The Fury (20 page)

He swam up from an ocean of darkness, breaching it like a swimmer who has gone too deep, expecting to feel warmth and daylight on his face but instead rising into an endless, heatless night. He tried to take a breath, couldn’t remember how, his lungs screaming at him.

He could see the new kid, Cal, right there, giving off his own weird light like some deep-sea jellyfish. The boy was struggling in the torrent of darkness, his eyes bulging, his mouth gasping like a fish. And behind him, visible over his shoulder, a tiny form that could only be Daisy, her twig-thin limbs clawing at the water, trying to find the surface.

He reached out, noticing that his own skin seemed to be glowing, as though he were radioactive. He stretched, trying to grab hold of Cal, willing the kid to grab hold of the girl, all of them kicking upwards.

Brick woke, his screams more like barks as he coughed up darkness. He pushed himself to his feet, his chair toppling over behind him. There was still no light, but he could feel the ground under him, could feel the pain in his cheek where he’d been sleeping on his laptop. There was something else, too, a ringing in his ears that was also profoundly silent, inverted cathedral bells whose peals were each a gaping absence inside his head.

Daisy cried out, her voice pinched by fear. Brick screwed his eyes shut, even though there was no light, trying to remember where she was.

‘It’s okay,’ he called out, edging around the table, feeling for the matches. ‘Don’t worry, we’re here.’

She began to cry even harder, and he heard a thump as she rolled off the chaise longue.

‘Daisy don’t move, you’ll hurt yourself, just hang on.’

He found the candle, burned down to the stick, and beside it –
bingo
, a box of matches. He carefully pulled one out, striking it on the box, the tiny flame filling the huge restaurant with soft light. Daisy stood by the sofa, her arms out, her sobs muted as she studied the burning match.

‘Here,’ said another voice, and Brick turned to see Cal walking over from the far side of the room. He held a candle out and Brick lit it, placing it on the table. Daisy saw Cal and came running over, hugging him tight, her eyes still full of sleep. ‘You okay?’ Cal asked her. ‘You have a bad dream?’

‘We were drowning,’ she said into his T-shirt. ‘You were there, and the other boy too.’

‘Brick,’ reminded Brick. Cal looked at him, and when their eyes met Brick realised the boy had been locked inside exactly the same nightmare. Not only that, but he knew that if he’d waved in his dream, the others would have seen it. That ringing in his ears seemed to grow louder, and yet infinitely quieter, and he worked his jaw to try and unblock his ears. It was a second or two before he noticed that Cal was doing the same thing.

‘You hear that too?’ he asked.

‘Bells,’ Cal replied.

Daisy pulled her head from his chest and jammed a finger in her ear.

‘They’re too loud,’ she said. ‘But not loud. I can’t really hear them. I don’t like it.’

‘I’ve had this before,’ Cal said to Brick, his hand gently smoothing back Daisy’s ruffled hair. ‘My head was . . . I don’t know, like full of sound but empty at the same time. It led me to Daisy.’

And just like that Brick knew exactly what he was hearing. They all did, a moment of understanding that passed between them as easily as the reflection of the candlelight in their eyes.

‘It’s one of us,’ said Brick.

Cal nodded, saying, ‘And they need help.’

The first of the crowd, the man, was nearly on them. Rilke bent down, scrabbling on the field until her hand closed over a stone the size of a satsuma. She waited until he was close – his animal grimace a jagged, toothy chasm that split his face in two – then she lobbed the stone at him with every ounce of strength she had.

It struck his nose with the sound that a milk bottle makes when it’s dropped on a stone floor, and the man fell. Rilke bent down, looking for another missile, but it was too late. The teenage girl slammed into her, sending them both tumbling over the field. Corn stalks dug into her arms and legs, the wind punched from her as the girl’s elbow hit her solar plexus. By the time she’d worked out which way was up the girl was on her chest, knees gouging her ribs and claws raking down her cheeks.

Rilke shrieked, the gargled sound that spilled from her own lips somehow more terrifying than the assault. There was no pain, just the roar of her blood. She lashed out, thumping her attacker in the cheek then grabbing a handful of soil, rubbing it into the girl’s eyes and forcing her back.

Another howl. Rilke looked up in time to see some dreadlocked guy about to take a punt at her head. She rolled, the girl spilling from her, the man’s foot swinging wide and sending him tumbling off balance. She scrambled to her feet, each breath a shriek. There were more people coming now, maybe ten or twenty of them.

‘Schiller!’ she yelled, ducking as another girl swung a punch. She kicked, her foot connecting with the girl’s knee and unleashing a pistol crack. Where was he? There was only the crowd, tearing relentlessly forward. If she couldn’t find him then they were both dead.

There, fifteen metres or so away, a bundle of shadow that had too many arms and legs. It had to be him.

