Cold Skies: A Psychological Thriller

by Zoe Drake

  The only answer was the light erasing all pain and time and space from Gareth’s consciousness, and finally, his consciousness itself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Leaving the chapel, Gareth hurried up St John’s Street.

  The girl hadn’t accompanied him when he left; nevertheless, he felt someone, or something, watching him from the shadows in the nearby alleyways, but watching him more cautiously than before. Taking their time.

  Waiting.

  “You should be cautious, mate,” he whispered as he glanced up into the clear, starry sky. “I’m dangerous.”

  As he reached the corner and the squat bulk of the Round Church across the road, he paused. The right-hand road would take him back towards the city centre. He turned left, limping slightly, and saw the narrow span of Magdalene Bridge before him.

  If he got to the other side of Castle Hill, he thought, maybe he could just walk out of Cambridge. As he padded past the shops and drew level with Henry’s Wine Bar, the entrance a hundred yards away across the plaza, a flicker of movement caught his eye and he stopped, all senses aflame.

  At the punting station, where the punts were moored together like a huddle of sleeping alligators in the murky water, the girl stood in one of the boats, waving at him.

  “How did you–”

  The girl put her hand to her lips, and beckoned to him.

  He walked across the courtyard and stepped onto the wooden platform of the punting station. Now the girl had the pole in her hand, the length of the wooden shaft dwarfing her. With both hands, she held it out to Gareth, and he took it.

  He stepped into the flat wooden boat, feeling it shift and sway in the water beneath him. Without any warning, the punt began to move, easing away from its fellows next to it. He turned back and saw the chain that dangled from the rowlocks. Was that the mark of something like a welder’s torch on the broken links he saw? Had they been severed inexplicably, “by a source of immense heat”?

  He returned his attention to the interior of the boat. He was alone.

  The girl had vanished.

  The last time Gareth had gone punting had been about three years ago; that felt like another person, in another life, but he still remembered how it worked. He let the pole slip through his hands, feel it strike the riverbed below, then tightened his grip and pushed down and forward. The punt slid silently along the water, at his command.

  Before him, the dark arch of Magdalene Bridge beckoned, and beyond it, the ghostly flickering leaves of the weeping willows, standing sentinel above the river. Gareth looked back at the riverbank and the street to his left, and at the cars that passed obliviously over the bridge.

  He would keep moving, he thought. Somehow, going somewhere. The horse is running, and now it’s time for all four hooves to leave the ground.

  He pushed himself slowly along the water, with an increasing sense of confidence, from Magdalene Bridge to the next one, St. John’s Bridge. He heard the drone of the traffic, and the incoherent shouts of pubbers and clubbers as he went. There was nobody to react to him, nobody on the riverbank to call out to a lone man, punting on the Cam at night.

  Further down the Cam, at the Mill Pond, he came to a new obstacle. There was a small weir behind a metal grate blocking the river, so Gareth would either have to give up or manually drag the punt down, to the next part of the river.

  Giving up was not an option.

  He navigated the punt to the side and stepped onto the riverbank, lifting the pole out of the water. He put the pole down, crouched and heaved the front half of the punt out of the water. To his relief, it wasn’t all that heavy. As he worked, he expected at any second, for the Men In Black to step out of the hole in the night where they were hiding to shoot at him, or stab him, or push him into the river. He glanced around as the bottom of the punt scraped loudly along the concrete. House music was banging from the Anchor, the pub on the other side of the Mill Pond. It wasn’t the weekend, so there weren’t any dinner-jacketed bouncers to see him. To his other side was the stretch of common land called Sheep’s Green and beyond that, the silent leafy depths of the Lammas Land Park, stretching away along the curve of the river.

  Gareth squatted, braced himself and slid the punt into the water. Stepping in, gripping the pole and pushing off, he cruised silently along the next stretch of the river, leaving ripples and the noise of Cambridge behind him.

