The Stone Man - A Science Fiction Thriller (14 page)

The few people that I passed stared at me as I dashed by, running along the streets of Sheffield city centre, panting and gasping and unaware of my own discomfort. I barely felt the sweat that had already begun to pour down my back and bead on my scalp. My earlier observation that the place was pretty much deserted stayed true for the most part, but there were still one or two people around as it turned out. Most would be at home, glued to their TVs for more Stone Man news and to find out whether or not they were in the path of destruction, to find out if they had to evacuate. Some would have already have been on the motorways, and some would be stubbornly refusing to go anywhere, wanting to stay to see it. I actually ran so hard that at one point I tripped over my own feet and went sprawling on the pavement, snagging the shopping bag of a middle-aged lady with my flailing hand and sending the helmet and jacket flying from my arms and tumbling to the feet of a young, trendy couple coming the other way (fortunately, I’d put my laptop bag back on my back.)

The middle-aged lady cried out, initially thinking I was trying to steal her goods, but her fear quickly changed to concern when she saw what had actually happened. She started to bend to help me up, but I was already getting to my feet and waving her away, dashing forward again and scooping up my own dropped items. As I disappeared around the corner, I heard the laughter (at my expense) of a handful of teens, congregated on, over and around a town bench. Normally this would have caused me a mixture of embarrassment, anger and a weird sense of victimhood, but in that moment it wasn’t even a consideration.

I don’t know how long I ran for. Perhaps a few minutes. I was aware of travelling through an unfamiliar city, my eyes registering the different buildings and outlets and recognising chain stores from my own hometown, but my brain didn’t care about them. It only wanted to seek and complete a goal. And so it was that when I began to feel myself closing in—feeling the source grow nearer and nearer, and realising that at this range, this newer pulse was an equal force to the pull—that I rounded the last bend in such an insane, gleeful rush that I ran headlong into the source itself, barely getting my arms up in time to protect my head and nearly getting knocked out for the second time in as many days.

There was dull thud that clattered my senses as I collided with the forearm and chest of another human being at running speed, briefly drowning out both pull and pulse. I sent the jacket and helmet skittering away for the second time that afternoon.

I say forearm because the source appeared to be another human being, one with either the foresight or rapid reflexes necessary to get
his
arm up in time, covering his face. The fact he was six inches taller—and I was bent at a run—meant that I’d collided head first with his raised forearm just above the elbow. It had hurt him, but had caused me considerably greater pain. As I sagged against the wall of the nearby building, I waited for my now-blurred vision to clear, moaning and panting. Sweat dripped into my eyes and stung them, making sight even more difficult, but I could make out an outline, and a fairly big one at that.

“Bloody
hell
,” I heard the outline say through gritted teeth, hunched over slightly, and in that moment I became aware of the pull and pulse again; the pulse was everywhere, it seemed, and it began in the man in front of me. My vision started to clear, and I felt a slight disappointment (I hadn’t really expected him to be blonde, as I thought that guy was elsewhere, but what did I really know about the rules of the game at this point?) that he had dark hair. He was definitely a big unit, too.

I blinked the last of the sweat out of my eyes. I could see clearly now, my head apparently resettled. He looked to be about my age, but with a more weathered face; his bulky frame seemed to back up the idea that he was an outdoorsy type. It wasn’t all muscle, though; he had the same build some rugby players do, several pounds of fat on top of a barrel-like physique that just created an air of mass. Despite our similar ages, his fine brown hair was already thinning quite a bit, at odds with his strangely childlike face.

He held up one thick finger (a finger like Dan’s, maybe bigger) and pointed it at me. He held it there for a second, still wide eyed, and then cocked his head slightly, raising his eyebrows.

“Yeah?” he asked, nodding slowly. I knew what he meant. I nodded back, still breathing hard.

“Apparently so,” I said.

“Did you … you were coming to me?” he said, realisation creeping across his face, now shaking his head slowly in disbelief. “I was coming to you!” he said, now starting to smile. I returned his grin, confused but pleased. I wasn’t nuts, after all. And here was someone who was as connected as I was, somehow, even though I couldn’t yet tell if he had any more of a clue as to what the hell was going on.

