Hungry Moon (22 page)

^{Jeremy and Geraldine didn't leave tomorrow unless it was safe. She ran from streetlamp to streetlamp, faster when she came in sight of the bookshop. She hammered on the door, but it was no use. Through a newly broken window she could see that the shop was unlit, deserted. The van had gone already, and so had the Booths.}

^{THIRTY FIVE}

^{Geraldine had been sitting on a carton of books, leafing through a picture book on sunlit Wales and feeling as if she hadn't seen the sun for weeks, when the stone smashed the window. By the time she'd dragged the doors open, the street was deserted. Whoever had thrown the missile could have dodged into a house or be hiding nearby in the dark.}

^{She went back to Jeremy, who was reading the note that had been wrapped around the stone. 'Don't you worry,' he was muttering. 'But it won't be because you want it, you bastards.'}

^{Geraldine put one arm around his shoulders and read the childish handwriting. DONT STAY WHERE YOUR NOT WANTED, the message said. 'I don't want to wait until tomorrow,' Jeremy said.}

^{'Suppose they don't stop at throwing stones? Suppose they set fire to the shop?'}

^{'Let them, if that's how small their minds are. The shop and the stock are insured, anyway. Bastards!' he shouted without warning, and lurched toward the door, then halted. 'They wouldn't let us see their faces? So much for the openness Mann's supposed to have brought to Moonwell. So much for their so-called faith.'}

^{'Never mind, Jeremy. I agree with you, we might as well leave now.' Surely the gravestone had meant simply that Jonathan wanted to be near them, and she didn't like to think of his being anywhere in this dark that made her feel she was asleep and about to start a nightmare. The sooner they were out the better, for Jeremy's sake too. 'We'd better tell Diana we're going today.'}

^{'We can tell her on the way.'}

^{They went through the shop and their rooms to check sockets and locks, and Geraldine was saddened to realize how little she regretted leaving. Jeremy went to the van, while she locked up. 'We won't stop to talk,' he said as he drove to Diana's.}

^{Diana wasn't there. Perhaps she was up by the church, where quite a few people were heading. Whatever noise had drawn them had been blotted out by the sounds of the van. 'Anyway, she's got the key,' Jeremy said, and swung the van round, back toward the bookshop and the road beyond.}

^{The lights of Moonwell shrank into a huddle as the road swooped up into the dark. It wasn't like driving at night, and not only because she knew it was still afternoon. The dark seemed thicker than night, and somehow closer - like being slowly frozen in black ice, she thought. When the headlights reached the top of the slope, the dark seemed to collapse toward them from all sides, from the horizon. But the van was speeding onward, down toward the woods.}

^{Two oaks reached across the road, their branches tangled so inextricably that it looked as if they'd grown together. The van sped under the tangled arch, and at once the dark seemed even closer, trapped under the trees. Jeremy leaned over the steering wheel. "The sooner we're out of here the better,' he growled, and she wished he wouldn't say what she was trying not to think.}

^{She glanced back as the van reached the first curve of the forest road. Compared with the dark in here the sky looked lighter, almost grey. The next moment it was gone, and ahead was only the cramped patch of lit road, trees seeming to step forward on cue as the edges of the headlight beams touched them. When the road dipped, it felt as if the dark were dragging the van down. 'Well, we're on our way,' she said, to cheer them up.}

^{The road curved, curved again. The trees leaned closer, linking branches overhead, then fell back for a lay-by. As far as Geraldine recalled, it was the only one on the forest road. It would be harder to turn the van now, though why should they want to? Each curve took them closer to the main road, and surely that meant out of the dark. Once they were out, they would laugh at their fears, laugh so much they might have to stop the van.}

^{Jeremy had rolled his window down, despite the chill, and was listening for traffic ahead. Geraldine wished the forest wasn't quite so still; she couldn't recall when she'd last heard birdsong. It must be the stillness that was making her glimpse movements, not only the trees stepping forward into the light and falling back into the dark but movements behind the trees, as if the light were drawing creatures to it. The dark was working on her, she told herself; her yearning to see was making her think she saw. There could hardly be something behind every tree, peering out as the van passed like those faces in picture puzzles she'd never cared for as a child, drawings of forests where you had to find hidden faces. There couldn't be so many creatures in the woods, and certainly not just a few that could dodge from tree to tree as fast as the van was moving. They must be bushes or undergrowth, of course, and the headlights were making them look paler than they should.}

