Imprint (4 page)

“
So Hayden
knows about this too?”

“Yeah.”

“You are being serious, aren’t you?”

“As I said before, yes.”

She looked suddenly guilty, probably for not believing him. “Well, I’m sure there’s an explanation. Maybe you can talk
to someone at school about it-
”

“I’m not going to school
today.”

“
What?
” she turned to stare at him in surprise, eyes wide. “You’re skipping school? You can’t do that! What if they catch you?”

He rolled his eyes. “People skip school all the time, it’s no big deal.”

“And when are you going to come back?”

“
I’m not sure, Al.
I guess when I’ve got my head around things.
You’ll have to trust me on this.
”

She turned away from him, to stare out of the window at the p
assing scenery
– a shiny blue car, some decrepit houses and a man walking his dog.
“Maybe
you
should trust
me
to help you sometimes
.”

Sean sighed. “
I do, but this time’s different. I need to do it alone. If I find answers, I’ll let you know.
Please, just cover for me
until then
, will you?”

She was silent for a moment, but then a look of defeat entered her eyes.
“Sure,” she
said flatly
. “Of course I will.”

Sean wanted to say something more, he almost wanted to confide everything to her, tell her exactly why he wanted her to stay away from him. But he
couldn’t
.
Although he didn’t
like it, it would be best for her
not to get involved
.
So in the end all he said was a simple “thanks,” and hoped it would be enough.
When the bus next rumbled to a stop with a large heave
of annoyance, Sean stood up and pushed his way off.
He did not look back to see
Ali’s expression.

The rest of the day was spe
nt in idle boredom. It was
cold, and the sun had taken refuge behind the clouds. At some point it had a
lso started drizzling. Sean
managed to find his way
to the
high street and
spent most of the morning reading newsp
apers for free until he was
chased out of the shop
. Then he ended up
sitting in the deserted park on his own. He almost wished he had gone to school now – at least school would have been a little more interesting than th
is. It seemed skiving
was overrated.
For a few brief moments, he wondered what Ali was doing and almost wished he had asked her to come with him.

By lunchtime, the rain had gotten worse. Sean stared up at the clouds with a quiet sigh and let the raindrops splatter across his face, revelling in the feeling. The truth was that he would be bored whatever he did. Life in general was boring, or maybe it was just him. He was a pretty boring person. Sometimes he wondered if death was any more interesting. Sometimes, he wished that he could give his life to someone who would appreciate it more than he did.

And it was then that something interesting finally happened.

He had subconsciously walked out of the park and was just crossing a rather empty road when he felt it again. He felt someone watching him. It sent a chill throughout his body that he couldn’t explain. He
paused, for a fraction of a
second, to glance behind him. Yet in that fraction of a second a car had come careening around the corner, completely disregarding any speed lim
its, and Sean knew that he had made a fatal
mistake.

He was rooted
to
the spot, unable to do anything except stare in horror as t
he horn
blared
, the car tried to slow down and the
brakes squealed. They say your
life is supposed
to flash before your eyes as
you die,
some sort of built-
in reflex that is supposed to make you realise just how lucky you were so that you can finally appreciate
everything
before you’re killed anyway. But Sean felt none of that. He never had
a chance too; e
verything was moving
too fast
. I
n the next second a burning, overwhelming pain had wiped all thought from his mind and he was vaguely aware of flying – rather spectacularly – through the air. For that one moment h
owever, before the pain, he
felt strangely content.
It was an odd feeling, a feeling of not being alone. It was a feeling that he had never
felt before, but it was soothing
.
Like the feel of icy water on burnt skin.

And then
he was falling: plummeting.

Down. Down. Down
.

Chapter 3: Just pull your arm out of my bed, would you?

He’d never felt as lost as he did now. On all sides menacing black walls boxed him in, and he had no sense of direction. He didn’t know which way was up, or down, or if there even was a way up at all. He had no sense of anything. Maybe he wasn’t even breathing anymore; maybe he’d finally snuffed it and gotten himself killed. The thought didn’t scare him as much as it should have, because if he really was dead then it wasn’t so bad.
There was no pain, or a promised day, or an Egyptian god wanting to weigh his heart against a feather, or a red-eyed demon sending him down into a fiery underworld. It was peaceful. It was like being everywhere and everything all at the same time.

This isn’t death yet, something said. This is just the first stage. Where was the voice coming from? Was it even a
voice? He wondered if he
had
really
heard it, or if he’d just thought it himself.

