Beyond Broadhall (The '86 Fix Book 2) Read online

  Beyond Broadhall

  By Keith A Pearson

  For more information about the author and to receive updates on his new releases, visit…

  www.keithapearson.co.uk

  Copyright © 2017 by Keith A Pearson. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Important Author’s Note

  Beyond Broadhall is the follow-up to my debut novel, The ’86 Fix, and if you haven’t read it yet, this book won’t make a great deal of sense. If you’re in the market for a 1980s time-travel adventure, head over to Amazon and pick up a copy.

  If you have read The ’86 Fix, I really hope you enjoy the next instalment of Craig’s adventure…

  JUNE 2017

  1

  One thing I really miss is the feel of carpet under my socked feet. It’s a comforting feeling you just don’t get when padding across clinical-grade linoleum. But with some of the Broadhall patients defecating on the floor with alarming regularity, carpet just isn’t an option in our rooms. Things don’t get much more homely above the floor. The magnolia walls of the twelve-foot-square room are bare, and the scant furnishings only extend to a desk, a chair, and a small wardrobe, all in flatpack beechwood veneer. It is a utilitarian room and for the moment, it’s a place I reluctantly call home.

  It’s been eleven months since I sat in my teenage bedroom and my mundane life was cast into madness. I suppose you could argue it was a lot longer if you include the thirty year trip back to 1986. That weekend felt like a lifetime in itself. Ironic really, in that it prematurely ended a lifetime — mine. Now, after my mandatory incarceration at Broadhall Hospital, I am nearly a free man. Actually, that’s not strictly true. I’m nearly free from the hospital walls, but I’m not free from the system that put me here. Nor am I free from the conflict and the torment which take turns to keep me awake at night.

  I had an idea which I hoped might ease my insomnia. I told my case officer I wanted to put my feelings down on paper, and he took that as a positive sign. I was a little surprised when he gave me a notepad and a pen, expecting either denial or a crayon. That was just one of the many incorrect assumptions I initially made about life in a hospital for the mentally ill. I’ve not seen a single straitjacket and I’m not sure if that’s a relief or a disappointment.

  The first notepad was full within six weeks. The second within eleven weeks, and the third within fifteen weeks. My words ran out before the supply of notepads although I estimate I’ve still written over a hundred thousand words. Plenty of words, few answers.

  My fourth notepad has been on the go for the last seven months, but I’ve only used the first thirty pages. I’ve already documented every minute of my weekend in 1986, and the days either side of it, so the fourth notepad contains mainly elaborate doodles and unanswered questions. My theory is that if I keep asking, something might come, but it never does.

  With nothing more to write, I read the notepads over and over again. It feels like reading one of those best-selling novels that everyone buys despite reviewers highlighting the ludicrous plot and terrible ending. I keep reading in hope of finding both, but whatever plot was playing out over that weekend in 1986, I can’t see it. I know what happened, I just don’t know why. Nor do I know how it ends.

  Inevitably, I always return to the first page of the first notepad, and the timeline of my inexplicable journey…

  Thursday 14th July 2016 - visit parents’ house circa 1.00pm and set up computer. Endure hallucinogenic episode and pass out.

  Saturday 17th May 1986 - wake up at midnight. Pain, lots of. Sleep. Get up circa 8.00am as sixteen-year-old me.

  Sunday 18th May 1986 - leave house just before midnight and run through streets. Pain, lots of. Pass out.

  Sunday 17th July 2016 - wake up in hospital early morning. Told that Craig Pelling was killed in 1986. Head fucked.

  Thursday 21st July 2016 - admitted to Broadhall Hospital.

  I like playing with numbers, cracking algorithms. I still hold a theory that the dates, or at least the numbers contained within the dates, hold some meaning. I’ve worked through them in every conceivable way, but I still can’t find a connection. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe there aren’t any answers to be found. Either way, I’m now approaching the point where I have no choice but to stop looking back and start looking forward. My new life outside Broadhall, as Craig Wilson, is imminent.

  I swing my legs off the bed and slip my trainers on. A glance at my watch — almost time to undertake my final challenge. If this goes as I hope, I should be deemed fit to re-enter society. The challenge is snappily named, ‘The Assimilation & Integration Workshop’. Thirteen syllables and an unworkable acronym.

  I stroll through the corridors of Broadhall and enter another featureless room to begin the final stage of my treatment. Once seated, I barely listen to my case officer, Stephen, as I consider how much time and ink has been wasted by giving the workshop such an unwieldy name.

  He interrupts my thinking. “Craig, are you listening?”

  Stephen is a nice enough chap. Early thirties, good-natured, and unbelievably patient. Born in Edinburgh, he speaks with a soft Scottish accent and has features to match: pale blue eyes, tangerine hair and milky-white freckled skin. It’s his responsibility to ensure I pass seamlessly from institutionalised life back into the real world. I’m probably not making that task easy.

  “Sorry, Stephen, go on.”

  “As I was saying, this pack contains all the basic documents you need to function. You have a bank account with a modest balance for essentials, a national insurance card, and a new birth certificate. There’s also a letter of reference from your doctor should you need it for an employer, or if the job centre staff ask any awkward questions.”

