three

Estelle peered at the figure below her more closely. Suddenly she knew what was wrong about him. That “thing” last night had bitten into his left leg, but this Sandor was holding his walking stick in his right hand. That was it. With these evil living shadows they had somehow created, it seemed everything was reversed, as with a mirror. She locked this revelation safely away in her memory, thinking it might be useful: until they got angry and started showing their horrid teeth and eyes, they looked pretty much exactly like their originals – except for this mirror effect.

Evil living shadows.

The idea of it was just too bizarre. When Sandor had suggested this last night, she had dismissed it as fantasy. If she could only find him again, the first thing she would do would be to apologise. But the real Sandor was out there somewhere in the forest, probably getting further away, while she was stuck here, trapped by his shadow!

After standing by the tree stump for a moment, the shadow-Sandor moved closer to Estelle’s tree. Watching its swift, gliding movement, any doubts she may still have had about its identity were immediately dispelled. No human could have moved like that, let alone one with an injured leg. Earlier she had compared its movement to a snake, but that was wrong: a snake used more muscular effort, was more earthbound. This creature moved in a light, almost ghostly way – just like a shadow, in fact.

The thing hesitated beneath her branch. If it looked up now, it would see her, and that would be it: no escape possible. She shrank back as far as she could against the trunk, trying to blend into the tree, wishing she’d put on something other than her Soul Cal pink T-shirt, and praying that the twig her foot was currently lodged against didn’t suddenly snap.

Finally, after a long, sweat-glazed, tense-muscled moment, she watched the thing move on, sliding swiftly into the forest and out of sight. Estelle breathed out slowly, and began climbing down. The thing had headed in the approximate direction of the road and the village, so she went the other way, towards the white building she had glimpsed from her treetop lookout.

In less than fifty paces she had entered the clearing where the building stood. It was certainly no ruin – in fact, it looked as though it had only been erected yesterday. The painted walls gleamed and the fresh gravel that surrounded it sparkled. The single-storey, flat-roofed structure had a plain, functional design: all clean, straight lines and right angles. The uniform surface of the walls was broken only occasionally by a tiny, dark-tinted window. The building was small – not much bigger than a large house in terms of the area it covered. And yet whatever was going on within those bare, anonymous walls was deemed important or secret enough to surround them with a high fence of sharpened steel posts, topped by what looked like electrified razor wire. The slowly swivelling security cameras mounted on the roof added to the atmosphere the place exuded… of quiet paranoia.

Estelle began circling the fence, hoping the building wasn’t so determinedly secretive that it didn’t even have an entrance. She had got halfway round when she found one, a heavy steel gate, almost hidden behind a large sign saying:

GOVERNMENT PROPERTY

AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY

Next to the gate stood a very ugly, stunted concrete structure about three metres high and two metres wide. From a small black slit near the top came a harsh, low voice.

“Halt! Don’t come any closer. Identify yourself.”

She stopped. “I’m Estelle Grant,” she said in a quavering voice. “I’ve been staying in a cottage nearby. My friend and I have been attacked.” It felt good to be saying these things to another human being, even if she couldn’t see his face. She didn’t mention that the creatures that had attacked them were their own shadows, worrying that if she said anything that crazy, they might not let her in. “I’ve lost my friend,” she added. “And – and I’m pretty scared. Can you… Do you think I could come in?”

When no reply came, Estelle took a hesitant step closer.

“Halt!!” screeched the voice. “Did I tell you you could move?”

“No, but…”

“Throw your gun to the ground.”

Estelle slowly removed Sandor’s gun from her pocket and threw it away from her.

“Now go and stand in the middle of the road, just in front of the gate.”

Bemused, Estelle did as she was told.

Suddenly, a dazzling bright light shone down from above. The light sizzled on her skin and turned the patch of tarmac she was standing on into a blazing square of white. The briefest glance aloft would, she was sure, render her permanently blind. Then, equally abruptly, the light was switched off.

From within the concrete bunker, she heard the crackle of a radio and the voice of the guard: “We have an unauthorised visitor here, Professor, requesting permission to enter. A young female. Says her name is Estelle Grant. We’ve scanned her and she’s F.A.B.”

“OK, send her in,” came a deeper voice, laden with static.

