𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞┃ Anthony Lockwood┃2┃

Chapter Twenty Seven - Hollow Boy

Nola would have thrown the flare then, just chucked it out at random and blown a few of the shapes to smithereens – the act would have given her a spark of satisfaction, even as the others fell upon her. But Nola did not throw the flare. Because though the candle's light had gone, another now replaced it – a pale encroaching light that stole out of the passage she had not yet entered, spreading across the slimy stone. It was not a light of the living, but a corpse-light, cold and faint, that gave no nourishment to what it touched. Still, it made her pause, and the effect it had on the ring of ghosts was no less definite. They at once stopped their advance, hesitating, looking back towards the oncoming glow. Their outlines grew tremulous and disturbed.

The light spread out into the chamber, pouring like milk through the heaps of tangled bones. Blood pulsed in Nola's ears. The quality of the air had changed. The ghosts began to shrink back towards the walls.

The passage seemed to distort. The walls flexed and fluttered. A cold breeze blew towards Nola, carrying that same soft, dry voice that she had heard in Aickmere's.

It called her name.

The ghosts sank away, flowed down into their heaps of tangled bones, and vanished.

She waited, clutching her flare.

From the darkness, of the darkness, untouched by the other-light through which it passed, a shape was crawling towards Nola down the corridor.

Up in the store, she'd run from it, but there was nowhere for her to run now.

The flare was slippery in her palm. She held it without hope or expectation. More even than the fearsome energies of the Poltergeist; far more than the twittering prison ghosts tied to the skeletons, she knew that this apparition emanated from the very centre of the Chelsea outbreak. Powerful as a flare might be, this thing was more potent still.

The cold breeze died away. Nola stood at the centre of a bulb of silence. The shape came out into the chamber, and there was nothing between it and her.

As when she had seen it near the lifts, it crawled awkwardly, in rolling leaps and jerks, as if its joints were misshapen or put on back to front. Its head was bowed. Long hair – at least, she thought it must be hair, despite the way it waved and coiled so oddly – fell down across its face, so that it was hidden. But Nola could see enough to know how painfully thin it was, the skin black and shrunken on the bones, like the mummies that they used to have in museums before DEPRAC closed them all down. It was tight and dry and desiccated-looking. Nola could hear the fingernails clacking on the flagstones, see the skin on the arms shearing tight with every swing, the wrinkles creasing so deep, you'd think they'd split in two.

Ahead of it was an advance guard of spiders. Shiny, black and scurrying.

The figure drew close and, with a single mysterious fluid movement, raised itself. It shuffled forward on its back legs, arms twisting and jerking as if still pushing it along the ground. Nola couldn't see the face, but teeth glinted beneath the lankly swirling hair. The outline was hazy, almost fibrous, like the rough edges of an unfinished mat or carpet. As she watched, these fibres sank away. The shape grew solid, its edges more defined. And, as it swelled and altered, she felt a corresponding opposite sensation. It was like the inward suction of a bellows, or a hatch opening beneath her. She felt her strength drain out. It poured away.

Her head spun. Everything went black. Nola closed her eyes.

"Nola..." Nola's eyes opened.

She was still on her feet in that same forgotten place. The other-light had faded and a different shape stood before her in the dark. She stared at it, frowning.