20 Years Later (14 page)

Zane smiled. “I don't.”

Titus sighed with frustration. “When we next go there, you need to think before you speak. You shouldn't have told her about the dream stuff.”

“Why?”

Titus tried to respond but couldn't seem to find the right words.

Zane scratched his head. “Don't you like her?” he asked in disbelief.

Titus didn't reply immediately. “I … I just had the feeling that she was much more in control than she let on. And I think she knew about my dream already. When I was telling her, it was like she had already heard it.”

“Maybe other people have had the same dream. Like we both had the one about Luthor.”

Titus shook his head. “No, it was different … not like she'd heard it before … it was …” He frowned. “It was like she was checking if I told all of it, like it was a test.”

“How do you know that? She looked interested to me, like she'd never heard it before.”

Titus looked away. “I just know,” he mumbled and went into the house.

Zane woke with a start, confused and disoriented in the darkness of his room. It took him a moment to remember that he was sleeping on the floor. Then he realised that there was a hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently.

“What?”

“Shhhh,” Titus whispered in his ear. “Keep quiet.”

Zane did as he was asked for a moment before whispering, “What's wrong?”

“Shhhh.”

The room was utterly silent, as were the square and garden outside. That was normal since the boys had grown up in a London that was quiet, save the sounds of wildlife. They knew nothing different.

Then a noise rang out through the darkness, tensing all of Zane's muscles in an instant. He recognised that metallic clang.

“The Giant!” he gasped and sat bolt upright, fumbling desperately for the matches and candle that were always at his bedside.

“Giant?” Titus hissed under his breath. “What are you talking about?”

Zane struck a match, lighting a candle that revealed the fear on his face and Titus sitting on the edge of the bed. Zane checked that his curtains were completely shut, afraid that the candlelight might escape and attract the Giant to his house.

“Yes …” He paused, both of them listening hard to the sound of the footsteps moving away from the far side of the
square into the distance. “Me and Dev saw him at the hospital.” He related the events to Titus in a low whisper as the last of the footsteps faded. “I haven't thought about it for a while,” he said finally.

Titus pondered. “It sounds like he came back. What did Miri say about it?”

“I haven't told her.”

“Are you going to?”

Zane squirmed a little. “Don't know. I don't want her to worry. She doesn't like hospitals and I'm not supposed to go into them.”

Titus lay back down carefully, mindful of his healing ribs. “It doesn't sound like the Giant is coming here. We should sleep and do something about this tomorrow.”

With that, he drew the covers over himself and Zane listened to his breathing slow and become steady, marvelling at how easily his friend had returned to sleep. After pinching out the candle flame, he lay there for a long while, fretting about the Giant, wondering about the hunt and who would bring back the hide. He assumed it would be Luthor and that made him more restless, having realised by now which door she had meant. It was some time before sleep smothered the noise of his mind.

Erin arrived early the next morning whilst they were still having breakfast. She tapped on Zane's window and he opened it to find her panting as if she had been running. She looked tense and kept checking behind her.

“Can I come in?” she asked urgently. At Zane's nod she scrabbled over the windowsill, dropping lightly into his room. Both boys noticed the knife in her hand.

She shut and locked the window behind her. Seeing their eyes on her knife, she slipped it back into the sheath at her belt.

“I borrowed it from a friend,” she said, her posture betraying her tension.

“Is everything alright?” Titus asked.

She nodded a little too quickly, glancing back into the square. Zane and Titus exchanged a worried look.

“Is there someone out there?” Zane asked, fearful that the Giant had returned.

“No-one's in the square,” she replied, in a tone that suggested that she didn't want to speak further on the topic.

“Who won the hunt?” Zane enquired as nonchalantly as he could manage.

“No-one yet,” she replied, sitting on the edge of the bed.

