5

Later, Matt would remember the details of the moments following Silvy’s kiss sketchily. His brain—confronted with a supposed figment of his imagination in the flesh—was not firing on all cylinders at once. It was like waking up to find that there was a tooth fairy, but that she looked like Halle Berry in that bikini. Confusion fought with incredulousness in Matt’s brain, taking a few jabs to the gut from sheer exhilaration in those opening seconds. He barely registered Roberro’s look of open-mouthed horror at seeing Silvy’s rapturous greeting, because he was too busy noting how all the men in the reception area had stood up or leaned forward in their seats to stare.

Their reaction almost meant as much to Matt as the feel of Silvy’s hot tongue in his mouth. Because, unless this was a case of mass hysteria, it meant that they were seeing her, too. And if they were seeing her, then that meant… Matt pulled back to look at her and then pulled her to him in another crushing hug. She writhed under his fingers.

“I cannot breathe, Mathew,” she squealed, pushing his hands away and laughing.

“But how…when…where have you been?”

Silvy put her fingers on his lips. “Not here,” she said. Same accent. Same Dietrich-like, deeper-than-you’d-expect voice. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

She pulled Matt after her and he followed, drinking her in from behind, inhaling her delicious bouquet. Despite it being January, her legs were bare under her coat, and the backs of her knees looked soft and tanned, drawing stares like a kebab-shop rotisserie drew bluebottles. Matt’s head spun with questions, but it was such a sublime moment, he didn’t care.

Silvy was here. Silvy. Real and warm and actual.

“Wait,” he said as they walked through the exit doors. “I forgot something.”

Matt turned and hurried back to the reception desk. It was manned this evening, behind a screen of protective glass, by Isla, a hardboiled no-nonsense Scot who, having grown up in Glasgow, took no crap whatsoever from the drunks and the manipulative junkies trying to bag another hit. Which was just as well, as it was they who made up the majority of A&E’s dysfunctional population at this hour. But Matt must have had a wild look in his eye, because even Isla took a step back as he approached.

“Matt, what’s wrong?”

Resisting the urge to howl like a wolf, he asked, in between his gasps for breath, “Can you see that girl out there?”

“You mean the one that was trying to eat your face in the clinical area five minutes ago?” Isla said.

“Yes, her.”

“Of course I can see her.”

“Yesss,” Matt said, making a fist of triumph.

“Are you feeling all right?”

“Better than I’ve felt for a long time. Isla, listen to me. I want you to take my mobile phone and take a photograph of us. She hates having her photo taken, so you need to be a bit sneaky.”

“Okay, but—”

“I know. I will explain it to you one day, I promise. Would you, please?” Matt handed over his mobile. “Battery’s almost flat, but there’s enough juice for a snap and I’ve put it in camera mode already. Just point and press this button here. I’ll be outside with her.”

Isla hesitated, “But it’s your phone. Won’t you want it back?”

“Nah, I’ll pick it up tomorrow. Thanks, Isla.”

The idea of a photograph had come to Matt out of fear and paranoia. If he had a photograph, he could at least stuff it under the nose of that sniffy psychologist, even though he knew she’d have something dubious to say about it. And yes, of course it was possible to stage a brief encounter moment with any old slapper willing to pose for a snap. But he would know. Every time he looked at it, he would know that she was real.

Matt turned and hurried back to Silvy. They stood under the brightly lit awning of the main A&E entrance, and once more he held her away, staring, grinning like an idiot as he turned and twirled her. Then he kissed her again and, making sure she had her back to Isla in the reception area, saw the flash go off before he closed his eyes to enjoy the kiss once more.

“You have nice lips, Mathew,” Silvy said when they broke off. It made Matt smile. She was always saying stuff like that. Little compliments that sounded off-kilter, as if she were surprised. As if it was all new to her.

“Okay,” Matt said. “Now what? I’ve got a million questions. We need to go somewhere where I can talk my bloody head off.”

“Where is your car?” Silvy asked.

“Totalled in the crash. Never got around to getting another one.”

“Totalled, yes. I am sorry.”

An awkward silence opened up between them, and it was Silvy who broke it. “So, we will get a taxi. I would like a steak. I hear the Carp does an excellent rib-eye.”

“Getting a bit late,” Matt said, glancing at his watch and then frowned. “How do you know the Carp?”

