“OK. Where are you?”
She gave him the street name and the nearest house number.
“Thank you. Stay calm, people are on their way.”
“OK.” Ending the call, she turned to the dog. “Shall we practise?” Frank leant against Caty’s legs as she reached out with her mind, and willed herself to become visible. She felt something change in her, as if she suddenly weighed more, or as if her veins had been filled with molten lead – but without the high temperature. Instead, she felt oddly cool.
“Whoa!” said Frank, in a stunned tone.
“I know.” Caty’s voice sounded high and girly; she coughed and lowered it. “That felt weird!”
“No, not that. Some of your thoughts...” Frank tailed off, smirking up both sides of his long, doggy nose. Caty smacked him playfully, while blushing furiously at the idea of what he might have heard.
There was a long, slightly awkward silence of at least a minute. Frank got to his hind feet and sighed in such a human manner that Caty gave a start, expecting to see a middle-aged man but instead seeing a dog. He took in a big breath, clearly about to say something, when Caty had a sudden, unnerving thought.
“That man in your...”
“The policeman!”
“What?” asked Frank, looking half-annoyed and half-relieved at her interruption.
“When I spoke to the emergency line, he could hear me. He spoke to me. But I wasn’t speaking through you, was I?”
Frank thought about this for a moment. “No,” he said slowly, his bushy, whiskery brows clenching. “No you weren’t. How odd. I thought you could only communicate through animals?”
“I did.” Caty frowned too. Would any of this ever make sense?
“Caty...” Frank had turned around, facing the opposite direction to Caty and he sounded worried. She spun around, and saw what Frank was seeing – and it made her blood run ice cold.
Three figures, all in white gowns specked with dark shapes, were stood on the other side of the rusted metal fence, just a few hundred yards away. They did not move. A breeze suddenly picked up, rustling through the damp trees and making the grass dance; the rippling made the meadow look like an ocean, a vast expanse of water. And she was stuck, stranded in the middle of it. The analogy was close enough, thought Caty, as Frank rested his paw on her elbow. She was stranded, all right.
Axelander, the oddity in the middle, met her gaze and she gazed evenly back. He would know, of course. He knew. That was why he did nothing: he was waiting.
Sure enough, a few seconds later she heard the rising and falling whine of sirens; still far away, but coming closer all the time.
Barely any time passed before blue flashing lights were travelling down the nearest street, and coming to a halt but the gate into the playground that, to the five uniformed officers, was deserted – apart from one curly, fuzzy, dark haired mongrel dog... that was standing on its hind legs.
“What in the name of...” stammered the first.
His colleagues quickly stepped up beside him. Their eyes widened as one, and they all stammered phrases of amazement and disbelief.
Caty took in a deep breath, preparing to speak through Frank.
“Don’t do what you’re about to do,” said Axelander.
Exhaling in a furious gush, Caty whipped around and glared at him. “Try and stop me!”
“Who’s that?”
“Who said that?”
“Otherwise,” said Axelander, perfectly calmly, “Jason’s condition might just prove fatal.”
She froze. “Jason?” she gasped. “What condition?”
“There’s nobody here!”
“But I can hear people talking!”
“He is... ah... ailing.”
“I’m calling for backup.”
“For what? Ghosts?!”
“What’s wrong with him?” demanded Caty furiously, thinking of Jason and forgetting everything else. “What have you done to him?”
“This is weird!”
“We have done nothing. He has brought this on himself.”
Caty laughed harshly at the thought of that ever being possible.
“Oh God, oh God!”
“It’s like a horror film!”
“Who’s there?!”
Suddenly, the jumble of voices made sense. While being invisible to the now quite terrified police officers, they had heard the whole interaction between Axelander and Caty. Now it was more important than ever that she made herself visible and explained – as best she could – to the officers, and get herself out of this terrible, terrible mess. If only this all ended up being a nightmare, she thought bitterly, as she prepared to join her mind with Frank’s, and thus be able to be seen by the apparently shaky police officers.
“Caty, I know what you’ve been planning. I can read you. It’s only too easy once I know you. And I do.”
“You don’t know me!” cried Caty, with the tone of a petulant teenager. Then a thought occurred to her. “If you know me, and you know what I’ve been planning, how come you haven’t located me until now? It’s been a few hours, hasn’t it?”
As she said this, and as her chest rose and fell rapidly with adrenalin, nerves and anger, she concentrated on closing her mind completely. Axelander hadn’t arrived until she had opened herself up – and even though he had appeared almost instantly afterwards (making this theory slightly more fantastical), she was sure that this was what had allowed him to find her.
