down roots. Royle had always been a city boy but Vanessa preferred to be out in the sticks, surrounded by trees and green fields and spaces that weren’t filled with the stench of motor vehicles and the sounds of a hemmed-in, overstimulated population.
It was dark now; the stars were out. The sky looked like a perforated black sheet backlit by a weak bulb. His hands ached as they gripped the steering wheel and his mind was filled with images whose collective meaning he found hard to define: a scarecrow with a missing girl’s face, a small crawling thing that remained out of sight, the mortally wounded body of a young man lying in a pool of blood.
These, among others, were the pictures he was forced to carry around with him, like unwanted family portraits of people he’d rather not be related to. He lived with these images; they were part of him now, central to who he was and what he had become. He wished that things were different, that he could have been a bus driver or a shopkeeper, or an internet millionaire... but he was a copper, and he always would be. Some things, it seemed, never changed, no matter how hard you wished they would.
When he pulled up outside the small detached house, he sat there for a little while, staring at the lighted windows and trying to define a shape beyond the glass. The Crawl was far behind him now; he could almost pretend that it didn’t exist, that it was something he’d once read about or seen in a film. This was real: the small, neat house in the country, his pregnant wife, the baby they’d made together, the untapped potential they had cherished before the darkness had come between them, driving a wedge between their feelings for one another.
Then, out of habit more than any sense of perceived menace, he glanced in the rear-view mirror to see what was behind him. Darkness bulged along the street, like food caught in a giant throat. Something flickered; a sense of quick, nervous movement. Even here he wasn’t safe.
None of us are, he thought. Not ever.
The skin of his back and shoulders started to prickle; then it spread along his arms, reaching round to his chest, almost hugging him. The Crawl – it was here, even here, where he had mistakenly thought there might be safety. Somehow it had reached out, following him from the Grove, and managed to grasp hold of the rest of his life, tainting everything, polluting his thoughts and even his dreams.
He opened the door and got out of the car. A gust of wind blew along the street, buffeting him, almost knocking him off his feet. Then, a second later, the air was calm and still; there was not a trace of the wind he’d felt. Royle stared back along the street, in the direction he’d come. The darkness twisted, corkscrewing. He half expected to hear disembodied laughter.
Something’s coming, he thought, but he had no idea where the thought had come from or specifically what it meant. It’s on its way.
Someone crossed the street, turning their head to glance in his direction. It was a small girl. She was wearing a dress but no coat. It was much too late for children to be out, unless they were up to no good – and this one didn’t look like the kind of kid who hung out on street corners, smoking fags and drinking cider with her mates. She was too sensibly dressed, and there was a sense of innocence about her that he could make out even from this distance.
The girl stopped in the middle of the road and stared at him. She lifted her arms as if she were about to take flight. Darkness webbed in the space between her arms and her body; black gossamer wings unfolding. Royle took a step forward, and the girl’s image seemed to waver, like a faulty piece of film.
He shook his head, closed his eyes. Opened them again.
The girl was no longer there. Wind gusted but he could not feel it. A soft clicking sound, like someone running a stick along metal railings, moved away from him along the dark street, fading into the distance. It was a sound he’d heard before, but he couldn’t remember where or when. He never could; it was like some kind of primal echo, a memory from a time that was lost to him.
Royle turned away and headed