The Storm Read online

  It took longer than she thought to reach the windmill, the flat ground making it seem closer than it actually was. By the time they had crossed a small dyke the sun had shifted and there was a noise approaching from the horizon, a deep rumble that started like thunder but which turned out to be a helicopter. Rilke put her hand up to shield the blinding light of day, seeing the black speck hover over the town. It was like a vulture, circling over a corpse along with the gulls that were already crowding there, huge sweeping grey clouds of them searching for scraps. That’s all that was left over there, scraps of flesh, of bone, and come tomorrow even they would be gone. The helicopter banked, retreated, its sonic thumps fading until they were lost beneath the rapid beat of her heart.

  ‘It’s so quiet,’ said Marcus. ‘It’s like the world has been switched off.’

  Rilke nodded, then walked the last few yards to the windmill door. It was locked, but it was old, and after a couple of kicks it wobbled open. The stench of damp and rot wafted out at them, but at least they would be hidden. She let Jade and Marcus go first, carrying the new boy inside. Then she ushered Schiller through the door. She followed him into the stale darkness, peering once more out across the land towards the sea. The helicopter was gone, but something was watching them, she could feel its eyes dancing up and down her spine. She looked up into the flawless blue sky, chewing her lip. Then she pushed the little wooden door closed, turning to find herself in a small, circular room. The single window was boarded up badly, beams of amber-coloured light straining to reach the floor, revealing a sculpture of cogs and old lumber but very little else. Schiller had already crumpled against the wall, his head in his hands. Jade and Marcus laid the new kid down next to the machinery, rubbing their arms and shivering.

  ‘We rest here for an hour,’ said Rilke, impatience making her foot tap. She didn’t like it in here. She thought she would have felt safe, concealed, but it was the opposite of that, as though there was a great big flag flying from the top of the windmill, one that said ‘We’re in here, send a missile.’ And that’s what they would do, if they knew the truth. They’d send a plane, a dozen planes, and blow this whole field into oblivion. If Schiller was awake, and transformed, it would be fine. But if he was asleep, if he didn’t hear them coming, then it would all be over before it had really even begun. ‘An hour,’ she repeated when Schiller started to protest. ‘I’ll wake you.’

  The others settled down, but she stayed standing. She’d been awake all night too, and she knew that if her head so much as dropped against either of her shoulders then sleep would have her. She paced back and forth next to the door, watching as first Schiller went under, then Jade, and finally, a few minutes later, Marcus, curled up like a hedgehog beneath the window. Pathetic, all of them, so much work to do and they only cared about resting. If her angel was ready, if it had hatched, she’d force them to move on. Nobody would dare argue with her.

  Schiller twitched, muttering something in his sleep. Rilke cocked her head, trying to work out what he had said. He wasn’t usually one for sleep talking. She knew that from the countless nights he’d been too scared in his own room and come to sleep in her bed, or in the chair, or on her floor, wherever she let him curl up. Once he was asleep, he was usually out till morning. He said something again, and suddenly she began to wonder if he was sleeping at all, or if perhaps his mind was somewhere else. Hadn’t it happened before, back at Fursville? Daisy had talked about it, about how they could meet in their dreams. What if Schiller was with her now? What if they were talking?

  She moved towards him, ready to kick him awake. Then she hesitated. Wouldn’t it be better to find out? She wondered what she would see if she sat down and drifted off. Would Daisy be there? Brick and Cal too, trying to talk Schiller round. Or would she see the man in the storm? Would she finally hear what he wanted them to do?

  There were no sounds from outside, no whump of helicopter blades, no roar of planes and missiles. They would probably be okay here for a little while. She sat down next to her brother, checked to make sure no one was watching, then rested her head on his shoulder. It didn’t take sleep long to find her, sweeping across the field, pouring into the windmill, smothering her. She felt an instant of panic, like the moment a roller coaster stops at the top of the slope, the anticipation of falling – into what, though, and who will catch me? – then she dropped into darkness and silence.

