by Amy Cross
“I really just want to get out of here,” she replied, trying to keep from panicking. “I don't need to know anything. I just want to leave.”
“Did it frighten you?”
“It was...”
Words failed her, and for a moment she could only think back to the sight of that eye nestled in the heart of all those squirming tentacles inside Mr. Velucci's gut.
“I find it beautiful,” Mr. Ford said.
She paused, before shaking her head.
“It's life, Ms. McCoy,” he continued. “It's new life. It's life that has been nurtured properly. You mustn't allow its form to scare you. Don't give in to your baser urges.”
“That thing wasn't real,” she replied. “It can't have been.”
“You doubt the idea of one life growing inside another?” he asked. “Surely you can't be ignorant of the so-called miracle of childbirth.”
“I know what a baby is!” she spluttered. “That thing -”
“Imagine an early mother, back in the days before medicine,” he continued, interrupting her. “Imagine her shock at seeing her belly swell. Would you expect her to cut herself open and remove the growing mass of cells?”
“Of course not, but -”
“Would you expect her to try to poison that growth? To kill it?”
“You're talking about a child,” she pointed out. “That thing in Mr. Velucci was not a child, it was a... thing!”
“You're right, it's not a child,” he replied. “It's better than that. It's the real Mr. Velucci, it's what his body is going to become once he has moved beyond his current form. The two minds will merge at some point. It's very rare to witness this unification, Ms. McCoy, so you'll have to forgive me if I struggle with the details. I'm as eager as anyone to see exactly how the process develops. But the mass inside his body is getting stronger and stronger, and it's requiring less energy by the day. Soon it should be ready to take full control.”
“Cancer,” she said, wide-eyed with horror. “You're talking about cancer as if it's...”
“As if it's new life blossoming from within?” he said with a faint smile. “Yes, that's precisely how I'm talking about it.”
“That's sick,” she replied. “It's wrong. It's -”
“The future,” another voice said suddenly, and she turned to see Mr. Velucci tying his dressing-gown cord as he emerged from the other room. “I'm feeling much better now. I'm sorry you had to see me in that state, but to be honest it was the only way to get the message across. You now know the full extent of our work up here, and I very much hope that you've been persuaded to stay.”
“I think I have to go. Right now.”
“Go?” Mr. Ford said. “Out of the -”
“You can leave if you want,” Mr. Velucci added, interrupting him and keeping his eyes fixed on Ruth. “I shall not try to stop you, although I wonder whether something might keep you here. I can only appeal to your good sense, and hope that you get past your very natural and rational concerns.” Picking up a tablet device, he unlocked the screen and brought up a photo, which he then showed to her. “Do you know this woman's name?”
Ruth shook her head.
“Dominique Ribery,” he continued. “A key figure in the emergence of our understanding.”
He swiped to another photo.
“Doctor Andrew Page,” he explained. “A good man. A bright man. Dead now, unfortunately. A pity. He could have contributed much to our understanding.”
He swiped again.
“Rebecca Curtis. A cancer patient from the American state of Iowa. She so nearly became the the source of a pure, un-poisoned specimen.”
He swiped for a third time.
“Elizabeth Miller,” he said, as a picture of a smiling girl appeared on the screen. “Some time after this photo was taken, Elizabeth was the only survivor of an incident at a camp in the United States. Again, she could have been very useful to us, but unfortunately her current whereabouts are unknown. She seems to have been spirited away by the military-industrial complex for reasons one can only begin to imagine.”
“I don't know who any of these people are,” Ruth told him, “and I don't think I need to. I just -”
“And then there's this young lady,” he said, swiping to a grainy shot of a little girl. “Emma Briggs. A child who endured a great deal of trauma in the very same incident that killed Ribery and Page. Her own mother died, too. Emma should have joined them, but she was spirited away from Leadenford Hospital. After that, her whereabouts become rather murky, but I was able to track her down. She spent time in several psychiatric facilities, dealing with her trauma. Eventually she was released into the care of a very kind couple who raised her as one of their own. And her treatment was so successful, she forgot everything that had happened to her as a child. Or rather, she suppressed the memories deep down and instead got on with a new life, and a new name.”
“I want to leave,” Ruth said firmly. “Now.”
“But those memories are still there, aren't they?” Mr. Velucci continued with a faint, knowing smile. “They're bubbling up. They're ready to be unleashed. They're ready to come back to the surface. They need to come back to the surface, where they belong.”
Shaking her head, Ruth took a step back, but there were already tears in her eyes.
“I imagine you're very scared right now,” Mr. Velucci said, “but you must break through that fear. You don't think it's a coincidence that you ended up here, do you?”
Feeling a tightening sensation in her chest, Ruth tried to reply, but now she was starting to get a little dizzy. She wanted to scream, to tell everyone that they were wrong, but somehow deep down she knew that it was all true. She could feel the memories stirring, she could feel some kind of long-forgotten sensations starting to turn in her mind, and she was aware of a rushing sound, as if a giant dam was about to break and flood her mind with all manner of horrors. Taking another step back, she bumped against the wall, and now she was starting to worry that maybe something more serious was wrong, maybe even something with her heart. She tried again to cry out, then she put a hand against her chest in a vain attempt to check that everything was okay, and then – finally – she turned and took a single faltering step toward the door before collapsing against the cold floor.
