screenstalker

I can't run, I can't hide. What the hell else can I do?

You could try shooting it.

I'm the worse shot in the world! And that thing's not gonna stand still and let me line up a shot, now is it?

Then you've got to make it stand still.

Charmagne danced sideways, trying to give herself room to think. The lumbering giant in the black bandages came after her, its every footfall shaking the ground. Flakes of mortar fell from the ceiling - Charmange suddenly wondered what would happen if it brought the roof down on top of them. You'll die. Obviously.

The screen-stalker was still watching, still smiling. Still enjoying her peril. In fact, he'd sat down on the ground, stretched his long legs out within the confines of the protective circle, and had produced another tub of popcorn from somewhere. He caught her eye and grinned.

There was no time to respond. With a howl of rage, the creature made another run at her, its huge claw-like hands spread wide to catch her. She stumbled out of the way, her feet sliding on the loose sand. One hand came so close to grabbing her that she felt the wind of it passing. She tried to break into a run before she'd got her balance back, and succeeded in spilling herself to the ground. Through some instinct she didn't know she had, she managed to roll away from the next attack. The huge beast was right over her. She squeezed her eyes shut and fired at the gun at it.

From the roar of pain, she guessed at least one shot found its mark. She didn't wait around to make sure, instead scrambling to her feet and sprinting back across the room. She ended up in front of the raised dais. Her lungs felt like they were on fire; her entire body was trembling. She cursed every cigarette she'd ever smoked, ever pizza she'd ever eaten, every night she'd spent in front of the television instead of at the gym.

The creature was staggering, fluid pouring from two holes in its chest. No, not fluid - sand. Grey sand flecked with silver, like powdered granite. It carpeted the floor with a noise like whispering water, but seemed to hinder the giant creature none at all. It stopped to sniff the air, located her again, then started into that lumbering run. Charmagne knew by that point it would take the mummy seven strides to cross the room, gaining speed with each second, then two more to skid to a halt. She backed up until she was right up against the dais, the rough sandstone cool against her back. This time, she did not dodge out of the way until the very last second.

The giant swiped at her, missed by inches, then couldn't stop itself in time to avoid ploughing into the pile of sarcophagi atop the dais. It lost its balance and fell, its huge arms outstretched but too slow to check its fall. It crashed into the sarcophagi with so much force the ground shook and huge chunks of stone were dislodged from the ceiling and walls. Charmagne was knocked off her feet by the tremor and went sprawling.

She recovered faster than the mummy, who had to struggle to free itself from the pile of rubble. Part of the wall that had been knocked down when the creature burst out had further collapsed, pinning it to the ground. Its tree-trunk legs kicked at the air in slow-motion, like a swimmer in treacle.

Charmagne rolled to her feet, the gun still gripped in her hand. There was no way to get a clear shot at the mummy's head from where she stood, but if she climbed up the tiers to a vantage point it would give the creature time to escape. So instead she ran forward till she reached the kicking legs and fired three shots into the backs of both knees.

The creature howled in pain. Shiny grey sand poured out from the destroyed kneecaps.

She retreated to a safe distance and watched the giant try to right itself. With its legs no longer able to support its weight, it could do nothing more than push up into a sitting position. As she watched its effort, Charmagne felt a wave of pity for the creature - closely followed by one of anger towards the man who'd made sport out of this whole event.

The screen-stalker was still sat with his popcorn balanced on his leg. As she approached he looked up at her and raised an eyebrow.

'It's not dead yet,' he noted. 'You'd better kill it outright, or it'll just keep coming after you.'

Charmagne tossed the gun down just inside the protective circle. 'Balls to this game. Do it yourself.' Then she turned and strode away from him.

'Well now, that's an interesting tactic. Are you sure you want to be unarmed right now?'

She ignored him and kept walking. She also ignored the giant mummy, which had rolled onto its stomach and was dragging itself along the ground with its huge arms. It couldn't move nearly as fast as it had done before, but it would still be a close thing whether she could reach the exit at the top of the tiered steps before it caught her, even if she ran.

She didn't run. Keeping her pace fast but steady, she mounted the first step.

If asked, she wouldn't have been able to explain exactly why she did it. All she knew was she had no wish to be used as entertainment, and the screen-stalker had no right to "test" her like that. If he wanted to play games, fine - this was just a change of rules. Now he was the one who had to prove himself. Either he could sit there and watch as the crawling, dragging, crippled mummy caught and killed her, or he could do something to help her.

My God, you're willing to die for your principles? I didn't know you had any principles.

'Shut up,' she told the sensible voice in her head.

She concentrated on pulling her way up the stone steps, which were each about four foot high. Her arms were already aching and she still hadn't regained her breath, but she kept climbing with grim determination, and she didn't look behind her. Even when the dragging sound got real close and she heard the harsh, furious breathing of the injured monster.

Well, I hope your pride will be some consolation to you when you're being masticated by undead teeth.

'Shut up,' she said again through clenched teeth. 'It's not pride, it's wanting to prove a point. I still can't believe he's as bad as Selena makes out.'

Why not? After what he's putting you through, you still think he's a good person?

'As a matter of fact - '

Arguing with the voice in her head had distracted her from the fact that the mummy behind her was already dragging its way up the steps. Charmagne was less than ten feet away from the doorway at the top when a huge meaty hand slapped down inches from her foot. The blackened nails protruding from the fingers chipped the stone.

Charmagne abandoned her pride and vaulted up onto the next step. Her squeak of terror was mercifully drowned out by a thunderous gunshot.

The screen-stalker stood over the giant, one booted foot planted between its shoulder blades. The back of the mummy's head was now a smoking crater.

He looked up and met her eyes, then made a face. 'Fine. You win.'

i'd just like to apologise for the break in posting. Nano was in fact completed - final word count was 50,704 by end of november, which was a nice convenient total. Chapters will now continue to be posted, up to chapter 40, which is the end. If anyone's still reading this (or has ever been reading this, lols), please comment and let me know if you like it! Or if you don't like it. Or if you just wanna say hi. Hell, i'd be happy just to get spammed. :)

'How did you get in here?'

'The same way as before - through the TV.'

'No.' The screen-stalker got to his feet. He tried to hide his unsteadiness. 'I locked you out. That means you don't get back in unless I let you.'

'I found another way.'

'There isn't any other way.'

'Then how come I'm here?'

He stared at her, brow creased in thought. 'Someone else let you in,' he said at last. 'That's the only possibility. Someone - wait. Wait, I know who it was.'

Charmagne pulled herself up to her full height and prepared her response. He wasn't going to be pleased, not at all - he might even throw her out again just on general principle… or worse, because God knows what the man was capable of -

'It was 8-Ball, wasn't it?' the screen-stalker accused. 'It has to be him. He told me there was something about you, something different. He wouldn't tell me what, of course, but I knew he was disappointed in me for getting rid of you. I should've known he'd try and bring you back.'

Fine, if that was what he wanted to believe. And he certainly seemed less angry about that possibility than he would be if he knew the truth. 'It doesn't matter,' Charmagne told him. 'What matters is I came back because I need to talk to you.'

'That's strange, I thought we were done talking.'

'Not by a long shot. First off, I want an explanation for your behaviour. Why did you throw me out?'

'You know why. Because you're a liability and you got someone killed.'

Guilt squirmed in her stomach. She forced it down. 'Y'know, I've been thinking about that. If you remember, there were two people. By the time we got there, one was dead and the other had had her tongue ripped out. And yeah, I should've taken down that monster when I had the chance, but if I hadn't been there, would you really have been able to save that woman? You were pinned down, there was nothing - '

'That's enough.' He tried to silence her with his quiet voice.

It failed. 'You couldn't have saved her anyway! I didn't screw the situation up - it was already screwed up. If you really want to blame someone I suggest you start closer to home.'

He stared at her. She could see his jaw clench and unclench; could practically feel the waves of hostility radiating outwards.

'My point still stands,' he said at last. 'You're a liability.'

'That's just an excuse so you don't have to face the consequences of your own actions. You just blame everything on me - hell, it’s the new girl's fault, let's all blame her so we don't have to worry about petty things like guilt or responsibility.' She glared at him. 'That's it, isn't it? You can't accept that you got two people killed, so you're shifting all the blame onto me.'

He didn't answer her, but the flicker in his eyes told her she was right.

'You had no right to throw me out like that,' Charmagne went on. 'I know I handled the situation badly and I feel guilty as hell about it, but the last thing I needed was the extra burden of your guilt as well.'

The screen-stalker sighed then. 'Regardless of all that, it's still too dangerous for you to stay in here. Too dangerous for you and too dangerous for others. You can't handle yourself yet.'

'Really? Because it seems to me that if I hadn't shown up when I did just now, you'd be mummy-chow.'

His eyes flicked to the pile of sand and fabric that up until recently had been a mobile, hostile enemy. 'I had it in hand.'

'Oh, sure you did. Listen, I can handle myself just fine and you know it. You're just not willing to give me the chance.'

Her voice had been steadily rising in volume for some time, until it echoed back and forth across the huge room. When she paused for breath, the echoes were drowned out by a sudden new noise - an ominous rumbling, somewhere deep within the ground.

The screen-stalker looked at her. 'Well, I guess you're gonna get the chance to prove that.'

The rumbling grew louder till it reached a pitch. It was joined by the sharp grinding noise of stone on stone. Charmagne whirled round but couldn't identify where it was coming from. The screen-stalker must've been more informed than her, because he suddenly turned and faced the sarcophagi on the high dais.

With a noise like the earth being ripped open, the wall behind the dais burst outwards. Huge chunks of sandstone crashed to the floor - Charmagne narrowly avoided being crushed by one. She had only just recovered when the ground shook for a new reason.

Something huge stepped out of the darkness behind the wall. It was twice the height of a human and as thick around the chest as an oak tree. Its massive body was wrapped in pitch-soaked bandages, which had fallen away in places to reveal equally blackened flesh. It stepped over the rubble and the remaining sarcophagi as if they were only toys.

'What the hell is that?' Charmagne demanded.

The screen-stalker didn't seem to hear her. He took two steps back, his attention fixed on the huge creature. Then he paused and gave Charmagne a speculative look.

'I tell you what,' he said. 'He's all yours.'

He took a leather pouch from his pocket, undid the ties, then upended it. A thin line of purplish red powder flowed out. He turned a full circle and the powder settled down on the floor to form a side ring about him. As the ends met, the circle began to glow in the dim light.

Before Charmagne could ask what the hell he was doing, the vast creature jumped down onto the floor. The floor shuddered with the impact. She retreated fast to the far side of the amphitheatre.

The creature swung its huge head back and forth. Trails of black mucus drooled from the gaping slit of its mouth. It sniffed the air, then took two floor-shaking steps towards the screen-stalker, who seemed entirely unconcerned. Charmagne wanted to scream at him but had no idea what good it would do.

A low grumbling growl emanated from the creature's throat as it ducked its head towards the man. Again it sniffed the air. Despite the fact that the thing's face was only a few feet from his own, the screen-stalker stood quite calm, his arms folded across his chest.

The growl became one of disappointment, and the creature turned away from the screen-stalker. It cast its huge head about and this time caught Charmagne's scent.

'It's up to you now,' the screen-stalker called from inside his protective circle. 'You'll have to kill it.'

'What? You bastard! How am I supposed to kill it?'

'You said you could handle yourself.'

'Myself, yes. Giant psycho-mummies? No.'

The creature came lumbering towards her. She squealed and darted out of its way. It might've been big but at least it wasn't particularly fast - it was a moment before it realised its prey wasn't in front of it anymore, at which point it swung around to sniff the air again.

The screen-stalker relented and took out the spare gun from its holster. 'Alright, here.' He tossed it out of the circle to land in the sand a few feet from Charmagne. 'But you might wanna be quick about it, else you're the one who'll be mummy-chow.'

Charmagne snatched up the gun and for one dreamy moment considered shooting the screen-stalker right in his big fat smug face. But then the huge mummy threw back its head and howled like a wounded animal. Again she had to dodge out of the way as it made a charge at her.

Already she was out of breath, her chest heaving and her hands shaking. The creature turned faster this time, having to search for only a moment before locating her again. It was learning her tactics. There was no way she could outrun it, even if there was anywhere to run to - by the time she'd got halfway up the huge tiered steps it would be on her - and it seemed impossible that she could kill the creature, not with her hands shaking like that.

It occurred to her that she was very likely going to die. And what made it worse was the fact that the screen-stalker was watching like it was all just entertainment to him.

The screen-stalker was gone by the time she reached the corridor. It wasn't hard to locate him, however. All she had to do was follow the howls of pain.

As she ran down the corridor, she realised that the watery image in Selena's room had been misleading. The walls weren't smooth and white, but made of crumbling pale yellow stone. The floor was coated with sand and small pebbles, and the air smelled dry and cool, like the inside of -

- yeah, like the inside of a tomb.

She half expected what she would find before she even reached the throne room.

The corridor terminated in a huge stone archway inscribed with coiled lettering that might've been Sanskrit. Beyond that the floor dropped away in a series of tiered steps to a flat open area the size of a basketball court. The ceiling was high and mostly hidden in the shadows cast by the guttering sconces on the walls. At the far end on a raised dais were a number of sarcophagi, several of which had been smashed open. Other details about the room were lost on Charmagne, because her attention immediately went to the fight in the middle of the amphitheatre.

There were a number of figures involved, one in a black leather coat. The other three were taller, probably over seven foot each, and wrapped in yellowing bandages. Apart from their abnormal height, they looked laughable - slender, tottering creatures that might have shambled straight out of Abbott and Costello.

However, they did seem to be gaining the upper hand in the fight.

