Corbenic by Catherine Fisher

him.”
    â€œIt’s just a story! Fine! I suppose if I’d asked Bron about the Grail he’d have been cured, would he? On the spot? He’d have jumped up and gone dancing? And I’d have come back and found us all living in country cottages with roses growing round the door? No one in the jails or sleeping rough or ill and my mother . . .” He stopped instantly, confused, cursing himself. Then he shoved Hawk’s hand away and looked around for his coat.
    â€œIt’s a story, yes,” Shadow said urgently, “but stories mean things. You must have dreamed it for a reason . . .”
    â€œSure.” He pulled his coat on, ignoring her, ignoring the stab of pain in his side. “I must be crazy talking to a pair of New Age weirdos. Look at you!” he gestured around angrily. “Look at this place!”
    Hawk folded his arms. “Cal,” he said gently.
    Hurt, furious, Cal shoved him aside, pulled the curtain so hard he almost tore it, and fumbled blindly for the door. To his horror hot tears were pricking his eyes. He had to get out. To get away. He stumbled down the steps of the van into the frosty fog and half walked, half ran over the mud.
    â€œWait!” Shadow’s darkness loomed after him. “You’ve left the sword. Cal!”
    â€œKeep it,” he growled, not caring if she heard him or not. “Keep the bloody thing.”
    He walked fast, unthinking, wiping his face. He didn’t care where he went, but in the swirls of fog the streets opened before him, uphill, past the shuttered shops, under the town arch, past the lit fronts of pubs where voices and music and cigarette smoke drifted out through opened windows.
    By Otter’s Brook the fog was thinner, and he was weary, slower, his side and chest throbbing, and he shivered in the cheap suit. The key was ice cold; he fumbled with it, opened the door, and slid in quickly, leaning with his back against it, breathing deep, harshly, every gasp almost a sob. Calm down. He had to calm down.
    The room was warm, and spotless. Nothing disturbed it. It smelled of Thérèse’s perfume. He kicked his shoes off, ran upstairs and pulled off trousers and shirt frantically, then ran down and stuffed them into the washing machine. It started, a heavy thumping. Then he dressed, put the TV on and went and sat in front of it, watching, not seeing. He only wanted noise. People laughing. People he didn’t know, laughing.
    There was a note on the table. He had stared at it a long while before he even saw it; then the words jumped out at him, in Trevor’s fastidious handwriting. Your mother rang. Wants you to phone back. Sounds desperate.
    â€œGod,” he said aloud. God. He couldn’t. Not now, not tonight. Tomorrow. Not now.
    Suddenly, out of nowhere, he remembered the slashed jacket, and he searched desperately for some matching thread, and found it in one of the orderly kitchen cupboards. He sewed the slash in the jacket carefully, hurriedly, stabbing his thumb, but he couldn’t do it fast enough, because even as he finished and bit the thread the phone rang with a jolt that seemed to go right through him. He stared at it, unmoving. It rang. Over and over. Never stopping. Never changing.
    â€œHang up,” he whispered, in agony. “Hang up.” But she didn’t. The same two notes, insistent, urgent, getting to him, getting inside him till his nerves were so tight his chest ached and he wanted to scream. And then it stopped, halfway through a ring. The silence was shocking. It was only nine o’clock but he had to hide from it; he flicked the TV off and ran upstairs and got into bed and lay there, breathless. He thought he had loved the silence, but it was a threat now; it could be broken. Sweating, he waited, every muscle tense in the bed. The torment lasted ten minutes. Then the phone rang. And rang.
    He groped for the Walkman, for anything. The only CD on the bedside