booksnew/source/incubus-source/CB24.txt

<h2>24</h2>
<p><3E>Oh she looked a lot older than this wee lassie,<2C> Mrs Cosgrove said, looking at Helen through the thick lenses which made her eyes seem huge and staring. She stoked the coal fire in the front room of her little cottage in Barloan Habour where Ginny Marsden had stayed. Both the old woman and Helen Lamont were ignorant of the fact that Mrs Cosgrove had already crossed the long and sinuous trail of this affair many years before, as a friend of Greta Simon back before the war years.</p>

<p> <20>And she didn<64>t look well, the poor soul,<2C> she quavered. <20>If it had been back in the war, I would have said she was sick with consumption. There wasn<73>t so much as a pick of meat on her bones.<2E></p>

<p>The description mirrored Nina Galt<6C>s observations and Helen wondered just what was it that Ginny Marsden had that could transform her from the healthy and fit girl on the video into the seemingly emaciated, much older woman that people perceived. Since the first time she had entered Heather McDougall<6C>s house she had experienced that strange and disturbing prescience, a sense of foreboding. Now that feeling was magnified and getting stronger all the time. Whatever Ginny Marsden had, she did not want to contract.</p>

<p>And David, adding his own weight to the old policeman<61>s years of obsession, had almost convinced her of the sinister connection. He had told her, in the early hours of the morning that the baby was probably some kind of mutant, though what kind of mutant he couldn<64>t even speculate.</p>

<p>They had fallen into each others arms again, both of them tired and yet strangely excited by the new, menacing overlay to their investigation, and in the night she had whimpered as she clutched at him, powerfully desperate for his strength, matching him motion by motion, thrust for thrust, carried on an irresistible wave of her own drive and her own need</p>

<p>Sometime in the dark and cold hours of the morning, she too had woken from a dream on which a wasp had stung her and laid a grub in the pit of her belly and it was eating her from within. She had jerked awake, trembling with fear, disoriented in the unfamiliar shadows of his room, with a burning acid pain twisting under her breastbone. It slowly died away and she lay back, listening to the sound of David<69>s breathing, pressing herself close to him for warmth and protection against the images in the dark. The fear diminished, but it did not go away.</p>

<p>It was with her still, faint yet insistent, the next morning, a sense of prescience that she could not shake. She had experienced tickles of forewarning before, just snags of hunch. Now, there was something deeper. She did not know how or why he knew that, but a part of her she did not even comprehend recognised the approach of danger. The odd, exposed feeling remained with her when she got the call back from the bank. Celia Barker had contacted them first thing on the morning, authorising them to give CID any information they needed. From the description she had of Ginny Marsden<65>s condition, Helen had not expected her to make a withdrawal from a hole in the wall auto-teller, but she had thought back to the image of Heather McDougall on video, dying, maybe even clinically dead yet still crawling towards her baby and she wondered. Even as that thought struck her she knew that she had crossed a threshold. She had stepped from the world of the rational, to a dimension where the inconceivable could actually be considered possible. </p>

<p>She wondered if Ginny Marsden was lactating now to feed her baby.</p>

<p><3E>She<68>s in Barloan Harbour,<2C> she said excitedly, turning round as she out the receiver down. <20>She made a withdrawal two days ago.<2E></p>

<p><3E>I know that place,<2C> David said. <20>It<49>s just a village. I used to fish on the canal and take pictures of kingfishers when I was a kid. It<49>s not a big place, so if she<68>d there we<77>ll find her.<2E></p>

<p><3E>And it<69>s between Kirkland and here,<2C> Helen said. <20>It<49>s on the same train line as Lochend, where Greta Simon came from. Ginny must have got the train, but she got off after a few stops instead of coming back into the city.<2E></p>

