“We’ve been outside for hours,” I say. “We need to get out of this light.”

Farah nods. At the same time, I watch the energy slip out of her and she leans against the low wall of the front garden next to us and puffs out a heavy breath.

“We shouldn’t have come this way,” she breathes.

I think about the old man Jonah killed, too weak to step outside his bedroom. I think about the man I met on the street when I first woke up: all you’ll want to do is close your eyes and wait it out…

That’s what happens to people here, I think. Their minds unravel; they curl up and they slip through the cracks in the world. It was happening to me until I met Farah and it was happening to Farah too. I think we saved each other. I have no idea how Chiu lasted for so long on his own, but maybe it was because he’s younger, or maybe his books saved him.

Chiu’s back is turning brown. Dry and crisp like an autumn leaf.

“We can’t stay here,” I say.

Farah offers me a weak smile. “You were right. We shouldn’t have left the hospital.”

“It was the right thing to do,” I say.

The ground tilts under my feet. The walls of the world recede and suck the air from my lungs. I can feel It watching me. It watched me when I was young, It watched me kill Tongue and It’s watching me now. That presence. It feels like the aura before a seizure, the metallic taste at the back of my throat.

Long and muscled, Its head tilted to one side like It’s puzzled.

“If we stay here, we’ll die,” I say.

“I can’t…” Farah shakes her head. “I can’t think.”

People think you can fight off a seizure the same way you can fight off falling asleep, but it’s not true. Something comes and sucks the ichor from you. I see it now in Farah: unblinking strength bound together by steel and snark, and yet … she’s beaten.

“I’m done, mate,” she says, looking regretfully at me.

“No,” I insist.

“Let’s just stay here a little while.”

I look at Chiu. His back is entirely brown now, one corner of his elbow cracked and threatening to flake off. Something shifts inside me, a new understanding. The reason why the outside is so awful here is not because there’s something here that doesn’t exist in the ordinary world, it’s just better hidden.

You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.

Exodus 33:20. One of Mum’s favourites. It’s the layers of detail that protect us from It in the ordinary world. Food to counter stillness. Love to counter emptiness.

“Dying is OK,” Farah says. “We shouldn’t make such a big deal of it.”

“No.”

“Why not?” she responds, irritably.

Because I love you.

The thought cracks through my mind like a whip. “Because it’s just getting good,” I say, instead. “Don’t you want to see what happens next?”

A weary half smile curls the corners of Farah’s mouth. It’s such a small thing: other people. I used to think I was a nobody, I was nothing, because I’d never done anything. I used to think no one would pay any attention to me because of it. But something happens when you get to know somebody: a connection forms. It’s the most human thing and it’s what binds us together even when everything else is gone.

Farah sees it in my eyes and I see it reflected in hers. I offer her my hand and she takes it. “Help me with Chiu,” I say.

She pulls herself to her feet. Her shoulders are stooped forward and her footsteps scrape on the pavement but she’s moving. I roll Chiu on to his back and slide my arm under him. Farah helps me, taking the other side of him.

He’s rigid, crisp and fragile. As light as a sheet of paper.

Oh god, we’re too late.

“Be careful,” I warn.

We lift him, delicately, terrified that he might break and fall into dust.

This is it; this is how he dies.

It’s shocking how quickly death comes. You’re fine and then you’re not.

The road is wider here, with a stretch of low, modern buildings on one side. I scan the signs, casting around for somewhere we can go. Somewhere out of Its glare.

An Indian restaurant…

A garage…

And then I find exactly what we need.

THIRTY

SLEEPY HOLLOW CO.

SOFAS, BEDS AND CARPETS

I don’t remember how we got into the shop. I don’t know if I carried Chiu or if he walked or if Farah carried us both. All I know is that if we hadn’t got inside when we did, we wouldn’t have made it.

I wake in the cavernous interior. Silver heating ducts and electrical conduits snake around the ceiling above me; rows of beds extend in every direction, giving way to a lake of sofas in the middle distance and, a little further off, a coastline of fake offices and what might be fake kitchens. There’s an alarm clock on the bedside table next to my head, its fake time stuck for ever at 7:59. The shelves next to Chiu are stacked with perfectly folded towels and empty picture frames.

The memory of being outside feels like a fever dream. If I’d lain down, if I’d told myself I was just going to close my eyes for a second… Just a second…

That’s how it would have ended. Nobody remembers themselves falling asleep.

Farah stirs on the bed next to me and then Chiu. They sit up like space travellers waking from a century in deep freeze. For a long time, none of us know what to say. We sit in incredulous silence.

At last, Chiu asks, “What happened?”

“You sat down and refused to move,” Farah says, offering Chiu a crooked smile.

Chiu shakes his head. “I was so tired.”