Sarah Pinborough - Into the Silence

For the S.S.C.C.,

without whom I wouldn't have such great

and ridiculous friends. Stony Stratford rocks!

Heavy raindrops pattered insistently against the window, searching out a way to creep in. Watching from her bed on the other side of the room, six-year-old Kate Healey pulled the covers up a little further until they stopped just under her nose. Her eyes were wide and her breathing fast. It was only rain, she knew that, but, lying there in the dark with her parents all the way downstairs, she thought the drops sounded just like the hungry fingers of dead children tapping at the glass, wanting to get at her warm skin.

Sleep. She had to try to get to sleep because Shona at school said the monsters didn't come for you if you were asleep, and more than anything Kate wanted the monsters to leave her alone. For a moment she let her eyes drift shut, and when she opened them again she was relieved that there were no shapes moving in the shadows of her room. No dead children inside. Or monsters. Or maybe dead children were monsters. Everything was a monster in the dark.

Shivering slightly, Kate wished she didn't have such a vivid and overactive imagination. She wasn't entirely sure what the phrase meant, but she knew that whatever it was it made her afraid of stuff that people like her parents didn't even think about. Monsters. Dead people. The bad things that lived in the secret black country under her bed and came out at night. She'd seen her mum and dad both shake their heads and blame her vivid or overactive imagination for waking them up at night when they had to be at work early. But she couldn't help it, however much she wished differently. And how could she explain that the world changed in the dark? And it terrified her.

Outside, the wind became distracted and carried the rain in a different direction, giving the small terraced house's windows some peace. Kate let out a sigh, and her heart slowed slightly to somewhere nearer a normal pace. The dead fingers were gone, at least for now. If only she could see to the other side of the room, then bedtime would be so much easier. She peered at the empty space on her bedside table where her night light had been.

Big girls don't sleep with a light on. That's what Daddy had said when he threw it away, despite all her tears. She'd almost gone and fished it out of the bin when no one was looking, but Daddy could be really scary when he was angry and so she'd left it where it was until the rubbish men came and took it away for good. Daddy had thrown it out four days ago, and Kate hadn't slept properly since. It was too dark. Bad things came alive in the dark.

Pulling Lucky the stuffed sheepdog into a tighter hug, she curled her knees up under him and towards her chin. Despite her sockets starting to itch with tiredness, she couldn't bring herself to shut her eyes for more than a moment, knowing that as soon as she did all the shadows in her small room would pull themselves together into something fluid and ancient, intent on creeping up to suffocate her. She blinked. It was a fast movement, too quick for the shadows to act.

From downstairs, the theme tune for some TV detective show that her mum was fond of drifted up towards her, reminding Kate that her bedroom was not a dark universe on its own but was attached to the rest of the warm and brightly lit house. It was a slightly comforting thought and, as the loud music faded into dialogue that she couldn't hear, Kate concentrated instead on the sounds from outside: not the rain, the dead children's fingers, but the real-life human sounds of nine o'clock on a Tuesday evening in Cardiff. She was a big girl. She'd show them she didn't need a night light.

A train rattled by on the tracks at the back of Maelog Place, and when she concentrated her hearing she could make out the constant thrum of car engines carrying people in and out of the city. The sounds soothed her. It wasn't the still of the night yet. It wasn't monster time. And if she could just get to sleep before then, she'd be all right. Earlier on, she'd heard a choir singing over at the Church of St Emmanuel and, when the train had finished its breathless journey past, she realised they'd started again. The sound was only faint, but Kate could pick up the strains of the men and women's voices as they surged louder towards the peak of the tune. She didn't know what the song was, but it was pretty. Even cocooned in her nightly battle with the dark, she smiled a little.

But then, almost imperceptibly, something shifted in the night air. A few streets away, a dog set up an anguished howl, joined by two or three more before they whimpered into subdued silence. Kate frowned. Cats shrieked and hissed in the street outside. The music from the church a few hundred metres away faded in her head, the sound draining to nothing and taking the throbbing car engines and the raindrops with it.

Thump. Something landed heavily on the roof and Kate's terrified eyes rolled upwards, her mouth falling open a little. It was too heavy to be a bird or a cat. What was it? Sweat seeped from the palms of her hands into Lucky's fur. Mummy. She wanted Mummy. The thing on the roof moved and Kate froze.

With each leaden step taken on top of the house, sound faded from Kate's world. Cold silence oozed through the tiles and down through the attic, its fingers reaching for the little girl, wrapping round her mind and digging sharp nails in, squeezing tighter than she held the tatty toy. Her throat worked to make a scream, but she couldn't find it. For a horrible moment, she couldn't remember how.

The clock beside her bed ceased its quiet, steady electric tick, even though the luminous hands continued on their regimented journey. Her heart stopped its panicked beat in her ears. Even the inner whine that accompanied complete stillness vanished. Her head was empty, cut off even from the regulation clicks and whirrs of its own body. Alone. Vacant.

The monsters had found her in the dark and they were never ever going to let her go.

And then she gasped and sat bolt upright, air pounding noisily through her lungs, the clock bursting back into life, the rustle of the sheets and duvet an explosion of joyous sound as whatever had been on the roof took a final leap clear of the house.

Kate didn't go to the window. She couldn't bring herself to move, not even when she heard glass shattering just before the choir fell silent. Not even when a shriek of human agony filled the street and her head. She wasn't a big girl. She wanted her night light.

She finally found her own scream fifteen minutes later when the sirens' wails filled the quiet roads outside, but this time no maternal reassurance would calm her. Kate Healey slept in with her parents that night, curled up tight against her mother Cara's back. She stayed there for the rest of the week, and no amount of shouting from Daddy could move her.

Kate Healey had found a fear that made the dark seem like child's play. And it came shrouded in silence.

Gwen Cooper pulled up outside the Church of St Emmanuel and stepped out of the black SUV before quickly zipping up her fitted leather jacket, flinching a little against the rain. Bloody weather. It had been raining for days and showed no sign of letting up, the sky hanging constantly heavy and grey over the city.

Jack Harkness slammed his door and looked over at her as she tucked her chin into the fitted collar.

'It's only water, Gwen. Pure, natural, recycled for millions of years, good old Earth water.' He grinned. 'This little downpour's probably been through you a few times already. Embrace it!'