Farah leans forward and bites Jonah’s forearm and he yelps and slaps her before returning his focus to getting her to move her hand.
“Let me look at it,” he growls.
The wet sound of his hand against her cheek resonates in my head and constricts round my throat. I take an unsteady step forward. I can hardly stand.
But I do.
I shouldn’t be able to sneak up on him like this. He knows I’m coming back. Maybe he doesn’t expect it so soon. Maybe he thought after I met my Maker I’d see things his way. Maybe I’ve still got more tricks than even Jonah realizes.
I swing.
The momentum of the golf club almost pulls the rubber handle out of my grasp. But my aim is good and the heavy metal head springs round hungrily and connects with the side of Jonah’s cheek. There’s a heavy, bellyflop kind of sound and Jonah reels sideways and staggers to one knee. He turns, his eyes wide with fury and surprise and hatred.
I don’t hesitate. I bring the club down into the centre of his forehead.
His mouth moves silently. He tries to close his eyes but the side of his face where I hit him doesn’t move anymore and so one eye stays open, staring wildly at nothing, while the other eye does a kind of slow, grotesque wink.
Then the skull starts to crack and there’s something crawling out … a million somethings … falling over each other, clambering out of each other, black and hateful. The skin sinks into the space left as they pour from his body and as quickly as they hit the air, they too split open and fade into the writhing mess. He begins to break: first his arm, then his chest. He falls backwards, cracking as more shapes pour from the remains.
Then he’s gone.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Farah stares at me with wide eyes. Her fear is not normal fear. It’s the same fear as my seizures: the inhuman, uncompromising fear of death.
“Let me see,” I say.
She shakes her head.
“I’ll cut it out,” I say. “Whatever it is, I’ll cut it out.”
I take out my knife so she knows I’m serious. Tendons stand out on Farah’s arm and neck from the strain of holding inside whatever it is that’s trying to burst out. I catch a glimpse of it: black, bulbous, malignant. The fingers of her hand are being forced apart; I count six of them … maybe eight.
She’s not going to live much longer. Not in this world.
“Come on,” I say.
“I’m scared,” she says.
“It’ll be OK.”
“I’m scared of losing you.”
I shake my head. “I’m coming back for you, don’t worry.”
“Let’s stay,” Farah says. “Jonah’s dead. I’ll be OK. I’ll be—”
She hisses with pain. I can see the fear overwhelming her, her old stubbornness coming back. My god, I think. She’s not going to move. All this, and she’s going to stay here and I’m going to have to watch her die.
“Come on,” I urge her.
She shakes her head.
“Do you remember when I asked you out at the swimming pool all that time ago?” I say. She frowns, wondering why I’m on this now of all times. “Don’t you think it was weird that I did it? Even though we’d hardly ever spoken to each other?”
“You were kind of a weird kid,” Farah says.
“Sure. But … I knew, Farah. Don’t you see? I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew.” I smile, delirious with the realization of it. “I didn’t understand it until right now, but it was blindsight even then. Something made me ask you out even though I didn’t know you at all. The point is, it was either a premonition, or a memory, or both. But I did it once, so I can do it again, OK?”
She smiles, lets her head fall back, nods weakly. I breathe a sigh of relief. I scoop her up. She’s heavy and I’m not strong. Chiu rushes to my side and slides himself under one arm.
We stagger and I’m afraid we’re going to drop her. We make our way down the corridor, Farah clinging tightly to Chiu with her right hand, her left hand pressed between us, holding the thing inside her.
We’re so relieved when we see the MRI undamaged that we accidentally walk Farah’s broken ankle into the door frame. She screams and I feel her nails dig into the back of my neck.
We half drop her on to the MRI table and she curls on to her side with her legs drawn up. The hand that’s gripping her stomach is sprouting tendrils that look like roots reaching out in timelapse in search of water.
I look around, expecting to see Benedict, but he’s not at the console. Panic strikes me. Something happened. Something bad. And he’s the only one who can operate the machine.
I see him and it’s worse than I thought: he’s on the floor, Abi kneeling over him.
I stare disbelievingly. “What happened?”
“That man … Jonah,” Abi says. “He attacked him. It was … it wasn’t human.”
I see it now, Jonah sitting over the unconscious Benedict and pounding and pounding on him. He didn’t want to risk me leaving, I think. He could have destroyed the machine but he knew that getting rid of Benedict was just as good and would keep his options open. Or maybe he preferred hurting a person to a machine.
“Is he … going to be OK?”
