Misplaced 5, part 4

Once again there were explanations and exclamations of wonder- and perhaps a hint of disbelief. But after days stranded on a desert island terrorised by a mysterious monster, seeing identical copies of yourselves and your friends who you knew to be dead walking around was enough to convince you that something strange was going on. Or that you’d eaten too many mushrooms.


The rescuers followed the others back up the rocky gully to a shallow cave among the rocks. In the entrance there was a blackened circle of stones that showed there had been a fire, but it didn’t seem to have been alight for some hours. Ruth guessed that it was lit at night as protection. But why was there no signal fire? Why were the remaining survivors hiding in a cave? Was it just for fear of the monster, or was there more to it than that?

But then all this speculation was driven from her mind. Just inside the cave she could see the shapes of two people, propped up against the walls of the cave. She hurried forward. And found herself face to face with herself.

Ruth had been injured in the monster’s attack, as she had known. She still looked pale and ill, with makeshift bandages covering the claw wounds. But she was alive, definitely alive.

Ruth looked down at her, relief evident in her face. She expected the Ruth of this world to be confused, surprised. But she seemed less surprised than most of the others. Behind her in the cave was this world’s Claire, who appeared to have a similar injury to the one her other-world counterpart had sustained in the crash. She had stayed behind at the camp, not in a state to go exploring into new universes. It looked like Claire here was in an even worse state.

All the survivors here seemed to be in worse condition than those on Ruth’s own side. Even those who weren’t injured seemed gaunt and had a worn, haunted look. Looking round the cave Ruth and her friends could see no stocks of food and little firewood. Did fear of the monster so terrorise them that they were afraid to search for enough food?

“We came through to see if you needed help and if we could give it to you,” Nick said. “After we found Mick, we were worried there was no one else left.” Mick, who had followed behind the others, suddenly looked down at the floor as if ashamed. He edged away behind a boulder.

“We didn’t know what had happened to him,” Tom from the alternate world said. “The night the monster attacked Mick was supposed to be keeping a look out in case it came, but he must have fallen asleep because we had no warning, we just woke up and there it was, bending over Becky and David.” He shivered.

“We all ran,” the alternative Rachel said. “We got separated in the darkness and the forest. I was so scared. In the morning we went back to the campsite and found everything destroyed. Charlotte and Emily were there when I got back, and Claire who’d hidden in a tree.”

“I found Ruth on my way back to the camp,” Tom said. “She was unconscious, and I thought it was too late, but she was still breathing. We tried to bandage the injuries and stop the bleeding, and eventually she woke up and we brought her up here.”

“What about Patrick?” Rachel asked. “We saw him in the forest but he ran away.”

“Pat? He was away from camp when the attack happened,” the alternative Rachel answered her. “He was already acting a bit strange since the crash- I think he was upset because Steph died after he tried to save her. He kept going off on his own. We’ve thought we’ve seen him once or twice in the forest, but he doesn’t stay still long enough to talk to. He’s behaving like a monkey, almost.”

“So that’s all of you that’s left?” Charlotte asked. “You six, Mick and Patrick?” The survivors from this world exchanged glances.

“Well, not really,” alternative Tom said awkwardly.

“Some of the others survived too,” alternative Rachel said. “But they won’t help us.”

“Won’t help you?” Rachel exclaimed. “But why not?”

“They say the injured are too weak, that there’s no point in helping them. They said we could waste our lives trying to help them, but they weren’t going to. They were just going to abandon them!”

“They just couldn’t be bothered with the extra work, collecting extra food and stuff,” alternative Charlotte said. “So they’ve made their own camp and told us we’re not allowed near it or near the site of the crash.”

“What makes them think they’ve got the right to do that?” Tom asked.

“The pilot of our aircraft had a gun,” alternative Tom said. “And now they’ve got it.”

“And they’ve just abandoned you?” Charlotte said. “Who’s in this group?”

“Emma, Ernest and Kath,” alternative Rachel said. “And Amy and Sophie, but they probably just got dragged into it. And Adam.”

Adam suddenly looked ashamed. Even though he had chosen to stay here rather than go back to his own universe with the others, he felt ashamed of what the other version of himself had done. Ruth too felt a sense of shame, that people who must be identical to people she thought of as friends could do what the survivors had just described. It had seemed bad enough when her friends from her own universe had gone back, too afraid for themselves to search for their alternate selves, however likely it seemed that they needed help.

“Well, we’re not much better off than you,” Tom said, “But we won’t abandon you.”

“No!” Rachel agreed.

“Thank you,” the alternate Tom said.

“Let’s go and find some food for all of us,” Nick said.
 
 
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Misplaced 5, part 3.

“Yes?” Patrick answered, thinking she was talking to him. He turned round and saw the figure for the first time. He stared. It looked at him, puzzled, confused, but not afraid.

