Somehow Robbie got Elias back onto the treehouse platform and they moved apart trembling and unspeaking. For a long time they stayed like that, as if by talking they might allow the screaming to start again. All around them the night thickened between the trees and the wood stood silent save for the tortured creaking of trees as their roots were found by the dark tide. The cicadas and their endless song were gone, leaving a hole in the night that seemed to throb.

Elias huddled in on himself, trying to present as small a target to the world as possible. His hand throbbed where he had touched the oak's altered bark and James's screaming still echoed in his ears. He wanted to be home. He wanted his bed. He wanted normal things about him again.

Eventually Robbie produced a small flashlight and poked the beam out into the darkness between the trees. It made little difference.

"Look." Robbie pointed at the edge of the platform. It had been an hour since James vanished, or maybe five minutes. "No, don't move. Look at the nails." He shone his light for Elias to see by.

Elias turned slowly to inspect the nearest of the four-inch nails they had hammered through the board supports to anchor the base of the treehouse to the oak's branches. A black resin was oozing from the tree's wounds and all along the exposed part of the nails a patina of rust had crept, like frost on a windowpane.

"When it changed ... when the dark changed it ... the tree did something to our rope," Robbie said. "It'll let this whole platform tip if it can. Spill us over."

Elias peered over the edge without approaching it. The planks hid the base of the oak and he couldn't see much of the other trees through the night but in Robbie's light he could make out the black surface through which the trunks emerged. A darker darkness. It looked to be at least a yard deep around the neighbouring beeches.

"What are we gonna do?" he asked.

"Nothing we can do." Robbie hugged his knees to his chest. "Wait."

"For what?"

"For morning." A shrug. "For help."

And so they waited. Neither of them prepared to talk about their friend or what waited for them under that black flood.

"Do you think it will reach us? Up here, I mean?" Robbie asked the question that had been haunting Elias.

"I think it comes up higher each night," Elias said.

"But this high?" Robbie's face made a white blur in the darkness.

"I don't know."

Elias didn't imagine he would sleep, but he did. A fitfully dream-plagued sleep full of running from unseen horrors. He woke twice to find himself close to the edge and after that he and Robbie nailed their belts to the boards then did them up around their waists again.

Finally, against all expectations that this was to be a night without end, a grey dawn fingered its way between the branches. Birdsong pierced the quiet, hesitant but real. Elias blinked, undid his belt and levered himself up. He nudged Robbie with his foot. "It's gone."

Cautiously he moved to where he could see the ground. The soil was blackened, the trees and undergrowth altered and sinister, but the liquid darkness had retreated.

"W-whut?" Robbie tried to rise and failed, anchored by his belt.

"It's gone. Drawn back." Like the sea.

"Where?" Robbie released himself.

"I don't know." Elias looked around at the lightening forest. "We need to leave."

"It's sunk back into that fault. The thing Mr Davis was talking about. It's welling up at night then going back by day."

"We need to leave," Elias repeated.

They tied their belts together and lowered themselves from the edge of the platform, expecting the structure to collapse at any moment. Robbie went first, a hang drop, landing with an "Ooof!" Elias followed, hurting his ankle. The rope that had fallen with James was still there, mottled as if diseased, and fraying all along its length. They could have used it to hold their pants up but neither wanted to touch it.

"Look." Elias pointed down the slope. The black liquid lurked among the thick vegetation around the creek. It wasn't liquid though. It wasn't wet. It didn't sink into the ground, it sank through it, as if the ground just wasn't there. Even so, liquid was the closest word he had for it. The inky surface could be glimpsed here and there along the creek, leading off into the distance until the trees hid it entirely. Suddenly he felt watched. Was James lying dead somewhere ... or was he down there, hiding in those bushes?

"We need to go." Robbie felt it too. He led off at a jog, not looking back.

They paused only at the bush where they had hidden their bikes. The dark flood seemed to have found its level right at the very edge, singeing the glossy leaves. They hauled James's bike out first as it lay across theirs and was closest to hand. Robbie pointed silently to the front wheel. The tire looked as if part of it had been dipped in some corrosive fluid. For several inches the rubber looked perished and crumbly. They threw the bike aside and got their own. Every second that Elias spent reaching into gloom among all those waxy leaves his heart pounded against his ribs, caught by the terrifying certainty that something would seize hold of his wrist and drag him in.

They reached the road into town, climbed the embankment then cycled along the grassy margin. Elias followed Robbie, weaving among the beer cans and discarded wrappers, their shadows flung out across the blacktop by the morning sunshine. Ten minutes later Elias paused to gaze back toward Briggen Wood. It looked just as it had always looked. A mystery of trees, sprawling toward the sea. But there, on the western flank, a darker line stood amid the green.

"Come on!" Robbie called.

As Elias turned he saw a police cruiser round the bend ahead of them. It slowed before he even thought to raise his arm. Sheriff Thorne brought the car to a halt beside them and leaned out his window. "Get in. Both of you."

