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  KHAOS: VOLUME ONE

  A NOVEL BY LOUISE MANSON

  First eBook edition

  © 2013 Louise Manson

  All rights reserved. Apart from any use under UK copyright law no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retreival system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

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  KHAOS: VOLUME ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  A mind floated carelessly in an in-between dream world, oblivious to reality. It could not see, nor move, nor hear anything except t its own hazy thoughts, but it did not worry; the real world seemed so far away, it might have been the dream, and only this place really existed. Perhaps it did, what did it matter? For the moment, the mind was happy and content in the cotton wool- soft land it found itself in. Pain was a distant recollection. Memories themselves tried to make contact every so often, but they all swam together in such a clamour that the mind simply rejected them.

  Occasionally something else tried to make contact; it was almost a voice, shouting something indiscernible. Or sometimes there was a sound tapping away so faintly it could have merely been a spider scuttling across glass. It seemed so far away and disconnected from that the mind did not concern itself with it.

  There was no way of tracking time; it may have been minutes, hours, or even days that the mind had been in this state. At one point, the mind felt itself rise up, as if it was trying to swim for shore. It did not break the surface of consciousness however, but hovered somewhere in-between. Now voices could be heard, but a long way off, and muffled, as if through a thick layer of blankets.

  ‘Female, mid twenties, mixed race by appearance – probably white and Afro-Caribbean, grey-blue eyes, no birthmarks, but has a tattoo on her left arm,’ said a distant, female-sounding voice.

  ‘What’s her condition?’ said another voice, male by the deeper pitch of it.

  ‘Burn victim, and what looks like lacerations on her shoulders. Found a few streets from a house which reportedly burnt down or exploded, on Avenue Gardens?’ replied the female voice.

  ‘Do we have an ID on this woman?’ said the male voice.

  ‘No, Doctor, there was no ID on her and she was unconscious – the police are looking in to it.’

  ‘They’re sniffing around, are they? She must be a witness,’ said the male voice. ‘Let’s have a look at her.’ The mind felt as if the cotton wool world seemed a little brighter for a moment, as if some sort of covering had been lifted momentarily. Then it went back to its normal darkness.

  ‘Nurse?’ the male voice said, after a long pause.

  ‘Yes, Doctor?’ the other replied.

  ‘You must have the wrong information.’

  ‘That’s what the ambulance report says…’ the female voice faltered.

  ‘This cannot be the right patient.’

  ‘What do you mean, Doctor?’

  ‘Nurse, there’s not a scratch on this woman.’

  ‘What? But wait…’ There was another momentary change in the brightness of the cotton wool world. ‘This must be the right woman, Doctor – the reference number, one-nine-eight-five, date; sixteenth, time of admission; eleven-fifty-three pm, it’s all the same, and she fits the description exactly…’

  ‘Except for her wounds, Nurse. What is the meaning of this?’

  ‘There must be some mistake… I checked with reception…’

  ‘Well check again! You must have mixed up the patient’s documents somehow.’

  The voices argued and became muffled and indistinct, as the mind drifted back down and settled at the bottom of the pool of unconsciousness. It considered what the voices had said, but their words didn’t make much sense. The gist of it, if they were in fact talking about the body that the mind belonged to, was that the body was female, and had been in some sort of fire or accident. The mind did not remember any fire or accident, and in fact could not recall any memories of her life or what might have happened to her. It was vaguely of some comfort to know that she was female and did in fact possess a body – the thought had crossed the mind that she might in fact be dead and in heaven, or perhaps some sort of purgatory. But nothing really fazed the mind, it was happy here, why should it concern itself with what was happening in the real world? So it settled down into the soft thoughtless stupor of unconsciousness and let time pass once more, unnoticed.

  Something else tried to break through, this time not a noise, but a fleeting image like a photograph flashed across the mind momentarily. A woman, middle aged and well dressed – sitting on the edge of a single bed. The bed was unmade and surrounded by clutter of empty coffee cups, glasses, books and pieces of paper. The mind tried to take in every detail, trying to memorise everything about the image, in case she never saw it again. The woman was holding something in one hand, like a small piece of paper or card, and the other hand was over her mouth, as if suppressing tears. The mind did not recognise the woman or the place or anything else about the picture, but the scene had invoked an emotion in the mind that it had not experienced before. When she looked at the woman, she was overcome with the crushing emotion of guilt. As fleetingly as it had arrived, it was suddenly gone, and she was left to puzzle over the its siginificance .

  Time may or may not have passed before more memories, more persistent this time, tried to reach her. Sounds were the most difficult, as in this lower level of unconsciousness she could barely hear. But images flashed across her vision for a moment like a slideshow of her life. And smells and feelings arrived at her senses with high clarity. A Christmas day; scrunched up wrapping paper all over the carpet, two rabbits in a cardboard box. Another, a father’s arms, hugging her; big mahogany coloured hands squeezing her shoulders, and a feeling of deep sadness. A brown patterned sofa, and the dusty carpet-like smell of it. Wearing a school uniform for the first time, stiff grey cloth, and the softness of her mother’s hand as they walked to school. Each image stirred some sort of emotion and the mind struggled to take it all in, make sense of it, and relate it to herself in any way at all For all she knew, they could have been someone else’s memories implanted into her, they seemed so unlikely.

