Next came a tremendous rush and noise, everything around her blurred and refocused, and she materialised in the midst of a group of the sinister tree-birds. Right in front of her walked a young woman dressed in a tunic identical to her own. She seemed oblivious to the imminent danger.
Leoni’s powerful instinct to run away was not so strong as the deep and immediate connection she felt to this girl, and she knew she had to warn her even at risk to her own life. Besides, there was no risk, right? Because at one level of consciousness she understood she was lying on a hospital bed tripping out on ket and this was all just a crazy dream. Wasn’t it?
Still she yelled: ‘Hey, you! We gotta get out of here. These things aren’t trees.’
The young woman spun on her heels. She was more of a girl, really – maybe sixteen – quite short, wiry, very pretty in a tough tomboyish way, with nut-brown skin and chestnut hair. She stood facing Leoni with her hands clenched into fists and shouted a challenge in a strange language. Dumb bitch. She was so up for a fight she was missing the bigger picture – namely, a flock of monster predators with beaks the size of cars looming right over her head.
Leoni rolled her eyes and tried again: ‘RUN! OR WE’RE BOTH GOING TO BE BIRDFEED!’ She raised her arm and pointed. The kid looked back over her shoulder and saw the danger. Then – whoomf! – the scene went blank and Leoni was emerging from her ketamine haze in California, strapped down to her bed, locked up tight in thick darkness.
It was as though her mind were running on two parallel tracks. One continued to give her glimpses of that strange and compelling otherworld that she had been immersed in on the edge of death and seemed somehow to have entered again under the influence of ketamine. The other dwelt on her predicament as a prisoner in a psychiatric hospital where her parents intended to keep her permanently out of their way.
Leoni had done a lot of drugs in her short life and once at a club had been persuaded to snort a bump of K. It made her eyes sting and burn, left a horrible taste in the back of her mouth and turned her bones to rubber. Far from speeding her up, as ecstasy and cocaine usually did, ketamine had locked her in a lugubrious and incoherent world of her own where everything moved in slo-mo and simple physical tasks like lifting a wine glass became daunting obstacle courses. It also gave her the feeling that she had somehow been sitting about a foot away from herself for most of the evening. She realised now that this might have been a kind of low-level out-of-body experience.
The dose Melissa had injected into her must have been larger than the amount she’d been able to snort. Much larger. And it had produced different effects – including a weird and spectacular return journey to the land where everything is known.
Here was the problem. Leoni’s very strong instinct about her bizarre experiences in the near-death state was that they were real – and the one good conversation she’d had with Dr Bannerman had reinforced her in this view. But, courtesy of Melissa, she had now discovered that she could repeat elements of those experiences, get the out-of-body feeling, even encounter the same beings – such as the Blue Angel and monsters like the tree-birds – simply by shooting up a drug.
Didn’t that prove that all such adventures, whether induced ‘artificially’ by ketamine or ‘naturally’ in a near-death coma, were just hallucinations – and thus completely unreal? And if that was so then wasn’t it likely that the devastating conversation she’d overheard between her parents while supposedly out of her body must also have been unreal?
Alone in the darkness, fearful, strapped so tight to her bed she couldn’t move, Leoni began to lose her new-found confidence in her flashbacks of being raped by her father. Suppose the rapes were just hallucinations too? Suppose they had never happened, as Dad had always claimed? Suppose they were no more ‘real’ than her ketamine dreams and near-death delusions of a non-existent otherworld?
Suppose her memories really were false?
Leoni heard the sound of keys turning in locks and bolts being drawn. Then the door was flung open, lights came on and Sansom strode into the room, scowling and red-faced.
Right behind him was John Bannerman.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Before her feet touched water, Ria felt herself lifted as though on a windstorm, and carried into the sky far above the river.
