The Book That THEY Do Not Want You To Read, Part 1
Page 16
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I’m weeping again and, strangely, I’m trying to be frightened again, trying to re-imagine the agonies that would accompany the knives and the needles that had so vividly filled my thoughts in the minutes immediately after my awakening.
Why?
Because, in the dark, silent reality that surrounds me in their absence, the aching sadness and rekindled guilt from the memories of my past cause me a pain that penetrates my being more deeply and more intensely than any physical pain could ever do.
It is a pain that eats away at the very foundations of my resolve.
It is a pain that makes me hate myself.
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In so many of the memories I have of Mum before Dad died, she is laughing and smiling, her eyes are sparkling and her expressions are happy and joyful.
In so many of the memories I have of her after he died, the laughter and the smiles are no more, her eyes have become pools of reflective sadness, and her expression has become one of embittered loneliness.
And I find myself asking whether I was ever really there for Mum in the days, weeks, months, and years that followed Dad’s death?
And I know the answer is no.
At first, I was so selfishly wrapped up in living my life that I did nothing to help her come to terms with the changes in her own life.
And then, when I became so overwhelmed by my own grief, I was never able to see how heavily his absence still weighed upon her, grinding her down until, in the end, when death did eventually come for her, I’m sure she welcomed it.
I was never really much of a son.
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Val.
The most painful memory of all...and yet, the most beautiful.
Christ, she was so stunningly gorgeous. Long black hair, eyes so big and brown I could lose myself in them. Her smile. Her laughter, her wicked, wicked laughter, so bawdy, so unfettered...so lascivious.
I have always loved her, from the very first moment we met...I still do. And she loved me, so very much, achingly so...I had felt it in the way she kissed me, the way she held me...the way she made love to me...
Oh, fuck, why aren’t I with her now, snoozing in her warm embrace whilst an open fire crackles beneath the hearth and gentle music fills the air about us. Why aren’t I there instead of here, in this hell-hole, bag on my head, arms and legs bound, waiting, waiting...for Pain or for Death.
I know why.
Because I let her go.
I simply let her leave, let her passion for me wither and die.
It would have taken nothing to make her stay with me, the slightest encouragement would have been enough...but I couldn’t even manage that. Instead, I let her love just slip away, dropping like leaves in the autumn, one leaf at a time, one moment at a time until, all of a sudden, you realise that the tree is bare, that nothing’s left, and all that stands before you is a winter, cold and dark and lonely.
That is how I am, a soul locked in winter.
Christ, how I so want the chance to tell her how I feel, to hold her close to me once more and whisper to her that I love her.
She has been dead for almost sixteen years now, and every day of those sixteen years I have regretted the way I let her go and wished I could somehow have her back.
But I have never wanted her more than I do right now!
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Is this what happens, at the end?
Do the ghosts of guilt and failure and disappointment gather around you in these final hours, torturing the soul with their dark recollections and grim reminiscences?
God, I wish they’d leave me alone.
‘LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!’
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Ten minutes?
An hour?
Fuck knows.
I’m not really scared anymore. Too tired to be scared. Too tired to care...wanting only to sleep, to make the images, the memories, the aching of my body and the dryness of my throat, to make it all go away.
Let me sleep now, a blank, dreamless sleep...please.
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I hear something.
It’s distant, difficult to discern against the background drumming of my heart and the phlegm-filled rattling of my juddering breaths...
But I do hear something...
Footsteps.
Muffled...outside the room I’m in...footsteps...getting louder...harsh and echoing...a corridor, floor of stone or concrete...
I draw breath to cry out.
Then they stop...and the cry hesitates in my throat.
A sudden clunk makes me jump.
What was that?
A squeaking hinge as the door opens...why is there a squeaking hinge? Only horror movies have a squeaking hinge...maybe that’s what I’m in now.
More footsteps, this time inside the room...and there’s something else, a sound that is familiar yet unfamiliar, metallic, trundling, like...like...a supermarket trolley...yes, that’s it, a superma...
The hood covering my face is suddenly whipped away and my world is changed from a sea of darkness to a sea of white, blinding light.
I shut my eyes though I’m desperate to see.
Pain!
Shit, pain!!!
My right cheek is stinging from what I can only assume is a rough slap across the face.
‘Is it lost?’
I try to blink my eyes open, but the light is still too bright.
I can feel the sensation of cold tears tracing their way over the skin of my cheek, soothing...
Pain once more, this time my left cheek...
Footsteps, circling around to the right of my chair.
Footsteps
‘Is it lost?’
‘What? Is what lost?’ I hiss through lips that are dry and cracked, blinking desperately, willing the blinding watery haze to lift so that I can focus...and then there is such pain, such burning, agonising pain, in my head, in my brain, like my brain is being crushed, squeezing, squeezing, so much pain, so much fucking pain...!
I’m screaming, screaming like I’ve never screamed before...
Then the pain is gone, as quickly as it came, the only thing left is a dull, residual throbbing at the back of my head.