The screen-stalker danced and twisted, narrowly avoiding swipes from clawed hands. He held a long-bladed knife in each hand and was slicing at the bodies as they came for him. But the mummies seem uncaring of injuries that would have killed a normal human. One blade ripped upwards through a torso, sending out a shower of bandage fragments and yellow sand, but the creature just crowded in on him and tried to pull his head of with its bare hands. He only just slipped out of its grasp.

If he'd been fighting only one assailant, he probably would've been able to finish the fight quickly and cleanly. But every time he shoved or sliced one mummy, the other two would lunge in on a fresh attack. He had his hands full just holding them back.

Charmagne started down the tiers. The steps were so large she had to jump down from one to the next. She was only halfway down when the screen-stalker finally dispatched his first attacker.

He managed to knock the mummy onto its back. Before it could recover and before its companions could grab for him again, he leapt onto the prone body, slid both blades around the neck and yanked upwards, decapitating the creature. Its head went bouncing across the sandy floor.

Whirling, the screen-stalker brought one blade down on the head of a mummy who was attempting to grab him from behind. The knife caught it a glancing blow to the side of the face, ripping a long tear through the bandages. Sand poured out. The mummy staggered as if disorientated, and the screen-stalker took advantage of the momentary lapse, whipping the other blade out to slice off the top two inches of its skull. For a second the mummy remained upright, then toppled stiffly to the ground. It burst on impact, as if only its unnatural lifeforce had been holding its withered body together.

In the time that kill took, the last remaining creature managed to slip through his defenses and grab him around the throat. The screen-stalker twisted and stabbed it in the chest, but the mummy didn't so much as flinch. When he tried to pull the knife free for another strike, he found it hung up in the ribcage.

With a howl of anger, the mummy lifted him up by his neck. He choked, his feet kicking at thin air. The remaining knife was clenched tight in his hand as he stabbed upwards into one of the arms holding him. The mummy howled again. Grimly, the screen-stalker sawed at the limb, releasing a flood of sand and bandage fragments to cascade over the ground. With a final, savage twist, he severed the arm.

But neither hand released its hold. The mummy continued to hold him aloft with its right arm, while the severed left gripped the screen-stalker's collar and hung on like grim death.

As she scurried down the last few tiers to the sandy floor of the amphitheatre, Charmagne saw the screen-stalker start to sag and go limp, his body flopping like a rag doll as the mummy shook him. The knife fell from his hand.

Without pausing to think, Charmagne ran forward and snatched up the knife from the floor. The mummy either didn't see her or was too consumed by his murderous task to pay any attention. She darted behind him and jumped onto his back. It noticed her then. Its hand released the screen-stalker and let him crumple to the floor, then reached back to snatch at her hair. She shoved her face into the back of its neck where it couldn't reach her. Her nose filled with the musty, semi-rotted smell of the bandages.

Before the mummy could find a way to dislodge her, she rammed the long-bladed knife into the side of its neck with such force that the tip burst out from the other side. Then she took a firm grip on the handle and let herself drop.

The blade tore through the creature's spine. Its head flopped forward, held on by just a flap of leathery skin. The mummy tried to turn to face her, but after half a step its limbs locked up and it tipped over like a felled tree.

Charmagne had landed on her butt in the dust. As the last mummy toppled, she scrambled to her feet and spun round, making sure there were no other lurking in the shadows. The amphitheatre was deserted, save for the three mummies already returning to dust, and the screen-stalker. Who, she suddenly realised, was not moving.

In a panic she ran over, just in time to see him push himself up on his elbows. He looked around groggily, his eyes unfocused as he took in the three dead mummies with him on the floor. Then he glanced up at Charmagne and looked even more surprised.

'Charmagne.' He frowned.

'Hello.'

'What the hell are you doing here?'

His voice was harsh, and only partly because of the damage the mummy had done to his throat. It reminded Charmagne why she'd come there; why she needed to speak with him, and she got angry at herself for forgetting.

She tossed the knife at his feet. 'Helping you, apparently. Don't ask me why.'

This time she hardly stumbled. Her vision swam but didn't fade out and back like it had done all the other times. Maybe I'm finally getting used to this, Charmagne thought.

The room was larger than the screen-stalker's, and infinitely more welcoming. The walls were painted a strange, hazy blue, so much like a summer sky that she had to blink twice to convince herself she wasn't looking out through a window. The floor underfoot had the texture of green wood. Candelabra stood in all four corners, each holding five cream-coloured candles. There was no furniture, save for the television she'd just stepped out of. The large screen was mounted in a tasteful, art deco surround.

Charmagne was just enough of a slob that she could appreciate good taste.

'What do you think?' Selena asked. She was biting her lip as if genuinely concerned with the girl's opinion.

'It's nice. Do you live here all the time?'

'I... reside here. I've only just come back.' She sighed. 'I've been so long away, the place fell into disrepair. You should've seen it before - it was a lot nicer than this. This is just what I've been able to do in the time I've had since I got back.'

Charmagne turned, taking in the whole room. The candlelight danced across the sky-blue walls, making them seem to move as if stirred by distant breaths of air. 'Where did you go?' she asked. 'I mean, if it's not a personal question. I was told you got sent away - '

'Banished. Or exiled, if you prefer that term. It amounts to the same thing. I was sent to the empty lands, to the dead space between channels, where there's no light or sound or sense of time, and from where no exits open.'

Charmagne had to look away as the woman's strong voice cracked. Selena took a deep breath and let it out slow before continuing.

'It was my own fault. I can accept that now, although it took me a long time. Something you have to understand about living in here - it's not as simple as himself makes it out to be. It's not him-the-good-guy against a entire world full of baddies. A lot of the creatures in here are practically human in their intelligence and compassion. And yes, some of them want more than their allotted amount. It's only natural, if you see the way some of them live. Wait.'

As if she'd just thought of something, she crossed the room, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor, and touched her hand to a spot on the wall. With a barely audible hum, a section of the wall folded in on itself like a paper shutter. Behind it was a pool of water, somehow hanging perpendicular to the floor. It rippled as the screen drew back.

'What's that?' Charmagne asked.

'It's a viewing mirror. Do you like it? It took me a lot of influence to have it installed. Look.'

She passed a hand over the surface of the impossibly suspended pool. It rippled as if stirred by deep currents, then abruptly its silvery surface became transparent. Charmagne found herself looking out over a vast desert beneath a red and violent sky. The view was distorted by the water.

'There's a group of dwellers called the Children of the Waste live out here,' Selena said, her voice soft. 'Some of the nicest and most peaceful you could ever hope to meet. Technically, they don’t exist, just as nothing in this world technically exists. We live and die at human whim. They watch our lives for entertainment, and at the end of the day they turn off their televisions and forget all that they've seen. Why shouldn't they? It's not like we're real or anything.'

The view changed, became an image of a small boy wrapped up in a ragged and dirt-coloured robe, the hood pulled up against a sandstorm. He led a sullen two-headed cow across the desert.

'Their lives will never amount to anything, never mean anything. They're trapped in the infinite loop of this world, doomed to play out the same few days of their lives over and over again for the entertainment of the uncaring.'

It would've taken someone a lot harder of heart than Charmagne not to have been moved by the images.

'In my naivety, I thought I could help.' Selena sighed with feeling. 'I thought maybe they deserved more than they had. So I broke the rules. I called in a lot of favours, and I used up a lot of my influence, and I opened a gateway for the Children of the Waste. I let them out into the real world.'

She passed her hand over the water again and the image wavered and changed. The new picture was distant and faint, distorted with static as if being received from a signal broadcast far, far away. It seemed to be of a small village in the middle of a rainforest.

'You'll have to forgive the picture quality - the mirror gateway isn't great at displaying images from the Outside. Anyway, this was the place I took the dwellers to. It's so far from human habitation that it would never have been discovered. Its occupants would never have encountered a human being in their entire lives. But apparently that didn't matter. Rules had been broken; they had to be put right.'

The image flickered again. This time it showed the same village, from the same angle. The only difference was that now the wooden buildings had been reduced to smoldering ruins.

'They had two weeks of peace before it was discovered what I'd done.' Her voice wavered again. 'Then he came, and he forced them all to come back, and the ones who tried to resist or to run, he killed. Then he burned the village so there'd be no trace of our world left in yours.'

'And that's why you were banished.'

'That's right.'

Charmagne nodded, her thoughts conflicted. Could the screen-stalker really have done that? She realised she didn't know him well enough to judge. And that troubled her. Because she'd thought she'd known him. She'd been willing to trust him; to put her life in her hands. Could he really be the heartless monster Selena made him out to be?

'I need to talk to him,' she said.

Selena gave her a distressed look. 'Why?'

'I want to hear it from him as well. I'm not doubting you or anything, but - '

'But you still think he's your friend.' Selena managed a tremulous smile. 'I can understand that. Hell, I wouldn't take my word for anything either. After everything he's put me through, I'm not exactly unbiased. Hold on, I'll find him for you.'

She passed her hand over the water. It rippled and went blank for several long seconds, then came up with an image of a long white corridor, stretching off into the distance. A figure in a long black coat was striding away down it.

'There he is,' Selena sighed. 'A man on a mission.'

She made a strange plucking gesture over the water, and a section of it seemed to peel away, like the top layer of an onion. She was left holding a thin, translucent slice of the watery picture. Turning, she dragged the water slice through the air towards the door. Two steps forward and it touched the wooden surface, immediately adhering itself flat. The rippling picture was now on the door itself.

Selena took a step back. 'There,' she said. 'You can go talk to him to your heart's content. Take your time, make up your mind. You know where I am, if you do want to come back.'

There was a hint of dejection in her voice, which made Charmagne hesitation. But she knew she had to speak to the screen-stalker. Maybe she just didn't want to believe he was that sort of person. If so, it was going to hurt even worse to find out the truth. She had to know anyway.

'Thanks,' she said, then opened the door.

Charmagne blinked. 'Do what?'

'I have to go back in a minute - I can't stay out here long, that's part of the deal. But if you want, when I go, I can hold the door open for you. You'd be able to get back Inside.'

'No.'

'Is that no, you don't want to come back in, or no, because you're waiting on our mutual friend having a change of heart and admitting he was wrong?' Her look turned serious. 'Because if it's the latter, I'm telling you now there's no chance. He doesn't forgive, he doesn’t forget, he will never ever admit to being wrong, and he does not change. He'll never change.' A note of bitterness crept into her voice. 'Believe me, I know.'

Charmagne thought of the way the screen-stalker had reacted, the way he'd thrown her out. She'd thought he was a pretty good person, someone she could trust, but what exactly had she been basing that on? She was a notoriously bad judge of character. Maybe she'd been wrong about him... she remembered the dark anger in his eyes, and shuddered.

Of course, everyone had ulterior motives...

'Why are you so keen for me to come back?' she asked. 'Didn't you warn me earlier to get out as quickly as possible and go back to my nice safe little life?'

'No offense, but that was before I saw what your life was like.' Selena cast a look around the shabby and neglected front room. Charmagne was suddenly very aware of the threadbare furniture; the pile of bottles, takeaway cartons and spilled ashtrays next to the sofa; and the general lack of personal touches throughout the room. It was a space she inhabited, but she'd never really thought of it as home.

'Alright,' Charmagne conceded. 'It's not that awesome. But seriously, why do you want me to come back? I find it difficult to believe it'd be out of the goodness of your heart.'

'Your cynicism saddens me. At least, it would if it wasn't so justified.' Selena sighed. 'The truth is I feel sorry for you. I've seen him do this so many times - befriend a mortal, bring them into our world, then ditch them just as fast. You weren't the first and I doubt you'll be the last. He used to be human, did you know that? But he's lost so many of his human traits now. He tries to regain them by living through others - people like you. Then invariably he gets angry and frustrated at the very things that make them human - their weakness, their compassion, their sensitivity - and abandons them.'

'That sounds like fairly human behaviour to me.'

'God, you are a cynical one, aren't you? Look, I think you should come back because I feel sorry for you and I wish I could've helped out more of the people he's used and abused over the years. If that's too nebulous and unbelievable reason, then I also want you to do something in return.'

'Like what?'

'A favour. I haven't decided what yet, but I like to be in credit for my favours. That way I've always got someone I can call on if I get into trouble.'

'I'm not sure I like the idea of owing you something non-specific.'

'Alright, then I'll give you an out - when the time comes, if you don’t want to do it, you can just refuse.' She shrugged. 'I doubt it'll ever happen anyway, so it's not that big a deal for me.'

'Then why do you want - ?'

'Charmagne.' Selena looked at her seriously. 'Not everyone can survive in our world. A lot of people crumble into insanity within the first hour. You've got something special, and that intrigues me. I think it'd be useful to have you as a friend. Failing that, it'd be almost as useful to be owed something by you.'

Charmagne bit her lip. 'What makes you think I even want to go back? Maybe I'm happy here.'

'Maybe so. Maybe I've misread the situation entirely.' She got up from her seat and went swishing across the room towards the television. Charmagne noticed only then that the screen displayed a picture of a strange room, its walls painted the colour of the sky and glowing with reflected candlelight.

'Where's that?' she asked, interested despite herself.

'That's my room. My own personal space. Everyone with a certain amount of power on the Inside can create one. It's like a hub. You get a doorway, which allows you access to any other point on the Inside, and if you're really lucky you get a televisual gateway as well, which lets you go out into the real world for limited times.'

'So if I came with you into your room, I could go from there to anywhere else in the TV world?'

'Pretty much. There're a few exceptions - like rooms belonging to other people. Those are invite-only places.'

Without waiting for a reply, Selena bent at the waist and pressed her slender fingers to the screen. There was a crackle of static and the gateway opened. She turned and gave Charmagne an enigmatic smile, then stepped into the television.

