Doc Mortis

Now that I was a bit more alert, some of what had been said in the last few minutes began to sink in. I suddenly felt scared – a feeling that wasn’t helped when Joseph and Ameena hooked my arms round their necks and began hauling me along the darkened road as quickly as they could.

The large building ahead of us wasn’t, in fact, a large building at all. It was a collection of smaller buildings, every one of which seemed to come from a different period in time. Shiny glass and metal stood beside moss-coated stone. A low, squat grey granite structure lurked in the shadow of a red brick tower block. The hospital must have started off small, then been gradually added to over the years since then.

From what I could see, the buildings all seemed to be interconnected, but every single one of them looked out of place. It wasn’t like any hospital I’d ever seen before.

So why had they moved Mum here?

I was about to ask Joseph when I heard the whispering again. The same whispering I’d heard earlier in the night. It was louder this time, audible even over the laboured breathing of Joseph and Ameena as they ran with me towards the hospital entrance.

‘Voices,’ I said, the word coming out as a squeak. ‘Hear voices. Whispering.’

Joseph swore again. ‘How close?’

‘Close.’

‘He said he heard something before,’ Ameena chipped in.

‘What are they saying?’

I listened. The whispering came from every direction at once, hundreds of voices, all overlapping and tumbling together.

‘Kyle, can you hear what they’re saying?’

The closer we got to the hospital, the louder the voices became. They weren’t whispers now. They were more like a series of murmurs – low at first, but becoming higher pitched all the time. In moments the night was filled by their excited, hyena-like squeals.

‘Y-yes.’

Joseph gave a grunt of effort as he tightened his grip on me. ‘Well? What is it?’

‘Hungry,’ I croaked. ‘They’re saying hungry.’

I was pulled sideways as Joseph suddenly picked up his pace. ‘Move, move, move!’

‘What? He’s hallucinating, right?’ I heard Ameena say. She sped up too, but struggled to keep pace. ‘Tell me he’s hallucinating.’

‘He’s not hallucinating. We need to get him inside now. If it happens here he won’t stand a chance.’

Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. They were screaming it now. Their voices came from the left and right, from behind me and from up ahead. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry.

Some of them were close. Closer, even, than Joseph and Ameena. A voice screeched right by my ear and I felt a blast of warm breath on my face. But when I squinted through the dark, I saw nothing there.

‘Wha’s happ’ning?’ I slurred. Pain clawed through my skull like five fiery fingers, beginning where the Crowmaster had scratched me and reaching all the way down into my chest.

The hospital wasn’t far ahead – I couldn’t tell how far, exactly – but I suddenly felt that we weren’t going to make it.

Hungry hungry hungry hungry! The voices had been whipped into a frenzy, screeching and howling like wild animals. Ameena and Joseph showed no signs of hearing them, but Joseph made sure to shout when he next spoke.

‘Listen to me, Kyle,’ he bellowed in my ear. ‘When we get inside, there won’t be long before it happens. The Crowmaster infected you with a virus and it’s about to kick into top gear.’

‘What does that mean?’ a voice asked. I couldn’t even say if it was mine or Ameena’s.

‘It means you’re going to slip through into the Darkest Corners,’ Joseph told me. ‘Those voices you hear, they’re from over there. Those... things must know you’re coming. They’re waiting for you.’

Hungryhungryhungryhungryhungry.

The Darkest Corners. It was the place all imaginary friends went when they were forgotten about – an alternate reality filled with pain, suffering and unimaginable horrors. A bit like my last visit to the dentist, but without the free sticker at the end.

I’d been to the Darkest Corners a few times and had barely survived each time. Fortunately, I was able to flit back and forth between here and there just by concentrating hard enough, so an escape route was never far away.

‘He can come back, though. He can just come back. Can’t he?’

‘Not this time. It doesn’t work like that,’ Joseph answered. ‘It’s the virus. When he slips over, he’ll be stuck there. He’ll be trapped in the Darkest Corners.’

I felt my head spin faster as the enormity of Joseph’s words sunk in.

‘Trapped,’ he added, hammering the point home. ‘With no way back.’

Chapter Three THE OTHER OTHER HOSPITAL (#ulink_3a350c57-402c-5757-b436-24f052629b5a)

I didn’t notice the door flying open at Joseph’s boot, didn’t even realise we were inside the hospital until Ameena staggered and fell to her knees, and we hit lino instead of concrete.

Joseph was beside me right away, turning my face so I was looking up at him. The five stabbing pains clawed all the way down into my stomach and a shock of agony shook my whole body.

An indescribable sound burst across my lips – not a scream or a howl, but something from deeper within than that. Something I didn’t even recognise as human. From my head to my toes, my muscles went rigid, amplifying the hurt a hundred times over.

‘Help him! Do something!’

My jaw was wrenched open and a leather wallet shoved in. My teeth clamped round it, stopping me biting my tongue off.

‘There’s nothing we can do.’ That was Joseph’s voice. He sounded a long way away. ‘It’s too late.’

‘There’s got to be some kind of cure!’ Ameena cried. ‘This can’t be it. It can’t end like this.’

They were talking about me as if I wasn’t there. Outside, I could hear the other voices still screeching. Hungryhungryhungry. Hungryhungryhungry.

‘Not here. Over there. There’ll be a cure there, if he can find it.’

Ameena’s face suddenly filled my vision. Sparks of blue flickered like fireflies around her head.

‘Did you hear that, Kyle? There’s a cure over there. There’s a cure in the Darkest Corners. Find it, OK?’ I closed my eyes, but she shook me until they opened again. ‘Find it and come back to me.’

‘You’ll be better there,’ said Joseph urgently. ‘Not like this. The hospital will be barricaded, so you’ll be safe from the things outside. At least for a while.’

He nudged Ameena aside and leaned in close to me. His face was a mess of flickering sparks. They scurried across his skin like insects.

‘But it’s not what’s outside you need to worry about, it’s what’s inside. There’s someone in the hospital. Someone worse than anything out there. Worse than anyone you’ve had to deal with so far. You’ve got to stay away from him. You hear me, Kyle? You’ve got to stay away from—’

I never caught the end of the sentence. The entrance hallway exploded in a shadowy spray of blacks and greys, and a tumbling torrent of electric sparks came crashing down on top of me.