Of course there was no yield and she was thrown back onto the soft carpet, much to the delighted laughter of Doctor Penhaligan. Lying on the floor she tried to clear her head. With her eyes shut, she seemed to have a clearer idea of her surroundings. The lights not dazzling and confusing her. There had to be a way out, there just had to be. No one would make a cage out of their own office and leave it escape proof. What if he found himself trapped in here?
“What do you remember about your lovely mother?” his voice purred again. “What do you remember about Marianne? She was even younger than you are now when I first met her. When she first came here, equally of her own free will. But she was already so full of life; brimming with power. She was already a wonderful test subject. The force of her nature just burst from her. Even at first meeting, we could see a level of strength that – for all she wasn’t a wallflower – she still had no idea of. Strength that we wanted to tap into.”
We? Who was “we”?
Clambering to her feet, she tried to shut him out, to think smart. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at his desk, If he was trapped in here, then that would be the logical place to put the escape switch.
She rifled quickly through the desk drawers. The bottom one was locked and there was nothing she could do to force it open. In the drawer above there was a pad with various scribbles and some other papers she couldn’t make any sense of, then a ruler and a couple of lemon-flavoured throat lozenges. There was nothing else. The top drawer was even sparser – paperclips, stapler and packet of staples, and some pens. Only one object gleamed enticingly to her, a shiny silver letter-opening knife.
Her heart beating faster, she picked it up and squeezed the hilt. It was light and slight, but it was a sharp blade and it was better than nothing. Fearing it probably wouldn’t work she rammed it into the lock of the bottom drawer, hoping she could just force it open. Was he watching now? Did he care what she found in here? Maybe he knew he didn’t have to worry. The carpenter had done too good a job for that.
“Don’t you think it’s a shame that she gave up her life in the way she did, Alice?” his voice continued. “That she couldn’t embrace what made her magnificent. That ridiculous sense of being cursed never left her. Don’t you feel sorry for her? That beautiful mother of yours who took her own life when she was only a year or so older than you are now.”
Again she spun around desperately, the knife in hand. The lights were making her dizzy, but it was his voice that was making her sick. The way it kept going and going on and on. She tried her best to block them, but each word thumped against her head.
“Your beautiful, wonderful mother,” he rhapsodised.
Knowing she could only rely on herself, she had tried to focus, to not engage – but something in her suddenly snapped.
“She left me!” Alice screamed. “She never really loved me!”
He’d finally got her to respond and she thought he’d take a moment with his little triumph, but no, his rejoinder came quickly – and not without tenderness. “Oh no, I think she loved you very much. More than anything, in fact. Yes, she failed you, but that wasn’t for want of love.”
“I was left with nothing! No one!” Alice couldn’t hold back the tears. “She didn’t look after me, she left me.”
“I think actually, Alice, in her own misguided way, she was trying to save you.”
Suddenly the three lights – the red, the green, the white, which all seemed to spin together – dropped to nothing. Darkness consumed her again. She gave a cry of panic and then a gasp of relief. Her hand clutched tighter around the hilt of that knife, making sure she didn’t drop it.
But there was only a few seconds of respite. In the echoing silence of that locked office, there was a click and a whirr and another light shone out. Once more it came from behind the desk, but this one came from an artfully concealed projector. It was throwing an image onto the far wall.
Her jaw slack, she stared at the projector first of all, and then her eyes followed the light over to the picture the doctor wanted her to see.
The photo was as harsh and as grainy as black and white pictures ever got. It was brutal. Projected in front of her was a snatched image of her mother sitting at the kitchen table of their old flat in Fallowford. There was a knife in her left hand – much bigger and more jagged than the knife Alice was currently clinging onto – and her head was thrown back. Her mother’s head was hanging at an unnatural angle to her body, and her throat was slashed open. Pint after pint of dark blood had poured down the front of her mother’s white nightdress.
As if punched in the belly, Alice buckled over with a pained gasp.
“Don’t you remember that she did it to try and save you, Alice? The most painful memories are often blocked out – a defence mechanism of the mind – but now that you see it again, doesn’t it all come flooding back? She left me a note. Obviously she knew that, despite her running away with you, I’d still some day find your location. In it she detailed why she’d done what she did, and her rationale was that she was trying to protect you. She didn’t want for you the life she had lived. She didn’t want you in danger. In the letter she claimed that you were nothing like her, that there was no point taking you in. That was nonsense, of course, even if others didn’t have the vision to see it. But now you’ve come back to me. You’ve proven to us all how close to your mother you really are.”
A cry burst from her throat and – finally – despair overtook her. She sank to her knees barely able to hold up the weight of her head anymore, just wanting to bury it in the carpet and never move again.
That bastard was right. That vile, worthless, evil, bastard of a doctor was right. To survive, she had forgotten what had happened. She had thought – had imagined; had told herself – that she’d just discovered her mother’s body. Alice hadn’t recalled that Mummy had actually committed the act right in front of her. Didn’t remember that at all, until this moment – when the bastard, Doctor Penhaligan, forced the memory into her mind again. Not the black-and-white image, but the red and vivid one, the grim reality.