  He kept going, managing to find it easy to keep the punt in a straight line. As he looked up, the buildings slowly receded behind the tops of the trees, the foliage drawing together above his head to screen out the rest of the world. Patches of night sky, dusted with stars and scattered cloud, revealed themselves to him. The thickness and density of the willows and the elms grew impenetrable. The grass along the riverbanks rustled and whispered as the animals paused in their work, assessed Gareth to be something harmless, and burrowed deeper into the undergrowth.

  Where am I going? he thought.

  For some reason, he had left Cambridge. He’d been prevented from leaving before, but now he’d managed it. “Because I couldn’t stay there,” he said out loud. But where was he going?

  He pushed once more, and the vessel drifted over the dark, placid water. He’d left everything behind. He wasn’t even sure if he’d locked his own front door. If he got, somehow, to London, he had the address and number of the man from SIAP. So if he rang him from a call box – maybe getting the guy out of bed – they could meet somewhere. Maybe they had some kind of UFO abductee ‘safe house’?

  What then? Would the visits stop? Would the little girl stop following him and stop twisting and pulling at reality like it was Plasticine? Would he still get men in suits and hats threatening his life?

  There were no answers. Gareth looked into the shadows under the trees, expecting company. Nothing. He peered over the edge of the punt and gazed at his own reflection. It wavered and rippled in the murk, refusing to stay still.

  He’d been trapped in his car, under the water, unable to move. That was one thing he knew for certain.

  So perhaps I’m still there.

  Perhaps he’d never gotten out of the car. In that case… the bottom of a ditch was the rightful place to be.

  “They said that I died in the crash,” he said aloud, “But I know I’m alive.” He lifted his right hand, turned it over, and inspected it. He looked again at the trees, the sky, and the undulating surface of the water.

  “If they were right,” he said aloud, “if I’m already dead, then nothing can hurt me. All I’m doing will… either keep me here, or take me to another place. If I’m alive, then… if I’m alive…”

  It doesn’t matter any more.

  He let go of the pole, and in one smooth movement leaped out of the punt. He hit the water with both feet, and was swallowed up with a splashing roar.

  The banks of the river were alive with the echoes of the splash and the scurrying of startled animals, until, eventually, everything resettled into darkness, and silence.

  The water was shockingly cold, enclosing Gareth with a swiftness and completeness, as he exchanged one mode of being for another. He was immersed. He was inside a pocket universe, where everything existed in liquid form.

  The river was deep at this point. He slowly tilted with his head and shoulders pointing down, leaving his legs to idly kick at the surface. Eyes closed, he punched his arms forward and dived, thrusting the water out of his way.

  Stretching his arms out once more, his fingers stubbed themselves on a resistant, muddy barrier. Instantly, weeds wrapped themselves around his forearms. His heart lurched but, as he gently came to rest upon the muddy bottom, he found the weeds could be easily separated.

  His pulse whooshed in his ears, and the air in his throat made strange, sub-vocal rumblings. He opened his eyes, but the water was so full of suspended filth that it was worse than keeping them shut.

  He groped out with his hands, and brushed against uncertain,
shapeless resistance. He tried to remember the dreams, the visions; rushing down the tunnel. The dancing bodies of light. The singing in the ears. he was floating – a pinprick of light swam into view in front of his closed eyelids, growing, blossoming inside his skull…

  And then his head was above water again. He cried out in surprise, and swallowed river water by mistake. He choked, coughed and retched, and lashed out violently with his arms and legs.

  After an eternity of floundering, his hands found the grass of the riverbank and he pulled himself towards it. He dragged his upper torso out of the river, and then, his arms trembling with the strain, he lifted himself out to sprawl, a sodden mess, along the riverbank.

  After coughing up the last of the river water, and spitting to get the taste out of his mouth, Gareth lifted his head to look around. The punt was slowly drifting down the river, and the abandoned pole floated aimlessly. It would continue, making its own journey now, into the night.

