Child of Recklessness (Trials of Strength Book 2) (21 page)

‘
He’s not our father, he’s
a monster,’ Hazel stated.

I nodded my head again as she slouched
over to me, when she reached me, she started to circle.

‘
What is this?’ Richard
Bishop whispered.

My attention was taken from my sister
for a second as I stared at my father. What the hell had he
planned?

‘
I’m a monster too,’ a
voice whispered in my ear.

I was still
scrutinis
ing
my father’s face, that at first the voice didn’t register. Had my
sister just said that? I heard screams, Richard’s face fell and his
eyes widened as he rushed forward. Why did he move so
slowly?

I felt pressure around my torso. I
couldn’t breathe. I looked down as blood dripped heavily from an
arm that had erupted from my body. I squinted, confused.
What…

Then the thing I’d readied myself for,
the thing I’d said I could handle happened, and I had lied. I
wasn’t ready. I wasn’t.

But then everything vanished, and I
died.

The Intervention

I had no
way to explain how I knew I had died, but seeing my sister’s fist
erupt from my chest said it all. There was no doubt about it, I had
left the living world behind, and then, well then I had no idea. I
couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, smell, taste or touch anything. The
world was just black, a dark abyss that I floated
through.

It was
like coming down with an extremely debilitating fever. My senses
were useless, but there was a certain feeling to being dead, a
clogged sense of euphoria. I was free.

‘
No matter what, I love you,’ a woman’s melodic voice whispered
from the depths of the darkness.

It was
familiar, and if I had a heart I could swear it filled with warmth
and love. I couldn’t reply though, and I wanted to. The voice… I
wanted to be closer to it, to find the source and clasp on
completely.

‘
What are you doing honey?’ the woman said, it was like the
sigh of an angel. ‘Come to me.’

With
those words the air filled with an almost inaudible hum, and as if
I’d been slapped in the face with them, my senses returned. The air
turned thick and warm, and my eyes picked up a claustrophobic
yellow light. The ground I was sprawled on was dirt-ridden. I
pushed myself up, my limbs like jelly, my usual heightened strength
gone.

When the
ground stopped spinning, and my eyes adjusted, my stomach dropped.
I let out what sounded like a whimper and closed my eyes. I
couldn’t be there, not again. But when I pulled my eyelids back up,
nothing had changed. I wondered fleetingly whether I’d survived my
sister’s attack, and been dragged to another replica of Greystone,
because that was where I was.

I looked
up to be sure, hoping I’d see balconies circling the maze, but
there was only the dark and dirty ceiling above my head. Had I died
and went to hell? Or was I locked in some nightmarish part of my
mind? Both choices were dismal, but I seriously hoped for the
latter.

‘
Honey?’ the woman, but louder since my senses were back.
‘Aren’t you coming?’

The
hairs on my arms and neck stood to attention, and I abandoned my
previous thoughts of finding that voice. I didn’t want to be there.
I had left that nightmare behind!

‘
You haven’t left anything behind, Lucas,’ the woman
replied.

Had she
read my thoughts?

‘
Okay,’ I mumbled, ‘that’s not creepy at all.’

‘
Find me.’

The
pipe-laden walls on either side of me seemed to be closing in, and
I hesitantly started forward. It wasn’t long until I reached a
long, low room. I clocked it instantly. The memory flooded my mind
the way horrors usually do. The room I stood in had been the final
resting place of Dr Terry Harris. He had been a good man and one of
the survivors of the initial craziness that swept my former town.
He’d been murdered to send me a message, strangled by Grace and
then hung from the pipes to make it look like a suicide to all but
me.

I tore
my eyes away from the place Terry had been cut down, and they
drifted helplessly over to a small blood stain on the wall. Another
memory flashed, myself attacking the wall once my mother had been
changed into one of the creatures that had tried to kill us. I
shook my head.

Please let me out.

I
turned, ready to go back to where I’d woken up, to find an exit,
anything. I just knew that going forward was something I didn’t
want to face.

‘
You have no choice,’ that familiar voice echoed.

And I
didn’t. The hallway I’d walked down was gone. There was only one
way to go, a doorway on the other side of the room. The charged air
only seemed to escalate with heat the more I staggered forward. I
barely noticed the black arrows that pointed the way. They
shimmered, slithering like snakes as they twisted along the wall
after me.

I knew
where I was headed. I knew who that voice belonged to. I knew I
couldn’t face it.

The
hallway kept stretching, growing before me and messing with my
vision, prolonging the emotions that barrelled around inside my
stomach. I was almost ready to collapse and scream when I came to a
corner that glimmered with the light from the room beyond. I
reached it, and turned.

I had to
close my eyes against the blinding white, but I could recall the
room with almost crystal clear clarity. In front of me, halfway up
the wall would be a glass balcony, an almost sideways dome that
housed my father’s workspace. It was white, and sterile, buried in
the heart of the underground labyrinth beneath Greystone. The room
it looked down on, the part I stood in, wasn’t as clean. The pipes
that ran the whole length of the tunnels grouped together there,
circling the walls and disappearing through them at the sides of
the balcony, conduits that powered the place.

‘
You came,’ the woman sang.

The
light dimmed slightly, and I scanned the room for the woman. I
couldn’t see her, but I could see major differences in the room.
The pipes bulged and moved, no longer ending at the balcony but
completely overtaking my father’s workplace. The glass balcony was
shattered, a feat I’d done myself, and the shards glittered as they
hung in mid-air and turned slowly.

‘
I’m glad you came, son,’ my mother said, and she stepped from
the shadow of the balcony.

That was
where I last saw her. Not only saw her, but fired a bullet into her
changed mind. I winced at the memory.

‘
It’s not like I had a choice,’ I replied with venom. It
couldn’t be my mother.

