Chapter Forty-two
Flynn had been watching The Snowman on TV and then he realised he was actually in The Snowman. He was flying like the boy, holding the Snowman’s hand and wearing striped pyjamas and an old-fashioned dressing gown.
As he soared over the snowy landscape, lights twinkled in the villages below. It was magical and peaceful. Then he found himself alone and falling.
The descent to earth was rapid and headlong. He twisted over and over until, once again, he was on the road in the dark, speeding along on the bike around twists and turns.
Something loomed ahead; something that had come off the fells and through the woods.
It was a creature … not human. A memory stirred somewhere in the depths of his fractured consciousness …
of a horseman riding across the fells and the devil springing up.
Where had he heard that story before? He grasped at the memory but it eluded him, and then all he knew was darkness.
When he woke up, he had no idea where he was. It wasn’t heaven – perhaps some kind of purgatory, because he couldn’t move and the pain in his legs and head was so bad it made him feel sick.
People were talking but their voices sounded distorted, like a recording in slow motion. He couldn’t understand a word they were saying. Someone in a mask loomed over him. He tried to talk and no sound came out.
The next thing he knew, he was lying still in a dark room.
Eventually the voices started again and he had the sensation of movement.
There were lights so bright they hurt his eyes and ahead of him was a dark tunnel.
He was paralysed, powerless to escape. The faces of people flashed in front of him; strangers and people he knew and loved.
Work colleagues, his mum and dad, Molly, Esme, Harvey – and Lara.
The tunnel crept closer and closer, becoming a giant mouth that opened wider, ready to swallow him up.