by Kondor, Luke
Even the school he’d been working at was somewhere to filter down the children. To find the ones with the symptoms. Low-level indigo stuff.
Ian didn’t know at the time, but if you were one of the teachers to find the child, you were moved to the IPC Academy with the child. They needed to create as much a sense of family as possible. They wanted someone to be there whom the child knew.
The last thing they need is a psychic child having a breakdown.
So when Ian thought back to the times of free-loving on the grassy knolls of Hertfordshire, a joint in his right hand, smoke spilling from his nostrils, and a naked girl on his left, he had to wonder how he’d ended up in that suit, in that classroom, as the alarms rang out, screaming into his ear. The last time he’d heard a piercing alarm like that was when he’d joined the Vietnam protests outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Back then it gave him a good thrill. It got his heart, albeit, medicated heart, in a prime mood for fighting. But now, he was much older, in a suit, surrounded by a hundred psychic children, in a classroom fifteen floors below ground level, scared out of his mind.
God, he missed Floraline.
His wife, that was. Although now that he thought about it, he did fancy a sandwich.
Why did she have to leave him to pursue a life of saving African children? Why did she have to be so goddam selfish?
“It will be okay, Mr Foster,” said Connor. His perfectly parted blond hair still maintaining an unnatural precision to match his unwavering calmness. Even now, the light of the alarm painting his face in red didn’t faze him. This was a spa day to him.
“The alarm is going off for a reason, Connor,” Ian said, reprimanding him. “Something must be very wrong.”
“Mr Foster, I think you’re worrying about this too much,” Connor said.
The auditorium was a series of rows of wooden desks and a central teaching platform. Ian had been delivering a teaching schedule for the Q4 period. They were going to be focusing on nanotechnology — what might its uses be in the future of the planet? Simple enough topic. Another one that Ian had no experience or knowledge in. This was the kind of place where you didn’t teach the children, so much as point them in a direction, wind them up, and watch as they told you how there was a better way to do things.
So there he was. Most of the indigo children in one big room and the emergency alarm going off.
“Okay so … you’re all bloody psychics, what’s going on? What’s happening?”
The students, in their seats, looked at him blankly. A girl with pigtails at the back coughed.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Connor said in a very Connor-like way. “We can’t just decide to see something. We only catch fragments.”
“Bloody useless,” Ian said, shaking his head. “Well, I guess we’d better start heading towards the safe rooms, right?”
Again the children were quiet. One of them at the back raised her hand. It was Abigail. Stupid Abigail. If the academy had a dunce … it was called her. A measly IQ of 180.
“Anybody else want to answer?” he said.
“Sir?” Connor said, leaning over his front-row desk. “If I may?”
“Yes?” Ian sighed and walked over to him. He bent down for Connor to whisper to his ear.
“I think the children are assuming it’s some sort of drill. I mean, how could anybody even know about us? Or have the resources to find us? Or make their way down, all the way down, here to the academy?”
Ian stood back up. He shook his head. What a fool these children must think him. He walked back to the centre of the stage and looked out at the brats.
“Okay okay, I get it now. You have seen this. And you know that there’s no actual danger of any kind and you want me to look like an idiot as I panic. Right?” He shook his head again. “Mr Foster the fool? Is that it? Ey? Well, you bloody little shits, I’m going to speak to Dr Warwick about this. About your behaviour today. I would even hazard a guess that one of you somehow tripped the alarm … well … let me tell you. You’re in for it now, oh boy yes, yes you are.”
As he rambled on and reddened in the face, the children remained quiet. Even Connor looked dishevelled. He had his hands on his head. Massaging his temples.
“Sir,” he said, feigning pain. “Sir, please.”
Connor … it was always bloody Connor.
“What! Connor?” he shouted. “What is it now? What do you want to whisper into my ear?”
The children in the back of the room started to shift nervously. They looked like they were finally taking Ian for the hard-hitting authoritarian he never set out to be. Finally. Sort of.
“I saw … the man, with red eyes.”
“Hahaha.” Ian feigned laughter. It was obvious and loud, and was the kind of sarcastic laughter a child would produce after a friend said something that wasn’t funny. A little immature. He tried to make the tail of the laughter sound real so he didn’t seem completely immature. “A man with red eyes. Good one, Connor.”
“But sir—”
“I said, good one Connor!” His tone implied he’d ended the conversation. “Now … where were we?”
“One one zero one zero one.”
A voice from the back of the auditorium. A girl. It was Abigail. Her arms were in the air, held by an unseen force.
“One zero zero one one one.”
She was having a fit. Mr Foster could see the indigo speck, a fine spark of light, exploding in her eyes.
“Can somebody just make sure Abigail doesn’t …”
“One zero one one zero.”
Now the other children around Abigail started. It was contagious. Soon enough it worked its way down the rows of seating.
Ian was too busy watching domino effect of children fitting, the binary chaos, so he didn’t even see as the man entered the door. He’d already made his way halfway down the stairway before Ian took notice. He was holding a woman by the scruff of her neck. Ian recognised her. The bitch from marketing. She never held the lift for anyone and avoided the IPC Academy staff like they were the plague. Yes. He recognised her, but he didn’t recognise that terror in her face.
