The wind had veered again and was blasting down straight from the north when Jack left the station and headed up to his sister's house. The night was blistering cold and the frost sparkled like diamonds on the windward sides of the trees and lamp posts. Jack hadn't stopped, hadn't slowed down all day. Robbie Cattanach had had to request extra storage space for the cadavers at Kirkland Hospital and the fiscal had drafted in another pathologist to help with the autopsies which were becoming monotonously, if horribly similar. In every case, the cause of death was either by devastating blood loss, massive trauma or both. Every one of the bodies in the storage freezers had been mutilated in one way or another. Robbie had been able to establish that the bite marks all had the same radius and similar shear-lines. Each of the dead had been gripped with enormous pressure, sufficient to cause dreadful bruising and in most cases, skin rupture. The pathologist was able to show, in a series of quick diagrams, the spread of the grip and the strange, two-digit claw marks on either side. Robbie Cattanach was not now prepared to put down on paper any speculation as to what on earth could have caused the marks. As far as he was aware, nothing living could have inflicted such damage.
Under John McColl's direction, the teams had hit the high spots and searched as much of the town's skyline as they could before nightfall. That search continued after dark in a town that had become strangely silent, eerily empty. Few cars moved on River Street. The cinema simply shut its doors and the bingo hall posted a sign saying that they were sorry, but they were closed for alterations. Under normal circumstances, this would have caused a riot among the blue-rinsed brigade, but there were few grannies who would risk venturing out in the dark just to test their luck. All early morning milk deliveries were cancelled and Castlebank Distillery stopped its night-shift bottling operation after acrimonious but very speedy negotiations with the union representatives. There was little else to be done when the entire bottling line failed to turn up just after seven o'clock. Latta Marineyard stayed open, working round the clock to finish the oil-rig platform just at the south of the tidal basin beside the old shipyard. The floodlights blazed down onto the maze of metalwork and the sizzling electric flashes of the arc-welders continued through the dark. Apart from that, and the and constant passage of police patrol cars, the town had simply locked its doors. The townsfolk huddled behind them and waited.
On the other side of town, somewhere between the looming brick megalith of Castlebank Distillery and the volcanic rock where the castle perched at the junction where the river ran into the firth, something moved in the dismal dark of the old shipyard. The great sheds where some of the ships that had made the Clyde great had been fabricated, were silent and empty. There were four massive structures, all connected and constructed of iron beams and corrugated iron, blackened by dirt and grime and the smoke of a bygone age. From the giant shed nearest the castle, a slipway which still had launching tracks embedded in the stone, swept down towards the tidal basin where the hardy wrack which could survive in the brackish water floated on a greasy surface. Inside, out of the wind, it was like a huge and dark cavern. Somewhere high, water leaked from an aged tank and dropped fifty feet or more into a rust puddle with a metronomic, almost metallic sound. High on the sides of the launch bay, a fretwork of metal stairs and ladders soared up into the utter blackness above.
It was not silent here. Apart from the steady droop of water, and the echoing chink of a rusty chain which hung beside the pulley door and was stirred by the harsh wind, the fine ice particles blown from the trees across the river abraded the outer surface with the sound of glass splinters and the wind itself whistled through the narrow gaps where the corrugated iron had peeled away. Beyond, closer to the distillery, the whine of machinery and the harsh sizzle of arc-welding came over the wall from the rig-yard.
Inside the gaunt and towering shed, something stirred in the darkness. It moved slowly, but with little care for silence, out from the shadows underneath the stairwell against the far wall. A little light, not much more than a glimmer, was reflected up from the oily water in the basin, just enough catch the figure of what had been a man shamble back into the shadows.
If anybody had seen Michael O'Day they would have recoiled in disgust. There was hardly an ounce of flesh on the man's bones. His once-smart coat was in tatters and covered with whatever filth he'd been lying in. The scarecrow figure turned and his eyes, now sunk deep under grizzled white eyebrows, closed quickly against the pale glimmer of light, screwing themselves up in obvious pain.
