She could sense it like the sub-audible chitter of bats, a tingling whisper felt, rather than heard, at the base of her skull where the messages from her brain shunted down the length of her spine. It was like the stealthy scrape of chitinous nails on stone, the rustle of dry winter leaves on a forest floor.
Jack had eased the car up Kirk Street and then along past the station, following the line of the tracks as far as the old warehouses, using his own mental map of the places where the killer, the Shrike, had struck.
He stopped and turned the car around just past the old green door of the derelict building, recalling for himself the dull sense of hopelessness when they'd found the boy's boot lying face down on the cluttered treads. When the lights swung across the crumbling facade, they picked out the words Jack had seen in the dream when a piece of the pattern had locked in place: West Highland Railway Company. Beside him, Lorna let her breath out sharply.
"I saw it here," she said flatly. "That's where it took the boy. It was using a woman then, I think." She shuddered, lips pursed tight. "But it's not there now. I can feel the echo. Pain and hurt and fear."
He reached across and gripped her forearm in a silent gesture. The shiver subsided.
"Not here," she said. "I have to get away from this."
Beyond the warehouse, on the other side of the river, the twin stacks of the furnace chimneys loomed up into the night. Whoever or whatever had killed Neil Kennedy must have crossed the water on the railway bridge. He tried to picture it in his head, a man or a woman dragging the flopped body of a small boy, feet smacking up and down on the sleepers, then the strange, preposterous climb on the bare face of the flue, and the grotesque impalement on the twisted lightning rods.
Why had it happened? There was no answer to that. There was no semblance of reason.
Jack spun the wheel and retraced his route to the junction of Strathleven Street where the old library stood on the corner. Overhead, the sky was black, but the clouds beating in from the west on the quickening wind had obscured the stars completely. There was a change in the air since the afternoon, an electric tingle of a gathering winter storm. The spindrift of ice was beginning to change to flakes of snow, blown horizontal and spiralling in the turbulence round the corners of dark buildings. Jack thumbed the radio to call in his position, but all he got was a burst of static.
"Where now?"
Lorna shrugged, a small movement he didn't see, but felt nonetheless.
He followed the road past the entrance to the commercial estate where the new do-it-yourself stores and garden centres crowded up against the old factory buildings which were being renovated to compete for business.
"That's where it got the boys," he told her.
She swivelled in her seat and the light from the street lamps reflected back at him from her eyes as she looked past him.
"It came across the roof," she said, as if picturing the scene again in her head. "Down through the hole. I didn't know it was a roof, not then."
"But we all know now," Jack said. "Don't blame yourself. Nobody knows anything. The town's gone crazy." He clamped his free hand on her arm again and she gripped his fingers. Her own hand felt soft and warm and somehow welcome.
"Anything yet?" he asked.
"Closer," Lorna muttered. "It's waiting somewhere, and it knows we're coming. I'm sure. But I don't know where. Keep going this way."
"How do you do it? What does it feel like?"
"Like sickness. As if it's touching inside me as well. I don't know why it picked me. It knows something, something bad, but it's hiding at from me. That's the feeling I get. Like being pawed by something filthy."
He kept travelling west, past the line of scraggle-willows which staggered unevenly on the banks of the small stream bordering the Rough Drain before taking a twist and disappearing into the overgrown acres of withered hogweed and tangled hawthorn. At the far end, he turned and headed straight south, down the long road which led to the castle, taking it slowly while the wind fluttered the flakes against the screen. The radio coughed twice just then, causing Lorna to jerk back in her seat, but when Jack picked it up again, it only hissed at him.
Castlebank Church loomed on the left, and as they passed, Lorna gripped his fingers tightly.
"What is it?"
"It was there," she said, voice hollow. "But there was badness there before it came. She leaned forward in her seat, looking up at the grey spire of the church, then drew her eyes across the stone to the buttressed sides. "It used the bad there, because it was weak and dirty. Because it was easy."
She drew back, mouth turned down.
"I don't want this," she whispered. "I don't want to feel these things. I don't think I'll ever be clean again."
"You're doing fine. Take it easy now," he said, twisting his hand palm upwards to snare her fingers in his. "We have to find where it's gone, and then it'll stop. That's a promise."
