The Darkest Corners by Barry Hutchison

Author:Barry Hutchison [Hutchison, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Earlier, when the streets had been filled with screechers and beasts, the world had looked like a very scary place. Now it was their turn to flee in terror as things bigger and angrier than they were, ran riot through the village.

Everywhere was dark. The streetlights were out, the few houses that had had lights on were now in darkness, and a thick layer of cloud had covered the night sky. The only glow came from the fires that crackled in buildings and consumed the cars that lay scattered across the roads like discarded toys.

I realised then that it was smoke covering the sky, not cloud. Smoke that was becoming thicker with every home that burned.

We kept low, tucked into the shadows by the door. Grotesque, inhuman shapes moved through the streets, revealed in silhouette whenever they passed the flames. The sounds of screaming and roaring and squealing and growling were all around us. Other sounds too, sounds without description. Sounds I wished I could somehow unhear.

This was the Darkest Corners as I had first seen it, way back on Christmas Day. A place filled with monsters and evil. A place I had mistaken for Hell itself. Or maybe it hadn’t been a mistake at all.

‘What’s the plan? How do we get to the hospital?’ Ameena whispered. She’d come from the Darkest Corners too. She’d seen all this stuff before. But her eyes were wide and her hands were shaking with fear.

‘We could make a run for it,’ I suggested.

‘I was kind of hoping not to die, though,’ she replied. ‘So that rules that plan out. We could try to sneak there.’

‘Sneak three miles? That’d take hours. We don’t have hours.’

‘He could be dead already, you know?’ she whispered. ‘Just saying.’

‘I know. But I have to try. I left him. It’s my fault.’

‘And you’re sure your magic powers are gone?’

I nodded. ‘It’s the Darkest Corners. I don’t have my abilities here.’ Just in case, though, I concentrated and tried to bring the sparks rushing through my head. Nothing happened. ‘Any other suggestions?’

A thunderous boom knocked us back into the doorway. A fireball rose up inside the church, destroying the roof. A cloud of shattered slates and charred wood was lifted into the air with a whoosh. As we watched, the pieces began to rain down like missiles, scattering the monsters and leaving the street directly ahead of us clear.

‘Running it is then,’ Ameena shrugged.

‘Police station. There was a car out back earlier,’ I said, aiming us in roughly the right direction. The fog made it impossible to see more than a metre or two ahead, which was both good and bad. Good because we couldn’t see any of the horrors roaming around, and bad for exactly that same reason.

Shapes moved in the cloud ahead of us, forcing us to change our route. The dust and the smoke were blinding. I had my face buried in the crook of my arm, trying to stop the stuff getting into my lungs. A coughing fit now would be very bad.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.