… and the world starts shrinking back towards the bungalow, hauling me along with it, helplessly. There’s ivy on the arch thing, I grab it, and my feet lift off the ground, like I’m a cartoon character in a hurricane hanging on for dear life, but the pain in my wrists makes me let go, and I fall to earth with a bruising whack and I’m dragged along the ground, scraping my elbows and bumping my tailbone, and I swivel onto my back and try to dig my heels in but the lawn’s too hard, I can’t get a grip, I sort of trip myself upright, onto my feet, and a pair of butterflies flutter by, up-current, like this unfightable force only works on me. Now I’m back at the rose beds, and the pale man’s still framed in the patio doorway, his hands and fingers threading away, like sign language for aliens, with a sort of hooked smile on his lips, and he’s doing this, he’s fishing me in, over the patio, past Heidi and Ian, who’re still as corpses, corpses this man killed somehow, this man stepping back into the kitchen to make room, and once I’m in this bungalow I’ll never ever leave it, so I desperately clutch at the door frame and the handle, but then it’s like twenty thousand volts shoot through me and I’m tossed like a doll across the living room and bounce off the sofa, onto the carpet, and flashbulbs go kapow kapow kapow in my eye sockets …
… the daymare ends with the scratchy carpet digging into my cheek. It’s over. It was like epilepsy or something. A photo of Heidi as a schoolgirl and a white-haired gran draws into focus, an inch away, must’ve fallen — maybe I knocked it off the dresser when I fell. I should go home and go to hospital. I need a brain scan. Heidi’ll give me a lift to Gravesend. I’ll call Mam from the hospital. Everything’ll be forgotten, all the Vinny stuff. It felt so real. One moment I was about to repair Bob Dylan with scissors and sticky-tape, the next … ants up Heidi’s arm, that daymare man with the busted nose, and the elasticky shoving air. What nutso part of my mind dreams up shit as weird as that, f’Chrissakes? I heave myself up, ’cause if Heidi or Ian finds me lying here they’ll think I’ve died in their living room.
“I believe you, dear heart.” He’s sitting on the leather armchair, one foot resting on one knee. “You’re an artless, vapid nothing in our War. But why would two dying, fleeing incorporeals blunder their way to you, Holly Sykes? That’s the question. What are you for?”
I’ve frozen. What’s he talking about? “Nothing, I swear, I just want to — to — to go away and—”
“Shut up. I’m thinking.” He takes a Granny Smith apple from a bowl on the sideboard, bites and chews. In the dull quiet, the sound of his munching is the loudest thing. “When did you last see Marinus?”
“My old doctor? At — at — at Gravesend General Hospital. Years ago, I—”
He holds up his hand for silence, like my voice hurts his ears. “And Xi Lo never told you that Jacko wasn’t Jacko?”
Till now the horror’s been high-pitched; with Jacko’s name, there’s a bass of dread. “What’s Jacko got to do with anything?”
He peers at his Granny Smith with disgust. “The sourest, blandest apples. People buy them for ornamental value.” He tosses it away. “There’s no Deep Stream field here, so we aren’t in a safe house. Where are we?”
I daren’t repeat my Jacko question, in case it brings this evil, ’cause evil’s the right word, to my brother. “Heidi’s gran’s bungalow. She’s in France, but she lets Heidi and …” They’re dead, I remember.
“The location, girl! County, town, village. Act like you have a brain. If you’re the same Holly Sykes whom Marinus fouled, we must be in England, presumably.”
I don’t think he’s joking. “Kent. Near the Isle of Sheppey. I–I don’t think where we are actually has a … has a name.”
He drums the leather armchair. His fingernails are too long. “Esther Little. You know her?”
“Yes. Not really. Sort of.”
The drumming stops. “Do you want me to tell you what I’ll do to you if I think you’re lying, Holly Sykes?”
“Esther Little was by the river yesterday, but I never met her before. She gave me some tea. Green tea. Then she asked …”
The pale man’s stare drills into my forehead, like the answer’s written there. “What did she ask?”
“For asylum. If her …” I hunt for her exact words, “… plans went up in flames.”
The pale man lights up. “So … Esther Little wanted you for an oubliette. A mobile safe house. I see. You! A used pawn so insignificant, she thought we’d forget you. Well.” He stands up and blocks the way out. “If you’re in there, Esther, we found you!”
“Look,” I manage to say, huddling, “if this is like MI5 stuff, about Ian and Heidi’s communism, I’m nothing to do with it. They just gave me a lift, and I … I …”
He steps towards me, suddenly, to scare me. It does. “Yes?”
“Don’t come near me.” My voice sort of shrivels up. “I’ll — I’ll — I’ll fight. The police—”
“Will be baffled by Heidi’s gran’s bungalow. Two lovers on the loungers, the body of teenager Holly Sykes. Forensics will have a proper farrago to disentangle by the time you’re found — especially if the triple murderer leaves the patio door ajar for the foxes, crows, stray cats … The mess! You’ll go national. The great, gory, unsolved British crime of the eighties. Fame at last.”
“Let me go! I–I—I’ll go abroad, I’ll … go. Please.”
“You’ll look adorable dead.” The pale man smiles at his fingers as he flexes them. “An unprincipled man would have some fun with you first, but I’m against cruelty to dumb animals.”
I hear a hoarse gasp. “Don’t don’t don’t please please—”
“Sssh …” His fingers make a twisting gesture and my lips, my tongue, and my throat shut down. All the strength drains from my legs and arms, like I’m a puppet with its strings cut, pushed into the corner. The pale man sits on the same rug I’m on, cross-legged, like a storyteller but sort of savoring the moment, like Vinny when he knows he’s going to have me. “What’s it like, knowing you’ll be dead as a fucking stone in sixty seconds, Holly Sykes? What pictures does your insectoid mind flick through just before the end?”
His eyes aren’t quite human. My vision’s going, like night’s falling, my lungs’re drowning, not in water but in nothing and I realize it’s been ages since I last breathed, so I try to but I can’t and the drumming in my ears has stopped ’cause my heart’s shut down. Out of the swarmy dusk the pale man reaches out his hand and brushes my breast with the backs of his fingers, tells me, “Sweet dreams, dear heart,” and my last thought is, Who is that doddering figure in the background, a mile away, at the far end of the lounge …?
The pale man notices, looks over his shoulder, and jumps up. My heart restarts and my lungs fill with oxygen, so quick I choke and cough as I recognize Heidi. “Heidi! Get the police! He’s a killer! Run!” But Heidi’s ill, or drugged, or injured, or drunk, her head’s lolling about like she’s got that disease, multiple sclerosis. Her voice isn’t the same, either — it’s like my granddad’s since his stroke. She pushes out the words all ragged: “Don’t worry, Holly.”
“On the contrary, Holly,” snorts the pale man, “if this specimen is your knight in shining armor, it’s time to despair. Marinus, I presume. I smell your unctuousness, even in that perfumed zombie.”