| Grey
Area
by Lorna Chapman
It was February when Michael first came to visit. That day had been particularly
wild with the rain finally turning to sleet, covering the moor and our
cottage with a thin film of white.
He wasn’t totally unexpected. Three weeks previously he’d
sent an email telling me he’d got the research job and that he’d
be dropping by some day. As it happens, we were just finishing dinner
when a brand-new Porsche pulled up outside our cottage and his tall frame
loomed into view outside the kitchen window.
Initial greetings over, Jane swept off to make coffee and he and I headed
for the living room, slumping down in the armchairs for all the world
like we were student flat mates once again.
‘So,’ I began, ‘how’s the new job?’
Michael gave his familiar twinkly-eyed grin.
‘Well, you know,’ he shrugged nonchalantly, ‘it keeps
me in champagne and silk sheets.’
I thought of the Porsche and shook my head in wonder. The word ‘scientist’
usually conjures up a picture of a thin, elderly man wearing a white coat.
Michael belied that image. He was in his early thirties, handsome and
charming. He’d obtained a Double First in Physics and Chemistry
at Oxford and was headhunted by top research companies all over the world.
‘As a matter of fact,’ Michael continued, ‘that’s
why I’m in the area. The Larsson Institute has built a centre up
on the moors, a few miles from here.’
I nodded. I’d already looked into it.
‘We can see it from our bedroom window,’ I said.
‘I thought I saw a glint from your binoculars,’ Michael joked,
then laughed at my guilty face.
‘High security,’ I remarked, thinking of the electric fences
and the patrolling guards.
‘Yes,’ Michael admitted. ‘But it has to be, given the
work we do.’
‘And what work do you do?’ I asked, the journalist coming
out in me.
Michael laughed. ‘You would not believe it, even if I could tell
you. Official Secrets Act.’
‘Oh,’ I latched on quickly. ‘So it’s a Government
project?’
‘Now, Ben,’ he admonished. ‘You won’t get me like
that. Let’s just say,’ he added cryptically, ‘The Larsson
Institute intends to keep everyone in the dark.’
He would not be drawn any further on the subject and the rest of the evening
passed pleasantly.
We saw quite a lot of Michael over the next few months. Whatever he was
researching, it didn’t seem to stop him from socialising. Whenever
Jane and I went to the local pub for an evening pint, he was usually propping
up the bar, with at least one admiring young woman gazing into his eyes.
‘I’m glad to see you’re not finding rural life too mundane,’
remarked Jane dryly, on Michael’s next visit one Sunday afternoon.
He grinned. ‘You know I’ll always carry a torch for you, Jane!
Why don’t you come with me and leave your life of drudgery?’
‘And have a life of drudgery with you instead, I suppose,’
Jane countered.
‘I’d drape you with diamonds and silks,’ he offered.
‘Oh, yes! How are the silk sheets these days?’ Asked Jane,
sweetly. ‘“Getting worn?’
‘Hey!’ I cut in. ‘Please! I don’t want to hear!’
‘Anyway,’ Michael admitted, ‘too much work on at the
moment.’
He caught my eye. ‘Official Secrets, Ben!’
My look of disappointment must have touched a nerve because he said, ‘Alright.
I’ll tell you one thing.’
I leaned forward eagerly to listen.
He hesitated for a moment then said, “my colleague, Shahid, and
I are setting up the first trial on the fifteenth of next month.”
‘What trial?’ I demanded.
He shook his head.
I threw more questions at him, but Michael clammed up and I was finally
forced to change the subject.
Over the next few weeks, I took to watching The Centre through our bedroom
window, but even with the binoculars, there was nothing interesting to
observe about the low, white buildings. I couldn’t wait for the
fifteenth. Despite Jane’s scepticism, I felt that I’d at least
see something on that day.
As it was, I nearly missed the date entirely. The editor of a newspaper
I was working for, insisted on my coming down to London and despite my
best efforts, I arrived home late in the evening to find the cottage in
darkness, with just the moon lighting up its white stone walls.
‘I’m upstairs,’ shouted Jane, as I opened the front
door. ‘Come and have a look at this. Leave the lights off!’
Carefully negotiating the darkened house, I made my way to the bedroom.
Jane was standing by the window with the binoculars in her hand.
‘Look,’ she pointed out across moor in the direction of The
Centre.
I looked.
‘I can’t see anything,’ I said, puzzled.
‘Precisely,’ said Jane, triumphantly.
Then I understood. I should have been able to see something. The sky was
cloudless. The moonlight should have enabled me to pick out the low, white
buildings of The Centre.
‘Now, have a look through the binoculars,’ urged Jane.
