by Mark Morris
The bus hit me. There was a horrible bang, a sensation of immense pain exploding through my body, and then I was flying through the air, helpless as a rag doll hurled from a car window.
I don’t remember landing. All I remember is the notion of my broken body stranded on a tiny island with a vast black sea rushing in on all sides. As the black water engulfed the island and closed over my head, I clung to a single image, which burned like a flame in my mind.
The image was that of the girl’s face in the split second when she’d turned to look at me. It was an image that was impossible, that made no sense. She’d been young, sixteen or seventeen, which meant she was a good ten years younger than when I’d first encountered her. Yet there was no doubt who she was. I was one hundred per cent sure.
The girl whose life I’d saved had been Clover.
TWENTY-FIVE
VISITING HOURS
I’m in the desert again, my hands delving into the sand. Only this time I’m standing to one side and watching myself doing it.
‘Is this a dream?’ I ask.
My other self squints up at me. ‘That’s what I’ve been wondering.’
‘So if we’ve both been wondering the same thing, it can’t be, can it? Because whenever you ask yourself that in a dream, you wake up.’
My other self shrugs. ‘But if it’s not a dream, how do you explain this?’ He nods down at his hands. ‘I don’t know where I am, or when I am, but somehow I know what I’m doing. I’m digging for the heart… no, for its essence. I’m reaching into the core of the planet, so I can pull out the…’
‘Primal stuff,’ I say.
‘Primal stuff, yeah. So that I can form it. Mould it.’
‘Won’t it mould itself?’
‘I don’t know. Will it?’
‘Isn’t that what we always wonder? Whether we came here to create the heart, or whether the heart brought us here to create itself? We wonder whether we started all this, or whether we’re just…’
‘Pawns.’
‘I was going to say “being manipulated”, but pawns will do just as well.’
The other me, his hands now buried up to their elbows, says, ‘What do you last remember?’
I think about it. After a moment, surprised, I say, ‘Nothing. My mind’s a blank. What about you?’
‘Same.’
‘So what does that mean?’
‘Fucked if I know.’
‘Alex?’
The voice comes from just behind my left shoulder. I turn to see who has spoken, and am instantly blinded by the sun. I flinch and close my eyes. The voice, soft and feminine, speaks my name a second time.
Keeping my left eye tightly shut, I try to open just my right one, but even that is too much. The harsh light of the sun pierces my eye like the sting of a parasite, and then burrows deep, making my eyeball ache and throb. I must have groaned with pain, because the woman standing behind me says, ‘Is it too bright? Hold on a minute.’
Next moment the sun is eclipsed by a soothing pall of greyness. As the ache recedes I try again, my eyes tentatively flickering open…
A face loomed in my vision. At first it was meaningless as a child’s drawing – red mouth, two holes for a nose, almond-shaped eyes studded with blue pupils. Then my vision adjusted; the face became more defined. A few seconds later I recognised it.
‘Paula! What are you doing here?’
What was wrong with my voice? I’d been speaking perfectly fine a moment ago, but now it had degenerated into a rusty whisper.
‘I’m here to see you. You’re in hospital. What do you remember?’
I stared at her. Hospital? No, that was before. I’d already done that.
‘You had an accident, Alex,’ she continued. ‘Do you remember anything about it?’
‘Green.’ The colour flashed through my head, and emerged as a croaky whisper before I realised I was going to speak. Immediately more details seeped into my mind: not just green, but a wall of green metal studded with a pair of glaring white eyes. And there was a sound echoing in my memory: a blaring roar. And then the big green monster, it—
‘Ate me,’ I said.
Paula frowned. ‘What?’
No, not ate me, it—
‘Hit me,’ I said. I struggled to concentrate, to make myself understood. ‘The…’ Not monster, but… ‘Bus! It was a bus. It hit me.’
Paula Sherwood nodded encouragingly. ‘That’s right. You were hit by a bus. Your older self brought you here. That was three weeks ago. It’s the end of November, Alex. November 28th 2012.’