Charmagne watched her step down daintily into her room. A fleeting wish for such grace and confidence crossed her mind. She shook the thought away.

The woman turned, one hand placed on her hip. She smiled and waited and said nothing.

Without so much as a backwards glance at her home, Charmagne pressed her hand against the screen.

Back through the television into the tiny room. The screen-stalker slammed shut the door then opened it again. Where before there'd been a midnight black corridor there was now his familiar dim room. He strode in without waiting for Charmagne. All she could do was hurry after him.

'I'm sorry,' she insisted again. 'I just froze up. I - '

He whirled on her, and for the first time she saw genuine anger in his face, dark and scary as hell. But his voice remained controlled. 'Get out of here.'

'W-What?'

'Get out.' He turned on the television and immediately tuned it to her front room. 'Leave your gun and get the hell out.'

Charmagne just stared at him. 'I said I was sorry, it wasn't my fault - '

'This isn't a discussion. This is you leaving, right now.' He caught her shoulder and all but ripped the holster off her.

'Hey!'

With one hand gripping her shoulder hard enough to hurt, the screen-stalker spun her round and all but threw her at the television. Charmagne threw up her hands in futile protection.

As she impacted with the screen a jolt of electricity lit up her veins, then she was falling. She landed in a sprawled and shaking heap on the carpet of her front room.

Behind her, the screen-stalker stepped up close to the screen. 'Stay away from me,' he warned. 'You no longer have clearance.'

He drove his booted heel against the inside of the screen. The picture crackled and went black.

Her body stinging with carpet burns and that numbing electrical shot, Charmagne dragged herself to her knees. The world tasted fuzzy and unpleasant. Slowly she raised her head to look at the television, which now flickered with silent static. She lurched forward and stabbed at the controls.

It cycled through the channels. Chatshows, sports, rolling news, life, death, film at eleven.

She went through them all three times but couldn't catch so much as a glimpse of the dimly lit room with the photocopied pictures on the walls. Finally she sat back on her heels, defeated. In anger she slapped the screen, but all that did was hurt the palm of her hand.

He'd locked her out. Goddammit, it hadn't even been her fault.

* * *

The note she'd left was gone from the fridge door, and had been replaced by a new one in Bert's scrawled handwriting.

"Char - Call me when you get back. Or better still, next time call me BEFORE you go because it's only polite. Angela's pissed at you. I'M pissed at you too. Sorry, but I'm worried you're gonna get fired if you don't come in soon - or at least CALL."

The word "call" was underlined twice.

"Speak to you soon. PS. Your crummy beer made me sick. PPS. Wherever you've gone, you better bring me a present."

Charmagne sighed. According to the clock on the cooker, it was half past four in the morning - although which morning, she had no idea. Calling Bert would have to wait till a more sociable hour. Before that, she needed a shower and a drink and a lot of sleep.

The first two were easy to come by. Sleep however seemed cruelly determined to elude her. No matter how much she tossed and turned and tied her blankets into knots, she couldn't relax. Over and over she saw the creature's head disintegrate into fragments, spraying its contents across the room and across her. And she saw the woman's tongue being ripped out like a withered and diseased root. She saw the woman slump, get dragged away, and she saw her own hand lifting the gun, only this time she didn't hesitate but instead pulled the trigger to explode the creature's head like rotten fruit, coating the room with a fresh layer of black interior matter.

Over time, the cycle of thoughts became of cycle of dreams and continued to play in a continuous loop. Charmagne awoke many hours later with a splitting pain in her head and no sense of having rested at all.

She'd left the television switched on overnight, tuned to a dead channel, on the very remote chance that the screen-stalker would have a change of heart. After all, she could understand why he was upset, but it wasn't like it'd been all her fault. Okay so she'd reacted badly to her first firing of a gun and her subsequent hesitation had cost that woman her life, but all things considered -

Oh, who was she kidding? She was lucky the screen-stalker hadn't done worse than kick her out.

More in hope than expectation, she went into the front room.

Someone was waiting for her there.

It wasn't the screen-stalker.

'I was wondering when you'd finally show your face,' Selena said.

After everything that'd happened recently, Charmagne should've been getting used to surprises. This was just too surprising, however. She stood and stared at the woman in the red dress who currently lounged on her sofa.

'Hope you don’t mind that I let myself in,' the woman smiled. 'I knocked, but no one answered.'

'How - what - ?'

'Our last meeting wasn't very friendly. I felt bad about that. I felt like I should make up for it somehow.'

'But, how - ?'

Selena gave her a patient smile. 'I came in through the TV, which you so kindly left on for me. It's difficult, I'll admit, and there're a whole bunch of rules and restrictions which seem purpose made to inhibit my fun.' She held up one perfectly manicured hand. It shimmered with an unnatural glow in the faint daylight filtering in past the curtains. 'The hardest part, of course, is distracting himself. Otherwise he'd come bursting out after me quicker than a wink.'

Charmagne finally recovered her tongue. 'Get out of my house!'

'Just give me a minute to talk. A minute's all I have, anyway - one of those pesky restrictions I mentioned. I take it you and our mutual friend had a falling out.' She looked sympathetic. 'He's not the easiest person to deal with, is he? Very temperamental. And has that nasty tendency to blame everyone else for his own mistakes. Is that what happened? More or less?'

'None of your business.'

'Listen.' Selena sat forward then, and dropped the girlish act. 'I don't know what he's told you about me, although I can probably guess. And we did get off to a bad start, you and me. All I can say is, whatever he's said, it's not all true. He doesn't like telling the whole story because it shows up his own flaws and the mistakes he's made.'

Despite the hours of sleep she'd just had, Charmagne still felt exhausted and totally unable to cope with all this. 'Alright,' she sighed. 'You've got your own side of the story to tell. That doesn't surprise me. But to be honest, I've had it up to here with everything to do with your world, and if you don't mind, I'd just as soon you left and never came back. Sorry.'

'You're really that sick of our world? Already?'

'Afraid so.'

'Well now, that's a shame.' The mischievous light returned to her eyes. 'Because I was just going to ask if you wanted to come back with me.'

Stepping through the door, she was momentarily disorientated. It was like walking into a midnight black sack. As far as she could tell, there were no walls, no floor, no ceiling, just infinite black.

The screen-stalker paused for just a second to produce his torch from inside his jacket, then started running again. The torch beams bobbed and jumped, illuminating patches of blank, non-specific corridor. Charmagne was hard pushed to keep up with his long stride.

They ran past a dark doorway but he didn't even slow down. He seemed certain of where he was going, plunging into the darkness with no heed for what might've been lying in wait. Behind him, Charmagne started to lose ground and put on an extra burst of speed, terrified of being left behind in that impossibly dark place.

They passed another door, and another. Then, with no warning the screen-stalker screeched to a halt in front of another doorway no different from the last. He shone the torch inside.

Puffing and panting, Charmagne staggered up to the door. Inside was a small room, barely bigger than a closet. It was almost as dark as the corridor, save for one thing - from behind a heavy curtain there emanated a dull glow. The screen-stalker stepped into the room and ripped aside the curtain to reveal a television set. On its screen was an empty room in someone's house. In the real world.

He swore viciously. 'They've got out.'

'What do we do? Do we go after them?'

The screen-stalker popped the clip from his gun and replaced it with another he took from his pocket. She caught a glimpse of silver as he loaded it. Then he tossed a clip to her as well. 'The silver might be enough to kill them,' he told her. 'Outside, they'll be weaker, more corporeal. Keep that knife handy as well.'

He moved towards the television, then hesitated, his hand halfway to the screen. Abruptly he jabbed at the volume control at the side.

As the volume rose, both of them heard a woman's screams coming from inside the television.

'Oh, fuck.' The screen-stalker grabbed Charmagne's arm and physically dragged her through the screen.

She stumbled coming out, as always. With one steadying hand placed against the wall, she blinked until her vision cleared. The screen-stalker was already away, charging from the room with his leather coat flying out behind him. Charmagne sucked in a lungful of air and took off after him.

The screams were coming from the second floor. She took the stairs two at a time; reached the landing a moment behind the screen-stalker. He whirled towards a bedroom and kicked out against the closed door. It burst open like a gunshot, showering splinters. The screams increased in volume.

Through the door and into the bedroom. Into what used to be a bedroom. It was now a slaughterhouse.

Black shapes filled the room. In the sunlight filtering in through the windows, they looked more like people and less like shapeless shadows, but only just. Their smooth masks were the colour of old bone. Three of them crouched on the floor, their backs hunched like savaging animals. Between them lay something red and wet. Charmagne took one look and prayed it had never been human.

Several more Silents had hold of a young woman. Her eyes were huge with shock and she was screaming as fast as she could draw breath. Each shriek made the creatures flinch, but they didn't release her. In the instant that Charmagne ran up to the doorway, she saw one figure reach up and push its stunted arm into the woman's mouth. The woman screamed once more, a choked, garbled scream that died in her throat. The Silent pulled back its hand, clutching the withered and black remains of her tongue.

The screen-stalker lifted his gun and shot the three feeding creatures through the head. The masks collapsed in on themselves as they fell. He spun towards the others.

One of the Silents broke away from the girl and flew at him. He fired but the shot skimmed over its head. The creature smashed into him like a wave of darkness and threw him backwards.

Another creature darted towards Charmagne. She had only an instant to realise it was the same Silent that'd attacked her before, the one she'd unmasked. Then instinct made her whip her gun upwards and fire.

The bullet took the Silent in the face, just above the depression of its left eye. The face shattered and burst outwards. Charmagne didn't close her eyes in time and saw the flash image of black stringy material erupting from the ruptured skull. A chunk of it hit her in the face. She cried out, staggering backwards.

Behind her, the screen-stalker was entangled in darkness. The Silent wrapped its limbs around him, shreds of darkness reaching out of their own accord to snag his wrists and ankles. He tried to shove it away but his hands sunk into it as if it were little more than mist. Losing his balance, he fell back against the wall and almost toppled down the stairs. The silver chain was still wrapped around his fist - he struck out with it and succeeded in landing a solid punch.

One Silent still held the woman, whose struggles were becoming weaker as her consciousness faded. The creature dragged her across the room with inhuman strength, towards a door at the back. Charmagne saw it happening but was too busy convulsively wiping at her face to do anything else.

The screen-stalker lost his grip on his gun. It went bouncing away down the stairs. Black tendrils ensnared his wrist; he fended them off and snatched a knife from his belt. The darkness against his chest was like a solid weight crushing him. He drove the knife upwards into the creature's chest.

The silver blade met no resistance at first. As sliced upwards as if through gossamer. Then the blackness congealed and became solid and he had to force the knife up the last few inches. The Silent let out a whistling howl and tried to pull away from him. With his chained hand still holding it in place, the screen-stalker grimly twisted the blade. A gush of freezing cold fluid spilled over his hand and the creature collapsed in on itself. He kicked himself loose of its clinging remains.

He looked up; took in the scene in the other room. 'Charmagne!'

She'd cleared her vision and had brought the gun up to level at the creature dragging the woman. But then she'd frozen, her finger locked around the trigger. She kept seeing that head bursting open to shower her with innards. It paralysed her for a vital second.

In that second, the Silent pulled the woman out through the second door and slammed it shut.

'No!' The screen-stalker charged past, knocking her to one side. He leapt over the fallen bodies of the Silents and their victim, and straight-armed the door open. It swung shut behind him as he disappeared into the other room.

For a moment, all Charmagne could hear was the rasp of her own panicked breathing and the residual ringing in her ears.

Then there was a gunshot from the other room. Closely followed by a second.

She let out a small, hiccuppy sob. The overwhelming stench of the ripped open body in the room suddenly caught in her throat and she had to turn away fast before she threw up. There was another smell underlying it, thick like ozone - the sort that you tasted rather than smelled. Charmagne realised it was coming from the black innards splattered on her face and arm.

The second door banged open and the screen-stalker strode out with a face like thunder. Charmagne caught a glimpse of a bathroom behind him, painted red and black.

'I'm sorry,' she blurted as he shoved past.

He didn't answer.

Something snagged at her arm. She spun around and the tendrils dissolved like mist, releasing their hold. Shadows fluttered in the corner of her vision; she spun round again and they danced away. Something caught at her sleeve, and when she whirled towards it, it tore a chunk out of her sweater before relinquishing its hold.

The room was suddenly filled with darting shadows. They streaked across her vision with silent malevolence, grabbing for her arms and legs whenever her back was turned. Their touch was freezing cold and numbed her skin as they brushed past like ghosts. Charmagne let out a whimpering gasp. They were all around her - she couldn't even see the door she'd come in through anymore -

Two gunshots erupted in the silence, deafeningly loud. Instinct overtook Charmagne and she dived for the ground, her arms up over her head. The echoes roared and rebounded throughout the room. When she dared raise her head, she saw that all the shadowy creatures had fled into the dark corners.

No, wait - not all of them. The one that'd been communicating with the screen-stalker, the one that'd laughed, was hovering at the far end of the room, its mask little more than a blur of white in the darkness. It must've been a lot braver than the others, because already it looked like it was considering coming back at them.

Charmagne picked herself up off the dusty floor. Without looking at her, the screen-stalker slipped a knife from his belt and passed it back to her. She didn't know why the curved blade would be better than her gun, but she didn't question it. The knife felt warm and strangely light in her hand.

The screen-stalker lowered his gun and switched it to his left hand. Then he beckoned to the hovering figure at the far end of the room.

Hesitantly, still moving with that smooth, unnatural glide, the creature came towards him. It kept its head low as if preparing at any moment to beat a hasty retreat. The screen-stalker made a couple of sharp, angry gestures and got only a headshake in answer. He raised the gun towards the ceiling warningly, and the creature cringed away. With obvious reluctance, it gestured out an answer with its stubby hands.