Connor jumped over his desk and hid behind it. The man pulled something out of his coat and threw a dart at Connor. Ian had to rearrange his glasses to see that it was some sort of metal spear that had lodged itself in Connor’s head. The blood now spilling onto the hardwood flooring.
“Connor? What did you …”
He looked up at the smiling madman and he saw the red lenses — the red eyes.
“Marvellous,” the man said before squeezing the woman’s neck. Ian heard the sound of her neck snapping like it was next to his ear. A wishbone cracked in two.
The children were all fitting now. Reading off binary code like they were broken computers. “I better get to work then.”
“Are you talking to me?” Ian said.
“Yes, I am indeed. Firstly, I’d like to say that this establishment is fantastic. What kind of decoration do you call this?”
“Err … I don’t know to be honest. Old and vintage, I guess.”
“Old and vintage, just marvellous.” He spoke like one of the old furniture salesmen Ian used to know in Hertfordshire. Curious enthusiasm of the mundane. Odd and pompous.
“What … who are you?”
“Well sir, I’m just here on business to be perfectly honest.” As he said this he dropped the lifeless marketer’s body to the floor (not that she really had a life before) and dusted his hands. “You see, these children, they are my job.”
“The children?”
“Yes,” he said as he raised his hands above his head. “Now, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
The man’s hands began to vibrate. Shuffling in the air and buzzing like a swarm of bees. It reminded Ian of a particularly strange acid trip he’d experienced in Donnington Park in ’71. Ian saw the children immediately around him quieten. They were no longer speaking the lines of binary. It to
ok Ian a second longer to see that their mouths were closing up, healing over like they were never there to begin with.
Ian backed away from the stage area. The madman was doing his hand dance. Too busy to notice as Ian quietly opened the door to the right of the stage and slipped away through it. Before he left completely, he looked up and through the circular window on the door to see Connor’s lifeless body on the floor. The dart still protruding.
Bloody Connor, he thought to himself, shaking his head. What have you gone and done now?
Nisha Bhatia
Darpal pulled Nisha by the hand. He led her through a back corridor that skipped the classrooms, courts, and the auditorium. The alarms were quieter there.
“Darpal, where are we going?” she said, pulling back on his hand.
“Miss Bhatia, we must go. We must. I can see his face already.”
“Whose face?”
“The man with red eyes.”
Nisha stopped running. She inhaled and looked behind her, back to the corridor. The other children. The teachers. The IPC Security. If Darpal was right then they were all going to be in danger.
“Why did you stop?” Darpal said as he tugged on her arm.
“We need to help the others,” she said.
“We can’t help them. If you go back down that hallway, you will die, along with the others. I know this. I know it. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen him place his hand on you.”
As Darpal spoke Nisha felt panic reaching out to her. A hand inches away from her neck, nearing her chin and reaching towards her mouth.
“I’ve seen him as he stands above you, as you try to scream.”
The hand edges closer. She can feel it. Just through Darpal’s words, she can feel the warm fingers as they clasp her face.
“And then you try to scream, but you can’t. You can’t even breathe.”
The fleshy wall that covers her face. She’s struggling to see as she thinks of it.
“And then you fall to floor and your body stops working.”
The blackness. The dark.
She shook her head and looked once more behind her.
“What about the others?” she said.
“The others?” Darpal seemed confused now. “Miss Bhatia. Well, they’re already dead.”
She held her hands to her face at the thought of the children. The ones from her dream. The ones she’d failed. The ones she’d told herself she’d protect. She looked down at Darpal’s sweet face. The indigo flickered, like a light lost in the darkness of his pupils. A firework in his eye. A single tear ran down his cheek.
“Okay,” she said. “Take us to the safe room.”
“No,” Darpal said, sniffling. “It’s on the other side of the auditorium.”
“And?”
“He’s there, the man with the red eyes,” he said. “The bad man.”
“Okay,” she said. “So where then?”
“Follow me,” he said as he grabbed her hand again and pulled her further into the corridor. He pulled her past several classrooms and past what looked like a gym, past an eating room, and through to a corridor she recognised.
“Wait, Darpal, where are we going? We need to go up and get out of—”
Darpal pulled her harder now. His soft skin hurt her hand. He was terrified. He was panicked. She followed him into the familiar room and through to the glass window. Inside, Dr Warwick and the Polish woman, Luna Gajos. She was still handcuffed to the metal table, her eyes reddened from tears, and her hair, which was tied into a ponytail before, was now by her shoulders. Nisha knocked on the window, forgetting that the sound only went one way.
“Here,” Darpal said, pointing her towards a small red button on the side of the window.
She walked over to it and pressed it down with a click.
“Dr Warwick,” she said. “It’s me, Nisha.” She spoke loud, trying to make sure he could hear her over the alarms which were still all around them, a barrage of noise which didn’t cease.
Inside, Dr Warwick looked around the room, and then to the window. Not at them, but in their direction. Luna did the same. Dr Warwick started to say something but they couldn’t hear. Darpal clicked the button next to the Nisha’s finger. The microphone button. His voice suddenly clicked and sprang into life.
