Brotherhood of Shades

He ran over and patted a low chrome-framed chair that stood tucked away deep in the maze of book-filled shelves.

“I’m gonna miss you, old friend,” he said solemnly to the piece of battered furniture.

“You will miss a chair?” D’Scover asked.

“I don’t have anything else to miss, do I?”

The library faded and was replaced with another building, the homeless hostel where Adam had spent Christmas. After this came the Salvation Army soup kitchen and the smiling faces of the Army handing out food and blankets. Then images of cold alleys and rainy nights fading into the doorway where he had spent his last night and finally the hospice and its quiet, darkened corridors.

“I have to show you something,” D’Scover told him when the Memoria settled once more. “I am afraid this may be painful for you.”

“Why do you have to show me?” Adam asked nervously. “Don’t show me if it’s horrible.”

“I must show you because it is important and because you have not shown it to yourself. It is a condition of the Memoria that you expel all emotional dead weight,” he explained. “I can sense that there is a memory long hidden deep in your psyche; you may not know you even possess it, but it presses on your consciousness and so must be seen.”

“You can see inside my head?”

“No, but you are still here in this Memoria, and so there must be something stopping you from releasing these images. I shall attempt to unlock them, if I may?”

Adam nodded and D’Scover lifted his arms and spread them wide as though opening curtains. The hospice whirled from view, torn away to be replaced with a small room full of sunshine. Dust motes hung in the afternoon sun, slowly spiralling in a fluid pattern in the languid air. Sunlight cut through the shadows above a desk where a young woman, no more than a girl, sat opposite an ashen-faced middle-aged woman. The girl clutched tightly at a chubby baby that lay sleeping peacefully across her tiny lap. His thick pink legs hung down over the edge, occasionally twitching gently in his sleep, deep in his innocent dreams.

“He should go to someone who can take care of him,” she pleaded as slow tears rolled down her cheeks. “You will make sure, won’t you? I just can’t look after him myself. He needs a proper family. I can’t be a mother to him, and I never even wanted him. It was an accident and his father’s no good. I can’t be with him and I just can’t have a baby – it’s not right. He should be with someone who actually wants him. He’ll be safe with someone else, someone who can feed him properly and give him everything he deserves, someone who’ll actually love him because I don’t. You will make sure of all that, won’t you?”

The older woman walked to a tall grey filing cabinet and pulled a file out of the top drawer. Slapping it down on the table, she pulled out a number of sheets of paper and pushed them across the desk towards the girl.

“You must sign this release for the boy, and the other paperwork is all just standard.” She smiled a grim smile. “And we’ll take care of everything else. You mustn’t worry; we have a number of families who are keen to take good care of such a bonny baby.”

The girl leaned forward and looked at the sheets of paper, scanning them through, but not reading them.

“It’s all very standard, I can assure you,” the woman said.

“And you’re sure I’ll never have to see him again?” the girl asked, hesitating as she reached out for the pen. “It’ll be just as if I never had him, as if I’d never had a baby at all?”

The woman nodded and the girl took the pen from the desk and signed a childish and unpractised signature at the bottom of the page. A button was pressed on the desk, a sharp buzz could be heard through the wall and a gangly woman in a nurse’s uniform entered.

“She’ll take good care of him, won’t she?” the girl pleaded.

The older woman nodded and the girl stood up with the still sleeping baby lying oblivious to his impending abandonment in her arms. She kissed him on the forehead and held him tight.

“I’ll always remember you,” she whispered. “You might not believe me, but one day you’ll know I did this for you, for the best.”

She handed the baby to the nurse, and he did not even stir from his slumber. The nurse walked from the room, letting the door swing shut heavily behind her. The noise it created ran like a gunshot through the room, and the girl crumpled into the chair, torn apart by great sobs that she could barely breathe through.

“STOP!” Adam screamed and the Memoria froze.

