She roared so loudly that some of the kids were now starting to turn their camera phones on her.
And for a short, scary second as he looked back at Jo and the kids filming her, Matt was a full and unadulterated believer. Not in ghosts or demons, not in God, or the Devil. But in something more abstract and terrifying, something horribly mundane. That maybe evil – actual objective, personified evil – really did exist, after all. But that it didn’t hang out in hell. It preferred to stroll the parks and streets of places like Menham, slipping through the screaming air and climbing inside people and houses and dogs and psychologies, looking through their eyes and seeking out whatever there was to devalue and devour.
He coughed harder again, only this time he threw up. He wiped his mouth and looked up at the moon, shaking.
And Rachel screamed on.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Chaos.
That was the word. It was utter chaos as the fire crew pushed through the mushrooming crowd, no doubt summoned by eager text messages and status updates of those first witnesses.
Watching a woman burn to death. Lol!
The police were here now, barking at people to stay back. But he spotted plenty of them crane their own heads so they could look at the monster on the grass. The thing that had what looked like a small farmer’s apple sack tied to its head. Tied tight with metal wire. Matt was sitting on the back step of an ambulance with the rear doors wide open, legs dangling off the edge like Huck Finn fishing in a pond. In the flashing emergency lights, he could see the parkland grass churned up with tyre marks.
‘Breathe,’ the paramedic said. ‘Breathe.’
He closed his eyes and let out some air as they pressed the oxygen mask close to his face. Someone was wrapping his wrist in a bandage.
The paramedic spoke again. ‘I said, are you feeling okay?’
‘I told you, I’m fine. Now let me talk to the woman.’
‘Are you a relation?’
‘Yes.’
The paramedic thrust a bottle as the bandage was finished. ‘Okay. You’re fine to go but, drink this first.’
He sloshed the water down and it felt exquisite. Then he twisted around to see Rachel, lying on the stretcher in the back. Her face was covered in another oxygen mask.
The paramedic nodded at him. ‘Be quick.’
He pushed himself up and knelt next to her. Her eyes were shut and he hoped she was asleep, dreaming of something distant and unreal and complet—
Her hand shot out from the blanket.
He jumped as she grabbed his arm. Her eyelids flicked open, and she stared at him with red eyes, raw from tears.
‘Rachel, it’s me, Matt.’
She groaned.
‘You’re going to be okay. They’re taking you to hospital—’
She started to speak, her voice muffled under the mask. She reached up quickly and pulled it to the side of her face.
‘Better keep that—’
‘My mum.’ Her voice sounded like it had gravel in it. ‘Is she okay?’
‘I guess she’s still back at your house.’
‘Check. Go to my …’ she coughed hard, ‘house and check if she’s okay.’
‘I will.’
She squeezed his wrist, harder than ever. ‘And get my recorder. Bring it to me.’
‘Okay …’
‘Hey,’ the paramedic called out from behind him. ‘Get that mask back on her.’
She rasped out some words. ‘Did you see it?’
‘See what?’
A bundle of sound from behind him, ‘I said get it on her.’
‘The rabbit?’
He shook his head. ‘Did you see it?’
She started to laugh, madly, nodding as the paramedic barged past Matt and leant over.
‘Where?’
‘Up on the hill,’ she said, as the mask started to slide back into place. ‘Watching it all. It was up there looking and dancing on the hill.’
Her voice warped into muffled sobs and laughter, while the paramedic grabbed Matt’s forearm. ‘She’s in shock, now give her some space.’
He did. He crawled out of the van and stood on the grass as the doors slammed shut. Then he wheezed out a breath and scanned the park for the only hill he could find. There was one on the other side of the lake.
‘Hey,’ he called to a policeman, still coughing. ‘Whoever did this was spotted up on the hill.’
A few officers hurried over and they all trotted toward the lake.
But with the remnants of his energy he climbed the hill to find nothing but grass and white flowers, whose petals throbbed with colour from the emergency lights. The police shrugged, and looked around, and their faces grew hard and less accommodating when Matt hit the ground and felt inside a hole in the soil saying, ‘It’s a warren.’
Only it wasn’t even that. It was a recess for some sort of sprinkler.
The rabbit hunt might have been funny in some parallel universe. But in this one, Matt just pulled his arm back, fingers caked with soil, dumbstruck by the last two hours of his life. He sat on the grass, head pounding and looked across at the lights. Through the trees at the very far edge, he could make out the strange hole of light that was Holly’s window, and in it stood a small figure, which must have been Mary. Yes. Of course it was. It was Mary Wasson at the window, on her knees for some reason. Not Holly on her feet staring out and admiring her view. ’Course not. ’Course not.
‘Are you okay?’ an officer said. ‘You know we’ll need a statement.’
He had no words to reply with because the bubbling hellfire flesh of Jo Finch was still in his nostrils, making his brain pulse and contract. A soiled breeze swept up the hill, fast and full of death. He
