As he stumbles towards the kitchen of his house, the pane of glass in the top half of the back door projects Tom’s reflection from out of the darkness and onto its mirrored screen.
And he is startled by this face from history, even prehistory, that confronts him. Forehead and eye sockets stained with the blood he’s smeared from his hands, and smudged by the soil that was then streaked by successive torrents of sweat, he’s near unrecognisable. His beard sprouts wild from cheek and chin, a ghastly crimson brush. Within it, his white teeth flash a grimace.
Indoors, he finds a wall to lean against. The injured shoulder slumps, the arm below cradled against his belly. He waits for his breath to catch up, his heart to slow. He needs water.
His eyes roam aimlessly around his feet. Archie’s little bed drifts through his vision. Gracey’s toy push chair. Fiona’s box of fruity teas.
To think that only weeks before he’d worried himself sick about finding new work to pay a plumber. Such a concern is a luxury now. Bedtime stories and anxieties about the school run. Getting clothes dry with the heating in such poor shape. A car service. Shopping. Parents’ evening. Walking the dog… Mundane dots that join up to form the silhouette of family life, his former life, now discarded; the white spaces between the dots were once coloured by unexceptional emotions, thoughts, habits, routines, absent-mindedness. But that’s all sunk into history now.
‘Jesus Christ.’
Now he’s laughing mirthlessly. But he stops when he thinks of the awesome presence that towered over the world at the edge of the woods.
Where is it now?
An image comes to him, of an old body coming apart in the air. Then he sees himself falling into those spinning stars.
Tom bends over, shakes his head as if to cast droplets from sodden hair, to turn the horror he feels into mere tears that can be tossed out of a mind.
He slumps to the floor of the kitchen. Rifles through his shoulder bag. Finds his phone and then Fiona’s number. She’s called him three times in the last hour, when he was consumed underground, or wherever it was that he’d been taken.
A familiar recorded message shouts inside his ears. His wife’s voice: ‘Say something nice after the beep.’
Seconds soundlessly elapse into the past. His shoulder smarts and throbs hotly. Even now, all he’s granted is the opportunity to leave a message to a family he’s already lost.
‘Gracey. My darling. It’s me. If you… If you ever hear this, I want you to remember that no matter what people are going to say about your daddy, he never did it. He was just trying to protect us. I’ll always, always love you and your mum.’
The handset shoots sharp pips into his ear. Tom checks the screen. Swipes up the image of a green telephone.
It’s Fiona. She’s sobbing. ‘Tom. Get here. Now.’
Gracey.
‘What?’ His own body-weight that grounds him to earth, the very air inside him, all rises up until his sense of himself disperses, becomes intangible.
The ceiling lights seem to brighten as dread gathers him back together. When he feels as if he’s naked and standing in cold rain, he starts to sob. ‘No. No. Not Gracey. I won’t… She can’t…’
‘She’s awake. She’s come back. They saved her.’