Elias scrambled into the backseat behind Robbie. Both of them were talking too fast for there to be any space between the words. Thorne, grey, grizzled, mean-eyed and bearing an impressive scar across the cheek below his left eye, turned in his seat and barked at them for silence. Elias found himself staring at that scar. He'd heard a dozen stories about how it came to be there and suddenly hoped the worst of them were true. Right now they needed someone dangerous on their side.

"Dispatch. I have Elias Peck and Robbie Honecker. Found close by where Davis last saw them." The sheriff lowered his radio and watched them both, gimlet-eyed. "You boys are in ten kinds of trouble. Where's the other one? James Reagen?"

Again they both launched into garbled explanations. Thorne listened grim-faced for a few seconds then raised a hand for silence. "Show me."

The sheriff pulled away, leaving the bikes at the roadside. It took almost no time to drive back to where they had re-joined the road. When Robbie called, "Here." Thorne pulled over. "Out."

Elias scrambled from the car with Robbie behind him. They both began their explanations again. Thorne cut across them. "The boy fell out of the tree in the dark, hurt hisself and hobbled off disoriented." He strode towards the forest. "We'll have a look for him."

"You don't understand." Elias had to half-jog to keep up. "He was screaming something awful."

"I would be too if I broke a bone falling out of a tree. Collarbone most likely. Hurts like hell."

"The tree dropped him!" Robbie shouted, suddenly furious.

Thorne didn't break stride or even glance Robbie's way.

"There was black ... stuff ... everywhere. He fell into it. It took him!" Elias said, trying to sound calm.

"You said it was dark," Thorne said.

"After sunset, but-"

Thorne slowed and waved them on ahead. "I'll see for myself in a minute. Lead the way."

They took him to the oak, going slower and slower as they drew near. In the end Elias led and Robbie hung back beside the sheriff.

"There." Elias pointed to where James had fallen among the roots.

Thorne cast a sour eye over the stained trunk and glanced at the surrounding trees. All of them were changed, diseased maybe, the bark falling away in patches to reveal smooth dark wood beneath, leaves mottled, curling in on themselves as if to hide from the daylight.

"Someone's dumped some shit here, that's for sure. You boys ain't to come here again. Not til I say so." He looked up at the platform. "Fell from there?"

"Yes. The rope-"

Thorne picked up the fraying length of rope, curling his lip as if it felt unpleasant in his hands. "You got some shitty rope here, boys. No wonder it gave out. Stupid."

"It wasn't like that," Robbie said. The usual heat of defiance had gone from his voice. "There was black stuff all over. Like a flood."

Thorne knelt, grunting like old men do. "Ground's dry." Again he grimaced as he dusted the dirt from his fingers. Part of him knew something was very wrong even if it wasn't letting the rest of him know just yet.

"I'll show you." Elias led off down the slope.

They reached the place where the bushes grew thick enough that you would have to forge a passage between them. Elias shifted, trying to peer through to where the liquid darkness had lingered that morning.

"It's gone. Sunk back into the earth." He turned to Robbie, helpless.

"Maybe if we follow the creek?" Robbie said.

Thorne made to advance into the bushes.

"Don't!" Robbie and Elias together.

And the sheriff, though not one for listening to the fears of little boys, stopped. He eyed the twisted briar before him. "This the stuff Davis stuck hisself with?"

Elias nodded. "Is he OK?"

"Sick," Thorne said. "Fever. Infection in his hand maybe." He shook his head. "We'll follow down a ways." He led off. "I heard something last night about nasty stuff being dumped down in Reed Valley. Toxic waste most like. And there's been some sort of oil spill out on the Sound." He furrowed his brow. "All kinda garbled so far. I'll be waiting on a clear report before I let anyone go rooting about in there." He nodded ahead into the corrupted undergrowth.

They walked quite some way, tracking the creek, making slow progress as they avoided the poisoned brambles and bushes.

"James!" Thorne punctuated their advance with booming calls. "James Reagen?"

Elias felt he should be shouting too, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to. Robbie kept similarly silent, eyeing the dark undergrowth and blackened trees with suspicion. Neither of them wanted to call out, Elias realised. They were both afraid of what might answer.

The affected region seemed to widen rather than narrow but still there was no sign of the dark tide that had surrounded the oak all of the previous night. Occasionally Thorne's radio blurted static, but although he banged it against his hand and fiddled with the knobs the dispatcher's voice refused to settle out of the roar and squeal of interference.

"What the hell is that?" Thorne pulled up short.

Before them a creature crouched between two trees. One of its legs hung at a broken angle, caught in some rusty trap that it had dragged out from beneath a bush, still anchored by a corroded length of chain.

"Raccoon?" Robbie ventured.

It was almost a raccoon, though its fur was a patchwork showing red and blistered flesh beneath. What held Elias's attention though were its eyes, bleeding crimson tears, and the intensity with which it stared all three of them down.

