Nightsiders

7:10 A.M.

He awoke curled up on the ground behind the pub, his mouth plastered to the cracked cement and his back and legs aching. Cautiously, he raised himself into a low crouch. There was vomit on his face and the cuffs of his jacket. He did his best to rub away the dry flakes from his cheeks and lips, and then pulled himself fully upright using his hands against the rough wall. He tried the back door, but it was locked. Turning slowly, he surveyed the car park; it was empty.

Robert trudged across the tarmac and stepped over the low fence, where he followed the footpath round to the front of the building. Daylight stabbed at his eyes. The sky was pale blue and looked incredibly distant, like a painting or a photograph; or, to extend Sarah’s metaphor from yesterday, a matte background from an old film.

Before long he was outside the hotel. There was a police car parked at the curb. Robert’s heart began to stammer, punching against the inside of his chest.

He entered the hotel and saw Sarah standing in the lobby, biting her nails and talking with a uniformed police officer he had not seen before. He wondered where Sergeant McMahon was, and if he knew what was going on here.

“Rob!” Sarah ran to him, reaching out and then pulling back her arms at the last minute. Her momentum carried her forward, and she almost collided with him. It was clumsy and a little embarrassing, but she managed to save face by putting a hand on his chest. “Where have you been?”

He hoped he didn’t smell of sex. “I…slept on a bench somewhere. Had too much to drink after we fought. I’m sorry. What’s happening?” He could not maintain eye contact with her.

Sarah leaned into him, more, he felt, for show than out of any kind of real affection. “It’s Molly. She was out all night.”

Robert staggered backward; the world seemed to hitch, like a roundabout getting stuck on its bearings. “Where is she now?”

“It’s okay. It’s fine. This officer found her about an hour ago, walking the streets and pinching a milk bottle from someone’s doorstep. Molly’s upstairs, asleep. We can talk to her later, when she wakes up.” Robert suddenly realized Sarah’s odd behavior was probably due to the intense relief she felt at having both her daughter and husband back. He felt guilty for missing it all, ashamed for allowing himself to be drawn into that absurd and vaguely nightmarish situation last night. And what about that anyway; was it even real, or had he dreamed it all? Right now, under the harsh hotel lights, it seemed he might have imagined the whole thing.

He certainly wished he had.

“I’ll leave you to talk,” said the officer, putting away his notebook and skulking out of the lobby, toward the door. “Call if you need anything.”

“Where’s McMahon? Has he been here?” Robert rubbed at his head and scratched his scalp.

Sarah looked at him askance; there was something odd about her expression, and it made him feel uncomfortable. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said. “I mentioned McMahon to that young officer, and he looked at me as if I was mad. He said there was no such person as Sergeant McMahon in the Battle constabulary.” Her face was hanging loose from her bones; the skin was slipping like the wallpaper in the hotel stairwell.

“I’ve had enough of this,” Robert said, backing away. He pulled at his hair, trying to connect himself to the pain, to inhabit the moment entirely. Strangely, it did not hurt a bit. “This is insane, all of it. It makes no sense.” Everything was spinning out of his grasp—his wife, his children, his very existence. “Where was Molly? Has she said anything?”

Sarah took a single step toward him and then halted. She raised her hands, an attempt at a placatory gesture that seemed somehow forced, as if she were trying to make it happen rather than let their reconciliation take its natural course. “She said she was with a boy—a local. Nothing happened, she promised me. They just walked around all night, talking.”

“That’s not like her. It’s not Molly. She doesn’t do things like that.” He started for the stairs. Things were slipping out of control. “Where’s Connor?”

“He’s in the bar, finishing his breakfast.”

Robert changed direction and headed for the bar, feeling the rage building inside him. He took a few deep breaths and tried to calm down; he knew shouting at everyone would achieve nothing. By the time he entered the room and saw the boy sitting at the table, he had just about managed to bring down his blood pressure.

He sat down opposite his son. “How are you doing?”

Connor looked up from his toast. There were crumbs on his chin. His eyes were ringed with black; clearly he had not slept much at all. “I don’t know anything, Dad. She left me outside the chip shop and made me promise not to say anything. She put me in an awkward position.”

“I know, son, and I promise you’re not in trouble. We just need to know where she’s been, and what might have happened.” He slipped his hand across the table but stopped it before the fingers touched Connor’s sleeve.

