A Cage of Butterflies by Brian Caswell

Author:Brian Caswell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press

XVIII

Ricky

September 22, 1990. 2.30 am

The scream echoed down the corridor and Erik froze with his fingers on the handle of the door. He turned, ready to move back towards the source of the sound, but stopped. Through the thin crack beneath the door, he caught the faint yellow glow of a light.

He listened for a moment. The echo of the scream died away inside his mind and the complex was silent again. He looked at that telltale glow.

Susan had not called him, and he knew instinctively that if anything serious was wrong she would. Carefully, he pushed open the door and moved inside.

The light came from a small examination lamp. It was mounted on an articulated arm protruding from the wall above the room’s only bed. Someone had turned it towards the wall, so that there was no direct glare, only a weaker reflected illumination, which borrowed its colour from the creamy yellow of the walls.

Ricardo lay on the bed. And his eyes were open.

“Ricky. Am I glad to see you …” The words trailed off as the realisation struck. The child could not see him. For a moment Erik felt his heart lurch and an electric fear run through him. Then he caught the rise and fall of Ricardo’s tiny chest and released the breath which he suddenly realised he had been holding.

Always the smallest of the Babies, it seemed that he had shrunk. And there was an … emptiness, an absence of life behind that gaze. He lay unmoving in the centre of the barely disturbed bed, in the middle of the sparsely furnished room and stared at nothing.

No. Much worse.

He didn’t stare. For the emptiness behind those eyes went far beyond the Babies’ normal peculiar detachment. Ricardo’s body lay on the bed; it breathed, its heart pumped blood. Perhaps it might even react.

But Ricky wasn’t there.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.