by David James
The strain on the parents is becoming marked; but I cannot withdraw them, it would be like losing their parents all over again. But I won't stop the treatment, I still feel that we will reach our goal in the end. I have begun to pass some day to day responsibilities onto some trusted members of staff. As you know I'm not the sort of person who willingly gives up responsibility, but I need to conserve my energy. We are close to a breakthrough, I can feel it.
As Sarah had read on she was becoming increasingly concerned with the apparent health of whoever had written the journal. It seemed as if the strain was beginning to show and she knew from experience what could happen if things went unchecked. She almost hoped that the person would be able to walk away before it was too late.
Sarah turned the next page and let out a groan of disappointment.
It was the end of the entries. It just stopped. She turned the pages over, but they were all blank.
She knew there must be more. And she knew what they must do to find them.
Chapter Fifty Seven
Ben stood there adorned in his newly acquired white coat. As he looked up his eye caught a flash of white again in the undergrowth.
'Who's there?' he shouted. The white shape stopped, but it was still almost completely obscured by the trees. He waited to see if there was any response to his shout, but the forest remained silent.
Ben was deciding whether to run back to the house or charge ahead into the forest and confront the shape.
Before he could make his mind up, he heard a sound over his left shoulder and turned his head quickly, just in time to see another shape move across his vision. And then something struck him on the leg.
At first he thought it was just a branch or something, but as he looked down he was horrified to see that there was a piece of sharp wood sticking from his leg. He looked in disbelief at it. There was no doubt it was an arrow. Crude, but as he felt the blood begin to pour from his leg, it didn't matter how crude it was. He reached down and took hold of the end of the arrow. He hesitated. He tried to imagine it was just a plaster that needed to be removed quickly. He tugged hard at the arrow head. It came out more easily than he had imagined, but he didn’t have long to feel relief.
A second arrow landed inches from the first one and thudded into the ground. His mind was made up and he turned and started to run, his leg partially collapsing in pain where the arrow had struck.
He ran wildly as if he was drunk; the roots and branches conspiring to trip him up at every opportunity. He was lurching along too quickly and was out of control when another root grabbed his ankle and he fell forward and landed painfully on the ground.
Above him the arrow landed in the tree at head height.
He crawled forward and forced himself to a half crouching half running gait. It probably looked pathetic, but he didn't care, he was making some sort of progress.
He emerged from the forest into the open of the village. He paused to listen; maybe whatever it was would relent now that he was out of the forest.
No such luck.
He sighed as he could still hear the sound of pursuit and it was clearly making a better job than he had of running through the forest. He gathered what was left of his stamina, let out a cry of pain and ran as best as he could across the remaining distance to the house.
The sweat was pouring into his eyes now, he could barely see the house, but he saw enough to see it was no more than two hundred feet away. He turned his head to look backward, all he could see was a blur of frantic activity across his sight; nothing was clear.
Half stumbling, half running he made it to the house and launched himself at the door, turned the handle quickly and with a last turn of his head to see what was following him he burst through the door.
He slammed the door shut and waited for the inevitable thud on the door, followed by the door being flung open.
There was silence.
He waited, but there was no sound.
'Why are you dressed like that Ben?' said Sarah.
Ben wasn't listening to her, he was listening to the sounds outside. There should be some sound surely? But there was just silence.
Sarah's expression suggested that she was waiting for an answer.
Ben looked down at his chest and said 'Oh, this. Found it just outside the village.' He was beginning to wonder what exactly had happened, or seemed to have happened.
He removed the white coat and placed it on the chair; there would be time enough to discuss that later. Maybe he would have some reasonable answers to her questions by then. Maybe.
'We need to go back to the building Ben.'
He looked at her as if she was joking.
But the expression on her face told him she wasn't.
'We need to go back to the manager's office.'
He managed to control his urge to scream out that she must be mad.
Sarah said in a lowered voice 'It's important.'
Chapter Fifty Eight
They ate a quiet, rather dull meal; he was beginning to get heartily sick of the limited range of canned foods. All the while Ben was listening and looking towards the window. He was beginning to wonder if he had imagined the afternoon. There was now nothing to see or hear that was out of the ordinary.
'Everything okay Ben? You keep looking outside.'
'Yes, fine, just seeing what it was like outside. You know, if we will need torches or anything.'
Sarah followed his gaze. 'Wouldn't hurt if we took them.'
They finished off their meal. 'You didn't tell me what happened this afternoon?' said Sarah.
'What do you mean? What do you think happened?' said Ben defensively.
'It was just that you went out in a jacket and came back wearing a white coat.'
'It was just something I found in the woods,' he said.