“All I know is she was with some boy. I don’t know his name, or where he lives, but Molly’s smitten with him.” His use of that antiquated word—smitten—was almost comical under the circumstances. It was a word Robert himself used often, and his son had obviously picked it up without realising. Robert felt a strange kind of pride.

“Okay, son. We’ll just leave it at that. You finish your breakfast and I’ll go and talk to your sister. He stood and pushed away from the table, still light-headed and slightly nauseous. He needed a shower, and to brush his teeth. He needed to wash the stink of Monica Corbeau’s mouth off his cock.

“Sorry, Dad.” Connor’s voice was tiny, like that of an infant.

Robert walked away, not sure what else he could say. He felt close to tears.

He climbed the stairs and went to their room, then stood outside and listened at the door. He could hear Molly crying, and was afraid if he went inside he would be unable to stop himself from screaming at her. He thought of that couple in the bar, practically eating each other’s faces, and felt his stomach flip. He imagined some boy’s hands all over his daughter’s body, and feared for her because of her lack of street smarts. He had always done his best to protect his children, and to bring them up in what he thought of as the right way. This inevitably meant they were both a little naive, and some of their friends knew much more about the seamier side of life…but was it so wrong to try and retain a sense of purity within the sanctity of your family, to do your best to keep the tide of filth at bay?

Oh, God, he thought. What if she’s pregnant? What if…what if she gave away her virginity in a back lane and finds out she’s up the duff?

He gritted his teeth and leaned his forehead against the door. The wood was cold and hard, but still it felt as if his head would pass right through it if he tried. The edges of his world had become less rigid, all borders were now blurred. Nothing was the same; everything had changed. Fact and fiction had become part of the same experience, reshaping the world into a strange and frightening place.

He pushed open the door and went inside. Molly was sitting on the bed, her knees drawn up to her chest and her T-shirt stretched over her kneecaps. She was staring at the bed, her face streaked with tears. She looked about four years old.

“Hello, love.” All the anger had gone now; he felt calm and detached, buoyed on currents of warm air. Things were going wrong, going haywire, and all he could do was attempt to limit or contain the damage. “How are you feeling?”

“Nothing happened, Daddy.” She had not called him that in years, not since she was tiny. “We were just walking around, holding hands. I was upset because you and Mum had that fight, and Ethan listened to me. That’s all. We just walked and talked.”

“Are you sure? Do you promise?” His voice was contracting, becoming small and quiet.

Molly looked up at him, her face a pale, drawn mask. Now she looked so much older than fourteen, and he felt like weeping for all the potential hurt that lay ahead in her future. He wished he could take care of her for the rest of her life. “I promise, Daddy.” Once again, he knew deep down she was lying: all that remained a mystery was the extent of the lie. He hoped it was a small one, a little white lie, and that its effects would be negligible. He could not judge her for her dishonesty, not in his current position. Not only was he lying to Molly, to Connor, and to Sarah, but he was also lying to himself.

He was the king of liars.

Robert went to her, and he knelt down at the side of the bed. He threw his arms around her, holding her as if she might float up and away if he ever let go.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll make it all better.” Another lie: this one perhaps the biggest of them all.

10:30 A.M.

The police station was quiet when he walked in. Nobody looked at him; even the uniformed officer on desk duty ignored him. An old man sat on a bench with a small dog in his lap and two women whispered together from their seats near the door. The white-painted walls were covered in shiny paper flyers; wanted and missing-persons posters and information leaflets, commonplace police station junk probably left unread by everyone who passed through the door.

“I’m here to see Sergeant McMahon,” he said, raising his voice to a level that fell just short of shouting.

The man at the desk looked up, frowning. “Who would that be, sir?”

“Sergeant McMahon. I’d like to see him, please.”

The officer shook his head. “I’m sorry, but there’s no one here by that name. We have a Sergeant Mackenzie, but he’s out on a call. I can take your details and ask him to get back to you.”

A clock ticked; behind the desk, beyond a narrow corridor and through a set of doors, several telephones rang. Pipes groaned and grumbled in the walls. Robert was surprised only that he was not surprised. It was as if this moment, this small revelation was simply part of some bigger story, and he was the unwilling protagonist being put through a set of preordained paces.

“So,” said Robert, looming over the desk. “You’re telling me there isn’t a Sergeant McMahon? That he doesn’t exist?” He clenched his hands on the desktop; his fingernails dragged across the smooth Formica surface.

Beats of silence: the women had stopped whispering and even the telephones no longer rang.

