The Bone Clocks

“Yes. Not really. Sort of.”

The drumming stops. “Do you want me to tell you what I’ll do to you if I think you’re lying, Holly Sykes?”

“Esther Little was by the river yesterday, but I never met her before. She gave me some tea. Green tea. Then she asked …”

The pale man’s stare drills into my forehead, like the answer’s written there. “ Whatdid she ask?”

“For asylum. If her …” I hunt for her exact words, “… plans went up in flames.”

The pale man lights up. “ So … Esther Little wanted you for an oubliette. A mobile safe house. I see. You! A used pawn so insignificant, she thought we’d forget you. Well.” He stands up and blocks the way out. “If you’re in there, Esther, we found you!”

“Look,” I manage to say, huddling, “if this is like MI5 stuff, about Ian and Heidi’s communism, I’m nothing to do with it. They just gave me a lift, and I … I …”

He steps towards me, suddenly, to scare me. It does. “Yes?”

“Don’t come near me.” My voice sort of shrivels up. “I’ll—I’ll—I’ll fight. The police—”

“Will be baffled by Heidi’s gran’s bungalow. Two lovers on the loungers, the body of teenager Holly Sykes. Forensics will have a proper farrago to disentangle by the time you’re found—especially if the triple murderer leaves the patio door ajar for the foxes, crows, stray cats … The mess! You’ll go national. The great, gory, unsolved British crime of the eighties. Fame at last.”

“Let me go! I—I—I’ll go abroad, I’ll … go. Please.”

“You’ll look adorable dead.” The pale man smiles at his fingers as he flexes them. “An unprincipled man would have some fun with you first, but I’m against cruelty to dumb animals.”

I hear a hoarse gasp. “Don’t don’t don’t please please—”

“Sssh …” His fingers make a twisting gesture and my lips, my tongue, and my throat shut down. All the strength drains from my legs and arms, like I’m a puppet with its strings cut, pushed into the corner. The pale man sits on the same rug I’m on, cross-legged, like a storyteller but sort of savoring the moment, like Vinny when he knows he’s going to have me. “What’s it like, knowing you’ll be dead as a fucking stone in sixty seconds, Holly Sykes? What pictures does your insectoid mind flick through just before the end?”

His eyes aren’t quite human. My vision’s going, like night’s falling, my lungs’re drowning, not in water but in nothing and I realize it’s been ages since I last breathed, so I try to but I can’t and the drumming in my ears has stopped ’cause my heart’s shut down. Out of the swarmy dusk the pale man reaches out his hand and brushes my breast with the backs of his fingers, tells me, “Sweet dreams, dear heart,” and my last thought is, Who is that doddering figure in the background, a mile away, at the far end of the lounge …?

The pale man notices, looks over his shoulder, and jumps up. My heart restarts and my lungs fill with oxygen, so quick I choke and cough as I recognize Heidi. “Heidi! Get the police! He’s a killer! Run!” But Heidi’s ill, or drugged, or injured, or drunk, her head’s lolling about like she’s got that disease, multiple sclerosis. Her voice isn’t the same, either—it’s like my granddad’s since his stroke. She pushes out the words all ragged: “Don’t worry, Holly.”

“On the contrary, Holly,” snorts the pale man, “if thisspecimen is your knight in shining armor, it’s time to despair. Marinus, I presume. I smell your unctuousness, even in that perfumed zombie.”

“Temporary accommodation,” says Heidi, whose head flops forward, back, then forward: “Why kill the two sunbathing youths? Why?That was gratuitous, Rhоmes.”

“Why not? You people, you’re so why why why? Because my blood was up. Because Xi Lo started a firefight in the Chapel. Because I could. Because you and Esther Little led me here. She died, didn’t she, before she could claim asylum in this female specimen of the great unwashed? A hell of a pounding she took, fleeing down the Way of Stones. I know, I gave it to her. Speaking of poundings, my sincere condolences over Xi Lo and poor Holokai—your little club of good fairies is de capitated. What about you, Marinus? You’re more a healer than a fighter, I know, but offer me some token resistance, I implore you.” Rhоmes does his finger-weaving thing and—unless I’m seeing things—the marble chopping board rises up from the counter in the kitchen and hovers towards us, like the invisible man’s bringing it over. “Cat got your tongue, Marinus?” asks the pale man called Rhоmes.

“Let the girl go,” says head-flopping Heidi.