The Hollow Places (24 page)

He was
alive.

He saw the
cliff that Firdy had walked them to. The Third had reached up a
watery tentacle and had taken them inside it, down into the water.
And he'd survived it.

He willed
himself towards the rocky coast as he had willed himself towards
the moon. Underwater his legs were moving, but he was so cold that
he could hardly feel them.

Minute by
minute, the beach came nearer. The rocks glistened as waves crashed
over them and shrank back. Bubbles exploded between stones.

He didn't
think he would make it, but he had thought that several times
tonight and he was still here. He focussed on the rocks until
nothing else existed to him. An undertow kept pulling him away from
the shore, but the distance he covered between its attacks meant
that he was making small progress each time. As he weakened, it
almost seemed that he was swimming the same length over and over,
but eventually, he was able to stop kicking and wade the rest of
the way onto the beach. Out of the water to his thighs, a final
wave crashed against his back and he fell onto the jagged rocks. He
bled, but he was beyond caring. He was alive. He shouldn't be. He
had been given a second chance and he was going to make the most of
it.

*

Not half a mile out to
sea, Firdy reached the surface, his head thrown up out of the
water, buoy-like, and his body floating, so that he looked like a
bin bag full of junk, buffeted by the waves and carried further out
to sea.

He tried to
move in the direction of the beach, but it was hard enough staying
afloat. The waves swamped him each of the few times he managed to
take a lungful of air, winding him and sending salt water down his
throat. The sea was like a living thing, wearing him down. He
kicked as hard as he could, but all he achieved was a slow
pirouette.

There was a
large rock to his left. He tried to kick himself towards it and
then half-stretched, half-threw himself onto it. His gloved hand
slipped, found purchase, slid again. He threw his other hand out,
but it struck the rock like a dead thing. The current pulled him
away from the temporary sanctuary and tugged him out.

It pulled him
under.

When he
screamed, in frustration rather than fear, it sounded like he was
gargling. He sucked in a painful, watery breath, reached for the
surface and yelped with an explosion of bubbles.

The only
consolation, he thought, was that he had killed Simon before he
died.

“I should have
killed them all,” he admitted as he spiralled away.

*

Simon crawled on his
hands and knees, inch by inch, foot by foot, knowing that Sarah was
still down there, under the surface, probably still inside the
Third.

He wanted to
get to his feet, but he lacked the strength to push himself up. He
had to rest, for a few minutes at least, qne he had to get warm or
the cold would finish the job that Firdy had started.

As he rolled
onto his back, panting, he considered effecting further upset in
the room below using his connection to the Third, but with the
thought he realised, with certainty, that the connection was not
there. His mind was unobserved, as clear as it was on those
merciful days when the Third had been busy, dredging, slicing,
splicing, and had left him alone until she needed more meat and
more minds. Her presence was gone and he might have been pleased if
it hadn't left him without a means of getting Sarah back.

He watched the
waves, thinking that if something was wrong with the Third, Sarah
might float up the way that he had.

The oily sea
was oozed and sucked, like a living thing, weeping. He knew that
Sarah could be anywhere out there and he wouldn't necessarily see
her. The same applied to the Third.

A rock tumbled
towards him.

“Sarah?”

No. This sound
had been made deliberately. He saw a woman in a long, leather coat,
black, over black jeans and dark boots. The wind caught her scarf
and it flapped like a flag beneath her pallid face. Under her
knitted hat was the only thing of colour: an escapee; a strand of
red hair.

Clare unwound
the scarf and shoved it, handful by handful, into her left coat
pocket. Then she removed a plastic bag from her right coat pocket,
opened it and carefully descended the rocks towards Simon.

“You missed
it,” Simon said, on his feet now.

He recognised
the look in her eyes. He had seen it in the mirror: making
deliveries; following orders.

“You don't
have to do this,” he said. His words were familiar. They had both
heard that line before. Between them, they could probably rank
pleas. Sometimes the things their victims said must have been true,
but it didn't matter, because there was no way to tell and no
choice either way.

