Fear and Folly Read online

  But she did not respond. Instead, she took a step forward, then another, almost gliding as her dress rode smoothly and cleanly across the uneven ground between us.

  I was mesmerised by her silent movement. When I looked up again, I saw something which I had not noticed earlier. The veil which she wore was made of an unusual material, too shiny and taut to be lace, and almost as closely-woven as netting. Its design was likewise strange, as if radiating from the centre.

  Then I noticed the small dark objects which were arrayed along parts of the fabric. I was sure that they were moving, as if struggling against the veil, trying to release themselves.

  She could only have been a few metres away from me when she again inhaled in a peculiar manner. As I watched in shock, there was movement behind the veil, as if she was craning her entire face forward. Then, without warning, she issued a strange sucking sound and the veil with its small dark crawling beads was drawn slowly inward from the centre, down into her face – a face which did not seem to be remotely human but appeared to have appendages moving independently of each other. A face which was the stuff of nightmares.

  After a few horrible seconds, the veil was released from her mouth and I noticed that the dark objects which had beaded the fabric, which had seemed to struggle to escape, had now all vanished.

  I do not know whether I screamed or shook or merely looked on in utter terror.

  My next memory was of hurtling down the lane to the village, my cottage already far behind me. I have no recollection of running down the hill through the woods, although the scratches and bruises which I later discovered on my arms and legs suggest that not one branch remained unbroken after my crazed descent.

  I did not cease running until I had shoved open the door of the village tavern and hurled myself to a halt against the bar. I must have been a sight to those within but there were no jibes at my expense, no queries about my bloodshot eyes and pallid cheeks, nor even any jokes about bugganes and glashtyns and fairies. Their eyes merely looked upon me with practised pity.

  Hours must have passed, I do not recall, although I remember that a number of empty pint glasses had accumulated in front of me. The constable had been summoned not long after last drinks had been called and he did me the great favour of accompanying me through the dark of night and locking me up in a holding cell, where I was safe from everything except the deranged images which repeated themselves incessantly before my mind’s eye.

  I never set foot in Balladoo again. I moved back to London the very next day and arranged for all my possessions to be shipped out to me. I work in the city now. Yet even there I do not feel completely safe. Whenever I pass a wedding party gathered upon church steps, despite all the frenetic fanfare, despite the bustle of hurrying humanity around us, I look upon the bride with nothing but fear.

  YAWN

  A story has to be really good to hold my attention. Otherwise, after just a few pages, my eyes narrow, my mouth widens. Especially at night, in bed, where a yawn will force its way between my lips like a zombie’s kiss and put me into a death-like sleep.

  They say the best place to read is outdoors. Find a clearing in the woods on a sunlit day. Seek shade in the embrace of an oak or sycamore. Lean back against its sturdy trunk. All well and good but the last thing I want to do then is read a book. I want to breathe in the magic of nature. Listen to the orchestra of birdsong and leafstir. Watch the dance of damselflies and dandelion spores. Feel the caress of a carefree breeze.

  Pity I’m stuck here in a lecture theatre, my soul shrivelling beneath a monotonous voice and four flickering fluorescent lights.

  I yawn.

  As soon as I get out, it’s off to the library. Another yawn-inducing place. I shuffle into a free seat, place my textbooks down, then my head hits the desk. I dream of being outside, beneath a tree, the dancing damselfly now a damsel. Before I know it, the sun is threading chevrons on the parade of hills outside the library. Tired and hungry, I slouch my way to the bus-stop. The minutes pass slowly, punctuated by more yawns. Finally the bus appears. The driver peers at me with tired eyes. I sit halfway along and notice a girl in front of me crane her neck and yawn. Before I know it I join her to honour the myth of contagion.

  I sleep well that night, soothed by my recurring dream of love beneath a bower, but at dawn I wake up yawning. I don’t feel tired at all yet I struggle through the morning. When it’s time to head to university, I find that I’m moving sluggishly down the steps and to the bus-stop. I wait. A single, thin, leafless tree cowers outside the shelter, as grey as the concrete ghetto around us.

