I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
- Albert Einstein
We ran for our lives.
It was Pee’s fault.
At first we were frozen, crouched there in
the dark, barely able to breathe, staring at something that had changed our
world in an instant from one that we knew, and understood, into…something
else. We just stared.
But then he ran, snapping our paralysis like
a rib, and we jumped up and chased after him.
Fear clogged our throats, oozed out of our pores, pounded in our
brains. A mindless panic expanded
inside us like an airbag, pushing our personalities out. We weren’t ourselves
anymore, just running things.
And all the while I was
dimly aware of a small part of myself, a silent observer that was actually
excited. But my mind was a muffled
voice now, sent out of the room for its own good. Survival was everything.
Luxuries such as thinking could come later – if there was a later.
I was in third place,
behind Pee and Osmo. I stumbled
endlessly over the uneven ground because I couldn’t see a thing, but once we
got past the perimeter fence, and in amongst the warehouses, I started to make
good speed. I was about to overtake
Pee, who had slipped into second place behind Osmo, when my inbuilt chivalry
started to kick in, just as automatic as my running. I couldn’t leave any of them behind, especially someone as little
and helpless as Pee. It’s not that I’m
brave or something. I know I’m
not. It’s just that my body decides
things for me sometimes. So I slowed
down, expecting Sal to catch up and overtake at any moment, because she was
easily faster than Pee. Then if anyone
were going to fall victim to what was behind us it would be me.
But Sal didn’t catch up.
We were all the way to
the hole in the wall that leads back onto Brookland Common by the time I
realised. I had to shout to the other
two to stop. Otherwise they would have
run all the way home without looking over their shoulders once. Our throats were dry and tight from
breathing the cold air so hard. The
streetlights on the far side of the wall coated us in an unhealthy yellow brown
light.
“Sal’s still back there.” My voice sounded like somebody else’s, so
serious.
I sweated clammily under
my coat, while above the neckline my ears glowed with the cold. Osmo swore.
Bits of gravel and broken glass crunched loudly beneath our feet as we
started back the way we had come.
We didn’t speak at
first. There was no question of us
carrying on without Sal. So we jogged
wordlessly back in amongst the warehouses and commercial units. Osmo and Pee were looking wide-eyed and
haunted.
“Is it me or are we
dreaming this?” I muttered eventually.
Osmo nodded. Pee had a fixed
frown on his face, as if he was sitting an exam, or as if he were constipated
or something. He kept making this
mewling sound from way back in his throat.
I don’t think he realised he was doing it.
“What are we going to
do? I don’t know what we think we’re
going to do!”
“Shut up, Pee. I’m scared enough as it is.”
“Just don’t think,” said
Osmo. “Just shut up and don’t think and
keep on going.”
It was the only sensible
idea.
When we got back to the
fence I crouched down and took the lead, still playing the protector. I kept low behind the overgrown weeds and
bits of wall, working my way forward.
Every now and then a glimpse of the golden light caught me, and I reeled
in disbelief that we hadn’t imagined it, some kind of group hallucination. But I still wasn’t convinced that I wasn’t
dreaming.
We could leave her, I
thought to myself, cringing at my own cowardice but following the thought
anyway. Maybe it was too late to help
her. Maybe it would be more use to go
and get help. But my body decided to
keep going forward.
We finally got as close
to where we’d left Sal as we were going to get without giving ourselves
away. I inched my head over the edge of
some crumbled old brickwork, trying to keep my face in the shadow of a spindly
old bush that was leaning over from the other side. When I saw what I saw my chest started to shudder, and I couldn’t
stop it for the life of me.
My god, it was really
real.
•
Sal liked science fiction
and I think that had a lot to do with why she hadn’t followed us. I don’t know how many girls are into science
fiction compared to boys, maybe more than you’d think, but Sal loved it. I know she believed in life on other planets
because she’d told me. As far as she
was concerned it was simply a question of when the human race would be mature
enough to receive our visitation from the stars. That’s if the aliens weren’t already here: learning about us,
guiding us, helping us to evolve. It
seemed plausible to both of us.