“… Safe room … do you hear me? I told you to get yourself to the safe room. Miss Bhatia, do you—”
“Yes, Dr Warwick, we hear you loud and clear. We can’t go to the safe room. He’s already been there. He’s already killed everyone.”
“What?” Dr Warwick shook his head in disbelief. “What do you mean?” He stood up from the chair, and the cushion he’d used to elevate himself fell to the floor. He walked towards the window, looking all around it. “Who … Miss Bhatia, tell me what’s happened?”
“The woman in there—”
“Luna,” she said. “My name is Luna.”
“Luna isn’t the killer. But the killer is here, and he’s going to find us if you don’t let us in.”
“Please sir,” Darpal said.
“Darpal … is that you? Why aren’t you in orientati— oh right, yes, the killer.”
“Let us in, Dr Warwick, please,” Nisha said. “We need to get in there.”
Nisha was about to start banging on the window when she heard a noise coming from behind her. A door handle opening. From up and around the corridor. Someone was coming.
“Now, Dr Warwick. I think he’s coming,” she said.
“Okay, okay. This isn’t exactly the safest room, but … I guess,” he said as he walked over to the door next to the booth. He disappeared from the window and, a few taps and beeps later, the soundproof door unclasped from the locking mechanism.
Nisha and Darpal burst through and slammed the door shut behind them.
“Lock it!” Nisha said.
“Okay, okay, Jesus,” Dr Warwick said as he dialled in a few more keys and a length of metal manoeuvred along the top of the door, locking it into place.
Nisha walked Darpal past Luna, avoiding her eye contact, and sat him in the corner.
“Be quiet and safe, okay?” she said.
He nodded. She then turned and looked to the others.
“What’s wrong with this place?” she said.
“Well, for one, we can’t see out, but people can see in,” Dr Warwick said listing the problems off with his fingers. “And secondly, we have no weapons. Oh, and please tell me you shut the inner mic off.”
“Inner mic?” Nisha felt her mouth go dry. “What inner mic?”
“Fantastic. So whoever’s outside can hear us, but we can’t hear them?” Dr Warwick slapped his hand against his palm and shook his head. “I’m afraid that me, you, Darpal, and …”
“Luna!” she said again, almost screaming it. “My name is Luna.”
“Sorry, lost where I was for a second. But all four of us, right now, are simply gill-bearing aquatic craniates trapped inside a spherical wooden transport container.”
“What are you saying?” Nisha said.
“He’s trying to sound smart,” Darpal said from his seat in the corner. “He’s saying we’re fish in a barrel.”
“Quite,” Dr Warwick said. “If there is a man, or a group of men, out there, killing our children, then he will surely find us hiding in this well-lit amplifier of noise we’ve found ourselves in. He could even be out there right now.” He pointed to the window and everyone looked.
For all they knew he could be stood there now, looking in, smiling. They waited in silence for a few seconds before Luna spoke.
“Okay, everyone, although you trapped me here, called me a child-killer, threatened me with sending me to one of those black sites and whatnot, I would like us all to survive, so can we please, just be quiet and wait it out.”
Nobody spoke.
They were quiet.
Quiet enough to hear the noise coming from the window. A clicking. Faint, but definitely there. A tiny metal point tapping away on the glass. Nisha lo
oked to the doctor, worried.
The tapping grew louder and louder until a final bang and the window fractured. Millions of white lines drew themselves across the once-smooth surface. Another second later and then a hole opened in the centre. The glass gave way, falling to the floor and crashing in teeth of glass and powder. Nisha heard Darpal crying. She bent down next to him, wrapping her arms around him.
“The man with the red eyes,” Darpal said. “He’s found us.”
Moomamu The Thinker
Moomamu’s feet slipped as he stepped in a puddle on the stone floor. He yelped as he slid into the wall. Didn’t matter. He needed to move. He ran through the castle faster than he thought he could. He’d taken the route already. He knew the way. A good practice run. Now for the real thing. His stomach felt sick. His head was light. He’d never run so much in his human life. He tried to inhale and exhale as fast as he could to keep up with the body’s demands, but he couldn’t match it. And to make matters worse, he had a stabbing pain on the inside of his stomach. A knot, tightening and pulling.
He skidded to a halt when he thought he heard a noise ahead of him. Somebody was in the castle. His heart was pounding. Thumping against the inside of his chest. It wanted out. The blood pumped around his body. Salty liquid ran down into his eyes and mouth.
The town, the horde, the cats would be outside looking for him. How many remained inside?
He held his breath to listen for the movement but couldn’t hear anything. Nearly there. Through the next corridor was the throne room and then to the right of that, past the giant fraying red rug, was the gilded door covered in math and symbols.
He started again, this time walking, listening and breathing. He held his stomach as he pushed his back up against the cold stone wall.
In front, a lantern lit the hallway. He stopped at the edge, held his breath again, and looked around the corner. The throne room. The frayed red rug, the gold mugs, cutlery, the platform, the weapons and paintings on the walls.