A light flashed and the gate slowly slid open.

“Proceed to the reception area,” said the guard.

Estelle didn’t need a second invitation and she dashed through the gate. A glass door swished open automatically as she approached the establishment, admitting her into a small room as plain and severe as the building’s exterior. Not a single picture enlivened the room’s blank white walls. There was a smell of new carpets, and the only furniture – a desk and four chairs – looked like they’d arrived straight from the factory that morning.

Into the room strode a tall man. He wore a long white coat over a dark suit.

“Hello, Miss Grant. I assume it’s a Miss?”

“Er, yes.”

His face was smooth, his smile tight, his eyes cold and of a blue so pale as to be practically colourless. They seemed made for looking through microscopes, rather than at people.

“I’m Professor Robert Mitchell. Pleased to meet you.”

He gave her hand a brief, cool squeeze, as if testing a piece of fruit for ripeness.

“You’ve caught us rather on the hop, Miss Grant,” said the professor in an impatient tone. “We’re just setting up. The rest of the staff won’t be starting until next week, and that includes the receptionist.” He eyed the empty desk ruefully. “I can’t offer you a coffee, as I’ve absolutely no idea how the blasted machine works.”

He looked at her as though their caffeine-free state was her fault. Bizarrely, she felt the need to apologise.

“I’m sorry, Professor. I realise you’re busy, but I just need to make a phone call to the police, and to my aunt, and maybe to my therapist, and –”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Miss Grant.”

Estelle stared at him disbelievingly. “Don’t tell me your phones aren’t working either.”

“We have a working phone line. I just can’t allow you to use it.”

His expression was as cold, as indifferent, as moon rock.

Was this man, this government scientist or whatever he was, really denying her the right to…?

“Perhaps you don’t fully understand, Professor,” she said, trying to maintain a reasonable tone and keep the tremor out of her voice. “This is an emergency. My friend and I were very nearly –”

“No, it is you who do not understand, Miss Grant!” he snapped with a sudden flash of annoyance. “You and your friend have created a mess. An unholy mess, which we’re now going to have to try and clear up. What’s your friend’s name?”

“Sandor. Sandor Watts. He’s been wounded in the leg.”

“Badly?’

“I’m afraid so.”

“Well we may just have to accept that he’s a goner,” Mitchell muttered almost to himself. Then he turned briskly and pushed open the swing door he had just come through. Leaning his long, lanky body into the corridor, he shouted: “Sergeant Farrell!”

Mitchell turned back to Estelle. “You were attacked, too, I take it?”

“That’s right. I –”

“How many of them?”

“Er, two.”

“One of each?”

“Sorry? What?”

He leaned into the corridor again. “Sergeant Farrell! I want you this minute!”

Returning his attention to Estelle, he enquired: “You each generated a single shadow, right?”

Estelle was struggling to keep up. So he knew about the shadows! “Y–yes. I mean no. Sandor… generated another one last night.”

A squat, muscular man in a black uniform dashed into the room. “Yes, Professor?”

“Ah, there you are, Sergeant. I’m afraid we have three more shadows on the loose, courtesy of this young lady and her boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend!”

Mitchell ignored her. “Two male, one female. The boyfriend’s also still at large. Answers to the name of Sandor Watts. Got a leg injury.” He turned to Estelle. “Which leg was it, by the way?”

“Um... the left leg.”

‘Got that, Farrell? The F.A.B. is injured in his left leg. How many men do you have available?”

“Currently six out on patrol, Professor, plus four here on base. I’ll alert the patrol unit right away.”

“Good man. I want updates every half hour. Understood? And don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

After Farrell had marched off, Mitchell turned back to Estelle: “Take a seat.” He pointed to one of the chairs.

“Not until you tell me what’s going on,” insisted Estelle, who couldn’t help feeling riled by his bossy, ungracious manner. “What is this place?” she demanded. “What kind of people are you?”

Mitchell simply held out the chair for her. “Sit!” he ordered.

Sighing, she sat down.

The professor cleared his throat and paced around a little, before turning to her. “I can’t say I like this situation any more than you do, Miss Grant,” he said tersely. “It’s just bad luck, you see – terribly, terribly bad luck, that you and your boyfriend stumbled upon something you shouldn’t have.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Delhaven Forest is publicly owned woodland,” Mitchell blithely continued. “So it’s a tricky place to fence off, and the problem, until very recently, was so small, and the wood so remote and unvisited...”