'And I noticed you were limping. How did that happen?'
Ben reached down to his leg, he had forgotten about the pain, but now the pain was making up for lost time. 'Just caught it on a branch, doesn't really hurt,' he lied.
'At least let me look at it,' said Sarah, standing up and walking across to him.
'Doesn't much look like a branch made that.'
Ben was not ready to tell Sarah what had happened, or at least what he thought had happened.
'Just a flesh wound,' he said attempting a smile.
Sarah stood up and said 'Are you okay to go out, I suppose I could go on my own?'
After what had just happened, there was no way Ben was going to let Sarah go outside on her own, he would just have to ignore his injury.
‘I’m fine, are you ready then?’ he said and stood up, wincing slightly.
They both walked towards the front door, Ben grabbing the torches they had brought on the way. Ben slowly and cautiously opened the front door, peering out through the narrow opening. But it was all quiet.
They were both surprised that it had started to get dark already.
'Good job we have the torches,' said Ben. And they set off across the green towards the building.
As they walked across the village, Ben couldn't help training his torch beam into the woods. He didn't really want to see what might be there, but he felt compelled to do it.
'Looking for something Ben?'
'I just thought I saw something,' said Ben.
'I can't see anything except trees,' said Sarah.
Ben shone his torch out front again, not at all reassured. But he did pick up the pace of their walking.
The building loomed ahead and Ben led them past the main gate and to the side, which had become their very own entrance now.
He peeled back the metal grating and turned to Sarah and said 'I'll go first if you like.'
Crawling through the window he eased himself down onto the desk and then onto the floor. He shone his torch ahead of him and could feel himself tense as he expected something to materialise from the shadows. But it all seemed clear. He picked out the light switch with the beam of his torch and
the room was soon bathed in light again. Sarah followed through the window and with slight assistance was standing next to him.
'I guess we should go straight to the manager's office then,' said Ben.
As he left the office, he instinctively reached out and switched off the light.
'Why did you do that?' said Sarah.
'I don't want to make it obvious we are here,' he said.
Sarah stopped walking and looked at him in the torchlight.
'Obvious to who?'
Ben was in no mood, standing in just torchlight in his strange building, to tell her what he had seen, or what he may have thought he had seen.
'Oh, you know, technically we are trespassing.'
Then a strange look came over Sarah's face as she said 'I don't think we are.'
Ben looked at her. He was beginning to read too much into everything now.
'Right, come on then, let’s get going,' said Ben, attempting to mask his anxiety with bravado.
They walked up the stairs and stood at the main office door. Ben shone the torch through the glass of the door, he couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. He pushed the door open slowly and walked in.
He shone the torch around the room and the soft light of the torch gave everything an ethereal glow. Everyday objects managed to take on terrifying forms.
'No lights then?' said Sarah.
'If we can manage without them, it would be best. Don't want to attract attention to ourselves.'
By torchlight they made their way to the manager's office.
'It's okay. I'll take it from here Ben,' said Sarah, 'you can keep watch.'
‘If you are sure?’ said Ben.
‘I’m sure,’ replied Sarah.
She opened the door and quickly closed it behind her, leaving Ben outside.
She felt relieved, she hadn’t felt comfortable with Ben in the office before. And she certainly hadn’t appreciated him damaging the desk as he did; though he did at least find the journal. But now she had the office to herself and she walked across and sat down in the chair behind the desk. She hadn't noticed how comfortable it felt to sit here and she felt herself relaxing into its warm embrace and she closed her eyes.
But she remembered why she was here and she certainly didn’t want to take Ben’s brutal, if effective, way of finding the previous journal. Whoever had been writing the journal must have kept it close to hand. She opened all the obvious drawers and found nothing but more papers. If she didn’t find the next part of the journal soon then she could imagine Ben insisting on his own rather more crude methods.
It was more in hope than expectation, but she ran her hand gently over the ornate carving on the desk fascia, searching for something that would make the desk give up its secrets. She was rewarded with a satisfying click as a small drawer appeared out of the front of the desk. As she moved the torch beam over the desk she could see that it contained a journal very similar to the other one.
Sarah hesitated. She remembered how the other journal had ended. Did she really want to find out what followed?
With a deep sigh she picked it up, moved the torch beam over it and in the gloom of the office she opened it and began to read.
Chapter Fifty Nine
The meetings were meant to be a clear the air session. So I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at what happened. What I was surprised about was how it degenerated so quickly into a slanging match. As I looked out across the room, if I was honest, the staff looked like the patients. It seems to be the staff who have developed worrying psychological traits. The 'us and them' culture was alive and well in the room.
