And where were those other two who also had been in that place of nothingness? Had they broken free as well, or had they stayed behind, sensing, perhaps, the mind-wrenching alienness that lay outside the place? And if they had not escaped, where might they be now?

And not only where, but who?

Why had they never answered? Or had they never heard the question? Perhaps there were not the right conditions in that nameless place for a question to be asked. Strange, the creature thought, to occupy the same space, the same sense of possible existence, with two other beings and never to be able to communicate with them.

Despite the heat of the night, the creature shivered, deep inside itself.

It could not stay here, it told itself. It could not wander endlessly. It must find a place to shelter. Although where to look for shelter in a world as mad as this was something it had not figured out as yet.

It moved forward slowly, uncertain of itself, uncertain where to go, uncertain what to do.

The lights? it wondered. Should it investigate the lights or should it…

The sky exploded. The world was filled to bursting with a brilliant blueness. The creature, its sight wiped out, all senses cancelled, recoiled, and a scream rose keening in its curdled brain. Then the scream cut off and the light was gone and it was back, once again, in the place of nothingness.

2

Rain slapped Andrew Blake across the face and the very earth was trembling with the deadening crash of thunder, the great masses of riven atmosphere rushing together once again, it seemed, just above his head. The air was sharp with the smell of ozone and he could feel cold mud squishing up between his toes.