“Why can’t you let me use your phone?”

“Of course we’re going to fence it off now. We’ll stop any other members of the public wandering in here. But that doesn’t solve the problem of you, now does it, Miss Grant? And nor does it solve the problem of Mr Watts. I can only hope that by the end of today, we’ll have dealt with the mess you two have made. Until such time, I’m afraid you will have to remain as our guest here.”

Estelle stood up, outraged. “You’re keeping me prisoner?”

“It’s hardly prison, is it?” Mitchell said, looking indignant. “I may not be able to offer you coffee. But we have a decent canteen, not to mention brand-new shower and washroom facilities. You’ll be very comfortable, I assure you.”

“You can’t do this!” she exclaimed. “I have rights. As a citizen…”

“Indeed you do,” the professor agreed. “And when you leave us, you will be able to tell the whole story, which I shall, of course, deny.”

She slumped back into her chair. “Who are you? What is this place?”

Mitchell took the chair opposite her, clasped his hands together over his knees and looked her in the eyes. “We’re a government facility conducting research into the health risks of radiation from domestic electrical devices.”

“Really!” snorted Estelle in disbelief. “If that were true, you wouldn’t be ringed with all this security and have armed units patrolling the forest.”

“That’s the official story, Miss Grant. And that’s the story I shall be telling the media, should you decide, when all this is over, to go public with any of what I’m about to say.” He sighed. “However, there is little point in concealing the truth from you, as you know too much already – in fact, it sounds as though you’ve had first-hand experience of the real subject of our research.”

“The shadows?”

The professor nodded gravely. “We’ve known about all this for a while. We’ve known, for example, that the light in this wood is… different. And that those who walk in it don’t cast a shadow exactly, but something else – something that I have described as a photographic negative of their own souls: a sort of ‘soul shadow’, if you will. If you remain stationary in this light for even a short period, the soul shadows can acquire physical substance.”

“I don’t think that’s the right name for them, Professor,” interjected Estelle. “The things that attacked us had copied our bodies, not our souls. They didn’t seem to have any… humanity in them.”

Mitchell didn’t look pleased with the interruption. “We’re still studying them,” he said curtly. “We don’t know what their intelligence is yet, nor their level of humanity, as you call it – and I hardly think it’s fair to make such judgements on the basis of your extremely brief acquaintance with the phenomena.”

Estelle suppressed her irritation at Mitchell’s patronising attitude. She was intrigued by his mention of the light in the wood – so that was the sickly yellow glow she’d seen. “What exactly is this light that makes the shadows come alive?” she asked.

“We call it, for want of a better term, zeta radiation,” replied the professor. “For the first few years, our research was carried out in a few temporary cabins here on this site – that is, until we were lucky enough to obtain funding to build a permanent facility. All was going very well until about a month ago, during the final stages of construction, when something happened – we’re still trying to figure out what. You see, the zeta radiation has always been weak, and the soul shadows never had much strength or durability. They were objects of scientific curiosity, but they weren’t dangerous. For some reason, the radiation intensified and, as you’ve discovered, the soul shadows have become deadly. There were a few… accidents… involving some of the construction crew – which is why we erected that fence and guardhouse outside, and recruited the services of a private security firm.”

“It’s a bit of a coincidence though, isn’t it Professor?” said Estelle sceptically. “You build your facility, and immediately the radiation gets stronger. The two have to be connected.”

“Maybe so,” he said gruffly. “Although I don’t see how.”

“Do you even know the cause of the radiation?”

Mitchell stood up. “I’ve said enough,” he said abruptly, and walked to the door. “I hope you understand why we have to keep you here for now, and why we can’t let you make any phone calls. This is top secret work we’re engaged in. If it gets out, it could cause a general panic, which the government is understandably keen to avoid. Once we have eliminated all the soul shadows in this forest, and any evidence they ever existed, then you’ll be free to go. And if you speak to the press after that, it’ll simply be your word against ours. We’ll have what the politicians like to call ‘deniability’, and that, as any politician will tell you, is a very useful thing to have.”

“And if I swear to you now that I won’t say a word?”

