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While pouring the orange juice into a glass, George looked up, spilling some of the drink across the counter. Chase saw a momentary flash of colour heighten his cheeks and a glint of madness in his eyes. The moment passed and he pushed the drink across the counter.

“
One twenty
,” he grunted.

Chase rummaged in her bag for her purse, feeling the cold edge of steel brush against her hand before she paid for the drink.

“Is Adam here?” she asked, still trying to get a semblance of a conversation going.

George shook his head and walked back to his stool.

Chase turned and looked for somewhere to sit when she spotted the young girl who had run away the last time she’d seen her. She was sitting by herself at a table, staring at the ground. Unsure whether to approach her, Chase remembered the book in her bag. Taking it out, she approached the girl, using the book as an excuse.

“Hello again.” Chase smiled disarmingly.

The girl didn’t acknowledge her.

“Are you on your own?”

As though hearing her for the first time, the girl looked up. A combination of exhaustion and fear was written across her face. She was dressed in the same clothes as the last time Chase had seen her, and there was a slight unwashed smell about her.

“You left your book behind.” She handed the book over, but the girl just looked at it morosely.

Chase put it on the table. “My name’s Chase.”

The girl started crying. She shook her head. “The world’s gone mad.”

“I beg your pardon?” Chase sat down next to her.

“I’ll be next.”

“Next what?” Chase frowned. She felt as though she was engaged in a cryptic conversation to which she didn’t have the key.

“I don’t want to change.”

“Change?” She wondered whether she had heard right.

 
“We all change. I can feel it happening.”

“What do you mean?” She heard footsteps behind her and turned to see George carrying a plate toward them. He slammed it down on the table along with a knife and fork, glaring at Chase as he did so.

“Your meal,” he said to the girl before turning and walking away.

Chase smelt it before she saw it. Looking down at the plate, she frowned, unable to believe what she saw.

Still steaming in the middle of the plate was a
turd
. That can’t be hygienic, she stupidly thought, still not quite able to believe what she was looking at.

The girl picked up the knife and fork and cut into the excrement, sliding a portion onto the tines of the fork and lifting it to her mouth.

“
Stop, don’t eat that.
” Chase knocked the fork out of the girl’s hand. She felt disgusted and sick just looking at it.

The girl looked from the plate to Chase, from Chase to the plate. Her hand was still hovering in the air, now without the fork. Comprehension seemed to drift across her face. “I’m going to be sick.” Knocking over her stool, she ran for the door, her hand over her mouth.

Chase followed her, absently noticing George scratching his bottom and then sniffing his fingers as he walked back behind the bar, oblivious to the small commotion.

Outside, the girl threw up. As though it was catching, Chase followed suit.

“It’s happening,” the girl said when she had recovered.

“What? What’s going on?” Chase sat down next to her.

“I don’t know. But everyone’s ... changing.”

“Changing! How?”

“I don’t know.” She started crying.

Chase put her arm around the girl’s shoulder, causing her to flinch, but she didn’t shrug her away which Chase thought was a step in the right direction.

“What’s your name?”

“Mandy ... yes, that’s it, Mandy ...”

Chase remembered the diary and then thought of George. “And when did all this start? No, don’t tell me, after the fog descended.”

Mandy nodded. “I think so. I don’t really remember.”

Chase frowned. She still wasn’t sure what was going on, but she knew she was in serious trouble.

“I hope I haven’t kept you waiting?” Adam said, walking down the lane, smiling. He was wearing black jeans and a grey shirt that was unbuttoned, revealing a white T-shirt underneath.

Chase looked up but didn’t smile back. Above her head, the pub sign squealed as though in pain.

“What’s wrong?” Adam asked.

“Apart from George trying to feed Mandy excrement, what could be wrong?” The sarcasm was as thick as molasses.

“Are you serious?”

“Do I look as though I’m joking?”

“You must have made a mistake. Come on, let’s go inside and sort it out.”

Chase stood up. “Come on Mandy. I’m not going back in and leaving you out here.”

Submissively, Mandy followed them back into the pub. Chase walked straight to the table they had been seated at.

The plate was gone.

Chase looked around, confused.

“So where is it?” Adam shook his head, unable to disguise his grin. “I’m sorry, Chase, don’t you realise how stupid it sounds?”

Chase clenched her fists, took a deep breath and walked to the bar. “George, where’s that plate gone?” She pointed at the table.

George eyed her warily from his perch, like a vulture watching a prospective meal, waiting for it to succumb.
 

