Watcher’s Web

Chapter 2-2

Bloody hell, what was that?

Jessica clawed at the armrest of her seat, heart thudding.

The hippie flipped a page in his book. The businessman’s head drooped.

She looked out the window. Brown paddocks, white specks: grazing sheep. Nothing strange, just the dull greyness of the Australian bush.

It was so stuffy in this cramped cabin. Jessica turned her face into the flow of cool air from the air-conditioning vent.

God, now she was getting worried. She’d dealt with all that s**t when she was younger. Her parents had traipsed off with her to countless doctors and other professionals, yet the only thing they’d found out was that no one knew what it was, and the only thing she could do was to learn to live with it. Up until now, she’d thought she was doing well, but obviously she had thought wrong. Damn it, damn it.

Something tickled the skin at her elbow. She lifted her arm to look for the culprit—a tiny spider or some such—but found nothing.

Feeling sick, she leaned back in her seat, but as soon as her elbow touched the armrest, a shock went through her. She sat up with a jolt and placed her hand on the window—a current went through it and the panel underneath it, and . . . Now tendrils of mist spread from the floor and the walls of the plane.

The two male passengers sat reading and sleeping, and the pilot stared ahead, moving his head in a rhythm as if singing to himself.

The tickling spread from her hands to her back and her legs, everywhere her body touched the plane.

This was ridiculous. Fool or not, something was going on here.

She called out, “Excuse me.” Her voice was hoarse and didn’t rise over the noise of the engine.

Now the very air tickled, as if it was alive with static electricity. Jessica reached for her seatbelt, ready to push herself up and tap the pilot on the shoulder.

There was a flash, turning the world into a seething mass of white. Jessica couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe.

The plane lurched and shuddered.

She must have been knocked out, because the next thing she knew her eyes had gone funny and everything looked blurred in rainbow colours.

Her ears popped. Fog trailed past the window, and the only sound was the ominous rushing of air. The propeller turned idly at the nose of the plane. Her ears popped again.

The pilot’s voice was loud in the eerie silence. “Repeat—reporting engine failure . . .”

Jessica sat stiff in her seat, every muscle cramped with fear. No, she didn’t want to die, she didn’t want to die . . . she didn’t . . . Heat flowed from the seat into her hands.

The trickle of warmth grew into a flood. It made its way up into her arms and though the soles of her shoes into her legs. Pain stabbed her forehead, as if a vial of acid had exploded there, spreading down her neck, her shoulders, her arms; burning, eating everything in its path.

She was flying, flapping her arms, which had become great white wings. She was a swan, and as long as she kept moving her wings they would never reach the ground. Pain increased until it felt like her skin was on fire, and still it grew. Over the thuds of her pounding heart, the world slowed to an unreal, hypnotising pace, in which the pilot’s attempts to restart the engine felt like they were part of another universe.

The businessman shouted, “Come on, f*****g re-start the engine!” He grasped the back of the seat before him as if ready to do so himself.

The pilot called into his headset, “Mayday, mayday, mayday.”

The burning heat inside her grew so strong that Jessica could no longer bear it. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

The pilot turned around. “You guys wearing your seatbelts? Lean on the seat—f**k!”

Glass exploded everywhere. Jessica was thrown into the wall. The noise was horrible: screeching, something tearing at the outside of the plane. Then a gentle cracking of wood, and the hammering of her heart in her chest. And pain, like molten lava, flowed over her skin.

Silence.