Silvy shrugged. “It is not my first time in this city.” Then she grinned and Matt found himself grinning, too. It was more than infectious; it was contagious. Fifteen minutes later, Matt stood at the bar of the Carp Inn, smiling with gratitude at the barmaid as she took his order for food. The kitchen had stopped taking orders ten minutes before, but she’d bought his story, which was that his girlfriend had flown in from abroad this evening and her plane had been late arriving and they were starving. Because it was a half-truth, Matt found he was able to sell it pretty well. At the bar, he kept looking around to make sure Silvy was still there.

She was, looking amazing in a short jean skirt, Ugg boots, and a low-cut T-shirt under a tight cardigan.

He leaned against the bar to quell his trembling, picked up the two pints of cider he’d ordered, and went back to her, sensing a big, stupid grin on his face, where there should have been hate and suspicion and ire. Those were the emotions he’d dreamed about hurling at her (along with several knives and an anvil) should they ever meet again. Of course, having been told by the psychologist that Silvy wasn’t real, the chances of that ever happening had been remote. Even so, it had given Matt huge vituperative pleasure to imagine it. Now that she was sitting here, however, all that bile had boiled away like so much steam. In fact, it was all he could do to stop himself from climbing up on the table and dancing a jig.

Through the window over Silvy’s shoulder, the world outside was going downhill. The wind had picked up, and people huddled against the plummeting temperature as they hurried to and from cars in the car park. Matt Danmor could have cared less. Inside it was warm, and his world, so banal and ugly not an hour before, was suddenly the best place in the universe to be. Silvy was sitting opposite him. Blonde, beautiful, smelling fantastic, and real. Matt’s brain gave another whoop. He wanted to shout it out. Scream the word at the top of his lungs.

Those lips, that hair, those legs, all real.

Four little letters that meant he wasn’t a lunatic. He took a healthy swallow of his drink and smacked his lips. Sod the Deluquel, he’d moved on to a real mood lifter—a pint of Old Rosie’s cider.

“So,” Matt said holding up his glass. “Here’s to you, Silvy. Back from the dead.”

A warm smile played over her lips. “You are so funny, Mathew.” She held her glass up and they clinked before she brought it up to her mouth and downed half the pint in three swallows.

“I can’t tell you how mind-blowingly amazing it is to see you again, but I have to ask—”

“Where have I been?” She finished his sentence, looking at him over the rim of the pint glass.

Matt smiled, despite himself.

Was this Silvy being frank, or—and this new thought floated out from behind a rock like a vicious moray eel—conniving and treacherous?

“Mathew,” Silvy said, her gaze steady, “I know that I have a lot of explaining to do. After the accident…well, I had to go away. When I came back, I started looking for you right away. You must believe that. But I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

“When you say you had to go away, where to? Did you run because you didn’t want anyone to find you? I mean, how did you get out of the car?”

He’d wondered about that, of course, like he’d wondered about every single second of his time with her. The “hiding from the authorities” theory had presented itself as a viable scenario, along with “alien abduction” and “figment of his imagination.” All equally valid as insane theories went.

Silvy shrugged. “I was thrown clear. Luck, I suppose.”

Luck? screamed a voice in Matt’s head. Did luck stop you coming to the hospital and finding me afterwards? Was it luck that made you completely untraceable on any bloody database in the country? The voice wanted him to be incandescently angry, but he couldn’t. Breathing in Silvy was like being dragged along to a Barry Manilow concert—despite a cast-iron determination to despise the whole thing, halfway through you found yourself singing along to “Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl,” and then before you could say “Oh Mandy,” it was too late and you were cheering like a good’un.

“So,” he asked, composing his thoughts, “was it something to do with not wanting to be found? I mean, are you here illegally?”

“Something like that,” Silvy said and swallowed some more cider before shifting over and snuggling up close. He caught another waft of that evocative perfume and drank it in while she spoke. “There is so much to talk about, I know. But all I have been thinking about is how it was before. Those few weeks we had together, I was so happy. Now that I have found you again, I want so much for us to be like we were before. For a short while. There will be time for explanations, I promise.”

“So, you want me to pretend like nothing has happened and pick up where we left off, is that right?” Matt asked, pulling back, unable to hide his incredulity.

“It is all I have been thinking about. I know what you must be feeling, but can we? For maybe half an hour, while we eat and drink. You and me. Please?”

