Fears Unnamed Part 16

He opened his eyes and knew that she was thinking the same thing. Her foot began to work faster. He stared out the window and saw a plane trail being born high above.

Realized how tentative the other pa.s.sengers' grips on life were.

Saw just how fortunate he was to still be here.

He reached down, grasped the woman's ankle and forced her foot away from him. This isn't luck This isn't luck, he thought, not for my family, not even for me. It's fantasy, maybe, but not luck. What's lucky about betraying my wife when she needs me the most not for my family, not even for me. It's fantasy, maybe, but not luck. What's lucky about betraying my wife when she needs me the most?

They're desperate. Amaranth is desperate to keep me as they want me.

No, he thought.

"No."

"What?" the woman said, frowning, looking around, staring back at him. Her eyes went wide. "Oh Jesus... oh, I'm..." She stood quickly, hurried along the carriage and disappeared from sight.

Amaranth returned. "Do not deny us," the voice said, deeper than he had ever heard it, stronger.

He closed his eyes. The vision he had was so powerful, quick and sharp that he almost felt as if he were physically experiencing it then and there. He smelled the vol-au-vents and the caviar and the champagne at the exhibition, he saw Maggie's cheerful face and the gallery owners nodding to him that he had just sold another painting, he tasted the tang of nerves as one of the viewers raved about the painting of his they had just bought, minutes ago, for six thousand pounds.

He forced his eyes open against a stinging tiredness, rubbed his face and pinched his skin to wake himself up. "No," he said. "My wife needs me."

"You will regret it!" Amaranth screeched, and Adam thought he was hearing it for the first time as it really was. The hairs stood on the back of his neck, his b.a.l.l.s tingled, his stomach dropped. The things came from out of the table and the seats and reached for him, swiping out with clear, sharp nails, driving their hands into his flesh and grabbing his bones, plucking at him, swirling and screaming and cursing in ways he could never know.

None of them touched him.

They could not not.

They could not touch touch him. him.

Adam smiled. "There's a bit of luck," he whispered.

And with one final roar, they disappeared.

Half an hour from the station he called Alison and arranged for her to come and collect him. He knew it was false, but she sounded virtually back to normal, more in control. She said she had already ordered some Chinese takeaway and bought a bottle of wine. He could barely imagine sitting at home, eating and drinking and chatting-one of their favorite times together-with Molly lying dead less than two miles away. He would see her pa.s.sing in every movement of Alison's head, every twitch of her eyelids. She would be there with them more than ever. He was heading for strange times.

As the train pulled into the station, his mobile phone rang. It was Maggie.

"Adam, when are you coming back? Come on, artistic tempers are well and good when you're not getting anywhere, but that was plain rude. These guys really have no time for prima donnas, you know. Are you at your hotel?"

"I'm back home," Adam said, hardly believing her tone of voice. "Didn't you hear what I said, Mags? Alison's mum is dead."

"Yes, yes..." she said, trailing off. "Adam. The guys at the gallery have made another offer. They'll commission the artwork for the same amount, but they'll also-"

"Mags, I'm not interested. This is not... me. It'll change me too much."

"One hundred thousand."

Adam did not reply. He could not. His imagination, kicked into some sort of overdrive for the past few weeks, was picturing what that sort of money could do for his family.

He stood from his seat and followed the other pa.s.sengers toward the exit. "No, Mags," he said, shaking his head. He saw the woman who had sat opposite him, it was obvious that she had already spotted him because her head was down, frantically searching for some unknown item in her handbag. "No. That's not me. 1 didn't do any of it."

"You didn't do those paintings?"

Adam thought about it for a moment as he shuffled along the aisle: the midnight awakenings when he knew he had to work; the smell of oils and coffee as time went away, and it was just him and the painting; his burning finger and hand and arm muscles after several hours work, the feeling that he truly was creating in fire.

"No, Mags," he said, "I didn't." He turned the phone off and stepped onto the platform.

Alison and Jamie were there to meet him. Alison was the one who had lost her mother, but on seeing them it was Adam who burst into tears. He hugged his wife and son, she crying into his neck in great wracking sobs, Jamie mumbling, "Daddy, Daddy," as he struggled to work his way back into his parents' world.

Adam picked Jamie up, kissing his forehead and unable to stop crying. You'll lose them You'll lose them, Howards had said. How dare he? How dare he talk about someone else's family like that?

"I'm so sorry," he said to Alison.

