Authors: Derryl Murphy
The sky was the
colour of slate now, an unbroken layer of cloud that showed no differentiation
anywhere that Dom looked. Gusts of wind pushed at the car at regular intervals,
trying hard to lift it off the road, but no unnatural numbers were involved; it
was just nature doing what nature did.
And then
overhead a roar pounded across the sky from left to right. Dom pulled over to
the side of the road, but could see nothing through the clouds, no numbers,
nothing to tell him what it had been. He opened the door and climbed out, as
did Jenna. The wind fought her for possession of the door for a second, and she
struggled to close it, her hair blowing across her face. Just as she shut the
door another screaming roar rushed out of the sky towards them. Dom and Jenna
both flinched, then watched overhead as a British fighter jet broke out of the
clouds, dark green streaking in and out of the wisps overhead like a reflection
of an especially slick and speedy rock skipping across the surface of an
enormous, unsettled pond. It was very quickly out of sight and earshot, and
everything was quiet again for a moment. Then Arithmos was standing beside Dom.
“This will do,” said the numbers. “You’ll find yourself safely to town from
here.” They looked to Dom. “You want to go to the Point of Stoer, north of
Ullapool. It’s late enough that you should spend the night in Ullapool, though.
When you come out on the other side of town tomorrow we will be there again.”
A car came down
the road, and Arithmos faded from view as it drove past. The driver of the
other car waved and Dom waved back, watched as he drove on and around the
distant bend. Wind tried to toss him out onto the road, and he held onto the
roof of his rental for balance. “This place easy to find?”
There was no
answer; the numbers were gone, not just hiding. “Well, let’s see what this
Ullapool looks like, shall we?” Billy opened the door when Dom didn’t respond,
and climbed in and closed the door before Dom retook control. Jenna climbed
back in and wrestled her own door shut, and then with a quick shoulder check—no
cars, no surprises—Dom pulled back out and followed the road.
Ullapool was a
very pleasant little town, with a ferry terminal that took people and cars to
the Outer Hebrides, and enough amenities to show that it must have been
something of the go-to destination for people in even smaller towns for many
miles about, as well as plenty of tourists: a decent sized grocery store, a
library, lots of hotels and bed and breakfasts, more restaurants than just the
usual fast food blight that every similar small town in North America suffered
from, and plenty of small specialty shops.
They found a
couple of hotel rooms without any trouble, and after showers and changes of
clothes, Jenna and Dom met up and headed down to a fish-and-chip shop they’d
seen near the ferry terminal. The wind was still fierce, the air damp and cool,
but the town itself acted as something of a windbreak from this angle, so they
kept themselves bundled up in their jackets and found a place to sit near the
water where they ate in silence, watching the gulls gather nearby as they
awaited potential scraps, surfing the wind and occasionally dropping down low
to check out any speck that looked a likely prospect.
Finally full,
Dom scattered his last handful of chips across the rocks on the beach, and the
gulls dove down in a white and grey and yellow mass, full-throated as each let
the others know that this was his or her prize, and the rest of them should
just bugger off right now. A few of the unlucky ones walked up closer and
stalked around Dom and Jenna for a time, watching them with one eye , but Jenna
finished all of hers and pocketed the garbage from the both of them, and then
stuck her tongue out at the birds. Dom laughed, as did Billy at the very same
moment, a dissonant sound that affected even Dom’s ear, and the look that Jenna
gave him cut the laughter off almost immediately. The birds that were within
range to hear all launched themselves into the air immediately, and after one
quick circle to make sure that they hadn’t missed any precious morsels, rode
the violent currents of air towards another prospective meal, one that would
presumably be less disturbing.
“It would have
been nice to come here just for a vacation,” said Jenna after a minute.
Dom raised an
eyebrow. “Vacation to me means sunny resorts an’ shit. Not that I ever took a
vacation.”
