Doc Mortis

Why hadn’t Joseph given me more to go on? Why hadn’t he told me anything useful? Time had been running out, but that hadn’t stopped him before. On Christmas Day, when I’d been running from Mr Mumbles, Joseph had somehow slipped a note inside a Christmas cracker and left it for me to find. Why couldn’t he have done something similar this time? Why had he left me to...?

My gaze fell to the leather wallet on the floor. He had wedged it into my mouth to stop me biting my tongue, but was that his only reason?

My pulse quickened, but I didn’t dare move. If I moved – if I grabbed the wallet and looked inside – I might be disappointed. Better to leave it there, to not look, and hold on to the hope for a little longer.

But hope wasn’t going to cure me. And hope wasn’t going to get me home. If there was something in the wallet that could help me, I had to get it. If there wasn’t, I had to deal with that and figure things out on my own. Either way, I had to know.

I stooped and picked up the wallet. It felt light and flimsy in my hands. I did nothing but hold it for a long time, unable to bring myself to look inside. Overhead, the closest light flickered – on, off, on, off – buzzing angrily, like a trapped insect.

The barricade was still silent, but I could hear other noises out there, off in the distance. Roaring. Screaming. Howling. I turned my back on the world outside, trying not to listen. My hands shook as I unclipped the stud fastener on the wallet, and carefully looked inside.

There was no money, that was the first thing I noticed. No notes, no coins, nothing.

In the bit at the back, where the notes should go, there were four photographs of different sizes. The pictures were in colour, but scuffed and scratched. One of them was scorched down the right-hand side, half of the image completely obscured by a mess of black and brown.

I flicked through the first three pictures. A waterfall. A sunset. A mountain – Fuji, I reckoned, in Japan. All nice, scenic images. All completely useless to me.

Then I came to the fourth photograph, and suddenly nothing in the world made any sense.

This one looked even older than the other three. Fold marks and scratches criss-crossed it like a road map. It was a different shape to the others too – square, with a white border that was yellowing round the edges. It looked like the ones Mum used to take with Nan’s old Polaroid camera.

I didn’t notice these details until later. Right then, all I could see was the image printed on the paper.

There were three figures in the picture, huddled round one side of a circular table in what looked to be a run-down old pub or restaurant. I recognised two of the people; the other I had no idea about.

The one I didn’t know was a boy of around four or five years old. He was on the right-hand side of the picture, kneeling on a chair and laughing so hard a little bubble of snot was popping out from one of his nostrils. His eyes were closed and his mouth was open in a wide, gap-toothed smile. A wispy white cloud in front of his mouth suggested the room – wherever it was – was icy cold.

Next to him, in the middle of the picture, was a much more familiar figure. He was leaning back in his chair, his arms folded across his broad chest. He was scowling at the camera – scowling at me – and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck bristle as I stared back into his dark, soulless eyes.

The collar of his overcoat was up round his ears, and the wide brim of his hat curved downwards, almost to meet it. Mr Mumbles looked just like he had when he’d come after me, but for two details.

His lips were unstitched, that was the first thing. My eyes had instinctively gone there, checking for the dirty lengths of thread that had kept his mouth sewn shut for most of our encounter. The scars were there – two rows of dark dots above and below his lips – but the stitching itself was gone.

The second unusual thing about Mr Mumbles’s appearance was his nose. It was as large and as hooked as ever, but in this picture a long, pointed icicle hung from the end, reaching all the way down past his chin. It was this that the boy on the right seemed to be finding so hilarious.

Seeing Mr Mumbles there came as a surprise, but it was the last figure that really shocked me.

He sat off to the left of the image, half out of shot. He was looking across at the boy and smiling – not laughing like the boy was – but smiling, definitely smiling.

His clothes were dark and coated with dust and grime. Across his chest were two small metal trays, attached by straps to more metal on his shoulders, like a crude, homemade suit of armour. From the dents and scratches in the metal, the armour had seen its share of battles.

His face was thin and drawn. A scar ran down the length of it, from above his right temple to below his mouth. The scar wasn’t fresh – a year or two old at least, I guessed. But... how was that possible?

I pulled the picture closer and studied it in the flickering light, searching for anything that would show it to be a fake. It had to be some kind of trick. It had to be, but I could see nothing to suggest anyone had tampered with the image.

I looked again at the third figure. His face was the one I knew best of all, the one I’d recognise anywhere.

Because it was mine.

The third person in the picture was me.

Except it wasn’t. This version of me looked older, taller, with a lean, muscular frame. So, not me, but someone who looked almost exactly like me. And who was having his photo taken with Mr Mumbles.

