The Darkest Corners (11 page)

T
he route to the theatre was clearly marked, but I didn't need the signs to show me the way. I just followed the music instead.

The pain in my knee made my teeth clamp together. I hissed through every step until I finally shouldered through a set of double swing doors marked
ANAESTHETIC ROOM
.

The music shook every surface in there, vibrating the floor and trembling the walls. Ameena came through the doors behind me, but I was already charging for the exit that led into the operating theatre itself.

I clattered against the metal frame of a bed that stood just beyond the doors. The bed was empty, but the white sheets were stained with blood and other fluids I didn't even want to guess at.

There was a second bed squeezed into the small room, and this one was occupied. Billy was strapped to it, his eyes wide and staring, his mouth still sewn shut. He moaned and mumbled as he saw me, and nodded frantically towards the leather cuffs that held him to the bed frame.

‘You're alive, thank God,' I said, almost cheering.

Billy was definitely alive, but he looked as if he'd prefer not to be. He was a mess of tears and snot and slick, shiny blood. The blood covered the lower half of his face. It looked even redder in the glow of the emergency lighting.

Ameena sidled in behind me. ‘Well, that was easy,' she said. Her eyes scanned the otherwise empty operating theatre. ‘Almost too—'

‘Don't!' I yelped. ‘Don't say it.'

She mimed zipping her lips closed, then shot Billy an apologetic look. ‘Oops, sorry. I forgot. You know? About the...' She pointed to her mouth. Billy glared at her. ‘I'll shut up now,' she said. She began her lip-zipping mime, then stopped. ‘Sorry, doing it again.'

‘Don't move, Billy. We're going to get you out of here.'

Billy's eyes went to the straps on his wrists again. Moving wasn't an option for him. I set to work undoing the buckles. The chorus of ‘The Teddy Bear's Picnic' continued to chime around us. ‘God, I hate that song,' I muttered. ‘Find where it's coming from and shut it up.'

Someone tutted from the shadows by the corner. I froze. Even in those
tuts
I could detect the accent. It was Eastern European, but not from any specific country I could identify. It was the sort of accent a bad comedian might put on when making racist jokes about immigrants.

It was the accent of Doc Mortis.

There was a soft
bleep
and the music stopped. ‘You are having very poor taste,' he told me. He emerged from the shadows, back to looking like his real self.

It appeared as if a nursery school had used his coat to practise finger-painting on, and that the only colour they had available was red. It was more crimson than white, and it stank of death.

His turkey-like neck had the scar again, and the missing patch of scalp was back. He wore his old glasses too, the round ones with the broken lenses. It was as if the
Dr Morris
version of him I'd seen really was an entirely different person.

I noticed he had a portable CD player clutched in his rubber-gloved hands. He pressed a button on top of the machine and a lid opened smoothly. Doc shook his head, marvelling at the technology.

‘The compact discs,' he said. ‘Like a record, but smaller. Shinier too. Someone, they took the record and they looked at it and they thought “I can do better than this.”.'

I held the baton ready at my side, and saw that Ameena was doing the same. We moved closer together so we both stood between Doc and Billy. But Doc only seemed interested in the CD at the moment. He had removed it from the player and was holding it up, his stubby fingers splayed round the edges.

‘Incredible, do you not think? I have never seen one before, until this day. Someone took the record and they improved it. Made it better than it was.' Doc's eyes crept over to me. His rubbery lips parted into a smirk, revealing his yellowing teeth. ‘
Improved
it, yes? Made it
better
.'
He flicked his tongue across the teeth. ‘Just like I do.'

‘You don't
improve
anyone. You torture them. You mutilate them.'

He waved a dismissive hand. ‘You say tomato, I say tomato,' he shrugged, rhyming the first one with
potato
. ‘I make art. Is it my fault that no one appreciates my genius?'

‘You're not a genius,' I said. ‘You're a headcase.'

‘The line between the two, it is thinner than you know. Perhaps I walk along the line, yes? Right along its razor edge.'

‘Or maybe you're just a sick freak who gets his thrills from hurting innocent people,' Ameena snapped, and there was real venom in her voice.

Doc looked her up and down, starting at the feet and letting his eyes work their way slowly up until they met her gaze. His creepy smile spread across his fish lips again. ‘This I will not argue with. But who is innocent these days? You?' He gestured to Billy. ‘Him? Anyone? No, no, I do not think so.'

He put the CD back in the machine and pushed the lid closed with one finger. I shifted my grip on the baton. If he pressed
Play
that CD player was getting it. If I never heard ‘The Teddy Bear's
bloody
Picnic' again it would be too soon.

Thankfully he didn't start the disc, and the player lived to play another day. He set the machine down on a stainless-steel table and gave me an appraising look.

‘Your father, he thinks he is a genius, but he is not. He came to Doc Mortis talking of an alliance. An alliance that would allow me back into the real world. That would allow me a limitless number of new patients for my hospital.'

He brought his left hand up close to his face and I saw he was now holding a surgical scalpel. Doc tilted the knife and the red emergency lights reflected off the polished blade.

‘And he did as he said. With my help, of course. He got us back. Here we are. But this means he has outlived his usefulness, I think.' He studied the scalpel. ‘I will very much enjoy adding him to my new gallery.'

‘Please do,' I urged, and Doc snorted with laughter.

