The Knowing: A thrilling horror fantasy Read online

  The bus pulled up just outside the driveway to Two Rivers. There was an anachronistic handmade wooden sign pointing visitors in the right direction. Steve half expected to see patients wearing straitjackets lining the road, walking with the shuffling gait of the Thorazined psychotic.

  “Hi there,” Steve said into the intercom at the entrance to the adolescent unit. “I’m here to see Joseph Gardiner. I phoned earlier. My name is Steve Abrams.”

  “Let me go check, sir,” an androgynous disembodied voice said, impressively matter-of-fact.

  Steve heard papers being turned. He guessed he was through to an administrator’s office.

  “Do you have ID, sir?” Still chilly.

  “Yes, ma’am. I have my badge.” He hoped he had the sex of the voice correct.

  The door clicked open without further questioning. Prominent signs read: ‘No phones allowed’. He showed his ID card to a security guard and handed over his cell phone. He’d left his firearm behind in the department. Walking through a security scanner completed the check. The door to the ward lay straight ahead. Another intercom, another flash of the badge at a camera and he was in.

  Bedlam would be one way of describing it. Adolescents lurched at him from every direction and speechlike sounds emerged from multiple mouths along with spittle. None of it made much sense. A sliding door opened on the left and he found himself freed from the zombie-like grasping of needy youth. A girl who looked to be in her early teens pouted her lips against the glass and then licked the surface with her tongue.

  “Sorry ’bout that,” the male nurse said chirpily. “We don’t get many visitors these days and you must seem kinda special to them.”

  Steve didn’t feel at all special. His shirt had stuck to his back and his hair needed a barber’s attention. “If you say so.” He smiled wanly.

  “Friend or family?” the nurse said, inspecting paperwork for Steve’s details.

  “Neither,” Steve said almost apologetically, shrugging. He flipped his badge again.

  “Sorry, Officer, I hadn’t realised,” the nurse said, straightening up. “I’ll go arrange an interview room.”

  Steve checked the nurse’s name badge. “Thanks, Nurse Elliott, but there’s no need. I saw him in the ER all those months ago and just wanted to check on him. He sorta got to me, I guess.”

  Something akin to a light illuminated the young nurse’s face. “Christ, you’re one of the detectives! He reached out to shake Steve’s hand vigorously. “What was your partner’s name ... Dale, wasn’t it? He’s a real cutie.” He blushed. “Sorry, Officer.” He reddened some more.

  Steve smiled. “Yeah, he is.” He paused and decided to leave it at that. “So, how is Joseph doing?”

  Nurse Elliott recovered his composure. “Okay, I guess. He has his good days and his bad days, if you know what I mean. He’s in the art room at the moment. I’ll take you there.”

  Joseph was sitting at a table in what evidently passed as the ward’s creative facility. A bored-looking member of staff sat in the corner, thumbing disinterestedly through a magazine. “Myra, this police officer is here to see Joseph. Keep an eye on him, will you,” the nurse said.

  The woman looked up briefly, mumbled “sure” and then resumed her half-hearted reading.

  Steve pulled up a chair and perched next to the boy. He’d put on a ton of weight since he last saw him in the ER. Steve leaned forward to inspect what he was drawing. Joseph was sketching a peanut. Except it wasn’t just any peanut. The boy had caught every indentation of the shell and it had a 3D quality. The bottom of the husk was opened up and the cavity drew the viewer into the space like a vacuum. To the right of the shell the boy had drawn the peanut itself, standing upright and supported by a realistic ear on either side.

  “That’s awesome, Joseph,” Steve said, smiling at the boy.

  Joseph said nothing and continued adding details to the left ear.

  “Do you remember me, Joseph?” Steve asked. “I’m one of the police officers who interviewed you in the ER. My name is Steve Abrams.”

  The boy switched his attention to the right ear.

  “I guess you’re mad at me for putting you here,” Steve said.

  Back to the left ear. This isn’t going well. Okay, I’ll ask about the peanut.

  “Why the peanut, Joseph? I mean, it’s a fine peanut but ...”

  “Peanut brain,” Joseph said obligingly, without removing his pencil from the paper.

