‘NO!’ I bellowed and threw myself from the seat.
The twisted tirades of my mother and father stopped, and when I searched for them, they had gone. I looked around wildly, but where they had been previously was only empty space. The silence they left behind was thick.
Did I want to die?
Of course I don’t!
The air filled with grinding concrete, and my head snapped to the sides, waiting for the room to explode again. Instead the ground beneath my feet shattered, the air rushed from my lungs, and I rocketed downwards. I hit the floor hard, but didn’t feel any pain. My mother had returned and paced in front of me. I staggered as I climbed to my feet, depressed to find I had plummeted back into the depths of Greystone, back to the room Terry had died in.
‘Do you want to die?’ Rebecca asked again.
‘Of course I don’t!’ I snapped, but I knew I’d lied, and so did my mother. ‘I mean… I don’t…’
I had no idea. I didn’t want to leave Anna and my son. Brian, Chris, Jessica, my family, I didn’t want to leave them.
But part of you does want to. If not to leave them, then to leave that world.
‘There is no one here but you and I honey,’ my mother said, her eyes crinkled. ‘Talk to me.’
‘I-I I don’t want to leave them,’ I whispered while Rebecca nodded, ‘but yes, I think I wanted to die.’
I sank to the floor and sat there dazed. A huge weight had lifted from my chest, and the blistering air seemed to cool.
‘Why?’ Mum asked.
I thought about it carefully, trying to form the right explanation, one that wouldn’t make me sound like a coward.
‘To be free,’ I replied, ‘to free the others. I am a constant burden, a never ending source of danger and pain. It’s my fault all of this happened, and it’s my fault all of their lives are gone. I wanted to fight, to not stop until I’d won and gotten us our lives back. But that’s naïve. The way I am, the way my son is, we’ll never be safe. With me gone, I’m one less danger for them to worry about.’
My mother crouched across from me and scrutinised my face.
‘You carry so much guilt,’ she whispered. ‘Maybe I can’t do this alone.’
I was about to question her statement, but she was gone. I got back to my feet and wandered to where she had been standing. The light vanished, and I was plunged into darkness. I panicked for a second that I’d died properly when they came back on. The surroundings were the same; I couldn’t tell that anything was different.
‘Hello, Mr Bishop,’ a man’s voice came from behind me.
I jumped and spun round. I gasped and stumbled backwards, hitting the floor with my butt. Hanging from the pipes was none other than Dr Terry Bishop. Terry had the face of a doctor with experience, but also one of kindness. His brown eyes were crinkled with laugh lines and his ash-coloured hair covered his wrinkled forehead. The glasses perched on his nose reflected the soft light from above, and before I could say anything, Terry wrapped his hands around the noose at his neck and freed himself.
He landed softly, his eyes never leaving mine.
‘How are you feeling?’ Terry asked, and I flashed back to when we had first met. He’d asked me the same question.
‘Well,’ I sighed and stood, ‘I’m kind of dead in an alive sort of way I think.’
‘I’m dead,’ Terry replied, his mouth pulling down at the corners.
I winced and remembered his corpse, hung from a pipe with a picture of my ‘dying’ father pinned to him, a message for me sent by the old man, with Terry as the envelope.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered, unable to meet his gaze.
‘Sorry?’ Terry asked while his face crunched with confusion.
‘It’s my fault you’re dead,’ I replied.
Terry rumbled with a warm laugh, and I finally raised my eyes.
‘Dear boy, answer me this,’ Terry said as he slouched towards me. ‘Did you wrap a rope around my neck and pull until I died? Did you rob me of air, sling me up and pin a picture of your Dad to my chest?’
‘No, but it’s because of me that-’ but Terry cut me off.
‘My work here is done,’ Terry smiled and waved before blinking out of existence. His voice however had one more message. ‘We both took similar vows, son. I promised to help people, just like you, and even though we sometimes lose sight of it, it’s all we’re ever left with.’
I was completely confused. What was the point?
I wasn’t standing there long though. The room started to shake.
