In desperation, I claw my way up the bank, out of the woods, and roll onto the grass by the town lane. I lie there for a moment, ridding myself of the sensation of moving mud around, ignoring the dark sentinel trees waiting for me to return.
Wandering down the lane confirms what I saw from the woods: Pub, locked. Post office, boarded up. Corner shop, too. I walk down Prairie Street—the houses are all dark and empty, some boarded up, others left wide open, doors swinging on their hinges. I go inside some of them—take the two cans I find. Apricots in syrup. Corned beef.
I walk the half mile to the train station, and when I get there it is dark. No trains. No lights. No nothing. No sun in the sky.
I stand at the ticket office, waiting. Hoping. Useless.
“Hello?” I call.
I wait.
“Hello! Please! PLEASE!”
The returning silence is louder once my echoes have faded.
On the way back, heart hammering now that my shock is wearing off, I pass the village school. Drawings hang in sad, dark windows, and the school gates swing with high-pitched screams as I pass, the wind blowing through me.
For the first time in my entire life, I feel truly, utterly, and completely alone on the planet. And I realize: No one is coming. No one is going to help us.
Cathy’s medieval way of living means it’s likely that no one even knows we’re here.
Oh God.
What are we going to do?
Nori.
I left her with Cath. Crazy Cath in the attic. Nori won’t understand why I’m gone. She’ll panic. Maybe try to come after me. Get lost.
She can’t cry out. She can’t scream.
I’ll lose her.
I sprint down Prairie Street, along the village lane, and back into Python. I’d give anything to have a way around the woods, or a path through; there is nothing but the waiting mud.
I slip down the rise and jump into what looks like a black stretch of nothing, with dark figures floating in it, impossibly tall.
Trees.
I take a last look at the village, a shiver of dread dripping down my spine and lower, and then I turn my back on it forever.
The mud is thicker now, and I’ve gone no more than five paces before I am panting, using the branches of the bug-infested trees to pull myself along. The mud is sucking down on my legs, pulling with a force I didn’t know mud could have. I lose my shoes, they are sucked off my feet like a giant tongue has whipped them away. I try to find them, my feet freezing now in the mud, feeling the texture of whatever the mud conceals, but they are gone.
I pull myself along, five more paces, my toes feeling every rocky or slimy spot, and then I see the dog. I see it because of the eyes. They glint in the moonlight, shocks of white in the dark. The moon is rising fast now, and I have no trouble seeing that the poor thing is dead. Teeth bared, eyes open. Staring.
If I were to say anything about it at all, it would be that the dog—a cocker spaniel—looks as terrified as I feel. So odd. I’m sure the thing died in fear.
“Poor pup,” I say, looking down at the corpse. “Did you get lost? Left behind? Me too.”
And then the mud bubbles around him. I see other glints then. On eyes, on teeth. And lumps in the mud as far as I can see in the moonlight. The things stirring in the mud are rising.
Oh no… no… it can’t be.
Dogs.
Cats.
Pets.
All the village pets—all of them—are here in Python. And all of them are dead. Dozens of corpses, all of them staring, mouths open in a final growl, a final shriek, fur clogging with black mud, and all of them
s t a r i n g
a t
m e
I shake my head. Back and forth. No. No, this is wrong. I suddenly wonder what the hell I’m standing on.
The village empty… and all the pets dead in Python Wood. Wrong. THIS IS WRONG.
I back away, but they follow. The suction of the mud means that the faster I move, the faster they come, eyes open and mouths begging.
“Go away,” I whisper, choking on the words. But they keep coming.
I turn and I heave myself through the mud, pulling on tree trunks and trying to beat my exhaustion, but I feel them chasing me, all of them pulled by the vacuum I leave in my wake. Or are they swimming?
The tree trunks give the sudden impression of coal, rather than wood, and beyond them—or in between them—I spot a flash of movement some way off from me. Low down. A long, dark thing.
Boar?
Deer?
Something else entirely.
There—again. A shadow, scuttling as though on top of the mud. Long-limbed and fast. Impossibly fast.
I wade and wade, pulling against the suction with every last desperate ounce of energy I have left, chanting, “One step, another step,” all the way. I break out in sweat; it runs down my face and neck, my body exhausted to the bone, until at last I can see the faint, flickering light of La Baume in the distance, up on the hill.
The thing in the woods is no longer long. It is tall. A torso. Long arms. A bulbous head.
Maybe not so alone after all, something inside me thinks.