Black and white. Sky, hospital. Black sky, white hospital. Rory was so concerned to ensure his senses were intact, since the silence of the mobile against his ear felt as if his hearing had shut down, that the reason for the colour of the sky didn't immediately occur to him. He almost grabbed a man who was walking away from a taxi. 'What time is it?' he demanded, having realised that his watch must have been destroyed in the crash.

'Nearly eight. Just coming up.'

Rory found the additional phrase redundant, not to mention unwelcome in some way he hadn't time to grasp. The thought that Hugh and their cousins were out somewhere in the night on his behalf with no means of communication dismayed him. Why couldn't he have regained consciousness before any of them left? They weren't even all together. His lurch after the vacated taxi only seemed to send it faster onto the main road. No other taxis were in sight, and he saw that he oughtn't to leave people wondering what had become of him. He turned almost fast enough to leave his vision behind and hurried back into the hospital.

While visitors were loitering in the reception area, they didn't appear to be queuing. Rory dodged around them and waited for the receptionist to notice him a waited several heartbeats before blurting 'Excuse me.'

She still didn't look at him. 'Which ward do you want?'

'None of them. I've been.'

Even when she peered at him she seemed hardly to be seeing him. 'Aren't you visiting? Didn't you just come in?'

'I had an accident. I'm discharging myself.'

'From where?'

'Whichever your ward is where you stick tubes in folk.'

'Intensive Care?'

He'd snagged her attention at last, rather more of it than he needed. 'That'll be it,' he said as if he were unconscious of her frown. 'Can you tell them I'm fine and I've gone?'

'You mustn't leave your bed till someone's seen you.'

'I can, look. I've got to be somewhere else.'

Her expression had vanished as though it had never existed, and he hoped her objections had too. 'What's your name?' she said.

'Lucas. Rory Lucas.'

She hadn't reacted when he heard a murmur at his back. 'Isn't he the feller that was in the smash-up?'

'The one built a hill out of rubbish, you mean.'

'It wasn't a hill,' Rory muttered.

'Right enough, a mound.'

'Not one of those either,' Rory said louder and turned to confront the man, but no face owned up to having spoken. He swung around again to find that the receptionist had changed s.e.x a at least, had moved aside for a broader-shouldered colleague. 'What seems to be the trouble, Mr Lucas?' the replacement said.

'None that I know of. You can see I'm fit to leave.'

'Better let a doctor be the judge.'

'Look, I know how I feel. If there's any problem I'll be back.'

As Rory took a sidelong pace towards the exit the man mirrored him. 'I can see myself out,' Rory said, turning to the doors.

He must have moved too hastily. At once he was surrounded by nothing, not even colour. He felt as though he were floating inert in the midst of a void. He couldn't let anyone observe his condition, and so he stumbled forwards in the hope this would lend him balance. He was just aware of blundering inside a segment of the revolving doors, which someone must be pushing. Suppose he tottered all the way around only to flounder blindly back into the hospital? As soon as he felt a shift of the air on his face he staggered towards it. He must be in the open, because he could smell cigarette smoke. As if the detail had returned all his senses to him, the blindness set about seeping towards the edge of his vision. There were no taxis on the forecourt of the hospital, and so he headed for the main road.

He was wary of moving too fast now. He could imagine that senselessness was lying in wait for him. He was yards short of the road when a taxi swung onto the forecourt and coasted towards the hospital entrance. He had to retrace practically all the steps he'd taken outside to be in a position to board once the pa.s.senger made way for him. He couldn't help peering into the lobby to make sure n.o.body had pursued him, and perhaps this was why the driver said 'Have they let you out, then?'

'Can we go to the station?' Rory slammed the door and, having sat back, clipped the seat belt into its slot. When the driver only squinted in the mirror Rory had to demand 'How do you mean?'

'You got your release.'

Rory fancied he was being asked to produce some kind of doc.u.ment until he saw that the driver was being facetious. 'I was visiting,' he said.

'Is that a fact.'

Insisting that it was might make Rory sound too determined to convince his questioner. 'Can we get going now?' he urged instead.

'When they've got this woman and her chair in unless you want us running them down.'

Rory was dismayed to realise that he hadn't noticed the large car ahead, into which a man was helping an invalid while a second man stowed a folded wheelchair in the boot. Surely Rory's senses weren't deserting him again; surely he was just preoccupied with leaving the hospital behind. He stared at the entrance to rea.s.sure himself that none of the emerging crowd was after him, and so he failed to observe the departure of the other car. He was sagging with relief as the taxi left the forecourt when the driver said 'How are they getting on?'

