0.4 by Mike Lancaster Page A

. he wouldn’t . . . would he?’
    Mrs O’Donnell shrugged.
    ‘I guess it all depends on what we’re saying happened to these people,’ she said. ‘If we’re saying they were merely disorientated by the effect of their . . . of the trance, then, no, I don’t think your boyfriend would have told Doctor Campbell to come around to see you.’
    Mrs O’Donnell leaned back again.
    ‘But I suspect neither of you is altogether satisfied with that as an explanation for the changes in personality that you noticed.’
    ‘It wasn’t Simon,’ Lilly said, with such certainty that Mrs O’Donnell raised an eyebrow of surprise. ‘And they weren’t my parents.’
    ‘Well,’ Mrs O’Donnell said, ‘that’s certainly a big statement to be making, isn’t it?’
    Lilly nodded. ‘It’s true,’ she said.
    ‘But it was
us
that were hypnotised,’ Mrs O’Donnell said. ‘It was us that were put into a trance. This could be just some weird altered version of reality caused by Danny’s act.’
    That had been Doctor Campbell’s line, and it had a persuasive logic to it.
    ‘But–’ Lilly tried to interrupt but was silenced by a curt wave of Mrs O’Donnell’s hand.
    ‘All I’m saying is that we cannot discount the possibility that there are psychological reasons for all that is happening to us. There are only four of us who saw things one way, and everyone else saw things another. Four individuals out of . . . what? . . . a total of
a thousand people
saw something that the other nine-hundred-and-ninety-six did not; whose version of the events would you believe first? Honestly, it wouldn’t be ours.’
    I had stopped listening.
    My mind had just slotted some details together, and I felt a shiver travel the length of my spine.
    ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Oh no.’
    Mrs O’Donnell looked over at me.
    ‘What is it?’ she asked.
    Her voice seemed to travel miles to reach me through the sudden rush of panic I felt.
    ‘Oh no. No no no no,’ I said. ‘How many people did you say live in Millgrove?’
    ‘It’s about a thousand,’ she said. ‘Just under, I think.’
    ‘And how many of us were hypnotised? Are seeing things differently to everyone else?’
    ‘Four,’ she said, as if explaining something to a very dull child.
    I didn’t care.
    The numbers were too terrifying.
    ‘So, what are we, you know, as a percentage of the village’s population?’ I asked, feeling sick, hoping my maths was wrong.
    ‘Well, we would be four out of a thousand . . . Which would make us . . . let me think . . .’ She stopped. ‘Oh,’ she said coldly. Her face had lost some of its colour. She looked at me. ‘That’s very good, Kyle,’ she said. ‘We
are
in trouble, aren’t we?’
    ‘Er, what are we talking about here?’ Lilly asked, bemused.
    ‘What percentage of the village population do we represent?’ I asked her.
    She shook her head. She should have worked it out way sooner than me.
    ‘The answer is nought-point-four,’ I said. ‘We are nought-point-four of a per cent.’

21
    ‘We have to find Rodney,’ Mrs O’Donnell said and it took me a few seconds to work out who she was talking about. Even though we had been talking about
the four of us
, it seemed crazy that I could have forgotten about the fate of the fourth person.
    Mr Peterson.
    Last seen in a foetal ball on the stage at the talent show.
    Where we had left him.
    ‘What happened to him?’ I asked. ‘I mean, after everyone started moving again?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Mrs O’Donnell said. ‘I was so relieved, I . . . I kind of forgot about him. I wandered down the high street, sort of in a daze, but no one was talking. They were just filing past, completely silent. When I spoke to someone they responded, but it was like they would rather not be talking. As if there was something . . . new . . . going on in their heads.They no longer seemed to need to chatter away about nothing. It was eerie. Like . . . like a
funeral
, or something.’
    I drained the