The Bone Clocks

“An exposй”—I sense a fragility here—“about what?”

“The secret war. The secret war waging around us, insideus, even. I saw you take Your Last Chanceout of the bag. You’d spent an hour with Holly Sykes, up in the bar, flipping coins. You remember, Mr. Hershey. I know you do.”

Twin facts: I have a stalker, and she is batshit crazy. “Proof of?”

“Proof that you’re written into the Script.”

“What script are you talking about?”

“ TheScript.” She appears to be shocked. “The first poem in Your Last Chance. You didread it, Mr. Hershey. Didn’t you?”

“No, I did not read your poetry, because it isn’t my sodding—”

“Stop!”She lets out a corroded sob and sinks her fingers into the arm of the chair until they whiten. She tilts her head back and tells a face that isn’t there on the ceiling: “He didn’t even readit! Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn!”

“Young lady, you have to see things from—”

“ Youdon’t get to ‘young lady’ me. Not after,” Soleil Moore’s fingers writhe individually, “all that time! Money! Blood!”

“Why is it my job to get your poetry published?”

“Because Soul Carnivoresexplains about the apex predators; because Your Final Chanceexposes the Anchorites’ methods; because the Anchorites have a door to anywhere and can abduct anyone;and because you, Mr. Hershey, you are of the Script.”

“Look, Miss Moore— whatsodding script?”

Her eyes flip open wider, like a mad toy’s: “You’re init, Mr. Hershey. As am I. And Holly Sykes—the Anchorites took her brother. You do know that. You wrote yourself into the Script. You describe it in ‘The Voorman Problem.’ What you wrote, in that story, that’s what the Carnivores do. You can’t deny it. You can’t.”

“ ‘The Voorman Problem’? I wrote that years ago. Apart from the prison doctor and Belgium vanishing, I barely remember it.”

“It no longer matters.” Soleil Moore calms down, or appears to. “Plan A was to alert the world through poetry. That failed. So we’ll have to resort to Plan B.”

“Well,” I want her gone, “the very best of luck with Plan B. Now I really must get back to work and—”

“You gave me Plan B yourself, at Hay-on-Wye.”

“Miss Moore, please don’t make me call security.”

“Your role is to bring my work to the world’s attention. I prayed and prayed that you’d do it by endorsement, but I didn’t grasp the magnitude of the sacrifice necessary. I’m sorry, Mr. Hershey.”

“That’s quite all right, young lady. But please leave.”

Soleil Moore stands up … in tears? “I’m sorry.”

A SUPERNATURAL FORCE flung Hershey backward and off his swivel chair. Soleil Moore stood over him. Five more shots followed, so shocking, so close, they didn’t even hurt. Hershey’s cheek is against the rough carpet. His ribcage is punched open. Holy buggery. Shot. Really actually bloody shot, me, here, now. The carpet’s drinking up blood. Mine. Copiousquantities. COPIOUS. Seven-letter Scrabble score. Can Hershey move any part of his body, dear reader? No, he cannot. Snow boots. Inches away. Sno boots. No w. Listen. A voice. Loving, ebbing, flowing. Mum? Don’t be so Disney. Soleil Moore. Miss S. Moore. Ah, of course! Esmiss Esmoore. E. M. Forster’s best book. His best character. “You’re famous, Mr. Hershey, so now they’ll read my poems. The news, the Internet, the FBI, the CIA, the UN, the Vatican—not even the Anchorites can cover it up … We’re martyrs, you and I, in the War. So was my sister. They lured her away, you see. She told me about them, but I thought it was just her illness talking. I’ll never forgive myself. But I can wake up the world from its ignorance. Its deadly ignorance. Once humanity knows we are the Anchorites’ food supply—its salmon farm—then we can resist. Rise up. Hunt them down.” Soleil Moore’s mouth continues to move, but the sound is gone. Reality’s shrinking. It was up at the Canadian border; now it stops at Albany; now it’s smaller than Blithewood Campus. The snowy woods, the library, the bunker, the bad cafeteria, all gone, all snuffed. Death by lunatic. Who would have thought it? Carpet of dots. Not dots. Spirals. All these weeks. Treading on spirals. Look. In the crack. Filing cabinet and skirting board. Spider. All dried out. Desiccated. Where the vacuum nozzle won’t go. A spider, a spiral, a … what? The fifth Lego Man. Inches away. On his side. Like me. Look.

A pirate. Funny.

An eye patch.

One-eyed.

Lego Man

sodding

pirate.

Holly

tell

her

…

..

.

April 1