‘Oh yeah,’ I said, still staring at the fallen monster. ‘Clear.’
I put the pads back into their holders on the side of the defibrillator and switched the machine off. My fingers traced along the button and down the metal case.
‘I made this,’ I said. The idea seemed alien. Yes, I’d used my abilities to create things before, but nothing this complicated. And I hadn’t even been thinking about it. My head spun. Just how powerful had my abilities been? Now I would never know.
‘So,’ Ameena began. She had her hands in her pockets and was swinging one foot idly above the floor. ‘We OK?’
I should hate her. I wanted to hate her.
‘No,’ I told her. ‘We’re not.’
‘Oh. Right, yeah,’ she said. ‘I mean… that’s fair enough.’
‘Why you?’
She raised her eyes to mine. ‘What?’
‘Why you? Why did he send you?’
Ameena shrugged. ‘He brought me up.’
‘He what?’
‘He brought me up. He’s your dad, but you see… Well, he’s my dad too.’ She smiled weakly. ‘I’m your sister, kiddo.’
My mouth dropped open. ‘You’re my sister?’ I spluttered. ‘But… but… I kissed you!’
‘Yeah, I know, ya sicko,’ she said.
‘My sister?’
A smile cracked across her face. ‘Nah, not really,’ she grinned. ‘Just kidding.’
I almost smiled. Almost. But a sudden swelling of anger pushed it aside. ‘You don’t get to do that,’ I said, grabbing her by the shoulders. ‘You don’t get to do that any more! You don’t get to make jokes and laugh and pretend like everything’s OK. Everything is not OK! Everything is never going to be OK again!’
I shoved her harder than I meant to. She gave a yelp as she tumbled to the floor beside the fallen thing. She peered up at me through a curtain of hair and did her best to fight back tears.
‘You hate me. I get that,’ she said. ‘But what you said earlier, about me picking him over you, that’s not right. As far as I knew there was only ever him. He’s not my dad, but he may as well be. He saved me when I landed in the Darkest Corners.’
She glanced at the monster lying dead on the floorboards. ‘Saved me from things like that. I would’ve been killed if it wasn’t for him. Or worse. He looked after me and fed me and kept me safe.’ A tear broke through her defences. She whipped it quickly away. ‘And now I see he was using me the whole time. He was preparing me for this. He didn’t care about me. He doesn’t give a damn about anyone. He just thought I could help him get to you. And it turned out he was right.’
Her voice had been growing weaker with every word. The last few came out as barely a whisper. ‘So I didn’t choose a side, Kyle. I didn’t even know there were sides. I wasn’t given that choice to make.’
She looked away and hung her head.
I should hate her. I wanted to hate her.
So why couldn’t I hate her?
‘Choose.’
She lifted her head and blinked. ‘What?’
‘Choose,’ I said. ‘I’m giving you the choice he didn’t.’
Ameena sniffed and brushed the hair out of her eyes. ‘There’s no choice to make. It’s you, Kyle. It will always be you.’ She tried a smile to go with it, but it didn’t amount to much.
I held out a hand and was surprised to find it was as steady as a rock. Her fingers trembled as they slipped into mine and I helped her back to her feet.
‘So, we’re OK now? Do you, like, you know? Forgive me?’
‘No. I can’t. I mean, not yet, anyway. I want to believe you. I want to trust you again, like I did. But I can’t. Not yet.’
She gave a resigned shrug. ‘Maybe someday, huh?’
‘Maybe someday.’
Ameena followed me over to the window. The whole village was in chaos, with more fires burning and more grotesque shapes lumbering through the streets.
‘There’s no snow,’ I realised.
‘Yeah, don’t really know what happened there,’ she admitted. ‘Don’t even know where it came from in the first place. It was nothing to do with us.’ She looked at me guiltily. ‘I mean, you know? Him. He was as surprised as you were.’
I filed that bit of information away. ‘Where is he now?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she admitted. ‘But he’s planning on setting himself up in power. He likes the idea of being in charge.’
