‘We are so, so worried about poor Edward,’ said Lady Anne. ‘We just want to make sure that he’s all right, and has everything that he needs.’ Her charm was working upon the nurse, and he smiled at her, picking up a pen.
‘Well, I can’t see any problem in that, and since Dr Spawforth has approved, I’ll put you down for half an hour tomorrow. From three o’clock?’
‘Couldn’t we make it a little earlier?’ said the Reverend.
‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ said the nurse. ‘The boy needs his rest.’
‘I think eleven o’clock will be fine,’ said Lady Anne firmly. Edward could hear the persuasion in her voice.
‘Eleven o’clock it is, then,’ said the nurse, and scratched his head, slightly puzzled. The spell had worked.
I’ll have to escape before then, thought Edward. But as he considered the doors through which Lady Anne had just gone, an orderly came through them. ‘Time to lock up?’ he said to the nurse. ‘Yeah,’ said the nurse, and the orderly advanced to where Edward was.
Edward slipped round and headed back towards his room. There was no point going out after Lady Anne. She might still be waiting around. Nowhere was safe. He had to be on his guard all the time. Eleven o’clock tomorrow, he thought. He was glad he had come out into the hospital. He would be able to prepare himself for their visit. Whatever they tried to do … He shuddered thinking about it. They’d try to get the Other Book out of him. And it was part of him, now. How they were going to do that, he didn’t even hope to guess. Something told him it wouldn’t be much fun.
Fourteen
Edward padded softly back down the corridor. He was a couple of doors away from his room. The orderly was moving very quickly, bearing down upon him, like a very slow elephant. He was marching down the corridor, not looking to left or right, swinging a bunch of keys. Edward couldn’t risk being caught by him now. And who knew that it wasn’t Mrs Phipps in disguise? He might bring me out to the reception area, thought Edward, where Lady Anne and the Reverend could still be lurking. There’s only one thing for it, he thought, and ducked into the nearest room, closing the door behind him.
He was forced to shut his eyes, because it was so bright after the darkness of the corridor. Red shapes formed against his eyelids, and he cautiously opened them. A television was flickering gently in the corner. He blinked for a moment, adjusting.
The room was the same size as his own, with a bed in the corner. A bed which contained a shape, that was stirring under the sheets. He hoped he hadn’t disturbed the occupant. He stayed by the door, ready to spring out. He only had to wait a couple of minutes before the orderly went past.
This room was much more lived-in than Edward’s. The walls looked like they hadn’t been painted for a while. They were a deep, rich red. They were also covered with pictures–engravings of old buildings, diagrams, symbols. Papers were strewn all over the place–reams of writings in several different hands, piles of printouts on the brink of toppling over, and towers of old books with their covers coming off. An ancient, blackened chest, its lid propped open, was full of more books, tottering in piles, threatening to cascade to the ground.
The shape in the bedclothes sat up. It was a man, dark-haired, gaunt, unshaven, swarthy. The man Edward had seen earlier, walking down the corridor, with the face of a saint. He wore blue and pink striped pyjamas and there was a long scar going from his ear to his mouth. His hair was very long and greasy. His cheekbones were sharply prominent, and his nose straight. Even from across the room Edward could see that his eyes were a piercing dark blue. They focused on him.
‘You. You’ve changed,’ he said, slowly and deliberately.
Edward edged towards the door. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to –’
‘No! Don’t go. This is interesting. Why have you changed? Or rather, what is it that has changed you? I must set it down. My tables! My tables!’ he laughed. He scrabbled around and picked up a small, black notebook, and scribbled in it. ‘Met-a-mor-phos-is,’ he said, enunciating every syllable. ‘Haven’t seen one of those for a while. You haven’t been disobeying the gods, have you? Or are you running away from one?’
‘No … no, sir,’ said Edward.
He was nearer the door, and he reached out to put his hand on the doorknob.
‘No!’ said the man. ‘Here. Stay here. I want to know why.’
He’d almost shouted the last bit. He was making too much noise. Edward didn’t want him to create a disturbance. The orderly was probably still within earshot. Edward went closer to the bed.