O'Day's thick hair, once black but now white, had all but gone, save for a few lank strands which fell down behind his ears. One hank, greased with oil swung down over his eyes. On his shoulder another clump had stuck to a patch of engine grease and fluttered there like moulted sheep wool. His face was so emaciated his cheeks appeared to be black holes and the bones were ridged out, giving his face a skull-like, fleshless look. The skin of his forehead was scabbed and peeling, and a suppurating sore seemed to be eating into the side of his nose. As he shambled back from the door, an incoherent mumbling sound came dribbling out between cracked lips along with thick and ropy saliva which swung with his jerky movements to add to the damp stains on the front of his coat.
He took several steps, swaying like a drunk, then stopped, shaking his head.
Something that was almost like words, but was still unintelligible came out in a guttural stream. The man's body jerked left and right, then he started walking again, feet scraping the stone floor, kicking aside rusty nails and rivets. He got to the far corner and reached the other space beneath the stairs and began to crawl into the darkness.
For a while, he stopped moving and simply huddled there on his side.
Then he began to twitch. It started with a twist of his neck, an involuntary spasm, then his whole body began to shudder. A hellish scream echoed round the vast chamber of the shed, reverberating from one dark wall to another, but no-one heard it. Michael O'Day's scrawny form writhed uncontrollably and his heels drummed against a metal plate which had been left under the stairs, banging a rapid drum-roll before they stopped abruptly and went limp. There was an instant of silence and then something moved out of the shadow. It was blacker than black and it moved with spidery speed. It flowed up the side of the stairs, clinging to the outside of the banister, then leapt without a pause to the first level of the side-wall platforms, reached a long limb upwards with eerie liquid grace and began to climb.
When it got to the top, high on the side of the shed, it paused, making a throaty, rumbling sound. Until now it had not opened its eyes, but when it froze to complete stillness, they flicked open, two caustic yellow orbs, blind looking, and the left one puckered and scarred, yet both searing in their intensity. The thing swivelled its head.
Here, out of the sickly warmth where it had spent the hours of light, the air was cold and somehow alien, yet despite the emptiness of the shipyard, it sensed life, abundant hot and fluttering life all around. Its head flicked to the side and cocked up to the left, a mantis-like motion of alert menace. Up in the high beams, it sensed the warmth of the starlings which had flocked and wheeled like bees in the dusk and now huddled in uneasy clusters. Its unearthly perception discerned the shiver of alarm which rippled through the roost as the birds sensed its own presence. It was too dark for them to fly. Instead they nervously fluttered, each small bird crouching tight as the unseen but strongly felt presence of the black thing touched them.
On the old iron stairway, the black gargoyle creature turned its head down with that same insectile flick and the birds were forgotten. Out there, beyond the towering metal walls of the boatshed, there was warm life aplenty, a surfeit of it, a storehouse of vitality, cowering from the dark, waiting to be reaped. It closed its eyes and sensed way beyond the walls. It scented the fear and the unease, like the fluttering consternation of the little birds in their roost, but much stronger, much more powerful. They tossed and turned and they worried, all of them giving off the sweet emotion that filled its senses with a potent spice. The obsidian lips parted and a drool of saliva slithered in a wet braid to splash on the metal tread where it sizzled and boiled in the freezing air. It held itself stock still and forced its senses outwards, beyond the nearest buildings, past Castlebank Church and over the centre of the town, keeping a grip on its own clenching hunger.
Soon it would have nowhere to shelter, unless it found welcome warmth, unless it invaded. Time was running out. Here, in this place of light, where the minds and souls were throbbing with savory life, it had almost outstayed its allotment, unless it found a nest to shelter from the burning radiance of day. Anger, glowing and feral, boiled up inside the thing as it hunched, still as stone, on the metal ledge, while it outreached with its baneful mind over the town beyond the shipyard.
