Everything that's in my head

Chapter 4

Adam lay there for how long he didn’t know. He slept and slept only to wake porpoise like from the depths of sleep. Sometimes, there was a cluster of concerned pink faces gathered around his bed, which Adam presumed were the same faces behind the screen. At other times, he was utterly alone in the blue swirling miasma. It was akin to having flu, Adam thought, aching all over, high temperature, cough but not so much as an aspirin to relieve the pain.

At nights, he would succumb to the same black nightmare that visited him every time he closed his eyes. He would be incarcerated in the same bathroom where he had met his end; the knife would be in one hand, while he banged on the door with the other. There would be blood everywhere and there was no one to hear his terrified screams. Just when he felt he was dying all over again he would wake, violently, lathered in sweat. The dream was so vivid there was no way of knowing fact from fiction, truth from falsehood but sleep, no matter how hard he fought it, would always drag him back to this dark and endless hell. Occasionally, the ‘English Teacher would drop by, in what Adam felt was morning and help him take a few tentative steps around the bed, impervious to the numerous questions that Adam bombarded him with.

It was established quite early on that his visitor’s name was Dougal. Adam had asked for it as a matter of politeness and Dougal gave it immediately, a little embarrassed he hadn’t before. Dougal, on his visits, would ask a few questions about this and that before disappearing mysteriously into the fog. In the gallery above, the men in starched white coats came and went clutching the inevitable clipboard taking readings and generally looking scientific. Adam never managed to make meaningful eye contact with any of them. At times they would stare at him silently, sometimes for as long as 15 minutes with Adam staring back, winking and cracking jokes. Other times, Adam felt uncomfortable and preferred to turn his back and ignore them.

But slowly, imperceptibly, he began to get better. His temperature began to fall and he was able to sit up in bed and have quite lengthy conversations with his new found friend. They talked about all manner of things, about Adam’s life, where he lived, what kind of job he had. The questions were never taxing, what did Adam think of this, what about that; which did he prefer, vanilla or chocolate. Adam was content to give answers if only because Dougal was the only company he had (save the Asian nurse, who wasn’t there anyway) and the questions helped to break the voodoo of his nightmares. Adam kept asking which hospital he was in but never got a firm reply; The Royal this or that, the something, something Infirmary, never a precise answer. When Adam asked to make a series of phone calls, he was immediately almost rudely, rebuffed. Adam thought of his mother, work, her, these people would be wondering where he was, they had to be contacted if only to say everything was alright. But no, it was not allowed; ‘any communication with the outside world would have to wait until he had made a complete and full recovery.’

One day, when Adam was sitting up in bed fielding another round of questions, he suddenly declared,
‘I’m better now, can I go home?’
‘No’, said Dougal bluntly, shooting Adam a hunted look.
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’, asked Adam, playing for time until he thought of valid, water tight reason.
‘Why do you want to go home?’, said Dougal.
‘Well………..It’s just that……………Adam’s voice died in his throat;
Dougal looked very serious for a second and finally after some thought said:
‘There was nothing for you there, you are here now’
‘But where’s here?’ demanded Adam, not a little annoyed.

Dougal snapped shut a manilla file he had been holding and beckoned Adam to follow him. He produced a wine red dressing gown from somewhere, that had long tassels at the ends of a silky cord and once Adam had climbed in to it, the pair began to walk arm in arm. The blue miasma left them and they were walking down a corridor that seemed to stretch to infinity. Adam sensed it was underground as the empty rooms they passed had no natural light. They walked slowly with Dougal gripping Adam’s elbow tightly and reassuring him of the short distance they had to travel.
Eventually, they arrived at a nondescript office. Dougal wafted Adam in with a sweep of an outstretched hand. On entering, it was apparent that Dougal had managed to make it quite homely. A severe looking hat stand stood in the corner, from which an old fashioned mackintosh hung. On one wall stood a large map of the world and in the middle stood a majestic, oak desk on which important looking documents lay strewn and strangely of all things, a fez. Dougal gestured for Adam to sit down and seated himself behind the vast expanse of dark wood and began to read the file he had been reading earlier. He flicked through some sections only to stop at a particular page which would be read in its entirety. With head bent, all Adam could see of Dougal was a shiny, freckled pate with clumps of wispy, grey hair that curled up from his ears and settled in sprawling reservations on the sides of his head.

Suddenly he looked up, studying Adam for a short while before resting the file gently in front of him.

