Joseph gave a grunt of effort as he tightened his grip on me. ‘Well? What is it?’
‘Hungry,’ I croaked. ‘They’re saying hungry.’
I was pulled sideways as Joseph suddenly picked up his pace. ‘Move, move, move!’
‘What? He’s hallucinating, right?’ I heard Ameena say. She sped up too, but struggled to keep pace. ‘Tell me he’s hallucinating.’
‘He’s not hallucinating. We need to get him inside now. If it happens here he won’t stand a chance.’
Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. They were screaming it now. Their voices came from the left and right, from behind me and from up ahead. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry.
Some of them were close. Closer, even, than Joseph and Ameena. A voice screeched right by my ear and I felt a blast of warm breath on my face. But when I squinted through the dark, I saw nothing there.
‘Wha’s happ’ning?’ I slurred. Pain clawed through my skull like five fiery fingers, beginning where the Crowmaster had scratched me and reaching all the way down into my chest.
The hospital wasn’t far ahead – I couldn’t tell how far, exactly – but I suddenly felt that we weren’t going to make it.
Hungry hungry hungry hungry! The voices had been whipped into a frenzy, screeching and howling like wild animals. Ameena and Joseph showed no signs of hearing them, but Joseph made sure to shout when he next spoke.
‘Listen to me, Kyle,’ he bellowed in my ear. ‘When we get inside, there won’t be long before it happens. The Crowmaster infected you with a virus and it’s about to kick into top gear.’
‘What does that mean?’ a voice asked. I couldn’t even say if it was mine or Ameena’s.
‘It means you’re going to slip through into the Darkest Corners,’ Joseph told me. ‘Those voices you hear, they’re from over there. Those... things must know you’re coming. They’re waiting for you.’
Hungryhungryhungryhungryhungry.
The Darkest Corners. It was the place all imaginary friends went when they were forgotten about – an alternate reality filled with pain, suffering and unimaginable horrors. A bit like my last visit to the dentist, but without the free sticker at the end.
I’d been to the Darkest Corners a few times and had barely survived each time. Fortunately, I was able to flit back and forth between here and there just by concentrating hard enough, so an escape route was never far away.
‘He can come back, though. He can just come back. Can’t he?’
‘Not this time. It doesn’t work like that,’ Joseph answered. ‘It’s the virus. When he slips over, he’ll be stuck there. He’ll be trapped in the Darkest Corners.’
I felt my head spin faster as the enormity of Joseph’s words sunk in.
‘Trapped,’ he added, hammering the point home. ‘With no way back.’
Chapter Three THE OTHER OTHER HOSPITAL
I didn’t notice the door flying open at Joseph’s boot, didn’t even realise we were inside the hospital until Ameena staggered and fell to her knees, and we hit lino instead of concrete.
Joseph was beside me right away, turning my face so I was looking up at him. The five stabbing pains clawed all the way down into my stomach and a shock of agony shook my whole body.
An indescribable sound burst across my lips – not a scream or a howl, but something from deeper within than that. Something I didn’t even recognise as human. From my head to my toes, my muscles went rigid, amplifying the hurt a hundred times over.
‘Help him! Do something!’
My jaw was wrenched open and a leather wallet shoved in. My teeth clamped round it, stopping me biting my tongue off.
‘There’s nothing we can do.’ That was Joseph’s voice. He sounded a long way away. ‘It’s too late.’
‘There’s got to be some kind of cure!’ Ameena cried. ‘This can’t be it. It can’t end like this.’
They were talking about me as if I wasn’t there. Outside, I could hear the other voices still screeching. Hungryhungryhungry. Hungryhungryhungry.
‘Not here. Over there. There’ll be a cure there, if he can find it.’
Ameena’s face suddenly filled my vision. Sparks of blue flickered like fireflies around her head.
‘Did you hear that, Kyle? There’s a cure over there. There’s a cure in the Darkest Corners. Find it, OK?’ I closed my eyes, but she shook me until they opened again. ‘Find it and come back to me.’
‘You’ll be better there,’ said Joseph urgently. ‘Not like this. The hospital will be barricaded, so you’ll be safe from the things outside. At least for a while.’
He nudged Ameena aside and leaned in close to me. His face was a mess of flickering sparks. They scurried across his skin like insects.
‘But it’s not what’s outside you need to worry about, it’s what’s inside. There’s someone in the hospital. Someone worse than anything out there. Worse than anyone you’ve had to deal with so far. You’ve got to stay away from him. You hear me, Kyle? You’ve got to stay away from—’
I never caught the end of the sentence. The entrance hallway exploded in a shadowy spray of blacks and greys, and a tumbling torrent of electric sparks came crashing down on top of me.
The last thing I heard before I passed out were those voices, louder and clearer and more excited than ever before.
Hungry, hungry, huuuuuuuungry!
The clanking of metal woke me. I leapt to my feet, startled, no real idea what was going on. The wallet was still wedged in my mouth. I spat it out, and realised at once that my body no longer hurt.
I prodded gently at my head. The Crowmaster’s scratches were still there, but there was no pain. Nothing. In fact, other than a dull ache where my knees had hit the hospital floor, I felt in perfect health.
Relief made me snort out a laugh, but another metallic crash soon wiped the smile from my face.
The sound was coming from the door, or rather, where the door should have been. Sheets of heavy corrugated iron covered the entrance, wedged in place by thick metal poles and thicker wooden beams. Rolls of barbed wire were strung across the entire barricade, cupping it like a sling and keeping it pressed against the door.
Everything – the metal, the wood, the wire – shook as the creatures on the other side of the door hurled themselves against it. I could make some of them out through gaps in the blockade, battering against the small windows with clawed, misshapen hands. The glass looked to be long gone, but a wire mesh and half a dozen strong bars stood in its place, keeping everything outside from getting in. Everything except their voices.
They giggled and shrieked. They spat and swore. They hissed and howled and hollered like all the demons of hell. And all the while, the barricade shook and the chanting continued:
Hungry, hungry, hungry!
I turned away and tried to get my bearings. A putrid, mouldy stench caught me right at the back of the throat, and I had to pull the neck of my jumper up over my nose to stop myself being sick.
I was in a long corridor that stretched away into the distance, ending in shadow. Fluorescent strip lights hung from the ceiling overhead. Most of them didn’t seem to work, but four buzzed and flashed erratically, casting a cold, flickering glow along parts of the corridor.
Those