Doc Mortis

Chapter Three THE OTHER OTHER HOSPITAL

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.

The last thing I heard before I passed out were those voices, louder and clearer and more excited than ever before.

Hungry, hungry, huuuuuuuungry!

The clanking of metal woke me. I leapt to my feet, startled, no real idea what was going on. The wallet was still wedged in my mouth. I spat it out, and realised at once that my body no longer hurt.

I prodded gently at my head. The Crowmaster’s scratches were still there, but there was no pain. Nothing. In fact, other than a dull ache where my knees had hit the hospital floor, I felt in perfect health.

Relief made me snort out a laugh, but another metallic crash soon wiped the smile from my face.

The sound was coming from the door, or rather, where the door should have been. Sheets of heavy corrugated iron covered the entrance, wedged in place by thick metal poles and thicker wooden beams. Rolls of barbed wire were strung across the entire barricade, cupping it like a sling and keeping it pressed against the door.

Everything – the metal, the wood, the wire – shook as the creatures on the other side of the door hurled themselves against it. I could make some of them out through gaps in the blockade, battering against the small windows with clawed, misshapen hands. The glass looked to be long gone, but a wire mesh and half a dozen strong bars stood in its place, keeping everything outside from getting in. Everything except their voices.

They giggled and shrieked. They spat and swore. They hissed and howled and hollered like all the demons of hell. And all the while, the barricade shook and the chanting continued:

Hungry, hungry, hungry!

I turned away and tried to get my bearings. A putrid, mouldy stench caught me right at the back of the throat, and I had to pull the neck of my jumper up over my nose to stop myself being sick.

I was in a long corridor that stretched away into the distance, ending in shadow. Fluorescent strip lights hung from the ceiling overhead. Most of them didn’t seem to work, but four buzzed and flashed erratically, casting a cold, flickering glow along parts of the corridor.

Those bits of the corridor I could see were in bad shape. The tiles on the lower half of the walls were filthy, cracked, or crumbled away completely. Above them, on the top part of the walls, it was impossible to tell what colour the paintwork had once been. Damp had seeped through it, marbling the surface with shades of black and brown. Large flakes of the ruined paint had peeled off, revealing patches of raw brickwork below.

Doors lined each side of the corridor. Some stood open. Others hung in pieces, the wood rotten and decayed. More light flickered from beyond some of the doors, suggesting this corridor wasn’t the only one to have power.

Dark puddles covered parts of the floor, fed by the constant drip-drip-drip of water that leaked through the decomposing ceiling tiles. At least, I hoped it was water. The rest of the floor, where the puddles didn’t reach, was a mess of debris and junk.

Soiled bandages and dirty syringes lay scattered around my feet. The half-melted head of a plastic doll stared up at me from within a nest of surgical gauze. I swung back my leg and booted the thing as far along the corridor as I could. I’ve found you can never be too careful when it comes to creepy-looking dolls.

Hungry, hungry, hungry! the voices behind the barricade screamed. Hungry, hungry, hungry!

That was it. I’d seen and heard enough. I had missed some of what Joseph had told me, but I remembered him saying I wouldn’t be able to get back. It was time to put that to the test.

I’d become pretty good at flitting between the Darkest Corners and the real world. It didn’t take much effort now. I used to have to really concentrate, but now I could make the jump just by thinking about it for a few seconds.

Still, I was taking no chances this time. I shut my eyes, tried to block out the crashing and howling from the entrance, and focused like I’d never focused before.

It happened in a heartbeat. The decaying walls around me appeared to heal, as the real world rushed in to replace the festering wound that was the Darkest Corners.

The sunlight that came streaming in through the windows burned away the stuttering shadows. I looked around. The barricade was gone. The filth and the rot were gone.

But Ameena was there. Ameena and Joseph. Her face crinkled into a grin when I appeared beside them. Joseph’s expression barely changed – just a raising of his eyebrows in the middle, and a slight widening of his eyes. It wasn’t a look that suggested he was pleased to see me.