Did I have an evil twin? Was that it? I’d only recently found out that my dad was imaginary, so discovering I had a brother I knew nothing about wouldn’t really be that strange by comparison.

But... he looked so like me. And the photo was so old. And where were Mr Mumbles’s stitches? And who was the kid on the right?

The picture threw up several questions, but it provided nothing in the way of answers, and answers were what I needed now. I quickly shoved it back inside the wallet with the other three photographs, and looked through the other sections.

Empty. Aside from the pictures, there was nothing else in there. I closed the wallet with a snap. What a waste of time. I was even more confused now than I had been a few moments ago. I was getting nowhere.

I was about to slip the wallet into my pocket, when a tiny triangle of white caught my eye. It poked out from the seam at the wallet’s edge, like a little shark’s fin cutting through the stitching. I studied it more closely. The stitching along one side of the wallet was loose, as if it had been unpicked and then hurriedly sewn back up. My heart skipped a beat. The wallet had a hidden compartment!

It took a few tries to catch hold of the triangle between the tips of my fingers. It was plastic, a little thinner than a bank card. On the other side – the side facing away from me – I could feel a little bundle of paper, just two or three sheets, maybe. They seemed to be attached to the plastic, because when I moved it, they moved too.

I gave the triangle a tug. The stitching held it in place, and my grip slipped off the smooth plastic.

Kicking through the rubbish on the floor I searched for something to help me get the thing out. Bandages. A clipboard. Some rotten grapes. I found nothing useful until my toe pushed aside an old, torn magazine and revealed a surgical scalpel hiding below.

I slipped the tip of the scalpel inside the seam of the wallet, and split the stitches open.

I let the scalpel drop to the floor and hurriedly wiped my hand on my jeans. The plastic card slipped out easily. I shoved the wallet in my pocket and carefully unfolded the paper that was attached to the piece of plastic. It was a map. A map of the hospital. The kind they might give to visitors or patients to help them find which part of the building they needed to go to.

It wasn’t big – about the size of an A4 sheet of paper when fully unfolded – and there wasn’t a huge amount of detail on it, but I didn’t care. It told me everything I needed to know, because there, in one of the smaller hospital buildings off to the left of the main one, was a circle of red ink. It had been scrawled heavily round a rectangular room in the middle of the building. The writing was small and hard to make out in the erratic light, but if I held the map close I could just make out the text printed in the middle of the room.

For the first time in days, I laughed. Actually, properly laughed out loud. Had Joseph been with me I’d have kissed him. He had left me a message, telling me the cure was there in that room circled in red.

In that room marked “Ward 13”.

It took me a little longer to find where I was at the moment. I’d assumed the door we’d come through was a main entrance, but I was wrong. It wasn’t even marked on the map as a way in at all, so I guessed it must be for staff or emergencies only.

I was so happy at finding the map I wasn’t even discouraged by the fact that I was just about as far away from Ward 13 as it was possible to be in the main building. If I stayed inside the hospital I had a maze of corridors and wards to get through until I got to where I needed to go. If I went outside, I’d be eaten alive. It was no contest, really.

Memorising the first few twists and turns of the route, I refolded the map, shoved it way down deep in my back pocket, and set off along the shadowy corridor in search of Ward 13.

Chapter Five THE SEARCH BEGINS (#ulink_abdcdb37-a00e-5f88-9e1b-650ed45f5294)

Every one of the doors along the corridor led into offices of various sizes. Some were little more than large cupboards with just a single desk and chair in them. Others were big, sprawling things with bookcases, filing cabinets and tables too.

Regardless of their size, all the rooms were in the same condition. The furniture was toppled or broken. Books and papers were scattered across each filthy floor. The walls were decaying and the ceiling was damp and the windows – all of them – were blocked with planks of wood, sheets of metal and rusted lengths of barbed wire.

Computer equipment was smashed, chair coverings were torn, and the whole place stank like a sewer. It made me all the more desperate to find Ward 13 and get out.

But I knew if I wasn’t prepared I might never make it to Ward 13 alive. Back in the real world, my abilities gave me at least a fighting chance against the horrors that came hunting for me. I could conjure up a weapon, or a shield, or, or... something. But my powers didn’t work in the Darkest Corners, as I’d discovered when I’d tried using them to attack my dad.

My latest encounter with him seemed like an age ago. Could it really have been only yesterday?

I needed a weapon. Something to fight with, in case anything came after me in here. A gun would’ve been nice, but I’d have settled for a sword or an axe – something I could do serious damage with if I found myself cornered.