She had a pleading look in her eyes. He’d seen that look before when he’d needed to get up for a lecture and she hadn’t wanted him to.

“Maybe I am insane,” Matt muttered.

Silvy smiled. “You haven’t changed.”

“Oh, yes I have. In all sorts of ways.”

“Please, Mathew. Later, I will tell you everything you want to know, I promise.”

Matt frowned. How bloody crazy was this, all of a sudden? He had every right to demand a blow-by-blow account of what happened that night, but on the other hand there was something weirdly appealing in remaining ignorant for a smidgen longer. He’d been in limbo for so many months, another half an hour would make bugger-all difference. Drinking Silvy in like this was like rediscovering a favourite wine after years of bad harvest. She was very pretty. And her perfume was bewitching.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s eat, drink, and be merry for half an hour. I reckon I deserve that, too.”

She smiled and and put her hand on his thigh under the table. “I have missed you so much.”

She obviously hadn’t changed. And if Matt needed further evidence, the way she laid into her steak five minutes later was proof positive. They laughed and joked and touched and drank, oblivious to all those around them while the pub gradually emptied. By eleven-thirty, they were full of food and more than a little drunk.

“Shall I ask them to ring for a taxi?” Matt asked.

“Yes, why not?” Silvy said.

“To where?” It was a question so loaded that it almost exploded in Matt’s brain.

“Yours?”

“Fine,” Matt said, trying to swallow and hoping he’d at least put his running gear in the laundry basket.

Silvy looped an arm in his. “Come on. Let’s go outside until the taxi comes. I think it has started snowing.”

There wasn’t much, only a fine dusting, but it seemed to please Silvy. It had turned very cold, and their breaths plumed like thick smoke as they clung to each other for warmth. The Carp had a terrace much frequented by students in the summer months, but this time of year the umbrellas were all furled and tied with rope, chairs upended on their tables. To Matt and Silvy’s right was the stone bridge carrying the road over the weir; to their left, a footbridge led to a river island housing a weather station.

“Let’s go onto the footbridge,” Silvy said. “I love looking at the white water coming over the weir.”

“They’ve probably locked the gate,” Matt called after her as she hurried down to where the footbridge began.

“Open,” she sang back, and he watched as she walked out over the water. Matt went after her, but hesitated before taking that first step onto the bridge. Was it only this morning that he’d had an absence attack that had left him confused and depressed? This morning after work that he’d toyed with the idea of cycling up here to feed his despondency? He shook his head in disbelief. Here he was, at that very spot, walking onto it in a moment of fun and contentment, as far removed from the dark dejection of a dozen or so hours ago as it was possible to be.

Yet an echo of that feeling brushed over him, as unpleasant as a hanging cobweb kissing his cheek. He’d walked alone onto this bridge many times. Walked and stood, watching the weir, imagining himself in the water, feeling its surge, his body twisting and rolling, his mouth spluttering, instantly disoriented as the power of it churned about him. So many times he’d imagined that last second of giving up the fight and inhaling and choking. He looked up. A half-moon emerged from behind the scudding clouds and lit up the edge of the cloudbank like a silver ribbon. And there on the bridge stood Silvy, smiling at him.

“Come on, Mathew. Don’t be such a baby.”

He placed one foot on the footbridge. Something wet caressed his cheek. He looked up and was greeted by fresh snow coming down with a vengeance. With it came a strange and deathly hush. Even the noise of the late leavers from the pub diminished to a distant jangle of dampened laughter and jeers. Silvy stood watching him, patient and unflustered by the snow. Still the half-moon beamed its cold light onto her hair. It was breathtaking and magical as she held out her hand to him. He stepped forward and her long, cool fingers intertwined with his. She slid her free hand beneath his coat and felt through his T-shirt for the pendant.

“You still wear it,” she whispered.

“Always,” he replied.

“Promise me you will,” she said, and kissed him again. But this one was oddly chaste, starkly different from the passion-filled hunger of before. He leaned forward to respond with a little more interest, but she turned away to look at the river and the water boiling through the weir gates.

“I know this place quite well,” Matt said. “I come up here, sometimes. Since the accident, that is. I love it when it’s like this after the rain. In full flood.”

The snow fell thick and fast now, blurring the pub lights and turning people into fuzzy shapes.

“I used to wonder what it would be like in the water. Helpless, giving up to the force of it.” Matt glanced at her, but she kept her eyes on the weir. “You probably think I’m a coward. It’s a coward’s way out, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” she asked, the words soft, her eyes flint.