‘Ah … ah, yes, yes, come closer. What are you? A little tatterdemalion, a little flibbertigibbet. The foul fiend bites my back. So, young renegade, you have entered my realm.’ He swept his arm around the room. ‘And what is your name? Do you have one? Or has it changed too?’
‘Edward, sir.’ He couldn’t think of a fake name. ‘Edward Pollock.’
‘Come closer, Edward Pollock. Let me look at this metamorphosis.’
Edward crept forward, stumbling through dusty piles of paper. He reached the man’s bedside. He grabbed Edward’s neck and pulled him so close that Edward could see the man’s pores.
He spoke fiercely, right into his ear, his spittle covering Edward’s cheek. ‘What is inside you must be destroyed, my little one, for it is wrong, all wrong!’
Edward struggled against him, but couldn’t get free, the man was crushing him tighter and tighter, and Edward shouted, and the door opened, and someone came in and said, ‘What’s going on? Dad, what are you doing?’ And the man let Edward go.
Edward stepped back from the bed to find himself face to face with Guy Lane Glover. They stood looking at each other, Lane Glover’s face going through a mixture of surprise, shame and hatred.
‘So now there are two,’ said the man, and pulled the bedclothes over his head. ‘Two, of course there are two. It seems perfectly natural now–the one who never looks up, whose eyes are lidded and balled, like Blake’s …’ He groaned like a banshee. What he said seemed familiar to Pollock, but made no sense.
‘It’s all right, Pa,’ said Lane Glover. ‘There’s only one of me. It’s OK.’ The man pulled the blankets off his head again, and Lane Glover ran to him. He took the man’s hand, and the man put his head against Lane Glover’s chest.
‘Pollock,’ said Lane Glover. ‘What are you doing here?’ He wasn’t angry, just sad.
‘I’m … I’m sorry, Guy,’ said Edward. ‘I didn’t know … your father, I’m sorry …’
‘I am red meat. His beak claps sidewise: I am not his yet!’ said Mr Lane Glover.
His beak claps sidewise … the image was horrible, and Edward had heard it before somewhere … was this another trap? he thought.
‘What does he mean when he says that?’ asked Edward.
‘He’s not mad,’ said Guy. ‘He isn’t. He’s quoting from something. Sylvia Plath. It’s a poem.’
‘I … I’m sorry, Guy,’ said Edward, and Guy sighed, let go of his father’s hand, and slumped down into the chair by the bed.
‘Somebody’s done for,’ said his father.
‘Sssh,’ said Guy. ‘It’s all right. I’m here now.’
They were silent for a moment, as Guy comforted his father, and the low flicker of the television spluttered in the corner. Edward wondered if he had a mother, or any other family at all. He wondered why no one had come with him to the hospital. He would never have been allowed to make a journey like that on his own.
‘How long has he been like this?’ Edward asked.
‘He’s been here for three years now,’ said Guy. ‘He was a professor of English at University College in London, before.’
‘What happened?’ asked Edward.
‘I don’t really want to talk about it.’ Guy sat on a chair and looked at his father. His father smiled. Guy let go of his hand and said, ‘Well, I suppose since you’re here, you might as well know everything that I know.’ He got up, pushed some books off a c
hair, and Edward sat down in it. ‘It’s a long story. Dad used to be a great lecturer–he loved his job, and his students loved him. He was researching into some old documents, and it was all going fine–he was getting funding, and we were moving to a bigger house–until he became obsessed with something.
‘I don’t know what it was. He used to talk about something, about a book that would prove some theory he’d been working on. But he never found it, and one day he came home, and he was … like this.’ He looked down at the floor. ‘He admitted himself. Just wandered in here one day, and said, “I can’t do it any more.” And I was sent to Oldstone Manor, and my father stayed here …’ He patted his father’s hand again. ‘So what are you here for, Pollock?’ he said. ‘Looking for a book too?’
‘Well … it’s funny you should say that. Promise not to think that I’m mad?’
Guy looked around the room, and shrugged. ‘Knock yourself out,’ he said. ‘You’re in the right place.’
