Chapter Twenty Nine

I was name checked on Guardian Edinburgh this morning thanks to this nonsense. Here is the penultimate chapter, as promised! And here is a list of previous ones in order. This brings the word count to 51971... but is it any good? I talked about that briefly in an article on The Edinburgh Reporter here.

“You know,” Nicky said thoughtfully, “that actually makes a lot of sense. I had wondered why my downstairs mix-up didn’t look quite right.”

“Surely someone’s mentioned it to you before,” Tim said, “maybe in a urinal? It’s the type of thing that would get commented on!”

“I always use the cubicle,” Nicky said, “never knew why before, was just my gut reaction to head for cover.”

“Have you never had a girlfriend?”

“Well no. I’m too eccentric, girls round our way aren’t looking for that. They want guys like that one Nigella’s always going after.”

“Do you fancy girls?”

“I dunno. Never really thought about it too much, to be honest.”

“Which did Nicky like before you mucked about with her brain,” Bracken asked, “girls or boys?”

“How should I know,” Magenta said irritably, adding, “I’d have to look it up in the file.”

“Can you reverse it so she can go back to the way she was?”

“Does she want to go back to the way she was?”

“Hoi,” Nicky said indignantly, “does she take sugar? I’m right here, why don’t you ask me what I want?”

“Well,” Bracken said reasonably, “do you know?”

“Not a Scooby,” Nicky admitted, “I feel as though I’m not in full possession of the facts which makes it something of a tough call.”

“Are you getting all this,” Tim asked one of the camera crew bitterly, “I’d hate for you to miss out on a good telly opportunity, just because your boss has hired a mercenary to manipulate several people’s lives, which is probably against the human rights act and might see his BAFTA nomination revoked.”

“Actually,” Brian told Tim in his head, “the whole thing has been going out live since the beginning.”

“Totally uncut?”

“Totally uncut. Using the telepathic powers the amulet has afforded, I’ve been able to blow this thing wiiiide open.”

“You know,” Tim thought back to him, “I’m actually not sure how useful that is. People will watch, be outraged on Twitter for half an hour, then forget all about it. Such is the fickle nature of our modern society.”

The fire exit door clanged open with an almighty ruckus. Bert and the scarred guard appeared through it in a flurry of dry ice, he with his hair blowing dramatically in tht wind and she cradling the wean protectively. They looked like some kind of unusual crime fighting duo.

“Stop everything,” Bert bellowed boisterously, “we have important information to impart!”

“Really, though?” Bracken was unimpressed. “I bet you a fiver that most of it has already come up.”

“The woman who calls herself Esmeralda is in fact Esmeralda’s identical twin, Magenta?”

“Yep, we know.”

“Esmeralda has been dead for years, killed by her sister’s own hand?”

“Aye.”

“Posing as Esmeralda because her rogue methods have so incensed the global science community, Magenta has been conducting invasive brain experiments on unknowing people, with the full knowledge and financial backing of The Jeremy Kyle Show?”

“Tell us something we don’t know!”

“This little boy isn’t yours, Bracken.”

Her lip wobbled ferociously.

“I know that too,” she whispered, bravely biting back the tears.

“We have all the documentation to prove what’s been going on, so we can send these two down for a long time,” Bert informed them.

“Now that we did not know.”

Bert smiled victoriously.

“Here’s one for you then, Dad,” said Nicky. “Assuming that’s not a memory trick as well?”

“No,” Magenta drawled, “he is your father. The memory work there was mostly done by your mother, to be honest I just had to tweak it a little.”

“Right well, in that case… Dad, it turns out that I’m actually a woman.”

Bert looked surprised for a moment, then shrugged. “Now that you say that,” he meandered, “it sort of rings a bell.”

He pondered.

“I want to build up our relationship either way, assuming you still do.”

“Oh aye, definitely,” Nicky nodded. “I feel like I probably need to be supported through this traumatic time.”

“You’ll readjust surprisingly quickly,” said Esmeralda, “or at least, I think you will. Assuming you let me reverse the procedure.”

“Why does that not inspire me with full blown confidence?” Nicky asked scathingly. “Think I’ll just take it from here if you don’t mind.”

“Did you do anything to Nigella,” Bracken said suddenly.

“Who?”

“My cousin, Nigella. Well, I thought she was my cousin. Maybe she isn’t. She doesn’t know who the wean’s dad is, but she definitely thought he was mine.”

“Lanky girl, ginger, nasal?”

“That’s her,” grinned Nicky.

“Yeah, did some work on her,” Esmeralda confessed.

“Aaaaand here she is now,” said Kyle, “please welcome to the stage, Nigella!”

Nige appeared at the door, looking flushed and confused.

“How did I get here?” she asked Jeremy. “I was at home in the kitchen peeling a leek and then suddenly BAM, I was here!”

“Teleportation device,” Jez told her dismissively, “but that’s not important right now.”

“I disagree,” Nige disagreed, rather emphatically.

“You’re here today because you’ve got something to tell someone,” he bulldozed on in a vague sort of way.

“Erm, OK?”

“Well on you go then sweetheart,” he said, gesturing in the direction of the characters assembled before her, “spit it out.”

“Who am I meant to be talking to?” she enquired.

“That can be up to you,” he replied, “because at this point I don’t think it really matters.”

“Bracken,” she started, walking up to her cousin, “I’m sorry.”

This was the first time Bracken had ever heard her cousin apologise, and she was flabbersmacked. That’s a mixture of flabbergasted and gobsmacked – Peter Andre taught me it.

“That’s alright,” she said, unsure what it is that she was apologizing for.

“Me and Al never done anyhin,” she continued, “I was trying to make you jealous so I wanted to make you think we spent the night together, sexwise. But we never.”

“That’s alright, even if you had done,” Bracken said magnanimously. “It’s not as if we’re going out.”

Nige smiled, and gave her a hug. Meanwhile it dawned on Al that maybe Bracken did like him after all.

“Nicky,” Nige continued reproachfully, “where the hell have you been? You had us worried. Thought the aliens had got you at last.”

“I’ve been in this place,” Nicky filled her in, “living in a tiny cell against my will for an as yet unexplained reason.”

“It’s because Esmeralda – sorry, Magenta – ” Bracken rolled her eyes, “thought that if she asked people whether she could experiment on them they’d say no. So she took them without asking.”

“Be fair though,” Magenta countered, “as soon as I gave her the option, she did refuse.”

“She?” Nige said, bemused.