"Looks like someone set fire to it ... almost." Thorne unclipped his holster and motioned for the boys to stand back. "Further."

They retreated further.

"It's one of Billy's traps," Elias said. Billy Ceasar set them in the woods. Not for food, just to have something to torture.

"Billy Cesar? You think he did this?" Thorne asked, not looking round. He aimed his pistol at the unmoving raccoon. Without warning or uttering a sound the creature leapt at him.

"No-" The crack of the pistol shot cut off anything else Robbie had been going to say.

The raccoon jerked and fell. Whether the chain had pulled it short or the bullet had knocked it back Elias couldn't say. Only that it lay unmoving once more, this time in a black pool of its own blood.

"Thing was rabid." Thorne turned to go back the way they had come. "I'll check back with the parents. See if this friend of yours is home already. If not we'll get a search out for him this afternoon."

The boys followed, Elias at the rear, vulnerable to the empty forest at his back and feeling guilty for not protesting that they should continue the search.

Thorne returned them to his cruiser paying more attention to his radio than to the boys. The device had burst into life with a string of now-coherent alerts regarding all manner of incidents. Not all of them were local. Trouble down on the coast at Pines Point, some kind of mining disaster at Charlestown, a whole bunch of fishing boats not coming back to ports despite the fine weather. Elias sat in the back seat wondering if Sheriff Thorne had to deal with this many calls on his time every day, and if so how did he manage to continue to be such a pain in the ass every time they stepped the least bit out of line.

Sheriff Thorne delivered Elias home first. The dispatcher had called ahead to let both families know their boys were safe.

"Your father might go harder on you than you think you deserve, boy." Thorne drew up outside Elias's grey house, the boards weathered, the whole structure seeming to slouch beneath its burden of neglect. "The man lost his daughter. Likely spent the night thinking you'd gone the same way as little Jenny. Taken by some lunatic. So you think on that before you judge him."

Elias trailed Thorne as he walked straight-backed through the untidy sprawl of the front yard. Robbie raised his hand inside the car. Elias made to wave back but realised Robbie was holding his walkie-talkie to his ear and nodded instead.

"You there?" Static. "Over?"

Elias scrambled for his walkie-talkie. He'd been lying on his back on the bed, trying not to think. "J- Robbie?"

"I'm outside."

Elias put on his spare glasses and went to the window. Robbie waved from across the street, his bike behind him, leaning against the Henders's wall. "I can see."

"Come out."

"I don't want to." In his room, with all his things around him, he could almost imagine none of the previous night had happened. Robbie would make him talk about it.

"Get out here!"

Elias turned the talkie-talkie off. He didn't know why he'd left it on. He turned away from the brightness of the day. The shadows were already reaching across the street. The sunshine wouldn't last.

Elias lay back on his bed, only to flinch a few seconds later at the banging downstairs on the front door. He tried to ignore it but the knocking just grew louder. Eventually he snatched up his baseball cap and the penknife from his desk then went downstairs.

"What?" He threw the door open.

"Your dad's out too, huh?" Robbie asked.

"Everyone's gone looking." Already Robbie had him talking about James. "The sheriff organised them into four parties." The turnout had been huge. Community spirit they called it.

"So this is the best time to do it," Robbie said.

"Do what?"

"Go and see what the witch is up to. She's behind this. Got to be!" Robbie nodded vigorously as if he needed to convince himself.

"Mrs Eaves?" Elias snorted, or tried to. "You said she wasn't a witch. You said she just made up fortunes for idiots."

"Yeah ... but James said she was a witch. And she was there wasn't she? With that girl. Right there in the woods like she knew something. So we're going to see what she's doing down there on Franklin."

"But-"

"We owe it to James." Robbie raised his voice, anger burning.

"He's not coming back," Elias said quietly, and as he said it he realised it was a prayer. Almost every adult in Aspiration and half the teens old enough to be trusted were out in Briggen Woods searching for James ... and here Elias was, praying that their friend never came back.

"I'm going." Robbie stalked away, back across the street toward his bike propped against the picket fence.

"Wait." Elias muttered it, half hoping it would be missed. But Robbie heard and turned, his gaze even and unreadable. And Elias, swallowing down as much as he could of the fear that haunted him, went to get his bike too.

The streets were curiously quiet for five in the afternoon. Elias guessed Sheriff Thorne had roped more people than expected into the search for James. The town still remembered searching for Elias's sister and not finding her. Something like that leaves a scar on everyone. Aspiration needed a win.

"A lot of them are watching TV too," Robbie said, as if reading Elias's thoughts. "Some shit on the news. Maybe the same short of shit we've got." He pedalled harder, leaving Elias's side.

Franklin Street ran the length of the small valley between West Hill and Pike's Hill. They reached it breathless and sweaty. Robbie paused to remove the pegged card from his wheel strut as if stealth were required. The old house loomed above its neighbours like a cow among sheep. Once it had been a grand home, or a decent stab at one, standing alone before the town grew up around it like weeds. The four turrets stood black against a sky starting to pale before the blush of sunset.

