He was devoting his energy to seeing, that was all. He peered at the interior of the carriage until his impressions seeped back, the upholstery yielding beneath his weight, the wheels clicking like the needles of a knitter at a bedside. How much of his brain did it take to hold onto these details? When he reached for the cup he couldn't judge how hot it was, even by tipping the drink into his mouth. He downed it before he was able to taste it, and he was trying to believe that he had swallowed a drink when he grew aware that the windows had turned blank.
Surely it was just that his perceptions had fallen short of them, but that was bad enough. Once he put down the cup at which he'd been staring he was able to recapture the sight of the city steeped in ochre. As it fled past the windows he couldn't help reflecting that it was the colour of light about to die – the colour of the death of colour. Had the fog advanced, if it was fog, or was his peripheral vision shrinking? When he glared across the city he saw that another layer of buildings had lost all its features, while beyond it he could distinguish nothing at all. The train had fallen so silent that it might have been denying its existence, so that he was suddenly afraid of being too intent on the view to hear his mobile if it rang. While he didn't want any of his senses to falter, he needed to be certain that Hugh and their cousins could reach him. Suppose he had already missed a call?
The busy clicking reappeared as he groped over the upholstery, and the carriage established its presence around him. Having located the mobile, he clenched his fist on it as he saw that there had indeed been a call. He couldn't read the number, which resembled digits less than random blackened scratches, as if somebody had tried to claw their way up through the miniature screen. Rory jabbed the key to ring the number back and clapped the mobile to his ear. A bell that sounded shrivelled by distance had barely repeated its note before it seemed to recede into silence. 'Who's there?' Rory said or shouted, he couldn't judge which.
In a moment he had an answer of sorts, though the voice was so muffled or so remote that it might as well have been buried. He couldn't make out any of the trinity of syllables, let alone the identity of the speaker. 'What did you say?' he demanded, which brought a repetition of the answer. It was just as incomprehensible, but perhaps distance wasn't the problem; perhaps the voice was whispering close to his ear. 'Speak up,' Rory urged and strained to grasp the response. It seemed to be playing at remoteness again, and as he strove to hear he felt as if he were being drawn into whatever depths it might inhabit. No doubt the narrowing of his vision aggravated the effect. He was so anxious to identify the name he kept being told that he only belatedly noticed how much of the city had vanished.
He stared in dismay through the window beside him and then across the aisle. He could see no more than a few hundred yards in either direction, and even the visible buildings looked perfunctory, little more than outlines nobody had bothered to fill in. Behind them there appeared to be nothingness, not so much as a hint of the sky. As he peered past them, desperate to make out whatever was there, another lurid line of buildings was erased. He turned his reluctant head to see a street merge with the advancing blankness on the far side of the carriage. Was he merely observing it, or attracting it somehow? He was distracted by the slowing of the train. Presumably the fog, or a medium that improved on fog, was closing in ahead as well, but he was suddenly afraid that it was designed to halt the train – to prevent him from finding Hugh or Ellen or Charlotte.
That was worse than stupid. He was letting his thoughts trap him in his skull. The train had reached a station, that was all. Admittedly so had the surrounding blankness. As the walls of the suburban station blocked his view of the city he saw the opaque medium creeping up a ramp towards the platform. He couldn't discern even a hint of the city beyond the enclosed ramp, but at least someone was approaching up the slope. As the carriage passed it Rory saw a man emerge from the blank mass that filled the lower half of the passage. The man's face did not, however.
Rory just had time to see that nothingness was trailing the figure up the tunnel before the entrance coasted out of sight, by no means far enough. The next moment the train stopped, and all the doors sprang open as though welcoming the traveller. As Rory's head lolled against the upholstery he saw the figure stalk fast out of the passage. It was little more than a ragged silhouette, scrawny and blackened. If he'd been capable of gratitude Rory would have felt glad of his inability to distinguish much above its neck, where the jagged outline suggested a collapsed cavity rather than a face. Nevertheless the figure was advancing at speed, and so was the vast absence at its back. Rory's fists clenched, or did their shaky best to do so, reminding him that he was still clutching the phone. Was it attracting the intruder? Perhaps, because at last he heard the name that the whisper had been repeating. It belonged to the figure that leapt into the carriage and so, he thought too late, did the all-encompassing blur that followed. As he saw his companion clearly at last, he was almost glad when the nothingness claimed him.
THIRTY-SEVEN
As Charlotte backed away from the impossible aperture in the earth, a mass of blackness reared up in pursuit. It was a shadow dragged out of the depths by the flashlight beam, but she couldn't be reassured while she was so aware of walking over a roof. She was still gripping the handle of the spade, and as her retreat pulled it out of the earth, the unsteadily illuminated patch of ground around the skylight and the entire dim common stirred as if the buried house were preparing to slough its concealment. She mustn't think she'd roused the house or anything within it. All she was seeing was wind in the grass, but the knowledge didn't help much. She could hardly think for yearning to be off the hidden roof and as far as an uninterrupted run would take her from the house.
She believed at last, which made her realise how desperately she'd been hoping not to have to do so. The possibility of different explanations for her cousins' states and her own had fled as she wished she could. So the house was indeed beneath Thurstaston Mound, but not in the sense they'd assumed. Had the mound collapsed simply from erosion, or could it have been somehow encouraged to collapse? Certainly it appeared to have trapped the occupant of the house in his own worst nightmare. Charlotte had no doubt that he'd been buried along with the house.
The idea was enough to send her several paces backwards. What had she imagined she could do here? For that matter, what had Hugh and Ellen done? She ought to try to locate them, but the prospect of calling out so close to the open skylight didn't appeal to her. Using her mobile was a problem too, even once she'd dealt with the spade by leaning it against her rather than risk digging it into the earth that covered the roof. She hung her bag on the handle and trained the flashlight beam on the hole in the ground, and then she peered at the mobile to key the call one-handed. All at once she was afraid to hear Hugh's or Ellen's ringtone in the depths below the skylight, and she re-called the hospital instead.
'Putting you through,' the receptionist said as the edges of the hole grew restless. In a few seconds Charlotte heard not just her own unquiet heart but the sister on the ward. 'Sorry to bother you,' Charlotte said, which seemed grotesquely remote from her situation. 'I was wondering if there's been any change with Rory Lucas.'