‘What do you mean?’
‘Bad Meddlums are becoming bigger. The suicide rate of people like us is at an all-time high. There have even been some cases of PTSD where Meddlums have been so monstrous, they’ve frightened people to their wits’ end. The Guild doesn’t know how to help people with these kind of mental health issues so they just up their dosages, ramp up their therapies and experiment more aggressively.’
Cherry was at a loss for words. The more she heard about the Guild, the more desperate she became. How was she going to get Chase out of there?
‘They will have noticed I’m gone by now, though,’ Peter continued. ‘This is where it gets dangerous. Getting caught after I’ve escaped will be game over for me. They won’t just put me back in a cell. They’ll make an example of me to send a message.’
‘Why haven’t you been caught already? You’ve got lenses, right?’ Peter nodded and blinked hard. Cherry went on, ‘Surely they can just hack into your sight and find out where you are, can’t they?’
‘They should be able to,’ he said, a look of confusion on his face. ‘So either they’re happy to be rid of me or there’s a serious glitch in their system.’
‘So you can’t get caught?’
‘Doesn’t seem that way, no.’
‘And you can’t go back?’
‘No way.’
‘Not even for a friend?’ Cherry pushed. She knew she asking a lot from him but she didn’t see that she had any other choice.
Peter held her gaze and then said, ‘Your turn to tell me everything. What’s going on?’
‘They took a friend of mine. Chase Masters.’
‘He’s like us?’
‘He is. He sees good feelings.’
‘Lucky bastard.’
‘Not really,’ Cherry said. ‘It made him pretty bitter about life – he couldn’t understand why he couldn’t have the happiness other people had. He was… a difficult man at times.’
‘He sounds lovely.’
‘He is,’ Cherry insisted. ‘He just thought he was alone. Didn’t we think the same at one point? But he’s a good man underneath it all – only now he’s gone. They’ve taken him.’
‘Why?’ Peter asked. ‘Why did they come for him?’
‘We sort of… started a fight. A turf war, you could call it.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
Cherry sighed. She didn’t have time to go into all the details. ‘I’ve been baking cakes for years to help people but he started making drinks to cause trouble. People were starting to become reckless. We kept trying to outdo each other and the whole town got caught in the crossfire and everyone, well, everyone went a bit… mad.’
‘That sounds like enough to make the Guild intervene.’
‘Happy paid us a visit and gave us some Normality to fix things. But she said I had to stop using my gift to help people otherwise I’d be taken away. Either that or I had to become a Feeler.’
‘So why did they take this Chase instead?’
‘I don’t know!’ Cherry cried. ‘I thought they were coming after me but they took him. And now he’s probably going to have his brain fried or have his eyes gauged out of their sockets or end up…’ Cherry couldn’t bring herself to say the word. Dead.
‘So what are you going to do?’ Peter asked. Cherry stopped in front of him and looked at him, her eyes full of hope. ‘Not a chance in hell,’ he said, standing up and backing away. ‘No. Way.’
‘Peter, please.’
‘I’m not going back in there!’
‘They might kill him!’
‘If I go back, they’ll kill me! I don’t know who this guy is. I don’t owe him anything. And he sounds like a bit of a prick!’ Peter put his hands on his head and pulled at his hair, hard, for a few seconds. He spun around with his fingernails digging into his scalp. He looked utterly mad. Cherry took a step back and wondered exactly how much electrocution he’d experienced over the years. ‘This isn’t a game, Cherry! If I get caught, I won’t be coming out again. If you want to risk your life for him, then fine but… I can’t.’
Cherry took in the panic in his eyes, the desperation on his face, and her heart sank. She couldn’t ask him to go back there for her. It was too much. There had to be another way. ‘Okay, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I get it – it was too much.’ Cherry dropped her tone, trying to soothe him. ‘But do you think you could maybe help me from the outside instead? You could tell me where it is, draw me a map and tell me anything I need to watch out for. And who I need to watch out for?’
‘Cherry…’ Peter warned.