Until now.

“Think about
this,” Simon said. “If I'm alive, something must have gone wrong.
Can you feel the Third? I can't.”

A few steps
above him, she paused.

“Like I said:
you don't have to do this.”

“Firdy told me
you'd say that,” Clare said. “He was very specific. He said that if
anyone else made it, I could let them go. It's only you he wants
dead.”

Simon laughed,
but it came out as a cough.

“So you take
your orders from Firdy?” he said.

“If he finds
out that I didn't do my job here,” Clare said, “there are people I
care about who are going to get hurt … you know the score.”

“Yeah. I
do.”

“You can't
talk me down. The only reason you're still alive is that you're one
of us. I thought I'd give you a minute.”

“A minute for
what?”

She looked as
though she was going to say more, but her mouth snapped shut. That
was it. If anything was going through her mind, it remained
unsaid.

They listened
to the black waves destroying themselves on the shore, breathing in
and out, wheezing and sighing.

He counted the
crashes out of habit.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

He sensed that
she had finished thinking.

“It'll be
quick,” she said and hopped down from her rock. Before her feet
touched the ground, Simon rushed her, hoping he would get there
before she could correct her stance, but the beach slipped away
from him and was replaced with the dark blue sky. He felt rocks
stab his back and smash into the back of his head, and there was
another pain in his arm, which Clare must have used to overbalance
him. He didn't have long to think about what happened. His last
breath out expelled a cry of pain and then the plastic bag was over
his head. He heard the wheeze of the drawstring and when he
attempted to breathe in the clear plastic entered his mouth,
shrink-wrapping him. He reached for Clare, knowing that even if his
hands could have found her he was too weak to do anything, but
knowing also that he would fight this time, from beginning to end,
pointless as it may be.

“Don't fight,”
Clare said. She tightened the drawstring until it cut into his
neck.

“No,” Simon
thought. He grabbed Clare's hands and tore at her fingers. He sent
loose rocks shooting down into the water with his feet. He could
sense her rising panic as she lost control of the situation.

Managing to
pry one of her hands loose, he flipped over onto his side, but
before he could get his bearings a blow struck the side of his
head. He heard the rock discarded, but to him it sounded like an
avalanche and he was part of it, gathering momentum, taking out
villages and families along the way.

*

The Third rose through
the water, a vortex of her own creation. She grabbed Firdy's body
and remade the hollow so he could breathe within her, but she was
too late. He was gone.

She had been
prepared to reject him. She knew that. But then Simon had put his
hands around his throat and now he was dead. It wasn't the same
thing. She felt strange about it. It was unpleasant.

She had been
in too many places at once and too slow to react. She had been
inside Sarah and Zak and Ian and Naomi and Jonathan and Will and
Simon, unravelling them and attempting to tie them together; lost
in the details.

Now she was
only lost.

The Others
like her had left what felt like centuries ago. They had taken a
swimmer and they had gone, first one and then the other, but after
years of thefts, increasingly selective, she never discovered the
trick. If it was a test, she had failed. If it was punishment for
something long-forgotten, it ought to be over now. In a single act,
she had killed, had been killed and had lost her son.

She was
bewildered.

And alone
again.

I'LL DIE, she
thought.

ANOTHER YEAR
ALONE.

ANOTHER
NIGHT.

I'LL DIE.

*

Simon attempted to grab
Clare's face, but she looked up and that was enough to take her out
of his range. He would have grabbed her hair, but she had tied it
up underneath her hat. She had him belly down. He had nothing to
grab onto and so no way to free himself.

He thought of
Sarah. After years of thinking that he had protected her, he had
actually been preserving her, to be used, used up and discarded. If
he had known it would end like this, he would have killed her
himself.

But how could
he have known? He had had hope.

The sky was
brightening. This would be the last thing he saw.