I gaped at her. Three weeks! No, I hadn’t been gone for three weeks. It was impossible.
But she was still talking. I tried to concentrate.
‘…in a coma. You had multiple fractures and ruptured organs. But you’re making amazing progress. The doctors can’t understand how quickly you’re healing, but your older self told me it was because of the…’ she floundered, searching for the word.
‘Nanites,’ I croaked.
‘That’s it. Nanites. Little machines that live inside you, and repair you when you’re broken. Amazing!’
She grinned. I tried to smile back, but it hurt. Three weeks. What about…
‘Kate,’ I said.
‘Don’t worry, she’s safe and well. I’ve been looking after her. I moved into your house, so that she wouldn’t have to be uprooted again just as she was settling in. I hope that’s okay. I told her you’d had a little accident, and that you were in hospital, but that you were fine and she’d be able to come and visit you soon. She sends her love. In fact, she made you this.’
She held up a slightly rumpled card, hand-made from a piece of folded white paper. In brightly coloured felt-tip pen at the top were the words GeT Well SOON Dady, the last three letters squashed together on the very edge of the card, because she had obviously misjudged how much room she’d need for her message. Below the lettering was a crude but very colourful drawing of a man and a girl – Kate and me presumably – holding hands in front of a big square house with lots of windows. On either side of the house was spiky green grass with flowers sprouting from it, and a few misshapen butterflies fluttering in the air.
This time I couldn’t help but grin, even though it seemed to tug painfully on parts of my body I didn’t know my mouth was connected to. ‘Tell her I love her… and I’ll see her soon,’ I croaked.
‘I will.’
With priority number one taken care of, I said, ‘When my older self brought me back, did he bring the heart too? The one I used to bring you here – or will do.’
To my relief she nodded. ‘He said to tell you he’s taken it for safekeeping and will bring it back when you’re capable of looking after it again. He said he didn’t want anyone to steal it while you were unconscious.’
I felt a pang of anxiety. ‘Are you sure it was me?’ It wouldn’t be the first time the shape-shifter had imitated me to fool my friends.
‘Of course. Grey hair and a few wrinkles don’t make you look that different.’
‘How old was I?’
‘Fifty-five, fifty-six? But he said to tell you he’d written all the details down in your notebook, which he’s also got. He said he’d bring that back with the heart too.’
My gut told me it had really been me – why would the Dark Man’s henchman take the trouble to imitate me, save my life by bringing me here, and contact the Sherwoods when he could just as easily have stolen the heart from my smashed and unconscious body? – but even so, after Paula had gone I couldn’t help fretting. I was in hospital – Oak Hill naturally – for the best part of the next two weeks, during which time I received lots of visitors. God knows what the staff must have thought of me in there – presumably that I was either the most accident-prone man in the world, or that I had some hush-hush and highly dangerous job. To their credit, they never asked questions – probably because I was paying a lot of money, not only for their care and attention, but also (although it was an unspoken agree
ment) for their lack of curiosity, and their discretion.
My first visitors after Paula were, to my surprise, Lyn and Dr Bruce. To be fair, Dr Bruce – who I would now forever regard in a new light after witnessing how she’d repelled the shape-shifter, a matter I’d have to address at some point – was only there to accompany Lyn, and after a brief, awkward greeting she beat a hasty retreat.
‘You look better,’ I said to Lyn as she sat beside my bed and took my hands in hers. It was true. The bandage had been removed from her head, her bruising had faded and her hair had now started to grow back. She still had a pot on her arm, but it was smaller than her previous one. In fact, it wasn’t dissimilar to the one I was wearing on my own right arm.
‘You don’t,’ she said.
I laughed, and then immediately winced with pain. ‘Ow, ow. Broken pelvis. Not good.’
