32

He’d forgotten the other voices. Somehow, he’d managed to put them out of his mind, until they started to come back. It was so strange, the way the brain could shut out things that it didn’t want to know about, drawing curtains across the darkest corners, no matter how terrible the secrets that lay behind them.

These were the voices. The voices that told him to do things. He’d remembered them too late. Much too late.

John Lowther’s hands trembled as he drove his Hyundai down the A6. His palms felt slippery on the steering wheel, and the windows steamed up so badly that he had to turn the fan on full to clear the condensation from the windscreen. For a moment, he considered letting the glass stay steamed up and driving blind through Matlock, letting fate take its course. But in the next second, he knew the idea had come from one of his voices, whispered almost imperceptibly into his ear. His defensive measures were failing.

He switched on the radio, let the tuner find a music station, and turned up the volume. It was Peak FM, playing the Stones — ‘Paint it Black’. Perfect. He belted out the words along with Jagger as he passed through the square and over the bridge into Dale Road, oblivious to the stares and laughter of pedestrians when he halted in traffic. They couldn’t hear him, and all he could hear was the music. The best of all worlds.

In Matlock Bath, he crossed the Derwent and parked near the old railway station, with its little cowled chimneys, mock timbering and herringbone brickwork. Though the Derwent Valley line was still open to Derby, Matlock Bath’s ticket office and waiting room had been converted into a wildlife gift shop. From here, it was possible to walk across the track and follow a footpath to the cable car station.

He passed a compound full of spare cable cars. Actually, half cars. They looked as though they’d been cut open to reveal their interiors. The hum of motors and the creak of cables over wheels increased to a rapid whir as a string of cars swung out of their station, dipping and bobbing as they rose. Two strings passed each other high over the village, half-hidden by the trees. In the roof of the station building, a huge steel wheel turned the cables. He saw with relief that all the cars were empty. There wasn’t much business for the Heights of Abraham at this time of year, with the kids back at school.

Arriving at the Treetops Centre, he found a sign that said Where to go next. Good question. Near the High Falls shop were a woodland family, carved by someone with a chainsaw and power file. The elm girl, the daughter of the family, was a young sapling crowned by a giant squirrel clutching an acorn, waiting to chew her bones.

A narrow doorway gave access to the base of the Prospect Tower. Halfway up the steps, there was no light from the opening at the top, just the faint glow of a bulkhead light on the wall below the handrail. The outer stones were worn smooth by the feet of thousands of visitors, but the inner steps still bore the mason’s tool marks, where they were too narrow to walk on.

This tower had been built to take advantage of the views and provide work for the unemployed. But it also contained a rare thing — a true spiral staircase. There was no central column, and the steps tapered sharply, so they were only wide enough to walk on if you stayed close to the outside wall and clung to the rail.

Finally, he stood at the top of the tower, with its three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view. It was so misty today that it was like a steady drizzle falling on him when he stood at the top of the tower. Spider’s webs in the hawthorn bushes had collected the moisture and shone like silver handkerchiefs draped between the branches.

Lowther looked over the parapet. Matlock Bath was below him, with the A6 and the Derwent snaking their way from the north beneath the crags of High Tor. Masson Hill and High Tor had split apart at some time. A fissure in the tor was a continuation of the same mineral vein that formed Masson Cave, which now lay on the opposite side of the valley. He could hear the traffic on the road, the clank of machinery working somewhere, a flock of jackdaws on the hill. Then the cables whirred into life as another set of cars began their descent.

The cable cars stopped automatically near the top of their climb, to allow visitors to admire the view and take photographs. He’d hung there himself on the way up, alone in his bubble high above the ground. Where to go next? The answer was too tempting. He’d imagined his cable car breaking loose and dropping towards the A6, the wind whistling through the sides as it fell, turning slowly in the air. The sound of the wind might drown out the voices. The impact with the ground might stop the world whirling round his head, scare away the colours and shapes that crept closer to the corners of his vision like spiders in his brain.

Southwards, he was looking at the dome of the Pavilion and the Fishpond Hotel. At the south end of the village, high among the trees, was Gulliver’s Kingdom, with its towers and turrets and the screams of children riding the switchback. That was where most of the voices came from. The voices of children. They were difficult for him to ignore, and even harder to understand.

If he put twenty pence in the telescope, he might be able to see right into the theme park. He might make out the pirate ship on Bourbon Street, or the singing frogs and a talking apple in the Palais Royale. Further away, there’d be the Rio Grande Train Ride chugging its way through fake cacti and replica Indians, and imitation vintage cars that ran on tracks, like trams. Kids didn’t need much to spark their imaginations, if they were young enough — if they hadn’t reached the age when they were taught to fear anything that wasn’t quite real.

He didn’t go to Gulliver’s Kingdom any more. He hadn’t been there for over three months, not since that day in July. But he could still picture himself wandering away from the Music House, through the Millennium Maze and across the Stepping Stones to reach Lilliput Land Castle. There was a mirror room in the castle. He loved the distortions there, enjoyed knowing that this was one place in the world where everyone saw a distorted version of reality, and not just him. He would stand looking at the fragmented images for a while, not focusing on any one detail, but letting the shapes blur and tremble on the edge of his vision as he swayed gently from side to side. Then he would move on, past the giant chess set to Fantasy Terrace.

They’d asked him to stop coming to Gulliver’s Kingdom. They said he frightened the children. But there was nothing to be frightened of, was there? His hallucinations were fully under control now. He could hold them in his hand and spin them, watching the light play on their colours, turning on their sound for as long as he wanted to listen, then turning them off again.

It was good to give himself a little glimpse into that world, knowing he had the power to switch it off whenever he liked. It was as if he possessed the key to a door that allowed him a glimpse of a strange, enticing universe. It was far too tempting not to take a peek now and then, wasn’t it?

Dr Sinclair had explained it was simply another way of seeing reality, and it was nothing to be frightened of. Well, as long as it was all under control, it was fine. And it was, right now. It was all under control.

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