'I wish I knew,' Rory almost said despite knowing that the man didn't have Hugh or Ellen or Charlotte in mind. 'Well enough,' he hoped.

The taxi was among white buildings now a so white that he could have thought the world was being drained of colour. 'What's wrong?' the driver said.

'Nothing whatsoever. I'll be fine.'

A frown narrowed the driver's eyes as if to fit them better into the strip of mirror. 'With them.'

'Oh, I see,' Rory said and tried to judge a laugh. 'Nothing too bad.'

'Something must be or they wouldn't be kept in.'

Rory nodded, careless of how much agreement that implied if it saved him from further discussion, but it felt like a threat of subsiding into unconsciousness. It seemed to have silenced the driver until the man said 'Parent, is it?'

'Neither of them. They're away having a good time.'

'Wife.'

'I've not got any of those.'

'Give us a hint at least. Man or a woman?'

Rory wondered how determined the fellow might be to turn the situation into a game. He would have advised him politely or otherwise to desist if the man weren't providing a stimulus without which Rory felt in danger of losing awareness. The fear was enough to make him blurt 'Both.'

'That's bad, that. Same problem?'

Rory seemed to have left himself no answer except 'Yes.'

'Something that's making the rounds, is it?'

'Nothing like that. Don't worry, I can't pa.s.s it on to you,' Rory said as the taxi swerved into another onslaught of whiteness.

'What, then? Not a secret, is it?'

'I can't say.'

'You're never telling me the hospital don't know.'

'That's the truth,' Rory said, only to reflect that he didn't know much. Rather than give in to calling Hugh or their cousins again a rather than risk hearing the same voice take their place a he shut his eyes. 'I don't want to talk about it any more,' he said.

'You shouldn't let them put you off. They've got to know something, it's their job. You ought to go back and make them speak up.' Perhaps the driver saw how much this troubled Rory, but his pause seemed little more than momentary. 'Here you are,' he said.

Rory was afraid he'd been returned to the hospital, but he was almost as disconcerted to see the railway station. How long had he been unconscious of his surroundings? Presumably as long as the driver's pause had actually lasted. 'You sure this is where you think you ought to be?' the driver said.

'It's where I want.' As Rory focused on the digital display beyond the complications of the grille he was unnecessarily reminded of a bedside monitor in a hospital. He slipped a fiver through the gap beneath the grille and looked back from the pavement to find the driver watching him with such concern that it seemed to menace Rory with inertia. 'I was visiting,' he repeated and willed himself to leave it all behind, to move, to turn.

The sky was black, the interior ahead of him white. The black taxi had brought him to the station, not the hospital. However incomprehensible the giant voice that filled the tiled booking hall might sound, that must be the fault of the address system rather than of Rory's senses. Nevertheless he took care not to outdistance them by dodging too fast through the crowd to the nearest available ticket window. 'Where can we get you?' the clerk said.

He tried not to be thrown by how pensionable she looked. 'Thurstaston,' he said.

'Not here, pet.'

'I'm not expecting it to be. It's where I have to go.'

'I'm telling you you can't do that from where you are.'

'Of course you can. I can, I mean. I've done it.' Rory's panicky frustration must be affecting his eyes, since the window appeared to be growing opaque, veiling the clerk's face. The patch of blindness shrank as he managed to grasp his mistake. 'Sorry, it was the nearest station,' he said and manufactured a laugh. 'West Kirby. I know you've heard of there.'

He would have been surer if he'd been able to distinguish her expression. Her face drifted into focus as she told him the price. 'Going now?' she said, and he wished he could without lingering over the transaction. Once her skinny fingers had stretched through the aperture under the window to hand over his tickets and token change he made for the destination board.

A train would be leaving for Liverpool in less than fifteen minutes. At least he could stop worrying about his unsteadiness once he was seated. Perhaps he might doze, except that the prospect of losing consciousness revived his panic. He bought a flimsy plastic cup of coffee at a refreshment counter. A girl in a white overall reminiscent of a hospital uniform shut the steam in the cup with a lid. This must have made the hot drink safe, because he forgot about holding it as he showed his ticket at the booth.

The train straight ahead was his. Every door was open, but he walked to the farthest to save time at his destination, however much it felt like trying to leave a pursuer behind. He remembered to plant the cup on the rudimentary table before he sat down. He was about to lift the lid when it occurred to him to phone again before the train moved off. He groped for the mobile and poked at Hugh's number and lifted the faraway bell to his ear.