  The bus is late.

  I wait and yawn.

  It’s so late that it must have come early. As I look up the road, considering whether or not to return home, I notice that the traffic is lighter than usual. Hardly any cars pass by. I assume there’s been an accident further along and that’s what’s holding everyone up, including my bus. So I continue to wait.

  Each minute heralds another gaping of my jaws. And they aren’t normal yawns. It feels like I’m struggling for breath rather than struggling to stay awake. It’s as if a thick grey quilt has been laid down over the sky and I’m suffocating beneath it. The thought makes me claustrophobic, even out here in the open. It occurs to me that, as young as I am, I might be in the middle of a heart attack. Or just a panic attack. But what do I have to panic about, except a late assignment? Whatever the case, I quiet my thoughts and decide to head back home. The next bus is due in forty minutes. Enough time to just relax for a while and get my breath back.

  It’s not easy walking back, particularly up the flights of stairs. My lungs are wheezing, my legs feel heavy. At the threshold, a small hallway window allows a perfect view down the main road as it runs toward the city centre, the direction which my bus should have come from. And I can see it from this height. It’s sitting stalled by the side of the road. I look at it, straining to find a shape behind the window. As I watch, a figure steps from the bus onto the sidewalk. It’s dressed like the driver but as soon as it emerges it drops to the ground like a discarded marionette. Even at this distance, I flinch as the driver’s face hits the cement. I continue to stare but he doesn’t move.

  With great effort, I drag myself inside and phone emergency services but the call isn’t answered. Nothing seems to surprise me anymore. Perhaps there is some major disaster in progress. Something in the air. Could it be nuclear radiation from a missile or meltdown? The idea is horrific yet sadly entirely possible, but I’ve felt no shockwaves or heat. I don’t feel nauseous. I’m just yawning compulsively.

  Darkness slips over me and I wake up sprawled like a squashed spider across the kitchen table, my body caught in a web of pain.

  I draw myself up with difficulty and yawn until I feel like my lower jaw is going to dislocate. I take my bag, step outside and peer around. The silence and desolation is profound. Nothing stirs. Then I hear something. Footsteps below me. A figure appears, jogging along the footpath. He’s breathing deeply, almost gagging as if he’s asthmatic.

  “Hey,” I shout. “What’s going on?”

  The figure stops, hands running down to knees, tears running down haggard cheeks. He can only gasp from beneath tortured eyes.

  I find energy from somewhere and leap downstairs.

  “No air,” he says with difficulty. “Got to get away. Somewhere. Where there’s air.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say. “All this. All these people. Are you saying they’ve all been asphyx-?” The word makes me cough. “Where’s the air gone?”

  “All used up. Just CO2 now.”

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I say, but part of me knows that it’s true. It’s the only explanation. The sky is becoming a vacuum for humanity, for all life. I scratch at my throat as I feel it tighten further. I yawn again but there’s nothing there to inhale. It’s like my mouth has been stopped with cement.

  “OK. If I believe you, then … then how did this happen?”

  The ma
n is struggling, his face is pale.

  “Pollution. No trees, man. Look around you. We’ve cut them all down. Re … replaced them with concrete. Created a pock … pocket of death.”

  I shiver.

  “Like a giant plastic bag pulled over our heads.”

  He nods and I think he laughs but it comes out as a horrible, rasping sound. Suddenly he collapses in convulsions.

  “Go,” he gasps. “Get out.”

  I place a hand on his shoulder, unsure what to do. Should I just leave him here? And where can I go? How big can this airless pocket be? It could be miles across or it could cover the entire world.

  I’m so tired and my thoughts are so chaotic that I feel like just lying down and dying right there on the footpath. But although my lungs are running on empty, there’s still fight in my mind and hope in my heart.

  The man at my feet is still. Only my own gasping grates against the silence.

  “Sorry,” I say and get back to my feet.