She heard the sound of cicadas singing and felt the force of a powerful intelligence – far more powerful than Brindle’s – probing and knowing her mind. Finally the beautiful thought-voice that had addressed her before was back inside her head, a voice like a soft wind blowing through pines, speaking the Clan language: ‘You have passed the second test, Ria. Now you must return to the land of the living. Use the Little Teachers again. I will await you.’
Then Ria was no longer in the sky but rushing at great speed through a rotating tunnel of light. Everything was moving so fast she felt dizzy and lost consciousness. When she awoke she was back in her earthly body, inside the Cave of Visions, slumped on the cold stone floor on a couple of ibex skins, surrounded by sleeping Uglies.
It was very dark in the cave. Almost black. None of the lamps that had illuminated the scene the night before were still burning and only the faintest trace of daylight filtered through the distant entrance passageway.
Ria turned on her side and reflected on everything that had happened since the mushrooms had taken her to the spirit world, culminating in that brief tantalising encounter with her mother and father and then this abrupt return to her earthly body.
She sobbed. Seeing her parents for a fleeting moment after seven long years was almost too painful to bear. Yet it had convinced her that death was not the end. In some way she could not understand it seemed her mother and father really did live on in the spirit world.
Other mysteries were equally bewildering to contemplate. For example, who was the bewitching blue woman who had stood beside her parents on the river bank? She looked like the spirit whose image Brindle had shown her on the way into Secret Place – the spirit he had called Our Lady of the Forest who he said watched over the Uglies. Was it she who had rescued her? And was it her thought-voice she had heard inside her head?
The thought-voice had spoken of tests. Which tests?
Then there was the problem of the mysterious girl who had appeared just in time to warn her of the monstrous tree-birds, then vanished again. And there was the bigger problem of life and death in the spirit world. She’d been in a body in that world – she was sure of it. So, what would have happened if the tree-birds had eaten her? She had bled and felt pain in their realm so presumably she could die in it – and if she had would her earthly body have lived on? Or died as well?
Ria reached down to touch her right ankle where the rat-roach had sunk in its fangs. Though there was no hot festering wound she could feel the scars of two puncture marks in the spot where she had been bitten. She turned her attention to her left leg. It should have been stiff and sore from her fall the night before but was free of pain and felt healed.
Thinking about what all this might mean, but coming to no immediate conclusions, Ria stood up and picked her way amongst slumbering Uglies towards the faint light of the entrance passage. Outside she saw Brindle sitting amongst the rocks, watching the sun rise over jagged mountains that soared up to touch the sky far away across the valley. She sent him her thought-voice: ‘The Little Teachers were amazing, Brindle. Thank you for getting me to try them. I had the most incredible journey. I actually did see my mother and father!’
‘Saw my father too,’ Brindle replied.
‘That’s what you were hoping for, right?’
But he didn’t answer. Instead he sent a picture into her mind of the wild braves who’d attacked them the day before. ‘They are scouts of a great army,’ he told her. ‘Father gave me secret knowledge of this.’ The pictures changed showing Ria throngs of the savages swarming into the Clan’s hunting grounds. ‘They are called the Illimani. Their homeland is in east, beyond the ice deserts …’
‘No one can cross
the ice deserts,’ said Ria. She was simply stating a fact.
‘They have crossed! You must believe this! Illimani scouts already been here many moons, learning these valleys, preparing the way. Now thousands more are coming, killing all in their path.’
‘But why?’
Brindle’s expression grew darker: ‘Because of the one called Sulpa. They have fallen under his power …’
Ria gasped.
‘The Eater of Souls,’ Brindle continued. ‘That is what his name means. He is King of the Illimani but he is not a human being. He is a demon from the spirit world who has taken an earthly body. On the outside he is handsome – men and women worship his beauty – but within all is foul, all is evil. He is a mighty sorcerer, Ria. He delights in causing suffering. He glories in pain. He feeds on the misery of others. That is why his horde is marching …’
‘And Grigo, Duma and Vik?’
‘They too fell under his power.’
‘Then why were they killed?’