“Oh, Nicky’s a girl,” Bracken explained.

“Oh right. Cool.”

“Really?” Nicky said, “why is nobody even remotely surprised by this news?”

“It’s because they knew you before,” Magenta yawned. “The residual memories cushion the blow of the shock.”

“Course they do.”

“So this woman here – what did you call her? Magenta? Locked you in a cell for two weeks?”

“Pretty much.”

“Was the wean with you?”

“Not physically with me, no,” Nicky said, “although he was in the building, as it turns out.”

“I was keeping an eye on him,” said the scarred guard.

“And who are you?” Nigella enquired.

“I am his surrogate mother.”

“That’s a bit over the top, its only been a couple of weeks. He won’t remember that in later life.”

“She means she was the surrogate womb for him,” Bracken said sadly.

“Come again?”

“The wean isn’t mine, Nige. That’s why I couldn’t answer your questions about the dad. I didn’t know, because I never had sex with anyone, because I’m not his mum.”

“So who is the mum, then?” Nige asked in a state of understandable confusion. “If you’re not, and this lady was just a womb for hire?”

“I am,” Nicky informed her.

“Oh. That’s odd. But I guess you two have always got on pretty well.”

Just as the conversation seemed to be in danger of getting awkward, there was a clap of thunder, and Dennis appeared.

“Oh, Christy,” said Tim.

The noise was high pitched enough to break Brian’s concentration, and he did a big amulet shaped poo.

“Yoink,” said Dennis, grabbing it.

“Did that guy just steal a turd fae under the dug?” Nigella asked.

“Yup,” Bracken confirmed.

“Is that a common Scottish phrase?” Jeremy asked with interest.

“It will be soon,” Nicky commented, “as soon as she puts it on her Bebo.”

“Dennis,” Tim said, “don’t be an idiot. Give me that.”

“Why does that guy want the poo?” Nige asked.

“He doesn’t want the poo,” Al explained, “there’s a magical amulet inside the poo, and that’s what he wants.”

“What for?”

“So that I can destroy it.”

“But if you don’t even like it, why not let the other guy have it?”

“Because it’s evil,” Tim told her, “and it needs to be got rid of before the evil spreads.”

He advanced upon Dennis and tried to forcibly remove the poo. Dennis flew up into the air and levitated just out of reach, which is one of the perks of being a ghost.

“Ha,” he gloated triumphantly, “now what are you going to do?”

“What are you going to do?” Tim asked, “if you can use the amulet to resurrect yourself?”

“I’m going to have a bowl of frosties,” Dennis replied. “Then I’m going to go to sleep in a comfy bed.”

Tim shook his head.

“I know that’s what you want to do now,” he said, “but honestly, all that will go out the window if you use that thing. Just look at it, for goodnessake.”

Dennis obliged, staring into the mottled glass surface. The piece of tentacle within seemed to pulsate ominously, and Dennis thought he could hear an insidious whispering noise. “Kill,” it said, “rip, tear, slash, inflate.”

“Inflate?” Dennis said aloud.

“Sorry,” said the whispering, “I got confused. Maim and hurt, destroy, poke out their eyes…”

“That’s not very nice,” he chided, inadvertently floating back down towards the ground.

“GOTCHA!” Tim shouted, grabbing his ankle with one hand and maintaining contact for just long enough to yank Dennis earthward and grab the amulet.

Dennis instantly vanished in a huff.

“Right,” Tim said, “now all we need to do is destroy it.”

“I wouldn’t be so hasty if I were you,” said a robotic voice from a fire exit which nobody had noticed until now.

Everyone turned.

It came from the mink caped, hooded figure. The boss, the man, the big cheese.

He or she had Adric in a vice like grip, with a flick knife tight against his neck, blade just millimeters from piercing the skin.

“Give me the amulet,” the figure said, “or your boy toy gets it.”

Chapter Twenty Five

Today, following on from my announcement that I've kept on top of the word count fairly well, I was asked whether I was pleased with what I have been writing. An interesting question, and one that has seeded an article now growing in my brain. In a nutshell, though, I can't hardly wait till I can start editing the thing, which I suspect will include scrapping at least two thirds...

Esmeralda replaced the phone in its cradle.

She hadn't said a word in the entire twenty-minute conversation, and her perfectly heart shaped face had remained smooth and expressionless.

During such a long period of time, Nicky had got distracted and started counting things; but Bracken was more alert and was consequentially considerably freaked out by the behaviour of their host. The woman was like a life-sized version of one of those collectable porcelain dolls - cold, unfeeling, and owner of a lot of wavy hair. She might have been pretty, but there was nothing else going on there. Maybe it was all the years of science.

"It's not the years of science," Esmeralda told her, which was disconcerting.

"What? I didn’t-"

"Save it. I know what you were thinking.” Esmeralda advanced on her intimidatingly. “I'm an expert on brains, Bracken,” she whispered, putting her nose right up against Bracken’s cheek. “Human brains. Like the one you have."

"I can't argue with that," Bracken agreed, a hint of a smile playing around her soft lips as though remembering memories past, "I do have a human brain."

"Exactly. You were looking at me when I was on the phone, impassive like that, even though I was receiving bad news-"

"-such as?"

"That's not important right now."

"Oh right. Sorry, please continue."

She nodded graciously.

"Thanks, I will.

You were watching me, standing there in my work environment, not reacting to what I was hearing down the phone in any way for twenty minutes."

"I thought maybe you'd gone to sleep standing up," Nicky volunteered.

"You would think that," Esmeralda pointed out coolly, "but Bracken didn't, did you?"

"No," she admitted, "I can honestly say that never crossed my mind."

"Swot," Nicky grinned, sticking his tongue out at them both.

"ANYWAY," continued Esmeralda, not angrily but just a bit louder to get their attention, "you were watching me and thinking about my brain chat and the fact I was able to ditch the love of my life for no reason better than money. And you thought maybe science was to blame, because like so many you were no good at it in school and now you hate and fear it as a consequence."

"I got a 3 for standard grade," Bracken said, "that's alright."

"It doesn't denote a particular aptitude for the subject like what I have though."

"Spose not, no."

"You had some notion that the constant consideration of variables, attempts to prove and disprove things, and a world view at odds with the spiritual or emotional led to my detachment," Esmeralda surmised. "I was so interested in the process of literally dissecting people's minds and memories that I forgot to consider what goes on in their hearts. That's right isn't it?"