  She tried to drift to the surface again , moving and thinking in slow motion, as if she were submerged in a thick, warm soup and barely able to move. She struggled against it, expecting to reach the surface of consciousness. Instead, she suddenly heard, loud and clear, a booming voice, coming at her from seemingly all directions.

  ‘Khaos! Arise! Wake up! I command you! Khaos! Khaos!!’ The voice shouted, over and over, getting more and more agitated. Who was Khaos? Was the voice speaking to her, trying to get her attention? It sounded so close, not distant and muffled, like the voices of the doctor and the nurse that she had heard earlier. Could she be Khaos? It seemed like such a strange, unlikely name. Yet somehow, it was familiar.

  Then the mind felt as if she were being thrown about, for whatever was shouting began to hammer on the outside of her mind as if it were trying to get in. Disorientated and confused, she spun away from consciousness once more and floated back down into the darker depths of her coma.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘How is the patient, Doctor Kenning?’ said a new voice. This one was female, but not the high pitched nurse’s voice she had heard before. A lot deeper and harsher. ‘Any changes to her condition? That is,’ the new voice chuckled, but not with genuine humour, ‘other than the radical change to her burns and wounds in the time between when she was c
ollected by the ambulance to when she arrived here.’

  Khaos, as she had come to call herself after the earlier incident, was spending more and more time floating near the surface of consciousness, trying vaguely to break through.li As her hearing was getting better and better, she listened to any voices talking near her, trying to find out any information that would help her piece together her fragmented memory and perhaps bring her back to consciousness.

  Now, as she floated in the shallow end of her mind, the voices were coming through much clearer, and she tried to imagine what their faces would be like; their facial expressions and physical gestures. Trying to picture them by what they described and talked about. Thankfully, though her personal memories seemed to have been all but wiped from her mind, she could still remember the names of objects and places and picture them in her mind, so she could still hear a tone of voice and remember what a face making this noise might look like, though remembering what their emotions actually felt like was a little harder.

  ‘She is stable, Detective,’ the doctor replied to the new voice, ‘But no change as of yet. And we still do not know what happened. The ambulance report stated that when they found her, she was covered in third degree burns and had deep lacerations on her back. And the men who were on duty swear that this was an accurate report.’

  ‘Yet when you yourself admitted her to the hospital, your report claimed no such injuries. In fact, your report stated that there was not a single mark on her.’

  ‘That is correct. There are scars on her back where there may have been lacerations at one time, but you don’t have to be in a medical line of work to see that they are very old and completely healed.’

  ‘So the only apparent ailment is this comatose state that the patient is in.’

  ‘Yes, she was like this when she arrived here, and has been ever since.’

  ‘So what do you think happened? Why are the two reports so different?’

  ‘We are human, officer. A mistake has been made, somewhere along the lines.’

  ‘But you didn’t make a mistake.’

  ‘No. And the nurse present at the time will verify that.’

  ‘And neither did the ambulance team?’

  ‘What are you getting at, Detective? Why is this of any importance to your investigation?’ said Doctor Kenning impatiently.

  ‘I will ask the questions, Doctor.’

  ‘Do you think she had something to do with the explosion on Avenue Gardens last week?’

  ‘All you need to know, for now, is that she may be a witness.’

  ‘Just a witness, Detective? Or is she the firestarter?’ said the doctor in a mocking tone.

  ‘We don’t know for sure. But you may as well know that yes, she may be more than just a witness, it is too much of a coincidence that she was found so near the explosion in that state. We’ve checked everywhere for any information on her. Nothing. There’s no record of her.’

  ‘What, you mean no one has even come looking for her?’

  ‘There’s no report of a missing person that fits her description. No family or friends have come forward to identify her. Frankly, we are at a loss, Doctor.’

  ‘Poor girl. No name, no family or friends. No clothes even! Nothing to define her except a weird tattoo and a few scars.’

  ‘Hmm, yes, her situation is strange. I’ve got someone at head office looking in to the tattoo, but I haven’t got any information on it yet. It’s not a lot to go on. No, I think the only people that might know about her died in that fire or are missing. Very convenient.’

  ‘But you surely don’t think she did it?’

  ‘It’s too much of a coincidence! Look at the facts: a house burns to the ground on Avenue Road, and a street away a woman is found in a coma, covered in third degree burns.’

  ‘But she’s just a young woman! How could she be capable-‘

  ‘A man is missing, Doctor.’

  ‘Are you talking about Patrick Begby, the heroin dealer whose face is all over the news right now? The one that you should have arrested years ago?’

  ‘We had nothing on him, Doctor. And he is still a man. If he was lying in hospital bleeding to death, you would still have to save him, wouldn’t you? Besides, there have been other, strikingly similar incidents.’