Finally its perception focussed and found what it sought. The strange other mind it touched was filled with flickering thoughts, wheeling emotions, and under it all, the dark bubbling fear that all prey possesses. It dipped into the mind and sipped on the emotion, nurturing the fear, sampling the jittery thoughts, and then, as quickly as it had entered, it withdrew, leaving hardly a trace of its presence.
Out on Clydeshore Avenue, Lorna Breck shuddered, as if a chill wind had blown through her. Somebody must have walked on my grave, she said herself.
In the old shipyard, the thing turned its mind away and pushed outwards, following the skein of thought it had invaded. It dipped here and touched there, a cold, unseen presence.
After a while, it began to move, flowing like oil up to the roof of the massive shed. A starling chirruped as a shadow deeper than night passed by. An eye gaped in the dark and the bird died instantly. Its small body tumbled, fluttering to the ground far below. When it hit, there was hardly a sound.
It was after eight when Jack knocked on Julia's door. Davy opened it, flashed him a big smile and then bounded away to watch whatever was on television. Julia was in the kitchen, sitting at the table with her big electric typewriter in front of her and a pile of papers on the side.
"You've been in the wars, I hear," she said, pushing her chair back. She crossed to the sink and filled the kettle.
"It's a long campaign," Jack said wearily. "I just need a wash and a clean shirt and a quick bite."
Julia reached up and rubbed his cheek.
"And a shave. You look totally disreputable."
"Always the one with compliments," he shot back. She slapped his jaw lightly.
"I told you to get a good woman who'll do your shirts for you."
"I've got one, and you're a marvel. Just tell me where they are and I'll be out of your hair in ten minutes."
Despite his obvious agitation to be gone again, Julia made him sit down and have a cup of tea while she rustled up a sizeable grill of bacon and eggs and hot toast, then sat down and watched him until he'd finished the lot. She asked him about the case and he responded almost unintelligibly between mouthfuls, but she gleaned enough to get the picture.
"This girl, what's she really like?" she asked.
"She's okay. I thought she was a bit of a flake at first, with this mental thing, but I reckon she's straight." Jack told her. "She's got auburn hair."
Julia's eyes crinkled over the top of her teacup.
"Do I detect a note of interest here?"
"Oh, don't be daft. She's too young for me."
Julia smiled again. She knew her brother probably better than he knew himself.
Davy's programme finished and he came charging into the kitchen, narrowly missing the fridge. He pushed and squirmed until he was on Jack's knee.
"I'm off school tomorrow," he announced. "Can we go sledging again?" The boy was bouncing around on Jack's knee with unconcealed enthusiasm.
"'Fraid not, pal. Too much work. But maybe at the weekend. No promises, but I'll do my best."
Davy took a sausage from his uncle's plate, slid down to the floor again, and went pattering out of the kitchen. Jack watched him, unable to keep the smile from his face.
"He's as fly as a bag of monkeys, that one."
"He's picking it up from you," Julia told him with mock reproof. She leaned over the table and took his empty plate away.
"As you heard, you don't have to come for him tomorrow. They've closed the school on the pretext of in-service training. The kids are having an extra week's holiday."
"Silver lining for the wee ones. I wish I could say the same for the rest of us."
"Are you going to catch him?" Julia asked. Like every mother, the enormity of what was happening in Levenford had seeped into her. She was afraid for her child.
"Sure I will, and damned quick. We're getting closer now. It's just a matter of time. You just look after Davy until the weekend, and it'll be over. That's a promise."
He reached across and ruffled Julia's hair, the way he'd done when they were both teenagers. Then she had screamed in protest, now she just came close and leaned her cheek against his shoulder.
"I'll be praying for you," she said.