She looked around his room. It was neat and clean, like all of the other rooms in his mother's house, containing simply a bed, a chair, and a chest of drawers covered over the top with a collection of nature's curios acquired over the years from the garden. There was also a wall full of books ranging from those that he'd had as a child with which Miri had taught him to read to encyclopaedias of herbs and medicinal remedies. He realised it was the first time a girl had been in it, and that made him feel strangely awkward.

“The deer aren't so far east yet, so the Hunters have had to travel further west from what I've heard. But it'll be my dad that wins,” she stated confidently.

Zane picked at a thread hanging from his trouser hem. Titus stood purposefully. “Well, seeing as Luthor is still away, this is the perfect time. Zane, tell Miri we're going over to the Red Lady's and then meet us at the far corner of the square.”

“Did you have a dream?” Zane asked, getting up eagerly.

“No,” Titus whispered, beckoning them both towards him conspiratorially. “We're not going to her place at all. Erin, I'll explain whilst we wait for him. We're going to the hospital to find what this Giant is so interested in.”

“I'm really not sure about this,” Zane whispered as the three of them crouched next to the round windowed door on the third floor of the stairwell. It was still fairly dark even though it was bright outside and he was convinced that it would be darker still in the corridor.

Erin sighed. “Stop saying that.”

“But I really do think this is a bad idea,” Zane persisted. “What if the Giant is in there?”

“No-one is here,” Titus said with absolute confidence. When Zane didn't relax, he added, “If he breathes as loud as you say, we'll hear him before we get to the door.”

Zane chewed his lip. “Mum says it's a bad idea to go into hospitals. Maybe we should go.”

“Shut up, Zane!” Erin whispered. “Look, I'll scout ahead, ok?”

Before they had the chance to respond, she drew her knife, opened the door a crack, and peeped through. She opened it more then slipped through, knife in front of her, keeping her centre of gravity low and moving carefully as her father had taught her. She followed the footsteps to the room that the Giant had entered, the tracks clearly visible in the dust. Pressing her ear to the door, she listened for a few moments and then crept back.

Zane jumped as she came back into the stairwell.

“Clear,” she whispered.

Titus stood and went into the corridor as Erin waved Zane through, bringing up the rear. They went towards the door. Titus examined the prints in the dust. “Strange shoes,” he commented, and then looked at the door. He pulled a sleeve down over his hand and wiped at a piece of metal positioned high up at eye level. He squinted to make out the letters in the gloom, found it impossible, and so struck a match from a box in his pocket. “Doctor Z. Al Siddique,
Doctor J. Shannon,” he read out loud. “I suppose this room belonged to them.”

“What's a doctor?” Erin asked.

“Someone that makes people better,” Titus replied. “Like Miri and Zane.”

“Doctor Zane,” Zane whispered to himself, trying it out. “Sounds weird.”

Titus turned the handle and slowly opened the door, Erin poised behind him with her knife. He looked first and then stepped inside, beckoning to his companions to follow.

Once inside, Erin put away her weapon as Zane shut the door behind him and looked around the room.

It contained two large wooden desks, two leather swivel chairs, one of which was on its side, and two walls full of files and books. A grey metal filing cabinet stood in the far corner, one of the drawers open, and all around it pieces of paper were strewn, left where they had fallen. Blinds at the window that practically filled the wall opposite the doorway were drawn, but Titus opened them and daylight filtered through the streaks of dirt into the dusty room. Both of the desks were positioned under the window, so that whoever sat at them could enjoy the view. Computer monitors, grimy and dark-screened, sat atop them, their keyboards covered with dust. None of the children had the faintest idea what they were.

Titus pointed at the Giant's footprints. By the look of it he had been to the filing cabinet a couple of times and also along the book shelves. There were several gaps where books seemed to be missing. Titus picked up a sheaf of papers from the floor and Erin went to the window to look outside whilst Zane hovered near the exit, ready to run.

“You can see loads of stuff from here,” Erin commented, peering through one of the clearer patches. “Zane, come and see.”

He shook his head. She shrugged and carried on admiring the view. Titus flipped through the pages in his hand, frowning.