“She took that rather well,” Mr. Ford observed, raising an arched eyebrow.
“Don't be so cold-hearted,” Mr. Velucci replied. “Get the poor girl up from there and settle her so that she'll be comfortable. I have a feeling that, when she awakens, she will have many questions.” He stepped closer and looked down at Ruth's unconscious face. “Poor little Emma.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Kay'll have her tongue down his throat by now,” Gemma said as she followed Merrie back into the apartment. “Or maybe somewhere else.”
“Has she always been such a slut?” Merrie asked, heading toward the kitchen before changing direction and making her way over to one of the other doors. “Maybe I'm wrong, but I swear she didn't used to be like this. I mean, in school she was always in love with Mark Donovan.”
“Maybe in a parallel universe they got together and Kay's a respectable housewife,” Gemma said with a grin. “Hard to imagine it, though. Do you think she'll even show up at the club tonight?”
“God knows,” Merrie replied, before pushing the bedroom door open. “At this rate it'll just be you and me.” She stepped into the room. “Okay, Judy, time to -”
Stopping suddenly, she saw that Judy's bed was empty. The duvet had been pushed aside and left crumpled, which was unusual since Judy was always the one nagging Merrie about making her bed. And then, looking down, Merrie saw one of Judy's orange shoes on the floor.
Just one.
“How's she doing in there?” Gemma asked as she came over to the doorway. “Judy? Are you feeling better.”
“She must have gone out,” Merrie replied with a puzzled expression, before going through to check the bathroom and kitchen. Returning to the
hallway, she spotted a phone on the table. “And she left that behind,” she muttered. “Maybe she went to a pharmacy.”
“She'll be back soon,” Gemma said. “Bagsy the bathroom first, yeah?”
“Sure,” Merrie replied, looking back through at the bed. Stepping over, she spotted a faint yellowish stain on the pillow, and deep down she couldn't shake the worry that something was wrong. “Where are you, Judy?” she whispered to herself. “What's going on with you?”
***
“Alright, love. You alright there?”
The man grinned at Judy as she shuffled along the busy street, but after a moment he simply turned and shrugged to his friend.
With one shoe still on, Judy was walking slowly through the crowd. Still pale and sickly, she was barely even blinking as she tried to find a way past the groups of people milling around outside the various shops and bars. For every step she took forward, she was then shoved to one side or the other, and slowly she was drifting further out toward the edge of the pavement.
Suddenly someone bumped against her, knocking her back the other way and inadvertently sending her stumbling into a bar. She almost fell, but at the last second she managed to steady herself against a table and she took a moment to get her bearings before taking another step forward. Then she stopped again as she realized something wasn't quite right. She couldn't remember where she'd been, or where she was going, but at the same time she felt anxious to reach... somewhere.
“Alright,” the bartender said as he wandered over to serve her. “After some hair of the dog, are you?”
Stopping at the bar, Judy stopped and stared straight ahead. She could see her own face reflected in a mirror behind the rows of bottles, and this sight finally roused her from a state of delirium. For a moment, she remembered coming to Mallaca with her sister and two friends, and she remembered being in an apartment with them. As quickly as those memories arrived, however, they faded again and she felt her mind once more getting lost in a haze.
“What's your poison?” the bartender asked with a smile. “You look like a rum girl to me. Or maybe vodka. Come on, things are a bit slow this afternoon, so I've got time to cook up something special. Actually, I was working on a new cocktail earlier, would you be interested in giving me your opinion? You can even have it on the house.”
Without waiting for a reply, he headed over and grabbed a couple of bottles.
Judy stared her her reflection. She was vaguely aware that something was wrong, but she couldn't quite manage to think properly. Every time she tried to remember who she was, and where she was, something seemed to block all her thoughts, replacing them with a sense that she had to keep moving. It was as if she was being drawn to somewhere far off, somewhere high above the town, and after a moment she put her hands on the bar as she tried to figure out her next move.
“Where are you from?” the bartender asked as he poured various different drinks into a shaker.
Judy turned to him.
“You've got that English complexion,” he continued. “Sorry, don't take that the wrong way, but I'm kinda good at guessing these things. So are you from England?”
Judy paused, before nodding. She wasn't even sure why.
“We get a lot of your lot here at this time of year,” the bartender explained. “Brits are my best customers. Well, until they overdo it. Sometimes they have a tendency to get a little merry.”
“Merry?” Judy whispered, feeling a flicker of recognition.
“Dancing on the tables, that sort of thing.” He began to shake the cocktail. “Some of the other locals don't like it, but I say there's nothing wrong with a little business. I mean, you guys sure know how to spend, don't you?”
He grinned at her.
She stared back.
“Are you feeling okay there?” he continued. “I wasn't making a crack just now. You do look kind of pale. I don't want to sound creepy, but we've got an old camp bed in one of the back rooms. You're welcome to have a rest back there if you like. I promise no-one'll disturb you.”
