All The Lonely People - David Owen Page 0,78

laptop was closed, and she couldn’t get enough purchase to claw it open, let alone try typing him a message.

‘I can’t stop them by myself!’ she shouted, standing as close to him as she dared, hoping the words might somehow sink into his subconscious. ‘You’re the only other person who can help!’

In front of her, Wesley took a deep breath and stood. They were face to face now. There was one more thing to try. A last resort. The substance of his body plucked at what remained of hers, urging her inside. The idea disgusted her, but if she couldn’t get his attention from out here, she would have to try another way.

A single touch was all it took. She shrugged him on without a fight.

31

Kat’s Cradle

A shudder wracked Wesley’s body as he moved towards the door. Somebody walking over his grave. Probably guilt trying to hold him back, knowing the truth might spill out when he faced Mum. She was in the kitchen, packing a bag for Evie and lunch for herself.

‘Can you take her to nursery today?’ said Mum. ‘I’m running late after all this.’

‘Sure.’ He was going to meet the Lonely People – his friends – to go and confront Aaron’s little brother, but he could take her on the way.

‘And can you come straight home, just in case Jordan comes back?’

It was unclear if she wanted the chance to talk him into staying, or if she was scared he would loot the place in their absence.

‘I’m sorry, about your brother,’ Mum said, zipping up the Frozen rucksack. ‘I thought he’d . . .’ She trailed off into a sad smile.

The guilt seemed to nag at the back of Wesley’s brain, like voices on a radio turned too low. He felt open, his defences lowered. If he explained everything, maybe she would understand.

Except she was already gone, kissing him and Evie on the head on her way to the door.

The wind buffeted Kat, threatening to tear her fingers from the grimy, algae slick metal. The ocean, hulking grey and whipped white swelled on all sides, spray stinging her face. There was no sign of land, only the buoy to which she clung, swaying wildly in the onslaught.

The other part of her went with Wesley back into his bedroom, so calm on the surface, so different to the landscape she had discovered inside.

Below her, wedged onto a flat platform just above the seething water, she saw the same black box she had discovered sealed inside everybody else.

It was wide open.

A torrent of fear, loneliness and guilt poured from it, a storm that darkened the sky and riled the ocean. Every negative feeling that had been missing from her previous hosts took precedence here, swirling unchecked through Wesley’s being.

No, it had all been inside those other people too. It had merely been suppressed. Kat had felt the same doubt and self-consciousness leaking from the boxes, pushed away and ignored but always threatening to escape. Those people, who seemed so confident, so normal, so capable of handling anything, felt all these things too. They just knew how to hide it. How to pretend.

Here, it all threatened to drown him. The desolation was so strong Kat wanted to bail out. It was too familiar. If somebody inhabited her, stepped into her internal landscape, they might find exactly this.

She understood him now, better than ever.

‘Wesley,’ she shouted into the wind, trying to project it into his brain. ‘You have to hear me.’

Her other part watched him gather some of Evie’s toys into a Frozen rucksack, no sign at all that he’d heard her.

‘Help me! You’re the only person who can! There’s not enough of me left to stop them.’

Through the storm, a light blinked on the impossibly distant, shifting horizon. Some fragment of him had heard, but she still wasn’t breaking through to his consciousness.

Painstakingly, she climbed down the metal strut as it pitched side to side, until she reached the platform. The wind was growing stronger, and water sloshed around her feet, soaking her legs. She pushed her aching hands under the box and heaved it to the edge. Empty, it was surprisingly light, yet sank under the water with hardly a splash.

It wouldn’t change anything here. The wind was battering her now, trying to throw her into the waves. Where the box had been was an area of metal encrusted with hard, pale scum. She used her nails to scrape letters into it, a message she could leave behind inside