‘In charge? Of that?’ I said, motioning at the rampaging creatures below. ‘How can anyone take charge of that?’
‘Not everyone from over there is a monster,’ she said defensively. ‘They’re the minority. A very vocal minority, I’ll give you, but still a minority.’
‘What about Billy? Where did they take him?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, think,’ I told her. ‘You’re my person on the inside.’
‘I thought I was your trusty sidekick?’
‘Well, now you’re both. Think. One of Doc’s porters took him from the church.’
‘Hospital then, probably.’ She caught my next sentence before it came out of my mouth. ‘Not this one. One that you didn’t magic into existence. Could be his own hospital, but probably just the closest one; it wouldn’t make any difference to him now.’
‘The town then,’ I said, looking out at that orange-tinted sky again. The hospital where they’d first taken my mum after she’d been attacked by the Crowmaster was in the next town. It was only a few miles away, but with the streets the way they were, it may as well have been on the moon.
‘We’ve got to try,’ I said, speaking the end of that thought out loud. ‘We can’t just leave him.’
‘Well, we could,’ Ameena said, then she caught my expression. ‘No, of course we can’t. What was I thinking?’ She chewed her lip. ‘Why can’t we leave him again?’
‘Because he’s one of us. He’s on our side. He’s –’ I stumbled over the words – ‘my friend.’
‘Well, alrighty then,’ Ameena said. She gave a slight bow, then gestured towards the door. ‘After you.’
I turned and took a few steps towards the door. A familiar figure was creeping cautiously along the hall towards us.
‘Kyle?’ she gasped. ‘What’s going on here? Why are you out of bed?’
My legs became heavy and my heart dropped into my stomach. ‘Oh,’ I whispered. ‘Hi, Mum.’
And then I closed the door in her face.
I stood there with my forehead against the door for several seconds, listening to my mum knocking.
‘Kyle? What’s going on? Let me in.’
‘Is she real?’ I asked, not looking at Ameena.
‘No. Yes. Kind of. I don’t know,’ Ameena said. ‘She exists. You made her exist. But she’s not your mum.’
‘She looks like her. She sounds like her.’
‘She’s your idea of your mum,’ Ameena said, and I did look at her then. ‘She’s an impression of your mum as seen through your eyes.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘Well… everything. She doesn’t think like your mum, she thinks like you think your mum would think.’ She replayed the words in her head. ‘Yeah, that’s right.’
Ameena stepped closer to me. Beyond the door, my mum continued to knock and talk.
‘Let me in, sweetheart. Open the door and let me in.’
‘You know those dolls where you squeeze its hand and it talks or burps or wets itself or whatever?’ Ameena said. ‘They might look like a real baby. They might pee on your leg like a real baby. But they ain’t a real baby. That’s sort of what she’s like.’ She thought for a moment. ‘But, you know, without the peeing on the leg stuff.’
‘So… she’s a doll,’ I said. ‘She’s not real. She’s just a talking doll.’
‘Yeah. Pretty much,’ Ameena said. Then she added, ‘Sorry.’
I sucked air in through my teeth. ‘Not your fault.’
She shrugged. ‘Well, at least tha
t’s one thing then.’
I stood back. Then I ran my fingers through my hair, straightened down my hospital gown and pulled open the door. My mum stood there, her hand raised mid-knock. She shot me an exasperated look and stepped through into the day room.
‘What’s going on? Why aren’t you in bed?’ She looked around the room and settled on Ameena. ‘And who’s this?’
‘That’s Ameena.’
‘Who?’ A frown wrinkled her forehead, as if she knew the name, but couldn’t quite remember where from.
‘Ameena. The girl I told you about.’
‘What? No.’ She smiled and looked at me as if I were kidding. When she realised I wasn’t, her smile died away. ‘No, don’t be silly. There is no Ameena.’
‘There is,’ I said, as Ameena waved. ‘She’s real. Well, more or less.’
‘But… she can’t be. That was all a dream, that stuff. I mean, how can she be real? She can’t be.’