She gave a small nod, hardly a movement in the dark of the car, and he moved on, right down the length of the road towards where the volcanic rock hunched like a sleeping monster on the bank of the firth where the river flowed into the estuary. Far down the water to the west, lightning stuttered and flickered in the squall whooping towards the town.
"This is where Annie Eastwood came," Jack said, prompting. "She fell off up there."
Lorna followed his pointing finger. Up high on the second dome of the rock, she could just make out the shadowy outline of the balustrade wall. She got a faint residual sensation of black despair, a strong and recent echo of bleak emotion, and beneath that, images of violence and terror.
"It's old. There's been badness here too. So much of it, and for so long. The stone is steeped with it, like that terrible house." She closed here eyes and from nowhere came a string of images, men in skins crooning round blazing fires while above them, in wicker cages, things, people, squirmed and screamed in agony as the flames crackled. She saw men in cloaks and with broad swords come running down the stairways cut into the stone, hot with exertion, stinking of fresh blood. She saw skulls on pikes along the parapet, pecked by squabbling crows, mouths agape, sockets blind to the sky. The pictures scuttered in rapid sequence across the forefront of her mind, as if she was remembering something she herself had seen. She blinked, shook her head and drew back.
"Not here," she said. "We have to go back."
Jack said nothing. He reversed, spun the wheel and drove away from the castle. They reached the junction and turned left, slowly cruising towards the oil-rig yard when Lorna gripped his hand so tightly it caused his knuckles to grind together painfully.
Just at that moment, the radio sneezed again. Jack pulled his hand away and grabbed the receiver.
"Fallon here,"
"Jack?" Static hissed and sparked around his name. "John McColl. You'd better..."
"Say again?"
"Your sister," John started, voice fragmenting in the electronic hiss. "You'd better get back. She says your nephew's gone missing."
"She what?" Jack bawled, jamming his foot on the brake.
The radio spluttered and wheezed. John's voice disappeared into it, each word broken up and scattered. Jack opened the car door and got out, walking several yards to get a clearer signal.
"Julia said he went......trees....hurt."
"Forget it John," Jack shouted, trying to overcome the interference. "I'm coming in. Give me three minutes."
He clicked the thing off, jammed it in his pocket and ran back to the car.
"Come on. We have to get to the station. It's my nephew. He's gone missing, I think."
Even while he spoke, the images were whirling around his head. He hoped he'd picked the message up wrongly. The static on the radio had left plenty of gaps, yet Jack knew that something was badly wrong.
He gunned the engine and took off with a shriek as his back tyres spun on the iced road, following the curve where the brick wall of the old woodyard abutted the pavement. He came to the end of the road, turned left again with hardly a glance for traffic, hauled hard on the wheel and sped towards the gaunt black frame of the derelict shipyard. He was doing nearly fifty, just passing the wrought-iron gates when Lorna flew forward, both hands up against her temples and screamed so loudly that Jack almost let go of the wheel.
"Stop. Oh God I see it."
He floored the brake and both of them were thrown forward as the car's nose almost crunched on the road. The tyres whined for several yards before everything ground to a halt.
"What in the name of..." he blurted, but she cut him off.
"There," she barked. "It's in there."
"Where?"
She pointed out of the nearside window.
"There. In that place. It's waiting or us. Oh Jack, I can feel it inside my head."
She rocked back again, hands still pressed to the sides of her head.
"No. Oh please no." The words came tumbling out almost incoherently. "Get you out of my mind."
"Jesus, Lorna, I have to get back to the station," Jack started, but quick as a striking snake, she turned and shot out her hand and grabbed his in a fierce grip.
"No. It is showing me what it has. The boy is in there, and he's alive. He's dreadfully hurt, but it hasn't killed him. He's saved him to bring you here."
She turned right towards him, eyes incredibly wide.
"That's what it wanted. It wanted you to come. I don't know why, but it wants you."
"But David's gone missing," Jack protested, but before the words were even out of his mouth, it dawned on him. "It's got him?"
She nodded, face slack.
