THE SIXTH GUEST: Chapter Four - Part Seven

Two or three minutes earlier, when Eddie ran away from the two of them, the vagrants he had called friends throwing trash and bottles at his back, Selina watched him go, arms folded tight around her while Travis turned his back on it. She watched Eddie until he was almost out of sight, down near the stone steps then turned her back on him too, nervous about his threats to tell the police about them but unsure if it would ever lead to anything. She had a feeling Travis was as good at covering his tracks as he was at sex.

Travis was up in the clearing near the wall he’d been sitting on, fitting the lid back onto his daffodil tin. Selina expected him to make some kind of further dig at Eddie but he didn’t. He didn’t say anything. She took a seat on the ground beside him and rested her chin on her knees, hands round her ankles, watching his careful movements as he put the tin away in his jacket pocket.

“It was business,” murmured Travis.

“I know.”

“A business relationship with a client. Simple as.”

“I know baby.”

He got up and straightened his jacket. “Fuck this. Let’s get out of here. Go back to yours?”

“Sure.” She stood beside him and slipped her bare arm up under his T-shirt against his spine. He bent in and kissed her tenderly, fingers tracing lightly down her cheek and onto her neck and shoulder; quiet and slow. He almost never did it like that: so gently. He planted a light peck on her lips and then held it longer, holding her so loosely she could only just feel it.

“You know I love you Barbie doll, right?”

“Course I do darlin’. You’re my man.” She took his hand and led him toward the lowered branches and the path.

Then the thunder hit.

It wasn’t above them like it was for Eddie down in the churchyard, but it was still like an explosion. Selina cried out and ducked, covering her head.

“What the hell was that!?”

Down by the church there were flashes of light like lightning coming down and screams, then another explosion of thunder and a ripple of brilliant flashes as fork lightning struck over and over again, making silhouettes of the trees. Selina pressed her face to Travis’s chest. “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know!” He was staring down toward the church, the flickering discharges of light dancing on his features, making him look ghastly.

And then the explosion hit and the paltry illumination of the lightning was overwhelmed by the blast of light and heat that shot through the trees and up the slope. Selina saw a fireball and bodies flying through the air, then the grip on her hand wrenched her off-balance as Travis started to sprint in the other direction. “Come on! Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

She ran after him, screams of help coming from behind. She lost her footing and her shoe but Travis kept on running and she was pulled along behind him. The vagrants in the woods were shouting or screaming. Some of them ran toward the light but most were running away or down the slope to the left, toward the far corner where there was another gap in the wall leading onto the road.

“Wait, Travis!” cried Selina. “We have to go back!”

He paused, looking past her at the horror down below, gaping eyes and mouth, stricken features. “No way! What’s going on back there?”

“I don’t know but we have to go back! Maybe we can help!”

His head shook marginally left and right but it became a silent nod and Selina took another look behind her. The light was still going. It wasn’t possible. A lightning bolt didn’t stay lit like that but it was far too bright to be lightning. She didn’t know what it was. There was fire down there too and still people screaming in agony. Suddenly she didn’t want to go down, whether it was her idea or not. But Travis’s face said it all. There were people down there dying – she could tell that from the cries – and his good friend; his childhood friend was down there with them.

They started back down the path, far too slowly to be any use to anyone, arms up to shield their eyes. There was more thunder; more lightning; but the glow didn’t diminish. It got brighter. But it was moving. It was getting closer; like it was climbing those steps. There was still a good fifty metres down to the top of them – they were still higher up the path than they’d started – but neither one of them could bring themselves to hurry. Nor could they flee.

Then fresh screams came: a man’s cry of agonising pain, and they froze. Travis tightened his grip on her upper arm. They didn’t go forward or back. The light was close to blinding, there at the bottom of the path, at the apex of the stone steps. It flickered and dropped in intensity, flickered again then went out.

Selina met Travis’s gaze then they both looked back down the path. Their night vision was ruined but there were still flames down there, flickering behind the vertical stripes of the tree trunks.

They started running; down the path toward the flame; toward where the light had been, down the dip to the top of the steps; but when they got there they froze again. Selina gripped the back of Travis’s coat, hand covering her face, hiding behind him from the devastation she was seeing.

There was a huge crater in the centre of the churchyard, smoke rising up from it; the edges glowing white from the intensive heat of whatever had landed there; like a meteorite had come down, though there was nothing to be seen of it. The crater was empty. The grass was on fire. The bushes around the mausoleum where she’d been sitting ten minutes earlier talking to Megan were aflame as well. All the windows down the side of the church were gone. The stone was blackened in a huge swath sixty feet high. The do-gooders van was literally torn in half, its engine on fire, the remains of the provisions inside burning and scattered. Corpses were lying all over the place: on the grass, against the walls of the church; tangled into the wreckage of the van.

A screaming woman was kneeling on the church drive beyond the crater, swatting at her burning hair, screaming for help, but neither one of them moved to go to her. Others were moaning, lying where they’d fallen or been blasted by the concussive explosion. Above in the sky, the clouds were still roiling but the lightning had stopped. The thunder was spent.

Selina turned to Travis, not knowing what to do, seeking answers, but he wasn’t looking at her or even down into the churchyard. She turned to follow his line of sight and screamed.

On the ground only metres away, propped against Mary Shelley’s grave, lay Eddie. Or the remains of Eddie. The centre of his body had been completely blown away; only scorched and cracked stone and earth visible where his pelvis and thighs should have been. But he was still alive! His arms were quivering, trying to reach down and feel his stomach; only touching exposed and sizzling ribs. His mouth and cheeks were stricken, agonised tears streaming down his face, but his eyes were pinned on both of them, imploring them to save him. Somehow; impossibly.

They couldn’t do anything. Nothing could possibly save him. Selina was shaking her head, moaning, burying her face in the back of Travis’s jacket, but Travis couldn’t look away. He watched the life shudder and drain out of his friend. Neither one of them did anything but watch.

And then Selina saw something that terrified her more than all the rest; something she could scarcely believe; and her arm came up, pointing to it so that Travis could see too.

There were footprints in the grass near to where Eddie’s smouldering remains lay, still trembling even now. The grass was scorched as though the feet that had stood there had been made from metal fresh from the forge, as though the ground had been branded.

And they moved away – the footprints – as though the creature that had made them had stood for a moment over Eddie’s screaming form and then simply decided to leave. The grass was glowing; smoking; one footstep after another, each one fainter than the one before it, as whatever it was had cooled with each step. By the time the charred footprints reached the undergrowth several feet away they barely left a sign.

“What does it mean?” whispered Selina, holding on to Travis for fear she’d fall into space if she let him go and never feel the earth beneath her again.

“I don’t know,” he murmured. “I don’t have the slightest fucking clue.”

But the footsteps were walking parallel to the coast.

Toward Boscombe.

Toward Gladstone Road East.

Toward home.

There was no way that Selina or Travis could have understood the significance of it.

But the sixth guest had landed.