“That’s right, sir. Can anyone else help?” The officer was losing interest. Now that he had decided Robert was not a threat, he was growing bored with the exchange. “If you’ll just write down your name and number here, I’ll have someone call you when the sergeant gets in.” He pushed a pad and pencil across the desk.

Noise flooded back in, filling the vacuum and making Robert’s ears drone. It was like someone was trying to tell him something, but all those other sounds were doing their best to drown out the tiny voice. He strained to hear, but nothing came through: the transmission was too weak.

“No. No, that’s okay. I must have been given duff information, that’s all. It’s nothing important, just a minor thing.” Robert felt like laughing in the man’s face; his sanity was slipping, but at least he was aware of the fact. Wasn’t it true if you thought you were mad, then surely you could not be mad? Q.E.D.

He was halfway across the room to the door when he turned back, stopping again at the desk. Something had occurred to him, a small thing, but one that amused him.

“Yes?” The officer spoke through pursed lips, clearly annoyed by now.

“I think I will leave my details after all,” said Robert, reaching for the pencil and the notepad. He carefully inscribed a name and address across the top of the page.

Nathan Corbeau

1 Oval Lane

Battle

Then, satisfied, he put down the pencil and left the station.

Robert had no idea why he had written down Corbeau’s details, other than it felt as if he were reclaiming something, a part of himself that had been snatched away by that other man who had taken his place. It made him feel powerful for a moment, and he gained an insight into what type of creature the usurper might be. He understood the thrill of theft, the prolonged high of pretending you were someone else, and took comfort from the knowledge that the life you knew could be smothered and replaced with another, even for such a short period of time.

He did not return to the hotel. Instead he climbed into the car and headed for Oval Lane. It was a short drive, but a pleasant one, and even in his current state of agitation he could enjoy the sight of the trees and the fields and the ancient farm buildings dotted along the horizon. A series of low hills rose into the distance, like the spine of a fossilized dragon, and he felt a strange sensation of being uplifted from the norm as he viewed the scene through the windshield.

He drove up the narrow access road and parked the car. He was just about to get out when his mobile phone rang. He picked it up from the dashboard and answered it.

“Rob,” said Sarah, breathless. “Is she with you? Is Molly there?”

He closed his eyes. “No, she isn’t with me. What’s happened?” He tightened his grip on the phone; plastic creaked close to his ear.

“She’s gone again, with that boy. Connor’s here, but she’s not. I was in the shower when I heard the door slam, and when I came out, Connor told me the boy had called her on her phone and she’d rushed out to meet him.” There was panic in her voice, but she remained in control. There was no danger, not yet; at least they knew who Molly was with, even if they did not know this boy personally.

“Have you called the police again?”

“No. Do you think I should?”

He paused, thinking about the question. “No. They won’t do anything anyway. As far as they’re concerned, she’s just messing about with some boy we don’t approve of: that’s not a crime. Stay there with Connor and I’ll see if I can find her.” His finger slid over the button that would terminate the call, but did not press it.

“Where are you, Rob?”

“Nowhere,” he said, thinking that was exactly where he was: nowhere at all. Nowhereville. He pressed the button and the line went dead.

He got out of the car and walked over the gravel drive, stopping at the porch. The sound of birdsong was like a recording. This time the outer door was open, so he stepped inside and rapped his knuckles against the inner frame. He did not knock again; he just waited for someone to answer. He had the feeling they knew he was there, waiting, and they would come eventually, when they were ready for him.

Nathan Corbeau opened the door. He was wearing a faded muscle vest and a pair of soccer shorts: Robert could not identify the team; he did not recognize the team logo. The man’s upper torso was wide, almost square in shape, and his arms were well defined and hairy. His skin was dark, almost swarthy. “Hello, stranger.” His smile was huge, and hungry.

“We need to talk.” Robert held his gaze, refusing to budge even an inch. He remembered the rape, the aftermath, and the promises he and Sarah had made both to each other and to themselves. He was not a victim; he would never be a victim again.

“Well, come on in, loverboy.” Corbeau stepped back and to the side, opening the door wider.

Robert stepped across the threshold, recalling something he had once read about vampires having to be invited in before they can enter a person’s home. “Thank you.”

Corbeau led him along the hallway and to the living room doorway. The wallpaper was scratched and torn, and somebody had spray-painted crude obscenities from floor to ceiling. The living room door had been removed from its frame. The wood around the absent hinges was rough and jagged, as if it had been hacked at by a dull blade.