‘Aw shit,’ I muttered and waited for the inevitable unpredictable journey to somewhere new.
The room didn’t explode, and the ground didn’t shatter beneath me, but a trap door that wasn’t there before appeared. It snapped open, and I dropped. I’d have laughed if my head hadn’t felt like someone was thumping it with a hammer. I slid like a child down a long slide, picking up speed. It twisted and turned, dipped alarmingly and levelled out before I dropped through another hole.
I managed to land on my feet. I had been thrown into an empty room. It looked newly decorated, and as I shifted, glass crunched on the floor. I looked down, and then up at the broken skylight. The sun shown weakly and I could hear the soothing sound of birds in the distance. When my gaze levelled, someone had joined me.
She looked around mid-teens; her hair usually blonde was matted with blood. Her soft features were ravaged by the fact that one of her eyes was missing, and crimson drops dripped from the orifice. I let out an involuntary whimper and backed away. Terry had been bad, but the girl that faced me was ten times worse.
Claire had been a sixteen-year-old girl with her life ahead of her. The room I was in had been used by Anna, Chris and I as a hideout back in Greystone, and Claire had caught up with us. Changed and a former shadow of herself, she’d attacked, and I’d made the decision to put her down. It had been the first life I’d taken consciously. The bullet wound was there in her forehead, right were I’d fired it through her skull.
‘Hey buddy,’ she smiled.
‘Claire…’ I whispered.
Her smile widened.
‘Sorry about my look,’ she grimaced and spun, ‘but losing an eye isn’t the best fashion advice. I bet my depth perception sucks now huh?’
I could only stare and gape.
‘Ah don’t worry,’ Claire laughed. ‘Not your fault. If only I had control over my abilities, I’d have probably healed, right? Maybe grown a third eye?’
‘I’m-’ I said.
‘Stop,’ she cut in, holding up her hand. ‘I know you wouldn’t have killed me unless you had to. I mean, come on buddy, it’s not like I gave you a lot of options when I tried to squeeze the life out of you. Plus I broke your nose. I gave you a mega bitch slap.’
‘It’s my fault you were even injected in the first place,’ I muttered.
‘Is it?’ she chided. ‘Did you take a needle with your Dad’s miracle drug in it and inject me, knowing that I’d change? Did you force me to wrap my hands around your throat?’
‘The whole experiment only started because of me,’ I replied.
‘So you planned it did you?’ she asked, to which I shook my head. ‘Well buddy, that’s all I have time for. Say hi to the little one for me, huh?’
With that, she too vanished. I felt like I was experiencing memory lane whiplash.
‘Are you understanding now honey?’ my mother’s voice came from behind me, and I turned.
Rebecca stared at my face.
‘I get what you’re trying to do, what my brain is trying to do,’ I said. ‘But it won’t work. You can’t just get rid of guilt, not when it’s warranted.’
I blinked and she was gone. I sighed, frustrated. The door to the room was to my left, and my peripheral vision caught the knob as it rattled. There were footsteps outside, and I felt my eyes widen.
‘No, please,’ I begged and searched for a way out. ‘Please, no more.’
The entire door started
to shake angrily, and I couldn’t take my sight away from it. I waited for it to open when I clocked the wardrobe we’d hid in back in reality. I raced over to it and yanked it open, remembering the trepidation I’d felt hiding in the worst place possible. I plunged in and closed the door behind me. I couldn’t see, but I continued to back away, my hands outstretched behind me to touch the wall.
The wall never came, but the ledge did. I tumbled backwards into a white light, and found myself standing in a corridor. I knew it. It was the better maintained part of the tunnels, the place my father and his men bunked out while we ran terrified around the outer perimeter. Metal slabs lay underfoot, and instead of humming yellow lights, the hall was lit with glaring white.
‘How you faring sweetie?’ Jane McDonald asked.
I turned to face her while my heart battered against my chest. She stood a few feet away behind a doorway in the middle of the corridor. It was the place she’d sacrificed herself in to help us get away. The submarine-like door was open, and she clasped her hands in front of herself. Her features were calm, youthful for someone in their late-thirties, and her navy-blue eyes watched me carefully. Eventually she moved, her hand rose up and shifted the loose black hair around her face.