She smiled grimly, a strange sight in combination with her tears and puffy eyes and gray complexion. "Such a b.l.o.o.d.y stupid way to go," she managed to gasp before her own tears came again.

Adam touched her cheek. "I'll drive us home."

As they walked along the platform toward the bridge to the car park, Adam looked around. Faces stared at him from the train-one of them familiar, the woman who had been rubbing him with her foot-but none of them were Amaranth. Some were pale and distant, others almost transparent in their dissatisfaction with their lot, but all were human.

The open girders of the roof above were lined only with pigeons.

The waste-ground behind the station was home to wild cats and rooks and rusted shopping carts. Nothing else.

Around them, humanity went about its toils. Businessmen and travelers and students dodged each other across the platform. None of them looked at Adam and his family, or if they did they glanced quickly away. Everyone knew grief when they saw it, and most people respected its fierce privacy.

In the car park Alison sat in the pa.s.senger seat and Adam strapped Jamie into his seat in the back. "You a good boy?" he asked. "You been a good boy for your mummy?"

"Tiger, tiger!" Jamie hissed. "Daddy, Daddy, tiger." He smiled, showing the gap-toothed grin that never failed to melt Adam's heart. Then he giggled.

He was not looking directly at Adam. His gaze was directed slightly to the left, over Adam's shoulder.

Adam spun around.

Nothing.

He scanned the car park. A hundred cars, and Amaranth could be hiding inside any one of them, watching, waiting, until they could touch him once more.

He climbed into the car and locked the doors.

"Why did you do that?" Alison asked.

"Don't know." He shook his head. She was right. Locked doors would be no protection.

They headed away from the station and into town. They lived on the outskirts on the other side. A couple of streets away lay the small restaurant where Adam had talked with Howards. He wondered where the old man was now. Whether he was still here. Whether he remained concerned for Adam's safety, his life, his luck, since Adam had stormed out and told him to mind his own business.

Approaching the traffic lights at the foot of the river bridge, Adam began to slow down.

A hand reached out of the seat between his legs and clasped the wheel. He could feel it, icy-cool where it touched his b.a.l.l.s, a burning cold where it actually pa.s.sed through the meat of his inner thighs.

"No!" he screamed. Jamie screeched and began to cry. Alison looked up in shock.

"What? Adam?"

"Oh no, don't you f.u.c.king-" He was already stamping hard on the brakes, but it did no good.

"Come see us again," Amaranth said between his ears, and the hand twisted the wheel violently to the left.

Adam fought. A van loomed ahead of them, scaffold poles protruding from its tied-open rear doors. Terrible images of impalement and bloodied, rusted metal leaped into his mind and he pulled harder, muscles burning with the strain of fighting the hand. The windscreen flowed into the face of one of the things, still expressionless but exuding malice all the same. Adam looked straight through its eyes at the van.

The brakes were not working.

"Tiger!" Jamie shouted.

At the last second the wheel turned a fraction to the right and they skimmed the van, metal screeching on metal, the car shuddering with the impact.

Thank G.o.d, Adam thought.

And then the old woman stepped from the pavement directly in front of them.

This time, Amaranth did not need to turn the wheel. Adam did it himself. And he heard the sickening crump crump as the car hit the woman sideways on, and he felt the vehicle tilting as it mounted the pavement, and he saw a lamppost splitting the windscreen in two. His family screamed. as the car hit the woman sideways on, and he felt the vehicle tilting as it mounted the pavement, and he saw a lamppost splitting the windscreen in two. His family screamed.

There was a terrible coldness as eight unseen hands closed around his limbs.

The car gave the lamppost a welcoming embrace.

"I'm dead," Adam said. "I've been dead for a long time. I'm floating in the Atlantic. I know this because nothing that has happened is possible. I've been dreaming. Maybe the dead can dream." He moved his left hand and felt his father's lost watch chafe his wrist.

A hand grasped his throat and quicksilver nails dug in. "Do the dead hurt?" the familiar voice intoned.

Adam tried to scream, but he could not draw a breath.

Around him, the world burned.

"Keep still and you will not die... yet."

"Alison!" Adam began to struggle against the hands holding him down. The sky was smudged with greasy black smoke, and the stench reminded him of rotten roadkill he had found in a ditch when he was a boy, a dead creature too decayed to identify. Something wet was dripping on him, wet and warm. One of the things was leaning over him. Its mouth was open and the liquid forming on its lips was transparent, and of the same consistency as its body. It was shedding pieces of itself onto him.

"You will listen to us," Amaranth said.

"Jamie! Alison!"