"Oh sweet mother of Christ," Jack spat. He grabbed the radio again, thumbed the switch, and started bawling into it. The flare of static hissed around them. Way to the west, but closer than before, the lightning danced in the clouds. He slammed the receiver down, while the images spun and swooped in his mind. David out in the snow. Julia in her bathrobe, a towel over her shoulder as she went up for her bath. Then from nowhere, little Julie's smiling face turning towards him as her mother spun her round on a summer's day. He tried to think past the images, tried to banish them so he could think.
"I can't get through," he finally said. "I need back-up."
"No time," she said. "The boy needs help."
She closed her eyes and for the first time, she deliberately thought outwards, reaching beyond herself instead of passively waiting for the terrible images to flood her senses.
Beyond the gates, the air was different, somehow thicker, murky. She concentrated harder, stretching her touch beyond the gates and through the gaunt corrugated iron sides of the huge empty building. She could feel the bleakness, the blackness, like a poison cloud.
"It's high," she whispered. "Up in the dark. It likes the pain, feeds on that. I can feel its hunger and emptiness. It is not like us, Jack, not like people. It's just evil. Bad and corrupted."
She opened her eyes again.
"It's waiting."
Jack let out his breath and the indecision vanished.
"Right. I'm going in there. You keep trying the radio and tell them we're at Castlebank Yard. Tell them I'm going after it, and for Christ's sake tell them to send everything they've got round here."
"I should come with you," she said, though the very thought of going into the empty shipyard appalled her.
"No. If it's in there, I'll find it. If Davy's there, I have to get him out. I'm putting all my faith in you, so you have to trust me."
He reached into the glove compartment and rummaged until he found the flashlight.
"Give it five minutes. If you can't raise them, get round to the station and tell John McColl what's happening."
"But I can't drive."
"Oh great," Jack said harshly. "Bloody fantastic."
"I'm sorry. I just never learned."
"Forget it. Just stay in the car. Keep the doors locked and keep trying the radio." He opened the door and turned to get out when she reached forward quickly and took him by the lapel of his jacket, levering herself upwards to kiss him quickly, pressing her lips hard against his cheek. As soon as she did that, a picture of Julie's smiling face flashed in front of his eyes then faded away slowly. He eased himself away, got out and closed the door.
The huge gates towered three times the height of a man, rimed with frost and on the sides of the iron spars, the thicker snow had been glued by the wind. The air was freezing cold and the gusts whined through the barbed wire tangles fixed to the top of the wall. Far-off thunder rumbled as the storm powered up, like a big animal looking for a quiet place to settle. The gates were locked, but there was enough play in the padlock chain to allow Jack to push them inward and squeeze through the gap. They groaned in rusty protest, an eerie, almost human sound, then clanged back together. He walked forward, into the shadow of the towering black building. The light from the nearest street-lamp was cut off by the outside wall and he was left alone in the dark. He jabbed the flashlight button and a weak cone of light spread out in front of him. There were no other footprints in the dirty snow but his own.
Back in the car, Lorna flicked the radio button on and off, but there was no coherent sound over the electronic froth. All of her senses were wound up to sizzling tension, and the strange other sense was like a scream inside her head. She had reached for the thing and she had touched it with that part of her mind.
And it had laughed at her.
It was hunched there in the dark, still as stone, not far from where the boy hung from a hook on the wall, small feet dangling and lifeless. The sense of deep pain radiated out from the frail form, but dulled by unconsciousness, body pain which juddered along damaged nerves and tried to scream messages at a brain which had closed itself off.
The black thing had sensed her own self and had let her approach, showing her images of blood and rot, teasing her with its foul mirth.
Again she saw the fire in Murroch Road, saw the shadowy thing move among the smoke, clutching the little bundle. She heard her own voice mimicked with foul sarcasm: Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home.
It turned its thoughts and she saw the baby in the pram, jolted awake by the violent blow, and smelled the fetid odour wafting in the air. Sleepy baby eyes swivelled and saw the strange shadow, then a bewildered, uncomprehending innocent mind was touched by the filth of its thought and hunger. Instinctive panic welled inside and a scream bubbled up.
Too late. Too late. The scream was cut off.