‘But you first, real boy. I wished to operate on you in the Darkest Corners, but you escaped. Today, there will be no escape for you.'

‘Want to bet on that?' I said, giving the baton a flick. ‘We're taking Billy and we're getting out of here. Try to stop us and you'll be the one needing to be hospitalised.'

Doc set down the scalpel. He patted the empty bed with its blood-soaked sheets. A shiver of excitement travelled through him. ‘Still warm,' he whispered, then he giggled softly.

I shifted on the balls of my feet and shot Ameena an uneasy look. ‘Untie Billy,' I said, then I turned back to Doc. ‘I'll watch him.'

Ameena set to work removing Billy's straps. Doc held his hands up in a surrender pose. ‘Do not worry. I will not try to stop you,' he said, but a dark glee shone out from his piggy little eyes. He turned his face to the corner opposite him. It too was bathed in shadow. ‘He, on the other hand, will do much more than try.'

I realised then that there were not just four of us in the room. There were five. A Frankenstein's monster of a thing took two faltering steps into the light. It was all stitches and scars, a patchwork quilt of skin and sinew sewn together with thick black wire.

It was naked, but a vast, distended stomach protected its modesty. The gut hung down almost to the knees. Things wriggled inside it, pushing outwards, trying to climb right through the flesh.

Ameena undid the last buckle and Billy rolled off the bed. We took cover behind it as Doc's latest patient came waddling closer, its ragged, pieced-together hands grasping for us.

‘Do you like?' Doc sniggered. ‘This is my all new Patient Zero. One of my finest creations to date. Over here, I have so many exciting tools at my disposal. With this, I have only just scratched the surface.'

The behemoth stumbled and bumped into the bed. Its face was made up of a dozen or more parts. The eyes were different colours. The ears were different sizes. Not even the eyebrows matched.

‘A whole ward of the sick and the dying, pieced together to make one perfect specimen,' Doc cackled.

We backed away as the thing began to shamble round the bed. Its stomach heaved and rolled like the surface of the sea. The effect was horrible, but strangely hypnotic at the same time.

It had moved between us and the door, continuing its lumbering route towards us. I was still holding the baton, but I didn't really want to get close enough to use it. The smell of the brute alone was keeping me well back.

‘I am very much going to enjoy this,' Doc said. Patient Zero took another step towards us. A melancholy groan escaped through its mismatched lips, and then it stopped advancing.

A hand, each finger a slightly different colour, moved shakily to its chest. One of Patient Zero's eyes widened, while the other narrowed. The hand clutched at where its heart was still presumably located. Then, with a final groan, the monster toppled backwards.

As Patient Zero hit the floor, its stomach burst like a water balloon, but a water balloon filled with rats and bugs and something that looked like custard. I retched at the stink, and jumped back as the insects and rodents squirmed, scampered and squelched in every direction across the floor.

Doc stared down at the definitely dead thing spread out at our feet. The smile fell from his rubbery lips. ‘Oh,' he muttered. ‘Well, that was disappointing.'

He shrugged and the smirk came back. ‘No matter.' Doc interlocked his fingers, then pushed them outwards until the knuckles cracked. ‘I will just have to take care of you myself.'

‘You?' I snorted. ‘Without your porters or your monsters to help you?'

‘Kyle, don't,' Ameena hissed, and the fear in her voice made me hesitate.

Doc's grin spread further. ‘Ah yes, she knows about me. She has heard the stories of what I can do.'

His arm flicked, little more than a blur. A sharp stinging pain cut across my cheek, and I felt blood run down over my chin. Behind me, embedded into the wall, a scalpel vibrated to a stop.

Doc twitched his arms and two more blades slid down from his sleeves. He caught them in his gloved hands, but Ameena was already bundling Billy and me out of the doors that led to the anaesthetic room. A scalpel stuck deep into the doorframe right beside my head, but then we were through the doors and heading for the next set.

We pulled Billy along, out of the second room and into the corridor. I hobbled as quickly as I could, but I wasn't fast enough. I was holding them back.

‘Go! Get away,' I told them, releasing my grip on Billy's arm.

‘What?' Ameena spluttered. ‘Are you mental? No way am I leaving you.'

‘I'll slow you down. Get out to the car and I'll catch up. I'll find you.'

Ameena hesitated, but I shoved them both on. ‘I'll come back,' she said.

‘Don't you dare. Get to the car. Keep Billy safe. If I don't make it, you're the only one who knows what my dad's done. You're the only one who can make him pay.'

She shuffled awkwardly, then nodded. ‘Don't be long,' she said, and then she and Billy were running along the corridor towards the exit.

If you go down to the woods today, you'd better not go alone…

‘Great,' I whispered as the music kicked in louder than ever. ‘This again.'

The doors to the anaesthetic room swung outwards, revealing Doc silhouetted against the red emergency lighting.

It's lovely down in the woods today, but safer to stay at home…

‘Here we are, real boy,' Doc said, shouting to make himself heard. ‘It is just you and I now, yes?'

His wrist snapped forward. Metal glinted in the space between us. Instinctively, I raised my arms in front of my face. The scalpel clattered off the baton and fell to the floor.

‘A lucky escape,' Doc sniggered. He held up the other knife. ‘No matter. For this one, I will get right up close.'

For every bear that ever there was…