Rilke ran, slipping on the loose soil and nearly going over. The tremors she felt beneath her feet were now nothing to do with the music that still played. She didn’t look back, knowing that to do so would kill her. The only thing that mattered was reaching Schiller.

She could hear him now, his brittle cries. He was lying on the ground, a man sitting on his stomach choking him with fluorescent orange fingerless gloves. Schiller’s eyes were the size of pickled eggs, looking like they were about to pop right out of his head, his own hands batting pathetically at his attacker.

‘
GET OFF HIM!
’ Rilke screamed. She was a dozen yards away now, her fist bunched and held over her head ready to cave the bastard’s face in.

Someone behind her clipped her foot and she went flying, momentum flipping her body over in a clumsy somersault. A weight dropped on her back and this time there was pain, a buckle of white heat that burned up her spine. A fist connected with the back of her head, pushing her face into the dirt. Then another, like a sledgehammer. She tried to breathe but found only soil and wormstench. Somebody had hold of her right hand, bending it backwards.

She was going to die. They were going to kill her in this very field, a mile from where she lived. They would bury her here, and nobody would ever find her. It was an impossible thought, too crazy to be real. Too insane to believe.

They’re going to kill Schiller too. Those screams of his will be the last thing you ever hear
. And
that
wasn’t impossible.
That
wasn’t crazy. That was all too real. They would kill her brother, stomp him into the ground.

No. She wouldn’t let them. They couldn’t have him.

Rilke wrenched her head up so hard she thought her neck would snap. She reached behind with her left hand, grabbing a fistful of flesh and squeezing hard. There was another grunt, this one laced with pain. The weight on her back shifted – not much but enough for her to worm her way forward. Schiller was ahead, almost close enough to touch. There were four or five people over him now, each one different and yet each one wearing that same fury-filled expression. Their hands and feet rose and fell, rose and fell, like pistons, like some horrific machine. Yet Schiller was still alive. She could see him through the gaps in the crowd, a hand held out towards her.

If she could just reach him . . .
What? You can die here holding hands?
No, it was something more than that. Something else.

A knuckled weight crunched down on her leg, another on her shoulder. She didn’t stop, crawling forward with everything she had. She reached for Schiller, the distance between them mere centimetres now but at the same time a vast, abysmal chasm.

‘Schill,’ she spoke his name through blood, but he heard her, turning his red, disbelieving eyes her way.

‘Rilke.’ He stretched, his fingers crawling over the soil. She grasped for him, the gap shrinking from five centimetres to four, to three, to two.

Their fingertips touched and the world burst into cold, dark fire.

‘Did it work?’ asked Cal.

‘Did what work?’ said Brick. ‘Standing here like a bunch of idiots holding hands?’

They were doing exactly that, huddled in a circle in the flickering light of the restaurant. Daisy wasn’t sure why. She couldn’t remember whose idea it had been. It had just happened, the same instinct that makes you flinch when somebody throws a punch, that makes you seek shelter when you hear thunder.

‘It worked,’ said Daisy, freeing herself from Brick’s huge, clammy palm. Brick pulled his other hand out of Cal’s, both boys wiping their hands on their clothes as though they had poison on them. Cal held on to her for a moment longer, giving her a gentle squeeze before letting go.

‘How do you know?’ he asked.

‘I just do,’ she replied. And she did. She’d seen it in her head, inside one of those little ice cubes. Although
seen
was the wrong word. She hadn’t really seen anything, she’d just felt it. But what exactly had she felt? Two people, or maybe just one, they were so similar she couldn’t be sure. They’d been scared, they’d been in pain. They’d been about to die.

But then what?

Daisy didn’t know for sure, but she understood that the three of them – her, Cal and Brick – had helped. They’d done
something
. She could still sense the person, or the two people – the
twins
, she realised with a sharp intake of breath. Only there was something different about them, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

They were coming here, though. That much was clear. Daisy frowned, trying to remember more, trying to see inside those transparent, clinking movies that played inside her mind. There was something there that frightened her, something that burned, but she couldn’t work out what it was.

‘What now?’ asked Brick. ‘We light some joss sticks and sing “Kumbaya”?’

Daisy didn’t reply, she just stared at the fire inside her head, trying to work out what was wrong, and why she felt so scared.

Rilke’s first thought was that she’d died.

The thought that followed was that she couldn’t have died, because she was still thinking. Then came the realisation that she couldn’t have died because she was in
pain
.

She opened her eyes, the lids sticky as if she’d been asleep for a week. The stars were moving, spiralling across the infinite black canvas of the sky. Her ears were humming. Her whole body seemed to be locked tight with a muted, throbbing ache. Smoke clawed its way into her nose. It filled her head too, draping heavy shadows over her thoughts, her memories.

Why was she here?

