Everything that's in my head

Chapter 6

Adam woke from a fitful dream where someone had been playing a guitar at the end of his bed and every time he opened his eyes as if to say ’do you mind?’ the apparition vanished. He also dreamt he had murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury and buried him in his back garden and just as people were getting suspicious, he woke up.
A weird set of dreams so vivid it left Adam unsettled. He checked to see any sign of the mystery guitarist but the coast was clear and all he could see was his room bathed gently in the dim light of the nurse’s desk lamp out in the corridor. Returning to sleep was impossible so he decided to swing his legs out of bed and put on a pair of slippers in a bid to take the night air and walk off the nightmare that he felt still lurked in the room.

He strolled down the empty ward waving at the nurse as he passed. He hung a left and entered a corridor that seemed to narrow to infinity as the perspective took it to an endless, distant horizon. Every 10 metres or so, a door broke up the monotony of the pastel coloured walls. They seemed locked, although Adam didn’t try them. He was content to walk and get some blood coursing round his veins. As he walked he thought about the day’s events, about how fun it had been and how for the first time since he could remember, he had genuinely laughed. He wore a rich smile at the thought of it, basking in the memory’s warm afterglow. It was a good feeling; a feeling that something had been achieved, although quite what Adam didn’t care.

After he had walked some ten minutes he began to tire and questioned the need to press on. The corridor still stretched to a point on the horizon and he felt that despite walking quickly he hadn’t got anywhere and it made him want to give up. A disturbing thought entered his mind in that he could walk for the rest of his life and still be no nearer an end. He came to a halt and with a rising sense of anxiety looked behind him to gauge how far he had come. Again the corridor stretched to infinity and Adam felt loathed to carry on. He could starve to death out here.

He had arrived outside a nondescript looking door and he gently tried the handle; to his surprise it opened. He crept into the room’s interior and waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the dark. From the orange glow of the street lights outside, he could see a form lying under a blanket which rose and fell in rhythm with the sound of light snoring. He hovered for a while; unsure at what to do but curiosity got the better of him and he stepped closer. He gently pulled back the blanket and stood back sharply. The face was hideous; There were suppurating sores all over it that continued down the neck and spread out like a plague onto the chest and beyond. It was a gargoyle made flesh and Adam froze to the spot with fear. For what he could make of the features, the man had a high forehead that rose to high widow's peaks, thick eyebrows and dark olive skin. He was, thought Adam, probably Mediterranean and about thirty years old.
He wanted to wake him up and ask a hundred questions but for once compulsion didn’t get the better of him and he made himself walk away.
The patient's notes were pinned to a clip board, at the end of the bed and Adam, with much squinting, could make out the name Earnest Serius typed at the top with a jagged graph below it. Replacing the notes, he peered at the sleeping Earnest. He noticed that despite looking nothing like him everything in the room was exactly the same as his own: it had all his things in it. The same wine red slippers tucked under the bed, the same navy blue sweater Dougal had given him, lay as it did in his room, over the back of a tubular chair. It was quite unnerving. As he gingerly put the blanket back over Earnest's face he suddenly noticed the horrific smell of death that hung in the air. He had been too preoccupied to notice it before. It was akin to shit only sweeter and now that he had become aware of it, it was unbearable.

Holding his mouth, Adam went for the door. He pulled the handle down slowly and left as quietly as he had come.
Taking in deep breaths, he managed to contain himself and walked around the corridor, uncertain as to what to do next. He fidgeted for a while, pulling his bottom lip and shuffling from one foot to the other. In there, he thought to himself was a person/thing not wholly unlike himself, who for all Adam knew, might have been dug up as he had. It had a human form after all and Adam felt encouraged that he wasn’t alone.

It came as quite a shock to see a bleary eyed Dougal marching down the corridor towards him dressed in a sensible dressing gown and floral pyjamas.

‘Do you know what time it is?’ hissed Dougal under his breath. He pulled the velvet cord around his waist and glared at Adam through furious eyes. He opened the door Adam had just closed and shot a concerned glance into the dark interior, cocking an ear to hear any sound of disturbance. Satisfied the sleeping figure had not been woken, he closed the door.

‘There’s nothing for you in there’, he hissed and ushered Adam back down the corridor.

‘I am very disappointed’.

He stopped and let Adam take the lead lest he should break away and disappear into another room. They walked in silence for a while and Adam felt the atmosphere between them awkward and frosty. Every time he turned he saw Dougal scowling at him and it was all a bit tense.

They reached Adam’s room

‘Into bed’, Dougal growled and turned to go, his charge safely returned but as he went Adam asked him a question that made him stop in his tracks and caused him to remain in the doorway, head bowed and with his back to Adam.

‘Who is Earnest Serius?’.

After an agonising 30 second silence, Dougal turned and had that same hunted look he wore when Adam asked him a difficult question. He looked at the floor and then at the ceiling,
It’s very late; it’s so late it’s become early, look’.
Dougal wafted a hand in the direction of the windows and Adam could see a salmon pink dawn seeping in through the blinds.