Dreamspinner Read online

  With a huge effort of will, he forced his Doctor’s sense to the forefront of his mind, swallowed hard, and examined the head. It was clearly a female child and bore similar features to the image of the woman whose throat he had been forced to witness being cut. Curious now, he leaned nearer to the head and realised that both it and the image of the woman were of the same race as his own. They were obviously from Arlenika Prime. The pale skin and white hair, the large round blue eyes of such an intense hue that other races find them mesmerising, they were very recognisable Arlenikan attributes.

  “Well it’s not surprising that I should hallucinate images of people from my own race. It’s what is most familiar to me, so it stands to reason that my troubled mind would use images it is familiar with. Of course, since I’m a doctor, it’s not too much of a stretch to believe that my mind would show me images of bodies cut up and dismembered. I’ve done countless operations and have cut into lots of bodies whilst operating on them. Yes, it’s my mind trying to make sense of the memories it has temporarily lost. This is a good sign. It shows my memories are still there and trying to come back. I must expect this to continue for a while.”

  Once the image of the child’s head faded, Soval sat back down on the bed and cradled his head in his hands. Despite knowing he was hallucinating and the probable cause of it, his heart clamoured in his chest and throbbed in his temples. The images were very real and terrifying and he was alone. Waves of loneliness washed over him unbidden and tears threatened at the corners of his eyes. As if hit by a bullet, his body arched back as a fresh wave of hallucinations took hold of his mind. This time he heard shouts, angry voices that threatened violence. When the images began, he found himself running through long grass that whipped at his legs and tried to trip him, his feet catching in the matted tussocks. Men were in pursuit, their angry shouts getting closer by the second and he quickly realised he had no hope of outrunning them. With a loud cry of anguish, Soval’s head cleared and he found himself sitting on the floor of the medical bay clutching at the bed sheet that dangled from the side of the bed. Dropping his head into his hands, he sobbed loudly.

  Groaning in pain, Soval awoke and took a few moments to realise where he was. Having fallen asleep on the floor beneath the bed in the medical bay, his hip was painful and his back, stiff. Wincing, he dragged himself to his feet and climbed into the bed, drawing the sheet right up to his chin as a child might clutch at a favourite blanket. He was about to close his eyes when the door burst open and he leapt to a sitting position in fright. The bed had gone. In its place was a soiled mattress on the stone floor of a cell that stank of urine. A group of angry faced men grabbed at his arms and dragged him from the stinking mattress to his feet, ignoring his screams. Suddenly the room went dark as many arms grabbed and flailed towards him, a hundred or more it seemed. He recoiled in horror but still they pawed and clawed at him as they growled and spat in anger, their words incomprehensible to his anguished senses.

  The light exploded in his eyes, revealing the bodies before him. The same woman and a female child with the head he recognised from earlier. An infant boy completed the grisly trio and Soval gazed at them, horrified but transfixed at the carnage. All had been dismembered in a most inexpert fashion, he noticed and the woman’s legs appeared to have been half hacked and half torn from the body. The female child’s head was detached but lay almost in the right position above the neck, the gap making her neck seem oddly long. Some kind of wadded material was visible inside the infant boy’s mouth and his arms were obviously broken, the white ends of bone that stuck through the bloody rents in the skin, testament to the most horrific torture imaginable.

  “Please stop,” he sobbed aloud. “I know why it’s happening but I can’t take this much longer. Please.”

  Without warning, it stopped and Soval found himself back in bed in the medical bay, the sheet clutched to his throat in a defensive gesture. Holding his breath, he waited for the next onslaught that would surely send him mad, but nothing happened. His forehead dripped with sweat and he wiped the sheet across it as he moaned long and slow, closing his eyes in a bid to calm himself.

  “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” he muttered as he climbed out of the bed and wandered over to the drinks dispenser. “Maybe if I write it all down it would help. It might act like therapy and help my mind to make sense of it. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.” He went to the medical records computer, switched it on and spent the next hour outlining his hallucinations in meticulous detail. Once this was completed, he then read it aloud taking the role of therapist and asking questions which he would then answer as himself. This went on for a couple of hours until he was tired and hungry, so he made his way back up to deck five and returned to the kitchen where he successfully made himself a meal without incident.

  With a full stomach, Soval felt much better and decided that what his mind needed was order. A strict schedule would occupy his mind as it struggled to retrieve the lost memories, allowing them to slip back into their proper place without his troubled consciousness fighting the process. Hoping this might lessen the hallucinations, he decided to draw up a cleaning schedule for the medical bay. The whole place needed to be tidied and scrubbed, all the instruments sterilised, the drugs locker inventoried, he would even change and wash the bed linens. Anything to occupy himself while his mind was struggling. Happy that he now had a positive plan of action, he returned to deck six and began immediately.