'Crap,' the screen-stalker said out loud, making the creature flinch away.

'What?' Charmagne whispered.

He didn't answer. Around them, their voices had riled up the other shadows again. Dark shapes flittered about the edges of their vision. Charmagne found herself turning in shuffling little circles as she tried to look everywhere at once. Her heart was beating faster and faster and she felt like she was going to hyperventilate. Her breathing was loud and harsh in the silence.

One of the creatures took advantage of her panic. It darted across the floor, all four of its limb-like appendages propelling it forward while not seeming to move at all. The first warning she got of the attack was when the creature popped up right in front of her with stunted hands clawing for her face.

She screamed and struck out at it with the knife. It was a panicked, imprecise strike, but more by luck than judgment it found its target. The tip of the blade caught the side of the creature's mask and ripped it from its face. The mask clattered to the ground, suddenly heavy and corporeal.

Charmagne took one look at the face beneath the mask and screamed again.

It was a face only in the most general of ways. The skin was completely smooth and unblemished, pulled tight across whatever bone or cartilage was beneath it. There were no eyes, just a number of indentations, as if someone had dug their thumbs into the wet clay of the face. The mouth was an irregular hole full of curved teeth.

The creature sucked in air through the distorted mouth and let it out as a thin shriek, made all the more terrible by its near-silence. Charmagne felt his sanity stretched and threatened to break. She let out a wail and slashed at the creature with her knife. It encountered only insubstantial air as the dark shape slid out of the way.

Behind her, the screen-stalker had caught hold of the lead creature. There was a silver chain wrapped around his hand and him somehow grabbed onto a fistful of the dark clothing. The creature writhed and thrashed but couldn't break loose.

He gestured as best he could with his left hand, hampered by the gun, but the creature was too distraught to pay attention. The darkness of its body twisted, morphing into impossible shapes, but the screen-stalker held it firm. Other creatures swooped down and tried to snatch at his hair and clothes. Finally he lost his temper and fired three more shots into the high ceiling.

A chorus of whistling shrieks rose from the creatures as they fled back into the corners. The lead one twisted so violently that it managed to tear itself loose, at the expense of leaving a chunk of blackness clutched in the screen-stalker's hand. He shook it off as it evaporated into mist.

At the back of the room a doorway was flung open and as one the dark shadows streamed towards it. It was like someone had turned on a vacuum just outside the room. In a matter of moments they were all sucked out and vanished. Charmagne and the screen-stalker were left alone in the now lighter and somehow less silent room.

Slowly, Charmagne unwound from her crouch on the floor. 'What the hell was that about?' she demanded, her voice shrill and near hysterical. 'Because I did not like that at all.'

'They were waiting to get out.' The screen-stalker crossed the echoing room to stand in front of the television set. It flickered with silent static. 'They reckoned they had permission. That someone was going to let them out.'

'Let them out?'

'Into the real world. Technically, the monsters could leave this place, if they were invited by an Outsider, but none of them have tried that route for a long, long time.' He stared at the screen as if all the answers were contained in the static. 'It doesn't make sense.'

'How do you know what they were planning?'

'They told me, just now.'

Charmagne shivered. 'Those things weirded me out.'

'If it's any consolation, you did the same to them.' He frowned. 'I just don't get how she managed to convince them she was gonna let them out.'

'Beg pardon?'

'Selena. That's what the Silent told me anyway - Selena was gonna let them out into the real world. But there's no physical way she could do that, and the Silents know it. They'd never fall for a lie.' The troubled frown deepened. 'I don't like this. Something's not right.'

In Charmagne's opinion, nothing was right about the situation. She bent to pick up the mask that the creature had dropped, but as her fingers touched it, it crumbled into ash.

Beyond the door the Silents had fled through, all but inaudible, came a distant whistling laugh. It was cut off abruptly, as if a door had closed.

'Shit!' The screen-stalker took off at a run towards the far door. Charmagne could do nothing but follow.

The screen-stalker was in a foul temper by the time they got back to his room. 'As if my life wasn't complicated enough already,' he muttered.

Charmagne, on the other hand, was preoccupied with what the 8-Ball had said. She wondered if she should've said longer and heard what he had to say, but then she remembered the frustrating way he had of handing out information, and decided that if she'd stayed any longer she would've punched him.

Once the door was shut, the screen-stalker went straight to the printer and picked up the few sheets that'd printed out in his absence. 'Goddammit... alright, what else do I have to do?' He sorted through the sheets, his frowned deepening. 'Crap, crap, rubbish, unnecessary... shit, can these people really not sort out their own problems?'

Abruptly, he lost his temper and flung the sheets against the wall, sending them fluttering in all directions.

'Why me?' he demanded. 'Why, ultimately, me?'

Charmagne wondered if it'd be safe to answer that, and decided it probably wouldn't.

The screen-stalker pushed his hair back from his face and, with determination, pulled his composure back down. 'Y'know,' he said, 'I'm beginning to think you should maybe go home. The outside world might suck, but at least it sucks in a good way.'

It took Charmagne a moment to realise he was talking to her rather than just ranting at thin air. 'What? No way. I've only just got here.'

'That's why you should leave now, before it becomes impossible. I should never have brought you here - it was incredibly stupid of me.'

'What do you mean "impossible"? How does it become impossible to leave?'

'Because - ' He frowned again, searching for the right words. 'Listen, it's - '

'Let me guess - it's another difficult thing to explain? You should think about getting a new excuse.'

'Alright, fine. It's not that difficult, I'm just not great at explanations. See, there are rules in place to keep the monsters from getting out. But if you stay here long enough, the rules affect you too. They keep you trapped. I can go outside for brief moments at a time, but I can never stay.'

Realisation dawned on her. 'Wait - you're from the Outside as well, aren't you?'

'I never said - '

'You are! The way you talk about it - you came here from Outside, didn't you?'

'Is there anything I could bribe you with to drop this topic of conversation right now?'

'No way.'

The screen-stalker sighed in a long-suffering way that was already becoming familiar to Charmagne. 'Alright, yes. I was born in the Outside. A long time ago. I had the chance to make a new life in here and I went for it.'

'What sort of chance?'

'The sort I'm willing to talk about to random girls who I've only known for two days.'

'Tch, touchy.'

'Yes, now you mention it. Anyway, I got sick of not controlling my own destiny out in the real world. Life's so pointless out there.'

'Would you believe I know what you mean?'

'Everyone finds life pointless, don't try and empathise with me.'

The printer on the table stuttered into life, making Charmagne jump again. With an irritable scowl, the screen-stalker turned away and picked up the print out.

'Aw, crap.' The scowl turned into a grimace. 'Did I say something stupid like, "hey, at least things can't get any worse".' He glanced at his wrist as if checking his watch - except he wasn't wearing a watch. 'I'm gonna have to deal with this now or I'll never get round to it.'

'Oh goody, more work for us?'

He gave her a look. 'More work for me. Weren't we just discussing how you should go home?'

'No, a discussion involves two people. What you were doing was making a suggestion, which I'm intending to ignore. If you disagree that violently, you can try throwing me out.'

The screen-stalker gave her another look, one which suggested he was mentally weighing up how difficult it would actually be to physically throw here anywhere. It must've seemed like too much effort, because he shrugged. 'Alright, you win. Just stick behind me, do as I do, and if something goes wrong, run like buggery. Okay?'

'Sounds like a plan. Not necessarily a good plan...'

He ignored her and went back to the door, sliding the print-out into the wooden frame there. Charmagne stood on her tiptoes to look over his shoulder. The picture showed a blurry silhouette crouched in a dark corner. Maybe it was because of the poor quality of the picture, but the figure seemed to have no face.

'Let's go,' the screen-stalker said, pushing open the door.

* * *

It was another poorly lit, non-specific room. There was a haziness to the air that prevented adequate assessment of the space, as if the corners of the room were out of focus.

Bits of the darkness were gliding around.

Charmagne stood just beyond the doorway, a frown on her face as she tried to figure out what she was seeing. The whole scene was like an optical illusion... or a piece of film caked in grime and played at the wrong speed. At some points the gliding shadows looked like figures, hunched over and moving on all fours with impossible grace; at others they were amorphous shapes floating over the ground with little heed to the effects of gravity.

Whatever they were and whatever they were doing, they were doing it in complete silence. There wasn't a single sound in the entire room, save for the quiet breathing of the two humans.

As her eyes adjusted better, Charmagne noticed a glowing object at the far side of the room. It was difficult to be sure, but the rectangular shape suggested it was a television set.

The screen-stalker took a silent step forward, then pressed his hands together as if praying. He rubbed them together, producing a barely audible sound.

The effect it had on the gliding shapes was immediate. All of them stopped and rotated in the air. Pale blurs became visible where faces might reasonably be expected to be.

A few of the shapes drifted closer. Most of them, however, stayed back, as if wary of the new arrivals.

The screen-stalker touched his fingers to his forehead. It looked like a salute.

One of the shapes broke away from the others and glided up close. Charmagne caught her breath. The shape was indeed that of a figure - a solid figure at that - wrapped up in shapeless black clothing that failed to give any hint of the body beneath. The head was hooded, the face covered by a blank white mask. Completely blank - devoid of eye- or mouth-holes and lacking any markings or decorations. It was oval in shape and curved outwards a little, but apart from that it was utterly smooth and somehow very inhuman.

Two arm-like appendages snaked out from somewhere within the clothing. They were similarly clad in black, and terminated in shapeless stumps like a closed fist. The creature touched the knuckles of one hand to the top of its mask, returning the salute.

Behind it, the other shapes resumed their restless gliding about the hazy room.

The screen-stalker inclined his head politely, then gestured with his left hand. The strange creature made an answering gesture.

Charmagne looked between man and creature with incomprehension. 'What are you - ?'

She didn't get any further because the screen-stalker shot out a hand and slapped it over her mouth. Even so, her words were like electricity in the room. The creature darted backwards as if stung, and the rest of the shapes fled into the shadows.

The screen-stalker gave her a quick, irritated look and touched a finger to his lips.

You could've told me that before we got in here, she thought in annoyance, but she kept the thought to herself.

The creature was hovering a dozen feet away, looking like it was torn between curiosity and fleeing like its companions. The screen-stalker moved his hands again in strange gestures - at a guess, he was placating the creature.

It seemed to work. The dark shape glided a little closer. Charmagne saw that it did have feet - or at least, foot-like appendages - but seemed to skip the actual process of using them. When it moved, it looked like it had just finished walking or was just about to start walking, but try as she might, Charmagne never actually saw the feet move.

The creature responded with a few quick, sullen gestures of its own. The screen-stalker gestured as if asking a question; the creature answered evasively. He asked again, more forcefully this time, and in response he got a laugh.

It was a faint, whispering laugh, like twigs brushing together in a slight breeze. The sound carried on the silent air and made the hairs on the back of Charmagne's neck stand on end.

The whispering laugh roused the other creatures, and they started flitting back and forth in agitation.

Then, before Charmagne could do anything more than glance at the screen-stalker and frame a worried question in her mind, the dark shapes swept towards them.

The winding stairs led upwards in semi-darkness for an immeasurable distance.

'Tell me again why you couldn't portal straight into his room,' Charmagne wheezed.

'The doors don't work like that. They can only operate in certain set areas, like stops on a tube train line. Besides, the 8-Ball chose this place deliberately.'

'Because he's an awkward bugger?'

'Yeah, pretty much.'

At the top of the stairs was a door. Charmagne felt that "door" should be capitalised, maybe even in bold and underlined just to really get the point across. It was twelve feet high and six feet wide, studded with metal rivets the size of her hand. If you were planning on containing a temperamental dragon with anger issues, this was the sort of door you would install. She had no idea why this "8-Ball" guy would need one.

The screen-stalker knocked politely, then pushed the door open. To Charmagne's surprise, it swung on silent, oiled hinges, as if it weighed next to nothing.

'After you,' he said.

Charmagne gave him a suspicious look and stepped through the door.

The room beyond was not what had been indicated by the grandiose entrance. She found herself standing in what looked like a converted attic that hadn't quite been converted enough to make it habitable. The ceiling was high, sloped and partially obscured by a haze of cigarette smoke. In the centre of the room were a dozen or so chairs, spaced at random and facing in all directions, like a general meeting for people with attention deficit disorder. As far as she could see, the entirety of the walls were covered in newspaper clippings and faded photographs and over bits of paper, very much like the screen-stalker's room.

Only one of the chairs was occupied. A bald, heavyset man slouched there, toying with a cigarette. Since he was sat directly in front of the door, it looked like he'd been expecting them.

'Good to see you, friend.' His voice was high and lilting, at odds with his appearance. He cocked his large head and his eyes shifted to Charmagne. 'And also-friend. How are things in the wider world?'

'Frustrating and annoying, as per usual.' The screen-stalker sat down in one of the other chairs. 'How about you?'

'Unchanging as the tides, my friend. So, what's your question?' Then he looked at Charmagne again. 'Take a seat, Charmagne.'

She was already weirded out by the fact that the man's eyes were colourless, the irises appearing ghostly in the smoky light. 'How do you know my name?'

The screen-stalker smiled. '8-Ball knows all.'

'It's true,' the big man said. 'Ask me anything.'

'Okay, how come you know everything?'

'Ah, sorry. I can only answer yes or no questions.'

'Why?'

'That is not a yes or no question.'

'Sit down, will you?' The screen-stalker waved her into a seat. 'Listen, 8-Ball, I need a few answers.'

'Shoot.'

'Did you know Selena's back?'

The 8-Ball shut his eyes for a moment, as if searching for the answer on the inside of his eyelids. 'Without a doubt.'

'Do you know what she wants?'

'Most likely.'

