Erased

by Nick Gifford

  But Kath had seemed convinced. And he remembered the three visitors yesterday. They had been deadly serious about their business, whatever that business might be. He looked up at the departures board, even though he knew the trains left at ten past the hour.

  He had twenty-five minutes to wait.

  He headed down Platform Two to the far end, where two men with notebooks and cameras stood. He wanted to be as far away from the main part of the station as possible. He dropped his bag and slumped to sit cross-legged beside it. The two trainspotters gave him a glance then returned to their conversation.

  He followed the time passing on his wristwatch, all the while staring back along the platform to the ever-changing mix of people around the ticket office, the shop, the telephones and coffee shop. For some reason he was expecting to see the men in suits, the Mr Smiths or maybe the “policeman” from Friday. It could be anybody, he realised. These trainspotters who barely paid him any attention might at any time reveal that they knew him, that they had been waiting for him in case he decided to leave the city. That woman, walking across to the telephones. She had glanced along towards Liam and the trainspotters. Could she be the one who had been set to watch the station? Was she calling in the Smiths right now as he watched?

  A rumble on the tracks, and the train was approaching, then roaring past. It stopped and people emerged. There weren’t many travellers today, not on a Sunday.

  As these people walked away from Liam, others walked in his direction, looking up at the train, deciding which door to enter by, where they would sit.

  Liam stared at them.

  He should move, he knew. He climbed to his feet and walked up to the train.

  Just then, he saw a man in a suit and dark glasses approaching, a black attache case dangling from one hand. Liam stopped. Was this it?

  The man looked at him, then past him. He walked on by, not breaking his stride, and then entered the first carriage.

  Liam walked further along the train and joined a carriage in the middle. There were lots of empty seats. He chose a pair of seats near the door, dumped his bag in the window seat and sat in the aisle seat, where he would be able to see along the carriage.

  Again, he felt a strange mixture of foolishness and of being terribly exposed and vulnerable. Was all this really necessary? But at the same time, if it was, then did he really think that his childish games of hide and seek, of catch-me-if-you-can, would be enough to outwit professionals?

  He was only doing his best.

  He slumped in his seat. He looked along the carriage at the handful of other passengers, speculating about who they were and what they were doing. What else could he do?

  ~

  He could think. He could go over and over in his head all the things that had happened, all the incidents that made no sense.

  They had to make sense, though. They had happened. His parents had vanished. The house had been trashed, then cleared. The fake policemen had been there. The Special Intelligence people had visited Kath’s flat. Mental Mendes had failed to recognise him. Kath couldn’t stand to have her own brother in the flat.

  These things were fact. They might make no sense. It might be impossible to see what connected them. But the one thing that bound them together was that they had happened to Liam this weekend.

  So why him? Why Liam?

  Maybe that was where his thinking was being led astray. Maybe it wasn’t just Liam. Maybe he was a peripheral figure, a bit part player in someone else’s story – his parents’ story, perhaps. That might explain why it made so little sense: he was only seeing a very small part of the picture. Why should it centre around him? It made more sense that he was witnessing events that centred around someone more important.

  But that still left him struggling for an explanation.

  Things had changed around him. What had the Scot called it? Erasure. Bits of Liam’s life were being erased all around him.

  One question worried him almost as much as anything else: were the changes in his head, or in the outside world?

  If they were taking place in his head that meant that at least some of his memories were false, that his understanding of the world could not be relied on. It meant that he was insane. But if these changes were really taking place in the outside world, that might be more worrying altogether... What was he up against, if they, that mysterious they, could manipulate the world to this extent? All evidence of entire lives was being deleted. The memories of people like Mr Mendes were being changed and blanked out.

  They were rearranging the world around Liam.

  Yes, that was the most disturbing possibility of all.

  The train rolled past the big warehouses and grain silos at Diss and pulled up at the station. Liam looked along the carriage to see who was getting out. A woman with two small children. An old Chinese man.

  Liam stood, moved towards the open door and stepped out. No-one else from his carriage made a late move to leave the train. He was confident now that he was not being followed. He had a fifteen minute wait until the two-carriage local train set out on the East Suffolk Line. He bought a chocolate bar and a packet of crisps from the machine, and went to wait on a bench surrounded by tubs and hanging baskets.

  He checked his phone, something that had become a reflex action, and always with the same result. No missed calls. No messages. He sat back and waited.

  Whether all these events centred around him, or they were merely part of someone else’s story, it was Liam’s life being messed with. It was Liam’s parents who were missing, his home that had been wiped away. He had to hang on to what he had.

  And he had to work out how to fight back.

  ~

  Wolsey station was at the end of the branch line. It was a small, red-brick building, sitting across the end of the single track. Liam walked through the building, the glass-panelled ticket office to his left, and emerged on the pavement.

  He didn’t have the taxi fare to get back to NATS and there were no buses on Sundays. Normally, his parents would have given him the money for a taxi, but he could hardly have asked Kath...

