The Power of Five Oblivion

you going?”
    “We don’t know that the telephone is connected. And if it is, how do we know she called the police? I’m not even sure there are any police any more.”
    “No, Holly!”
    But he was too late. I had already got to my feet and was making my way over to the telephone box. I could feel my heart pounding. It was such an ordinary thing … or at least, it had been. But at the same time there was something strange and horrible about it – the thick, mottled glass, the bright crimson paint. As I approached, it could have been a spaceship that had landed here and was waiting to swallow me up and carry me away.
    I opened the door. It was even heavier than I had imagined. The floor was a slab of concrete. There was a black telephone clinging to a panel above a box with a narrow slot to take a credit card, the little pieces of plastic that people had once used instead of money. A thick wire curled down from the handset. I didn’t want to touch any of it. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had made a telephone call – if I ever had. All I wanted to do was see if the phone was working.
    I picked up the receiver, solid and strange in my hand. One end for the ear, the other for the mouth. I held it against my head but there was no sound. What now? There were buttons marked one to nine with a zero beneath. Once there might have been instructions but someone had taken them away. I looked through the window and saw Jamie waiting for me anxiously. The glass twisted him out of focus. It was as if he were bleeding into the forest around him.
    What number was I meant to dial? The receiver was still pressed against my ear. Of course … it was 999. Everyone knew that. But before I had a chance to do anything, a voice spoke to me … a woman’s voice, not old, not young. She sounded almost bored.
    “Hello?” There was a pause. “Who is this?”
    I didn’t know what to say. Already I was wishing that I had listened to Jamie and hadn’t gone into the kiosk. I wanted to put the phone down and leave but I couldn’t. I was rooted to the ground, no longer in control of my own movements. I could feel my hand trying to crush the plastic receiver beside my ear.
    “We’re on our way,” the woman said. “We’ll be with you very shortly.”
    But it wasn’t just the woman’s voice that I heard right then. I became aware of something else … the sound of breathing. There was nothing human about it. At first I couldn’t even tell if it was coming from the phone. It was as if it was underneath me, far below the ground, the rumble of an earthquake about to happen. And then, a second later, it was all around me, inside the kiosk, suffocating me. I tried to put the phone down but I couldn’t.
    I looked out through the windows but the forest had gone. It had simply been whipped away. Everything was white and, impossibly, it was snowing. Jamie had disappeared. Ahead of me, about a hundred metres away, I saw some sort of castle, built into the side of a mountain, enclosed by huge towers and walls. The clouds were racing past as if they had been speeded up. Everything was white and grey.
    “Who is this?” the woman asked.
    And then again, the breathing, and a single word – my name: “Holly”. Spoken by something inside the mountain. Mocking me. Colder and crueller than any voice I had ever heard. I was holding the telephone so tightly that I was actually hurting myself, pressing it into the side of my head. But I couldn’t let go.
    I don’t know what would have happened next but then the door was jerked open and Jamie grabbed hold of me, dragging me out. I shouted and dropped the telephone, watching it fall and dangle at the end of the wire. And then I was lying on the forest floor, almost in tears, more frightened than I had ever been in my life.
    “What is it, Holly?” Jamie cried. “What happened?”
    He was cradling me and now I really was sobbing. I couldn’t stop myself. “I don’t know,” I said. “There was a woman. But then there was something else. I heard it. And I saw…”
    “What did you see, Holly?”
    “I can’t tell you. A castle. Something…” I shook my head, trying to get the vision out of my thoughts. “But they’re coming, Jamie. She told me. They’re on their way.”
    He held me, waiting for me to recover. Finally, when I was strong enough, he helped me to my feet and together we went home.
    For the last time.

SIX
    We ran back to the house. We didn’t know where else