‘What now?’ Ameena barked as I entered the clearing just a few paces behind her.
I didn’t reply, partly because I was too out of breath to speak, but mostly because I didn’t know what to say. I had no idea what we should do next.
The mast was much larger than I’d expected. It almost filled the width of the clearing, and stretched way up into the dusky darkness above our heads. From a distance it had seemed to shine with a near-supernatural silvery sheen. Up close, it was a dull gun-metal grey, with no sign of the gleam it had appeared to possess.
I tried to tell myself it didn’t make any difference. What mattered were the components of the mast – the dishes, the antennae, the big knobbly bits that stuck out of the side – not how shiny it was. And yet, even though I knew this, the lack of that near-magical sparkle caused my heart to sink, and made me wonder if the whole plan wasn’t doomed to failure.
The birds were still flocking after us, now just a few metres from the clearing. An image of their vicious beaks snapped into focus in my mind’s eye, closely followed by visions of Marion and Toto’s remains. Both Totos.
Once again I found myself wondering about the dog that had come leaping to my rescue from… well, from nowhere. That big, powerful, savage animal that had appeared at just the right moment to save me from death, just like the mattress had.
But once again I had no time to dwell on the mystery of the two Totos. The crows were swarming into the clearing now, and if we didn’t move fast the dog’s rescue – and death – would have been in vain.
‘Into the middle,’ I yelped, already running, ‘beneath the tower!’
‘I heard these things give you brain tumours,’ she said, moving forward, but not quite running.
‘Really?’ I snapped, hurrying past her. ‘Well I know for a fact those things tear your face off and eat it. Take your pick.’
Ameena overtook me before I’d finished the sentence. She stopped almost exactly in the centre of the space beneath the mast. By the time she spun round I was beside her, gripping the sleeve of her jacket for no reason other than fear.
A bubble of panic formed in my throat when I realised the birds weren’t slowing. They raced in our direction, a wide stream of black, flowing from the trees and heading directly towards us.
‘Do something!’
I pushed down the pain, forgot the fact that fifty per cent of my face was so smashed up it looked like mashed potato. The birds were coming, and I was the only one who could—
‘They’re turning!’ Ameena yelled, before I could even attempt anything. ‘Check it out!’
She was right. As the line of birds reached the mast it split in two, each half arcing around the outside of the structure until they crossed paths at the other side. They didn’t slow down then, just kept flying around and around, one half moving in one direction, the other half taking the opposite route, criss-crossing their way around the mast.
Faster and faster they flew, until the sheer speed of their flight made it impossible to follow any one individual bird. Faster still they went, moving fluidly, somehow able to avoid crashing into all the other birds racing in the opposite direction.
‘What are they doing?’ Ameena asked. She was clinging to my arm now, as tightly as I clung to hers.
‘I… I don’t know,’ I confessed. ‘I thought the mast would send them crazy, make them fly away. Like the phone did.’
‘But it isn’t.’
‘Isn’t it?’ I whispered. ‘I’m not sure. They’re not coming in here. They’re not trying to get at us.’
‘Probably heard about the brain tumours,’ Ameena muttered.
‘Maybe…’ I looked up at the massive, towering structure above our heads. From directly below it seemed impossibly big, like some giant metal dinosaur. I wondered how many calls it could handle at once.
And then a terrible thought hit me. The mast was up here on a hillside in the middle of nowhere, miles from anything even resembling civilisation. What if the birds weren’t being driven back because nobody was making a call? The phone had only scattered the crows when it had started to ring – the signal, I guessed, somehow breaking the Crowmaster’s hold on them as it travelled through the air.
If no one made a call, then would there be a signal from the mast? Would there be anything to stop the birds?
I hurriedly told Ameena my theory. Her face seemed to crumple before I was half finished. She glanced at the circle of screeching death that surrounded us, and not for the first time that night I could see real, raw fear in her eyes.
‘They’re not scared to come in,’ she said, realising the same thing I had just half a second before her. ‘They’re keeping us trapped. They’re keeping us in here.’ She tore her gaze from the birds and turned to me. There was no hope in her wide, dark eyes. ‘He’s coming. He’s coming for us.’
‘Listen,’ I said, trying to sound like I believed what I was about to say, ‘I have an idea.’
I could tell from the way she looked at me that she’d heard the doubt in my voice. Still, we both knew we were beyond even the clutching at straws stage. What we needed now was a miracle.
‘OK,’ she said, nodding slowly. ‘Spill.’
I took a short breath, swallowed once, and then put the sentence out there.
‘I think I created that dog.’
She blinked. Whatever insanity she had expected to emerge from my mouth, I had obviously surpassed it.
‘It sounds crazy, yes, and I don’t know if I believe it myself, but he just kind of appeared from nowhere, like, well, like Mr Mumbles and Caddie did back at the house. And there was a mattress too; I think I made that, and—’
‘Do it,’ Ameena said, cutting me off mid-babble. ‘Whatever you’re planning, do it.’ She stole another look at the wall of birds. ‘Although it’s going to take one mean dog to get through all that.’
