Thicker Than Water

With my psychic antenna fully extended, I listened to the eerie silence beyond the windows. It was still dark out there. I looked at my watch and it was way past seven o’clock. There ought to be some light in the sky by now.

Matt called again, a little louder. Still nothing. No sense of movement, either on the psychic plane or in the world of brute, inarguable flesh.

A minute or two passed like this, with Matt calling Mark’s name and nobody answering.

‘Okay,’ I said at last. ‘It seemed like a good idea. Sorry to waste your time.

’

‘Where did he die?’ Juliet asked. We all looked at her. ‘The boy,’ she clarified unnecessarily. ‘Where did he die? Was it in this room?’

‘No,’ Coldwood said, pointing. ‘It was out there. He threw himself off the walkway.’

‘Then that’s where we should be.’

It was clutching at straws, but it was worth a shot. I nodded and went to retrieve the cutting kit from the floor, but Matt had already picked it up and seemed unwilling to hand it over.

‘Let’s go,’ I said.

The hallway was completely still.

We pulled open the swing doors - with some difficulty because of the broken glass and débris littering the floor - and stepped out into the darkness. Automatically I looked towards the east. The sliver of light I’d seen there before had gone now: the sky was unrelieved black from horizon to zenith. Except that there wasn’t any horizon, to speak of. The nearer towers loomed out of the dark like black cliff faces, pitted with darker holes like caves where the broken windows stared down at us. Beyond that, there was nothing.

Matt wÓsiz stas in the lead as we spread out across the walkway. He cleared a space with his foot, knelt and set the cutting kit down between his knees. He looked up into the blind, black sky."

"‘Mark,’ he said again. ‘This is Matthew, your -’ he choked on the word but he got it out ‘- your father. Please stop this. Please let these people—’

He didn’t even get to finish the sentence. A wind from nowhere ripped the breath from his mouth.

It hit us full-on, sending Coldwood and me slip-sliding backwards on the treacherous footing of broken glass and powdered brick. Juliet leaned into it and kept her footing.

A second later, we realised that the dust and débris on the walkway hadn’t stirred. This was a wind that had no quarrel with matter: just with us.

‘Mark—’ Matt yelled, and the darkness swallowed the sound so that, standing a scant few feet away from him, I could barely hear it.