It was a stepping-off-the-escalator-with-your-eyes-shut moment for Matt. His brain was flying along in half-pissed contentment, but Silvy’s words required more than a bit of clear thinking if they were to make any sense.

“What do you mean?” he asked. The wind had picked up, swirling the snow about them. Matt pulled his coat tighter.

“After the accident, remember I told you I went somewhere?” Silvy said.

“Yeah.”

The wind was now howling.

“I died, Matt. After I pulled the wheel and we hit that tree, I died. But you survived. That wasn’t what was meant to happen.”

The steak and cider churned in Matt’s stomach with a sickly swoop. “What do you mean?”

“My injuries were horrific. A broken neck, ruptured internal organs. But, for me,” she smiled a smile of terrible calmness, “dying isn’t that bad.”

“Dying isn’t that bad? Who are you? Miss Blonde Zombie 2014?” Yeah, that was it. Try turning it into a laugh. That usually worked. But no one was laughing here. Not this time. He had to shout now to be heard above the squal. “Come on, hitting your thumb with a bloody hammer isn’t that bad. But dying is…well, it’s dying. What could be worse than that?”

She turned her eyes towards him. They were silver. Odd that, because there wasn’t any moonlight anymore. “Believe me, there are many things worse than dying, Mathew.”

He was going to ask, “Like what?” but something caught his attention on the island side of the footbridge. It wasn’t easy to see through the snow but, yes, there were people there. Small people dressed in robes. They looked a lot like a children’s choir. And then he realised that he couldn’t hear any sounds from the Carp anymore; they were drowned out by a strange roaring noise coming from behind the stone bridge on the far side of the weir.

A bucket full of ice spilled into his gut and he shivered violently. “Right, this is getting way too weird. What’s going on, Silvy?”

“When I died, someone fixed it for me to come back.”

“Big bloke with a scythe and a white horse?”

Silvy didn’t so much as smile. “When you come back, you will be so much stronger. Like me. We can be together for always, Mathew. All you have to do is jump.”

Matt looked behind him. There were now more “children” on his end of the footbridge as well. He peered at them through the whirling, driving flakes. They looked at him with unblinking eyes. All with identical, fresh-faced stares like a bunch of disturbing Russian dolls. That was worrying. Beneath him, something was happening to the river. The level appeared to be falling. That was even more worrying. Then something Silvy had said earlier suddenly rang a very large alarm bell inside his head, too.

“Hang on, did you say, ‘after I pulled the wheel and we hit the tree’ before?”

“Yes.”

A simple word, “yes.” Simple, but loaded with oh, so much terrifying meaning. And as Matt stared at her in disbelief, he saw something move behind her eyes. Something restless and unsavoury which turned the ice in his gut into a glacier. Matt took a step back, but his brain was having a bit of trouble assimilating the whole package. An involuntary laugh escaped from where it cowered deep in his throat. It was meant as a “good one, Silvy; now let’s go home to bed” type laugh. Instead, it rushed out as a shrill warble of fear.

“It is time, Mathew,” Silvy said and stepped back. At least that was what Matt’s brain wanted to believe, because admitting to what actually happened was grounds for sectioning. Silvy began drifting back, at a rate of knots, about a foot off the ground, still with that sad little wistful smile on her lips. One second she was next to him, the next she was standing amongst the choirboys of St. Clone’s on the far side of the footbridge. At the same time, the roar from the other side of the weir doubled in volume. Beneath him, the river had dwindled to a trickle. Where the hell was all that water?

The answer came, thirty feet tall, over the stone bridge—a frothing white wall of it twenty-five yards away and coming fast. He looked at Silvy and saw her smile tilt upwards to the sky as she and the choir opened their mouths and screamed (or was it wailed?) like banshees. Lots of things were happening in Matt’s brain at once. Panic and terror, but most of all anger.

Silvy.

Too-good-to-be-true. Bloody Silvy.

He should have known. Should have realised that someone like her was never going to bother with him unless there was a very good—or very bad—reason. Too good to be true, too beautiful to be real. And here he was on a footbridge in the snow with a Thames tsunami heading his way. By any stretch of the imagination, that added up to deep doo-doo. But Silvy? Not an English language student at all, then. That meant one very important thing as far as Matt was concerned.

