S.O.S (22 page)

“Ha.” Molly said again and they made their way along the high street, past the church to the coffee shop.

*

The young man was not dressed for the cold. He had come back to the church to see the old priest and this time he wanted some proper answers. He'd had a sense of the priest not telling him everything last time and he didn't have the time for games. The priest however was not there; he was across the road conducting a burial. It could be his, the assassin thought, if this time he didn't offer up the answers that he wanted.

Crossing the road, the young man slipped unnoticed into the cemetery and stood behind the grieving party. It was freezing, there was a dark mist inching its way across the afternoon, creeping across the grave stones and seeping into the skin of the funeral party. He shivered and turned. He was wasting his time and he was cold. He'd come back, the old priest was bound to shut up shop before he went home. The assassin checked his watch; he'd give it half an hour and then come back. As stealthily as he had arrived he left, making his way up the high street to find somewhere he could buy a coffee and get warm.

Molly fetched the coffees while Dev sat. He watched her manoeuvre her way back to the small table holding two steaming cups and thought, not for the first time, how pretty she was. When she got to him she placed the cups on the table and grinned. “Sorry Zack, I didn't get you anything. I didn't know what you'd want.”

“Very funny,” Zack said. He pulled his hat down low over his face and looked away. He noticed a young man enter the café, order a drink and take a seat. He watched him for a while as he took out a phone and began to scroll through things on it. “That guy over there is weird,” he said to Molly.

Molly turned and looked across the café and as she did so the young man looked up and caught her eye. Molly had taken her hat off and her flame red hair was loose on her shoulders. She smiled slightly, just to be polite, but the young man looked quickly away. She turned back to Zack. “Agreed,” she said, “probably on the spectrum – not able to make good eye contact or smile.” She nudged him and remembered too late that her arm went right through him. “Like you,” she said.

“Even funnier,” Zack said, “Molly Sharp, you're on fire!”

Molly laughed out loud. It was a combination of nervous energy, the warmth and the peculiar sense of well-being that she had. She was here in a warm café with the two most important people in her life and it felt good.

“What's so funny?” Dev asked.

“Zack is,” she replied, “although he doesn't know it.” She turned to him. “Do you, Zack?”

Across the café the young man with his computing brain closed his eyes and flicked through images in his head. He had seen her face before; he knew her; he was certain of it. File after file flashed before his eyes and then, after only a minute or so, the right one came up. The file from CAMHS; it was the girl who heard voices. He opened his eyes again and shifted slightly in his seat so that he could watch her unseen. She seemed to be talking to someone who wasn't there, laughing and joking with an empty space and even stranger, the young Indian boy with her didn't seem to even notice.

The assassin remembered the words on the file; dark matter. He drank his coffee and stood. He needed to know more and, always ahead of his marks, he left the café and made his way along to a side street where he could see them exit and set up pursuit without being seen. Something was going on and he intended to find out what it was.

*

It was fully dark by the time that Molly, Dev and Zack left the café. Molly and Dev had eaten a toasted sandwich and drank two more coffees each, realising when they sat down that they hadn't eaten all day. Prepared now for the cold and semi-prepared for the fear, they made their way along the road to the cemetery. The iron gate was locked, so they walked the perimeter wall until they found a tree alongside the wall that they could climb. Molly was first up and landed on the other side with a thump. Dev followed, but he wasn't as agile as Molly and it took him several attempts to get a foothold on the tree and climb.

“Dev? You OK?” Molly called from the other side. “Hurry up, it's... it's weird here... “

Moments later Dev appeared at the top of the wall and lowered himself down, clinging onto the top with his fingertips before he let go and dropped the four feet or so to the ground. He landed badly and staggered a bit to right himself.

“Zack?” Molly called. A few moments later Zack appeared. He looked less clear, more ethereal than he usually did.

“Phew,” he said, “That wall is thick!” He smiled, but the truth was that he could feel his energy zapped.

“Come on,” Dev said. “Molly?”

