The Hollow Places (28 page)

At last, Clare
was feeling in control again. She wouldn't have said that she was
back in her element, but here she was, walking among people as
though she hadn't seen the things she had seen or done the things
that she had done. She continued to clap, empowered by her
secrets.

She had never
felt like she belonged in society, even before the Third. She
didn't want to belong. Except now she'd met Simon and that was
different.

When a little
boy smiled up at her, she smiled back and felt a momentary
schizophrenia. Her smile had been automatic, but did that make it
real or something well-practised? Was anything about her real?

The boy took a
swig from his can of fizzy drink and was then weaving between the
bodies to get nearer to the front.

“Look,” Sarah
said.

A local teen,
supervised by a fireman, used a flaming torch to set light to the
bonfire. Once done, the crowd gave him a cheer and then cheered
again as two men used torches to get the blaze really going.

As Clare had,
Sarah found herself watching the crowd more than the fire itself.
The children shrieked with pleasure as flames stretched up and up
and up and leapt and cracked and barked and grabbed the Guy by the
ankles, twisting and roaring and pulling sticks apart to lick at
his hollow fibre body. All the while, his grim mouth was set with
determination.

“It's going to
be okay,” Sarah thought bitterly and laughed. Clare put an arm
around her then.

Sarah found
that she didn't mind it.

“It is going
to be okay,” she thought. “This time, it really is.”

The crowd
rippled and rolled like an animal, retreating from the growing
flames, until the three of them were no longer lost in the middle,
but standing very near to the front. Sarah was glad of the warmth
on her face. Despite a hot shower, this was the first time she had
felt warmed since the intense cold of the Third. She reached out
for Simon's hand and when he took it her warmth was complete.

Three firemen
were now standing in front of their vehicle with their arms folded.
Like Simon, they were unsmiling. The fire had taken on its own life
now and would burn unassisted for a good time to come. It created
and recreated itself, finding new sources of fuel and using them
up, throwing smoke into the air and ash to the embers. The belly of
the fire roared, orange and blue and red, white and green.

The Guy's head
was a flame, his fiery crown spiralling up and up and exploding
above him. Amber sparks leapt like grasshoppers, turning the grass
black.

Unlike the
firemen, Simon saw things in the flames that he reasoned could not
possibly be there. He watched Firdy's arm reach up out of the
embers, the gloved hand melting, ringed with fire, seeking a grip
on the world. He saw the Third, a tidal wave of fury, crashing over
her son, then drawing back, like fingernails digging great grooves
into the world. He saw Naomi and Ian Moody and Jonathan, rolling in
the ash among jaws and teeth and claws, turning over among smacking
lips, tongues ...

A hand seized
his arm.

Not Firdy this
time.

One of the
firemen.

Hauling him
back.

Sarah holding
him too.

Tugging at his
sleeve.

Nine years old
again. She'd always be nine years old to him.

“What were you
doing?” she asked. “What were you looking at?”

Clare was also
watching him intently.

He thought for
a moment what to tell them and decided to tell them the truth, that
he had imagined terrible things in the fire and that he had been
afraid, but in the middle of it, as furious as the flames
themselves, he had seen himself with the two of them, carving paths
through the future, leaving the past behind.

## End ##

Dean Clayton Edwards writes in
the South of France with his wife and two daughters. For more,
visit
http://deancedwards.com

Coming soon:

Abnormal Activity (an
interactive novel)

Strange Ideas

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