AFTER
Something solid drives through my gut, like a wall of water, and I’m a ghost. Split down the middle.
No… a human knot, plummeting down rocks and bony roots until I hit earth. My head cracks against something sharp and my skull splits, from my ear to the nape of my neck. Something like smoke pours out, but wet and warm. It curls up and around my face in a red veil. The earth licks and holds me still like a great wet tongue.
All is quiet. For a moment, all is quiet.
But from the silence, a shrill ringing builds in my ears. A scream, like an eagle testing the sky. Like I’m inside a brass bell. Trying to shift my joints is like bending the branches of a tree, so I push into the mud, sending feelers out to understand the state I’m in. Count my body parts, one, two, three. Grass tickles inside my left ear. My right palm rests on a rock, slippery and black. My jumper is twisted and pulls against my throat. Burnt orange knit, little brass sparrow button, splattered with black. My head throbs, and the hollow twists and weaves like the ocean.
There’s no time.
Light flashes through my fringe. Too long. Why didn’t I shave it close, in case I had to run? I brush it from my eyes and smear a clod of cold mud across my forehead. Behind and above, something delicate snaps and a shower of pebbles tumble down the crag face into the ditch.
They’re here.
I turn my face into the earth and force every muscle to move. Every bone screams as I rise. Little details embedded in the earth are floating from side to side – pebbles, dangling bracken, my fingers in the soil, as if there’s a lag behind my eyes. I cover my face with my hands, and when I pull them away, they’re cupping blood. My palms are deeply lined, scored with pain. They look so old. When did I get so old? Why did I wait so long to run?
I retch into the ditch and my throat rips as easily as wet paper. All is red. This is worse than the ache; this is tissue tearing beyond repair. I grab my neck and make everything tight.
Pin it all closed, hold it together. I’ve made it this far. I can breathe. Move.
From my knees, I claw up the ladder of jutting roots. The black soil feels like clay. My legs drag uselessly behind, as if I’m a thick, sallow worm, heavy with water.
One, two, three more and I’m over the ledge. Rolling on my back, a lilac sky shifts behind swaying branches. I can’t lie here. I can’t go back. It’s too late. I’ve done too much. And then, a whimper in the quietest part of me: I never thought it’d be like this.
I fight back a sob and push myself upright. Moving makes me gag, but I hold it down. Some long, deep breaths still the trembling forest. I scan the trees up by the cliff face for the two shadows, but whoever they’ve sent is either hiding or still too far up the mountain to see. I’d only caught a glimpse of them, dressed in faint grey, blending into the mist. Something was pinned to each of their chests, something that reminded me horribly of a timer.
Their eyes were black.
Almost entirely black.
I must’ve fallen around thirty feet from the rocky ridge, but it’s impossible to see the spot where I slipped. My stuff is gone – my yellow backpack, my kit, everything – either stuck up the crag or it’s tumbled down further than me and out of sight. All is obscured by trees, standing so closely that their roots are in knots and their branches grapple for space between them.
Using a boulder as leverage, I scramble upright, but when I put my right foot down it won’t take my weight. My ankle is hot and loose, as if all the bones are lost. Should it hurt? My trousers are heavy with mud, and a thick but uneven coat of moss has attached itself to the fabric. I try to knock it off, but it’s stuck – as if I’m the stone each clump was born on. I prise the lumps off with my nails.
I need to get my foot going, so I test it on the ground again. It’s then that I realise I’m wearing brown brogues, the type with serrated edges and little holes cut out from the leather. At least two sizes too large, the heel hangs away from my ankle, and the laces dangle undone, thick and slimy like wet black liquorice.
They aren’t mine.
A second avalanche of stone comes rolling down the other side of the hollow, so I turn and lurch through the forest. The thin silver birches are densely packed, and I grasp them tightly to ease the weight on my leg. From there, I enter a crush of pines and my knitted jumper catches on the branches, but I press on, praying that I’m not leaving a hairy orange trail for them to follow. Here, the ground dips again, but this time I use my good leg to slide down the pass, using the roots to control my fall.
I must be sliding for miles. How far down does the mountain slope?
It’s a long time before the ground starts to level out. Here the trees are plugged further apart, and through them I can make out a wide field of dry yellow grass, sticking up in short, round tufts like anemones. It’s open ground and I might be seen, but I need to know where I am. I rub and squeeze my knees like my father used to do when he rose from his chair
and needed to move quickly.
On my feet again, it takes a few tries before I find a branch long enough to hold me up, and I slowly creep out from the cover of leaves. I’m in a wide valley, split in half by a stream which froths white at the edges. At this side of the valley is the steep slope of white trees, and at the other is a range of tall brown crags, coated in dead brown grass like hair on a giant.
