Cravings XVI (Paige)

XVI - Paige

            “Oh, God,” Paige said as she came and stood beside Josh, staring at all the same signs he had seen, then, “Oh, God,” she said again.

            “Something must have taken him,” Josh said.

            “Oh, God. Oh, God.  We have to help him, we…”

            She stared into the darkness of the factory in horror.  There was no place right then that she wanted to be less.  She had walked past the old Langford works a couple of times an the ruined building terrified her even in the daytime.  She wasn’t sure she could cope with it in the dark, with the monsters.

            Henry appeared suddenly at their side, making Paige flinch.

“What’s happening here?” he asked, “Where’s the boy?”

            Josh gestured at the window.

            “Oh,” the old man replied.  Paige thought he was going to say more, but instead he turned away and started walking up the street.  He stopped before he left the area still partially illuminated by Josh’s torch, then swore, much to Paige’s surprise.

            “This way’s blocked too,” he said, his voice quivering with something which might have been fear, but which easily could have been rage.  “So much for that plan.”

            Something tugged at the corner of Paige’s mind.

            “Charlie thought we were being led,” she said, “guided even.”

            Josh nodded, then stared back into the factory.

            “We need to go after him,” he said after a moment, “we don’t have any other choice.”

            Paige stared back into the darkness of the works.  She could feel a cold sweat beginning to form across her skin, a feeling of nausea building in her stomach.  Her heart was starting to pound so loudly it was almost drowning out her thoughts, but she could still hear them enough to argue with herself.

            He’s just a kid, we have to help him, one half of her mind was saying, whilst the other screamed in terror, I don’t want to go in there.  I don’t have to.  I don’t want to.

            She must have stood, frozen like that, for longer than it felt, because Josh suddenly stopped staring at her, waiting for her to respond, and instead turned, kicked the twisted metal bars off the sides of the window frame and then leapt into the black beyond, taking the torchlight with him.  The very immediacy of it all shocked Paige into wakefulness, and she realised that, right then, she was standing in the darkness, with only Henry for company and the light was inside the factory.

            “We have no choice,” she said, perhaps to Henry, but mostly to herself, and then she vaulted the brick window ledge and disappeared inside.

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