I looked for Neg again. He’d fallen back. I heard him calling me — Gsh? Gsh! — but I faced forwards and ran faster. Trees jumped out at me. Trunks moist and black as if they had risen from a swamp, roots like tentacles. My breath burned in my throat. Soon, please God, it would be dark.
In my veins my blood was chasing its own tail.
A shriek came from somewhere, and I turned. They had him now. I heard them laughing as they ripped his clothes with vicious downward movements. In the half-light his naked body had the texture of a mushroom. The delicate, creamy underside — the stalk. They bound his wrists behind him with fencing wire, his elbows too, then they stood back. His eyes were closed, and his feet stamped up and down in the mud, but in slow-motion, almost tenderly, as though he was trampling ripe grapes. Making wine. They unleashed one of their hunting dogs, a blunt-looking thing, all jaws and shoulders. It tore at his genitals, and then, when he pivoted in agony, his buttocks, then his genitals again.
It’s hard to run with your hands over your ears.
Was I complacent once? Was I too full of myself? I don’t know. I don’t remember. If I was, I regret it. I take it all back.
I denounce myself.
One of our number had been set on fire. No, more than one. Deep in the woods, white birds were sprouting bright-orange crests and wing-feathers.
On I went, the spit thick in my mouth. Trees jolted and staggered as ships’ masts do in a storm. The earth heaved, threatening to unburden itself of all its darkest mysteries. Any moment it would vomit blood-stained treasure, murder weapons, human bones. It was just me running, though. Just me running. The world stood still like someone frightened or amazed.
Over to my left I saw a woman go down, two men in hunting clothes on top of her, their mouths split open, red and wet and grinning. You’d think somebody had taken an axe to their faces. One of the men had pulled the woman’s head back by the hair, as if she were a horse and her hair the reins. Her throat stretched tight against the air, the crown of her head almost touching her shoulderblades. Was that Lum? I couldn’t tell. In any case, I didn’t want to see what followed. It would be worse than I could possibly imagine. There were more of my companions among the trees, most of them with dark figures fastened to their heels or curved against their backs. We were trying to outrun our shadows.
I’m not sure how I came to lose my balance. In taking my eye off the path for a moment, I missed my footing, perhaps. Then I was rolling and sliding down a steep bank that was slippery with mud, wet leaves and ivy. Down I tumbled, branches whipping at my face and arms. A tree brushed one of my legs aside. I even turned a somersault, the sky whirling like the skirts of a woman doing some old-fashioned dance. At last I reached the bottom. I lay on my back next to a track, my heart about to spring from between my ribs, the breath crushed out of me. I stared at the bare branches laid out peacefully against the clouds. All the cries came from high above me now. I got to my feet. My leg hurt, but not too much. I didn’t think I’d broken anything. On the other side of the track were more trees, then a river, and in the wide green field beyond I saw a building that had the look of a ruined church or priory. As I stood there, uncertain what to do, the sky appeared to shift and then disintegrate. Out of a heavy charcoal greyness, something incongruously light and soft began to fall.
Snow.
It was as though bits of us were falling through the air. Bits of who we were. A snowflake landed on my sleeve and promptly vanished. If the snow settled, I would vanish too. A disappearing trick. This was more luck than I could ever have expected. Just then, though, I heard a shout. Several figures had paused on the ridge above me, motionless and wizened. They were staring at me through the snow, one in a cap with ear-flaps, one in fatigues. A third was looking back over his shoulder, his arm raised, beckoning. I hurried across the track, then climbed down to the river’s edge, its water the colour of beer, its flow interrupted here and there by smooth round boulders. Weeds stretched full-length beneath the surface like a drowned girl’s hair. I began to splash through the shallow water, my boots skidding on the smaller stones. I was alone, I realised, alone for the first time in I didn’t know how long. I felt a flicker of something against my stomach walls.
On the far side, hoof-prints showed in the mud. Sheep, I thought. Or deer. This was where they’d come to drink. A bank rose in front of me, red earth bound in roots. Above it, outlined against the sky, I saw a battlement. I climbed the bank and found myself in the lower reaches of a field. There was no cover here at all. I glanced over my shoulder. Two men were scrambling down the slope towards me, cursing as their feet caught in the brambles. One had a pitch-fork and a coil of rope. The other was carrying a pair of shears. At least they didn’t have a dog. I couldn’t explain the calm that welled up in me just then. Was it the snow, which was falling still more thickly now, flakes the size of oak leaves sticking to my cloak? Or did I have an inkling of what was about to happen?
As I set off across the field, a girl jumped out in front of me. She seemed to have appeared from nowhere. I let out a cry. She put a hand over my mouth, then placed one finger upright against her own. Her face was covered with freckles. I’d never seen so many. She gave me a queer blurred smile.
‘This way,’ she whispered. ‘Quick.’
She wasn’t one of them. She was somebody else.
Thank God for that. Thank God.
Chapter Eight
She ran ahead of me, her hair and coat-tails flapping. Snow poured into the gap between us. We passed to the left of a church, its roof partly gone, its stone floor open to the sky. There were other buildings, ancient-looking, some with walls still standing, some torn down to their foundations. Through a hedge and into a garden, the grass waist-high. Buildings here too. More recent. Tall chimneys, narrow windows. All in a state of disrepair. I looked round, eyes half-closed against the swirling snow. I thought I could hear men’s voices, but the men themselves weren’t visible.
We had reached the back of a house, the whole wall hidden behind a screen of vines and creepers. The girl heaved on a door and pushed me inside. Brick steps led down to a cellar. The smell of cold ashes and mouse-droppings. The faintest memory of candle wax. She motioned for me to follow, then parted a frayed curtain to reveal a second door, the wood untreated, dark as peat. She bolted it behind us and started up a narrow staircase. I could only tell where she was by listening to her footsteps on the bare boards. Once, a light flared in my head and I saw a hand splayed on the earth, pale as something that had just been disinterred, and I knew that it belonged to Lum, even though I couldn’t see any other part of her.
At last we came out into a room with a low ceiling and a single round window. There was no view, only a tangle of greenery, the snow a constant slanting movement just beyond. Again the girl bolted the door behind us, then she went to the window and put her face close to the criss-crossing bars. I squatted on my haunches, my heart beating so hard that it seemed to shake my whole body. Blood sizzled in my ears. They were still out there, all the rest of them.
The girl turned from the window. ‘Do you know who I am?’
I stared at her. It had gone all blank inside me. All hollow.
‘You don’t remember me, do you.’
What was she saying?
‘Can you talk?’ She moved towards me, knelt in front of me. I felt her eyes searching my face. All hollow. Just a space. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘It’s not important.’