Out of Nowhere

by Gerard Whelan

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.

  11. The Stiff Upper Lip

  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.

  12. The Market Town

  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.

  13. The Assault in the Library

  Kirsten threw her loot into the pick-up truck and joined them. She wasn’t too happy at first with the job Philip wanted them to do. She was like a little child who’d been let loose in a toyshop only to be told, just as she was getting into the swing of things, that it was time to go home and do her homework. But she cheered up when Philip promised they’d have time to raid more interesting shops later.

  ‘I think I could get to like thieving,’ she said with a grin.

  They fetched the plastic sacks from the car, while Philip set off to the hardware shop.

  ‘Any special book requests?’ Kirsten called after the big monk. When he looked back you could see his white teeth grinning through the black curls of his beard. The grin looked genuine, and again Stephen felt uneasy – either the man was a great actor or his moods were all over the place.

  ‘Just don’t get anything too steamy,’ joked Philip. ‘We don’t want too many distractions.’

  Then he was gone, and they crossed the square to the library.

  ‘I’d really much rather be doing a bit of pillaging,’ Kirsten complained.

  ‘With any luck,’ Stephen pointed out, ‘we won’t even get in.’

  But there was nothing to stop them. The door of the building was old and solid-looking, but it stood slightly ajar. Stephen wasn’t sure he liked that. The disappearances seemed to have happened late on Sunday night, a time when library doors should be locked. It suggested that someone had been here since then.

  The door swung open at a push, and they were in a large front hall. Before them was a broad staircase. Off the hall were anonymous offices, most of them identical and all of them empty. The quietness seemed even quieter here.

  ‘Now this is really creepy,’ Kirsten whispered. It was a whispering sort of place.

  They went up the stairs, their footsteps echoing in the stairwell. In front of them, on the next landing, stood a glass door with the words Public Library written on it in gilt letters. They stopped, hesitant. They looked at each other with embarrassed smiles.

  ‘Robbing a library,’ Kirsten whispered. ‘It feels almost sinful!’

  But she didn’t sound as though that bothered her. Her whisper echoed, as though a mocking little voice was aping hers.

  For a moment they both just stood outside the door. Even now Stephen half expected a librarian to appear, demanding to know what they were at. Then the sound of breaking glass came from somewhere outside, startling them.

  ‘There goes the hardware shop,’ Stephen said.

  The noise had broken the spell. Stephen shrugged off his unease and pushed at the library door. It swung open.

  The library was a single, large, rectangular room. Big windows that looked out on to the square took up most of the wall straight ahead. The other walls were covered with bookshelves. Free-standing bookstacks stood scattered around the carpeted floor. Stephen felt himself relax. Inside the library the silence seemed less oppressive. It suited the place: you expected libraries to be quiet.

  Immediately in front of them stood an old-fashioned glass-fronted library counter with low wooden gates on either side of it marked In and Out. Kirsten, bubbling at the opportunity, breezed in through the gate marked Out. Stephen used the proper gate. They stood looking around.

  ‘You start at that end,’ Kirsten said, pointing. ‘And I’ll start over here. We’ll meet in the middle.’

  They started filling the plastic sacks, working in silence. Stephen noticed that Kirsten examined each book before selecting or replacing it. He himself flitted from shelf to shelf, picking titles that caught his eye. As he rounded the free-standing stack furthest from the door, he noticed that the room wasn’t, as he’d thought, perfectly rectangular. There was a walk-in alcove at this end. A sign above it read Reference Section. At the back of the alcove was another door. Set in its top half was a window of cloudy frosted glass. As he looked at the glass, Stephen thought he saw a shadow behind it – a moving shadow.

  He stood stock-still, waiting. A shiver ran up his spine. There was no sound. He wasn’t even sure he’d really seen anything. He looked back at Kirsten, but she was still busy selecting books. Should he say something, and risk looking like an idiot when the room turned out to be empty?

  He looked back at
the door, licking lips that were suddenly very dry. There was no sign of movement. Stephen cursed himself for a panicky fool. The eyes play tricks when things are tense. The hairs were tingling on his neck, but he’d heard nothing and seen … what? A movement that might have been anything or nothing. The shadow of a window-blind blowing in the breeze.

  But there was no breeze.

  ‘Get a hold of yourself,’ he told himself.

  He walked boldly over to the door in the alcove and put his hand on the knob. It turned easily and the door opened inwards. But before he could open it fully the knob was yanked from his hand, and something hit him very hard in the face.

  Stephen toppled backwards, and as he fell he was hit again, hard, in the shoulder, by what felt like a boot. Someone flung himself on top of him. Blows were aimed at his head, and he had just enough sense to throw his arms up in front of his face. Several pairs of running feet went by him. His arms took the worst of the heavy blows, but some of them landed. He was dazed. Little stars sparked and died in front of his eyes. His attacker was growling, a savage sound that didn’t sound human at all. Stephen felt sick to his stomach with fear. He thought of the body in the field. He felt he was going to pass out.

  Then Kirsten screamed.

  The sound seemed to trip a strange switch inside Stephen. There was a very peculiar feeling in his head, a sudden twisting, pulling sensation, as though his mind itself was trying to escape from his body. For a moment he had a feeling that was very hard to describe: it was almost as though he – not his body, but he – was somewhere else entirely. Then his mind seemed to snap back into his body like a piece of overstretched elastic suddenly released.

  He was instantly very alert and very aware. Everything seemed very, very clear. His body moved as though with a will of its own. His hands caught his attacker’s wrists, his speed surprising both of them. Stephen saw the other’s face for the first time. It was the face of a boy not much older than himself, a dirty face twisted into a look of utter hatred. The youth’s teeth were bared in a doglike snarl, and Stephen shuddered as he saw that they were sharp, as though they’d been filed. Thick spit was drooling from his mouth. The boy’s eyes were dark and burning. He was very strong, but Stephen didn’t feel weak now at all. He held the youth’s hands easily, then bucked his hips so that the bigger boy was thrown off him. Stephen let go of his wrists and his attacker flew helplessly through the air and slammed into the wall with an explosive grunt. He fell on the ground with a cascade of displaced library books raining down on him.