Taking them from her and I swept my view carefully over the moor. There
was nothing. That is to say, there was something.
I could see my front garden, across the road, up onto the moor, a little
further and then… nothing. Everything had gone. It was as though
someone had thrown an enormous black sheet over part of the moor.
I tried following the blurred edges of the blackness. As far as I could
estimate, it covered an area of roughly three miles in diameter. It was
fairly flat and above it, where the moor rose higher, the lights of various
farmhouses and smallholdings twinkled into view.
‘Keep watching,’ said Jane.
I did and soon saw what she meant. The ‘sheet’ was moving.
It shifted flatter and spread outwards, then rose slightly and pulled
inwards in a regular, pulsating rhythm.
I took the binoculars from my eyes and turned to Jane.
‘When did this happen?’ I asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ she replied. ‘Maybe an hour ago.
I came up to draw the curtains and that’s what I saw.’ She
waved her hand at the pulsating sheet of blackness.
‘Ben,’ she hesitated. ‘Do you think it’s dangerous?’
I felt uneasy, but said soothingly, ‘oh, I shouldn’t think
so, It’s probably just some foul smog they’ve produced. It’ll
be gone by morning.’
I could tell Jane wasn’t totally convinced, but we watched for a
few more minutes then had supper and went to bed.
The pulsating black sheet had indeed gone by morning and The Centre was
visible once again. A number of people had observed the phenomenon and
the lunchtime pub gossip was rife. There was, however, only one person’s
account that I wanted to hear.
My attempts to get hold of Michael on his mobile phone were futile and
the telephone number to The Centre was unobtainable. Finally I drove there
and was duly turned back by the guards.
Frustrated, I bit the bullet and waited for Michael to contact me.
He did. Three days later, in the early hours of a bright summer morning,
he hammered on our front door.
‘Strewth!’ I exclaimed as I let him in. ‘You look awful!’
His well-groomed look had gone well out of the window.
‘Thanks!’ He muttered and slid past me into the living room.
‘God! I need a drink!’
Jane quickly poured him a brandy. He downed it in one and collapsed onto
the sofa. Jane poured him another.
I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was ashen-faced, unshaven and
his clothes looked slept in. There was something else about him too but
I couldn’t quite work it out.
‘What’s happened?’ I got straight to the point.
He gulped down more brandy.
‘Nightstalk,’ he said, finally.
“What?”
He rubbed his hands over his tired face. ‘The project Shahid and
I were working on. It’s called Nightstalk’
‘What’s it about?’
Michael took another gulp of the brandy. ‘Roughly speaking, it’s
an instant camouflage device. Push a button and ”zip” and
you blend into the background. No need for paint or camouflage clothes.’
‘That’s incredible!’ I exclaimed..
‘But how does it work,’ Jane wanted to know.
A ghost of his familiar smile flashed across his lips as he answered her.
‘Light travels in straight lines, right? When light hits an object,
you can see it. But if you can make light bend away from the object, there’s
too much light and the object effectively can’t be seen.’
‘A bit like a suit of mirrors?’ suggested Jane.
‘Exactly. Only in this case the mirrors are a type of gas.’
‘I can see the possibilities,’ I said, slowly. ‘Military
use. A whole army could just disappear.’
Michael’s face paled further.
‘It’s all gone wrong,’ he said, hoarsely. ‘Catastrophically
wrong. The opposite’s happened. Darkness everywhere. Things disappearing.
Too many shadows!’
Perhaps it was all this talk of darkness and shadows, but my eyes didn’t
seem to be focusing very well. I looked around for my reading glasses
and motioned to Michael to go on.
‘We did the test three days ago. The fifteenth. There was an explosion.
The gas escaped. We contained it,’ he added. ‘But, I think,
maybe…’
He trailed off.
I looked at Jane. She was rubbing her eyes and blinking. I wondered if
it was the morning sun streaming in through the windows. I got up to draw
the curtains.
‘No don’t!’ There was panic in Michael’s voice.
I turned back.
‘Please! I need the light!’
‘What do you mean?’ As I said this, I realised what had been
niggling away at me. It wasn’t my eyes that were having trouble
focusing. It was Michael. Despite the sunlight, there was a darkness forming
around him. It was as though he was blurring at the edges. His features
were becoming less and less defined.
Jane had realised what was happening too and looked at me in disbelief.
‘My colleague, Shahid. He was the first,’ Michael was saying.
I watched in growing horror. Michael’s outline was slowly dissolving.
He was literally fading away before our eyes.
‘Shahid disappeared, Ben!’ Michael gasped. He spread his blurred
hands. ‘He just disappeared into the shadows.’
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