Alice Isn't Well (Death Herself Book 1) (4 page)

Chapter Four

1941

“What happened to her?” a voice shouted nearby, as several brights lights flooded into Wendy's field of vision. “Was she in one of the houses?”

“She was in the street,” another voice replied. Male this time, with a hint of authority. “Her name's Wendy, she's nine years old. Apparently she got too close to the crashed plane. Looks like she only suffered superficial burns to the face, neck and hands, but we still need to take care.” A pause, before the figure leaned closer, still too blurry for her to make out. “Wendy, can you hear me? Wendy, my name is Doctor Aldringham and I'm going to take care of you. You're going to be absolutely fine, do you understand? You just need to be a brave little girl for me.”

Staring up at him, Wendy squinted as she tried to get the man's face in focus, but the light behind him was too bright.

“That seems like some kind of response,” the doctor continued. “Get something on these wounds and make sure she's monitored carefully. The only real danger here is infection. I need to get to the people from the houses, some of them are injured far more seriously. I don't think too many of them are going to make it.”

“The pilot,” Wendy whispered, as she felt a throbbing pain running across her face.

“What was that, dear?” a female voice asked.

“The pilot,” she whispered again. “What happened to the pilot?”

“Never you mind about that now,” the female voice continued. “We're going to give you something for the pain, and it'll maybe knock you out a little too.” There was a pause, and Wendy heard the woman doing something on a table nearby. “Silly girl,” the woman added after a moment. “Whatever were you doing out so late? Your mother's going to be very cross when she finds out.”

Closing her eyes, Wendy tried to focus on her own thoughts, even as she felt them drifting away. A moment later, a sharp pinprick of pain hit her right arm and she realized she was being injected with something. She tried to open her eyes, but although she could see light filling her eyelids with a red haze, she didn't have the strength to do anything except wince as she felt a second injection, and then a third. Taking a deep breath, she told herself she could open her eyes if she just took a moment to gather all her strength, and finally – as she heard more voices swimming all around her head – she decided to count to three and then try again.

One.

Two.

She paused. Everything went black for a moment, and she felt her whole body become lighter.

Three.

Sitting up suddenly, she opened her eyes and found that she was now in a large, dark room, with a patch of moonlight falling through the nearby window, casting shadows on a brick wall opposite. Looking around, she saw to her surprise that she was on an old metal bed, and that there were other such beds nearby, as if she was in some kind of dormitory. As soon as she turned to look to one side, she felt a sharp, sore pain running across her chest and up to her face, and she realized she must have passed out at some point and been brought to the dormitory to recover.

She waited.

Silence.

A moment later, over on the next bed, someone shifted under the covers.

“Hello?” Wendy whispered. Her lips were dry and cracked, and she felt fresh skin tearing a little at the edges. In fact, as each second passed, the nerves in her body seemed to be waking more and more, bringing fresh appreciation of the pain she was feeling and of the injuries she'd suffered. She looked around, and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness she realized there were lots of other beds in the dormitory, each with someone under the sheets, and she began to make out the sound of lots of people breathing, some of them even snoring.

She paused.

In the distance, she could hear a faint engine noise. Planes, most likely, passing over the city either on their way to bomb the Germans or on their way back.

Like the plane that crashed.

For a moment, her mind's eye saw the burning plane again, its flames filling the night sky, and she remembered the dancing orange glow that had seemed to rush out of the inferno. The image quickly faded, however, and she found herself in the dark dormitory again.

Slowly, and with a little pain, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and took a moment to catch her breath before getting to her feet. She felt stiff and sore, but she was determined to find out where she was and to get home as soon as possible, back to her mother, who she figured must be very worried about her by now. Limping heavily on her right leg, she made her way past the next bed and into the aisle that ran along the center of the room, and finally she began to slowly, carefully head toward the door at the far end, under which a sliver of light could be seen. As she got closer, she sped up a little, despite the pain.

Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“And where do you think you're going?” a woman asked, her voice filled with a soft Irish lilt.

Spinning round, Wendy looked up and saw a friendly face smiling at her, framed by a nun's habit.

“You should be in bed,” the nun told her. “There's absolutely no reason for a lovely little lady such as yourself to be up and about at this hour. It's barely even three in the morning.”

“Where's my mother?” Wendy asked.

“Your -” The nun paused, with a hint of concern in her eyes. “It's Wendy, isn't it? Well, Wendy, you'll be seeing Mother Superior in the morning, and until then you have to stay in bed and get some rest.”

“Where's my mother?” Wendy asked again. “She wasn't home when the plane hit, she was at the hospital, so where is she now? I want to see her!”

“I...” The nun paused. “I can't tell you that, sweetheart. It's not my place.”

“Why not?”

“I just can't. Mother Superior -”

“Why can't you tell me
now
?” Wendy asked, trying not to panic. She'd never spent a night away from home, not ever in her whole life.

“Sshh,” the nun replied, putting a finger to her lips, “if you don't keep your voice down, you'll wake all the other little girls, and you don't want to do that, do you?”

“Where is she?” Wendy whispered, with tears in her eyes. The tears stung her sore skin, but she couldn't hold them back. “Why am I here?”

