The Post-Humans (Book 1): The League (3 page)

He had created that dream world himself. He could see it all over the room. He even thought for a moment that his out-of-body experience could have been the result of somebody drugging him. But it was too real. He needed to try and do it again, to prove to himself that it was a product of his imagination somehow.

He grabbed his charcoal-stained work shirt and a pair of boxers and tried to rally the courage to go back into Lockie’s room. But he couldn’t do it, and ended up sitting on his bed staring at the charcoal smeared wall.

Eventually curiosity got the better of him. He wandered quietly up and down the hallway of the house trying to summon the courage to enter Lockie’s room again. He had to see what was happening, he had to know if he was crazy.

He pushed the door carefully.

Lockie was asleep.

He opened it the rest of the way and slipped in, approaching the bed. There was Lockie laying sprawled on his back. He hadn’t moved, not even rolled over. His dark curly hair looked like a cushion under his head. Athan bent down and reached out a shaking hand to touch the sleeping freckled face. Lockie was the only young man he knew that wore fleecy pajamas to bed every night.

Athan felt like an idiot leaning over his sleeping friend.

He was too nervous to touch him, so he climbed awkwardly onto the bed with his feet either side.

Lockie groaned and began to move.

Now or never
.

He stepped onto his stomach and closed his eyes, waiting for Lockie to cry out or complain.

Instead there was a feeling like a rush of air in his face and he opened his eyes to find himself standing next to the giant organic structure in the dark again.

Athan was sure that he had lost his mind.

Have I just gone inside Lockie’s body, or mind? Where am I?

He straightened a twisted sleeve then realized he was clothed! He was wearing his shirt…but no boxers.

A shirt and no shorts…

It was the same shirt that he had been wearing at work, and the same shirt he had been wearing when he had blacked out and went crazy and drawn organic images everywhere.

He wondered if there was a link?

Athan stepped back out into Lockie’s room and noticed his boxers laying on the bed next to his sleeping friend.

Umm…better get rid of those before he wakes up.

He grabbed his shorts and ducked out of Lockie’s and into his own room. He needed the dirty work clothes.

The suit jacket, the thin black tie and the black suit pants that were crumpled under some of the drawings.

“Oh, underwear,” he muttered.

He found his undies from the day at work, and the tight black donuts of his socks. He pulled all of his charcoal stained clothes on and tiptoed down the hallway to the back door and the pile of shoes.

His black leather work-shoes were beneath Tim’s runners.

He pulled them on and went back to Lockie’s room. He needed to complete his experiment.

Standing in Lockie’s room he looked around: university textbooks, dirty clothes, DVD covers and some chocolate wrappers. He noticed his reflection in the big mirror over the dressing table. It was a woman’s dressing table, but it had come with the rental house, and the boys all used it to fix their hair.

Athan looked like he was going to a funeral, or a wedding, maybe a job interview. His short brown hair was a mess, so he slicked it back with his fingers to get it to look at least a little presentable. He’d have to clean his clothes later.

He had to see if he could manage this with clothes on.

He was nervous, but it felt right.

He remembered standing on that beer soaked carpet at The Link with everyone screaming and recoiling from him. The look in his friend’s eyes. The fear.

How would he face them again?

He was responsible for throwing the club into turmoil and frightening everyone, including himself.

He pitied the man in the mirror. Things couldn’t be normal for him again if this was real.

Athan Harper fixed his tie and turned to his sleeping friend Lockie.

“Good bye cruel world,” he whispered.

He stepped into Lockie for the last time.

He found himself standing fully clothed next to the scaffold of flesh. Around him a white glow had begun to bring a cold light to the new and strange world that was shrouded in a soft mist. Everywhere, Athan began to see the shapes of the strange landscape become more visible, and he could see that the land went on and on, maybe forever.

“Where am I?” Athan whispered as he placed a hand on the warm leathery skin of the skeletal tree-like thing beside him.

Am I inside a new world? Is this in my mind? And why had he been drawing these extraordinary shapes all his young life?