“We’re decorating, so you’ll have to excuse the mess.” Corbeau led the way into the living room, smiling.

Monica Corbeau was sitting on the sofa, one hand buried in a slit in the cushions and pulling out the padding. She was wearing some kind of housedress, open to the waist, and no underwear. Her breasts hung loose; there were food stains on her skin. She turned to him and smiled, chocolate stains on her teeth and rubbed into her messy hair. “We weren’t expecting visitors,” she said. “If you’d called ahead, we could have dressed up and made a bit of an effort.” She giggled, and kept on tearing the stuffing out of the sofa.

The floor was littered with detritus: fast-food cartons, beer cans, condoms, wooden crates, pages torn from pornographic magazines, and, oddly, cut flowers. The stems of the flowers were dry and brittle, and the petals had been scattered across the grubby carpet in decorative arcs. The room smelled bad, like backed-up sewage pipes.

“What have you done to my house?” Robert stared at the walls. There were brown stains that looked like they might be feces, and when he raised his eyes to examine the ceiling, he saw that wads of dirty toilet paper had been balled up and thrown so that they stuck to the plaster.

The blinds and curtains were drawn, and someone had set fire to the trailing edge of the curtains before extinguishing the flames to create a long charred hem that had left deposits of ash on the floor.

“We’ve been making the place feel more like a home, making our mark, putting our stamp on things.” Corbeau moved toward his supine wife, reached out a hand and grabbed one of her breasts. She giggled again.

Robert realized then that he was truly in the company of beasts: there was no other explanation for these people and the things they did. He cast aside his inbred middle-class liberalism and accepted they were monsters. It felt strange, going against everything he had been taught, to dismiss fellow human beings in this way, but his only hope for survival was to see them for what they were. No excuses; no theories or postulations. They were beasts.

“Why are you doing this to us?” His shoulders slumped, but he knew he had to gain a degree of control. “Just tell me why.”

Corbeau let go of his wife’s breast and walked back toward Robert. His feet crunched on food containers and broken glass. “We’re playing games, now. We’re just beginning.” His voice was quiet, but sounded louder than a jet engine in the stifling silence of the room. “We’re playing funny games.”

Robert looked him in the eye, and reflected there he saw…nothing. No love, no hate, no empathy, no antipathy…nothing but an empty yearning for diversion, the need to be entertained. “But who are you?”

Corbeau stopped in his tracks, spreading his legs apart as if to balance his weight in an unstable world. He put his hands on his hips and leaned back slightly, like a stage actor preparing to bellow his lines at an audience. His face looked odd, as if it didn’t quite fit on his skull.

“Who are we?” He repeated Robert’s question, but with a tone of contempt in his voice. “I’ll tell you who we are. We’re the ones you don’t want to be reminded of. The ones born on forgotten council estates, and who grow up to steal your cars, break into your houses, and rape your wives and your daughters. We’re the ones whose names you never know, but whose faces haunt your CCTV dreams…the ones with steel in our bones and acid in our blood. The mad ones, the bad ones, the glad ones. We’re every lazy middle-class stereotype brought to life.”

His face seemed to grow, to enlarge and inflate, and the light dimmed and flickered around him.

“We are exactly who you don’t want to be, who you’re glad you’re not. We’re the ones who remind you to be good and careful, to do your jobs and pay your taxes and not get bitten on the arse. We’re the flipside, the underside, the nightside. We’re the damned, the damned, the damned…and we’re never going away. We are them; we are They.” His theatrical speech sounded rehearsed, scripted.

When Corbeau stopped speaking, a silence seemed to fill the room, straining the joints in the construction. Robert expected timbers to creak and crack, windows to shatter, bricks to explode under the unbearable pressure of all that ghastly silence. But it did not happen. Instead, Monica Corbeau once more began to giggle.

Nathan Corbeau took the final few steps toward Robert, stopping only when he was right in his face. The man’s breath smelled like dog shit. Robert winced, but stood firm. It was all he could do; put on a show of strength.

“Remember this?” Corbeau slowly raised his hand, and Robert saw he was holding a mobile phone. He twisted his wrist, showing Robert the screen, and the picture upon it. He must have taken the shot from the car last night, outside the bar. It showed Monica on her knees from the side, with her face buried in Robert’s crotch. Her eyes were closed, her cheek bulged, and Robert’s hands were gripping the sides of her head. “She has a good technique, learned from working on her back in backrooms and bedsits, when we were too poor to put food in the babies’ mouths.” Corbeau pressed a button and the still picture began to move. It was not a photograph; it was a film clip.

