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.
 
 
The story continues...