  “Sorry, I don’t get it.” Steve was up to date with Rorschach but peanut interpretation was new to him. Those human-looking ears must mean something, though. Perhaps ...

  “My brain,” the boy said abruptly, as if reading his thoughts. “Peanuts.”

  Steve guessed this wasn’t anything to do with the Charles M. Schulz comic strip. “Do you mean your brain is like a peanut?”

  Joseph turned slowly to look at him. “Yeah, like two fucking peanuts,” he drawled lazily. He mimed tossing nuts into his mouth and swallowing them. “See, now they’re gone. Here today, gone tomorrow. The sun’ll come out tomorrow.” He turned back to the drawing. “Yeah, I remember you.” There was a purposeful edge to his voice. The boy slipped his free hand inside his pants. The pencil made ever faster strokes on the paper. A look of consternation crossed his features. His left hand resumed its rather more methodical detailing of the right ear. “Sorry,” he said softly, as he withdrew his other hand from his pants.

  Steve left the room. Overstimulation wasn’t something the boy needed. He found Nurse Elliott in the office. “I see what you’re getting at. Is his brain really that bad?”

  “Like in his drawing, you mean?” Nurse Elliott said.

  Steve nodded.

  “Well, it’s certainly shrunk some, but it’s more wrinkled than a peanut. He’s improving, though. He’s on some experimental drug developed by some guy at Caltech. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Steve had heard about that. The Kenyan wunderkind who’d blown the lid open on the dangers of cell phones had moved on to shaking up the pharmaceutical industry. He was on a scholarship at Caltech and he’d found a boyfriend, too. “Does that mean he’s still on involuntary treatment?”

  “Of course,” Nurse Elliott said. “There’s no way he can consent as he is. His dad doesn’t like it, but he’s not complaining.”

  “And he can’t leave, either?”

  The nurse shook his head. “He’s here on an executive order. Only the White House can free him – ” he looked towards the pandemonium across the way, “ – along with the rest of these poor young suckers. God help the lot of them, I say.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dai Williams, ex-Pontypridd student of the mystical practice of hocus focus, now back on terra firma after confinement in his fortress of solitude in a Battersea tower block, mulled over the events of the previous day. He glanced at the glittering insignia with its red and gold ribbon hanging at the end of the bed. An invitation to drinks at Buckingham Palace wasn’t something to be passed over lightly. It also gave him a distinctly queasy feeling. Was it treasonable to view repeated contact with Her Majesty as potentially life-threatening? Particularly for her. What if she had another stroke? At least the footmen must be up-to-date with CPR – and this was hardly an assignation in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps she’d slip something in his drink and cast him into the dungeons so that he’d be at her behest for another round of space-time tinkering.

  Then there was the minor problem that the Queen hadn’t specified a time, so maybe he should ring her private secretary to check. As his grandmother used to remind him, old folk required their supper early to avoid indigestion and trips to the loo. She might also be testing him to see whether he’d pry into her thoughts with a ping. Or perhaps the Queen might telepathise him the details while Prince Philip helped himself to corn flakes out of the 1950s Tupperware container. Fat chance; the Queen was no better at long-distance telepathy than he was. Sandra was still the expert in that department.


  He turned to look at his fiancée. For once, her dark hair wasn’t covering her face. Her nose twitched from time to time, as if her senses were on guard, monitoring the world around her. That goes with being a telepathic lackey for MI5, he thought. Dai gently touched Sandra’s bump. He longed to know more about the baby busily growing under his fingertips and resisted giving it a gentle ping. He’d already discovered it was a girl but hadn’t told Sandra yet – or allowed her access to the thought. Antenatal ultrasound scans were such an anti-climax when one could see more than any machine.

  He was still waiting to be told off for getting too close to the Queen. It wasn’t his fault that he was a bit touchy-feely. Granny Betty had been rather adept at laying on hands, too. With a dying monarch just feet away, what else could he have done, for Chrissakes! It was also strange there’d been no debriefing after the Balmoral incident, but perhaps it was a royal prerogative to keep the details under wraps. As far as the general public were concerned, they’d been advised that the Queen had had a stroke and he’d valiantly come to her aid. There was no mention of the fact that they’d been sitting together on a roughly hewn bench on the Balmoral estate and that she’d transgressed the spacetime continuum.