  He shouldered his bag and set out on the long walk. Passing through the small seaside town’s dense terraced streets, he could soon see the Mere. Wolsey sat at the top of a shingle point that jutted south for a few miles to the derelict army base, Wolsey Camp. A wide, muddy creek wound between the point and the mainland and here at Wolsey it opened out into a broad, shallow, salt-water lake, the Mere. Across the water, Liam could see trees, fields, and in the distance the two flags which flew from the roof of the main NATS building.

  He felt a sudden surge of pride at the sight. This was his place, his school. Until now, he hadn’t quite realised how much he had been hanging onto that thought: that despite everything, he always had NATS.

  In his line of sight it was about a mile to NATS, but because of the Mere, and the winding creek that cut inland from Wolsey, he had a walk of about six miles ahead of him.

  He set out, glad that it was another cool, grey day. He remembered the trip out from the school to the station on Friday, riding on the back of Jake’s motorbike. It had only taken a few minutes. He remembered the wind rushing by, yanking at his hair, roaring in his ears. He remembered the sense of complete freedom, the last time he had felt anything remotely like freedom. It had been like reaching the peak on a rollercoaster before crashing down the steepest of slopes.

  He had hoped that someone might pass him in a car, a teacher, perhaps. Someone who would recognise him and stop to give him a lift the rest of the way. But the roads were quiet this afternoon.

  When NATS came into view again, Liam’s legs and shoulders were aching, his feet sore. He had removed his fleece and tied it around his waist. He was thirsty and tired and hungry. He just wanted to get back into his room and flop.

  He reached the wrought iron gates and looked up the long straight drive lined with poplars. The school building sat at the far end, always a striking sight along this avenue
of ancient trees. There were people there, someone on the steps, some others walking across in front of the building. Normal life ... the very idea of a normal existence seemed foreign to Liam right now.

  He paused to put on his school tie, then trudged up the drive.

  Two girls sat on the steps, studying something on the small screen of a mobile phone. Rebecca Mills and Hannah Jessop. They barely glanced up at Liam as he turned to the right, to follow the gravel road around the side of the building. Beyond them, a blond senior Liam half-recognised looked across at him. He was a French kid, a loner. The seniors didn’t tend to mix with the main school. This boy watched Liam curiously as he passed.

  Emerging from the deep shade of the yew trees, Liam could see that there was a cricket match going on. He considered going over to watch, but the thought of his room proved too much of a temptation.

  He came to the entrance to Sherborne House, which occupied this end of the main dormitory wing of the school building. He flipped the perspex cover of the keypad and thumbed the security code to get in.

  When he pushed at the door it stuck firm, and he realised he hadn’t heard the soft click of the lock releasing.

  He thumbed the number again, more carefully this time, but still the door wouldn’t give.

  Even now, he wasn’t too concerned. Sometimes, if you got the number wrong and tried again, the lock wouldn’t respond, as if it was still stuck after the first try.

  He paused for a few seconds, plenty of time for it to clear.

  When he tried again, and the lock refused to release, he started to panic.

  ~

  It was happening again.

  He needed help. He needed somebody to step in and tell him it was all some awful mistake. Someone to sort it all out.

  He heard voices. Laughter.

  There were some girls sitting out on the grass just around the corner. One of them was Hayley.

  He approached them, warily.

  For a long time, they didn’t look up, and in all those long seconds Liam was able to cling to the hope that this wasn’t going to happen, that another part of his life had not been erased.

  And then they looked up. First Laryssa, then Tsuki and Naomi.

  And finally, Hayley.

  She looked at him, first fixing his eyes, and then her glance skipping over his features. There was no recognition in her look.

  “Hayley?” he said.

  She frowned. Just as you would if a stranger came up and greeted you by your name.

  “Do I...?” she said, letting the words tail off.

  “It’s me. Liam.”

  Someone said something he didn’t quite catch, and Hayley looked away, pulled a face, and the girls started to snigger.

  Liam backed away. His world had been wiped out.

  6 Unexploded

  Schools, these days, are high security places. Pupils carry ID cards and all visitors have to be filtered through a central reception area. It’s only sensible, in times like these.

  A school like the National Academy for the Talented and Special has even more reason to be careful. The parents of many of its pupils work for the Ministry of Defence, the Armed Forces or the Diplomatic Service, and they need to know that their offspring will be working and studying in a safe environment. So, relaxed as NATS may appear on the surface, it is, in fact, a closely monitored, highly secure institution.

  Nothing goes unseen, or unheard.

  ~

  Liam turned away from the four girls on the grass. He remembered thinking he must be playing a part in someone else’s story, but ... first home and now NATS ... This was his world being wrecked. It was his story. But what was the connection between what had happened at home and now at NATS? What was being done to him?

  He retreated around the corner of the building and that was where he met Mr Willoughby. The Principal was standing there with two men Liam did not know. If this hadn’t been a school he would have taken them for some kind of security guard. They were taller than the Principal, with broad, muscular shoulders and a way of standing that reminded Liam of a big cat, poised for action.

  Willoughby smiled. “Liam Connor,” he said. “Welcome back to the Academy.”

  So the Principal still knew him. Somehow, Liam didn’t find that a comfort right now, as the two guards moved slightly to either side of Willoughby, blocking the path.

