The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Read online

  And then I heard Father come up the stairs and walk into the room.

  He said, “Christopher, what the hell are you doing?”

  And I could tell that he was in the room, but his voice sounded tiny and far away, like people's voices sometimes do when I am groaning and I don't want them to be near me.

  And he said, “What the fuck are you . . . ? That's my cupboard, Christopher. Those are . . . Oh shit . . . Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”

  Then he said nothing for a while.

  Then he put his hand on my shoulder and moved me onto my side and he said, “Oh Christ.” But it didn't hurt when he touched me, like it normally does. I could see him touching me, like I was watching a film of what was happening in the room, but I could hardly feel his hand at all. It was just like the wind blowing against me.

  And then he was silent again for a while.

  Then he said, “I'm sorry, Christopher. I'm so, so sorry.”

  Then he said, “You read the letters.”

  Then I could hear that he was crying because his breath sounded all bubbly and wet, like it does when someone has a cold and they have lots of snot in their nose.

  Then he said, “I did it for your good, Christopher. Honestly I did. I never meant to lie. I just thought . . . I just thought it was better if you didn't know . . . that . . . that . . . I didn't mean to . . . I was going to show them to you when you were older.”

  Then he was silent again.

  Then he said, “It was an accident.”

  Then he was silent again.

  Then he said, “I didn't know what to say . . . I was in such a mess . . . She left a note and . . . Then she rang and . . . I said she was in hospital because . . . because I didn't know how to explain. It was so complicated. So difficult. And I . . . I said she was in hospital. And I know it wasn't true. But once I'd said that . . . I couldn't . . . I couldn't change it. Do you understand . . . Christopher . . . ? Christopher . . . ? It just . . . It got out of control and I wish . . .”

  Then he was silent for a really long time.

  Then he touched me on the shoulder again and said, “Christopher, we have to get you cleaned up, OK?”

  He shook my shoulder a little bit but I didn't move.

  And he said, “Christopher, I'm going to go to the bathroom and I'm going to run you a hot bath. Then I'm going to come back and take you to the bathroom, OK? Then I can put the sheets into the washing machine.”

  Then I heard him get up and go to the bathroom and turn the taps on. I listened to the water running into the bath. He didn't come back for a while. Then he came back and touched my shoulder again and said, “Let's do this really gently, Christopher. Let's sit you up and get your clothes off and get you into the bath, OK? I'm going to have to touch you, but it's going to be all right.”

  Then he lifted me up and made me sit on the side of the bed. He took my jumper and my shirt off and put them on the bed. Then he made me stand up and walk through to the bathroom. And I didn't scream. And I didn't fight. And I didn't hit him.

  163. When I was little and I first went to school, my main teacher was called Julie, because Siobhan hadn't started working at the school then. She only started working at the school when I was twelve.

  And one day Julie sat down at a desk next to me and put a tube of Smarties on the desk, and she said, “Christopher, what do you think is in here?”

  And I said, “Smarties.”

  Then she took the top off the Smarties tube and turned it upside down and a little red pencil came out and she laughed and I said, “It's not Smarties, it's a pencil.”

  Then she put the little red pencil back inside the Smarties tube and put the top back on.

  Then she said, “If your mummy came in now and we asked her what was inside the Smarties tube, what do you think she would say?” because I used to call Mother Mummy then, not Mother.

  And I said, “A pencil.”

  That was because when I was little I didn't understand about other people having minds. And Julie said to Mother and Father that I would always find this very difficult. But I don't find this difficult now. Because I decided that it was a kind of puzzle, and if something is a puzzle there is always a way of solving it.

  It's like computers. People think computers are different from people because they don't have minds, even though, in the Turing test, computers can have conversations with people about the weather and wine and what Italy is like, and they can even tell jokes.

  But the mind is just a complicated machine.

  And when we look at things we think we're just looking out of our eyes like we're looking out of little windows and there's a person inside our head, but we're not. We're looking at a screen inside our heads, like a computer screen.

  And you can tell this because of an experiment which I saw on TV in a series called How the Mind Works. And in this experiment you put your head in a clamp and you look at a page of writing on a screen. And it looks like a normal page of writing and nothing is changing. But after a while, as your eye moves round the page, you realize that something is very strange because when you try to read a bit of the page you've read before it's different.

  And this is because when your eye flicks from one point to another you don't see anything at all and you're blind. And the flicks are called saccades. Because if you saw everything when your eye flicked from one point to another you'd feel giddy. And in the experiment there is a sensor which tells when your eye is flicking from one place to another, and when it's doing this it changes some of the words on the page in a place where you're not looking.

  But you don't notice that you're blind during saccades because your brain fills in the screen in your head to make it seem like you're looking out of two little windows in your head. And you don't notice that words have changed on another part of the page because your mind fills in a picture of things you're not looking at at that moment.