"I guess that was a theme," Bracken concurred uncertainly, running a hand through her hair. It needed a wash.

"Well you're WRONG," Esmeralda said triumphantly, "that's not my motivation at all."

"Oh right."

"Years of science has been my saviour," she steamrollered on, little caring about Bracken's honest disinterest. All she wanted to hear about was her relationship to the wean, or lack thereof.

"Abandoned by my parents and sister, I was left to fend for myself in London when I was just four years old."

"That's terrible," Bracken said, pricking her ears up sincerely, "I'm so sorry."

"Well, they left me with a foster family," Esmeralda corrected herself, "but they smelled weird. And they kept my sister! So I ran away to find her."

"That's so weird," Bracken exclaimed, "why keep one and not the other?"

"The doctor didn't tell them they were going to have twins. They didn't want two babies."

"Did they not have enough money to bring up two?"

"Oh no, that wasn’t it," she said derisively. "They were rolling in it. Don't you remember what a long posh name I have?"

"Well, that could just be an affectation," Bracken pointed out.

"I suppose so. But it isn't. My family is way posh. Posher than God.”

“Is God posh?”

“I don’t know,” she waved away the question impatiently, “it’s just an expression.”

“I don’t think it is,” Nicky said helpfully.

“Fine, it’s not,” Esmeralda was heading towards something approaching irritation for the first time in ages, “but you know what I was trying to convey so will you please stop nit picking and let me explain.”

Nicky made the sign where you pretend to zip your mouth closed, then sat on his hands to make extra sure that he couldn’t renege on his unzipping and interrupt again.

“My parents were very wealthy, but also very lazy. They only kept my sister because having a kid was the in thing to do at the time. She was looked after by nannies, in the main, and rarely saw them.”

“How do you know?” Bracken asked.

“How do I know what?”

“How do you know she was looked after by nannies if you were given away to foster parents when you were only four? Did you find her after you ran away?”

“No,” Esmeralda reported darkly, “I found only heartache and sadness. It was as though I was living in a Bonnie Tyler album, only less fun.”

Bracken didn’t think this was a particularly great analogy, and would have left it out, herself, but she let it pass.

“I met my sister again, years later, and we exchanged notes on a few things.”

“So where is she now?”

Esmeralda looked pained.

“Gone,” she said.

“Gone?” Bracken’s suspicions were roused by the tone of face, and the look on her voice. “Gone as in travelling? Or gone as in dead?”

“The latter,” she replied.

“What happened?”

“Well,” Esmeralda said, “I accidentally killed her.”

Had Bracken been eating or drinking anything, this was the revelation that would probably have made her choke. But she wasn’t, so it was fine.

“Come again,” she managed.

“Well I was very angry,” Esmeralda said vaguely, as if that made it alright, “and she’d been so annoying, refusing to swap memories with me and so on as per usual.”

“You wanted to swap memories?”

“Only for a little while. Just to see if it could be done. I would have put them back again.”

“What if you couldn’t remember how?”

“That’s what she said. Amongst other, less pragmatic things. She said I was mental, and that I had to stop poking around inside other people’s heads like that. She called it invasive, and weird.”

“Well, she may have had a point there.”

“Pfft.”

“Let’s agree to disagree on that score, shall we. So where even was this? Did she come out to Peru to find you?”

“No, she was there by pure coincidence, as it goes. She was doing some research for her postgraduate thesis – she was a scientist too. We were really very alike, as identical twins sometimes are.”

“So what, you just bumped into each other at random?”

“Yes. It was at a gas station, I remember. I was leaving and she was coming in through the door, and it was like looking into a mirror. Then right away I realized that it must be my sister. She didn’t really remember me, though. Our parents told her I had died.”

“Your parents sound like really great people,” Bracken said sarcastically.

“Tell me about it. So anyhoo, I told her I wasn’t dead, and she came to stay with me for a while. We told each other all about our lives and our work, and it turned out we had kind of been living in parallel. She was doing some stuff about whether cats remember coyotes… something like that. She used to carry around this big scrapbook with identikit pictures of coyotes in for cats to recognize. I think what I’ve been doing is a little more high brow, to be honest.”

“Well, your stuff might have benefits I guess, for like coma patients or something,” Bracken stretched her imagination. “Hers sounds kind of… made up.”

“I think it was,” Esmeralda nodded. “She struck me as the type who would flirt her way through academia, rather than putting in the work.”

“Unlike your good seld.”

“Very unlike me. I dedicate most of my waking life to my work.”

“Which reminds me-”

“We’ll get to your story in a second,” she soothed, “I thought you wanted to hear about how I killed my sister?”

‘Only if it’ll help me assess how likely you are to kill me as well,’ Bracken thought.

“I wanted to do the memory swap, and initially she agreed – although to be fair we’d consumed a lot of tequila that night. But when it came to it, I don’t know… I’d prepared the solution that we needed to take – hers would knock her out whereas mine was a different dosage so that I could operate on us both prior to the hypnosis – ”

By this point Nicky was really struggling to keep a lid on his hands. He really wanted to metaphorically unzip his mouth and let a deluge of questions flood forth.

“You didn’t do the hypnosis first?” Bracken asked, trying to piece the whole bizarre mess together in her mind.

“No, I needed to be alert for the surgery.”

“And what’s involved in the surgery?”

“Just a small incision, and then I put a little flake of metal in a particular spot on the brain so that the nerve endings are disrupted and a kind of blockage is created.”

“Then what?”

“Then I close up – a paper stitch is needed in some cases – and embark upon a session of hypnotherapy where I implant memories in the other person.”

“But you said you wanted to swap. Who would implant her memories into your brain?”

“Well she would, once she was me.”

“Once she was you?”

“Once she had my memories, I mean.”

“Surely there’s no way you could impart all the required medical and scientific knowledge through one session?”

“Well I don’t know, because she bailed on me. But I thought I had it all worked out. We’d been preparing for a while – she listened to CDs of my memories when she was going to sleep at night, for example, and she’d sat in on some of my sessions with other people.”

“This all seems wildly implausible,” Bracken couldn’t help saying.

“She said that as well,” Esmeralda remembered through gritted teeth and angry, downward pointing eyebrows.

“Sounds like she and I would have gotten on alright.”

“Oh,” Esmeralda exclaimed, “you don’t know the half of it.”

Chapter Twenty Four

I would like to point out that all the characters in this book are fictional, and any resemblance they bear to real people is totally coincidental... Read the story so far via my other blog, here.