...And Lorna was in Memorial Park when Annie Eastwood's dead daughter came out from the shadows of the rhododendrons and glided forward to embrace her mother, to squeeze her mother, to ooze inside and invade.
She blinked her eyes, breath caught in her throat and the image winked out.
It was showing her. The thing that had come into the world in the back room of an old house where bad things had been done down the decades, down the generations, was letting her in on its secret.
It was mocking her, showing her how it made people do the terrible things that had ripped her from sleep at night, or even slammed into her consciousness while awake, and she knew she had been right all along. This thing was not human and it was utterly evil. It could take people and get inside them and corrupt them for its own baleful use.
She thought of Jack walking into the dark and deserted shipyard where the gantries and stairwells climbed in a web of tangled metal to the soaring roofs and she realised he could not face this thing on his own. He did not even know what manner of thing he was hunting, did not know that he was the prey.
He would not sense it. It would come down from the heights where it sat like a black gargoyle. It would come for him with such speed he would have no time to react.
And then it would take him.
Horror flooded her at the thought of the creature inside Jack, changing him, forcing him to do obscene things, making him sin again and again, and finally twisting his mind and forcing him to the ultimate degradation.
She reached for the handle and pulled the catch. Nothing happened. She'd locked the door as instructed when he'd left. Quickly Lorna flipped up the button and wrenched the door open. Cold air swooped in, bringing a flurry of snowflakes. She got out, closed the door behind her, and crossed to the gate. Using all of her strength, she managed to move them forward the distance necessary to part them then shoved her way into the shipyard grounds. As soon as she stepped beyond the protection of the wall and the street light as Jack had done only minutes before, she heard the cold chuckle of laughter inside her head. It was thick and oily and filled with vicious glee.
A primitive fear opened inside her and Lorna thought she was going to be sick.
-------
Jack got in through a small door on the side of the vast shed, like the entrance to a goblin's cave on the side of a mountain. He had to brace his foot against the metal wall and heave hard before it creaked open on rust-frozen hinges, and then suddenly it swung back against the surface with a deep booming sound which reverberated and echoed around the man-made cavern.
He stepped in while the noise slowly diminished, a vast and fading drum beat, angling the flashlight in front of him and cursing himself for not replacing the batteries after the last night's search. As soon as he was inside the shed, where great ships had been conceived and built and launched down the slips into the tidal basin, the sharp wind was cut off. A few flakes of snow eddied in beside him and sparkled in the feeble light. Behind him the door slowly swung to and fro in the gusts of wind.
Inside it was deeply dark, a monstrous hollow place. The torchlight picked out a length of chain, each link thick as a man's chest, scaled with rust, coiled like a metal anaconda. Jack was not given to flights of fancy, and his mind was on finding the Davy - his belief in Lorna's strange perception was now total - but when the wind through the doorway ruffled the rust-flakes on the hauling chain, for one brief moment he thought it had moved and his heart kicked against his chest so hard it hurt.
He swung the light towards the heavy coils, forcing his breath to calm down, damning himself for an idiot scared of the dark. Jack walked past the massive links, still creepily wary lest the thing did actually move (and if it did, oh what then?) and moved deeper into the vast space of the building shed.
The air smelt thick and oily, and underlaid by other smells. Somebody had lit a fire in here some time ago, off in a corner somewhere and the scent of charcoal and burned wood mixed with the other odours. Dusty rust, flaking paint, rat droppings. Bird shit and birds feathers, the throat clogging smell of a busy winter roost. Jack walked on past a massive block of old machinery and a stack of acetylene cylinders, giant ant cocoons scattered in a heap.
The empty place was not silent. The wind was rasping grains of ice against the high roof and the westward side of the building, scraping the corrugated metal with the sound of shingle on a deserted beach. Far off to the left, where the big hangar doors were wedged shut, a light chain dangling from a crossbeam clanged like a cracked bell against a stanchion. Somewhere close by, a rodent made a sound like a squeaky shoe then pattered away unseen. Up above, out of sight, nervous starlings twittered and chirruped. He took a step forward and his foot kicked against an old rivet which tinkled across the oily floor and struck an empty paint-tin with a hollow clunk. Beyond the perimeter fence, outside the yard altogether, the screech of tortured metal in the fabrication plant shivered the walls. The men who worked round the clock there on the new rig laboured on, unaware of the drama in the deserted shipyard.
