Chapter 17: 17: Back to Reality

I woke up at six in the evening on Saturday, my body clock out of sync and my head groggy. It took half an hour to get my thoughts together and shake off the heavy sleep.

The memory of the previous night’s events floated around my mind like a bad dream. Images of fire, blood and fear played through my mind. No matter how hard I tried to push them away, they kept returning. The creature attacking me at school. Major Wilson, his furious face covered in soot, his rifle aimed at me. Doctor Pierce and Brooks transforming in the Nissen hut as the explosives they’d planted blew apart Section 13’s base. The dead body I’d stumbled across, ripped to pieces. Major Wilson shooting Brooks in the back of the head.

And the empty cage.

Every time the cage crossed my mind, a cold sweat broke out. I knew how close I’d come to not being put inside it.

I looked for my phone, expecting a bunch of messages from Jess and Dee before I remembered that I’d lost it in the attack on Section 13. None of my data was backed up, so I’d have to start from scratch when I got a new phone. I grimaced, then realised it wasn’t the worst problem to face, considering how close I’d been to death the previous night.

I logged onto Facebook on my laptop, checked my messages. I wasn’t Mr Popular and barely used it anyway. Despite that, there were a few messages from people checking up on me. There were also a lot of conversations that started ‘Have you SEEN this???’ with the photo attachment mysteriously unavailable. Follow-up messages revolved around people saying they couldn’t understand where the footage they’d shot on their phones had gone. Most of those threads quickly fell silent and were then deleted.

Section 13 was mopping up the squealers, as Major Wilson had put it. Making sure they squashed all the rumours, and no information got out.

That was something that had bothered me the previous night, at least in the back of my mind. Section 13 weren’t just protecting the public from the monsters of the night. They were actively covering up their existence, making sure the truth never got out.

Surely that was more dangerous than letting people know these things existed?

Wilson had made the argument that if everyone knew what was really going on there would be bloody mayhem. Maybe he was right. But if people didn’t know what was out there, how could they defend themselves?

Flicking through the group conversations, I noticed a shift in the tone as they continued. By midnight on Friday there were already multiple claims the whole thing was a hoax or a prank played by the sixth form. Where these theories originated was hard to pin down.

By one o’clock, according to the timestamps, all talk of missing footage had already stopped. There was a brief resurgence at two in the morning of theories and speculation from a handful of people still awake. This coincided with the attack on the command centre. Section 13’s ability to control social media had been knocked out when the building went up in flames. Despite that, these threads also quickly stopped.

By Saturday morning, the ‘prank’ theory had taken hold.

The ‘monster’ had been a sixth former dressed up in a Halloween outfit after all, according to anyone that cared to still mention the incident.

If you didn’t know it was all a concerted exercise in social media manipulation, with Section 13 pulling the strings, you might have been taken. Knowing what it was made it laughably obvious.

I messaged a few people to let them know I was okay, feeling touched by the number who were concerned. Maybe I wasn’t quite the outsider I’d thought.

I was surprised to see a message from Forrest pop up that was actually short and sarcasm free for a change.

Hey Ethan, really hope you’re alright. That was a crazy night. Message me.

Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks Forrest.

Ok, good, he replied and left it at that.

I guessed he was taking signing the Official Secrets Act seriously.

It reminded me that in all the chaos, I hadn’t signed it. Technically, I could say whatever I wanted to whoever I wanted.

I doubted Major Wilson would see things that way though, and I didn’t feel like poking that bear to find out. Plus, the less anyone talked about what had happened that night, the less scrutiny there would be on me, which suited me fine.

I messaged Jess, asking if she wanted to meet. She messaged back that she couldn’t, sorry. I added that I’d lost my phone, she replied ‘Ok, talk soon.’ Her dad had a gig on at his club (called ‘Legends’ naturally) and he’d roped Jess into helping as per usual.

Still on Facebook, I messaged Dee. He said he’d be round soon. Mum had left some food and a note saying she’d be at the shop until eight. Joe had been fine with me taking the day off.

Dee arrived half an hour later.

We said nothing for a while. Just sat at the dining room table and drank cups of tea.