Axelander was frowning. Then his face cleared. “See? You’re a natural! Your talents... they’re paralleled in only one other: me, of course. Caty, come back with us. You can rule with me! Why else did you think we are situated beneath your ‘office block’? I saw you, and you ability...-s coming! It’s your destiny!”
Hesitating ever so slightly – confused, half-swayed by his compliments – Caty cast her gaze over his eager face, and the resentful expression of his companions. And she thought a thought that was safe from Axelander’s clutches inside her closed mind. If Axelander and his two comrades – one of which was the infuriatingly cheerful one Caty had been rude to her first night – who, she wondered, was watching over the rest of the God of Darkness’s People?
It was as she thought this that the backup team the skittish policeman had ordered arrived.
The black van pulled up ever-so-quietly behind the police car – with its lights still flashing – and instantly ten, twenty bullet-proofed officers – swathed head to foot in black uniforms and with guns at the ready – filed rapidly out. With stunning co-ordination, they filed into the park, arranging themselves in a curved line in front of the policemen, their guns pointed towards the dog – the only thing they could see.
“Caty,” pleaded Axelander urgently. “You have to choose!”
“I have chosen,” said Caty meekly. She turned from the officers, towards Axelander, with a welcoming, submissive smile on her face, which he returned massively. Frank yelped indignantly at being dumped, left behind.
With a force of mind she had not fully expected, nor thought herself capable of, she flung the barriers around her mind away, and poured everything that made herself into Frank.
A few of the men gathered around the odd sight of the dog standing on its hind legs gasped – even screamed quietly – as they saw a young woman appear out of thin air, right in front of them. Those with guns tightened their grip on them, pulling them closer to themselves and raising the barrels a notch, so that every single one was aimed at Caty’s heart.
“State your name!” shouted one, who seemed to be one of higher rank.
“C-Caty Dean, s-sir,” she stammered as she turned slowly, hands raised over her head, to face them. Behind her, she heard the unmistakable sound of more than one person hurrying over a metal fence. Could she make them visible? She doubted it somehow.
“What is your purpose?” the higher ranked officer shouted.
“Please,” begged Caty, willing them to believe her with every particle of her body. “Please, you have to help me. Behind me right now there are three men who are going to kidnap me.”
“There’s nobody there.”
“There is! There is! You just can’t see them – just like you couldn’t see me! But you heard me – and you heard them!” she accused the first officers who arrived on the scene. All five of them were looking terrified.
The speaking officer seemed to decide to humour her. “Are these men armed?”
“Not in a way you would expect. Please! Take me somewhere safe! Quickly!” She stepped towards them, away from the footsteps moving fast towards her, but the leader yelled “Stop moving! Stop there! Do not move!”
“Caty! Close your mind right now!” That sounded like Axelander, but she was frozen to the spot, too scared of being shot to turn and find out.
Next second, large, strong hands accosted her, wrapping around her arms like vices and, no matter how hard she struggled, she could not shake them off.
“Stop moving! Stop moving!” ordered the leader.
“I can’t! They’ve got me!” said Caty, as loudly and strongly as she could with her breathlessness and captors pulling painfully on her arms, and stepping onto her feet with feeble weight.
Everything seemed to happen very fast. One second, the back-up officers were standing in uniform line, disbelief and incredulity etched into their faces as they gazed at the spectacle of a clearly insane woman; the next, they were stumbling backwards as they saw, with their very own eyes, two men appear out of nowhere. For one of Axelander’s accomplices had put his hand over Caty’s mouth to silence her as she tried to speak, and instead became visible; at the same moment, Axelander – in desperation – had tried to open his mind to Caty and force her to submit, and he had been channelled through Frank along with her as a consequence.
“Now do you see?” growled Caty, as she bit into the accomplice’s hand. He wrenched it away, shaking it and scowling at Caty, but the policemen could still see him. Three trained their guns on him, and forced him to his knees, where he was shackled but one of the ordinary officers.
“On your knees! On your knees now!” the leader screamed at Axelander, but he would not be captured. Instead, he tried to command them to lower their guns using his bizarre type of mind control; when this failed, he grabbed Caty again and attempted to flee with her.
Once Caty had wormed her way out of his grasp, they opened fire, and shot him in the leg three times. The officers converged on him, but in the time it took them to reach him from ten yards away he was already gone, invisible to them. Naturally, his unrestrained, equally invisible comrade rushed to his side, and carried him – bleeding heavily – away from the bustle.
He then began to return to rescue the other oddity – who was now invisible also, to the fury of his arresting officers.
