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Chase felt sick. She backed away from the door, clumsily tripping over rubble on the floor, her balance suddenly precarious, causing her to flail her arms like a windmill as she began to fall. Snatching at empty air, she fell backwards to the floor, her head smashing onto a brick. Pain suffused the horror and a flicker of lightning illuminated a dirty, gaunt face peering down at her before the darkness of oblivion claimed her.

***

 
“So are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Ratty asked as Drake dragged him through the fog.

“You ask too many questions,” Drake growled.

As the wind picked up, it parted the fog like curtains revealing they were at a barrier in a perimeter fence guarded by men in army attire, their guns levelled at the floor as they saluted Drake. Imaging devices covered their features, making them look like bug-eyed insects.

Passing through the barrier, Drake dragged Ratty toward a small, squat building. He punched a code on an electronic keypad and the door slid open. Ratty was about to protest, but Drake pushed him inside and the door slid shut with a laughing emission of compressed air.

“Your new home,” Drake bawled from outside.

Inside the building it was dark and Ratty picked himself up off the floor and reached out his hands to feel his way around. His shins banged into something and he muttered a curse before crouching down and feeling what he had bumped into. It felt like a bed. He squashed his hands down on a hard mattress, testing it when his fingers brushed against warm flesh. He recoiled in shock, a small squeal of fear issuing from his mouth.

“Please, please don’t hurt me,” a voice whimpered.

“
Izzy
, is that you?”

“Ratty. Oh my god, Ratty, it’s you.” Ratty felt arms encircle him as
Izzy
hugged him and a tear rolled down his cheek. He was glad she couldn’t see him in the dark. He wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t dare in case she felt his tears.

“What are you doing here?” he asked when she finally released him.

“I was following the road, like you said, but they found me. I didn’t hear them coming, but they had those goggles on, you know. Ratty, I’m sorry. What are they going to do to us?” She sniffled.

Ratty shook his head. “I don’t know.” Slowly his eyes adjusted to the dark and he could just make
Izzy
out as she sat on the edge of the bed. She had her face in her hands and he could tell she was crying.

He sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulder. “I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.” He only hoped he could keep his promise.
 

He thought about Chase. Why hadn’t she believed him? What was it about adults that made them think they had the monopoly on the truth? Did you have to reach a certain age before they took any notice of you? Before, in their eyes at least, you left behind childish things.

“There’s definitely something weird going on.” Ratty took a breath. Swallowed. “I went to my granddad’s house in
Paradise
, but he wasn’t there. Instead, there was a woman who said she’d
won
his house in a competition. Can you believe it?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Have you heard anyone saying anything? Something that might tell us what’s happening?”

Izzy
shook her head and wiped her eyes. “I was brought straight here and then a man called Moon came and talked to me. He wanted to know how I got here. Where you were. Things like that.”

Ratty nodded his head. “They must have known we were missing, because I think they were looking for us.”

“Then why won’t they take us home?” She started crying again.

“Because now we know they’re here. I don’t think they want people to know about them and what they’re doing.”

“But we don’t know what they’re doing.”

“Yes, but if we go home and start talking, people are going to ask questions. Didn’t you ever find it strange that the fog has been here for so long, but has never been on the news? It didn’t even get a mention in the local paper. No, these people must have high connections to cover up what they’re doing so well.”

“You’re just being stupid. They couldn’t make a village disappear.”

“Then why don’t you explain it?”

She hesitated. “I can’t.”

“Well, whether you believe it or not, in a sense,
Paradise
has disappeared. It’s there, but it isn’t visible. No one has been in or out for nearly two years. It’s like the story of Sleeping Beauty, only instead of a forest, there’s fog stopping people entering.”

“And are the people sleeping?”
Izzy
asked, sarcastically.

“No, but they seem, I don’t know, different.” Ratty didn’t rise to her bait.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I never really talked to any of them as I wanted to get to my granddad’s house, but I saw a couple of the villagers and there was something about them.”

“In what way?”
Izzy
frowned.

“Well, they were, I don’t know, it was like when you see someone and you have to cross the road to avoid them, because you can tell there’s something wrong with them, mentally, you know, like Mental Mickey who puts an elastic band around his dick to stop himself wetting his pants. It’s in the way they look and act.”
   

“So what did the villagers do?”

“That’s just it, they didn’t
do
anything. They didn’t have to. I avoided them because ... I don’t know, I was scared I suppose.” He didn’t like admitting it.

“That’s just stupid.”

“You wouldn’t think that if you’d been there.”