'Okay, okay.' The screen-stalker sunk down in his chair, his face thoughtful. 'These plans she has - do they involve me?'

'Reply hazy. Ask again later.'

'I don't want to ask again later, I'm asking now. Does Selena coming back have anything to do with me?'

'Y'know, you shouldn't try and force the answers. I'll just end up telling you whatever you want to hear.'

'I know, I'm sorry. It's just... important, y'know? I'm concerned about it.'

'Very well. Same question?'

'If you would. Does it have anything to do with me?'

The 8-Ball closed his eyes, opened them, and sighed. 'As I see it, yes.'

'Damn.'

'Sorry.' He tapped his cigarette into an oversized ashtray. 'You knew all this already, of course.'

'I was hoping I was wrong. It has been known to happen, from time to time. Alright, so Selena's back and she's pissed at me. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Is there anything I can do about it?'

'Yes.'

'But you're not going to tell me what, right?'

'Ask again later.'

The screen-stalker let out a long, heartfelt sigh. 'Alright, I guess I've nothing else to ask.'

'Did you really come all the way up here just for those few questions?'

'I had to make myself sure. And it helps to verbalise these things sometimes.'

'So, no other questions?'

'None that I don't already know the answers to.' He pulled himself up in his chair. 'It was good to see you anyway, 8-Ball. I should make the effort more often.'

'You should.'

The screen-stalker stood up. 'I'll see you later then?'

'Definitely.'

That seemed to cheer the screen-stalker. He smiled for the first time since entering the room. The two men said their goodbyes.

Charmagne had hung back for the duration of the strange conversation. For some reason, the large man with the colourless eyes mad her nervous. She was grateful when the screen-stalker motioned for her to follow him out of there.

Just before they reached the door, the 8-Ball said, 'Hey, Charmagne?'

She glanced back. 'Yeah?'

'Come here a moment.'

She looked at the screen-stalker, but he'd already gone out through the door and apparently hadn't heard. Reluctantly, she went back to stand in front of the man.

The 8-Ball looked her up and down, then tapped his cigarette again. 'You ain't the first, y'know.'

'Huh?'

'The Stalker's always had a soft spot for mortals.' He smiled, and it was both indulgent and a little sad. 'Ask me what happened to his last friend.'

'What happened to his last friend?'

'Yes or no questions only.'

'Alright, fine.' Charmagne sighed. 'So I'm not the first person he's brought in from the outside then.'

Somehow she should've expected that it had happened before - that the screen-stalker had dragged someone in through the television to share in his amazing, goo-filled adventures. A small feeling of disappointment welled up inside her but she quickly forced it down. Why the hell should she be special or unique? She never had been before.

'A definite no,' the 8-Ball answered.

'Did he get bored and kick them out?' she asked hopefully.

'No.'

'You're a very unhelpful oracle. Okay, was it something bad that happened to them?'

'Yes.'

'Alright,' she said again, and sighed again. 'You're trying to scare me off, aren't you? You're trying to warn me of the inherent dangers involved in hanging out in this world. So at a guess - at an absolute stab in the dark - the last person he brought in died. Right?'

'My sources say no.'

'No?'

The 8-Ball shook his large head.

Charmagne was being to feel more than a little infuriated with this game. 'Look, I appreciate your concern, really I do, but I'm not up to playing twenty questions with a billiard ball right now. Can you really not give me any more helpful information?'

Another shake of the head.

'Well, in that case, I'm just gonna take my chances, alright? Whatever happened to the "last friend", it's not gonna happen to me.'

And with that, she flounced out of the room.

The 8-Ball tapped his cigarette, which hadn't burned down any during the course of the conversation - and in fact had not burned down any for the last decade or more - then closed his eyes for a moment.

'Don't count on it,' he said, even though she was beyond earshot by then.

The next day she went to work. It turned out to be a mistake.

Her bosses quite reasonably wanted to know where she'd been for the last two days, and quickly started picking holes in her half-assed story. By the time she left, she had been officially cautioned and told she'd have to make up for the work she'd missed by coming in at the weekend.

It wasn't the first time that'd happened, of course. She screwed up and got cautioned and had to work weekends, and then she'd bitch and curse and spend a drunken evening thinking about how she was gonna tell the bosses to stick their goddamn job because she was gonna go make ceramic hedgehogs for a living or something. Then she would fall asleep and in the morning she'd go back to work and the whole cycle would repeat.

Except, of course, she now had one other option, didn't she?

The television was still unplugged when she got home. She fixed herself some dinner, periodically nipping into the front room to make sure the plug hadn't spontaneously wormed its way back into the wall socket. It didn't.

She changed her clothes, selecting a black jumper that would hide any further goop stains and a pair of jeans she could run for her life in. She scraped her hair back into as neat a ponytail as she could manage. The overall effect, when she checked in the mirror, was of someone attending a job interview in a very undiscerning funeral home. She considered pulling on a hat to cover the unruly frizz of her hair, but decided she looked stupid enough already.

As a last minute thought, she scribbled a quick note to Bert and stuck it on the fridge, where he was sure to look first.

Then and only then did she plug the television back in.

This time it took her only a minute or so of randomly cycling through channels to find the dimly lit room with the photocopies on the wall. If she strained her eyes, she could just make out a dark figure standing in the far corner.

'Hello?' she said. 'Are you there?'

There was no response. Either the figure was just a trick of the light, or the screen-stalker was playing a silent game.

'Can I come in?' she asked.

Again there was no answer. The shadowy figure - if that's what it was - didn't move.

'Fine. Ready or not, I'm coming in.'

She pressed her fingers against the screen. For a moment, it seemed like nothing was happening - the screen remained resolutely solid to the touch. Then a ripple ran through the glass and abruptly she was sucked into the television.

As was becoming her habit, she stumbled and almost fell as she emerged. The disorientation and nausea didn't seem to fade with repeated use of the gateway.

When she was able to clear her vision, the first thing she looked at was the shadowy figure in the corner.

It was indeed the screen-stalker. He came into the meagre light, an unreadable half-smile on his lips. 'Glad you made it,' he said.

'You and me both. Didn't you hear me calling?'

'I heard. I just wanted to see if you could open the gateway yourself. And, since you've passed that test, you win a prize.'

'Ooooh, what sort of prize.'

The screen-stalker picked up a package from the table behind him and tossed it to her. She caught it clumsily - there was a lot more weight to it than she'd expected.

'Cool, what is it?'

'Why do people ask that? It'll take you five seconds to open it and find out.'

Charmagne ignored him and tore open the package. Inside was a gun in a holster. The holster was black leather worked with baby-pink tooling, and the flare of the gun's hammer was also gilded with pink.

'My God, it's adorable.' She laughed. 'How did you know?'

'You look like a pink person.'

Charmagne had to wonder how exactly she looked like a pink person, since she didn't own a single item of pink clothing. Nor did she look like the sort of person who would add ribbons to her hair at the slightest provocation or have an extensive and well-catalogued collection of My Little Ponies. And just because she did have that sort of secret collection didn't mean anyone would look at her and say, "now there is a pink kinda person".

Nevertheless, the holster was definitely cute. She wasn't so sure about the gun. It gave her a queasy feeling in her stomach.

'I thought it might be handy,' the screen-stalker said in his quiet voice. 'Now you won't have to steal mine all the time.'

'It's lovely. Thank you. Where did you get it?'

'Around. These things turn up now and again. Wanna see my collection?'

'You have a collection of gay holsters?'

He gave her a sour look. Then he turned and pulled open a long drawer from the desk. Charmagne stepped closer and saw the gleam of metal.

'Wow,' she said.

The drawer was crammed with weaponry. Mostly guns, but also a good assortment of knives and at least one sword, which was wedged in at a diagonal angle. There were also knuckledusters, shuriken, crossbow bolts, gilded kukris, a rusted parang, a couple of bicycle chains and the sort of blunderbuss you only ever saw being wielded by great white hunters in pith helmets. All were arranged in the sort of artless mess one leaves a kitchen drawer full of odds and ends that you're just sure will come in handy some day.

'I have a flamethrower somewhere as well,' the screen-stalker grinned.

'Well, aren't you just the closet psycho.'

'Ooh!' He spotted something in the tangle of weaponry; pulled it out to reveal a short handled double-headed axe. 'I forgot I had this.'

'Y'know, some people collect stamps. Have you ever thought about collecting stamps?'

'So,' he said with another smile, 'are you ready for another day in the office?'

'I guess that's why I'm here.'

'Good girl.' The screen-stalker was already sorting through the sheaf of photocopies he kept in his back pocket. 'There's a bunch of stuff that needs dealing with, but first I want to go visit someone.'

'Who?'

He held up a picture for her to see. It was a bad photocopy of a blurred photograph, but she could make out a bald, heavyset man in a dark suit. He was facing away from the camera, talking to someone whose face was hidden by a veil of hair. The most striking aspect of him was a large black figure eight tattooed on the back of his head.

'The Magic 8-Ball.'

Charmagne stared at him with the now-familiar sensation of reality unravelling around her. After all the shocks she had in the past few hours, the least she'd expected was for her flat to be a safe, stable haven from the craziness.

'I'm sorry,' she said, 'say that again?'

'You didn't come into work yesterday. I phoned you and you didn't answer so I went in without you. Then the same thing happened today. If you'd checked your answer machine when you came in, you'd have found a half dozen messages from me.' Bert blinked at her from behind his milk-bottle glasses. 'Actually, that's a point. When did you come in? Because I checked the whole flat when I came in and you weren't here, and I didn't hear the door open - '

'I tell you what, how about we skim over that and I'll refrain from asking how you managed to get in here despite your solemn promise that you'd disposed of that spare key you lifted off me three months ago. Okay?'

'Um. Deal.' He looked her up and down then, as if taking in her appearance for the first time. 'Where have you been, Char? And what the hell have you been doing?'

'That really would be very difficult to explain. Let me wash my hands, okay? Then we'll get drunk and I'll tell you some of it.'

She went into the cramped bathroom. Bert followed her. There was barely enough for one person, let alone two - unless they were very good friends - so he had to loiter in the doorway while Charmagne examined her face in the mirror above the sink. Apart from being pale and shell-shocked, it didn't look as bad as she'd expected. She had a couple of awesome bruises blossoming on her shoulders where the zombie had grabbed her.

'You sure you're okay?' Bert asked.

Charmagne glanced up at the mirror and for the briefest of seconds saw, instead of Bert's familiar round face, the leering visage of the zombie. She squealed and spun around.

'What?' Bert asked.

Right, my brain has officially gone mental. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, Bert was still his usual confused, podgy self.

'Nothing. It's fine.' Charmagne attempted a smile, failed. 'I'm just tired.'

'You sure? You're covered in shit and jumpy as hell. What have you been doing?'

'Nothing, just... watching movies. Sorry, can you just give me a minute? Or ten? I'll be out in a bit.'

'Sure. Sure, no problem. I'll go wait in the front room, yeah?'

'That would be great.'

'Can I have another beer?'

'If you really want to risk it.'

'Cool. Is okay if I watch TV?'

'Ye - no, don't touch the TV!'

'What?'

'It's not - it's just - oh for God's sake just don't touch the bloody thing, alright?' She shoved him out of the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.

Through the door, she heard him ask, 'So, is this a woman thing or a you-thing?'

* * *

She'd lost two days of her life. It should've been a very distressing fact, one that she had trouble coming to terms with. But for some reason it wasn't bothering her. Maybe she was just too tired, too overwrought. With everything else that'd happened, skipping forward a few extra hours seemed of little consequence.

Explaining this to Bert was a difficult proposition though. For a start, Charmagne immediately decided not to make mention of the fact she'd been running around inside the television. It wasn't something she felt able to talk about without sounding crazy. So instead she made up a lame story about meeting a friend and having to take a very unexpected trip out of town.

'Well, shit,' Bert said, grimacing at the taste of his second out-of-date can of beer. 'You could've at least called. Have you any idea how pissed off the bosses have been? And I'm the one they've been demanding answers from. Like I should know where the hell you get to.'

'It was good of you to come check up on me.'

'Hell, I figured you were probably just passed out drunk in a corner somewhere. If I hadn't been getting hassle for it I probably wouldn't have bothered, y'know? I mean, I'm used to you disappearing off the face of the earth for days at a time.'

'Gee, thanks a lot.'

After Bert left, she thought about that for a while. She'd often wondered whether anyone would miss her if she did just drop off the face of the earth into oblivion, and she guessed she now had the answer. Bert would come round, steal her stale alcohol, look a bit confused, then go on his way. He'd do that maybe two or three times, depending how much the bosses were yelling at him. No one else would bother, of course - it wasn't like she had vast reserves of friendship to draw upon.

She felt bad about worrying Bert like that. He hadn't seemed hugely bothered by her absence, but then he never seemed hugely bothered by anything at all. Maybe that was her own fault - they were friends, but not the sort of friends who ever phoned each other or hung out or made plans together. They shared the ride to work, their cigarette breaks, and the occasional evening of silent drinking and movie watching. They were friends by default, more than anything else.

It would've been nice to tell him everything that'd happened - about the screen-stalker and the magic doors and the zombie and all that - but he would've just thought she was crazy. Or, more likely, he would've said, 'huh, fancy that', then changed the subject.

She drank a little more whiskey, stared at the blank television screen for a while, then decided all those problems could wait till tomorrow.

Before she went to bed she unplugged the television.

Authorial Note:
Posted Word Count (eleven chapters): 13,921
Current Total Word Count: 23,655

Once again the ground was solid and carpeted. A welcome and familiar dull glow of light emanated from a single, well-shielded bulb. The shadows in the corners of the room were deep but non-threatening.