Being here is to shrink.
If I look along the valley, I can just about make out mounds of mauve veiled by mist. Hill and valley, repeated into the horizon.
Thank fuck. I’ve seen this before. The map Michael showed me, but never let me keep. Faded brown ley lines on a tea-stained sheet of paper, so old it felt like tissue. Like Bible pages in church, it had to be held with care and apprehension. Michael had let me touch it, even peer in close to memorize the route, but that was it. At the end of each lesson, he always rolled it back up in foam and locked it in the lowest drawer of his desk. It was too faint to even photocopy, but then something in Michael’s eye told me that he wouldn’t have allowed copies, even if I’d asked. He kept all the maps, the secrets, and the keys.
Michael had told me of the silence here in the valley. He said to me, “It’s like the air is turned inside out.” Already, I wish I could go back and tell him it’s not like that at all. Write a research paper about it. Tease out the truth, that really, it’s far more like being in an oil painting. The quiet comes from the absence of movement, of life. Each breath you take is the swill of a creaking ship, and you are electricity, bristling with noise. I clap softly, testing the sound.
Reassured for now that the two shadows must be still far above and seeking me in the trees, I step out into the open glen and dip my free hand into the water. It runs red, but soon it’s glassy again. I plunge my other hand in and then lift the water to my face. Rubies drip from my chin. I wait for them to turn crystal before straightening up and searching left and right for my next steps. Michael’s finger had traced a route along the valley with the crags on the right; I’m sure of that. Which would mean that here I should turn left.
I set off, trying to place a little more weight on my right ankle each time. It still feels strange and wet and hot, but I don’t want to look at it. I have a feeling that if I inspect it, I might not want to hurry. If I tried to forget it, maybe I could move on quicker. Heal faster.
I carry on up the valley, careful to step in the brush and avoid the shining pebbles. My ears are open, listening for the slightest crack or creak from the white forest to my left, but Mothtown is silent, the breeze not even enough to rustle leaves. It’s hard to believe it could ever have been a town, with its naked hills burning beneath the stars. It’s wild twists of woodland. The loudest quiet. The only sounds are the light trickling of water on stone and the wet drag of denim on denim. The deep goose of the water is kind and easy on my eyes.
I had no idea the place would feel like this. Obviously I knew it was remote, but with that, I’d imagined the valley to be a host to wild things that loved the light of the sun but hid from people. But the sky was a wide grey blank, a dirty chalkboard with no clouds, no birds.
In one of our first lessons alone, I’d asked Michael if it was a town, as the name suggested. He sat back in his leather chair, brought his hands together in a steeple over his mop of gelled blonde curls and said, “No. If anyone ever lived there, they’re long gone. No one's lived there for thousands of years. Anyone who did is now buried beneath a cairn. These days, Mothtown is home to a high population of native moths. Fluttering around in communities. Flutter… or flap – is that what moths do? These are rare ones, big and beautiful. The sort you don’t see out in the open, or in places further south.” Michael’s eyes glared at the dirty cream lampshade on the ceiling. “I believe that’s the reason.”
The analytics in my mind clicked into gear. I wanted detail. “What sort of moths?”
“Why would that be important, Mr Porter?” Michael leaned forwards, his eyes small and squinting. “Besides, I’ve never been there. I haven't seen them myself. But no living man knows more about Mothtown than me,
so my words are golden.”
I imagine the crags to my right covered in sleeping grey moths, their markings blending with the cracks and crevices. But no – even I can see that it’s bare, violent, dead rock, and little else. Not even a sprout or sprig of green. In fact, now that I’m here, there seems to be no life at all. Every time I take a breath, I’m stealing, and every time I release it, I’m polluting. The idea of being utterly alone had once invigorated me, but I’d never before imagined how it would feel to be completely surrounded by quiet. No, more than that. The complete absence of life. And in the stillness of the world, I bristled. Chaos.
Michael told me that nothing that stays here for long, survives. But that’s OK, I don’t plan to be here long. I can do this quickly. It’s in my blood. My whole life has led to this moment.
Not too far ahead is a tall white stone, about twice my height. It’s lodged in the middle of the stream so that the water runs around it in thin trickles. As I approach it, I realise that the lower third of the stone, so up to my stomach, is blotted with white paint. At first it looks like random streaks and splashes, but slowly the shapes become clear, and I see that the patterns aren’t accidental at all. They’re handprints. Hundreds of them, layers upon layers. I get close enough to reach across and press my trembling palm onto one. My metacarpals protrude through my skin. Did it always used to be so thin? The spread of my hand matches the upper levels of prints perfectly, but as I try the ones further down the stone, my hand covers two of the white shapes easily. They must be children.