After the huge meal, the hot shower went a long way to making Jack feel he was able to face the night ahead and the plan he'd been working on. He stood under the cataract of water, letting the heat soak off some of the tension which had crept under his skin. His thoughts danced at random while the steam fogged the tiles. He closed his eyes for only a moment and all thought wavered away, drifting into the mist of vapour. A few seconds later, Jack gave a start, as if coming awake. He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead, and knuckled his eyes. Without looking, he reached out and yanked the shower handle, twisting it far over until it pointed to the blue marker. The hot water switched to a jet of cold. He endured it for ten seconds, feeling his skin pucker as it froze, then, when it became unbearable, he stumbled out of the shower, gasping for breath. While he shaved, he remembered Julia had asked him to run the bath for her. He jammed in the plug and let the bath fill noisily while the steam misted up the mirror, making the shaving more difficult. He rinsed off with a sharp splash of cold water and ran his fingers backwards through his hair again, knowing it would fall back over his forehead once it dried.
Downstairs, Julia had placed a fresh shirt over the back of a chair close to the fire and he savoured the momentary crisp warmth as he buttoned it. Davy was perched on the arm of the seat, eyes fixed to the screen where Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck were perpetrating enormous wrongs on each other. Julia had got into her dressing gown.
"Come on, young man, it's time for your bed," she told her son, who immediately protested that he was off school the following day, and using Jack as a back-up, he wheedled his way into staying up for half an hour.
"I've run your bath," Jack said, stretching an arm into the sleeve of his coat.
Julia looked up at him.
"I hadn't planned one 'til later," she said.
"Oh, I thought you asked me to," Jack said, brows knitting in puzzlement. He'd been sure she had asked him to fill the bath.
"Must have been some other girl," she said, smiling. "Are you sure there's nothing I should know?"
Jack patted her backside.
"Go on. Get up and soak before the water gets cold."
Julia hadn't planned on an early bath, but for some reason, and despite the oddity of her brother telling her he'd imagined she'd asked him to run the hot water for her, the idea of a quick warm soak appealed to her.
Davy gave his uncle a hug and tried to elicit a definite promise for Saturday. Jack ruffled Julia's hair again at the bottom of the stairs before she went up for her bath, then, impulsively, took her in his arms and squeezed her tight, silently showing his love and appreciation before he walked out into the cold. Down the path towards the gate, the wind moaned through the bare branches of the rowan tree and cut into him like a knife.
He'd parked the car up at the end of the road and the fifty yard walk drained the heat from him, despite the thick wool of his overcoat which he'd buttoned up to the neck. Ice had already started to rime the windscreen and had clogged the keyhole enough to make it difficult to turn the lock. The engine started first time and Jack eased the car onto the hill and carefully steered it down the slope towards the centre of town. It was only when he was half-way down Kirk Street, when raised his hand to check his watch, that he realised he'd left it at Julia's. The radio spat and he thumbed it on. Bobby Thomson told him there was a message to call Lorna Breck. Jack told him he was heading that way anyway. He switched off and accelerated over the crossroads.
-----
The cartoon had ended just after Uncle Jack had left. Davy flicked through the channels, but there was nothing of interest for a seven-year-old so he hit the button and watched the picture disappear to a dot. Upstairs, he could hear the watery sounds of his mother in the bath and he knew that in a few minutes she'd be down to tell him to get into his pyjamas and go to bed.
He picked up a toy car lying on its side close to the fireside kerb and trundled it along the top of the fireplace, making a noise he thought was a close representation of a racing car. The kerb was warm on his stockinged feet as he edged along, feeling the heat of the coals against his legs. Just at the end, before he turned the car to retrace its route, he found Jack's watch. Davy dropped the car and carefully lifted the timepiece. It was heavy and silver and had two little faces inside the big one and a picture of a thin sliver of moon rising beside the quarter hour.
He turned and scampered across to the window. He peeled the curtain back and leaned up against the glass, raising his hand to cut out his own reflection. He hadn't heard Jack's car outside, as he normally did when his uncle came to visit. He peered out. Specks of snow danced up against the pane then veered away, gusted by the wind. Further along the road, an orange street-lamp winked as the branches of the chestnut tree swung in front of the glow. Jack was nowhere to be seen.
Davy pulled back and thought for a moment. If the car wasn't there, that meant it was probably parked outside the cottage, and that was only two minutes away across the back gardens behind the house. It was dark out there. If he told his mother, she'd tell him just to leave it. Davy sat down and thought. He closed his eyes for only a moment and when he opened them again, it was as if he had just woken from sleep. He rubbed his eyes and then turned to pick up the watch.
