The Roar by Clayton Emma Read Free Book Online

out like black rods from her eyes. For a few seconds Gorman met her gaze confidently, he was even smiling a little, pleased with himself. She didn’t mean to do it, she didn’t even know she could do it, and when Gorman flinched and pulled his head back she made no link between her gaze and hispain. He opened his mouth to gasp and his body turned rigid as if he was being electrocuted. His shoulders jabbed up and his hands began to shake as if he was a malfunctioning borg. Then a thin trickle of blood ran out of one of his dry nostrils and he closed his mouth again and made this awful creaking noise as his teeth ground together. Ellie became aware that her eyes felt like magnets locked to his head, and she tried to drag them away, suddenly understanding what she was doing to him. Gorman realized too. He could hear the roar, feel her anger and hatred like scalpels slicing his brain. It was the worst pain he had ever experienced.
    ‘Shut the lid,’ he rasped, falling against a policeman, who held out his arms to catch him. ‘Shut it, quickly.’
    The policeman kicked Ellie’s coffin lid closed, and the last thing she saw for several weeks was the paleness of terror on Mal Gorman’s face.

4
    A VERY DISTURBED BOY
    T he Barford North Community Hospital was a hulk of rust-streaked concrete that looked like a prison. Unlike the private hospital in nearby Oxford, there were no plastic flowers in reception, no carpets on the floor, no relaxing music or smiling nurses in crisp white uniforms. In the Barford North hospital, the chairs in the waiting room were scratched and grey and screwed to the floor. There was no heating. The drinks machine coughed up watery coffee for two credits a cup and there was a drunken man asleep in the corner muttering something about kebab sauce.
    Mika’s parents sat in silence waiting for news, huddled in their coats against the early morning cold. Tears ran down Asha’s face as she remembered how she’d shouted at him only moments before he’d started to choke – that she’d got angry with him, not only for waking them up in the middle of the night, but becausehe wouldn’t accept Ellie was dead. And now he might die too and those angry words would be the last he heard. She felt terrible guilt and sorrow. She loved her children so much the pain was unbearable, and she felt as if she would rather die too than exist without them.
    David took her hand and squeezed it. He did not find it easy to show his feelings in front of strangers, and to the passing hospital staff he looked calm, as if he was waiting for a train, but inside he felt cut to pieces by grief.
    It was two hours after Mika’s dramatic arrival in an ambulance pod that a doctor came to talk to them. David and Asha followed him along a dimly lit hallway and stopped outside Mika’s ward. The doctor was a small, grey-faced man with serious eyes. He looked tired and anxious to get away.
    ‘Well, you’ll be pleased to know there’s nothing wrong with him,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘You can take him home.’
    ‘What?’ Asha cried, almost falling over backwards with shock. ‘He was nearly dead two hours ago! What do you mean there’s nothing wrong with him? That’s impossible! He couldn’t breathe! He was choking to death!’
    ‘That wasn’t the reaction I was expecting,’ the doctor said. ‘Parents are usually happy when I tell them their children are still alive.’
    ‘Of course I’m happy,’ Asha spluttered, her eyes filling with tears of confusion. ‘I’m just amazed, that’s all, he seemed so ill.’
    ‘Well, not any more,’ the doctor said, impatiently. ‘He suddenly came round while we were examining him and sat up in bed looking disorientated. When we asked him if he knew what had happened to him he came out with some incoherent mumble about water in the engine and popcorn. And he says everything looks dark, but we’ve run full tests and he’s perfectly healthy. His eyes are fine.’
    ‘So what