The place was empty, but it was alive with odd noises and unseen life.
Somewhere in here, the killer had Davy. It was waiting for him. Lorna had said it would be high, though he already knew that. Somewhere, he knew, there would be a stairway, something the old shipwrights had used when they built up the immense hulls of the craft. He'd have to climb again, and the thought twisted at him. But he'd climbed the chimney, re-living his own nightmares, and that was just to find the emaciated, torn bodies of the missing children. If Davy was up there - and he knew he was - he'd have to grit his teeth and find him, no matter how high he had to go.
He followed close to the wall, skirting an old milling machine and a pile of wooden boxes mouldering under a torn tarpaulin when a clatter of noise erupted far overhead. Something solid hit one of the steel spars with such force it sent a vibration right down the framework and into the ground. Up in the dark, the starlings screeched in panic. They took off, flying blind, so many of them in flight that their wings roared in the air, like a predator bursting from cover. Jack stopped, startled again. He could hear them, fluttering and screeching up there, then there was a cascade of noise, a series of hard drumbeats. For a moment, Jack was puzzled, then he realised what had happened. The little birds were crashing into the sheet metal sides of the shed. They were so terrified, they were flying in the dark, unable to navigate. On the east side, a dirt-encrusted array of skylights showed a flicker of lightning and a cloud of birds fastened on the brief light. They smashed against the glass, punching into the thick panes, killing themselves as they darted for freedom.
Another loud boom spanged the air and the birds started to fall. Jack jerked back as one of them hit him on the shoulder with surprising force, a bunch of meat and feathers. The bird made a little squawking sound as the air was driven out of its tiny lungs, but it was already dead. Another one fell just two feet away, bunching, a puff of feathers in the dim light, then another and another, bird rain, drumming on the empty cans and steel benches.
Way up in the darkness a hellish screech ripped the air. Something crashed against the roof, fast and hard and powerful. The noise of the starlings was cut off instantly. Whatever was up there, jarring against spar and beam was moving fast, crossing the whole width of the shipyard shed. Jack felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle in unison. When the noise reached for far side, in a matter of seconds, the birds started to fall again, but not in ones and twos as before. This time the flock, thousands of them huddled for shelter on every cross-tie, came dropping, stone dead, to the ground. They hit off Jack's head, smacked against his chest. One struck his wrist and knocked the flashlight right out of his hand. It landed on its face, glass tinkling, then winked out. He stood in the darkness, all alone while around him the tiny bodies of birds thudded as they hit until finally the downpour ended. He warily walked forward, feeling his way with hands in front of him, while his feet could not avoid crushing the soft little bodies underfoot. He found the torch and shook it until the batteries made enough contact to coax a wan light.
He could not turn back, despite the appalling sense of wrongness that shivered through him at the thought of the cataract of dead birds. This was something different, something unexpected and alien. Even at that moment, no matter what he'd thought before, he was still really expecting to find a man in the vast hangar; a crazy man, obsessed or possessed. What kind of thing could have scuttled across the girders and wiped out the winter flock of starlings, he could not comprehend. It could not have been human. He was in here, alone, trying to find that thing. Had it not been for the certainty that Davy was in here with it too, he might have turned back and ran.
He forced himself forward until he came to the cats-cradle of stairwalks set onto the far wall. His knuckle rapped against the bannister and a small pain flared in the bone. The torchlight was all but useless, but it was all he had. He angled the faint beam upwards, but it could penetrate no further than the first turn. Beyond that was pure blackness. The shivery fingers were still crawling down from the nape of his neck, spiders down his spine, but he ignored them as best as he could, put a foot on the first tread, pointing the flashlight ahead of him, and began to climb. He reached the turn and something happened to the air. It was as if it had suddenly become charged, somehow more solid than before. He paused, taking a deep breath, and a sickening scent of rot enveloped him. His throat clamped against it, cutting off the reflexive urge to vomit. This was worse than the bodies in the chimney, more putrid than mere fleshly decay. It was a stench of utter foulness. He tried to hold his breath, realised the futility of that, and carried on. The reek abraded the soft membranes in his throat and his nose and made his eyes water glassily. Still he kept climbing.
