‘Ma’am.’ He spoke to her over his shoulder, warily watching the door. ‘Stay here. Stay down.’
At least he didn’t think she was the enemy.
Yet.
Quietly, he ran to the bedroom door and then he was gone, off down the stairs, his body pressed to the wall, waving the knife in front of him. Thea shakily got to her knees. As much as she would have liked to have stayed where she was, to curl up into a ball and try to block out everything she’d just seen, she had to follow him. There was no one else to do it. Her shoulder was beginning to throb, a dull drum beat punctuated by the occasional top note of needling pain and she felt tears forming, hot and stinging.
She would not cry. She would get up, she told herself, like a nanny to a recalcitrant child. She would stand. See? There she was – she was standing. Now she would walk to the door. It was not so far away, not so much of an effort. There was nothing wrong with her apart from the shoulder; her legs and feet were fine. See? She was at the door. How easily that had happened. Now she would walk down the stairs even though her knees were a bit wobbly and her shoulder a bubble of pain. Hopefully, by the time she got to the bottom, Ethan would not have killed himself and she could get the damn knife away from him.
And throw it far out into the snow.
She staggered into the kitchen, bracing herself for she didn’t know what, with nothing to defend herself, shaking and alone, to find …
… Ethan asleep on the floor, curled up around the knife as if it was a cuddly toy. Peaceful again.
She bent down and quickly slipped it out of his grasp before she allowed herself to crumple to the floor next to him.
Chapter 34
There was so much blood.
It wasn’t so much the amount of it that was making Thea feel sick, but rather the doughy, fleshy flap of skin Ethan was gouging out of his head.
She hadn’t been able to stop him this time. It was the morning of the next day. Before she could finish describing his hallucination, he had been halfway to the knife in the cutlery drawer. They were currently sitting on the floor in the bedroom.
Head wounds bled. A lot. She’d read that somewhere. Something about the fact that there are numerous blood vessels and so even a minor cut could cause major bleeding. What Ethan was doing was not a minor cut though: he was digging into the skin around the disc on his temple, blood running down his cheek, his jaw trembling, his hand trembling, Thea trembling for him.
She watched helplessly. The knife continued to twist and jab and the obscenely squishy flap of skin was deluged by another welling of blood. At least she’d managed to pour boiling water over the knife and sterilize it first, but at this rate, it wouldn’t matter because he was bound to go into shock at any minute.
With a pent-up scream of frustration, he hurled the knife away from him, where it clattered against a skirting board, smudging red on the paint.
‘It won’t budge.’ He put his head in his hands despondently while his shoulders heaved. ‘How does it do it?’
Thea pressed a dishcloth to his temple. She had come prepared. The dishcloth had been folded neatly in a cupboard, so she guessed it was clean and she’d cut another one into strips to wrap around his head once the bleeding stopped. She’d also brought up the whisky, to dab at the edges of the wound primarily, but there was too much blood for that. So she wiped the blood away from his cheek and neck with a towel and he took a swig from the whisky bottle instead.
She edged the dishcloth away from his skin, had a look, stopped herself from heaving, and pressed it firmly back.
‘It doesn’t look as if it’s attached itself into the temple,’ she said. ‘It hasn’t drilled down with a prong or anything. I don’t get why you can’t just lever it off.’
Thea got off her knees and sat next to him, their backs against the wall. He offered her the whisky, but she shook her head.
‘What can they do with these discs? Can they work at long range? Could they …’ He stopped and his shoulders drooped. He spoke softly. ‘Could they even kill us with them? Zap us with some kind of electrical charge?’
Ted’s empty stare flashed back into Thea’s mind.
She dunked the towel in a bowl of hot water she’d brought up. Ethan’s blood swirled into it, spirals and curlicues of red drifting lazily out across the surface. He closed his eyes and rested his head back against the wall, still holding on to the dishcloth.
‘How were we so stupid?’ He sighed. ‘To get involved in this?’
‘Because we were desperate, that’s why.’