<p><3E>When was the withdrawal?<3F> David wanted to know. His face fell when she told him it was Christmas Eve. The girl had had plenty of time to move on, but they wouldn<64>t know until they had checked it out. They got to the village in less than half an hour and by the time they turned at the bridge over the canal and down to the small station, clouds were beginning to gather, billowing up the estuary, promising a dank and dismal rain or a heavy fall of snow. The harbour here, where the waterway that meandered through the city emptied itself into the old river, was old and weathered and at this time of the year, there were few signs of life apart from a pair of mallard ducks in the broken reeds. Further along the waterway, the same canal that looped through the parkland close to June<6E>s apartment, was lined with old and gaudily painted narrowboats. They all looked deserted and empty and one or two were slumped on their sides in thick patches of weed. David took a minute to reclaim childhood memories of birdwatching here where the fresh water met the tidal brack, attracting waders in their thousands, marsh harriers and herons. He remembered this place in sunshine and summer warmth. Now it was cold and bitter and somehow empty.</p>

<p>The railway angled past the canal harbour and under the arches there was a little restaurant where he<68>d once taken June. It was closed now, possibly for the winter, maybe for ever. There was little passing trade in a place like this. Most of the village was to the north of the canal, and further away from the flat where the old locks held back the water, the land rose up to the Langmuir Hills where the heath and bracken covered slopes were powdered with snow. This had been a good place to come as a child, back then, armed with a fishing rod and a camera and no complications.</p>

<p> In less than an hour after they arrived, he and Helen, they had got the first clue in the corner shop where a thin, birdlike woman with hungry, gossip<69>s eyes recognised the girl from her coat in the photograph, told them she had bought a pound of minced beef and had gone up the Loanhead Road.</p>

<p><3E>It<49>s a dead end,<2C> she said. <20>She<68>ll be in one of the houses there. They take in lodgers, most of them.<2E></p>

<p>In five minutes, old Mrs Cosgrove was making tea.</p>

<p><3E>And her pram<61>s out the back,<2C> she said. <20>I couldn<64>t believe she would have left it, but she must have just taken the baby and gone.<2E> There was a faint, familiar smell in the old woman<61>s house, hardly traceable, but enough of a taint to make them both recognise it. Ginny Marsden had been here. The baby had been here.</p>

<p>The old lady told them she hadn<64>t smelled anything, but she said there had been a bloodstain on the sheets and she<68>d had to wash them in bleach. <20>I don<6F>t think the poor girl was all there,<2C> she said, tapping her temple. <20>Maybe she<68>d one of those unfortunates they<65>re putting out of hospital and back into the community. It<49>s a terrible shame. Maybe she<68>d gone back to somewhere she knows?<3F></p>

<p>They had some tea, strong and welcome against the increasing cold in the air when they left the cottage knowing they had picked up Ginny Marsden<65>s trail, hoping they could find it again.</p>

<p><3E>Where now?<3F> Helen asked. He shrugged. The trail, first hot, could go cold. The pram left few clues, for it had been out in the cold since boxing day and had only been discovered that morning. Even the blanket was hoared with frost. They went towards the car and David was just about to put the key in the lock when a white patrol car came labouring up the road. David held his hand up, motioning it to stop. The local policeman seemed irritated at the delay until David showed him his warrant card.</p>

<p>The young man, who looked too thin for his shirt collar which gaped over a prominent Adam<61>s apple hadn<64>t seen the girl in the picture, but he<68>d been in bed with a cold since Christmas Eve. This was his first day out since and he maintained his belief that he should have stayed under the blankets. David thanked him and was about to move away when, for no particular reason, he asked the local cop where he was going.</p>

<p><3E>Up to the Middle Loan farm,<2C> he said. <20>Got a call to check out the Park<72>s place. They<65>re not answering the phone. Their in-laws have been trying to get them for a couple off days. Lucky buggers have probably flown out to Barbados and away from this bloody winter.<2E></p>

<p>He went driving up the road and they got in the car. David started the engine, thinking.</p>

<p><3E>Do you think we should...?<3F> they both asked at exactly the same moment. Another coincidence. A cold and clammy sensation caressed Helen<65>s mind. Without another word, David put his foot down and followed the patrol car.</p>

<p>The policeman had stopped at the gate on Jack Park<72>s home straight when they caught up with him.</p>

<p><3E>This is the worst thing about working out in the sticks,<2C> he said. <20>You spend more time opening and closing these things than anything else. That and rounding up the livestock when people forget to close them.<2E> His name, he told them, was Jimmy Mulgrew. He<48>d been in Barloan Harbour for three miserable months of winter and out of the warmth of the car, he looked as if the wind blowing up the estuary would knock him down. His nose was scarlet with the cold and raw from rubbing with tissues.</p>