How?
I close my eyes and see us as children, finger painting with mud, flicking little copper coins into a cup, and I struggle to catch my breath. My throat rubs raw with each gasp, so I try desperately to breathe slowly through my nose instead. This doesn’t make sense. Who were they? This isn’t a place for children. This is death’s house. How would a child even get here? Michael wouldn’t have sent children, no. That wouldn’t be right. Someone that young – they could never make this choice. I trace one of the handprints with a stubby fingernail and
discover that it’s not actually paint. Whatever it is has permeated the stone over time. So perhaps they’re from years ago, centuries perhaps, before Mothtown became what it is now? Yes. That would make sense. Maybe it was the native community here that originally found the door, and sent a message to the world that this was the way out?
Behind the standing stone, the stream forks to the left, back into the white forest, and to the right, slightly up and over a tight nest of stones. I force my mind back to Michael’s map. On there, the stream was unbroken, and ran straight and true to the edge of the paper. It was as faint as everything else, but I’d traced it with a finger time and time again. The stream was the east to west compass. It didn’t deviate.
Fuck.
Neither path seems right, but then again, I’m acutely aware that I’m standing in the open beside a focal point that could attract eyes from anywhere with an open view of the valley. I have to choose. I look up at the crags, jutting from the ground like teeth. The door is up there somewhere, and I’ll be just as exposed on higher ground. If this is the quickest route up there, then it’s the only way.
I limp across the narrow rivulets and squeeze through the stones, sometimes by sitting and swinging my legs over, and sometimes by sticking my branch in the gaps and pivoting over the most jagged. Luckily, the stones don’t stretch far, and I can see the plateau where they break into a flatter stretch, where wild yellow grass with fluffy tops grows. It looks like it might reach past my shoulders.
Only a little bit further.
Michael had promised that once I reached Mothtown, it wouldn’t take me long to navigate its hills and valleys to reach the door. The way out. Two days, at most. Perhaps I could even make it today, since I’d technically cut time by taking the faster, ‘falling’ route down through the woodland. My two shadows would have to turn back, return to their pale house with empty hands and dark eyes.
For the first time in as long as I can remember, my face breaks into a grin, before the ground falls away beneath me. I slide like a heavy stone into black water, and my head is sucked beneath the surface.
BEFORE
1.
You want to know how I disappeared?
Here I am, surrounded by things bearing my name, brass things under bell jars, instruments glinting like silver starlight. Dust-that-is-not-dust still drifts down to us from the rafters. Your hair is white. Feel it, dry like chalk. This is my ash. Sticking to things freshly cut. Things burst.
It’s a lot to take in. I thought it’d all be blue. Light, airy blue, like the sky you scribble when you’re little, when the sky is always that same pastel shade. Fresh cotton in the lungs. But the walls, watching me with jade irises, they’re just like his special room. And that’s – that’s strange, isn’t it? That it’s so similar. The velvet curtains. The arms of red leather. I’m squeezing them in case I float away, but this is real now, isn’t it? It’s all real?
What do you want from me? How would I even begin to explain… I know where I was, and what happened, but the last three days – they’re a blank. I don't know. I don't know. I’m tired. Blood still trickles down my chest, avoiding the part where my heart flits. Too fast. Moth-fast. Why is there so much broken glass on the floor? It crunches beneath my feet.
Start at the beginning? All right. I see it differently now. I have new eyes.
Some stories start with running. And some end with it. But my legs never were up to much – spindly, all knee-lumps and no muscle. I run like a spider. When I was very young, every summer Mum would present me with a pair of shorts like it was a special treat. After pulling them on, I’d crawl down the stairs like a beetle, searing my knees across the carpet. Emily would lean down over the arm of the sofa, her face peering at me like a bright, wide moon, before shaking her head and turning back to the beautiful people between her magazine pages. Mum and Dad would just ignore me, occasionally muttering under their breath, “Bloody hell, David, you’re a hazard.” But if Grandad was there, he’d bend down to my level, his face wrinkled like an old apple, and whisper, “What are you today, Bumblebee? Take me with you.” I was the only one who saw the way his eyes glittered behind his glasses, like they were made of hundreds of jet fragments, all flicking around independently. With one finger, he’d loop my curly fringe around and around into two spirals, dangling like a pair of pale gold antennae. Then, I’d whisper whatever creature I was and he’d click like a cricket, or twitch, or fold his arms across his chest like a praying mantis. Sometimes he’d pull me to him first, just so I got the full itchy experience of his favourite orange knitted jumper – the one with the brass sparrow button on the collar – before releasing me back to the floor, my cheek scorched.
