Ahead of her, something white stood out in stark contrast to the gloom around it. Now Lisa did stop, eyeing it suspiciously before setting off towards it, walking cautiously, sensing what it was before she was close enough to be absolutely certain.
It was the Transit. There was no sound of an engine. And if that detail was wrong, others probably were too. Lisa felt sick at the thought of having to look inside the van, yet equally she knew she had no choice. Whether she was being tested or tortured, she had no way of telling. What now seemed beyond doubt was that she was meant to look inside the van, just as she had been meant to look inside the wreck of her car.
Maybe she would find her own smashed-up corpse in the Transit as well. That she could cope with; the shock of it the first time around had worn off, superseded by seeing her sister intact again but controlling the swarming dead. Rather, it was the nagging suspicion that an even nastier surprise – if that were possible – had been lined up for her.
The forest was utterly silent, with not even the slightest breeze to rustle the branches. The black cloud had either lost her or, more likely, was holding off, leaving her be while she made whatever awful discovery awaited her.
It was not until she felt the undergrowth crunch under her shoes that she realised the season had changed. The trees had been stripped of leaves and the ground was coated with a layer of frost. Lisa’s breath appeared as phantoms in the air before her, though she still felt warm.
The Transit started to take shape as she approached it head-on. Instead of just white metal half-glimpsed through the dense trees, Lisa began to make out the windscreen and headlights, which were unlit and seemed to stare at her with the flat eyes of the dead. Through the windscreen glass she could make out a silhouetted figure, which could have been a man or a woman, living or otherwise. She ran her tongue over her dry and cracking lips. Suddenly she felt the air turn icy so that by the time she was close enough to touch the van, she was shivering.
There was insufficient light for her to see clearly the body in the van. Without actually meaning to, she reached out and gripped the driver’s side door handle. Then, equally without volition, as if she had lost any ability to control her own actions, she pulled the door open.
“Ben?” she said.
He was sitting behind the steering wheel, shoulders slumped, hands loosely in his lap. When he turned to face her at the moment the door opened, Lisa could see he was the same Ben Matthews she’d found in this position, only dead or dying, what felt like a lifetime ago. And yet there was something different about him. Something had altered so subtly that at first she could not tell what. And then she had it.
“Who are you?” he asked, voice as emotionless as his face was expressionless. It was as if his personality – all the facial expressions, the voice inflections, the sum of the parts that made up the Ben she knew – had been wiped away. He was like a machine in human guise, not in the least bit curious about her sudden appearance, or angered by her intrusion. In fact he was already turning away from her to stare blankly out through the windscreen.
“Ben?” she said. “Don’t you recognise me?”
“No,” he answered, still looking ahead.
Lisa shuddered. The chill seemed to be deepening.
“Listen,” she said. “You have to trust me. There’s something coming this way. Something dreadful. It’ll destroy us both if we stay here.”
And maybe it would destroy them anyway, even if they ran. You cannot outrun the King of all the dead. Well, she probably couldn’t. But that didn’t mean she had to roll over and die, or whatever the hell came after death. And even if this Ben had no idea who she was, it didn’t seem right to leave him here with that monstrosity likely to reach out and strike them down at any time. “Ben, please!”
“I can’t leave the van,” he sighed, sounding like a bored child.
“Why not?”
“Because they’re out there.”
A chill ran along Lisa’s spine. “Who’s out there?”
“The ones I killed.” He turned to face her again, only this time his face was no longer impassive. He looked scared. “I can see them in the trees. They don’t come close but I know they’re there. Waiting for me to step outside. Then they’ll have me.”
He moved one hand from his lap and felt around on the seat beside him, finally holding up a curled length of hosepipe. “I’ve got this but I can’t use it. I’d have to get out of the van to put one end in the exhaust. And then …”
His voice trailed off, like he had lost interest mid-sentence.
Lisa had seen nothing in the woods. Maybe this was Ben’s own personal hell.
Wait a minute.
Her face folded into a frown. If Ben was dead, then why didn’t he recognise her? She had recognised him. And if he wasn’t dead, if he had somehow escaped Alison, how come he was here, being made to suffer his own worst nightmare? The answer that suggested itself was so ludicrous that she almost rejected it out of hand, except she instinctively knew it was right.
Ben had died in the van. But he must have been just at the point of death when Lisa opened the door. She had done nothing to revive him. For all she knew, his toppling over in the seat had been enough for his system to kick-start itself.
Whatever the explanation, he lived. But he had died, if only for the tiniest fraction of a second. Maybe, because of that, a small part of him was left behind here, in the realm of the dead. That would explain his odd remark about not feeling whole, and why he could not entirely rule out trying to kill himself again.
Could it be that this lost part of his spirit, his soul, call it what you like, called out for him to join it and he was finding it almost impossible to resist?
“Don’t be afraid,” she said, impulsively reaching out to touch his face.
