Part of her screamed that she should leave, but another, calmer part of her made her legs move and forced her deeper into the room. It was dark. The two windows were covered. The buzzing grew louder, as if responding to her presence.
At the end of the room was a cupboard — a built-in wardrobe. The doors remained intact, and the cubby hole was always empty, as if nobody had even noticed it, or if they had seen the cupboard they had not been interested enough to look inside. The buzzing seemed to be coming from within, behind the closed doors. It wasn’t only in her head after all, and the realisation filled her with relief.
Hailey moved forward, towards the wardrobe. The buzzing sound intensified.
She stood before the doors. They were tall and narrow, with stainless steel handles. She reached out and grasped one of those handles, her fingers tightening around it. Don’t, she thought. Leave it alone. But that other part of her — the calm part — whispered to her that she should open the doors.
Her hand made a fist around the small handle. Then it turned, pulled, and the door eased noiselessly open.
At first Hailey didn’t know what she was seeing. There was a dense cloud inside the wardrobe, low down near the floor on the right hand side. The cloud seemed to be moving, vibrating. The buzzing sound was louder now — it filled her ears, flowing inside her head. The sound was that of their wings: quicker than thought, lighter than dreams.
She was looking at a swarm of giant insects. Flies. Bees. Hornets. No, that wasn’t right. They were too big, too quick… too beautiful.
They weren’t insects, they were birds.
Hummingbirds.
Hailey had only ever seen hummingbirds on television, on nature programmes, and they had always fascinated her. As far as she knew they lived in America, and places like Ecuador and Mexico. There certainly weren’t any in England. So what were these ones doing in a dingy cupboard in a derelict tower block in Northumberland?
They were gorgeous. Their plumage was radiant — green, red, yellow and gold. The colours bled and mingled as she watched, lighting the darkness and forming a shimmering mirage of sad beauty in the bottom corner of that wardrobe.
There were a lot of them in there. Each one was tiny, the size of a baby’s hand, and they were clustered in the corner as if they were all feeding from the nectar of a single bunch of flowers. Hailey watched them in silence, feeling a sense of awe creep along her arms, then climb to her neck, where it rose higher and flushed her cheeks.
“Beautiful,” she whispered.
And that one word was enough to break the spell.
The flock of birds seemed to undulate, shifting as if their natural rhythm had been disturbed or even broken. They turned to Hailey as one, their little black eyes peering at her from the corner, their sharp little red beaks glinting in the shadows. Then, as if dancing, they flowed out from their hiding place, breaking apart their formation to hover before her, creating a brightly-hued screen between her and the interior of the wardrobe.
Spellbound, Hailey reached out a hand… her fingers opened, then closed. She tried to grab one — just one — of the hovering miracles, but they all flowed away from her, breaking ranks and forming an opening. She looked through the gap they had made and into the cupboard. And she saw what it was they had been eating, and why their beaks were so red, like they’d been carved from ruby.
The dead dog was folded into the corner of the wardrobe, its legs broken and twisted, its head crushed. The fur of the dog’s jaw, and along its neck, was red, tattered, and the corpse had been punctured thousands of times. By countless tiny little beaks. Red beaks. Like rubies.
Hailey tried to scream but the hummingbirds were stealing her air, sucking it from her throat. She backed away, flailing out at the suddenly obscene creatures. Their wings moved faster than she could see; the buzzing sound was louder than anything she had ever heard. She knew that she would fall before it even happened: the image flashed through her mind, clear as a frame from a film.
Walking backwards, panicked and unable to take a breath, she felt her legs tangle and then she went down, hitting the concrete floor hard. She cried out in pain and shock and fear, and the hummingbirds swooped backwards, allowing a small space to open up between her and them. She drew breath; her cheeks swelled; her throat opened. Finally, and with great relief, she opened her mouth and screamed.
The birds backed away as one hovering mass: their colours were like spilled paints, their motion was nightmarish. Where Hailey had first perceived beauty, she now witnessed horror of a kind that she barely even understood.
She scrabbled on the floor, turning around and rising to her feet, pushing away and heading for the door.
Then she saw what the birds were moving away from.
Her scream had not caused them to flee. It was something else. A thing so alien, so unlike anything she had ever imagined, that it took on a strange kind of beauty — a beauty tinged with horror and darkness, and with tears and blood and sweat. Hailey’s belly began to cramp; she felt moisture between her legs.
“What?” she said, and it was the only thing worth saying, the only question she could have asked. She tried to move back the way she’d come, towards the birds, but was caught between two extremes. Her legs skidded on the smooth concrete floor, her skirt riding up to show her dirty, slashed tights. The floor was cold on her exposed flesh. The backs of her legs turned to stone.
Hailey glanced down at the exposed parts of her legs: her scuffed knees, the smooth patches of thigh visible through her ripped tights. Then she looked back at the small, ragged shape that was blocking her escape.
Something vague, dusty and tattered shifted in the shadows near the doorway. Then, as if responding to her whispered question, it began to chuckle.
Others joined the creature, spilling from the joints in the walls and ceiling, squeezing through the plug points and light-fittings. Then, clustered together in a dense and leering pack, they came streaming towards her, aiming for a point directly between her open legs.
CHAPTER TWO
TOM RAN AS if the hounds of hell were snapping at his heels.
It was an old phrase — one his mother had been known to use whenever she needed to get a move on, if she was late for work or an appointment she needed to keep. The hounds of hell. Tom hadn’t heard those words in years, never mind used them, so when they came into his head now, as he sprinted between lampposts on a street two miles away from home, he felt a twinge of grief somewhere deep down inside, like a guitar string snapping.
Tom’s mother had died when he was twenty-one. She had never seen him finish university and get his first proper job, or even had the opportunity to meet his wife, Helen.
He ran faster, closing in on the crooked No Entry sign he was using as a marker.
Fartlek — it was Danish for ‘speed play’.
The training method was one of Tom’s favourites; it helped rid him of the formless anger he often felt burning up his insides. The technique involved sprinting for prolonged periods between two fixed points — usually street lights or concrete bollards — and it helped improve speed and stamina. In Tom’s case, he would run at a steady pace for ten minutes, and then vary this by increasing his pace for a set distance. He only ever used the method when he was feeling particularly low. Today was one of those times.
Helen was having a rough time this week. She had developed minor abrasions that might turn into bedsores along one side of her back, and he was forced to roll her every hour or so to prevent this from happening. She screamed in pain whenever he moved her on the sheets.