And far overhead, he heard something chuckle in the dark. It was a sound so coldly gleeful that he actually felt the skin on his shoulders pucker and cringe. It was waiting for him.
"Bastard," he hissed.
Jack reached the first landing and swivelled left, gripping the rusty bannister with his free hand. The torchlight was fading fast to a rosy glow and as he turned, the connection failed and the light went off. He shook the thing again, trying to worry the batteries together when he heard a faint noise behind him. He spun, almost losing balance, and a hand clamped round his elbow. Huge fright exploded in the pit of his stomach. He jerked back, raising the heavy torch to slam it against the thing when Lorna said:
"It's only me."
Jack had to throw himself backwards to prevent the flashlight cracking her skull. A surge of cold relief flooded through him, followed by hot anger and dismay. His legs suddenly felt weak.
"Jesus god, you scared the crap out of me," he finally managed to say.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to," she said, reaching out to take him by the elbow again.
"I thought I told you to stay with the car?"
"I couldn't. The radio isn't working and you can't find the boy by yourself. I can."
"No," he said, shaking his head, though she couldn't see the motion. "There's something in here. It's too dangerous."
"I know it's here. It's up there," she said. He knew she was pointing in the darkness. "It's waiting for you."
"And that's all the more reason for you to be out of here. I haven't the time to keep an eye on you. Now will you get back to the car and let me get on with this?"
"No Jack. You won't find the boy, and even if you did, you can't get him out. Not with that thing in here. I can find him and get him out if you can keep it away."
He stood in silence for a moment, thinking. It was wrong, he knew. It went against everything he was to allow the girl to stay in the black shipyard shed while the thing (not a man) that killed children and could slaughter a flock of birds in an instant was somewhere up in the high gantries lying in ambush, waiting for him to climb to it. Yet she was right. It had brought Davy here as bait to lure Jack inside. All that mattered was getting the boy out of here, and it would surely try to stop him. But if he could deal with the killer Lorna might somehow get Davy to safety. He shrugged and reached for her hand.
"Right, but stay close to me," he whispered. "Really close."
He pulled her towards him and she put a hand around his waist, brought him close and pressed herself to him in a spontaneous gesture of solidarity. In the brief contact, he could sense her tension and fear and he wondered at her courage in coming into this metal cavern in the dark to face the thing that had driven her close to madness since the night Marta Herkik had died.
"Come on," Lorna said. "We have to climb."
Very carefully, they followed the narrow metal staircase, level by level until they came to the crosswalk close to the top of the hangar. Above them, the dirty row of skylight windows flickered in gauzy rectangles as the sheet lightning of the approaching storm lit the sky.
"Where now?" Jack asked.
"Up further. He's close, and so is the other. It's waiting."
"Well, I'll be ready for him, don't you worry." Jack said, though he wasn't sure he was ready and his intestines felt knotted with anxiety. He groped around, hoping to find another flight of steps, but there were none. Instead, in the dark, he fumbled until his fingers clamped around the first cold ring of a ladder set against the wall. His heart sank.
"You wait here," he told Lorna.
"No. I have to come with you," she protested, but he put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
"No chance. Two of us on a ladder gives us no room to manoeuvre." He thought of the birds flopping in their hundreds, the powerful smack of a solid form hitting the corrugated walls. "If anything comes up, or down, then we're stuck. You wait here. I'll find him and bring him down, and then we can take care of the whatever else happens."
Lorna said nothing. Jack turned and started to climb, biting down the looping vertigo, holding tight to the rungs. There were eighteen steps in all to the first catwalk. He counted them all, through gritted teeth, and at the top he gingerly stepped out onto the scaffolding planks. He followed the skyway, gripping the bannister carefully, shuffling his feet so as to maintain contact with the beams until the next ladder which would take him almost to roof level. Men had walked and worked here, when he'd been a boy, welding and rivetting the mighty hulls of ships which still sailed the Atlantic. They'd worked in the light, not in this gloom. He climbed the narrow ladder slowly, feeling the sides of the building vibrate under the onslaught of the west wind against the bare wall until he reached the final level just under the crossbeams.