“You don’t serve shit in here, do you George?” Adam said, laughing.

George gave a toothy, humourless grin.

“Although it sometimes tastes a bit like shit.” He held his hands up in a placating manner. “Only joking. The food in here is excellent.”

Looking across at Mandy, Chase saw her shake her head and frown, as though warning Chase not to pursue the matter further.

“You see. I don’t know what’s got into you, Chase. Let me buy you girls a drink and we’ll sit down. A pint of bitter, orange juice, and, Mandy, what would you like?”

But Mandy had gone. The door swung shut in her wake. Chase made to go after her but Adam grabbed her shoulder.

“Let her go,” he said quietly. “Her parents died recently. I don’t think she’s got over the shock yet. I think she just needs some time to grieve.”

“Died. How?”

“Oh, it was a car crash.”

Chase frowned. A car crash. Since moving to
Paradise
, the only vehicles she had seen were rusting carapaces left unused in some of the drives. “Here? How long ago?”

“No, they lived away from here, somewhere. I don’t know where. It happened a few months ago. Terrible business.”

“So Mandy lives here on her own?”

Adam nodded, but before she could question him further, George suddenly reappeared with the drinks and Adam busied himself paying.

For whatever reason, she felt Adam was lying and she shivered.

CHAPTER 18

Conversation in the pub was stilted. Occasionally someone in the shadows would cough. A chair would scrape and someone would approach the bar before scurrying back to their dark retreat, drink in hand.

Chase didn’t really know what to say. She had so many questions, but she didn’t know whether Adam would tell her the truth. And if he did, how would she know?

“I’m still waiting for you to come and see me at the surgery,” he said, sipping on his bitter.

“Yes, I know.” Didn’t he realise she had more important things on her mind, like leaving.

Adam
tutted
. “You really have got to organize yourself. We need to check how the baby’s doing. Besides, it would also give me an excuse to see you again.”

Chase nodded. She still couldn’t believe she was pregnant. It felt as if she was swimming through a murky pool – nothing was clear anymore. Where once there had been understanding and routine, now confusion and uncertainty reigned. Her world had flipped on its side, twisted, inverted, somersaulted, rolled over and played dead without her knowing it. Now she was in a world inhabited by strange people. Sanity replaced with insanity. Nothing was what it seemed.

“Have you seen the vicar again?” Chase asked. “I called in at the church, but he wasn’t there.”

Adam swirled the contents of the glass. “It’s funny you should ask that.”

Chase found nothing remotely funny about it.

“You see, he’s gone missing.”

“Gone missing!” Her heart lurched and her breath hitched in her throat.

“Yes. Now before you start, I don’t believe he’s dead, like you said. But I never actually saw him when I said I did. You see, I just didn’t want to upset you, not with the baby and all.”

“So where is he then?”

“That’s it. I just don’t know.” He shook his head.

“Then why don’t you believe he’s dead?”

“Because he’s not.”

“So now you’re calling me a liar.”

“No, not at all.”

“But I saw the body.”

“Then where was it?” He sipped his drink. “You saw for yourself, there was no evidence of anything like you said. We don’t breed killers around here.” He laughed without humour.

Was he telling the truth? Chase didn’t know anymore. She wanted to believe him, if only to take away the festering memory of a man with a slit throat. Where were the police when you needed them?

Madness or death? The question returned and the answer was as elusive as ever.

She didn’t want to be mad. And she really didn’t think she was. She knew what she had seen ... didn’t she?
Or had she stepped onto the roller coaster of delusion, where everything swept past in a swirling blur? Was her memory playing tricks? Was she going mad? She remembered reading somewhere that a mad man doesn’t know when he’s going mad, so because she thought she was, did that mean she wasn’t?

She began to feel dizzy.

“Chase, are you okay? You’ve gone very pale.”

“I think I’m just a bit hot. Can we go outside?”

“Sure.”

She picked up the book that Mandy had forgotten to take and walked toward the door with George watching her. He licked his lips with a reptilian flick of his tongue and she shivered as she recalled the snake eating the frog.

***

Mandy was scared. Very scared. Petrified even. She didn’t understand what was going on – why people were changing. Why
she
was changing? In her case, it wasn’t a physical change like some people had experienced when their ailments miraculously healed or went away. Those people had flocked to the church, offering praise and thanks to the Lord for the miracle. The vicar had been overwhelmed by the increased attendance, and the collecting bowl was handed out at every opportunity so people could show their thanks for the marvel.