Although some of my injuries echoed Lyn’s – I’d broken an arm, several ribs, and had fractured my skull – they were only a few of many. I’d also bust my pelvis, shattered my left ankle, dislocated my jaw and dislodged several of my vertebrae. This latter injury meant that for the time being I had to wear a plastic neck brace, which was hot and uncomfortable, and which also made it hard for me to swallow – though that could have been more a psychological reaction than a physical one.
I had internal injuries too – punctured lung, ruptured spleen and various muscular tears – which had required emergency surgery. Quite how that had worked with the nanites bustling about in my system I had no idea, though it didn’t appear to have disrupted either their presence or their work, judging by how quickly my organs and bones were now knitting themselves back together.
‘So what happened?’ she asked.
‘I got hit by a bus. In 1948.’ Quickly I gave her the details, though I didn’t reveal that the girl I had chased, and subsequently saved, was Clover. I was still processing that one.
‘The Dark Man,’ she said sourly, hunching her shoulders as if bracing herself against a sudden chill.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ I said glibly. ‘He won’t try anything now you’ve got Dr Bruce to protect you. How has she been, by the way, since…’ I stalled, unsure for a moment how to put it into words. Then I said, ‘…since she did her thing?’
Lyn leaned forward, as if afraid of being overheard. ‘I don’t think she remembers. She hasn’t mentioned it again.’ She frowned, and I saw a little of the old confusion in her eyes, which caused my aching guts to flip over; it dismayed me whenever I saw even the tiniest hint of a possible relapse. ‘What is she, Alex? How did she get like that?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘I think it was something to do with the heart. Something I’m going to have to learn.’ I remembered how McCallum had manipulated the heart during his stage act. ‘I think there’s a lot it can do I don’t know about yet.’
‘Can I… hold the heart?’ she asked shyly.
‘You could if I had it.’ When I explained where it was, her face fell like a patient denied vital medication.
‘As soon as I get it back, though, I’ll – shit!’
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘I’ve just remembered that my phone’s in my jeans. In 1948. Which means I’m without the heart, my phone and my notebook. And I can’t move. And this fucking neck brace itches like fuck.’
My grumpy mood lasted until the next day, when Paula returned with Kate. But lovely though it was to see my daughter, her visit was an all too brief blaze of sunshine between massing banks of storm clouds. As soon as she and Paula had gone the gloom set back in, and my thoughts turned inward again. I couldn’t get that glimpse of Clover’s teenage face out of my mind, couldn’t think of a reason for her being there which didn’t point to the fact that I’d been manipulated, deluded and betrayed by someone I’d grown to trust implicitly.
I asked for a phone, and was brought one. Luckily my whack on the head hadn’t caused me to forget Clover’s mobile number, and I tried calling her again – and again I got her voicemail. My first instinct was to put the phone down in frustration when her message cut in, but I didn’t. After the beep I said, ‘Call me at Oak Hill, Clover. We need to talk. If you’re wondering why I’m in hospital, it’s because I was hit by a bus. I’m sure you know why.’ I hesitated, wondering whether I should say more, then I broke the connection.
I needed someone to talk to, though, if only to stop the ever-circling spiral of dark thoughts in my mind. Picking up the phone again I called Candice.
‘Hey,’ I said when she answered.
‘Dad? Is that you? Oh God, where are you? I’ve left you, like, a million messages over the last couple of weeks. You still haven’t told me anything about where Kate was found, or how. I’ve been worried sick about you. Where’ve you been?’
Though it was lovely to hear her voice, I felt pummelled both by the gush of words and the emotion behind them. Resisting the temptation to hold the phone away from my ear, I said, ‘I’m really sorry not to have been in touch, love, but I’ve got a good reason. I’m in hospital again. I had a bit of an accident.’
‘My God, you’re kidding! What happened?’
‘I got hit by a bus.’
‘Shit! Are you serious?’
‘I’m afraid so. I’ve been pretty much out of it these last few weeks. Have got quite a few broken bones. But I am getting better. You don’t need to worry.’