<p><3E>Jackie Park and his wife Kate.<2E> He dropped his voice. <20>She<68>s a looker. Big girl, but classy.<2E> David gave him a man<61>s look which said he got the drift. <20>Had a kid a few weeks ago and they were staying home for Santa Claus and then going to visit her parents yesterday. They<65>re not answering the phone. He does a lot of travelling, so maybe he<68>s stuck somewhere. There was a hell of a fall of snow over the borders in the past couple of days. The sergeant asked me to have a look, just for the record.<2E></p>

<p><3E>We thought we<77>d give you a hand,<2C> David told him, and that was fair enough with the local man. He was a city boy, not at home with the big shambling cattle on farms, not quite ready to believe they weren<65>t ready to kick and rear and maybe bite and gore.</p>

<p><3E>Don<6F>t see smoke from the chimney,<2C> Helen said. The cold and troubling shiver that had gone through her had left her with a quiver of inexplicable apprehension.</p>

<p><em>Something wrong.</em></p>

<p>Even she did not know how many times that mental warning had flared in other people<6C>s minds. All she knew was that, quite unaccountably, this didn<64>t <em>feel </em> right.</p>

<p><em>Something wrong. </em>David Harper could sense the wrongness, though he did not know why. An instinct had made him follow the patrol car, an instinct that had no foundation in reason, yet...<em>yet...</em></p>

<p>It was Christmas time. Up here, they<65>d have log fires and there would be smoke. Over by the whitewashed edge of an outhouse he could see the stack of wood piled on the lee side out of the wind. There would be smoke on a day like this. <em>Something wrong.</em> David was no city boy. He<48>d spent his childhood up the hills, helping on farms, taking his wildlife shots. Something was not quite right here. He knew it, not just in the strange and threatening sense of foreboding, but in his rational mind too.</p>

<p>The farm was silent. Dead silent.</p>

<p>Down in the woods a pheasant hawked, tin on stone, jarring the air. Up on the moor a hawk bleated, high and plaintive, a strange contradiction between hunter and prey. In the farm, no animal made a sound. The hairs on David<69>s arms went walkabout again. Jimmy Mulgrew heard nothing and did not realise that was extraordinary. There were no cattle lowing, no dogs barking. That was not necessarily odd, though almost any approach to a farm will get a response from the guardian dogs.</p>

<p>Even more peculiar, there was not a sound of poultry. Chickens did not have the sense to stay silent. A cockerel did not have the ability to stop proclaiming its territory. Yet there were no sounds of either. As Mulgrew closed the gate with a rattling clang, David looked over the cropped hedge and into the field beyond. A pigeon loft, one of the old fashioned ones that might have braved the storms of centuries stood squat in the middle of the field. Beside it, scattered around its stone bulk, light shapes fluttered in the gathering wind.</p>

<p>David held up a hand to shield his eyes from the watery glare reflecting from the snowclouds but he already knew what the shapes were. A flock of dead pigeons lay on the short grass, their hapless wings fluttered by the impending storm. The sensation of cold expectation swelled. He waited until Mulgrew got back into the patrol car before following on, a small convoy moving slowly along Jack Park<72>s home straight.</p>

<p><3E>Something<6E>s not right,<2C> Helen said;. <20>But I don<6F>t know what it is.<2E></p>

<p><3E>You got the second sight?<3F> he asked, trying to make it light, but he could sense it too, though he didn<64>t know what it was or how he could sense danger. <20>As the cavalry say, it<69>s too quiet. It <em>is </em>too quiet. There<72>s no sound at all, and that<61>s unnatural.<2E></p>

<p>They drew round the corner, in the gap between byre and barn, turned sharp to negotiate the space, and found themselves in the small courtyard. Helen turned in her seat and pointed to the gaping door of the garage. A Range Rover stood next to a small Volkswagen. Two cars. The jeep<65>s door was wide open.</p>