Every single crap incident in the last year was her fault.

He wanted to hurl abuse at her. Wished he had those knives and the anvil. But all he could think of was her pendant. He reached for it, bundled it in his hand and drew back to throw it as the water struck. He thought he heard the tone of the godawful noise they were making on the bank change. He didn’t speak whatever language it was, but if he were a betting man, he would have put money on the fact that it changed with that one note from triumph to despair.

Then the cold fury of the wave broke over him and the handrail in front of him snapped off with a crack. It buried itself in his midriff. His feet left the footbridge, lifted bodily by the power of tons of water as it drove onwards. There was a bend in the river ten yards behind. The bank, he remembered, was dotted with huge sycamores. He expected to tumble down the far side of the wave at any moment, head-first into a churning brown mass, and be dragged under to join the grasping roots and bits of old bike that conspired to tear his flesh and trap his limbs. But the handrail kept pushing him back, keeping him high on the crest. He went ten, twenty, thirty yards backwards and the wave kept growing. He could look down, see the river and the bank, even the Carp with its lights still burning as the water swept by.

Maybe he should have screamed, but there was too much frothy water spraying into his face as the wave finally peaked. He hovered thirty feet above the river proper now, and he could feel the power beginning to diminish. Any second the thing was going to curl over, come crashing down, and bring him with it. He closed his eyes and flailed his legs. He began to feel the weight transfer, the momentum changing from a force pushing back to a tilting fall as gravity kicked in. He reached the apex, his back arching, ready to plummet. Matt had air enough in his lungs for one last yell.

“Silvy, you BITCH!”

Thump!

His back crunched against something solid. And then the water wasn’t lifting him or pushing him or sucking him down anymore. In fact, there wasn’t any water at all. The pressure on Matt’s back eased and he fell forward onto the fifteen-foot length of handrail still wedged under his armpits, but even more wedged now in something solid, high above the riverbed. Below him, the water roared past like a charging beast. And then, there was only river. A thick, oily, silent slick in full flood. Like it had been five minutes before. Matt swayed—or rather, the handrail swayed—while his legs swung in the air like a clown on a trapeze.

He risked a look behind and felt for whatever it was he’d thumped into. The snow stopped falling to allow the moon to slide out and shed its light on the mayhem. He was up a tree. Specifically, one of the huge sycamores overhanging the river, with the handrail wedged firmly in its branches. Matt pushed himself back on trembling arms to collapse in the elbow of one of the tree boles. He lay there panting, his limbs shaking from a shuddering mix of cold and adrenaline.

Not dead, he thought.

Not bloody dead. And from somewhere inside his head, a little voice said, Now, what are the chances of that?

Okay, he was wet and he was cold, but most of all, he was NOT dead.

Matt laughed out loud.

Below, on the remains of the footbridge, he thought he could see something in the vague shape of Silvy disappearing into a shimmering bit of air. Odd, but bearing in mind what had gone before, not unexpected. From the direction of the Carp, he could hear screams and shouts as people emerged to look at what was left of the weir and the footbridge, and realise that the pub had miraculously avoided a very wet end. Matt considered yelling for help, but then thought about trying to explain why he had decided to do an impression of a colobus monkey on this of all nights, and thought better of it.

Instead, still shivering badly, he scrambled down the tree in the semi-darkness. The first twenty feet or so were easy, but then the trunk thickened, so that near the bottom he was forced to hang from a low branch and dangle. Matt fell, bent his knees and rolled. He sat up, checked himself for sprains or breaks, found none, and began walking. He stayed on the dark side of the Carp and passed two fire engines, an ambulance, three police cars, and the beginning of a milling crowd set on enjoying a bit of a disaster. He could have rung for a taxi, but he was still sopping wet, so he jogged to keep warm. It freed his mind to think about what had just happened, and boy, was that an uncomfortable process.

Silvy was real, because other people had seen her. Of that there was no doubt. Roberro, the prat, had even touched her. So, tick the “real” box in red ink. But a real what? That was the six-million-euro question. Matt headed back towards town, thinking of what had happened on the bridge. Thinking of the moment when there had been a transformation from Silvy the meat-loving sex goddess into Silvy the evil Snow-White twin, complete with an entourage of (at least 7) vertically challenged…things. And “things” was exactly the correct improper noun because, when they’d howled at the sky, they had neither sounded like nor looked like anything human he’d ever seen.

