The boy is facing a big window with his back to me.
‘Hey!’ I shout but he ignores me. His shoulders start heaving up and down like he’s laughing or crying. I can’t tell which. Light blazes into the room so the edges of him are all fuzzy and undefined. Maybe he’s got a knife. Maybe he’ll turn round and plunge it straight into me. But I want to see his face. Talk to him. I can’t seem to get near though; it’s almost like I’m walking on the spot. I start running as fast I as can, my feet slamming against the stone floor.
Sharp pains creep up my arms and legs. I can’t get my breath now and my lungs pull and strain for air. A voice whispers something right next to me.
‘Who’s there?’ I gasp, spinning round to look but there’s no one else in the room. It’s just me and the boy. A harsh beep, beep, beep starts up all around until I think my eardrums are going to pop like balloons. Suddenly, the noise stops and everything goes silent. The boy turns round.
And I’m looking into my own face.
I’m in deep water. I want to stay here but I can’t stop myself from soaring upwards towards the surface. There’s an explosion of light and sound and I gasp as I break the skin. My mouth feels like an animal died in it and there’s a horrible sick smell around me.
I’m huddled in the corner of a room looking up at a face. The face belongs to a man who’s thin and pale, with glasses. He’s bald. He smiles and stretches out a hand but something seems to shrivel inside me and I don’t want to touch him for some reason.
‘Welcome back, Callum. You’ve been away a long time,’ he says in a posh, deep voice.
I gawp and try to speak but all that comes out is a croaking sound. I try again.
‘What happened?’ My voice sounds rusty, like it hasn’t been used for ages and my throat hurts like mad.
The man gestures with his hand. ‘Let’s get you on your feet and then I can answer your questions.’
I’m wearing hospital-like clothes and I can feel my hair is hanging down around my collar. How long have I been here? I get unsteadily to my feet and look around.
Along with Baldy there’s another bloke, younger, with a beard, wearing blue hospital scrubs. I’m in a room that looks like it hasn’t been used for ages. There are piles of boxes and a mop in an old bucket, just like the one I used at Riley Hall.
I have so many questions but I can’t get my mouth to work properly. A wave of nausea swirls inside me.
‘Steady,’ says the other man but I bend over and puke all over the shoes of Baldy, who yelps and jumps back.
‘Sorry,’ I mumble.
‘It’s fine,’ says Baldy, shaking the sick off his shoe with a grimace. ‘Let’s get you cleaned up, Callum.’
‘Cal,’ I say, even though it’s about the least important thing I could possibly say at this moment. ‘It’s Cal.’
I don’t know what will happen next. Dogs could start talking and it could rain pink frogs right now. It wouldn’t be stranger than what’s already happening.
‘Right,’ says the man. ‘Let’s get you back to your room and we can talk.’
My room? My room?
‘Where am I?’ I say at last.
‘Well, at the moment you’re in an old storeroom. Looks like you went on a walkabout. We had some trouble finding you this morning. But I’ll explain properly when we get you back to your room, as I said.’
OK, now I get it. I went mad, just like I thought, and got myself locked in a loony bin. I bet Des loved it when they carted me away.
I dumbly follow them out of the storeroom and down a long, plain corridor with closed doors on both sides.
Smells are assaulting me from every angle. Disinfectant, food, and even aftershave from the man, are all so strong I want to gag. And everything is too bright. I squint up and see small lights buried into the ceiling.
‘Where am I?’ I say again and my small voice makes me sound about five years old.
The men exchange glances and open a door at the end of the corridor.
Inside is a plain white room which feels familiar. I look around, so confused and dizzy I can’t speak. The ground tilts sideways and I feel the impact of the ground rushing to meet me just as everything shrinks to a tiny pinhole.
More voices.
‘Do you think he can hear us?’
‘I don’t know. We should be cautious about what we say. Everything’s changed. There are no protocols for any of this so we have no way of knowing his level of awareness post cracks.’
‘When can we continue?’
‘Shh, I think he’s . . .’