  And people are different from animals because they can have pictures on the screens in their heads of things which they are not looking at. They can have pictures of someone in another room. Or they can have a picture of what is going to happen tomorrow. Or they can have pictures of themselves as an astronaut. Or they can have pictures of really big numbers. Or they can have pictures of Chains of Reasoning when they're trying to work something out.

  And that is why a dog can go to the vet and have a really big operation and have metal pins sticking out of its leg but if it sees a cat it forgets that it has pins sticking out of its leg and chases after the cat. But when a person has an operation it has a picture in its head of the hurt carrying on for months and months. And it has a picture of all the stitches in its leg and the broken bone and the pins and even if it sees a bus it has to catch it doesn't run because it has a picture in its head of the bones crunching together and the stitches breaking and even more pain.

  And that is why people think that computers don't have minds, and why people think that their brains are special, and different from computers. Because people can see the screen inside their head and they think there is someone in their head sitting there looking at the screen, like Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation sitting in his captain's seat looking at a big screen. And they think that this person is their special human mind, which is called a homunculus, which means a little man. And they think that computers don't have this homunculus.

  But this homunculus is just another picture on the screen in their heads. And when the homunculus is on the screen in their heads (because the person is thinking about the homunculus) there is another bit of the brain watching the screen. And when the person thinks about this part of the brain (the bit that is watching the homunculus on the screen) they put this bit of the brain on the screen and there is another bit of the brain watching the screen. But the brain doesn't see this happen because it is like the eye flicking from one place to another and people are blind inside their heads when they do the changing from thinking about one thing to thinking about
another.

  And this is why people's brains are like computers. And it's not because they are special but because they have to keep turning off for fractions of a second while the screen changes. And because there is something they can't see people think it has to be special, because people always think there is something special about what they can't see, like the dark side of the moon, or the other side of a black hole, or in the dark when they wake up at night and they're scared.

  Also people think they're not computers because they have feelings and computers don't have feelings. But feelings are just having a picture on the screen in your head of what is going to happen tomorrow or next year, or what might have happened instead of what did happen, and if it is a happy picture they smile and if it is a sad picture they cry.

  167. After Father had given me a bath and cleaned the sick off me and dried me off with a towel, he took me to my bedroom and put some clean clothes on.

  Then he said, “Have you had anything to eat yet this evening?”

  But I didn't say anything.

  Then he said, “Can I get you anything to eat, Christopher?”

  But I still didn't say anything.

  So he said, “OK. Look. I'm going to go and put your clothes and the bedsheets into the washing machine and then I'll come back, OK?”

  I sat on the bed and looked at my knees.

  So Father went out of the room and picked up my clothes from the bathroom floor and put them on the landing. Then he went and got the sheets from his bed and brought them out onto the landing together with my shirt and my jumper. Then he picked them all up and took them downstairs. Then I heard him start the washing machine and I heard the boiler starting up and the water in the water pipes going into the washing machine.

  That was all I could hear for a long time.

  I doubled 2's in my head because it made me feel calmer. I got to 33554432, which is 225, which was not very much because I've got to 245 before, but my brain wasn't working very well.

  Then Father came back into the room again and said, “How are you feeling? Can I get you anything?”

  I didn't say anything. I carried on looking at my knees.

  And Father didn't say anything either. He just sat down on the bed next to me and put his elbows on his knees and looked down at the carpet between his legs where there was a little red piece of Lego with eight nobbles on.

  Then I heard Toby waking up, because he is nocturnal, and I heard him rustling in his cage.

  And Father was silent for a really long time.

  Then he said, “Look, maybe I shouldn't say this, but . . . I want you to know that you can trust me. And . . . OK, maybe I don't tell the truth all the time. God knows, I try, Christopher, God knows I do, but . . . Life is difficult, you know. It's bloody hard telling the truth all the time. Sometimes it's impossible. And I want you to know that I'm trying, I really am. And perhaps this is not a very good time to say this, and I know you're not going to like it, but . . . You have to know that I am going to tell you the truth from now on. About everything. Because . . . if you don't tell the truth now, then later on . . . later on it hurts even more. So . . .”

  Father rubbed his face with his hands and pulled his chin down with his fingers and stared at the wall. I could see him out of the corner of my eye.

  And he said, “I killed Wellington, Christopher.”

  I wondered if this was a joke, because I don't understand jokes, and when people tell jokes they don't mean what they say.