Mitchell shook his head. His expression had hardened again. “Not good enough, I’m afraid, Miss Grant. I’d like to say I trust you, but it simply wouldn’t be true. Now, I must get back to work.” He led her through the set of swing doors into the corridor and pointed. “Down there you’ll find the canteen. Mrs Hollins will be able to sort you out with some lunch should you want some. There’s also a recreation area with a television and some magazines. I will see you in a little while.” Before Estelle could say another word, Mitchell had marched off in the other direction and disappeared around a corner.

Estelle wandered down the corridor, past the non-working coffee machine, and into the canteen. The counter was brand new, like everything else, and entirely devoid of food. The single window had bars on it. She crossed the room and tried opening it, but it wouldn’t budge. While she was standing there, she saw a black-uniformed guard walk by along the gravel path next to the fence. He was accompanied by a large German Shepherd on a short lead.

“Can I help you?” came a low female voice to her rear.

Estelle turned. A mature woman in a blue uniform was leaning out of a doorway behind the counter. She was holding a large cardboard box.

“You must be Mrs Hollins?” said Estelle.

The woman looked at Estelle warily. “Did the professor send you?”

Estelle nodded. “He said I could get something to eat here.”

“I’ve got nothing fresh,” said the woman frostily. “Won’t have anything fresh in till Monday. You can help yourself to crisps and nuts. Or we’ve some tinned fruit salad here in the back.”

With that, she bustled away.

An hour later, Estelle was sitting on a sofa in the rec room, restlessly flicking through a magazine called New Scientist. The remains of her meal – a bag of crisps and a tin of pineapple rings – sat on the low table in front of her. There had been no further word from Professor Mitchell; no updates, so far as she knew, on Sandor, or the killing of the soul shadows.

In her enforced idleness and her agitated frame of mind she concocted an elaborate conspiracy theory. She convinced herself that the professor hadn’t really been surprised by her arrival at the Facility this morning, but that he had known about her and Sandor all along. It had been him in that mysterious car last night. He had driven past the cottage and witnessed the attack by the soul shadow. Fearing that they might survive and then blab to the press, he had stolen Sandor’s car battery. And straight after leaving her, he had radioed Sergeant Farrell and told him to forget about finding Sandor – he must kill him. Those ice-blue eyes of his told her all she needed to know about Professor Robert Mitchell. For him, the research project was everything, and if people had to die for it to continue, so be it.

By this stage in her thought processes, Estelle was absolutely certain that she would never get out of the Facility alive, and it was only a case of when, and how, she would die. Would it be a mafia-type killing? Would they give her a pair of cement shoes and then throw her into a lake so she could “sleep with the fishes”? Or would she be sprayed with gold paint like that girl in the James Bond film? Knowing Mitchell, she’d probably be fried from the inside by some super-high dose of radiation. Yes, that would be more his style.

And who would miss her? Not her mother, that was for sure! Aunt Lucy would no doubt shed a few tears. Some of her old schoolfriends might be sad for a day or two. But, truth be told, she hadn’t really made much of a mark on the world in her eighteen years. She rather doubted there would be a big fuss when the news crept out that she’d disappeared. No Facebook tribute pages for her. She liked to imagine that if things had been different – if her life hadn’t been so disrupted by the divorce and her mum’s madness and her own breakdowns – she might have forged deeper relationships with people. Sandor was the one exception. He’d vanished from her life for four years, but the bond between them was so deep, it hardly mattered. He was alive – she was sure of it! – and he would survive this nightmare, and she’d continue to exist in some way after this, in his memories.

A knock at the door interrupted these contemplations. She jumped. Here it comes, she thought miserably.

But it didn’t come. Instead, the face that appeared at the door was a friendly, cheerful, smiling face. It was a man in his thirties; unshaven cheeks, receding hairline. He bounded in.

“Well, hullo there! You must be Estelle. I’m Derek Atkins.”

She gave him her hand, which he shook enthusiastically. He was short and not exactly thin, and his amiable exuberence was an immediate tonic for her spirits. If she was going to be killed by anyone, Derek would be her preferred choice of assassin.