‘You’re on Earth’, he said flatly.
‘Although not the Earth you remember, a completely different Earth’.
Earth was a little bit vague, for Adam, who sat motionless, waiting for something more specific.
‘You are in a kind of hospital’, replied Dougal, not meeting Adam’s eyes; Adam could tell Dougal was choosing his words carefully, plucking them from the ether, one by one, and placing them in neat, enigmatic rows.
‘We felt you could relate to this more’.
Despite feeling a lot better than he had been, Adam was still very weak and the mental effort of trying to extract hard information from Dougal was proving exhausting. His eyes fixed on Dougal demanding a hard and fast answer. Dougal wore that same hunted look he had worn earlier and stretched out his arms but the ensuing sentence was still born and he brought them together again slowly. His eyes rolled around his head. He pursed his lips, unpusrsed them and then re-pursed them. Still no words came.

There was a palpable rise in tension as Dougal visibly struggled with what was obviously a difficult confession. Adam knew instinctively what Dougal was about to say was not only explosive but mortal. The stress turned his bowels to ice and he began to shake in anticipation.

‘Tell me please Dougal, I think it’s only fair that you do’, .

Dougal, who by now was at the top of a metaphoric diving board and could not turn back, sunk his head into his chest and whispered,

‘ It's Monday, 2nd April' and after a short yet horrid pause......................... ,'1 000,243 AD’.

When Adam came to, he was lying on the floor in Dougal’s office, groggy and with a slight headache. Dougal was tenderly wiping his brow with a damp cloth and had a face of pinched concern.

‘My dear boy’, he purred, squeezing the cloth into a bowl of lemon scented water.
‘I’m so sorry'.
Adam sat up, remembered what Dougal had said and let out a deep groan.
He covered his eyes with the back of his right hand and continued moaning for a further 3 minutes. Dougal let this one ride and walked back to the sink, emptied the bowl into a basin, wiped his hands on a towel and sat behind his desk.
He took his glasses off and lay then gently down in front of him, Rubbing his eyes and looking quite tired, he stared at Adam with a desperate look as if to say 'I am so sorry, you have cancer'. Adam dragged himself up from the floor only to slump sulkily in an armchair by the window.
‘We found you quite by chance, we weren’t looking for you, in many ways you could say, you found us’. Dougal said quietly.

‘We were mining, and the drill head struck something, it was your femur.
We ran a few tests to see how old you were and what kind of food you ate that sort of thing, then put you in a glass case. You are a homosapien and a very good example of one too, if I may say so. It was only when we found your brain in a completely different part of the world that we thought it would be fun to put two and two together or rather you and this brain we’d found. It was well preserved, sealed as it was in its ancient burial casket. We’d just finished a spot of lunch when the test results came through and we couldn’t believe it. We had all of you, it was a miracle. It was a perfect match, I mean the chances of that happening, must be billions to one. I still can’t believe it. Sure we found fragments before, a jaw bone here, a tooth there, but nothing on this scale. I mean you're famous, a first; a freak’. Dougal bit his lip, but it came too late. Adam looked genuinely hurt.

‘So, I’m one of them Bronze Age men they find in bogs?’

‘Yes, broadly’, said Dougal who, now he had got the confession off his chest, was noticeably more relaxed and garrulous. He lent back in his chair and crossed his legs.
‘You are a living legend. You trod the Earth all those years ago. Those feet walked on ancient ground, ground that is long since buried. OK, so you were a savage, that isn’t such a big deal, not any more anyway. This has been my life’s work, you understand. You could say that you are my baby, I mean; it was me that dragged you back here. I’ve given you a second chance, how many people can honestly say that they have lived twice? It throws up all manner of possibilities. I’m an expert on your language not like those idiots up there. I can speak the language, write it, pronounce it like a native, I've given half my life for its study. What do you think? Have I made any mistakes so far?’

Adam thought for a while and later replied:

‘No glaring errors to speak of'.

Dougal let out a triumphant sigh and rubbed his hands together gleefully.
‘Now you must have a thousand questions you want to ask me, fire away I’m all ears’.
Adam fell silent. He played with the tassel of his dressing gown and looked at the floor
His mind was racing, he had one trillion questions rising up like bubbles from the ocean floor yet he couldn’t decide on any one of them. He frowned with the effort, his eyes bulged at the mental exertion, and finally, with beads of sweat forming on his brow, he looked up and asked

‘Do you have ray guns?’

Dougal rose from his chair, visibly disappointed and launched himself at the mackintosh that hung from the coat stand in the corner. He marched to the door and opened it without taking his eyes off Adam and gestured him to follow.

They walked for a matter of ten yards when Dougal opened a side door and Adam found himself in a courtyard. It was bathed in bright spring sunshine. A fountain surrounded by water lilies gurgled contentedly in the centre and the damp flagstones under their feet gave off a fresh, earthy smell lending the area an altogether pleasant and peaceful feeling. Dougal sat himself down on a wooden bench and patted the area next to him which Adam took as a signal for him to sit. They both remained there for a while taking in this Garden of Eden before Adam opened the conversation. He felt a little self conscious, sat as he was, in his pyjamas and dressing gown.

