Isaac’s hand crawled like a drugged tarantula across the folds of the blanket. He couldn’t work out the best way of getting under the covers, because of the way they folded in on themselves and around the sheet: both sets of cloth ripples were so similar that Isaac was suddenly convinced that they were all part of the same big undulating cloth unity and that to bisect it would be ghastly, so he rolled his bulk on top of the covers and found himself swimming in the intricate twisting folds of cotton and wool. He swam up and down, waving his arms in an energetic, childish doggy paddle, hacking and spitting and smacking his lips with a prodigious thirst.

Look at you, you cretin, spat one section of his mind in contempt. How dignified is this?

But he paid no attention. He was content to swim gently in place on the bed, panting like a dying animal, tensing his neck experimentally and prodding his eyes.

He felt a build-up of pressure in the back of his mind. He watched a big door, a big cellar door, set into the wall of the most ignored corner of his cerebellum. The door was rattling. Something was trying to get out.

Quick, thought Isaac. Bolt it . . .

But he could feel the increasing power of whatever was fighting to escape. The door was a boil, bursting with pus, ready to rupture, a hugely muscled blank-faced dog, straining ominously and silently against chains, the sea pounding relentlessly against a crumbling harbour wall.

Something in Isaac’s mind burst open.

Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

sun pouring in like a waterfall and I rejoice in it as blooms burst from my shoulders and my head and chlorophyll rushes invigoratingly through my skin and I raise great spined arms

don’t touch me like that I’m not ready you pig

Look at those steamhammers! I’d like them if they didn’t make me work so!

is this

I am proud to be able to tell you that your father has consented to our match

is this a

and here I swim under all this dirty water towards the looming dark bulk of the boat like a great cloud I breathe filthy water that makes me cough and my webbed feet push towards

is this a dream?

light skin food air metal sex misery fire mushrooms webs ships torture beer frog spikes bleach violin ink crags sodomy money wings colourberries gods chainsaw bones puzzles babies concrete shellfish stilts entrails snow darkness

Is this a dream?

But Isaac knew this was not a dream.