I force my eyes open.
This time I’m lying on top of a bed. The bearded man is standing over me and a woman in blue scrubs is facing away. She turns around. I gasp so hard it hurts my throat.
‘Mum?’
She stares back at me, frowning. Then I realise it’s not Mum at all. I feel like someone punched me in the guts. She looks a bit like Mum but is loads younger and more done up. I can smell her perfume and even the sickly sweetness of her make-up.
She’s wearing a stethoscope round her neck. She comes over and gently eases me back against the pillow. I smell toothpaste and coffee on her breath.
‘I’m just going to listen to your heart, Callum,’ she says. ‘You probably feel a little disorientated so try not to speak for a minute.’ Her voice is nothing like Mum’s. She sounds completely different. I’m so confused I just stare hard into her face as she bends over me. I feel tears spill over my eyelids and one slips over my cheek and goes hotly into my ear. But she doesn’t really look at me.
‘It’s Cal,’ I whisper. But no one is listening.
The door swings open and the bald man from before strides in. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes as he comes and stands at the side of the bed. He exchanges a look with the nurse and she leaves the room. Her thick-soled shoes make a shushy sound on the floor.
‘I want to know what’s going on,’ I say and try to swallow tears. ‘I don’t know where I am. I want to go home.’
‘Sit up, Callum,’ he says, ‘and we can talk properly.’
‘I told you already, it’s Cal!’ I want to shout it but my voice doesn’t work properly still.
‘Sorry, I’ll try to remember,’ he says. His smile is tight as a drum.
I sit up again and a sharp sweat smell wafts up. As Baldy comes closer, I catch a whiff of his milky cereal. Cheerios, I’m sure it’s Cheerios. Everything stinks here. And it’s so bright. I groan and raise my hand to shield my eyes from the glaring lights overhead.
He gestures to the beardy male nurse and the light dims. ‘Is that better?’ he says and I nod.
He pulls a plastic chair from the side of the room and sits on it back to front. ‘I’m Dr Daniel Cavendish,’ he says. ‘You’re in a special research unit . . . a hospital, I guess you could say. We call it the Facility.’
Loony bin. Definitely.
‘Was it because of the cracks? Is that why I was brought here?’
He glances at Beardy with a puzzled expression before his eyes flick back to me. He hesitates for a second before speaking again. ‘I’m not quite sure . . . um, how to . . .’
I have a very strong urge to punch this bloke. Why won’t he just tell me what’s going on? How long have I been in this place, anyway?
‘Well, why don’t you just tell me when I came here?’ I say as he continues to stare. ‘Is it still Thursday? It’s Thursday, right?’
Cavendish swallows, visibly. ‘You’ve been here for rather longer than you might realise,’ he says.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘How long, then?’
His eyes flick around again. I get a weird mental image of a lizard with a long tongue, lassoing flies. He hesitates for ages before speaking. ‘You’ve been here for twelve years.’
The room tips sideways. The beardy male nurse quickly shoves a cardboard bowl under my chin. I gag but nothing comes up. A pounding in my head seems to echo around the walls.
‘Twelve years?’
Why would he say something so stupid and wrong?
Both men stare back at me, their expressions blank.
‘Twelve years?’ I say again, more quietly this time. ‘Are you mad? Is this a joke?’
Cavendish crosses one leg over the other. ‘I know it’s difficult to absorb right now. You were brought here, injured, as a small boy,’ he says. ‘You’d been in a car accident.’ He pauses. Your injuries were very serious. You almost died.’
I think my jaw actually drops open.
Cavendish continues. ‘We decided to attempt an experimental neurological procedure.’ Pause. ‘Brain surgery.’ Pause. ‘And it saved your life. But there were some unexpected effects.’
‘What do you mean, unexpected effects?’
He exchanges glances with the other man again. He talks like he has the worst constipation ever. Stop, start, strain; stop, start, strain.
‘Well . . . technically you were in a coma,’ says Cavendish, ‘but you could move freely. All tests showed your brain activity was strong but you were living in a world inside your own mind.’