“My name is Sister Julia,” the nun replied, reaching down and taking Wendy's hand in hers, “and I'm just the orderly for tonight. Mother Superior will talk to your properly in the morning. That's her job, you know, and she's very good at it. It's best that you hear -” She paused, as if she'd caught herself just in time. “Well, she'll explain everything. She's very good at explaining, and at making people feel better.”

“I want to go home.”

“Of course you do.”

“Right now!”

“Why don't you get back into bed and try to sleep?” Sister Julia asked, trying to lead her back along the aisle but not managing to get her to move at all. “I know you must have a lot of questions, Wendy, but I'm not in a position to answer any of them for you. Mother Superior will talk to you in the morning and -”

“No!” Wendy hissed, pulling her hand free as she tried not to panic. “I want to go home right now!”

In a nearby bed, a figure turned under the blankets and then sat up, woken by the sound. A moment later, the same happened in half a dozen beds along the aisle.

“You're making a lot of noise,” Sister Julia whispered, her voice sounding a little more stern now. “Wendy, you mustn't misbehave or you'll get a reputation. Come to bed and wait until morning.”

“Is that the girl whose house got hit by a plane?” asked a voice from one of the beds.

“Quiet!” Sister Julia hissed, turning to the beds one-by-one. “I want all of you to go back to sleep immediately. This is nothing to do with any of you! Nosy little things!”

Slowly, the figures in the beds began to settle again.

“Please,” Sister Julia continued, reaching her hand out to Wendy again, “let's not have any more silliness. Just because times are hard, we mustn't allow ourselves to weaken. God is watching over us, and we have to trust that he has a plan for us all, Wendy, including you. It's just a few more hours until dawn, and then Mother Superior will talk to you properly, and you shall have to listen to her and be brave. There's nothing to worry about, you're quite safe.” She paused, before allowing a broad smile to cross her face. “We wouldn't let anything happen to you here, not at Barton's Cross monastery.”

Chapter Five

Today

“Base to Echo-1, are you receiving me? Over.”

Raising the radio to her mouth as she made her way across the dark atrium, Alice clicked the button on the side. “I'm here, I -”

“Respond with your call-sign, please.”

She sighed. “Echo-1 here,” she continued, despite feeling a little ridiculous. “I'm in the atrium now. I'm just looking for a way up to the third floor.”

“I can see you, Echo-1,” Donald replied. “There's an escalator to your right, about five yards away.”

“You can see me?” she asked, looking around and finally spotting a camera high up on one of the walls, with a small green light just below the lens. She paused for a moment, imagining Donald watching her from the office. There was something desperately, almost pathetically keen about Donald, and she felt that she was being tested. Making her way around the corner, she saw a rusty old escalator leading to the first floor, so she began to make her way up.

“Highly habituated visual input,” Donald said after a moment.

“I'm sorry?”

“That feeling you get when you're walking up a broken escalator,” he continued, sounding more than a little pleased with himself. “You're so used to the idea that it should be moving, you make little adjustments in your head, even when it's completely still.”

“Okay,” she replied, already starting to feel as if Donald had a 'fascinating' fact about everything she encountered.

“That's why you feel disorientated on a static moving transport conveyance staircase unit,” he added.

“Okay.”

Reaching the top of the escalator, she stopped for a moment and shone her flashlight around, seeing the dark, empty corridors of the deserted shopping mall. Abandoned stores lined the walls, their rectangular black windows reflecting the light from the flashlight as she turned, and a few of them still had the ghosts of brand-names above their doors, like names on tombstones. Making her way over to one of the stores, she cupped her hands around her eyes and peered through the dark window, and she saw that the interior had been gutted, with just a few rails left on the wall and some packing boxes dumped by the stripped counter. As she looked through more windows, she realized that in most of the stores there were still a few old boxes of merchandise.

“You alright there?” Donald asked over the radio suddenly.

Almost jumping out of her skin, she stepped back and looked around, half expecting to find him nearby.

“Sorry,” he continued, “didn't mean to scare you like that. Smile!”

Spotting a camera on one of the nearby pillars, next to the old elevators, she paused for a moment before turning and heading to the next escalator. There was still no sign of anyone around, but she still shone her flashlight up to the next level for a moment, before making her way up. When she got to the second floor, she leaned over the railing and looked around the vast atrium, marveling at the idea that the place had once been a busy, vibrant shopping mall. Now it felt more like the empty husk of something that had outgrown the space and wriggled away. Shining the flashlight across the atrium, she trained the beam on a shop on an old clothes shop on the other side, and for a moment she tried to focus on the silence all around.

“One more to go,” Donald said suddenly over the radio.

Nodding, she headed to another broken escalator and made her way up to the third floor. The escalator's metal steps clanged as she got to the top. Walking past rows of dark, abandoned stores, she finally found the spot where she'd seen something on the monitor, or at least where she'd
thought
she'd seen something, since now she was starting to have doubts. Looking around, she spotted a camera high up on one of the nearby columns, but she preferred not to think about the fact that Donald was watching her so, instead, she made her way to the exact spot where she'd seen a shadow fall across the floor. Looking around now, the whole thing felt absurd, and she figured Donald was probably chuckling away at her from the comfort of his swivel chair. He probably thought she was jumpy, maybe even paranoid.