“Are you Patrick?” Ruth asked the creature, which was half crouched, legs bent, like a monkey, rather than standing upright. It nodded, but didn’t speak. It stared at Patrick, who stared back, unsure for a moment whether to reach out or to shy away. Then he cleared his throat and spoke.

“Hello?” He held out his hand to shake. His monkey-like double took it tentatively, and cleared his throat too.

“Hello,” he said, his voice sounding husky, as if it hadn’t been used for some time. He looked from Patrick to the others, trying to work out what was going on. Ruth saw him shudder when he saw Alex, and remembered what Mick had said on seeing him and Jack; “You should be dead.” So there was no Alex in this world. Who else was missing? Who else, in fact, were they looking for?

Then the new Patrick saw Nick and Mick standing side by side. His face creased in surprise. “What? What’s happened?” he said slowly.

“It’s a bit difficult to explain,” Patrick said. “We’re from another...well sort of another dimension. Ish. I’m another version of you, and...well, it’s all a bit complicated. We’ve come to look for you and find out what happened to everyone else.”

“Do you know what happened to the others?” Ruth asked gently.

He shook his head and turned away.

Ruth tried to remember her dream again. Where had Patrick been? She couldn’t remember him being there, but she could not be certain.

“You don’t know where they are?” Rachel asked. He shook his head again, not meeting their eyes. Suddenly he jumped, grabbed a branch and swung away into the trees.

“Patrick!” Rachel shouted.

“What spooked him?” Charlotte wondered. Patrick was quiet. Ruth looked sideways at him, then spoke to the others.

“Well, he seems all right anyway, and if he doesn’t want to be helped there’s not much we can do. Let’s look for the others first, and then come back for him.”

“Let’s start searching the hill, then,” Tom said, and led off in that direction. The others followed. Ruth and Patrick brought up the rear. He didn’t say anything, but she could see that he was preoccupied. Did he understand why his alternate self had been reluctant to answer their questions, why he had suddenly disappeared, as if scared?

“So that’s what happened to me, then,” Patrick said at last. “I’ve gone wild, feral.”

“We always said you were a monkey,” Ruth replied, trying to raise his mood. He smiled, but stayed serious.

“I wondered what I’d do if I was in that situation. Perhaps it would have been better not to know.”

“Just because it happened to him doesn’t mean you’d do the same,” Ruth said.

“But he is me,” Patrick said.

“You still have free choice,” Ruth replied. And yet, at the same time, she wondered. What the alternate Patrick had done was really the natural conclusion of all the running away from problems that people accused Patrick of- running away to the point where all human responsibilities were left behind and man regressed to merely a glorified ape. She thought of Lady Psyche’s song from Princess Ida:

“While Darwinian man, though well behaved,

At best is only a monkey shaved.”

Take away the clothes and the soap and the razors, and what was left was not civilised. And unlike the song, she believed it to be as true of women as of men. There was some mystery surrounding what had happened to the survivors of the plane crash here. Something was wrong, and she didn’t think it was just the monster.

Deep in melancholy thoughts, she scarcely noticed that they had reached the hill and were climbing. It was probably only because she wasn’t really paying attention that she saw it. A small scrap of clothing, caught on a bush.

“Look at this,” she said to the others.

“It could have been left at any time,” Tom said.

“But it makes it more likely that we’re on the right lines,” Ruth said.

They continued climbing. At the top they turned and looked out over the whole island.

“It really is just like ours,” Emily said.

“Look,” Alex said, pointing. Down by the stream at the bottom of the hill were two human figures.

“We’ve found them!” Rachel exclaimed.

“Not quite,” Tom replied. “Which way are they going?”

“They’re coming up the hill,” Alex said.

“Then let’s go and meet them,” Rachel said, starting off down the hill. The others followed.

“I can’t see them any more,” Emily said after a few minutes. “They can’t have just disappeared.”

“Spread out,” said Alex. They spread themselves out across the hillside and continued on their way down. Suddenly Ruth heard a shriek from further along the line, and, along with everyone else, ran towards it, afraid something terrible had happened. Had the monster attacked again?

She stopped at the edge of a gully between outcrops of rocks, and looked down. Rachel was lying in the bottom of the gully, holding her ankle. The scream must have come from her. Relieved that it was nothing worse, Ruth and the others looked for a way to climb down. The gully was not very deep, although the sides were steep and it took a couple of minutes until she was beside Rachel. Her ankle was swollen, but she didn’t think it was broken, only twisted.

“You’ll be ok,” she said to Rachel. “We’ll find some water and-”

“Ruth,” Tom interrupted. She looked round.