“Soooo,” Dee said eventually, “You want to talk about it?”

“Nope.”

It was the truth. I didn’t want to talk about it.

One reason was that I was still trying to get it straight in my head. Another reason was I was simultaneously trying to forget about all of it.

“Do you?” I asked, “Want to talk about it?” I felt like I should ask him, but my tone made it clear what I hoped the answer would be.

“Nah,” Dee said with a shrug, “PlayStation?”

“Yeah. Maybe less of the blowing things up and more of the football though.”

“Cool.”

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We booted up the PlayStation and got into it. I tried to focus on the games but flashbacks to the previous night’s events kept hitting me, none of them happy memories. The monster. The attack. Major Wilson’s cold-blooded execution of one of his men. The explosions and the fire.

“Man, you are off your game tonight,” Dee said as I lost my third consecutive match.

“Yeah, I’m still tired. It was a long night.”

“Yeah,” Dee said.

We sat for three hours kicking virtual footballs around, not talking and drinking cups of tea. Dee left at ten.

Sometimes you don’t need your best mates being concerned and asking you a ton of questions. You just need them to carry on as normal and give you time to process.

That night, unlike the first night, I slept poorly.

My dreams were of blood, fire and smoke. I woke up three times in a panic, my heart beating so fast that I sat bolt upright and looked around wildly for an enemy that wasn’t there. Often the last image I saw before I opened my eyes was Major Wilson’s face covered in ash, his eyes blazing.

Each time I told myself it was over and I was safe.

Not too deep down, I didn’t believe I was safe though. I had this constant knot of anxiety in my stomach, a gut feeling that it was only a matter of time before whatever was coming next caught up with me.

I spent Sunday at the garage. Joe noted I was unusually quiet. He asked me if I’d heard anything about that escaped animal on Friday night. I said I knew nothing about it. Jess messaged me to say she couldn’t come round, which annoyed me. I’d have thought saving her life and then going missing for the best part of ten hours would have meant, well, something.

Mum kept quiet about it all. It wasn’t until Sunday night that she broached the topic of my disappearance.

“Ethan, can you tell me what happened, love?” she asked after we’d eaten.

I sighed and shook my head.

“Mum, I can’t. It was all crazy, but I can’t talk about it. I’m not allowed to.”

“Not allowed to?” Mum asked, “What does that mean?”

“I…”

I didn’t want to lie to her, but I couldn’t tell her the truth either. I settled for an approximation.

“There was a situation at the school, Mum. A terrorist thing.”

Mum’s eyes widened.

“A what now?”

“Yeah. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I saw some stuff that was, um…National security stuff. You know? So the military took me away for questioning. To check the identity of someone I’d seen. But I’ve signed the Official Secrets Act now so I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

Mum listened to all of that with a mixture of disbelief and sympathy. Back in the day, she’d gone on every anti-government demonstration there was. Probably invented a few of her own, before having me and deciding to take a step back from it all. She’d rubbed shoulders with the police on a weekly basis, even found out that one of her co-protestors was an undercover officer. She knew she was on at least one GCHQ watchlist, as a ‘counter-culture revolutionary’ so she wasn’t going to dismiss any talk of conspiracy or the OSA out of hand.

It was still a lot for her to swallow. Jess and Dee had told her about the military showing up and taking me away, however, so there was enough of the truth in there for her to pause any further questions for now.

“Okay,” she said.

I think she was just relieved to have me home safe and not in any serious trouble.

And then it was Monday morning, and back to school as if nothing had happened.

Everyone trundled to class as usual.

Bells rang, lessons were attended, teachers droned, and my secrets were still safe

There were mutterings and rumours about the weird creature at the Halloween party, but they died down soon enough. The local paper printed an article about an escaped lion from a private collection. The assembly held by Mr Andrews on Monday failed to mention the incident, and no-one dared to bring it up. All damage to the school had been plastered over or repaired.

I saw Mr Andrews in a corridor between lessons, and he made a show of only vaguely acknowledging me.

Life was already returning to normal less than three days after a supernatural gorilla-dog thing had appeared out of nowhere and terrified everyone.

I was back to reality again.

Except reality all felt totally surreal.

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