The ringing ceased at last, to be succeeded by silence that felt as if a listener were holding his breath. When the belated voice spoke Rory found it worse than artificial. He could have fancied it was eager to abandon all pretence, to reveal the ident.i.ty beneath the bright mechanical repet.i.tion. 'Call me. Don't leave me wondering,' he said with at least as much desperation as impatience and tried Ellen, to be met by the same silence and eventually the same message, which seemed to have grown hollower, as if it were emerging from deep in a hole. He could only reiterate his plea and call Charlotte. This time the silence and its companion voice, beneath which lurked an echo like a m.u.f.fled mocking imitation by another speaker, made Rory feel close to being dragged into the depths, and so did his own repeated appeal. It was beginning to resemble a ritual whose purpose he didn't understand and might prefer not to, but he was unable to bring any other words to mind. Indeed, he had reverted to pleading 'Don't leave me a' yet again before he fumbled to shut off the call.

He let the phone drop on the upholstery and stared around him. Commuters were boarding trains on either side of him, tugging their shadows after them. Shouldn't this be sufficiently vivid to anchor Rory's senses even if the artificial light reduced the trains to monochrome? Perhaps the unreality of his calls had affected him, because he could easily have taken the windows for screens on which he was projecting images. He was stretching out a hand to touch the gla.s.s when the train jerked forwards, having shuddered like a dreamer struggling to leave a nightmare behind.

Had it spilled his coffee? As he made to dodge the threat of being scalded he saw that the dribble had only formed a ring around the base of the cup. It was too pale to stain the table. It lingered like an obscure symbol as he moved the cup, but in a moment he couldn't see where it had been. Perhaps the girl at the counter had put too little coffee in the cup, because Rory wasn't sure whether he was tasting it or simply how he thought it should taste. At least it wasn't as hot as he'd antic.i.p.ated; indeed, he could imagine that he felt it growing colder in his hand. He took a gulp and was almost sure he tasted coffee, however faintly. When another mouthful proved no more conclusive he planted the cup on top of its lid so as to concentrate on the view from the train.

The streets sailing past the windows were threaded with headlamps brighter than the generalised amber glow that blotted out the sky. He tried not to feel that the glow was m.u.f.fling the cityscape, although in the distance it looked thick as orange paint, smudging the shapes of buildings. Or was fog doing that? He wouldn't have expected to encounter any at this time of year; it made him feel as if he'd been unconscious longer than he knew. Straining his eyes seemed to attract the indistinctness, which drained substance from a line of houses he'd thought were clearly defined. As he tried to make sense of this he realised that he couldn't hear the train.

He was devoting his energy to seeing, that was all. He peered at the interior of the carriage until his impressions seeped back, the upholstery yielding beneath his weight, the wheels clicking like the needles of a knitter at a bedside. How much of his brain did it take to hold onto these details? When he reached for the cup he couldn't judge how hot it was, even by tipping the drink into his mouth. He downed it before he was able to taste it, and he was trying to believe that he had swallowed a drink when he grew aware that the windows had turned blank.

Surely it was just that his perceptions had fallen short of them, but that was bad enough. Once he put down the cup at which he'd been staring he was able to recapture the sight of the city steeped in ochre. As it fled past the windows he couldn't help reflecting that it was the colour of light about to die a the colour of the death of colour. Had the fog advanced, if it was fog, or was his peripheral vision shrinking? When he glared across the city he saw that another layer of buildings had lost all its features, while beyond it he could distinguish nothing at all. The train had fallen so silent that it might have been denying its existence, so that he was suddenly afraid of being too intent on the view to hear his mobile if it rang. While he didn't want any of his senses to falter, he needed to be certain that Hugh and their cousins could reach him. Suppose he had already missed a call?

The busy clicking reappeared as he groped over the upholstery, and the carriage established its presence around him. Having located the mobile, he clenched his fist on it as he saw that there had indeed been a call. He couldn't read the number, which resembled digits less than random blackened scratches, as if somebody had tried to claw their way up through the miniature screen. Rory jabbed the key to ring the number back and clapped the mobile to his ear. A bell that sounded shrivelled by distance had barely repeated its note before it seemed to recede into silence. 'Who's there?' Rory said or shouted, he couldn't judge which.

In a moment he had an answer of sorts, though the voice was so m.u.f.fled or so remote that it might as well have been buried. He couldn't make out any of the trinity of syllables, let alone the ident.i.ty of the speaker. 'What did you say?' he demanded, which brought a repet.i.tion of the answer. It was just as incomprehensible, but perhaps distance wasn't the problem; perhaps the voice was whispering close to his ear. 'Speak up,' Rory urged and strained to grasp the response. It seemed to be playing at remoteness again, and as he strove to hear he felt as if he were being drawn into whatever depths it might inhabit. No doubt the narrowing of his vision aggravated the effect. He was so anxious to identify the name he kept being told that he only belatedly noticed how much of the city had vanished.