“I’m one of the researchers here,” Derek told her. “We’re just a skeleton team at the moment. The rest of them are arriving next week.” His eyebrows rose and fell excitedly as he spoke, as if he was telling her the most astounding news. “I’m like a kid in a toyshop right now, playing around with all this brand-new state-of-the-art kit.” He looked at her. “Hey, do you fancy a tour?”

Estelle couldn’t help smiling. He had big, eager puppy-dog eyes. Not at all like an assassin in fact – more like a geeky scientist with a secret romantic side, who’d never managed to find himself a girlfriend. She immediately spied an opportunity.

“I’d love it,” she grinned.

For the next half an hour, Estelle allowed herself to be shown around the “kit” in the lab. The room was filled with metal boxes, trailing wires, monitors, pipes, metal stands and clamps gripping bottles of different-coloured fluids. She was bombarded with terms like “beamlines”, “electron storage rings”, “synchrotrons”, “vacuum chambers”, “crystallography” and “diffractometry”, and she kept smiling and nodding and praying that he wouldn’t ask her if she had any questions.

The inevitable query eventually arrived. “So, Estelle, is there anything you’d like to ask?”

Those puppy-dog eyes again! He was so hoping to have found a fellow geek. Of course the only question on her lips was: “Can you help me get out of here, please?” – but she sensed the need to play the game a bit longer, really win his trust, before landing him with that one. Then she remembered a curious term the guard had used just after showering her with bright light. “What does F.A.B. mean, Derek?”

“F.A.B.? That would be flesh-and-blood. It’s just a short-hand term we’re using here for people.”

“As opposed to?”

“As opposed to… er… other things,” he prevaricated.

“You mean soul shadows?”

Derek’s eyebrows shot up a couple of inches. “So you know about them then, do you?”

“Oh yes!” She pulled down her T-shirt at the back to show him the teeth-mark scars.

He gazed at her bare neck for perhaps a tad longer than was strictly necessary. The tip of his tongue licked his top lip. “Heck, that looks like a mature one…” he murmured. “You were lucky to survive.”

“So is this where you research them then?” Estelle asked, turning to face him again. She didn’t mind tantalising him a little, if it helped her in her goal.

Derek, still slightly mesmerised by what he’d just seen, finally blinked and refocused. “Soul shadows? Oh no! Not here. This is where we do all the official stuff: testing domestic appliances, that sort of thing. It’s real research, don’t get me wrong, and it’s what we’d show the press or the public, should they ever get wind of this place. But soul shadows research goes on down there.” He pointed to the floor. “Hey! Why don’t I show you?”

Estelle decided to test out the man’s sense of loyalty. “Are you sure Professor Mitchell wouldn’t mind?”

Derek tapped his nose. “Who’s going to tell him, hey? Hey?” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

This subversive streak she’d uncovered gave her cause for hope. If he was prepared to go behind the professor’s back on this sort of thing, then what else? But then a scary thought occurred to her. “Are there… soul shadows down there?” she asked.

“It’s all perfectly safe, I promise,” Derek winked.

She followed him back out into the corridor, where he summoned a lift. After a short descent, the doors opened onto a long, dimly lit subterranean corridor. The walls were bare concrete, lined with pipes.

“This place is bigger than I imagined,” Estelle murmured.

Derek laughed. “You haven’t seen the half of it!”

After a short hike along the corridor, they reached a large metal door set into the right-hand wall. The door didn’t fill her with confidence. It was painted with yellow and black diagonal stripes and reinforced with bands of steel. A boldly lettered sign said:

DANGER!

Category A Personnel Only.

Derek slid a card through the entry scanner, and the door slowly hissed open. Estelle found herself looking into a large, high-ceilinged chamber at least as big in area as the entire ground floor of the Facility. The chamber was in virtual darkness except for a central section, which was separated from the rest of the room by a ring of closely spaced vertical steel bars that ran from floor to ceiling. This caged area was flooded with the same sallow light she had seen in the forest. It contained three male figures, one of whom looked exactly like Derek.

“Are they…” she began, hesitating at the entrance – but she knew the answer.

The soul shadows had all turned to face Derek and herself. So far, they looked like normal human beings, just curious.

