Chapter Eight

When Phoenix Newman heard the sound he drew away from the computer screen and took off his headset.

What the fuck is that?!

The hum roared over his rooftop. Between every bellow – they lasted about seven seconds each – he could make out a rough set of sounds: cars honking, wind howling, and people screaming. 

The hum had possibly ruptured his ear-drums – he could not tell. Everything became muffled and full of static. 

Covering his ears, Phoenix rushed towards his window. He reached down to his navy drapes and tugged them open. 

He recoiled. The piercing blue light was blinding at first, then it slowly came into focus as distant helicopters closed in on The Spire. They hovered over the metropolis with flashing red lustres. What were they doing? Why were there so many in the dead of ni—

Then he could see it: the source of the sound, the anomaly in the ozone layer. A cyan vortex – no, a spiral – sparkling and twisting in on itself. 

It brightened into a heavenly circle, whitening, twinkling, glowing briskly with a delicate shade of blue that drifted amongst the clouds, casting down upon the majestic mist of the late-night thoroughfare.

The humming stopped again. Silence lay steadily in his house. Not a scream, not a whimper. 

Then Phoenix's voice, loud and forceful: "Jesus Christ!"

His heartbeat accelerated. He could not hear his own words; instead, he felt a vibration shoot up his neck and into his skull. 

Phoenix began gibbering. 

Slowly, his hearing came back, accompanied by a shrill ringing noise. It went on for quite some time. 

He stopped for a moment as the sound of the outside hubbub became clear. 

"Moooooom!" He didn't realise he was holding his breath until he called for his mother. 

He hurried to his door; it slid open automatically, letting him pass into the hall to his parents' room. 

The door slid open and revealed Phoenix's mother cowering on the king-sized bed; face wrinkled, hands shivering, and mouth agape, shaking with absolute terror. "Phoenix," she mumbled. "I can't hear! I can't hear!" She screamed suddenly. 

And Phoenix flinched, tears beginning to well in his eyes. "Mom I—" He was a loss for words; he burst out crying, not with melancholy – well, there was a hint of sadness in it – but with fear, guilt, sickness, and a whole bunch of other emotions he couldn't name.

A sound came tumbling up the stairway; it was his father. Screaming, panicking . . . horrified. Phoenix had never heard him so scared in his life.

Phoenix snapped his head back and rushed downstairs. His feet drummed on the steps like jazz percussion. "Dad," Phoenix yelled. "Dad!" He rushed to the final step and heard two other sounds. The first was Ruby growling and barking aggressively, snarling more than she ever had before. It was as if she had been fending off other animals, protecting pups or fighting over who got the last leg of lamb. The other was something Phoenix couldn't quite put into words; a low, thrumming sound.

A small, continuous hum is what it was. And from the living room came a bright and blinding white light. 

What the fuck?

Phoenix raised his arm to cover his eyes and looked down at his feet, sauntering into the sitting room. The glow began pulsing, dimming and brightening in the same way that the spiral had, only not as potent, and more on sync with a low, beating heart.  

Richard kept screaming – "Fuck off! Fuck off!" 

A set of footsteps. A wooden object being shoved over. Shattered glass. 

BANG!

The shouting stopped. And Ruby whimpered away, scurried by Phoenix and bolted up the stairs. She had deep, pink patches in her skin where fur used to be. 

Phoenix stepped into the living room completely now, and he saw . . . he wasn't sure what he saw. It stood about seven feet tall, and possessed a thick, muscular frame. It gleamed with a bright bluish purple aura. 

Its face was no different than the night sky: it had no eyes or lips or hair. Its body was littered with deep pockets of space, rich clusters of stars – and in its chest: a galaxy, pulsing, breathing . . . alive.

Phoenix yelped.

He was too frightened to move a muscle; he stood as still as he possibly could, but not for long. He soon began trembling with an intense, unnerving horror that he'd never felt before.