"You will see them again soon enough. First, listen. You pledged to believe in us and to never deny us. You have reneged. Reaffirm your pledge. We gave you a gift, but without faith we are-"

"I don't want your gift," Adam said, still struggling to stand. He could see more now, as if this world were opening up to him as he came to. Above the heads of the things standing around him, the ragged walls and roofs of shattered buildings stood out against the hazy sky. Flames licked here and there, smoke rolled along the ground, firestorms did their work in some unseen middle distance. Ash floated down and stuck to his skin like warm snow. He thought of furnaces and ovens, concentration camps, lime pits...

"But you have it already. You have the good luck we bestowed upon you. And you have used it... we have seen... we have observed."

"Good luck? Was that crash good luck?"

"You avoided the van that would have killed you. You survived. We held you back from death."

"You steered steered me!" me!"

Amaranth said nothing.

"What of Alison? Jamie?"

Once more, the things displayed a loathsome hint of emotion. "Who knows?" the voice said slowly, drawing out the last word with relish.

At last Adam managed to stand, but only because the things had moved back and freed him. "Leave me be," he said, wondering if begging would help, or perhaps flattery. "Thank you for saving me, that first time... I know you did, and I'm grateful because my wife has a husband, my son has a father. But please leave me be." All he wished for was to see his family again.

Amaranth picked him up slowly, the things using one hand each, lifting and lifting, until he was suspended several feet above the ground. From up there he could see all around, view the devastated landscape surrounding him-and he realized at last where he was.

Through a gap in the buildings to his left, the glint of violent waters. Silhouetted against this, dancing in the flickering flames that were eating at it even now, a small figure hung crucified.

"Oh, no."

"Be honored," Amaranth said, "you are the first to visit both places." They dropped him to the ground and stood back. "Run."

"What? Where?" He was winded, certain he had cracked a rib. It felt like a hot coal in his side.

"Run."

"Why?"

And then he saw why.

Around the corner, where this shattered street met the next, capered a horde of burning people. Some of them had only just caught aflame, beating at clothes and hair as they ran. Others were engulfed, arms waving, flaming pieces of them falling as they made an impossible dash away from the agony. There were smaller shapes among them-children- just as doomed as the rest. Some of them screamed, those who still had vocal cords left to make any sound. Others, those too far gone, sizzled and spat.

Adam staggered, wincing with the pain in his side, and turned to run. Amaranth had moved down the street behind him and stood staring, all their eyes upon him. He sprinted toward them. They receded back along the rubble-strewn street without seeming to walk. Every step he took moved them farther away.

He felt heat behind him and a hand closed over his shoulder, the same shoulder the bug lady had grasped. Someone screaming, pleading, a high-pitched sound as the acrid stink of burning clothes scratched at his nostrils. The flames crept across his shoulder and down onto his chest, but they were extinguished almost immediately by something wet splas.h.i.+ng across him.

He looked down. There were no burns on his clothing and his chest was dry.

Adam shook the hand from him and ran. He pa.s.sed a shop where someone lay half in, half out of the doorway, a dog chewing on the weeping stump of one of her legs. She was still alive. Her eyes followed him as he dashed by, as if coveting his ability to run. He recognized those eyes. He even knew that face, although when he had first seen her, the bug lady had seemed more alive.

"Let me back!" he shouted at the figures receding along the decimated street ahead of him. From behind, he heard thumps as burning people hit the ground to melt into pools of fat and charred bone. He risked a look over his shoulder and saw even more of them, new victims spewing from dilapidated doorways and side alleys to join in the flaming throng.

Someone walked out into the street ahead of him, limping on crutches, staring at the ground. The figure looked up and the expression that pa.s.sed across her face was one of relief. Adam pa.s.sed her by-he only saw it was a woman when he drew level-and heard the feet of the burning horde trample her into the dirt.

"Let me back, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" The last time he was here-although he had been on the other side of the lake, of course, staring across and pitying those poor unfortunates on this side-he had not known what was happening to him. Now he did. Now he knew that there was a way back, if only it was granted to him.

"You are really a very interesting one," the voice said as loud as ever, even though Amaranth stood in the distance. "You will be... fun."

As Adam tripped over a half-full skull, the burning people fell across him and a voice started shouting again. "Tiger! Tiger!" It went from a shout to a scream, an unconscious, childish exhalation of terror and panic.

The world was on its side, and the legs of the burning people milled beyond the shattered windscreen. One of them was squatting down, reaching in, grasping at his arms even as he tried to push them away.