‘Your, ah, dear f-f-father also thinks he’s better, you see, than the rest of us.’ He laughs, although it sounds more like hiccups. ‘Us, ah, less honourable scientists,’ he continues through the hiccupy laughs, ‘doomed to spend our jolly old days working with wretched specimens such as yourself.’
I don’t know why he keeps calling Dad an ‘honourable scientist’. He was just doing his job, as a vet. A very good vet, mind, perhaps the best in the country, Mum said. He had ‘the magic touch’, that’s what they called it — ‘No animal too small, no disease too big,’ he always said. Animals in farms, animals from the house next door, animals on the other side of the world. Until the virus came.
‘And all I am trying to, ah, jolly well do is keep my little d-d-delinquent, ah, charges safe and, ahm, sound.’ He gives me a big smile, and it looks like his fraggly yellow teeth are running a competition to see which one can fall out of his mouth first. ‘Which is why I have no choice, I’m afraid.’
I look at the shut door. At the picture of scowling Selwyn Stone. None of them offers any advice or any help as the Doctor gives me my sentence.
‘You touched a restricted insect. You know the rules.’
He presses a button under the desk, and the door slides open to reveal two wardens in the corridor, waiting for me.
‘Take him, ah, back to his room,’ says Doctor Fredericks with a wave of his hand. ‘Q-q-quarantined for seven days. Total isolation.’
Chapter 4
The wardens haul me back to my room and lock the door behind them as if nothing had happened.
Seven days. Stuck in here. Because I thought an insect was talking to me.
Sat up against the wall, clutching my pillow to my chest, I try to focus on the world beyond the window. A solid black sky, but no rain.
I try to think of happy things — like being back at home. I’m helping Mum unpack the shopping. I’ve said something to make her laugh. Then Dad comes in holding his favourite mug, full of tea, and joins in. And we’re laughing and cooking dinner and we’re happy. Everything’s normal again.
I don’t know how long I stay like that, curled up on my bed, clutching my pillow. At supper time they shove a bowl of Eggs’n’Ham formula through a hatch in the door, but I don’t feel hungry.
Sleeping, staring, untouched formula bowls piling up on the floor — that is how my life is until seven grey skies have been and gone since I was taken to the Doctor’s rooms.
That evening, I have the strangest dream.
I’m dreaming that I’m asleep in my room at home, when there’s a faint noise at the window.
A tap tap tapping.
I try to ignore it, and roll over. But the noise just keeps on getting louder and louder.
My head is pulsing — half dreaming, half awake, I toss and turn, feeling my pillows, the cold wall behind, confused as to whether I’m at home or in the Hall. The tap tapping grows louder and louder, like a drill inside my brain.
Then, with a jolt, I wake up. I’m definitely in my room at Spectrum Hall.
And I’m freezing.
I’m freezing, because the window wall has a jagged hole smashed right through it, and in the moonlight I can see shards of broken glass all over the floor. Carefully I climb out of bed, trying not to step on the jagged edges, when some feathers hit me on the head.
Dark and wet feathers, flapping round the room.
I raise my arm over my eyes, and another thing hits me from the opposite direction. Flying in through the window, flying at me from all sides, is a flock of birds. They flap their wings manically, showering me with freezing water. In the half-light I catch a glimpse of their huge eyes and purple-grey chests.
Pigeons. My room is full of flying varmints.
I grab my chair, ready to bat the birds back out again, back to wherever they came from, when they start to speak — all of them talking together in a deep voice, more like singing than talking. Like a choir, direct in my head — just like the crackle from the cockroach in the Yard, or the whistle from the spider in the Doctor’s room, only this time there’s hundreds of voices speaking at once.
And I really can hear what they’re saying.
*Kester Jaynes, we have been sent to find you.*
But it’s a talking choir without perfect timing. Because as most of them finish, I notice a higher-pitched voice join in late, making even less sense than the others –
*Yes, Kester Jaynes, you have been sent to find us.*
All their heads turn to look at me: what looks like at least a hundred pairs of eyes and beaks swivelling in my direction as if they’re synchronized. A hundred pigeons at least — in my room.
*Kester — we know you can hear us.*
It’s true. I can. But I don’t understand how or why.
*You can talk to us. Let your mind go free. Let us in, Kester. Let us hear your thoughts.*
I don’t want to let anything into my head. The pigeons flutter about in the pale blue light. It looks like most of them are dark grey, with white speckles. But there’s one white bird with pink feet and orange eyes. Ninety-nine dark grey pigeons and a single white one, the one with the high-pitched voice. The one who can’t say words properly. Like me.
*Kester Jaynes, the time has come,* say the ninety-nine grey pigeons.
*Kester Jaynes, have you got the time?* adds the one white pigeon.
*You have a special gift. Only you can save us.*
*Yes. We’ve saved a special gift, only for you.*
I think spending so long on my own has sent me crazy. And then, without thinking, words start to form in my head.
Yes, words — actual words.
After six whole years, six years since I spoke a single one. And now, as if that had been yesterday, as if we were still in the hospital, as if Mum was still lying there, they come again: words.
The last words I ever spoke were to Mum. The night that she—
She was lying there, sort of looking at me, more looking past me, holding my hand so lightly, like just to keep hers on top of mine was an effort, her breathing rickety, her skin yellow — so all I said was —
‘Will you come back?’
She shook her head ever so slightly from side to side, gave what was maybe a smile and then said — in fact whispered — so soft, so I had to lean in, smelling her breath, sweet and stale — ‘Tell Dad.’ Another pause, a big breath. ‘Tell Dad he has to tell you.’
But she never said what.
The pigeons peck in –
*Kester! Kester! You must save us!*
Mum disappears, and instead there are just words — forming, circling in my mind, pulses of sound trying to connect.
There’s a silence. While I think, and try to speak.
*Yes, Kester, save yourself from us!* squeaks the white pigeon.
The other grey pigeons shake their heads and peck at the white one so much he falls off the end of my bed with a squawk.
But it helps. I realize I can speak. Like in my head before, to the moth in my room, to the cockroach in the Yard — only it’s different this time. Because I know they’re listening, and understanding. So I say the first new words of my new talking.
*Get out of my face, birds!*
(No one said the words had to be polite.)
The pigeons cock their heads. Like they don’t care what I say or think. The white one picks himself up off the floor with a shake of his head and hops back on to the end of my bed, scratching furiously at his wingpit with his beak. Ignoring him, the grey ones fill my head with their sing-song, wailing like ghosts.