0.4

that sound like they didn’t originate on Fringe or Doctor Who.’

The only one of Kate O’Donnell’s explanations that held any water for me – that we were still in a trance and the whole thing was just a fantasy – was the very one that was impossible to prove or disprove. It was like the old question that the film The Matrix was based upon: how can you tell whether you’re just a brain in a jar, experiencing a sophisticated virtual-reality program that is flawless in its execution?

The answer is: you can’t. So it actually doesn’t make much sense entertaining it. If we woke up and found out the day had just been a weird dream, then that would be great, but we couldn’t bank on it.

And we certainly couldn’t close our minds to other answers in the hope that it was right, because we could…

NOTE

The thought here is never returned to. Kyle must have finished the thought on the blank part of tape. Ernest Merrivale sees the fact as proof that the tapes are all recorded one after the other, without breaks. He suggests that if there had been any break between each tape, Kyle would have rewound the tape to see what he had last said, and thus would have realised that the blank tape was cutting off his words. The error would never have been repeated.

Tape Three Side One

… going round and round in my head. My brain was making so much noise, but it was about time I started to put all of those thoughts to some good use.

I tried to think about everything I had seen since waking from the trance on the stage, to find something that would point the way for us to move forwards.

It was then that I remembered Mrs Birnie.

Proudly recording Danny’s act.

The video camera.

She had been filming it all.

So what had the video camera caught?

23

Aware of the odd glances I was getting from the others, I rushed down on to the village green, hoping that Mrs Birnie had done what most everyone else had – left behind the thing that she was carrying.

It took a couple of minutes of looking around the area to find it, nestled in a discarded jumper. At first I thought that wishing too hard for the thing had made me imagine the flash of reflected sunlight, then I saw it again and headed straight to it.

It was one of the new type of Canon camcorders, a thin slice of metal that concealed some pretty cool tech specs. It was the kind that no longer even needed a tape, working from memory cards and an internal hard drive.

I held it in the air like I’d just won the FA Cup.

Lilly, Kate and Mr Peterson were all staring at me as if I had just lost my mind.

‘Mrs Birnie was filming it,’ I shouted at them. ‘She was filming the whole thing!’

They just kept staring, and I realised that they weren’t looking at me at all.

They were looking behind me.

I felt like a pantomime character who had suddenly been warned ‘BEHIND YOU!’ as I turned my head and stared back over my shoulder.

Then I just felt sick.

The whole village, it seemed, was moving in an unnaturally neat formation: utterly silent, perfectly organised, and heading down the high street.

Heading towards the village green.

Heading towards us.

24

It was like some kind of waking nightmare.

The entire village was marching towards us, silently.

I moved nearer to the stage and to the people there who were, I was certain, the only people I could trust; the only people I could rely on now.

We put up our hands and volunteered to be a part of Danny’s act, and from that moment on we were set along a different path from the rest of the people of Millgrove.

Call it ‘chance’, ‘fate’, ‘karma’ or ‘luck’, the end result was the same.

We were screwed.

Royally screwed.

I counted the front row of people approaching and there was a straight line of twenty. With twenty behind them. And twenty behind them.

Keep repeating until you reach a thousand.

They came across the green towards us, perfectly synchronised.

I recognised every face. People I loved. People I just said ‘hi’ to. People I didn’t like but still managed to smile at when I saw them. People I’d done odd jobs for to raise extra pocket money. People I had bought things from. People who had taught me. People I had played with.

I had an impulse to run, to turn and flee, just like Lilly and I had done earlier, but there was another part of me that was tired and scared and just wanted to know what was going on.

Then I wanted it to end.

If that meant aliens were going to take over my mind too, then actually, so be it.

I just couldn’t take it any more. Whatever the crowd wanted of me, I think I was probably prepared to give it to them.

In that moment I had given up.

The crowd was close now. Very close, moving towards us as a single entity, like flocking birds or marching army ants.

Still silent.

And in the front row was: my mother; my father; my brother; Doctor Campbell; Mr and Mrs Dartington; Simon; Mrs Carlton, the local busybody; Len Waites, the butcher; Eddie Crichton, who’d never got to hand out a prize at the talent show; Mr and Mrs Parnese, who had a stall selling mobile phone accessories on Cambridge Market; Laura Jones, who was a year below me at school; Peter Parker, who was a librarian, not Spider-Man; a red-faced man I knew by sight, but not by name; Barry and Dennis Geary, the nearest thing to bad boys you got in Millgrove; Karl Raines, the best footballer at our school; Ellie Whatsername, barmaid at the Blue Nun in Crowley; some bloke that is always hanging around her like a faithful puppy.

They stopped about three metres away from us.

Perfectly in synch.