Invaders From Beyond

by Colin Sinclair

  “Oh, sure you didn’t,” one girl’s saying. “Except we all saw it, didn’t we? And there’s even photos on the shared drive.”

  The guy she’s talking to has gone red. He stutters when he speaks and puts on a stupid smile, like he’s trying to make out he’s not embarrassed.

  “I had a cold,” he says in a quiet voice.

  Everyone roars with laughter, so I do too.

  Another guy’s sort of crying, he’s laughing so much. He says what the other bloke said, but in a funny voice. “He had a cold!”

  The girl next to him says, “Well I thought it was just adorable. I know people used to, but I’ve never seen someone actually get emotional about it.” She’s classy and not showing much skin. Her tits are smaller than mine, but nicer.

  Someone else says, “It was a beautiful tribute. Seriously! Some of the most heartfelt karaoke I’ve ever been privileged to hear. Princess Diana’d be bowled over.”

  The crying-with-laughter guy says, “Actually, you mean Marilyn. Pretty sure it was the original.”

  Aha. If this was a pub quiz, I’d get the barrel of bitter.

  “Candle in the Wind!” I say, a bit louder than I meant to.

  Then everybody’s looking at me. Nobody’s talking any more. What’s their problem?

  Anyone can look. They look at me and I look at them. Nobody’s speaking, still. Pretty soon I get sick of it, so off I go.

  It’s starting to look like most of the groups are la-di-dah snobs who probably all work together. There’s a publishing company somewhere around here and if it wasn’t for that then there’d only be hotel workers and jobseekers. I can hear people saying things like ‘promotion opportunities’ and ‘jollies’ and ‘smart objectives’ and who the hell talks like that on New Year’s Eve?

  The TV’s on, up in the corner. There’s no sound and the settings are messed up so the reds are like blood smears. Some guy’s talking, acting all superior. His specs look like they’ll slip off his nose even though it’s big as a beer can. The programme’s some Review of the Year on Channel 4, it looks like. The giant words JULY 2018 fade out from behind him and now there’s a video of a Blighter, except all fuzzy because it must have been nicked from YouTube and you can’t see the ridges on its shell or whatever it is they have on their backs. All the fuzziness makes it wiggly around the edges, like a Scooby Doo ghost. Looks like the Blighter’s sat on a beach because the background’s just beige and you can’t even tell how big the thing is. Part of the trouble’s that its head’s low to the ground, maybe pushing down into the sand.

  The video goes bright white suddenly and the TV presenter pulls the kind of face he saves for stories where everything seems pretty sad but maybe all for the best. NATO shot first.

  A few people are watching the TV, but they turn away once the YouTube clip’s finished. Some guy starts doing an impression, bending over double like the Hunchback of Wherever He Was. He’s lolloping around, groaning and swinging his pretend-heavy head at the guys holding pints around him. He freezes for a second, then bursts up with his arms spread wide, puffing his cheeks and making an explosion sound. One pint hits the carpet and smashes up glass and lager and the guy just laughs, the dick.

  I’m at the bar before I remember that I won’t have any cash until tomorrow, when Dad’s money comes through. So I just stand there. This part of the pub’s weirdly quiet, like there’s a bubble around it.

  “You got a Blighter back here or something?” I say, waving my hand, pointing out all the people that ain’t here.

  Gail’s behind the bar, like always. She laughs at my joke. Last summer, that sort of gag was all the rage. Like, Is that a Blighter in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me? Or, You don’t need a Blighter to work here, but it helps.

  “We’ve got an offer on pitchers of beer,” she says. “My idea. It keeps the queues short and keeps people sat down.”

  She looks over at the Blighter-impression-bloke. One of his mates kicks him in the bum when he tries to pick up the bits of broken glass.

  Gail sighs. “Well. That’s the theory, anyway.”

  I think about asking her for a free pint, but then I change my mind. She’d probably give me one, but I don’t want to get her in trouble. Her fella Ralphie runs the Beast—at least, his name’s on the door, even though Gail does all the real slog—and he’s a tight old bastard. I can see him through the gap in the door behind the bar. He’s got his feet up, TV on, and he’s holding a brandy glass the size of a vase.