Molly had her hands over her ears. “God it's noisy in here,” she exclaimed. “Zack can you...?”

She looked at Zack but he was standing with his hands dug deep into his pockets, his chin down on his chest. “Can
you
see them?” he whispered, “All of them?”

Molly moved across to him. The mist had come down low and she couldn't see her feet.

“Zack, are you OK, you look...” She didn't finish her sentence. There was a resounding crack behind them and they all spun round...

Molly froze and reached for Dev's hand. There was a movement behind the grave stone at the back of the cemetery and Molly held her breath.

“What was that?” she whispered.

“I don't know. Nothing I think, just a fox.”

“Shall we get out of here?” she said quietly, her voice a little clearer.

“No,” Dev said. His voice was strong, but it was a front; he was terrified. “Come on, let's move further in. Are you all right?”

“Yes, I'm fine but the voices are awful, really loud, I...” she shook her head as if to clear it. “I can hardly hear you...”

“Then you may be right,” Dev said. “If the voices increase in a grave yard then you could be right about the world being full of ghosts.”

Molly turned and looked at him; the sceptic. He shrugged. “Ask Zack,” he said, “ask him if he can see or hear anything?”

Zack had sat down by a tree. He felt odd; light headed as if he wasn't quite there. “I heard him,” he said, “you don't need to ask me. Tell Dev I can see figures, blurred figures everywhere and I feel really weird. Like, strange and weak.”

Molly crossed to him and sat down with him. “Zack,” she began, “there's something that I need to tell you, something that I have to say...”

Zack lifted his chin. He didn't want to hear that she liked Dev; he knew that already. He didn't feel like that about Molly, not in that way, but he still didn't want to hear it; not now.

“Molly, would you hold my hand?”

Molly didn't reply. She took his hand, which she couldn't feel, and held it; she knew she had it in hers because she could see it. “Zack, your hand is...” She stared down at his fingers. “It's fading... you're fading... ZACK!”

Suddenly a blinding light cracked the sky in half behind them. Molly screamed and ducked down, Dev put his hands over his head. It lasted for no more than ten seconds, but it was terrifying. Molly could hear herself screaming against a background of raging voices and she had clenched her fist, holding onto the image of Zack's hand. Dev had leapt towards her and covered her to protect her, his coat flung round them both. Then as instantly as it had flashed across the night, the light vanished and it was dark again. The grave yard was dark and silent and empty.

“Dev?”

Dev sat up and uncovered Molly, pulling his coat back round him. He looked at her. “Are you all right?”

“Yes! Yes, I'm fine...” She could see the faint outline of Zack's hand in her own and her gaze moved from his fingers to his arm and to his face. He was there beside her, blurred, faded, but still there. She blinked and shook her head. “I can't hear anything,” she said, “nothing at all.”

“What, no voices?”

“No.” Molly looked all round her. “Nothing, no voices at all.” She frowned. “Just traffic.” She stared at Zack's hand, which had begun to look more substantial, more concrete. “Zack, can you see the figures?”

Zack shook his head. He had felt something pulling him just then, tearing at him, draining him, willing him to follow, but Molly had held on to him, she had saved him. He looked all round for the familiar grey shapes in the night but there weren't any. “Nothing,” he murmured.

“They've gone,” Molly announced, getting to her feet. “The ghosts have gone.”

She looked across at Dev who had begun pacing back and forth. She recognised the signs and said; “Dev, can we work this out at home, not here? I'm frozen and this place freaks me out.”

But Dev hadn't heard her. He continued to pace and it looked like he was drawing figures in the air with his finger. At one point he stopped and said; “The energy is absorbed by the light, so electromagnetic radiation, and then it seems that...hmm...no, no, that can't be right.”

Molly said to Zack. “Have they really gone?”

He nodded. “If that light was the same as all the others that we've seen then we must have been in danger.”

Molly glanced over her shoulder. The place was deserted but there was something eerily right in what Zack was saying. “How could we have been? There's no one here?”

