Scott Mariani - The Doomsday Prophecy

He thanked her and laid it in his lap. The heavily embossed gold script on the cover read, ‘JOHN SPOKE TO ME, by Clayton R. Cleaver’.

‘Clayton distributes it free to all the poor and underprivileged families,’ Miss Vale said, glowing. ‘He is truly a wonderful man.’

Ben opened the cover. Inside was a foreword by the author. He scanned it quickly.

Ten years ago, I completed the manuscript of this book in a moment of Divine revelation and sent copies to every publisher in the USA. Not one of them wanted to publish it. But I already knew they wouldn’t, because that is what John told me. He told me to persist. That this book had to get out there. I sold my car. I sold my house. I sold everything I had. I lived in a trailer and invested every cent to set up my own publishing company and bring this book, dear reader, into your hands .

John was right in every word He said. The book was so successful that within the year I had every major US publisher begging me for the rights. To date, the Word of John has gone out to more than twelve million Americans …

‘So what do you think, Benedict?’ the old lady asked.

‘It certainly looks interesting,’ Ben said.

‘Take it,’ she said instantly. ‘I have many copies.’

‘That’s very kind, Miss Vale. I look forward to reading it very much. I’m looking forward to meeting the author too.’

She beamed at him. ‘I believe this must have been meant to happen. I just know you and Clayton will get along.’

Mae showed Ben to the carriage house. The guest quarters were situated at the back of the mansion, on the ground floor. It was a substantial apartment in its own right, with two bedrooms, a kitchen, bathroom, living room and even its own dining room. The furnishings were exquisite. Ben tossed his bag onto the four-poster bed and walked back to the living room. French windows looked out over a magnificent subtropical garden filled with palm trees and Spanish moss, and roses of every colour imaginable.

Looking around him at his elegant surroundings and thinking of his amiable, obviously very generous and charming hostess, he couldn’t help but wonder what she was doing with a thug like Clayton Cleaver.

He wondered what kind of man Cleaver must be. He looked at his watch. In a few hours he’d find out.

Far away, Zoë Bradbury was sitting up in her bed, her hands folded limply in her lap, gazing into the middle distance. At the bedside, sitting in a plastic chair, the doctor was making notes on his pad. It was just the two of them. As always, his questions were soft and gentle.

‘That’s a very nice bracelet you’re wearing, Zoë. Is it real gold?’

She held out her right arm and stared at the shiny link bracelet as though she’d never seen it before. ‘I suppose so,’ she muttered suspiciously. She knew that every line of questioning, however indirect and subtle, was a probe searching for a way inside her head. Part of her wanted to scream and run, to fight it until she dropped, to hate this man. But there was a soft look in the doctor’s eye that was genuine, and some part of her very much wanted to trust him, reach out to him. It was an inner conflict she was finding hard to resolve. She was a prisoner; she was kidnapped; yet this man seemed sincerely to want to help her.

‘It looks antique,’ the doctor said. ‘Where did you get it?’

‘I don’t remember where it came from. I don’t know how long it’s been there.’

‘Maybe it was a gift from someone close,’ the doctor suggested. ‘Someone who loves you, like a relative. Tell me about your family.’

‘I see faces in my mind. I think they’re my parents’.’

He nodded. ‘That’s good progress. Things are starting to come back to you, just like I said they would.’

‘Will it all come back?’

‘What you have is called post-traumatic retrograde amnesia,’ he said. ‘The memory loss is usually transient, depending on the severity of the injury. You had a nasty knock on the head. But I’ve seen a lot worse.’ He reached into his briefcase and brought out a book. ‘Now, I have something to show you.’

‘Where am I?’ she asked flatly, ignoring the book. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d asked him that.

He gave his standard reply. ‘A place where we’re going to make you better.’

She sensed his discomfort as he said it. ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ she asked, looking him in the eye. A tear rolled down her cheek.

He glanced away. ‘You’re going to get your memory back.’

‘But what about afterwards? If I remember, what next?’

He laid the book gently across the bed. ‘Let’s focus on this, OK?’

She looked at it. It was a book of dog breeds, filled with colour pictures. ‘What’s this for?’

‘You told me you thought you had a dog back home. Why don’t we see if we can find out what kind he is?’

‘Why?’

‘Because it might help jog other memories. That’s how the mind works, by unconscious association. One recalled detail can trigger another. So, if we can find your dog, we might remember his name. Then maybe some related incident will come back to you, like say a day at the beach. Before you know it, we might be able to start making all kinds of inroads into areas that are still blanked out. OK?’

‘OK,’ she whispered.

He started patiently flipping the pages, one by one. ‘Let’s see. Does he look like this?’ He pointed to a picture of a Labrador.

She frowned. ‘I don’t think he’s that big.’

‘OK, let’s look at some small dogs. Here’s one. King Charles spaniel. Does he look like this?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘What about this one?’

‘I don’t think so.’

He flipped another page.

‘Stop,’ she said. ‘There.’

‘This one?’ He pointed. ‘West Highland White terrier.’

She recognised the picture. It was the small white dog from her cloudy memory. ‘That’s him. That’s my dog.’

‘Good.’ He smiled. ‘We’re making really good progress, Zoë.’

‘Can I go soon?’

‘Soon,’ he said.

‘How soon?’

‘I can’t say yet. It all depends on your recovery.’

‘What am I supposed to be remembering?’ she asked, her voice rising fast. ‘This isn’t therapy. I’m being held against my will. What’s so important that I’m being kept prisoner in this place?’

The doctor had no answer to that. ‘Let’s take this one step at a time, OK?’

When the session was over, he left her in her room. As the guard locked the door behind him, the doctor closed his eyes and sighed deeply.

You’re a doctor. You’re supposed to be helping people. This is all wrong. What the hell did you get mixed up in?

‘Jones wants to see you in his office,’ the guard informed him.

‘Later,’ the doctor said.

‘Jones says right now.’

The doctor sighed again. His shoulders drooped.

He got there three minutes later. Knocked on the door and walked in. The room was small and square. The walls were plain, the floor bare concrete. Jones’s desk was clear apart from a phone and a laptop. Jones was leaning back in his chair, smirking at him.

The doctor found it harder every day to hide his hatred of this man. He would have loved to smash that smirk off his face – but he knew what Jones would do to him. ‘What did you want to see me about?’

‘Got any good news for me?’ Jones demanded.

The doctor hesitated. ‘Not the news you want to hear, certainly.’

Jones grunted. ‘I didn’t think so. I wouldn’t say this so-called therapy of yours is getting us anywhere, would you?’