So Edward told him everything that had happened. The television continued to flicker in the corner, its low voices sounding like they were spelling out some awful doom. The intense brightness of the lights showed up everything in the room, the papers, the diagrams, the books all glowing seemingly from the inside.
Glover paid attention to Edward, sometimes asking him to repeat something if he hadn’t understood it. When he came to telling him about Strangore, O’Brien and the pond, Glover said, ‘I wondered what got into me that day. Something just seemed to take me over.’ Sometimes his father would surface from the half-sleep he had entered into. When Edward got to Reverend Smallwood, Guy’s father sat up straight in bed.
‘But that’s it! That’s it, my boy! It’s here somewhere! I know it is!’
‘Ssshh … be quiet,’ said Guy. His father was more excited than usual, and took some calming down.
They talked long into the night. If you hadn’t known that they were enemies, from the way that they spoke you might have thought that they were best friends. This was another side to Lane Glover, and Edward felt his dislike slipping away.
Guy told Edward that he and his mother had worshipped his father. He’d been like an enchanter, casting powerful spells of attraction on all those that came near him, the centre of a small group of charmed people–artists, poets, writers, models, politicians, lawyers, bankers, people whose talents and brains had brought them together. The house in Islington was large, and always full of visitors. Sometimes they stayed for months, sometimes they were gone in an hour. His father was eccentric, always, and inclined to be obsessive. But Lane Glover had loved him all the more for his oddities.
And then one day he had come home from a visit somewhere, and had not been able to speak properly. He’d sung in snatches of madness and half-remembered quotes. And then he had broken down. He had admitted himself to St Clive’s that day.
Around midnight Edward decided to go to bed. Lane Glover promised he’d try to see him the next day.
‘Pollock,’ he said, as he was leaving the room.
‘What?’
‘I believe you.’
‘What?’ said Edward. This wasn’t like Lane Glover. Although admittedly he now knew he hadn’t known what Lane Glover was like.
‘I believe you. Look what a book did to my father. I think I’d believe anything after that.’
‘Thanks,’ said Edward. ‘Where are you going to sleep?’
‘I sleep here, some nights. Now that I’m on suspension. There’s a camp bed.’
‘No bedbugs?’
‘No.’ The two boys stood in silence for a moment. ‘Thanks, Edward,’ said Guy. ‘Let’s talk in the morning.’
Edward left Guy and his father and stole back into his room. He hoped fervently, as he slipped back into his bed, that he had made an ally. He needed all the help he could get. Edward fell gently into natural sleep.
He was dreaming quietly of green and gold forests when there was a tremendous crash and he jumped out of sleep. Somebody–or something–had knocked over his chair and was creeping towards him. In the murky light he couldn’t make out what it was–it seemed oddly shaped. He stiffened and tried to get up, but the shape leapt at him and something was placed firmly over his mouth. In his half-sleep it was difficult to struggle, but he tried. He couldn’t move his arm. His brain was paralysed. Though he was sending urgent messages to his limbs, they just wouldn’t budge. It felt like he was swimming in treacle.
The door creaked open and a thin shaft of light fell on to the floor. An orderly poked his head around it.
The thing on his bed wasn’t making any noises. He tried to shout. The orderly closed the door, and he was plunged into darkness again.
Whatever it was pulled Edward’s pillow out from under his head and started to press it down upon him. He kicked and kicked–it seemed curiously light and he hoped he could kick it off. He screamed inside–he was finding it harder and harder to breathe.
The pillow was taken off him and something brushed his face. It felt disgusting, alive, clammy, leathery and cold, and it stroked his face, and he was aware of a low whistling sound, endless, inhuman, dry and meaningless, like an insect’s noise. Squeezing his eyes shut he fought against it more and, as he kicked, the door opened again. Whatever it was suddenly released him.
Edward heard the click of the switch and heard something laughing. He opened his eyes. Mrs Phipps was sitting on his bed, glaring down at him, radiating malevolence. For a moment she looked like a beast with fangs and leathery wings, then she morphed back into her usual shape. He recoiled and tried to get out of the bed, but couldn’t.
