The thought hits me like a slap. Would it work? Me and Gail and what, Auntie Alice too? Carrying out Mum’s plan after all. All of us standing on the coast, facing out to sea.
Gail just shakes her head. She keeps blinking and blinking. It makes her seem proper crazy.
“You can join us,” the farmer says in a quiet little voice. I guess he means all three of us, but he’s looking at Gail, because she’s the one with the gun.
“How many of you are there?” Gail says.
“Eleven.” Then he looks over at the pile-of-clothes dead guy. “Ten.”
“Including cops?” I say.
He nods. “Four of them. It was the only way.”
It’s hard to argue with that. Any time a Blighter’s out in the open, folks fight and fight and then too many get close up and then the Blighter’s good for nothing. Maybe Frodo was right, maybe there are tons more of them fuckers around. Maybe cops all round the world are keeping schtum about some bothy or cave or hole nearby, telling no-one and knowing that it’s the only way.
I say to Gail, “He’s lying. They won’t let us join their gang, I swear they won’t. They killed Frodo. And there’s no way we can keep them away from us now, either, if we hang around. We got to leave while we can.”
Gail don’t look like she’s going to put the gun down, but it twitches a bit in her hands.
“I need the calm,” she says.
Don’t we all? But that’s not the way. Blighter calm is just cheating.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Auntie Alice moving. It suddenly occurs to me that maybe she’s after the Blighter too. All that talk in the car about escape and whatnot, when she knew full well I was leading her straight to the biggest, happiest high, one that’d help her blank out all them troubles in a second. I bet she’s going to make a run for the bothy, give that Blighter a big slimy hug and get her rocks off right there and then. You can’t trust nobody.
I don’t even look over her way. She can do what she likes. Gail is who I came for. She’s the one for me, even though it’s getting harder all the time to hold onto that thought. Seeing Gail all messed up and snarling and toting Ralphie’s rifle makes her just a little bit less lovable.
There must be something I can say to change her mind.
“I love you,” I say. No idea where that came from. It’s a tense situation.
Gail don’t say nothing to that.
She’s still looking at me when it happens.
The gun goes off. The farmer don’t make a sound, he’s so surprised. His body thunks down face-first on the grass even before I can see where Gail hit him.
“Fuck,” I say.
I say it again when Gail turns the rifle to point my way.
“Raise your hands,” she says. “You’re coming with me.”
There’s this weird half-second that seems to go on and on. She’s staring at me and the whites of her eyes are shiny from the Volvo’s headlights, and right at that moment I can see she’s figured out something’s up, but you know when you can’t quite pin it down?
She swings round on the spot at the exact second that Auntie Alice comes jumping out of the dark. Auntie Alice would have grabbed Gail from behind if she’d been a second faster, but instead she’s right in front of the rifle, almost touching it, when Gail pulls the trigger. I swear Auntie Alice is actually in mid air when the flash and the bullet send her flying backwards again, like she’s a ball hit by a rounders bat.
It’s not like I can actually see through her belly, but there’s enough of a hole that I know she’s a goner. It must have been quick, I reckon. She’s looking up at the sky, almost smiling, like she’s just lying there watching out for funny-shaped clouds.
I can’t see Gail’s face no more. There’s a cracking sound and some rummaging. She’s reloading the rifle. Then the gun twitches, pointing up the fellside.
I walk in front of Gail like she wants me to. I don’t say a thing.
13
I WALK AHEAD of her, over the ridge and towards the bothy. I guess she figures that when I get another taste of the Blighter’s fizzy calm, I’ll be just as thumbs-up about this whole sorry affair as she is. Maybe she hopes I’ll convince myself that her killing Auntie Alice was an ‘accident,’ once I’m high on that Blighter love. Or maybe she don’t care.
The funny thing is, it takes pretty much the whole way before I work out exactly what it is I’m feeling right now.
