THE SIXTH GUEST: Chapter Six - Part Three

Normally, when the house was full of people like this, concentrated into one area it was pandemonium: everyone chattering, Travis always trying to spin things, Selina being flirty and tactile. Now the group were subdued. Mike and Rosalie were outsiders anyway (although another one of Mike’s superpowers was the ability to get on with anyone anywhere anyhow) but Travis and Selina only murmured to one another quietly. The hall was narrow, especially with the shelf unit eating up space on the right hand wall. It was single file as they snaked toward the back of the house and the kitchen.

Clare came in last and closed the door. It wasn’t a Yale, so didn’t lock automatically. She turned the key and left it dangling there for if there was a fire in the night. Fire scared her far more than someone breaking in. She didn’t like to think of her and all her lodgers trapped in the hallway searching for the key if the house were burning down.

She didn’t rush into the kitchen because there would inevitably be a continuation of the conversation they’d been having outside. And she really had no clue where she stood on things. She did not know why the seizures had happened or why it was just to them. And this new information! An explosion in town? All those burn victims? Selina and Travis’s friend killed? It was all just far too much data to take in in such a short span of time. It left her feeling wiped. She wasn’t the world’s expert on everything by any means but she also knew that the others were going to look to her for answers that she simply didn’t have.

“Put the kettle on!” she called. “I’ll be through in a bit!” She needed a minute. At least! A couple of weeks would have been better. She pushed open the lounge door and stepped into the peaceful gloom, squinting her eyes tight shut as she pinched the end of her nose. She’d collapse on the sofa for a few minutes, get her head straight, then go back out and try to rally everyone.

She opened her eyes, still just in the doorway. Henry was sitting in front of her in the armchair nearest the door, his back to the wall, only his profile visible from her angle. He was motionless, looking straight ahead toward the front window. For an awfully long moment Clare knew that he was dead, that his heart had given up on him or his brain had, but then he flinched, almost a facial tic it was so instantaneous and random. His cheek muscles spasmed, his lips curled up as though he were sneering, then his entire face turned blank again.

“Henry?”

He stared forward without reacting. Clare went to feel his forehead to check his temperature but hesitated, not wanting to invade his space, but he was catatonic, he needed checking. She put her hand to his brow. There was no sweat but he was terrifically hot. It wasn’t a wonder – the house was a lot warmer inside than it was out – but there was something seriously wrong with him. On top of everything else!

“Henry? Can you hear me?”

Clare went to feel his pulse but paused again, a little afraid, when she saw his hands. Every tendon was strained, the fingers half clenched, palms hovering over the ends of each chair arm and they shook, right up as far as the elbow. Then deep within Henry’s throat she heard a croaking groan, quiet but laboured.

She thought of the seizure and how it had affected them all and how this could be the next stage, that this was going to happen to each and every one of them. “Henry, wake up!”

He didn’t come out of it but the croaking subsided. The shaking did not. He needed an ambulance, now! She kept a phone by the sofa to the left of the bay window. Clare span on her heal and took a step toward it. Then she stopped.

In the bay, in front of the armchair opposite where Henry was sitting, stood a man in silhouette against the streetlamp light coming in through the pale yellow blinds from outside. Clare’s hand flew to her mouth but the scream didn’t escape. He was tall and very broad in the shoulders and she could tell by his outline that his arms were folded, but every feature was black in the darkness.

He must have been in there the whole time, watching her, but she had no idea who he was, if he was a friend of Henry’s or an intruder. But he hadn’t been helping Henry who obviously needed aid. He had stood there, doing nothing. He might even have been responsible.

“Hello?” asked Clare, her voice smaller than she’d meant it to be.

Like Henry he gave no indication he knew that she were there. But Clare’s eyes were adjusting now and she could see indications that he wasn’t even looking into the room, his back to her. Yes definitely. He was facing away, his arms folded, looking if anything at the blank closed blinds in the window.

“Hello?”

No reaction. He was huge, almost as tall as Joey.

From the kitchen, Clare could hear the sounds of voices and clatter. The others were easily within calling distance but she didn’t call out to them. The same force that had persuaded Henry to enter the room originally, despite all better judgment urging him to return to his bedroom, was keeping her here too, staying her hand.

She could hear the scrape of Henry’s clutching fingers on the fabric of the chair arms, the gurgle of spittle in the back of his mouth, she knew she needed to act; but something was dulling her imperative, slowing her thoughts. And it was so hot in the room. So hot.

“Who are you?” she whispered, turning on the light.

The man released his folded arms to his side. He started to turn around. Clare didn’t move. She couldn’t. All she could do was watch. She registered his thick curly hair; his close-cropped but dense beard; his fair skin. And then he was facing her, pale grey eyes regarding her calmly across the room. He looked directly at into her face and with a voice like grinding bones said, “I am your God.”