Read Online Darkmans by Nicola Barker - Free Book Online Page B

– until he felt satisfied by the answers; and if he wasn’t satisfied he may well turn hostile. There might be –
    God forbid
    – an ‘episode’.)
    Consequently – according to Beede – the horse had simply ‘escaped from a field’. Beede had ‘just happened across it, wandering around in the road’, so had gone off in pursuit of it, then Dory had arrived – ‘in the nick of time’ – and had helped him to subdue it.
    In this new scenario Dory was quite the hero…
    ‘Yes, I know you hate horses. Don’t you see? That’s what made the whole thing so…so admirable. ’
    The only problem with this approach was that Dory wouldn’t automatically give up on all his former scraps –
    Dammit
    – and a few hours later there was always the risk that he might suddenly remember being in the play area (for example) and then get all agitated and jumpy, and the questions would start over. He was tenacious. He was suspicious.
    Things were definitely –
    Definitely
    – getting worse on that score. Elen had said so herself (and Isidore had strongly indicated as much too, in some of his rare – but precious – moments of unselfconsciousness).
    On the positive side (and there was always a positive side), he was actually ‘going under’ slightly less often than he had done previously; but when he did, he ‘fell’ much more quickly, was in deeper, and for significantly longer.
    When he came to he was just a mess; he was in chaos. It was as if his brain had been placed inside a food processor (set on to its ‘chopping’ function); everything got hacked-up and jumbled together. And the end result? A horrible, indigestible mental coleslaw.
    On this particular occasion Beede had taken the precaution of checking his watch at his very first sighting of Dory in the French Connection, and he’d calculated (another quick peek. Yup ) that it’d taken twenty-five minutes for him to return to himself ( fully return – so that he remembered his address, his wife, his child, his date of birth; all the basics, in other words).
    Beede had been on hand for almost the entire process, and so far as he could gauge, things were definitely degenerating. Elen had told him that this’d happened twice before (a serious degeneration): once when they were first engaged, and once a short while after Fleet was born, when Dory had been forced to quit his job with Ashford’s Fire Department (a severe blow from which he’d still barely recovered).
    While Beede was certainly no expert, the attacks themselves seemed to have become far more…more perverse…more…uh… tricksy of late –
    For want of a better word
    More dangerous (even). They were stealthy. They seemed almost to creep up on him. They had no sense of propriety; were untimely, inexpedient and often socially embarrassing. They never (or very rarely) stood on any kind of ceremony. They were merciless. They were indecorous. They were delinquent.
    Previously – and again, this was chiefly relying on the information which Elen had given him – they’d had a much more controllable evolution. They were constant but reliable. Were predictable. Were minimal. Had exhibited an internal logic of some kind.
    Now there was something almost cruel, almost…
    Vindictive?
    Is that too emotional?
    Now there were ‘flashpoints’. And the paranoia was terrible. Really terrible. Much more severe than it had ever been ( ever, Elen said). And the denial was absolute. But worse than all of this – worst of all – Dory had become – and this might not seem like much, superficially, but it was actually the most heart-breaking element of the whole thing – he’d become humourless.
    He’d lost his ability to just laugh it all off. He was really – really – brought down by it. He was depressed. He kept saying (for example) that he was finding it ‘hard to focus’ (he’d been twice to get his eyes tested over the last six weeks. His eyesight was pronounced perfect, on both