I felt a lump climb into my throat and tears rim my eyes. Jane had been the kind-hearted soul who’d taken it upon herself to be the group’s mediator in Greystone. A brave, selfless woman who had eventually blew herself up to give us time to escape. I had tried to stop her, to save her, and I’d failed.
Jane tilted her head.
‘You failed?’ Jane questioned. ‘How exactly?’
I looked at her incredulously, but she shook her head before I could answer.
‘It was my choice to do what I did, Lucas,’ she continued. ‘If I hadn’t, all of us would have died here and no one would have escaped. The only person guilty for my death is your father.’
‘And me,’ I spat.
‘Why are you desperate to take the blame?’ Jane laughed.
‘Guilt is what keeps me going,’ I answered, ‘it’s what drives me forward.’
‘It’s what holds you back,’ Jane said. ‘You may have overcome your fear, but your guilt? The guilt that isn’t yours to handle?’
I sighed.
‘You want to die because of what you think you cause,’ she said. ‘But really, you’re not even to blame. You rush into these deadly situations without a second thought. It’s brave, and contrary to what Chris tells you, it’s exactly who you are, you shouldn’t change.’
‘Then why am I here?’ I moaned.
‘Because whether or not the guilt is yours, you carry it, but you don’t use it,’ Jane replied. ‘Guilt is there to make you second guess your decisions. It’s there to make you think, before you leap. You just leap.’
I went to disagree with her when my mother flashed to her side. Terry and Claire appeared behind me, and they all started to talk at once. Their voices echoed in unison and the sound was like nails on a chalkboard. I gasped and covered my ears, but that did nothing to stop the onslaught of sounds.
‘You need to accept the things you have no control over,’ they screamed. ‘Relinquish the guilt that doesn’t belong to you!’
‘No!’ I cried.
I had no idea why I wanted to hold on to it so fiercely. The guilt was mine, it was mine to carry, the burden I’d become so used to. The dead started in at me.
‘Think about it this way, Lucas,’ the voices overlapped, ‘Anna, Brian, Chris and Jessica. How will they take your death? Will they blame themselves?’
‘No! My death is on me,’ I tried to fight through the noise, but the heat in the air increased exponentially and I felt ready to burst.
‘But you know they will,’ they replied. ‘Do you think their guilt will be the catalyst to their deaths, like ours was to yours?’
I shook my head, I tried to think of a response, but I couldn’t. They were right. Could I cause the deaths of the people I’d died for? It was impossible, but one of the most logical things I’d heard in a long time.
‘Unburden yourself,’ they all cried. ‘Let go.’
I could fell tears streaming down my cheeks, and I couldn’t tell if they were from emotion or the warmth polluting the air. I collapsed to my knees, finding everything unbearable. What would I be left with? If I let go of what I thought drove me forward, how would I go on?
‘Are you ready to die before finding that out?’ the voices questioned. ‘Admit you’re not to blame. Let go of what holds you back! Admit it!’
‘No,’ I whispered, shielding my head, but the voices didn’t stop.
‘ADMIT IT!’ they screamed. ‘ADMIT IT! RELINQUISH WHAT ISN’T YOURS! TAKE AWAY YOUR BURDEN; TAKE AWAY WHAT HOLDS YOU BACK!’
I moved my arms and opened my eyes which I’d squeezed shut. All four of their faces were inches from mine, their eyes widened unnaturally and their mouths were monstrous. I couldn’t decipher their words anymore; they were just screams that increased with volume. The air was thick and filled with heat, and the walls to my sides started to close in. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t do anything. It was too much. My brain was going to kill itself with the pressure. I was going to die all over again.
And then I surprised myself.
‘IT’S NOT MY FAULT!’ I bellowed.