  After what felt like a very long time Gareth sat up on his soaked patch of grass. The night air breathed upon him, bringing another layer of chill to the cold water that coated every surface of his body and pasted his hair to his skull.

  Without warning, without sound, he was covered in light. It fell upon him, turning him into a blazing creature of tungsten white, illuminating every crease of his sticky clothes. It was like stepping into s stage spotlight, but this one was coming from directly above.

  He looked up, then instantly down. It was almost as bright as the sun. He had an impression of a circle of light, only a few feet across, with him at dead centre. Beyond that was the river and the stillness of the night…

  He tensed himself, and raised his head, eyes still closed. “Come on, then,” he yelled. “Do something!” There was no sound from above. He could not see any shape, any sign of a craft or a ship, only a constant, incandescent whiteness. “Come on!” he shouted. “Do something!”

  Receiving no answer, he opened his eyes and stumbled to the edge of the spotlight circle. He peered out through it into the night, with the familiar feeling of electrical fear tingling and creeping over his skin once more, mingling with the river water to seal his body in a deadening grip.

  Something was happening. Something in the forest…

  Although he stood in the light, and he should not have been able to see, he knew there was something happening in the dark. Something was taking shape. The darkness was solidifying, and some of it was becoming paler; turning into blobs of faces, blank masks with roughly daubed features.

  The darkness was squeezing itself into suits, into stiff and awkwardly-cut jackets and trousers, limbs held in straight, rigid angles. Hats were crammed onto the blobs to restrict their oozing shapelessness and mould them into something new.

  Hundreds of Men In Black, perhaps thousands. The forest was full of them. They had soaked up the night like an enormous sponge, and now there was no room for anything else.

  Gareth looked or a sign from above, but he couldn’t stand the light, the blinding light.

  “Wait,” he muttered, feeling the gravity of exhaustion slow down the velocity of his blood flow. What had Doug said about all this? The only consistent factor of these events was the presence of light and darkness. And light itself was determined by the quantum world…

  He sat down heavily on the silvered grass, refusing to let his adrenalin panic him into making a run for it. The Men In Black stayed where they were, seeming content to watch him for the moment.

  He thought about the light. It was enclosing him in a circle, a cone, a cylinder. So what was outside? The absence of light?

  What was light? Bennings had described the mystery of light behaving as sometimes a wave, sometimes a particle. When the wave function collapsed, then the decision was made – wave, or particle. So who decides? Who collapses the function? Who decides what can be observed?

  Gareth stood up. “I decide,” he said, slowly and clearly.

  The Men In Black began to merge into each other, like watercolors running across canvas. Slowly, they drifted away, returning to the night, as something new came into their midst.

  A will-o-the-wisp, flickering among the trees. Playfully, it zoomed in from the darkness to rush towards Gareth, gathering shape as it approached. As it got closer, he could make out the face, the shimmering blond hair, the billowing, one-piece robe that she always wore.

  Gareth smiled. “Hello,” he called softly.

  He walked towards the girl, and the circle of light moved with him. She didn’t say a word, only tilted her head up to watch him. He stood in front of her, taking in the serene perfection of her features.

  He watched, smiling, as the girl’s head gently split down the middle, bisecting the nose and face, a soft glow emerging rom within.

  The girl’s head opened up to its fullest extent. Gareth stepped closer and looked down. Inside her skull was a doll’s house, the minute rooms decorated to a fantastic precision. On the upper level were several rooms, all of them with eight sides. One room had a table in the middle, with a lantern on the table that provided the glow in the girl’s head.

  Outside that room, on a small wooden staircase, was a small model of Gareth himself. He was frozen in an uncertain posture: about to either open the door, or retreat back the stairs. Shadows plucked at him from behind, in the depths of the stairwell.

  “There I am,” Gareth said with a weary sigh.

  As suddenly as it came, the light from above was switched off.

  The trees beyond, the little girl, and Gareth himself, all disappeared with it.