Robert tore his eyes from the little screen and stared at Corbeau.

“I suppose your wife still has the same number?” Corbeau raised the phone into the air, as if in a form of victory salute, and made a big show of pressing another one of the buttons. “And there it goes, right to her handset. The wonders of technology, eh?”

Realization dawned upon Robert, and the earth trembled beneath him. “No. You haven’t…”

Corbeau nodded. “Oh yes I have.”

What should he do, where could he go? There was no point in running, because the file would already have arrived, and by the time he reached her Sarah would have seen it. This was irreversible; there was nothing he could do to prevent the outcome, or to rewind the tape of the last few minutes. All he could do was hope her capacity for mercy had not left her after the attack, and that he had done enough in all their years of marriage for her to realize how much he loved her, how much she meant to him, despite his many flaws.

“One more thing.” Corbeau, still smiling, turned to face the door that led to the kitchen. “You can bring her out now.”

Robert was frozen. He was a man of ice. What now, what next?

Molly walked through the door, her face dirty with tears. She was sniffling, but quietly, as if she had been ordered to remain silent. Her feet scuffed the carpet and her hands played with the hem of her sweater. She looked small, tiny; a mere baby in a room filled with adults.

There was a boy standing behind her. He looked to be about sixteen or seventeen. On his head was a Burberry baseball cap and he was wearing an ugly tracksuit. Fine stubble shone at his chin, but his cheeks were hairless and marked with old acne scars. Robert was sure this was the boy he had seen Molly with before—the boy she had been secretly spending time with.

“Meet my son, Ethan. He’s a good boy, but does play a bit rough.” Corbeau took a step back, as if expecting Robert to leap at him, fists swinging.

Robert, beyond even the thought of violence now, stared at his daughter. “Molly. Are you okay?”

She nodded, but did not speak. She was frightened and ashamed. Now her father knew the depth and breadth of her lie, and the sheer magnitude of this betrayal had taken away her voice, rendering her mute.

“What do you want to do?” Corbeau’s voice had once again lowered and taken on an almost sensual tone. “Do you want to kill him, or do you want to kill me? You want to kill someone, I know you do. I can smell it on you, like the scent on a dog. You want to spill blood, but you don’t know how. Your safe and secure upbringing has kept you in a bubble, kept you away from having to take a life. Now’s the time to look back, reach inside, and become primal…but you don’t have a clue where to start.”

On the sofa, Monica Corbeau began to sing. It was a sad song, a lament or a hymn in a foreign tongue, and it sounded incongruous here, in this room, at this moment.

Ethan Corbeau pushed Molly away from him, toward Robert. The boy, he could now see, was holding a knife. He had been pressing the blade into Molly’s back, against her spine.

“Go on,” said Nathan Corbeau. “Kill him. Give it a try.”

Robert wanted to strike. Oh, how he wanted to strike: he could feel bone shattering against his knuckles, taste blood on his lips, could even hear the sound of screams in the air. But he knew he was outnumbered, and that if he even tried to make a move for either the man or the boy, he would be killed. The game would be over.

“No.” He shook his head and reached out for Molly. She ran into his arms, finally able to sob. He felt the heat of her terror against his chest, the dampness of her tears on his skin.

Two more children, these ones a lot younger than Ethan, stepped out from behind their brother. The boy was small, underfed; his skinny arms and legs were white as paper. The girl was even smaller, and had wispy white-blonde hair. They did not look alike; their features held no similarities whatsoever. Robert realized this was, at best, a makeshift family, and he wondered where these children had been taken from. Did they have real parents somewhere, weeping for the loss of their young ones?

“My family,” said Corbeau, making an expansive gesture with his arms. “My clan. All together, at last.”

Robert began to back away, slowly, carefully, not making any sudden movements. It felt like he was facing down a rabid dog, lulling it into believing he was not afraid and that he was not going anywhere…but all the time waiting for the right moment to bolt.

“Don’t worry,” said Corbeau, shattering the illusion. “You’re free to go. This time. But the next time we meet…this all ends. It ends in tears. It’s been fun, and it still is, but all fun must come to an end.” He bared his teeth, hissing like a vampire from an old film, and his eyes were black as coal. Not for the first time, Robert wondered if the man was even human.