Take it.
The thought came from nowhere, like a distant whisper, and the decision was somehow made. Without further pause, the boy hauled his shoes from under the table and jammed them on his feet with the wriggling motions children use when they haven't opened the laces. His hooded jacket was still slung over the back of the chair and he pulled it on quickly and did the zipper right up to the neck. At the bottom of the stairs, the heavy watch clenched firmly in one hand, he paused for a second. Upstairs his mother was still splashing in water. Any second now, she'd pull the plug and he'd hear the gurgle as it flushed through the pipes.
It would only take a minute, he told himself.
He reached for the front door handle, then stopped again. If he followed along the road, then Jack might get to his car first and drive away. There was a quicker way, the kind of route Davy and his small friends knew intimately because of the hours they'd played in each other's gardens. He went down the hall, through the kitchen and eased open the back door. Here, in the lee of the wind, it was cold, but not bitterly so. Davy pulled the door closed and twisted the handle to make sure it made no sound, then scampered down the steps and across the crisp, frosted grass of the drying green.
At the far end, the small rockery gave enough height to scramble over the lattice fence and into the neighbour's garden. On the corner, beyond the onion patch, there was a gap in the privet hedge which was used as a short-cut by most of the kids in the street. It led through to the stand of tall pines which bordered onto Cargill Farm Road.
Davy had never been in the barwood at night. Beyond the protection of the fences and privet hedge, the unhindered wind tugged at his jacket and pulled the hood back from his face.
The track between the trees was hard-packed and solid with frost. The boy's feet thudded noisily as he scurried between the gaunt trunks. Overhead, the dry pine-needles scraped and whispered and up there in the dark, two trunks sawed noisily against each other with a shivery squeal, like an animal in distress. In the dark, he held his hands out in front of him and his eyes were instinctively open wide to catch as much light as they could in the gloom. Here was a strange world of shadows and eerie sound. Twenty feet in from the edge, the far-off light from the window of the nearest house faded to nothing and Davy was alone in the gloom.
He stopped, hands still outstretched to protect against the knife-edge twigs that jutted in spikes from the conifers, momentarily lost.
Just ahead on the track, or what he assumed was the footworn path, a small juniper bush reached a out fuzzy branch just at head height. It waved lazily, almost threateningly, as the cold wind whipped it into motion. Davy shrank back, and bumped against a tree. A broken branch jabbed against his spine and when he twisted, he felt the material of his jacket rip.
From just ahead of the juniper bush, a twig snapped and suddenly everything went quiet.
For a second there was no sound at all, not even the whine of the wind above. It was as if a heavy door had silently closed, trapping him in still air. The wind, for some reason, had stopped. Davy stood frozen, heart now beating faster. He held his breath, ears straining to listen, but no sound came.
Very slowly, he raised his foot then put it down in front of him. It happened almost without volition, because as soon as the twig had snapped, the kind of sound a twig would make if something heavy had stood upon it, his first thought was to turn back the way he had come and scramble though the hedge and over the lattice fence and back into his own house.
Instead his foot moved forward. He took another step, then another, heading for the far edge of the wood opposite Jack's house.
He made it past the waving arm of the juniper bush, feeling with his feet to keep them on the bare path.
Something rustled nearby in a patch of dead brambles and a small unseen thing scuttered out and dashed into a scraggle of rhododendron. Davy's heart skipped a beat and he gasped involuntarily. This stand of trees was a different place at night. For a small boy, it was like a different world.
He waited until his heartbeat settled again, though it was still beating fast, before he moved forward again.
Ahead, maybe forty yards away, he thought he could see a patch of light from the street and made his way towards it, easing his way past the dark trunks.