"So what're we going to do?" Elias asked, coming to a halt beside Robbie.

"Watch."

"That's it?" Elias asked. "Watch?"

But even as he spoke two figures came from the gate leading up to the old house. Mrs Eaves and the man who somehow seemed too unimpressive to qualify as Mr Eaves. Both of them were struggling with bulging suitcases.

"They're leaving," Elias said.

Robbie only nodded and cycled off up the road. Elias followed. By the time they passed the car, a large black sedan, all four suitcases had been shoved across the back seat, crammed up against cardboard boxes of the sort used for moving house and overflowing with what looked like anything that had been in arms' reach. Mrs Eaves and the man were already returning to the house, her voice raised in reprimand, the individual words elusive. A tight sense of urgency wrapped the pair.

Elias and Robbie stopped twenty yards past the car. "Where's the girl?"

"Still inside?" Elias guessed. He turned his bike for a second pass.

Robbie frowned, silent for a moment. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear w-" A dull thumping.

"They've got her in the trunk!" Robbie said.

"The trunk?" Elias blinked then squinted at the car through the non-taped lens of his glasses. "Why?"

"She was on a leash before..."

"She's a prisoner?"

"C'mon!" Robbie stood on his pedal.

"Wait! We should get Thorne!" Elias glanced toward the open door of the big house. A dozen blank windows stared back, empty eyes watching. The witch could emerge any moment. "Wait!"

But Robbie was already going and somehow the bond between them would allow Elias to do nothing but follow. "Shit!" Maybe a day earlier he could have held his ground. Maybe before they watched James go down beneath that black sea. But today it seemed that it was no longer within Elias to let a friend go on by himself. Or perhaps it was just a terror of being left alone. "Shit!"

"It's locked." Robbie tugged at the trunk, leaning from his bike.

"Maybe it wasn't anything-" Another thump from within cut Elias off.

"Help me with it!" Robbie got the fingers of both hands under the lip and heaved. The whole car rocked slightly but there was no give in the trunk.

Elias glanced at the house. The man was in the hallway bending over a removals box, side-on to the entrance. Swearing softly Elias moved away 'walking' his bike with a foot to either side.

"Hey! Come back!" Robbie hissed, voice edged with outrage.

Elias kept going. He reached the driver's door and opened it. "There should be a lever in here ... somewhere." His dad's car had one but that was a Ford and where the Ford had a black metal level beneath the steering wheel this car had just smooth plastic. "Shit! Shit!"

The man lugged yet another suitcase out of the house and left it on the porch. He should have seen them but somehow he didn't, returning to the dim interior without a glance their way.

"Hurry!" Robbie hissed.

Elias leaned in across the driver's seat, his legs still wrapped around his toppled bike. He fumbled blind in the dim footwell and along the felt-covered divider between the seats. His fingers flinched from something soft and yielding, a decaying apple core, then fastened around some kind of knob.

"Please God!" He tugged at it and was rewarded with the clunk of the trunk lock releasing. For a second he lay gasping, sweat-soaked.

By the time he manoeuvred his bike awkwardly back to the rear Robbie had unzipped a large case and a white hand had emerged to clutch at his tanned wrist.

"Help me get her out!" Robbie pulled the flap back revealing the wild-eyed girl wearing a dirty T-shirt and shorts. She'd been gagged with a bandana and a cord bound her wrists. Robbie fumbled at the knots but they were too tight.

"Hey! You!" The man at the doorway made the mistake of shouting rather than just running at them.

"Oh crap!" Robbie tore at the cord but it resisted him. The girl wriggled out, maggot-like, and Elias saw that her ankles were similarly bound. The man was starting to run now.

Somehow Elias found his penknife in his hand, blade open. The sharp edge sliced through the girl's bonds in two slashes.

"Get on!" Robbie dragged the girl to her feet. "Go!"

Elias didn't need to be told again. He began to ride. Robbie came behind him, slow and wobbling, unused to passengers.

"Shit." Elias looked back. The man was running at Robbie and the girl, gaining fast. The witch was out of the front door now and the sharpness of her black-eyed stare swept across him.

Elias turned in the street, letting Robbie pass him. He felt a strange sense of amazement. This wasn't the sort of thing Elias Peck did. It was as though he was an observer, watching himself do it, with any fear of the consequences boxed up somewhere in the back of his mind. Shock, he decided. Shell shock. Like the men who come back from war. That's what the previous night had done to him. What the coming night might do didn't bear thinking about.

He cycled straight at Mr Eaves, realising as he did that the man looked terrified rather than furious. Elias turned and skidded at the last moment his bike scything the legs from under Mr Eaves. They should have both gone down in one tangle but somehow Mr Eaves fell sideways over the picket fence.

Mrs Eaves ignored them both and made directly for the car. She climbed in as Elias untangled his legs from his fallen bike. Her gaze zeroed in on the retreating backs of Robbie and the girl and she reached for the ignition.

