0.4

It had been filming the inside of my pocket all that time.

‘Do it now,’ Danny advised and I threw it over to him. He caught it in one hand and switched it off.

Then he smiled and nodded towards the tear in space. It was already drawing back, moving away, as if its interest in us – the interest that had it screaming across the countryside – had suddenly ended.

‘Danny, what the -?’ I started, but Danny shut me up with a dismissive wave of his hand.

‘I guess you all have some questions,’ Danny said, and his face suddenly looked sad. ‘Follow me and I’ll try to answer them for you.’

Then the sad look was gone.

He turned and started walking into the field behind him, away from that terrible patch of moving darkness, away from the road, away from Millgrove, away from Crowley.

After a few seconds, we followed.

We trudged across a field sun-baked into clay, following Danny Birnie in pursuit of answers. Danny had been there at the start of all this, and there was something right about his being here now.

I realised that I was afraid. Not of the terrible thing that had been seconds away from destroying us, but afraid of my friend.

Of Danny.

Of what he had become.

He walked quickly, neither slowing down nor turning to check that we were keeping up with him. Or if we were even following him, for that matter.

The sky was almost full dark now, with a summer-stuffed moon looming on the horizon, surrounded by wisps of cloud and tiny, icy chips of starlight.

For centuries humankind had stared up into a sky like that and wondered whether they were alone in the universe.

Now I thought we had our answer.

A dark, tall shape loomed out of the darkness ahead and Danny led us towards it. Eventually the shape resolved itself out of the near dark, revealed itself to be an old, ramshackle barn on the edge of the field.

‘I guess here is as good as anywhere,’ Danny said.

He walked into the barn.

It was no longer Danny, I was certain of that. He was one of them. This could be a trap, an ambush, a massacre.

But he might really have answers.

Answers we needed.

We followed him into the barn.

Quietly.

Like cattle.

Or…

NOTE

The last break in the narrative as the end of the tape once more gets in the way. Howard Tillinghast sees this break as crucial. ‘This is the point at which innocence breathes its last gasp of oxygen, before revelation takes it away, forever.’

Tape Three Side Two

… last side of the last tape I can find. It’s one of Dad’s mix tapes that he makes for the car so he can embarrass us with his bizarre musical taste on long journeys.

Still, I guess we’re almost through now. There’s not a whole lot more to tell.

Only the bad stuff.

The stuff I don’t even want to think about.

This might get a little mixed up, but bear with me, I need to work out the best way to tell you the things I have to tell you.

I wonder if anyone’s listening.

If you are then I need you to believe me.

It’s the truth.

38

Inside the barn it was dark, and there was a musty stench in the air that made me gag. My shin crashed into something hard.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Danny said in the gloom. ‘How thoughtless of me.’

I heard him moving about and then…

… then it wasn’t dark any longer.

I heard Kate O’Donnell gasp.

Oh, I know how crazy this sounds. Do you know how many times I have run it through in my head and still end up doubting the evidence of my own senses?

An eerie halo of reddish light, bright enough to illuminate the barn around us, suddenly appeared, surrounding Danny.

He smiled.

‘Bioluminescence,’ he said, as if it were another of his conjuring tricks he was performing and he was particularly proud of it. ‘I knew I could do it, but… well… WOW!’

Danny looked at us and shrugged.

‘It’s a simple trick, really,’ he said. ‘Basically, I converted some skin cells to photoproteins.’ He spoke like that was not only normal, but something we should understand. ‘I’m fuelling them with some excess calcium that I’m growing from my own skeleton.’

He laughed. ‘It tickles, if anyone’s interested.’

NOTE – ‘Bioluminescence’

Although dramatically simplified, this is indeed the way that we produce light. One of the strengths of the Straker Tapes is, I believe, that they do show us the things we do normally and naturally in a new and different way, as if Kyle is really experiencing these commonplace sights for the first time, in the position of an outsider.

In Identity Crises: Bodies as Text, Steinmetz writes: ‘Things we take for granted are shown in a new light by Straker’s words. Filament networking and bioluminescence are so familiar to us that it takes a boy to remind us how precious these things are.’

We stood there open-mouthed, trying to work out if Danny was toying with us, or whether he’d really just used parts of his skeleton to light up the barn.

There was a long silence and then Lilly stepped towards Danny with a ferocious look on her face that was altered into something satanic by that strange red glow. Danny shook his head, and there was something about the way that he did it that made Lilly stop in her tracks.

Suddenly it wasn’t rage on her face.

It was fear.