  A loud noise disturbed his cogitation. Doorbells didn’t come any more ear-piercing than theirs. There was a groan from the other side of the bed. Sandra was about to demonstrate her displeasure at being so rudely awakened. “I’ll get it,” he said to the recumbent form. It was 7:00 a.m. and way too early for the postman. He stumbled into some clothes and padded his way, bare foot, downstairs to the front door. “I’m coming,” he yelled. Dai put an eye to the spy hole and saw someone in black silhouetted against the sunrise. The sight was definitely ominous with a capital ‘O’. He did think MI5 could have waited until after he’d had his three Weetabix.

  Dai opened the door and a tall figure dressed entirely in black thrust an envelope into his hand. A gleaming motorcycle idled on the pavement, purring loudly like an over-indulged cat. The letter was highly embossed, bore no stamp and had the Queen’s distinctive curlicue writing on the envelope. It read, without any elaboration, ‘Sir David Williams’.

  “You work for his sirness, do yer?” the courier asked through the niqab-like gap in his flip-up visor. It was like communicating with Gort. Dai was all ready to say the phrase ‘klaatu barada nikto’ in case he demanded a tip with menaces.

  Admittedly, Dai didn’t look anything like a knight of the realm that morning; jeans and a hooded top had been the only clothes to hand when he leapt out of bed. Granny Betty had always insisted that doors should be answered whatever one’s state of dress. “It could be the good Lord calling,” she used to say with a wink. He’d never been partial to Pontypridd’s doorstep bible bashers, but the prospect of fried leeks and laver bread for tea performed miracles for adolescent incentivising.

  “I work for myself,” Dai said, glancing at the courier’s bloodshot eyes inside his carbon fibre carapace. Strictly speaking, that was true; MI5 paid him as a freelance agent with bonuses according to the assignment. Interrogation with the hocus focus paid handsomely and it was a lot less messy than waterboarding. Granny Betty wouldn’t have approved, but, hey, he had dependents now.

  They heard someone retching inside the house. It had started the previous evening when they’d made a flying visit to the Park Estate. He’d gone out onto the balcony to show Mrs Pigeon the shiny insignia. She’d always been ready with her comforting coo and a quick flash of avian insight. Admittedly, it had usually been about her reproductive needs. And pinging a one-gram brain had to be done very gently. Human brains were a doddle in comparison.

  Sandra had ended up confined to the bathroom for 20 minutes. One bout of vomiting seemed to follow another. She hadn’t been a pretty sight when she eventually opened the door. Perhaps his improvised Faraday cage had trapped some bad karma in the apartment. He really should have removed the ten-micron thick copper mesh lining his flat, but he wasn’t about to destroy his bolthole in case Wi-Fi and mobile networks got switched back on.

  Dai half-turned into the hallway. “Sorry, mate, I need to go. My girlfriend’s not feeling too good.” He turned over the envelope and noticed the Royal Crest. “Thanks for delivering my invitation to tea.”

  The courier reached up to remove his helmet. He blinked in the sunlight smearily reflected off the grimecovered windows of neighbouring buildings. The headgear definitely suited him better on than off. “You mean ... you’re ... Christ!” He stood looking flustered. His batteries had to be running low.

  Dai touched him on the shoulder, recalling that the Queen had done the same to him with a ceremonial sword. “That’s okay, mate, I guess it’s not every day you meet a knight without his suit of armour on.”

  The courier shook his head vigorously. “Christ, man ... I mean, your grace ... you saved the Queen! How the fuck did you do that?” He reddened, evidently embarrassed by swearing in front of a knight of the realm.

  Dai shrugged. MI5 employees did a lot of that. Explanations were best kept to a minimum in his line of work. “Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” he said limply without the usual John Wayne impersonation. What he meant is, “a man with special powers has gotta do what a man with special powers has gotta do,” but it didn’t sound right – and required way too much clarification.

  The courier reached in his jacket pocket for something. He thrust a grubby piece of paper and a leaking biro into Dai’s hands. “It’s for my girlfriend. She fuckin’ worships the Queen. She’ll never believe I met you. Her name is Sonia,” he explained breathlessly. “I’d have taken a selfie but the guvnor confiscated our mobiles. ‘Government’s orders’, he said. We have to use these bloody walkie-talkies now.” He pointed at a speaker attached to his leathers that had been squawking like a strangled parrot.