From the
corner of his eye, he discerned a flash.

And then
another.

In the
periphery of his vision, fireworks exploded silently in reds and
blues and greens.

As the colours
intensified, Clare released her grip and to Simon's surprise he was
able to get his fingers underneath the drawstring and snatch a
shallow breath. He set both hands to work opening the plastic bag.
Whatever the reason for Clare's lack of care, he didn't have the
breath to play dead. He tore at the opening and managed to pull the
bag up over his mouth.

For the second
time in minutes, he fell on the rocks, gasping.

Clare stared
out to sea, which Simon gradually realised was being illuminated
from below. Red and pink and orange light rose to the surface, the
colours alternating. The sea seemed to swell each time a colour
reached a peak of brightness. A large, pink wave rolled towards
them and broke over the stones with a sigh. It was followed closely
by a red wave, which broke too soon, before it had even reached the
shore and sent a loud hiss up into the night. The foam from the
wave crawled between the rocks and whispered. The rivulets sought
him out and he back-pedalled, avoiding most of them although they
travelled much further than seemed natural. A single rivulet
splashed one of his trainers and he was paralysed by a pang of
distress. Every part of him ached for a second. For that moment, he
wanted to die so intently that he could have thrown himself face
down into the water, but then it was over.

A third wave
approached, gathering itself up with more violence than the others,
ragged and rolling.

“Come away,”
Simon said, getting to his feet.

“Listen,”
Clare said. There were voices in the water. Neither male nor
female.

“Dead,” the
wave was saying. “Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead ...”

“Come away,”
Simon repeated and staggered back, but Clare remained transfixed.
She gasped as the wave struck her at chest height and knocked her
off her feet.

It washed over
her completely, tossing her hat aside and drenching her. As the
wave drew back, she was sitting on her bottom, legs splayed. The
water latched onto stones and pulled a few out with it, but it left
Clare where she was.

On a rock
above, Simon watched Clare sink her head between her knees and hug
herself.

She wept.

“You okay?”
Simon asked.

She didn't
answer for a long time, but then she said:

“I've never
felt it … her … before.”

“How was it
for you?” Simon said.

“Lonely,” she
said.

*

It took Simon twenty
minutes to find Clare's car, but when he did it was what he had
expected. A small, non-descript hatchback, parked up beneath an
ominous conifer. Three doors. The boot was locked, but he tried the
driver's side door and it clicked open. Inside, he pushed the
button for the boot and then went round the back.

He found car
maintenance tools, some of which could have doubled as weapons, a
reflective, yellow vest, a warning triangle, bottled water, a box
of dry goods, a Highlander rucksack, bars of chocolate, some rope,
a tartan blanket, some black tarpaulin and a first aid kit. If this
wasn't her stuff, she had stolen the car from a serial killer.

He opened up
the rucksack and found a change of clothes inside: a pair of blue
jeans, a plain, grey t-shirt and a dark blue sweater. He stripped
off to his bare chest and used the sweater to dry himself off
before stretching the t-shirt over his torso. Then he pulled on the
sweater, accidentally ripping it in the process. He sized up the
jeans. No chance. He'd have to make do with his wet trousers.

There was a
waxy, black raincoat in the back, but this was also too small. He
dumped his wet clothes in the boot, availed himself of a bar of
chocolate and jogged back to the rocks.

He expected
Clare to be gone, but she hadn't moved except to stand. Her arms
were folded tight. The waves had diminished. They were back to
normal, but she was not.

“Coming?”
Simon said, descending the rock face.

“She's dead,”
Clare said.

He thought she
meant Sarah and slid on the loose ground.

“Firdy died
inside her,” she continued, her voice almost a monotone. “It
flicked a switch in her and she caved in. She let herself die.”

“Hallelujah,”
he said. He wanted to ask her if she'd felt Sarah's presence when
the Third's wave washed over her, but he didn't trust her, so
instead he said: “Be reassured that this is great news.”