“How … how did you find me? What brought you here?” I asked, in between gulps of air. I was also becoming aware of just how wet my clothes were from sweat, and felt them sticking to me. I hated that sensation with a passion, but right now there were far more important things to worry about. The pull and pulse were booming, screaming in my brain.

He screwed up his face at this, pulling an almost comical
Eh?
expression.

“What brought me here? I
live
here. I take it you don’t, from the accent,” he replied, pronouncing
don’t
as
dun’t
. I shook my head.

“Coventry,” I breathed, “Came for something else, though … then I just …” I waved my hand, trying to find the right phrase. I ended up shrugging “… picked up your, I don’t know, your signal,” I finished. The big man’s response was to screw his face up even more. He flattened his big paw of a hand against his chest.

“
My
signal? I was following
your
‘signal.’ It’s coming off you like a speaker,” he said, his thick accent coming through clear as a bell again (
Your
as
Yaar
.) “I nearly honked up this morning, then a couple hours later, it happens again and here you are. What the fuck have you been
doing
?” he asked, spreading his hands wide and suddenly looking a bit pissed off. This was not a guy you wanted to get on the bad side of, clearly. I held up my hands, head down, and made the let’s-calm-down gesture, bobbing my hands downward. I coughed slightly, clearing my throat. I was steady again.

“Whoa, whoa. Hold on. Looks like … looks like we’re each getting the wrong end of the stick here. I’m not sure either of us knows what’s going on. Let’s start again.” I straightened up, and held my hand out. “Andy Pointer.”

He looked at me, and dropped his arms after a second, his face unknotting. As his face relaxed, I was struck by how bright his eyes were, which may have also had something to do with the fact that he’d just stopped squinting. Even so, they were a younger man’s eyes, I thought, now appearing to take years off him, making him look almost like a boy. As I would later find out, when he was excited, that he had the enthusiasm of one, too. That was very much a part of who Paul was. Is. Sorry, Paul.

“Paul Winter,” he said, quietly nodding his head in an okay-let’s-be-reasonable kind of manner, not looking me in the eyes. He took my hand to return the shake—my hand felt tiny in his—and I saw his eyes jerk open in utter shock, just before I felt the electricity slam into me as well. The pull consumed all of my senses and overloaded them.

Everything around us disappeared in an explosion of white light.

***

Part 2:

Making the Most of It

Chapter Three: Paul’s Story, Driving Under the Influence, The Weaker Points of Double Glazing, and A Meeting With a Blonde That Does Not Go Well

***
 

The room is dark, but it isn’t night time. The venetian blinds are drawn; blades of sunlight creep through them in a slatted pattern, striking the sofa. The rectangles of light sit just above the face of the sleeping man, and create just enough illumination to make out his surroundings. On the large, expensive looking coffee table are several empty microwave dinner trays, each one slightly less fresh than the last. There are several items of clothing strewn around the floor, and propped against the radiator is a large, broken picture frame. Surrounding that are shards of the glass that once were inside it, and the picture has fallen out. It shows the sleeping man in a different time, not so long ago, smiling and holding a certificate of some sort.

Right now, he is naked except for a pair of navy blue boxer shorts, and his sleep is clearly troubled. He mumbles constantly, and now he cries out incoherently, shaking his head in a twitching manner. He doesn’t wake.

He looks very different from the picture on the floor; he is now unshaven, haggard even, with dark bags under his eyes. He is, however, very recognisable to you; see the blonde hair. He doesn’t look like someone who has slept properly for some amount of time. Suddenly, he begins to whimper and thrash around on the sofa, striking at his head with the heels of his hands, harder and harder—

***

There was moment of strange visual static, followed by whiteness again, and then the street I was currently stood on snapped back into view. I would have no doubt have taken a moment to regain my senses, and then internally register my amazement and verify my surroundings (stunned by the fact that I was no longer seemingly stood in a stranger’s living room and immediately back on a street corner in Sheffield) were it not for the sudden realisation of blinding pain in my fingers. Paul’s monstrous paw of a hand was clamped on mine so hard that his knuckles were white; my fingers were literally about to break. One look at his glassy, vacant eyes and clenched jaw told me that he was still in the other place, wherever that was, but that was no good to me. I had to save my hand. I shouted out in pain, but he was beyond hearing me.

In a moment of panic, helpless to think of anything else to do, I kicked him in the balls as hard as I could.

