The other man laughed. “Fucking hell, man. Are you blind? This…” He gestured with the hand that wasn’t holding the gun. “This is the problem. All of it.”
“This house?” Royle was acting dumb, pretending that he was slow on the uptake. Anything that might buy him some time.
“Jesus…” Erik Best shook his head. “Not the house… not just the house. Everything else, too. This place, this estate — this fucking life.” He walked across the room and stood by the window. The curtains were closed. The beaked figure did not move as he approached, and he barely even looked at it. “I’m right at the centre of the black hole, Royle. I can’t move, can’t breathe. Nothing I do makes any sense.” He turned towards the small figure. “Look at this… this thing.”
“What is it, Erik? I can see it, too. Where did it come from?”
Best turned away from the window. He dropped the gun hand down by his side. “It came from the black hole. Right over there.” He nodded towards the pile of items at the centre of the room.
Royle wasn’t certain, but it looked like there was a hole in the carpet right at the middle of the untidy heap. The hole looked like it might even penetrate the wooden floorboards beneath.
“That thing… I think… I think it’s my daughter. Or at least a small part of her.”
That was Abby Hansen’s cue to move. She seemed to snap out of whatever fugue state she’d entered, and moved sideways, towards the figure. It stood there like a statue, tense and immobile. Even when Abby put one arm around its narrow shoulders, the thing did not move.
“Get away… you get away from it.” Best raised the gun.
“Listen, Erik. Let’s just stay calm.”
“Get the fuck…
Erik Best’s finger twitched on the trigger. The gun went off: a single shot, but in the small room the sound was deafening.
Royle reached him too late. Abby was already bending over and clutching her abdomen by the time he grabbed the gun hand, twisting it to release the weapon. By this time, Best had gone limp. He let go of the gun without a struggle and sank to his knees, his head going down and his shoulders hitching in a silent sob.
That was when the figure by the window started making a noise.
It raised one small, thin arm, pointing at the wounded woman, and let out a sound like a broken motorcycle engine. The din was unearthly… that was the exact word that came to Royle’s mind, even at the time. The sound was not of this world. A long, high-pitched clicking sound, like nothing he’d ever heard before.
Other than raising its hand, the figure did not move. It just kept on clicking: a single endless ratcheting note, with not even a pause for breath.
Royle went to Abby Hansen. She was down on her knees. Blood had turned her legs red; she was clutching at the wound, trying to stem the flow. She started crawling on her knees, making her way over to the pile of items on the floor — all the things she’d kept when her daughter went missing. When Royle tried to help her, she brushed away his hands. She kept on moving, staggering on her knees, until she came to the hole in the floor.
Royle could hardly believe what he was seeing.
The hole had enlarged; the edges were burnt, as if an intense heat had seared the floorboards and the carpet. There were black leaves clinging to the lip of the hole. It was a perfect black circle — a black hole, just like Best had said. He felt his hand open and the gun dropped to the floor. He made no effort to keep hold of it. His muscles were limp, lifeless.
He sensed movement before he saw it, and by the time he’d turned around Erik Best had already picked up the gun. He was holding it with the barrel in his mouth, his eyes wide and his teeth chattering against the steel barrel. He smiled around the barrel, and then he pulled the trigger. The back of his head detonated in a confusion of red, like something from a dream. It didn’t look real; it was a special effect, one that would play out on the screen behind his eyes for the rest of his life.
Royle watched as the man crumpled to the floor, blood pouring from his open, slack mouth as the gun slipped away. Then, when he turned back to Abby Hansen, she was crouching by that hole in the floor, shivering. The beaked figure had somehow made its way across to her, and they were embracing tightly, as if one were absorbing the other. The small figure in the black cloak looked vague, insubstantial, like a rag doll that was no longer held together by the glue of its parents’ grief.
Abby Hansen smiled.
Then both figures fell into the hole and vanished.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
SHE’S BACK THERE, inside. She’s in the grove inside the Grove; the place that exists just out of sight, out of step, beneath and off to one side: the place that is sometimes known as Loculus. This time she knows where she’s going; she is no longer a tourist. This place has begun to feel more like home than her real home, back in the world that she can barely bring herself to think of as real.
She walks quickly, her bare feet whispering across the soft ground and the black leaves. She does not hurt her feet. It is as if they know exactly where to tread so that they can miss the stones and roots that might cause them harm.
She glances down at her belly, where she was shot. There’s still blood there, but the wound is already healing. Leaves cling to it, fusing the flesh, repairing the damage.
Before long, she is once again at the mouth of the cave, which stands among others just like it at the foot of the high cliffs. It all looks different this time, darker, deeper, and more menacing. She pauses at the threshold, uncertain. Why is she here? What happened to the thing that might have been her daughter or might just have been something else trying to impersonate Tessa?
She is beyond doubting any of this. She knows that it is as real as that other place — the one where Erik Best took his own life, and where that policeman is still standing, covered in Erik’s blood and wondering what to do next.
Both places are real. The only place where that reality is thin is the joint between the two worlds, where she crossed over. The first time she came here, it felt like a dream within a dream. But now it feels like she is wide awake. Before, she thought that her spirit was walking here, treading on ground that would be unable to take the weight of her body, but now she realises that her corporeal self is here, standing outside the cave.
This means, of course, that she might be in danger. Anything that happens to her here will have repercussions in the other world. If she dies here, she dies there, too. There is a connection, a bond, as if one world feeds the other. She wonders briefly what came first, which grove sired the other. Then she realises that it doesn’t matter.
She stares up the cliff face, making out small hand and footholds. What’s up there, at the top? What kind of view would she be rewarded with if she made it to the summit of those cliffs?
A sound draws her attention: something slithers inside the cave. She isn’t afraid, but she feels as if she has been noticed.
As she watches the cave mouth, a small figure emerges and takes shape. She feels her breath catch in her throat, but then as the figure is revealed she is saddened to see that it isn’t Tessa. It’s a small girl, but not the one she’d hoped for. The girl walks towards her, the hem of her dirty white shift dress swaying around her knees. She is smiling, but her mouth is black: no teeth are visible. Her lips are thin and pale. Her eyes are heavy-lidded, as if she has just woken from a deep sleep.
The girl beckons with one hand, a tired come-hither gesture.
“Who are you? Tell me your name, honey.”
The girl shakes her head. In that moment, Abby recognises her from the news reports and the footage on television. This is the first one; the original Gone Away Girl. It’s Little Connie Millstone… but a different version to the one that went away. She looks older, as if the soul of an ancient crone has been trapped inside the body of a