Jeremy Kyle hurled his phone at the wall, incandescent with apoplectic rage.

He had just had some most irritating news, and he was pissed off about it. Later on he would pick up the smithereens of keypad and sim card and admit to himself that he may have overreacted a little bit.

Jeremy decided to find a slightly less destructive mode of venting his frustration, and took to pacing up and down his enormous living room, trying to work out simultaneously how he was going to save the show and exact his revenge.

"Daddy," one of his bleary eyed daughters poked her head around the open door, "is everything alright?"

"Yes," he lied to his innocent child in the way that parents do sometimes for their own good, "everything's peachy keen, jelly bean. Go back to bed now, there's a good girl."

Convinced that something utteryly terrible had happened, she shuffled off back to the bed she shared with an enormous furry crocodile called Cameron.

"Either mummy and daddy are getting divorced," she lisped adorably to her toy friend, "or something's gone wrong with his show and he doesn't know what to do about it."

"Heads will roll if it's the latter," Cameron intoned sagely, taking off his slippers and throwing them at the ceiling, as was his wont.

"Ain't that the twoof," the little girl replied with a vigorous nod. Her speech impediment worsened in times of stress as part of a little known condition called Orphan Complex whereby a child unconsciously tries to make itself cuter so that if something goes wrong in the parent department, they will be sure to be adopted, or in some cases kept on by the better parent whilst the sibling gets stuck with the other parent.

However, Jeremy Kyle and his wife were doing perfectly fine, so his daughter and her crocodile had nothing to fear at all. If only they could know. But they didn’t, so they played jenga to cheer themselves up. The next morning they would awake in amongst a nest of those wooden bricks, with strange markings on their faces where the blocks had imprinted on their skin.

Meanwhile back in the living room in the present, Jezza had glanced out of the window to see a cocaine addled hooker tottering by on red patent stilettos. She was too skinny for her own good, living as she did on a diet of irn bru and very few solids, and she looked a good fifteen years older than her actual age of thirty six.

He opened the window, then almost shut it again as the rush of cold air gave him goosebumps. But he was a stronger figure than that.

"OI, LOVE!" he bellowed at the top of his voice.

She turned around in surprise at hearing his familiar voice in such close proximity, wondering whether someone was watching repeats of the show in one of these houses. She squinted unattractively in his direction, wondering whether it was time to go and get a long overdue eye test at last.

"WOT?" she yelled back indignantly, for yelling is the first defense of the short sighted and squiffy, "I'm not doing anyfink wrong. I've finished work."

"Wanka," she added under her breath.

"I heard that," he shouted. "You need to SORT YOUR LIFE OUT!"

He slammed the window closed triumphantly.

"That's right," he muttered insanely, "it's MY show."

"Jez," his wife said, appearing in a salmon pink smoking jacket and cravat, "what's going on?"

"Nothing, it's nothing,” he lied, rubbing the back of his neck so hard that the friction caused sparks to fly onto the Persian rug. “Make us a cup of tea would you?" he added, stamping on the rug to stop it from catching fire.

He followed her through to their moben designed kitchen, as fitted by Laurence Llewellyn Bowen. As always, he paused to admire the black granite worktops with flecks of unicorn horn run through. A strong kitchen makes a strong man, that’s what he always said under his breath when nobody was listening.

"It's not nothing," his wife said, continuing the conversation and switching on the kettle like the multitasking female type she was, "you've broken the phone and you'll probably get an asbo for shouting abuse at that off duty hooker."

"I think if anyone gets an asbo it’ll be her," he said archly, taking the milk out of the fridge. "She'll be known to the law."

"So are you though," his wife pointed out. "Everyone knows who you are. You're a public figure."

He picked at some leftover chicken in the fridge, then spat it out when it turned out to be fish.

“Fair point,” he acknowledged.

“Anyway,” she pressed on, handing him a milky brew with four sugars, “what’s gone wrong with the show to put you in such a foul temper?”

He sipped his beverage and gave a long sigh to indicate his pleasure at consuming the lovely drink.

“Just had one of the researchers on the blower,” he said, in gangster speak, “the one who’s been at that top secret facility finding out about some weird stuff that’ll make my show respected like Panorama or Dispatches or something like that.”

“The one you reckon’ll get you a BAFTA?”

“The very same. Anyway, thing is, right, what goes on in that place… well…”

“Well what?” she challenged, eyebrows raised higher than a post op facelift. “Your ‘serious documentary’ spiel is just a cover for the fact that you run the entire operation, churning out people with weird and wonderful life stories to jazz up the show?”

He looked at her in shock. His jaw dropped and everything.

“How did you know that?”

“I’m not an idiot, Jez. And you’re not very good at keeping secrets. I gather you have some sort of unhinged young woman from South America who hypnotises people or lobotomises them or something of that nature?”

“There are no lobotomies involved,” he said sharply, “that’s outdated and ridiculous. You’ve got no proof.”

“Alright,” she said, “touchy. Whatever you say.”

“AND,” he interrupted, “she’s not from South America, that’s just where she developed some of her less orthodox techniques.”

“Fine,” she allowed, “she’s not from South America. Great. What’s gone wrong? Has she developed a conscience?”

“No,” he sulked, “I could solve that by throwing more money at her. No, she’s decided in the name of science to tell them all what’s been done to them, and see whether that reverses the procedure or not.”

“Which would ruin the show.”

“Well yeah,” he complained, “you can’t do a big reveal when everyone involved knows everything already and has had a few days to come to terms with it. And it makes the whole scenario far too complicated to explain to our target audience.”

“So what are you going to do?” she asked, picking imaginary bits of fluff off her pashmina.

“The only thing I can do,” he said, draining his mug. “I’m going round there to sort it out.”

“Do you want me to come with?”

“What about the kids?”

“Oh they’re fine, we’ve got the live-in nanny after all.”

“Should we tell her we’re leaving?”

“I’ll stick a post-it note on the fridge door.”

“Right then,” said Jeremy Kyle, putting on his second best suit jacket. “Lets go sort some lives out.”

Chapter Seventeen

Links to parts 1-16 available here.

"Bert," Nicky whispered fiercely, "wait a sec!"

But the old guy was long gone. Probably away to find that guard with the kind voice.

Nicky through the sheet off him and sat up in the darkness. It was so black in there he felt as though someone has carpeted his retinas. Which in this bloody place, he thought, was not completely outside the realms of possibility.

