The Old Man reaches out to my face and I step backward and his hand wafts in the air, trying and failing to reach me. I look at his dark glasses, searching for the eyes beyond, but all I find is my own back-to-front reflection. I watch his hand, flailing in the air, and my gut squirms. I look at the book, lying open on the table. And I see them. Strings of neat dots, raised on the page.

Braille.

And here it is…

Anomaly #5: The Old Man’s blind.

11

I’ll accept the rain and the clouds. I will. Weather is a weird thing. It can be clear and then rain in the space of an hour. It can. It happens. The black door? OK, the door is odd, but maybe Gad (I can’t call him the Hippie, not anymore) replaced it. I don’t know. It doesn’t make much sense, but the door can be explained away too. Same as the suit and the lopped-off dreads and the damn conservatory. People get tired of things, change it all up. It’s normal, part of everyday life. But this thing with the Old Man? This is not normal. The Old Man could see a few hours ago, and now he can’t.

And nobody but me seems to find that strange.

I’m lying ramrod straight in my bed in my room, staring at the ceiling, covers pulled to my chest, fully clothed except for my shoes, door locked.

My bed? My room?

The door, the window, my bookcase, desk and chair—everything is exactly where it should be. The disturbing part is that only some things are different. But they’re big things: Gad, the Old Man, the dog.

I look at my shaking hands and splay them in the air, like stars.

How long have I been like this, lying here, freaking out? Minutes? Hours? I ran from the conservatory. I had to find space to think, to process everything that’s happened. But no amount of thinking can erase the tapping of the Old Man’s stick on the tiled floor outside. His long, white stick.

There’s a light knock at the door. A pause. “You OK in there, darling?”

“I’m OK,” I lie. “I’m fine.”

But things are about as far away from fine as Mars from Earth. Bea’s been taken. Taken. She’s disappeared from existence and then this happens, this place. This is not my home. This is not my life. And this man in the corridor, being all nice and dadsy, is not the Old Man.

And maybe I’m different too.

Maybe he knows that.

A whimper comes from outside my door. A skittering of claws.

When I ran from the conservatory, the dog leapt up from under the table and came after me. A black Labrador—a guide dog. I stare at the strip of light under the door and grip my sheets.