Something crimson glinted just inches from where Elias's right hand braced the sidewalk ... his penknife, the blade catching the sunset. On instinct he grabbed it and scrambled forward. He stabbed the knife into the passenger-side tire. It almost bounced off, and a heartbeat later the rotation of the wheel tore it from his hand.

Mrs Eaves drove away, tires squealing.

Elias hurried back to his fallen bike, only to find Mr Eaves looming over him as he stood with it. Just a half a yard and the picket fence separated them. Elias jerked to a halt but the man made no move to seize him. Instead, he stared slack-jawed after the retreating car. "What have you done?" And when Elias found he had no answer Mr Eaves supplied his own. "You've killed us. You've killed us."

Elias ran with his bike, jumping into the saddle as he picked up speed. Mr Eaves's plaintive voice following in his wake.

"How are we going to get out now?"

Elias cycled madly after the departing Mrs Eaves, losing her as she turned the corner onto Elm, front tire flapping, and finding her again on the corner of Oak, the Buick jammed against a stop sign, now leaning at a drunken angle. Elias swooped past as Mrs Eaves emerged to consider her bent and steaming radiator grill. He felt her stare boring into the back of his neck as he pedalled on.

Robbie was waiting at the railyard, an abandoned area where the rusty hulks of old machinery huddled together as if reminiscing past glories. The boys often hung out at the yard and Elias had guessed it would be the place where Robbie stopped running. When Elias arrived the girl was standing some way off staring around in seeming amazement.

"What's she say?" Elias leapt off his bike and let it clatter to the ground. Only now did he realise he'd grazed both knees and had blood trickling almost to his shins. "What did she say about the dark? About James?"

"Nothing." Robbie shook his head. "Not a word. I'm not sure she can even speak."

Elias wasn't having that. Not with his newfound recklessness, not after rescuing her. "Hey! You! Why did they have you in the trunk?"

The girl glanced at him as if he were a minor annoyance then returned her attention of a great rusting cog wheel nearly as tall as her, running her fingers over its blunt teeth.

Robbie shouldered past Elias, taking the initiative. He leaned in close. The girl was skinny and shorter than Elias. Robbie was a head taller than her.

"What's your name?" He enunciated each word as if she might be deaf ... or foreign. "Your name!"

Robbie poked the girl to get her attention. She reacted as if electrocuted. One arm shot out, to shove Robbie away, open palmed. He flew back like he'd been hit by a car, skidding across the dirt to come to a halt on his back ten feet away. Elias ran to his friend's aid. He reaching him just as he raised his head off the ground. "Kia," Robbie gasped. "Her name is Kia."

Elias helped him to his feet, shooting astonished glances at 'Kia'. Robbie clutched his chest, hunched over, and spat. "Jesus!" He shot a sideways look at the girl, now exploring the flaking door to a shack built from corrugated iron.

Elias left Robbie's side and return cautiously to the girl. "Kia? Kia, right?"

Kia looked at him. She had grey eyes, pale hair, a pinched face, maybe from hunger. She didn't look anything like the superheroes in his comics but she had thrown Robbie through the air as if he was nothing. She looked tired. Weak.

"Your parents were following," Elias said. "Will they find us here?"

Kia shook her head vigorously.

"No they're not your parents or no they won't find us?" Robbie joined them, limping slightly, wary now.

Kia held up one finger, shook her head, then a second and shook her head again.

"Both," Elias said.

Kia nodded.

It had grown late. All around them shadows stole across the stockyard, stretching out as if reaching for each other. The sky in the west lay red still but deepening into darker shades.

"We have to get her to Thorne," Elias said. "She's been kidnapped, and the Eaveses will be running now they know they've lost her."

"She's a monster! How could she be kidnapped? She could have busted out of that trunk." Robbie looked back toward Kia. "No offense."

"Kidnapping isn't that simple." Someone had stolen Elias's sister. When a child is taken very young there are ways to control them that make strength irrelevant. Elias wasn't letting the girl go. Not without helping her. "We're taking her to Thorne."

"He'll still be out looking for James. Everyone will."

"So we'll go find him." Even as he said it Elias knew that no part of him wanted to return to those woods.

"I'm not going back in there." Robbie said it for him.

"We'll just go to where all the cars are. There'll be someone there coordinating. They can call the sheriff in."

Robbie shrugged his assent. "You can ride with me," he told Kia. "Just don't do ... that ... again."

The boys returned to their bikes.

"Kia!" Elias called the girl from her inspection of an engine block.

She looked across and when Robbie patted the back his saddle she went to join him. The sun had gone now and the yard was full of shadows. Already the heat was leaving the air. Kia wore shorts and a baggy T-shirt that the sea breeze tugged around the painful thinness of her. Elias felt cold just looking.

"We're taking you to the sheriff," Elias said.

Kia only watched him, her head tilted as if he were a curiosity.

