He pulled out onto the main road. A few scattered cars travelled along the highway, but the lanes were wide open.

  He pushed the Toyota up to 85 km/h and tried to focus on what he would say to Potrevski.

  What did you say to someone when you’d just lost three million dollars they had left in your care?

  There was no easy way to deliver that news.

  He slowed as he approached the intersection and pulled into the turning lane to wait for the light to change.

  “I can’t help it. It’s all going back!” Despite everything else, the words still echoed in his ears.

  The anxiety and confusion that had filled him earlier had been pushed aside by circumstance, but it had never truly left. The feeling that something was happening — of wheels being set in motion — was still with him.

  A flash of intense white light filled his vision.

  He turned to look and was blinded by the glare of sunlight reflecting off polished chrome. His eyes adjusted, and he found himself staring at the unmistakable form of the black car he had encountered the other day. It drifted through the intersection in front of him with horrifying grace.

  There was something wrong with the way it moved.

  The wheels spinning on the road were out of sync with the world around them. They were turning far faster than they should have been. The car itself was moving slowly, impossibly slowly, but the wheels — the wheels were going fast. The car should have shot past in a flash, but it slowly drifted through the intersection.

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  The illusion made Patrick’s head swim. It was as though the road the car truly occupied existed somewhere else, and this was merely an image superimposed over the real world.

  He shook his head and tried to blink the image away, but it persisted.

  The car's deeply tinted window began to roll down.

  He watched, hypnotised, as the interior was revealed.

  He stared in shock into its terrifying depths.

  The emptiness within stretched on forever — a vast nothingness beyond comprehension.

  Looking into it, Patrick was filled with a loneliness that engulfed him, filling him to the point of physical pain.

  He understood, completely, what it would mean to exist in such a place.

  A silent scream of anguish filled his mind.

  Hopelessly, he struggled to maintain his sanity and reason, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as he tried to contain the pressure building inside him.

  Just as he thought he could take no more, the car somehow snapped back into place with the world around it.

  It passed through the intersection at speed, rapidly shrinking into the distance.

  His heart hammered in his chest.

  Nothing could have prepared him for the sight of such complete nothingness.

  The piercing sound of a car horn sliced through the fog clouding his thoughts.

  He glanced into the rear-view mirror to see a driver gesturing angrily at the traffic light.

  Patrick looked ahead. The arrow had turned green.

  With mechanical reflexes, he lifted his foot from the brake and pressed the accelerator.

  The horn blared again as the light changed back to red just as he entered the intersection, leaving the car behind him to wait for the next cycle.

  He paid it no attention.

  A few hundred metres down the road, he pulled into a side street and parked. He switched off the engine and slumped forward, his head coming to rest on the steering wheel.

  “What the hell is going on?” The words escaped as a whispered breath.

  This wasn’t just a strange mental state brought on by lack of sleep. Something real — and deeply disturbing — was happening.

  Though he couldn’t name it, he could feel the momentum building.

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