Paul blinked. His mouth then gaped as his eyes darted left and right, trying to get a handle on where he was, then looked at me and started to speak frantically.

“Did you—” he started, then immediately stopped as his brain caught up with physical reality. His eyes screwed up, and his hands flew to his genitals as he gave a low moan and slumped to the floor. He curled up into a ball and stayed there, breathing hard and making little noises.

That’s when I became aware of something; the pull was now stronger than ever, but the pulse was now gone. The pull was
everywhere though,
and yet somehow still only taking me in one direction. That’s the best way I can describe it. Something had changed. Connecting with Paul seemed to have completed part of a circuit, or broken the pulse’s hold, or changed our receiving frequency, or
something
, but whatever had happened had intensified my connection to the pull. Operating normally whilst the pull was that strong was like trying to think with a marching band playing in your ear; you could do it, but you really needed to concentrate.

I realised I had more immediate concerns, and focused on Paul lying on the floor. I stood over him awkwardly for a second, as a car drove past with a female passenger staring at the foetal giant lying on the pavement. I gave her a
What are you looking at?
gesture, and she hurriedly looked in the opposite direction as the car drove on. I crouched down to Paul, uncertain of what to do, and touched his shoulder. I couldn’t see his face. It was buried under his arm.

“You okay?” I asked, nervously. The response was muffled, but it sounded as if he wasn’t impressed with me asking such a stupid question. Thinking it wouldn’t be a good idea to have a man of his size—and one who I would probably need to work with—severely pissed off with me, I thought that a little creative diplomacy was in order.

“I had the same thing happen to me when I came back,” I lied, but with a tone of sympathy that was genuine. “I came to, and then suddenly it just felt like I’d been kicked in the balls. Once I got my breath back, I could see that you were just standing there. I mean, you were clearly still seeing that other place, so I shouted at you and you woke up. Did you see it? Did you see the room with the guy?” There was a long pause, and I began to feel very nervous indeed, but then there was a quiet noise of affirmation from Paul.

“I’ll give you a moment. Try and … try to get your breathing under control,” I said, not being very helpful, and stood, rubbing my eyes. That had been a vision on a whole new level; not merely a face, but a complete scene, and furthermore one that I very much thought was happening right now. I was certain of it. That had been like a live feed, just like the ones I’d been seeing on the news of the Stone Man, albeit without the production graphics. The concept was incredible, but by this point I found it far easier to push the lunacy of it to one side and concentrate on the task at hand. Clearly, Paul was the key here. He’d found me, I’d found him, and when we’d physically connected, whatever force or signal that I’d been latching onto previously suddenly went haywire. It was like I was an antenna, and Paul was some kind of … booster pack.

The question was, what the hell was it that we were picking up? And what did the blonde-haired guy have to do with it all? Whatever it was, he certainly didn’t look happy. Either way, I knew that we were close; the Stone Man’s destination, as far as I knew, was a point in or around this city, and I thought that with Paul onside—and the pulse now being stronger than ever—finding the blonde-haired man was going to be even easier.

I was right, of course. God forgive me, I was right.

Paul was stirring now, holding out a hand with his head down, wanting to be helped up. I grabbed his arm and pulled, doing my best to offer assistance despite having almost no effect on his upward movement. Paul is a big man. Once he was standing, he patted me on the shoulder as a gesture of thanks, still not making eye contact, and then stood with his hands on his hips as he took heavy, regular breaths. I didn’t say anything, and let him breathe as I quietly thought to myself. I needed him to work with me, and by my reckoning, a ten-minute recess to get ourselves in order and see what Paul knew (if he knew anything) would be a good idea.

He suddenly began looking around again, as if he was hearing something. Turning on the spot, he finally looked back at me, confusion on his face.

“What ... what the bloody hell was ... wait. Do you ... d’you feel that?” he asked. “That’s … that’s different.” So he was picking it up now too. The circuit had connected, and there had been a reaction for us both.

“Yes,” I said, nodding, “I know what you mean. Look, I reckon we could both do with five minutes to debrief as best we can. I’ll try to give you as much of an explanation as I’ve got, including what you’ve just mentioned, and you can tell me what your side of it is. We can also explain to each other who the hell we are. Then we can plan the next bit.”