"Come on." Elias set off. "Look out for the witch."

They cycled through the curiously quiet town, down through the Aims Road and the downtown shops. Old man Robson was still in the carpark, sat on the asphalt, his back to the shopping trolley where he kept his belongings, a bagged bottle in hand. Elias found a crumb of reassurance in that. A car roared past them, a four by four, all its light blazing. Teens maybe, knowing that Thorne was out of town.

Elias thought of how Kia had thrown Robbie aside. Of how she had put her name in his mind without speaking. On any other day it would have turned his world upside-down, but that had already happened and it would take more than Kia to turn it back.

They passed the Mason place, the gothic mansion silent atop its hidden bunker, curtains drawn on every window. From the corner of his eye Elias saw as he passed that the front door stood wide open, the hall beyond dark and empty.

A few more minutes pedalling and they left the shacks on the edge of town behind them. Away from Aspiration's lights the evening quickly darkened. The coast road was as quiet as Elias had ever known it. Even the cicadas seemed to be holding their breath. The wind picked up and he wished he'd brought a jacket. They passed by the abandoned Miller house where they'd taken the boards for their treehouse. Elias was sure he saw a figure inside, watching them through one of the empty upstairs windows.

A car came barrelling past them so close it nearly clipped the edge of Elias's handlebar. He saw the white faces of two children through the rear window one clutching a stuffed toy. A swirl of dust, a glimpse of a BMW badge, and they were gone around the curve of the road.

"Jesus!" Elias wobbled and carried on.

They cycled another mile in silence without seeing any more traffic.

The road dipped down towards Elt's Hollow before rising steeply for a while then beginning its slow descent toward Briggen Woods. Elias applied some effort and began to pick up speed.

"Hey! Hold up! I'm pedalling for two here." Behind Elias Robbie turned on his lights, five beams spearing the thickening night. Elias had said the set belonged on a monster truck not a BMX but right now he felt glad of them and hoped the batteries would hold out.

He turned in the saddle to call back. "You go up front! We can see where we're going then!"

"Wait! Wait! STOP!" The terror in Robbie's voice made Elias apply both brakes hard before he even looked forward. The effect was immediate. His back wheel skidded, the bike turned sideways and Elias went flying, rolling across the blacktop.

"W-what?" Elias raised his head as Robbie came to a halt a yard shy of him.

"Holy shit..."

Elias lifted himself up on his arms. Just a few feet ahead of him the road surface disappeared beneath what looked like water so black that it swallowed the beams of Robbie's lights and gave nothing back.

The road re-emerged thirty yards or so further on as it climbed towards the rise.

"Crap!" Elias scrambled back to his bike.

Robbie walked his BMX away from the slowly rippling surface. They stood together ten yards from the edge. Kia watched the stuff with a curious frown, head tilted to one side. She wrinkled her nose as if it smelled bad.

"We better go back," Robbie said.

Elias nodded, but glancing toward Aspiration he saw headlights on the curve that they had recently come along. "Get off the road!"

"Why?" Robbie frowned at the approaching lights. Kia had already crossed the ditch and wriggled into depths of a glossy-leaved bush. "They could help us."

"Could be the witch," Elias said.

Robbie flicked off his bike lamps and followed Elias into the brush at the roadside, taking the ditch in one long stride. They pushed on into the bushes, getting the bikes tangled with innumerable branches and twigs. There were thorns in the mix and trash thrown from passing cars crunched underfoot.

"I don't like this," Robbie muttered. "That black shit could creep up on us in here and we wouldn't see it."

He fell silent as the car approached. The driver was clearly paying attention and pulled up short of the dark flood.

"It's a different car," Robbie said and made to rise.

"It's them," Elias hissed, unsure of why he was so sure. Perhaps it was the way that Kia had retreated even further into the bush she'd chosen, lost from sight now.

Robbie was right, it was a station wagon, not the sedan, and it looked older than he was. But it was Mrs Eaves who got out of the driver side. She went to stare at the blackness across the road. Her husband came to stand at her shoulder.

"What we gonna do?" he asked, his voice a whine.

"Find her," hissed Mrs Eaves. "It's all we can do."

"We could try the other way again. Go off road, head up that ridge."

"You need to steal a better car then," she said, disdainful. "And the ridge doesn't last. We're on an island, at least until daylight. Maybe even then. We wasted too much time."

"Can't you ... you know ... do something." The man's fear was making Elias even more terrified. He looked down, expecting to see the black liquid rising around his feet, but saw only darkness. Despite his efforts he rustled the bush and Mrs Eaves turned her head sharply toward him.

She answered her husband without looking away from the spot where Elias held so still that he wasn't even breathing. "I need the girl. She's my battery, my fuel. I'm the Ferrari she's the gas. You know this. So grow a pair and help me look."

"Where?" He flung out his arms, rotating to encompass the night. "She could be anywhere."