Judy's lips parted slightly, revealing a thin membranous film that had dried over her mouth.
“Okay,” the bartender said, finally realizing that something was really wrong. “Have you taken something?”
Judy stared at him for a moment and then – without warning – she turned and began to make her way out of the bar.
“Do you need anything?” the man called after her. “Can I call a doctor for you?”
Once she was back out in the crowd, Judy knew instinctively which way to go. She walked along the crowded street, still stumbling slightly but with more purpose this time. Something in her mind had clicked and given her direction, and at the next intersection she took a decisive turn to the left. She bumped against a couple of people and ignored their angry responses. She walked straight into a bin and didn't even noticed the pain as she stepped around and continued. She knocked over a shopping bag and didn't bat an eyelid as an angry woman yelled at her. She just kept walking.
And as she walked, her gaze was focused now on the villa high up in the hills.
Chapter Twenty
“Hey,” Cally said, reaching out and trying to grab Emma's arm. “Come here for a minute.”
“I can't!” Emma yelled, running to the end of the bed and grabbing the metal handle, before swinging around and almost landing in Kieran's lap. “I'm busy, Mummy! Can't you see?”
With that, she ran over to the window and stood on tip-toes so she could look out across the hospital garden. From high up on the eighth floor, she could see past the garden itself and even past the road, even past the farm beyond the gas station. She could see all the way to the hills, but she wanted to see further. She strained, trying to stand even taller, trying to focus on the world outside. Trying to focus on anything except what was happening in the hospital bed.
At the same time, she felt that something was wrong, that all of these things weren't actually happening. Or rather, that they weren't happening now. And somehow she knew what her parents were going to say next. Her mother was going to say that everything was okay, that she should be left to play, and her father would encourage her to go and sit on the hospital bed. She knew that's what they'd say, but how? Feeling a little dizzy, she waited.
“It's okay,” Cally said quietly behind her, shifting her weight slightly on the bed. “Let her play.”
“Emma,” Kieran said. “Why don't you go and sit on Mummy's bed with her for a few minutes.”
“I don't want to,” Emma replied, keeping her eyes fixed on the horizon, fully aware of what her father was about to say.
“Just a few minutes,” Kieran continued. “For Mummy's sake.”
“It's fine,” Cally told him, wincing slightly as she shifted again. “Let her look out the window. It's fun for her.”
“She's not here to look out the window,” Kieran pointed out. “She's here to see you.”
“She's scared of me,” Cally whispered.
Kieran shook his head.
“It's true,” she continued. “I don't blame her. Go on, how do I look?”
As they talked, Emma remained at the window, and now she was busy watching the cars that flashed past on the main road. She wanted to be in one of those cars right now, to be going far away. She didn't want to be mean to her mother, of course, but the hospital ward always had a funny smell, like really strong chemicals. For Emma, these visits always meant having to smell that smell, and she'd begun to notice that the smell was worst when she was really close to her mother. Her mother no longer had the right smell, and that bothered Emma more than she really understood. She felt bad, but really she sometimes wished she could stay at home and wait for her mother to get better. Then they could all be happy at the house again, and no-one would smell like chemicals.
And then suddenly she realized that, even though her eyes were open, they were also closed, which didn't seem to make much sense at all.
She blinked.
It took a mom
ent to work out what to do next, but finally she managed to open her already-open eyes.
“Mum,” Ruth whispered, staring up at the panels of a clear white ceiling, and then she sat up and found herself in a clean, tidy bedroom with white walls.
Looking around, it took her a moment to realize that she was in a room at the villa. In an instant she remembered Mr. Velucci and everything that had been happening, but those memories now had to sit alongside another set, and she couldn't help but think back to the pale and sickly woman she'd seen in the hospital bed all those years ago.
Her mother.
“Emma,” she heard her mother's voice whisper, and she felt a shudder as she realized that it was all true.
Once, long ago, Ruth McCoy had been named Emma Briggs. She'd ended up being looked after by the council in Scotland, and somebody – she couldn't remember who – had arranged for her to be given a new name and for her to go and live with the McCoy family. She'd always known that she was adopted, and she'd always vaguely remembered those sessions with Dr. Glyn where they'd talked about her feelings, but now she understood that she'd been suppressing memories of some truly terrible things that had happened when she was with her mother.
“I forgot,” she whispered, thinking back to the sight of her mother in a hospital bed. There were tears in her eyes now. “How could I have forgotten her?”
And then, in a flash, she remembered a different version of her mother. Lumbering, stumbling, pale and sick. Terrifying, too. She remembered running and hiding, and screaming, and desperately trying to get away. She remembered her mother lunging at her, looking almost like...
“A zombie,” she said under her breath. “But that can't -”
“How are you feeling?” a voice asked.
Startled, she turned and saw Mr. Velucci standing in the doorway.
“What name would you like me to use for you?” he continued. “Ruth, still? Or would you prefer to go back to your original name? Should I call you Emma?”