What I Tell You In the Dark Read Online Free Page A

crackle of their wings eclipsing the sky, always devouring.
    The locust has no king . I watched him say it this very morning to the woman, Stella. The leader. He stood up in the meeting,everyone except him quiet in the aftermath of Stella’s announcement, her carefully packaged messages about InviraCorp still hanging in the air. But he dared to tell this appalling truth to her, to all of them, his pointing finger shaking before him.
    Watching him after that I realised something had reached an end in him. The way he stumbled in the corridor, those last few steps to the bathroom, holding on to the walls like a passenger on a ship. Minutes later, I was in there, snatching him up.
    We’ve now reached Alex’s office and he is holding open the door for me. ‘Okay Will,’ he says, ‘in you go.’
    The way he is trying to dominate me with this rote-learned conciliation is making me surprisingly angry. Sympathy as strategy, manipulation beneath a pelt of kindness… I’m sick of seeing it. It’s an insidious form of oppression and I’ve watched its creeping rise in the world with mounting despair. It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that I’m starting to feel like I want to gouge out his eyes or thump his gut – but really, who am I kidding? Even if it would change anything, this body couldn’t withstand a fight, not even against a house cat like him, and especially not against the thick wrists and sloping shoulders of the security apes. No, there’s simply no way. And besides, it must be at least a week since Will has slept more than a few hours in a night. Even the walking I’ve done today has exhausted me. In fact, a nice sit down may be just what I need.
    And so in I go. The dagger of my enmity will remain cloaked a while longer.
    He puts a guiding hand on my shoulder. ‘Okay Will,’ he says again. There is an almost professional patience in his voice – I am a simple but troublesome child passing through his care.
    I shrug him off.
    Just know this , I tell him silently as I pass. There shall be no covenant. No mercy either .
    â€¢
    I find that if I lean back in my chair, I am able to see past the guy who is talking to me and get a clear view through the window behind him. Several hundred yards in the distance the steel skeleton of a new building is being slowly hoisted and lowered into place. Tiny men are busy operating the cranes or standing and watching the cranes or walking to where there are other machines and more tiny men. Behind them is a bright blue sky. It’s really quite poetic in its way.
    â€˜Are you still with us?’
    This is directed at me but I choose to ignore it because I’m not yet done with my looking out of the window, and anyway I would have thought the answer to that was self-evident.
    Even so, the man who is talking to me – mid-fifties, stuffed toad-like and wet-lipped into his suit – has moved his head so that it now interferes with my line of vision, and the concert of tiny men is replaced by his jowly face. His name is Oliver, he is one of the in-house lawyers. Not just one of, in fact: he is their elder. A Son of Zenas.
    â€˜Every word,’ I tell him cheerfully. It’s not an exact answer to his question, which I’ve already forgotten, but it addresses the spirit of the thing.
    â€˜So, Will, what I was saying is that we cannot of course make you go home if you do not want to be off work and if you are, as you have stated yourself to be, in perfectly sound …’ he describes a little shape in the air with his finger ‘… health.’
    He then waits for a short while, as if for a response from me. Was that supposed to be a question?
    â€˜Was that a question?’ I ask him.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜What you just said. It sounded like a statement but you,’ I imitate his funny little hand gesture, ‘seem to be waiting for me to say something.’
    â€˜Is there