From that look alone, I should have realised something wasn’t right, but I didn’t. I smiled cockily back at them, telling myself that Joseph was just unhappy at having been proved wrong—

A bomb went off behind my eyes and I saw blood splatter on the floor at my feet. The pain crippled me, making my body go limp. I dropped to my hands and knees, my muscles spasming, rivers of red flowing from each nostril and down over my mouth and chin.

I tried to scream, but the blood was flowing down my throat. I coughed, spluttered, hacked – choking on the stuff, drowning in it.

The second jolt of pain was worse than the first. It hit me like a hammer-blow to the side of the head. The force of it took my arms and legs out from under me.

I landed, face down, in a grimy puddle.

Hungry, hungry, hungry. Hungry, hungry, hungry!

The pain eased off and the blood stopped flowing. I coughed up a wad of dark red and left it floating in the water. I didn’t move for over a minute, just knelt there, staring at my bloodied reflection flickering off and on in the puddle. There one second, gone the next.

I didn’t have to look to know the barricade was there. There had been no flashing sparks, no sensation of movement – nothing to signal I was flitting between worlds. But I was. I had. I was back in the Darkest Corners. And it looked like I was stuck there.

At long last, I stood up. I looked at the spot where Ameena had been standing. Where she was still standing, a whole world away. She’d be shouting at Joseph now, demanding to know what had just happened. The thought of it almost made me smile. Almost.

The corridor went dark. For a few seconds I could see nothing. The crashing of metal and the screeching of the creatures outside sounded louder and closer in the sudden darkness, but I didn’t dare run. With no light to see by, I could bump into anything, and I didn’t imagine there was anything good to bump into in here.

Then, as I’d begun to wonder if the lights would ever come back on, they did. All four of them resumed their random blinking and flashing, offering me at least a partial view of the corridor.

I kept my back to the barricaded door. Going that way was out of the question. The only route open to me, it seemed, was down the corridor, further into the hospital.

I peered along it, at the filth and the rot and the dark pools of shadow. More than anything I did not want to go that way. More than anything, I knew I had to.

Ameena and Joseph had mentioned a cure – a cure that could only be found in the Darkest Corners. Was that why Joseph had brought me here? Was the cure here in the hospital? It made sense, but that was what worried me. Nothing about the Darkest Corners normally made sense.

But still, if there was a cure, then I would find it. What other choice did I have? Being stuck here – being trapped for ever in the Darkest Corners – was unthinkable.

I took a few big, bold steps along the corridor, then stopped. What was I doing? Joseph had also said there was somebody in the hospital. Somebody worse than anyone I’d crossed paths with before.

I thought of Mr Mumbles, Caddie and the Crowmaster. I couldn’t believe there could be anyone worse than those three. But what if Joseph was right? If there was something even half as bad as any of the monsters I’d faced so far, I was in real trouble. Back there, back in the real world, I could do things. I could stop them. Here, I was just a kid. Here, I was powerless.

Here, I was as good as dead.

Ameena would know what to do. She’d come up with a plan and find a way to make it work. But Ameena wasn’t coming. No one was coming. I was trapped in a big scary hospital in a big scary world, and I was on my own.

Squeak.

Squeak.

Squeak.

The sudden sound made me jump, and I gave a little yelp that only reminded me how scared I was. The squeaking had come from... where? Somewhere along the corridor, I thought, but it had an echoey quality, suggesting it might have come from further away.

I stood still, listening, not daring to make a move. Even the things outside had fallen silent, and were no longer battering against the barrier. The sound didn’t take long to come again – a high-pitched squeak-squeak-squeak like some sort of machine badly in need of oiling. There was another sound too, behind the first one. It took me a moment, but I soon identified it. Footsteps, slow and steady, clack, clack, clack.

Joseph was right. I was wrong. I may have been trapped in a big scary hospital in a big scary world, but now I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I was definitely not on my own.

Chapter Four FINDING THE WAY

Ilistened again for the squeaking and the footsteps, but heard them only once. They were further away this time, somewhere deeper within the hospital, and I decided it was finally safe to... to...

To do what? I was at a loss. From what I’d seen of it from the outside, the hospital was enormous. Finding a cure – if there even was one – would be virtually impossible. Would it be a pill? A drink? An injection? Some kind of machine? How could I look for it when I didn’t even know what it was, let alone where it was?

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.