‘Father showed me Grigo not killed. Only Duma and Vik. Scouts followed us. Grigo went other way. See Sulpa.’
‘But why? I don’t get it …’
‘Something bad going to happen.’
With Brindle’s words came images of smoke.
Images of fire.
And though the morning sun was growing warm, Ria shivered.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Two nurses, not Deirdre and Melissa but of the same general build, followed Sansom and Bannerman into the room. One of them was carrying a bag; the other marched to the window and drew back the thick blackout curtains. Somehow the entire night had passed and bright morning sunshine flooded in through the bars.
Leoni looked to Bannerman for recognition and gave him a wavering smile but his expression was stern and he seemed surrounded by an invisible armour.
Sansom approached her bed, tight-lipped and surly, and began to unfasten the buckles of her restraints with abrupt, jerky movements. ‘You’re free to go, Miss Watts,’ he told her as she sat up. His small piglike eyes glittered above the busted blood vessels in his nose: ‘My nurses here have your clothes. Get dressed, please.’
And that was that.
Five minutes later, Leoni and her rescuer were following Sansom’s broad well-tailored back out of Mountain Ridge.
Leoni kept glancing up at Bannerman She couldn’t help it. She was in awe of him. First he’d saved her life. Now he’d broken her out of a secure mental hospital. What would he do for an encore? Scale tall buildings at a single bound? Stop runaway trains in their tracks? Fly through the air faster than a bullet? Alongside everything else that had happened in the last couple of days, she realised, she was falling for this dashing, mysterious, totally hot guy!
‘You got my message,’ she whispered out of the corner of her mouth.
He nodded: ‘Yup.’
‘You moved pretty fast. I’m impressed.’
Sansom led them into a plush office with leather furniture, a power desk and a bubbling coffee pot. Bannerman hunched over the desk to sign a couple of forms and then they were back out in the corridor again and headed for the elevator. As they descended, Leoni noticed that the two doctors were locked in some kind of weird staring contest. At one point Bannerman’s upper lip actually curled.
The elevator opened into a public vestibule and Leoni and Bannerman stepped out. Sansom stayed put. The doors slid closed in front of him and he was gone.
‘Phew!’ said Bannerman. ‘That felt like sharing a cubicle in hell with the devil.’
‘He’s really gross,’ Leoni said. ‘I hate him.’ She paused: ‘Listen … John … I owe you big time for this … I mean,’ she laughed, ‘it’s not as though I don’t owe you big time already. Seeing as you saved my life! But now I owe you even more …’
Bannerman looked embarrassed. ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘What your parents and this pissant psychiatric hospital did to you was beyond wrong. Their lawyers had covered their tracks pretty well and I couldn’t find out where they’d taken you, so it was just great to get your voicemail.’
They were walking across the parking lot now. The sun felt good on Leoni’s skin and she couldn’t believe how amazing this guy was. ‘You mean,’ she said, ‘you started looking for me even before I called you?’
‘You bet! I had an attorney working on your case from the minute I knew they’d grabbed you off the ward.’
At this she threw her arms around Bannerman’s neck and attempted to kiss him on the mouth.
He returned her embrace, but kept his lips tightly closed.
Being rebuffed sexually by a good-looking man was not a common experience for Leoni. She stepped back: ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That was brazen of me.’
‘No!’ he replied. ‘It’s me who should apologise! I must seem ungallant. But you see … I’m gay. It was my partner who did your legal work. That’s him over there …’
John Bannerman’s lover was yet another spectacularly good-looking man. What a waste! ‘Hi,’ he said, ‘I’m David Temple. Good to meet you, Leoni.’
‘Hi, David. I’m really grateful to you for getting me out of there.’ Leoni made a vulgar gesture at the hospital with her middle finger. ‘I don’t know how you did it, because my dad has swarms of killer lawyers working for him, but you must be brilliant and amazing. So … thank you!’ And she leaned forward and hugged him.