Charmagne sagged against a photocopy-covered wall while the screen-stalker shut the heavy door behind them. He did something to the handle that resulted in the click of several locks sliding into place. Then he too leaned back against the wall and let out a shuddering breath.

'Well now,' he said, 'that was a close one.'

'That was a weird one. Who was that?'

'An old friend.'

'She didn't look very friendly.'

'Really? She didn't kill us - what more do you want?' He held out his hand and took back his secondary gun from her. His hands shook a little as he made an automatic check of the safety before tucking it back into the holster. 'Thanks.'

'You're entirely welcome.' Charmagne was considering sinking to the floor, but was fairly sure if she did so it'd be impossible to get back up again. Adrenaline was still coursing through her body and, having nothing to do now, was turning itself into the beginnings of a migraine.

'I think it's maybe time you went home now,' the screen-stalker said. 'We've had quite enough excitement for one day.'

Although that sounded like a world class idea, Charmagne's head was still reeling with unanswered questions. 'So, who was that woman?' she asked. 'Why was she so pissed at you?'

He smoothed his hair back from his face. 'Well, her name's Selena and yes, she is technically an old friend. I've not seen her for a long time, because she got... look, it's hard to explain, but it amounts to a banishment, like she said. She's been gone for a very long while. And it would appear she still holds a grudge against me.'

'For what?'

'See, that's something else that'd take a long while to explain. And right now, begging your pardon, I don't feel like explaining stuff.'

'Oh. Well, fine. I'll just take myself off home then, shall I?'

'If you don't mind.'

He switched on the battered television set and fiddled with the controls. A moment later, the picture of Charmagne's front room reappeared, just as she'd left it.

As simple as that. Despite the madness of the day, despite almost getting eaten by a zombie and meeting an inexplicably terrifying woman and being menaced by an undead python, she felt strangely reluctant to go back to her own safe little flat. She'd been granted a glimpse of this extraordinary, impossible world, and was now being sent home without a word of explanation. Well, without a word of explanation that actually made sense.

'I appreciated your help,' the screen-stalker said then.

'What help?'

He shrugged, and for a moment seemed unsure of himself. 'You seem to know how to handle yourself. And you didn't freak out or panic at any point, which surprised me. You helped.'

Charmagne stared at him, then shook her head. 'I tell you what, maybe someday you can explain to me how exactly I helped, because all I remember doing is screaming a lot and jumping on a chair. But hey, I'll take compliments wherever I can get them, so - '

'I'm remembering now why I don’t talk to people any more.' He tapped the top of the television. 'Go on, get yourself out of here.'

With her hand less than an inch from the screen, she hesitated. 'Can I come back?'

'Come back?'

'Back here. Can I come... visit again some time?'

'I'm not so sure that'd be a great idea. Not with this Selena problem that's just come up.' The screen-stalker frowned. 'But I guess you did help me, and I appreciate that. So yeah, you can come back. Any time. My cassy is your cassy, and all that.'

'I bet your pardon?'

'You know, that Spanish phrase, about my house being yours.'

'Mi casa su casa?'

'That's what I said.'

'If you reckon.' Charmagne tried to muster a smile, but her facial muscles felt as tense as the rest of her. 'Now, if you don’t mind, I'm gonna go get some sleep and maybe puke a few times.'

'Have fun with that.'

She pressed her fingers against the screen. There was a crackle of static and a softening of the glass surface, as if it were melting beneath her hand. Then abruptly she broke through and was sucked into the gateway. Her nerves stretched then snapped back into shape and she stumbled out onto the bobbly carpet of her own front room.

The brighter light there made her blink. She turned and saw the screen-stalker on her television, all but invisible in his dim, box-like room. He raised a hand in mocking salute, then turned off the screen from his side. The picture flicked to black.

Curiosity made her squat down in front of the television and poke at the screen. It was perfectly solid, with a tangible layer of undisturbed dust covering the glass. There wasn't the slightest thing to suggest it was a magic portal to another world.

With a sigh, she switched it off and headed to the bathroom. She felt exhausted and headachy, the last traces of adrenaline and the whiskey she'd drunk earlier in the evening - God, it felt like days ago - producing a sour, nauseous sensation in her stomach. Her hands were spattered with dried zombie goop.

Bathroom first, then more whiskey, then bed. Maybe then the world would make a little more sense.

As she was coming out of the front room, someone stepped out of the kitchen opposite. Since neither person was expecting the other to be there, they both jumped back with a yell of surprise. Charmagne, being the one with nerves already strung tighter than piano wire, came very close to battering the intruder around the head with her bare hands before she realised it was in fact her friend Bert.

Bert, for his part, was so surprised he dropped the open can of beer he was holding and had to quickly stoop to retrieve it before more than half its contents exploded over the carpet.

'What the hell are you doing here?' Charmagne demanded, one hand pressed to her heart. 'God, you almost killed me.'

'Char, where the hell have you been?' Bert sucked the foam off the top of the can. 'I've been trying looking for you all day.'

'Where were you looking? In my fridge? Because if that's one of the cans from the bottom shelf, I'll warn you now they're seven months out of date.' Her sluggish mind caught up with what Bert had said. 'Wait, all day? I saw you at work just today. Like four hours ago.'

Bert stared at her. 'No-o, you last came in on Tuesday. You've not been there for two days. Geez, how much have you been drinking to lose two whole days?'

The woman's age was difficult to judge - certainly her face belonged to someone little older than Charmagne herself, someone not even out of their twenties, but she carried herself with the confidence and grace of someone with many more years. As she took her first steps into the room, the silvery cloak fell open to reveal a sleek red dress that clung to her every curve. And yet, it would've been difficult to class her as beautiful. Maybe it was the hardness around her eyes, which was only noticeable when she came closer. Or maybe it was the palpable air of menace she carried with her like a living aura.

'I've been looking for you everywhere,' she said, her voice consciously soft and sweet. 'You wouldn't believe how difficult you can be to find. Anyone would think you'd been deliberately hiding from me.'

The screen-stalker hadn't moved since his rapid reversal across the room. Every muscle in his body had tensed, so much so he seemed to thrum with contained stress. 'What're you doing here, Selena?' he asked.

'Looking for you, silly.' The woman called Selena giggled. The childishness of the gesture did not suit her. 'I wanted you to join in my celebration. Did you hear? My banishment's been lifted.'

'That's impossible.'

'Not impossible, no. Not if you know the right people.'

The screen-stalker pulled his gun; levelled it at the woman's head. She didn't so much as flinch.

Charmagne didn't know what was going on or who the woman was, but in the short time she'd been inside the television world she'd decided to trust the screen-stalker's instincts. His reaction told her clearer than words that this Selena person was bad news. Without stopping to think, she grabbed the second gun from the screen-stalker's belt.

The woman's eyes drifted to Charmagne as if noticing her for the first time. 'Oh, you brought a friend,' she smiled. 'Hello, friend, and who might you be?'

'Get out of here,' the screen-stalker warned.

'I was just being polite. And maybe a little curious. You're not consorting with mortals again are you? I thought you were over all that.'

'I said get out!'

She smiled. 'Make me.'

For the space of maybe two heartbeats, the screen-stalker hesitated. Then with a suddenness that took Charmagne completely by surprise, he darted away from her, sprinted across the room and dived out through the open window.

It all happened so fast that Charmagne was left standing in the middle of the room with her mouth open, staring. Out of every possible scenario she'd had in her head, she hadn't for a moment considered he would run off and leave her.

She looked up and found Selena with the same look of bemusement on her face. As their eyes met, the thought slowly trickled down into Charmagne's mind that she was in a very bad situation, and the one person she'd been counting on for protection had done a runner.

The gun was still in her hand. Okay, that was good. She lifted it, having to use both hands to stop it from shaking.

Selena gave her a smile that was borderline sympathetic. 'You're new here, right? Yeah, I could tell. If you like, I can explain a few things to you.' She took a step forward, not in the least bit fazed by the gun. 'I'll make it quick because you're probably in a hurry. You don't belong here. This isn't the sort of place you should be. In fact, it'd be very beneficial to your health if you'd go back home and forget this part of the world ever existed.'

In the back of her mind, Charmagne couldn't help but agree.

There was a scuffling noise outside the window. It sounded very much like someone who'd dived out and gone running away at full speed through the darkness before being brought up short by the realisation that maybe they'd left something behind.

'There's no reason for you to get caught up in all this,' Selena was saying. 'Trust me, it'll only end badly.'

A face appeared at the window, swiftly followed by a body in a leather trench coat. The screen-stalker boosted himself up to the window and started crawling back inside. It wasn't clear how he intended doing so without being noticed, but whatever his plan had been it failed miserably.

Selena glanced up then gave a contemptuous flick of her hand. The top half of the sash window came crashing down with enough force to knock all the air out of the screen-stalker. He let out a surprised "ooooff" of pain, pinned half-in and half-out of the window.

'Hey!' Charmagne brandished the gun in what she hoped was a menacing way. 'Don't do that!'

She received another smile, this one less sympathetic and more pitying. 'Go home, child. You're quite obviously out of your depth.'

Selena flicked the air again, like someone shooing away a troublesome fly. Charmagne suddenly found herself holding, instead of a gun, a coiled Indian python.

'Eeeeeeek!' she said automatically, then, 'I mean, awwwwww. Is baby python.' She stroked its triangular head. The bemused snake curled around her hands and waggled its tongue in the air as if wondering where it was and how exactly it'd got there.

Selena clucked her tongue. 'God, people are difficult these days.' She flicked her hand again.

The snake twisted in Charmagne's grip. Its skin sloughed off in huge patches, revealing putrefying flesh beneath. It hissed in anger, its head thrashing from side to side as the jaws elongated and grew huge curved fangs. In a matter of seconds it'd become a vile creature of nightmare, its semi-rotted muscles locking like ropes around her hands and its head rearing back like a deformed cobra. Its milky eyes had been replaced by black and empty sockets.

Charmagne screamed and flung it away from her. It lost its grip on her hands, to land in a thrashing heap on the floor. It took but a moment for it to right itself and come darting back towards her. With another scream, she scrambled up onto a chair, just out of reach of those jaws.

Selena was grinning like a happy child. She raised her hand and held it there in a thoughtful way, as if deciding what further horror to inflict on the girl.

She never got the chance. While her attention was distracted, the screen-stalker struggled his way free of the entrapping window. He staggered to his feet and charged her. It wasn't an elegant or refined attack, but it worked. He slammed into her with a perfectly executed rugby tackle, knocking her right off her feet and sending them both crashing to the floor.

'Run!' Charmagne heard him yell. She didn't need telling twice.

The evil snake made another strike for her ankles as she vaulted over it; it missed by inches. Without a single glance back, she ran for the window, scrambling through it and letting herself drop.

The ground outside was soft and squashy. Charmagne didn't stop to wonder where the hell she was or what she was running on. She put her head down and fled into the darkness. Off to her left she caught a glimpse of something huge and tentacled sulking in the shadows, but it was gone before she could be sure of it.

Footsteps sounded behind her. Since she had no way of knowing who they belonged to, she put on an extra burst of speed. They were catching up with her regardless, but she let out a gasp of relief when she heard the screen-stalker's voice close behind.

'Turn left! There's a door right there!'

She couldn't see a thing. Apart from the squashy ground beneath her pounding feet, they could've been running through the black void of space. So when a rectangle of light appeared in front of her she didn't know whether to cry out in relief or just fall down and die on the spot.

Rough hands grabbed her shoulders and rushed her through the doorway.

With his thumbs hooked into the front pockets of his jeans, the screen-stalker crossed the room to stand just at one side of the television. The curious tentacle continued to probe the screen. There was a faint crackle like a distant electrical discharge, and its suckers pushed through the glass and into the room beyond. With a slooping sound, the tentacle followed it.

The screen-stalker placed the heel of his boot on the fat body of the tentacle. Not quite hard enough to crush it, but definitely enough to hold it in place.

'Evening, Ted,' he said in a conversational tone. 'Would you mind greatly keeping your fingers out of there?'

The tentacle squirmed beneath his foot, thick muscles tensing and curling as it attempted to escape. Its suckered tip reluctantly withdrew from the television screen and flopped back to the carpet.

'Much appreciated.' The screen-stalker turned away with a satisfied smile. It looked like he was about to give Charmagne a cheerful lecture on how politeness was the best way of solving problems, when the tentacle decided it wasn't very happy with the way it'd been treated. It shot out with malevolent speed and fastened around the man's ankle.

'Hey!' He kicked out at the tentacle, but the suckers bit into the fabric of his jeans. The tentacle tensed like a snake and dragged him off balance. The screen-stalker was left hopping on one foot and still trying to pull himself free.

'Alright, cut that out, there's no need to - '

It yanked him forward, pulling his leg out from under him. He lost his balance and landed on his back.

'Goddammit! Fine, if we're playing like that - '

The screen-stalker drew out his gun, sat up and jammed the barrel into the fleshy tentacle around his ankle.

'Okay, Ted, time to let go now or you'll be losing an arm, alright? Let go.'

For a moment it seemed like the tentacle would do as told. But then a second tentacle, which had been snaking along the ceiling above him, darted down and snatched at his arm. It locked around his right wrist and yanked upwards. The gun came with it.

Pinned by two points, the screen-stalker was still trying to appear in complete control of the situation. He continued to reason with the increasingly angry mass of flailing tentacles.

'Look, I understand your point, really I do. I don't mean to be the bad guy here - I really am just doing my job. The rules are there for a reason. Now, if you just put me down and - ow!'

The tentacle around his wrist slipped under the cuff of his jacket, allowing the suckers to latch onto his flesh. The screen-stalker attempted to twist his arm loose but the grip tightened. It hauled him sharply upwards until he was suspended in mid air, one arm and one leg still flapping free. A dozen excited tentacles churned the air around him.

