by Kevin Brooks
Then nothing.
Nothing . . .
Less than nothing. An unimaginable emptiness, a vast swathe of absolute blackness stretching deep into space for a thousand million miles . . .
And then it starts all over again.
The massive crash as the car demolishes the living-room wall, the violent eruption of bricks and metal and broken glass . . .
Then it stutters . . .
Stops.
Starts again.
The massive crash as the car demolishes the living-room wall . . . the floor tilting as the room is turned upside down
shake it
like this
and then a blizzard suddenly explodes out of nowhere, a great white whirlwind of bricks and metal and broken glass swirling and tumbling all around me . . . and now I can see the big bad wolf. He’s standing right in front of me, dressed in a Santa costume and wearing a long white beard, and as I gaze into his curiously human eyes, I see a familiar face reflected in their mirrored darkness — a haunted face, battered and bruised, covered in scratches, caked in dirt and dry blood — and I think I know who it is . . . I’m sure I know who it is . . . but just as it’s coming to me, on the tip of my tongue, a spinning brick comes flying out of nowhere and hits the wolf in the head, and as he falls to the ground everything melts away . . .
The blizzard, the wolf, the haunted face . . .
All gone.
Never was.
And then there’s nothing again.
Nothing . . .
Less than nothing. An unimaginable emptiness . . .
Elliot?
A voice from the other side of the universe.
Can you hear me?
And then it starts all over again.
The massive crash as the car demolishes the living-room wall . . .
It’s different now. It’s the same — the same crash, the same car, the same wall — but it all feels more distant, more fragile, as if it’s real but not real . . . and I’m there, but I’m also somewhere else . . . somewhere halfway between . . . somewhere soft and white . . . and the violent eruption of bricks and metal and broken glass is silent and slow and somehow graceful
Elliot?
Can you hear me?
and something is going beep beep beep and another voice says
It’s all right, nothing to worry about.
and then everything goes quiet again and I’m back in Shirley’s living room and all I can see — in silent slow-motion — is the snow globe flying out from the heart of the eruption and shooting across the room toward me.
The snow globe . . .
Everything.
There’s nothing else now. The rest of the world has gone — the room, the car, the bricks and metal and glass, the dust and smoke . . . it’s all disappeared into an unseen darkness, and all that’s left is the snow globe and me. It shines with a soft and silvery luminescence, and as it tumbles and spins through the void toward me, I can already feel the shattering pain as it hits me in the head . . . I can physically feel it . . . it’s there, right there . . . right between my eyes . . .
I raise my hand to my head, feeling for the pain . . . but my arm gets stuck, caught up in something. I yank it, and as my arm comes free, I feel a sharp pain in my wrist . . . and when I put my hand to my head, it doesn’t feel right
You’re not right in the head, are you?
it doesn’t feel like skin, it feels like some kind of cloth. I try to get hold of it
No, Elliot . . .
but something takes hold of my hand and gently pulls it away
Is he awake?
and now the snow globe is right in front of me, within touching distance, and as it moves closer and closer I can see it’s not tumbling and spinning anymore, it’s still . . . perfectly still . . . I can see it with absolute clarity. It’s right in front of my eyes now. I can see the wolf, and the pathway through the woods, and the falling snow . . . and I can see the red-hooded figure of the little girl with the basket
Ellamay?
and she turns her head and looks out through the glass at me
Elliot?
Please come back . . .
and now the little girl’s face is right in front of me, staring into my eyes . . . and for a moment her face is mine — battered and bruised, covered in scratches, caked in dirt and dry blood — and then it’s ours, together, Ellamay’s and mine
We are as one
and then it changes again and it’s Mum’s. She looks terrible — her face covered in stitched-up cuts, her right eye blackened and swollen shut
Elliot?
Can you hear me?
her skin deathly white . . .
I think he might be waking up.
She doesn’t look anything like herself.
Wake up, Elliot
it’s me . . .
The snow globe shatters.
My glass skull cracks.
“Please, Elliot . . . please wake up . . .”
My eyes flutter open.
I’m in a white room, lying on a white bed, staring up at a white ceiling. My head hurts. I can feel things sticking into my skin, something gripping my hand. My mouth is bone-dry. Muted sounds are drifting all around me — soft beeps, a low humming, hushed voices in the background — and just for a moment I’m a newborn baby again, lying on my back in an incubator, looking up through the clear-plastic dome at the white sky of the ceiling above . . . and suddenly the sky darkens and an unknown thing appears out of nowhere, and as it looms down over me, getting bigger and bigger all the time, the fear erupts inside me — uncontrollable, overwhelming, absolute . . .
I close my eyes.
I can feel it . . .
The fear.
I can feel it then, and I can feel it now.
But it feels different now . . .
It somehow feels right.
It’s still wrong — how can it ever be right to be so afraid? — but it’s my wrong. It’s me. It’s how I’m supposed to be.
Not dead.
I’m not dead anymore.
I’m scared.
I’m me again.
I open my eyes.
“Oh, thank God,” I hear Mum say.
I turn to the sound of her voice and see her sitting next to me on the edge of the bed. She’s holding my hand, gripping it tightly. Tears are pooling in her eyes.
She smiles at me.
“Welcome back, Elliot,” she says.
I smile at her.
Yeah, echoes Ellamay. Welcome back, Elliot. Happy Christmas.
And I smile at her too.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2016 by Kevin Brooks
Cover photographs: copyright © 2018 by Alena Root/Shutterstock (boy); copyright © 2018 by Peter Hatter/Trevillion Images (trees); copyright © 2018 by Lisa Valder/Getty Images (snow)
Lines on pp. 129–130 from Martyn Pig by Kevin Brooks (© Kevin Brooks, 2002) reproduced courtesy of Chicken House.
Lyric on p. 164 from “Merry Xmas Everybody” (© Holder/Lea, 1973) reproduced courtesy of Barn Publishing (Slade) Limited.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First U.S. electronic edition 2018
First published by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont U.K. Limited 2016
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending
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