‘Sparrow was ill for a very long time,’ I said gently.
‘We know. But still we visited her.’
‘You were allowed to go to her room?’
‘Oh no, not that. No, we visited her in the same way we visited you. Her mind was always so confused, though, in later years.’
‘You used mental telepathy? Is that how you got to me? But how? And why?’
‘Michael showed us how. Ultimately, it was he who took us to you.’
‘Which one is Michael?’ I raised the torch, sweeping its beam around the room, lighting up the others there. A young man covered his face with enormous mutated hands, their fingers twisted and scaly, their colour black, but raw-reddened in parts, their size out of all proportion to his body; with horror I saw that his bare feet were the same, twisted and blackened and extended like the roots of a tree. The pretty girl, whose lower spine was so cruelly disjointed that her body was not above her pelvis and legs, clung to the stick she carried for support, the sudden brightness surprising her. A man or youth of obvious African origin looked at me in alarm, the huge flap of soft skin and flesh that covered his face lifted like a veil.
‘There.’ Joseph was pointing into the crowd, which parted to reveal the cot behind. I shone the light on the poor, stunted-limbed creature that lay there, the thing whose body resembled that of a giant, bloated slug, whose mouth was a mere aperture, its eyes pink, sightless orbs. A low keening noise came from it.
‘Michael can only communicate by thought, a gift we have only recognized in recent years, and in ourselves only some months ago.’
‘But how did you find me? None of you could have known me, or even of me.’
‘The clairvoyant helped us.’
‘Louise?’
‘Is that her name? Our collective mind journeyed to hers, whether by chance or by the force of wanting, we have no idea. We made . . . a connection. We were then guided to you.’
I gave myself a few moments to let this sink in. Shelly Ripstone had contacted Louise before hiring my services and it was only then that I began to have the visions – those invasive thoughts. There seemed to be a weird kind of sense to it all, although it didn’t explain the terror I’d been put through last night.
‘I’m not sure I understand any of this,’ I finally said in exasperation.
‘Then let me tell you about us and of this place.’
And this, Joseph did.
PERFECT REST was the only home these unfortunates had ever known, and indeed, they referred to it as ‘Home’. For a long time they had all believed that the Doctor – whom I assumed was Leonard K. Wisbeech, although they never called him by his name – was their creator, that somehow he was the father of them all. It was only through Constance Bell, who had come to them several years ago as carer and friend, that they learned they had come from different fathers and mothers, parents who were unable to cope with their offspring’s disabilities and malformations. Constance had told them that they were here to be protected from the outside world, for out there normal people had a special hatred for those born unlike themselves.
Here, in this place – and it was purely for their own benefit, carried out solely to help them – they underwent tests and experiments, were given strange liquids to drink, numerous tablets to swallow, their bodies examined and probed, their deformities studied. They were photographed and X-rayed (they didn’t know the technical terms for these things, but it was easy for me to surmise), blood, tissue, and even cells taken from them. Sometimes, when certain experiments were performed on them, they suffered great pain; sometimes they underwent strange operations that left them in great distress and physically no better off. Sometimes their companions were taken away never to be seen again. Their abilities, both mental and physical, were constantly tested, and the only reward for their cooperation was the security of the Home.
Often they were returned to the dormitory heavily sedated and with no recollection whatsoever of where they had been, what they had done, what had been done to them. Always on these occasions, they were left distraught, parts of their bodies sore and bruised, frequently openly bleeding.
They remembered the one who had brought them treats, offered them comfort and told them wonderful stories of magic and families (many of them around me in the darkness now sighed and laughed at the memory, their apprehension momentarily allayed). This little woman had told them to call her ‘Sparrow’, but most of them preferred to call her ‘Momma’. But she had grown old and frail, her visits less regular until they stopped altogether. That was when Constance had come to them and taken over Sparrow’s role; Constance, who was not unlike themselves.
Hearing her name spoken with so much affection, even reverence, filled me with a longing to see her. It also filled me with fresh trepidation.
It seemed that others in this place had treated them far less kindly, regarding them as freaks rather than ‘exceptional departures from the ordinary’, some even beating them when displeased with their behaviour or slowness, while others were content merely to mock them (which, Joseph told me, was worse, far worse). They were never allowed to forget their imperfections, never allowed to think of themselves as anything other than oddities, strangers to the world beyond these walls, so it was easy for me to see how this room itself had become their home within the Home, their sanctuary from those who would despise them, the very darkness their retreat. Yet still they were curious about the outside world, lack of windows merely deepening the mystery of normal life (it became obvious to me that the projections along the dormitory’s right-hand wall covered the fake windows built into the exterior wall so that the big house would appear normal to observers across the river or even passing boats).
Much of what these unfortunates knew of the world itself came from books, for they were encouraged by the Doctor, who was interested in their intelligence as much as in their physical capabilities, to read and learn. Constance had helped them, even bringing in books that were discouraged, literature that was not truth but not lies either, for they contained fiction that spoke of truth. When their thirst for this new kind of knowledge had grown into a passion, she had smuggled in a different sort of book, although it also contained many stories. She had told them it contained the Ultimate Truth.