“What’s the next bit?” he asked, furrowing his brow further. I scratched at my forehead.

“I think if we want to get to the bottom of all this, we both need to go and see the gentleman we both just saw. He’s the reason I’m here, he’s tied up with the statue thing somehow, and I think that you and me can find him. More quickly than I could alone, at least. Let’s get a pint somewhere close by—I think we both need it—we’ll rattle through it all and you can tell me whether you’re in or not. Yeah? I know this sounds like a lot in one go, I mean, we don’t even know each other, but I think that’s the best plan of action right now?” I held up my hands, palms out, giving him the choice. He sighed, and nodded.

“Oh, I’m definitely in,” he said, scratching at his own face now, “as if I couldn’t be. All this shit …” He trailed off shaking his head, silent for nearly a full minute, head down. He then shrugged, and gave a humourless chuckle. I knew what he meant. It was so unbelievable, so ridiculously immense and impossible to get your head around, that you just found yourself accepting it, bemused.

“Nuts,” he said, with a sad smile. “Absolutely nuts. If you weren’t here, I’d have thought it was all in my head.” It came out
Ah’d
of thaat it weraal in me ead
. In time, I’d find myself subconsciously picking up bits of his accent myself, using more flattened vowels and saying
Aye
instead of
Yes
. “But I do wanna hear your side. Tell me everything. All of it. This is just …” he trailed off again, and waved the sentence away. He shook his head, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Nearest pub’s two minutes down the road, we can walk it. You can buy.” He turned and began to walk in the direction he’d pointed, so I wasn’t really sure if that last bit was a joke or not. I decided to play it like it was.

“Okay, but you can get the next one,” I called after him as I followed, trying to lighten the situation further.

“Nope,” he said, without turning round, “that’s yours too.” This seemed less of a joke, and I wondered if I’d gotten the whole thing wrong.

“How’s that then?” I asked with false jollity.

“Tell you what,” said Paul, putting his hands in his pockets and striding ahead, still facing forwards, “you get the beers in like a good lad, without any fuss, and we won’t have to have a little chat about you kicking me in the balls. How’s that sound?”

I stopped dead for a moment, and wondered if my heart might just have done the same.

“Fine,” I said softly, and began following again, now maintaining a slight distance between us until we were at the pub.

***

The shouting has started on TV. I know, even without looking, what’s happening. They’ve arrived. Now it really starts. And I’ve just been proved totally right.

I’ll carry on in a second, there’s something I have to do first.

Right, back. I don't know how much time I have now. Where was I?

***

“Okay,” said Paul with a sigh, gently flattening his hands on the table, “I'm forty-three, married, no kids, benefits officer for the council, been having horrific bouts of nausea since yesterday that seem to have something to do with you, and the guy I saw when I shook your hand has the same face that was in my dreams last night. Not really happy about any of that, apart from the married part. But you’re going to explain all of it now anyway, aren’t you, so it shouldn’t be a problem, should it?” He raised his eyebrows and his glass at the same time, not taking his eyes off me as he drank.

We were sitting in the sort of pub I didn’t like; one room, one bar, tiled floor. I like a cosy pub, built like a rabbit warren, a place you can sink into. This was too bright, with too little upholstery and upkeep. At least it was quiet; the Stone Man effect was destroying bar takings and attendance as well as property. A cheap radio was playing music, perched on a shelf, which helped; otherwise, the aging barman and the two equally silent drinkers perched on barstools would have been privy to our conversation. Even if we lowered our voices, sitting as we were by the window, I think the things about to be discussed would have, even if overhead slightly, drawn further attention.

“I’m afraid that’s not really the case, Paul,” I replied, trying a thin smile. “I have some ideas, and some personal experience of what I think is at least the
source
of what’s happening to us, but in terms of concrete facts … I only have speculation. Let’s just put our stories together before we do anything, just so we don’t screw anything up that could have been avoided.” I sipped at my own pint, feeling nervous. I’d only met Paul about four minutes ago, and already things didn’t seem to be going well. He drummed his fingers, examining them.

“O-kay…” he said, quietly, before continuing, “well I think you should probably go first, as you’ve just heard the main beef of what I have to tell you. That’s everything I know in a nutshell, and it sounds like you have a bit more on this than I do. So off you go.” It wasn’t a request.