But no; there were no easy answers here, no quick and simplistic solutions. There was no monster in the home or ghost in the machine. This was a man—a ruined, broken man—and the damage he could do was real and deadly. No crucifix would send him away; no wooden stake or silver bullet could be employed to stop his heart. He was flesh and blood, yet of a different breed entirely. Robert’s notion of a rabid dog was closer to the truth than that of a supernatural entity. Nathan Corbeau was feral, ferocious; he was an animal…but an entirely human animal.

Robert backed out of the room and along the hallway, clinging desperately to Molly, not wanting to ever let her go again. He reached behind him and unlatched the front door, only turning his back on the Corbeaus once he was in the little porch. He walked quickly, but he did not run. Molly clung to him, her fingers digging into his clothing, and into the skin beneath.

Even when he reached the car he could hear laughter coming from the house, and only when he drove away did he allow himself to cry.

2:30 P.M.

“Burt, it’s me. It’s Robert.” He had pulled the car off the road and into a dirt shoulder. Molly was asleep on the backseat; her misadventure had taken its toll, and she barely had time to reassure him she had not been physically harmed during the ordeal before her eyelids had begun to flicker closed.

“I was planning on speaking to you. I have something to tell you.” Morrow’s voice was unreadable. He was giving nothing away.

“What have you found out? We’re desperate here. Things have taken a weird turn, and I’m beginning to doubt everyone…and every damn thing. Tell me I’m not going mad.” Robert’s cheeks were still damp from the tears, but all his crying was now done. He was finally ready to fight back.

“In all my years in law I have never encountered anything like this. It’s beyond belief.” Morrow paused, as if preparing himself. “I’ve done some research on this Corbeau character, and it seems he doesn’t even exist.”

Birds sang outside the car. A rabbit ran across the road in front of the bonnet, stopping to stare for a moment before moving on. An airplane contrail formed a hazy arc in the sky above the windshield.

“Oh, all the paperwork is in place: there’s a driver’s license, a birth certificate, a national insurance number—the illusion of an identity. But when I looked deeper, digging under the official layer, there’s no further proof of the man or his family. It’s like someone has set up these identities, but for a reason I cannot possibly even guess at. He’s been involved in no criminal activity, doesn’t even flag up on the constabulary’s HOLMES system as having any kind of criminal record. There’s nothing…and that’s what first made me suspicious.”

“What do you mean?” Robert’s mind was working overtime. This was too much, too little…too something.

“People always make ripples on the pond, Robert, it’s impossible not to, especially these days. We have CCTV on every street corner; your name is on so many official lists it would make your head spin… there’s no way anyone can go unnoticed. But somehow, and for some reason, that’s exactly what this Corbeau has done. He has never had a parking ticket or a police caution. He has appeared on no surveillance camera in the UK. There’s nothing. Nothing. And that’s impossible.”

Once again Robert felt himself slipping away. Why would a man with no real identity steal his? It did not make sense, not on any level. There was nothing to be gained from his actions… nothing but… entertainment. He did not even want to think about the possibly fictional Sergeant McMahon, and whatever his elusive presence represented. “Did you know,” he said into the phone, “corbeau is the French word for crow?” He stared out of the windshield, up into the treetops. Birds’ nests were clustered there like scabs.

“Robert? Are you okay, Robert?”

He brought his attention back to the phone. “And crows feed on carrion, don’t they? They eat dead and abandoned flesh.”

“Come on, Robert. Snap out of it…we can solve this, I promise you. I just need some time.”

Robert smiled. He realized for the first time that part of him was actually envious of Corbeau; he was jealous of the freedom the man possessed, of the way he could simply uproot and build a new family whenever he needed, or perhaps not bother and drift alone for a while, until he once again felt the urge to piece together a clan. “There’s no time left, Burt. But thank you. Thanks for all you’ve done for us.” He ended the call and threw the phone into the footwell, then turned to look at his sleeping daughter. She was curled up like an infant, sucking her thumb. Briefly, he wondered what his life might have been like if she and her brother had never been born.

Then he looked forward and started the car, pulling out again into the narrow road. There was no traffic, so he should be back at the hotel in Battle within half an hour. Molly would probably not even wake during the journey, and the rest would do her some good. There was a long night ahead, and the demands upon her young body and mind might be immense. It was good she get some rest now, while she was able.

