In all directions, stained-glass saints looked lovingly down from the windows, watching over the congregation from worlds away. Right now, though, the congregation consisted of Ameena, me and not another living soul.
‘You must have a really impressive shed,’ she whistled, stepping into the church. Her footsteps echoed on the wooden floor, and the sound seemed to bounce all the way around the room.
‘Pretty amazing, eh?’ I said, my voice hushed.
‘Not too shabby,’ she admitted, quietly. ‘But why are you whispering?’
‘I don’t know,’ I shrugged, still keeping the noise down. ‘Aren’t you supposed to whisper in churches? Isn’t that like a rule or something?’
‘I think that’s libraries.’
‘Oh, yeah.’
We were still speaking in hushed tones, neither one of us daring to be the first to raise our voices.
‘I really want to shout,’ Ameena said. She giggled, nervously. It was the first girly thing I’d seen her do. ‘Like, properly shout, just to see what happens.’
‘Don’t!’ I hissed. ‘You’ll get us chucked out!’
‘By who? There’s no one here but us and the Big J over there.’ She glanced across at the enormous statue. ‘And I can’t see him grassing us up.’
‘Look, just don’t, will you?’ I pleaded. I wasn’t used to churches, and they made me uneasy. With everything I’d been through already tonight, I didn’t know if my nerves could take any more strain.
‘Fine, I won’t,’ Ameena sighed, ‘but only if we stop whispering.’
‘OK,’ I agreed, still hushed. ‘Just don’t shout!’
‘Right, then,’ she said, in something closer to her normal volume. ‘There, I’ve done it. Your turn.’
‘What should I say?’ I asked, quietly.
‘It doesn’t matter! Just say anything.’
‘Anything,’ I said. My voice sounded stupidly loud in the silence of the church hall.
‘There, wasn’t so bad, was it?’
I shrugged. It still felt wrong to be speaking out loud in a church, but then I figured that people sang hymns and stuff there, so talking was probably allowed, too. I also had a vague memory of a man who came to visit our school two or three times a year. He wore a black suit and a white dog collar, and spoke as if everyone else in the world was deaf. If he was allowed in a church, then speaking in a normal voice couldn’t possibly be against the rules.
Ameena nodded and smiled as she scraped her hair away from her face and tied it back. It was the first time I’d been able to look at her properly since she’d shown up. To begin with I’d thought she was older than me, but now I wasn’t so sure. A little taller, yes, but maybe my age.
Her skin was pale brown, like coffee with milk in. She was skinny – a little bit too skinny to be healthy – and I wondered where she’d found the strength to hit Mr Mumbles so hard with my bat earlier in the night. Adrenaline, I guessed.
Her clothes were shades of black and grey, and looked like they’d been slept in. But so did mine right now, so I couldn’t exactly blame her for that. Either her feet were ridiculously out of proportion to the rest of her body, or the shabby black boots she wore were a good few sizes too big. Either way, I imagined getting a kick from one of them would be like being booted by a horse.
I watched her set off to explore the church. Living in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t get to meet a lot of people. It was usually the same faces saying the same things, day after day after day.
Ameena was different. Not just because she was new, but because she was…well, just different. I’d never met anyone like her before. I doubted there was anyone else quite like her to meet.
It was lucky she’d shown up when she had. Another one of tonight’s coincidences that I didn’t want to start questioning too much. That said, though, there was something about her…Something about the way she was taking most of the weirdness in her stride, which made me wonder if—
‘Hey, check these out,’ she called, waving at me from the closest corner of the hall and derailing my train of thought. I jogged across and found her standing stock-still, pretending to be part of the full-sized nativity scene which had been set out in the corner nearest the door. She stood there, hands clasped together, between the Three Wise Men and the shepherds, and just behind a donkey with an ear broken off.
‘You make a good angel,’ I told her. Instantly, a blush stung at my cheeks. That sounded like a corny chat-up line. ‘I mean…I didn’t…’
‘I’d make a terrible angel,’ she replied, choosing not to comment on my remark. ‘Feathers freak me out.’ Her whole body convulsed at the thought of them. Nope, I’d definitely never met anyone like Ameena before.
When her shuddering had passed, she rapped her knuckles on the donkey’s ribcage. ‘What do you think of this baby?’ she asked.
‘It’s…a donkey?’
‘It’s not just a donkey, kiddo, it’s a heavy donkey.’
I looked from the statue of the animal to Ameena and back again. She was nodding like she was trying to tell me something, but I didn’t have a clue what it was.
‘So?’
‘So, super strength, remember?’
‘Nope, you’ve lost me.’
Ameena threw up her arms and let out a dramatic sigh. ‘Look, you punched a full-sized man through a metal door, right?’
‘Like I said, it was a lucky punch, that was—’
‘Shut up, I’m not finished. Lucky punch or not, what you did shouldn’t have been possible. Under any normal circumstances, a weakling like you – no offence – should not have been able to do something like that.’ She paused for a moment, letting her words sink in. Much as I’d have liked to, I couldn’t argue.