Then a voice spoke–one Edward didn’t recognise. Mrs Phipps melted backwards. The voice was metallic, rasping. ‘So this is the subject,’ it said. ‘We’ll have to see what we can do.’
Edward sat up in bed. He noticed that the clock above the door said seven thirty. A little man was standing in the centre of the room. He was almost entirely bald. He looked like he had never had any hair. He wore a shabby brown suit and carried a clipboard. Edward thought there was something menacing about clipboards.
‘Well, Edward Pollock,’ said the man. ‘Let me introduce myself. I am Doctor Isocrates Spawforth.’
Spawforth, thought Edward. Help. Not someone to mess around with. Edward might have guessed that standing behind the doctor was Lady Anne. She was wearing a summery, floating dress that was entirely at odds with her expression. A long chain of beads dangled around her neck, which she was twisting as she came forward.
‘I can’t tell you how useful Phipps has been,’ she said. The ghastly creature, human now, shuffled to her mistress and cackled. Behind her was Reverend Smallwood.
‘Let’s get to the point,’ said Lady Anne. ‘Strap him in.’
Two heavy-looking orderlies in bright white coats came forward and strapped Edward down into the bed, then wheeled him out into the centre of the room. He shouted, ‘Help!’ But then he realised how stupid that was. Dr Spawforth was in charge, after all.
The bed had wheels, and one of the orderlies pushed it out into the middle of the room. ‘Follow me,’ came the metallic voice. Spawforth marched ahead. As they went past Guy’s father’s room Edward yelled, ‘I am not his yet!’ It was something Guy’s father had said, and he hoped Guy would realise that something was wrong.
But nobody came out of the door.
Edward was pushed down the passageway, Spawforth marching ahead all the time, Lady Anne and the Reverend behind him. Through the double doors, into the main reception area of the ward, into a large lift and then up. He didn’t see which floor they were taking him to. It was certainly two or three stops. Nobody else got into the lift.
The orderly pushed him out again, down more bleak corridors, through more doors, past bleary-eyed nurses and unfocused patients, and finally they came to a stop in a large room.
It was an operating theatre. There was a trolley full of instruments, a table, a huge lamp. Suddenly he remembered the day of the drinks party at O
ldstone Manor, when he had looked out of the window at the tables being prepared below, and for a second it had seemed as if he were being examined on them. That had been a foreshadowing of this moment, and Edward realised that he should have paid attention. Again he felt a tightening, as of a bow-string, again he felt powerless, a puppet being dangled over an abyss.
‘What are you going to do?’ he said. He tried to speak as firmly as he could.
‘There is something, Edward, that is lurking inside you. The Other Book,’ said Lady Anne, ‘has sucked itself into your cells, into the very marrow of your bones. And it is beyond my reach. So, with the help of Dr Spawforth and his machine here, I hope to get it out of you. Sometimes, we must have necessary recourse to Science, Edward. That is something you will learn. If there is anything left of you. We are going to rip it out of you, Edward. This machine can mimic the power that I have. It will serve, instead of the other person I need. And that is all I need to get it out of you. Ready?’
There was a large contraption in the corner of the room. If it had been flashing and buzzing strangely, Edward wouldn’t have minded so much, but there was something terrible about the clinical silence with which it was turned on and put into position.
Spawforth turned on a dictaphone and started speaking. ‘Subject: Edward Pollock, twelve-year-old male. Time 0742 hours.’
The machine was manoeuvered next to the bed. Edward squirmed in his straps but they were too tight. There was only one thing to do, and that was to lie still. The machine had a giant tube attached to it, which had an opening about the size of his chest. It was lowered slowly until it was about twenty inches above him. And then a button was pressed, and a little disc came out, and the disc was covered in tiny, sharp, glinting hooks. And it started moving up and down.
Edward couldn’t help it. He screamed. His thoughts were not, at that time, on escape. He thought he’d had it. He felt the Other Book shrieking in its strange syllables through his curdling brain. It knew what was happening. The fact that it couldn’t help Edward, or didn’t want to, was horrible.
The Other Book Page 13