Jenna shook her
head. “I grew up in Utah. I figure I’ve had enough sunshine to last me the rest
of my life.” She hugged herself. “I mean, I’m cold, and the weather is
miserable, and we haven’t even seen much in the way of rain yet, but if it
weren’t for the numbers and for Napier and friends coming after us, this would
be a really neat place to visit.”
Dom looked out
over the harbour. Not far out a seal reared up out of the water, stared back at
him for a moment before diving back down; numbers unlike anything he’d ever
seen trailed in the animal’s wake, but even from here he could tell they were
nothing to worry about. Far away, a ferry was coming in from one of the distant
islands, fighting its way through the choppy water. Across the water a hole
opened up in the sky, and for a few moments the sun shone through like a
spotlight. Dom smiled. “It is pretty country, isn’t it?”
“A harsh land,”
said Billy. “Harsher than the seaside I once . . .” A pause, and then, “Another
memory! I once lived near the ocean.” Dom felt Billy frown. “Or I did for
awhile, at least.”
Jenna grinned.
“Can you remember anything else?”
Billy shook
Dom’s head. “Not yet. But that’s something. Maybe just being back here is
shaking some things loose, first the poem and now this small thing, like a
slightly faded transparency laid over what’s in front of my—our—eyes right
now.”
Jenna stood, put
her hand on Dom’s shoulder. “I want us to get an early start tomorrow.” She
held out a hand and helped Dom stand as well, held his hand for a fraction of a
second too long, then gave him a quiet smile before letting go. “It’s going to
be a big day, I think. Get this part done, only one leg left.”
Dom nodded, but
it was Billy who answered. “Spoken like a true optimist.”
On that note,
they walked back to the hotel in silence. Outside their rooms, Jenna gave Dom a
peck on the cheek and said goodnight.
He didn’t sleep
well that night; thoughts of Jenna wouldn’t stay out of his head, and he tossed
and turned for much of the evening. Twice he tried to talk with Billy, but both
times received the briefest of answers; his shadow was off somewhere or
sometime else, trying to dig up more memories and unwilling to concentrate on
anything like conversation. But eventually sleep did claim him, a slumber
accompanied by the gentle whisper of local numbers regularly scraping over the
roof and brushing against the window as they were blown in from the sea.
Oddly enough,
the best chance that Ruth had to escape from Napier, to dump him from her body
for good and for real, came when he was likely at his strongest.
The flight
landed in Glasgow, and even the captain of the plane sounded surprised at how
easily everything went. She could see numbers through the window and sense
others further afield, all scrambling to ease John Napier’s path back on his
own soil, their plane being bumped ahead of others in the queue, time and again
getting preferential treatment.
And when they
exited the plane—naturally the first off, even ahead of those in business
class—the explosion of joyous celebration had caught even Napier off guard, the
sensation of rapture only equalled, or perhaps even surpassed, by an absolute
raging hatred, a blinding and seething anger towards their prey that Napier had
obviously passed on to the numbers in the short time they’d been in contact
with each other; she could practically smell the origins of that animosity on
the numbers, having lived these past days embedded in it every moment. It was
in the midst of this celebration that Ruth sensed an opening.
They were both
overwhelmed by all the numbers and by the astonishing variety of those numbers
that had come to greet Napier, but Ruth was able to slip away from attention
soon enough, seeing how she was emphatically not the reason the numbers were
there to celebrate. She steeled herself to push back, surprised still that
Napier hadn’t noticed anything amiss, but just as she had found some background
numbers she felt she could manipulate, the other shadow spoke to her, hopefully
softly enough that Napier wouldn’t detect the internal voice:
Mā. I mean,
please don’t. He’ll know, the very second you call to them. And then he’ll push
you so far down you’ll never find your way back out again.
The words were
not enough to stop her, but just as she reached out towards the numbers Ruth
felt her right hand—her real right hand, which at the moment was still
controlled by Napier—twitch, and then she watched as the numbers she’d been so
focused on do a little dance through the air before flying off, tearing up into
the sky as if they’d been launched on a rocket. No words were spoken, but at
that moment Ruth could feel one small portion of Napier’s attention turned
inward, glaring down at her as if she were at the bottom of a deep, dark well.
