The Dome : 1 : Chapters 1-3

Chapter One: Arrival

It should have been a fortnight’s holiday, but in fact, two months had passed while no one knew what was going on. His mother and father had been annoyed, mainly because they had received phone calls from him asking for money. Then, eventually, a travel agent had contacted them, saying it would send him back to Britain, if they paid the fare. When Jason set off two months ago, he had arrived in one part of Greece, but was being sent back from quite another. Only his mother was waiting at the airport to take him back home. She had not wanted to travel all the way down from Norfolk to Gatwick, but had had no choice. He was arriving back in England penniless and without transport. She would do her duty, like she always did, hating silently, but noticeably.

She glanced at her watch; it was just a couple of minutes past six o’clock. As she sat in the airport lounge the sunlight streamed in through the long vertical blinds. The plate glass coruscated here and there and bathed all who were present in a beautiful glow. Her hair was silver now, but her complexion was still like that of a much younger woman. As she turned her head her hair glinted in the sunlight and it was then that she caught sight of her son. He was tanned of course, looking very relaxed, and basically, pleased to see her. She was not so bothered. After two months he had lost weight. Being lost in Greece he had probably been living on berries, and getting water from a public drinking fountain. He apologised for being a nuisance, and assured her all would be well. Disinterestedly, she tossed her head and headed for the car park.

It was obvious Marion Mitchell was co-operating because she had to. Her only son, Jason, was difficult in her mind, but probably in no one else’s. Although this time he had got into a bit of a scrape. She wanted an explanation, but only in a half-hearted way. So far, she had not asked for one; it would come sooner or later she thought, but in any event it would be too late, the damage had been done. She had a son who didn’t seem to be capable of independence. She was the one who had to clear up. Other parents would take it all in their stride, Jason always thought. Somehow his mother couldn’t; a molehill would become a mountain. But it wasn’t all plain sailing. Used to difficulties she had perfected the art of agonising over her small family. The only thing she wanted now was to complete the long journey home.

As they sat in the car Jason was shocked by his mother’s silence. Although not surprised by anything she did now, he couldn’t help thinking that she was totally cold, and that was shocking. Any other mother, he knew, would be full of questions; not so Marion. He began to wonder if she had buried him, at least in her own mind, two or three years back, and everything that she did now with regard to him, was simply meaningless, a date with a ghost. Her silence made it easy for him. He didn’t have to find answers, where possibly there weren’t any. When he was on the plane, flying back home, he had been going through some practice answers to try to make himself look better.

One thing he had definitely decided to lie about was his money. He had simply gone on holiday with insufficient funds, and then on finding that he couldn’t pay for his hotel accommodation, had concocted some cock and bull story about losing his money on the beach. Didn’t his mother want to know how he had lost his make-believe money? Apparently not. Didn’t she want to know how he had travelled around the mainland looking for work to try to earn some money? No she didn’t. She had about as much interest in his recent difficulties as he had in gardening. His mother liked him to do the gardening when staying with her, so she won again. He would do the gardening; there would be no interest in Jason or Jason things. Knowing she expected to play by her rules, Jason was circumspect about his stay with her and his father. He didn’t want it to be too long. He had friends, or so he told himself. To most people they would probably appear as hangers-on, but whatever the nature of them, he could probably stay with them until he found a place of his own. Things would work out, he thought; he wasn’t going to panic.

Jason, who was twenty-five now, had had one or two girlfriends, but nothing really serious. All that would change he thought, as he sat tanned and handsome in his mother’s car. Girls would be falling at his feet; a tan always improved your chances with the opposite sex. The friends he already had would see him as a more attractive accessory. Possibly Paula would show a more positive interest in him than she had done before he went away; either her, or Kristin. He hadn’t known either girl very long. He had met them at a nightclub about three months ago, and they had seemed interested in him. Now they would definitely be interested he thought, and his mother would be even more put out, because to hear her speak of them you would think you were talking of loose women. Jason thought his mother wouldn’t know a real ‘lady of the night’ if one jumped out of the dark and grabbed her. Paula and Kristin weren’t prostitutes. They were just everyday modern girls that liked enjoying themselves, and having the proverbial ‘good time’. But, and this was what his mother did not understand, it did not make them ‘good time girls’. All he knew was that he would like to get to know them better, no harm would come of that.