  There’d been a girl named Sonia at Dai’s primary school. She had a limited but effective repertoire of insults that made fun of his name. It was predictable but it still hurt. If the hocus focus had been active in those days, he’d have been tempted to ping and leave a lasting impression. She’d got her comeuppance when her face erupted with pustules of acne as a teenager. Not even Granny Betty’s laying on of hands could deal with that.

  So, what should he write? ‘Dai’ or ‘David’? With or without the ‘Sir’? Formal or friendly? A knighthood ought to come with an induction course in using the bloody title. The sword might come in handy to beat off the signature hunters, too. ‘Hi Sonia’ was a friendly start. He signed ‘Dai Williams’ and added ‘Sir David Williams’ underneath as a touch of formality. He returned the paper and biro to the courier. Ink had been deposited generously on his finger-tips.

  “Thanks, your knightness,” the courier said. “Sorry ’bout the biro. It’s probably being shaken about on the bike that made it leak.”

  Dai sympathised. He’d probably leak if he was vibrated at high speed over rubbish London roads. Filling in pot holes barely figured on the list of government priorities. They were still trying to work out what to do with all the kids who’d been locked up in old mental asylums for the common good. Occasionally, someone jumped the fence, but there were plenty of vigilante mobs out there ready to deal with the waifs and strays.

  As PA to the Royal Glamorgan Hospital’s Chief Executive, it just wasn’t in Joan Edwards’s makeup to wait demurely in Accident & Emergency for her daughter and friends to be treated within the arbitrary four-hour target. Since the death of her husband in a freak accident in the National Theatre of Wales, she’d become someone on a mission, even if the assignment wasn’t obvious to most around her. People saw her as a soft touch, which suited her fine.

  Once Mrs Edwards had wrapped Bronwen’s hideously expanding body in food wrap, she’d called 999 and mumbled the bare bones of the situation. Fortunately, an ambulance crew were enjoying a tea break in a nearby café and they were around in a jiffy. But she’d had to endure some strange looks and questions from the paramedics. A
nd she’d never hear the end of her neighbours’ tongue wagging.

  “Isn’t Ceri a bit young to have started that sort of thing?” one of her neighbours had asked with a smirk. The truth was, bondage that had gone amiss wasn’t exactly uncommon in the Valleys. Folk needed something to occupy their idle time now that the coalmines had been closed, after all.

  Mrs Edwards had done her best to look suitably in command of the situation when they arrived at the hospital. If mobile phones had been available, she felt certain their photos would have been uploaded to social media within seconds. Ceri and Dilys were still in their ‘Gold Witch’ costumes and far from being their normal sizes. Bronwen had been rushed into the resuscitation bay and staff were crowded around her bloated, plastic-coated body like worker bees buzzing around their queen.

  Mrs Edwards was banking on the gawpers assuming the girls had got stuck in their Halloween outfits after too many treats. At least Ceri and Dilys were no longer gasping for air. She was also dreading the ambulance crew tipping off the local press and had scribbled a brief and suitably ambiguous press statement while she was waiting.

  “Good Lord, Joan, what the hell happened to them?” the A&E consultant asked, scratching his head.

  Although Mrs Edwards wasn’t a witch, the advice given by the Cymry Wiccae Association about disclosure was clear. Complete honesty was rarely recommended, even in a life or limb situation. She’d also been complicit in allowing the girls get on with the task of bringing the cauldron into the 21st century. On the other hand, it was her daughter’s health at stake.

  “Well ...” Mrs Edwards said, considering her words carefully, “I think they were playing with some sort of chemistry set. The smell was something dreadful. I suppose it must have backfired on them. Ceri said it was for a GCSE project to do with potions in Welsh folklore. Perhaps it was a chemical past its use-by date. I should have checked, but I didn’t want to spoil their fun. You know what children are like on Halloween night.” She ended the explanation with a shrug. A&E staff heard plenty of lame excuses for bizarre mishaps and she was sure hers would pass muster.