  He hands me the envelope. The sum total of my new life, encapsulated in thin brown paper.

  “Okay, Craig, are you happy to move onto the next module?”

  I half-heartedly confirm I am. Today, like the last few months of my stay at Broadhall, is proving to be a painstaking experience. Perhaps if I was suffering from a genuine mental illness I’d welcome being treated like a child, but there is only so much condescension a man can stomach. As well meaning as the staff are, they couldn’t begin to comprehend the real issues I have to contend with. I’m grateful they’ve created this new life for me, I really am, but it’s a life in limbo until I can start living it.

  “Sure. Ready when you are,” I reply, trying to portray some semblance of positivity.

  For five long hours I’m pummelled with information, interspersed with questions, tests, and then a final appraisal by a shrink. At the end of the workshop, my joy at being passed fit to return to society is slightly tempered when the psychiatrist simply signs a form and places it in my file. I was kind of hoping he’d thump the front of the file with a big ink stamp, imprinted with the word ‘SANE’.

  The shrink leaves the room, and just as I’m about to get up and follow, Stephen gets his second wind.

  “Let’s just go through the plan for tomorrow, shall we?”

  I inwardly groan and sit back in my chair.

  “I’ll drive you to the flat at 9.00am, so you need to ensure you’ve got everything packed by 8.30am.”

  That allows about eighteen hours to pack my possessions. All I own, apart from my recently acquired brown envelope and four notepads is half a wardrobe of drab clothes purloined from a charitable organisation when I first arrived. My packing will more likely take eighteen seconds.

  “Once we arrive at the flat, I’ll
show you around, help you unpack, and we’ll go through the house rules.”

  More fucking rules. It never ends. My entire eleven months here has been governed by rules. From the time I need to be out of my room in the morning to the time I need to be back in the room at night, and everything I do in between.

  “Is there anything else you want to know, any other questions or concerns?” Stephen asks.

  I rigorously shake my head.

  Once I’ve thanked Stephen for his time, I’m out of the door before he thinks of any other trifling details he’s missed. I let myself relax a little as I amble through the network of beige corridors back to the sanctuary of my room.

  I close the door and slump onto the bed. Nothing to do but kill time before my final dinner at Broadhall. I lock my hands behind my head and stare at the ceiling. Now I’m in the silent confines of my room, I wait for the inevitable cascade of questions my mind will pose. These are the same questions I’ve asked myself a hundred times a day, and have done every day since they told me I was to be discharged. Despite the constant asking, I’m still no closer to answering any of them.

  The most pressing, and significant question relates to this new life of mine.

  This time tomorrow I will be sat in my own flat, having tasted the first day in the real world as Craig Wilson; a man with very little past and an uncertain future ahead. God willing, I should still have a good few years ahead of me and enough time to build a new life. I have a blank canvas on which to paint a portrait of the man I always wanted to be. It’s a befitting analogy because Craig Wilson will be a two-dimensional man. It’s our past that shapes us, provides depth; the light and dark of who we are. I no longer have a past, well, not one I can claim as my own. What does that make me? No friends, no family, no wife — it makes me irrelevant to virtually every person on the planet.

  Whenever I think about my new life, I can’t help but think about the one I lost. But that is a serious head-fucking exercise; a one-way ticket to crazy town. So why doesn’t it ever go away? Why does my mind torture me by demanding answers? I think I know — closure. I need to know what happened to the people I left behind, the lives I forever changed. In particular I want to know what happened to my parents. It’s a need more than a want. Some days I don’t want to know because I fear it will be too horrific to bear. Other days I feel more optimistic they might have rebuilt their lives after my death.

  And that’s a phrase I will never be able to reconcile — my death.

  No matter how many times I’ve tried, it’s impossible to get my head around the fact I terminated my own life. I ran from my teenage bedroom and stood in the middle of the road. And in doing so, I put myself in front of the van that killed me. I was responsible for the death of sixteen year-old Craig Pelling.

  Yet despite all logic and all reasoning, I continue to exist. I can only guess that I was struck by the van at the precise moment my body was between the two timelines. My teenage self was killed but I must have already been too far advanced on my journey to the future. I don’t have the answer but I do know every time I think about it, I spin my mind around in an endless loop of infinite paradigms. I’ve got beyond the fact I did it, and the shear stupidity of my actions, but I still struggle to understand why I’m here. It’s one of those questions that nobody can answer, like what lies beyond the known universe, or who voted for Honey G on X Factor.

  To try and shift my mind from the question of my existence, I grab my first notepad from beneath the pillow and flick through the pages. I study the words and hope the answer will leap out at me like a bug in a line of computer code. It was Einstein who said that the definition of madness was doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. Reading the notes again is my madness. Still no answers but that doesn’t mean I’m not without some theories. And tomorrow, I may feel inclined to explore those theories. We’ll see.