  Gail doesn’t even ask me if I want to order anything. She knows I’m always skint.

  “You okay, then, Becky?” she says.

  I shrug, but that’s a bit rude, isn’t it? Gail’s alright. More than alright. She’s still got the same face as when we were kids, except now she’s got crinkles either side of her eyes, even though she’s only like twenty-nine, same as me. Far as I can remember, I sort of had a thing about her, back at school. Never did nothing about it, ’course, and just as well, because here she is shacked up with Ralphie, who’s about as full-on manly as Kendal men get. Still, Gail’s always up for chatting, not like the other lasses in the pub in sequined halternecks or whatever instead of a barmaid’s pinny. So I say, “I’m good,” and Gail smiles one of her nice smiles.

  “You don’t much look it,” she says.

  I don’t know what to say to that, because she’s right. So I don’t say nothing.

  Gail laughs even though I didn’t even make a joke. “Not a fan of New Year’s, then?”

  “You get to chuck one calendar away and start a new one. Other than that, it’s just another day, isn’t it? And I don’t even have a calendar.”

  “Good grief,” Gail says, but she’s still smiling, “Put it like that, now I’m depressed too.”

  “Who says I’m depressed? I’m not depressed.”

  “Very glad to hear it. Want a drink?”

  “Nah. Not in the mood.”

  Maybe she’s taking the piss after all, ribbing me about having no cash. Stuff like that makes me see red. I guess it’s a family thing, because Dad had the exact same problem. Pride.

  So words just start pouring out of my mouth. “Who’s the one who should be depressed, eh? Who’s on which side of the bar? I’m free and easy, me. I’m the paying customer, mate, at least I could be if I felt like it. You’re stuck there serving booze and, I don’t know, washing up pots ’til your false nails fall off.”

  Gail stops smiling. Them crinkles at the sides of her eyes are still right there. They’re not laugh lines.

  Pull yourself together, Becky Stone. Think calm thoughts. She didn’t deserve that. One time, back in PE class at school, Gail dragged me out of the long grass on a cross-country run and held me up while I limped to the finish line. I didn’t even have a bad foot or nothing. I just didn’t want her to let go.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “It’s alright,” Gail says. “It’s true. You win. Maybe we’re as messed up as each other. I bet I hate New Year’s Eve more than you.”

  I don’t pull her up about the ‘messed up’ bit. I’m not messed up. I’ve got my own flat, me, and a record collection some folks on eBay would kill for. I haven’t got a care in the world.

  She reaches up to grab a pint glass from a shelf, fills it from the pump, downs half and then hands it to me. She leans on the bar with both elbows.

  Like a fat-arsed polar bear, it looks like we’ve broken the ice.

  Gail says, “So. Got any New Year’s resolutions?”

  I take a little sip, all ladylike. “Get a job, maybe.”

  “You say that most weeks. It doesn’t count.”

  “Learn ‘Stairway to Heaven.’”

  “Same goes for that.”

  I puff out my cheeks. “What about you, then?”

  Gail looks both ways like she’s doing the Green Cross Code. She leans over so our foreheads are nearly touching and I can smell her breath. I tell you what, that wasn’t her first pint.

 
“Swear to secrecy?”

  A curl of her hair tickles my nose. It gives me a shudder, but not a bad one. “Swear down,” I say.

  “I’m going to find myself a Blighter.” Except she hardly even says the last word out loud, more mouths it.

  We both look over at the TV. It’s showing another YouTube clip, closer up and clearer than the last one. I already know this one frame by frame, pretty much. It was the very first Blighter video I saw, last summer, when everyone was sharing it on Facebook and when everyone still called them ‘Sluggish.’ Even though the TV sound’s turned off it’s like I can still hear the voice of whoever’s holding the camera, just from memory. “What the hell is it?” the guy says, and “Where did it come from?” and all the time he’s moving closer and closer to the Blighter and then after a while you can see which end’s its head. It’s fat, big as a fire engine, and shiny and juddering. It looks like it’s basically made up of just slime, or like it’s some fairytale giant’s used condom but, you know, alive. Then the video goes all blocky as the camera-guy turns the camera on its side instead of zooming in, so now the screen’s all tall and thin, and back then on Facebook you had to turn your head to keep watching, which was annoying as hell and when will people learn to hold cameraphones the right way round if they want to get their shit on TV? And then you can see the Blighter a bit more clearly, you can tell the slimy slug bits from them hard sections on its back that look like they’re click-click-clicking together as it shuffles and shudders.