Matt got to the top of the Woodstock Road and, despite bouts of severe shivering, kept going. The weather had driven everyone indoors. He was miles from his flat, but it didn’t matter. His brain, Deluquel-free at last and sober from the river dousing, was trying to get a handle on things now that it had some new data.

Ok, so Silvy was real-ish. But hadn’t she said she’d come back from the dead? Matt listened to the arguments raging inside his skull and heard his head throw them all out as insane. But there was no denying the evidence of his own eyes and ears, not to mention the evidence of his sopping-wet clothes. During his cosy little evening out with back-from-the-dead Silvy, he’d strayed off the path of the here and now into a there and then which was not the world as he knew it. She’d admitted to causing the crash, for crying out loud. Not only that, she’d tried to kill him all over again, hadn’t she?

The MO of this most recent murder attempt was the most difficult thing to take on board. A knife to the heart, okay. A brick to the back of the head, possibly. But a thirty-foot freshwater tsunami was unconventional, to say the least. So unconventional that, whenever Matt’s brain got to that bit, it stalled and sent him off in search of something he could cope with. But no matter how hard he tried, there was nowhere else to go, and he found himself trotting through the white, silent streets a bit quicker, with regular over-the-shoulder glances to see if any very small people wearing calf-length hoodies were following him.

By the time he reached the General, the snow had come back with a vengeance, lying an inch thick on the ground. Matt retrieved his bike and stuck his head down against the wind. He made it back to the flat through a deserted Oxford in twenty minutes, but was seriously cold when he got there. He got in, drew the blinds, stripped off and promised never to slag off the storage heaters ever again as he hunched intimately up against one in an extremely ungainly pose. When the circulation had returned to his hands and feet, he put on some old joggers and made a mug of tea, drank it scalding hot, made another one, and waited while his limbs slowed from a shake to a quiver as he sat on the sofa, analyzing how lucky he had been.

Lucky.

Not a word Matt had associated with himself for quite some time now. That was the biggest problem of all, as far as believability went. For the last fourteen months, Matt had been a klutz—Captain Ahab’s Jonah, to quote Linda Marsh. Tonight, though, Matt had won the euro-lottery-rollover-mega-bingo top prize and cheated death. That did not compute.

Matt was still pondering that incongruity when he finally stopped shivering, yawned, and then yawned again. Exhaustion and its sneaky little friend shock were knocking at his mental door. Bed beckoned. Matt took the hint. He upended his cup in the sink and, as he did so, his eyes fell on a thin worm of brown leather attached to an encircled golden cross, sitting next to the drainer.

Silvy’s pendant.

Somehow, it had still been wrapped around his forearm and wrist as he’d reached to fill the kettle. He’d used trembling, numb fingers to disentangle it and had forgotten all about it until now. He picked it up and studied it. The clasp on the necklace had broken, and the link holding the pendant to the leather gaped. Unbelievable to think that the thing hadn’t been lost altogether in the water, let alone remained wrapped around his arm.

Matt stared at it. It was the one thing that Silvy had given him—not counting her body and two attempts on his life. The bin, overflowing as usual, beckoned at his feet. He dangled the pendant over it. There was a space between the newly discarded tea bags and the congealed remains of a plate of macaroni cheese, but he hesitated. The pendant had become as much a part of him as the small mole on his left buttock, and his bigger left ear. There was a jeweller in the shopping centre in Headington. He could get it fixed there. He might never wear it again, but at least it would be in one piece. And it had a lot more significance now that Silvy had solidified into something more than a lump of undigested, gristle-induced imagination.

Matt yawned so wide, he almost dislocated his jaw. He stumbled into bed. It felt warm and welcoming and he fell asleep immediately. Within an hour, and for the first time in many months, he was dreaming Deluquel-free dreams. After months of sanitized, tranquillised sleep, they came thick and fast, and began with the main feature.

Silvy.

A collage of Silvy laughing, munching on raw steak, naked in his bed. It was pleasant, non-threatening, until the scene in the car happened along. It was blue, a humble little Fiat Bravo called Spike, with two occupants: Matt and Silvy. “Monster” boomed out of the speakers, Silvy singing along to it, happy, legs crossed in the passenger seat next to Matt. It was night; the towel they’d used to lie down on in the dunes was still covered with sand on the back seat. There was no traffic.