Izzy
shrugged her shoulders. “What on earth did you have to be scared of?”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell going to find out.”

CHAPTER 14

When Chase recovered from the concussion, it was dark. She slowly opened her eyes and moved a hand to rub the spot where her head had struck the brick. There was a large bump and she winced as she touched it. Her second instinct was to protectively hug her stomach and hope the baby was all right – she still couldn’t believe it. A baby.

She realised she was still lying on the floor, but she was no longer outside the farmhouse: she was inside, the macabre, rotting mobile of carcasses swinging above her head. Slowly the realisation dawned that someone must have dragged or carried her, as she doubted she had crawled inside by herself. Panic flooded her system, starting in the tips of her fingers and spreading through her body like liquid nitrogen, freezing her blood.

She could feel her heart hammering away; could see the slight crystallisation of her breath creating ghosts in the cold air as she fought to control her breathing. She didn’t want to move, too afraid. She gazed nervously around the room, inclined her head slightly, taking in the skeletal armchair and the upturned cupboard. Was that someone in the corner, watching her? She wanted to run, and she started to stand up, but a wave of nausea swept over her and she collapsed back down.

Looking back toward the corner, the figure, if that’s what it was, had slipped away.

The carcass mobile twisted in the breeze, spreading the scent of death. The smell seemed stronger near the floor and she gagged.

Movement caught her eye, startling her. A shadow within shadows.

A rabbit carcass swung into the one next to it as someone slipped past, setting in motion a morbid Newton’s cradle that swept across the room. The beams of the ceiling creaked as the pendulous weights swung to and fro, dead, glassy eyes sparkling in the darkness as though the hosts had been reanimated.

A floorboard creaked as pressure was applied.

“Who’s there?” Chase whispered.

No one answered.

Outside, an owl hooted and she heard the beat of wings as it flew past.

“I know there’s someone there.” Her eyes scanned the room, looking for the slightest motion.

“
Here
,” a voice hissed, causing Chase to jump.

“What do you want?” Her throat was dry; she could hardly get the words out. Peering toward where the voice emanated, she saw someone was sitting in the skeletal armchair, his features hidden.

“Want? What do
you
want?”

Chase tried to sit up but her head throbbed when she moved. “Answers,” she said.

“Answers, solutions, revelations.”

“Just answers.”

“
Just
answers. Questions sometimes lead to answers.”

Chase bit her lip. There was something about that voice. She tried to see the figure more clearly, but he was cloaked in nocturnal shadow.

“Ask me a question.”

Chase could hear him tapping his foot on the floor. She licked her lips; tried to swallow. “What’s going on, here in
Paradise
?”

“
Paradise
, nirvana, heaven, utopia. Do you believe in paradise?”

“I thought you were going to give me answers, not more questions.”

“
Do you believe in paradise
?” he hissed.

“It depends what you mean by paradise, the village, or the dream?”

“
Paradise
, inhabited by mankind before the first sin. What was the first sin?”

“I don’t know. Look, I want answers, not puzzles.”

“
Answer my question,
” he hissed again. “What was the first sin?”

“I don’t know, something in the bible about eating an apple.”

“An apple. The tree of life. Knowledge. Snow White. And so
endeth
today’s lesson.” The man stood, shook his garments around him and walked out of the room, laughing.

“Wait, come back.” Chase gained her feet, fighting the nausea and giddiness that swept over her. “You haven’t answered anything.”

A disembodied voice came back out of the darkness: “Oh, but I have.” A door slammed.

This is bullshit, she thought, staggering to the back door, holding the back of her head in an attempt to alleviate the pain. But the Raggedy man had gone. “Asshole,” she mumbled.

What had he given her but more questions? Apple. Tree of life. Knowledge. Snow fucking White. What was this crap? Her head hurt – it hurt even more if she tried to think. Fighting back the pain, she started for High Top Cottage.

Now she knew why the vicar called the Raggedy man the Fool. She wanted to kick the vicar’s holy ass. He must think she was a fool too, telling her to go and see him.

In the dark, the ambience was foreboding. Nocturnal predators skittered through the undergrowth, hunted through the trees, stalked on the breeze. She sensed, more than saw them. Felt their eyes, tracking her. In the darkness, shapes twisted, distorted from the recognisable into the startling, into the bizarre, into the terrifying. Tree trunks, contorted by shadows, became old hags. Bushes became huge, lurking beasts with teeth and tusks. A patch of light through the trees became a spectre, the leaves adding the illusion of dark sockets for eyes and giving contour to the illusory shape. Branches became claws, reaching out to grab her.