"Abrams has a bloodhound." Mrs Eaves stalked back to the car. "That's where we'll start. Get me close to her and she's ours again."

Elias hardly breathed until he could no longer see the retreating taillights. Robbie was first to emerge, Kia last.

"It's deeper." The flood had swallowed another few yards of the road, including the spot where Elias had fallen.

Robbie turned on his bike lights, unclipped one of them and took it with him. He approached the black tide, coming to a halt close to the leading edge. "Mrs Eaves thought Kia could get her through here." He stared at the road rising beyond the expanse of darkness.

"You wanted to go back to town. You said so." Elias went to retrieve his bike from the bushes.

"My mom and dad are out there with Thorne, looking for James," Robbie said. "If the flood is here then most of Briggen Woods must have gone under."

Elias felt suddenly guilty. He hadn't thought of his father. Not once. He crossed reluctantly to where Robbie stood. "What can we do?"

"If we can get through then we can get back here again too. Bring them with us. We can save them." He turned to face Kia who stood pale and silent behind them. "You can do it. The witch, she said so... Please!"

Kia frowned but came to join them at the edge. She wrinkled her nose then reached out both hands, fingers splayed. Elias felt the skin across his shoulders crawl, the same electric sensation ran along the back of his arms.

At first nothing happened except that the ripples grew smaller then stilled. Then, like Moses with the sea on one of those over-acted movies from the fifties with the unnatural colors and the square-jawed heroes, the dark waters before them parted, pushing back into black walls.

Kia took a step forward, then another and another. She turned slowly. If the blackness were to flow back it would be around her ankles.

"Go on!" Robbie shoved Elias's shoulder.

Elias stumbled and cried out, twisting away. "You first."

So Robbie abandoned his bike and followed Kia, his face pale but determined. Trembling, Elias followed.

Kia held the darkness back in a circle maybe ten yards across. Within it Robbie's flashlight could show them the road, its surface gritty as if it had been torn by innumerable small sharp claws.

As they advanced the darkness rolled back ahead of them. It flowed away to reveal a car that had come to rest at the lowest point of the dip, its roof just inches below the surface. All four doors stood open wide. Kia led the boys toward it. The road surface became more grey. It looked scoured, and potholes showed further along. The scrub to either side of the road appeared dead, the leaves ashen or black. In the ditch, bramble coiled like dark razor wire. Elias kept close to Kia. He could see the lines of tension in her body as if she were holding off a weight that kept pressing back at her. The hardtop crumbled under their shoes like rotten snow.

They slowed as they drew nearer to the car. The badge read BMW. Elias's dad would call it a Beemer. The car looked as though it had spent ten years at the dump. There was a rusted hulk like this back at the stockyard, but that had the rounded 50s shape to it with those fins they used to have. This one looked modern. As Elias got closer he began to spot small patches of paint amongst the bubbled rust. The car lay empty, the insides torn, rusted springs jutting from perished seat covers. Luggage covered the back seat. Suitcases. All grey and cracking. A teddy hung half out of the open door, eyeless, discoloured, the stuffing drawn from its stomach.

"This is the car that came past us," Elias said. "One of the kids had this toy."

"It's an old wreck someone hauled here to dump." Robbie shook his head.

"In the middle of the road?"

"Where's the driver then?" Robbie asked.

Elias looked at the black walls pressing in around them. There had been two small children. Suddenly he didn't want to know where any of them were.

Kia led on, and Elias followed, one foot in front of the other. He badly needed to pee. The silence felt fathoms deep, pressing on him from all sides. Another step. Ahead of him Kia had started to shiver, maybe with cold, maybe with the strain of holding back the dark. He wondered how long she could do it for.

By the time they climbed the slope and stood clear of the flood's margins Kia's breath rattled in her throat and her whole body shook. The blackness closed in behind them like liquid soot.

"Come on. Keep going!" Robbie urged them on.

Elias let his friend lead, flashlight swinging.

They covered another mile before the moon broke cover, rising above Henner's Ridge to paint a silver landscape before them. By that light they saw that another dark expanse of flooded land stood between them and Briggen Woods.

"Half of it's under already!" Robbie raised his fists to the sides of his head.

"That's half the trees that are under," Elias said. "Almost all of the woods are going to be flooded." He didn't say the rest but it was clear enough. Anyone in Briggen Woods was cut off and if the dark rose much further there would be nowhere left for them to run. His father was stranded in a tree. Or under the tide with James.

"Come on, Kia!" Robbie reached for her hand. "You can get us through to them."

Kia pulled away as if stung.

"She can't, Robbie. She almost couldn't get us across the last one." To reach the woods would require travelling more than ten times as far across rough country and wholly submerged. At least when they'd crossed the dip they had had sky above them. "It's too far."

"Your dad's in there too!" Robbie shouted, rounding on him.

The rebuke stung and Elias could only hang his head while Robbie turned back to the girl.

"You can do it, Kia. If we get them back to the road we can take the turn for Scottsville and follow it up into the Mantocks. We'll be safe in the hills!"