  *

  Gareth opened his eyes.

  He was looking at a light bulb.

  It was an ordinary light bulb, fitted into a ceiling, and covered with a lightshade with a shade of mauve that wasn’t really masculine, or really feminine either. It was – functional. That was the word: functional.

  He felt the pressure of his body upon the muscles of his back, and he realized he was lying down. Sensation returned; he was on a mattress, on a bed, he was warm, he was dry, and daylight was streaming through a window next to his head…

  He sat up. He pushed back the quilt, looking down at the white pajamas he wore. Where am my clothes?

  Where am I?

  Looking around, and behind him, he saw the large golden cross on the wall above his head.

  He heard footsteps creaking on old-fashioned wooden stairs, leading in his direction. He was suddenly struck by a childhood memory; lying awake, in the morning, listening to his mum climb the stairs, coming to tell him breakfast was ready.

  The door opened, and a figure in a dark sweater and jeans walked into the room. He looked down at Gareth, a broad smile breaking through his beard and bringing a knowing twinkle to his eyes.

  The priest and Gareth stared each other for a long time. “Mr. Rose,” said Gareth eventually.

  “Call me Michael,” the priest replied.

  Gareth rediscovered hunger.

  With knife and fork he speared sausage and sawed through egg and toast, shifting bacon, mushrooms and grilled tomatoes around the plate to soak up the egg yolk and brown sauce, chewing slowly to enjoy the piping hot breakfast. The shower had thankfully washed the last of the river’s grime from his skin, and under the smell of the breakfast, he could still detect the aroma of shower gel and shampoo. His clothes, too, had been freshly laundered.

  Rose appeared at the door of the kitchen, a tray in his hands. “More tea, Gareth?”

  The guest enthusiastically nodded his head, and waved for the vicar to sit down. Rose put the tray holding cups, teapot, and milk on the table, and sat down opposite Gareth.

  “I suppose there are a few things you would like to know,” said the priest.

  Gareth swallowed some toast and washed it down with strong, milky tea. “Actually, there’s a lot I already know.” He paused. “But I don’t know if I can pout it into words. Everything is different. I’ve still got my own
memories… but things have been… added.”

  Rose spread his hands wide. “Show me.”

  “The photographs. The ones I received at the B & B. You sent them, didn’t you?”

  “I did indeed. Are you going to ask why I sent them, or how I knew you would be at that particular B & B?”

  “Because you were told to do it,” Gareth said without hesitation.

  The vicar nodded.

  “But you could have helped me,” Gareth went on. “Couldn’t you have spared me some of that business? Like, when I came here with Caroline, couldn’t you have been a bit more straightforward?”

  “I dropped enough hints as it was. If I had said more, you wouldn’t have listened.”

  “Yeah… I suppose you’re right.”

  Gareth stood, and took his empty plate to the sink with a heartfelt thanks and a hiccup.

  “Please don’t do the washing up,” Rose said, “I’ll take care of it later.”

  “I won’t argue with that,” replied Gareth. He looked through the window at the clear blue sky above the garden, the tulips and crocuses swaying in the spring breeze. “We might as well get started,” he said.

  When Gareth noticed the vicar hadn’t replied, he glanced back. Rose was still sitting, his elbows on the table and his face in his hands.

  “I’ve been waiting for this for so long,” Rose said slowly, “that I never thought the day would come. To be honest, I never thought I would personally see it. I never expected it would be me.”

  “For the last weeks, I’ve been asking – why me,” replied Gareth. “Why me? Why you, why anyone? It doesn’t matter. It just happened to be us.”

  “Yes, it happens to be us,” Rose replied, lifting his head. he stood up and gestured to the back door. “So, shall we go?”

  The morning brought the scent of flowers to them on the spring breeze, as they walked under a cloudless blue sky through the cemetery, towards a gate in the hedge.

  “Is this the way back to the ditch?” Gareth asked.