Halfway across the belt of trees, there was a depression where a big pine had come crashing down in a winter gale. Most of the tree had been cut away and burned in the neighbourhood fireplaces. All that was left was the fan-shaped root system and the dip in the earth where it had been torn free. Here Davy and his small friends had played adventure games, using the great roots as a gang hut or a fort or a space-station, whatever the game dictated. At night, however, the spiked semi-circle glowered like a the skull-frill of a monstrous dinosaur. In his mind, Davy could picture the dead tree in the warm light of a summer day, but now in the dark, it had changed into a threatening mass, something with a life of its own. The boy veered away from it, moving right off the pathway and into a closely-planted section of pines.
Without warning, the wind came gusting between the trunks again, more ferociously than before. It whipped at Davy's hood and he raised a hand to snatch the draw-strings. Uncle Jack's watch was still held tight in one small fist.
He felt his way between the trees until he came to a dead end where the rubbery rhododendrons crowded together to bar any progress. Immediately a sensation of being trapped in the barwood swamped him. It was as if the bushes had eased themselves, roots and all, out from the edges and right across the track. Davy's breath locked in his throat and he backed away again as he had done when he'd seen the juniper branch beckon to him. He turned, groping his way in the dark, every nerve now jittering with the awareness of the motion of the forest, mentally conjuring up dread movement behind him where the bushes were thickest. He banged his shoulder against a tree, swerved to the right and reached an open space where he stopped, panting for breath.
And in that moment, he knew he was not alone. He did not know how he knew. Yet suddenly, something in the dark had changed and that change had been picked up on an instinctive level, received by wire-taut senses, gathered and sent to his brain along jangling nerves. He was in the dark, among the night-strange trees and there was something there with him. He froze.
Up above him the wind shrieked through the icy needles and far off the two trunks screamed frictive protest. A shivery fear tingled up and down the bones between his shoulderblades. Davy swung his head from side to side, beginning to panic, wondering which way he should go, not even sure now of how to get back, in the dark, to the safety of the privet hedge crawlway.
Then something came crashing out of the dark towards him.
It happened so suddenly that he didn't have time to think.
All he saw was a black shape, blacker even than the trees over his head. He'd been standing there swinging his wide-eyes from left to right when the movement had flickered in peripheral vision. His neck had jerked round towards it so fast he felt a painful wrench in the neck muscle under his jaw. Ahead of him, between the trees, but high up from the ground, there was a loud crash as something leapt from one trunk to land on another with a thump strong enough to shiver the roots. At that very moment, Davy heard the grunting sound, a noise so hard and deep and fearsome that he simply turned and ran. It was the kind of sound a dinosaur would make in the dark of the forest. The noise of something that would open preposterous jaws lined with curving serrated teeth and snatch a small boy from the ground and snap him in two with one savage crunch.
In that instant, he heard the voice in his head.
"Get you. Catch you."
It was like a creak of wood against wood, the rasp of stone on stone. It was a voice so cold and so deadly it sent wild fear sizzling down his back.
"Catch you kill you, catch you eat you." The voice in his head jabbered in malignant glee.
Davy took off. He ran like a startled rabbit, jinking past the jagged saw-tooth trunk of an old pine he scooted along the track, legs pumping fast, lungs bellowing air.
Behind, high and off to the right, the thing smashed through foliage, hit another trunk with a smack and wrenched a small branch loose in its passing. Davy heard the scrabble of claws on bark and a rip-tide of terror surged through him. He opened his mouth to let out a scream, but all he managed was a whimper. His uncle's watch was still clutched in a death-grip in his hand as he blundered through the trailing strands of brittle bindweed, while all the time the dreadful voice was screeching in his mind.
Something hit the trunk above his left shoulder and Davy immediately dodged to the right. As he did so, his foot snagged on a root just at the edge of the depression where the tree had blown down and the boy went sprawling headlong. He saw the dip yawn in front of him. His left hand went out in a reflex action. The ground fell away from him and he felt his body twist as his legs swung up and over. The spiked branches in the gloom of the hole were waiting to impale him and he could do nothing as he flipped in the air towards them.