<p><3E>Wonder how many they<65>ve got,<2C> Helen said. Both of them knew this just didn<64>t look right.</p>
<hr />

<p><em>He heard their approach.</em></p>

<p>It was a faint vibration at first then a rumble in the air. It stretched its perceptions and an instant panic flared when it felt something familiar.</p>

<p>They were both coming now.</p>

<p>It woke the mother with a hard, brutal twist of thought while its glands pumped up reflexively. It forced itself to be still, listening, now fully alert after the miasma of the shedding. He had pushed and squeezed, expanding and contracting until the split had widened down his back and then he had laboriously freed himself from the dry sheath. A breeze had carried the discarded, papery skin away across the field as soon as the mother had opened the door. It had flipped over, that translucent, fragile image of his former self, tattered and torn, shrivelling in the cold as the wind scraped it over the far thornbush hedge. He had taken a while to rest, but now he was fully awake. The mother moaned, coughed huskily until he forced her to stop. The gate clanged, the same sound he had heard before, when he had taken the mother. Now there was a new threat and his survival instinct kicked in hard.</p>

<p>With another wrench he had forced her to absolute stillness. He could feel the thud of her heart magnified in the hollow of her ribs and he could perceive its liquid rush in the veins of her breasts. The skin there was dry and scabbed where he had fed hungrily, draining this one even more rapidly than he had drained the last.</p>

<p>Up here it was dark and for the moment he was safe.</p>

<p>But they were coming. <em>She </em>was coming, and the peculiar hunger, the different hunger tried to swamp his wariness. Tyres rumbled on the cobbles, making the building shiver. The smell of dead chickens filtered up, an oily smell on the dusty air. He sat perfectly still, his great eyes closed, sensing outwards.</p>
<hr />

<p>Helen felt the touch again, registered the sensation she had experienced before and for a bewildering moment her vision swam.</p>

<p><3E>All right?<3F> David asked. He too felt his nerves tensed up. Jimmy Mulgrew was whistling. If he had seen the two cars in the garage, he made no mention. Helen nodded in silent response, clamping her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. Her skin felt as if it was trying to shrink on her. For some reason, a flare of discomfort pulsed in her breasts and her nipples scraped against her brassiere. Instantly she recalled the sensation in the hostel. David came round beside her.</p>

<p><3E>It doesn<73>t sound right, not even a starling or a sparrow.<2E></p>

<p><3E>You<6F>re right. There<72>s no sound at all,<2C> she agreed. <20>That<61>s weird.<2E></p>

<p>Over by the chicken coop, a small whirl of air spun a handful of white feathers in a will o<> the wisp circle. Over by the farmhouse proper, beside the angle of the porch, a white heap lay on the cobblestones. At first it looked like a dead sheep. All three walked forward, Jimmy Mulgrew huddled against the cold, his keys jangling beside his cuffs. For all of ten seconds they stood and looked down at the dead dogs, and the now black pool of congealed blood. It was clear that one had bitten the other. They were frozen in their bizarre embrace.</p>

<p><3E>What the fuck...?<3F> Jimmy asked, he looked at Helen and apologised with his eyes. She hadn<64>t even heard him. Her heart was revving up now, pounding harder and faster. Her breath was shallower and for a reason she could understand, but not put into words, she wanted to be out of there, driving fast down the hill from the farm, and looking in her mirror to make sure nothing was racing after her.</p>

<p>The alien touch slid on the surface of her thoughts and a shudder of nausea ran through her.</p>

<p>David went quickly to the front door, eyes flicking from window to window for the merest hint of movement. Of a sudden he felt dreadfully exposed. Anyone could be watching them and he didn<64>t even have a baton with him, though he could see Jimmy Mulgrew carried his night-stick. It was still on the loop of his belt and in a flash of uncharacteristic contempt, David thought the village constable was a congenital idiot.</p>

<p>They got to the door, David taking natural command of the situation, pushing the younger man to the side, away from possible danger. Anything could come through the door, an axe, a bullet. He stood away from the direct front, tried the handle. It turned without any resistance. The door opened.</p>

<p>The smell of blood came billowing out, cold and familiar, carried on the sickly smell of death.</p>