  But then Father said, “Please. Christopher. Just . . . let me explain.” Then he sucked in some air and he said, “When your mum left . . . Eileen . . . Mrs. Shears . . . she was very good to us. Very good to me. She helped me through a very difficult time. And I'm not sure I would have made it without her. Well, you know how she was round here most days. Helping out with the cooking and the cleaning. Popping over to see if we were OK, if we needed anything . . . I thought . . . Well . . . Shit, Christopher, I'm trying to keep this simple . . . I thought she might carry on coming over. I thought . . . and maybe I was being stupid . . . I thought she might . . . eventually . . . want to move in here. Or that we might move into her house. We . . . we got on really, really well. I thought we were friends. And I guess I thought wrong. I guess . . . in the end . . . it comes down to . . . Shit . . . We argued, Christopher, and . . . She said some things I'm not going to say to you because they're not nice, but they hurt, but . . . I think she cared more for that bloody dog than for me, for us. And maybe that's not so stupid, looking back. Maybe we are a bloody handful. And maybe it is easier living on your own looking after some stupid mutt than sharing your life with other actual human beings. I mean, shit, buddy, we're not exactly low-maintenance, are we . . . ? Anyway, we had this row. Well, quite a few rows to be honest. But after this particularly nasty little blowout, she chucked me out of the house. And you know what that bloody dog was like after the operation. Bloody schizophrenic. Nice as pie one moment, roll over, tickle its stomach. Sink its teeth into your leg the next. Anyway, we're yelling at each other and it's in the garden relieving itself. So when she slams the door behind me the bugger's waiting for me. And . . . I know, I know. Maybe if I'd just given it a kick it would probably have backed off. But, shit, Christopher, when that red mist comes down . . . Christ, you know how it is. I mean, we're not that different, me and you. And all I could think was that she cared more about this bloody dog than she did about you or me. And it was like everything I'd been bottling up for two years just . . .”

  Then Father was silent for a bit.

  Then he said, “I'm sorry, Christopher. I promise you, I never meant for it to turn out like this.”

  And then I knew that it wasn't a joke and I was really frightened.

  Father said, “We all make mistakes, Christopher. You, me, your mum, everyone. And sometimes they're really big mistakes. We're only human.”

  Then he held up his right hand and spread his fingers out in a fan.

  But I screamed and pushed him backward so that he fell off the bed and onto the floor.

  He sat up and said, “OK. Look. Christopher. I'm sorry. Let's leave it for tonight, OK? I'm going to go downstairs and you get some sleep and we'll talk in the morning.” Then he said, “It's going to be all right. Honestly. Trust me.”

  Then he stood up and took a deep breath and went out of the room.

  I sat on the bed for a long time looking at the floor. Then I heard Toby scratching in his cage. I looked up and saw him staring through the bars at me.

  I had to get out of the house. Father had murdered Wellington. That meant he could murder me, because I couldn't trust him, even though he had said “Trust me,” because he had told a lie about a big thing.

  But I couldn't get out of the house straightaway because he would see me, so I would have to wait until he was asleep.

  The time was 11:16 p.m.

  I tried doubling 2's again, but I couldn't get past 215, which was 32768. So I groaned to make the time pass quicker and not think.

  Then it was 1:20 a.m. but I hadn't heard Father come upstairs to bed. I wondered if he was asleep downstairs or whether he was waiting to come in and kill me. So I got out my Swiss Army knife and opened the saw blade so that I could defend myself. Then I went out of my bedroom really quietly and listened. I couldn't hear anything, so I started going downstairs really quietly and really slowly. And when I got downstairs I could see Father's foot through the door of the living room. I waited for 4 minutes to see if it moved, but it didn't move. So I carried on walking till I got to the hallway. Then I looked round the door of the living room.

  Father was lying on the sofa with his eyes closed.

  I looked at him for a long time.

  Then he snored and I jumped and I could hear the blood in my ears and my heart going really fast and a pain like someone had blown up a really big balloon inside my chest.

  I wondered if I was going to have a heart attack.

  Father's eyes were still closed
. I wondered if he was pretending to be asleep. So I gripped the penknife really hard and I knocked on the doorframe.

  Father moved his head from one side to the other and his foot twitched and he said “Gnnnn,” but his eyes stayed closed. And then he snored again.

  He was asleep.

  That meant I could get out of the house if I was really quiet so I didn't wake him up.

  I took both my coats and my scarf from the hooks next to the front door and I put them all on because it would be cold outside at night. Then I went upstairs again really quietly, but it was difficult because my legs were shaking. I went into my room and I picked up Toby's cage. He was making scratching noises, so I took off one of the coats and put it over the cage to make the noise quieter. Then I carried him downstairs again.

  Father was still asleep.

  I went into the kitchen and I picked up my special food box. I unlocked the back door and stepped outside. Then I held the handle of the door down as I shut it again so that the click wasn't too loud. Then I walked down the bottom of the garden.

  At the bottom of the garden is a shed. It has the lawn mower and the hedge cutter in it, and lots of gardening equipment that Mother used to use, like pots and bags of compost and bamboo canes and string and spades. It would be a bit warmer in the shed but I knew that Father might look for me in the shed, so I went round the back of the shed and I squeezed into the gap between the wall of the shed and the fence, behind the big black plastic tub for collecting rainwater. Then I sat down and I felt a bit safer.

  I decided to leave my other coat over Toby's cage because I didn't want him to get cold and die.

  I opened up my special food box. Inside was the Milkybar and two licorice laces and three clementines and a pink wafer biscuit and my red food coloring. I didn't feel hungry but I knew that I should eat something because if you don't eat something you can get cold, so I ate two clementines and the Milkybar.