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
“This stuff isn’t going to eat itself,” she said. Then a look of concern crossed her face. “Are you okay? You look… well, you look shocked. Or scared.”
Tom knelt down on the blanket, reached for a sandwich. “Sorry. I was just thinking — thinking about my late father.”
And then he was frightened all over again, because it was true: he had been thinking about his dead father, but without even realising he was doing so. Those fists — those images of violence — had been all that was left of the man, a representation of his will. His ghost, his phantom, was nothing more than a snatch of unfocused aggression, a flock of fists fighting against something unseen.
After they’d eaten — sandwiches with cheap fillings, freezer-shop-bought
“She was a twin, you know.” Lana smiled, but her eyes were flat. “Her brother was stillborn. Thirty-seven seconds after I had Hailey, I delivered a little corpse.”
Tom didn’t know what to say, so he remained silent. He stared at Lana’s face, at the way her hair fell across her cheek and she kept pushing it out of the way; an unconscious gesture, but somehow sad and beautiful.
“I haven’t told anyone that,” she said, glancing at him, and then down at the ground. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you.” She shook her head. “Hailey doesn’t even know she almost had a brother.” She smiled again, and this time it was better, stronger, almost real.
“What’s wrong?” Tom waited for her to answer; there was no rush, they had all day. “What’s really bothering you?”
“I’m worried about her,” said Lana, turning to stare at her daughter’s back.
Tom moved round on the blanket so that he was sitting right next to her on the rock. He could feel the heat of her body, even through their fleecy jackets. A flash of sunlight lit the sky above them, and then dimmed but did not vanish. “Why? Is she still having those fainting spells?”
Lana shook her head. She lifted a hand and pushed the hair from out of her eyes. “No, she seems to have stopped those. But there’s something else, something wrong.”
Tom placed his hand on her knee.
She glanced at him and smiled, but the expression didn’t last. “I think she might be pregnant.”
“Ah… okay. Has she said anything?” He squeezed her knee, but this time she failed to respond.
“No, it’s nothing she’s actually said. But sometimes when I look at her, when she’s wearing thin clothing, her belly seems swollen. Then, the next time I look, it’s flat. I’m not sure what’s going on, but it isn’t right. It could be a tumour, or something. It might not be natural at all. I think I should take her to see a doctor, but if I tried I know she’d fight me.”
The landscape was silent; not even the birds sang. Not a living soul was visible. The sky trembled.
“This all sounds a bit strange,” said Tom, unsure of what she wanted him to say. “Her belly — you say it looks like she’s pregnant one day, and then the next it looks normal?”
“No,” said Lana. “Not normal. On those other days she looks too thin. Skinny. Like she’s starving to death. Her skin’s all dry, her breath smells, and she’s passing blood when she goes to the toilet. She says she’s never even been with a boy. I don’t know what to do. I couldn’t handle it if she was seriously ill.”
