Out of Nowhere (5 page)

My friend and I followed the mountain track down through the hills. After a while we came to a crossroads where the track joined a wider, paved road. There was a house there, a prosperous-looking bungalow with a gravelled yard surrounded by a low stone wall. The front door of the house was open, and there was a car parked in the yard.

‘There you go,’ my friend said. ‘Transport. Dirty old things, cars, but they have their uses.’

He vaulted the low wall and landed on the gravel in the yard. I followed him. The car was unlocked and we went into the house to look for the ignition keys. In the livingroom a half-grown cat howled at us hungrily. My friend invited it into the kitchen to look for some food. I searched for the keys and found them in the bedroom, on a locker beside the rumpled bed. I went back to the kitchen, where the cat was twining itself around my friend’s legs. He’d found a can of food with a picture of a cat on its label, and was trying to figure out how to operate the ring-pull.

‘It’s terrible to see all these dependent animals,’ he sighed.

‘Look on the bright side,’ I said. ‘At least the humans haven’t wiped these ones out too.’

My friend finally got the can open and poured the food into
a bowl.

‘I’m not sure how bright a side that is,’ he said. ‘I’d hate to be depending on humans for
my
survival.’

We watched the little animal wolf down the food. It growled fiercely as it ate.

‘I’ve never understood,’ my friend said, ‘how cats let themselves be fooled by humans. I mean, dogs are born idiots, but you’d think cats would have more sense – or at least more self-respect.’

Suddenly the cat did one of those reverse feline jumps. It arched its back and its fur stood on end, and it bared its teeth and hissed. It was staring at the window. I looked at my friend. He met my eyes and smiled.

‘Bad guys,’ he said. ‘Outside. I felt them too.’ He sighed. ‘Ho hum,’ he said. ‘No rest for the wicked.’

He led the way to the front door. We went out with the crystals already in our hands. They came at us as soon as we emerged, two young boys as crazed as the one we’d already unshaded. These two, like him, were ragged and dirty. They were just as stupid too. They ran straight at us, screaming and growling and snapping. My friend unshaded both of them without even breaking step.

‘So they even attack us,’ he said with mild interest. ‘Things really have got out of hand here, haven’t they?’

He sighed again.

‘Interfering amateurs,’ he said, ‘are a pain in the neck.’

We left them lying in the yard and drove away.

‘Which way?’ my friend asked.

I stroked my crystal. It was cool now, neutral.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘We’ve a lot of ground to cover. The nearest town first, I suppose. Maybe we can pick up a trail. We have to start somewhere.’

The fact that we couldn’t trace the people we were looking for wasn’t reassuring. We’d tried everything before coming ourselves. I didn’t want to dwell on the possibilities, so when my friend drove the car out onto the road I concentrated on the scenery. It was pleasant in the car, driving through the heat with open windows, watching the bare hills and fields streaming by. There was a tape-player in the dash, and after checking aimlessly through some cassettes that were beside it I stuck one at random into the machine and switched it on. The music of the country came softly through the speakers, a wild, sad, lonesome music made by pipes and whistles and stringed things. I listened to it as I enjoyed the view, feeling the breeze wash over the skin of my face. The sun was moving slowly lower in the sky.

‘Their music moves me sometimes,’ I said to my friend. ‘It’s hard to believe that it’s made by them at all.’

He nodded at the tape machine.

‘That stuff there,’ he said, ‘comes out of the place itself. They’re just a channel for it.’

At the next crossroads there was a signpost giving directions and distances. My friend turned in the direction of the closest indicated town. When we reached it, we saw it was hardly worthy of the name. It was a small collection of houses at yet another crossroads. We stopped by a tourist shop, and my friend got out and tried the handle of the door. It wasn’t locked and he went in. I stayed in the car and listened to the
lonely music. I didn’t bother keeping watch. The place was deserted – I could feel it in my borrowed bones.

My friend came back with a large-scale tourist map of the area and spread it out across the warm bonnet of the car. I got out and joined him. He took out a pencil he’d also borrowed, a gaudy thing that said
Welcome to Ireland!

‘Indeed,’ I thought, reading it.

With the pencil my friend traced a rough outline of the exclusion zone on the map. Inside the barrier there would be nobody except our kind, broadly speaking. Within the rough circle he’d marked, the map showed half a dozen settlements. None were very big. It was a sparsely populated area – too bare and mountainous to sustain any large communities.

‘Do you remember this area at all?’ he asked.

‘Not really. Why? Is there something special about it?’

‘Oh yes, at least there used to be, a long time ago. Something
very
special.’

I looked at the map, trying to see through the changes that millennia of man and weather had wrought. Suddenly I saw it.

‘The crystal works!’ I said.

My friend nodded, pointing to a place on the map.

‘There,’ he said. ‘In those mountains.’