“Thanks for a lovely day, Mathew,” Silvy said and kissed his cheek.

“It was a pleasure,” he said. “Really was.”

“I wish it could go on forever.” She stretched back, and her breasts pushed forward against her T-shirt in a way that made it a very big struggle for Matt to keep his eyes on the road.

“Nothing lasts forever,” Matt said. He could feel the sloppy grin on his face.

“No. And I am sorry.”

“What for? That things don’t last forever?”

“No,” Silvy said. “For this.”

It was a classic schlock-horror moment. Hysterical, if it hadn’t been so horrific. Two people in a car on a quiet country road. One turns away, and on turning back has a face like something from a crack-fuelled nightmare. Except Silvy didn’t do the melodrama. She didn’t turn away. She sat there while Matt checked his mirrors, before turning to her for an explanation.

“Sorry for wha…AAARGHJESUS.”

It was a “meeting Linda Marsh for the first time on acid” moment. Silvy wasn’t Silvy any more. Her blonde hair had disappeared, and in its place was a moving, weaving corn-row of red snakes. Hungry, ice-blue eyes with vertical black slits for pupils. Her skin was alabaster and almost transparent, her mouth lined with needle teeth.

Matt’s scalp contracted in terror. His body, meanwhile, didn’t simply flinch; it tried to jump backwards out of the car and would have succeeded but for the seat belt and the door. Matt let go of the wheel, every sinew in his body desperate for escape. He watched the thing put out a claw—there were just the two fingers—and grab the wheel in a convulsive jerk as it turned its grinning face to the sky and howled.

Matt woke with a sweaty start, panting, feeling like he was in a very bad B movie. He got up and drank some water from the sink in the bathroom. The clock read 3:33. He could feel his heart racing as his mind did its usual bout of rationalizations. Was this a nightmare, or a delayed recollection of actual events? Matt closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. He really did not want to know the answer to that one.

Which only left the problem of getting back to sleep. He’d read somewhere that you needed dreams to prepare you for the trials and tribulations of everyday life. You were unlikely to face the monsters of your imagination in actuality, but in case you did, your subconscious had already done an am-dram production of it so that there was a subliminal script filed away ready for immediate access in your amygdala. Some people said you could control your dreams, train yourself to become lucid while you drifted through REM sleep—or the more vivid non-REM variety. That was all well and good, but the thought of being lucid with Silvy doing her Gorgon act didn’t fill him with enthusiasm.

So Matt thought of drifting on a boat on a nice blue sea, sun above, coral shallows below, bobbing along with a warm breeze in his hair. Pretty soon, he’d gone off again. But there were more dreams waiting to ambush him. No more of Silvy; she’d gone back into her box for the night.

No, these were just weird.

It was morning and he was on another footbridge. Not the one at the Carp, but he knew it well enough. This one crossed the canal in Jericho within sight of St. Barnabus’s. He wasn’t alone. There were two people next to him. His legs didn’t seem to have any bones, and his eyes wouldn’t open. He could hear and smell, though. His two companions struggled to support his jelly form. One smelled of pine needles, along with something more exotic. The other smelled of fried bacon and wheezed quite a lot.

“We need to get him to the other side,” said Pine Needles.

“Do we really?” puffed Bacon. “Can’t we leave him here? I mean, he can see his velocycle.”

“It’s called a bicycle, and no, we can’t. It’s only a few more yards. And we need to hurry up. I think he’s already beginning to come around.”

“Oh, all right. All I can say is that this is doing my lumbago no good at all. I shall have to have some of those marvellous little buttons…what are they called, again?”

“Aspirin. They’re called aspirin. And I don’t like you using so much of their stuff, you know that. Why don’t you ask Mrs. Hoblip to cook up a toad-bile poultice?”

“Ah yes, Mrs. Hoblip’s lumbago poultice. That panacea for so many ills, and the cause of a great many more, unfortunately. You seem to have conveniently forgotten the last time. The look on that plastic surgeon’s face is one that is burned onto my retinas. And skin grafts are no fun, either, I can tell you. Really, Kylah, I’m surprised at you.”

“All right, all right, I’ll get you some aspirin. Now, Let’s do this, please? Ready?”

Matt felt his feet dragging on the wooden walkway. Felt himself leaning against the bike, and then woke up in his own bed wondering who the hell Kylah was, and why that name “Mrs. Hoblip” rang so many bells.