‘I wasn’t thinking about a dog,’ I told her. I could feel my cheeks flush red at the sheer ridiculousness of what I was saying. ‘I was going to see if I could make a… a mobile phone.’
She blinked again and her head made a very slight spasming movement, as if she was fighting back the urge to laugh. ‘Right,’ she nodded. ‘Good. Go for it.’ She squeezed her lips between her fingertips, trying to stop herself saying anything else. She failed miserably. ‘Just make sure you top it up first.’
I ignored the jibe. Ameena and I both knew this was our last chance. All I had to do to save us was create a complex piece of telecommunications equipment from thin air. That was it. Simple.
Yeah, right.
Still, I had to try. I held out my left hand, palm facing me, fingers curled around a handset I had not even begun to imagine. As the birds whipped around us and my head throbbed like it was about to implode, I closed my eyes and tried to paint a picture with my mind.
‘If I can make a dog, I can make a phone,’ I said, steeling my determination.
‘There’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear out loud.’
I ignored that comment too. All that mattered was the phone. The phone I was trying to imagine nestled in the palm of my left hand. The phone that would save our lives.
Slowly, almost cautiously, I felt the first tingle inch across my scalp. It moved at such a crawl it took all my willpower to avoid concentrating on it and accidentally whisking myself off to the Darkest Corners. If it came to it, that place might prove to be a last-chance escape route, but going there would only delay the inevitable. Besides, I knew from experience that there could be something even worse waiting for us on the other side.
I screwed up my face and tried to dredge up the details of the phone Mum had given me. It had been black, or maybe a very dark blue. The buttons were grey with… were the numbers yellow? Or white?
Ignoring the detail, I concentrated on the phone’s shape, and how it had felt in my hand. Solid, but not too heavy. How long was the casing? I felt sweat on my brow. How wide was the screen? I cursed myself for not having paid more attention.
Despite my uncertainties, the tingling filled my head. I heard Ameena whistle softly, before she blurted, ‘Something happening,’ in a voice filled with wonder.
I kept concentrating, feeling something take form in the crook of my palm. I didn’t open my eyes, but maintained my focus, trying to pin down an image of the phone, trying to remember every last detail.
When next Ameena spoke, the amazement was gone from her tone. Her voice was flat and deflated. ‘Oh.’
Blinking open my eyes, I looked down at my hand. There was a phone there. Of sorts. It looked like three or four different phones melted together.
It was as wide as it was long, with a jumbled mish-mash of buttons scattered apparently at random across the front. The screen was shaped like an upside-down letter L, but tapered to a point at one end. The casing itself seemed to be made of a number of different materials – from shiny black plastic to dull chrome – with no obvious joins between them.
I knew the phone wasn’t going to work. It was too distorted, too deformed to be operational. Also, I’d forgotten to give it an “on” button.
‘Well, it nearly worked,’ Ameena said, trying to sound encouraging, ‘which, I’ll be honest, is a damn sight more than I expected.’
On the one hand I was devastated – the phone had been our only chance, and I’d screwed it up. But on the other hand I was amazed – amazed that I’d managed to create something out of nothing, just by thinking about it. OK, it wasn’t perfect, but it was there. It existed, and that set me wondering just how powerful these abilities of mine actually were.
Ameena tugged on my sleeve and I looked up from the useless brick in my hand. It took me a moment, but then I saw him, standing just inside the circle of birds. His empty eyes were trained on us both. Another crow sat perched on his shoulder, watching us on his behalf.
He began to prowl around the mast, but never venturing beneath it. And all the while, the crows flew by behind him, a blurred wall of living black.
He didn’t speak, just stared at us. We watched him pad back and forth, like a tiger waiting on feeding time at the zoo. The only difference was we were the ones inside the cage, not him.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining,’ Ameena said in a whisper, ‘but why isn’t he coming in?’
‘Maybe because…’ I began, but the sentence ended there. I had no idea why he wasn’t coming for us. Nothing made sense any more. ‘It must have something to do with the mast,’ I guessed. ‘Maybe the signal’s stronger under it or something.’
‘But I thought you said it didn’t send out any signals unless someone made a call?’
‘Yeah, but I’m not a mobile phone engineer, am I?’ I said, with more venom than I meant. ‘Maybe it’s something like that, or maybe he’s just claustrophobic, or maybe he heard you talking about brain tumours. At this point your guess is as good as mine.’
‘Fine. Then care to hazard a guess at what he’s doing now?’
The Crowmaster was no longer pacing. He was stretching up with his elongated arms, wrapping his spindly fingers around the first of the twenty or so horizontal metal struts that ran up all four sides of the mast. The gap between each bar must’ve been over two metres, but the length of his limbs meant he was able to haul himself up with ease.
We watched him pull himself on to the first strut. It wasn’t until he reached for the second that we realised he was climbing the mast.
I let my gaze overtake him, craning my neck and tilting my head until I could see what the Crowmaster was climbing towards. And I knew, in a flash, we were done for.
‘I was right, it’s something to do with the signals,’ I said, so quietly I could barely hear myself over the screeching of the birds. ‘And he’s going to stop them.
‘He’s going to smash the transmitter!’