They sat there for a few moments. A fresh trickle of blood ran down Ethan’s cheek. Thea shifted uncomfortably, her shoulder throbbing.
‘Ethan, there’s something you should watch.’
‘Is that …?’ Ethan glanced up from the laptop.
‘Yep. Our Delores.’
‘Wow.’
He went back to watching intently.
‘Wait, wait, wait.’ He paused the video. ‘So people were trying to buy Moses’s tech, and they were going to use it to put adverts in people’s dreams. Correct?’
‘Well, kind of. I think it would help people learn quicker and be smarter, but it could also influence people without them even knowing they were being influenced.’
‘Or it could programme people to say, or believe, or do anything?’
Thea looked at the image paused on the screen: Delores was caught mid-gesture in a blur, which made it look as if Moses was reaching out to a ghost.
‘Yeah, I guess so.’
Ethan pushed the laptop away from him a little and rubbed at the cloth taped around his head.
‘Well, this just gets better and better,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Not only am I acting out my hallucinations, but if I’m lucky and the tech works properly, I get my mind reprogrammed to eat a certain brand of crisps, and – gee – I don’t know … maybe go kill the prime minister.’
‘Keep watching.’
He did. Thea didn’t want to see it again, Ted’s face, so she watched the snow come down. At first, she’d thought it wouldn’t settle. The ground had been so wet from the sleet, but it had and now big, fat, feathery flakes floated lazily in the dark, giving the fields a duvet day that Thea would see the next morning. She was beginning to lose track of time. They’d been at the lighthouse for only one day and the trial itself was in its fourth week. The snow fell and the window was a square of static interference on a television screen. They couldn’t have got back to the Sleep Centre even if they’d wanted to; they were wearing warm layers, a fleecy top and thermal jacket, but only trainers on their feet, the monastery search party intending to be back well before the snow.
No, that was wrong, Thea thought; they could still get back to the Centre. It would be cold and miserable and they’d probably twist an ankle because they couldn’t see the path anymore, but they could do it. They just didn’t know whether that was the best idea yet. And the snow was a good excuse.
One day gone already. Why hadn’t anyone come to get them? The Centre knew where they were and, yes, there was snow, but that wouldn’t stop them. Ethan had heard of a fire at the Centre from the radio of one of the search party guards. Was that keeping them busy? How much longer would that last?
Ethan was silent when the video diary ended.
‘I think it’s when you go into Phase Three, remember – the bit where we get to improve ourselves?’ Thea spoke quickly. ‘I think that’s where it all starts to go wrong. Ted was learning all those languages—’
‘Jesus! Did you see him?’
‘So Moses tested it on himself, scrambled his brain and Delores needed money so she sold it to Aspire.’ Though, Thea realized, Delores had continued to look after Moses, had made sure he was hidden, yes, but safe and cared for. Kind of. ‘They’ve probably fixed any problems,’ Thea said eagerly, wanting to believe it.
Ethan stayed silent.
In the afternoon a little FM radio picked up a local channel playing old songs and if Thea s
quinted with her brain she could almost believe that she and Ethan were a happy couple enjoying a weekend break in a cottage picked from PlacesInTheMiddleOfNowhere.com.
They found tins of custard in the cupboard and heated them up, dunking biscuits in them to really make sure they made up for any sugar restriction they’d had back at the Centre. The pain in her shoulder had dulled and she tried to keep it fairly still, hoping it would get better on its own. Luckily, there were painkillers in the medicine box that had been left on the counter.
She couldn’t help wishing Rory was with her. He’d probably have had a chocolate bar in his pocket and his laugh would have instantly made her feel like things could be worked out. Though, she had to admit, he would have been rubbish at getting a gun from an armed guard.
‘My mother is probably haranguing the Centre right now, if they’ve allowed her call to go through,’ Thea said. ‘She thought it was a cult.’
Thea pictured her mother at the helm of a small motorboat, nosing it through the waves, the other women stood behind, heading to the island to rescue her. The post-menopausal army.
