HUSH Read online

  And he was heading there now, unless he was very careful.

  He sidestepped into a shop doorway, glancing back through the converging panes of glass which threw the street’s image into a geometrical nightmare. He waited there for several minutes, ignoring the suspicious stare of the shopkeeper. In all that time he caught not a hint of pursuit.

  Surely they wouldn’t have given in that easily, though? He’d had a twenty-second head start, little more. What had they done to the landlady?

  The thought was sudden, unbidden, chilling. Guilt mixed in with other emotions and coursed through his veins like acid. He closed his eyes and bit his tongue to try to recover. Eventually, he felt calm enough to carry on.

  He stepped once more into the throng. He looked down at the pavement as much as possible, trying not to catch anyone’s eye.

  Suddenly there was a shout behind him, loud and commanding. He spun around, fists clenching even though the voice had come from a distance. Heads turned in his direction, eyes bored into him. He readied himself for whatever attack was to come. Something was dashing at him, something dark, accompanied by the rhythmic clatter of claws on concrete.

  The crowd parted. The shape lunged.

  “Cujo! Here!” The voice contained a hint of desperation. Certainly not the voice of pursuit.

  The dog almost knocked him over. Its slavering jaws left a splash of froth on his trousers as it passed him by, accelerating through the gap formed for it, dodging the legs of those too slow to step aside.

  Jacob breathed a sigh of relief and leaned against the front wall of a shop. Seconds later a little man ran by, the few fat strands of hair on his head flapping like worms as he chased after his escaping hound.

  Jacob saw the train station signposted across the street. He could not see the distance but the direction was clear, so he continued on his way. Home was where he needed to be right now, comfortably cynical in his flat. He could ring the others from the station, see if he had any better luck than he’d had with Janey. The worry that they wouldn’t be where they should be either ate at him. He tried to throw a blanket over his fears.

  “None of this is happening. It’s all okay... It’s all okay...,” he muttered to himself as he walked, under his breath, in time with his quickening stride.

  He reached the station twenty minutes later. He was fairly certain that he was not being followed--twice he had ducked into shops and waited for black-suited figures to catch up, but both times proved to be false alarms. Still, there was the continual prickly feeling that he was being watched, and he couldn’t shake the fear that easily.

  The main flow of people was coming out of the station, ready for the day’s work in town. Jacob stood to one side for a while just watching faces, expecting at any moment to see a pair of dark sunglasses or a scarred female face. He wondered where she was now, back at the lab or off somewhere in pursuit of him? Was she looking at him right now? Running her cruel fingers across the matt-black of surveillance photos, staring into his absent eyes?

  He shivered, forcing his way back into the crowd. He received a couple of disgruntled “tuts” as he shouldered his way through the exit doors, but ignored them. These people lived in a different world, now. A safe world, a cocoon. He was headed somewhere else entirely.

  There was a bank of telephones against the far wall. Exposed, but they would have to do. Dogstar Bob was staying in a B&B called Wenderview House. Directory enquiries once more furnished him with the number, and Jacob rang directly. There was a tight knot of expectation in his stomach, twisting his guts into painful contortions. As he listened to the dialling tone he doodled random, twirly shapes in the dust on the perspex shell over his head.

  “Hello, Wenderview House.” More hopeful.

  “Hello, yes, I wonder if you could help me?”

  “That’s what we’re here for, mate.” Sounded friendly.

  “Good. I wonder if you have a guy staying there with you, name of Dog--er, Bob Hale?”

  “Hale? Hale, Hale, Hale.” Jacob imagined a finger running down a neat register. The knot in his stomach began to unwind slightly. He wasn’t worried about what he’d say this time, he just wanted to hear Bob. He was desperate to hear a friendly voice.

  “Dogstar Bob, you say?”

  “Uh? Yeesss,” Jacob answered hesitantly, trying to remember what he had said.

  “Nope! No one here by the name of Dogstar Bob, I’m afraid,” the voice said, jauntily. “’Fraid not.”

  “But he’s staying there!” Jacob said, already realising the futility of his words.

  “No, he isn’t. Now--” But the voice was cut off. In the distance, through the crackle of interference, Jacob heard another voice, faint but strong. A woman’s voice...

  “Fade,” it said. And the line was cut off.

  Panic rising Jacob went through the motions one more time. He found out the number of the lodgings where Liam and Trev were staying. He dialled. The phone was picked up. He spoke. No answer. He sensed someone there-- heard a faint whisper of movement, an almost undetectable breath. He spoke one more time, expecting no reply. He wasn’t disappointed. He tried Sondra too, but much the same thing happened: the receiver was picked up but no one spoke, and Jacob had the overpowering sense of being listened to.

  He slammed the phone down into its cradle with incredible force, willing it to break. It did not, and he was glad of it. The last thing he wanted now was to draw attention to himself.

  He bought a train ticket, and spent the next hour sitting in a toilet cubicle, jumping every time someone came in, holding his breath until they’d left. When he heard his train announced he took a deep breath and opened the door. There was a man washing his hands; Jacob hadn’t even known he was there. The man’s eyes flickered over him in the mirror, then back down to his hands. Jacob left the toilet, starting violently when the door crashed shut behind him. Sink man stood with his back to him, drying his hands. The hand drier sounded like a jet engine taking off.

