style="font-size:15px;"> He unfastened his seat belt, reached out, and opened the door beside him.
Charlie let out a yelp. “What are you doing?” he shouted, over the deafening siren.
Ben ignored him. He stepped out of the car in something close to a trance, his mind racing with what he was seeing all around him, turning it over and over like a puzzle whose solution was dancing just out of reach. Distantly, he heard the passenger door open and Charlie Walsh step nervously on to the cobblestones.
“Get back in the car, Ben,” he yelled. “Please.”
The pleading in the man’s voice brought Ben to his senses and he shook his head, as if to clear it.
“OK,” he shouted, and saw Charlie Walsh’s face crumple with relief. “Sorry, mate. Let’s go.”
He climbed back into the driver’s seat and was pulling the door shut when the dead body stood up and looked at them.
It was a man in his late twenties or early thirties. His gown looked as though it had been dipped in dark red paint, and his left arm was pointing away from his body at an unnatural angle, but his face wore a wide, hungry smile and his eyes glowed the colour of lava.
Charlie Walsh let out a high, trembling scream, and pressed his hands against the dashboard as though trying to push himself backwards, away from the nightmare thing before him. Ben just stared, his eyes bulging, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Then the blood-soaked figure ran forward, leapt on to the bonnet of the Range Rover, and smashed its fist through the glass of the windscreen.
Ben’s paralysis broke as Walsh screamed again. The noise of the siren burst into the car through the broken windscreen, deafening them both. The man with the red eyes shoved his arm through the glass, tearing his skin to ribbons; blood splashed into the air as the man’s fingers slid across Ben’s throat, then lunged for Walsh’s face. The man was yelling so loudly that he was audible over the din of the alarm, shouting words that were unintelligible to Ben’s ears, his mouth working furiously, spit and blood pattering down on to the glass as he fought to reach the two men inside the car.
Then his grasping, searching fingers closed on Charlie Walsh’s lower lip. With a primal roar, the crimson, glowing monstrosity tore it from the man’s face with a sound like ripping paper. Blood burst from the wound, spraying on to the dashboard and windscreen, and Walsh’s screams reached a terrible new pitch.
Ben shoved the Range Rover’s gear stick into reverse and floored the accelerator. Walsh was thrown forward in his seat and for a terrible second the patient’s fingers closed on his throat. Then momentum hauled him back, and he fell heavily on to the cobblestones of the courtyard. He was on his feet again instantly, bathed in the blinding gleam of the car’s headlights as it hurtled backwards. Ben looked over his shoulder and saw the open gate approaching, dangerously fast. There was no time to correct their course; he could only hope that he had not turned the steering wheel since driving them into this terrible place.
There was a screech of metal as the car shot between the gateposts and a huge shower of sparks on the passenger’s side as the panels tore along the brick wall. Charlie Walsh, who was sobbing between screams, wearing the look of a man who expects to wake up from a nightmare at any moment, leapt in his seat and almost fell on to Ben, who shoved him roughly back. Then the screeching stopped, and they were through the gate. Ben slammed on the brakes and hauled the steering wheel around. The tyres smoked and squealed, until the big car was facing the right way down the road they had driven up, only minutes earlier. There was a thud behind them, and Ben glanced into the rear-view mirror as he shoved the car back into drive and floored the accelerator again.
The blood-soaked patient, who had torn Ben’s neighbour’s lip from his face as though it was nothing, had run headlong into the back of the car. There was a bright spray of blood across the rear window at the point of impact. The car leapt forward and Ben saw the man lying in the road; he seemed to have knocked himself out. But, as he looked at the fallen patient, he caught sight of something else that almost stopped his heart.
Dark shapes were dropping steadily into the courtyard, before moving quickly towards the gate. Ben pressed the window’s button again and, over the howl of the siren, he could hear, very faintly, the crunch of breaking glass and a low, swelling roar, like the noise made by a pack of animals. He was still looking in the rear-view mirror as the car accelerated through the outer gate and down the hill; as a result, he didn’t see the glow of blue and red emerging from around the sharp bend in front of them.
Andy Myers gritted his teeth and pressed his foot down more firmly on the accelerator. The siren was deafening, even from inside the car; the old vehicle’s windows and doors were not as airtight as they had once been, and the sound was so loud the windows might as well have been rolled down. He was looking forward to finding out from the duty nurse exactly what was going on, radioing it in, and getting back to bed. There was a cricket match at noon and he was already glumly aware that very few of the club’s players were going to be rested and at their best.
He turned the wheel gently, sending the car neatly round the bend that would take him on to the final approach to the hospital. Then everything in front of him was blinding light, and he had the briefest of moments to wonder where it was coming from before the Range Rover slammed into his car head-on.
“Look out!” screamed Charlie Walsh, the words mangled by his missing lower lip.
Ben dragged his gaze away from the rear-view mirror, aware that something had moved at the edges of his vision. Then red and blue light filled the windscreen, there was a sickening crunch of metal, and everything went black.
Ben emerged into a world of chaos.
His eyes flickered open and pain shot through his head as the siren pounded into it. Slowly, ever so slowly, he turned to look at Charlie Walsh.
His neighbour hung in his seat belt, his head lowered, his eyes closed. His face was covered in blood and a ridge of swelling was already beginning to rise across his forehead. As Ben watched, a small bubble of blood inflated and popped in Charlie’s ruined mouth, followed by a second, and a third.
He’s alive, he thought. Thank God.
Ben looked down at himself and felt relief wash over him; the big car’s roll cage had held. There was a bulge behind the pedals where the engine block had been forced back by the collision, but it had not broken through; it would have crushed the lower half of his body to jelly if it had. Blood was falling steadily from his nose and he could see the dent in the dashboard where he must have been thrown against it. His head thumped with pain and he found he couldn’t think straight; he tried, but the thoughts drifted away from him, as insubstantial as smoke on the wind. He reached out with a shaking hand and opened the car door. He made to get out, but a sheet of agony bloomed up from his left ankle, and he screamed. Ben looked down, and saw that his foot was twisted almost ninety degrees to one side. The sight was so alien, so terrible, that he vomited into his lap, unable to stop himself.
Ben fumbled his mobile phone out of his pocket and dialled Maggie’s number. He knew he should phone the police, but for some reason he felt unwilling to do so. Something had happened before the crash, although he wasn’t sure what it was. Had there been another car? Had he hit another car? He held the phone to his ear as he peered through the broken windscreen. There were pieces of metal strewn across the road. He leant further forward, dimly aware that the car seemed to be higher than usual, that his view of the road was different, and saw a twisted hunk of metal lying beneath his front wheels. Ben stared at it blankly, until his eyes picked out a smashed pair of lights sticking out of the wreckage, one red, one blue, and everything