The image of Nathan Corbeau loomed large in Robert’s mind, and behind him stood the shadowy figure of Sergeant McMahon. Corbeau was a man—he had to be—but if that was the case, then what exactly was McMahon? He had acted odd from the start, the way one might expect a small-town policeman to act rather than how a real one would behave. It had taken a while for Robert to consciously register this, but it had niggled away at the back of his mind, taking small bites, shading things, from the very start.

But if the sergeant had never really existed, how could they have even met him? He had even taken them into the station and interviewed Robert in his boss’s office. He tried to remember exactly how things had happened. Sarah and the kids had certainly spoken with him, and Corbeau had used the sergeant’s name. He could not be a figment of Robert’s imagination because others had interacted with him…but that did not mean he wasn’t a figment of Corbeau’s diseased mind; a figment that had walked out into the world, moving among them to push along the sequence of events.

The idea shocked him in a way he could not pin down. He had earlier thought of McMahon as a fictional presence and himself as a reluctant protagonist in some mysterious plot. What, then, if that were true? What if this entire situation was a fiction, and they were all merely players? It was like that Shakespeare quote, the one about all life being a stage…

Robert tried to examine his life before they had arrived in Battle, but everything seemed shrouded in mist. Shapes loomed and retreated; events were partially glimpsed. Even the attack on Sarah felt like a story someone had once told him. He knew it had happened—he remembered it—but he felt no real connection to the event other than a sense of muted rage.

What did it all mean? There was no way of knowing; the human mind was like a faulty machine, rewriting its internal programming as it went along. For all Robert knew, he had been born only a minute ago, fully formed and with implanted memories. That did not necessarily mean any of this was real.

He was a writer; he created lies for a living, even when he was meant to be writing about the truth. What if all of creation was a lie? Robert had never believed in God or religion, and right now that seemed like an even more logical choice. Everything, he suddenly realized, was caught up in the act of creation. Everything was fluid, poised on the cusp of change.

He supposed that was the closest thing to a cogent theory he would ever achieve: the notion of a fluid reality constantly reshaping itself around those living it, a sort of improvised existence.

Molly moaned on the backseat, changing her position as she slept. She was real; she had to be. The love he felt, the pain at her discomfort…real, all of it. But now he was into the realm of emotion, of the inner world, and none of that was relevant to the world he could see outside the car windows. His head began to ache. It was all too large to take in, too slippery to grasp. It went against everything he knew about reality, and opened up too many questions to even consider. If none of this was real, if people could be ciphers who dipped in and out of the narrative of our lives, acknowledged only by ourselves, what did that say about the nature of reality itself?

He drove toward Battle with a chill in his hands, confusion in his mind, and sorrow in his heart. Above him, pale clouds scudded across a washed-out sun. But whose clouds where they; which author had created them; who or what had brought them into being?

“Nearly there,” he whispered, to Molly and to himself. “Nearly where?” The question was a valid one, but he doubted he would ever reach a conclusive answer.

The streets of Battle were, as always, quiet and restive: few people were outdoors, and the road traffic was characteristically light. Robert smiled as he climbed out of the car and went around to the back door. The scene was like a lightly sketched passage from a novel; the surroundings were not important to the plot, so detail was kept to a bare minimum. The scene seemed to fade away at the edges, like the visual limits of a video game.

He opened the rear door and took Molly in his arms, closing the door with his foot. He did not bother locking the car; he felt sure that car theft was not part of the story, and that the vehicle would still be there when they came out to collect it.

He took her through the back door and up the emergency stairs, not wanting to bring attention to the fact that she had to be carried. The last thing they needed right now was more police interest—even from real live policemen. He trod softly along the second-floor landing, slightly out of breath from the climb.

Sarah opened the door even before he reached it. Her face was dark, creased, and filled with an unexpected look of pity. “Is she okay?”

He nodded. “She’s just sleeping. She hasn’t been harmed, just shaken up a bit.”

Connor stood behind his mother, anxiously shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Put her on the bed,” he said.

Robert entered the room and laid Molly on the mattress, impressed once again by Connor’s concern for his sister. He turned to face the room—to face his wife—and opened his hands, as if showing her he was unarmed. It was a strange gesture to make, but for some reason it felt right.

He turned back to his daughter and stroked her hair, pushing it out of her face. She shifted onto her side, and he saw it there, on the back of her neck: a small, neat mark, an incision. It was in the shape of the letter C. They’d marked her, branded her like someone would do to cattle.