  Jacob scuttled through the ticket lounge with his head lowered, feeling eyes upon him every step of the way. There was a woman reading a magazine in one of the scooped plastic seats. It was Guns & Ammo. She seemed to be turning the pages with unnatural haste.

  By the time Jacob boarded his train he was sweating heavily, his roiling stomach grumbling with fear. As they trundled laboriously out of the station Jacob tried to peer back into the foyer. He thought he could still see the magazine woman sitting there, but he wasn’t sure. He was not sure of anything anymore.

  Morris. Janey, Sondra, Bob, Trev, Liam.

  He needed Maria now, more than he had ever needed her while she was his lover. He had gained a clearer understanding now of why she had left, but even that seemed unimportant. She’d have to listen after what he’d been through.

  The train sailed into countryside and rolling fields. Constant greenery and the occasional glimpses of scattered farmsteads calmed him, yet he spent the entire journey standing in a compartment between carriages. He tried to convince himself that he was not entertaining the thought of jumping should he be approached by someone suspicious--someone with dark glasses, for instance--but one hand was always resting on the window, ready to reach over and flip the latch.

  He heard laughter from one of the carriages. He set his face to it, for it was a sound he was sure he would never make again.

  He had moved one step down from reality.

  6. Breath Takes Breathing

  The air is alive.

  Everything here is alive. Every tiny component piece of this place is hideously, swarmingly living. He looks down at his feet and sees the evidence there, in the ground that at first he thought was wet ash; scribbles of motion play across its glistening surface... crawling tides... insectile migrations.

  Instinctively he tries to take a step, but it comes out all wrong, as if something unseen had kicked his ankle sharply to one side. He almost falls, staggers, rights himself, then fights the urge to scream. The feeling of being touched all over, all the time, threatens to drown his sanity. Dizziness spins inside his head. He gulps for breath...

  But he only opens his mouth.

  He gulps again. Mouth opens. Nothing.

  He gasps, or tries to.

  Gulps, gasps. Nothing.

  A memory of saner times reminds him that this is all part of the plan. He thinks of the dropped tube, the luminous matter gushing out. His bodily functions are stalled -- chest still, lungs empty, blood stagnant -- but without any apparent loss of mobility. He is just one single surviving point of light, somewhere up inside himself, a bright pinprick of consciousness huddled away from the madness.

  A milling cloud of mitelike things envelops him. The first mouthful of the swarm is understandably the worst -- he gags and spits -- but after that they still persist, flooding into his throat, exploring his every passage. This, he knows, is exactly why such drastic measures have been taken, why he is not even breathing. None of their team could face this otherwise. An artificial death is much preferable to a real one.

  Around him his companions try to cope in their own desperate ways. He decides to walk, to orient himself if he can, and get used to this place where even gravity plays tricks with perception.

  He senses no open air, no space between him and any other object, just density. It is like being submerged in some oozing, viscous medium, heavier than water, but not quite as thick as gelatine. Walking is nigh on impossible, like struggling through a sea of molten fudge, but after a while he finds that by hauling his arms back and forth -- hands cupped like paddles -- he can generate a rudimentary form of locomotion.

  There is no direct light source here, just a general indirect glow. However, in spite of this, some curious trick of refraction enables him to see far into the d
istance. Though seeing and understanding are not the same thing. Not the same thing at all. He forces himself to gaze up, gaze out-- and sees...

  Boundless glossy black plains. Chitinous causeways. Moist constructions of glassy resin. Vast sprouting bulks, like mountains of leprous iron filings. Tiers of anthracite-coloured bone-stuff, flecked by bright silver. The whole sky seethes; a gaping maw infested by an infinite tide of squirming black maggots. And while the sky writhes, the earth breathes, literally, flaunting its terrible reluctance to settle, or remain in any one fixed state for more than a heartbeat. It is forever spilling and churning, collapsing and rearranging, endlessly animate.

  Spider armies made from tar march, merge and march again. Locust volcanoes spout eruptions of black vomit, which transform into avalanches of rotting termites, which turn into slithering rivers of cockroaches that aren’t actually cockroaches, which then evaporate.

  The place reeks something like the sea: briny, pungent, but with other conflicting odours thrown in, as well: rubber, mint, formaldehyde. And the silence. That is the most eerie thing of all. No sound. Even if he wanted to, even if his body allowed him to, he could not scream. None of the noises he is familiar with could be transmitted through this lazy stuff. Not even the blood music of the inner ear can soothe him here.

  The group quail. One or two fall-- or drift to their knees.

  Then, as if on cue, the real reason why their hearts are held silent suddenly brushes against them...

  One quality of this air that is not quite air is that it conducts rumours of motion in the exact same way an ocean might: ripples of a far-off disturbance wash up against their bodies, while nearer tremors of displacement stir gently against their skin like faint tides. Or -- as in this case -- an immense wake which knocks them in every direction as something the size of a cruise liner plunges by-- an invisible colossus which leaves them tumbling like corks in its terrible riptide.

