In a private room in a quiet suburb outside London, Alan Knightley slept a dreamless sleep. This condition was not unusual for a patient who had been asleep for over four years. Experts said he was somewhere between a coma and a trance. Some such patients dreamed and some did not—at least, that was according to the ones fortunate enough to wake up.
Although he was forty-eight years old, Knightley still had a freshness and youth about his face, with no gray hair to speak of. The doctors assumed this was due to the sheer amount of uninterrupted rest he’d enjoyed during his interminable stay at Shrubwoods Hospice. Despite an occasional flutter of the eyelids or an even more occasional grunt, he showed no sign of waking up any time soon.
Several tubes and wires protruded from the sleeves of his gown, running along the side of the bed and connecting to an intravenous drip and an ECG machine, which displayed a pulsing green line resembling a distant mountain range. At the end of the bed, a clipboard read: Knightley, Alan.
His hair was neatly combed back to reveal sharp, if not conventionally handsome, features. He had a wide, knowledgeable brow; an angular nose interrupted by two slight bumps that indicated he had, on occasion, encountered opponents who could not be reasoned with; and a jaw that was proud and composed even while unconscious.
His room had an old TV angled the wrong way, and beyond that a window looked out over neatly manicured lawns, hedges, and a dense outcropping of trees. There was only one picture on the wall: a child’s painting of a father and son, which made up for its lack of formal skill with its bold use of color and unusual attention to detail. Both figures wore a suit and tie; the father’s suit was red and the son’s green.
Darkus Knightley, the smaller figure from the picture, sat patiently by his father’s bedside. He was older now, but he wasn’t embarrassed by the painting that hung over him. It reminded him of how far he’d come in the past four years, leading up to his thirteenth birthday—a hollow affair that had taken place a month earlier. His father, on the other hand, was still lying in the exact same position he always did, impervious to the passage of time, hardly moving a muscle: the cause of his condition as yet unknown.
As chance would have it, Darkus was wearing green, just like in the picture; to be precise, it was a forest-green tweed vest and jacket ensemble that was somewhat ahead of his years. His shoes were highly polished brogues. His sharp blue eyes, neatly parted hair, and angular nose and ears also made him seem older than his years—certainly different from your average thirteen-year-old.
Without warning, he began to speak aloud, apparently from memory, for there was no printed matter in evidence.
“Last week I examined the Curious Case of the Amber Necklace,” Darkus began. “I found the line of reasoning clear and well laid out, but its conclusions were lacking.” He paused and watched his father’s closed eyelids for any kind of response. Seeing none, he continued. “If there was a larger organization responsible for its disappearance, I see no hard evidence to prove it . . .” He paused again, watching his father the way a fisherman watches the still surface of a lake, waiting for a ripple that means the bait has been taken. He received no such ripple.
What he did receive, however, was an audible signal from outside the door: a minute squeak from the linoleum, as if someone had been standing outside, possibly even eavesdropping on him. Darkus turned his head to the door and saw a small circle of mist on the porthole window. Someone had most certainly been watching him, but he told himself that in all likelihood it was only a concerned member of the nursing staff. He checked his simple Timex watch, which confirmed his time was up. Besides, he had an event to attend that evening.
“That concludes my report for today,” he announced. Then he added gently, “Sleep tight, Dad.”
On cue, a female nurse opened the door, making no attempt to be quiet. She had stopped bothering with details like that a few years ago.
“Same time next week, then?” she asked Darkus.
“Yes-yes,” he answered softly, then collected his herringbone coat and Donegal tweed walking hat and quietly left the room.