  The isolation ward was first on his hit list and he had the beds stripped within ten minutes, the empty beds wiped with anti-bactericide and remade with fresh linen within another hour. With a bucket of chemical wash, he cleaned all the surfaces and washed the floor, before heading to the morgue. It was while doing an inventory of body bags that he had another couple of hallucinations. As he reached for another bag, he noticed the tell-tale shape of a body within, and backed away as the now familiar flush of fear coursed through him.

  “No, I must not give in to it,” he admonished himself. “It is just a hallucination.” He strode forwards, grabbed the body bag and flung the top aside, expecting to find it empty as the hallucination faded under his assertive stance. The woman’s impassive gaze regarded him accusingly and he backed away in horror, his hand going to his mouth instinctively.

  “Why did you do it, Daddy?”

  Soval swung around, startled out of his wits by the sudden voice behind him. The female child, very much alive with her head attached firmly to her body stood gazing at him, the infant boy on her hip. “What?” he said, before realising the stupidity of the remark.

  “Why did you do it?”

  Soval turned a full circle, expecting to meet whomever the child was referring to as Daddy, but there was no one else and the child’s eyes were firmly fixed on his own. “Me? Oh, you’ve made a mistake. I’m not your Daddy. I’m a doctor. I can help you if you want me to.”

  “Daddy. Why, Daddy?” the girl begged as her image faded slightly, giving Soval a glimpse of the empty gurney behind her. The image regained solidity but only for a moment and she continued to fade and solidify repeatedly as he looked on in horror. For a moment, he wondered if the whole experience had not been a hallucination after all, but a haunting. The spectres of these two children appeared exactly like all the ghosts he had ever heard about. Although he had never contemplated whether he believed in such things or not, this was actually happening and he pondered the question now. Try as he might, he was unable to pretend they were not there. He tried several times, closing his eyes, counting to ten, then opening them again but they were still there. He tried counting to twenty before opening his eyes, then thirty but still they remained and asked the same question to which he had no answer.

  “Did I do something bad, Daddy?” she asked as a tear formed at the corner of her left eye. “I’m sorry. Please don’t be cross with us anymore. Please don’t hurt Mummy again.” She came towards him, her arms open wide to hug him and he backed away in terror. The th
ought of making physical contact with the spectre horrified him and although aware of the incongruity of that feeling, he was unable to change it. She was a little girl, whether dead, alive, or a figment of his troubled mind and was no threat to him. With this thought came a memory of her severed head as it lay on the pillow in his bed and he backed away, shaking his head.

  “No. You were dead. I saw your head. You can’t be standing here now all put back together again. Are you a ghost? Are you wandering in some spiritual way station unable to pass on due to having endured a violent death? Have I been witness to wicked hallucinations due to my amnesia, or am I haunted? Do you haunt this empty vessel? You must’ve been passengers on board and when whatever happened, happened, you were unable to pass on for some reason and now you’re haunting the ship. Yes, that must be it. You’re spectres of lives cut tragically short, but I am not your father and I cannot explain the reason for your awful predicament. I am sorry for you, child, but I am not who you mistake me for and I will not hug you. Please do not feel bad of me but I am as much a victim in this as you are. I am stuck here alone with no one except the spectre of a child who haunts me. Forgive me for my inability to give you aid. I will give thanks for your lives in the temple down the corridor if that will ease your spirits.”

  A noise caught Soval’s attention and he turned from the spectres before him. The dead woman now stood behind him, naked and beautiful despite the multiple stab wounds that covered her abdomen and torso. Her breasts swayed slightly as she took a step towards him and he was horrified to feel his groin react.

  “Why?” she demanded, her brow creasing into a frown. “Why?” She took another step towards him and he took another back.

  “Daddy?” The voice from behind caught him by surprise and he spun around to find the spectre of the child, the infant still on her hip, walking towards him, her free arm outstretched. With the spectre of the child coming towards him and the reanimated corpse of who he presumed to be their mother advancing from his rear, he was unable to escape in the narrow confines between the two gurneys and he cried out in horror as his heart leapt in his breast. His last conscious thought before his mind ceased its panic and stilled for good, was the titillating way the woman’s breasts swayed as she moved.

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  4

  Tearan Lindo grunted his way through another hundred crunches before allowing himself the luxury of a shower and breakfast. He had awoken after a night of vivid dreams, after which a few precious memories filtered back and slotted into place. The fork paused halfway between his plate and his mouth as images exploded inside his mind. Instantly he was fifteen years old and standing in a long line of other boys his age, his parents standing amongst a crowd of others nearby. The line shuffled forwards as each boy reached the front, held out his wrist for his identity chip to be scanned, received a parcel containing pants, tunic and boots, and went to stand in a new line at the other side of the public square. Four similar lines of boys shuffled their way forwards, some faces smiling and excited, others frowning and fearful. At the end of their childhood, Arlenika Prime’s most precious commodity did what they had done for countless generations; they gave their first seven years of manhood to the Arlenikan Security Force.