  It’s bloody well disgusting, in other words.

  Then, at the same moment the Blighter turns to look at the camera, at the guy holding the camera, the video goes all jerky because the guy’s hands have started shaking. And that first time on Facebook, like everyone else, I’m thinking, I don’t blame you, mate, just look at the fucking teeth on that thing! because its mouth’s open now and you can just about see them pointy white triangles and they’re dripping spit and there’s steam coming out of its dark nasty hole of a mouth.

  Except the guy holding the camera isn’t shaking from fear, is he? With the sound turned up you can hear this weird giggle and soon enough it’s a full-on belly laugh and then you’re thinking, God, that’s weird, and then you just click Share and get on with your life until the next clip shows up.

  Still. We’re all pretty much used to them by now. It’s New Year’s Eve, we’re only like a couple of hours away from 2019, and then them Blighters will be so last year.

  “There aren’t any more Blighters,” I say. “Least, none that still matter. None out in the wild.”

  Gail’s whispering now. “I bet you there are.”

  I shake my head. “There ain’t, and if there was, some rich bastard’d get in on it like a flash. Like that oil baron dude out in Dubai.”

  I laugh because it’s funny, what happened to that guy. Bagged a Blighter all for himself, kept it out of the papers and probably bumped off anyone who found out about it, and look at him now. Ha ha ha.

  “There’s one, at least,” Gail says. She refills her pint. “I know that for a fact. Play your cards right, Becky Stone, and I’ll show you.”

  2

  THE SUN’S SHINING but it’s bastard cold out here.

  “You’re seriously telling me you don’t have any walking clothes?” Gail says.

  I jam my hands all the way into the pockets of my leather jacket. I shrug, but it sort of turns into a shiver.

  “Walking’s for old folks,” I say.

  Gail’s got all the gear. Boots and a waterproof blue jacket and a woolly hat so big that there’s a dark smudge on the front rim where the mascara’s rubbed off of her eyelashes. I pull up my hoodie, but the wind just whistles on through.

  It’d be better if we were actually on the move. That’s what walkers do, isn’t it? Rather than just crouching behind bushes like we’re doing. Gail didn’t even bring sandwiches, and all I had for breakfast was one bit of cold pizza. It’s not even like the cupboards will be full when I get home. Dad’s cash normally comes through on the first of the month, but New Year’s Day’s a write-off because all the bankers are still hammered.

  One of my legs has gone to sleep and I’m shivering so much I topple backwards onto my arse.

  “Ah, sod this,” I say.

  I stand up, but Gail grabs at my hand.

  “Don’t you dare,” she says. “I’m not having you showing your face and scaring them off.”

  I look down at my freezing, bluey fingers, held in Gail’s bulky glove. My hand looks small enough to be a little kid’s. For some reason, it makes me feel like crying.

  “I think they’ve been having you on,” I say.

  She shakes her head and pushes back a bit of hair that’s fallen out from under her hat. “I told you. They didn’t tell me anything to my face. I just heard them talking about it. No reason they’d lie. It’s no joke.”

  “Yeah. But I’m freezing my tits off and I still reckon they’re full of—”

  Her hand squeezes mine. “There! Look, they’re here.”

  Sure enough, a car’s pulled in off the road, just up from where we are at Sadgill. Lucky for us, Gail’s beat-up old Corsa’s hidden way off in the other direction, at the edge of the woods.

  I squint. Last time I went to the opticians, they said I needed glasses, but those things cost a fucking fortune. “You’re sure that’s them?”

  I must have started standing up again, because Gail’s pulling me back behind the bush.

