0.4

I was listening to the sound.

That is if ‘sound’ is the right word for it. Because it seemed like it was made up of a lot of sounds: a high- pitched hiss like gas escaping at pressure from a ruptured pipe; an insectile chitter like a locust swarm; that deep, bass vibration we’d heard in the village; a high, keening wail.

It sounded distant.

But not that distant.

Certainly not distant enough.

And I realised that I had heard the sound before, back at Kate O’Donnell’s house, just before she shut her computer down.

‘What is that?’ Kate asked.

‘Nothing good,’ I said.

The noise drew closer.

I’m not exaggerating, my skin bristled with gooseflesh.

There was something about the sound that hit me at a primal level. A bit like how the sound of a Tyrannosaur would have affected a tiny mammal that stumbled into its killing grounds.

Closer, the sound was terrifying.

It sounded like something was out there in the half-light, getting closer and closer to us with every passing second. Something awful, something dangerous, something that we could not even begin to imagine the shape or size of.

We started walking, moving away from the sound. It was the only thing to do. Whatever was out there was coming after us, I was certain.

Lilly’s walking pace speeded up, and we all matched her speed.

Everyone’s face reflected their fear.

Fear of whatever was making that sound.

Getting closer with every second.

36

We ran.

A jog became a run became a sprint and still that sound was close on our heels.

My eyes were squeezed shut and I had stopped thinking of anything except that noise behind us.

Suddenly I realised: the noise was no longer behind us.

It was to the side of us.

Running parallel to the road, across the fields, shadowing us.

Running parallel to us.

Running to overtake us.

Except, of course, running isn’t the right word for it at all. Sure, I could hear it crashing through the undergrowth at great speed, but there were no footsteps. Just this weird phasing static that was more like some stereo-panning effect from a video game than an actual sound in the real world.

I opened my eyes and started scanning the hedges by the side of the road for a sign of the thing that was making such a terrible noise. I could see nothing there, and that made me even more terrified. I ran faster.

I’ve never been particularly athletic, but I think I could have run for the county if I’d matched the speed I was making then, spurred on by that inhuman sound.

I was even starting to feel that I might outrun it.

Suddenly Lilly screamed my name.

37

The scream pulled me back to the real world.

I turned my head to face forwards.

Just in time.

I killed the speed. Ground to a halt and stood there, gasping for air.

I realised that Lilly had just saved my life.

The thing that had been following us, then moving alongside us, had now overtaken us.

It was waiting there, directly in front of me.

Blocking my way forwards.

It’s not easy to describe it. In fact, the more I think about it, it’s probably easier to talk about what this thing wasn’t, than to struggle with what it was. I mean, I don’t think the thing was solid, and I’m reasonably sure that it didn’t have a form that the human eye could recognise. It didn’t look alive, but it didn’t look not-alive, either. It didn’t look natural, but it didn’t look entirely unnatural.

Oh yeah, I’m making a good job of this.

Let me try again.

It seemed more like something missing from this world, than something added to it. It was as if there were a tear in the skin of our world, and it had revealed this terrible thing beneath it.

At the time I remember thinking about those pictures you see in anatomy books, when they show a person, and then the bones and muscles inside them.

You strip away the skin of this world, I thought, and this is what you find hiding underneath.

‘What in God’s name is it?’ Kate O’Donnell asked, and I saw her cross herself.

I shook my head.

It was too much.

This tear in the world had been following us, hunting us, and now it had us.

And we were too tired and too scared to do anything about it.

It moved closer, pushing against the surface of our world and making the air seem to bulge as it did so. I stood there wondering what stuff this… thing, this tear, was made of, and I wondered what it would do to us when it reached us: whether it would hurt; whether it would dissolve us, melt us, or suck us through into its cold blackness until we were nothing.

There were tears streaming down my cheeks, and I could feel the cold breath of infinity roaring in my face.

‘Hey!’ someone shouted from somewhere behind me. ‘Are you going to just stand there and let that thing wipe you off the face of the planet?’

I turned around.

Somehow I wasn’t surprised.

By the side of the road, standing straight and tall, stood Danny. He nodded towards the tear in space and cocked his head to one side.

‘If you have any interest in surviving the next few seconds,’ he said, ‘then I suggest you toss over that video camera you picked up on the green.’

I thought, Video camera? What is he talking about?

The air bulged again and the tear moved closer.

I thought, How does he know I’m carrying his mum’s video camera?

Danny said, ‘Quickly. Throw it here.’

I reached down and fumbled the camera out of my pocket. Lights were flashing on its tiny casing.

It had switched itself on when the can of drink hit it.