“They’ve cut her,” he said, trying to look away but unable to look anywhere else.

Sarah walked over and looked at Molly’s neck. She sucked in air through her teeth. “The bastards,” she said.

Connor let out a single sob. “The fucking cunts.” His language was blunt and to the point; Robert could see no point in is chastising him for it.

“This can’t go on,” he said, smoothing down Molly’s hair to hide the mark. “We have to stop them.”

Sarah nodded. Connor remained silent and moved to the other side of the room, started rummaging for his PSP.

“I assume you’ve seen the film clip.” There was no point in sidestepping the issue; confrontation was the only way now. He finally admitted to himself it always had been the way, and only now could he accept that.

“I’ve seen it. I can’t believe you were so stupid.” Her eyes were cold and hard, and Robert could see the hatred behind them. It stirred slowly and sinuously, like a serpent.

“I’m sorry.” It sounded pathetic, but what else could he say?

“I think we have more immediate problems than your tacky little blow job, Rob. I’m not falling into that fucker’s hands and going at you. That’s exactly what he wants, and I refuse to give it to him. I learned a lot when I was raped.”

Robert winced, as he always did when she mentioned the attack. He realized now that they had never properly confronted the issue, only ever approached it from the edges. Perhaps if they had been braver, and discussed it more openly a long time ago, things might be different now. Maybe they might still be the owners of their lives.

“I learned a lot about power and possession, and invasion. That’s what he did, you know: he invaded me. He forced himself inside me, invading me in my most personal spaces. I am not letting that happen again.” Tears rolled down her cheeks, forming thin snail trails on her skin.

“I don’t know what it means anymore, but I love you.” Again, his words sounded ridiculous, but Sarah seemed to understand what he was trying to say.

She nodded, glanced away, and then behind her, at Connor, who stood in the bathroom doorway clutching his PSP like a religious artifact—a weapon to repel the demons. “Love isn’t the issue here. The issue is hate. Are we capable of enough hate, enough primal loathing, to finish this thing?” She looked back at Robert, searching for a strength he did not even think was there.

“I hope so,” he said, sitting down on the bed. “But if we aren’t, we need to learn fast.” He glanced to Sarah’s side, at the mirror on the wardrobe door, and barely even recognized the man who stared back at him. He was losing himself, his features fading and his connection with the world degrading. Soon there would be nothing left but a smudge.

Sarah picked up her phone off the bedside cabinet. She held it up for them both to see the screen.

“Watch this with me. Know exactly what it is you’ve done.” She pressed a button to start the clip.

Robert watched in silence. After a few seconds, the scene altered, becoming something he could not remember. Corbeau’s wife turned to look directly into the phone camera, and she smiled. The smile sliced across the entire bottom of her face, bisecting it. Her nose changed, becoming like a pig’s snout. Her mouth opened wide, wider, showing nothing but blackness.

“This didn’t happen before.” Sarah’s hand was shaking, but she kept it together. “What is this? What’s happening to us? Where the hell are we?” She threw the phone onto the floor.

Robert shook his head. “We’re nowhere,” he said, wishing he knew what that meant.

The mobile phone twitched on the floor. Slowly, it began to move, and flipped over to display the screen. Nathan Corbeau’s face, wide and pale and hideous, stared at them. It pressed against the small glass panel, and then made it bulge outwards, as if it were made of rubber.

Calmly, Sarah got up, walked over to the phone, and stamped on it.

“We have to do something,” she said. “We have to stop them.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon as a family, locked up together and eating room service. With Molly rested and awake, they played games, they held hands; they even told each other stories, sitting in a tight circle on the master bed. This strange behavior added yet another layer of unreality to the whole situation, but by now Robert had learned to accept the weirdness. If this was just a fiction, a story being told to make a reader or a listener more afraid of the dark, then he intended to play his part well. The ending, when it came, would be brutal, but he would ensure it was also swift…and just.

The innocent must suffer, he thought, and the guilty must be punished. Was that a line from a book or a film? He was not sure, but it had always resonated with him, seeming to mean something beyond the boundaries of fiction. The question now was, who was innocent and who was guilty? He suspected everyone had a little bit of both about them, and the true test would be strength of conviction.

The Corbeaus were animals in search of entertainment, but the Mitchells were now a family in search of meaning.

Robert closed his eyes and thought: Let the strongest survive.