He paused to get his breath back and something moved above him close to the slant of the roof. Even in the dark he could make out the quick, scuttling motion. Lightning flashed again and he got a glimpse of a shape scrambling with spiderlike speed on the metal ties. It spun on one long limb, grabbed a spar, flipped over and landed with a violent thump which jolted the wooden planks under Jack's feet and almost tumbled him over the edge of the narrow gangway. He clenched the safety barrier with both hands, head and chest leaning out into the void. He couldn't tell how high he was and the blackness below looked as if it went down and down forever.
Forty days and forty nights.
The words came in a whispery scrape inside his head. Even as he gripped the rail, white knuckled, centre of gravity perilously close to the point of no return, a part of his mind wondered where the phrase had sprung from.
And they fell from the light to the outermost darkness where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The thought scrabbled on the inside of his skull, a hideous invasive abrasion.
"What on earth..." he blurted aloud, heaving himself back from the edge.
Not of earth, fool.
Ahead of him, in the dark, a deeper darkness, a pure blackness so profound it seemed to suck the rest of the gloom in to itself, hunched just above head height. A sensation of dreadful cold and awesome malice radiated out from it, a chilling aura which made the skin of his scalp crawl.
Down below, Lorna called up, her voice echoing in clean, clear tones from the walls.
"Be careful, Jack. He's close. He's coming."
"Too late," he thought, holding himself dead still.
Too late, too late, the voice in his head chanted, and then the voice changed, became a grating chuckle that was more like the growl of a hungry animal than a laugh.
"Who are you?" Jack thought, or asked, although he did not quite know which. He jammed his thumb hard on the button on the flashlight, willing the thing to work, but nothing happened. The darkness, and the oppressive malevolence flowed over him.
I am the other. I am the spirit. I am that which is Eseroth. I am what AM.
"Where's the boy?" Jack asked, this time aloud, and all the time wondering why he was asking, why he was perched up on the skyway, talking to a shadow.
In the blackness, two eyes flicked open with an audible click. Poisonous orange orbs swivelled towards Jack and speared him with a blind gaze. He felt the blind-sight crawl over him like the touch of a leper.
Come into my parlour, little man. Come eat of the flesh and drink of the blood and do this in memory of me.
"Go take a flying fuck to yourself," Jack bawled back at the eyes, anger suddenly sparking hot enough to wrestle the fear. Lightning stuttered stroboscopically along the line of skylights and the eyelids closed with a meaty slap. The flickering luminescence danced for several seconds and for that time, the weird greenish light illuminated the central part of the huge shed, throwing harsh shadows from the cross-hatched girders against the walls. Jack blinked against the sudden glare and inside his head a blare of pain stabbed from temple to temple. Through blurred vision, he saw a dark shape scuttle back away from him.
"Light," he whispered to himself as the alien other pain faded. Realisation sparked in a duplication of the lightning. "It needs the dark." He didn't even realise he had stopped thinking of this killer as he.
He turned back along the gangway, past the ladder he'd climbed, feeling his way carefully, quickly as he could. The walkway turned abruptly at the corner and followed the far wall. He called Davy's name, hearing the word ricochet from wall to bullwark, breaking up on the high girders. The wind shrieked through the holes in the thin steel plate and rattled the corners of the roof in a sudden cacophony of sound which reverberated round the hangar.
"David! Can you speak to me? It's Uncle Jack."
The wind whooped in response. "If you can hear me, Davy, make a noise."
"You're close Jack," Lorna's voice soared up. "He's near to you."
The metal plates clanged together as the wind slammed against the west wall. The sound faded away, then Lorna's voice ripped through the dark.
"Move," she shrieked. "Jack it's coming!"
He heard it behind him. Something clattered across the girders, each contact causing them to ring out like gongs. It came from the left, swung straight to the right, leaping an impossible twenty feet, slammed against the wall behind him. Jack started to turn, disoriented in the dark.