My eyes are squeezed tight closed. My face takes time to rid itself of the expression of excruciating suffering, the contortions fading away to be replaced by wide-mouthed panting and wide-eyed disbelief.
I try frantically to look from side to side, up and down, frustrated that my head can’t move, angry that I cannot see my attacker, my torturer. But my vision has not yet cleared; shapes are still blurred, dark shadows the only thing I can see...
Footsteps, moving behind me
Footsteps.
‘Is it lost?’
I can feel hot breath on my right ear, the words, though barely whispered, booming around my head.
I think desperately. What could this man have lost? Why does he think I know where it is? What is he talking about...what has he lost...what can I say, what can I tell him, what can I do to avoid any more pain...?
‘Yes,’ I reply hurriedly, my voice barely coherent. ‘It’s lost, very lost, so lost you wouldn’t believe it. I don’t know where it is, it could be anywhere, anywhere at all...’
More PAIN...!
Unbelievable.
Indescribable.
Chest, squeezing, compressing, turning inside out...can’t breathe, going to explode, searing, burning, freezing, ripping...my heart is coming out, out of my chest, out through my ribs, each one is breaking, snapping, shattering...my lungs are collapsing, all the air has gone, nothing left to breathe, nothing there to breathe with...the room is swimming, the light is fading, it’s going dark, the room is receding...it’s all about to end...
Gone.
The pain is gone.
And I’m panting desperately, chest heaving as best it can in its restraint, heart pumping manically.
I can taste blood in my mouth, lots of blood, can feel it dribbling down by chin.
More tears, still blinding me
to anything other than formless shades of white and black.
Footsteps, behind me once more.
Footsteps.
Then, again, the same question, this time in my left ear:
‘Is it lost?’
I am speaking before he has even finished asking the question.
‘No,’ I reply, my voice shrieking now, consumed as I am by fear and pain and the fear of pain. ‘It’s not lost. I found it. I know where it is. I can take you to it, now, right now, please, just let me show you, please, just don’t hurt me again, please...’
Then it hit me.
Such unimaginable agony, so strong, so powerful...
I’m retching between the screams, threatening to vomit...but there’s nothing there to come up.
My body wants to thrash uncontrollably, yet it can’t...instead, all it can do is twitch and arch and crash against the chair...
And all the time, my balls feel like they are being crushed in a vice, the scrotum being stripped away one piece at a time, my dick burning as if it had been dipped in acid, everything dissolving, melting...
The taste and smell of blood is everywhere, filling my mouth, filling my nostrils. I am gagging on a mixture of my own bile and my own blood, unable to breathe, unable to think, wishing for death, wishing for the nightmare to end...
Then it did.
-
Ten minutes?
An hour?
I’m crying even before I’m fully conscious.
I’m aware of sensations, so many uncomfortable, unpleasant sensations.
My crotch is warm and wet...I guess I must have pissed in my trousers.
Something is flapping and dangling from my nose; I’m not sure whether it is snot or blood or both.
My face is wet with tears and spit and sweat and blood.
The straps across my forehead and around my wrists and ankles feel warm and wet and a little bit sticky. They sting violently and I know that they have cut deep into my skin.
I barely notice the first slap across my face. It is a single voice of discomfort amidst a multitude of clamouring agonies.
But then there is another...and another...and there is a voice, the voice, the one who is asking, always asking, always asking...
‘Jethro’.
It sounds like my Dad, calling me in for tea...but it isn’t.
‘Jethro...can you hear me?’
The voice is soft, cajoling, persuasive.
I struggle to open an eye, but once more all I can see are the monochrome shadows, the hues of light and dark.
‘I need you to do something for me, Jethro, something very important. I need you to write something for me. Can you do that?’
Stabbing, biting pain on my forehead, hurting...then...freedom, freedom to move my head, from side to side, up and down, side to side, up and down...my neck is sore, so very sore, muscles burning and aching...and my head lolls down onto my chest as spittle oozes out between my lips.
And my wrists, they’re free as well, though my arms can’t move, the muscles locked solid, like lumps of concrete.
‘I need you to write down everything that has happened since you met your alien friend, Ambassador Tukaal. Everything. I want to know everything he said, everything he did, everywhere he went, everyone he talked to. I want to know it all. Leave nothing out, however insignificant you might think it is, nothing at all. Can you do that for me, Jethro?’
I nod, blinking furiously, sniffling like a child, stifling sobs which still crash around inside me, looking for a way out.
I hear a new sound...no, an old sound, the sound of the supermarket trolley, and see the blurred shape of a table being wheeled in front of me. On the table, I discern the shape of a pad of paper and a pen, a simple blue biro. I still can’t lean forward because of the chest restraint, so the table is moved closer to me, its edge nestling into my stomach, my arms lifted onto it by black-gloved hands.
‘Remember, Jethro, Leave nothing out.’