Then something hit him a shocking blow on the shoulder. The ground, only inches from his face, swung away from him with dizzying speed. He felt himself thrown upwards and something under his shoulder-blade ripped with an actual tearing sound and a searing bolt of pain arced across his back.
Again the boy's mouth opened as the hurt twisted through him. His eyes were still wide open, but the dark world of the trees whirled and spun. His shin scraped across rough bark and scored a flare from knee to instep. The grip on his shoulder was so enormous that he couldn't breathe and the big scream boiling up from deep inside simply came out in a burbling wheeze.
In a matter of seconds, the boy was up in the canopy of the pines, hauled and jolted along as whatever had grabbed him leapt from trunk to trunk at bewildering speed. Davy could smell the noisome stench which surrounded him and he could hear the guttural mindless snuffling of the creature every time it flexed itself for the next leap. Needles tore at his face and twigs poked at his eyes. By the time he reached the end of the line of trees on Stockyard Street, Davy was barely conscious. He felt himself drawn upwards, even higher than before. Out on the road a car's headlamps flickered briefly, though the sound of its engine was just a low drone, almost drowned out by the now-sluggish thudding of blood in the boy's temples. Whatever held him gripped him harder still and he felt the last of his breath expelled from his lungs. Little green lights sparkled in front of his eyes and then everything faded away to complete darkness.
The thing that had snatched the small boy in the belt of trees did not pause. Using the trees and the darkened sides of buildings as its own skyway, it skirted the low land on Rough Drain until it crossed Castlebank Street over the old spur line rail-bridge and disappeared into the high warren of deserted sheds in the shadow of the rock where the castle perched.
-------
Lorna was wrapped against the cold in a thick wool jacket and a knitted Tam O'Shanter hat with a big red pom-pom. It made her look more childlike and innocent and the paleness of her skin made her eyes huge and luminous, but the pinched, fearful tightness of her face contradicted the illusion of youth.
"Ready?" Jack asked, and she nodded, not trusting herself to say anything. She was so frightened she thought she might be sick.
When they had discussed the possibility, in the cold light of day, she had readily agreed. It was a long shot and she knew that Jack knew it too, but at least it was a shot. Lorna had been willing, almost desperate to do something, anything that might rid her of the terrible visions that were ripping her apart. But now, in the cold dark of night, as she eased herself into the passenger seat, the slumbering fear in the pit of her belly had woken up and was twisting and writhing like a rat in a corner.
It had seemed simple then. Jack had wanted to use her as a direction finder, some kind of psychic sonar. That's how he'd described it and she'd laughed then, a girl from a farm on the edge of a village in the back of beyond, picturing herself with a dish aerial on her head, trying to pinpoint a source. The pictures, he'd explained, were no use to them, because Lorna didn't know enough of the town, not the way Jack knew it after a childhood spend exploring every alley and shack. She'd laughed then, but she was not laughing now. Even before he'd arrived, the cold twist of fear had started to roil in her stomach and she could not fight it.
"We'll just drive around," he'd said. "If you get anything, anything at all, let me know, and we'll try to find it."
She'd agreed to that. "And don't worry," he'd told her. "You'll be with me all the time, and you'll be in the car. If we can find it, then I'll call up the cavalry."
Lorna hadn't worried then. As long as she was with this man, she was safe. When she'd collapsed into his arms, the sense of sureness and strength and honesty had come radiating out from him. Behind it, as before, she felt the bleak empty space that had not been filled, had not healed over, since the deaths of his daughter and his wife, but in that moment she'd known that she could trust him implicitly. Whatever faultline had opened in her mind and let in the nightmare visions of terrible death, had also allowed another perception. For some strange reason, she felt closer to Jack Fallon than to any other person. That thought had warmed her, but not enough to douse the embers of fear.
Now despite the closeness, despite his protective presence, she was dreadfully scared, though she tried to hide it. She nodded and he started the engine and they pulled away from the house. Neither of them heard the muted ringing of the phone in the empty house.