Mummy had sat there at their wobbly kitchen table and smiled at her so sweetly and kindly.
Alice had seen immediately that something was wrong, but Mummy had just shushed her and told her it was all going to be okay. Told her that Mummy loved her and would always love her and what was happening was for her own good. She blew her a kiss – her mummy liked to blow kisses, even if they were right in front of each other – and softly whispered that she was doing what she always did and looking after her little girl.
Still the young Alice cried.
There was a look in Mummy’s eyes that she couldn’t recognise, it made Mummy look like a stranger. Crazy is what she would call it now, but back then she couldn’t understand what it meant. Back then she didn’t know what was happening. She didn’t know why Mummy was behaving the way she was, why she was smiling the way she did, why she was clutching onto the carving knife.
And so she’d stood there, with tears in her eyes and a wail in her throat, and watched helpless as Mummy – having told her again that she loved her and blown her one final kiss – reached up and drew a thick line of blood right along her throat.
Crumpled now on the floor, Alice let out a long, agonised wail. Some vomit finally did burst up at the thought of it – the recollection of it – and splattered over the clean carpet. She shook and cried and tried to make sense of everything. But from the moment her mother had smiled at her that day, nothing had made sense. Her whole world had been fragile and brittle and she had become fragile and brittle too. Easily shoved aside because life was just easier if you kept yourself hidden.
There was a long time when she wished she could have been a literal nobody. An amnesiac, with no identity, who couldn’t claim any past. Now she craved that more than anything else. With the knife in her hand, she wanted suddenly to take the same route as her mother. To cut that thick line of blood across her throat and become properly nothing. Her
shrieks of pain echoing around her, she tried to straighten up and raise the knife.
Yet, paradoxically, having nearly driven her mad, that bastard’s voice stopped her. Interrupting her cries and her trembling hand, it thudded into her again.
“If we were to pull out on that picture – bring the camera back for a full panoramic view – then we would no doubt see you there in that kitchen. The way you were found on the day it happened. Crying and shaking and barely able to utter a word, but still stood there staring at your mother’s tragic young body. Stood there and taking it all in, I suppose. Absorbing that grisly scene as best your young mind could. Yes, we would see you there. You side by side with your twin brother.”
The knife stopped its journey and dropped point first into the carpet.
Chapter Eleven
Her head spinning, she nearly yelled that she didn’t have a brother.
But in an instant there they were – all those memories and thoughts that she must have buried deep inside her. In a tumult of colours, smells and feelings, every one of them surfaced, came pouring back.
Still collapsed on the floor – the horribly blown-up photograph of her dead mother ripping up a seam of many awful emotions; so much so that even though she couldn’t open her eyes to glance at the picture now – the other crucial part of her childhood returned to her.
She’d had a brother.
His name was Paul.
He’d been younger than her – ten whole minutes – and she had never, ever let him forget it. Alice was the big sister. It didn’t matter if Paul was actually physically bigger than her, she was older and therefore better.
In a rush it all came back. He had been a sturdy, chubby little boy (who she could imagine would have grown up into a fat and chunky adult) and despite everything, she had loved him. Despite the frequency with which he punched her or pinched her or pulled her hair, she had adored him.
Often he made it hard for her, as really nothing gave him greater pleasure than causing his sister pain; but – no matter how many times he provoked her and she told him that she hated him and she hoped he died – the truth was that she cared for him very much and relied on him and made sure he knew she was there for him. Despite the fights and the arguments, they had each other and – given what their mother was like – that was what they needed.
Mostly when she had found herself thinking about Mummy, she pictured her on the day Alice found her dead. (Her mind having expertly blocked out anything immediately before). There were no recollections of being tucked into bed, or nursery rhymes, or playing chase in the park, or even cuddles. She suspected there must have been occasions when Mummy did cuddle her, yet for most of her life she’d struggled to recall a single instance.
Now she could picture Mummy all dolled up in a bright red blouse and wearing even brighter red lipstick, yelling at the two of them. Paul sat beside Alice on the battered brown old sofa with worn arms. There was a cigarette still dangling from Mummy’s lips even as she exclaimed: “I don’t care how much you say you hate each other, you’re brother and sister and you’ve got to get along. Who else are you bloody going to have after all?”
Then, having given that life lesson, she’d gone out in the town and left tiny Alice and tiny Paul alone in the poky flat they called home.
But there hadn’t been hate, not really. They’d argued a lot and yelled out things they didn’t mean – and Mummy would spend her days getting more and more annoyed by the noise – but there had been intense sibling love. They’d been together since the womb, after all.
Even before Mummy had tried to save them by leaving them, the other was all they had. She hadn’t needed to yell that fact at them. It had been perfectly apparent for as long as they could remember.