He moves forward for a moment into the light, and though his features are blurred by my tears, I see his face. He pats me twice on the shoulder, as if he were a friend.
‘I’ll be back in twenty minutes.’
And with that he leaves, accompanied by two others I think, both of whom were dressed in black.
A sudden clunk makes me jump once more.
Footsteps, retreating into the silence.
Footsteps.
[Collator’s Note: Just some words of explanation:
JP and I were never involved in the bullying of Chipper Morgan, though admittedly, neither of us did anything to prevent it. He hanged himself in our last year of secondary school.
JP’s Dad died in 1988 from lung cancer. He was 47. He spent the last three days of his life in hospital, but JP never visited. They had had a row the day before he was admitted.
JP did break Mr O’Flynn’s window.
JP’s mother died following a stroke in 2006. I know that they rarely saw each other in her last few years.
Not long after they called off their engagement, Valerie was diagnosed with a rare and extremely aggressive form of ovarian cancer. She died four months later.]
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Diary Entry 10
[Collator’s Note: This was written on an A5 piece of paper torn from a notebook. It was attached with a paper clip to a badly creased and stained sheet of hand-written notes.]
This was what I was writing when Tukaal arrived to get me out of that cell.
THEY told me to write down everything that had happened to me since I met Tukaal, everything he did, everywhere he went, everyone he talked to. Everything.
I would really like to be fastening this to a piece of paper with the words:
‘FUCK OFF, YOU BASTARDS, YOU AIN’T GETTING ANYTHING FROM ME!’
written in really big letters on it, but I’m not.
Instead, I’m fastening it to a piece of paper which describes every single thing I could remember, every detail from the moment Tukaal landed, to what happened at my house, to what happened in Manchester.
It’s strange, but looking at it now, it doesn’t look like much. Yet, at the time, I felt that I was writing like a man possessed, so desperate was I to get everything written down.
I make no apologies for spilling my guts so easily. I was shit-scared, my whole body was hurting and I really believed that I was going to die!
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Diary Entry 11
[Collator’s Note: While it is possible to re-produce the text that was on that note, it is sadly not possible to re-produce the sheer misery and fear that the frantically scrawled words, the tear and blood stains and the creased and crumpled nature of the sheet engenders. I’ve tried to describe some of what the sheet looks like, but I’m afraid my efforts simply cannot convey the sense of terror that oozes from the original.]
think...
think...
silver spaceship — Winter Hill — photos
came down really quickly, no [the next two words are a bit smudged by sweat or tears, but I think it says] no noise
hid in a ditch, scared
standing over me, talking, human, normal, no death ray
[the next few lines are almost obscured by dried blood but it is possible to make out the following words]
has to meet someone
needs a lift
Manchester
[the next few lines are almost clear]
called himself Tukaal
took home, offered him a room
why did I do that?
why the fuck did I do that???
tea and biscuits
he has a metal case
Next morning, spent time talking about Confederation, made lots of notes, can get them if needed
Went to the park, he sat a while, just watching
Went for a curry at Sukhis
Cooked breakfast on Sunday, more discussion
went to Sainsburys, he didn’t speak to anyone then call on phone-thing
&
nbsp; Saw them watching, Range Rover, took apart his phone
found bugs in the car, cameras and bugs at home
[what looks to be another tear stain]
Val
Val
Val
[more words obscured by blood]
Range Rover follows us- walked up to it, white van, spoke to man in white van, he called him a fucking weirdo — may need to find him
[the writing seems to get frantic here, as if he’s desperate to write about the white van man]
THEM
What if THEY come for me?
[the next few lines I can’t decipher — hand-writing becomes illegible]
set off for Manchester
Range Rover can’t follow - nanites
Steal car at Sainsbury’s
Got my bag
Metal case, capsules of mercury
Debenhams, 3rd floor, researcher
Tukaal on his own, wait outside
[the next few lines are again illegible, but it is possible to make out the words]
MIB, must warn, fire alarm
hit by bus, bouncing, broken leg, face all smashed in.
ra
oh no, he’s coming back
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Diary Entry 12
[Collator’s Note: This is a continuation of the long typed diary entry relating to Tuesday 14th September that was one of the Word documents on the main CD. Note how the explanation of the events immediately after he comes round differ from the previous section of the diary, which he wrote much later.]
When the blackness finally lifted, I found myself tightly strapped to a chair with a black fabric bag over my head.
To say I was scared beyond all ability to think straight would be an understatement. Maybe that’s why those minutes or hours (I don’t know how long it was, time seemed to stand still) that I was alone in that cell are such a blur.
Perhaps my own mind doesn’t want me to remember.
Anyway, what I can recall is what the man had told me to do - write down everything I could remember about Tukaal - everything that had happened, everywhere we had gone, everyone we had spoken to, everything he had said.
He had given me twenty minute and then he had left, and that was when time had stood still again, the silent world of the cell grinding to a halt, everything losing meaning except the pen, the paper, and my desperate need to write down absolutely everything I could recall about the alien.