0.4

‘Ah, Kyle,’ he said. ‘Are you feeling better?’

I nodded.

‘I’m fine,’ I told him. ‘Lying down seems to have cleared my head a bit.’

‘Good.’ Dad nodded, perhaps to demonstrate that this was indeed good. ‘There’s someone here to see you.’

I hadn’t heard anyone arrive, but then I had been sort of lost in my own thoughts.

So who was it?

Lilly? That had to be who it was. She probably had a whole bunch of questions that needed answers too. Well, she’d beaten me to it.

Dad opened the living-room door and ushered me in.

Mum was sitting in her chair, the one with the various remote controls in pouches on the arm, while the other chair was occupied by our local GP, Doctor Campbell.

The last time I’d seen him had been months ago, when I’d injured my wrist playing tennis with Simon.

Dad followed me in and pointedly shut the living-room door behind him.

‘Hello, Kyle,’ the doctor said, his old face watchful.

‘Hi,’ I said, my mind racing.

I sat down at one end of the sofa, while Dad took a seat at the other end, leaving plenty of distance between us. The three adults looked dreadfully serious, and if I didn’t know better I’d have thought I was in a great deal of trouble for something I had done.

Doctor Campbell smiled at me, but it was a controlled smile. He smoothed out some wrinkles from his trouser leg.

‘Your parents asked me over,’ he said. ‘They thought that you might be feeling… ill.’

I smiled back.

‘Me?’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Good. Good.’ The doctor nodded. ‘So you don’t feel feverish? Or disorientated?’

‘No, I really am fine.’

‘Your parents are quite worried about you.’ His eyes narrowed to slits and it looked like he was watching for my reactions to his words. ‘That was quite a story you told them earlier, wasn’t it?’

I didn’t like this.

I didn’t like it at all.

My mouth was dry and I felt panicked. I didn’t answer. I just sat there looking at the doctor, wondering where this was going.

Doctor Campbell sighed.

‘Tell me what happened today,’ he said, and his voice had a coaxing tone to it.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I mean, I’m really not sure.’

‘But your parents told me what you told them; that everyone in the village turned to statues for… how long did you say?’

He raised an overly furry eyebrow at me.

I shook my head.

‘I didn’t.’ My throat felt scratchy.

He was scrutinising me as if I were a germ under his microscope.

‘You didn’t say? Or you didn’t really experience it?’

I nodded. Evasive.

The doctor frowned, turned to my dad and said, ‘I’m getting nowhere. Perhaps you could try…?’

Dad tried to give me a reassuring smile.

‘C’mon, Kyle,’ he urged. ‘Just tell the doctor what you told us. Maybe he can help.’

For some odd reason I got the impression that helping me wasn’t very high on Doc Campbell’s list of goals here. So I made a deliberate show of massaging my temples and squeezing my eyes shut, as if I were desperately trying to remember something. It wasn’t an Oscar-worthy performance, but it wasn’t half bad.

‘I… I can’t remember,’ I said after a few moments. ‘I think I nodded off upstairs and it’s all just slipping away.’

The doctor shrugged.

‘I suspect that you have had some kind of reaction to the hypnosis,’ he said gravely. ‘A dream, if you like, while in a highly suggestible state. Your mind has invented an alternative version of reality where it was everyone else who got hypnotised, while you and other volunteers were the only ones that were really awake. It’s a kind of inverted version of the way things really were.’

He brushed at his trouser leg again, his eyes never leaving mine.

‘You need to sleep,’ he said. ‘It will give your mind time to sort itself out, allow it to put fantasy and reality back in their proper places.’

He smiled widely.

‘Doctor’s orders,’ he said.

‘I do feel very tired,’ I lied.

‘Then that’s settled,’ the doctor said brightly. ‘You rest. Stay in bed the rest of the day. I’ll stop by tomorrow to make sure that everything is OK. I’ll leave a couple of pills with your parents in case you find sleep difficult.’

‘Thank you, Doctor Campbell.’

‘It’s what I’m here for,’ he said.

No, it’s not, I thought instinctively.

I had to get away from the house. To find Lilly. Maybe Mrs O’Donnell. Talk to them about what they remembered, and find out their impressions of the village now the event was ‘over’.

Then I needed to find Rodney Peterson and find out exactly what he thought he saw.

‘I think I’ll go and lie down a bit more,’ I said.

‘Good boy,’ Doctor Campbell said. ‘You’ll soon see that it was all just a horrible nightmare.’

Liar, liar, I thought. I know it. You know it.

I had a sudden flash of intuition and decided I’d play a hunch.

‘I’m glad Mum and Dad called you,’ I said.

‘So am I, young man,’ he said.

‘Lucky you were by the phone on a Saturday too.’

‘I’m always on call,’ he explained. ‘I guess it’s the curse of being the only doctor in the village.’

I got up and crossed the room towards the door. The telephone was on its cradle on a table nearby. I feinted for the door, went for the phone instead, picked it up and switched it on.

I got a dial tone.

Doctor Campbell was on his feet, starting towards me, but not before I punched in those three numbers.

999.

The doctor reached me and tried to get the phone from me, but I held him off for the few seconds I needed. When he finally wrenched the phone from my hand, I had already confirmed what I had suspected: there was nothing and nobody on the line.

Just those clicks and hisses I knew would be there.

‘I’ll be in my room,’ I said quietly, and made my way up the stairs.

17

My experiment had proved that Doctor Campbell had lied – Mum and Dad couldn’t have called him: the phone wasn’t working – but past that I couldn’t go.

I needed to get out of the house.

The question now was: how?

I’d talked myself up into my room, where I was now a virtual prisoner.

There was the doctor who was here to ‘check on me’. And there was Dad blocking the door when I went