IX - Paige
Paige didn’t know what to
think. She was astonished and terrified
and yet, a part of her, some dark, pessimistic part wasn’t really surprised at
all. Of course this would happen, it
told her, why wouldn’t it?
“What?” she said, feeling
stupid for even asking, then, rethinking, asked again, “What is this?”
They were standing in the
middle of the street. It had seemed
natural somehow, now there was no traffic, to just walk down the middle of the
empty roads. It felt safer in the
middle. There was less chance of
something coming out of the walls at them, less chance of being surprised,
until this.
About ten feet in front of
them, rising up out of the fog, there was a wall. It wasn’t supposed to be there, as far as anyone could tell. It stood right in the middle of the road,
cutting one of the white road markings in half where it touched the
tarmac. It wasn’t made out of granite,
either, like so many of the walls in Devara.
This wall was made of metal, mostly, rusty and misshapen, like a pile of
old cars in one of those American junkyards you always saw in films. As Paige stared at it harder she realised
that some of the metal had actually come from cars, but that wasn’t all it
contained.
It really was a wall of junk. There were rusted washing machines, hospital
beds, TVs and wirelesses which looked like they came from the 50s, swing sets,
bathtubs, and anything else ancient and metallic, corroded and held together
with stalactites of decay. And between
them all, in a fine, gooey webbing, was what looked like skin, muscle and
tendon. As Paige began to make out the
details she started to feel ill.
“Oh my God,” she said, “it’s
alive!”
And it was. The flesh was moving, twitching,
pulsing. It was very slight, sporadic,
like it had little energy left, but it was there alright. The rusted artefacts seemed to quiver
slightly with each motion.
“My hallucinations must be
getting worse,” Henry said. He sounded
scared, and Paige didn’t blame him, but his denial was really starting to worry
her.
“If you’re hallucinating Henry,
then we all must be!” she snapped, “Do you think I want to see this? Or to make you think you’re
seeing it? What kind of sick joke would
that be?”
There was silence for a moment
and the fog swirled more thickly around them, obscuring the grotesque blockade.
“We can’t go this way,” Charlie
said suddenly and began walking back up the street.
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