All was quiet.
Slowly I slid along the wall and angled my head to see around the corner.
There was a bed, a hard-looking chair and a tall man.
The man was standing up looking out of the window, his back to me. I stepped into his territory, my boot heel clicking on the wooden floor.
‘Who are you?’ the man asked without looking around. I focused on his reflection and realised he had been watching me in the window. Disarmed, I came to a halt.
‘My name is Carl,’ I said. ‘You don’t know me. Are you Gledhill?’ My heart was hammering. Although my gut feeling about the man was good, it was still possible he was one of theirs. Or, if he was insane as it was claimed, he could be dangerous. Alternatively, if he felt threatened he probably only had to call and help would come running.
‘What do you want, Carl?’ He turned from the window and looked at me with sad, dark eyes. I moved forward two steps and he went to lie down on the bed, offering me the chair with a casual gesture. I lowered myself onto the chair without taking my eyes off him. His face had once been handsome but the left side was now somewhat twisted out of true and his mouth didn’t close properly.
‘It’s not safe for you here, you know,’ he said, looking away from me and fixing his gaze on the ceiling. ‘They come and see me at irregular intervals. I haven’t had a visit for six hours at least. You haven’t got long.’
I sensed a terrible sadness, an emptiness that was the antithesis of my urgent need to flee the City. He had the aura of a man who had tried everything and failed. Being in his company depressed me.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked him, keeping my senses alert to the approach of hospital staff.
‘I went too far,’ he said in a flat voice.
‘You mean the Dark?’ I asked in a whisper.
He winced and turned onto his side. He was a lean man, his skin displaying an unhealthy mustardy pallor. If he was more prisoner than patient, however, why was he left unguarded in an unlocked room?
I got up and walked around to the other side of the bed so I could see his face. ‘How did you come to the City?’ I asked him.
‘I went too far,’ he repeated, his lips barely moving. ‘Too fast.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I did what they said couldn’t be done.’
My stomach tightened. ‘What?’
‘I ran a mile in three and a half minutes. I collapsed at the tape and woke up here.’
‘You mean the City?’
He suddenly shot out a hand and gripped my arm. His grip was pitiful.
‘Go now,’ he ordered.
‘I have to know about the Dark,’ I said, leaning closer to him.
‘Stay away.’
What did he mean? From him or the Dark? ‘I have to get out of the City. Getting into the Dark seems to be the only way. I need to know where it is. How do I get there?’
‘It’s all around us.’
A ring around the City like Stella had said? ‘I just walk outwards from the City in any direction?’
He tightened his grip on my arm and drew me right up to his face. His eyes frightened me. The pupils were too big. What had he seen, this athlete? What horrors? ‘I ran out of the Dark,’ he said, ‘just like I ran into it. It’s everywhere and nowhere.’ With his free hand he reached up and touched my forehead. His fingertips were ice-cold. ‘It’s in here.’
I stared into his eyes, searching for a sign that he was telling the truth.
‘Now go,’ he said, withdrawing his arms and curling up on the bed.
‘Gledhill.’ It was my turn to grab hold of him. ‘How do I get there?’ I hissed.
He turned and lay on his back again. ‘Go out of the Secure Unit and turn immediately left, then left again and you won’t be far away.’
There was a sound behind me. Footsteps coming our way. Gledhill tensed and his head whipped around to watch the corner of the wall. I saw terror in his eyes and as I crawled around the back of his bed to hide I understood why they didn’t need to put locks on his door. The man had been so profoundly frightened by something — whatever he saw in the Dark perhaps — that he no longer had the nerve to turn a simple corner.
A thin man in a white coat appeared. He had unruly eyebrows and wore glasses that were lopsided on his squashed face due to their missing arm. He reminded me of someone but I couldn’t think who. I felt sick with fear and a growing sense of paranoia that I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge. White Coat asked Gledhill if he was all right; he had heard voices.
‘Dreams,’ said Gledhill. ‘I was having dreams.’
‘Well, keep it down. You’re disturbing the other patients.’
With that he was gone. I stood up and looked at Gledhill. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ll go now.’ He didn’t speak. I touched his cold hand briefly, which elicited no response, and then I walked around the corner.
The long ward was as before. No sign of White Coat. I walked to the end and, as Gledhill had reluctantly advised, turned left and left again. I was in another long corridor, this time darker and seeming to dip as it went. I shivered and pulled my jacket tighter around me. I could hear something in the distance. Somebody moving furniture around or wheeling heavy trolleys on a resounding surface. Enough to make sweat bead on my forehead.
I reached a door with a small window. I looked into a white-shining lab. There was noise. People moving around, talking, rattling metal and glass things in sinks, but I couldn’t see anyone, not even shadows. Then, I saw White Coat pass right by the little window. He was inches from me and would have seen me if he hadn’t been looking down at something he was carrying. I didn’t see what it was because I’d bobbed down out of sight. He must have been standing at the workbench just to the right of the door. I heard him walk back past the door and I moved away down the corridor. Only ten yards away the corridor came to an end. To the left was a fire-exit door with a push bar. Outside was a dark, empty courtyard. I had only to go through that door and I’d be out of immediate danger. Possibly there’d be a quick escape route out of the grounds. But Gledhill had put the idea in my head that somewhere down this corridor I’d find my way into the Dark. The fire exit didn’t look that significant. I followed the corridor around to the right. A little way up was another door. I stepped through into a warm, stale, reeking ward and my flesh started to crawl.
The ward probably connected with White Coat’s lab by an interconnecting door in the far right hand corner. I went the other way, towards the beds and the tiny muttering, chattering forms that moved under the blankets.
A bitter film coated the inside of my mouth. As I got nearer to the beds the noise of one pathetically abnormal voice chanting rose above all the other sounds: ‘Two three, Two three… Two three, two three…’
I realised who White Coat reminded me of and stopped in the middle of the ward, too frightened to go on, too far committed to go back.
‘Two three, two three…’
I started walking again, sweat running down my back, sticking my shirt to my skin.
‘Two three, two three. Two three, two three.’
There were at least a dozen beds. All the occupants were small children and all of them were strapped into place with leather restraints. They shifted their little bodies about but despite apparent strength could not loosen the straps. Their heads moved freely, swivelling at the neck. I wanted to free them but was too scared to attempt to do so. They had been strapped down for a reason, after all. The bed I was approaching was the first one on the left hand side of the ward.
‘Two three, Two three.’
The boy’s head, twisting from side to side on the bolster, was covered in a fine layer of dark brown hair. It was lighter under the eyes and around the mouth, where the pink skin showed through more clearly. His small ears were flattened against the side of his head and he had no lips. His eyes were very nearly those of a healthy, normal boy. There was intelligence in them but it was in their accentuated roundedness that you could see most clearly the canine influence. In the eyes and the mouth, which jutted subtly like a sculptor’s failed attempt at a snout.