I opened my eyes and started scanning the hedges by the side of the road for a sign of the thing that was making such a terrible noise. I could see nothing there, and that made me even more terrified. I ran faster.
I’ve never been particularly athletic, but I think I could have run for the county if I’d matched the speed I was making then, spurred on by that inhuman sound.
I was even starting to feel that I might outrun it.
Suddenly Lilly screamed my name.
Chapter 37
The scream pulled me back to the real world.
I turned my head to face forwards.
Just in time.
I killed the speed. Ground to a halt and stood there, gasping for air.
I realized that Lilly had just saved my life.
The thing that had been following us, then moving alongside us, had now overtaken us.
It was waiting there, directly in front of me.
Blocking my way forwards.
It’s not easy to describe it. In fact, the more I think about it, it’s probably easier to talk about what this thing wasn’t, than to struggle with what it was. I mean, I don’t think the thing was solid, and I’m reasonably sure that it didn’t have a form that the human eye could recognize. It didn’t look alive, but it didn’t look not-alive, either. It didn’t look natural, but it didn’t look entirely unnatural.
Oh yeah, I’m making a good job of this.
Let me try again.
It seemed more like something missing from this world, than something added to it. It was as if there were a tear in the skin of our world, and it had revealed this terrible thing beneath it.
At the time I remember thinking about those pictures you see in anatomy books, when they show a person, and then the bones and muscles inside them.
You strip away the skin of this world, I thought, and this is what you find hiding underneath.
"What in God’s name is it?" Kate O’Donnell asked, and I saw her cross herself.
I shook my head.
It was too much.
This tear in the world had been following us, hunting us, and now it had us.
And we were too tired and too scared to do anything about it.
It moved closer, pushing against the surface of our world and making the air seem to bulge as it did so. I stood there wondering what stuff this… thing, this tear, was made of, and I wondered what it would do to us when it reached us: whether it would hurt; whether it would dissolve us, melt us, or suck us through into its cold blackness until we were nothing.
There were tears streaming down my cheeks, and I could feel the cold breath of infinity roaring in my face.
"Hey!" someone shouted from somewhere behind me. "Are you going to just stand there and let that thing wipe you off the face of the planet?"
I turned around.
Somehow I wasn’t surprised.
By the side of the road, standing straight and tall, stood Danny. He nodded towards the tear in space and cocked his head to one side.
"If you have any interest in surviving the next few seconds," he said, "then I suggest you toss over that video camera you picked up on the green."
I thought, Video camera? What is he talking about?
The air bulged again and the tear moved closer.
I thought, How does he know I’m carrying his mum’s video camera?
Danny said, "Quickly. Throw it here."
I reached down and fumbled the camera out of my pocket. Lights were flashing on its tiny casing.
It had switched itself on when the can of drink hit it.
It had been filming the inside of my pocket all that time.
"Do it now," Danny advised and I threw it over to him. He caught it in one hand and switched it off.
Then he smiled and nodded towards the tear in space. It was already drawing back, moving away, as if its interest in us—the interest that had it screaming across the countryside—had suddenly ended.
"Danny, what the -?" I started, but Danny shut me up with a dismissive wave of his hand.
"I guess you all have some questions," Danny said, and his face suddenly looked sad. "Follow me and I’ll try to answer them for you."
Then the sad look was gone.
He turned and started walking into the field behind him, away from that terrible patch of moving darkness, away from the road, away from Millgrove, away from Crowley.
After a few seconds, we followed.
We trudged across a field sun-baked into clay, following Danny Birnie in pursuit of answers. Danny had been there at the start of all this, and there was something right about his being here now.
I realized that I was afraid. Not of the terrible thing that had been seconds away from destroying us, but afraid of my friend.
Of Danny.
Of what he had become.
He walked quickly, neither slowing down nor turning to check that we were keeping up with him. Or if we were even following him, for that matter.
The sky was almost full dark now, with a summer-stuffed moon looming on the horizon, surrounded by wisps of cloud and tiny, icy chips of starlight.
For centuries humankind had stared up into a sky like that and wondered whether they were alone in the universe.
Now I thought we had our answer.
A dark, tall shape loomed out of the darkness ahead and Danny led us towards it. Eventually the shape resolved itself out of the near dark, revealed itself to be an old, ramshackle barn on the edge of the field.
"I guess here is as good as anywhere," Danny said.
He walked into the barn.
It was no longer Danny, I was certain of that. He was one of them. This could be a trap, an ambush, a massacre.
But he might really have answers.
Answers we needed.
We followed him into the barn.
Quietly.
Like cattle.
Or…
NOTE
The last break in the narrative as the end of the tape once more gets in the way. Howard Tillinghast sees this break as crucial. "This is the point at which innocence breathes its last gasp of oxygen, before revelation takes it away, forever."
Tape Three Side Two
… last side of the last tape I can find. It’s one of Dad’s mix tapes that he makes for the car so he can embarrass us with his bizarre musical taste on long journeys.
Still, I guess we’re almost through now. There’s not a whole lot more to tell.
Only the bad stuff.
The stuff I don’t even want to think about.
This might get a little mixed up, but bear with me, I need to work out the best way to tell you the things I have to tell you.
I wonder if anyone’s listening.
If you are then I need you to believe me.
It’s the truth.
Chapter 38
Inside the barn it was dark, and there was a musty stench in the air that made me gag. My shin crashed into something hard.
"Oh, I’m sorry," Danny said in the gloom. "How thoughtless of me."
I heard him moving about and then…
. . . then it wasn’t dark any longer.