The land he indicated lay further to the north. The road that we were on would eventually bring us there. I pointed to a tiny patch of blue.

‘That must be the birthing lake,’ I said.

I felt a sort of sadness run through me. My hand went absentmindedly into my coat pocket to stroke the crystal. It had been formed here, in the bowels of that little patch of
blue. The stone bones of the hills and the cold humours of the waters had joined in its making, once upon a time before time.

‘Do you think it’s a coincidence?’ I asked my friend. ‘It must be. These hills are dead now.’

‘Or sleeping,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Time will tell. Our best bet now is to go that way, though. There’s a town up there that looks fairly big. Maybe we’ll find something there.’

He folded the map. I was lost in thought. Imagine forgetting the place you’d been made – even after so long. For the first time in my life I felt old, though I was young in the eyes of my people. My friend read my mind.

‘What’s a thousand years between friends?’ he said. It was a saying we had.

On the way back to the truck Stephen suggested that they say nothing to Kirsten about the disappearing body.

‘She’s upset enough as it is,’ he said.

Philip seemed to be still in shock. His eyes were less wild, but he looked at Stephen as though he’d never seen him before. It seemed to take him a while to understand what the boy had said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re right. And whatever happened back there, we have to keep control of ourselves. At least I do.’

He smiled. It looked sad and forced and completely artificial, but Stephen was glad to see it nonetheless. For a while he’d thought Philip was losing it completely.

Philip took several deep breaths.

‘I’m not even going to wonder what happened back there,’ he said.

By the time they reached the pick-up truck the big monk had regained at least some semblance of composure. So – to Stephen’s surprise – had Kirsten. She had the air of someone who’d given herself a good talking to. Her face was pale, but there was no sign of the tears she’d cried earlier except some redness around her eyes.

Stephen and Philip got back into the truck. Philip turned
the key in the ignition, but then he paused and turned to them.

‘Look,’ he said, his voice trembling slightly, ‘there’s no use in pretending. There’s a killer about. Killers. They may be near, they may not be. They may be dangerous to us, they may not be. We have to assume that they are. I’m not happy having you two out here. I think maybe I should take you both back to the abbey.’

‘No!’

Kirsten’s reaction was immediate. Stephen was taken aback by the change in her. She looked positively angry.

‘I’m not a baby, Philip,’ she said. ‘So now we know it’s dangerous out here. All right. But anywhere is dangerous – a city street is dangerous if it’s the wrong street and the wrong time. We can go back to the abbey, but the abbey will still need the supplies we came to get. So you’ll only have to make another trip. We must be near the town by now, right?’

‘We’re almost there.’

‘So let’s do what we came to do. There are three of us. We have guns.’

She looked at Stephen, who was staring at her in amazement

‘I
refuse
to be terrified!’ she said. ‘Even if this is a dream, I refuse to let it be a nightmare!’

Philip stared at her too.

‘She’s right,’ he said softly. There was a tinge of admiration in his voice. ‘We have work to do.’

But he didn’t sound too happy about it. Philip couldn’t altogether hide how uneasy he felt. But he put his foot on the pedal and they set off.

‘Stiff upper lip, eh, Fräulein Herzenweg?’ Philip said.

Kirsten pushed her top lip out and flattened it. She looked so silly even Stephen smiled.

‘Stiff upper lip, Brother Philip,’ Kirsten said.

Stephen said nothing. He’d been watching Philip’s eyes in the driver’s mirror. The wild look he’d seen in them back in the field had frightened him at least as much as the body and its mysterious disappearance. The eyes were masked now, carefully controlled, but he imagined he could still see a hint of that mad gleam in their depths. And there was still the little matter of the pistol: what exactly was a monk doing with a gun like that? Philip had held the gun with an easy familiarity – he’d obviously handled pistols before.

There were too many mysteries here by far for Stephen’s liking.

The town was large by local standards only. A long string of buildings on either side of the road made up the main street. Four or five sidestreets stretched off it for short distances on either side. They drove in slowly and watchfully. The place looked deserted. There weren’t even any dogs in the streets. Most of the doors in the houses stood open and there were cars and vans parked neatly on both sides of the road. A light breeze toyed idly with dust and discarded bits of paper.

Kirsten peered carefully at each building as they passed by. Reaching the town seemed to have cheered her up – at least, if she was acting it was a very convincing act. She seemed almost her old excited self, and when they passed the first supermarket she gave a little squeal of delight.

‘A supermarket!’ she said. ‘I never thought I’d be so glad to see one!’

About halfway down its length, the street widened into a central square that was also a crossroads. In the centre of the square stood a statue commemorating some war of liberation or other. Philip parked close to the statue and everyone got out. The silence was eerier here in the town. It was no longer natural.

