Lola had gone out from the camp and simply not returned. Billy disappeared in the village. On the map, I had drawn a circle between the two sites that took in a number of remote farms. As the Beast rolled down the driveway of the next farm on the short list, there was no sign of the Wild Things. Only gangrene hanging in the air from the cowshed and the claggy sound of the cows’ labored breathing. The beam from my headlights bounced over a dirt-encrusted road that offered no telltale tire marks or footprints. Just a smooth sheen of mud that the rainstorm had washed from the verge like an incoming tide. In another few days, the road surface would disappear altogether from view.
My eyes watered with tiredness as I checked the map for the next destination—a stand of trees marked with the symbol denoting a ruin. It was a possibility. All the locations I had identified lay within a modest radius of our camp and the supermarket. I would have to make the final approach to the ruin on foot, and the contours on the map suggested it was steep. I thunked the car into drive, and the Beast found its grip on the muddy surface.
The radio was scrolling through dead air again, an electronic pip followed by white noise. I hummed along with the monotonous tune. It sounded like a car braking heavily, and then I was braking heavily as I spotted the silhouetted crenellations of a tower up on the hill. I had to squint to focus on the map. It seemed like the right place. The red light of the clock said 3:14 a.m., and I didn’t have enough memories to account for the hours I’d been searching. I wondered how many nights I’d been without proper sleep. It must be Wednesday by now; five nights we’d spent in the woods. But then sleep didn’t matter anymore: I couldn’t stop if I wanted to.
Ahead of me, the hedge broke for a wooden gate. I drove up to it and jumped out, leaving the engine running. The crowbar made short shrift of its chain, and I drove into the field, stopping to engage the four-wheel drive, before heading in a direct line for the ruin. The Beast ate up the slope. The dense grass gave us traction, and we powered up to the tree line. I pulled on the hand brake and turned off the engine. Silence dropped around us like settling flies.
The shattered turret loomed over us, a black rent in the sky, its corners collapsed into the shape of an eyetooth. I knew at once this wasn’t the place. Even the most brazen of children wouldn’t dare. I didn’t dare. But I slid out of the car, leaving the driver’s door open and the headlight warning alarm binging, and forced myself up the rest of the slope. I had to be brave for Billy. I had to turn over every last stone if I was ever to sleep again. Horatio was close behind me as we entered the wood, his paws padding lightly as though he, too, were on tiptoes.
The torchlight threw the trees into Gothic shapes. I recoiled from a fox that seemed about to spring from the undergrowth, but saw it was a root. I gulped air, and my breath clung heavily around my head as though I were breathing inside a helmet, the atmosphere crushing me as surely as water or space. It is just fatigue, I told myself, tiredness letting my brain lower its defenses so the demons could sneak out to play tricks on me. I laid a hand on Horatio’s shoulder and put one foot before the other until I reached the hole in the side of the tower that passed for an entrance.
The space inside the ruin was so black that it seemed all the fearful dark that surrounded me had gushed from its depths. The darkness repelled me like a magnet. Even the light of the torch was swallowed, revealing nothing but more darkness. Behind me, Horatio shifted his weight and gruffed. It was too much. My legs took control and carried my senseless body back down the path, covering the distance with uncanny speed, and I was back inside the car, fumbling the door closed and locked, punching the button to start the engine, and pulling the gear stick into reverse. The Beast shot backward down the hill, and I screamed when a dark shape passed through my headlights—Horatio. I swerved to avoid him as he came round to my flank, and the steering wheel wrenched out of my hand as the car jackknifed into a violent right angle.
We hung, the Beast and I, for teetering seconds, suspended on two side wheels over the steep slope. Horatio galloped away into the dark space beyond the headlights. The car gave a furious roar as my foot slipped and over-revved the engine. The two wheels that now grasped for traction in thin air gave a bitter whine. How do I stop the car rolling? I thought. Steer into it? Or is that a skid? I’m so very tired. And then the grass retreated from my driver’s-side window and was replaced by the starry night sky.
From far away, a voice wakes me. “You’re lost,” it says. My mother is walking away across the savannah, not looking back. I run to catch her, red grass stinging my cheeks. Exhausted, I fall back, my eyes blurring with dots and darkness.
Red grass whips me awake. My mother is far now. But she is dead; she can’t be here. On the horizon, she turns and says, “You’re lost,” and steps off.
I see only dots and darkness.
Find yourself.
Dots. The dots are in the car, on the ceiling. I’m in the car.
Open your eyes.
The air burst with screaming—crows or rooks, big black birds with ragged witch-cloak wings, bickering over carrion. The world was too bright. I could only open one eye; the other was glued closed. I scratched my eyelashes out to free it and shivered in a dawn chill that came straight out of the earth. I was lying across the front seats, my head bent to the side against the passenger door. When I moved my shoulders to sit up, pain shot down my neck. I capitulated and stayed down.
The Beast had rolled down the hill. The sky was in the right place, though, so we’d landed on our feet. I hauled my legs up to my chest, and everything seemed in order, so I rolled onto my side and pushed up with my arms, sliding back into the driver’s seat. A loud thud was my Burmese Nat, the heavy silver figurine that I’d picked up as I left my house, slipping from my legs to the floor. I wondered if he was responsible for the egg rising on my forehead. I pushed him back under the front seat with my foot. Outside, Horatio gruffed. I got out, carefully stretching my head side to side, and rubbed both our necks as we walked round the car.
The Beast hunkered at the base of the steep slope. As well as a broken window, the bonnet and roof were crushed, and both sides were concave, bent to the contours of the land. One headlight drooped on wires from an empty eye socket, like a pair of comedy glasses. I lifted the light and inspected it; I hadn’t realized in the brightness of the morning, but the lamps were still on. I slotted the unit back into the eye socket and shoved. It clicked into place, fixed.
I put my head back and let out a whoop into the sky—The Beast lives!—a loud “fuck-you” to the universe. The crows or rooks or whatever they were joined in.