Royle smiled at her, but Abby stared right through him. She was probably in shock. Or maybe she’d simply retreated inside herself, where it was safer.
Finally, Royle managed to look away from the figure in black. “Okay, Erik,” he said, turning reluctantly to face the gunman. “So I’m here. Now, what shall we talk about?”
Best used the gun to point at the bed. “Sit down. I don’t trust you on your feet. I don’t trust any of you fuckers.”
Royle stayed where he was. “So why did you ask me in here, Erik? I mean, if you don’t trust me, why am I here?” He gestured with his hands, shrugging slightly.
“Don’t get fucking clever. You’re only here because you tried to help when our Tessa went missing. You were the only fucker who cared. Nobody else did. They just turned their backs and walked away, probably thinking I had something to do with it.” He licked his lips. His gaze wouldn’t settle on one thing; his eyes moved around the room, looking at everything, doubting everything. “Now, sit down on the fucking bed before I put a hole in you.” Finally his gaze settled on Royle, and there was a blank spot behind those eyes that Royle wished he’d not had turned upon him.
Royle did as he was told and sat down on the small single bed. The soft mattress bowed beneath him, making him feel like a giant, or a man sitting on a toy bed. “Okay… just be cool, Erik. Tell me the problem.”
The other man laughed. “Fucking hell, man. Are you blind? This…” He gestured with the hand that wasn’t holding the gun. “This is the problem. All of it.”
“This house?” Royle was acting dumb, pretending that he was slow on the uptake. Anything that might buy him some time.
“Jesus…” Erik Best shook his head. “Not the house… not just the house. Everything else, too. This place, this estate — this fucking life.” He walked across the room and stood by the window. The curtains were closed. The beaked figure did not move as he approached, and he barely even looked at it. “I’m right at the centre of the black hole, Royle. I can’t move, can’t breathe. Nothing I do makes any sense.” He turned towards the small figure. “Look at this… this thing.”
“What is it, Erik? I can see it, too. Where did it come from?”
Best turned away from the window. He dropped the gun hand down by his side. “It came from the black hole. Right over there.” He nodded towards the pile of items at the centre of the room.
Royle wasn’t certain, but it looked like there was a hole in the carpet right at the middle of the untidy heap. The hole looked like it might even penetrate the wooden floorboards beneath.
“That thing… I think… I think it’s my daughter. Or at least a small part of her.”
That was Abby Hansen’s cue to move. She seemed to snap out of whatever fugue state she’d entered, and moved sideways, towards the figure. It stood there like a statue, tense and immobile. Even when Abby put one arm around its narrow shoulders, the thing did not move.
“Get away… you get away from it.” Best raised the gun.
“Listen, Erik. Let’s just stay calm.”
“Get the fuck… away.” His finger tightened on the trigger. It was a subtle movement, but Royle was looking at exactly the right place to see it happen. He was ignoring the man’s face. He was more interested in that hand, and the gun it grasped so tightly. Without thinking, he stood and made a single quick movement towards the gunman.
Erik Best’s finger twitched on the trigger. The gun went off: a single shot, but in the small room the sound was deafening.
Royle reached him too late. Abby was already bending over and clutching her abdomen by the time he grabbed the gun hand, twisting it to release the weapon. By this time, Best had gone limp. He let go of the gun without a struggle and sank to his knees, his head going down and his shoulders hitching in a silent sob.
That was when the figure by the window started making a noise.
It raised one small, thin arm, pointing at the wounded woman, and let out a sound like a broken motorcycle engine. The din was unearthly… that was the exact word that came to Royle’s mind, even at the time. The sound was not of this world. A long, high-pitched clicking sound, like nothing he’d ever heard before.
Other than raising its hand, the figure did not move. It just kept on clicking: a single endless ratcheting note, with not even a pause for breath.
Royle went to Abby Hansen. She was down on her knees. Blood had turned her legs red; she was clutching at the wound, trying to stem the flow. She started crawling on her knees, making her way over to the pile of items on the floor — all the things she’d kept when her daughter went missing. When Royle tried to help her, she brushed away his hands. She kept on moving, staggering on her knees, until she came to the hole in the floor.
Royle could hardly believe what he was seeing.
The hole had enlarged; the edges were burnt, as if an intense heat had seared the floorboards and the carpet. There were black leaves clinging to the lip of the hole. It was a perfect black circle — a black hole, just like Best had said. He felt his hand open and the gun dropped to the floor. He made no effort to keep hold of it. His muscles were limp, lifeless.
He sensed movement before he saw it, and by the time he’d turned around Erik Best had already picked up the gun. He was holding it with the barrel in his mouth, his eyes wide and his teeth chattering against the steel barrel. He smiled around the barrel, and then he pulled the trigger. The back of his head detonated in a confusion of red, like something from a dream. It didn’t look real; it was a special effect, one that would play out on the screen behind his eyes for the rest of his life.
Royle watched as the man crumpled to the floor, blood pouring from his open, slack mouth as the gun slipped away. Then, when he turned back to Abby Hansen, she was crouching by that hole in the floor, shivering. The beaked figure had somehow made its way across to her, and they were embracing tightly, as if one were absorbing the other. The small figure in the black cloak looked vague, insubstantial, like a rag doll that was no longer held together by the glue of its parents’ grief.
Abby Hansen smiled.
Then both figures fell into the hole and vanished.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
SHE’S BACK THERE, inside. She’s in the grove inside the Grove; the place that exists just out of sight, out of step, beneath and off to one side: the place that is sometimes known as Loculus. This time she knows where she’s going; she is no longer a tourist. This place has begun to feel more like home than her real home, back in the world that she can barely bring herself to think of as real.
She walks quickly, her bare feet whispering across the soft ground and the black leaves. She does not hurt her feet. It is as if they know exactly where to tread so that they can miss the stones and roots that might cause them harm.
She glances down at her belly, where she was shot. There’s still blood there, but the wound is already healing. Leaves cling to it, fusing the flesh, repairing the damage.
Before long, she is once again at the mouth of the cave, which stands among others just like it at the foot of the high cliffs. It all looks different this time, darker, deeper, and more menacing. She pauses at the threshold, uncertain. Why is she here? What happened to the thing that might have been her daughter or might just have been something else trying to impersonate Tessa?
She is beyond doubting any of this. She knows that it is as real as that other place — the one where Erik Best took his own life, and where that policeman is still standing, covered in Erik’s blood and wondering what to do next.