The moment she brushed her flesh against his, Ben grunted and jerked away from her, breaking contact. Frowning deeply, he raised his own hand to his face and felt it gingerly, as if she had slapped him. “Lisa?” he said, blinking in confusion.
Lisa slumped with relief. Having Ben recognise her was like having a newfound ally. She felt that, whatever she was up against, at least she no longer had to face it alone. “Do you remember what happened?”
He sighed and shook his head. “Not really. I have these … not memories, but sort of pictures in my head. It’s like things happened to me when I was drunk.”
He broke off, staring intently over Lisa’s shoulder.
“What is it?”
“They’re still out there.”
Lisa followed his gaze. She could see nothing. “You mentioned something a few minutes ago. About those people who died.”
“I’ve seen them. They’re waiting for me.”
“No,” Lisa said. “I really don’t think they’re there, Ben. If you ask me, the guilt you feel over their deaths is what’s really haunting you. Not them.”
He managed a half-hearted smile. “Haven’t we had this conversation before?”
“You do remember it?”
“I remember the sense of it.” He started to climb down from the van. Lisa moved out of his way so he could drop the ground. Once he was down he gripped her shoulders lightly and looked into her eyes. “I know you told me I shouldn’t blame myself, that people will die when it’s their time to die, and only then.”
“And do you believe that?”
Instead of answering he jerked his head to one side, raising a hand for silence when Lisa went to ask him what was wrong. “Something’s there,” he whispered.
“Let it go,” Lisa said. His nervousness was starting to get to her. Now she thought she heard movement through the undergrowth. “Once you stop blaming yourself for those poor people’s deaths, you’ll stop seeing them.”
“I don’t think it was them,” Ben said, slowly scanning the woo
ds.
“Then what?”
“I think he’s looking for me,” Alison said, stepping out from behind the van.
This was not the Alison she’d encountered at the wreck on the endless road, the Alison who had been made whole again. This was the Alison who had trashed Lisa’s home, pursued her relentlessly and, in the end, most likely killed her. The torn-apart Alison who was stitched together by hundreds of scuttling, biting insects.
There was no sign of the black cloud but Lisa knew that meant nothing; Alison could summon it at will. It had seemed to come from within her.
“Oh fuck,” Ben said.
Lisa, eyes fixed on her sister, felt him tug at her elbow. She reached across and gently pulled his hand away. “Get out of here, Ben. This has nothing to do with you.”
“You’re wrong,” Alison said. She moved slowly along the van towards them, one fingernail scraping against the metal. “It has everything to do with him.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Lisa said. “Now run, while you still can.”
He shook his head. “We both go or we both stay.”
“I can’t run any longer, Ben. One way or another, this has to end now.”
“Then it ends for both of us.”
Lisa was about to remonstrate with him when, from the corner of her eye, she detected movement in the trees behind the Transit.
The walking dead, she supposed. Reinforcements, called in by her sister. Not that she needed any help. With the force of the cloud at her command Alison could swat them like insects, as effortlessly as she herself had been struck down.
Lisa strained to see into the trees but the shadows pooling between them were too deep. Again she sighted movement but it was insubstantial, as if she were looking at nothing more than drifting smoke. Then she heard Ben draw breath sharply.
“You see them?” he said, sounding nervous.
When Lisa looked at him she was shaken by the look of undisguised fear on his face. He was as pallid as the creatures that had invaded the cottage.
“Something’s out there,” she said. “I just don’t know what.”
But when she turned back to stare into the surrounding woodland, she saw them. Five people, standing stationary at the edge of the clearing.
Two of them were much taller than the other three.
There was a fire in one of the houses I wired. Five people died. An entire family wiped out, including three kids. Three fucking kids.
Lisa glared at Alison. “What sick trick are you playing now?”
“This is not my doing.”
“I bet it isn’t.” She looked at Ben. “Stay here.”
“Where are you going?” He sounded terrified at the idea of being left alone.
“I have to end this,” Lisa said.
And, without pausing to worry about the likely consequences, she marched straight across to Alison, who did not move an inch, did not even blink as Lisa stood defiantly in front of her, arms held rigidly at her side, hands clenched, resisting the impulse to lash out at the stitched-together monstrosity that she had once loved.
Up close Alison looked even more abhorrent than Lisa had imagined. Though she walked and talked, she was nonetheless dead and not untouched by decay. Patches of her skin had started to bubble and peel away and the stench that she gave off was so foul that Lisa almost had to turn away. But she made herself meet Alison’s steady gaze. She wanted it over with. She could not, would not, run any more. One way or another, it was going to end right there and right then.
“You’ve got me where you want me,” she said. “Now finish it.”
Alison did not respond immediately. “Only you can do that, Lise.”
“How?”
“You know how. You just cannot bring yourself to accept the truth.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“I guess not,” Alison said. “So I’m going to show you.”