  My thoughts are in chaos. Chaos. A Greek word. Literally a yawning. A gaping gap in the order of things. I’d only just learnt this the other day. My lecturer would be proud, although I may never have the chance to tell him seeing as I might fall dead in the next few minutes.

  Trees are the answer. They’re the canaries in this coalmine. If I can find a place where they’re still healthy, still green, then I should be safe. I remember the large tree which stands at the end of the road, a stately old oak, and look in that direction. It stands naked, not a shred of colour on its boughs. Dead leaves carpet its base. Where there was grass, where lawns and bushes once bejewelled the city with their emerald lushness, now there are only withered, barren plots, as yellow as old paper.

  I fall into the grip of another great yawn, one that seems to go on forever as I struggle to find oxygen in the vacuum. The city centre’s a dead zone. My best option is the extensive network of parkland to the east. It’s only a kilometre away but in my condition that’s a marathon.

  I start walking, each step painful. I ration my breaths, trying to keep my heartrate as low as possible, trying to feed my lungs on the smallest of inhalations. Somehow I find myself near the park. What was once an oasis of greenery is now draped with the ash-grey pall of death. Leaves that would usually take weeks to blanch curl up and go pale before my eyes. I increase my stride to outpace the hand of death. There’s no movement in the air, no other living being near me, and yet leaves crackle and curl all around me as quickly as if some unseen hand is crushing them. I rush on past them but the strange noises follow me. They sound like an army of skeletons marching behind me, their bones creaking and clattering.

  Something catches my eye up ahead. There are many trees below me, sloping down to the riverbank. They are still green. But it is what I see between them which spurs me on and injects me with hope. A building made of glass.

  I almost fall as I surge down the slope, running as air flows back into my lungs. There is a greenhouse at the foot of the hill. I run till I find the door. Buoyed with hope, it takes me a few moments to realise that several of the panes are shattered. The greenhouse is useless as a refuge. Then I notice several more parallel to the river and I run from one to the next but each is damaged in some way. They’re all tombs waiting for death to creep into them. I feel like I’m submerged deep beneath the ocean’s surface and my scuba tank has a hole in it. Hope streams out at a furious rate and I realise that this is it. This is the end.

  Suddenly I sense movement. A hand slides under my arm, tries to lift me. I’m half-carried, half-dragged over to the last greenhouse in the row. There are voices around me, all melding into one until I’m somehow able to raise myself to my feet.

  The person nearest me, still supporting me, is gazing intently into my eyes.

  “This one’s still intact,” they’re saying. “Still intact.”

  At first I think they’re talking about me, but they mean the greenhouse. It’s enough to pull me back from the brink.

  “Well?” I stumble to the door and pull the handle, yank it, wrench it. Nothing.

  “We don’t have the key,” the voice says.

  In my confusion bordering on delirium, I pull my arm back, ready to fling my fist through the door. Thank God I’m too weak.

  “There must be a key,” the voice continues. Other voices chime in but it’s all a blur.

  “Where’s the office for this place?” I ask. “It’ll be there. Probably in one of the nearest ones. Break the doors and windows. Just find that damn key.” Hope refills my spirit. “And bring anything else of use. Food and water. Hurry, dammit!”

  I give in to fatigue, slump down by the greenhouse door. I close my eyes. My lungs are tightening again. They feel like they’re the size of walnuts. Over the barking of urgent voices, I hear the crackle of advancing death. Then everything goes black.

  When I come to, I am bathed in sweat. The air is warm and humid. But there is air! I suck in deep breaths and my lungs expand. A water bottle appears in my hand and I gulp down thirstily. Smiling faces surround me. A profusion of tropical greenery surrounds us all.

  “Wow!” I say. What else is there to say at a moment like this? “Thank you!” I look around. “How many of you are there?”

  “Only about half a dozen,” says a girl next to me, dark rings etched beneath her eyes. “Who knows how many are out there.”