But where we disagreed, me and Sal, was the
bit about how ready we humans were for first contact. I thought it should be any day now – well, I felt ready,
personally, being an evolved, well-balanced individual. And though Sal seemed to agree that I wasn’t
the most stupid example of the human species she’d ever met she didn’t have
that much faith in the rest. As far as
she was concerned it would probably be another thousand years before humanity
got over itself finally and grew up.
“Human development,” she said, “if you
average it out around the globe, is about equivalent to that of a
teenager. Or in other words: we’re
pretty messed up.”
I liked Sal. Well, that might be a bit of an
understatement. Actually, saying ‘that
might be a bit of an understatement’ might be a bit of an understatement. She was a deep thinker, a fast runner and
she liked Star Trek. And yes, she was
cute. So cute, in fact, that she could
have got away with having a horrible personality, if that had been her
bag. And, let’s face it, most cute
girls try that on for size, for a while at least. She was way too cute to hang around with me. But somehow, through some weird space-time
anomaly or something, she’d inherited the geek gene. She was talking about learning how to speak Klingon so she’d be
able to swear at Mr. Michaels without him realising. I didn’t think it would work.
Ask somebody if they want a nice cup of tea in Klingon and they’ll think
you’re swearing at them.
But yeah, out of the four
of us, she was definitely the most likely to ignore popular opinion. Even if it meant hanging around on her own
to face something potentially dangerous.
Even if her three friends were in the process of running for their teeny
little lives.
I peered over the top of
the wall from the safety of my shadows and I saw Sal kneeling in front of the
thing that was glowing with that golden light, the thing that had floated down
from the sky.
“Do you think it’s taken
over her mind?” whispered Osmo.
•
I was George. Back then I was what some people would call
‘precocious’, at least in some areas of my development, meaning my head. For a fourteen year old I could knock out a
pretty deep short story, the kind that made my English teacher, Miss Schneider,
think the sun shone out of my notebook.
These days, because of what happened to me, I’m not the old George
anymore, precocious or otherwise. There
are moments, like right now, as I write these words, I don’t even feel
human. But I shouldn’t get ahead of
myself.
It was back in the olden
days – not just a different century but a whole different millennium – back
when we still watched Friends, back when my 10-gigabyte hard drive still seemed
pretty impressive. I lived at Number
Nine, Iron Street, Banford. I went to
Penrose High School. I hung around with
Sal and Osmo and Pee. On Saturdays we’d
go ice-skating at the rink in Kurtsholme and then wander around the market,
eating butter pies and trying to avoid anyone from school. The dockland waste ground at Five Elms
marked the northernmost point of our wanderground. To the south we wouldn’t normally go further than the woods at
Hensley Edge, although now and again, just to shake things up, one of our
random end-of-the-line bus journeys would take us further. And occasionally we’d take the train to
Blackport, of course. Never dull.
By evening we’d be piling
heavy-eyed into my house, or Osmo’s or Sal’s – not Pee’s – for our tea. We’d doss around indoors for a while, but
sooner or later a morbid compulsion would draw us back outside to see who was
out and about that was worth avoiding.
Banford was a buzzing place.
There was always something, at least on a Saturday, anyway. I’m not saying it was always something nice,
but there was always something.
Sundays, on the other
hand, tend to be deadly boring wherever you are. Well, you canna change the laws of physics can you? On Sunday we would zombie-walk from one
morose limbo moment to the next. Well,
that’s how I remember it. This
particular Sunday was the most boring ever - Granddaddy Sunday - right up `til
7:40pm, when we saw the light in the sky from Openshaw New Road and we set off
chasing it. It’s funny how the most
overwhelming events in life always seem to be preceded by quiet moments.
We followed the light
from the far side of the cemetery. It drifted
slowly enough for us to keep sight of it as we ran down the main path that
splits the cemetery in half. We were
scared we’d lose it as it fell behind the trees near the perimeter, and there
was a lot of cursing and scuffling as we fought with each other to be the first
to get through the gap in the fence.
But as we emerged from the trees we saw that its descent had
slowed. It hung in the air, seeming
lost, seeming to wait for us. In the
end the timing was perfect. By the time
we crossed Brookland Common and passed through the old industrial estate, and
were pulling up behind the protective cover of the bit of wall on the waste
ground near the docks, we were just in time to see it land barely ten metres in
front of us.