<p>His heart blagged against his ribs. The knowledge of complete vulnerability was right up there at the forefront. Adrenaline socked into his bloodstream in the instant preparation for fight or flight, made his leg muscles tremble. His throat tried to swallow the excess of saliva. Behind him he could hear Helen<65>s harsh breathing, accentuated now in his heightened senses. Jimmy Mulgrew started to say something and David jabbed him with the edge of his hand.</p>

<p>Very slowly, very silently, his whole body now hypernaturally aware, he edged inside, motioning them to stay back. If someone came round the corner of the hall, pointing a shotgun at him, he could throw himself to the floor. Maybe he could. Silence and speed were his best weapons in this situation, he knew. A very reasonable part of his mind told him to get the hell out of here <em>right now. </em>Another part told him that people here could be in danger if they were not already dead. He could smell the death in the air. He got to the end, closing his mind to the sickly smell. There was no buzzing of flies, not at this time of the year, but the house had not quite frozen. He reached the end of the corridor, turned, flattening himself against the wall. A door lay wide open.</p>

<p>David eased round the threshold and saw the dark splash on the wall. He held his breath, succeeded only in making his heart pound a deafening pulse in his ears. He exhaled slowly, drew his eyes down and looked into the eyeless sockets of Jack Park.</p>
<hr />

<p>Kate Park awoke cold and shivering, her skin almost blue with the cold, trying to scream but unable to make a sound. There was no sensation in her toes and her mouth tasted of blood. She wondered if she had bitten her tongue. She came clawing up from the pits of hell where her dreams replayed the catapulting body of her husband over and over again. She saw him slam against the wall, saw the spade spin away, tumbling in slow motion while Jack turned, twisting in an ungainly pirouette, his hands disappearing in fragments.</p>

<p><em>Kate it<69>s...Kate it<69>s...Kate it<69>s</em> ...his voice echoed in its own mantra, the words repeated over and over and over in her head as if an endless loop was running in her brain, unable to switch off. She had come awake on that black surge of unendurable horror, still seeing him, spin away and then hearing his voice overlaid by the dreadful sucking sounds the baby had made.</p>

<p><em>Monster. </em>The core of her own self recognised it and repeated Ginny Marsden<65>s mental shriek. It had been at the cot, at the crib. It had sucked there and she had done nothing because the baby, the baby <em>devil</em> had captured her. </p>

<p>It had fed on her and it had fed on them all. In the fog of shock and mental paralysis, she had seen its red, glassy eyes blink once, and then it had turned from her and crawled across the room, its image wavering and blurring and then it had sucked at the still twitching body that had been Jack Park, the husband who had tried to save her, who had put the baby inside her. It had slobbered and sucked and then it had come back to her, the mental bonds tight and unyielding. Over by the wall, Jack<63>s mouth was open and his eyes were mere shadows. The dark hollows stared accusingly at her and she knew again she was damned forever.</p>

<p>Now she was here in the cold and the dark, in the musty confines of the back barn where they had stored the hay before the new barn was built. It smelled of mice, though not one sound could be heard. It smelled of bird shit and old hay and the dried out carcasses of long-dead rats. She had moved once, only taking the narrow stairs in the early morning when it was still cold, to get a drink of water from the trough at the corner of the wall, sucking up the icy drink with her face almost submerged while the baby, a greater weight now, clung tight to her, dangling like a long, thin monkey.</p>

<p>It had changed in the night. She had heard the grunt and strain of the thing and for a little while, the mental connections sparked and fizzled and she was almost herself again. Without warning she came tumbling out of its control, back into the real and awful world where she could suddenly think.</p>

<p>For a ghastly, unbearable moment, everything came flooding back to her, all of it, every movement, every noise. The sounds of the dogs and the horses and the cattle and her own husband slamming in a thudded crunch against the wall. She heard again the gobbling mucous sound form the cot and knew that everything in her life was gone. It was dark in the old loft. A few stray rays of moonlight came through the holes where a few slates had come loose, solid silver rods in the dusty air. The thing was close</p>