‘But she is,’ I said softly. ‘It was all real. Everything I said.’
‘No, but… you said… you said I died.’
‘Yes,’ I said. My tonsils tightened, making my voice go up an octave. ‘I did say that.’
There was silence in the day room then, broken only by the scratching of a pen against a newspaper crossword. Even the sounds of battle outside had quietened, and I felt as if the whole world were listening in on this conversation.
I took her by the arm and led her over to the window. She stared down at the monster on the floor, but didn’t comment.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Look out there.’
She peered through the blinds and I felt her whole body stiffen. I gave her arm a squeeze as silent tears began to roll down her cheeks.
‘N-no,’ she whispered. ‘It can’t. It can’t be. This… this isn’t happening.’
‘It is happening. And it’s happening because of me,’ I told her. ‘I did this.’
She stared at me in horror. ‘You?’
‘Not on purpose. He tricked me. He made me do it. My dad.’
She looked so like my mum. So perfectly, absolutely like my mum. I wanted to tell her this was all just some bad joke and that of course none of it was real. Of course she was still here, still with me, still alive.
But I couldn’t. Because she wasn’t.
‘He killed the person I loved most in the world,’ I told her. ‘And even though I can’t stop all this, I’m going to find him. I’m going to make him pay for what he did.’
Her eyes darted across my face, as if searching for some sign that I wasn’t telling the truth. Finally, she stopped searching. Her face paled a few shades. Half a dozen emotions swept like a slideshow across her features. A hand came up and touched my cheek, but there was no warmth to it. No blood flowing beneath the skin.
‘I… I feel like your mum,’ she whispered. ‘I look at you and I see my boy. I see my little boy.’
She lowered her hand. ‘But I’m not, am I? I feel like her, but I can also feel it’s not right. I can feel I’m not right.’
Both hands came up this time. She cupped them round my face and held me. We were both crying now, tears flowing down our faces before falling to the bare wooden floor.
‘She loved you, your mum,’ she whispered, pulling me in until our foreheads met. ‘I know she did because I love you, Kyle. So, so much.’
‘I love you too, Mum,’ I said, but the words just barely made it out. ‘I loved her too.’
‘She would be so proud of you,’ she said. ‘So proud of the man you’re becoming. My boy – her boy – all grown-up.’ She clenched her jaw and glanced away.
I threw my arms round her and sobbed against her shoulder. She wasn’t my mum, not really. I knew that. But she was the closest thing I’d ever have to my mum again.
‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘You have to go.’
Ameena put her hand on my arm. Reluctantly, I stepped away from this ghost of my mother and saw that the ends of her hair were already becoming hazy and faint.
‘There’s a man out there who killed your mum. I know what she’d tell you to do if she were here. She’d say not to go after him. She’d say it’s dangerous and that she’d never want you putting yourself at risk for her sake. She’d say she wasn’t worth it.’
She was right. That’s exactly what my mum would have said.
‘But we know different, don’t we? We know she was worth it. Your mum would say not to go, but I’m not your mum, and I say – go get the son of a bitch.’
‘You hear the lady, let’s go,’ said Ameena. I resisted as she began to steer me towards the door, but in my heart I knew I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t watch my mum – even this version of her – fade away into nothing.
I grabbed one final look at her before Ameena pulled the door closed between us and the day room. Then I strode with renewed determination back to the room I’d woken up in, and tore through the cupboards until I found my clothes.
Twice. He had robbed me of my mum twice.
He had hurt or killed or corrupted everyone I had ever really known.
He had turned me into a weapon that was responsible for the Apocalypse that was now taking place all across the world.
And now – now that I finally had nothing left to lose – he was going to pay for it all.
‘Whoa! Some warning next time before you go flashing your butt cheeks at me,’ Ameena said. She turned away as I slipped my jeans on.
‘I wasn’t flashing anything. I’m wearing boxer shorts.’
‘Whatever. Some warning next time, please.’