He drove up the slope of Clydeshore Avenue and down the run towards the old bridge, both of them peering through the windscreen at the fine salting of frozen mist which rolled and tumbled in the headlamp beams. He slowed down at the turn and was about to pull out when Lorna cried out so loudly his foot automatically stamped on the brake pedal and the car fishtailed right across the junction. Jack swung the wheel, guiding the nose into the skid, found purchase and eased it to the far side and slowed to a stop. Lorna was thrown right back in her seat. In the wan orange light he could see the pallor of her face. Her eyes were wide and staring, both hands up at her face with her fingernails dug into her cheeks and she was moaning incoherently.
He reached over to her and grasped her shoulder. Under his fingers he could feel the tuning-fork vibration that told him every muscle in her body had locked in tension.
"What's wrong," he asked, shaking her almost roughly.
She opened her mouth and he thought she was about to speak, but all that came out was a low moan.
"Come on Lorna," he said, more urgently. He shook her again, even more strongly. Her head rocked back against the headrest, and a lock of hair which had been tucked under the rim of her hat fell down over her eye. She gasped, then started hauling breath in, like an exhausted swimmer who's battled an undertow to reach the surface.
"What is it?" Jack demanded, his voice now loud.
"Catch you kill you, catch you eat you," Lorna jabbered, the words tumbling over each other in a rush. It didn't even sound like her voice, not the sing-song highland lilt that gave her the air of innocence. Her tone had dropped to a harsh rasp, almost a growl. Jack felt a chill crackle through him.
He took both her shoulders in each hand, leaning right across the seat and grabbed her tightly, pulling her roughly back and forth. Her eyes were staring straight ahead, and her pupils were so wide they were like blind, black pools. Her breath was rasping in her throat, so fast it sounded like a dog panting. He pushed her hard against the back of the seat, slamming her roughly against the fabric. It seemed to work. Lorna blinked twice. Her breath caught in her throat and then she let out a shuddery wail. Jack pulled her in towards him and held on to her as she shivered against his chest, mewling continuously. He rocked her, the way he had soothed Julie when she'd been teething, waiting until the spasms passed, then finally pushed her back. Her face was still deathly pale, making the freckles on the bridge of her nose stand out like sepia ink-blots, but her vision was back. She knew where she was.
"It's out again," she said, with difficulty. Her voice was cracked and uneven.
"What happened?" Jack asked simply.
"It came down from the trees," she said. "I could hear its thoughts. There was a boy. It was telling me what it was going to do."
She paused, seeming to cast around, looking for the right word. "No. It was telling me and it was telling him. Oh, it's evil. It's like a disease in your head. It wanted the boy to be frightened. It was leaping from tree to tree, jumping through the branches. It moves so fast. It came rushing down and took the boy. Oh, Jack, I could feel his fear, it was like glass inside me. He didn't have time to scream."
"Where was it?"
Lorna shook her head.
"Trees. That's all I could see. I don't know where. It took the boy up into the trees and carried him along the branches. It's dark in there."
Jack was now beyond any semblance of disbelief.
"What in Christ's sake is a kid doing out in the dark? Eh? Do the stupid bloody parents in this town have no fucking idea?" He felt the hot and futile anger rise inside him again in the certain knowledge that another child was dead.
"It's still moving," Lorna butted in. "It's gone beyond the trees. It crossed over on a bridge and then up a wall, away from the light."
"Where, for Christ's sake?" Jack demanded, voice too loud.
She shook her head.
"It wants me to see, but I don't know where. I think it's a railway bridge, but it's too dark."
She sat back, hands over her eyes, concentrating. She held her pose for several seconds, then jerked up.
"The boy. He's still alive. Oh, but he's hurt. It still has him, but he's broken something. He's so small."
Her eyes flicked open.
"I can sense the boy, Jack. There's something wrong here. It's important, but I don't know what it is." Lorna's voice rose higher. "The boy is special to it, but I don't know why. I can feel it laughing. It's like poison."
"Just as long as we find out where," he told her. "That's what we need to know."