<p><em>not a baby it<69>s a fucking devil.</em> She did not know that she was only repeating Ginny Marsden<65>s desperate protest. She did not know that the emaciated, skeletal thing that had been Ginny Marsden was lying stiff and frozen less than twenty yards away, feasted on by a horde of rats, the only creatures which had survived the proximity of the thing.</p>

<p>The beast was a black and twisting shadow, roiling on the floor close to the angle of the roof where the cobwebbed beams sloped down to the flat. It grunted, though the sound wasn<73>t quite a grunt, more of a hollow and flaccid gulping noise. It was like nothing she had ever heard. She knew, right then, that this was something like nothing else on earth. This was something that should never have existed in this world.</p>

<p>She turned, almost able to hear the protest in her joints. It was squirming there, making an effort. Its mental pulses swelled, flickering randomly on the surface of her own mind, unfocussed little jolts of energy. It was concentrating on its escape. In the dark shadow, she could hear ripping sounds, but the motion was oily black, shadow upon shadow.</p>

<p>Yet she was free. Everything in her life was gone and Kate Park had no intention of running now. There was nothing for her to gain. All she could think of was that the thing had to be destroyed. She moved, rolling away on the rough boards, getting towards the hatch. She reached the edge of the rickety stair and did not hesitate. Down she went, on hands and backside, like a disjointed crab. She got halfway down when she heard it scuttle above her, heard it howl its silent, cerebral shriek.</p>

<p>Down at the bottom she turned. It came scuttling like a spider, still making the hollow sound and sending dreadful commanding pulses at her. Its anger and rage sizzled ahead of it reaching out towards her. From its hind legs trailed a whispery translucence that for a moment looked like crumpled old polythene sheeting. She turned away from it, lurching towards the wall. An old pitchfork, one that hadn<64>t been used since before Jack had been a boy, was stuck into the soft and rotted wood of the walls. She grabbed it without hesitation. It came out with a singing vibration, humming as she spun it round. The beast came at her, its red eyes glaring poisonously. She hefted the shaft, raising the curved tines. It jinked to the side, its edges blurring and wavering again as it pushed its thoughts at her. She leaned into the thrust, snagged the papery trailing flutter which merely ripped away with the sound of dry leaves.</p>

<p>The ghostly thing whipped round, a pale image of the monster floating upwards. It snagged her attention for a fraction of a second. The black and rippling thing scuttled under the prongs, came for her, snatched at her coat. She gasped, turned to face it, trying to get the pitchfork down onto it. She lunged hard again. It blared its command into her and a huge and glassy pain exploded in her head. Her eyes went blind in that instant and her whole body convulsed under the force, as if an enormous electrical charge had gone right through her. The fork came down, twisting with the motion of her body. The spike slammed down onto her foot, stabbed through the skin and flesh, bored between the bones of her toes and continued through the sole of her shoe and down into the soft earth of the bottom barn. </p>

<p>The little monster scrambled up her coat, fingers scrabbling at her skin, got close enough to fix on her and snatched her mind just as the hurt of the stabbing reached her brain. It probed, touched and pushed. Kate<74>s muscles contracted again, sufficient to pull the pitchfork from her foot. A distant scrape of pain accompanied the motion. The implement dropped to the dry muck where her blood was now mingling with the shit of long dead cattle. It held her there, her whole body vibrating with the power of its seizing, unable to move a limb. After a while, it made her walk to the door, keeping to the side of the building, and made her drink until her belly was hugely distended. She could not refuse.</p>

<p>When she had opened the door, the ghostly white thing had tumbled away, drawn out in the draught of air. It had looked like a ghost. It had looked like her worst nightmare.</p>

<p>Much later, in the dark of night, she crouched in the cold, waiting for the next thing to happen. At her breast, the baby mewled, now heavier than before, now grown more. Pains creaked out in her joints and every beat of her heart gave her an odd, wrenching discomfort. Her gums bled and her back ached and the pounding between her temples made it hard to see in the dim light.</p>

<p>She could do nothing but watch and wait while the baby drained her and would not let her die. Day and night passed. All she took was water. It fed like a glutton.</p>

<p>When the sounds came, sounds of the approaching cars, she did not hear them. She sat still as stone in the shadow of the barn until the baby roused her and made her move.</p>