‘Please. I can’t do this without you.’
‘You shouldn’t be doing this at all.’
‘I can’t leave him there.’
‘Like you left me, you mean?’ Peter spat.
Cherry was stunned. ‘Peter – I was seven. What could I have done?’
‘I don’t know. Something. Anything.’
‘I had no idea the Guild even existed. I thought you’d been taken away to… to an asylum or something! I was a child. No one would have believed me if I’d told them you weren’t crazy and I could see the monsters too. I would have ended up right there with you.’
Peter dropped his head, deflated, the fight gone from him as quickly as it had reared up. ‘I know. I’m sorry. There’s nothing you could’ve done.’
‘You don’t have to come with me, Peter. I understand. I completely understand. Just… please help me. You know what it’s like in there. Don’t let someone else suffer if they don’t have to. I can’t leave him in there but I need your help. Help me save Chase.’
Images flashed through Peter’s mind. Blue suits, bottles of pills, gloved hands holding his nose, bleeding eye sockets, jars full of eyeballs staring back at him, grey skin and finally, a lifeless, limp hand with a yellow rag tied around the ring finger dangling from under a crisp white sheet. Peter squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, hoping the memories would fall from his head and burn in the flames of the candle. He opened his eyes and saw Loneliness pulling at the boards nailed to the window, trying to reach out for Cherry. Peter sighed.
‘What kind of a name is “Chase” anyway?’
Peter had been kept in solitary confinement for most of his time in the Guild so it turned out that he didn’t know what the rest of it looked like outside the section he’d been kept in. He didn’t even know how big the Guild was. What he did know was that it was in Cornwall, somewhere called Warleggan, and that it was all underground.
‘I was planning on finding part-time jobs here and there, and working my way up the country and then flying abroad. I didn’t bargain on finding you on my first stop,’ he said while he mapped out what he knew of the Guild with charcoal on the floorboards.
‘You mean, you had no idea I was here?’ Cherry asked, kneeling next to him to look at his work.
‘Nope. There’s no way I could’ve known, is there?’
‘Wow. If anything’s going to make you believe in fate it’s something like that, eh?’
‘I guess. Now, Happy is the worst,’ Peter said, getting back to the matter at hand. He drew a smiley face on the floor.
‘What about Grumpy?’ Cherry smirked.
‘Who’s that?’ Peter asked. ‘I’ve not met them.’ He scratched his head.
‘No it’s… come on! Snow White?’
‘Who’s she?’ Peter asked.
‘Forget it. Remind me later to make you watch that movie. OK, so Happy is the worst. Who else?’
‘For the most part, no one else will be too concerned with you but you’ll definitely be on Lonely’s radar because that Meddlum has been buzzing around you like a fly since we were kids.’ Peter pointed towards the thumping sound coming from the patio doors. Loneliness was sat with his back against them and was banging his head over and over.
‘Happy and Lonely. Got it.’
‘Conveniently, everyone who works for the Guild wears specific colours, depending on thei
r roles. The white lab coats are, obviously, the doctors. They carry out all the experiments. Most are completely brainwashed but a few of them only pretend to have had treatments. If you can find one of the normal ones, you might be able to get them on your side.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘There was a nurse,’ Peter said softly. ‘She was kind to me. She never carried out the treatments on me when she was supposed to. She’d turn the machine on without me connected to it and I’d scream for a while so no one got suspicious, and then we’d just talk. She helped me. She stayed at the Guild so she could help people like me.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Cherry nudged Peter’s arm and his face flickered for a moment, like his heart was remembering something, something that made him look like he’d missed the bottom step in a flight of stairs and fallen further than he thought. And as quickly as it was there, it was gone again.
‘The blue suits are the guards and the henchmen,’ Peter went on and Cherry didn’t probe him any further. ‘They do all the heavy lifting and all the dirty work but it’s everyone in yellow you really need to watch out for. They’re the Feelers. It’s their job to watch everyone. You sneeze, you wipe your arse, you dump your feelings in someone else’s cake, they’ll know about it.’
