will be me?” Nathan said.
“Me,” Chester said.
Nathan frowned. “What are you talking about?” he said.
“Your life’s running out boy. This here specimen of a failed man, that’s you if you don’t do something about it. You want to keep coming here for the next twenty years? You want to live your life never trusting yourself?”
Nathan wondered whether he was talking aloud or if it was all in his head. Before, when he’d been committed, it had been aloud.
“That’s where you’re headed son. You keep showing up here week in and week out, that’s what he’ll do to you. It’s mental castration.”
Nathan opened his mouth to argue but then he closed it again. He closed his eyes as well and told himself that this wasn’t real, none of it was. He didn’t know where he would be when he opened his eyes, but the giant flappy man who smelled like a sewer wouldn’t be there. It was just a projection of his own fears. It wasn’t real and he didn’t need to listen to what it was saying. He repeated the sentiment to himself over and over again until he could no longer hear what Chester was saying and the smell had begun to fade.
The trouble with not being able to trust the things that he saw was that he couldn’t trust anything. He remembered getting on the bus and travelling to Dr. Romero’s office but he couldn’t believe in that any more than he believed in Chester. Maybe he had invented the whole idea of Dr. Romero and he was still in the middle of his original breakdown. He didn’t know and even when he opened his eyes and saw the waiting room around him he couldn’t trust that it was really there.
The door stood ajar. Everything was as he remembered, the coloured chairs and the map of the underground on the wall behind him. Chester was gone, but there was still a faint smell of body odour. He sniffed the air and, after a moment, he understood that it belonged to him. Everything seemed to be real, but it always did.
Nathan became aware that he was gripping the sides of the chair as if he might fall off. He looked up. The receptionist stood at the door. He hadn’t seen her come in.
“Is everything okay?” she said.
Nathan managed to nod, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak.
The receptionist smiled. “Dr. Romero will see you now,” she said.
He was relieved that his legs held him when he stood. Nathan walked to the door and followed the receptionist out of the waiting room to Dr. Romero’s office.
CHAPTER 7
IT WAS DARK BY THE TIME NATHAN LEFT Dr. Romero’s office. He stopped outside beneath a lamp post and zipped up his jacket. His breath pooled in thick clouds in front of his face.
The building he had just come out of was in the middle of town, but there were few people out in the unseasonably cold weather. Those that he did see had their heads down, rushing along, trying to get somewhere warm.
Nathan paid his surroundings little attention as he started to walk. He had told Dr. Romero about Chester but he hadn’t seemed very worried. He’d told Nathan that he didn’t have a patient called Chester and that he must have fallen asleep while he was waiting. It had been a vivid dream, he’d said, nothing to worry about. When he’d left the session, he’d spoken to the receptionist and she’d confirmed that she’d heard him snoring.
A bus shot past on his right and sprayed him with a fine mist of icy water. Nathan barely looked up. Whether it had been a dream or not his encounter with Chester was difficult to forget. He’d survived it at the time by telling himself that it wasn’t real and that it didn’t mean anything, but he was beginning to believe that the opposite might be true.
He was still sure that it had been a dream or an illusion, there was no doubt in his mind about that, but didn’t that mean it was more important? If Chester was just a vision created by his subconscious then maybe he should listen to what he’d had to tell himself. Maybe there was a part of him that was worried that he was heading in that direction. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life questioning the reality of everything around him.
Nathan didn’t know what to think but that was part of the problem. He’d started to question one thing and now everything was up for debate. What if everything that had happened to him since leaving the hospital was a fantasy? Worse still, what if he hadn’t left the hospital at all? He might be in a coma or dying and he didn’t realise it. Or what if there had never been a crash at all, what if he was an entirely different perso
n? The idea made him stop and shiver.
He looked around and for a moment he didn’t recognise where he was. The neon blue sign of a newsagent’s across the street revealed a part of town that was unfamiliar. He’d lost track of where he was going and now he was lost. He took out his phone but before he’d switched it on he remembered that he’d run out of credit and wouldn’t be able to look at a map.