  I put the notepad back under my pillow and let my mind drift to the consolations I have clung to during my time at Broadhall. I’m fairly sure that the hyperacusis I once suffered is no more. I discovered it was linked to anxiety and a series of treatments helped me deal with that. I’ll only know for sure if it worked when I next hear a dog bark. Then there’s my weight. I arrived here the wrong side of seventeen stone but at my last medical appraisal, I tipped the scales at a shade over eleven. My body is now lithe, the subcutaneous fat gradually burnt away through the combination of a limited diet and strenuous exercise. I no longer have to avoid mirrors.

  Then there is this new future I created.

  Although I may have screwed up my own life immeasurably, others may have benefited. My parents were happier than they had ever been, although the sad irony is that their new-found happiness was fleeting; cut short as their son was terminated by a Ford Transit. I hope that they managed to support one another and maybe found a way past their grief. The consolation I have chosen to accept is that my grandparents should have escaped their premature deaths in 1994 as a result of my chat with Aunt Judy. Indeed, she herself was left in a better place, ready to face her own demons in the shape of the paedophile, Malcolm Duffy. I’ve tried to search for the case online but we are only able to access a handful of websites on the computers here. Apparently the censorship is for our own protection but it’s a reminder that this is as much a prison as it is a hospital.

  And what of my wife, Megan? Many a night I have lain in bed picturing her new future. At first, I couldn’t escape the irrational jealousy my visions summoned but deep down I knew it was for the best. The Megan I first met at Video City deserved happiness. She didn’t deserve to live a life barren, bitter and resentful. I imagine her living in a big house now. Happy, fulfilled. I see her cuddling up on the couch with a better husband than me. I see her readying children for school; a boy and a girl, handsome and pretty. I picture dinner times; the four of them sat around a table in a farmhouse-style kitchen. I see the future that I knew Megan always wanted but we never had the chance to live. It took a while but eventually the images of Megan’s happy home brought contentment. I hope they’re a fair portrayal of her new reality, I really do.

  Beyond Megan there’s Malcolm, Marcus and Geoff — three lives I tampered with to varying degrees during my weekend in 1986.

  Assuming Malcolm heeded my advice, his beloved Star Wars collection should have remained in his possession, rather than that of the thieves who stole it from the back room of Video City in 1990. Whether he sold it or continued it, I hope that both possibilities kept him away from Mali Surat, his devious Thai bride. However, I can’t see Malcolm still being alive if I’m honest. He wasn’t exactly a health-conscious man, and I have grave doubts he would have lived much beyond his seventies whether Mali Surat had fed him to death or not. Maybe he had a more befitting end to his time on earth though. I hope he did, and at least I gave him some chance of that.

  My former schoolmate and subsequent boss, Marcus Morrison, is an interesting one. I didn’t confront him for his own benefit, more the benefit of everyone he treated like shit. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a tad curious how Marcus’s life panned-out after our altercation at the skate park. Did he come to terms with his sexuality sooner, or bury it deeper? Did he finally stand up to his homophobic father? And if he did either, is Marcus Morrison now a better man for it? It would be easy to hope Marcus had an awful life but it wouldn’t make me feel any better. Maybe my intervention was the catalyst Marcus needed to reflect on his attitude and behaviour.

  Geoff Waddock, my former colleague at RolpheTech, is a footnote. I have no idea what Apple stock is worth these days but if Geoff did follow my impromptu advice and invest in it, rather than in banking stocks, he should be a wealthy man. Maybe I should get in touch with him and see if he wants to offer a reward for my sage investment advice. He never knew me as a sixteen-year-old and therefore would have been unaware the teenager who called him in 1986 died a few hours later. Perhaps it’s not such a ridiculous notion if I do get desperate for mon
ey.

  And lastly, there are the two women who bookended my life — Tessa and Lucy.

  I can’t imagine things would have turned out differently for Tessa after my aborted seduction and warning about Marcus. I wonder if she did marry that lead singer of a semi-famous band or if perhaps life took her in another direction. It doesn’t really matter if I’m honest. I have now come to terms with the fact Tessa was never going to be part of my life, this or my former. She’s now just the girl who took my virginity, well, Craig Pelling’s virginity.

  Of all the lives that I am no longer part of, there is one, apart from my mother, which brings the greatest lament — Lucy. The ten years we worked together are gone and although I could walk back into her life tomorrow, we’d be strangers. It’s not an option anyway. By now, Lucy should be enjoying her new life in Brighton. Even though RolpheTech never closed in this timeline, and I don’t know why it didn’t, her sister’s offer would have still have materialised as before. Lucy would have still sold up and moved with her daughter. It’s ironic that Lucy’s departure is the one event I never instigated but it still summons the deepest regret. I miss her.

  On balance, my brief trip to 1986 might not have been a complete disaster for everyone and perhaps some lives are better for my interference.

  Whether I want to find out if those lives are better, is another question.

  2

  There are two breakfast sittings at Broadhall. I take the early sitting which is between 7.45am and 8.30am. Supposedly, this sitting is for patients who are less likely to self-harm with a butter knife or hurl their porridge around the canteen. I have never considered either, so I take my seat and dig into a bowl of municipal muesli. The word bland doesn’t do it justice. However, it is a staple of the diet which has enabled me to shed almost six stones of bulk from my frame, so I put up with it. I don’t even think of it as food any more; it’s just fuel without fat, sugar, or flavour.