‘It wasn’t such a big deal,’ David told her. ‘I think Sansom probably was convinced he was holding you legally, but it turns out he was wrong. They did have a qualified clinician write up your declaration – bribed him or blackmailed him, I’d bet. But I found so many holes in the paperwork there was no way it could be enforced. Once I brought the county magistrate up to speed he ordered you freed at once.’
‘Does that mean I’m safe? My parents won’t be able to do this to me again?’
‘The original declaration has been thrown out,’ said David. ‘They could try for a new one but I’m sure we’d nail them in court if they did. So, yes, short of them kidnapping you again, I’d say you’re safe …’
While talking they’d climbed into a beat-up late-1990s model Chevrolet Impala looking like it hadn’t been washed since it came off the production line. Bannerman was driving, and he’d ushered Leoni into the front passenger seat. David was sprawled in the back: ‘Even so,’ he continued, ‘we figured you’d want to get off your parents’ radar for a while.’
‘You figured right.’
‘And I know you want to understand more about what you went through during your near-death experience,’ Bannerman added.
‘I have to find out!’ Leoni agreed. ‘Because it’s driving me nuts. One minute I think everything I saw and heard was real, the next I convince myself it was just some kind of hallucination. I go back and forth on it fifty times a day.’
‘So I have a proposal for you,’ said Bannerman. ‘Remember what I told you about my research into near-death and out-of-body experiences?’
Leoni was immediately alert: ‘Yes.’
‘I’m running a very hush-hush clinical study at the UC Irvine School of Medicine that’s looking into these sorts of experiences right now. My proposal is that you join the project for the next couple of weeks as a volunteer. You’re an ideal candidate and I’m pretty sure you’d get spectacular results.’
Leoni was curious: ‘What makes me so ideal?
‘Lots in general, but one thing in particular. When you described your NDE to me you said you had an encounter with an angelic being … You showed me a sketch you did of her.’
‘The Blue Angel …’
‘You said she gave you a lecture about how you’d squandered your potential?’
‘She did.’ Leoni nodded. ‘But that was just the start. There was so much other weirdness that I didn’t get a chance to tell you about. She said I had come to a place called “the land where everything is known”. There were green flowers everywhere, strange-looking bugs the size of cows … and there we
re monsters there, John … Real monsters.’
Bannerman turned slightly as he drove, glanced at David in the back seat and gave him a look – something of a knowing, I-told-you-so look.
Leoni bristled: ‘Hey, you guys don’t think I’m crazy, do you? I’m up to here with people trying to make out I’m crazy.’
‘No!’ David reassured her.
‘No way!’ said Bannerman. ‘It’s just that David knows I’ve had other recent cases of people who’ve been through NDEs and claim to have met a blue woman – also in extraordinary surroundings. Most of them described her as an angel. None of them can draw as well as you but their sketches of her have obvious resemblances to the figure you showed me. Two of the volunteers in my project have reported encounters with her – ’
‘Which means,’ David interrupted from the back seat, ‘when we add your testimony to what John already has on file it starts to look like there’s something very strange going on here. If enough different people experience the same supposedly non-real things then you begin to wonder whether what they’re experiencing might be real after all …’
‘And is it?’ asked Leoni. ‘Is it real?’
‘We have to be cautious about this,’ said Bannerman. ‘It’s difficult to verify what people say has happened to them – in what might effectively be other dimensions of reality – in ways that would be accepted by scientists who don’t believe in other dimensions. All the volunteers in my project have reported out-of-body experiences of other worlds, but I narrow down the field by only using those who’ve also had veridical experiences in this world while they were out of body.’
‘“Veridical”? What’s that?’
‘It means truthful and real – in other words people who’ve had experiences that can be verified. If I can confirm even one level of this phenomenon then it helps to increase confidence that the other levels could be real as well. You had one of these experiences – an experience while you were out of body that I’ve been able to verify …’