Schiller
, her brain told her, and at once her paralysis snapped free. She sat up, a jet of milk-white vomit erupting from her mouth without warning. She held her stomach with one hand, wiping spit away with the other. Stars drifted down from the night, landing on her face and the field beside her, glowing fiercely. She held out her hand, letting one settle on it. The spark guttered then died.
We knocked the stars from the sky
, she thought.
Our fingers touched and we knocked loose the stars
.

Only they weren’t stars. How could they be? They were ashes, like the flickering embers from a bonfire. They filled the air, dancing on their own heat. She looked through them, the world gradually coming into focus. Schiller was there, lying next to her. His face was a mosaic of bruises, blood running freely from his nose and his mouth. But he was alive. Seeing him like that brought everything back, and Rilke staggered to her feet, ready to defend herself from another attack.

There was nobody there.

Not only was there nobody there, she didn’t know exactly where ‘there’ was. They were in a field, a
different
field. This one had something growing in it – a carpet of fat leaves painted silver by the moon. There was a glow against the horizon, and it took her a minute to understand that she was looking at the party, the rave. The distant crowd danced in the weak glow as if nothing had happened. She looked back at her brother, her brain desperately trying to put the pieces together, trying to make some kind of sense of what had just happened.

‘Schill?’ she asked. ‘Are you okay?’

He didn’t reply, didn’t show any sign that he’d heard her. Rilke crouched down beside him, pressing two fingers against his throat and feeling the pulse there, faint but steady. But he was cold, he was
freezing
. Touching him was like picking up a glass of ice water, and Rilke had to pull her hand away after a minute or so as the numbing chill crept into it.

‘Schiller,’ she said again, shaking the blood back down her arm. ‘Talk to me. Please.’

He was in shock. He had to be. He’d taken a pretty bad beating, they both had. But how had they got from over there, getting the life stamped out of them by a bunch of stoned strangers, to right here?
I fought them
, her brain argued, picking strands of logic from the confusion. She looked down at her hands, stained pink like she’d been cutting up beetroot.
I fought them, and we ran, and it was so terrifying that I’ve already blocked it out.
That had to be it, didn’t it? She wished she had a watch, or a phone, so she could check the time.

And so you can call an ambulance, right?

No. She wasn’t going to do that. There was no precise reason why not, only that she knew it would be the wrong thing to do. There was an image in her head, a picture, a memory that she had no actual memory of – a paramedic in his green overalls, his face somehow a horse’s face as he threw himself at her, as he pushed her through a window.

Somebody cried out from the direction of the party, a word she couldn’t make any sense of. She tapped her pocket, feeling for the torch but not finding it. It was probably better this way. If they saw the light then they might come after her again. They might be coming after her now, feet pounding through the darkness, fists clenched, that same depthless rage burning through their faces.

The Fury.

‘We need to go,’ she said, lifting one of her brother’s arms and looping it around her shoulders. She braced herself, pushing up with her legs, his body rag-doll loose against hers. ‘Schiller,’ she snapped, his name seeming to echo against the night. ‘Pull it together. We need to get out of here.’

His head lolled against his chest, swinging from side to side like a nodding dog on a car’s parcel shelf. She looked over her shoulder to the party, trying to get her bearings in the dark. If she was where she thought she was then the road back into town was way off to her right. But that’s not where she was headed.

‘Fursville,’ she whispered, the word ridiculous, meaningless, and yet the only thing she could think of. She caught a glimpse of a roller coaster, the wood rotting, a deserted restaurant. This was where she was supposed to go. And somehow she knew how to get there, too, something inside her head pulling at her, leading her.

You’re crazy
, her head told her.
Go to the hospital, get Schiller some help. He’ll die if you don’t
.

Only she wasn’t crazy. This was something else. The swarm of ashes had calmed, but they were still falling, darting like fireflies. She held out her free hand and caught another one, a fragment of charred pink leather that flickered and died in her palm. Another followed, this one a burning scrap of fluorescent orange –
Like the man’s gloves, those fingerless gloves around Schiller’s throat, choking the life from him
– which took flight again after a second or two, rising back into the night.

Yes, this was definitely something else.

She hoisted Schiller up and started walking. He didn’t give her any help but she hauled him after her step after step after step. The cold that was coming off him was unbelievable, like she was walking through the middle of a blizzard. This wasn’t something a doctor could sling a bandage on or temper with antibiotics. Schiller didn’t need a hospital, he needed whatever lay inside the place in her head, that abandoned theme park called Fursville.

Right?

She pushed the questions away, locking on to those instincts, to her absolute gut belief that what she was doing was okay. The sea wasn’t far from here, and the little boat yard that belonged to the neighbouring village. She could hotwire one of the old roll-ups or dinghies. She’d done it before. It was a clear night, no wind, they could be there – wherever
there
was – before dawn. All she had to do was follow that feeling in her head, that guide rope tugging gently on her thoughts.

Shivering, her teeth chattering so hard she was worried the ravers might hear them, Rilke kicked her way through the ash and the dirt, heading for the sea, heading for Fursville, heading for answers.