The being held Richard by his shirt collar; it slowly looked over towards Phoenix with its featureless face. It raised its lengthy, muscular arm and pointed towards Phoenix. 

The creature began brightening and thrumming. More and more. Louder and brighter until . . . 

Blackness. 

                                              ~"AMONGST THE SKY"~

Roberta Newman crept down the stairs, repeatedly prattling to herself like a madwoman, hoping to God that she would hear her own soft and gentle voice. 

Please, please, oh Lord, don't make me deaf! Please, God! Not me! I need my ears – I need to hear, oh God, please!

She went on this way for some time, slowly making her way down the stairs, sliding her hand along the oak-wood bannister – it had such an intricate feel, often keeping her calm, but not tonight. Her heart had been pounding way too quickly for that. 

Roberta felt so sick with worry that her stomach was on the brink of vomiting up her evening dinner. Lasagne, chips, macaroni . . . 

She did not feel well at all.

She was only thirty-six years old – yet she walked down the hallway with an additional twenty years tugging on her legs. All strength had seemed to escape her muscles. 

Her skin was young, her sheaf of black hair silky, her voice, which she could no longer hear, beautiful – everything except her movement. She was too shocked to regain her composure. 

She got to the doorway. She shrieked in horror. Her son was lying unconscious on the carpeted floor; she scampered over to him and caressed his cheeks, his boyish hair, his expressionless face. 

Tears cascaded down her chin and plopped onto Phoenix's. Almost like a leak in the ceiling. 

 "Phoenix!" Roberta yelled. Please, oh Lord, let him be okay! God, please!

It felt as though an eternity had passed, an aeon, even. And she was too aghast to utter a word more. She just whimpered, pulling him up into her embrace and sobbing away. 

It took all of five minutes for a whisper to call up to her. It was subdued, hazy. 

"Mom?" Phoenix groaned, opening his eyes leisurely. He saw the faint blur of his mother hugging him, sobbing, crying into his shoulder. "Mom!" he said a little louder, but got no response. 

Phoenix lifted himself upright. 

"Oh, thank God!" Roberta yelled. "Thank God you're okay!" 

She sounds strange . . . off, Phoenix thought. 

She mispronounced her words a bit. 

Phoenix looked around, completely unaware of what happened. His father was nowhere to be seen; all that was left behind was a mess of pillows, a coffee table flipped on its side, and a shattered glass. "Where's Dad?" Phoenix asked his mother. 

Roberta did not respond. She just stayed down on her knees, wiping away lines of tears. Her dark skin was turning red now. She looked up at him with those pulchritudinous, green eyes, the puffy black hair. 

Her lips curved up into a smile. 

She wore a black nightgown with a cross-necklace wrapped around her skinny, clear neck. 

"Mom!" he yelled.

Roberta heard nothing. All she could see was Phoenix mouthing the word. Finally, she said, "I can't hear! I can't hear!" and frowned. 

"What?" he croaked. Oh, no, please! Fuck no!

Then he remembered something: the spiral in the night sky. His eyes widened with realisation. 

"Oh, fuck!" he said, and ran over to the living room window. Pulled back the curtains and looked out; on the left he could the blue light of the vortex pass over the streets; and on the right he could a spread of traffic drive up the path. He turned round and made a beeline for the front door. It was still open (Phoenix forgot to close it), so he drew back the handle and stepped out into the  luxuriant sprawl of lawn, barefooted. It felt wet. 

A deep cold stretched out across the night like a biting, Russian winter; wind blew his hair back, and a thin rain swept down over his shoulders. 

"Hoe-lee-shit!" He spoke with the intensity of a politician. 

The stars warped around the spiral as if it were a black hole. He sure hoped it wasn't one – that would be the end of him. It sparkled. The city roads gleamed in the light with winks of moonshine flashing along the concrete. They glimmered, beautifully so. 

He wasn't sure if this meant the end of the world, but he knew one thing was for certain: the invasion, the UFO, the posts – they were all real. And now Violetwall was in deep trouble.