‘Meaning that for a split second there, you used muscles you don’t even have. For just that moment, you were strong. Super strong.’ She gave the donkey statue a shove. It didn’t budge. ‘Aren’t you even a little curious how you did it?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘Liar! Come on, have a go. See if you can lift it. It could come in handy for when your friend gets back on his feet.’
She had a point. Something had happened to me when I’d run at Mr Mumbles. Something I didn’t remember ever feeling before. I thought about the tingling at the top of my spine, the feeling of electricity crackling across my skull. Something had definitely been happening to me. The question was: What?
And then there was the other stuff. The light bulb which burst into life just when I’d needed it most. The axe which had appeared out of nowhere. And as for the shield…
I decided to keep those bits to myself. Ameena could have bumped into the light switch. The axe could have been there the whole time, for all I knew, and the shield…OK, the shield was a little harder to find an explanation for, but given time I’d think of one. It was all just a series of silly coincidences. There was nothing strange about it.
Except that I’d hit Mr Mumbles like an express train. There was no way of getting around that one.
‘OK,’ I nodded, at last. ‘Let’s do it.’
Veins I didn’t know existed bulged on my forearms, standing out like thick blue wires from the skin around them. The whole area from my wrists to my elbows felt as if it was being burned up from the inside. Any minute now I half expected to see smoke pouring from my fingertips.
Gritting my teeth, I dug my toes into the wooden floor and heaved harder, until my entire body was trembling from the strain. I’d been telling myself for the past five minutes that I could do this, but it was starting to look as if I was wrong. Try as I might, I just couldn’t budge the donkey.
‘Come on, put your back into it,’ Ameena barked. Easy for her to say. She was perched up on top of the nativity stable, one leg dangling over either side of the pointed roof.
‘I am putting my back into it,’ I puffed. ‘It’s no use. It’s too heavy.’
‘How hard can it really be to lift one little stone donkey?’
/> ‘You come down here and try it, then, if you think it’s so easy!’
‘Ah,’ she grinned, ‘but I’m not the one with the magic mega-muscles, am I?’
‘Neither am I,’ I sighed. ‘It was just—’
‘A lucky punch, yeah, so you keep saying,’ she snorted. She shuffled towards the front edge of the roof, then jumped down to join me.
‘Careful,’ I warned, ‘you nearly landed on the baby Jesus.’
‘So? It’s just a doll.’
‘I know, but…it’s probably unlucky or something.’
Ameena looked at me, her mouth curving into a smirk. ‘It’s unlucky to jump off a shed and land on a doll?’
‘Yeah,’ I nodded, convincing no one. ‘If…the doll’s Jesus.’
‘I see,’ she replied. ‘I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.’
She gave the donkey statue a slap on the backside and winked at me. ‘Now, let’s give this another go.’
‘It’s a waste of time,’ I protested. ‘I can’t lift it.’
‘Then try harder. You must be doing something wrong.’
‘Listening to you, that’s what I’m doing wrong!’ I cried. I was annoyed enough that I couldn’t move the thing. I didn’t need her rubbing it in. ‘I should be at the police station, telling them everything, not here giving it Mr Universe!’
‘What? If you hadn’t listened to me you’d be dead by now!’
‘Yeah? Well…’ I floundered, struggling to find a decent comeback. ‘So?’
‘So?’ Ameena scoffed. ‘That’s the best you can come up with? So? You know what your problem is, Kyle? You’ve got no imagination.’
‘No imagination?’ I yelled. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, something I imagined was just trying to murder us both! Imagination-wise, I’d say that’s pretty bloody impressive, wouldn’t you?’
‘Then move the donkey!’
‘But my imagination’s got nothing to do with—’
‘Move the donkey!’
‘Fine! I’ll move the damn—’
BOOM!
In a spectacular shower of dust and plaster, the statue of the donkey exploded before our eyes. I stood, rigid and staring, feeling tiny invisible threads of electricity dart backwards across my head and down my neck.
For a long time there was no sound in the church, other than the echo of the explosion. Even the wind and rain appeared to pause in their onslaught. At last, the floor gave a faint creak, as Ameena nervously shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She brushed some stone dust from her hair.
‘Well,’ she began, ‘I think we can safely consider the donkey moved.’
I didn’t reply. Instead, I closed my eyes and concentrated on the tingling sensation which still zapped through my scalp. It was a strange feeling. I’d thought it was completely new, but now I realised it wasn’t completely unfamiliar. I’d felt it a few times that night, but it had been there maybe a dozen times in the months before then, lurking quietly at the back of my brain. If I could somehow hold on to it this time – somehow stop it slipping away – then maybe I could figure out what it was.
The dim light behind my eyelids swirled in slow circles, reminding me of the satellite images of tornadoes I’d seen on the news. Every so often, a spark of white or blue would flash like a fish in a stream, before vanishing back down into the dark waters of my mind.
‘Kyle?’ I heard Ameena say, but I ignored her. When she spoke again she sounded distant and garbled, as if talking on a radio that was tuned to two different stations at once. Whatever she was saying, it could wait.
I focused on the flashes, trying to slow them down enough for me to see them properly. All the while, the electrical tingling crept through my hair. It had changed direction and was creeping forwards again – a silent predator, edging closer and closer to the front of my head.