The Burial
I thought my outburst was only an attempt to stop the voices, but once the words erupted from my mouth, I realised I believed it. The heat vanished from the air, the voices stopped and the walls returned to their places. The four figures in front of me stood and their faces returned to normal. Jane’s hand reached behind her, and out of nowhere a grenade appeared. Before I could stop her, she pulled the pin and the small object exploded in an orange light.
When I opened my eyes I was on a hilltop. I squinted through the rays of the sun at the clear blue sky, and at the sparse clutter of trees in the distance. Beside me was a hole in the ground, around six feet deep. I backed away from it when my mother appeared on the other side.
‘Do you get it now?’ she asked.
I nodded.
‘I let guilt cripple me,’ I whispered. ‘Especially what should be Dad’s guilt. I wanted all those deaths to mean something, and they do, but I let it get to me more than I should.’
‘Yes,’ Rebecca smiled. ‘You never really overcome things like fear and guilt, but they are there for a reason honey. Use them, but don’t let them destroy you.’
She started round the grave and took my hands in hers.
‘Let go of what you can’t control and fight for what you can,’ Mum whispered. ‘You look at yourself as the one to blame, but, sadly, you’re a victim like everyone else. But that doesn’t mean you can’t fight back. Remember the selflessness of that little boy who saved that dog, all you need to do is think before you leap. Don’t let guilt drive you to your death.’
‘What would have happened if I hadn’t realised?’ I asked knowing the answer.
My mother sighed before she replied, ‘Your body has healed as much as it can. Thanks to your gifts, your heart was able to kick start, and the healing process began.
‘But if you hadn’t let your mind heal too… You would never wake up.’
Rebecca let go of my hands with a squeeze, and turned back to the empty grave.
‘There’s still something bothering you,’ she said. ‘Work on it with me.’
It only took a second to figure out what she meant.
‘My sister,’ I growled, ‘Hazel. If she was put through similar trials like me, why didn’t that work?’
‘What does your father think?’ my mother said.
I went over Richard’s notes in my mind and remembered his question.
‘He thinks there’s something else,’ I replied. ‘That I had something Hazel didn’t. But after everything he did to get me into the perfect mind-set for the change, I still have no idea.’
‘You’re trying to find some physical reason,’ Rebecca stated.
‘Think outside the box. What were you thinking before the change? What were your desires, your goals?’
I closed my eyes and cast my mind back. It was shockingly clear the memories. Before, they had been hard to sift through, no doubt my guilt trying to lock me out of them, but after my mental intervention, they came a little easier. It was still horrifying, and the fact I’d even been subjected along with others to the tortures we had been made me sick. I focused in on the moment I had changed and the time before it.
The group had exiled us, doubtful of our loyalty. At that point in time, my mother had changed and my father had been revealed for the human monster he was. I myself had progressed further than I would have thought possible, from a scared boy to an adult desperate to fight back, desperate to help save the others.
‘And there you have it honey,’ Rebecca laughed. ‘Science can only account for so much, but you have to take a moment to think. That selfless saviour of an animal was back, it wanted to save the other survivors over himself. Maybe that contributed to you being able to accept the change.’
I worked with that angle, weighed it up against scrutiny. It was plausible in a way, and I tried to pull up other people who had been tainted by my father’s creation. The bloodthirsty residents of Greystone had been hit with massive doses, almost destroying any hope of their survival. I, on the other hand, had been prepped. The drug slowly, and over time, being introduced to my system before my dear old Dad thought I was ready for the final shot.
But even if the changed townspeople hadn’t been overdosed, would they have survived? I thought back to my initial entry to that world, when things first went to hell. I was overtaken by the desperate, selfish need to save my own arse, probably the same emotion experienced by everyone else.
‘So you’re saying…’ I started.
‘Put it this way,’ my mother cut in, ‘even the monsters of reality, the ones who consciously choose to hurt other people, they know right from wrong. Take your sister for example. She was undoubtedly raised with the murder of you in mind. Even putting her in a similar position you were in, somewhere deep in her mind she knew her goal was wrong. That it was evil.
Child of Recklessness (Trials of Strength Book 2) Page 15