The light mellowed, the air cooled. Lisa felt a jolting dislocation and, thinking that she should be used to these sudden shifts by now, looked around. She was still in the woods, but in a different clearing, dappled by evening sunshine. Next to her lay a fallen tree, so large that it was almost level with her shoulder. Now she recognised it as the place where she and Alison had stopped during their very last stroll together.
“Why don’t you join me?” she heard her sister say.
Looking up, she could see Alison, whole again, sat at the edge of the tree trunk, legs dangling over the side. The lenses of her sunglasses masked her eyes.
“Okay,” she said. There was no point in defiance now.
The old tree offered plenty of footholds and she pulled herself to the top with ease, settling down next to her sister. It was not long after this brief respite, she remembered, her throat tightening, that Alison had been taken from her.
As if sensing her sorrow, Alison reached out to touch Lisa’s hand, her skin feeling warm and dry. “It really was you who should have died that day, Lise.”
Lisa laughed bitterly. “So I keep telling myself.”
“No, you don’t understand. You should have died that day. It was your time, Lise, not David’s. But something went wrong.”
“Explain what the hell that means,” Lisa said. The first tendrils of fear began to creep through her as she realised that Alison was not talking figuratively.
“Maybe it was a twist of fate. But you lived when you shouldn’t have. David died when he shouldn’t have. And once it had happened, that was that. There was no way to change it to how it should have been.”
The tendrils burrowed deeper, until Lisa felt their cold touch at the very heart of her being. There was only one reason for Alison’s words having such an effect on her; they must be true.
“But that wasn’t the problem,” Alison said.
Lisa almost laughed in her face. “Sounds like a fucking problem to me.”
“Don’t ask me to explain this, because I can’t. When you cheated – no, not cheated – escaped death, something changed.” Alison shook her head and turned away, visibly struggling for words. “The power of life turned strong inside you, Lise. So strong that you were able to pass it on to others. The sick, the dying.”
“Oh sure,” Lisa said. “I was a regular miracle worker.”
“Think about it. How many of your patients died on your shift?”
Lisa said nothing, not liking where this was going.
“None,” said Alison. “In the three months since you went back, not one.”
Lisa shifted uncomfortably. “Coincidence, that’s all.”
“No, not coincidence. You changed their fates, Lisa. While you were there, they lived. Every time you gave an old woman an affectionate hug – and you’re the most tactile person I know – whenever you mussed up some old fellow’s hair. Your touch kept them alive, when they were ready to move on.”
“But people have died –”
“Yes, but not while you were there. All you did was divert fate, Lise, not change its course completely. Once you weren’t around, it followed its course again.”
Lisa considered this for a moment. It made sense, in an insane kind of way.
“So in the end I didn’t really make a difference,” she said.
“Exactly,” said Alison. “Until Ben Matthews.”
“Ben!” Lisa could have kicked herself for not dragging the truth out of him earlier, while she’d had the chance. “I knew he was the reason for all of this.”
Alison looked surprised. “But he’s not. You are. You brought him back, when you touched him. In the van. The difference was, he wasn’t some old dear who would die anyway the moment you finished your shift. The course of his fate was completely changed.”
“You could say the same about
me!”
“No. With you it was a fluke, a one-off. But if you have the power to raise the dead, Lise, it wouldn’t be a one-off, would it? How many more after Ben Matthews?”
Lisa snorted derisively. “Like I’d go round looking for corpses to resurrect.”
“Once you gave Ben Matthews his life back, you became an affront to nature,” said Alison. “You had to be stopped before you could do any more damage.”
“Damage?” Lisa could not believe what she was hearing. “I saved a life!”
Alison pushed herself off the tree, dropping lightly to the ground. “Saving a life is one thing. Giving it back after it has come to its rightful end is something else. I know it wasn’t your fault, Lise, but the natural order had to be restored.”
“This is bullshit. Just another evil little game.”
“Evil?” Alison said, her voice unexpectedly tender. “No, Lise, not evil.”
“If not evil, then why did you – Alison - have to die? She wasn’t part of it.”
“I was in the way. Wrong place, wrong time. Death is a force of nature, Lise, like the sea, or a storm. If a tree had fallen on me, would you call the tree evil?”
She turned and began to walk across the clearing.
“Hey!” Lisa called out. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“You wanted an end to this,” Alison said, without turning round.
“I know I did, but –”
“Then follow me.”
And with that she plunged into the darkness between the trees, out of sight.
Lisa closed her eyes, breathed deeply, not doubting that Alison had told the truth. As astonishing, as downright unbelievable as it was, she accepted it. It all tied in with what she had secretly known, but never faced up to, since she survived the crash.
What she could not understand was why Alison had not finished her off there, in the realm of the dead, when she had such terrifying power at her own fingertips. There had to be a reason why she had held back the black cloud.
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