"fucksake," he said out loud.

"Nicky?" came a voice from surprisingly close by.

"Bracken?" he recognised it, whirling round to try and locate her. "what are you doing here?"

"Hell if I know. Esmeralda had some heavies kidnap me from outside the library and now here I am, strapped to some kind of victorian hospital trolley in a room where it's perpetually night time."

"I was kidnapped too," Nicky said, "on my way home from poker. So have you been here all that time an Aw?"

"no," she told him guiltily, "I've not. Just got here really. I think. I don't have much concept of time in here. Nicky, is the wean with you?"

"No," he replied, "is he not with Nige's mum?"

She drew in a shaky breath. He thought she might be crying, or trying not to.

"Nut," she started, "he went missing the same time as you. I've been so worried about you both, and I keep phoning the police but they just take the piss it feels like. And I've asked around and tried to think of the places you guys might go together but you've never been there.. It never even crossed my mind that you might not be together!"

She burst into tears - not pretty girly ones but the trembling, wracking sobs of someone who thinks themselves completely and utterly defeated.

Nicky moved towards the sound, arm stretched out in front of him, intending to give her a hug.

He banged his hip on something hard, which turned out to be a handle of the trolley she was on.

"Did you say there were straps?" he asked, gingerly feeling for them.

"yeah," she sniffled, "go and get the head one first? It's too tight and it's hurting me."

He fumbled around to find it, accidentally poking her in the eye and pulling her hair before his fingers hit upon the cold metal of the buckle. He undid it, and then moved on to the ones binding her wrists.

Bracken shook her head from side to side in relief. She'd never take the right to stretch her neck for granted again, she vowed.

"Are you not wearing any shoes?" Nicky asked as he got to the straps around her ankles.

"That cow took em off me when I was unconscious. Seemingly she thought I might have a knife in there."

"Aw, like a wee skein dhu," he chuckled.

"Well she's not from round here," Bracken said.

"I was wanting to ask you about that," he said, suddenly serious. "who is this woman? How do you ken her? Why does she hate us?!"

"Well," she said, "it's sort of a long story..."

"Oh, dinnae bother then."

"Har Har. You need to know the enemy."

"I have heard that's preferable, in some states."

“Her name is Esmeralda Francesca MacGregor Di Saatchi Von Rollo,” Bracken started. “She used to go out with the new guy that works at the library, Aloysius Hunkington-Smythe.

“Those might actually be the stupidest names I have ever heard,” Nicky interrupted.

“Shut it, bawjaws” she snapped, “I’m trying tae fill you in.”

“You’re right,” he said, contrite, “I apologise. You aren’t the one who named them, after all.”

“No,” she nodded, not that he could see her as they were still in the pitch dark, “I didn’t. Why would you even say that? Weirdo.”

“Anyway, that’s basically all I know. She turned up the night Al’s mother died, and tried to convince me that the two of them were still together – which I don’t think they are-“

“Ooooh, Al now is it,” Nicky trilled, “darling Al, with his ridiculous name and his job in the library.”

“Yeah, you need to work on your insults a bit more Nick.”

He lowered his eyes in agreement. Not that she could see that as they were still in that room that was really really dark. But had she been able to see, she might not necessarily have recognized the eye-lowering thing as an admission of wrongness. It’s not the conventional sign in this day and age.

“She drives everywhere,” Bracken said, “she thought I’d keep weapons about me because she’s a racist…. And that’s about it. Oh, well she’s nuts of course. Seems perfectly nice till she drugs and kidnaps you.”

“That’s it?” Nicky asked, sounding askanced. “That’s your long story?”

“It sounded longer in my head,” she admitted, embarrassed. “Oh, wait, there was something else.”

“What was it? Another bit of her name that you missed out of the list?”

“No, don’t be facetious.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“She gave me a lift to work, even though she probably knew it was an in service day,” Bracken started, “but there was more… Before we got out of the car, she’d started to tell me something. She’d been asking me loads of annoying questions based on her blinkered social views of what it means to be a single parent, and then she admitted that there was a reason why she’d been doing it…”

“Then what happened?”

“The weather.”

“What?”

“There was a big clap of thunder that drowned her out and I couldn’t hear what she was saying, and we ran inside to avoid the rain taking out one of our eyes.”

“Rain can’t take people’s eyes out,” he snorted derisively.

“Yes it can,” Bracken said defensively, “from a certain angle. It was on a repeat of 999 Life Savers.”

“So why didn’t you ask her about it when you got into the library? Was she sucking face with Al?”

“No,” Bracken fumed, “she was not. As it goes Nige was trying it on with him at that point. But I forgot all about Esmeralda’s cryptic nonsense because Adric told us that the library is being closed and probably knocked down so that they can search for Mayan gold underneath.”

“You what?”

“One of the kids was digging outside and found some Mayan gold. They had it checked out by experts, it was definitely real.”

“Shut up,” Nicky squeaked incredulously, “what would it be doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Bracken told him, “that’s exactly what I said as well. Adric seemed to think pirates brought it-“

“But that’s absurd. Pirates never actually buried treasure, that was a myth put about by Robert Louis Stevenson.”

“I know,” she said wearily, “I said that as well.”

“OK, sorry.”

They were quiet for a moment. The blackness seemed to swirl around them, a bit like treacle, only less likely to drown a man. Or woman. Or otter. Can otters drown? Yes. But it’s pretty rare, because they’re generally quite good with water.

“Right,” Nicky said briskly, “enough of this otter chat. Let’s escape.”

“How can we,” Bracken said, “its pitch black and I’d imagine that if we ever find the door it’ll be locked.”

“Why would they bother? It’s not like you were getting out of those straps any time soon. And the last person in here was Bert, who was rescuing me.”

“Who the hell is Bert and why was he rescuing you?”

“The two of those questions seem quite closely linked, as it goes,” he mused. “Bert is an old geezer who claims that he is my real dad, and that he wanted to make up for lot time. He sort of hinted at some kind of dark past, but didn’t really go into it in any detail. I think he was trying to keep a sense of mystery for later on in the text.’

“What?”

“I think he might genuinely be my dad but. Steve and I were never very alike.”

“Whereas you and this Bert character are like two peas in a pod,” she posited sarcastically. “You know literally nothing about him.”

“True,” Nicky agreed, “but what I do know is that he got me out of that weird smelling little cell, and he would have got me out of the building if your pal Esmeralda hadn’t turned up and given him the willies.”

