I creep away from Farah’s and Chiu’s sleeping forms and prowl the silent hallways. I pass the business centre and a large event hall. I can imagine people getting married here: all the white flowers and dancing and bridesmaids like you see on television.
I find the staircase and head up a level, where I find a restaurant and another bar. Even in the ordinary world it would all be abandoned at this time, but, for once, I’m enjoying the quiet. It gives me space to think.
And of course, I think about the pool. Farah. Standing close, her hands on my chest, her breath on mine. She was breathing as tightly as I was. Surely it wasn’t all an act.
Grow up, Kyle. You have bigger things to worry about.
Like dying. And walking to London. And a sky that wants to eat me.
I should tell Farah I like her. And then what? It’s not like we’re going to go out on a date. A cinema that has no films? A restaurant with no power? In a world where we don’t eat and an unspoken malevolent force lurks outside?
But at least she’d know.
I go up another level, a surprisingly stark column of stairs that dog-leg round and round and were presumably added on when the building became a hotel.
But what if it goes wrong? What if things get weird between us? It’s not like there are lots of other people in this world to hang out with.
Slowly, I’m beginning to realize that my prowling isn’t aimless. I’m looking for something. I’m in one of the corridors: deep pile carpet, gold leaf wallpaper. This place really is fancy. I have an idea that I want to give Farah a present. Something small that she can carry with her. A keepsake. I’d never dream of doing it in the ordinary world, but it feels OK here. A gift to a friend: something to make us brave.
“Here.”
“What’s this?”
“Just … something I found. I thought you’d like it.”
I have a picture in my head and I don’t know why I think it’s here, but it’s—
There.
A gold necklace hangs from the arm of an ornate bronze lamp on a half-moon writing desk set against the wall.
It can’t be an accident, I think. It’s like I knew it was here, even if I didn’t know that I knew.
Blindsight, Chiu would say.
I wonder at the chain of events that led to this necklace being left here: a guest dropped it, I imagine, and then a cleaner picked it up and hung it here so it could be more easily spotted. Then … it was forgotten. The guest never found it, the cleaner never came back this way and other cleaners couldn’t risk taking it for themselves in case they were accused of stealing.
It’s beautiful. I reach out, slowly, scared that it’s going to vanish before my hand touches it. A gold chain with a single golden dolphin curled round a tear-drop pendant. I don’t know if it’s just that I’ve never handled something so expensive before or if gold is somehow different in this world. It does more than reflect the light of this and the ordinary world: it captures it, transforms it, returns it as something more iridescent, more complete. I never really understood gold until now, but I feel like I’m seeing something here that people in the ordinary world only half see: that gold cuts across the worlds, thousands, millions of them, it gathers light from them all.
I stop suddenly. A noise nearby. I listen, hoping that I’ve imagined it. Did somebody whistle? A soft, fluting warble? Surely not. I want to call out, I want to believe that Farah has woken up and come looking for me.
He’ll sniff you out.
I pocket the necklace, my head swivelling up and down the corridor. Alert, expecting any moment to see … something. My pulse races. A primordial fear inside me reaches back to the ordinary world and stretches forward, beyond this one.
Blindsight. The ability to see round corners.
A floorboard creaks. I’ve felt this in the ordinary world too: that shivery, unnerving sense when you’re all alone at night and some instinct tells you that you’re not really alone. In the ordinary world it’s only ever an illusion, perhaps a whisper of this world. Your heart rises into your throat and you throw open the living-room door and there’s nothing there.
Another creak.
A man appears from round the corner and stands, solid and completely here. He turns his head a little to the side, as if double-checking that I’m fully here as well.
“It’s OK,” he says. “Don’t be scared.”
I take a step backwards. He’s tall and slender, but powerfully built, lean and sinewy. He wears combat trousers and a lank camel-coloured shirt, open at the collar. I watch his heavy motorcycle boots compress the luxurious carpet.
“I can help you,” he says. “What’s your name, lad?”
He’s walking towards me. Every instinct in my body wants me to run, but my legs won’t let me. He’s built of menace, overpoweringly dark.
“Young lad, eh?” he says, thoughtfully. “Sad. Cut off before you ever got a chance, right?” He’s reaching behind his back, the tight knots of the muscles in his arm twisting and rolling over each other. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any hobbies, have you? Do you like technical things?”
I shake my head, slightly. His face is grim, haunted looking.
It’s the clear, cold eyes that finally do it for me.
I bolt. I don’t look back; my legs lurch out like they’re grasping at the carpet and pull me after them. My mind is frozen, a rigid spear of terror thrust through my heart.
“Hey, wait up,” the man calls. “I need to talk to you—”
I grab at the wall as I turn the corner and swing into the next corridor. I’m a mouse caught in a trap, filled with uncomprehending terror and nothing else. I fling myself at a door, hoping desperately that it’s open…
Locked.
Obviously, it’s locked.
I’m not thinking straight.