Rebecca
Bishop sighed, tilted her head and pursed her lips in a sympathetic
expression. She didn’t look like the monster she became, but like
her former self. In her mid-forties, my Mum didn’t look a day older
than thirty. Her dark brown hair cascaded in luscious locks that
cradled her face, and her kind, mahogany eyes smiled.

‘
You always have a choice honey,’ she replied. ‘Sometimes all
the options are just hard to see.’

‘
This isn’t real?’ I asked. ‘Am I dead?’

‘
You were dead,’ Rebecca replied. ‘Hazel nicked your heart, it
stopped, briefly.’

‘
I’m not now?’ I said.

She
lifted her hand and made a so-so gesture with it. I shook my head
as pain bloomed behind my skull.

‘
What’s happening?’ I gasped.

‘
Think of it like a mental intervention while you’re down for
the count,’ Rebecca said. ‘We have quite a lot to work
through.’

I went
to reply, but couldn’t. Just when I’d thought the world couldn’t
get any crazier, it always did, in spectacular fashion.

‘
Let’s start from the beginning, hmm?’ my mother
smiled.

The room
exploded, and I jumped back with a yelp. The walls broke into huge
chunks of concrete, and they spun with deadly speed around the
darkness. The glass I had seen twinkling in the air shot towards me
and my eyes widened. Before I could react, the shards stopped
inches from my head. They flew backwards, chunks breaking off from
one another as the concrete blocks rushed forward. All merged
together, and before I knew it, I was standing in the kitchen of my
childhood home.

The
kitchen wasn’t large, but it was well-furnished. The sink and
worktops lay beneath the windows that looked out to the back
garden. Sunlight streamed through the glass, and lit up my mother
with a godly light. She stood where I’d last seen her smile with
unconditional love.

‘
Work out what?’ I burst before the earth shattered again. It
was safe to say I was no longer in reality.

‘
We’ll get to that,’ Rebecca replied. ‘First, I’d like to
remind you of something.’

She
slouched forward and took a seat at the dining table, motioning me
to do the same. I did, and she clasped her hands on the
surface.

‘
Remember when you were ten?’ she asked. ‘That time you and a
friend of yours ignored everyone’s warnings and went down to the
burn?’

As she
asked the memory swam up to the surface. It had been a hellish
weekend, with lightning storms and torrential rain. Samuel and I
decided to go out anyway, to have an adventure down at the river
not far from my home. We had been warned of the danger, but we
hadn’t anticipated the rising water level a storm could bring. When
we had set our eyes on it, we had filled with excitement. As
children, the danger only escalated our feeling of adventure, I
mean, what was the worst that could happen?

We
played for hours, laughing and seeing who could go the furthest
into the unstoppable water. The sun dipped, and it was time to go
home. No one had been hurt, and the fun would live forever in our
memories. Then we heard a strangled cry. It tugged heavily at my
heart and I searched frantically for the source. It was a dog, a
tiny terrier that had been dragged into the rushing river, and had
become stuck. It had cried and cried as it clung onto the rock
across the water.

I hadn’t
even thought about it. Against the screams of my friend I threw
myself against the waves. The fear had almost crippled me, but the
terrier’s call for help trumped it all. Once I’d reached it, I
grasped the rock it was holding onto with all the strength a
ten-year-old could muster, and the dog and I stayed there together,
partners against death. I shielded it with my body, and kept it
from tumbling away. I hadn’t really contemplated the concept of
death at that point, but I knew if I didn’t help, no one
would.

Thankfully, Samuel had rushed for help. My house hadn’t been
far, and one quick phone call and my father raced into the water
after me. I had saved that dog, and the memory would forever warm
my heart. My father, on the other hand, had been livid with rage.
Didn’t I know how bloody reckless I’d been? How I could have died?
My mother had sat in the very spot she was sitting, and while there
had been terrified tears in her eyes, there had also been a smile.
A smile that she mirrored once I’d came out of the
memory.

‘
You were so brave,’ Rebecca whispered, ‘my little good-hearted
soldier. I guess we understand the anger your father exhibited. He
couldn’t have his precious subject dead now, could he?’

It did
make sense. Richard had had Greystone planned for a while. Then,
when the government had ditched him, he started his injections on
me, and then threw the town to fate.

‘
What are we doing?’ I asked.

‘
You’ll see,’ my mother replied and stood.

The sun
outside vanished in an orange flash, and moonlight took its place.
My Mum faded from sight, reappearing by my feet, beside the dining
table. She sprawled immobile, blood pooled at her shoes, but her
eyes were open, and she stared at me. My head snapped to the
doorway to the hall. It was open, and in the shadows stood my
father, as if waiting for something. I then realised he was. He was
waiting for me. The moment that was being recreated was the moment
I had crashed through the house on the day everything went to
hell.

‘
Tell me honey,’ Rebecca said from the floor, and my father’s
deep voice echoed every word. ‘Do you want to die?’

My head
moved from side to side as if I was in a trance.

‘
Do you want to die?’ they both repeated. ‘Do you want to die?
Do you want to die? Do you want to die? DO YOU WANT TO
DIE!?’

The Others

‘
NO!’ I bellowed and threw myself from the seat.

The
twisted tirades of my mother and father stopped, and when I
searched for them, they had gone. I looked around wildly, but where
they had been previously was only empty space. The silence they
left behind was thick.

Did I
want to die?

Of course I don’t!

The air
filled with grinding concrete, and my head snapped to the sides,
waiting for the room to explode again. Instead the ground beneath
my feet shattered, the air rushed from my lungs, and I rocketed
downwards. I hit the floor hard, but didn’t feel any pain. My
mother had returned and paced in front of me. I staggered as I
climbed to my feet, depressed to find I had plummeted back into the
depths of Greystone, back to the room Terry had died in.