He stared in dismay through the window beside him and then across the aisle. He could see no more than a few hundred yards in either direction, and even the visible buildings looked perfunctory, little more than outlines n.o.body had bothered to fill in. Behind them there appeared to be nothingness, not so much as a hint of the sky. As he peered past them, desperate to make out whatever was there, another lurid line of buildings was erased. He turned his reluctant head to see a street merge with the advancing blankness on the far side of the carriage. Was he merely observing it, or attracting it somehow? He was distracted by the slowing of the train. Presumably the fog, or a medium that improved on fog, was closing in ahead as well, but he was suddenly afraid that it was designed to halt the train a to prevent him from finding Hugh or Ellen or Charlotte.

That was worse than stupid. He was letting his thoughts trap him in his skull. The train had reached a station, that was all. Admittedly so had the surrounding blankness. As the walls of the suburban station blocked his view of the city he saw the opaque medium creeping up a ramp towards the platform. He couldn't discern even a hint of the city beyond the enclosed ramp, but at least someone was approaching up the slope. As the carriage pa.s.sed it Rory saw a man emerge from the blank ma.s.s that filled the lower half of the pa.s.sage. The man's face did not, however.

Rory just had time to see that nothingness was trailing the figure up the tunnel before the entrance coasted out of sight, by no means far enough. The next moment the train stopped, and all the doors sprang open as though welcoming the traveller. As Rory's head lolled against the upholstery he saw the figure stalk fast out of the pa.s.sage. It was little more than a ragged silhouette, scrawny and blackened. If he'd been capable of grat.i.tude Rory would have felt glad of his inability to distinguish much above its neck, where the jagged outline suggested a collapsed cavity rather than a face. Nevertheless the figure was advancing at speed, and so was the vast absence at its back. Rory's fists clenched, or did their shaky best to do so, reminding him that he was still clutching the phone. Was it attracting the intruder? Perhaps, because at last he heard the name that the whisper had been repeating. It belonged to the figure that leapt into the carriage and so, he thought too late, did the all-encompa.s.sing blur that followed. As he saw his companion clearly at last, he was almost glad when the nothingness claimed him.

THIRTY-SEVEN.

As Charlotte backed away from the impossible aperture in the earth, a ma.s.s of blackness reared up in pursuit. It was a shadow dragged out of the depths by the flashlight beam, but she couldn't be rea.s.sured while she was so aware of walking over a roof. She was still gripping the handle of the spade, and as her retreat pulled it out of the earth, the unsteadily illuminated patch of ground around the skylight and the entire dim common stirred as if the buried house were preparing to slough its concealment. She mustn't think she'd roused the house or anything within it. All she was seeing was wind in the gra.s.s, but the knowledge didn't help much. She could hardly think for yearning to be off the hidden roof and as far as an uninterrupted run would take her from the house.

She believed at last, which made her realise how desperately she'd been hoping not to have to do so. The possibility of different explanations for her cousins' states and her own had fled as she wished she could. So the house was indeed beneath Thurstaston Mound, but not in the sense they'd a.s.sumed. Had the mound collapsed simply from erosion, or could it have been somehow encouraged to collapse? Certainly it appeared to have trapped the occupant of the house in his own worst nightmare. Charlotte had no doubt that he'd been buried along with the house.

The idea was enough to send her several paces backwards. What had she imagined she could do here? For that matter, what had Hugh and Ellen done? She ought to try to locate them, but the prospect of calling out so close to the open skylight didn't appeal to her. Using her mobile was a problem too, even once she'd dealt with the spade by leaning it against her rather than risk digging it into the earth that covered the roof. She hung her bag on the handle and trained the flashlight beam on the hole in the ground, and then she peered at the mobile to key the call one-handed. All at once she was afraid to hear Hugh's or Ellen's ringtone in the depths below the skylight, and she re-called the hospital instead.

'Putting you through,' the receptionist said as the edges of the hole grew restless. In a few seconds Charlotte heard not just her own unquiet heart but the sister on the ward. 'Sorry to bother you,' Charlotte said, which seemed grotesquely remote from her situation. 'I was wondering if there's been any change with Rory Lucas.'

'Rory Lucas?' Presumably the sister was questioning a nurse, but the audible reply came from Annie, who called 'He's not moved since she left him.'

'Nothing yet, I'm afraid. We've got your number, haven't we?'