  Liam’s mind raced, and he didn’t like where it was heading.

  “Principal Willoughby,” said Liam. “What’s going on? What’s happening?”

  Willoughby spread his hands, as if to show that he had nothing to hide. “Nothing’s happening,” he said. “It’s all over. You’re back. We want to welcome you. We want to resume our work with you.”

  They weren’t working “with” Liam. They were working on him...

  Liam suddenly saw himself as a laboratory animal, with Willoughby the scientist in charge. Was Willoughby responsible for it all? Was he the one pulling all the strings?

  “Come along, Connor,” said Willoughby. “My two friends here will help you in with your bag. We have new accommodation for you.”

  The two guards approached Liam. The path narrowed here and so they came in single file.

  Liam let his bag drop from his shoulder and caught it by the handhold. All the time from Wolsey, those six long miles, he had cursed its bulk and weight. Such a big bag, just for a weekend at home! Now he raised it to his chest. They were going to help him with his bag. Okay then...

  He hurled it at the lead guard, with all the strength he could muster.

  The man was taken by surprise. He saw what had happened late, saw the bag flying through the air at his head.

  He cursed, raised his hands, swung his head back.

  The bag struck him in the face, knocking him back into the arms of the second guard, and the two of them fell in a heap.

  Liam turned and ran.

  His tired and aching body howled in protest, but he ignored it, and sprinted as fast as he could. Along the path at the side of the building and out onto the grass again. Right through the middle of the startled group of girls, feeling a sudden sense of angry betrayal that Hayley still did not know who he was.

  Out on the playing field, the cricket match was still going on. Liam swung right, into the stand of pines and evergreen oaks. He heard voices behind him, shouting, arguing.

  He looked back and saw one of the guards, far closer than he had expected.

  Every breath tore at the lining of his throat, and his lungs ached with the effort.

  Gorse blazed yellow all around him in a sudden burst of sunlight breaking through the clouds. He twisted and darted a sudden left. It would look like he had plunged into the heart of the gorse, but there was a narrow track here, a path through the thicket.

  He ran, and the dry green spines of the gorse scraped and snagged at his trousers, but he didn’t slow.

  The scrub opened out again, and he ran on, taking another narrow path through a stand of blackthorn. This was a completely different world now, the ground beneath his feet sandy, held together by a tight, rabbit-cropped mat of grass. The school was out of sight, and the playing fields. He could neither see nor hear his pursuers now, but he knew that he had to keep going.

  The blackthorn cleared, and he was in an open, sandy area at the foot of a stand of pines. There were black patches here, encircled by big stones, where someone had broken the rules and lit fires. Like any other pupil at NATS, Liam knew all the places you could hide out on the school grounds. Places to smoke, and hang out with friends away from the staff, places to come with a girlfriend, or just to be on your own.

  He cut across between the tall, bare pine trunks and followed another trail through the gorse, slowing to an exhausted jog now.

  Eventually, he came to another stand of pine trees, on an old dune overlooking the creek.

  He stopped for a rest. This was where Greasey Davies told them he’d spied on Miss Carver last summer. He’d seen her skinny-dipping
in the creek and then sun-bathing on a towel on the wet sand as the tide went out. It had become a popular meeting place for the boys for the rest of Summer Term, but no-one had ever seen Miss Carver here again.

  The tide was halfway now. It was coming in, Liam guessed, although it was hard to tell. Across the creek he could see the towering banks of shingle of Wolsey Point. Farther along to the right, he could see the broken shell of the watchtower, one of the ruins of the old Army camp. The place had been important during the Second World War, one of a string of bases along this coast that had been used in developing the first radar systems. It had been abandoned for twenty years or so now, and the place had become a wildlife haven, managed by the Point Preservation Trust.

  The sun lit the Point a vivid gold, against the retreating dark clouds. It really had turned into a beautiful evening.

  Liam headed down to the strip of hard sand at the water’s edge. He was heading north, up-creek. If he carried on, he would come to an area where the creek opened out into the Mere, flanked on this side by a wide area of salt-marsh. He would come to the road to Wolsey, eventually, and he would have to hope they weren’t watching it, waiting for him to re-appear.

  ~

  The boat gave him another option.

  It was there ahead of him, dragged up onto the sand. It was a flat-bottomed punt, turned upside down so that it wouldn’t catch rain-water. He tipped it up and saw that there were oars underneath.

  He looked at the creek. It was about thirty metres wide here, and the current didn’t seem too strong. He looked all around, but there was no sign of anyone.

  He turned the boat the right way up, put the oars inside, went to the prow and dragged it, slowly, down to the water. When he reached the creek, he went to the back and pushed.

  He got it most of the way in, gave it a final shove and then jumped aboard. With his extra weight, it grounded at the rear. He climbed out and pushed again, going into the water up to his knees before scrambling back into the punt.

  The boat sat there, turning idly in the current so that the prow pointed south. The tide was coming in, but the surface current still flowed southwards, out to sea. The two seemed to balance right now, allowing the boat to stay pretty much where it was while Liam worked out how to get the oars into the rowlocks.