'Alright, seriously, that does it!'

His untethered left hand grabbed for a second gun, concealed in a holster at the small of his back. He pulled it loose and aimed, not at the mass of writhing tentacles, but out through the open window. Despite the fact he was suspended at an awkward and no doubt painful angle, he barely hesitated in lining up the shot.

The gunshot was so loud in the enclosed room Charmagne thought her eardrums had been ruptured. The mass of tentacles flinched in on themselves. Then, abruptly, all the fight went out of them. Several went limp. A few of the smaller ones retreated with haste through the window. The two holding up the screen-stalker let go without bothering to lower him to the ground. He dropped the short distance and somehow managed to land on his feet.

On the television, the woman in the bed had turned her attention from her male companion to the events happening on the screen. The screen-stalker cast a sour glance at them.

'Show's over, folks,' he said and hit the off button.

Outside the window there was a hissing noise, like a distressed snake. Whatever was controlling the tentacles started reeling them in. The suckers made sullen little pops as they retreated over the windowsill.

The screen-stalker pushed his black hair back from his face. 'See?' he said to Charmagne. 'Piece of cake. You just have to know how to talk to people.'

Charmagne came out from behind the crockery cupboard, where she'd taken shelter a few moments before. 'Oh yeah, most definitely. Your skills at negotiation obviously know no bounds.'

'Anyone ever tell you you're very sarcastic?'

'Me? Sarcastic? Noooooooooo.'

The screen-stalker reholstered his guns. On his right wrist there were a number of red sucker-marks, one of which leaked a trail of blood down his arm. 'Look, I had everything perfectly under control,' he said, despite all evidence to the contrary. 'There was never any real problem - '

He broke off and went still again. Just as he'd done in the graveyard, his head tilted like he was listening to something.

It made Charmagne's stomach knot up again. After the surreal experience of watching a tentacled beast go nuts and suspend someone from the ceiling - not to mention having a zombie attempt to eat her brains shortly before - she wasn't sure if her nerves could take any more surprises. For the first time she found herself missing her nice safe little flat where nothing more shocking than occasional threatening phone calls from the landlord ever happened.

She couldn't hear anything. The room was utterly silent.

Actually, that was maybe the point. The teenagers by the door had gone quiet. In fact, when Charmagne turned to look at the barricaded door, she found all three of them mysteriously absent, as if they'd disappeared into thin air.

The last of the tentacles disappeared over the window ledge into the darkness beyond.

It was an unnatural silence that was left behind. As if the entire world was holding its breath.

Charmagne opened her mouth to ask what was wrong; the screen-stalker motioned her to silence. With one hand back on the holstered gun, he turned a slow circle, taking in every aspect of the empty room. It was so still and so quiet Charmagne could hear her own heartbeat loud in her ears.

Then there was an exhalation of air and the door behind them blew open. The noise made both of them spin round.

The doorway was completely, impossibly black, as if it opened onto a lift shaft. The darkness seemed to seep out like a living entity, dimming the light within the room.

Something - no, someone - stepped out of the blackness. Wrapped up in a thick cloak which seemed to be made of silver moonlight, the figure paused on the threshold as if waiting an invite.

The screen-stalker's reaction was to back up so fast he reversed into Charmagne and pushed her against the far wall.

With thin, delicate hands, the figure pushed back the hood to reveal soft, elegant features.

'Hi,' the woman smiled. 'I'm so glad I found you.'

'I can't believe it.'

'No, you don’t want to believe it. Your mind is programmed to believe one specific set of parameters, and anything that falls outside of them must be instantly discarded for fear of destroying everything you were ever certain about.'

'Hey, that's a generalisation - '

'Yes, but a true one.'

He was leading the way through the graveyard with surety, back to the crumbling crypt with the black, cavernous entrance. Charmagne had to hurry to keep up with his long stride.

'Think of it this way,' he said, apparently liking the subject. 'People need those set parameters. They need to have things to believe in and things to disbelieve in. In the past, in the outside world, there were demons and monsters and who knows what else, and people believed in them - really, truly believed, like their lives depended on it. And their beliefs kept them safe - but at the same time, it allowed the monsters to exist. These things feed off each other, I'm sure you know that.'

'Um,' said Charmagne, who wasn't at all sure she knew that.

'But as time went on, people stood being afraid of the dark. They stopped seeing demons in every freak occurrence, every change in the weather, every small thing that didn't fit the precise parameters of their world. And that belief had to go somewhere, it couldn't just vanish. So people stopped believing in the demons out there and started believing in the ones in here. In the world of movies. In the things you can see every day of your life, right there on your screen. People watch them and they tell themselves that none of its real, it's all just make-believe - but part of them, the part that continues to feed the monsters, is never quite convinced. It's necessary. We have to be scared of the dark.'

They'd reached the door to the crypt. It still stood open, and there was still nothing but absolute darkness inside.

'That's a very nice theory,' Charmagne told him. 'Windy, verbose, yet completely failing to answer my simple question of what's going on and why.'

The screen-stalker sighed. 'Belief creates a link, alright? Between the outside world and this one in here. But its not a one-way thing - occasionally, if they're really determined, things can go through the other way. Monsters can leave their place here and go into the Outside. Please stop looking at me like that.'

'I can't help it, your bullshit is hypnotic.'

'Look. It's like... it's...' He glared at her in irritation. 'Okay, look. It's a magic door. The television is a magic door. Usually it's fine, but sometimes monsters try and sneak through it. Alright?'

'And you have to stop them?'

'Yes.'

'Why you?'

He started to answer, then shook his head. 'Listen, I'll explain it better to you later. Right now, I've got other places I need to be. You can either tag along for a while longer, or I can show you the way back to your own world.'

'I'm beginning to get the impression you don't want me here.'

'If that were the case I'd never have let you in in the first place. But equally, I'm not responsible for you and I'm not forcing you to stay, alright?'

'You're very touchy, aren't you?' Charmagne looked down at her arms, which were streaked with zombie goo. 'If I stay, am I gonna get more covered with icky than I already am?'

'Yes.'

'Curses. Alright, fine, I'll stick around. I mean, if it's not a huge inconvenience for you - '

'Not a huge one, no.' The screen-stalker took out the printed sheets again. 'Come on, I've got a fun one we can do.'

* * *

This time, the door opened into a large combination living room/dining area, furnished in tasteful Victorian style, with a wide archway between the two rooms. There was one doorway in each part of the room - the first, which Charmagne and her companion stepped through, was regulation plywood, while the second was a huge oak-panelled affair. This second door was all but obscured by the enormous pile of furniture that'd been stacked in front of it. There was a large bay window, which was also blocked up. The door in the dining room and the open sash window next to it had strangely been overlooked.

The people responsible for the mass furniture rearrangement were three teenagers - two girls and one effeminate boy, all dressed in pyjamas. Together, they were currently attempting to add a large writing desk to the teetering pile in front of the door.

The screen-stalker closed the door quietly behind them.

One of the teenage girls was sobbing hysterically. 'We can't do this!' she wailed. 'Tommy's out there! We can't lock him out with that thing!'

'He's not Tommy anymore!' the other girl, a spirited goth chick, yelled. 'We can't let him in!'

The effeminate guy, trying to be the voice of reason, said, 'Hey, c'mon you guys - ' The goth girl shoved him away and he went sprawling over a chaise longue.

None of them paid the slightest attention to Charmagne or the screen-stalker. Charmagne looked around the room and located a television placed in an alcove opposite the barricaded door. On its screen was a dimly lit bedroom. There were two people in that room, but neither of them were watching the television. Charmagne blushed and looked away.

The screen-stalker was leaning against the wall, picking at a tub of popcorn he'd somehow acquired and watching the hysterical teens with amusement.

'Can they not see us?' Charmagne asked, nodding towards the teenagers.

'Technically they can, but they won't pay us any attention. We're not relevant to their world. Popcorn?'

'No, thanks.'

'Are you sure? It's fun to eat.'

'Do you reckon they know about the open window there?'

The screen-stalker glanced round. Then he shrugged. 'Who knows?'

The teens certainly didn't seem to be aware of the window. Charmagne was just wondering whether she should draw their attention to it - because if this was the sort of movie she thought it was, undefended windows were never a good thing - when a fat green tentacle slithered up over the window ledge. It probed the air like a fat, curious finger, then slid down into the room.

Charmagne had never seen a tentacle in real life. It was not something she'd really expected to encounter, unless maybe she took an unscheduled trip on a fishing boat that specialised in trawling the ocean trenches. She didn't know how to react. The tentacle was as wide as her wrist and covered in shiny green skin. Its underside bore dozens of pink suction cups. As it slid over the windowsill, the suction cups attached and detached themselves to the woodwork with quiet popping noises.

It was followed by several other tentacles. They flopped in through the window and started investigating the nearby floor and walls.

'Should we maybe be doing something?' Charmagne asked. Fleeing in terror seemed like a good option.

'Like what? Helping those guys?' He nodded towards the flailing teens.

The teens in question were engrossed in their argument. 'I should never have let you drag us out here!' the hysterical girl cried. 'I knew something like this would happen!'

'Hey, we're not the ones who came in here screaming our heads off - '

The boy tried to break them up again, and again the goth girl shoved him out of the way.

'We're here for one reason only,' the screen-stalker said to Charmagne. 'To watch out for those guys.' He indicated the television and the couple in the room beyond. 'Everything else is none of our business.'

'So if those tentacles that're coming through the window suddenly decided to change direction and try to escape through the TV, then you'd have to do something, right?'

'That's why I'm here.'

Charmagne nudged his arm and pointed out a stubby tentacle which had altered direction and was poking at the television screen. Its suckers made wet popping sounds on the glass.

'Hold this.' The screen-stalker handed her his popcorn tub. 'Watch and learn.'

It took them less than a minute to manhandle the body back through the television into the graveyard. The screen-stalker insisted on returning to make sure no incriminating evidence had been left behind in the kitchen. Satisfied that the sleeping man would remain blissfully unaware of the things that'd transpired in his home, the screen-stalker came back to the graveyard. He turned and switched off the television set that rested on the pile of earth there.

'Done.' He favoured Charmagne with a smile. It did little to brighten his shadowy face. 'C'mon, let's get him back in his grave.'

'Is he dead?' Charmagne asked as she again picked up the unpleasantly squishy legs. 'I mean, properly dead. As in not getting back up again.'

'Oh no, he's just knocked out. This - ' He tapped the metal circle on the zombie's forehead. ' - Is like a corpse-taser. Knocks them right out. Once we get him settled, I'll take it back off and he'll be back to normal in a few hours.'

'How does that work then?'

'Magic.'

'What sort of magic?'

'The sort I'll explain to you when I've not got my hands full of corpse.'

They transported the unconscious zombie back to the disturbed grave. 'We don't have to bury him, do we?' Charmagne asked, not relishing the idea of that much hard labour. She was already anxious to get out of that cold, damp, spooky place.

'Nah, it should be fine. Just dump him here - yeah, right there. That'll do it.' He stood up and brushed the dirt from his hands with the air of a man satisfied with his work. 'So, are you having fun yet?'

Charmagne fixed him with a look, but before she could muster a sufficiently sarcastic reply there came a noise from somewhere out in the mist-shrouded graveyard.

It was a faint, indistinct sound, carried and amplified on the silent air. Like a sneakered foot accidentally dislodging a small stone, which clattered against a polystyrene tombstone. If it hadn't been for the screen-stalker's reaction, Charmagne probably wouldn't have even noticed it.

He went very still, his head cocked towards the sound. It was an instantaneous change, as if someone had flipped a switch inside his head from relaxed to alert. He pinpointed the noise and turned his shoulders, one hand snaking beneath his jacket towards the concealed gun. Charmagne took a prudent step backwards and almost tripped over a half-buried crypt.

There was a millisecond of silence, then something jumped out at them.

Charmagne squealed and jumped backwards. Her foot caught on the same half-buried crypt and she lost her balance, sitting down hard on the bare ground. She got a brief glimpse of a hunched figure with a horrible, contorted visage, lumbering straight towards them.

Then the screen-stalker laughed. 'Hey, Stoo,' he smiled, relaxing. 'How goes it?'

The lumbering shape straightened up and pulled off the rubber mask it wore. Beneath the mask, the face was revealed to be that of a young man, probably not even out of his teens, with a floppy emo fringe and a broad grin. The black-and-white lighting gave a strange, luminous cast to his face. He wore an odd, ill-fitting tunic, and there were a selection of metal amulets strung about his neck.

'Afternoon,' the kid grinned. 'What up?'

'Working. You?'

'Same. Busy day. Got lots of corpses need to be - oh, hey girlie.'

He'd noticed Charmagne. Charmagne, still sat on her butt on the cold, damp ground, was debating whether she really wanted to get up or not. The kid gave her a friendly wave which she failed to return.

'Charmagne, this is Stoo.' The screen-stalker made the introductions. 'Stoo, this is Charmagne. She's on day-release from the Outside - '

'Oh crap, what the hell did you do to Lenny?'

Stoo had noticed the open grave and the unconscious zombie within, and his interest in Charmagne was abruptly forgotten.

'Ah. Don’t freak out, he's fine. But he got out, into the real world. I had to go after him.'

'Aw, man, I told him bout that like a million times. Dude, I'm sorry.' Stoo sunk into a crouch next to the grave. 'You know what he's like - he doesn't mean any harm. He's just a little rotted in the head, y'know?'

'I know, I know. He should be okay in an hour or so. Just keep an eye on him.'