Elias opened his mouth to protest. Robbie wasn't talking hundreds or thousands of yards anymore, he was talking the best part of twenty miles!

Robbie forestalled him. "What else is she going to do? If she doesn't get out then she's stuck here like everyone else. Mrs Eaves was trying to leave. She wasn't hanging around. Aspiration's already an island. Soon it'll be three islands. Then the hills will go under one by one. Then what?" He grabbed Kia's hand and frowned. "She says she's scared."

"That ain't news. I'm shitting myself." Elias shivered.

"No, I mean I can hear her. Like she's talking in my head." Robbie dropped her hand. "And now I can't."

Elias crossed to stand by them and reached out to Kia, slowly, as much from his own shyness as from not wanting to spook her. He couldn't remember the last time he held a girl's hand. Perhaps he never had. He guessed he must have held his sister's hand at some point before she got taken.

Kia raised her hand to Elias, also tentative, and as their fingers touched something electric passed between them. Elias didn't hear her voice in his head. It ran deeper than that. Somehow he just knew what she wanted to say. She wanted him to know that she didn't understand the darkness or know where it came from, or why. She didn't think she could reach the woods but she could try.

"Why were you with Mrs Eaves?" Elias asked.

A whirlwind of images blew through him, confusion mixed with fear. There had been another home, an orphanage, long ago. Kia had been adopted or stolen or maybe a bit of both. What came through very clearly was that she didn't want to go back to the woman. She feared them both, the man and the woman, but for different reasons, and the woman most of all.

"Can you help us?" Robbie asked. "We need to get to our families."

Kia nodded slowly. She tightened her grip on Elias's hand and in his head the voice that wasn't a voice let him know she would need their strength too.

"Anything," Robbie said, though the word trembled.

They began slowly, walking hand in hand into the shallows of the dark tide. Immediately Elias experienced it in a way he had not the first time. He felt the pressure on all sides as Kia pushed the darkness back, exposing the ground to the beams of the flashlights that both boys held in their other hands. They'd taken the lights from the array across the handlebars of Robbie's bike and Elias clutched his like a weapon.

As Kia pushed, using some muscle wholly lacking in the boys, Elias felt the hot flow of his own strength running into her. It was as if where she held his hand he were bleeding, but with all of it running into her veins and not a drop spilling.

They advanced across the blasted ground, going around whatever strangely twisted vegetation lay in their path. The grass glistened like oil and where it grew long Elias felt its sting across his bare legs. With every yard that they advanced the darkness rose around them, the pressure increasing, the draw of heat and energy increasing between Elias's hand and Kia's. Soon it was above their heads and curving over the bubble of Kia's defence, threatening to seal away the sky. In the beams of their flashlights the darkness coiled and swirled like a black fog behind glass.

A few more yards and they were beneath the dark sea, the moonlight gone as swiftly as if a curtain had been drawn.

Elias tripped, his foot snagged on some hidden root, and he found himself unable to keep his balance. He fell forward to the ground, breaking his fall with both hands. Immediately the darkness surged forward and the bubble preserving them shrank, halting only just before Elias's face. If he stretched out a hand he could touch the void.

"Elias..." Robbie's voice, thick with strain.

Elias looked back to see his friend nearly as pale as Kia, their hands bloodless and squeezing each other for all they were worth. Both stared at him with wide eyes.

"Take her ... hand..." Robbie got the words past gritted teeth.

Elias scrambled backwards, getting to his feet, but as he rose someone spoke out of the darkness.

"Jeeze. I'm gone for a night and you guys get yourself a girlfriend."

"James?" Elias spun around but they were alone in their hemisphere where the outer dark couldn't reach.

"Let go of her." James spoke from a different direction this time. "It's not so bad once you're in."

"It looked pretty fucking bad going in!" Elias reached for Kia's hand. Immediately the strength ran out of him and he nearly fell again, but at the same time the walls of their sanctuary pushed back and for an instant he saw something, pressed against the divide, something human but horrific, lidless eyes in a burned face, gone in the next heartbeat.

"Bitch!" A snarl came from back inside the inky fog. James's voice but also not his voice. There were tones in there, both deep and shrill, that he never owned. He spoke again, more normally but with a sly humour running through it all. "What you gonna do, boys? Can't hold her hands forever... The tide's rising. Best to join in while joining in is still an option."

"I ... don't wanna turn into that," Robbie managed. "Gotta go ... back."

"Turn into ... that?" A sneering tone. "What do you think you'd look like to the people living before the last tide came in?" James asked from the darkness. His voice but as if something else were using it. "The tide's risen more times than you know, boy. You've been living under it your whole life. Monsters, all of you. And now a new tide has come in. You take your medicine and join us. It's going to happen sooner or later. But not much later."

Elias and James stumbled around Kia, turning her, and together they began to retrace their path. The thing with James's voice laughed at their backs as they left.