‘Yes,’ Cherry said, ‘I’m starting to realise exactly how much Feelers can see.’
‘If you don’t get caught, you probably won’t see any of the Gelders,’ Peter said.
‘Gelders?’
‘The Guild Elders. They’re the ones in charge.’
Cherry blew out her cheeks in frustration.
‘What’s wrong?’ Peter asked.
‘It’s just all a bit… mad, isn’t it? White coats. Blue suits. Feelers in yellow. And now bloody Gelders. It’s a lot to get my head around.’
‘Things do go mad when you’ve got a bunch of people who want to control something as uncontrollable as feelings. They’re never going to get that control because it’s impossible. The more they try, the madder it gets, and they fail all over again. What started out as a quest for knowledge about something potentially incredible and life-changing and good has turned into a lust for power fed by the fear of something they can’t understand. For people like my mother, that cycle will never end and so it just keeps going on and on and on.’
Cherry let Peter’s words sink in. This was so much bigger than she’d anticipated. ‘Something potentially incredible?’ she asked. ‘Do you like seeing Meddlums?’
‘I did, before they put these lenses on me. You can pinpoint exactly how someone’s feeling without even talking to them, without knowing a single thing about them. Then imagine the possibilities once you do get to know them. You could unravel their most complex issues and thoughts within minutes.’
‘You sound like you’d make an excellent therapist,’ Cherry said.
‘That’s the plan. These lenses might mean I don’t see Meddlums anymore but I still want to help people. Like you do.’
‘Just be careful it doesn’t backfire on you like it did for me.’
‘You could always… come with me?’ Peter neatened the outline of the smiley face with his finger, avoiding her gaze.
‘What do you mean?’ Cherry asked, also avoiding his gaze.
‘It’s easier to hide from the Guild when you know they’re watching. We could change our names, dye our hair, keep moving around so they can’t find us…’
‘I don’t want to live like that,’ Cherry said.
‘You don’t really have a choice now. Especially if you rescue your friend. You’ll always be running from them.’
‘That’s different,’ Cherry said.
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ll be —’ She caught herself before the words slipped out onto the floor and ruined Peter’s drawings.
‘With him?’ he finished for her anyway.
Cherry fiddled with a splinter jutting out from one of the floorboards and didn’t say anything.
‘I get that,’ Peter whispered. ‘I do, really. Don’t feel embarrassed by it. If I had the chance to run away with Shura, I would have taken it.’
Cherry hadn’t shied away from saying the words because she’d been embarrassed. She’d shied away because she’d surprised herself. Something that she hadn’t thought through properly had almost fallen out of her mouth and that rarely happened. Cherry was an over-thinker. Her anxiety had conditioned her to be that way. Yet somehow, when it came to Chase, she defied that trait in herself. When it came to Chase, Cherry was involuntarily impulsive and while it made her hands tremble and her knees go weak, it also made her heart swell.
‘Is Shura the nurse?’
‘Yes… she is.’ Peter rubbed out the smiley face he’d drawn and wiped his hands on his jeans. ‘I don’t really have any more to tell you. I’ve told you everything I know.’
‘That’s okay,’ Cherry said, once again choosing not to push Peter when it was clear he didn’t want to talk. ‘You’ve told me plenty. What I need to figure out now is how to get in.’
‘The place is underground and security is round the clock. They have cameras everywhere and they’ll see you coming from miles off.’
‘So it’s impossible?’
‘Pretty much.’ Peter raised his shoulders in apology.
‘There’s got to be something.’ Cherry wasn’t going to be put off. ‘An air vent? A rubbish chute? Anything?’
‘It’s just not going to be that easy! And you’re stealing back a man. He won’t exactly be inconspicuous when you try to smuggle him back out.’
‘There’s got to be a way!’ Cherry threw her hands up in frustration.
‘Well… ’ Peter began. ‘There might be a way but it’s suicide.’