“There are lots of words I don't understand,” he said quietly. “I think it might be something to do with someone being ill. It talks about a patient a lot.”

Zane fidgeted, eager to go home. Erin turned around to see the rest of the room. When she faced the wall opposite, her eyes widened.

“Look at all that!”

The wall was completely covered in pieces of shiny paper of various sizes. The one at the centre was a large rectangular grid of tiny squares marking out the days of the year with faded writing on most of them. Next to it was a poster of the brain of a yellow cartoon man that looked very odd to the children. All over the rest of the wall were photos, several hundred of them, pinned so close to each other that they often overlapped. It was these that drew Erin's attention. She was first over to the wall, carefully wiping the dust from them with her sleeve.

They peered at them, seeing another world of clean smart clothes, fresh, healthy faces, lots of smiles, and glasses held in hands with all manner of different coloured liquids in them. Everyone in the photos looked happy, all of them older than the children but much younger than Miri. Most of the locations were indoors, in places strangely lit with crowds of people in the background. There were many women, dressed in a kaleidoscopic array of dresses and outfits, some of which seemed to sparkle in the light.

Erin gasped. “Look, Zane! He looks just like you!”

The two boys hurried over to see the one she pointed at. Two men, dressed in crisp suits reminiscent of the Gardners, but without the long black ties, were seated at a table with the whitest cloth they had ever seen covering it. They were both smiling broadly and holding up a glass each. Both had neatly
cropped black hair, but one had skin that was much darker than the other. The white man had a neat goatee beard and brilliant blue eyes that sparkled out at them. Zane couldn't take his eyes off him.

“He does look like me!” he whispered.

“Even more when you tie your hair back,” Erin said. “If you had blue eyes and a hairy face like him, you could be brothers. I wonder why the other one has such dark skin. He must have spent a lot of time outdoors.” Even as she said it, she didn't believe it, but having never seen anyone with skin like his, she couldn't think of another explanation.

Titus scanned the other photos. “They're both in lots of these pictures,” he said, pointing some out. The children moved from one to the other, examining them closely. “I think they were good friends,” he commented. “And there are lots of girls with them.” He pointed out three photographs taken at different times. In each one, a different woman had her arms around the men's arms or necks, in some they were even kissing.

Erin shuddered and looked behind her, shrugged, and then went back to the pictures.

After a few moments, Titus unpinned one from the wall to take it over to the window. “Look!” he said. “This one was taken here in the hospital. I recognise the painting of the lady from downstairs.”

The others came over to look at the photo of the same two men, this time dressed in long white jackets with more sensible smiles on their faces. They looked proud, and the dark-skinned man was holding up a piece of metal in front of them.

“It's the thing from the door!” Zane cried. “They must be the doctors whose room this is, I mean was.”

Titus nodded at him, clearly having reached that conclusion some time ago.

“They look like nice people,” Erin said quietly, almost wistfully.

Both Titus and Zane agreed. “Happy too,” Titus added.

“Do you think he could be my dad?” Zane asked hesitantly and his friends nodded. Zane stared at the picture. “I wish I'd known him,” he sighed, and swallowed down the lump rising in his throat. “Mum said he died when It happened.”

“Lots of people died,” Titus said.

Erin started and looked behind her, hand flying to her knife. Zane jumped and Titus looked alert. “Did you hear that?” she demanded nervously.

They both shook their heads. Erin shuddered violently and looked to her right sharply, as if seeing something from the corner of her eye.

“There's no-one here,” Titus said, trying to calm her. He assumed Zane's nerves were getting to her.

“How do you know?” Zane said, voice cracking.

“I just know,” Titus replied confidently.

Erin swallowed hard, slowing regaining her composure. “Have we finished here?”

Zane wanted to leave too, Erin's tension leeching into him, but Titus was beginning to pick his way through the papers on the floor and showed no signs of being finished yet. He tried his best to be patient while Erin returned to the window and looked down at the road below. She seemed to spot something and rubbed a patch of dust away from the glass to get a better view.