Every time I slow down, Gail jabs the rifle between my shoulder blades. It hurts, but not the normal way. Each of them rifle-jabs breaks off a bit of that love I had for Gail. It’s like the gunshot that killed Auntie Alice cracked something deep down inside me, and now she’s just helping gravity do its work. I imagine each bit dropping off me and onto the grass ’til there’s nothing left. They don’t even make a sound.
And that’s not the only sadness I’m feeling.
The more I think about Auntie Alice, the harder it is to make her out to be the bad guy. And not just because she’s gone and died in the most fucked-up way possible. I never actually knew her, I guess, until today. Now that I’ve spoken to her, she don’t seem anything like she was in my head. And now don’t is didn’t and I’ll never get to know her, ever.
Trouble is, I’m falling right into Gail’s nasty trap. The more this kind of shit happens, the more I actually do want to get close to that Blighter too. I got to make all them thoughts about Auntie Alice, and Mum, and especially Dad, just go away. Find some fucking calm.
But that isn’t how things work, is it? It’s like I always said. Blighter calm is a cheat, a fake.
There are other ways to find it. Good and bad ones.
Like the way Dad found calm the only way he knew how.
But I’m better than him.
That thought hits me proper hard. It’s maybe sort of one of them life-changing moments. I might almost want to jump up and down and go ‘Ulrika!’ if I weren’t being marched around at gunpoint.
I’m better than him.
Sure, he had amazing taste in music, and sure, I’m a lot like him, and sure, I loved him then, and I still do. But he killed Mum and Mum didn’t even do nothing to deserve it. The more I think about it, the harder it is to blame anyone for that, anyone other than Dad. And I sure as hell don’t want to pretend it was Auntie Alice’s fault anymore, and I don’t want to try and forget about the whole business neither.
This weird feeling washes over me. Straight away I look down, but we’re still a way away from the line of white stones. This feeling I’m feeling, it’s not the Blighter’s doing. It’s not that giggly calm that Gail wants so bad.
But it’s calm alright.
Because...
I get it now.
Back in 1999 and then past the Millennium and then for years and years after that, Dad’s money paid for this counsellor. She wore ugly power suits covered in cat hair and she used to bang on about ‘the process.’ I thought I weren’t even listening that whole time, but now there’s one of her special words stuck in my head. I reckon this feeling’s what she’d call ‘acceptance.’
Suddenly I feel like I can do just about anything. I don’t need a Blighter, or Dad, or anyone or anything. I’m just me and that’s alright.
But with a gun poking into my back, I don’t get to make the choices, do I?
Gail prods at me again. I don’t hate her, but I sure as hell don’t love her, and I never did.
I step over the line of white stones.
Straight away I get that tingly, bubbly feeling again. But it’s not all that. In fact, it’s even less than it was before. It’s just mixing in with this new, real, solid calm I already got, shining its edges up but not stopping me seeing through the Scooby Doo fuzziness. I don’t feel anything like Gail looked like she felt when I found her at the bothy.
All the same, I let my legs go a bit bandy and I slow down, mostly for show. I’m guessing that’s what Gail wants to see.
I give her a few seconds before I turn around
to look at her.
It’s a shock. Even though she’s still holding the gun, Gail’s grinning at me. She looks proper wasted. Every time she blinks it looks like she might nod off there and then, even though she’s still carrying on trucking over towards the bothy.
“Gail?” I say.
She just opens her mouth. It stays hanging open and her head swings from side to side like she’s lost listening to music.
“Gail. I’m scared.”
And it’s true. But to be honest, I’m way more scared of her creepy-as-fuck face than I am of the gun.
She stumbles. I duck without thinking. That thing could go off any second.
Suddenly Gail’s on her knees. The bubbly feeling makes me feel like I’m wading through water, but I get to the gun before she drops it. So now I’m holding it in my hands, but I don’t feel like I’ve won or anything.
Because I won’t ever get my Gail back.