“Given him the willies? Where are you, an Enid Blyton book?”

“Point is, I reckon he’ll come back.”

“Assuming Esmeralda doesn’t strap him to a trolley and lock him in a dark room somewhere for mucking about with her fiendish plan. Whatever that may be.”

“Nah, he works for her,” Nicky said, “she trusts him. That was how he was able to get me out.”

“He works for her?” Bracken was incredulous, “then what exactly is it about him that you think we can trust? You utter muppet! This is probably all part of her grand design!”

“Jeez Bracken, she’s not Kevin McCloud.”

“I’ve told you before about making jokes about programming on channel four.”

“Sorry.”

Bracken crossed her arms dejectedly. What she wouldn’t give for a wee cuddle from the wean right now, with his sticky face and perpetually paint covered fingers.

“Oh my Christ,” Nicky said, as though reading her mind, “the wean!”

“What about him?”

“He must be here too!”

“What? Why?”

“You said yourself he’s nowhere to be found on the outside… And I’ve just remembered, the guard that Bert ran into said there were three McCrackens here!”

Nicky slapped his forehead, as people do on telly but less often in real life.

“I can’t believe I didn’t work it out then – I guess I was thinking about trying not to make any noise that would give us away. Three McCrackens though – you, me, and the wean!”

Bracken got to her feet.

“We are getting out of here,” she decided, stepping off the trolley and lurching forwards into the darkness.

“Ow,” she added, falling over. She had severe pins and needles and couldn’t feel either of her feet. Those straps had been tighter than she’d realized.

“Bracken, are you OK?”

He moved towards where he thought the sound of her crash to the floor had come.

Finding her hands, he pulled her to her feet.

“Ow ow ow,” she squeaked, hopping from foot to foot as the blood began to return.

“Lean on me,” he said, putting an arm around her waist, “and lets do this thing together.”

She let him support her weight, and together they inched slowly forwards, arms outstretched, in search of a door.

Amazingly, unbelievably luckily, the first thing that Nicky’s fingers alighted on was a door handle. Holding his breath, he gently pressed it down, and the door swung open.

“I can’t believe it wasn’t locked,” Bracken whispered mildly, blinking as the dazzling white light of the lavish marble corridor hit her corneas.

“There was no need,” Esmeralda said coldly, appearing out of the shadows and making them both jump, “you were supposed to be secured.”

Bracken sighed.

“Better do the introductions then hey. Nicky McCracken, this is Esmeralda Francesca MacGregor Di Saatchi Von Rollo. Esmeralda, this is my cousin, Nicky McCracken.”

“Oh, I know Nicky already,” Esmeralda said, the ghost of a smile playing around her lips and getting a bit confused into thinking that maybe it was a sneer.

“What,” Nicky said, genuinely confused, “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

“Oh but you have,” Esmeralda said enigmatically, making a mental note to stop beginning so many of her sentences with ‘oh’.

“Sorry hen, not ringing a bell. You must have one of those forgettable faces.”

Esmeralda’s nostrils flared in irritation.

“It’s about time both of you heard a few home truths,” she said. “I think you should come with me.”

“Where’s my son?” Bracken demanded, on the verge of tears. “What have you done with my wee boy?”

Esmeralda regarded her with arctic cool.

“That little boy,” she said deliberately, enunciating every syllable like a crisp footprint in snow, “is not your son.”

Chapter Fifteen

Chapters 1-14 on my other blog, here.

Generally speaking, babies do not talk.

There are a lot of things they don't do, to be honest. Walking, cycling, swimming, singing, contributing a little bit here and there to the household expenses... Babies don't do any of that stuff. They're like the worst kind of loser boyfriend, depending totally on you to do every last thing for them.

Keep me warm, they say with their too-large baby eyes, keep me safe. Clothe me in clean linen, sing to me when I feel sad, feed me every three hours.

Pay my rent, just this month. Lend me bus fare every morning so I can go to my minimum wage job and spend the proceeds on cider and computer games. Do my laundry, cook my tea, sort the bills out, clean the bog. Please? I've had such a long day and you do all that stuff better than me anyway. It's my go next time.

It's possible that babies, much like loser ex boyfriends, are incapable of any kind of rational thought process that might enable them to take charge of their own lives and do things for themselves.

However, unlike ex boyfriends, they are very small, and new to this being alive malarkey, which we all know takes a bit of practice. (The practice that the loser boyfriend never had to put in, because he is so mollycoddled by his doting mother that he thinks chips just come straight from the ground hot and covered in cheese and gravy.)

Anyway, babies are babies, not ex boyfriends. Well, some babies might be ex boyfriends one day, but I'm not going to wait about for that to happen. There's stuff to be getting on with.

So, we have established that babies probably aren't deliberately lazy and thoughtless. In fact, they might not be thoughtless at all. The fact they can't communicate it to adults does not mean in and of itself that they do not engage in a perfectly logical thought process of their own devising.

As such, Bracken's baby lay in its lumpy bed and thought,

"I wonder where Bracken is."

Then it thought,

"And Nicky."

Then it thought,

"I wonder where I am?"

"Maybe I did something bad? But that's not it. I'm too small for punishments."

The wean listened carefully. All he heard was silence.

"Maybe they did something bad and got taken away from me? But that doesn't make sense. Nicky and Bracken are stand up members of the local community. They don’t do crimes. They've got me to think of."

The wean wondered whether this was his own original thought. It sounded like the sort of thing he might have heard other people saying.

He looked around him.

He was lying in a cot with a lumpy mattress, located in the centre of a room with blue walls and an unusual smell. The only concession to the fact a child inhabited it was a picture of a Care Bear on one wall. It looked as though it had been cut out of a newspaper and stuck up as an afterthought, which wasn't all that surprising, because it had been.

"I'm hungry," thought the wean. "I wonder if I should cry."

It didn't usually work in this place, the crying till someone came thing. There were two meals a day, with a snack in the morning because the guard had muttered something to the woman in charge about weaning, and that was your lot.

The wean wasn't sure how he knew that the person in charge of the facility was a woman, but he didn't have any doubts about it. She went out of her way to disguise her identity with odd costumes and voices and the way she carried herself, and the whole bizarre act seemed to fool most of her employees, but the wean knew.

Perhaps children are more perceptive than adults. Or perhaps they are less conditioned into thinking that the bad guys are always men.