I finished pulling on my clothes. They weren’t the same ones I’d had on earlier, which was a bit of a relief. I’d been wearing those ones for weeks. The smell of them alone would have warned my dad I was coming.
The clothes I wore now were uniformly dark. Black jeans, black jumper with a black T-shirt beneath. My trainers were also black, but with a silver tick on each side. I tied them in a tight double knot because the last thing I needed was for one to come flying off in the middle of battle.
Battle. The thought made me hesitate. I looked at Ameena, then down at myself. Were we really going to do this? Were we really going to go out there into the chaos and the monsters and who knew what else?
‘You scared?’ she asked, as if reading my thoughts.
‘Terrified. But then I’ve been terrified since Christmas,’ I confessed. I took a deep breath. ‘This is the end, isn’t it? One way or another.’
‘One way or another,’ she nodded, then she straightened her shoulders and pulled off a textbook salute. ‘It’s been an honour serving with you.’
‘Whatever,’ I said, but inside I smiled. How, after everything, could she still make me smile?
‘What’s the plan now then?’
‘We head to the hospital,’ I said. ‘We find Billy.’
She looked doubtful. ‘Sure that’s such a good idea?’
‘Yes,’ I insisted. ‘We don’t sell out our friends.’
‘Ouch. You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?’
‘Doubt it,’ I admitted, then we headed down the stairs and threw open the door to Hell.
Earlier, when the streets had been filled with screechers and beasts, the world had looked like a very scary place. Now it was their turn to flee in terror as things bigger and angrier than they were, ran riot through the village.
Everywhere was dark. The streetlights were out, the few houses that had had lights on were now in darkness, and a thick layer of cloud had covered the night sky. The only glow came from the fires that crackled in buildings and consumed the cars that lay scattered across the roads like discarded toys.
I realised then that it was smoke covering the sky, not cloud. Smoke that was becoming thicker with every home that burned.
We kept low, tucked into the shadows by the door. Grotesque, inhuman shapes moved through the streets, revealed in silhouette whenever they passed the flames. The sounds of screaming and roaring and squealin
g and growling were all around us. Other sounds too, sounds without description. Sounds I wished I could somehow unhear.
This was the Darkest Corners as I had first seen it, way back on Christmas Day. A place filled with monsters and evil. A place I had mistaken for Hell itself. Or maybe it hadn’t been a mistake at all.
‘What’s the plan? How do we get to the hospital?’ Ameena whispered. She’d come from the Darkest Corners too. She’d seen all this stuff before. But her eyes were wide and her hands were shaking with fear.
‘We could make a run for it,’ I suggested.
‘I was kind of hoping not to die, though,’ she replied. ‘So that rules that plan out. We could try to sneak there.’
‘Sneak three miles? That’d take hours. We don’t have hours.’
‘He could be dead already, you know?’ she whispered. ‘Just saying.’
‘I know. But I have to try. I left him. It’s my fault.’
‘And you’re sure your magic powers are gone?’
I nodded. ‘It’s the Darkest Corners. I don’t have my abilities here.’ Just in case, though, I concentrated and tried to bring the sparks rushing through my head. Nothing happened. ‘Any other suggestions?’
A thunderous boom knocked us back into the doorway. A fireball rose up inside the church, destroying the roof. A cloud of shattered slates and charred wood was lifted into the air with a whoosh. As we watched, the pieces began to rain down like missiles, scattering the monsters and leaving the street directly ahead of us clear.
‘Running it is then,’ Ameena shrugged.
‘Police station. There was a car out back earlier,’ I said, aiming us in roughly the right direction. The fog made it impossible to see more than a metre or two ahead, which was both good and bad. Good because we couldn’t see any of the horrors roaming around, and bad for exactly that same reason.
Shapes moved in the cloud ahead of us, forcing us to change our route. The dust and the smoke were blinding. I had my face buried in the crook of my arm, trying to stop the stuff getting into my lungs. A coughing fit now would be very bad.
The church was still burning, casting an orange glow across the fog. I used it to get my bearings and we hurried on towards the police station.
The Darkest Corners Page 7