A man with a bobble hat walked past with two tiny yapping dogs on pink leads. Nathan wondered if his wife had made him take them out. He didn’t trust the man not to turn into another Chester so he watched until he was out of sight around the corner and then Nathan turned back and saw the church.
It had always been there, of course, but hadn’t been immediately obvious next to the brightly lit shop, not until a light had gone on inside. Nathan crossed the street. The noticeboard said it was ‘St. Valen’s Catholic Church’ but that didn’t mean anything to him.
He ran a hand across the stone wall and the texture made it feel real. Nathan leaned forward to read some of the notices but then he realised where he was.
He hadn’t been thinking about where he was going and he’d automatically started walking towards Gwen’s house. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that, but he supposed it was only natural. He’d lived with Gwen for much longer than he’d lived in his new place.
Nathan stepped back from the church and the light that had been inside went off. He was surprised by how quickly it faded into the background but he was also relieved. The problem now was getting back to the high street and then to his actual home. He turned in the direction that he’d been going and considered paying Gwen a visit but decided against it. Their new relationship as friends was still fragile and he wasn’t sure he had earned the right to an unscheduled visit.
It seemed to take much longer to get back to the high street than it should have done and eventually he was forced to accept that he was really lost. The long rows of houses and cars all looked alike and he didn’t know where to turn. He stopped and took out his phone again, but he still didn’t have any credit. He should have gone into the newsagents and bought some when he had the chance, now there were no shops around.
His face was uncomfortably numb. A thin mist had settled on everything that made it difficult to see further than a few car lengths ahead. He took out his phone and checked the time. He didn’t need credit for that at least. It was just after seven, but it felt much later. None of the houses that he passed had lights on and even the street lights were beginning to flicker and die. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked and something metal crashed to the ground. There should be people around, he thought, but the whole world seemed to have been abandoned.
What if they really had all gone? What if he’d imagined everyone he’d ever met? Maybe there had been a disaster and he was the last man left on Earth and he’d forced himself to forget and live in a dream.
Nathan walked more quickly as if he could outpace his fears. He tried taking different turnings at the ends of the streets but whichever way he went he seemed to end up back on the same empty roads, looking at the same dead houses and the same frosted cars.
His heart was racing and he felt as if he was on the verge of another episode. He turned left and right and spun around in circles. There was nothing and no one. Even the houses had stopped looking real. He felt as if he could see right through them, they were fake, set dressing for a film or TV show.
He reached out and touched a lamppost. The metal was cold enough that he felt his sweaty hand stick to it, but that didn’t matter. He smiled as the pain shot up his arm and his heart began to slow. It was real. It was real.
Nathan let go of the lamppost and looked around. This was ridiculous. He was being ridiculous. There was no need to panic, he was just lost. He would take another walk down the street and turn right instead of left (or was it left instead of right?) and if he didn’t find his way out he would simply knock on one of the doors and ask whoever answered it for directions. He just needed to stay calm and everything would be okay.
At the end of the road, he heard them. A noise that, at first, he thought was an animal: a dog, or maybe a fox, rooting around in an overturned rubbish bin. He turned towards it, expecting to frighten the animal away, and found himself somewhere new. The rows of houses were gone. He turned and made sure that they were still behind him where they should be. If he’d wanted to he could have walked back and stood on the same street, beneath the same lamppost. That was good. That was how things were supposed to work.
The disparity between the two streets was difficult to reconcile but, Nathan supposed, houses had to end at some point and businesses begin. He found himself looking along an alleyway that seemed to run behind a number of different shops. There were black bin bags and giant plastic wheelie bins. The noise that he had heard earlier was one of them being knocked over; its contents had spilled out over the ground.
If he was at the back of a row of shops, then the front must only have been another street along. Nathan was sure that once he was in a well-lit area he would know where he was. He seemed to have spent the majority of his time walking in circles so he couldn’t have gone very far. Maybe he would even find himself back outside Dr. Romero’s office.