'I will. Don't worry, I will. You know he doesn't mean any harm though, right? I mean, half the time he doesn't even know what he's looking for out there. He'd never really hurt anyone, he just... just likes going outside, y'know? And it wasn't really his fault this time - we were hanging out with Ted last night and they were both drinking, and you know what Ted's like when he gets an idea in his head - '

'Ted?' With a frown, the screen-stalker dug a number of folded printouts from his back pocket. He flicked through them. 'Oh yeah. He's on my must-see list as well. Figures.' He put the papers away, then stooped down to remove the metal circle from the zombie's forehead. It left a mark behind on the waxen skin. 'Anyway, I should get going. Things to do, and all that. I'll catch you later, yeah?'

'Yeah.' Stoo remained by the grave, his face sober. Too quiet for the screen-stalker to hear, he added, 'Yeah, I just bet you will.'

'Come on.' The screen-stalker walked past Charmagne without offering to help her up. She scrambled to her feet, still with one wary eye on Stoo. The young man didn't so much as glance up as she hurried away.

'Who was that?' she asked when she caught up.

'Stoo,' the screen-stalker replied. 'He's an acquaintance of mine.'

'Yeah, but who is he? What's he doing here?'

'He lives here, inside the movie. I forget what his actual job-title is. Some kind of necromancer, I think. Anyway, he's been here forever.'

Charmagne nodded as if she understood. Inside her head, however, it felt like someone had pulled out all the wiring and reconnected it in the wrong places. Nothing made sense - it didn't even make the kind of non-sense she could understand. This was all completely new, completely wrong, so far out of her field of reality she didn't know where to start making sense of it all.

Maybe it was all a hallucination. That would be a comforting thing. Being insane, imagining all this stuff... yeah, she could believe that.

'So, what do you think?' the screen-stalker asked then.

What do I think? It was an interesting question, since she had no idea what to think. 'I'm very confused,' she admitted. 'None of this has given me any answers at all. I'm more confused than when we started.'

'Told you so.'

Charmagne looked around at the mist-shrouded cemetery with its polystyrene gravestones and its lack of pigmentation. She thought about the zombie and the necromancer and the gateway through the television into the sleeping man's house. And once again she wished she could believe it was all the fault of her own mind going crazy.

'This is all real, isn't it?' she said aloud. 'Its all really happening.'

'Yep.' The screen-stalker grinned at her. 'Just like in the movies.'

Even though she knew what to expect this time, the transition was still unpleasant. When Charmagne touched the television screen she felt the same tugging on her veins, the same buzz of electricity through her nerves. Then the moment of dislocation as her body was stretched like cheap elastic and pulled through the gateway. She stumbled and almost fell. It took her another moment to clear her vision.

The air was warmer there. She hadn't realised how chill and damp the graveyard had been.

It felt very strange indeed to be standing in someone's front room. Like trespassing. The guy on the sofa - the owner of the house, she presumed - was an older guy, probably in his forties, wearing jogging pants and a Van Halen t-shirt which almost but not quite covered his beer gut. He didn't so much as stir from his sleep when the two complete strangers appeared in the middle of his room, leading Charmagne to suspect his state was at least partially alcohol-induced. She had some experience of that herself, after all.

Two doors led off from the room. One was shut. Through the other could be heard faint sounds of disturbance, like someone rummaging in a kitchen cupboard.

The screen-stalker circled the sofa on silent feet and went to that door. Again, Charmagne trailed behind him. She wondered what would happen if the guy on the sofa woke up, but he seemed pretty heavily comatose.

The open door led into a small, compact kitchen. Here too was evidence that the sofa-guy lived alone - piles of dishes, a bin full of beer cans and pizza boxes, an industrial size bottle of Febreeze on top of the washing machine. The most obvious out-of-place thing within the kitchen was the zombie rooting through a cupboard full of tins.

Even to Charmagne's untrained eye, and even though it was facing away from her, it was quite obviously a zombie. Its body was thin to the point of emaciation, the remains of a ragged blue shirt hanging tent-like over its frame. Through the holes and tears in its clothes, patches of mottled greenish-blue flesh were visible. The back of its head - the only part of the head visible, since most of it was nosing in a cupboard - was completely hairless and in many places skinless as well. Grubby white bone showed through the most threadbare places.

A stench like cheap bacon left out on the side for three weeks filled the air, almost tangible in its strength.

The screen-stalker closed the door behind them. Then he cleared his throat loudly.

The zombie didn't so much as glance up. It continued to paw through the cupboard, its claw-like hand moving in slow, erratic sweeps as it pushed aside various tinned goods. Maybe it was looking for something specific, but there seemed to be little purpose to its movements.

Again, the screen-stalker cleared his throat, louder this time. Still getting no response, he crossed the kitchen, took hold of the zombie's shoulder and spun it towards him.

The zombie staggered like a drunk and was only saved from toppling to the ground by virtue of being wedged against the counter. Charmagne took one look at its face and had to choke back a scream. If the back of the creature had been bad, the front was a hundred times worse. What remained of the face hung in loose, rotten folds from the skull, like a plastic Halloween mask that'd been partially melted over a fire. One eye was gone, the socket a black and leaking hollow. The other was suffused a greyish white and stared blindly. There was no way such a creature should've been standing and walking, yet somehow it was.

'What're you doing?' the screen-stalker asked it in an angry whisper. 'You know you're not allowed out here.'

The zombie held two tins in its skeletal hands. It lifted one towards him. 'Brains,' the zombie replied.

'Those are beans. Close, but no.'

This seemed to disappoint the zombie. It looked at the other tin it held. 'Brains?' it enquired hopefully.

The screen-stalker sighed. 'C'mon, let's get you out of here.'

With one hand firmly gripping its shoulder, he guided the zombie towards the door. It seemed happy enough to go with him, until its head turned towards Charmagne.

'Brains?' it asked. Then, more excited, 'Brains!'

It lunged away from the screen-stalker with a speed that was so unexpected he lost his grip. The zombie half-dived and half-fell towards Charmagne, clawing arms outstretched. She let out a squeal of surprise and tried to jump out of the way, but the kitchen was too small and she was brought up short against the wall. The zombie barrelled into her, pinning her to the wall. Its dead hands clamped onto her shoulders. She drew in a breath to scream and the stink of decaying flesh filled her nose and throat and made her choke.

'Brains!' The zombie breathed foul air into her face.

She did scream then, but it came out as a strangled gasp. Panic froze her, and she could do nothing but stare in horror as the zombie's jaw fell open to reveal blackened stubs of teeth.

Then the screen-stalker was there, an arm locked around the zombie's throat from behind. He forced the head back, dragging the creature bodily away. Pain shot through Charmagne as the clawed hands dug into her shoulders, refusing to give up on its prize.

The zombie struggled, its jaws working as it tried to clamp its teeth down on the man's arm. Holding it firm, the screen-stalker reached round with his left hand and grabbed the top of the zombie's head, his palm flat against its forehead. From the front it looked like he was trying to pull the head clean off. But abruptly the fight went out of the zombie. A shudder ran through its body and its hands released their death-grip. It wheezed an exhalation of fetid air, then slumped. The screen-stalker lowered the body to the ground with surprising care. As he took his left hand away, Charmagne saw a circular piece of coloured metal pressed into the flesh of the zombie's head.

Not that she cared very much about it right at that second. Both her hands were clamped over her mouth and she was deciding whether she wanted to scream or throw up, or first one then the other.

The screen-stalker straightened up, wiping his hands on his shirt. Without a single glance at her, he went to the door, opened it a crack and peeked out. He gave a grunt of satisfaction then eased the door closed again.

'He's still asleep,' he reported. 'We're okay.'

If Charmagne had been able to find her voice she would've had something sarcastic to say about that.

'Sorry about that,' the man said then. 'You hurt?'

The question reminded Charmagne about the pain in her shoulders. She checked them quickly and found them bruised but nothing worse. The way those rotted fingers had dug in, she'd been certain they'd pushed right through into her flesh... she shuddered and shoved the horrible thought away.

'I'm okay. I guess.'

'Good. Give me a hand with this.' He bent down and linked his arms under the zombie's shoulders.

With extreme reluctance, Charmagne took hold of the feet.

'I'm in the TV,' she said, to clarify.

'That's an oversimplification, but yes. You're in the TV.'

'God.' Charmagne turned full circle, taking in as much of the room as she could see. 'It's bigger than I expected.' Behind her was a battered television set of a style that'd been out of date for fifty years. On its screen there was an image of her own front room. She crouched down and stared at it; reached out and touched the solid screen. 'How did you do that?'

'I opened the door and invited you in. That's what you wanted, isn't it? To come in here and know what's going on?'

She stood back up and turned to face him properly for the first time. Despite the dim light, he looked less threatening than he had done as just a shadowy blur on the television screen. Without the leather trenchcoat he was thin but well-built, his bare arms displaying ropy cords of muscle. Charmagne still couldn’t see his eyes but her attention was fixed on the gun under his arm anyway.

'I don't understand any of this,' she admitted. 'It's all so crazy.'

'The novelty soon wears off.'

There was a sharp clatter of noise from the back of the room. Charmagne jumped but the screen-stalker seemed to have been expecting it. As he turned away, Charmagne realised the noise was that of an old-fashioned dot-matrix printer. Her eyes were slowly adjusting to the dimness, and she could see a table at the far end of the room, next to a bricked up window.

The man went to the shadowy tangle of electrical equipment on the desk, none of which seemed to be switched on save for the printer. It spat out a sheet of paper. From a distance, Charmagne couldn't make out details of the printout, but it looked to be a badly photocopied black and white photograph. Exactly like the ones covering every square inch of the walls, she realised.

'Anyway, I promised you some kind of explanation,' the screen-stalker said, 'or at least an insight into what's going on here. But you can still back out if you want to. Your place is still right there.' He nodded towards the television. 'You can quite happily retreat, unless you really want to see more.'

Charmagne looked around the small room. 'What more is there to see?'

He thought about it, then shrugged. 'Too much.'

Well, aren't we just the melodramatic sort? She didn't say so out loud, of course, because the man was six inches taller than her, considerably more muscled and carrying a gun. But she definitely thought it quite loudly.

There was a door behind her, only discernable as a black rectangle against the photocopy-covered walls. The screen-stalker brushed past her to get to it; she stepped quickly out of his way. Attached to the door at about head-height was an ornate wooden frame with a glass cover. He lifted the page that'd come out of the printer and slipped it into the frame.

Something happened to the glass cover. It shimmered as if catching a distant reflection of light. But there was nothing in the room which could've caused it.

'Alright,' the man said, picking up his leather coat. 'I'll show you a few things. Just remember this was your choice, okay? You wanted to come here.'

'Um. Okay.' Charmagne couldn't work out why he was making such a big deal of the point. It was like he was covering his back... just in case something happened to her.

A reassuring thought, that one.

Up close, she saw the wooden frame was intricately carved into abstract patterns and shapes. There was something disturbing about it - not least the fact that the patterns seemed to move and writhe if she looked at it from the corner of her eye. She also realised the entire door was marked with similar, shallower carvings. She started to reach out to brush her fingers over the patterns but an internal warning stopped her. There was something just not right about them.

Either the screen-stalker had no such internal warning system or he'd become immune to the unease inspired by the patterns. He placed his hand flat on the door and pushed. It swung open on silent hinges, revealing only darkness beyond.

'Let's go,' he said, and smiled.

* * *

They emerged into a graveyard. Charmagne blinked in the sudden grey daylight and looked behind them. From this side, the door they'd stepped out of was the black and gaping maw of a sunken crypt, its grey stones worn smooth by time and the elements. Ahead, scrubby grass sloped away to be lost in a low-lying fog bank. Ancient and cracked gravestones protruded from the ground like broken teeth. The fog sucked the colour from everything, leaving it grey and monochrome.

Charmagne frowned as she realised it wasn't just the fog causing that effect. There was no colour to anything. Everything was displayed in varying shades of grey. She stared down at her hands and found the pigment had gone from them too.

'Where are we?' she demanded.

The screen-stalker had produced a heavy torch from somewhere under his jacket. He clicked it on and played the beam around. It picked up little except grey tombstones and more fog. Then he set off with confidence down the slope, his booted feet making no noise on the grass.

Charmagne trailed behind him, not sure what else she could do. Behind them, the doorway they'd come in through was quickly swallowed by the fog - she wondered how easy it would be to find their way back. Still, the screen-stalker seemed to know where he was going.

As they passed one of the larger gravestones, she happened to glance down at it. Both sides were blank. She stopped and examined it more closely, putting one hand on its top. It wobbled freely, as if it had no weight at all. She poked at it and found it was made of something resembling polystyrene, painted to look like textured stone.

The screen-stalker was striding ahead and she had to hurry to catch up.

'Where are we?' she asked again.

He stopped walking so suddenly she almost ran into the back of him. In front of him was an open grave, its sides slick with mist-soaked mud. A dank, musty smell filled the air. As the torch beam was directed downwards, Charmagne saw that the grave had collapsed in on itself. At one end there was an irregular, gaping hole. The more she looked at it, the more it resembled the sort of hole that'd be made by someone digging their way up out of their own grave.

'We're in a zombie flick,' the man answered.

That was exactly what she hadn't wanted to hear. She swallowed hard, feeling her throat constrict. 'Where are the zombies?' she asked, aware that the answer was probably something else she didn't want to hear.

The screen-stalker shifted the torch beam away from the desecrated grave. A short distance away, sat atop a pile of black earth, was something so incongruous to the scene that Charmagne couldn't believe she hadn't noticed it before. It was a television set, placed at an angle and projecting a faint glow across the nearby gravestones. On its screen was a picture of an unremarkable front room - nice leather furniture, shelving units crammed with books and DVDs, a coffee table bearing a full ashtray and the remains of a meal. The picture was in colour, and there was a young man fast asleep on the leather sofa.

The torch beam played across the television. 'Out there,' the screen-stalker told her.