But it was after Mummy died (after they watched her die) that they really clung to together. It was then that they’d come to The Butterfly Clinic. Both of them had been really disappointed that there weren’t colourful butterflies in every room.
Trembling and sobbing on the floor, Alice’s thoughts and memories tumbled – spilling out and crashing together in an unholy jumble through her mind. She couldn’t recall why they had suddenly been swooped out of Fallowford. Their mummy had died, but why had they moved elsewhere? How had that been explained to them? Not that they could have done anything about it even if they’d objected, but were they just led through their shock and grief like docile lambs?
Suddenly the two of them found themselves in this huge old house. Where they had their own bedrooms (but were relieved that they were next door to one another), and new toys that hadn’t been given to them third or fourth hand. And after having been cooped up in that tiny one bedroom flat for what felt like season after season, there was now a whole huge wilderness of a garden to go off to and explore.
Paul still would pinch and punch her with malice, but now she couldn’t stay cross with him for as long. They had lost Mummy. She had killed herself in front of them (although they both did their best to never, ever mention that) and all they could feel most of the time was confusion and anger. The fact was that she slapped him too. Timing her blows so they had more effect and hurting him pretty bad at least once. It was mean on both their parts, but they didn’t know what else to do. The world was a hurtful place and they just wanted to hurt it back.
Importantly, he was still her brother. They still clung to together at The Butterfly Clinic, more than ever.
And then suddenly, one day – having cared for him so much, having loved him so much, having relied on him so much – Paul was gone.
He went away and, just like Mummy went away, none of the grown-ups she knew would ever speak about it.
But he was definitely gone.
Somehow – and it might be the most horrible thing of all – he slipped away from her. He became a ghost, a figment in the distant recesses of her mind. Only visible to her in dreams, and then dreams that she couldn’t remember.
How could one forget their own brother? What kind of person did that make her?
But she had managed it. Let go of him almost completely.
Until now.
Breathing deeply, she tried to straighten up on the carpet. That photo was still blown-up large and brutally black and white above her, and it was an almost impossible task to make her mind focus with the worst moment of her life looming over her like that. She had to try though. Right now, she was all she had – herself and nothing else – so she couldn’t just crumble away to nothing. What was happening to her wasn’t fair. It was cruel and horrific, but she couldn’t let herself be beaten by it.
That bastard, Penhaligan might be able to lock her in a room, he might be able to disorientate her, he might be able to make her sick by unearthing memories she’d forgotten, but he wasn’t going to triumph over her.
She picked up the paperknife again, squeezed the hilt tighter. It wasn’t much – would wound, rather than kill – but it was something.
At first she couldn’t get the words out of her throat. But then, after three deep lungfuls of air, she let out her question loud enough to be a scream.
“What happened to Paul?” she cried.
She could sense him watching her. Picking her up on all the cameras around the room. Raising her head, she wondered how big the smile was on his face, how much pleasure all this was giving him.
“Don’t you remember?” he asked finally.
Her eyes squeezed tight, not wanting to see that big nasty photo anymore, she shook her head.
“You killed him, Alice.” He purred. “Paul died, and it was you who murdered him.”
Chapter Twelve
She could remember waking up on the wet grass, lying alone in a clearing at the middle of the woods.
It was dark.
Except it wasn’t.
She knew within a few drowsy blinks of her eyes that it was daylight. That somewhere distant, the sun was shining. The fact that she couldn’t see anything had nothing to do with the night, it was all because of t
he fog.
Even then, as a small child lost in the woods, she knew that this wasn’t normal fog. Normal fog was still, it hung there as if waiting to be swept away. This – whatever this was – was darker. It was like smoke. Smoke that moved. At first, when she stared at it, she felt seasick, but then she realised that this fog – or whatever it was – was actually swirling. It seemed to encircle her and then to move around as she did.
She couldn’t quite remember getting up from her prone position and taking a few steps forward, but she knew that when she did the fog split and let her through. Like a curtain pulling apart, it opened up and sent her in whatever direction it wanted her to go. Yet all around her, it remained dark and impenetrable. The fog might respond to her in a certain way, but it didn’t want her to peer too far into it. It didn’t want her to have too much light.
Whatever this thing was – fog or smog or impenetrable smoke – it was black and actually crackled as she moved. Like a thunder cloud hanging low. She couldn’t touch it and there was no scent to it, but absolutely she knew that it was alive. It lived and breathed as surely as she did, and it was in charge. Letting her see only what it wanted her to see – mostly what was barely three foot in front of her.
Although trapped, she felt relieved in that. Being within meant she had somewhere to hide.
She’d woken with the knowledge – the utter certainty – that someone wanted to kill her.
Had they told her that?
They told her so many things when the bright lights shone at her; was that one of them? Or perhaps they’d said it when she was asleep. She heard their voices then too. Whispered tones repeating the same, just out of reach, message again and again.
If they had told her this clearly – as fact – then she couldn’t really remember it. But she knew that death waited in these woods as certainly as she knew anything.
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