“They most certainly are,” said Derek, strolling in. “Impressive, huh? The world’s first captive soul shadows.” He gestured to the silvery yellow light filtering down from the ceiling. “That was the hard part. Reproducing the zeta radiation. It had to be perfect, or they’d sicken and die. It has a frequency of exactly 405 terahertz – that’s just about on the threshold between infrared and natural light, which is probably why you feel nauseous just looking at it. We then had to chromatically distort it in all sorts of clever ways.”

Derek went over to a large metal cabinet on the right-hand side of the chamber, opened the door and pulled out a tray of raw, pink flesh.

“Relax. It’s animal, not human!” he laughed when he spotted Estelle’s worried face.

“The zeta radiation has no effect on matter of any kind,” Derek continued, as he donned a pair of blue rubber gloves. “But when it passes through certain types of organic material, like human tissue for instance, it changes. The substance of whatever it hits next – a floor for instance – is chemically transmuted into an almost perfect replica of the person the radiation just passed through. Et voilà. A soul shadow. Amazing when you think about it!”

He picked up the tray and approached the caged area. “Now watch this!” Estelle edged further into the room, scared yet curious to see what was about to happen. As Derek came closer, the eyes and mouths of the soul shadows distorted and grew bigger. They howled and rushed in their horribly quick, lithe way to the edge of the cage and stuck their grimy hands through the gaps between the bars, groping towards Derek and his tray.

“I’m sorry to say they’re smelling me, rather than the meat,” said Derek. “That’s what’s exciting them. Human flesh sustains these beasts. It prolongs their lives.”

Particularly aroused was “Shadow-Derek”, who was jumping up and down and screaming and sticking his arm out as far as the bars would allow. Estelle noted once again the mirror effect – Shadow-Derek’s hair was parted on the right – the opposite side to his original.

The real Derek turned back to Estelle, grinning and raising his eyebrows. “See this one! He loves me, doesn’t he?! They have this weird attachment to their originals, their progenitors, as we call them. It’s not exactly love in the sense that we mean it. If I let him out now, he’d eat me. Still, it’s rather sweet, don’t you think?” As Derek tossed the first piece of meat through the bars, one of them – Shadow-Derek – caught it, and the other two immediately leapt on him and began trying to tear it from his grasp. One of them stuck his fingers into Shadow-Derek’s chest, and something that looked like porridgy sawdust began leaking from his mouth. It seemed for a moment as though they’d actually kill him. Then real Derek threw several more pieces in, and the other two skittered across the floor to seize their own food.

“It’s not their preferred diet,” beamed Derek. “But we can’t give them that – for obvious reasons!”

Estelle was rapidly going off her new friend. His enthusiastic manner was quite endearing when focused on things like synchrotrons and Geiger counters, but now, in the context of these caged monsters, it seemed more like sadism. But she tried, despite her fear and revulsion, to appear as if she was enjoying herself. If she was ever going to persuade him to help her escape, she had to maintain the illusion of camaraderie between them.

“Now watch,’ said Derek, and he moved to a control panel opposite the cage. He pressed a few switches, and the pallid yellow zeta radiation in the caged area was suddenly split by shafts of brilliant white light. The soul shadows roared with pain as the shafts struck them. Their black eyes widened and their enlarged mouths vomited up the meat they had just eaten. As the beams began to rove like lights on a dance floor, they tried to escape them by moving around, but the lights always caught them. One of them hurled himself against the bars in a desperate effort to escape. Another rolled himself up in a tight little ball, offering as little of himself as possible to the burning beams.

Derek was laughing. “It can’t kill them,” he guffawed. “They’re too mature for that. But it sure burns!”

“Stop it!” yelled Estelle. She couldn’t help herself. “Switch off the lights.”

Derek turned to her, frowning. “Hey, are you actually feeling sorry for the brutes? They’d eat you, you know. They’re complete monsters.”

“I – I just don’t… like seeing anything in pain. That’s all.” To her relief, Derek switched off the beams. The creatures moaned pitifully and rubbed their blistering skin.

Estelle had seen enough. Now she just wanted to get out. There was no way she could ever convincingly befriend a man like this, so she decided to risk all with a plea from the heart. “Derek, would you do me a favour? Would you help me get out of here? I know the professor doesn’t trust me, but I promise I’d never tell anyone about this set-up of yours. I don’t actually care what you’re doing here. I really don’t. But I’m scared. I miss my aunt. I miss my life. I just – I just want to go home.”