'You have, thanks,' Charlotte said, already envisaging a situation where she might prefer it not to ring. She ended the call, and her finger wavered over the keys until she became furiously impatient with herself. She jabbed the key to display the list of names and selected Hugh's. A breathless silence followed, and a heartbeat, and then an imitation bell began to shrill in her ear. Her heart had time to thump again before the call belatedly triggered the theme from Sesame Street. While it was m.u.f.fled, she couldn't doubt that it was somewhere beneath her.

She felt as if she wouldn't be able to move until it was answered, and quite possibly not then. It might depend who spoke. As the jolly theme jingled on, it sounded increasingly like a mockery of childhood. The melody fell silent halfway through a jaunty rising phrase, and a voice spoke in Charlotte's ear.

She had to take a disoriented moment to recognise why it wasn't audible beyond the skylight as well. It was the automated message, responding from somewhere that seemed hardly to exist. 'Hugh, are you there?' Charlotte pleaded. 'Can you hear me? Answer me, Hugh.'

n.o.body did. She terminated the call and managed not to yield to the temptation to repeat some or all of the words at the top of her voice. She brought up the list again and thumbed Ellen's number. 'Be somewhere up here,' she prayed under her breath. She hadn't finished whispering when the t.i.tle song from Oklahoma commenced its crescendo in the depths of the house.

Like Hugh's tune, it sounded several floors deep. The protracted cry suggested an attempt to rise above a nightmare. When it arrived at the rest of the verse, Charlotte was a.s.sailed by an image of Ellen prancing helplessly at the behest of the music in the dark. Ellen might be too frail or too distressed to offer much resistance. The unwelcome fancy made Charlotte shout her cousin's name before the song was cut off by the familiar message. 'What are you both doing down there?' she could hardly wait to plead. 'Can't either of you answer?'

The question seemed to grow more ominous as it left her mouth. 'Someone speak to me,' she called loud enough to be heard without the phone, an appeal that raised n.o.body as far as she could tell. She dropped the mobile in her bag and clenched her fist on the handle of the spade. She knew where she had to go now if she could.

The mouth of the house worked, eager to swallow her, as the gra.s.s around the hole trembled in the wind while the flashlight beam magnified her nervousness. She did her best to lose her temper with that and to hold onto her anger as she followed the shivering beam to the hole, which was far too reminiscent of an open grave. The resemblance wasn't entirely dispelled when the beam plunged into the dark.

It crept across the floorboards and spilled over the brink of the trapdoor to grow dimmer on the stairs. 'Hugh,' Charlotte called down. 'Ellen.' She didn't know whether she was more afraid to find out why they didn't answer or to descend into the house. She succeeded in recapturing some of her anger as she clung to the spade, which she wasn't about to leave behind when it was the nearest thing she had to a weapon. She lowered it through the skylight at arm's length and let it fall with a thud that resounded through more levels of the house than she could judge. Without going after it she wouldn't have a weapon. She slipped the strap of her bag over her shoulder and nestled the bag under her arm, and turned to set foot on the ladder.

Beyond the cliff and the foreshortened river the Welsh coast glittered as if to communicate a message she had neither the time nor the ability to decipher. Perhaps it was simply reminding her how much light she was leaving behind. Under her foot the topmost rung felt treacherous with rust. She mustn't take these as excuses not to proceed, and a flare of anger was enough to send her onto the next crumbling rung and the ones beneath, taking her up to her waist in the lightless house. The flashlight beam shrank from the edge of the cliff as she groped for the next rung with a foot, and she was aware of the gaping s.p.a.ce beneath her and closing in at her back. She gripped the highest rung with her free hand, and as scales of rust sc.r.a.ped together under her fingers she brought the flashlight to waist level. Darkness flooded across the common, blotching her vision, so that when the flashlight beam jerked downwards with her uncertain descent she wasn't sure how many shadows were fluttering around her among the rafters. She planted both feet on a rung and closed her fist on another while she aimed the light at the floor. The beam wobbled across the boards until it encountered a shape that had been lying low. The light seemed to rouse the thin twisted limbs as the object glared at her with its solitary orb.

It was a telescope. Either its stand had collapsed or, to judge by its position, it had been toppled from blocking the trapdoor. Suppose it had been dislodged from beneath? Charlotte clutched at the ladder and swung the light around the s.p.a.ce under the roof. Shadows started out of the corners and sank back, but apart from the telescope and the spade and a scattering of earth, the attic was bare. Nevertheless she was feeling more than reluctant to step down into it, never mind the rest of the house, when she heard a noise beyond the trapdoor.