From this they had learned that the Doctor was not their creator, that there was a Supreme Being who was Creator of All and It was known as God. Constance had helped them understand this God of all things, and those who could read had helped those who could not, until even those whose poor mental ability left them unable to cope with the simplest of tasks were able to grasp this new and wonderful message. And the message was that all were equal in the eyes of God and all were loved equally, even the aberrations of His own natural order, for they were – not merely, but importantly – a testing for all mankind.
(For someone like me, who had never forgiven God – if there was such a Being, and the jury was still out on that one as far as I was concerned – for creating me like this, their belief was astonishing and, in a way, awesome, especially as it came from nothing more than a book, the bestseller of all time, admittedly, but still words on paper, a tome, a Holy Writ that might be history or fantasy. It was odd, but I felt both angry and humbled. Most of all, though, I felt confused.)
It seemed that recently a great dread within them had become almost overwhelming, an ominous and rising disquiet that had developed into a collective fear. That was when the one called Michael had begun to take them on mind-journeys.
At first, they had only visited Sparrow where she lay on her sickbed within the Home itself, but her mind was too clouded and muddled for mental dialogue, so they had ventured further afield, wandering aimlessly for a while, witnessing life as they had never before known it, but rapidly becoming desperate as their inner trepidation increased. It was Michael who had led them to the clairvoyant, the clairvoyant who had led them to me. And in me, they had recognized one of their own.
‘Why now, Joseph?’ I asked. ‘You’ve li
ved here in these conditions for so long, why is it only recently that you’ve become afraid?’
‘We’ve always been afraid, but at least we knew this place, we felt some stability here, a kind of security. But now we sense that something terrible is happening to us. With each passing week we become fewer in number.’
‘You mean when you’re taken out of this room?’
‘Yes.’
‘And those who do return – they never remember what’s happened to them?’
He slowly shook his wizened head. ‘But we dream,’ he said. ‘We dream of horrible things, nightmares where . . .’ He stopped speaking and his eyes closed. ‘Even the dreams we cannot remember fully. Only snatches, scenes that frighten us. It’s as if our inner minds know but refuse to tell our conscious selves.’
As I turned the torch on Joseph to study his face, a question that had lodged itself in my own mind came to the fore. ‘Joseph, tell me why you are here. Unless your garment is hiding something you’d prefer not to be seen, you don’t appear to have anything wrong with you. Yet you’re kept in this place and you’re much older than everyone else in here . . .’
I sat upright – as much as I was able – and stared at him. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? I mean, you’re older than the Doctor himself, so unless he is the successor to someone who first started all this . . .’ I felt a sudden rush of excitement, an unexpected insight. ‘Unless someone else other than Dr Leonard Wisbeech started snatching badly deformed children at, or soon after, their birth a long, long time ago . . .’ I shook my head once in an effort to clear the thoughts that were bombarding it. Shelly Ripstone’s illegitimate baby had been taken away from her eighteen years ago because it had been born like the others here, probably not expected to live anyway, but useful for study while it was still alive. The same thing had happened to many such malformed newborns, all thought to be terminal cases, or . . . or all thought to be useful as objects of research, exhibits to examine, for learning, for autopsies . . . And now, with genetics the new, fast-expanding science, their bodies – best of all, their living, breathing bodies – were invaluable as specimens for genetic research. Oh dear Lord . . .
As I looked at Joseph, thoughts still tumbling through my head, my original line of questioning came back to me. I leaned forward again in the chair, elbows resting on my knees, hands clasped together in front of me, one finger extended, pointing at the old man.
‘You’re not old at all, are you, Joseph? I mean, there isn’t anyone in this room that’s very old. You’re all quite young and you, Joseph, are even younger than some, aren’t you?’
It might have been a smile on that ancient, wrinkled face, or it might have been a frown of sadness, it was impossible to tell.
‘We lose count of all time in the Home,’ he said in that high, rasping, almost distant voice of his, ‘but I know that not too many years have passed since I was brought here as an infant. Constance tells me it has only been twelve.’
It’s called progeria, a rare disease that causes drastically premature ageing in children, even in babies. A twelve-year-old can look as if he were a hundred.
‘Joseph . . .’ I said. I wanted to weep. Right then and there I wanted to sink to my knees and weep for them all.
But I rose from the chair and took the few paces to stand before him. I knelt and put my arms around his frail little shoulders to hug him close.
Only then did I weep.
35
I took only two of them with me: the man-boy, Joseph, and the girl with the acute curvature of the lower spine, who was introduced to me as Mary, and whose hair hung in golden ringlets around her pretty face, and who possessed the most innocent eyes I’d ever seen. I remembered her too, from last night’s visions, although her image had been unclear, shimmery. None of their friends who were able could be coaxed to join us, for they were terrified of being caught outside their dormitory unattended. Their fear was frightening in itself and I wondered if any government department had sanctioned such an establishment – after all, could babies just disappear from hospitals only moments after their birth without some collusion by the authorities? – or whether this whole operation was truly clandestine. Surely the health authorities had to have some involvement? Perhaps they did, but never bothered to monitor the conditions in which these poor misfits lived. Perhaps they had too much faith in the eminent Dr Leonard K. Wisbeech and all the fancy letters after his name. I prayed that that wasn’t the truth of it.