I tried my now customary role as mediator, but it is hard to tell if the staff regard me as one of them any longer. My closeness to the children may have created a fracture between myself and the staff.
More worryingly, the staff seem to be dividing themselves up into their own groups; there seems very little to unite them. They have even taken to sitting in different groups.
More than ever, we need something to unite everyone.
I managed to mediate between the two groups, guiding them along as gently as I could towards the conclusion I wanted them to reach. It may be our last chance of averting some sort of disaster here.
The isolation here that was such a benefit is now becoming oppressive and I think some of the staff have lost touch with the reality of the outside world. Maybe we all have, myself included. This place is beginning to feel more like a prison than a place of treatment. It is becoming more and more difficult for everyone to think rationally in this place. It is up to me to somehow draw them together around the treatment. We are desperate now and I can’t see any other way, no matter how risky it is.
Ben chose that moment to open the door, 'Anything interesting Sarah?' said Ben.
Sarah looked up angrily at him. How dare he intrude like that. She wished she had locked the door now.
Ben was disturbed at the scene that greeted him. In the middle of the darkened room was Sarah hunched over a book of some sort; the soft torchlight highlighted her face as she looked up and her visage terrified him. She looked as if she was about to fly up at him in a rage. The torchlight made her appearance almost grotesque as it created shadows around her face and eyes; she looked barely human.
'It's just that I might be of more use if I tried to find something useful,' spluttered Ben hurriedly. Sarah didn’t respond, to Ben it seemed that she was no longer in this office at all. He quietly shut the door behind him and left Sarah alone with her thoughts.
As the door shut Sarah barely noticed and continued to read the journal.
Monsters.
Let me explain before you judge us too harshly.
The journal slid from Sarah’s hands and dropped onto the floor and she felt the gloom in the room begin to engulf her as the memories flooded back in. Locked doors in her mind were suddenly flung open and the shadows began to emerge and swirl around her.
She suddenly felt very frightened and alone in the darkened room, and as she looked around the office she now feared every shadow that seemed to be forming around her. She switched off the torch. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to see her if she stayed perfectly still.
Ben was glad to be out of the room, he felt uncomfortable just looking at Sarah and it was clear that she didn’t want him there. He was beginning to worry about her. Since they had arrived here he could see that she had been getting more distant. It was almost as if this place was having a detrimental effect on her.
He had left the room so hastily, and walked for several minutes lost in his own thoughts and not concentrating on where he was going, that he had entered a part of the building that was unfamiliar. There was a corridor stretching out in front of him, it was too long for his increasingly feeble torch to illuminate it all.
He walked carefully along the corridor and noticed that there were smaller offices on each side. Pushing gently at the door he walked slowly into the first one.
It was slightly cramped and as he ran the torch across the wall, it was full of the usual post-it notes and printed sheets. He pulled one of them off the wall to look at. It made no sense. He wondered about putting it back on the wall, but he thought that it was unlikely that anyone would be returning to complain. And this thought made him stop for a moment.
He hadn't really thought about that, people returning. Would the offices be again full of people going about their daily business – though he wasn't entirely clear exactly what that was – or would they remain like this until cobwebs and nature reclaimed the whole village?
It made him think about the endgame. He had just taken each event, each day, each revelation one at a time. He found that made for an easier life overall. But at some point he knew there had to be an end. And it was then that he realised that it was not in his control. He was entirely dependent on Sarah for that. And whilst there is a form of comfort in giving up responsibility for your own destiny; if anything goes wrong, it couldn’t be his fault, there is also
a fear from not being in control.
He left the office and continued down the corridor. He put his head round the doors of several more offices; they were all pretty similar and unremarkable. He was about to give up, but he thought about standing around watching Sarah read again. So he decided, for the sake of completeness, to look in the last office on the corridor.
As he opened the door he could see that it was at least different from the rest. There was a coffee machine and a table and chairs. It looked more like a staff room.
The torch’s beam was now fading and its light was now a pale yellow rather than a bright white.
He walked into the room, casually looking at the mugs and plates. He wondered what fevered discussions had taken place here and he began to picture the people that had once stood or sat around here. What they must have talked about. The plans they made. He wondered where they were now?
His torch beam alighted on what looked like a staff notice board. In amongst the usual staff announcements were some more personal items. He ran the torch beam along the board.
Tickets for a concert, now expired, were surrounded by photos of people and their families.
And then the torch beam stopped.
It was all Ben could do to stop himself from dropping the torch.
He reached forward and grabbed the photo. As he peered at it he realised he hadn't been mistaken.
And now he felt that he understood nothing about this place anymore. He turned and ran out of the room to get back to Sarah, whether she wanted him there or not.