  Daisy

  East Walsham, 11.09 a.m.

  There were more people here now, in her kingdom of ice. She could sense their arrival, like birds alighting on a branch, making it sway almost imperceptibly. The ice cubes clinked, bouncing off each other, each one still full of other people’s lives. The whole world swam with liquid movement, the constant burble and splash of a swimming pool.

  ‘Hello?’ she said. Was it the new kid, the one called Howie? He was still here, somewhere, lost in the maze of icy mirrors. She’d heard him calling out, shouting for his mum and his brother. ‘Say something, please, I know you’re there.’

  ‘Daisy?’ The voice came from right behind her and she spun around. The creature she saw there was so beautiful, and yet so terrifying, that she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It stood tall in robes of diamond-white flame, its wings curling overhead. It was so bright that she turned away, before realising that she wasn’t really staring at it, not with her eyes anyway. She looked back, seeing the creature’s face, recognising it.

  ‘Schiller?’ she said. It wasn’t his face, and yet it was. It shimmered in the light, like a reflection in a sun-drenched, wind-rippled pool. But there was no doubt it was him, because as soon as she said his name he broke into a huge, blinding smile. ‘It is you. How are you here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and even though he looked like his angel his voice was high and soft, so much like Rilke’s. ‘I’m asleep, I think.’

  Of course. It had happened before, not with Schiller but with Brick and Cal. On their first night in Hemmingway they had shared a dream. It didn’t seem like something that could actually happen, but then nothing that had happened was like something that could actually happen. Besides, if they all had angels inside them then why wouldn’t they be able to communicate like this? There had to be some kind of link between them now, one that didn’t bother with things like distance and time and space.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she said. ‘Tell me what it’s like, the angel.’

  Schiller shrugged, his wings lurching up then down. The action seemed so silly that she giggled. This was the first time she had heard his voice, she realised. The first time she had met him, really, because he had been frozen for so long. No, you heard his voice, remember, a part of her brain said. In Hemmingway, when he spoke and ended that place, a single word that smashed a hundred people into ash. You were unconscious, but you still heard it.

  ‘I didn’t mean to do that,’ he said, reading her thoughts. ‘But they were going to hurt us, hurt my sister. I didn’t know what else to do.’

  It’s okay, she thought. You didn’t have a choice.

  He shrugged again, but this time his mouth was turned so low that it looked drawn on, an upside-down smiley.

  ‘Have you spoken to it?’ Daisy asked.

  ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t really have words, just, I don’t know, like feelings. It tries to show me things, but I don’t always understand.’

  ‘Did it show you why it’s here?’

  ‘The man in the storm,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘That’s what I keep seeing.’

  Daisy nodded. She was the same. How many times had she been pulled towards that particular ice cube, the one filled with a furious darkness, the one where he lived? It loomed there even as she thought about it, cracking towards her with the sound of breaking glaciers. But she knew how to push it away now, and she did so gently, insistently.

  ‘Rilke says it’s because it’s telling us what to do, the man in the storm, it’s one of us. She thinks we have to follow its example, destro
y things.’

  He was shaking his head as he spoke, and Daisy could sense his reluctance.

  ‘Your sister is wrong,’ she said. ‘She’s made a mistake. A terrible one. We’re not here to join it, we’re here to fight it.’

  As if in response, she felt something moving in her chest. Well, it wasn’t so much her chest as something deeper, someplace she couldn’t quite identify. It was like a pressure there, as though her heart was about to burst, but in a good way, like waking up and remembering it’s Christmas Day. It was her angel. It was close to hatching.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Schiller, and there was something in his voice. Fear, maybe. ‘Rilke’s usually right about things. She’s clever like that. I’m not clever, I just do what she says.’

  ‘You are clever,’ she said. ‘Your sister’s a bully; you shouldn’t let her push you around.’

  The space around her grew cooler, as if the ice cubes were leaching heat from the air. Then somebody else spoke, a voice just as cold.

  ‘I knew it.’