There had been much whimpering and moaning as we three had sneaked through the double doors, but as soon as we were outside and the doors closed behind us, the sounds stopped. It was as if all those left inside the dormitory were holding their breath.
‘Don’t you have a warden of some kind on duty out here?’ I asked Joseph, nodding towards the open doorway of the partitioned office.
‘Usually there is one,’ he replied, ‘but Michael tells us there is something terrible happening here tonight, so perhaps our supervisor is being kept busy elsewhere.’
Michael. That poor blob of barely-human flesh whose only existence was acknowledged by a blurred number tattooed on to his skin. ‘How does Michael know these things?’ I said.
‘He senses them. He travels beyond his own body. It’s his only . . . gift.’
Nature compensates, right? Only what a sick joke in this case.
‘And he communicates this to you?’ I said, still in a whisper.
‘He shares his thoughts with us. Not with words, but with feelings and emotions. It isn’t always clear, but tonight he has shown us great terror and we are afraid.’
And Louise had felt it too. Back at the old abandoned house, she had sensed their panic.
‘You’re sure he knows where Constance is?’
Joseph gave a bow of his head. ‘He will guide us.’
‘Okay.’ I wasn’t reassured, but I knew when to follow my own instincts. I took the twelve-year-old by the hand and led him over to the elevator. Mary, hardly leaning on her walking stick, merely using it for balance, followed us.
We stopped in front of the shaft doors and even as I debated whether or not to push the call button, we were startled by a sudden clanking noise, followed by a low humming that grew louder.
‘Quickly,’ I said, now taking both my companions by the elbow and pushing them towards the closed door next to the elevator shaft. ‘The lift’s coming up.’
The girl hobbled awkwardly and the man-boy shuffled in his slippers, but it took very little time to reach the sturdy-looking door behind which I assumed was the staircase to this wing. Rather stupidly, I had also assumed the door would be unlocked.
The humming sound grew louder as I turned the door’s handle to no effect. The lock was a simple cylinder and on a good day I could have picked it within forty seconds; however, this was not a good day and nor did I have forty seconds. I whisked the keyring I had taken from the small office out of my pocket and chose the obvious key, the Yale. It turned the lock easily and just as the humming from the lift shaft sighed to a stop, I pushed my companions through the open door. I followed through smartly as the elevator doors began to clunk open and through the two-inch gap I’d left I caught sight of a blue-uniformed figure emerging from the lift to cross the landing, heading towards the office opposite. It was a squat, broad-shouldered man, the short sleeves of the uniform showing off his muscular arms. He whistled tunelessly, obviously happy in his work.
For a hair-raising moment, I thought he might test the dormitory doors that I had left shut but unlocked. Fortunately, he only paused before the entrance, seemed to listen for a while, then went on into his office. Inside, he took the newspaper that had been folded beneath his armpit and sat in the chair, leaning back to stretch his legs, resting his feet on the desk before him. With relief, I closed the stairway door all the way.
I found we were on a wooden, carpet-less and dimly-lit landing, to our left stairs, ascending, presumably to the roof or attic rooms, to our right, descending. Puttin
g a straight finger against my lips, I warned my two newfound friends to remain silent, then immediately had to clap my hands over their mouths as they began to jabber. Obviously they were not used to that kind of sign language in this small, enclosed world of theirs and had no idea what I meant. The girl, Mary, who was slightly taller than I, jerked her head away from my hand, total panic in those innocent eyes, while Joseph clammed up instantly.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ I whispered urgently, reaching for Mary’s arm to reassure her. ‘We must keep very quiet, okay? We don’t want anybody to hear us.’
She blinked and Joseph nodded as vigorously as he could manage. The girl had raised a hand to her cheek, so that the sleeve of her robe had slid down to her elbow, exposing her lower arm, and I saw the markings there: 201079. Not a human to the people who ran this place, I reflected, only a number, a registration no doubt kept on file, somewhere.
‘I’m s-s-s . . . I’m s-sorry,’ she stuttered so woefully it might have been an apology for her existence rather than the noise she had made and I had to rush my hand to her mouth again. This time she took a step backwards away from me, her spine hitting the landing’s rail behind her.
‘It’s all right,’ I hissed, remaining still in case I alarmed her further. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I’m a friend, remember?’
Joseph went to her and reached up for her wrists, taking them in his own hands and gently pulling them away from her face. ‘He’s the one we called to help us, Mary,’ he said softly. ‘He really is our friend.’
A thought occurred to me and I moved closer to them both. ‘Joseph,’ I said close to his ear. ‘How did you get your names? Are they your real ones, the names you were born with?’
‘Oh no.’ He regarded me gravely. ‘We only had the numbers to begin with. Momma Sparrow gave us our names. She could never remember the numbers.’ He looked up at me with pale, weary eyes. ‘Your name,’ he said in a hushed voice. ‘You haven’t told us what you are called yet.’