  Two guys get out of the car. Yeah, it’s them. I wouldn’t have recognised the old bloke, Owen, but the young one’s definitely Lee, because he’s wearing the same puffer jacket as he was the other night on the door of the Beast. They’ve both got massive Frankenstein walking boots too, just like Gail. Do people round here get this stuff free on the NHS or something?

  The two of them stand together, looking up at the side of the valley. Checking a map, maybe, or instructions. Lee points somewhere up there and then they’re off. Slowly, mind you. Lee’s dad Owen is a wobbly old codger. Must be in his nineties at least—maybe hundreds? Do people get that old?

  “Wait. Let them go on ahead,” Gail says, like she’s reading my mind, because I was just about ready to shout out, Hurry the fuck up! “Further up there we’ll be able to use the trees as cover, but for now we can’t risk leaving ourselves exposed.”

  While we wait I try and make tunes with my chattering teeth. I’m doing ‘The Temples of Syrinx’ by Rush, one of Dad’s favourites. I’m getting so much into it that I’m almost annoyed when Gail hoiks herself off the ground and sets off up the hillside.

  “Keep low,” she says. She scrambles up ahead of me, so all I can see of her is legs and bum.

  I’m panting by the time we reach the line of trees. Turns out even old Owen’s fitter than me. Gail scoots into the woods. She’s loving this.

  She points. Lee’s helping his dad across a muddy patch, where one of Owen’s walking poles is stuck in the ground. Jesus. This is going to take forever. What do walkers do other than walk, to pass the time? Every minute out here feels as long as a triple-vinyl prog-rock album.

  I nudge Gail’s arm. “If you had to choose between having webbed toes or webbed fingers, which would you pick?”

  “Shut up, Beck.”

  We keep on walking.

  I swear it’s an hour later before Gail says anything else. She’s been doing all these CIA moves, ducking from tree to stone to tree. Which is all very impressive, except that there’s me just tramping along behind her, so what’s the point?

  “I think they’re heading to Tarn Crag.”

  Whatever. Knowing the name of somewhere doesn’t make it more interesting. There’s nothing out here. I don’t know why they don’t just call the whole place ‘hills’ or even just ‘the countryside.’ I’ve got grown-up cousins down south and last time I saw them, at the funeral, they said they was amazed I wasn’t out in the open air all the time. They said I was lucky and they only wished they had the great ou
tdoors on their doorstep. I said someone’s cat shat on my doorstep once, and I didn’t feel the need to go and stand in that.

  “Is there anything up there?” I say, just to say something.

  “Well, there’s a tarn.”

  “Yeah. Obviously.”

  “It’s a kind of small lake.”

  “I know that.”

  Gail clams up. She knows I’m thick.

  Then she says, “Hold on,” but in a way that means Aha! not Stop walking. “There’s a bothy up there, too. I’m sure there is.”

  I just keep on plodding, watching more mud stick to the mud that’s already on my shoes. I swear my Cons are twice as big as they were this morning.

  “Them Blighters, they got no taste,” I say. “Just think of all the places they could have ended up. Who’d want to hang around all on their own up here?”

  “I don’t suppose they chose where to end up. They just landed.”

  “Crash-landed, more like.” I’m thinking about all them videos people took in the first couple of days in July. Any Blighters that landed somewhere soft were filthy with soil. And the ones that landed somewhere hard, on roads or whatever, were just guts. A nasty secret part of me wishes someone got video of that too. Just imagine it in slow-mo—an enormous giant slug slapping onto tarmac and then just turning all the way inside out, showering up goo like a whale going up through its own blowhole.

  “Still, they were unlucky,” I say, even though I can tell Gail would be happier if I let her be. “They should’ve planned ahead. Could’ve gone to Hawaii. Or Disneyland.”

  Gail turns around and grins, which warms me right up for a second. “Well, San Francisco basically is Disneyland, now, the way they’ve treated their resident Blighter. Have you seen all that razzmatazz around it, on TV? It’s like a cross between Lourdes and a funfair.” She goes quieter. “Still, who am I to talk? I was as desperate to head over there as anyone, at least at first. Not that Ralphie would give me the airfare, even if we had it.”

  “But now that San Francisco one’s the weakest of the lot.”