^{Jeremy was peering ahead as if he didn't want to glance aside. 'What the fuck is this?' he muttered. He meant the dark, Geraldine told herself, not the things she wasn't really seeing, shapes scuttling from tree to tree, their heads that looked dismayingly blank emerging from concealment far too high on the tree trunks. She would have told him she didn't mind if he drove faster, except that then he might realize she was nervous too, and each one's nervousness would feed the other's. Best to keep quiet, remembering that they were closer to the main road every moment, surely almost there now. 'Is that the main road?' she blurted.}

^{'Where?' Jeremy craned himself over the wheel so eagerly that the van swerved, and she wished she hadn't spoken: it couldn't be the main road ahead, for what she thought she'd glimpsed, a large shape moving across the forest road just beyond the curve, hadn't carried any lights. It must have been a tree that had appeared to move because the van was moving. The van swung round the curve, and both she and Jeremy cowered back in their seats, gasping, as the headlights lit up what was standing in the middle of the road, thrusting forward its white eyeless face that bore a gaping smile, its outstretched arms touching the trees on both sides of the road.}

^{'Fucker!' Jeremy screamed, and drove straight at it as though that would make it disappear, its long, oval body the colour of a dead fish, its penis dangling like a withered umbilical cord down one fleshless leg. It only smiled more widely, a smile that seemed totally devoid of emotion on the flat, shiny, featureless face, and let go of the trees, ready to reach for the van with its huge splayed hands. At the last moment Jeremy cried out with loathing and despair and swung the van toward the edge of the road, slewed it round, tires screeching, back toward Moonwell.}

^{He almost made the turn. He would have if he'd slowed even slightly. Geraldine thought of treading on the brake herself, too late. The van bumped off the road, swaying violently, throwing Jeremy against her, their heads cracking together. He was still clutching the wheel, but his feet had been dislodged from the pedals. 'The brake, where's the brake,' he moaned as the van ploughed through the undergrowth between two trees. The van was still speeding when it crashed headlong into an oak.}

^{All the lights went out, the dashboard as well as the headlights. Geraldine was hurled forward against her seat belt in the dark. The belt almost dislocated her shoulder before jerking her back against the padded seat. She slumped there, stunned almost beyond being terrified, listening to the stillness through the inflated jagged drumming of her heart. Somewhere in the engine, cooling metal ticked. Or did the sound mean that the engine was getting ready to explode? 'Jeremy,' she whispered in a voice that seemed stuck in her throat, 'are you all right? Are you there?'}

^{Silence. She reached for him, afraid to find he wasn't moving, afraid he would be wet with blood. She touched his leg and felt it flinch, heard him moan. A moment later his hand groped for hers. 'It's happened,' he said in despair. 'Something must have happened at the missile base. That's what all this is.'}

^{'We have to get out, Jeremy. Can you walk?'}

^{'Walk where? What's the point? Didn't you see that thing on the road? A nuclear mutation, that's what it was. Radiation must be affecting us right now.'}

^{She didn't know if he was correct, and hadn't time to wonder: the thing on the road might be coming for them now, its long, pale fingers groping through the trees for them, its featureless head nodding forward. Wouldn't it be preferable to die in the fire if the petrol exploded rather than fall into those hands? But if they fled now, they might still have a chance. 'Come on,' she whispered, 'before it explodes.'}

^{'It already has, don't you understand?' But she heard him struggling to open the door on his side of the van, which was higher off the ground now than hers. It creaked and then slid open squealing, and she wanted to tell him to hurry, not to let go of her hand, in case the smiling eyeless thing was making for the sounds. He let go of her hand in order to haul himself out of the van, and she heard him climb painfully down onto the grass. 'Take my hand,' he said shakily, urgently.}

