All Sorts of Possible
Read All Sorts of Possible Online
Authors: Rupert Wallis
The moment a sinkhole swallows the car that Daniel and his father are travelling in, everything changes; suddenly Daniel is the ‘miracle boy’ who survived unharmed
whilst his father is left trapped in a coma.
So how did Daniel escape? Was it luck or something more – was it really a miracle?
Mason, a small-time gangster, thinks so. When he decides the boy has been saved to help him with the biggest score of his career, Daniel is suddenly facing a life or death
situation all over again . . .
A lyrical and atmospheric novel about love, loss and learning to accept the world for what it is, not what you want it to be.
Also by Rupert Wallis
The Dark Inside
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © 2015 Rupert Wallis
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Rupert Wallis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act,
1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
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Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
HB ISBN 978-1-4711-4366-3
eBook ISBN 978-1-4711-1894-4
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
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For YOU
‘. . . a human being is a being who decides – who still has to decide – what he or she will be in the next moment . . .’
Viktor Frankl, TV interview, Buenos Aires, 1985
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wf6DAQQVno
The Moon at the End of the Tunnel
The Man Who Came Up Out of the Floor
When the sinkhole opened, there was no time to brake or turn the wheel, and the old green Land Rover was snatched off the dirt road over the smoking rim.
The teenage boy in the passenger seat blinked as blue sky was ripped from the windscreen and trees launched themselves like rockets.
He was a raggedy doll thrown forward as the car was swallowed down into the world.
The boy’s eyes flicked open and he panicked, thinking the Land Rover was still falling, but it wasn’t. The car was stationary, pointing down, his seat belt braced
across him and his chin buttoned tight to his chest.
‘Dad?’
His hands wouldn’t stop trembling until he gripped the seat to turn and look.
Trussed in the seat belt, his father could have been asleep.
‘Dad? Can you hear me?’
The boy edged closer, stopping when he heard stones popping out from beneath the tyres and the Land Rover groaning, wanting to move.
‘DAD?’
He kept watching the drumbeat in his father’s temple until every sound around them had died away, too afraid to do anything else.
The windscreen was shattered but not broken. Through the open window next to him the boy could see between bars of dirty sunlight all the way to the other side of the
sinkhole.
The hole was huge. Black. Like the filthy inside of some industrial flue.
He could smell the cold.
Hear damp crackling on stones.
He kept breathing slowly until he had focused clearly on what to do next.
But his phone wasn’t in the pockets of his shorts or the plastic well between their seats. Not even in the side of his door. When he tried thinking back to where it had been before the
sinkhole had opened, all he kept remembering . . .
. . . was the sunlight flaring in the windscreen as he tried to tell his father one last time that he didn’t want to go camping, shouting . . .
It
was a waste of time,
not
the
PlayStation.
That he was
too old
for camping now.
That he was
done being a kid
and should be able to do whatever he wanted.
And then the road had opened up as if answering him back.
He clicked out of his seat belt, using an arm to brace himself against the glove compartment as he leant forward to search for his phone, hunting for it like a cat in the space
under his seat. But all he found was an old shopping list written on the back of an envelope in his father’s hand.
‘
I
hate
you, Dad
.’
That was the last thing he had said, after being told his PlayStation would be thrown out if he carried on complaining.
The boy shivered. He was only wearing a T-shirt. Somehow, even the marrow in his bones felt cold. He reached back into the rear seats for his North Face jacket and managed to slip it on, the
Land Rover creaking as stones tumbled unseen around them, until he realized it was just their echoes. It made him wonder how deep the sinkhole might be and how far they had fallen, whether he could
climb out and get help.
He peered out of the open window, just a little way at first.
The car was a long way below the level of the road, sunk into a dark scree that looked like mining spoil piled against one side of the hole. Tiny stones streamed out from around the tops of the
Land Rover’s tyres as if the rubber was slowly melting.
Daring to lean out further, the boy realized the sinkhole was even bigger than he had first thought. As wide as a football pitch, but far deeper than the length of one. He could see a stream at
the bottom, as purple as a vein in the low light.
In the cool, dank updraught, he smelt wet stone and petrol and soil.
‘Hello!’ he shouted, looking up at the rim of the sinkhole and the fat crescent of blue sky above it. ‘
HELL-LO!
’
A dark hole of his own suddenly appeared inside him as he wondered how many people drove down the dirt road in a single day.
Ducking back in the car, he gripped the door handle, imagining the PlayStation version of himself clambering out of the Land Rover and wading through the thick dark scree, then climbing the wall
of the sinkhole and disappearing into the blue sky for help.
He thought hard about everything.
About what might go right.
And what could go wrong.
And then his iPhone rang.
He pushed his head out again, looking all around as the sinkhole tried to trick him with its echo, its walls ringing too. He remembered now. He’d been holding his phone,
his elbow resting on the open window, the trees blipping by as he shouted at his father.
He worried it would stop ringing, that he would never find it, and then he saw the phone some way below him among the dark stones, daylight catching on its screen.
Clicking open the door, he heard the car’s suspension bushes twang and the tyres straining, wanting to move, and he whispered over and over that he was lighter than air. But the scree
swallowed his foot like murky water, and then sections below him sheared off, sending the phone clattering deeper into the hole, the ringtone mewling as it fell.
When the Land Rover suddenly lurched and started to slide, he yanked the door shut and turned quickly, clasping his right arm round the back of the driver’s seat, and his left one across
his father’s chest, to try and keep him safe.
The Land Rover had fallen further, about halfway into the hole, and was lying lopsided. Its faded green paintwork was dappled with gold where spots of sunlight caught it.
The boy was already slip-sliding his way down the loose dark rubble, plotting a route to the iPhone below as the voicemail rang.
One bar on the phone was enough to make the call to the emergency services, but the woman’s voice at the other end was faint, foamy with crackle, and it was like talking to the spirit
world. He told her his father was breathing but unconscious. That they had been on the dirt road going towards Farnham’s Wood. But he didn’t know the road number when she asked him for
it, saying it was just called the ‘Back Road’ by everyone who knew it. He told her to
sendsomeonequickly
.
‘Just hurry!’ he shouted. ‘My dad’s trapped in the car.’
‘Someone’s already on their way,’ she said. ‘They’ll be there as quickly as they can.’
He nodded as though she was beside him, then whispered he was scared.