  ‘The apartment fire? But that was nowhere near-‘

  ‘Do you think it was a coincidence that the victims were customers of Begby?’

  ‘Ok, so now she’s a drug addict who got a bad batch and took revenge? We have taken blood and urine samples, there are no traces of drugs.’

  ‘Four people died, Doctor. They died horrifically. And a baby is missing. God knows what has happened to the poor kid.’

  ‘But she arrived here clean, not a scratch on her; she may have no connection to the Avenue Road fire…’

  ‘That makes her even more suspicious. Were the wounds faked? Was it part of some plan to give her a cover story?’

  ‘The paramedics insist that the injuries were real, Detective. We are still at a standoff about that.’

  ‘But you’re a doctor, Kenning. With your medical knowledge, you must be able to reason that there’s no way that she could have healed in the time between pickup and drop-off.’

  ‘As I said, Detective, my department and the ambulance department are still in disagreement about this.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Did it ever occur to you that she might be a decoy? Something to distract you, while the real killers continue their killing spree?’

  ‘I have thought of it. But something tells me otherwise. Something tells me she’s not an innocent. She knows something.’

  ‘But she’s just a young woman!’

  ‘Your disbelief is beginning to irritate me, Doctor.’

  ‘Well, you are getting ridiculous!’

  ‘You are getting complacent!’

  ‘Perhaps you are working too hard, Detective. Maybe you need a break.’

  ‘What I need, Doctor Kenning, is for you to do your job; nurse her back to consciousness so that I can question her. And don’t tell me how to do mine.’

  ‘Well she is unconscious, Detective. And I have nothing to tell you.’

  There was a brief, angry silence. Then the sound of footsteps and a door opening. ‘Call me if there is any change.’ said the deep female voice. There was the sound of the door closing; the detective must have left.

  Back down in her subconscious, Khaos considered what had been said, and wondered once again what had happened to her. She could not recollect being involved with any drug dealers, but she could not trust her memory anymore, so she did not know what to think. What she did know was that she was caught up in it, whether she knew what was going on or not, and the moment she woke up that detective woman would probably want to talk to her. This worried her somewhat, and she wondered why. ‘If my conscience is clear, then why does it concern me?’

  She swam up through unconsciousness again, trying more and more to make contact with reality somehow. This time she could not hear a voice, but sensed a presence, someone was in the room with her body. She tried to say something, but nothing came out of her mouth. She must have made some sort of movement though, because a hand was suddenly clutching hers, she felt it this time, and a voice was soothing her.

  ‘Don’t worry pet. You’re safe here. Just sleep, dream it all away.’ the woman holding her hand had a gentle, female voice. She was reminded of her mother’s hand that she had held in her memory, but this hand felt younger,smoother, and very warm, not soft and papery and cool like her mother’s. There was something familiar about this person but she could not work out how she knew her. Whether through the woman’s soothing voice or perhaps some medication she was on, she felt herself drift off calmly.

  Later on, more memories came, this time much clearer but less fond and more distressing. Tree branches smashing through a car windscreen. Lots of hands, touching her, but she couldn’t see the faces they belonged to. Standing in the midst of a collapsing room, she could
feel the heat but could not make out her surroundings, but in her arms was a baby wrapped in a blanket, crying. This vision, unlike the others, was in black and white, like an old movie. Falling into deep water, and sinking to the bottom, and an arm reaching in for her. The woman on the bed again, what was in that piece of paper that upset her so much? Then a kiss, she remembered the softness of the mouth but not the face it belonged to, and that stirred conflicting emotions of fear and pleasure, each fighting to be the dominant feeling. Then the black and white vision returned, and she saw a man, but he wasn’t human, but seemed to be made of earth, and a hand was reaching out towards him, pointing. It was her hand, could it really be her own hand? And he was screaming, and then he exploded into dust. It was all too much, it hurt to take it all in; she fought to push away the thoughts.

  It must have been night in reality, because the dream-world was darker than normal. Khaos could hear little sounds around her; a tapping like something was knocking against glass, very quiet creaks and groans, the building whispering to itself. A regular, gentle, bleeping; she must be rigged up to a machine. Never before had she heard the sounds of the hospital and the room her body was in so clearly. Khaos was just beginning to wonder if she were perhaps very close to regaining consciousness, when the booming voice came again, this time so loud it seemed to her to shake the very foundations of the hospital.

  ‘Khaos! Wake up! Human Soul! I command you! Wake up!’

  On April twenty third, at eleven fifty-three pm, in the Coma victims unit, room seven, the unidentified female patient’s eyes snapped open.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Khaos looked around the darkened room in wonder, finally able to see all the things she had heard and only imagined; she wasconnected to a machine, she had an oxygen mask over her mouth, and a needle was in her wrist connected to a drip on a pole, which she noticed was completely empty. To her right was a window, this must be where the tapping had come from, because she could see the dark branches of a tree and the moonlit night sky through a thousand tiny rain drops that has settled on the glass. There was a door to her right, which was currently closed. There was another door on the left, perhaps it was a bathroom.