It’s a wonder that Marion hadn’t made a mummy’s boy of Jason. It wasn’t that she fussed him to death or anything, but she never seemed to show enough interest in encouraging healthy relationships. Everybody needs some encouragement to do the right thing, its how people are, but for Marion Mitchell it was too much trouble. Let him get on with his own life, she thought. She didn’t want to get involved, he will make mistakes anyway, no matter what she said or did, or so she thought. In everything with him she was a defeatist. Jason’s blue eyes would get him into trouble, that together with his natural charm. No girl was safe while this paragon walked the streets. Jason was coming home with a sense of excitement. Certainly there were things in Jason’s life even he thought were dark.

There were so many unanswered questions about the recent past. Some answers would have to be found, a way forward opened up. He was not going to rest until he got to the truth about several mysteries in his life. He came back from Greece a new man wanting some solutions. He knew his mother and father would not be of much help to him, but this did not discourage him. He was eager to start on his journey of discovery, nothing would stop him now, not even his mother’s cosy refusal to disturb anything that meant a ruffling of her well-ordered feathers. She would not hear of it. What he was about to do, he would have to do alone.

It was for the best, he would be unhampered and single-minded in his quest. He would be a success in what he wanted to do, because he was ambitious, and he had big ideas about just what he could become. No one had any idea about just what he wanted to achieve, or what he hoped the future would bring. His mother would have dismissed his ideas straightaway, as unrealistic and illusory. Not Jason, there was something inside him which propelled him forward. He was probably not sure what it was himself, but it was that perseverance and the ability to go on and on that he alone possessed.

If he could control his life he would. He had his head on his shoulders, and nobody was going to tell him what he could or could not do. He knew certain people already who he thought might be able to help him. He had met, quite by chance, a television director and his family, and he hoped one day they might be instrumental in giving his career a leg-up. He had done a lot of writing since he left school, and the dream in his mind had always been that of penning a Hollywood blockbuster. One day he would make it. One day they would all see, but until then he must sort out the problems of his life, so that a way forward might be carved out.

As all this flooded through his mind Jason grew weary. His mother wasn’t saying much in the car, so he had plenty of time to think. Now the journey was over, and as they came out of the dell to the left of the main road, they entered the small town of Radley that was home. In two minutes he would be back inside the family home face to face with his father, but somehow he wasn’t relishing the prospect. His mother wound the window down to get some fresh air as if she wanted to revive herself before arriving at her destination.

The pleasing zephyr played over her features in a soothing and caressing way. At that point the car shot forward into the road where they lived, and in no time they were both stood on the doorstep. Unfairly, Marion Mitchell rang the bell. Jason’s father would have to answer the door. After a slight delay the door opened slowly, and a middle-aged man stood there alone.

‘Can I help you?’
‘Its all right, Maurice, we are back’, Marion said as his blind eyes looked on the whole world the same. Jason’s father had been blind for about six years now. It had been a very nasty car accident that had taken away his sight. The glass from the windscreen had exploded in his face. He was lucky to be alive. With this cross to bear, Jason’s mother was grudging in nearly everything she did that was not absolutely essential. It even extended to not bothering to making Jason toast in the morning. He could do it himself; she would probably have to do something for her husband, so her hands were full.

She was a creature resigned to her fate, but not liking it at all. She knew in her heart that she would never get used to the idea that her husband was a liability. It was just an irksome task, this whole life of hers, until one day it would peter out completely. It would not be totally wrong to say she looked forward to that very day. She was not a happy woman. This morning she looked tired. The long drive yesterday had taken it out of her.
‘You should have stayed in bed, mum’, Jason offered, seeing her look dishevelled and unkempt.
‘Oh, I’ll be alright’, she said half-heartedly, a line she had rehearsed millions of times, but could still not deliver with any conviction.

Jason’s father was sitting at the large dining table alone. Marion always did her breakfast first, leaving her free to serve Maurice. In the middle of the table was a silver rose bowl covered in crimson ‘Fragrant Cloud’. It was ‘Fragrant Cloud’ because it exuded a delicious perfume therapeutic to Mr. Mitchell. Marion had dabbled in aromatherapy to try and help her husband, but like everything else she did it was a half-hearted attempt at helping him, and now the full rose-bowl was the last vestige of her interest. It is a known fact, of course, that if you lose one of your senses, you immediately make more of the others, and they in turn become more actively sensitive to the environment around them.