The wean assumed that although the boss lady was a lady, she didn’t have any children. If she had, she would be more inclined to feed him properly. Ladies who already have babies like other people’s babies. Sometimes they like them even more than their own.

He thought about him and Bracken’s trips to the library. There were always old ladies there cooing over him and looking disapprovingly or sympathetically at Bracken. He knew she found it discomfiting, but had noticed that she tended to laugh it off. This could have been for his sake, he thought, or possibly it was meant to maintain some semblance of dignity. Then she’d mumble something about how fast he was growing, even though he was small for his age, and sidle off towards the board books.

Like all children, the wean enjoyed the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

The door of the small blue room creaked open, an hour ahead of schedule.

The wean turned to see who the intruder was.

It was one of the guards, the one with unusual purple markings on her face. It was a pretty colour of purple, but the wean couldn’t help thinking that the lady didn’t like it very much.

“Hello little one,” she cooed, much like the sort of ladies he remembered from his trips out and about with Bracken.

He gurgled endearingly for her.

“Aw,” she said, “coochie coo. This is no place for a little guy like you.”

She picked him up for a cuddle. The wean thought it would be odd, being hugged by a stranger in strange surroundings, but it was alright. Comforting, even. It felt like it had been an awful long time since he had been held by someone who wanted to pick him up.

He gurgled some more.

“I wish things hadn’t turned out like this,” the guard said wistfully. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”

The wean pricked up his ears. This might be interesting, he thought. Although that didn’t really matter, given that he had no way of passing on any information he might get.

But then the door opened again, and the guard put him back down in the cot hurriedly, pulling the tatty blanket back across him.

She whirled to face the new visitor, her mind racing to come up with an explanation as to why she was breaking the strictly enforced ‘no contact’ rule.

The wean could appreciate that her body language was tense, she stood rigid and ready for confrontation. But then she recognized the other person, and sagged with relief.

“Oh,” she said, “its you. Thank goodness.”

“Yes,” the man replied, “but you ought to be more careful. We’re all under surveillance you know.”

“Not all of the time,” she pointed out defensively.

“I know,” he said gently, “but its still not safe.”

She pouted attractively, and picked up the wean once more.

“Is this another McCracken?”

“Yes,” she said, “or at least that’s the name we’ve got on his files.”

Cryptic, thought the wean, taking a moment to be impressed with himself for knowing the word cryptic. He hiccupped.

The man smoothed his hair back nervously, and tickled the wean under the chin.

“Hi little fella,” he introduced himself, “my name’s Bert. I’m –” he hesitated a moment here, “ – a friend of Nicky’s.”

The wean smiled at the mention of his favourite uncle. Nicky did finger painting with him every Tuesday and Thursday while Bracken was out lollipopping, and they got the paint all over the kitchen. The wean liked all the colours. He thought maybe Nicky liked winding up Bracken. She always pretended to be annoyed and then mellowed considerably when she saw all the pictures they had made for her. Pictures of the three of them living together in an enormous castle with orchards and ponies in the expansive grounds. Well, that was what the wean was going for. But it mainly looked like splodges. Bracken always said that she loved them though.

He sighed.

“Aw,” the guard said, “is oo hungry?”

“I’m alright thanks,” Bert joked.

“Not you,” she replied, missing the humour.

She produced a warm bottle from her pocket.

“I think he’s a bit big for bottles, but there doesn’t seem to be a blender in the kitchen so I couldn’t mash anything up for him.”

Bert nodded his assent, not really knowing what else to do.

“Sorry wee man,” she addressed the wean.

He didn’t mind in the slightest. Any food was good food, as far as he was concerned.

“So are you going to help?”

This was Bert speaking. The wean examined him as he drank his milk.

Bert was of average height and slight build, with a shock of white hair and movements a bit like a sparrow. He was dressed in a very white lab coat, with a blue spot where a biro had burst in his top pocket, and a white jumpsuit underneath. It was sort of futuristic as people thought the future might look during the 1970s. The wean had watched a lot of Buck Rodgers on daytime TV with Uncle Nicky, which was how he knew.

Bert also had a large amount of very white hair, which stuck up in tufts all over his head. He looked a little wild. The wean liked him.

“I’d like to,” she began, “but I’m worried about the repercussions.”

“If we move fast, there don’t have to be any. We can blow the operation wide open!”

“I don’t know,” she said, concentrating on the bottle, “the facility has people on every continent.”

“Yeah but if the boss is in jail the whole operation will fall apart.”

“No it won’t,” she said anxiously, “there’ll be a contingency plan. And who’d believe us, anyway? The whole thing’s just too bizarre. The Chamber, the medication, the –”

“Sssh,” he interrupted, putting a finger on her lips. “We don’t know who’s listening.”

She was silent.

The wean yawned. The milk was all gone and he felt relaxed and sleepy, although slightly concerned about all the ominous chat the adults were engaging in. He thought they’d probably sort it out though. That’s what grown ups do, isn’t it. Sort things out.

“He’s fallen asleep,” the scarred guard whispered, rocking the wean gently.

“Just as well he’s too young to understand all this. It’d be too much to take in. All these different people thinking they’re his mum, and him being taken away from the real one when he was too small to know the difference.”

Bert smiled sadly and put an arm around her shoulder.

“Let him go down for the moment, Patti,” he said soothingly. “You’ll have him back soon enough.”

Chapter Fourteen

Parts 1-13 here!

Nicky was lying uncomfortably on a rickety trolley provided by Bert.

"How old is this thing," he grumbled, more to himself than to his strange companion.

"Oh, bout a hundred and something years," Bert said cheerfully, "the boss likes period pieces."

As he spoke he was covering Nicky from head to toe with musty smelling sheets with the assured precision of a surgeon. It could have been his medical background, or he might once have worked as a chambermaid making beds in hotels - perhaps as a summer job during his studies. It really wasn't important - the main thing was that Nicky was disguised. As a cadaver.

Nicky wrinkled his nose distastefully. He'd had better smelling costumes. Like when he went to a school fancy dress party as a bunch of flowers, and his mum had sprayed the roses with rose water to make it more realistic.

He frowned. That didn't seem right. Mum never helped him with school stuff. And if Steve had seen him dressed up as a bunch of flowers, he'd either have dissolved in fits of laughter or skelped him. Steve was not a man of half measures.

"Are you ready?" Bert was asking from the relative comfort of not under an ancient sheet.

"As I'll ever be," Nicky replied through his nose, even though it sounded clichéd.