The tears at the end weren’t entirely faked.

“Hey, Estelle, sweetheart, don’t cry, love.” Before she knew it, Derek was standing next to her, arm lightly enclosing her shoulder. “Of course I’ll get you out of here. If I’d known you wanted to leave, I’d have offered to earlier. You only had to ask.”

This was a big surprise, and a happy one. “But – but won’t the professor be angry with you?” she sniffed.

“Hey, leave all that side of things to me, sweetheart. Don’t you worry about a thing. Derek’ll sort you out.”

She didn’t much care for the arm around the shoulder or the “sweetheart” business, but it was a hell of a lot better than watching him fry soul shadows for kicks. She could scarcely believe she was about to get out – out of the Facility, out of the forest!

She allowed him to lead her back through the door of the chamber and further along the corridor to a small underground carpark. There were spaces for about thirty cars, but only two were parked there, plus a formidable-looking armoured personnel carrier. “This way, love,” said Derek, guiding her to one of the cars, a small white Fiat.

Estelle still felt wretchedly nervous. This was all too good to be true. It had to be a trap. She kept glancing over her shoulder, as she climbed into the car, and as Derek reversed slowly out of the parking space, expecting to see the professor arriving, flanked by a row of soldiers all pointing their weapons at her. But no one arrived to stop them as they proceeded up a long, dimly illuminated ramp that ended in a steel gate embedded within rock. Derek opened his window and slid his ID card through another scanner, and the gate began to rise. A slowly widening strip of daylight flashed into her eyes, and that was when she allowed herself the first delicious sense of hope that all of this might soon be over. When the gate was fully open, Derek accelerated out of the tunnel and onto a narrow black road twisting through the forest. Glancing behind her, Estelle saw the tunnel entrance sliding shut to become, to all appearances, a natural grassy bank. The secret entrance had taken them a good thirty metres beyond the Facility’s perimeter fence, which was now swiftly receding in their rearview mirror.

“Where can I take you, my lady?” he smiled, waggling his eyebrows at her. “To the village? To Edgebourne? What, pray tell me, is your desired destination?”

There was no way this man had ever had a girlfriend! But she would happily bear his company – and his eyebrows – for the next hour if it meant getting a ride to Edgebourne.

The trees flashed by on either side. He was driving extremely fast. Soon they would see fields!

“You mean you’d really take me all the way to –”

She never managed to finish the sentence.

There was a violent bang on the car roof. The roof actually bulged inwards by about ten centimetres. Estelle’s mouth went dry. Her fingernails dug into the seat cover. Tyres screamed as Derek went into a swerve and nearly crashed into a tree, before bringing the car to a skidding standstill at an angle in the centre of the road.

“What – what was that?” croaked Estelle.

Derek didn’t say anything. He peered upwards at the huge bulge in the roof, and she saw his adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. His face was tight with fear.

She knew as well as he did that there was something still up there. They could hear its groaning, wheezing breath.

Derek, his eyes still fixed on the bulge above his head, seemed to have turned to stone, except for his hands, which were madly trembling.

“G – get out of here!” Estelle screamed.

This snapped him out of it. His foot slammed down on the accelerator, and the car screeched away. As they raced along the road, filthy fingers with long, yellow nails suddenly appeared at the top of the windscreen, and then a face – a smiling horror of piranha teeth and black, pitiless eyes.

Derek began to scream. The car, still flying along at top speed, began to slalom crazily as his hands went into a frenzy. Estelle saw he was trying to shake the thing off, but it was clinging on with ease – the usual physics of motion and momentum didn’t seem to apply to these creatures born of shadows.

“No!” cried Estelle, as she saw the front of the car rising up. Suddenly they were off the road and flying up a bank. She grabbed the wheel, trying to pull it back the other way, but it was too late. There came a neck-jarring, metal-crunching whump as they collided with a tree. She flew forward, knocking her head with a hard smack against the windscreen.