“No! Stop them –!” began Caty, but she knew it was too late. How could they stop what they couldn’t see? So she tried to take him down herself; she ran into him, wrapping her arms around his waist as she barrelled into it. Even though she had taken him off guard, he stood his ground and did not fall to the floor – as she had wanted him to.
They grappled, with him taking a firm grasp of her wrists and twisting them painfully. Her legs buckled, and yet she still pushed against him.
“No, Caty! Don’t!”
What?! thought Caty, desperately trying to wrench herself free of the oddity.
“Oh, no you don’t,” sneered the oddity. “You’re not going anywhere."
“Oh yes she is,” said a voice, and before Caty had time to wonder – again – who it was, there was a colossal bang! and the oddity’s grip on her slackened, and he fell to the ground.
Behind him, sure enough, stood Jason.
“Jason!” gasped Caty, not quite believing her eyes. “How...? What...? W-w...?”
He laughed. “They followed right after you, didn’t they? They thought they’d left be back in the centre room, but I got out again and followed them straight afterwards.”
“But... but – but... he said you were ill! He said you were dying!”
“And you trusted Axelander’s word?” he asked, scepticism etched into every smirking line of his face.
“I guess.” She sighed. “So where are they, then? The others?”
Jason opened his mouth to speak, but Caty’s question was answered before he could say a single word. Unnaturally thin people dressed in white, patterned gowns were stepping out, lining up along the outside of the fence. Their eyes were no longer blank, however; they gazed at Caty with awe and reverence, and then – as if an unspoken word had passed between them – they broke into applause. The policemen looked around wildly, hearing the clapping but seeing nothing.
“So you see, Axelander, there’s not really any point in dragging Caty back to your filthy dungeon,” hissed Jason, approaching the spot where he was huddled under a bush, panting. “Go,” ordered Jason. “Why don’t you go back to your little hovel, and spend the rest of your pitiful, endless existence brooding over how badly you were wronged?”
Still breathing heavily, and looking quite incapable of speaking, Axelander raised his head and gazed at Jason. “You ... think that... you... have – won,” he panted. “How – ever... you know... I’m – right. In time... you ... will – see, that... is true.”
Jason snorted derisively. “OK, old man. You think that.” He turned away from him, and strode back to Caty’s side, holding out his hand to her. “Come on. Let’s go – I know the perfect place.”
Grinning broadly, Caty slid her hand into his, where it fit perfectly – like corresponding jigsaw pieces. Jason bent his head suddenly, and kissed her full on the mouth. And even though all the escapees from Axelander’s strange religious dungeon were watching, Caty did not care one jot; her heart was bursting with joy.
* * *
“Come on, you. Into the coop – that’s right.” Caty chivvied the last, reluctant hen into her roost for the night. Twilight was just setting in, and the western horizon – clearly visible over the crest of the apple orchard, surrounded by a large collection of small fields, all bordered by dry stone walls – was a hundred shades of dark pinks, rich oranges and, up higher, a glorious deep blue that was scattered with bright stars. Once every few minutes, the still evening air was broken by a soft bleat, or the gentle call of a cow. Smiling serenely, Caty passed her gaze over the flock of sheep pottering about in the field on the hill, and the herd of cattle grazing down by the stream.
“Honey?”
Caty turned, and saw her love of the past – oh, how long had it been? – about eighty years, standing in the back doorway. He was grinning, and opened his arms for her. Swinging her bucket – which contained a dozen eggs nestled in straw – as she went, she returned to his arms and wrapped hers around his middle. Together they gazed as the glowing, setting sun.
Jason was exactly the same as he had been eighty years before: impossibly handsome, young, strong, artsy. His hair, however, was no longer flopping in his eyes; now he wore it short, as it was easier to manage that way.
He bent his head down, and kissed Caty’s forehead, still smooth and wrinkle-free, despite the number of years it had lived through: Caty was as equally unchanged as Jason. She closed her eyes briefly, and then gazed back up at her husband.
“Are you happy, Caty?” he asked softly.
“Undeniably,” she replied, and then she sighed.
“What is it?”
“Nothing really. I was just remembering the office...” murmured Caty, resting her head against Jason’s strong, muscular chest – evidence of years of hard work. Her job in the office, which had once occupied most of her thoughts, seemed a lifetime ago, and extremely insignificant.
“Anything in particular about the office?” asked Jason, grinning.
“Yes, actually.” Caty looked up, and grinned back. “Robert never did get that memo, did he?”
They laughed together, and then entered their little country house, shutting it up for yet another night.
The End.