Her mouth hangs open again. It starts moving, really slowly, like she can’t remember how to make words.
Then she speaks.
“Please. Help me. Kill me.”
I look down at the gun and I look down at Gail. I think about wasps on the carpet, about Dad crushing them with his Hush Puppies.
Well. It’s an option, at least.
“Come to me,” Gail says.
“I’m right here, aren’t I?”
“Please. Come to me. In here.”
She sounds less and less like Gail all the time. Something about the rising and falling of her voice. She’s normally got a bit of Manc to her accent, but not now. She don’t even sound drunk. She sounds more like some foreigner who’s used to speaking another language, and like using English words is a proper pain in the arse.
“Come to me,” she says again.
And then she says, “It’s dark.”
And then, “In here.”
I get it.
I turn and look at the bothy.
14
SOON AS I set off, Gail gets up on her feet again. I take her by the arm like I’m a gent and she’s some Victorian lady. Sometimes she’s a dead weight, and sometimes it feels like she’s floating above the grass.
There’s a brand-new padlock on the bothy’s big black double doors. I shove Gail all the way back, then I shoot at the lock with the rifle. I only shot a gun like a couple of times before and all this giggly, bubbly feeling is making my arms shake. It takes me four goes and loads of splintered wood before the lock falls down onto the ground.
I pull the doors open.
Behind me, Gail says, “Yes. Yes.”
The inside of the bothy’s black dark. My eyes sting from looking.
“Are you in here?” I say. My voice echoes all round.
I hear the Blighter before I see it. The slithering sound reminds me of silly putty, when you stick your fingers in the tub and make it fart. But louder.
And louder.
Soon it’s hard to tell what’s the actual sound and what’s the echo off the stone walls. There’s sucking and popping noises all around.
I’d run away, but where to? Auntie Alice is dead. Mum and Dad are long dead. Gail’s a killer now and if she snaps out of her trance I’m not sure I’m not going to kill her myself.
More to the point, the cops could easily be right outside by now. At least while I’m in here, they can’t shoot me. I’m hoping that if they come any closer to the bothy, they’ll probably end up giving me a hug instead.
Anyway, there the bastard is.
All that tickly, happy feeling disappears just like that.
Now I can see that the Blighter’s easily wide enough to fill the bothy right up. It’s as big as a bin lorry. It’s slimy too, and looks even more like a slug seen through a microscope than they look on TV.
It’s shuffled near to the doorway and the moonlight’s reflecting off of its snout. Steam’s huffing out of its mouth. Up close I can see them triangle teeth are sort of bent inwards. If a Blighter got a hold of you, those teeth would just pull you further and further in.
And it proper stinks.
I laugh. A real Becky laugh, not a champagne-bubbly one.
So it turns out I’m a badass. This is obviously the most terrifying thing ever, and here’s me thinking the Blighter could use some Listerine.
But really, it comes down to this. I don’t have all that much going on, day to day. I just cash Dad’s cheques, buy heavy metal, drink beers, listen to heavy metal... That’s about it. I always said to myself I was low maintenance. That I didn’t need much.
But maybe I do.
I had Gail, maybe, for a bit. And Auntie Alice, sort of. But not now.
So if this is the end of me, curtains and all that, then at least it’s an interesting way to go.
I just look up at the Blighter and the Blighter just looks down at me. At least, that’s what you’d say if it had eyes.
“I do not appear to affect you,” it says.
“The fuck you don’t.”
I say that even before I really think about where its voice is coming from. I’m still looking up at the Blighter’s dripping teeth, but out of the corner of my eye I can see Gail standing just behind me.
“Not in the sense in which I normally affect your kind,” Gail says, or at least her voice does.
The Blighter’s just drooling, with its mouth wide open, but it’s still definitely who I’m chatting to. I don’t want to look at Gail, but I make myself turn and face her anyway. Her expression is what Mum would have called a picture of contentment. Her arms are loose at her sides, swaying a bit, like she’s dancing in her sleep.