Ethan had been quiet up until that point. ‘So is it just you and your mother?’
‘Yep. We don’t live together, or anything.’ She wasn’t quite sure why she added that so quickly. ‘I’ve got my own place, but yeah … just me. What about you?’
‘I was married. Once. Didn’t work out.’ He paused and Thea didn’t think he would say any more. But he cleared his throat. ‘We met before I joined up. It was good then but being in the army meant I was away a lot, too much really. And even when I was home, I was always kind of still away, half the time – y’know?’
What Thea knew about marriage she’d got from books, but she nodded sympathetically.
‘I don’t blame her,’ he quietly said. ‘Between the nightmares and the sleeplessness, the memories … there wasn’t any space for anything else. For her.’ He looked down. ‘I wasn’t the same person she met.’ He sighed. ‘So, I’m on my own now.’
They were silent for a while until Thea looked up and caught him gazing at her so intently, she began to squirm.
‘Don’t you think that’s odd?’ he said.
‘Well, lots of people get divorced—’
‘No, Thea – think! A few of the others I spoke to,’ he said, frowning, ‘they were all single, not much in the way of family – loner types …’
Thea was beginning to guess where this was going.
‘And, apart from you and your mother, no one at home waiting for them to call.’ He paused for emphasis. ‘No one to care what happens to them.’
Thea thought back to that first meeting with Delores in her office: ‘You are the one who is important. You are … different to the others.’ Delores had meant different as in white-crowned sparrow, but had she been different in another way too? Was she the only one out of those fifty clients who had someone waiting for their call? So why take the risk – unless the chance to trial out sleeplessness on her had been too hard to resist?
‘What should we do?’ Thea asked. ‘This fire back at the Centre, the one the guards at the monastery ran off to help with – they’ll sort it out soon enough and we’ll be next on their to-do list. Should we try to get off the island? Go back to the Centre?’
Thea’s tongue felt furry and coated with sugar. She couldn’t think of anything. No matter how many times she moved the pieces around, the game always ended with her and Ethan dead. Not dead – they can’t do that, one part of her brain murmured. The other part sniffed and rolled its eyes.
‘There must be working Wi-Fi at the Centre somewhere, probably in the Staff Bubble. We just need to sneak in and email that memory stick to someone, anyone. My mother, a newspaper … At least we’ll have tried to do something.’
‘Or we could just carry on sitting here, in the warm, eating custard and listening to the radio until they come for us.’ Ethan sounded serious. ‘We might not even have to wait; they could just programme me to kill you and then kill myself, any moment now. Problem solved.’
Thea got goosebumps on her arms. It was the tone in which he’d said it, so bleak, so emotionless.
‘You’re going to have to handcuff me tonight, you know.’ Ethan screwed up the empty biscuit packet and fixed her with a look.
‘I’m not sure I know you well enough for that just yet!’ Her joke was met with stoniness. She blushed.
That was when Moses started to wail.
Chapter 35
Thea hadn’t expected to see the sky. There it was though, peeping through a hole in the roof of Moses’s room. No wonder he had been wailing. Snow steadily drifted in, enough to have already covered his blankets, melting where it touched his skin, piling up in the furrows of the bed sheets. Luckily for him, the fallen bits of soggy wood, plaster and a few cracked tiles had missed the bed.
‘The weight of the snow must have caved that bit of the roof in,’ Ethan said, squinting upwards. ‘Pretty weak roof to start off with. Guess they didn’t have time for roof repair before shoving him in here.’
‘What are we going to do?’
They stared at Moses. He pulled the squelching bed sheets up under his nose and stared back at them, his wide eyes moving from one to the other. God knows what his brain thinks we are right now, Thea thought.
‘We can’t leave him in here,’ Ethan decided. ‘It’s cold, for one thing.’
‘I don’t know …’
‘I get it – he’s dangerous. I’m not stupid. But I can handle it. We’ve just got to move him to the kitchen, put him in the chair, handcuff one arm to the radiator. I’ve had to take him to the toilet enough times. He knows the drill.’
