Old Riding turned to North Riding. They roared into the junction, and as they swept westward onto the A66 slip road, they turned their heads to behold the desolation all around. An industrial wasteland of concrete and rust. Enormous towers and webs of pipes and decrepit furnaces, all tangled up in an undergrowth composed almost entirely of carrier bag. No fumes had issued forth from the yawning apertures for many years, and yet a cloud of utter noxious blackness hung above the dead factories all the same, blocking out the stars, a dutiful son gazing down upon his mother’s grave.

It was maybe the glimpse of Middlesbrough, the only glimpse they ever wanted, drawing them together for comfort, or maybe George’s good cheer at the beginnings of a solution laid out before him. Whatever it was, George decided he’d been a bit harsh on Simon. He may need a few friends in the company while everything played out.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” he said to Simon, who was gripping the wheel tight in both white fists, staring only onward. Silence. “So, marketing, eh? How did your research go this week? Make any breakthroughs?”

Simon sped on, his round, pale face flashing like a beacon every time they passed a street light. “They thought I was from Northallerton,” he proclaimed finally. “Northallerton! And the best part is, it was because they thought that was posh.”

They cackled their horror into the endless, impassable chasm between their shoulders. And the walls of the chasm drew closer.

“You know,” Simon continued as he swept by a shady-looking van clattering along in the left lane, “It went really well. Thanks for asking. We’re carrying a prototype right now. I’m going to reach potential clients where no other insurer has ever gone.”

“Interesting,” said George. He was thinking about the CEO’s Aston Martin meeting his rigid friend on an icy country road in Sweden on his next critical ski trip.

“I need to get this through,” Simon was saying. Some colour was returning to his orb-like cheeks. He sighed then, looked down a moment. “I really need this raise, see. My little boy... he’s not very well. There’s a clinic in France... some new innovation. Eighty percent cure rate so far. It’s what I live for.”

“Oh,” said George.

“Seeing him fight on... it makes you feel grateful to be alive, you know? Like that bloody black car earlier on. We’re just bumbling along, minding our own business, doing no-one any harm. And then-” He slammed a palm down on the wheel, hard. “Gone. And it would have been completely out of our control. You ever think about death like that?”

George had thought about death a lot that week.

“I read a theory recently,” he began, not really knowing where it came from or why he was talking, “That your afterlife is whatever you last accept it to be. Like, if you believe in a god and heaven and all that sh-... all that, then that’s what’s waiting for you. Quite comforting really. And if you think that you’re going to a zoo where you’re in a giant hamster cage, and you can’t sleep because there’s pink monkeys coming in to look at you and poking their paws through the bars all night and screeching at each other... then there’s that.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Simon chuckled, and chanced a worried glance over to the passenger’s seat. “You’re an odd one, buddy. But I like it. There’s a message to it.”

“And what’s that?” George said.

“Think positively.”

A few moments contemplating the fields, the winding road, the endless verge. They passed a sign that told them it was only seven miles to Darlington.

“I never asked why we were spending the night here,” George asked suddenly. “I’m all done... this is on you. What are you up to?”

Simon fumbled for words. “Well, I’ve got the advertising software all up and running already, but there’s a firm here I’ve worked with before.... optimisation, you know... but I’m not sure we need it. It looks just fine as it is. Should’ve just gone home to be honest.”

George leant forward in his seat. “Well, if it’s working, give me a peek!”

Umms and aahs. “It’s confidential right now.... it’s..”

George laughed. He was warming to this man, and it was nice to take his mind off the upcoming slaughter. “Come on, matey. It’s just us. I won’t tell.”

Simon considered all the way round the next bend. “Okay. Maybe I could use a little feedback.”

On the dashboard, there was a new-looking button where the driver’s heating dial should have been. Simon pressed it.

The world shone white.

“Oh Jesus!” Simon yelled. In front of him, the road had gone. Instead, there was a flat, impenetrable light. Generic White Woman Number 79 smiled out pleasantly from beneath her brown bob. She was the picture of health.

“Oh Jesus Christ!” Simon cried. His hands were fused to the wheel, as if to steer them to safety. But where was safety now?

The woman opened her mouth to reveal perfect, gleaming teeth.

“Varidol, the latest breakthrough in Medicom’s groundbreaking range of cardiac stimulants, is available for SmartAid in your area now.” Her voice was calm and soothing.

George was neither calm nor soothed. Paralysed. Simon began to veer sharply left.

“To upgrade your medical plan today-”

“Turn it off!” George screeched.

Simon hammered at the button. The woman disappeared. Blinding whiteness filled the windscreen. The voice deepened, an old tape winding down to rest.

“-call the Bureau of a Hundred Eyes, Mistletoe Street, Raughnen.” A man’s rasp, the scrapings of his throat mixing with gravel as the car hit the verge. Simon wrenched right like a sea-captain battling a storm. The storm was winning.

“Fuck! Fuck! Turn it off!”

The screen only brightened. George shielded his stinging eyes, peered through the blueness of retinal burn at the tiny gap at the left side of the windscreen.

“Strangers will not be admitted. The eyes are watching. You were not welcome,” the man choked out. It was the voice of death, a dying man on his deathbed, a dead voice repeating a dying will. It was impossibly low.

“It was only little,” Simon babbled hysterically. He was trying to open his window, peer out into the beautiful night air, but the glass was snapping furiously back into place like the jaws of a crocodile. “I saw it! They tested it! Five and a half inches! That’s all it was, all it was...” He began to cry. The car hurtled on, blind to the world.

George slid his bottom out right. Struggled from the clutching coils of seatbelt. Plunged into the footwell.

Through the tiny black slit of normality where metal met glass, he saw a sign flit by at awful speed. It was a green road sign, but the name of the road was the 666 now and it was only half a mile to The End.

Then his eyes opened wide against the glare. He’d missed something very obvious. He scrambled a hundred and eighty degrees in the confines of his leather pit and saw Simon’s foot, pressed in deathly horror to the floor. The car sounded like it was coming apart.

“Brake!” he roared over the noise. “Brake, for God’s sake! Turn the fucking engine off!” But Simon wasn’t listening. Above the clamour, the man on the advert was telling them to sit back and relax.

George peeked out again and saw the barrier. Straight ahead.

There was no pain. And at long last, that hideous light went off.

In the floating nothingness that followed, they shattered the silence.

Oo-oo-ah.

What’s that sound? he thought.

A soft, musical piiiiing, a tap on a metal bar.

Oo-oo-ah. Oo-oo-ah.

And all he could think was

what’s that sound?

what’s that sound?

what’s that sound?