^{She grasped it and climbed blindly down onto yielding earth. She was trying frantically to judge how much the van had swerved among the trees. The road was behind her, she thought, the road and whatever was there. 'This way,' she hissed and stumbled forward, her free hand outstretched, until her fingers bruised themselves against a tree trunk.}

^{It was wider than her arms could reach. She pulled Jeremy round it until she thought she'd placed it between them and the van, then she slumped against it, slid down with Jeremy until they were sitting among the roots. The crusty bark scraped her shoulders on the way down, but its solidity felt reassuring, as familiar as anything could be in this dark. She held her breath and waited for the van to explode.}

^{She was breathing faster than she liked by the time it became clear that the van wasn't going to. The silence was no relief. She'd known woods to be still, but never like this: not the creak of a branch or the whisper of a leaf - no sign of life, except for the thing she'd seen on the road. Though it must be at home in the dark, wouldn't it have to make some noise, however slight, if it were creeping toward them? She squeezed Jeremy's limp hand. "The van isn't going to blow up,' she whispered. 'Maybe we can fix it if the damage isn't too bad. There's a flashlight in there somewhere.'}

^{She ought to have grabbed it before they'd left the van. She couldn't see Jeremy, couldn't see the trees, couldn't even see any part of herself. Pale blurs swarmed on her eyes from the strain of trying to see, and every one of them made her think it was the smiling faceless shape, the long hands reaching for her. Even if they couldn't fix the van, the flashlight would keep back the dark and help them get back to the road. Perhaps they could try for the main road, even though she couldn't hear it; surely it was closer than Moonwell. 'Come on, Jeremy,' she whispered, pulling at him.}

^{He stood up reluctantly, his hand tightening on hers. She sensed that he was staring at the dark. She wondered what he thought he was seeing, how the images his eyes manufactured looked to him. She could tell he was close to panic, even closer than she was. 'This way,' she murmured, guiding him while she knew which way to go.}

^{She had a moment of panic when she let go of the tree. No need to hurry, the van should be almost directly ahead, give or take a few feet on either side; she was sure that they'd fled almost straight from the van to the tree. She strained her ears in case the engine was still ticking, and her senses intensified: there was something large just ahead of her that she was about to touch - the van, she told herself fiercely, not something that would reach for her. It was neither. It was a tree.}

^{'What's wrong?' Jeremy demanded, feeling her recoil from bruising her fingertips on the rough trunk.}

^{'It's all right, nothing.' She willed him to keep his voice down, told herself that they must have passed the tree without her noticing on the way to taking refuge. She guided him past, over the fleshy ground that swallowed their footsteps. Not far now, it couldn't be, and almost at once a shape loomed on whatever sense she was using instead of sight. Before she could find it, Jeremy jerked back. 'Jesus, what's that?' he nearly screamed. 'What did I touch?'}

^{She made herself reach in front of him, her fingers tingling with readiness to flinch. It was another tree trunk. 'Just a tree,' she murmured.}

^{'Not just a tree, there's a face on it. Or maybe I hallucinated it. Christ, what a time to have a flashback after all these years.}

^{The derision in his voice failed to disguise his panic. 'Someone must have been carving on it, that's all,' Geraldine said, dreading a recurrence of the time she'd had to help him through a bad trip, the endless hours of reassuring him that it would stop eventually, that he wasn't going mad; they would seem even longer out here in the dark. 'We'll go this way,' she whispered.}

^{They must be almost level with the van by now. She'd been veering to the left when they encountered this tree, and so she led him to the right, over earth that felt so soft she had to reassure herself that it wouldn't give way, through the silence that clung to her ears as the dark clung to her eyes. The next thing she touched would be the van, she decided; there couldn't be room for anything else in the space she'd glimpsed in the moment before the crash. An object that she sensed was higher and wider than herself blocked their way, and she stretched out her hand at once for the feel of metal. But her hand groped over deep-set eyes and a mouth with jagged teeth.}

^{She bit her lip to keep back a cry. It was a tree, with more than one face carved on it. Her fingers touched something higher on the trunk, something cold and waxy that grew where the hair of the face would have been: long, oval leaves - mistletoe. Her hand ranged about with a desperate aimlessness, trying to distract her from what she had to say. 'I don't know where the van is.'}