“Jesus, Hailey… do we really need to talk about that?” Lana shook her head. “What the hell gets into your head, girl? Sometimes, I just don’t think I know you at all.”
Hailey’s voice turned petulant, the tone low and uneven. “It was in the magazine. I didn’t make it up.”
“Okay, that’s actually very interesting.” Tom turned to face them, walking backwards across the stony ground and trying to avert the threatened row. “The Romans were a pretty nasty bunch, and they had very demanding gods.” Something caught his eye. A small, almost dainty movement far behind them, somewhere back along the route they had taken. It looked like a scrap of white sheet, or perhaps a piece of paper, flapping in the wind. Tom stared back along the trail, but nothing else moved. Even the hikers they’d seen in the car park were absent.
“What is it?” Lana looked in the same direction, and then at Tom. “Are you okay?”
Tom nodded. “Yes, fine. I just thought… I dunno. Something just spooked me.”
“Yeah,” said Lana. “Probably all this talk of dead babies. So I think that’s enough of that.” She glared at Hailey, who continued walking at a slow pace, watching the ground at her feet.
They followed the relatively straight line of the wall, clambering over small rocky outcroppings and plodding up and down the sudden dips and rises. In places the grass was so worn that it looked bald, as if transparent ice were forming and hardening the ground. The air was chilly — but not cold enough to support the idea of snow — and the slight breeze was stirring, becoming stronger.
Tom kept glancing over his shoulder, trying to catch sight of whatever he had spotted moments before. Each time he turned his head, something twitched at the edge of his vision. But by the time he had focused on the location, there was no longer anything to be seen. It was as if something were teasing him, drawing his attention before ducking back out of sight. The thought unnerved him, and he remembered the weird visions he’d been having lately: the dog with a boy’s face, a figure that may or may not be a visual echo of his dead father’s abuse.
“How about we stop for a bite to eat?” Lana pressed her body against him. It was warm, firm, and reminded him of reality rather than stupid dreams and visions.
“That would be good. Hailey — what do you think?”
“Whatever.” The girl stopped and sat down on a large, damp rock that was sticking out of the ground like a giant’s tooth. She picked up a twig and started stripping the bark, rolling it off between her fingers like the rind of some strange fruit.
Lana put the cooler bag on the ground and sat on a nearby cluster of stones. Slowly she began to take items out of the bag: a small checked blanket, bags of sandwiches, a thermos flask filled with what Tom assumed must be coffee. She lined up these things neatly, as if it were important that everything was just right.
“Can I help?” Tom made a move to sit down beside her, but she glanced up and shook her head.
“It’s fine,” said Lana. “Be done in a minute. The grass is still a bit wet, but it’ll be okay if we stay on these rocks.”
The sky was now grey as slate, and the dense clouds resembled a layer of dull, dirty plaster across the ceiling of the world. Tom stared upwards, trying to make out the sun behind the billowing mayhem. He saw glints, tiny fragments of brightness, but they were swallowed instantly. “Hope it doesn’t piss it down,” he said. And when nobody answered, he trudged over the grass towards a low section of the wall.
The stone was old, chipped, and light grey in colour. It poked up above the grass like a giant fossilised spine. He approached the ruin, glancing along it in the direction they’d been heading. Then, as his hand pressed against the cold stone, he looked the other way, trying to pick out the route they had come along.
Something shifted in the grey air, partly obscured by the dimness and the distance. It was a mere flicker, like the sudden twitch of a fish’s tail twisting and vanishing into deep, debris-filled waters. The motion filled him with a heavy sense of dread, and he wished that he had not seen it.
Tom kept looking at the same spot, but the movement failed to reoccur, and nothing solid appeared out of the dull, heavy air.
He felt a weight pressing down on him, as if the air above him were turning to stone, like the wall, like the attitudes of the people on that damned estate. His shoulders began to ache from the imaginary burden, and if felt as if he were being pushed down into another world — one that existed either directly beneath or alongside this one. He ran the palm of his hand across his forehead and it came away damp. The sweat was cold, like the perspiration from someone suffering a fever. His vision burred; the churning air far ahead of him shimmered with the promise of more movement.
“Who’s there?” he whispered the words, afraid to speak them louder.
Then, fading into existence like a slow-dissolve image on a cinema screen, something took shape a few hundred yards down the track. It hovered in the air, twisting and bucking, filled with an energy that was both frightening and invigorating. It seemed to Tom that he was watching many hands, chopping, punching, and picking at the substance of the air, as if trying to use those small, condensed acts of violence to break through the barriers of reality.
“Who?” Again, it was a whisper. He didn’t want Lana to hear.
The hands darted like birds; they opened like wings and then folded shut again, forming solid fists that pummelled the air. Tom heard their impact in his mind, but he knew that the sound was not audible in the real world. Only in that place he had felt shifting beneath and around him, that one that was still trying to open up and pull him in.
He was trapped here, mute and helpless before those rampaging fists — the fists that were now moving closer to him, seeking him out, drawn to his anxiety.
It was like a pocket or envelope of air had closed around those barely visible fists, and they were trying to fight their way out. They were large, bony and monstrous: bigger than life, yet so much less than living. He saw now that there were scores of them, packed in tight like creatures caught up in gossamer netting.
Tom stood his ground. He was too terrified to move, to run. His feet had been swallowed by the earth, becoming part of the footing of the ancient wall at his side. The fists raged; they bristled with energy. If they touched him even once, Tom knew that he would be destroyed. His body would explode on impact.
Then they were gone. The pocket of air seemed to pop like a balloon, and nothing threatening was inside. The sky rose back to its natural position, and his legs were released from the ground’s hungry grip.
“Mum said the food’s ready.” Hailey stood at his side, one hand resting on his forearm. Her face was so pale that he thought he could see through it to the skull beneath. Something twitched inside the confines of her cranium, causing the bone to bulge outward: nothing but a vision that was leftover from his brush with that imaginary realm. He blinked and it was gone.
Tom was under no illusion that her presence had sent the chaotic hallucination on its way, and he could have fallen to his knees in thanks. Instead he followed her back to the cluster of rocks, where Lana sat smiling on the red and black blanket, an array of food set out before her on an improvised table of stone. The sheer banality of the sight helped him to put some distance between this moment and what he had seen — or what he thought he had seen.