Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [102]
‘Is me brother here?’
‘Your brother? We don’t even know who you are, let alone your brother.’
Jimmy tried to sit up.
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘You need to stay put and rest.’ She placed her hands on his shoulders and ushered him gently back down.
Shapes of people passed outside the frosted glass.
‘It must have been this dream.’
‘What kind of dream?’ She checked his monitor next to the bed.
‘But it was me,’ said Jimmy. ‘I was looking at myself.’
She studied his eyes, as though she might find the images still playing across his pupils.
‘But I was older, and it felt like night-time because there was no sun. But, but everything was bright as day.’
‘What about your brother?’ She stopped what she was doing and stood to listen.
‘Well, there was suddenly loads of us just walking on this marble floor, and I looked down and saw Gary was with me, but like when he was just a kid. We walked off this marble into this desert with all these other people. Then Gary and me started digging with our hands. Gary moved away the sand.’
He stopped and looked to the ceiling. He wanted to replay the concussion, to make sure of what he had seen, and felt.
‘He found this piece of light. It was like we were digging for light.’
She put her hand on his. ‘Dreams can be very strange sometimes. Now you need rest and have the doctor check you over.’
‘But that’s not it,’ he said. ‘Gary carried on moving the sand and found an arm, and a leg, and then the body. All made of light. When I moved the sand from the face it was mum.’
The nurse still held his hand. ‘Where’s your mother now?’
Jimmy looked at her then out of the window. Cotton-wool clouds blown down the wind. Now the nurse had both her hands on his. A policeman appeared gravely at the door like a messenger of doom. The nurse shook her head and he disappeared.
Later they would come into his room with plastic smiles and a false patience, trying to coax from him a name and address. He watched them turn their hats in their hands and said nothing.
That evening, clothed in a gown of hospital green, he limped from the bed and out into the tube-lit corridor. He walked with his head down like a novice monk, floating past a policeman at the vending machine. He stood and waited for the lift but when the doors slid open a huge and firm hand gripped him on the shoulder and asked where did he think he was going dressed like that?
After three days they drove him from the hospital. Two officers sat quietly in the front. Sealed in a plastic bag in the glovebox was his knife. His head was still heavily bandaged and he sat upright and regal like some turbanned prince. It was the same road he had journeyed only days before. He recognised nothing. Reeds flowed bright green in a sun-clear stream. Frost streaked the furrows of ploughed fields.
Then the weather changed, quickly, as it had been doing all day. From dark thunderheads that billowed as high as mountains, to shoals of scattered nimbus harried across the blue sky behind. When the car finally turned from the motorway the world loomed as black as judgement day. He was going home. The only gap of cloud that the sun shone through looked like an entrance to heaven.
Missing Person
MOTHER OF BILLY K MISSING
Over a year and a half since the vanishing of singer Billy K, police last night announced that his mother, Marina Fulton, has also been registered as a missing person. Frank Courtney, her former husband, and stepfather to Billy K, relayed the concerns to police after returning home to collect his belongings after the finalisation of their divorce.
Only a few personal items of Miss Fulton are missing, appearing that she planned to leave. Though police are treating the sudden absence as suspicious, officers have no leads of her whereabouts to pursue. Mr Courtney, last month served a restraining order by Miss Fulton, has been questioned and released without charge.
With the disappearance of Miss Fulton goes the last physical sighting of Billy K. Woken at 2.30 a.m. on the morning of