‘What was that date again?’

’1,000,243………………AD, just after lunch, Dougal added quietly.

‘So every thing I know, everything that was my time is now no more?’

‘Yes, utterly and completely, everything, zero, zilch, nothing is left', said Dougal, spreading his hands wide and crossing them in front of him.

Suddenly his eyes lit up and he grabbed Adam’s knee firmly with his left hand, shook it from side to side hand in a bid to be jolly and said:
‘But you were a human and that can’t be a bad thing, I mean, what can you do?, There is no such thing as time travel. Never has been never will be. In short, we cannot send you back. You are here now, among friends’.
Adam didn’t like being handed this fait accompli, without much of an explanation, it vexed him that he had had no say in the matter. He had wanted to end it, once and for all, but now he would have to go through the whole thing again.

‘Christ’, Adam exhaled loudly and sunk his head deep into his chest.

‘Not even him’ Dougal said, grasping Adam’s hands between his own.
The two men sat in silence for while before Adam buried his head in Dougal's chest and wept like a baby. Dougal stood up slowly and helped Adam to his feet. He put his arm around his shoulders and they began to walk around the courtyard.
‘It is as if you have been beached on a distant shore; a creature of the deep, flung by a freak wave onto a strange and magical land. But as time passes this will become home.’

I know you as humans set great store by company, friends, companions that kind of thing, so I want you to understand that here you are never alone. This must be a very, very strange situation for you, we have gone to great lengths to make it as normal as possible but in the end this is something you will just have to accept and believe you me, in time, you will get used to it.’
‘Thank you’, said Adam distantly. He felt terrible; as weak as a pup. A crushing depression had descended upon him. Looking at his slippers, he wrestled with an unimaginable reality. There was silence save the gurgling fountain and he thrust his hands deep into his pockets.
‘Take me back, please Dougal, to my room, I'm so tired.’
‘Certainly’, and Dougal turned them both in the direction of the door they had come from.

Two more weeks went by. At some stage, he was wheeled to a location immeasurably better than the one he had become accustomed to. It was a bright, private room that over looked the leafy courtyard that Dougal had taken him to.

The Asian nurse came and went at unpredictable times. On occasion with soup on a tray and on others to give him a bed bath which she conducted with her usual, silent cheerfulness. At first, Adam was uncomfortable with these cleaning expeditions. He felt very unattractive lying as he did; with his flabby body, a bulging varicose vein and tousled, unkempt hair: not forgetting his foul and pestilent breath. The nurse was beautiful, almost perfect in every proportion; She had a loving, oval face and a smile that exuded warmth and generosity. The fact that she wasn’t physically there soon lost its shock value, as Adam was content not to ask any questions, (she wouldn’t have answered them anyway). He was happy for her just to break up the tedium of the day. At times he would stroke her face and watch his fingers disappear into her soft, coffee coloured skin. He ran his fingers down her long straight back and she never seemed to mind. She just carried on with her duties regardless and with that same warm smile.
But even these flirtatious moments soon lost their appeal, for Adam knew that if she had been real she would surely never go near him let alone give herself wholly and wantonly. As the days went by, the apparition became a pleasant diversion rather than a flowering relationship. Dougal popped his head round the door from time to time, only to look at Adam’s notes, run his weathered hands over his body and then leave with little in the way of conversation. And so it went on, day after day, for what Adam felt was turning into months.

One bright spring morning, Dougal swept in and asked, which Adam felt had been really told, him to get up. He left as quickly as he had arrived but in time to cast a shirt and a pair of faded jeans on to Adam’s bed. Adam hurriedly struggled into his new attire. The jeans were flairs and billowed outwards and downwards until they arrived at the floor in a tidal wave of blue denim. Not even his toes were visible from under the vast expanse of blue material. He hadn’t worn trousers like these since he was a boy and even then drain pipes were coming back. He tried the shirt on and that too was in the same fashion dimension. It was heavily patterned with a collar that was wide as it was long. The whole ensemble was circa 1972 and as Adam fumbled with the innumerable buttons, he quietly thanked God the world he knew no longer existed.
Presently, Dougal returned wearing the same fearsome mackintosh that hung in his office and a battered, brown Trilby set at a rakish angle. He carried an air of purpose about him and Adam felt he had no option but to get dressed and in short order.
‘You need some fresh air and exercise’ said Dougal tartly, sitting briefly on a small chair that lay near the bed.
With his charge dressed, he stood up, clasped Adam’s hand and closed his eyes.
Within an instant they were in a park. Vast, green sun drenched spaces, inhabited the place where they had been only a moment before.
Slacked jawed, Adam gaped at his surroundings.
‘This is Greenwich, isn’t it?’ he said, recognising the landscape and features of a park had grown to love.
‘Yes, we swiped it from your memory’ said Dougal proudly and clicked his fingers. Within an instant the park was full of Londoners basking in unseasonably good weather. A Frisbee landed at Dougal’s feet and he picked it up and calmly threw it back.
‘How did you do that!!?’ a high pitched Adam enquired incredulously.
‘It’s all in the wrist, you just……
‘No!!!’ said Adam exasperated,
‘How do you change this?’, he waved a hand around the park.
‘Oh that’s simple’, said Dougal.
‘You think it and it will happen, I told you that we are here to make you feel at home. You are a human after all you need this, would you prefer something more rugged?’
Dougal clicked his fingers once more and Adam was standing on the edge of a deep precipice that made him jump back, sick to the stomach with vertigo.
‘The Rockies, don’t you love them? Adam had become very disconcerted by now becoming all sweaty and pale. He staggered a bit and his eyes were like saucers. 'It is something we have learned to do over the years, Earnest taught us. Simply close your eyes and think of where you would like to be. Whether it be the past, future, or the present, just picture it in your mind. It will take time to get the knack, but once you've got it, it's easy'.

