We sit in numb silence for a while. My drink tastes like I’m drinking a bottle of my own saliva but I’m intensely grateful for it.
I drink to remember.
This is my blood, drink this in remembrance of me.
Tongue moans softly in his sleep. Beyond that, the heavy, sleeping breaths of Levi. Jonah lies nearby, silent. I guess even Jonah likes to be near other people when the sky turns black outside.
My eyes search the metal framed roof, the panelled windows showing a blackness so complete it terrifies me if I look at it for more than a moment.
“Is that going to happen to us?” Chiu asks.
“Maybe,” Ose concedes. “But Tongue has been here for a long time. He was here before I came. Time’s different here, but it’s not for ever.”
“How long do people last with Puzzles before they … you know?” Farah asks.
“Everybody is different,” Ose says. “Some last a few moments. Some last for days. Tongue … with our help … several months now.” He shrugs. “We don’t know, really.”
I’m sure Farah is thinking about the baby, wondering if she could have saved it.
“It’s awful,” I say.
Ose takes a long, bitter drink. “Nobody knows when they’re going to die, Kyle. That’s no different here than it was there.”
TWENTY-TWO
You’re not supposed to know when you’re dreaming. It’s a secret your brain likes to keep from you. But I’ve seen Grandad in my dreams so often it’s become a dead giveaway.
“What about these?” I say.
I hold up a jam jar filled with assorted bolts. They look like silvery maggots, gummed to the glass with grease.
“Box,” Grandad replies.
I’m fifteen and Grandad has come over to clear out the garage. I drop the jam jar into the cardboard box where it clunks against a pile of screwdrivers.
“Careful,” he scolds. “You’ll break it.”
He adds his own jar to the box, delicately, almost lovingly, even though we both know we’re taking the whole thing straight to the tip after this.
“You don’t have to clear out the garage,” I say. “We don’t use it.”
“Better I do it than leave it to you and your mother after I’m dead,” he replies.
I bite back a twinge of annoyance. He insisted I spend my Saturday helping him while Mum was at work but now we’re here he’s acting like I’m getting in the way. He always does this, treats us like we’re both equally useless. It’s his burden, I guess, to care about us no matter how disappointed he is in us.
I pick up the starter motor from the workbench. “I remember you showing me how this worked when I was little. I spent ages trying to fix it.”
Grandad glances indifferently at it. “That thing was never going to work.”
He takes it from me, drops it in his box and opens another drawer.
My earliest, warmest memories are of being in the garage with Grandad, tinkering with various car parts while he tells me about his job as a fitter at the Jaguar plant. I think it maybe only happened once or twice but the memory has grown so much it feels like more.
“Ah! That’s what I’m looking for.” He pulls out a sheaf of papers. “This is important.”
“What is it?” I ask.
He lays out the papers on the workbench: ID1: Verify Identity – Citizen. TR1: Transfer of Whole of registered title(s). OFFICIAL COPY: Register of Title.
“Very easy to give somebody a house, you know,” he remarks. “Just a couple of forms, nothing else. You could almost do it by accident if you weren’t careful.” The joke is so old he doesn’t even bother to wait for a reaction. He turns on the spot, scanning the bare brick of the garage. “Now … where should we put it?” He stops, his eyes alighting on a dark corner of the garage. “That’ll do.” He stacks the forms together and slides them into the space between the electricity cupboard and the wall. “I’m putting them up here, OK? Keep them safe.”
“Safe from what?”
He gives me a small, dogged sigh. “I won’t be around for ever, Kyle. And your Mum … well, you know what she’s like.” I nod. I know, but he’s going to tell me anyway. “She’s suggestible,” he says. “People take advantage of her.”
He’s talking about Dad again, I think. I never met Dad, but the story has come out in fragments over the years. A churchman – evidence that Mum was fond of the churches even before I came along – a youthful affair and that’s all … never to be seen again.
“I do what I can,” Grandad goes on, gesturing to the garage and, by implication, the house. “But I need you to step up, Kyle. Do you get it? I need you to look out for her.”
So that’s why he wanted me here today. I’d be pleased that he’s putting so much trust in me, except I can see in his face he doesn’t trust me in the slightest.
“She could shift the house without the papers,” he says. “But there’s no reason to make things easy for her, is there? Look out for her when I’m gone. She’s dangerous when she gets an idea in her head, you know that.” He gazes steadily at me, a pessimistic look. “Just do your best, son, OK?”
TWENTY-THREE
“Kyle.” Farah’s voice, low and urgent. “Kyle, wake up.”
My eyes open, my body drags itself out of sleep. “Farah?”
“It’s time,” Farah whispers.
Chiu is quietly pulling on his clothes nearby. I look up and the blackness of the skylights catches my eyes. “Are you sure about this?”
“You’d prefer to wait around until Jonah starts prising body parts off you?” Farah says.
I slip on my shoes. Jonah and the others are still sleeping, a little distance away on their roll mats. I watch Jonah for a few moments. I can’t shake the feeling that he’s not really asleep.
The slip-scrape of our footsteps as we creep away is terrifyingly loud in the silence.
Any minute, I think, Jonah will be on us.
But then we’re outside and the cool air and the darkness swallow us like we just dived into the ocean. No streetlights, but always just enough light to see by. The black, undecorated sky looks like eternity; the darkness rushes around us in a continuous swoop-and-return, devouring us, again and again. Farah holds the map in her hand but it’s clear she’s already made her plan.
“Across the bridge and down on to the motorway,” she whispers. “We’ve got one junction on the M25 and then we can get off the main roads. Even if he bothers to come after us, he’ll never be able to find us among all the side roads.”