Cherry frowned. ‘I’ll try anything. What is it?’
‘Getting caught.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah. Oh.’ Peter shook his head and laughed at his own stupidity. ‘I told you it was suicide. It’s a mad idea. Don’t —’
‘If I were to get caught,’ Cherry interrupted, ‘hypothetically, of course… where would they take me?’
‘Cherry…’ Peter warned.
‘Just hypothetically!’
Peter narrowed his eyes. He didn’t believe this was hypothetical and yet he still found himself saying, ‘They’d probably take you to a holding cell in the first instance while the higher-ups were alerted. You’re probably of interest to them so certain people will want to be told you’re in the Guild.’
‘Okay. Will Chase be in a holding cell?’
‘If he was only taken today then yeah, most likely he’d be in a cell. They won’t start experimenting on him until they’ve run all the preliminary tests on him. That gives you at least twenty-four hours.’
‘Peter… ,’ Cherry said slowly. ‘I think I’ve got a plan but… I’m going to need your help.’
‘I can’t go back in there! Please!’ Peter began digging his nails into his scalp again.
‘It’s okay! I’m not asking you to!’ Cherry looped her fingers around his wrists and stroked them with her thumbs until he loosened his grip on his skull. ‘Just answer me something. Your Meddlum… she creates smoke when you feel hate, right?’
‘Right,’ he mumbled.
‘And the more hate you feel, the more smoke she gives off?’
‘That’s about it, yeah.’ He looked up at her and Cherry smiled at him.
‘Well, then. Let’s fire her up.’
21
Captured
Cherry thwacked her spoon against the side of the mixing bowl. The batter sprayed across every surface of her kitchen and slopped onto the floor, while she skipped around the central island.
‘I’m baaaaking agaaaain!’ she sang. ‘And there’s nothing you can do about it!’ Cherry picked up a bag of Cheery chocolate chips and twirled it around her head so that most of them ended up on the floor rather than in the bowl.
‘Baaaking is really great, filling Plymouth with lots of HATE!’ Cherr
y yelled.
She mustered up as much Hate as she could in her mouth and spat it into the bowl. She stirred the mixture furiously.
‘Cakes and cookies are a must, when sharing out your Love and Lust!’
She scooped up a handful of pistachios, put them in her mouth and chewed them into tiny pieces, concentrating all of her sexual desire into them. She opened her lips and let the masticated mess fall into the batter.
‘All my treats must be filled, with feelings to piss off the Guild!’
Cherry had started to sweat. She put the bowl down and listened, hoping to hear the sound of a van pulling up outside, but all she could hear was Loneliness tapping its foot.
‘Are you serious? Where are they?’ Cherry hit the handle of the wooden spoon that was sticking out of the bowl. The end in the batter flicked up and a large dollop of the batter hit Cherry on the forehead and slowly slid down her face. ‘Brilliant,’ she said wiping it out of her eye. ‘The Guild have been sniffing around here for the last week and now that I need them, they’re nowhere to be seen,’ she huffed. ‘They’re probably too busy prodding at Chase’s eyeballs with hot pokers or shoving bolts of electricity through his hippocampus. Oh God, this is impossible.’ She put her head against the kitchen counter, a chocolate chip sticking itself to her cheek. Cherry was getting ready to throw in the towel when there was a knock at the door.
‘Finally. COMING!’ She yelled, grabbing her coat as she skipped through the shop, but her feet slowed and shuffled the last few feet to the door when she saw George standing at the window. ‘Urrggghhh,’ she groaned, unlocking the latch.
‘Lovely to see you too!’ George said, an amused look on his face.
‘Sorry,’ she said, taking her coat off again. ‘Sorry, George – I’m just… expecting someone.’
‘Oh, yeah? It’s not Chase by any chance, is it?’
‘Erm… no. He’s… not here but… he’s not who I’m expecting.’ Cherry sighed. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘Sounds it. Well, anyway, I won’t keep you. I just wanted to say thanks for everything.’