Dougal was having fun now and wore a boyish grin from ear to ear.

‘How about something a little less……..dramatic?'

Again he clicked his fingers and they were in a windswept car park in a medium sized industrial town. 'You see, you can also create exactly any where you have been in your life time, It's all in the power of the mind'


This continued for some time with Dougal showing off the many varied and different environments that seemed to be at his fingertips.
They sat sedately in a gondolier, pressed their noses against the cold glass of a Swiss cable car, took in the games at the Coliseum, watched from a hill top and saw Custer’s last stand, sat shivering in a lifeboat and observed the Titanic going down. (Adam politely gave up his seat for an elderly dowager.) They took part in a race riot, with Adam as a policeman and Dougal hurling abuse and bricks at him all afternoon. (Dougal thought this very funny). They raced up and down the corridors of the palace of Versailles on scooters, nearly banging into King Louis XV1 and forcing Marie Antoinette to throw herself clear,
‘Sorry, no cake!’,
Roared Dougal, as he swept by, leaving Adam to placate the royal couple, without much success.
Adam wanted a go after Dougal had shot Kennedy. He stood still and placed his arms by his sides. He tried to conjure a picture in his mind but only a succession of strange and unconnected images moved behind his eyes. It was difficult to concentrate and peeking out of one eye, he caught Dougal yawning which made him grab at anything that came by. Quite why he had ten thousand Bruce Forsyth’s march past him in Red Square, Adam could only guess at, but it was a start. Once he had cracked it, he became more confident.
He addressed bemused Nazi storm troopers at a Nuremburg rally, breaking into ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas’ half way through a rousing speech on behalf of Hitler, who looked genuinely confused.
He threaded a lovely pass to Osama Bin Laden who then broke through a solid Brazilian defence and scored the winner in the 1970 World Cup final.
Pele was furious, but Osama just pulled his shirt over his head and ran around the pitch waving his arms in the air. Then it was Dougal's turn and he took Adam on a grand tour of history.
They were present at Shelly's death; Adam wanted to pull him from the sea when he got into trouble but Dougal prevented him and let the hapless poet sink beneath the waves. Dougal murmured that they could not interfere, which Adam thought a little rich coming from Dougal. He let it pass and they continued with the tour. They breakfasted on the Mary Celeste and saw a gigantic squid pull each screaming crew member from the deck and hurl him skywards. They were involved in a lengthy Battle of Britain dog fight over Kent with Dougal claiming two enemy aircraft to Adam’s one. They climbed Everest, had afternoon tea in the belly of a whale, and finally dined with Napoleon on the eve of Waterloo. Just as his manservant was clearing away the brandy glasses so Dougal tapped his watch to signal the end of the day’s play.
‘One more go’, pleaded Adam wanting to gun down Noel Edmonds with a particularly nasty looking machine pistol.
The two travellers plonked themselves in the leather chairs in Dougal’s office and Adam put his feet lazily on the desk.
Dougal took his coat off and hung it up on the handstand.
He looked at Adam’s feet and gave them a disapproving look. Adam hastily removed them and sat up.

‘Drink this’, said Dougal, pouring Adam a glass of water.
Adam sank it in one and noticed a bitter after-taste as it went down.

His voice was heavy and a little loud. Adam felt a wave of fatigue wash over him. His eyes felt like sacks had been placed on them and he gave out a most undignified yawn.
He remembered clicking his fingers and thinking, ‘bed’, but after that he could recall nothing concrete as a black cloud of oblivion descended upon him.