  Daisy turned to see another figure. This one was definitely human, although that same blue fire burned where her heart should be. Rilke didn’t step so much as float towards them, her face so twisted by anger that she could have been a feral.

  ‘I knew I’d find you here, little brother.’

  ‘Rilke, we were only talking,’ said Daisy. Rilke swept down on them like a bird of prey, glaring at her. She wasn’t the girl that Daisy remembered; this was almost like a dream person, somebody that didn’t look quite themselves but who was definitely them. Of course, because she isn’t really here, and neither am I, I’m with Cal and Brick and Adam. That knowledge made her feel safer – surely Rilke couldn’t hurt her in this not-real place.

  ‘Don’t listen to her, Schill,’ said Rilke. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She hasn’t seen what we’ve seen.’

  She saw it now, in the ice, a wall of water that trembled across the land. For a moment she felt it too, that huge weight of darkness swallowing the sky, falling down on her, and she had to push herself out of the sensation before it made her scream.

  ‘Oh, Schiller, no,’ she said. ‘All those people. You didn’t have to hurt them, you didn’t have to do that.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Daisy,’ spat Rilke. ‘He did. Don’t you see it yet? Hasn’t it gotten into your stupid little head? You can protest all you like, but sooner or later you’ll be forced to see the truth. He called us, the man in the storm. He wants us to join him, he wants us to help him cleanse the world.’

  ‘No,’ Daisy said. ‘You’re wrong, Rilke. Please, why won’t you see that?’ She turned to Schiller, silently pleading for him to stand up to his sister. But even though he burned like a giant sentinel of molten glass, he could not look either of them in the eye. ‘Please.’ She felt so powerless, so small. Why couldn’t she be like Schiller right now, why couldn’t her angel do something to help her? If it had hatched, then Rilke would have to listen to her.

  ‘Don’t threaten me,’ said Rilke, even though Daisy didn’t realise she had. ‘You will change soon, but don’t even think about getting in my way. I won’t hesitate to kill you. Schiller won’t hesitate, isn’t that right.’

  It wasn’t a question, and after a moment of uncomfortable fidgeting Schiller nodded.

  ‘And it isn’t just him any more. We’ve got another one, ready to turn.’

  ‘Howie,’ said Daisy, remembering the voice she’d heard. Rilke’s expression flickered, unsure. She glanced around at the kaleidoscope of ice, as if she could see him there.

  ‘He’s ours,’ she hissed. ‘You hear me? And if you’re listening, Howie, then remember this – if I think you’re going to turn against me when you hatch, then I’ll just smash in your skull before you wake up. Understand?’

  How could she be so horrid? Daisy thought. And the answer was clear enough: she’s insane, she is totally and utterly crazy. It had started long before all this. Daisy had seen it inside the girl’s head, terrible things – a mad mum, and the bad man, the doctor, whose breath smelled of coffee, whose hands were rough. Poor, poor Rilke, it wasn’t her fault. It had scratched away at the foundations of her mind and the Fury had made it so much worse. Everything was crumbling now. Daisy could almost see it in the girl’s face, the way her features seemed to grow and shrink like some hideous painting warping in the cold. She was falling apart from the inside.

  ‘Leave her alone, Rilke,’ another voice, and this one so, so welcome. Daisy turned to see Cal there, or at least a shimmering dream shape that looked like him. Brick was close behind, and Adam too, floating amongst the constantly shifting sea of ice.

  ‘Oh and the hero returns,’ Rilke said. ‘As self-righteous and arrogant as ever. Go away, Cal, nobody wants you here.’

  ‘Yeah? I didn’t see your name on the door, Rilke,’ he replied. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want you to leave Schiller alone,’ she said. ‘Leave us all alone. Let us do what we’re here to do. I don’t care if you want to hide away in a church, wait out the end days cowering in each other’s arms. But you will not stand between us and our duty. Do you hear me? I mean it, Daisy, if I find out you’ve been talking to Schiller again – any of us again – I’ll finish you.’