  We sit in silence for a while. The knuckle-crack of approaching death can be heard faintly outside, stalking us, but we can’t see much. The panes of the greenhouse are semi-opaque and it’s beginning to grow dark. I feel my jaw, which is sore to the touch, but I have no inclination to yawn. Instead I feel revitalised, re-energised.

  “We have to do something,” I say. “We’re safe here but there are others out there who need our help. We can’t sit here and let them die.”

  Silence follows. I can’t blame them. I may as well ask astronauts to walk on the moon without a space suit. And there are other things left unsaid. Murmurings. I know because I am thinking them, too. Such as how long this one greenhouse can support us. And how each extra person we let in will reduce our survival time. Will that even matter? Will the world outside these glass walls recover quickly, if ever, or are we doomed to starve in here rather than suffocate out there?

  I push all of these questions to the back of my mind. The best way to help myself is to help others. I rummage through items on a series of shelves at the back of the greenhouse, grabbing a pack full of large zipper storage bags, and two lengths of hose. The others stay slouched on the ground but watch me with interest. I swing each open bag through the air before quickly zipping it shut, then place all but one in my backpack.

  “I’m not sure how much air is in these bags,” I say, “but I hope to be back in half an hour.”

  The others stare at me apathetically.

  “Put aside some food,” I add. “Enough for two.”

  I step outside, closing the door behind me as quickly as possible. Instantly my lungs strain for breath. I’ve fed one end of a hose into a bag, keeping my fingers tight around the entrance to avoid air loss. I place the other end in my mouth. It’s a terrible breathing apparatus but it’s all I have. Darkness has fallen but the lights have come on all around the park. I wonder how long this automation will last, now that there are no people to operate the system, to operate anything. I shudder but march on. I wouldn’t be out here searching for survivors if I didn’t believe that I would find some.

  The city is a lost cause so I head in the opposite direction, following the winding river through the southern suburbs. Everything is eerily silent. No barking dogs, no cooing doves. The birds are probably the most fortunate as they can fly to escape but I soon see their tiny corpses here and there, proving how quickly this vacuum was created, and how vast it must be. Larger bodies appear here and there. I don’t need to get close to them to know that they’re beyond help. But after fifteen minutes I see a face peering out from a window. It moves slightly. I point at th
e door. It feels like an eternity and I cast my air-bag aside, pulling a second one from my backpack. I hear a horrid sound like a saw cutting through wood and eventually the door opens. A hunched figure is outlined by the light of a lamp. I pass an air-bag and a spare hose to them, pointing at my own.

  “Quick,” I say between breaths. “Take this and do as I do.”

  I step inside and shut the door behind me. No house is air-tight but there’s still a little bit of oxygen available. While the resident, a middle-aged lady, slowly recovers, adjusting to the makeshift breathing apparatus, I find the kitchen and toss cans and bottles into my backpack, as well as a can-opener, then run back.

  “Follow me,” I explain. “I know somewhere we can shelter.”

  She nods and I lead her by the hand. The return journey seems to take twice as long but we make it back to the greenhouse as our last air-bags fall empty. I knock on the door, then pound harder, but no one comes to let us in.

  My lungs are beginning to ache again and the lady is struggling, her eyes wide with fear and betrayal.

  There are small stones lying to one side. The desire is there to hurl them at the door. Nothing’s too twisted when death is at hand. The air in my bag has been used up. I feel faint but use my last ounce of strength to keep the lady standing steady by my side.

  Suddenly there’s a face at the door, obscured, distorted. All I can see is that it’s shaking from side to side. I’d cry, I’d rage if I had the energy. Blackness is sweeping down on me when the door opens. I fall in.

  A cool breeze wakes me. I open my eyes and feel like I’m in paradise. A large fern frond is being fanned in front of me, a pair of smiling eyes hover above it. They belong to the girl I’d met earlier.

  “Thank you,” I say. “That almost makes up for leaving me out there.”

  She averts her eyes.

  “We were arguing,” she says. “Some of us don’t want more people here.” She pauses. “Not me, of course.”