Hugo's pupils might grow absolutely obedient, unable to act without his direction, inside or outside the school. How unremittingly responsible for them would that make him? Carlotta's book would be so successful that everyone she met insisted on questioning her about it, until her home and her phone and her computer were so besieged that she hadn't a moment of her own. The unnatural health of Helen's residents might suggest to their offspring that they were refusing to die, and Ellen fancied that some of the children would take matters into their own homicidal hands. As for Roy, anything he visualised would become real, including whatever he feared. How would he stop this, if indeed he could? How could any of them control elements buried so deep in their minds that they might not even be able to identify the material until it was too late?
This was certainly an unnerving notion. It even made its author uneasy, down here alone on the beach. Perhaps she should save working on it until she was home; she had more than enough to take back to her desk. She could walk faster now that she didn't have to think. If she'd had enough of the beach, the nearest escape route was up the path where Charlotte had walked in her sleep.
This put her in mind of her own dream that night, of being trapped in a house that had smelled stuffed with clay – a house as dark as the inside of a skull and yet not dark enough for her. In the dream she'd thought any of the windows would be as bad as a mirror, but she was distracted from the memory by the creaking of the cliff beside her, or rather of the shrubs that covered it. A trickle of sand emerged, presumably dislodged by the same imperceptible wind, and she veered away from the cliff. She ought to be able to walk faster on the pebbles than on the sand.
The stony trail bordered the mud at the edge of the water. The mud was as gloomily brown as the exposed clay of the cliff, and scored with ruts that she could take for scratches gouged by giant fingernails as their owner had sunk into it. Rocks of the same increasingly omnipresent colour protruded from it, some wearing wigs of moss or seaweed, some warty with barnacles. The tops of a few had been hollowed out by waves and held water as if, Ellen thought, they were fonts for a primitive baptism or a more mysterious ritual. Did she need to quell her imagination until it was safely home? The calls of seabirds had begun to sound like the cries of children in a panic if not worse. They seemed oddly muffled, so that she wondered if any mischievous children were lying low in the rusty hull of a boat at the foot of the cliff, but it was full of clay and rocks. Ahead of it she saw the rounded bulge up which the trail snaked towards the dark stained lid of the sky, and she was making for the path so hastily that she almost failed to notice a movement within the cliff.
There was a hole in the clay, about the size of her head and slightly lower. She had the unwelcome notion that a face had peered out of it before withdrawing like a worm. It could have belonged to an animal, since the hole went deep into the cliff. It could hardly have grinned at her, displaying a mouthful of clay. She tramped towards it, holding her shaky breath, to quash the impression. Something moved as she did, back there in the dark.
Was it a rabbit? As she stooped with some reluctance to peer into the burrow, its denizen advanced to meet her. It was no wild animal, and Ellen recoiled, almost sprawling on her back. The tenant of the burrow shrank away just as vigorously, and when Ellen risked ducking for another look she was able to distinguish that the face was her own.
The reflection wasn't flattering. Surely it was blurred by the dimness or by the surface that was acting as a mirror. Had erosion exposed some uncommon species of rock? Ellen crouched, gripping handfuls of thigh, until she was certain what she was seeing. A mirror was buried at arm's length inside the cliff.
She was able to discern most of the oval frame and some of the handle, which was propped among the subterranean roots of a tree or bush, but her image in the smudged glass remained puffily shapeless. She couldn't really look like that. To prove it she planted one knee on the yielding sand, which made her feel yielding too, and reached into the burrow.
She hadn't fully grasped the implications of an arm's length. She had to grope blindly inside the narrow tunnel, catching earth under her fingernails, until she could almost have imagined that someone was inching the mirror out of reach. Her cheek was inches from the cliff, which filled her nostrils with a heavy smell of clay. She wobbled on her knee, and as her shoulder bumped against the cliff, her fingertips nudged a flat surface – the glass of the mirror. By stretching her arm as straight as it would go she was able to touch the handle among the bony roots. She strained her thumb and forefinger to dislodge it, and the bunch of scrawny objects shifted in response.
Ellen sucked in a breath that tasted of clay. The next moment she lost her balance, and the side of her face slammed against the cliff. Beyond the impact she thought she could feel the thing she'd mistaken for roots flexing itself, rediscovering liveliness. Perhaps it was preparing to seize her by the hand. It took her a dismaying effort to remember that she had another one – that she could use it to fling herself backwards. She barely saved herself from falling as her arm emerged from the passage. She wasn't certain that she saw the five discoloured twigs move, but the mirror did. It tilted just enough to trap her face, displaying how deformed it was, not only by terror, if indeed that could be blamed at all.
She didn't quite scream. She released an ill-defined cry that made her lips feel as unhealthily swollen as her entire face looked. It failed to rescue her from her nightmare, because she wasn't asleep. The mirror tilted further, turning her reflection into clay, and for a crazed moment she was tempted to reach for it again, to examine her face until she was sure of her appearance. Or might the remnants of a hand adjust the mirror? When she realised she was waiting for this – waiting like an animal pinned by headlight beams – she floundered away along the beach.
She couldn't use the path up to the field. It passed directly above the burrow, from which she could imagine an arm thinner than flesh sprouting to clutch at her feet the instant she strayed close. As she fled towards a road that descended to the shore, the sand kept slipping aside, twisting her ankles, until she had to hobble like an old woman. Eventually the beach grew firmer, but it was a trick: when she trod on it her feet sank deep into packed sand that was well on the way to becoming mud. She felt as if it were dragging her weight into her legs, swelling them out of proportion, except that they were no heavier or more unmanageable than the rest of her. Surely only her toil and the heat as thick as the low clouds were weighing her down. When she held out her hands as if beseeching an invisible companion, she was almost certain they were more or less the size and shape they ought to be.
Nevertheless when she finally arrived at the road up the cliff she was wary of encountering someone at the top – anyone at all. She didn't want to be near people while she couldn't tell the difference between humidity and her own sweat or as long as a thick smell of clay seemed to cling to her. The road was deserted, and she put on speed once it flattened out alongside the field where she'd slept. A hedge blocked her view, but the occasional gap let her see that the field was unoccupied. If anyone was hiding, so they should, given how their hand had looked. While Ellen wished she hadn't had that thought, she gave in to whispering the rest of it. 'Worse than me.'
Perhaps she imagined the muffled distant voice – if it was both, how could she hear it? – but she couldn't doubt its message, which felt buried in her skull. 'No,' it said.