"Good. Now remember you will have to stay very still, and not speak or get up or sneeze or do a wee until I give the word."

"I'll remember," promised Nicky, although he doubted that such a promise was going to have much of an effect. He'd seen enough movies to be pretty convinced of their imminent capture and subsequent horrible murder. Not that he'd ever seen any evidence of actual violence with his own actual eyes, but the place just had that aura about it.

Bert nodded, then realised Nicky couldn't see him. He winked instead.

"You'll be alright, son," he said with confidence. It felt nice to be a dad, he thought. "Now, if we meet anyone of the other side of the door, I might say some things that sound a bit odd. But I need you to trust that I know what I'm doing. Can you manage that?"

Nicky thought he would probably find this quite difficult. There again, what choice did he have? Sit in the blue walled room waiting for something to happen, or take his chances with the crazy old guy. It was one of life's classic dilemmas, like daddy or chips.

"Yeah," he said eventually, "I can do that."

"Great," Bert grinned with a painful sounding crack of his jaw. "Ow," he added, rubbing it with his crinkly fingers. He had some ibuprofen in the car, it’d be fine.

He opened the door using a swipe card with a picture of a blue and white cat on it, and maneuvered the trolley out into the corridor. Nicky couldn't see this of course, but his new surroundings were made entirely from intricately sculpted, highly polished marble. There were even ornately carved Greco-roman pillars outside of Nicky’s cell.

"Three," Bert said in a low voice, swinging the door closed behind them, "two," he punched in a security code that exploded the alarm system in a shower of sparks, "one! GERONIMO!"

He took a run up and jumped on the back of the trolley, sending it hurtling down the corridor at the speed of a puma.

"Wheeeeeeeeeeeee," he exclaimed with enthusiasm.

Still unable to see what was going on, Nicky clung to the sides of the trolley, closed his eyes, and prayed to Richard Dawkins for his survival.

“WHAT,” came a predictable voice only seconds later, “do you think you are doing, Doctor Sprinkler?”

“Bert Sprinkler?” Nicky thought, “that’s a weird and unusual name.”

“Sorry,” Bert said, catching his breath cheerfully, “I have always wanted to do that.”

Nicky could almost hear the stranger’s eyebrow raise.

“Who’ve you got on the trolley?”

“McCracken.”

“Which one?”

Bert showed no hint of surprise, although he was actually quite shocked.

“Come on man, which one? We have got three, after all.”

Nicky bit the inside of his mouth very hard, drawing blood. He swallowed it with a quiet grimace.

“Nicholas,” Bert replied evenly, smoothing first his tie and then his hair, because he felt he ought to be doing something with his hands.

He hadn’t known there even were three McCrackens. Was he father to them all?

“And what might you be doing with the unconscious body of Nicholas McCracken,” the other voice asked suspiciously. “He isn’t due in the chamber for at least another week.”

“Had word from her that it was time to speed things up,” Bert said ominously. “And you know how she reacts when you keep her waiting.”

“Don’t I just,” the voice said bitterly. Nicky decided it must just be one of the guards. Ha, just. Like they weren’t modeled on the Kathy Bates character in the film Misery. “You know how she likes her coffee at exactly 10:03? I once went in at 10:04, because my watch battery was running slow. She threw it in my face.”

“What, your watch?”

“No you crabstick, the boiling coffee.”

Bert examined the woman’s face. It bore signs of angry purple scarring underneath the eye mask that the guards were all forced to wear.

“That looks painful,” he said sympathetically.

“It was,” she reported. “Very.”

A look passed between them. Nicky tried very hard not to cough. It was the kind of look that might result in another subplot if things got too boring and he didn’t want to spoil the moment. Even though he couldn’t see it.

“Well,” she said, reddening slightly in a not completely unattractive way, “I’ll let you get on.”

He smiled sadly.

“Thanks,” he said, “I think.”

She swayed empathetically.

“Do you ever wonder whether what we do here is…” he began.

She started to say something in reply, but then looked up suddenly and a shadow passed across her brow.

“- in the name of science,” she cut across him instead, a warning note in her milky voice.

Bert turned, to see a familiar mink cloaked figure behind him.

His blood went cold, like that of an alligator, snake, or other reptile. Because he was a mammal, this was uncomfortable to him and made the hairs rise up on the back of his neck and the top of his head as if he had plugged himself into the mains.

“Does she ever wonder whether what we do here is…?” The figure repeated darkly. The weird voice box that he or she used to disguise his or her speech could not render his or her tones completely emotionless, Nicky noted. Apparently Bert’s doubts about the operation were a matter of concern.

“Go on, Bert. Finish your sentence.”

“Oh, I can’t remember what I was saying now,” Bert said airily, forcing a short laugh.

“Seeing you unexpectedly like this has completely put it out of my mind. I’m getting old, you see,” he added hopefully, knocking the top of his head in a comic fashion as if to suggest it was empty of thought.

“Yes,” the big boss agreed, “you are old. But not forgetful. It’s clear to me that you’re trying to hide something, and don’t think for a second that I’m not going to find out exactly what that is.”

Bert smiled coldly. His heart was racing like the clappers, but he maintained a calm outer exterior.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he replied demurely, accidentally fluttering his eyelashes. He made a mental note to stop watching BBC adaptations of Jane Austen novels to help him get to sleep at night. It worked, but there was some form of mental conditioning that went along with it which led almost exclusively to embarrassing consequences.

“You know exactly what I mean,” the caped authority snapped with an angry swish. “But never mind that now. Take Mr McCracken and go, before he wakes up.”

Bert narrowed his eyes. He didn’t have permission from the head honcho to take Nicky anywhere.

“At once,” he replied, bowing his head as if before royalty.

Nicky felt the trolley start to move, much more sedately this time. He did his best not to exhale too big of a sigh of relief. They weren’t out of the woods yet, metaphorically speaking as it were, and now would not be a great moment for the sheet to go flying off him and for them to see he was awake.

‘Although,’ he thought to himself, ‘I could always shut my eyes and pretend that I really was unconscious.’

He smiled. Maybe, if he kept his wits about him, escaping wouldn’t be so hard after all.

“Right Nicky,” said Bert very quietly and almost without moving his lips, “slight change of plan. I’ll have to actually take you to The Chamber right now, and I will need to leave you there alone for a bit.”

Nicky had no idea what that meant, but he guessed from context that it was bad.

Another door opened, and the trolley stopped.

He was alone once more, but this time he was also in the dark.