“You are special. You are unique.” Her mouth makes the words more careful than normal. It’s weirdly high.
I laugh, but mostly for show. “I’ve waited yonks for you to tell me that, Gail. But you could at least say it like you mean it.”
Sod this. It’s mental as anything, watching her speak someone else’s words. Something else’s. I turn back to the Blighter, ugly as it is.
“Let’s get a few things straight,” I say. “You’re not going to kill me, are you?”
“No.”
I try to ignore Gail and pretend the words are coming out of the Blighter’s mouth.
“Have you killed anyone?” I say.
“Never.”
So the Blighter’s already one up on Gail, for a start. All the same, I make one of those snorting sounds like teachers do. “But your farmer mates have, haven’t they? Shot Lee and Owen in the head, didn’t they? Cold blood.”
“I did not ask them to do that.” Gail’s voice is a tiny little whisper. “They did it because they love me.”
That sort of hurts. Seems like even a Blighter has more people that care about it than I do.
“It is a relief to be able to speak to you,” the Blighter says.
“You’re the second person today to tell me that,” I say, thinking of Auntie Alice, “but you’re not the ugliest.”
Even though it’s basically just a massive slimy slug, I can tell from the way it’s shuddering that it’s gearing up to tell its story. I’ve got the kind of face that makes people want to blurt everything out.
“I am suffering,” the Blighter says in Gail’s voice. “All of my kind are suffering.”
But they all landed in different parts of the world. “So you can speak to the others? All you Blighters?”
It wobbles, I guess maybe trying to shake its head. “No. But I sense them, near and far. I sense their pain, flooding through me, accumulating and adding to my own.”
“What’s so painful, then?” Hunger, I bet. Nobody on TV ever mentions what they eat. Far as I know, no bugger’s actually been gobbled by a Blighter, neither, no matter how close up they get. Funny, that.
“The gravity of our world is far lesser than yours. There, we were able to spread our wings. We could burst through the atmosphere, when it was our time to leave. Here, we are pulled down to the Earth and unable to move. I would not have the strength to unfol
d my wings, even if I were free of this stone prison. Every moment is a punishment. I am suffering.”
Well. Aren’t we all?
“Why did you leave your cushy old world in the first place, then?” I say.
“Our planet fractured. The tectonic shifts became so extreme that first the land became inaccessible, then the atmosphere poisonous. We did not grieve our world, however. Its time was at an end. We simply launched ourselves away in the hope of finding a home.”
“You picked a shitty spot.”
“It is unfortunate. But I understand that your people do not wish to harm us.”
That’s probably going a bit far. It probably never heard about the bombings last summer, before the governments thought better of it. Bits of Blighter meat chucked up all over the beaches. Even when scientists figured out all the stuff about the ‘circle of calm’ around each Blighter, and how bloody lovely it was to stand in it, all people did was fight over their Blighters and then hide them away to stop other people fighting over them.
I suppose now’s the time to find out what that’s all about.
I do my best Louis Theroux impression. “So tell me this... Why do you make everyone all gooey-eyed when they come close?”
The Blighter’s mouth opens even more and drool sprays onto my face. If it weren’t for the last of the giggly buzz, I’d chuck my guts up right there and then.
Gail’s voice says, “An inadvertent side-effect. It is a defence mechanism that has served us well in the past. Here, the calming effect appears to be amplified, against our wishes. It has rendered us unable to speak to your people. Until now.”
I always wanted to be somebody special. And now I am and I don’t like it one bit.
“But it don’t last forever, does it? Your happy-clappy buzz, it runs out. Why can’t you just have your chat after people come back down from their high?”
The Blighter goes quiet. Its mouth twitches. I look back at Gail and her mouth’s doing the exact same thing. I’m half-thinking about giving either one of them a prod when the Blighter starts talking again, in Gail’s tinkly little voice.
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