Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [78]
But now they were surfacing.
Vincent was remembering that day when he was ten and he had the fever. Memories coming up from the depths. The big wooden house on Leonard Crescent, echoing with a little boy’s fever dreams. Memories surfacing fast. How he’d come downstairs, following the echoing voices. Looking into the living room and seeing his dad hit his mom. Memories and the truth, coming into the light. How his dad had looked up and seen him in the doorway and bellowed with rage. How he’d grabbed Vincent. And how the Bad Thing had happened. Memories coming into the light. Vincent finally able to look at the truth after all these years.
How he’d made the Bad Thing happen. How his dad had grabbed him and at the moment of the touch he’d done it.
His father’s one big fist had grabbed the shirt of his pyjamas, pulling the cloth up so Vincent’s belly was bare and cold. The other big fist in his hair, pulling it hard. Vincent’s mother crying over by the table. The mirror and the razor blade flat on the table, the way they always were when Dad got like this. And at his father’s touch Vincent had struck back.
The mirror had come flying off the table, skidding through the air like a hockey puck slammed full force. Smashing into his father’s head and cutting it open. Laying a big flap of skin bare and then the blood starting. His father crying out and letting go of him. The mirror falling to the floor and smashing, no longer driven by the force that had moved it.
The force from Vincent. From inside his mind.
Now Vincent stood in the shadow of the Wendacott Avenue mall, near enough to hear the traffic on the road but a world away. On three sides the blank back walls of stores sealed him in. On the fourth side, in back of him, three strange grown‐ups stood. In front of him stood Bobby Prescott. Vincent’s life was about to end and the shock of it brought the memories up. The truth was breaking surface.
Inside him was a power. He could cut and wound with it. It was so big it frightened him. But there was no time to be afraid now. There was no more time for the lies he’d told himself, the years of falsified memories. He could reach out with his mind and touch the world. He could fight.
On the ground Calvin moaned with fear. Bobby Prescott stood looking at them, smiling.
Vincent smiled back at him. Within himself he made an acceptance. He turned around. The other two men and the woman were closing in. The woman was holding on to Calvin’s bicycle. Behind them was the open space of the mall’s parking lot. Beyond that, Wendacott Avenue and freedom. Calvin was moaning louder now. ‘Let’s do it,’ said Bobby Prescott.
Vincent reached deep inside his mind and felt the power there, just where he’d always known it would be. Waiting to be used. Vincent reached down and scooped the power up. He embraced it, feeling drunk with the immensity of it. It rose up like hot air rushing up from a tropical ocean. Rising and stirring into turbulence. The seed of a storm. Vincent let the stormseed spin and whirl in his mind. Spinning like a top. Then he let it loose.
The storm erupted in his mind like thunder exploding over the prairies. Behind his eyes was lightning and the scream of storm wind. Vincent let it sweep upwards from the deepest pit of his mind, moving forwards, gathering speed. He aimed it straight at the two men and the woman, a storm swelling into something bigger. It swept up behind his eyes with hurricane force.
Vincent held his breath, the power transforming, ready to take any shape at all, to perform any act, a ball of pure energy. The Bad Thing was straining at its leash, ready to happen.
But Vincent held on to it, letting the power build, his head snapping back with the effort of restraining the release, the power ready to pour out of him. Bobby Prescott’s people were hesitating, as if they sensed something was wrong.
Vincent closed