Just out of the corner of his eye, he saw the dark move with the speed of a striking snake and land with a jarring thump on the platform just ahead of him. In the corner the thing merged with the shadows, and he only had a fleeting impression of something squat, limbs elongated and oddly jointed, blacker than coal. Chittering sounds crackled in his ears and then the scrapy voice came scratching into his mind.
And he took him to a high place and showed him all that lay before him and offered it all, if he would fall down on his knees and adore him.
The words grated with sly menace. Jack stood his ground, trying to make out the shape squatting on the walkway.
All of this, it rasped, like stone grinding on stone. A picture flashed into Jack's head, completely unbidden. Julie's face wavered just in front of his own, beside her mother. They were staring at him oddly. Completely bewildered, Jack opened his mouth and closed it again.
They were covered in blood. He could see the great jagged shard of glass poking out from the front of Julia's dress, and the red river blurted down the flowery pattern, making it glisten slickly. Rae's eyes were wide open and glaring.
"You should have been there, Jack," she said, though her voice had that same scratchy undergrowth rustle he'd heard before.
"But you can come with us now," she said and then she smiled, but it was not her smile, not the lazy smile of gentle humour he remembered. It stretched into a leering, hungry grin. She reached out her hand. Julie did the same, her small blood-slathered fingers splayed out. Despite the sudden wave of horror and unbalancing loathing that surged inside him, Jack felt himself reach. He took a step forward, felt the edge of the parapet under his sole and reflexively snatched for the safety bannister. His hand groped in the air, clenched on nothing. He felt himself begin to topple and instinct took over. The grotesque wavery vision winked out. In a panic, he swung his hand to the side, found a stanchion and grabbed at it just in time.
Raucous laughter yammered in his head.
He pulled himself back to the platform, gasping for breath.
"Bastard," he hissed, turning round to face the squat thing, and just then, another image was forced into his mind.
He saw Davy hanging on the side of a wall, his little body twisted to the side, eyes glazed and drying, a trickle of saliva and blood dripping from his slack mouth. Beneath him, Lorna Breck was lying spreadeagled and naked on the perforated metal of the skywalk. Her head was thrown back and her legs splayed while between them, the wizened figure of Michael O'Day nuzzled and slobbered. He could see her writhing, mouth agape, making little jerking motions. Revulsion squeezed at him. He closed his eyes, wishing the sight away, but it persisted, dancing at the forefront of thought. O'Day lifted his head up and his eyes locked on Jack's own. His emaciated face was skull-like and his skin was peeling. His mouth was open showing two blackened teeth. Blood was smeared round his mouth, and a wet piece of red flesh trembled at the corner of his lip.
Jack shook his head, eyes tightly closed. O'Day began to laugh and he could hear the lecherous, manic madness in it. He pushed away from it.
"No," he bellowed into the dark. "Get out of my head!"
The surge of anger and adrenalin was so powerful that the picture disappeared instantly, leaving him standing on the gangplank, chest heaving, heart pounding.
The force of his anger drove him forward, towards the black shape. It leapt to the left, bounding right over the safety rail, hit a spar which clanged in resonance, spun, tumbled in the air and crashed against the wall behind him. He half turned and something hit him on the back with such enormous force that he was catapulted forward towards the corner of the wall. His cheek hit against a support beam and he heard the bone crumple just under his eye.
Very far off, he heard Lorna scream, then the sound faded away. Little whirling lights danced in front of his eyes and as they began to fade, Jack realised he was losing consciousness. A dreadful sleepy numbness oozed through him. Somewhere in the distance, he heard a series of metallic booms, like sounds heard in a dream. How long he'd lain crumbled on the skywalk, he had no idea, though it could only have been a few seconds while his brain struggled against the creeping lethargy. He rolled over, groaning as his cheek scraped against the floor. As he turned, the flashlight flickered on and at the far edge of the beam, a shape jinked behind a cross-tie.
His vision faded again and he slumped to the floor, fighting the fuzzy clouds of dizziness. A loud noise thudded behind him. He tried to turn, couldn't make the effort and a second crushing blow slammed into his back. A dazzling white light flashed in front of his eyes and a purple afterimage swallowed it and he felt himself falling into complete oblivion.