Philip had drawn the pistol again and was holding it like
he meant business. Kirsten was busying herself with the big notebook, checking her shoplifting list. She headed straight for a chemist’s shop she’d spotted in the square, with the expression of a desert wanderer sighting an oasis. When she tried the door, it opened. The other two watched her go in.

‘We’ll have to split up for at least part of this,’ Philip said to Stephen. ‘I don’t like it, but it’s the quickest way, and the sooner we’re back in the abbey the happier I’ll be.’

‘I’ll stick with Kirsten, then,’ Stephen said. ‘Maybe I should take the shotgun.’

‘Yes,’ Philip said. ‘I wanted to talk to you about that. You don’t mind carrying a weapon?’

‘I do mind. But I’d feel better, under the circumstances.’

Philip nodded. He put his hand into the pocket of his robe, then took it out and held it, palm upwards, out to Stephen. Lying in his hand was a little silver-coloured automatic pistol.

‘Take this,’ he said. ‘It’s easier to carry than a shotgun. There’s not much of a punch to it, but if you shoot anything with it they’ll know that they’re hit.’

Stephen stared at the wicked-looking little gun. It was only a baby thing compared with the big pistol Philip carried, but it was a real gun nonetheless. So, Philip had two pistols –
at least
two pistols. It was very strange that he should have one; that he should have more was positively bizarre.

He looked up again into Philip’s face. The monk was watching his reaction carefully. Stephen badly wanted to know what was going through his mind, but there was no way to tell. He took the proffered weapon.

‘We’ll find most of what we need either in the supermarket or in the cash and carry,’ Philip said. ‘We should do those together. We can pick up the fuel we need from the petrol station on the way back. But there’s a hardware shop around the corner where I need to get some things. So I’d like you and Fräulein Herzenweg to do a job for Paul while I do that.’

‘Of course. What is it?’

‘I want you and the Fräulein to go to the library.’

Stephen blinked at him in disbelief. The
library
? A Viking raid for
library books
?

Philip pointed at a venerable-looking building that took up one side of the square.

‘In there,’ he said. ‘Up the stairs. You can’t miss it.’

‘But–’

Philip held his hands up in front of him.

‘Don’t blame me,’ he said. ‘It’s Paul’s idea. He’s a great man for books, is Paul. He asked me specifically to get you two to do the job. Maybe he thinks it’s the safest place for you – I don’t think Paul believes
anything
dangerous can happen in a library.’

Stephen was still looking at him in disbelief.

‘There are two black plastic bags under your seat in the truck,’ Philip said. ‘You take them in, and you fill them with books – a selection. It’s very straightforward.’

Stephen shrugged. The idea seemed daft, but to tell the truth he quite fancied the idea of being in a place where nothing dangerous could happen. Or at least of keeping Kirsten in a place like that.

‘Whatever you say,’ he said.

Philip looked at him, considering. Suddenly he lowered his voice and spoke urgently, finally showing his masked unease nakedly.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘That body back there.’

Stephen had been trying not to think about that body. Here in this very ordinary town – even if it was deserted – dead bodies seemed a long way away.

‘Yes?’

‘It wasn’t …
right
.’

Stephen wasn’t sure what he meant. The body had been murdered, of course that wasn’t right.

‘In what way,
not right?
’

‘It was all cut up, stabbed and slashed. But there was no blood.’

‘No blood?’

‘Not a drop.’

‘You mean something had drained it all out?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe it was hacked about after it was dead – you don’t bleed when you’re dead. But even then there’d be
something
, some stain or something.
But there was nothing
. You’d have got more blood out of a tailor’s dummy.’

‘But isn’t that weird?’

‘
Weird
? It’s impossible! But that’s how it was.’

‘What could it mean?’ Stephen asked.

‘All I can think of,’ Philip said, ‘is that the body wasn’t human. It was … something else.’

Stephen stared at him blankly.

‘Something else?’

‘Don’t ask me what, because I don’t know. But between the
lack of blood and the way it just disappeared … I can’t believe it was human at all.’

‘But what was it then?’

Philip snorted. ‘If I knew that,’ he said, ‘I’d be a happier man.’

Stephen looked down at the little silver gun. It wasn’t a toy, he reminded himself, even though it looked like one. He was frightened of the unknown threat now abroad in the world, but he was almost more frightened of the gun. Then he thought of Kirsten. He couldn’t leave her undefended because of his squeamishness.

‘Don’t use that unless you really need to,’ Philip said. ‘But if you do need to use it, then don’t hesitate. Your life might depend on it. More than your life, in fact.’

‘More?’

‘Yes,’ Philip said. ‘Mine.’

Stephen shivered. But before he could say anything else Kirsten reappeared from the chemist’s. She carried two big plastic bags full of booty, which she swung with real pleasure. Looking at her grinning face, Stephen thought of the dead body in the field. He was suddenly glad that he’d taken the gun.