The rest of the text was, like the handwritten editions before, done in one big solid block that flowed all the way from the left of the page to the right, before dropping down onto the line below. The words were more or less a stream of consciousness, jumping from one subject to the next, and often switching conspiracy theories mid-sentence.
The world was flat, but it was also hollow. The world was all a simulation, but aliens walked among us. Anyone in power was a lizard, but also a robot.
And Springwatch presenter, Michaela Strachan, was still a ticking time bomb of death.
By the later editions, he’d discovered columns and subheadings. At first glance, this made those issues easier to read, but once you drilled down into the content, the whole thing was as indecipherably batshit crazy as before.
She stood and let her gaze wander across the pages. Aside from the ink colour and the rambling content, they had nothing obviously in common. Nothing that…
“Wait,” Sinead said, and Taggart rolled over onto his front like she’d spoken his name.
Kneeling, she checked the first few issues. The date. The date was the same. A quick scan across the rest of the line confirmed that the publication dates matched on all of them. They’d all been put out on the same day, and were all one year apart.
Grabbing a few sheets from one of the other piles, she checked the dates on those. Those dates didn’t match the blue-printed editions, and they didn’t match each other, either. There seemed to be no pattern to when those other issues had been published, just the ones in blue.
Behind her, Taggart growled.
Still crouching, Sinead turned to find the little dog lying flat on the floor, the fur on his collar rising as his eyes went to the window, and the darkness that lay beyond it.
“What’s the matter?” Sinead asked.
She reached out and patted the dog, and the growling abated. His eyes, however, remained locked on the darkened glass, and the moment Sinead lifted her hand away, the scruff of Taggart’s neck began to rise again.
And then, she heard it, too—the scuff of a footstep on the gravel outside.
She froze solid, her outsides becoming a statue of ice, while her insides churned, and whirled, and spun. Taggart, either sensing her distress or terrified himself, commando-crawled closer to her on his belly, and pressed his shoulder against her ankle.
“It’s OK. It’s nothing. Don’t worry,” she said, though she couldn’t say if she was talking to the dog or to herself.
Without moving from her spot, she tried to look outside, but with the station lights on the window had become a mirror that reflected a view of the ceiling tiles and showed nothing of the darkened world beyond.
Her heart was a hummingbird in her chest, fifty beats per second, badabadabadabadabum.
Taggart’s ears twitched, and his growl crept further back into his throat. First his eyes, then his head shifted, like he was following the progress of someone as they made their way around the side of the building towards the…
The door. Had she locked the door? She’d closed it, yes, but locked it?
She cursed herself below her breath, not daring to make too much noise. Could she get to the door in the next few seconds? Without being seen? Without being caught?
She tried to logic away her fear—it was probably nothing, and even if there was someone there, so what? That didn’t mean they meant her any harm.
But try as she might, her body wasn’t listening. Her adrenal glands had drowned out all sense of reason, and now she was back in that farmhouse, back in that room, back on that bed with the monsters closing in from the shadows around her.
There was a knock on the door out front, and Taggart let out three high-pitched barks and the start of a howl, then rolled onto his back and pawed at the air like he was going to get in trouble.
She should move. She knew that. She should get up off the floor, go to the front, see who was there.
But she couldn’t. Try as she might, fight as much as she liked, her legs were not for budging.
Another knock, louder this time. Sinead took her phone from her pocket. No signal. Of course.
The landline was out front. The radio, too.
She was alone in a strange place, with somebody hammering on the door.
“Come on. Get it together,” she hissed, curving her hands into tight fists until her fingernails dug into her palms. “Grow up.”
But growing up wasn’t the problem. Sinead of five years ago would’ve had no problem marching over to the door and pulling it open.
Sinead of six months ago would’ve thought nothing of confronting the late-night caller, or of giving him a mouthful about sneaking around in the dark.