Doc Mortis. Barry Hutchison

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СКАЧАТЬ shook his head. From here I could see his hands on the steering wheel. The knuckles were white. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Something worse.’

      ‘Worse?’

      Joseph didn’t answer.

      ‘You seem to know a hell of a lot about all this,’ Ameena growled. ‘What’s going on? What’s wrong with him?’

      ‘He’s infected.’

      ‘Infected? Infected with what?’

      ‘No time to explain,’ Joseph said. He sounded irritated. ‘We need to get him to the hospital.’

      Ameena turned to look at me. Her head moved as a series of jerks. Her face looked blurred and hazy. When she spoke, her voice was muffled and faint. ‘Is there... Can they help him?’

      He may not have spoken, but I couldn’t miss Joseph’s reply when he glanced over at Ameena. It was written all over his face.

      ‘You holding on in there, Kyle?’ he asked, looking at me in the rear-view mirror. My mouth was too dry to speak, but I managed to hold up a thumb for him to see. ‘Good lad,’ he said. I was jostled sideways as the car pulled round a corner and on to a much narrower road. ‘Not long now, it’s just up— No, no, no!’

      ‘What now?’ asked Ameena. Before Joseph could reply she said, ‘What happened to the engine?’

      The car rolled slowly and silently to a stop. ‘They’ve killed it.’

      ‘Who has?’

      ‘I don’t know! Someone!’ Joseph roared. His voice was so loud it made even Ameena jump. ‘We need to get him in there,’ he said, a little more quietly. He nodded ahead, to where the hospital stood. ‘It can’t happen out here.’

      Ameena began to speak, but he cut her off. ‘When I say, get out of the car and help Kyle up. We’ll both carry him. No arguments, we need to move fast.’

      After a quick glance at me, she nodded.

      ‘OK. On three. One. Two.’

      ‘Three!’ Ameena cried, throwing open her door.

      My door flew open next, and hands reached in for me. They caught me by the front of my jumper and dragged me out into the chilly night air. The blast of cold cleared away the cobwebs a little.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