He wondered if it were some kind of premonition that he had been able to channel the shapes of this world through his hand.

What would happen to all his things and the drawings that lay all over his room next to Lockie’s.

The drawings all over the walls?

There would be questions that he had no answers for.

He couldn’t go back there.

He knew he had to see his family, maybe for the last time.

He couldn’t be just Athan Harper now, he needed to learn more about this place and himself.

This was the beginning of his self imposed exile.

Athan set off across a wide expanse of shifting dunes of skin. It heaved a little like it was breathing. It was comforting and warm and felt like home for some reason. Like he had been there before.

His Mum’s house was where he needed to go, to say good byes and wash his clothes maybe. He could smell the way, or feel it. He couldn’t decide what the sensation was, but he knew he was going in the right direction.

THE WIND HOWLED.

The freezing cold rock felt comforting to the small boy who hid there. It protected him from the wind and the constantly falling snow. Andy had no idea how he had become lost out in the storm. He wasn’t even dressed to go outside in that kind of weather.

Andy looked down at his cold left hand, and wondered why he couldn’t feel his fingertips.

He had so many questions.

Had he run away from home again? Was Dad angry with him? Dad was often angry with him; the things he did, the choices he made.

A sound broke his thoughts.

Had his father come to find him? Or was there something else out there in the storm?

Something coming for him?

Andy squinted into the blurring storm, peering as hard as he could with his stinging eyes. He couldn’t make anything out in the swirling grey darkness. He had to squeeze his eyes shut afterward to relieve the sting of the icy wind.

Again a sound, out in the dark.

He squinted harder.

Then Andy put a picture to the sound. It was a clanging or twanging, and only one thing could possibly make that broken music. A guitar, a broken guitar.

He looked around the side of the rock, in search of somewhere else he could hide, or somewhere to run to.

His father had found the broken guitar.
His
broken guitar. The one Andy had broken.

Andy had found it in his Dad’s study and wanted to impress him by playing a song his Dad would recognize. Like one of those cool Black Sabbath songs or that catchy one about the hotel in California. He brought the guitar to the patio where he could strum away in the fresh air like the musicians in the videos.

It was at that point that Perky, the family cat, decided to spring one of his famous surprise attacks.

He leaped up onto Andy’s chest, then sprang off, nearly knocking Andy to the ground. Andy was only six years old, and Perky was old enough to know better. But for the third time that week he ambushed young Andy. Only this time Andy had been holding Dad’s beloved guitar in his hand. It was the good one that Dad had usually kept in a case high up on the wardrobe.

Andy’s little fingers had let go of the coveted acoustic guitar to fend off the fluffy grey monstrosity that had sprung out of nowhere.

The guitar fell hard against the doorframe, before clattering across the concrete pavers near the barbeque.

Andy stood still, unable to move, while the cat disappeared

The guitar’s body looked battered. There were splinters of wood and a broken string.

Before Andy could react, his father grabbed him from behind and turned him around.

His father’s angry face was close to his.

The world blurred into a kaleidoscope of colour. His uncontrollable tears made it impossible to see and he couldn’t understand what his father was yelling.

Andy choked.

He couldn’t answer.

It felt as if he had swallowed a sock, like it was stuck in his throat, and all he could do was try to breathe again.

“I said, what the
hell
do you
think
you are doing?”

He couldn’t look at his father, and he couldn’t speak. So he broke free from his grip and ran.

He didn’t stop running.

He kept moving down to the picnic ground at the other end of their street. It was his special place.

The rock was where Andy would hide when he knew his Mum would call ‘home time’.

Andy examined the edge of the slick brown rock that shielded him from the unrelenting wind. This was the side he would peek from to see if Mum had guessed his hiding place.

This was his rock.

This was his park, but it was so cold. Why was it so cold?

“
Hello
?” called a man’s voice in the dark.

A man, but not his Dad.

