The Leaping Part 32

'I think I'd like that,' she said. 'Maybe I should try to buy Mum's house back. I could make an offer, hey?'

'Why not?' I said. 'You should do that. Moving up here was a nice idea but maybe we just weren't ready.' I hoped she wouldn't notice that my hands were shaking.

'I miss her,' she said. 'I really miss her, Jack.' She lifted her head away from my neck and, eyes still closed, stretched.

'Lie back down, Jennifer,' I said. 'Here.' I put my right arm around her shoulders and then bent down to press against the back of her knees with my left arm, so that I could lift her. I laid her down on the stones.

'This doesn't feel right,' she murmured. 'Not very comfy, Jack.' She wriggled and opened her eyes. She saw me, dripping wet, the red sky behind me. She frowned a little bit, her lovely eyebrows lowering, her lips pouting ever so slightly. 'Is everything OK?' comfy, Jack.' She wriggled and opened her eyes. She saw me, dripping wet, the red sky behind me. She frowned a little bit, her lovely eyebrows lowering, her lips pouting ever so slightly. 'Is everything OK?'

'Yes,' I said, and I forced myself to attempt a smile and nod. I wasn't sure that I managed it. 'As long as you're OK, everything is fine.'

She looked scared, and started to try and sit up and look around. I found myself forcing her back, putting my weight on to her shoulders, trying to keep her head still by kissing her. But already the change was upon me, and I was closing my teeth on her neck.

'Where are we, Jack?' I heard her saying. 'What are you doing?'

EPILOGUE.

JACK.

I hid for a long time. The police were all over the valley for years, picking up bits of information. Sometimes they heard rumours about a wolf that might have escaped from some reservation in Scotland, but that was as close as they got to the truth.

Now I'm back, insects and spiders and small animals are starting to move in to Fell House with me. Often I watch spiders spinning their webs across open doorways, the silver threads delicate and perfect. Over time, further webs are built, and then they all catch the dust and thicken, and the dust starts to acc.u.mulate and cling to itself and form bridges and webs of its own, and all these fragile edifices start to knit together as if the house is somehow healing. The roof still leaks when it rains, and the plaster is still damp. It keeps on falling off in chunks and breaking on the floor. I leave it there. The birds still perch up on the roof, s.p.a.ced so regularly they could be part of the architecture.

I lean against the door-frame between the living-room and the kitchen and look at the floor.

There are green forests and clear rivers to be found out there beyond all the s.h.i.+t, I used to think, and this was supposed to be about finding them. This was supposed to be about running across the fells on all fours beneath a starry night. Stripping away all the c.r.a.p that we wrap around ourselves in order to reveal the true creature beneath. I always thought that the creature beneath would be somehow n.o.ble, being natural, somehow stronger and more honest than the people we pretend to be, but I'm finding out, now, what I am when I am alone and I am only me; no physical props, no social-feedback loops, n.o.body to distract me or lose myself in. And I am not what I thought I was. I have thrown all the mirrors out of the window.

I remember more now than I did immediately afterwards. Images come back to me when I'm trying to fall asleep. I remember hanging above the surface of the water, surrounded by red light; the water reflected the sky above so that it was like being suspended in a uniform void. Some hungry bodily hollow, ringed by mirrored mountains like teeth grasping in all directions at once. I remember plunging downwards, and the pure, sudden blackness of being inside the lake, the clean feeling of it, the joy of unadulterated sensation. I remember hot blood on my fine-boned, pale-haired face. The taste of her comes back to me sometimes, and I salivate. When I remember this, though, I need to forget, so I turn myself into the inhuman thing that is said to haunt Fell House, the twisted, narrow thing that slips across the fells and picks off sheep and lost climbers, the shadowy four-legged thing that screams and howls throughout the valley when the sunset turns the sky that blazing red, the warped lupine thing that growls and pants and chases its tail on the sh.o.r.e of Wast.w.a.ter, turning around and around and around, looking for a way backwards. inhuman thing that is said to haunt Fell House, the twisted, narrow thing that slips across the fells and picks off sheep and lost climbers, the shadowy four-legged thing that screams and howls throughout the valley when the sunset turns the sky that blazing red, the warped lupine thing that growls and pants and chases its tail on the sh.o.r.e of Wast.w.a.ter, turning around and around and around, looking for a way backwards.

When I am not remembering or forgetting, I am a person of sorts. I huddle in the corners of my peeling rooms, picking at carca.s.ses that lie opened up like books, with ribs like lines of text. The ribcages are always empty by this point, eviscerated, with the beating hearts and important parts and meaningful aspects of the beings all removed. They're hollowed out. Little voids.

I've taken all the birthday presents I never unwrapped out of the bag now and laid them around me on the kitchen floor, having pushed the bones and whatnot out of the way, into a corner. Outside it's raining, and the clouds make the day so dark I can't tell what time of day it is. Water runs down the wall behind me and splashes on to the slates. The presents are dim shapes in the dark. I want to open them, to see what Erin and Taylor and Graham and Francis and Jennifer thought I might have liked. I pick up the heavy purple one, the one from Jennifer, and hold it in both hands. It is such a simple shape. Six-sided, with three pairs of sides the same size, each side having four edges, each edge shared with another side, and the whole thing having eight corners. Cuboid, but not a cube. It could be a box of some sort, holding something well-packed inside it. Or it could be a big heavy book. My fingertips flirt with the folded edges of wrapping paper. The wrapping paper is faded now, and slightly mouldy. Whatever is inside it is probably slightly mouldy too. I want to open it. Through the window I can see the big black birds swooping through the storm as if it isn't there. The house creaks. The golden ribbon is still curly. I remember seeing Jennifer running one arm of the scissors along it, pressed against her thumb. not a cube. It could be a box of some sort, holding something well-packed inside it. Or it could be a big heavy book. My fingertips flirt with the folded edges of wrapping paper. The wrapping paper is faded now, and slightly mouldy. Whatever is inside it is probably slightly mouldy too. I want to open it. Through the window I can see the big black birds swooping through the storm as if it isn't there. The house creaks. The golden ribbon is still curly. I remember seeing Jennifer running one arm of the scissors along it, pressed against her thumb.

I put it down again. Unopened. The outside of it is enough.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

Thanks very much to Alan Bissett for the initial encouragement, to Sarah and Sally for lending me their laptops right back near the beginning, to Sarah Hymas and Flax for publis.h.i.+ng some early pieces in Before the Rain Before the Rain, to Nicholas Royle for being an excellent friend, mentor and agent, to Kirkby and d.i.c.k for reading several drafts, to Nick Johnston at Quercus for his enthusiasm and his priceless advice, to my family for their unwavering support and to Beth, my wife, for just about everything.

THE THING ON THE Sh.o.r.e.

Tom Fletcher COMING IN SPRING 2011.

Artemis Black (from The Leaping The Leaping) is a.s.signed by a mysterious multinational corporation called Interext to manage a call centre in Whitehaven, on c.u.mbria's grim post-industrial coastline. The isolation and remoteness of the place encourage him to implement a decidedly unhinged project.

Soon one of his employees, Arthur, becomes aware of an intangible landscape inside the labyrinthine systems of the call centre a landscape in which he can feel some kind of otherworldly consciousness stirring and in which, perhaps as a result of his father's increasingly alarming eccentricities, he feels that he could find his recently deceased mother.

Arthur takes refuge in this belief as his father, his job, and his house slowly deteriorate around him. He begins to conflate the mysterious, interst.i.tial region that exists down the phonelines with the sea, as that was where his mother drowned. In a way he is right Interext's activities have attracted something, it is just not as benevolent as he thinks ...