The indicator on the dash flickered down past minus ten as Jonathan pulled into the parking lot. It was empty. The nearest vehicle — a lorry pulled over to the side of the road about 200 metres back towards the highway. A red glow from the cabin.

He looked through the rear vision mirror to see an eager nose poking and sniffing over the backseat. “Alright, let’s do it, girl,” he said quietly, as he cracked open the door. Lucy let out a hopeful whine from the back.

The air outside was frigid. Jonathan put his boot to the ground and heard a crack. It had been sub zero for two weeks now and the ground had gathered that deep cold. He made his way round to the back of the car and opened the boot.

“Stay.” He checked her vest. “Ok.” Lucy jumped out.

 

The path out of the parking lot was a straight line into the forest, only a few hundred metres of open field before the wilderness really closed in. He usually let Lucy off most of the way and walked in solitude as she ran off ahead. The ice cracked under foot. The night obscured everything but the cold. He looked back towards the car and dim red lights from a line of windmills blinked in the distance. Jonathan’s gaze returned to the forest ahead, and the night above. There were a lot of stars out tonight. Clear. Clearer than usual. Odd. Static. Almost perfect points of light in a sea of black. It seemed out of character for a place not more than 40km from the city, but he was grateful for the spectacle.

The walk traversed the distance quickly. He was half way there, yet Lucy had already made it to the treeline, returning impatiently to hurry the human along. Jonathan smiled as she came trotting back down the path, until she froze. A low growl boiling out of her chest.

Then he felt it. Like a frozen steel bar straight on skin. Something touched his shoulder, as if it had melted through the down in his jacket. A shadow in the corner of the eye. Instinctually he dropped and lunged forward, stumbling and swinging around to see it hanging in the air like the hand of darkness itself. A narrow ribbon-like appendage stretched upwards, past the treeline until it was indistinguishable from the night, save for a thin tract of starless sky.

The hand seemed to be searching. Tendrils. Fingers flayed out, rippling in the breeze as though weightless. One of them snaked its way towards him. Gestured. Pointed. The hand became rigid again. Then vanished. Pulled on the end of a column of shadow, back into the sky.

Jonathan stood motionless and cold. Off in the distance he could hear screams. A few at first. Then a chorus. He looked up. The stars were beautiful. They were comfortable again, somehow. Shimmering. Glistening. Drawing his gaze even in a moment of terror.

 

No, not stars. Something was moving past them. Distant black ribbons waved back and forward in the night sky. He could see them now. Coming from somewhere between the clear points of light. Reaching towards the ground.

 

He turned to run. But it came faster this time. Locked him in place. Fingers wrapped over his shoulder. It’s icy grip lingering for an instant. Enough time for Jonathan to anticipate what must happen next. Enough time to feel the bottom drop out of his stomach and his feet lose touch with the ground. Enough time to wonder and dread and pray and then wonder again.

A sound like a whip cracked the cold air and he was gone. The growl subsided and Lucy paced around in a circle wide eyed and panting. She sat for a moment and whimpered, then ran off into the forest.

* * *

Colonel Williams sat on the lunar surface in disbelief. He wasn’t supposed to sit in this suit, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore. There had been no radio chatter in two hours. Not since they’d received the last signal from Earth. Europe, Africa and the Americas had barely had time to realise what was happening, whereas most of Asia had witnessed it first hand.

Flooding across the sky like an inkspill.

 

From Williams’ perspective and that of those stationed on Serenity base, it was as though eternity itself had swallowed the Earth. A great black mass had appeared out of the darkness, unfolding itself and wrapping around the planet like a silk sheet. One half ever so slightly with rippling and glistening with reflected star light, while the other seemed to swallow the light of day — consuming it for its own purposes.

Williams wondered what was happening underneath. What unseen horrors. Everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of… he thought, remembering the words of a childhood hero. He didn’t notice the mass getting closer. None of them did. How could they?

It reached out like a hand, from the space between the stars, and pulled them into the night.