She was certain
then that she would never get out.
They’d woken up
to rain, torrential sheets of it that now sometimes fell straight down,
sometimes shifted position and came at the car from one side or the other.
Breakfast in their laps as they drove north, the landscape on this side of Ullapool
lacked in trees, but certainly not in water. The wipers were working overtime,
and Dom drove much slower than he wanted, unsure not only where the turnoff was
that he needed, but right now not even sure sometimes where the road was.
Through momentary
gaps in the rain he could see some hills reaching up to be swallowed by the
clouds; back home, the mountains reached up to meet the clouds, but here it
seemed more accurate to say that the clouds came down to settle in with the
mountains, everywhere on them green foliage accompanied by purple heather.
Stone walls traced their way across the countryside, on rare occasions
accompanied by a farmhouse, on even rarer moments another vehicle on the road,
invariably driving far more recklessly than Dom would have liked. They saw
sheep as well, but he imagined that the majority of farm animals were smarter
than he was and today made sure they stayed somewhere less affected by the
weather.
“Hungry,” he
said. They had found that Dom could watch the road with one hand on the wheel,
while Billy used the other hand to bring the sandwich up from his lap or his
coffee up from the cup holder to his mouth, and somehow this allowed him more
concentration for the road than if he were doing it all himself. He took a
bite, chewed loudly for a moment, swallowed and grunted for another bite. Then
Billy put the sandwich back down and he grabbed the wheel with both hands
again.
There was still
no sign of Arithmos, but after fuelling up that morning Jenna had grabbed a
map. Roads were scarce in this part of Scotland, so it wasn’t too difficult to
find their own way. Arithmos had said their next stop was the Point of Stoer,
and so rather than sit on the side of the road and wait for the numbers to come
around, they had pushed on.
Driving slowly,
his attention focused hard on the road, Dom still drove right past the turnoff
and had to stop and back up about a hundred feet. There weren’t too many people
stupid enough to be out on a day like today, though, so he had little concern
that he would be rear-ended by a speeding metal surprise.
The
road to their destination was a single track, barely wide enough to handle the
little car he was driving. They passed pullouts at fairly frequent intervals,
just like when he’d been on Seil Island the other day; surprisingly, within the
first ten minutes he had to use three of them, waving to drivers as they went
past on their way from one place to another, barely able to see their upturned
palms behind cascading sheets of water, but knowing they were waving, since it
seemed all drivers here were friendly and polite.
The land was
desolate, a few tiny faded white farmhouses sitting back among rolling green
hills, very little vegetation aside from grass and rare low shrubs. Some sheep
were cropping at the grass while they stood at the bottom of a hill or hid
behind some scraggly bush or a low stone wall, trying to keep their rears to
the wind, and once, at the top of a hill just before he rounded a bend, Dom saw
something standing and watching them from the top of a hill, possibly a very
large dog.
After the first
three cars and one tractor about ten minutes later, there were no more
vehicles. The wind picked up even more, rocking the car back and forth a few
times, but without any sign of accompanying numbers that could be seen as a
potential threat. The rain, which had let up for a few minutes, began to fall
again, slicing through the air in waves, rattling against the windshield, a
sound like someone hurling random handfuls of gravel as they inched along in
the suddenly low visibility.
“Should you pull
over?” asked Billy.
Dom grinned.
“Jesus, Billy, you don’t usually sound worried.” He squinted ahead and saw a
turnoff, pulled in and slipped the car into neutral and pulled up the parking
brake. “What the hell.” He flexed his fingers, heard and felt the knuckles
crack. “Getting pretty tense with this.”
The wind and
rain were even louder without the wheels running against the road. They sat and
listened to it for awhile, watching the whole time for any sign that the sky
might be clearing up, and waiting for Arithmos to appear. “Not going to
happen,” Jenna said finally, leaning forward to look up at the grey through the
windshield.