Grandad smelled like iron. Like something unearthed and laid in the light.
I used to think it strange that one place can be home to one person, but not to another. Grandad’s office at the university was my cave. Lamp-lit bell jars, apparatuses with round pieces of glass that distorted the light, and yellowing certificates that couldn’t have been as old as they looked framed in bronze. Being there was being inside Grandad’s head. Every day after primary school, I’d sprawl on the sofa and watch loose spider threads drifting in the draft from the old windows, while Emily
went to theatre practice. But if it was cancelled and she came to the office with me, she’d choose the awkward wooden stool in the corner, eyes on whatever book or magazine she’d brought with her. She carried her home in her pockets, whereas mine was the smell of old leather, dust, and the tapping of Grandad’s computer keys.
Most often it was just the two of us.
Grandad’s office was where wonders happened. Everything had a story, a place. Everything was important. Most of it I couldn’t ever have appreciated for what it was because I was so young. It was beyond me. A sculpture that reminded me of a fortune cookie but made of silver mesh, framed certificates the colour of spilled tea, a row of plastic models mounted on a wooden plank that reminded me of twisted letter ‘H’s, and a huge glass model that sat on a little plinth so that it was the first thing you’d see when you walked in. Panes of glass in different thicknesses, separated by air and suspended like the layers of a cake. And piercing all of them were two glass straws, all bending in their own unique way. Blue and orange. Grandad did explain to me once in his own way what it meant, as he weaved a shoelace between the straws. “You’re blue, and I’m orange, of course.” He smiled and traced a finger up the blue straw. “And this is you travelling through time, each glass is a heartbeat. And this,” he threaded the shoelace through the gap, “is an alien travelling at the speed of light. Look how much wiggling and weaving he can do in the time it takes for your heart to go ‘thump’!”
But my favourite things in the room were the mirrors. There were mirrors everywhere – on shelves, on his desk, between books, and mounted on the walls. If you sat in his desk chair and looked to the left or right into the mirrors mounted there, there’d be thousands of you, falling away into the tiniest speck. If one of Grandad’s meetings overran, I’d wait for him on that chair, spinning as thousands of Davids dangled their skinny legs, their pale and wispy hair blowing in the breeze from the window. One time, Grandad caught me doing it and stood between the mirrors with me, staring into the depths of our reflections. He didn’t speak a word, just gazed into my eyes through the glass as his cheeks ran with tears.
Grandad seemed to think a lot of things that made him feel things. He mostly worked in silence, but would repeatedly look over at me as if about to speak
but then change his mind. I’d catch him watching me out of the corner of my eye, as I pretended to read one of his books. Normally we’d be left alone in his office, but down in the courtyard, men and women in white coats bustled from place to place, their heads down, eyes on the prize. I couldn’t even imagine what they talked about, but I liked that. I liked the mystery. Grandad’s office was the heart of a creature that moved of its own will. Why would anyone want to be anywhere else?
But now, when I go back there in my head, it’s always the last visit I see.
One Friday, when I was ten years old, the telescope was set up at the small, blacked out window in the corner. It reminded me of a long black cannon from one of the war films Dad sometimes watched, apart from the white label on the side, printed with ‘Property of the Institute of Dark Matter.’ It was late afternoon and the November sky was already turning indigo. I pressed my eye to the lens but formless black oozed back at me. I gestured to the telescope then up at the sky.
“What is it, David? You want to see?”
Grandad heaved himself up from his desk and took three trembling breaths before joining me on the wooden bench. As he fiddled with the silver knobs, I watched the papery skin stretch around his jaw. The hollows where his little half-moon glasses sat beneath his eyes were as purple as new bruises. Dad had said we shouldn’t point them out to Grandad or ask about these things, just to accept them as part of Grandad now. I didn’t like it. It was as if he was starting to rot, the inside being eaten by something I couldn’t see. But I was sure Grandad would’ve talked to me if it was something he wanted to share, so over the last year or so I watched him transform silently, from my soft and round-faced friend to something new. A wrinkled and gnarled creature, emerging from an egg.
Grandad sighed and leaned back. “I don’t think there’s much to see, Bumblebee. It’s too cloudy. The skies are clearer where I’m going; I’ll take some good pictures for you, OK?”
On the floor beside his desk was a stuffed yellow rucksack, almost as tall as I was. ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2025 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