It drifted down from the
sky like the first star leaf of some great universal autumn. We could see what it was now, in the centre
of all that shining: an inhuman figure, clutching a smooth golden ball.
It was impossible to tell
whether it was the ball that was shining or the figure or both. We watched from the shadows. It floated gracefully down, but when its
feet touched the ground it tipped backwards drunkenly, falling against the low
remnant of another wall. The brickwork
crumpled beneath its weight. All was
still for a moment. The figure didn’t
move. Maybe it was dead. We held our collective breath, despite all
of the running we had just done. Then
it looked directly at us.
It’s funny that we had
run all that way there, and then, at a panicked squeak from Pee, we turned around
and started to run back again.
All of us except Sal, of
course.
•
From the safety of my
shadows I could see Sal kneeling on the floor, looking into its face.
“Do you think it’s taken
over her mind?” whispered Osmo.
They were both completely
still, just looking at each other, and this did seem scary to me – as scary as
if it were chasing after her with a ray gun.
I couldn’t even summon the courage to answer the question, I was so
afraid of being heard.
Pee put his back against
the wall, slumped down onto his bum and moaned.
“We’re going to die,” he
croaked.
I was dimly aware of him
puking up. Me and Osmo continued to
watch the scene in front of us. And
that’s all we did. We should have been
working out some plan to rescue our friend, but we didn’t even try. We just cowered there in the shadows and
waited. It makes me feel sick when I
think back to it.
What broke the spell in
the end was Sal herself, standing up and turning around and walking towards
us. The light was behind her and all
around her, casting her face in shadow so we couldn’t see her expression. We had no way of telling if it was our Sal
or if she’d been taken over by a telepathic nightmare from the stars. A bit of drool at the corner of her mouth
would have been enough for me. I would
have been off and running again.
“Come over,” she said as
she drew near. “He knows you’re
here. It’s alright.”
She sounded pretty
normal. As she reached the wall I was
able to make out her face. She did have
something of a stunned expression, wonderstruck I’d say, but I could tell at
once that it was the real her in there.
“Are you alright?” asked
Osmo, and for a moment I felt bad that I hadn’t asked first, but then he said,
“You’re not going to turn into a bug-eyed monster, are you?”
“I’m fine, honest. You’ve got to come over. It’s amazing. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
Sal’s voice was alive, I mean, really alive – I’d never seen her so
switched on. She was having the biggest
moment of her life.
Me and Osmo looked at
each other. It was one of those looks
that only happen now and again, that you share with someone who’s in the exact
same extreme situation as you, when you’re both feeling the same feelings,
thinking the same thoughts. We both
nodded minute little nods at the same time.
I turned to Pee who was still on the floor.
“Do you wanna stay here,
Pee?”
Pee looked like a trapped
animal, like a mouse that’s been caught and you can see its heart fluttering
through its ribs.
“Yeah,” he managed. “Just for a little bit.” None of us blamed him. I nearly got down there and joined him. Sal smiled.
“Come out when you’re
feeling a bit braver, Pee.” Pee nodded
seriously, and his eyes rolled in their sockets, scanning the darkness behind
our little wall, making sure the rest of the world was still normal. Sal turned to me and Osmo. An excited light danced in her eyes, but her
breathing was measured, her body language calm.
“It’s okay,” she said
levelly.
She took the time to look
each of us in the eye, to communicate her confidence. I felt myself stand up straighter. The small part of me that had been excited all along suddenly
stepped forward, elbowing my fear to one side.
Osmo managed to raise his eyebrows high and puff out his cheeks. He shrugged in a mock devil-may-care way and
the three of us relaxed a bit, looked more like our old selves.
“Come on,” said Sal.
She beckoned with her
head for us to follow her. I’ve got to
say that with the golden white light behind her, and my bloodstream pumping
with adrenaline and everything, she did look beautiful in that moment. I’m sure me and Osmo were both ready to
faint on the spot - with the intensity of the situation, you know. I feel like fainting every time I think
about it.
We shuffled out from the shade of our barricade and
into the beams of an alien light.
“By the way,” Sal said,
conversationally, “he’s telepathic.”
(c) Ian Moore 2008
