And the really sick joke was, Raf wasn't even sure the silver rain was real. He, who never cared enough about anyone to be truly afraid for them, was terrified that Hani might be killed. And as for Zara ... If he hadn't vomited already he'd be doing it again, beyond doubt.
Below him, between the suq and the spice house was the tiny blind alley down which the ballerina had vanished. At its end was a tiny courtyard belonging to the spice house. One back door, padlocked, one CCTV camera for security, nothing fancy; even adjusting his eyes across their whole spectrum hadn't revealed any trace of hidden beams.
As for dealing with the camera, Raf had justified being there by clumsily yanked up the front of his jellaba and unlaced his fly, at the same time as snatching a quick look around. To his right had been the red-brick wall, to his left the yard, little more than a token reminder of a larger one that had existed back before the suq was built. Above him a distant cast-iron loading boom jutting from the side of the spice house, its wheel rusted tight. The open window just below it had looked very far away.
Ambling back up the alley until he was out of camera range, Raf had jumped, feet jamming against the wall on both sides. He'd seen it on screen, mountaineers straddling a gap and climbing effortlessly, leaving the ground far below them. He managed four, maybe five awkward hops.
It wasn't pain in his ankles or lack of skill that stopped him. It was looking down. Down onto a drop of no more than three metres, but it was enough. Vomit rose barometer-like in his throat, spewed between rictus lips and trickled to the ground below, leaving memory etched on his palate as an aftertaste.
Open the door.
Can't.
Open the door.
No.
The voice of waves, other children shouting. Later on, in another place, he'd had to push one of them downstairs to cure that. Threw a knife across a crowded dining room so that it nailed a wooden beam beside another's head. Sheer luck but impressive.
Fear of heights or fear or falling? They were different. That difference had been explained to him at length by a psychiatrist at Huntsville, who masked her stink with cologne and scuttled sideways into rooms like a crab, because that was the only way she could fit through the door.
Apparently the height/falling difference mattered. Until he recognized which one it was, nothing could be done to cure what was a simple, almost boring phobia. All he had to do was watch some films and tell the fat woman what he felt.
Only Raf felt nothing as he looked at pictures of smiling children climbing frames or slides, shinning up ropes and leaping off walls. He didn't know any of them. And how he felt when he looked down couldn't be described. Not in words a child might use and certainly not by the adult that child became.
If he fell now and rolled on landing, he could walk away with nothing worse than a few bruises. Every shuffle upwards increased that danger. A few more shuffles and it would be a broken ankle rather than bruises, then a leg or hip. Much higher than that and his spine would concertina. At the top, where he needed to go, where muted screams broke through the open widow — fall from there and his vertebrae would be crushed on impact. He knew that for a fact.
Very carefully, Raf twisted round until his back pressed against the suq's brickwork and his feet jammed hard against the crumbling warehouse wall. It felt safer than straddling the emptiness. By shuffling his back and straightening his legs he might be able to inch his way higher. All it would take would be for him to conquer one simple, irrational fear.
All. Darkness swept in against the edge of his thoughts every time Raf glanced down. And the alley floor sucked in his concentration like a singularity swallowing light. Until looking away became nearly impossible, climbing ditto.
Crying with frustration, Raf made himself stare up at the window, its shutter swinging slowly in the evening breeze.
Everything he needed to become was on the other side of that. Zara, Hani, the ballerina ... And whatever the ballerina was doing, that was something he needed to know about.
Hey, dead boy, the voice in his head was mocking. Recognize where you are?
Raf did. He'd been there before.
Chapter Forty-eight
Switzerland
Outside was silver rain.
Inside a fox cub coughed, thin shoulders heaving and skull flat to the floor. The door stood ready to be opened, buckled by the noise and anger of what waited on the other side.
He touched the handle.
Skin seared and the boy's fingertips vaporized, fragments of skin left sticking to the red-hot door knob as he yanked back his hand. He wanted to cry but he was doing that already.
It was nothing, he'd been telling himself... Nothing seeping under the door, nothing pushing past the sodden towels he'd used to close out the gap; but he could no longer pretend. Tears dripped unnoticed onto his red wool dressing gown.
He could smell burning and the smell came from him.
All the boy had to do if he wanted to live was turn the handle and yank back the door. It was that simple. The alternative was to die in peace, letting go any last shred of hope that stuck to his soul the way his burnt skin was glued to the door handle. Die, or walk out into the silver rain. Into the Hell pastors talked about in chapel.
Water still trickled from the cold faucet but it was boiling now, steam rising from the basin as he turned on the tap. A gravity-feed cistern in the roof behind him supplied water and the noise had not yet reached his stretch of attic.
Stripping off, the boy screwed up his dressing gown and held it under the water, burning his already burnt fingers. When the cloth was completely sodden, he wrapped it around his body. The dressing gown wasn't long enough to protect his ankles or calves but it would cover the rest of him, for what that was worth.
He opened the door by gripping its handle through cloth from his gown and twisting. And when steam hissed from beneath his fingers, the boy knew he should have dealt with the door first, when the dressing gown was still dry, rather than this way round. Logical rather than lateral, he wasn't as good at that as his mother's friends expected.
But this wasn't a test.
Taking a deep breath, he threw back the door and stepped out. There was no ground, no walls, no roof above him. Only a red glow. A darkness of night sky held back by flame. The silver rain had almost finished, thick drops of lead trickling down from gutters to evaporate into dark smudges on fire-scarred walls. Surrounding him was what was left of one attic and between him and the next surviving attic lay nothing but a smouldering pit of fire bisected by a black steel girder that stretched over empty space.
The noise of the flames had grown softer. Burnt out, along with the west wing of the school. There was fire behind him, scavenging its way like cancer along the building, shattering walls, melting lead and eating through wooden beams to drop the blazing remains noisily into orange cinders below.
Firemen had seen him now. That became obvious when a spotlight almost bowled him backwards with shock. Someone swore, their words made puny by distance and flame, and the light snapped out. So the boy shut his eyes and let them adjust, calling up darkness in his head. Waiting until the extraneous noise died and the orange glow behind his eyelids slid away.