Ducie by Chris Freeman

  Chapter 32. Where should I begin?

  By 2pm, the fresh misty promise of morning had given way to the cumbersome drag of a gloomy afternoon. A razor blade breeze slashed sporadically through the churchyard, cascading autumn leaves around the tarmac pathway like giant, mouldy confetti. Adam fought off the chill with a shudder, shoving his hands down to the depths of the pockets of his Berghaus fleece jacket. He hadn’t noticed the cold until now, but it bit hard into his heroin-perished body now he had time to feel it. His mind on the other hand buzzed with the heat of whirring information cogs, stoked up to full pelt and eagerly ready to process the truths that Kate had promised him.

  - So come on then Katey. Spit it out! How are they going to kill me without leaving the Institution?

  - It’s not as simple as that.

  - Oh, here we go with the excuses already. If you say you know the truth, then why isn’t it that simple? You tell me, then I’ll know what you know. It sounds simple to me.

  - There’s just a lot to understand before you get to the part about what they can do to you.

  - You mean the experiments Frank mentioned? The tests?

  Kate was struggling for a place to start, but that sounded as good a place as any.

  - They weren’t tests as such. They were meant to be, but they never ended up that way.

  - Come on Katey! This cryptic crap of yours is frying my head. You owe me answers. I never asked for any of this shit you gave me.

  Adam hadn’t intended to raise his voice like that. He immediately wished he could chase the words out of his mouth and smother them, but was forced to watch as they made their way through his mouth and out into the world, intent on wreaking havoc as they frolicked their way mischievously towards Kate. As her stare morphed into a more intense gaze, an involuntary tear escaped her eye and ran a wet slalom down her cheek. That single droplet of emotion alone was enough to sink Adam’s heart with a ton-weight of guilt. He’d never seen Kate’s strength succumb to the normal sadness of mere mortals before. In his eyes, even her earlier suicide attempt was a sign of her strength. Of taking back control over a situation that dared threaten to overwhelm her. By saving her life, he’d denied her that. Perhaps it was he that owed something to her now and not the other way around. He scooted across the bench and clutched her as she wept, fully now, the seal of her resilience broken, allowing her emotion to come gushing through. She was as thin and frail as Adam; perhaps more so, but something about her, her aura, her complexity, her stoutness made her feel big to hold. Adam clung on until her release subsided, Kate now just taking occasional gasps of breath as her state normalised.

  - I’m sorry Katey. I shouldn’t have….

  - No, you should have. I mean…. You have every right to be angry. To hate me. But I need you to know Adam that I didn’t ask for any of this either.

  Adam stayed silent, which seemed to imply both that he understood, but that he also expected Kate to continue.

  - When they first gave me the drug, I went to sleep. They didn’t expect that part. I was off the planet they said. Wouldn’t wake up for the end of the world. But fine, breathing, peaceful, you know?

  Adam’s brow ruffled in a way that questioned what she was saying, but he said nothing. He’d quickly learnt that keeping quiet gave Kate momentum, forcing here to fill the void in conversation by elaborating.

  - About three hours in, that’s when it started…. The talking.

  - What? Sleep talking?

  - I suppose so, yeah. I don’t remember any of it, but they have it all on tape.

  - They showed it to you?

  - I’ve heard it, yeah. It’s fucked up. It’s me talking, but it’s stuff I wouldn’t say. The words I use….The way I say them. I dunno….I just know I wouldn’t have said that stuff.

  - Said what exactly Katey?

  The silence again.

  - I was saying that I was this Argentinian girl…. Daniella….. That I lived in a place called Mendoza. Worked on a market stall. The recording goes on like forever. You can hear Frank asking the questions. Loving every second of it, like he’s uncovered some sort of big story or something…. In the end, I gave them everything down to the address where I lived….Where she lived. Daniella.

  - Did they check it out?

  - Oh yeah! They flew out there. Frank and Harrison. And they fucking found her Adam. Daniella Diaz. The exact girl Working on a market stall in Mendoza. I led them right to her.

  - And what, they just waltzed right up to her with the whole sleep talking story?

  - Pretty much yeah.

  - So which one of them did she slap first? Please say Frank.

  - Well, she actually listened at first, but in the end she wasn’t having any of it.

  - Good on her, I say! They could have been any old fraudsters.

  - But they weren’t though, were they. They were telling the truth.

  - So what did she do?

  - She shut them out after the initial conversation. Just walked right out of the café. Never even said bye.

  - So did they give up on her and come home?

  - Not exactly….