“I don't know, I just think... well, if what we read this morning was right.” Zack got to his feet as well and walked across the cemetery, past the graves and made a circuit of the place. “It looks empty,” he said.

Dev stopped pacing. “The light absorbs dark matter. Didn't you say that Zack? Isn't that what you said the Koreans had been talking about?” He was staring at completely the wrong place as he spoke to Zack and Molly almost smiled.

“He's over there,” she said, pointing, “speak in that direction.”

“If the light absorbs dark matter,” Dev went on, speaking in the direction Molly had pointed him, “and this dark matter is made up of energy from trapped souls then this light is... well it's like some kind of shifting from one universe to another, isn't it?”

“Whoa? Stop – parallel universes? Dev, are you nuts?”

Dev looked at her. “No, hear me out Molly. This light is like some kind of portal, like a guide and if I got it right it could just be the answer to the equation, to the problem with dark matter. This light could be the way out. If it destroys dark matter then it could...” Dev stopped as a rustle sounded behind them. He turned. “Zack?” he said, “Molly, is Zack over there?”

But Molly didn't answer him.

*

Father Tom looked everywhere for his prayer book; the funeral mass was in it and he needed it for the following day. Deaths were like that, they came in batches, like buses and he had three funerals this week. Perhaps that was why he'd lost the prayer book. Funerals were so sad, especially those of children, and they churned him up; he couldn't focus on anything. Heaving an irritated sigh, he knew that he had to retrieve it before supper, and that he had probably lost it over at the cemetery. He hated the place in the dark, but he wouldn't relax until he'd found the book, so needs must. Pulling on a coat, Father Tom made his way out of the church and across the road. He opened the iron gate and made his way along to the newly dug grave of the little girl they had buried that afternoon.

*

Molly stood absolutely still. She knew she had heard something and she knew that it wasn't Dev. It was a footfall, almost silent, but not quite. A leaf had crunched underfoot, the unmistakable sound of something cracking, very quietly with the weight of a shoe. Her heart hammered in her chest and she could feel the sweat on the back of her neck. A few headstones away, his voice muffled by the thick fog, she heard Dev calling her name but she didn't dare answer. She was hidden in the shadow of the tree they had used to climb over the wall and she knew she had to turn, she knew she had to face whatever it was that had come after her...

*

“Good GOD! What on earth are you doing in here at this time of night?!” Father Tom staggered back a few paces. “You banged straight into me! This is private property, I...” He found his balance and stared at the young man he had run into. He never forgot a face. “It's you! What are you doing here...hey?.. HEY?”

“MOLLY?” Dev had sprinted forward the moment he heard a voice and he landed almost on top of Father Tom. “Molly?!”

Molly rushed towards him and he scooped her up. “Bloody hell Molly! You scared the life out of me? Where did you get to?”

“I heard someone, there was someone here, he...I felt him close in on me and...”

Father Tom had hurried to the gate, but he knew that the interloper had gone. He knew who it was too and he felt a shiver run through him. There was something dead behind that young man's eyes, something he couldn't account for and he had a terrible sense that he, along with Molly, had been in grave danger. Molly! That was another thing; Molly and Dev! What in God's name did they think they were doing, breaking into the cemetery at this time of night?

He walked back to them and said; “I hope you've got a good excuse for trespassing on church property.”

Dev held out his hand and Father Tom took it. “I'm sorry sir,” he said, “but we needed to find something out.”

“Hmmm.” Father Tom looked at Molly. She was ashen. “And did you?”

“Yes, I think we did,” Dev said, “and we need to talk to you if that's OK?”

“Yes, yes it is. But let's get out of the cold and into the warmth. Come on.” He led the way and Molly and Dev followed him. Molly glanced behind her at Zack who hung behind. He had seen him, seen the man come up behind Molly and he'd been powerless to help her. He felt wretched, but he knew something that they didn't.

“Zack?” Molly said. Father Tom looked over his shoulder at her.