“God,” he said experimentally. “You’re so wet.”

“I know. I know.”

The TV chirped almost silently to itself in the gloom above them. Ads passed across its screen, to be replaced by the logo of some science channel, and after that an image of great roseate streamers of gas and dust, studded with actinic stars, pocked and wrapped with velvety blackness, full of the beautiful false clarity of a Hubble telescope image. “The Kefahuchi Tract,” announced the voice-over, “named after its discoverer, may upset all our—” There was a sense of the screen filling suddenly, overflowing. Silent sparks of light began to pour out of it into the room, bouncing and foaming across the bare boards to the fireside, where they encountered Anna Kearney, biting her lower lip and moving her head back and forth in a dreamy, inturned manner. Into her hair they flowed, down her flushed cheeks, across her breastbone. Taking them to be a part of what she was feeling, she moaned a little, rubbing them in handfuls into her face and neck.

“Sparks,” she whispered. “Sparks in everything.”

Kearney, hearing this, opened his eyes and got off her in terror. He grabbed up the chef’s knife, then stood with it for a moment, naked and uncertain. “Anna!” he said. “Anna!” Fractal light poured from the TV screen like the fanned-out tail of a peacock. He ran aimlessly about the room for a moment until he found the Shrander’s dice in their soft leather scrotum. Then he looked at Anna, looked at the knife. He thought he heard her try to warn him, “It’s coming, it’s coming.” Then: “Yes, kill me. Quickly.” Disgusted with himself forever, he threw down the knife and sprinted out of the cottage. That was it: something huge roared down towards him in the night, like a shadow out of the sky. Behind him he heard Anna laughing, and then murmuring again:

“Sparks. Sparks in everything . . .”

When Anna Kearney woke up, at five-thirty the next morning, she found herself alone. The fire had gone out, the beach house was cold. The TV, still tuned to CNN, buzzed to itself and displayed images of current events: war in the Middle East, deprivation in the Far East, in Africa and Albania. War and deprivation everywhere. She rubbed her hands over her face, then, naked and shivering, stood up and collected her scattered underwear with amusement. I made him do it at last, she thought: but remembered the night only vaguely. “Michael?” she called. The beach house had one external door, and he had left that open, allowing a little bright white sand to blow in across the threshold. “Michael?” She pulled on her jeans and sweater.

Out on the beach the air was already bright, agitated. Kittiwakes swooped and fought over something in a clump of tidewrack. Up on the dunes Anna found flattened marram, the residue of some chemical smell, a long, shallow depression, as though something vast had settled there in the night. She looked down at Monster Beach: no marks.