Even worse, he was probably right.

A moment later, a burst of static hissed from her radio. She could hear Donald's voice somewhere in the mix, but it was quickly lost in a howl of noise.

“I don't know what you're saying,” she told him, although she immediately felt somehow 'wrong' breaking the silence with her voice. It was like talking in church while everyone else was praying.

Another burst of static, and then the radio stuttered a couple of times before dying completely.

“Are you still there?” she asked.

No reply.

“Echo-1 to base,” she added. “Come in. Over.”

Sighing, she looked up at the camera and waved, before holding the radio up as if to show him what had gone wrong. She waited a moment longer, before realizing that there was no way she could get in touch with him. Suspicious that maybe he'd switched the system off on purpose in an attempt to freak her out, she slipped the radio back onto the clip around her waist and turned, shining the flashlight around one more time to make sure that there was no sign of anyone. She didn't even know what she was supposed to be looking for, not really, but there was nothing to indicate that an intruder had broken into the mall and -

Suddenly the flashlight flickered a couple of times, before dying completely.

She peered at the bulb and saw that it was fading fast. Tapping it didn't help.

“Great,” she muttered. Again, talking out loud felt wrong in such a place.

With no light now, she took a few steps forward in pitch darkness. The only light came from the domed glass ceiling several floors above, but moonlight streaming down into the central atrium only served to make the surrounding balconies seem darker. She made her way past several black windows, figuring that she should at least look like she was checking the place out. After all, she knew Donald was probably still watching her over the cameras, and the last thing she wanted was to get back to the office and have him ridicule her efforts. Barely able to see in the darkness, she held onto the railing as she made her way past the disused elevators, and finally she rounded the next corner and looked along a corridor lined with yet more abandoned shops.

She let out a sigh of relief.

The place was obviously empty.

A moment later, she heard a faint scratching sound nearby.

Turning, she looked back the way she'd just come, but there was no sign of anyone. She took a few steps back toward the main balcony, while looking around for some sign of a rat or another pest, anything that could have made the sound, but there was nothing. Glancing down at the floor, she half expected to see a rodent scurrying past, but again there was absolutely no hint of movement. She turned, looking all around, filled with the sudden sense that there was definitely something nearby, convinced that at any moment she was about to see someone, gripped by panic but determined not to show it in case Donald was still watching over the cameras. She stopped, forcing herself to stay calm, telling herself that she had to keep from letting her mind run away with the possibilities.

Slowly, she began to feel something blowing gently on the back of her neck.

She turned, but once again there was no sign of anyone. Just a camera high up on a nearby wall, with its little green light glowing in the dark, and the tingling sensation that someone had been standing behind her just a moment earlier.

Silence.

And then, suddenly, the rattling of hurried footsteps nearby, coming up the broken escalator until finally Donald appeared, shining his flashlight straight at her and causing her to immediately shield her eyes.

“Where is she?” he called out, stepping over to her.

“Who?” she asked, still not able to look straight at him.

He lowered the torch and shone it all around. “Did you see which way she went?”

“Who?” Alice asked again, turning to him.

“Did she go up or down?” Leaning over the balcony, he shone his flashlight around for a moment, before turning to her and grabbing her radio from around her waist. “What's wrong with this thing?”

“I don't know,” she replied, still startled. “I just -”

Hitting a button on the side, Donald brought the device crackling back to life. “Why'd you turn it off?” he asked.

“I didn't.”

“This switch here,” he replied, holding it up for her to see. “You can toggle the radio on and off. You toggled it off.”

She shook her head. “It just stopped working by itself.”

“Rookie mistake,” he muttered, handing the radio back to her before heading over to the foot of the broken escalator and shining his flashlight up to the fourth floor. “Did you seriously not see which way she went?”

“There was no-one here,” Alice told him, trying to stay calm. “I looked, but I didn't find anyone.”

“Why'd you turn your flashlight off?”

“I didn't,” she replied, holding it up and flicking the switch on the side, “it just seemed to -” Before she could finish, the flashlight came on, shining its beam up to the ceiling.

“We have to find her,” Donald replied with a sigh, heading to another of the escalators and looking down toward the second floor. “Can't let someone run loose in the place, can we? How did she look close up? Drug addict? Rough-sleeper?”

“Who are you talking about?” Alice asked.

“The girl,” he replied, turning to her. “The one who was right here.”

“There was no girl.”

“Course there was.”

“No,” she continued, shaking her head. “I'm sure of it. There was no girl here.”

“Alice -” He stared at her for a moment. “Just before the camera cut away, I saw -”

“There was no girl,” she said again, determined to stand her ground. She figured he was toying with her, trying to make her doubt herself. “Even with the flashlight off, I'd definitely have seen a girl if she was nearby.”

“Seen her?” He paused, with a faint frown. “Alice, I was watching you on the camera. You didn't just see her. You were talking to her.”