contradictory about details. The Grove shooting was probably the single most disruptive event in Bulverton since the upheavals of World War 11, but the crucial moment within it was misremembered by those who witnessed it.
From the point of view of Ken Mitchell and his colleagues, any attempt to recreate the events of Grove's day
had to take account of that visit. Mitchell had said as much. Had Grove already intersected two realities on the day of his massacre? Had he entered Extreme Experience?
Would that explain the mystery of the guns found stashed in the back of his stolen car? lt was known what guns Grove possessed, and that he had taken both of them with him on the day.
None was found afterwards at the house. Two were found in the car, two were the ones he used. They intersected: they seemed to be the same ones.
Most of the official reports and media coverage dwelt on the guns Grove had carried and used that day. Some others referred to the guns later found in his stolen car. But none drew these two elements together. There was apparent vagueness, a blurring, a resistance to the idea that there might be conflict between the two sets of objectively checkable facts.
Nodding off on the almost deserted train, in spite of the draughty carriage and the uncomfortable swaying, Teresa felt that the problem, and also any potential solution to it, was constantly slipping from her grasp. She understood so little.
The train stopped for a long time at Robertsbnidge station. There was no explanation from the guard, or anyone else. The cold night enveloped the train. Two railway workers walked slowly along the platform carrying torches which they pointed approximately at the wheels.
There was a conversation up ahead, presumably with the driver. Teresa could hear the voices, but not what they were saying. Train doors slammed. A generator started up beneath the carriage floor. Teresa huddled lower in her seat, dreading an announcement that the train had broken down or was being taken out of service. lt was already after 1.00 a.m., and she was desperate to get to her bed. The day had been too long already. Finally, to her great relief, the train continued on its way.
She could not stop thinking about Grove, especially since she herself had ventured into the scenario of the day of the shooting.
1
to forget what had been like to enter
it was mpossi
1
his mind. His thoughts, which had come at her like the hot, unwanted breath of an intrusive stranger, had felt as if they were too close to her face. How do you recoil from someone inside whose head you are lurking? lt had been a
descent, if not into the evil that many people said had possessed Grove, then into a profoundly unhappy and deficient mind, one tangled up with petty fears and motives and
revenges. He was clearly sane, but also sick: Grove was
mean, dangerous, unreasonable, socially inadequate, vio-
lently disposed, unpredictable, riddled with hatred, unloved by anyone around him, unloving to anyone he knew.
His mind was so blankly unprotected, so obsessed with ferocious irrelevance, that any intrusion would affect it. She could have caused reactional crossover within that scenario, simply by entering it and residing briefly within his mind.
When Mitchell had talked to her in the corridor outside her room he spoke as if she had already caused the crossover. In reality she couldn't possibly have done so.
'In reality,
The phrase kept recurring. But reality was an assumption that was no longer viable.
Teresa already knew that some realities were contiguous, she had sensed that others could intersect, and now she was beginning to believe that Gerry Grove must have caused an intersection, a crossover.
Today, in the aftermath of Grove, in which of these realities were they anyway living? The one in which Grove had left his guns in the back of the stolen car, or the one in which he went back to the car, collected the guns, and took then, to the town centre?
The answer was both, hinted at in the blurring of memory The crossover Mitchell was concerned with had already occurred. But had Grove caused it, or had she?
In her tiredness her thoughts were circling on themselves. It was too late in the day to try to think about a slippery subject like this. She kept recoiling from the consequences of her own thoughts.
At long last, twentyfive minutes after the scheduled time, the train drew into Bulverton.
Teresa wearily left her seat, the only passenger to alight, alone on the dimly lit concourse, with no staff in the station. She walked back to the hotel as quickly as she could, her mind focused on one simple intent: getting to bed as soon as possible.
She crept into the hotel, using the master key Amy had lent her a few days earlier, and walked quietly through the darkened building. The stairs creaked as she climbed them.
When she reached her bedroom and closed the door, she did so with a feeling of errant lateness she had not had since her teenage years.
CHAPTER 31
