was standing with her back to them, staring out of the window at nothing.
Chapter 15
The shoes he’d stolen were more like slippers. Paper ones. Flimsy. His feet were cold. His torso too. He crouched down behind a bush and waited for the guard to amble past on his midnight round.
He’d timed this from his window on the third floor. He only had a few seconds before the people in white would notice he was gone and sound the alarm. The seconds ticked by. Finally the guard appeared, whistling as he walked. The moment the man was out of sight he darted towards the wall and swung himself up into a tree that brushed up against it. He scrambled along a branch until he was at the same height as the top of the wall and then he hung over the side and jumped, landing in a crouch on the sidewalk below.
He stood up quickly, scanning the street. It was eerily quiet. The avenue of trees spreading their thick branches overhead buried him in shadows. Headlights suddenly swept across him. He bowed his head and started walking, trying to look inconspicuous – which was hard given that he was wearing only a pair of bright-green scrub trousers.
He knew he needed to find out where he was. But, more importantly, he needed to figure out who he was. Before the monsters with the fangs and the tails came after him. Because, though he couldn’t remember much of anything else and didn’t even know his own name, he did know that they were coming.
As he rounded the corner he saw the sign next to the front gate of the place where he’d been locked up for what felt like years. Gateways Hospital, it said. And underneath, Community Mental Health Centre.
He paused for a moment, the word Gateways stirring something in his subconscious, but then he shrugged to himself and kept walking. It was just one more thing he couldn’t remember.
In the distance he heard a siren start to wail and he upped his pace, breaking into a jog and then into a sprint, the green scrub trousers he was wearing flapping uncomfortably. At the bottom of the hill he turned onto a main thoroughfare, blinking in the sudden glare of shops and the eye-shattering headlight beams of dozens of cars.
Nothing about this place looked familiar, but then again it didn’t look unfamiliar either. He wasn’t scared by the noise or the traffic or the cars weaving in and out across four lanes. A sense settled over him that he belonged here. That this had once upon a time been his city – his stomping ground. He knew that if he gave in and trusted his instincts he’d figure it all out. In the same way he knew that the monsters the doctors had dismissed as figments of his psychotic mind were real.
He was aware that he was drawing stares. People were openly gawping at his dirt-streaked feet, naked chest and hospital trousers. He should have taken a doctor’s coat but, hell, knocking out the orderly and managing to pull his pants off him had been all he could manage in the timeframe.
He ran across the street, ignoring the angry honks of oncoming traffic that had to swerve to avoid him. He kept moving, following his gut instinct, letting it take him somewhere, though he didn’t know where. He just kept running, dodging past late-night revellers, almost smacking into a lamp post that he didn’t see coming, hearing the yells of people behind him and a whistle blowing in the distance.
He couldn’t let them take him back there and lock him up. He couldn’t let them keep sticking needles in his arm and pumping him full of drugs that made him pass out and the days drift into one long vivid streak of nightmares. If they weren’t going to listen to him about what was coming – about the monsters – then he was going to have to take matters into his own hands before it was too late.
He ducked down a narrow alley running between two buildings. It looked familiar, as though his feet were following a well-trodden path. The sound of sirens faded into the background and he slowed his pace, coming to a halt at the far end of the alley.
He stepped out onto another street and scanned it. The building over the way jarred something in his memory. It looked out of place, like someone had transplanted it from another