  ‘But you’re wrong!’ Daisy shouted, and the movement of the ice grew more agitated, the giant cubes crashing against each other. ‘You’re wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong!’ As she spoke the pressure in her chest grew. She felt like a can of fizzy drink that had been shaken, one that was about to be opened.

  ‘Am I?’ Rilke seemed to chew on something, her dream face expanding, deflating, like a pair of lungs. ‘Then maybe it’s time we found out for sure.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Daisy asked. Rilke’s smile was loose and wet, a clown’s smile. She looked at Schiller, then behind her to three more figures that Daisy hadn’t even seen arrive. It was Jade and Marcus, and between them stood the new boy, Howie. They all had that same heatless fire blazing in their chests. Rilke turned back, her eyes small and black and full of something that Daisy didn’t understand, something utterly human and yet completely alien. For the first time Daisy realised that the angel inside Rilke was probably screaming the truth at her, trying to make her understand, in a language that none of them could ever hope to hear. She felt sorry for it, felt its frustration. If only there was a way for them to know once and for all why they were here, and why they had been chosen.

  ‘But there is,’ said Rilke, plucking her thoughts once again with icy fingers. ‘Don’t you see, we just have to go there.’

  Go where? Daisy wondered, and once more it came for her, the storm in the ice, crashing through the floe in a hail of splinters. She looked and saw the man there, the beast, wrapped in a spiralling cloak of debris, its mouth open, devouring everything it could, turning substance into absence. It rolled its dead eyes towards her as if it knew she was there, and in the thunder of its voice she heard laughter. She shoved it away with the fingers of her mind, silently screaming no no no no no.

  ‘Yes, Daisy. It’s the only way for you to learn.’ Rilke’s smile grew even wider, until it seemed too big even for her head. She began to retreat, pulling her burning brother along with her. ‘When we wake we go there, to the man in the storm, and we ask him.’

  Rilke

  Great Yarmouth, 11.43 a.m.

  They woke as one, Rilke swimming up from sleep in time to see Schiller’s watery eyes open, Jade groan and sit up, Marcus hunch against the wall as if he knew what was coming. Rilke wiped a hand across her dry lips, thinking about the dream she had just shared.

  Daisy was becoming a problem. She just refused to acknowledge the reality of the situation. Rilke was so disappointed, but it wasn’t the little girl's fault. It was the others, Cal and Brick. Boys, she thought, so weak, so convinced of their own authority. She should have killed them back in Hemmingway, should have turned Schiller on them, or just done it herself the way she’d done with the girl in the base
ment. How easy it had been, to take a life, how without consequence. Squeeze, bang, dead, squeeze bang dead, and then maybe Daisy would have listened to her, maybe she’d be here right now.

  There would be time for that, though. As soon as her angel woke she would find Cal and Brick and she would put them out of their misery. This would all be so much easier without them. Unless they wake first, she thought, shivering, suddenly uncomfortable in her own skin. How she longed to slough it all off, the flesh and the bone and the gristle and the stink of human, to be a pure thing of fire.

  Please, she said to the thing in her heart. Please don’t take too long. I need you.

  The words made her feel unbearably weak, and she stood to make her blush less obvious. She wasn’t sure how long she had slept for – too long – but they needed to get moving. What she had said in the dream-that-wasn’t-really-a-dream was true. There was only one way they would know for sure what the truth was. They had to find the man in the storm and listen to what he had to say. The thought was like a fist clenched tight in her stomach, but fear was just another reminder of her weakness, her despicable humanity, so she ignored it. She had seen the man in the storm, in her mind, she had seen how similar he was to Schiller, to what was inside them all. He was one of them, an angel, tasked with culling this pathetic species and herding what was left back into the stable. There simply was no other explanation.

  But how to get to him?

  ‘I’m still tired, Rilke,’ said Schiller in that infuriating puppy whine of his. He pushed himself up with his elbows, everything about him loose and soft and disgusting. ‘We hardly got any sleep at all.’

  ‘Shut up, Schiller,’ she said. ‘All you ever do is moan and sleep. Get up.’