  They freeze as best they can. Their hearts are quiet and lungs empty, but who knows whether this will be sufficient to shield them from the attentions of the vast denizens of this world? A long time passes, but only the subtlest of vibrations carries back. They have escaped detection... For the moment.

  He sees the fingertips of his nearest companion flick together, describing some elaborate pattern in the air. The man nods at the horizon, which is dominated by an inverted cone hundreds of metres high; it resembles a Cornetto, but one formed of igneous rock and filthy gum. It revolves majestically, and he imagines that if there was noise here, they would be able to hear the screech of protesting rock for miles around. About its jagged crown even darker shadows flare, exhale and scatter away like chasms in the sky.

  “The Citadel,” the man signs at him.

  “Quickly,” he signs back, then points meaningfully at his chest, his throat.

  They make to move in the direction of the Citadel, when -- abruptly -- disasters strikes.

  One of their team goes berserk.

  A tall, wild-eyed man on the edge of the group suddenly begins to thrash. His whole body convulses, throwing out distorted bow-waves in every direction, dwarfing the minimal currents caused by their earlier movements.

  Without pause the woman directly behind him draws her combat knife and thrusts the blade into the back of his neck.

  Time stretches, blood corkscrews through the sludge, and though the man’s panic dies with him, something has changed.

  They all go stiff in unison. Tighten in horror as they sense a mighty swell coming their way. Something huge and dark and endlessly flowing is headed directly for them...

  **

  “you go, mate.”

  Jacob clutched at the seat and glanced around in panic, eyes wide, heart jumping. He was alone in the back of a taxi, but then he should have known that...

  “There you go, mate. Akeley Street,” repeated the driver. Jacob’s neck ached terribly from the awkward angle at which he’d succumbed to exhaustion, but he quickly paid the fare and dived out into the dying afternoon.

  **

  At first Maria wouldn’t even let him into the flat, so he was forced to tell her there on the doorstep.

  “Morris is dead,” he confessed numbly, staring at the floor.

  She let him in.

  Luckily, today was a “work-at-home” day for Maria. A “pyjama day”, as she liked to call it. Not that she ever wore pyjamas. A T-shirt generally, or in the summer, nothing. Thinking of her naked scattered Jacob’s thoughts in every direction as if they were marbles spilled from a box--

  -- Maria stretching exquisitely on the sheets in the morning, the arch of her back lifting her breasts slightly off the delicate bow of her ribcage; the lean tan line of her thigh as she stepped from the bath--

  They were intimacies he could no longer treasure, though his throat still tightened with desire. He closed his eyes, shook his head and followed her through to the living room.

  Maria was wearing an olive terry-towelling robe scrunched closed with a fist at the front. A Little Miss Bossy T-shirt under that, extra large, down to the knees, and damp hair, tied back in a lopsided ponytail to keep it off her face. No make-up. Truth is, she didn’t need it. The absence made her look very young, though, even with the slimline specs she wore for reading.

  She regarded him with one hand steepled over her face, index finger pressing against the bridge of the glasses, thumb-tip in mouth, chewing on the nail. She snatched off the glasses and angrily flipped them closed. Rubbed her eyes. Blinked at him.

  “Fuck,” she said, then sighed. Without the glasses she squinted a little, her vision readjusting after a long day spent in front of the VDU. Jacob stepped towards her. She leapt back as if scalded.

  “Don’t. You can’t be near me. Sit. Sit over there,” she stabbed fiercely at the sofa. “Let me think.”

  It was obvious to Jacob that she had already consolidated the break-up in her mind -- shored up the sandbags of her emotions -- and his unexpected reappearance was a sore test of her defences. He felt obscurely moved by this recognition, and then angry at himself that he couldn’t even begin to let go, that he begrudged her happiness so much.

  He did as she asked. After a pause, she lowered herself into the wicker chair by the television, scowling and rearranging its fat hillock of cushions to get more comfortable, using the delay, Jacob knew, to work out an angle on this scene.

  A sudden, vivid insight into her emotions flared out inside him: he understood how distressed she was that her hard-won composure was being compromised; he saw her resentment at the realisation that perhaps she still loved him, and how that was making her weak; he perceived her dismay and crumbling confidence over her inability to deal with him as she might one of her patients. And he felt her rage that he had returned at all.

  And somewhere in there too, he hoped, she felt sadness and shock at the news about Morris.

  “So,” she said, her voice flint-edged.

  So Jacob told her his story. Everything, from start to finish, in every particular, with each minor detail dug out, polished, and held up to the light for her inspection. He related it all in the same low, dead voice, like clockwork winding down.

  To her credit, Maria didn’t gasp or shake her head in disbelief or say “None of this makes any sense” or “I just can’t believe it”. When he’d finished his story, however, she did fix him with a steady gaze and said: “You absolutely and completely have to go to the police, Jacob. Straight away. And there isn’t a single argument in the world you can use to change that fact, so deal with it.”

  “But Morris is dead,” he whispered, holding on to the idea as if it were a cliff face; hanging on might be scary, but to fall would be worse.