It’s not raining pink frogs but it might as well be for all the sense he’s making.
‘What, you mean . . . I was dreaming?’
‘No, not dreaming,’ he says, leaning forward. ‘Brain scans showed you were in a coma. Coma patients may twitch or have muscle spasms, but they are unable to use their limbs. You were the first ever to actually get up and move around.’
‘But I’ve been here the whole time? I was like that for years and years? Why didn’t anyone take me home? What about my parents . . . family?’
Silence. Then . . . ‘We’ve never been able to trace anyone. Sorry. You have no living family that we’re aware of.’
No. That can’t be true. There must be someone who cares about me. Mustn’t there?
A big silence fills the room, pushing all the oxygen out. There’s too much to ask. I can’t make the space for the questions in my head, let alone get them out properly. ‘Why did I wake up then?’ I squeeze my nails into my palms to stop myself from freaking out.
Cavendish clears his throat. ‘We’re not sure exactly why it happened now. You’ve been emerging for the last week but all we could do was watch and wait.’
I don’t know why, but a crazy laugh barks from my mouth and I have to squeeze my fists even tighter. My legs are trembling so hard my knees are bouncing up and down. All I want to do is get up and run. Anywhere. Somewhere this isn’t happening any more.
‘So, what?’ I say through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve just knocked about in this room like some kind of zombie for twelve years? That’s nuts. You’re nuts!’
‘It wasn’t exactly like that,’ says Cavendish in that oily, patient voice. ‘You were moving about inside your own world. We’ve watched and studied you and carried out constant tests. The work here has helped us to make huge advances in neurology. But you haven’t been lying in bed all that time, if that’s what you’re thinking. Here, I’ll show you.’
Cavendish gestures to Beardy, who walks over to the far wall and presses a button. There’s a whirring sound and the walls splits into two parts, revealing a kind of glass pod hanging from the ceiling like a giant egg. I swing my legs round to the side of the bed. Beardy goes to stop me but Cavendish puts a hand on his arm and shakes his head warningly. I walk a bit unsteadily over to the pod. I’ve never seen it before, but I know it all the same. I lean my forehead against the cool glass and look inside. I can see hundreds of tiny pinpoints of light. I look down at my own hands instinctively.
I’ve seen them. The lights on my skin.
And that’s the horrible moment when I know for certain this isn’t just a bad dream.
This is real.
‘What is this thing?’ I croak, closing my eyes for a second as another sicky wave hits my stomach
‘It’s a suspension pod,’ says Cavendish. ‘When you weren’t in your bed, it allowed you to move, to run, to stay fit, without becoming injured. You were locked inside your own mind but your body was – is – healthy. This just kept you safe.’
I stare into the pod numbly. Can this tiny space really have been my whole world for twelve years? I can’t take it in. It’s too much. I don’t want to be here. I want to be on the sofa watching telly at home with a jumbo bag of crisps next to me on the sofa. I won’t complain about Des or Ryan or school or anything ever again. I just want things back how they were.
Is he saying none of that ever happened?
A big babyish feeling rises up and I squeeze my burning eyes shut so I don’t start blubbing everywhere. Questions. Must ask questions. Got to pick it all to bits until it makes sense.
‘So how did I end up in that room?’ I say, turning back to face Cavendish and Beardy again. ‘Where I woke up?’
They exchange glances. It feels like there is another, unspoken conversation going on here.
‘Your room door is usually kept closed for your own safety,’ says Cavendish in a tight voice. ‘But someone . . . left it open this morning. In error.’
Images of the room in Riley Hall flash into my mind. The boy . . . he was just a twisted sort of a dream, then. But what about the others?
‘So how do you explain all the people I know?’ I say. I know I’m speaking too loudly now because Cavendish winces. Tough. ‘What about school? What about Mum and Des and Pigface? I didn’t just make them up! I have a history! A family!’