Thea eyed Moses warily. Moses was definitely awake more often and, though quiet, Thea often saw him watching them. She remembered the Moses in the video diary, the happy-go-lucky, joking one from the start … the clever one. Clever enough to make the technology. Clever enough to outsmart her and Ethan.
Thea sighed.
Around the lighthouse that night, a new, cushioned, white world formed in the quiet dark hours that saw Thea awake, Moses shackled to the radiator and Ethan cuffed to his bed.
It was the morning of their third day in the lighthouse. They sat on the floor, drinking tea and eating crackers.
‘We can’t stay here much longer,’ Ethan said, while dipping a cracker into mayo. They were running out of food now too. All that was left was a pot of jam, the crackers and mayo, some tins of beans and the dregs from a box of cereal.
‘I know.’
Thea rolled her shoulder experimentally. It hurt.
‘I had a date not so long ago.’ Ethan snapped a cracker. ‘Before we started the trial. Met her on the web, hooked up for a drink. Thought it would be awful, because dates generally are. It wasn’t.’
He tapped the lid of the jam and paused.
‘Didn’t think I might not see her again.’
Thea’s cracker snapped in half, one end mired in mayo. A lot of sensitive, compassionate comments could have been made at this point.
‘It’s probably best you only got one date.’ She smiled. ‘No time for you to screw it up.’
Ethan puffed out a breath of air like he’d been punched. ‘Harsh!’
But it had worked: he smiled and rubbed his hand over his bristly hair.
She munched a dry cracker, which coated the roof of her mouth.
‘What about you?’ He leant forward, his arms over his knees. Thea noticed his forearms. They were tanned and strong-looking, then she blushed for paying attention to something like that when they were stuck here. In the lighthouse at the end of the world.
‘Yeah I screw it up too. Sometimes on purpose. Sometimes not.’
Rhodri popped into her mind. She’d met him at the train station. Their train had been delayed and they had both gone to sit on the same spot on a bench. They’d laughed, he’d offered the place to her and got them coffees for the wait and, when the train finally appeared, they’d chatted a
nd flirted on the train ride. Numbers had been exchanged.
And she’d ignored every one of his calls.
‘What did you see?’ Thea changed the subject. ‘When you hallucinated?’
Ethan sighed and rolled the jam lid on its edge with one finger.
‘Mistakes I made.’
‘When you were in the army?’
‘I don’t talk about it much because, well, I don’t need to – I relive it most nights in my nightmares.’ He rubbed at a spot on the carpet tile. ‘There was a hostage situation on one of my postings and … well, decisions had to be made quickly. Not the right decisions, it turned out. Not the right decisions at all. It’s when it’s kids – that’s what hits you hardest, that’s what you can’t forget …’
At night. On your own. Sleepless.
‘It was pretty much this, the trial, or prison. I mean, not straight away, but I just wasn’t thinking straight half the time and that’s where I’d have ended up, eventually. Short fuse.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘No fuse, more like. In hindsight, prison would probably have been the smarter choice, wouldn’t it?’
If she had been someone who was used to hugging other people, Thea might have tried giving Ethan a hug then. He looked like he needed it. Rosie would have done it, she thought, in that easy way she had, and then she’d have made them all laugh by producing chocolate from her shoe, or something. Ethan hung his head.
‘Max?’ Moses woke up, his free hand smoothing the spot on his temple where Thea knew a disc had once been, the skin dented and scarred.
Ethan and Thea generally ignored him. His brain was poorly set jelly in a trifle and it was impossible to keep track of what he was talking about.
‘Where am I?’ There was something different to his voice this time, something sharper. Thea glanced at him. He leant forward in the chair, peering at them both intently. He smelled: a sour, musty funk and Thea could see, where he was gripping the arms of his chair, that his fingernails were edged in black.
‘St Dunstan’s Island. The Sleep Centre,’ Thea replied, unable to take her eyes from his. They were so focused on her.
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