ADAM RUNS (Part 3 of 10)

ADAM RUNS by Leyland Perree

(Part Three )

Adam slept on. The overhanging cliff kept off the worst of the rain, but it did little to shelter him from the cold. He shivered constantly. Occasionally he stirred, whimpering. His dreams were full of dark water and the hollow knocking of bones. They were of his Mother, of endless woods, of insatiable hunger – and of NotGod.

The first time NotGod came to Adam was when Adam was three years old. He had been sitting at the dining table working at the beginnings of a junior jigsaw when it happened...

***

What he detected wasn’t exactly a voice. Nor was it a thought. It was something else entirely and Adam, at three years and three months of age, intuitively recognised this. He looked around. His Mother was out in the hallway talking to a friend on the telephone. The television was off, and there was no-one else in the room.

‘I not see you,’ said Adam. He spoke in the uncomplicated babble only an infant can deliver, and only a parent can understand. ‘Are you invisible?’

The feeling that someone was there with him retreated, but not all the way. Adam put down the piece that he was about to plug into the puzzle and sat very still with his hands in his lap.

‘What’s your name?’ said Adam. This time the feeling resonated in him; faint, but strong enough to recognise. Not an answer, but a response nonetheless. Adam nodded, accepting this as readily as if it came from the mouth of own Mother. He bent to one side on his chair, and peered under the table.

‘Are you God?’ Adam asked.

The feeling stirred again. Adam shook his head and when the answer came, it came in his own voice.

‘Not invisible. Not God.’

Adam suddenly felt slow and sleepy, and at the same time the stirring inside grew stronger. It felt like he was falling asleep and waking up all at the same time. He would recall this, years later, whilst under hypnotherapy, and Doctor Christian would tell him upon waking that, in a way, that was exactly what had been happening to him at that time.

Sitting there in his home, at the table, in front of an unfinished puzzle, Adam became aware of feeling very warm inside. His Mother’s telephone chatter sounded muffled and far away. The feeling became a stirring became a presence. There was the smallest fragment of nothing, then that slow, sleepy feeling began to pass. He was glad when lucidity finally returned to him, but it was like he had woken from a deep sleep with his eyes already wide open. It was an unpleasant feeling that left him with a sense that something had been taken from him. That was what frightened him the most...until he looked down at the table.

All at once, Adam saw that the jigsaw in front of him was no longer a disarray of pieces, but a completed puzzle; one he had no memory of finishing.

Behind him in the hall his Mother was still talking on the telephone. The entire episode couldn’t have lasted for more than half a minute, but to Adam it was as if his mind had blinked.

The ordeal left Adam beset with nightmares he could never recall. After the first week of them, Adam’s Mother called her doctor. After the first month, her doctor called in a sleep specialist. At six months, after Adam had lost more than a third of his body-weight, he and his Mother were recommended to an institution for the research of new and unclassified diseases, known to its residents as The Facility.

It was a whole year after their arrival that NotGod came to Adam again...

***

When Adam awoke, he did so with such immediacy that an onlooker might have thought he had closed his eyes just moments before. Within seconds Adam knew he was not alone. His perception of reality had changed, as he feared it would. Now, there was a strange duality to it, as if he were seeing everything with two pairs of eyes, and hearing with two pairs of ears.

NotGod was here, but he wouldn’t present himself yet. Not until he was ready. Still, the air vibrated with his presence, and Adam knew that now, more than ever, he would have to be careful.

It was still dark, but not full dark. The sky was paling way over in the east. It was time to get moving again.

Adam rose and stretched, wincing at the stiffness in his back and legs. His chest felt hot and painful. His clothes were still damp where the rain had blown in on him while he slept, but the storm has passed and above him was a clear sky, bright with stars.

Adam started strolling, continuing in the direction he had been moving in the night before. The woods were quiet, almost peaceful, but perhaps that was just part of the duality.
After five minutes, with the worst of the aches already working their way out, Adam started to jog.

By the time the sun broke upon the horizon, Adam was holding a steady pace through a stretch of open woodland where the trees were slender and widely spaced. He had no idea where he was or how far he had come since Sunday. He was also painfully hungry, but he wasn’t overly concerned. NotGod would take care of that when he finally decided to put in a formal appearance.

Somewhere off to his right, the far-off crack of a rifle echoed off the surrounding hills. Unconsciously, Adam altered his course, turning away from the sound, even though it was faint enough to be miles - if not tens of miles – out of his way. It was probably someone out to take a few rabbit or maybe a roe deer. But then again, maybe not. Still, it was people, and in his current state people were best avoided. Best for him – but better for them.

Adam continued on, and soon the woods began to close back in again. The spaces between the trees soon became choked with leaves and fallen branches, tangling underbrush and deep patches of nettles. Adam try to avoid the latter as best he could, but soon his ankles were awash with nettle-rash, blotchy pink and itching madly.

Adam had been running for only two hours when he took his first pit stop. He wanted to try to find some dock leaves to alleviate his itching.

What he found instead was the fox.

- end of part 3 -