  Arlenikan boys come of age at thirteen and join the military at fifteen, where they stay for seven years before returning to their families to make their way in life in whatever way they wish. They leave the loving safety of their parents’ arms and join a new family, one that not only teaches them to become self sufficient and confident soldiers, but one that guides them through the emotional minefield that is the transition from boyhood to manhood. Joining the military is not the law for Arlenikan boys, but it is an accepted rite of passage that few wish to miss. Wide eyed boys leave their tearful parents and return seven years later ‘grown men proud and true,’ as the Arlenikan military song goes.

  ‘Wipe your tears young man, fear not and cry no more.

  Be brave my boy and save your tears for the dreadful hour of war.

  Leave the weeping to your mother; it’s seven long years for you.

  When you return to her, you’ll be a grown man proud and true.’

  ‘Stand beside your brothers now, leave childhood things behind.

  Stand straight and tall and find in each of them your peace of mind.

  For each and every one of them is looking forward, as are you.

  To coming home again one day a grown man proud and true.’

  ‘These bright young eyes and steadfast feet, so eager to depart.

  Although the pain of loss will dim the eyes, please son take heart.

  You’ll leave some brothers on the field; your heart will break in two.

  Their spirits will return beside these grown men proud and true.’

  ‘When you are far away from home, on field of war or peace.

  Let not the memories of these seven long years of life decease.

  But let the wisdom learned beside your brothers carry you

  Every moment near and far, a grown man proud and true.’

  Tearan’s eyes welled up as he remembered and then sang the most famous Arlenikan military song of all. He was afraid that day when he stood in line and got his uniform alongside all the other boys. Together, all four hundred and seventeen of them stripped naked and donned the new pants, tunics and boots in front of the crowd of cheering fathers and sobbing mothers. After an inspiring speech by the man who would be their commanding officer and father figure for the entire seven years, they marched away leaving their piled clothes on the ground. The crowd of parents watched their children march away, not to meet them again for seven years, some never to see them alive again. The discarded clothes were left for the wind and weather to gradually wear away. When, after seven long years, the boys returned as grown men proud and true, they would go with their parents and collect what remained of their childhood garments. These would be saved in a special seven-year box that passed down the male line. The box gathered scraps of weathered fabric with each new generation of returning sons. Each male proudly placed his own scraps inside alongside those of his father, grandfather and many generations of the men who had endured the seven years before him.

  Try as he might, he could not remember what had become of his seven-year box and hoped the memory would surface soon. Neither could he remember his parents’ names, the images of their faces blurry and indistinct when he tried to force the memory forward. Growling with frustration, he reluctantly stopped pushing and relaxed. Maybe if he left it alone it would come back by itself like the memory of the day he joined the military did. Relieved that at last some memories were returning, he continued his breakfast and felt confident that before too long he would find his whole self again. He hoped that he might also remember what happened on board the ship, and was desperate for an explanation as to how he came to be there in the first place. As he finished his drink, a thought suddenly landed inside his mind and his eyes widened as he understood it.

  “Of course. Shit, why didn’t I think of that earlier?” He cursed aloud at not realising that a ship this size would have a full personnel manifest somewhere. Even if it were not possible to get the ship’s main computers working, there might be personnel records in the medical bay. “People have allergies, illnesses, and some need regular drugs. The medical people are bound to have records of everyone aboard. Maybe there’s a record of me there.” Without further delay, he set off and took the stairs two at a time down to deck six. He decided to try the door marked, ‘Medical Research and Scanning,’ first. It seemed the most likely place for medical records to be kept. As he checked the various machines, he realised something was off but did not understand what it was until he examined the body scanner and found several white hairs lying on the dark grey sheet.

  “Someone’s used this machine,” he said as he peered at the hairs. “And that someone has hair like mine, which means there’s another Arlenikan aboard.” He then realised, as he searched the room w
ith more focus, that things were a little different from when he had been there before. A chair moved here, a utensil moved there, hairs on the sheet and in a side cubicle, an unmade bed. It was a basic bed much like the one upstairs in the security room he now called his base, but the sheet was pulled aside and a hollow in the pillow gave testament to a head having lain there some time recently. There was no doubt he was not the only one aboard and he wondered if it might be the writer of the name on the wall in the engineering briefing room. “What was that name again? Mykus something I think. Maybe it’s him.”

  Laying a hand on the butt of the gun at his hip, Tearan left and walked down the corridor.

  ‘Medical Bay.’ The bright yellow letters remained impassive and he frowned. If someone had set up home down here, he hoped they would prove to be friendly. He did not like the thought of remaining here alone forever, but he fancied the thought of having an armed psycho to avoid forever, even less. Taking the gun from its holster, he opened the door and marched in, kicking it so it flew back and hit the wall behind where anyone might be hiding ready to leap at him. More signs of habitation met his eyes. The door to a drug locker stood open. An injector lay on the floor beside it and Tearan noted the unpronounceable name on the drug phial attached to its top. Despite knowing he had no medical knowledge and would not know what the drug was for, he registered a feint flutter of recognition deep inside that was gone as quickly as it came. He frowned and wondered whether he had been given an injection recently or used this drug before. It was so maddening not being able to remember.