Cavendish clears his throat. ‘We don’t exactly know how your mind created the world it did. But the vivid details may have something to do with the procedure you underwent.’ He pauses again. ‘Your original surgery involved transplantation of brain tissue from a donor.’
‘A donor?’ I say, stupidly.
‘Yes . . . You received brain tissue from a local boy who died on the day you came here.’ He pauses. ‘Memory is a complex thing and there is no scientific reason why memories couldn’t be transplanted from one person to another but . . .’
‘What are you on about?’
He shifts again. ‘The part of the brain we transplanted is known as the amygdala and among other things it helps control memory. And . . . the boy in question may also have had a mother, stepfather and so on. I think you may have been reliving some of his memories.’
I pause for just one second and then I’m shouting. ‘So why does that nurse look like my mum?’
Cavendish’s looking at me like I’m a dangerous dog. ‘Do try to stay calm.’
‘Don’t tell me to be calm!’ I yell.
Cavendish swallows again. He has a huge Adam’s apple that bobs up and down above his collar. ‘You’ve been living somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness,’ he says. ‘Your brain has simply woven details from real life into your coma state.’
No . . . It’s not fair. I want to curl into a ball or howl and cry and hit someone.
None of it was real? Not Mum, or home, or Amil or school? Could they really be just someone else’s memories, all mashed together with stuff happening around me here in this room? I look around at the plain white walls and the horrible pod in the corner, then at Cavendish, Beardy and the nurse. I think about the beeping sounds in my head and when Pigface couldn’t hit me that time.
‘Sometimes it seemed like —’ I close my mouth, biting the words back.
‘Like what?’ says Cavendish quietly.
I hesitate. ‘Like things weren’t real.’
He nods. ‘I expect this was when you were closest to regaining consciousness.’
I suddenly remember Mum, or whoever she was, sliding across the floor in that weird way with blank eyes. What was it she said? ‘He can’t be waking up?’ and then something about increasing the dosage? I don’t understand why they’d say that. They must have wanted me to wake up, surely?
I stare at Cavendish until he blinks, twice in a row, and then I look away. It’s probably all got mixed up inside my head. It’s not like they’d have any reason for keeping me in a coma. I can’t m
ake sense of anything right now.
‘How did he die?’ I croak at last.
‘Who?’ says Cavendish.
‘The boy. The one whose memories I’m carrying in my head.’ Just saying those words makes me want to throw up or scratch myself all over. I feel like I’ve been invaded by insects.
‘I’m not sure of the exact details,’ says Cavendish, ‘but it was a long time ago. I suspect it was an accident of some sort. He’s not important now, anyway.’
Not important?
I want to go home.
I have no home.
I want to go home.
‘Can I go there?’
Cavendish looks at the other guy again. ‘Where?’ he says.
‘The house on the hill. The house where I, where he, where they all live. I want to go there.’ I know I’m not making sense.
Cavendish tips his head back a little, frowning. He clears his throat. ‘If you mean a place from your coma world, that would be a mistake, even if you could locate where it was in the real world. Your mind has had to cope with a lot, Cal. Best just to start again and forget about the past.’
‘If I could locate it!’ I almost laugh and then realise I can’t remember the address of the house on the hill any more. It’s gone. I swallow and squeeze the thin blanket in both fists like I’m clinging on to the edge of the world.
‘Why a mistake?’ I say.
‘What?’
‘Why would it be a mistake to go there?’
Cavendish runs his tongue over his dry lips and I catch a whiff of his breath again, sour now under the milky smell.
‘Uh . . . well, there’s a serious risk that it could result in some kind of cerebral overload. Either a stroke, or a major psychological trauma that could be just as dangerous. Mixing the two realities – the world of your coma and the real world – is just not advisable. These are such unusual circumstances. Anything could go wrong.’
I sink back onto the bed and cradle my head in my hands. I feel like my whole world has been picked up and shaken like one of those glass snowstorms.
The silence seems to go on for ever.
‘What happens to me now?’ I say finally through a headful of snot. ‘Where will I go?’
Cracks Page 4
