Organ Music Read Online Free PDF

kids.’
    â€˜But many people of your age are well able to communicate – to manipulate computers, for example,’ said Dr Fabrice. ‘Sign those forms now and, later, after we have checked with our lawyer, you will probably be sent home.’
    â€˜Probably!’ exclaimed Harley.
    â€˜How much later?’ asked David. ‘I mean, my mother – please let me ring her.’
    â€˜I’m afraid not,’ said Dr Fabrice, watching as Harley signed the pink form without bothering to read it.
    Then it was David’s turn. As he scribbled his signature he heard Harley yawning behind him, and knew exactly how he felt. It seemed as if they were signing off after a long and dangerous job, free, at last, to feel properly tired, even sleepy.
    Dr Fabrice took the forms and put them in a basket on one side of his desk.
    â€˜I can offer you a bed until ... oh, until the morning shift comes on,’ he said. ‘I suggest you sleep. Our night staff will wash and clean your clothes for you.’
    Dr Fabrice sounded so sure of what must be done.
    The worst was over. Sleep would somehow make the next few hours come and go in less than a second. David and Harley looked at each other, half-nodding, half-shrugging.
    Sitting beside his desk, Dr Fabrice had seemed imposing; on his feet he was revealed as short and squat. The boys followed him out into the corridor, and once again music came to meet them. More than meet – it assailed them. To David it sounded like the music that had been playing when they first stepped out of the elevator into this pale blue curve. For some reason it made him think, as it had then, of horror films – of mad, hooded figures sitting in front of double keyboards, with stops and pipes sprouting like alien fungi from solid rock.
    Dr Fabrice opened a door. They were looking into yet another room, but this time David saw whiteness: two white beds, so soft and pure that an involuntary sigh of pleasure escaped him at the sight. After the shower, the disinfecting, then the question-and-answer session, he felt soft and pure himself, all natural dirt washed away from his skin and out of his head, and all responsibility passed on. He and Harley let Dr Fabrice herd them into the room, and David, glancing upwards, checked for any lensed eye that might be scanning the room. Yes! There it was, still watching him. But so what? All it would see, over the next few hours, would be two boys sleeping, free of care.
    And then Harley cried out in terror.
    David’s gaze skidded across Harley’s gaping face to the bed on the left-hand side of the narrow room. It had been empty. It had ! Yet now there was someone in it.
    A young man lay on his back under the crisp white cover, apparently asleep. David thought, in that first dizzy second, that he was wearing long, fingerless, blue lace gloves, then understood that the hands (folded left over right) were covered in intricate tattoos. His forearms writhed with flowers, naked girls half covered in their own flowing hair, and spiralling serpents. The skin showing between the lines looked yellowish and translucent, the flesh like rapidly clearing water. If I keep looking , David thought in terror, I’ll be able to see right through him to the sheet beneath . The room seemed to fall away, and for a moment he believed, with woolly astonishment, that he was about to faint. I can’t! I mustn’t , he thought, twisting around to stare at Dr Fabrice, standing behind him. For a moment Dr Fabrice appeared to have a ghastly owl perched on his shoulder. Familiar dark glasses were staring at David from just behind the doctor, who seemed entirely unaware of either the young man in the bed, or Quinta, his close shadow.
    Harley screamed again. A horrid scarlet had begun pumping up between the man’s fingers, spreading over the thin, blue border of the white sheet.
    â€˜Blood!’ Harley shouted.
    â€˜Now, then,’ Dr Fabrice said,