The video camera.
She had been filming it all.
So what had the video camera caught?
Chapter 23
Aware of the odd glances I was getting from the others, I rushed down on to the village green, hoping that Mrs Birnie had done what most everyone else had—left behind the thing that she was carrying.
It took a couple of minutes of looking around the area to find it, nestled in a discarded jumper. At first I thought that wishing too hard for the thing had made me imagine the flash of reflected sunlight, then I saw it again and headed straight to it.
It was one of the new type of Canon camcorders, a thin slice of metal that concealed some pretty cool tech specs. It was the kind that no longer even needed a tape, working from memory cards and an internal hard drive.
I held it in the air like I’d just won the FA Cup.
Lilly, Kate and Mr Peterson were all staring at me as if I had just lost my mind.
"Mrs Birnie was filming it," I shouted at them. "She was filming the whole thing!"
They just kept staring, and I realized that they weren’t looking at me at all.
They were looking behind me.
I felt like a pantomime character who had suddenly been warned "BEHIND YOU!" as I turned my head and stared back over my shoulder.
Then I just felt sick.
The whole village, it seemed, was moving in an unnaturally neat formation: utterly silent, perfectly organized, and heading down the high street.
Heading towards the village green.
Heading towards us.
Chapter 24
It was like some kind of waking nightmare.
The entire village was marching towards us, silently.
I moved nearer to the stage and to the people there who were, I was certain, the only people I could trust; the only people I could rely on now.
We put up our hands and volunteered to be a part of Danny’s act, and from that moment on we were set along a different path from the rest of the people of Millgrove.
Call it "chance’, "fate", "karma" or "luck", the end result was the same.
We were screwed.
Royally screwed.
I counted the front row of people approaching and there was a straight line of twenty. With twenty behind them. And twenty behind them.
Keep repeating until you reach a thousand.
They came across the green towards us, perfectly synchronized.
I recognized every face. People I loved. People I just said "hi" to. People I didn’t like but still managed to smile at when I saw them. People I’d done odd jobs for to raise extra pocket money. People I had bought things from. People who had taught me. People I had played with.
I had an impulse to run, to turn and flee, just like Lilly and I had done earlier, but there was another part of me that was tired and scared and just wanted to know what was going on.
Then I wanted it to end.
If that meant aliens were going to take over my mind too, then actually, so be it.
I just couldn’t take it any more. Whatever the crowd wanted of me, I think I was probably prepared to give it to them.
In that moment I had given up.
The crowd was close now. Very close, moving towards us as a single entity, like flocking birds or marching army ants.
Still silent.
And in the front row was: my mother; my father; my brother; Doctor Campbell; Mr and Mrs Dartington; Simon; Mrs Carlton, the local busybody; Len Waites, the butcher; Eddie Crichton, who’d never got to hand out a prize at the talent show; Mr and Mrs Parnese, who had a stall selling mobile phone accessories on Cambridge Market; Laura Jones, who was a year below me at school; Peter Parker, who was a librarian, not Spider-Man; a red-faced man I knew by sight, but not by name; Barry and Dennis Geary, the nearest thing to bad boys you got in Millgrove; Karl Raines, the best footballer at our school; Ellie Whatsername, barmaid at the Blue Nun in Crowley; some bloke that is always hanging around her like a faithful puppy.
They stopped about three meters away from us.
Perfectly in sync.
Perfectly silent.
They were looking at us, and they were looking through us, at the same time. A thousand people in a block.
Lilly took hold of my hand and her palm was cold, her hand was shaking. I held it tight and drew strength from that simple gesture.
We stood there together, facing the crowd, waiting for them to make their move.
Chapter 25
Kate O’Donnell took a step forwards.
"What do you want from us?" she demanded.
There was no answer. The crowd just stood there. It was almost as if they had been frozen again.
"They’re not even blinking," Lilly whispered.
It was true.
They weren’t blinking. Or breathing, it seemed. They weren’t moving at all.
"WHAT DO YOU WANT?" Kate screamed this time. She looked red-faced and terrified.
Again, nothing.
The crowd seemed to be ignoring us.
They were just standing there.
Kate jumped from the stage and homed in on Doctor Campbell.
"All right, you idiot quack," she said spitefully. "Just tell me what the hell is going on!"
She put her face just centimeters from the doctor’s face and screamed, "TELL ME!"
She was so close that he must have felt her words on his face.
But he didn’t appear to flinch.
Kate let out a sound of frustration and sank to her knees, like all the air had been let out of her. I could hear her sobbing. I even felt like joining her. Lilly’s hand tightened its grip on mine, and her fingernails bit into my palm.
Then I heard it.
A low sound that could have been the thrum of an electrical power source, except it seemed to be coming from the crowd of people in front of us. I realized it had been building for a while, but that I had only just become aware of it. It was a deep throbbing sound I could feel throughout my body.
I was vibrating along with the noise.
I felt on the very brink of panic, and still the sound continued to develop; getting louder and deeper and making my body vibrate even more, like the heavy bass you get at a rock concert when the PA is really kicking.
Lilly let go of my hand and put her hands up to cover her ears.
"What is that?" she said loudly to compete with the sound that was rising up around us.
The crowd still didn’t move.
They just stood there.
"My god." Kate’s voice was quiet and full of fear. "Look."
She was still on her knees, and she was staring at Doctor Campbell in front of her. I looked over but couldn’t see what she meant.
"His hands!" she said. "Oh god, look at his hands!"
I thought she had lost her mind.
And then I looked at Doctor Campbell’s hands.
And then I thought maybe I had lost mine.
NOTE
Kyle pauses here and creates a silence that lasts almost a whole minute. Sounds of breathing can be discerned, but nothing else.
Bernadette Luce has written much about this pause. In "The Importance of What Isn’t There: Finding Truth in the Gaps" she hypothesises about the reason for this pause, deciding, after a particularly long discourse, that "(T)his is the moment where the power of silence overtakes the weakness of language. Kyle Straker, with his silence, tells us all we need to know about this part of the greater narrative. That it is beyond words, it transcends language, and the gap he leaves as he attempts to find a way to describe what happens next is a silent scream that we hear echoing through the rest of the tape. Gaps always provide a good environment for the manufacture of echoes."