And then there was a playground blossoming in front of his eyes, sprouting out of the darkness like someone had recorded the growth of
a
flower and speeded it up for playback. The playground was dimly familiar, as if it were something from a past life. There was a little boy clinging onto the climbing frame, and a slightly older boy watching nervously beneath.
Don’t fall, the older one was saying. Don’t fall. Hold on.

Another image came, of those same two boys, except the background had changed to the sea, the roar of the waves rushing through his head. Just like how he used to press seashells to his ear and listen to their memories. The water flowed in one direction, in a steady rhythm, and one of the boys was standing knee-deep in it. Don’t go in too deep, the other said. You’ll never be able to get back.

The scene changed again, but this time the young boy was alone. He was surrounded by evergreen trees that formed a canopy above his head and obstructed the sun. There was a light mist shrouding the forest in mystery, and as the elusive boy slipped
silently between the trunks
, there was a whisper.
Go back, it said. Go back, they are coming for you
.

The first thing that Sean felt as his consciousness was slowly dragged back from the realm of oblivion was a
strange sense of disappointment that he couldn’t place. Everything w
as still dark, but there was a
blinking orange light in the corner of this black room.
‘
My eyes are closed
,’
he realised with some surprise.
After
a long struggle, he
managed to crack one eye
open an
d now a smal
l stream of that same blinding
light filtered into his awareness.
It reminded him of too-early mornings spent listening to the radio alarm clock blaring loudly yet not having the energy to reach over and switch it off. Maybe this was what was happening now. The only difference being that he couldn’t move.

A
fter a lot
of effort, he managed to peel open both eyes.
His vision wavered, blurred and then gradually began to clear
into a stark white ceiling
.
He wanted to let out a sigh of relief, but he couldn’t figure out how to breathe.
Worrying.
A
s his awareness continued to return, so did memories and with them a painful bolt of realisat
ion. T
his was evidentially
not
any normal school morning, and nor was it a weekend. There was a reason behind
the temporary paralysis, the stark white ceiling.
And dammit, he would prefer school over this any day.

The
horrible screeching of brakes rebounded inside his head that was threatening to burst and he could still see a flash of
the
car that had c
ome careening around the corner
. He tried to blink away the memory, tried to forget
and focus on the present
, but t
he
imaginary
adrenaline
still l
ingered and festered at the mere thought
.
He
shakily flexed one hand and tried to reach out
in vain. His
body
should be
damaged quite badly
, but he could not feel anything
.
Not even pain. It struck him as odd.
After a little while
, Sean gave up tryi
ng to move. H
e closed his eyes again and waited for something to happen.

Time
passed uneventfully
and gradually an understanding that there was an
absence of the expected physical p
ain started
to mak
e him wary. He had been hit by a car hadn’t he? S
urely it was
supposed to hurt
? Well, he preferred not to question and accepted the fact gratefully.
He f
ound he was
able to mov
e his limbs
now
. Digging his arms
into the sur
face he
was
lying on
(
he was disconcerted to
find that his elbows were numb)
he grappled with his hands for something to hold onto and struggled into a sitting position.

He blinked: twice. T
he image did not fade.

He had imagined that he would be
lying in a hospital bed, all dressed in white like some crude replica of a fallen angel, and that he would wake up to find himself surrounded b
y beeping machines on all sideS.
So it came as a shock to him when he realised that he was sitting on the
floor
, the hospital bed right beside him and beeping machines connected up to whatever lay in the bed. Upon further inspection from his position on the floor, Sean caught sight of a mop of dark hair plaste
red to a
pillow. I
ntrigued, he spent the next few minutes for
cing himself onto shaky legs. But
w
hen he finally managed it, leaning heavily against the bed for support, he felt like the world had fallen out from underneath him.

In the bed
lay
himself.

It did not make any sense whatsoever. Sean struggled to stay standing as he choked on air and his legs wobbled precariously. It was
him
that was lying in the bed…well, his body anyway. He was staring into a mirror
. It wasn’t possible. It
couldn’t
be possible.

But it didn’t matter anyway, because in the next moment he came to the odd realisation that he was falling before everything faded into black again.

The next time he woke up
it
was to soft voices that faded into
a comforting background din. He felt mentally exhausted but the rest of his body was
numb as
he blinked blearily and found himself staring up at the stark white ceiling again. After the initial
deliriousness had worn off he tried to hone in on the voices. They were quiet and muddled and he could not make them out, but two of them sounded familiar. His family, maybe?