‘Oh God, I feel awful that I didn’t know. So where are you? Wherever it is, I’m coming to see you today.’
‘I’m in the same hospital I was in last time. The one in Hampshire, near Farnborough.’
‘The private one? Must be costing you a fortune, Dad.’
‘I can afford it. I came into some money.’
‘Well, I guessed you must have when you suddenly paid off Dean’s debt.’ After a beat of silence, she said, ‘Do you mind me asking where it came from, Dad? It’s not… dodgy money, is it?’
My bark of laughter sounded like someone scraping rust off an old bike. ‘No, it’s not dodgy money. It’s… well, it’s a long story.’ All at once it struck me that in my search for Kate, and with everything else that had happened since I’d become involved with Benny and Clover and the obsidian heart, I’d seriously neglected my eldest daughter. Not that she needed me to look after her, but all the same I was suddenly overcome with an urge to see her, to hear her news, and to tell her some of mine. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘if you’ve really got the time, jump on a train to Farnborough and get a cab from the station to Oak Hill Hospital. I’ll pay.’
‘I will do. I’ll set off as soon as I put the phone down. But how’s Kate? And where is she? Who’s looking after her while you’re in hospital?’
‘She’s fine,’ I said. ‘She’s with friends. I’ll tell you all about it when you get here.’
She arrived just after lunch, and we talked for almost three hours. When she walked into my room I almost lost it, partly because my injuries and the medication I was on were making me feel emotionally brittle, but also because, although I’d spoken to her on the phone a few times, the last time I’d actually seen her had been on the night of her eighteenth birthday at the Rusty Bucket in Covent Garden – which was only about eight weeks ago for her, but something like three years for me.
She looked surprised when I opened my arms to her – my right one still encased in its pot, which was no longer a pristine white since Kate had been at it with her felt tips – but stepped forward into my embrace willingly enough.
‘You soft old sod,’ she said, kissing my unshaven cheek. ‘What the hell have you been up to this time?’
I told her a partial truth – that I’d been hit by a bus because I’d run into the road to push a young girl out of the way.
‘Seriously?’ she said, clearly unable to tell whether I was having her on or not.
I lifted my broken arm and clumsily drew an x on the left side of my chest with my swollen forefinger. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’
‘B
loody hell, Dad!’ she exclaimed. ‘That’s amazing! You should get a medal or something!’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t want any fuss.’
Plus it happened over sixty years ago, I thought.
‘What a hero.’ She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. Then she sat back. ‘So, tell me about Kate. I want to hear everything.’
I’d thought through what I was going to tell her between speaking to her this morning and her arriving this afternoon. I didn’t like lying to my daughter, but neither did I want to drag her into the madhouse that my life had become. Plus, of course, if I’d told her the truth she’d have gone away seriously worried that my bump on the head had sent me completely nuts – particularly since I wasn’t in possession of the heart, so had no way of backing up my claims.
‘First of all, she’s absolutely fine. The person who took her was a woman who’d had a child in Kate’s class. A little girl called Jody. Her husband and Jody were killed in a car crash last year, and… well, I suppose the grief of it must just have got too much for her, and she snapped. So she went to the school the day Kate disappeared, and told Kate she was to take her home because I was busy with work and couldn’t pick her up. Kate wouldn’t normally go with strangers, but she must have thought it was okay because it was Jody’s mum, and Jody had been her friend at school. So Jody’s mum looked after Kate as if she was her own little girl. I think in a way she might even have convinced herself that Kate was Jody.’
Candice shuddered. ‘Creepy.’
‘Yeah, but sad too. In the end a neighbour got suspicious and called the police.’
‘And Kate was all right?’
‘Just a bit confused. She couldn’t understand why I’d had to go away for such a long time, and why she wasn’t going to school. I think Jody’s mum told her it was the school holiday.’
‘God, what a nutter,’ Candice said. ‘You must hate this woman for what she put you through.’