Had some other man found Dad’s broken guitar? Did Dad call the police? It was his father’s favourite thing, maybe he would go to jail for breaking it. He deserved it for what he had done.

“There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you, Andy.”

Andy looked up nervously at the man holding Dad’s guitar.

He was wearing a dark suit and tie and his hair looked wild in the wind. He didn’t look very happy.

“Are you the police?” Andy choked as he looked at the damaged guitar in the man’s hand.

“Me?
No
, I’m just a guy taking a walk.”

Andy looked confused.

“So, is this baby yours? I have a couple at home. Better nick though.”

“It’s Dad’s. It broke.”

“Well, laying around in all this snow is no good for the wood you know? But this one looks like it’s taken a beating.”

He knows.

Andy shut his eyes hard to stop the stinging cold, and to avoid looking at the man who knew about guitars. He could tell the man blamed him for breaking it. He wanted to run, but there was nowhere left to go. The storm was thick and swirled like a grey ocean around the solitary rock.

He couldn’t see the swing set or the picnic table Mum and Dad always sat at. He was alone with this man.

The guitar thumped into the snow in front of Andy. It caused him to look up at the stranger who brought it.

The man sat himself down and leaned his back against the rock beside him.

“Who are you? How did you find me?” Andy watched the man carefully.

The man half smiled. “It’s easy to find someone when you know what to look for. Did you break that guitar, Andy? Is that why you’re hiding?”

“Dad was angry at me.” Andy blurted. “I didn’t mean to do it.”

The man tugged at his jacket sleeves and crossed his arms. “So Dad wasn’t happy then? But your Dad loved you. You know that right?”

Andy blinked.

He was about to protest, but Andy knew his dad loved him.

Andy sighed. “Yes. Daddy loves me.”

“So why are you hiding? You broke the guitar. That’s not a great thing to do, but that can’t be it.”

Andy looked blankly out at the swirling snow.

“There’s something else, deeper. Why are you hiding?” the man persisted.

Andy shook his head.

“No Andy. There’s something else here.” The man gestured to their rock and the swirling storm. “We aren’t sitting out in a snow storm because you broke a guitar.”

Andy was confused.

The man shook his head. “Andy, deeper! You don’t stay out here when someone forgives you. You did something else. You may not remember it, but I know you did it.”

The man’s face was stern, but kind, as he waited for Andy to reply.

“I didn’t!”Andy shook his head and began to cry. There was nothing else he could say.

The man was growing impatient. “Listen to me! This doesn’t go away until you fix it. Think deeper.” The man urged. “Secrets, Andy. You are only hiding something from yourself! What have you got buried?” The man forced a smile and put a hand on Andy’s shoulder. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, mate. We all bury things deep down when we don’t want to see them again. Me included. But you are the one who can stop the storm. Your secret is the key.”

The man looked down at Andy’s hand that had been stirring up the dirt and leaves next the rock.

Buried
.

There
was
something buried.

Andy ran across the yard almost tripping on the corner of the sand pit. The tears burned his eyes and streaked down his cheeks.

There was a rustle to his left that made him stumble back.

He fell on his backside next to the garden bed.

Andy used his shaking knuckles to rub his eyes so that he could clear some of the burning fog. It was Mum’s honeysuckle hedge, and the rustle came from beneath.

It was the cat.

Fluffy, grey, Perky.

“
You
! You did it!” Andy hissed at the family cat that sat poised to spring from within the bush. “
You
!”

The cat backed up a little, it knew it had been seen.

“
Why
did you do it?” His little right hand wrapped around half a brick that was being used as edging.

He thrust the chunk of old red brick into the hedge at the cat.

Thump!

The sound of the brick hitting the cat on the head was the worst sound Andy had ever heard. It was like the sound of someone dropping an apple onto a tiled floor.

The cat tried to curl up, its head down.

Andy crawled into the hedge, still sobbing and hissing through his teeth. He grabbed the cat by its front paw and pulled it free of the bushes. It could have been dead, but it squirmed a little.