Flash. A white spark shot past.
Flash. A blue one passed by, slower, buzzing like a wasp.
Flash. Blue again. This time I was too fast for it. As it sparked behind my eyes I concentrated like I’d never concentrated before, focusing all my attention on that one, tiny bright spot.
The little blue lightning bolt buzzed angrily, trapped like an insect in a jar. It vibrated in the darkness, but it could struggle all it liked. It wasn’t going anywhere. I’d done it. I’d managed to hold on to one of the sparks!
I was just about to congratulate myself, when the screaming started. It sounded frantic – deranged, even – but it didn’t sound like Ameena. It didn’t even sound human.
My concentration broken, the blue flash zipped gratefully off into the darkness once more. I flicked opened my eyes, and gasped. There before me lay a vision of hell.
Chapter Nine
THE DARKEST CORNERS
Almost at once, the screaming stopped. I barely noticed it come to an end.
Around me, the church stood in ruins. The imposing brick walls lay crumbled and wrecked; the stained-glass windows shattered from their frames. Just moments ago I had been standing on polished wood, but now a carpet of weeds and grass tangled around my feet.
The chandeliers were gone. No surprise, as they no longer had a roof to hang from. Up above me, a billion unfamiliar stars looked down from a cloudless sky, occasionally winking, as if they all knew something I didn’t.
Ameena. Where was Ameena? She’d been there beside me, but now…I whispered her name into the darkness, but no reply came back. She wasn’t here. I was on my own.
Or was I?
Through one of the gaps in the collapsed wall, I could see a street. Dark, misshapen figures skulked, stalked and skittered back and forth across the road, illuminated here and there by the flickering flames of burning wreckage.
Keeping low, I crept across to a mound of rubble, crouched down behind it, and peeked through a gap. None of the people – no, they weren’t people, they couldn’t be people – none of the things which were moving around outside seemed to know I was there, so if I could stay out of sight for long enough I might be able to figure out what the hell was going on.
The street outside was the same one Ameena and I had run along to get to the church, only now – like the church itself – it was completely different. The houses which lined either side of the road had all been either boarded up or torn down. Those which were still standing appeared to throb and move as if alive.
It was only when I looked more closely that I realised the effect was caused by hundreds of insect-like creatures, which crawled as one over every surface, poking and prodding at the barricaded windows as they tried to find a way in.
The things out on the street, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be moving with any shared purpose. Some seemed to be in an incredible hurry. They would appear from an alleyway on one side of the street, and then in the blink of an eye would disappear into another across the road.
Other figures were in less of a rush. These ones took their time. They strolled lazily along the length of the street, stopping occasionally at the flaming remains of a car, warming themselves, or maybe just appreciating the destruction.
Still others were involved in brief, violent battles which came out of nowhere. Groups of two or three of the creatures would suddenly lunge and begin tearing each other to pieces. I watched, dumbstruck, as one spindly figure was torn clean in half by two larger beasts. It thrashed and howled like a demon, and I realised this was the screaming I had heard just before I’d opened my eyes.
What were they? I couldn’t be sure. A lot of them were vaguely human-shaped, but even from this distance it was clear that none of them were all the way human. They were either too large or too small, had too many arms, too many heads or too many tails to qualify as a member of the human race.
Some of them wore clothes – dirty, torn rags for the most part, serving very little purpose. The naked ones moved like animals, scurrying around on however many limbs they happened to have.
Categorising them like that was wrong, though. They couldn’t be di
vided into humanoid and non-humanoid, or naked and clothed, or anything like that. They couldn’t be categorised at all, because not one of them looked the same as the others.
I saw one creature covered in thick, coarse hair, another with scaly skin that shimmered in the pale moonlight. Yet another slithered along the street, leaving a silvery, slug-like trail in its wake.
They roared. They whispered. They hissed and howled. Some laughed. Others sobbed, or snarled, or screeched or screamed.
Watching them, I realised there was one category they could all fit into. One word that could be used to describe them all:
Hideous.
Tears ran down my cheeks as I turned away and slunk down behind the rocks. What had happened? The church, the street – probably even the whole village – had been turned into some twisted, hellish version of itself, but how? And where was Ameena? Was she here somewhere, too?
All those questions. So many questions which I couldn’t answer. But there was another question, too – one I hardly dare ask myself: had I done this? Was it all somehow my fault?
It couldn’t be, I told myself. How could I have possibly done this? No matter how much I tried to convince myself, though, the thought remained, lurking quietly at the back of my mind.
I decided that what I needed was a plan. Well, what I really needed was a miracle, but a plan would be the next best thing. If I had a plan then I’d have something to focus on, other than the hundreds of creatures which lurked outside.
First thing first – I had to find out if the rest of the village was like this too. Maybe whatever had happened was contained to just this one street. Maybe there were other people – real, normal people – just round the next corner. If I could find them, we could figure everything out together.
So I had a plan, although admittedly it wasn’t without its problems. For starters, I could see thick plumes of greyish smoke billowing up from at least the next few streets over. That didn’t bode well for the theory that it was only this one which had been affected by…whatever was going on.
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