by Will James
Half way along the road Zack found the right house. The curtains were drawn but the lights were on so he made his way around to the side of the house. He peered in through the windows at the back – a neat kitchen, a meal half finished, left on the table. No movement. He walked in through the half open back door and followed the voices. The door to the lounge was open and a woman sat in there on the edge of a sofa. She was silently weeping. Next to her a little girl was curled up, hugging her knees into her chest, her face buried.
“Speak to him again!” a voice demanded.
The woman continued to weep. Zack felt a moment of panic. He edged closer but there was no sign of Molly. He headed up the stairs.
At the top he turned towards the bedroom, but as he did so he saw her, lying in the bath, her eyes closed.
“Molly?!”
Suddenly she snapped them open and her face froze in a mixture of joy and fear.
“Zack, Oh God, I’m...” her voice trailed off.
Zack followed the lead from the lamp. It was plugged in outside the bathroom. The switch was down. “I’ve got it,” he called. “Don’t move.” He sat on the ground and stared at the switch. He focused his mind, focused his energy and willed himself to a physical presence to move the switch on the socket....
*
Father Tom pulled up outside Jenny’s house and slung the car onto the pavement. He and Dev climbed out, but they didn’t slam the doors. Even ten yards away they moved silently and stealthily so as not to be heard, not to disturb. At the house they crept to the front window, crouched down so as not to be seen. Underneath the window Dev raised himself up to see inside. There was a young man, a woman and a child, but no Molly. He ducked down again.
“She’s not there,” he said.
Father Tom looked at him. They both knew she was in there; there was nowhere else she could be.
“She’s somewhere in that house,” Tom whispered. He didn’t add what they both thought; either alive or dead.
Dev nodded. “Come on...” Still crouching to miss the windows, he led the way around the side and in through the back door. He motioned for Father Tom to wait there while he crept into the house.
He could hear talking, a woman’s voice, pleading, thick with tears. His heart hammered in his chest. He didn’t know what to do. He was no hero; he was terrified. He thought fast. He needed to get upstairs to check that Molly wasn’t up there. Creeping along to the staircase, pressed against the wall, Dev began to climb up backwards, keeping one eye firmly on the closed door of the lounge.
As he rounded the curve in the staircase, he turned and dashed up the rest. At the top he saw the open door and headed for it. He stopped.
“Molly?” he murmured, “Molly, oh my God...”
Molly lay fully clothed in the bath; her eyes shut tight, tears streaming down her face. Dev inched into the room, he took in the wire and the lamp, Molly’s feet and hands bound and he had to stifle a gasp of horror. He looked at the bulb, it was off then he took a step back onto the landing. The switch on the plug was also off.
“Thank God.” He whispered. He came into the bathroom and with trembling hands he leant down and touched Molly on the shoulder. She started violently and her eyes snapped open.
“Dev?” She had to hold in a sob that caught in her throat and he put his finger to his lips.
“You’re safe,” he whispered, “the lamp is off.”
“I know,” Molly said. More tears rolled down her face, “He’s gone. Zack did it and he’s gone...”
Dev bushed his hand against her cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said, “he was...”
“Is!” Zack interrupted, “He is! I’m still here.”
“Zack? Zack are you really? I can hardly see you!” Molly’s voice was just above a whisper, but still it was too loud. Dev shook his head.
“Sssssh, he’ll hear us,” he said, “he’s downstairs.”
“He wants to get the light, finish it,” Molly told him. “He wants Jenny to call to her son, make him appear.”
“Can she do that?”
“I don’t know, I...” Molly broke off. She could see Zack now, vaguely. He had faded and was sitting in a heap on the floor. “Zack, you saved me,” she said simply. He shrugged. He had saved her and he knew that it was probably the last thing he would do. He was glad though, it was the last and the best thing he would ever do.
Dev looked at Molly. “Can you stay there for a bit longer? It’ll be too noisy trying to get out. I need to call the police; I’ll do it outside the house where he can’t hear me. They should be here in minutes. Is that OK? Will you be ok?”
She nodded. “I need to talk to Zack anyway.”
Dev leant forward and kissed Molly on the lips. “I’ll come back for you,” he said. “I promise.”
Moments later he was gone.
*
The assassin stood outside the lounge and fastened the lead apron across his body. The case he had been carrying around lay open and it was almost empty. He had already removed the anti-particle storage system, APS, from its case, a long cylinder with a bar of clustered cells that ran along the centre of it, like a neon strip light. The cells absorbed light, but they also gave off a toxic radiation. The assassin wasn’t interested in the complex science of it, he knew what he had to do and he was intent on doing it. The lead apron was a protection against the radiation, but it was heavy. He knew that once on, he didn’t have much time or dexterity. He had to turn it on and radiate the light, annihilate it within seconds. He looked at Jenny in the lounge and motioned with the gun.
