Thicker Than Water

I was almost thrown by that - by the suddenness and the force of it, the black slamming down from above and wrapping itself round me with disturbing intimacy. I could still feel the chair underneath me, the cool metal of the whistle between my fingers, but I couldn’t hear anything now except the music I was playing - and rising behind the music the broken rhythm of the two men’s laboured breathing. The world had gone away. I was alone in the dark, the tune my only lifeline.

So I carried on playing, my chest on fire now: there was no other choice.

And as I played, the darkness revealed itself to me: it had within it variations of tone, anfractuosities of depth and texture. It wasn’t a curtain, it was a three-dimensional landscape executed in monotone: vertical and horizontal expanses that I couƒnsectuld imagine as cliffs and fields, mountains and plains. I was looking at a black world on which a black sun shone, casting shadows of black on black.

Something within that landscape was staring back at me.

It had some kind of camouflage that didn’t depend on colour, so I couldn’t detect its outlines: only the pressure of its gaze, because an exorcist can always tell when one of the dead or the undead fixes its attention on him.

And all sound had died now: my fingers were still moving on the stops of the whistle, but the tune I was playing had fallen away on the far side of some shearing blade, leaving me here in this silent immensity.

The hidden thing shifted, very slightly, and the sense of being watched and weighed shifted with it.

Mark? the thing said. Or rather didn’t say, because there was no sound here."

"I couldn’t answer. To answer I would have had to stop playing, and some instinct told me that if I did that I wouldn’t be able to find my way back out of this place.

The thing that lived in the darkness growled soft and deep. It didn’t like being ignored.

I don’t have him, I thought. He’s dead. He’s already dead.

I was starting to lose the feeling in the tips of my fingers. I had no idea what stops I was pressing, what notes I was sounding. My chest felt impossibly constricted, as though it might shut down at any moment and stop the flow of air across the whistle’s mouthpiece.

The thing moved towards me, leisurely but with a heavy weight of purpose.