He walked towards the overturned bin and at first he didn’t notice the eyes. He felt as if he was being watched, but he put it down to the unfamiliarity of his surroundings. He might have walked right out the end of the alleyway and onto the high street without realising that anything was wrong, but a noise made him stop and turn back to the overturned bin.
It sounded like a baby crying, but it was quickly stifled.
Nathan scanned the dark recesses behind the shops, but he couldn’t see anyone there. Perhaps he had imagined it. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. Nathan crept back towards the overturned plastic bin and bent down.
The yellow eyes of a cat looked at him and he staggered backwards. He felt his heart race with the shock of it, but there was also a relief. It was just a cat that he’d heard; there was nothing to worry about. For a moment he thought he’d stumbled upon an abandoned child, it was the sort of thing that you read about and he’d known the idea would have haunted him if he’d left without investigating.
Nathan smiled. He could hear the cat moving around inside the bin and he knew that it was a big one. He bent down again to have another look but when he did the eyes had changed. It wasn’t a cat at all. Whatever was in there its eyes were yellow but very human.
“Hello?” Nathan said.
The noise that came in reply was a groan and a whimper all rolled into one. Nathan couldn’t even tell whether it was male or female.
“Are you okay?” Nathan said.
This time the response was more movement; angry banging on the side of the bin.
Nathan stepped back. He didn’t want to be attacked.
“I’m going, okay,” he said. “I’m sorry I disturbed you.”
He tried to walk away, but he felt something brush against his arms. He spun around and at first he thought there was nothing there. His mind was not prepared to deal with the scale of what he was seeing in front of him. For a moment, he thought that a tree had spontaneously grown out of the concrete.
The man towered over Nathan. He had to be at least seven foot tall and he was as solid as a rock. His round forehead overhung his face and cast a shadow over his eyes. His skin looked pallid in the yellow light of a distant streetlight. His hair had been shaved right back to stubble.
“Sorry,” Nathan said. He staggered back towards the bin, but the man moved towards him with surprising speed.
The man opened his mouth and Nathan expected him to speak but, instead, an animal moan came out. His eyes flickered between cat and human. He was dressed in an old tracksuit that wasn’t nearly thick enough to protect him from the cold.
There was a noise from the bin again and Nathan looked back. Another one climbed out. This time, he was sure that it was a woman
. She had long hair that had been tied back and now hung in a greasy lump across her grey shoulder. She wasn’t as big as the man, but still bigger than Nathan. She walked towards him and he noticed that she wasn’t wearing any socks.
Nathan knew that this couldn’t be real. Nothing about it made sense. He wondered when the fantasy had started, whether he was still lost somewhere or maybe even still waiting to go in and see Dr. Romero.
He knew that the man and the woman weren’t really there because they couldn’t be, but that didn’t make them any less scary as they stumbled towards him with their arms stretched out like hungry zombies.
For a moment, he was too surprised by what he was seeing to do anything about it. They were a fantasy, a dream, he had no doubt about that, but it was like no illusion he had ever experienced. The cold wind bit through his thin clothes. He searched for something he could latch onto that would bring the real world back into focus.
“You aren’t real,” he said at last.
The two creatures glanced at him when he spoke, but their only response was a moan that seemed to originate deep within their chests. They appeared to be human but grotesque versions. Their features were swollen parodies, like cartoons drawn by a blind man.
“Stay away from me,” Nathan said.
They didn’t stop moving.
He told himself that they weren’t real and if they weren’t real, then he had nothing to be frightened of. None of his daydreams had ever hurt him physically, although experiencing them had always left him emotionally drained. But he was cured now, wasn’t he? They wouldn’t have let him out of the hospital if they didn’t think he could tell the difference between reality and fantasy. So why was he having so much trouble now?
Nathan knew that if he ran away, it would be giving power to his delusion. Dr. Romero had made it clear that he wasn’t out of the woods yet. It would be easy to slip back into the state that had landed him in Happy Trails in first place. But the ghoulish creatures were getting closer to him. He could smell the rotting meat on their breath and no matter how much he told himself that they weren’t real they looked it.