There, emerging from the shelter of the gully, were the people they were looking for. They had found them, the remains of the survivors. There was Tom, Charlotte, Emily, Rachel. Mick and Patrick they knew about. Was that all that remained? Ruth realised, with a feeling of dread, that she was not there.
 
 
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Misplaced 5, part 2.

The few who were left looked at each other, unsure what to do.
“Well that wasn’t very nice,” Tom said.

“That lot don’t care about anyone but themselves,” Charlotte said. Generally she and her good friend Emily were among the quietest people on the island, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have opinions.

“They’re not that bad,” Patrick replied to her, but others took up the thread. Old grievances began to surface. Times when they people had been left out of invitations, forgotten or deliberately ignored. Times when people had been overlooked for solo roles, or when favouritism had seemed to sway decisions to the benefit of partners and close friends. Within any group that had known each other as long as these, there were bound to be sub groups and petty rivalries, and hurt feelings lurking below the surface. And yet- there was little malice involved. None of those now loudly complaining would have denied that their friends who had gone back were both talented and, generally, nice people. They just felt that perhaps they weren’t all they claimed to be, and perhaps it was someone else’s turn in the limelight.

Ruth was ashamed afterwards that she took her full part in the moaning. The only person who did not join in the argument at all was Nick. She was rather surprised that he hadn’t gone back with the others, as he was generally one of the favoured ones. But he seemed to have been greatly affected by Mick. He was sat next to him now, trying to get him to talk, to think where the others might be if they were still alive. But finding the remains of David and Becky seemed to have driven him even further from rationality than before. He sat silently, beside a tree, his face covered, making little groaning noises. Nick still looked as if he were confused at what was going on.

“This isn’t going to help the others, if they’re still alive,” Ruth said finally, trying to bring the argument to an end. “We should start looking for them.”

Patrick spoke. “If we think this island is exactly like ours, and the people we’re looking for are like us, if we can think what we would do in the same situation, we might be closer to finding out what happened.”

“Good idea,” Ruth said. “What would you do if the camp was attacked in the night and everyone scattered?”

“Hide in the trees,” Patrick said.

“We looked in the forest,” Rachel said. “And we didn’t see anything.”

“We could do with searching it properly, though,” Ruth said. “Anyone else have any ideas?”

“Well, at first I’d just run,” Tom said. “Then maybe when it got light I’d come back here, to see if there was anyone else around. Or maybe I’d head for somewhere higher up, somewhere where I could see if anything tried to attack again.”

“Up the hill, you think?”

“It’s what I’d do.”

“So we might have walked right past them and not noticed!” Rachel exclaimed.

“Maybe. Let’s start there, anyway. We’ve got to start somewhere.”

But as they turned to head back towards the hill, the peace of the island was shattered by an outbreak of noise. At first Ruth dismissed it as the monkeys. Then she remembered what Mick had said.

“It attacked!”

“What, the monkeys?”

“No, no, the noises!”

She listened closer. It was like the monkey noises, but not quite the same. There was more menace in it, something different. And it was all one voice- made by one creature. She shivered. The monster!

Mick jumped up, whimpering, and fled in blind fear into the forest.

“Come back!” Nick yelled after him, but it was no use. Mick was too terrified to listen. Nick set off after him. The others followed.

They found Mick crouching among the roots of a huge tree. The roaring had died away. The forest seemed unnaturally quiet, somehow empty- and yet there was still that feeling of malevolence that Ruth had felt when they had first set foot in it. Nick tried to persuade Mick to come out, but it was hard work. The others looked again from one to the other, trying to see differences between the two, but it was harder than most spot-the-difference puzzles. Allowing for Mick’s raggedness and general lack of care, the two of them looked the same, sounded the same. Ruth thought she could even detect familiar mannerisms in the way Mick moved.

Something caught Ruth’s eye, and she turned round quickly. Nothing. Then she saw it again, and turned back, but it was too quick for her. She took a couple of steps towards where it had been, then stood absolutely still beside a tree trunk. For a moment, nothing stirred, but then, quickly, something swung through the trees in front of her.

A monkey? Maybe that was all that had made the noise, that the monster was really just a troop of primates magnified by her dreamy fear and Mick’s terror. But how could a monkey have inflicted those injuries of David and Becky? That would take something with long teeth or claws, unless - unless they could use weapons. There was the terrible possibility that the stranded travellers had turned on each other. But that couldn’t have happened, surely not. They would never do that.

There it was again, closer this time. She took a step forward. There was a rustle of leaves behind her, and she turned quickly. The shape had dropped silently to the ground behind her, and was looking at her. A mass of long blond hair, a small, skinny frame clad in a ragged orange shirt and grey trousers, a thin, bespectacled face garnished by a brownish beard, speckled with grey. She gasped.

“Patrick?”
 
 
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