The Darkest Corners by Barry Hutchison

living room. ‘Doctor?’
    â€˜Doctor?’ I gasped. ‘Doc Mortis?’
    He nodded. ‘The one and only.’
    And in he came, strolling through from the living room like it was the most ordinary thing in the world. Doc Mortis looked like he had always done – short and squat, with wispy white hair and a bloodstained white coat.
    But he wasn’t exactly the same. There was a red mark round his throat, like a burn, and his face was crisscrossed with fiery scratches. He had survived the attack by one of his own patients, but he hadn’t survived unscathed.
    He looked over at me, and I saw that a wide strip of his scalp had been ripped away, leaving a mess of half-congealed blood behind. His glasses were bent out of shape, both lenses cracked beyond any use whatsoever. But still he kept them balanced on the edge of his nose. He peered over them at my dad.
    â€˜You called?’ said Doc Mortis, drawing the words out in that creepy Eastern European accent of his.
    â€˜He’s ready.’
    â€˜Are you sure?’
    â€˜I’m sure.’ My dad stepped back and gestured at me. ‘It’s time. Wake him up.’
    There was a snap as Doc pulled on a pair of thin rubber gloves. From nowhere he produced a syringe with a long slender needle fixed to the end.
    â€˜What are you doing?’ I asked. ‘What is he doing?’
    â€˜Relax, Kyle,’ said my dad, and I suddenly couldn’t remember him ever having used my name before. He caught me by the arm and held me in place. ‘It’ll all be over soon.’
    There was a sensation like a wasp sting at the side of my neck as Doc stabbed in the needle. My dad smiled, and there was something like concern there in his eyes. That was another first. ‘We’re bringing you back to us,’ he said. ‘We’re bringing you home.’
    And at that, the last of the blue sparks faded, and a calming darkness fell in their place. The pain that stabbed through my limbs became soft and fluffy like candyfloss. It tickled across my skin before being carried off on the wind. I felt my heart flutter like a rabble of butterflies and a tingling spread out from where the needle had pierced my skin.
    And then nothing but darkness.
    And then no one but me.
    And then...
    And then...
    A sound somewhere in the nothing. Far away. A sound I recognised. A sound I knew.
    BEEP.
    BEEP.
    BEEP.
    The sound of a heart monitor.
    The sound of a hospital.
    BEEP.
    BEEP.
    BEEP.
    And in the darkness, a giggle. A child’s voice, soft and high-pitched.
    â€˜Oh, look, Raggy Maggie. Mr Lazy Bones is finally waking up.’

L ight. It brightened the space beyond my closed eyelids, easing me awake. I lay still, unable to move, and immediately thought of my first encounter with Doc Mortis. He’d drugged me and strapped me to an operating table. I hadn’t been able to move then, either – only been able to watch silently as he’d drawn closer with his bag of rusty tools.
    But I could move now, I realised. As my body began to wake up, my hands twitched and my arms raised to pull against the straps holding me down.
    Only there were no straps holding me down. Not on my arms, not on my legs, not across my forehead like last time.
    I opened my eyes. The room I was in was stark and bare, but it was clean. There was no flaking paintwork or bloody streaks on the wall. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything. The walls and the ceiling were white. There was no furniture, aside from the bed I was lying on. The place looked less like a room than a template for a room, like something that would eventually become a room when the owner decided what he or she wanted to put in it.
    I tried to sit up and regretted it immediately. The room spun and a sharp pain hacked at my skull. There was a thin white sheet covering my body. I threw it off and saw that my legs were bare. From the knees up I was covered with a hospital gown, which I could feel was