D’Scover had never seen it do this; it faded out but never stopped with such a clear image like this. He swung his arm out and the room looked as though a thick veil had been pulled across it. Adam turned his face away.

“I did warn you it would be emotionally painful,” D’Scover said. “But you needed to see it.”

“That was my mother,” Adam said blankly. “My real mother, that was her, wasn’t it?”

“Her image lay deep in your memory from when you were a baby.”

“I want to see her now. I want to see her and . . . and tell her . . . and just say that . . .” He slid down and sat on the floor, or rather on the grey smudge that currently represented the floor. “Who am I kidding? I don’t know what I want.”

D’Scover walked over and sat down next to him.

“She thought she was doing the best for you,” he said gently. “It may not mean a lot to you now, but she did do it for what she thought were the right reasons, you have to understand that.”

“NO!” Adam stood quickly and turned his tear-stained face away from D’Scover. “I have to know for myself why she gave me away. Please, I have to know. I want to see her NOW.”

Adam looked back to the veiled Memoria and curled his small fists at his sides; turning his face upwards, he began to scream. Above the two of them a swirling black mass began to descend and envelop them both. Adam’s scream became the noise of the wind and in the middle of the black cyclone he stood with his eyes closed and his hair whipped around by the rush of air. D’Scover grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him hard, trying to snap him out of the hurt rage that possessed him.

“ADAM!” D’Scover yelled. “THIS WILL NOT WORK. YOU CANNOT FORCE

THIS!”

Adam opened his eyes and looked hard at D’Scover and the wind fell like a stone. D’Scover stared at Adam through the stillness and realised the boy was looking past him at something behind. He let go of the boy’s thin shoulders and turned slowly. Behind him there was another green space, a garden this time with a smaller swing set and slide and a tiny weedy pond. Next to the pond sat a young woman in a deckchair, a discarded book in her lap. Time had passed, but there was no mistaking the face of the young girl who had given up her baby over fourteen years earlier. She carried a thin but content smile as she stared down the garden, watching something. A child of about three years old played in a sandpit a few metres away, driving a bright red truck backwards and forwards, scattering sand over the edges into the grass.

“Adam,” D’Scover said softly, “you cannot stay here; we have to move on.”

Adam crouched down by the child and looked into his face. The child remained unaware of Adam’s presence and carried on playing his simple digging game.

“This should be me.” Adam looked over his shoulder at D’Scover. “If I’d not been born when I was, if I’d not been an accident, I could’ve been this kid.”

“No,” D’Scover said gently, “that is not the way it works. You were you. This child has a different spirit and will live out his life. Your life is over and however tragic, brutal and short your existence was, it was still your existence. You have had your time; this is his time,” D’Scover explained. “We have to leave now.”

Adam ignored him, and instead walked over to where the woman sat.

“My mother.” He said the words carefully, experimentally. “I don’t think I’ve ever said that out loud before. I’ve cried it in my sleep, and wished it in my dreams, but never said it out loud. It sounds strange.” He looked closely into her face. “Mother.”

Leaning forward, he kissed her cheek lightly. He reeled back as she shuddered and her hand flew to the spot where his lips had briefly rested. Staggering back a few more steps, he reached D’Scover.

“She felt it!” he gasped, turning to stare into D’Scover’s face. “How the bloody hell did she feel it? This isn’t real, is it?”

“This is not real; you are imagining what she would do and have constructed this to suit what you imagine will happen,” D’Scover said, but he sounded unconvinced. “We have to leave this place.”

His voice was cold as he once more reached into the air and pulled across the veil and they were standing in another dark room.

“Where are we now?” Adam asked.

“Where we always were,” D’Scover replied. “The place in which you died.”

Adam looked around and realised that they were in the hospice. The room was still empty and the bed had been stripped, but Adam recognised it and, inexplicably, he felt safe here.

“I have to leave you here for now,” D’Scover said. “I have some work to do at my offices, but I will return shortly.”

“Leave? But what am I going to do while you’re gone?”