Jason would spend some time with his father he thought, going over some of his experiences in the Aegean. He was full of good intentions at this point of his life. There was a lot he needed to know himself, not from his father, but he would not begrudge telling the old man a thing or two. When he first thought of the stay at home he hadn’t been too keen, but on getting back home he had changed his mind. After all, it was a comfortable home. It was a three-bedroomed house, detached, with pleasant gardens to the front and rear, and placed as it was at the head of a cul-de-sac had a good view of the leafy trees that lined the road.

Inside the house, it was light and airy; the lounge with its pale lemon walls was a sunny room even on dull days. It made Jason feel secure that he was back in familiar surroundings; he didn’t knock it, even if his friends would make better soul mates. Apart from anything else it would be cheap to live at home for a while. He could eat there for a small cost; his mother would not take much from him. And they would agree quite silently a makeshift compatibility that would get them through, however long they stayed together. To any onlooker it would seem an uncomfortable ‘menage a trois’, but they could handle it, and that was all that mattered.

Chapter Two: Working out the past

The time had come for Jason to work something out. Just before he had gone on holiday he had stopped taking drugs prescribed for an ear infection. Unbelievably he had been on them for six years. Jason came from the sort of family that trusted implicitly the doctors of the medical profession. His family would argue that they had no reason to do otherwise. No doctor had ever cheated them before. After six years on what seemed to be the wrong medication Jason was going to act. Before he went away he had thought it over, and now he was back he wanted to get to the truth about Dr. Hillier.

The tablets had made him lethargic and generally uninterested in life. They had had a sedating effect, and all they had told him was that it was necessary to take the tablets or his balance would be adversely affected, as long as the ear was infected. This had gone on for six years, and as Jason now realised it had gone on for so long because the tablets stopped him from complaining. On these tablets you would accept anything. Dr. Hillier wasn’t a psychologist or psychiatrist but there was something about the tablets that suggested that he was operating in the regions of the mind. The whole thing was suspect, and Jason wanted the police involved. It wasn’t going to be easy convincing anyone that something was wrong, but it was as plain as day that something underhand had been afoot and Jason was not going to flinch from doing his bit to get justice.

When he looked back he thought of the night in one of the clubs in Norwich. Some people thought it was a red light district and now Jason was in two minds as to the nature of the clubs there. They could very easily be involved in anything, sex for sale, drugs, anything, and the more Jason thought about his night at the Dakota Club the more he became convinced that it had something to do with his long-term medical problems. It was only a fortnight after his visit to the club that the prescription for the tablets began. It had been downhill all the way after this: nights in, no motivation to mix socially with anybody, no interest in talking to people, no nothing. Something was very wrong. If he hadn’t stopped taking the tablets against Dr. Hillier’s advice he would still be the quiet dummy that the drugs had made him. Thank goodness he had stopped taking them; he congratulated himself mentally every time he thought of his decision to come off them.

Somebody was going to pay. What Dr. Hillier was trying to cover up was anybody’s guess. Jason was going to have to reveal the truth, but what was the truth? Had he just forgotten to stop the treatment or did he have a personal interest in keeping Jason drugged. Jason was convinced it was the latter. He hoped to reveal the truth about Dr. Hillier once and for all. In Jason’s opinion he was the sort of doctor that had got away if not with murder then something that came very close.

Tonight he would go back to the nightclub that he had visited six years ago. That seemed the most likely lead he had. After all, his troubles started after the visit. If he was just imagining that the club was sinister, only time would reveal the truth. But also if he could find anything out it may just clear Dr. Hillier’s name and stop the suspicion Jason had in that area. For although he thought Dr. Hillier’s medication was wrong, perhaps he had been made ill by something completely unconnected to the doctor. A spiked drink for instance that he had received at the club. But a drug that could have a detrimental effect on your health for six years, no, he thought not, but he wasn’t going to close his mind to any solution, until the facts could be established. Jason was nothing if not fair.

He wanted to uncover the truth in an unprejudiced way. He was ready to do so; would fate be on his side he wondered, certainly time was not. Six years is a long time, and as he considered his plight he suffered the first pangs of doubt and helplessness. It was going over and over in his mind - Will I be able to find out the truth, or will they just close ranks and do a big cover-up that will ridicule all the efforts I make? Life is lousy, Jason thought, the six years that have been wasted can never be recouped, and it could possibly all end in disgrace. An innocent man can be made to look guilty by the unscrupulous and the unlawful if they think they are being exposed. He would have to be very clever about this and as discreet as possible, even then the guilty parties would probably twig. Realising that, is when Jason knew it was dangerous, but this did not deter him. He had a kind of bravery in spite of too much molly coddling as a youngster by a confused mother.