Pain bloomed in her temples like a monstrous black flower. She lay there dazed, but did not lose consciousness. She wished fervently she would – wanted so much to slip away from this terrifying reality into nothingness. But all the time she lay there, feeling the warm wetness trickling down into her eyes, she was aware also of the breathing – that grating, squeezebox breath – of the creature still close by. Slowly, achingly, she raised her head. She dreaded seeing it there, squatting like a demon on the concertina’d bonnet. But when she actually looked, it was nowhere in sight. Derek was moaning with pain, moving sluggishly. The steering wheel seemed too low down. In the collision, it must have collapsed onto his legs, trapping them.

Where was the creature? The loudness of that awful respiration told her it was only centimetres away – just outside the car. But where? Next to Derek’s door, perhaps?

No! Next to your door, Estelle!

The dark shape rose up silently beside her, like smoke. Its black eyes glistened, its nostrils quivered with the smell of her. Only the window glass shielded her from those claw-like hands, those teeth. And what a meagre shield it suddenly seemed! She watched, helpless, as the soul shadow drew back its pale hands and then battered them against the glass. The bang was loud, like a balloon-burst in her ears. She screamed. The car shook. But the window held.

That incessant tortured breathing was driving her insane. The in-breath was like a scarcely human metallic growl; the out-breath like a quiet scream. Again it threw its hands against the window. The car rocked, and this time spider cracks spread through the glass. The demonic smile widened in triumph. Estelle shrank back, trying to squeeze herself between the front seats and into the rear of the car. Derek was moving more urgently now, frantically trying to free his legs from the steering wheel. Estelle cast around for some kind of weapon, but there was nothing – not even a pen.

She heard the shattering, and felt the rain of splintered glass on her arm and leg. Again she screamed, as the hands with their horn-like fingernails groped at her T-shirt. She tried to push it away, but it grabbed her wrist, and hauled her closer to the window. Her cheek was now jammed in the angle between the door frame and the roof. In the distant background she could here a rising tumult of engine sounds, clashing gears and squealing tyres. Her left arm and shoulder were out of the car, being stretched painfully. The creature’s breathing had reached a hysterical pitch. She could picture its jaws poised over her flesh, preparing to bite.

SLAM!

Estelle felt an overwhelming force propelling her across the car, into Derek, who cried out in shock and pain. Something huge had cast its shadow over her side of the car. She shivered, nursing her stretched and bruised arm, trying to work out what had just happened. Then she heard more clashing gears and the roar of an engine. An eight-wheeled armoured personnel carrier, like the one she’d seen earlier in the underground car park, was reversing away from the bank where Derek’s crashed car was perched, back down onto the road. The soul shadow was still there, leaning in through her window, but its eyes no longer gleamed and its mouth was slack and immobile. Black mud-like matter was seeping out from its nostrils and between its lips. She reached over and pushed it away. It slid lifelessly to the road. She saw now that its body had been completely flattened by the impact of the crash.

So dazed was she by all of this that she was now convinced she was dreaming, especially when she saw Sandor looking down at her from the turret of the APC.

“Sandor?”

“Hello, Es!”

It wasn’t a dream – it was real! Sandor had come to her rescue again!

But he looked grim.

“Get out of there, Es, and climb in,” he said urgently. “Quick as you can now. We can’t hang around. There are soul shadows further up this road and they’re closing in fast. The patrol that found me bolted after we were attacked. I managed to rescue one young corporal, but he’s seriously injured. Needs medical treatment A.S.A.P. He tells me there’s some sort of facility up the road, is that right?”

Estelle glanced across at Derek. He looked back at her with frightened eyes as he struggled again to lift the steering wheel that was pressing down on his thighs. She tried to help him, but the whole steering column had collapsed and couldn’t be shifted by hand.

“Don’t leave me here,” he pleaded.

Estelle turned back to Sandor. “The driver of this car is stuck, Sandor. The steering wheel, it’s jammed against his legs.”

Sandor lifted himself flinchingly out of his turret and hopped on his good leg onto the road. After limping his way around the car, he leaned in through the driver’s window and tried wrenching the steering column upwards, but to no avail.

“We’ve got a hydraulic cutter in the APC,” said Sandor. “But it’ll take time. The shadows’ll be here any minute, and I reckon young Hynson will die from loss of blood if we don’t get him to a surgeon in, like, ten minutes.”

“But he was helping me to escape,” Estelle pleaded. “We can’t just leave him here.”

In the silence that followed, they heard a whisper in the trees up ahead. Estelle hoped it was only the wind.