Eventually, he turned for the final time and headed out, across the hallway, into the spare bedroom. In the mirror, I watched the night swallow up his entire body — except for the mask. In the darkness, the red of the plastic never disappeared.
He scanned the room, the mask moving with him, left to right; one long, snake-like movement. When he was done, he did the same thing again, replicating the action exactly. Then, finally, he turned and stepped back into the half-light of the hallway, pausing, and looking across towards me. I stood motionless, soundless, staring through the gap between the door and the frame, right into the darkness of the mask’s eyeholes.
Then, finally, he left.
The Programme
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking across at the door out of the room. It was open. Beyond was a living area, stripped of almost all decor. The only furniture he could see was a table in the middle, and a single chair pushed under it.
It was a trick. Had to be.
He tried to work out how long they’d kept him, how long he’d been waking in the middle of the night and staring into the corner of the bedroom. Two or three weeks. Maybe a month. Maybe more. And during that time the door had never been open.
But now it was.
He leaned forwards a little. He could make out more of the living area now: a second door to the right of the table, closed. A bookcase, empty, next to that. On top of the bookcase was a book. It had gold lettering on it, a Post-It note attached to the front.
He got to his feet, dropped the blanket on to the bed and slowly shuffled to the bedroom door. Stopped. Now he could see what the book was.
A Bible.
Hesitating, he took another couple of steps forward, into the living area. The floorboards were cold against his bare feet.
‘Hello there.’
He turned and, through the corner of his eye, saw a man standing next to the door to the bedroom. Leaning against the wall, dressed entirely in black. Tall, broad, well built.
‘How are you feeling?’
I recognize you, he thought, looking across at the tall man, trying to find the tail of the memory. But it wouldn’t come to him. Memories were starting to swim away, disappearing every day — and they weren’t coming back again.
‘Have you lost your voice?’ the tall man said, and stepped away from the door. ‘My name is Andrew, by the way.’
‘Where am I?’ he said, his words indistinct as they passed through his toothless gums.
Andrew nodded. ‘Ah, so you do speak.’
‘Where am I?’
‘You’re safe.’
‘Safe?’ He looked around him. ‘From who?’
‘We will get to that.’
‘I want to get to it now.’
Andrew paused. Something flared in his eyes, and then it passed again.
‘You remember what you did?’
He tried to think. Tried to grasp at another memory.
‘I, uh…’
‘You made a mess of your life, that’s what you did,’ Andrew said, his voice harder now. ‘You had nowhere else to go, no one to turn to. So you turned to us.’
‘I turned to Mat.’
Andrew smirked. ‘No, you didn’t.’
‘I did.’
‘No, you didn’t. Mat doesn’t exist.’
‘What?’ He frowned. ‘I want to see Mat.’
‘Are you deaf?’
He looked around the room, towards the door. ‘Wha— where is he?’
‘I told you,’ Andrew said. ‘He doesn—’
‘I want to know where he is!’
In the blink of an eye, Andrew was on him, clamping a huge hand on to his throat. He leaned in so they were almost touching noses, and squeezed with his fingers. ‘You have to earn the right to speak. So, don’t ever speak to me like that.’
Andrew shoved him away, and — as he stepped back — a memory came to him: pinned down on the dentist’s chair, looking up at a tall man in a surgical mask.
Andrew.
‘You…’ he said quietly, touching his gums with his fingers.
‘Don’t say anything you’re going to regret.’
‘You took out my teeth.’
Andrew looked at him.
‘You took out my teeth,’ he said again.
‘We saved your life.’
‘You took out my teeth.’
‘We saved your life,’ Andrew spat. He took a big step forward again, his hands opening and closing. ‘I’m willing to help you here, but I can just as easily feed you to the darkness.’
The darkness.
He swallowed. Looked at Andrew.
He meant the devil.
‘Is that what you want?’
‘No,’ he replied, holding up a hand.
Andrew paused, steel showing in his face. ‘I don’t care about your teeth. There are things going on here more important than your vanity. Soon you will come to understand the situation you are in — and the situation you were pulled out of.’
He stared blankly at Andrew.
‘I don’t expect you to understand. That’s why I’ve left something there for you to read.’ Andrew nodded at the Bible. ‘I suggest you study the passages I’ve highlighted. Process them. Because you’d better start to appreciate that you’re standing in the middle of this room with your heart still beating in your chest.’
Andrew stepped closer to him.
‘But if you cross us, we will kill you.’
And then he left.
He’s in an apartment, two floors up. There’s no furniture, and holes in the floor. He’s sitting at a window, facing Mat. He feels scared.
‘What am I going to do?’
‘I have friends who can help you,’ Mat says. ‘They run a place for people like you.’
‘I don’t want to run any more.’
‘You won’t have to. These people — they will help you. They will help you to start again. The police will never find you.’
‘But I don’t know who I can trust.’
‘You can trust me.’
‘I thought I could trust my own family.’
‘You can count on me, I promise you that. These people will help you to disappear, and then they will help you to forget.’
‘I want to forget, Mat.’
Mat shifts closer, places a hand on his shoulder. ‘I know you do. But do me a favour. Don’t call me Mat from now on.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘My friends, the people who are going to help you, I’m not Mat to them. Mat is dead now.’ He pauses, looks different for a moment. ‘You can call me Michael.’
When he woke, Andrew was sitting at the bottom of the bed. He brought his knees up to his chest, glanced at Andrew, and then looked out through the top window. Early morning. Or maybe late afternoon. He wasn’t sure any more.
‘Have you read the book I gave you?’ Andrew said.
The book. The book. The book. He tried to find the memory, a spark that would lead him to the book, but it wouldn’t come.
‘I can’t remember,’ he said quietly.
‘It was a Bible,’ Andrew replied, ignoring him. ‘The book was a Bible. You remember I gave you a copy of the Bible, right?’
‘No.’
Andrew paused, studied him. ‘That’s a shame,’ he said eventually. ‘We’ve been treating you differently from the others, you know that?’