“Hurry up,” he said coldly...
*
Dev was at the turn in the staircase and he could see the young man, just a couple of metres away from him. He was just outside the door. He had placed some sort of device in the centre of the lounge, that much Dev could see as well, but any more was hidden. Dev glanced down at the floor. His palms were sweating; he could hear nothing as the blood thundered in his ears. He took a step down, silently, then another and on the bottom stair, holding his breath, he took the edge of the rug that ran the length of the hall floor and gripped it hard. The assassin was only five feet away from him looking into the lounge. He took a breath and yanked with all his might.
The rug came up. He held onto the edge of it. The assassin, weighted by the lead apron, had the ground ripped from underneath his feet. His legs went up in the air and he landed hard, with a resounding crack onto the floor. His head came down and smacked against the door frame. He lay unconscious.
“Jenny?!” Father Tom was into the hall and then into the lounge as fast as he could get there. In the centre of the room a long cylinder lay on the floor. It was buzzing and a crackle of energy was coming off it in waves. Tom bent and turned it over in his hands. There was a sickly purple glare that came off it and his hands were hot, they were burning, but still he turned it and held it. “I’ve got it!” he suddenly shouted, “I’ve got the switch....”
Just as his words left his mouth he felt an enormous pressure behind his eyes, a blinding light. He heard Jenny’s voice cry out and his heart wrenched.
“Chris! Chris! Please, don’t...”
Upstairs Molly too saw the light. It was so bright that it lit the whole of the house. She struggled to sit up, to grip the side of the bath.
“Zack?!” she cried, “Zack, hold on to me, please. Focus on me Zack, Zack please...”
His voice was barely audible. “I can’t Molly,” he said, “Not this time...the light... It’s pulling me in... I want to go...”
Molly was openly crying now. She knew he was right. “Zack I never said, I need to say...”
She had to strain to hear him, to hear anything against the suffocating silence that was beginning to descend. “Zack I went to Newcastle,” she cried, “I found...” her voice failed her, strangled in a sob. “I found out that you’re my brother! My twin... Zack...” She began to shout his name as he faded. “Zack! Zack, please... ZACK...”
The light burned brighter than ever. The whole world was bathed in the luminosity of it.
Molly closed her eyes against it.
Dev shielded his eyes against it.
Father Tom had shut down the switch seconds before he opened his eyes to it and he stared right into it.
He saw a boy, a smiling boy of thirteen with his arms wide open and he saw a stream of grey that the boy absorbed. And the more he absorbed, the brighter the light shone until Tom had to look away or be blinded by it. The last thing he saw before he turned away was a shabby boy in a hoodie and a beanie hat who looked longingly at the door and the stairs beyond and then disappeared. Father Tom bowed his head and waited...
*
It felt as if it took no more than a few minutes, but none of them knew how long the light had actually shone for. What they did know, or at least what Molly felt as she opened her eyes, was that it had taken with it all the dark matter in the world. When eventually the light burned itself out, Father Tom looked up at Jenny across the room, holding her daughter, tears shining in her eyes. Her son had gone forever. He was the light, the vessel to take the souls out of the world and save them.
Father Tom went to her and placed his hand on her shoulder.
“It will be all right,” he said gently, “the world will be all right.”
*
Dev climbed wearily back up the stairs and in the bathroom he lifted Molly up and out of the bath. She was shivering and weeping and tenderly he untied her hands and her feet. He held her close, wet and shaking and he stroked her hair.
“He was my brother,” she whispered. “He found me, we found each other but it was too late...”
Dev pulled away slightly and looked at her face. “No,” he said, “it wasn’t too late. You loved him and he loved you. Even I could see that.”
Molly almost smiled. “Even you?”
“Yes, even me; in my most nerdy, geeky, disconnected way, even I could see what you felt.”
She laid her head against his chest. “It’s gone very quiet,” Molly said. “They have all gone. The dark matter has gone.”
“No voices?”
“No. Do you think that we’re safe now?”
“Will the world keep spinning?” Dev shrugged. “If you’re right and dark matter has gone, then yes. No bombs, no change in orbit. No fame for me as the genius who discovered the secret of dark matter.” He grinned. “Life will go on as we know it.”
She looked up at him. “I hope so, because Dev, I really like...”
But she didn’t get to finish what she started to say; Dev bent down and turned her mouth to his...
