Chapter Two

He tried to open his eyes. They were gummed shut, and he rubbed at them blearily until his eyes popped open.

Moving his eyes around, he saw that he was lying on a pathway, next to a building.

Brushing the gravel from his body, he stood up, groaning. From the pins and needles that spiked through his arms and legs, it appeared that he had been lying there for quite some time.

He blinked. He had no idea where he was. Looking around, he could see that he was in a public place. He remembered had been lying on the ground next to a building, so he turned to inspect it.

It was a large square building, with glass windows that showed row upon row of books. A metal plaque proclaimed the building to be the ‘Ashmoor Public Library’.

Where was he? He didn’t remember being in a place called Ashmoor. In fact, the last thing he remembered-

He frowned. He couldn’t remember anything. Oh, he knew how to walk and he was fairly sure he remembered the English language, and he could even remember facts, but the simple truth was that he had no memory of his past life.

This frightened him.

Just then a car drove up beside the library, and a man leapt out.

“Andrew – is it you?” He called. “It is you! You’re back, you’re safe! We thought … we thought you weren’t going to come back.”

Was his name Andrew? Oh, well, he could not remember his name so Andrew would do for now.

“Who are you?” He asked gruffly.

The man froze, a look of alarm on his face.

“Andrew? Are you feeling all right?”

Andrew began to back away. Something in the back of his head whispered about stalkers and muggers, and the animal instinct in him kicked in. He turned and ran.

“Andrew? It’s me, it’s your dad! Andrew!”

Andrew stopped running, and turned cautiously.

The strange man who claimed to be his father stopped also.

“What’s going on?” Andrew asked. “Where am I, and what happened?”

The man hesitated.

“Tell me!”

“What do you mean, where are you? You’re in Ashmoor Town, just like always. Well, where do I begin? Andrew, you’ve been missing for a month.”

Andrew silently digested this.

“In Ashmoor, children have been going missing. First it was just one little girl, and there was a fuss over it, but when the second child, a boy, disappeared, there was a major uproar.”

“How many children disappeared?” Andrew whispered.

“Seventeen in total. You are the first to come back. Oh, Andrew, I’m so happy to see you safe.”

***

This is BBC News, in Ashmoor Town, England.

Recently there have been disappearances in Ashmoor, presumed kidnappings.

In total there have been seventeen to date, and all have been children under eighteen. Psychologists have been called in to see if this can provide any possible link.

Breaking news – one child has been found!

Andrew Blake, the thirteenth child to go missing in what has been dubbed the worst case in Ashmoor history.

The kidnapper, nicknamed the “Ashmoor Asylum Kidnapper”, is still at large despite the efforts of the authorities to find him.

Andrew Blake claims to have no memory of the time he spent while kidnapped – or at all. Here we have substances expert Joe Chair to explain.

“Thank you. Now, there are many drugs which cause memory loss, but it is unlikely that any were used on Andrew. Why? Because he has been examined by top psychologists and no drug-related issues have been found. There is no drug currently known to the scientific community that could completely wipe the prefrontal lobes and still leave the cortex and cerebellum fully intact.”

Thank you, Mr Chair. We will keep the public updated on any new occurrences.

This is BBC News in Ashmoor, England.

***

Andrew turned off the television. He was not comfortable in this house, or with these two adults, the man and woman who claimed to be his father and his mother. He had no memory of them.

His father had hoped that seeing the house might bring back some memories, but so far it had not helped at all. It was as if everything that had happened before Andrew was twelve, and up until yesterday, had simply been wiped from his brain. It was as if they had not happened.

“How are you feeling, Andy?”

A nervous, slightly high pitched voice called from the hallway. It was his mother, her face perpetually twisted in a worried look. She had been so relieved when Andrew had been found, but since learning of his memory issue had not stopped worrying.

For his part, Andrew had not yet had his name for long enough to decide whether or not he liked the pet form Andy. He called back to his mother.

“I feel fine.” His voice was cool and the words were clipped and clinical. He was still cautious, unsure if these were really his parents.

Oh, they’d shown him pictures in an effort to jog his non-existent memory, to no avail of course, but photos could be edited so easily these days by anyone that it really was not proof at all.

“As long as you’re happy.” His mother smiled thinly. She looked ill, Andrew thought, and then wondered how he knew it.

In fact his mother was just beginning to recover, When Andrew had first gone missing, she had become very weak and unwell. The doctors had said it was the stress.

Andrew was still not entirely convinced that these two people were really his parents, but he remembered this afternoon.

First he had been taken to the police station, and the police had removed the ‘Missing’ notices. The BBC had then been called, after they had driven home to his house.

Thinking back, the look on his mother’s face would have been hard to fake. The wideness of her eyes as she had seen Andrew, the delight and joy in her eyes as she had realised her son was finally home, the tears she had broken down into – it was not something you could easily put on. Still, something did not seem right.

Andrew was back.

It seemed to him as if he had never been there before.