"She just never came home. Her dinner was in the oven because she'd phoned to say she'd be an hour late getting home. She had a couple of things to do. Buying Christmas presents and wrapping paper. Just to make sure she had something for everybody." All the short sentences came out in brief bursts.
The woman's hands were shaking and her eyes were wide with the glazed and certain look of a mother who has lost a child.
"She's dead, I know she is. Something awful's happened to her. I can feel it." The voice started to break up into a gabble of choking sobs. Helen Lamont waited until they had subsided. Winifred Marsden's husband put his arms tentatively around his wife's shoulder and patted her gently before drawing her close. She turned his head into his shoulder, like a child seeking comfort. He did what he could, but there was no comfort for Winnie Marsden and there was no warmth in her husband's eyes. He was looking into the far distance, seeing his daughter run through the flower beds as a tiny child and overlaid on that picture, in awful stark colours of red and black, he saw her sprawled in some alley or under a hedge, ravaged and ravished and stone cold.
"She always came home, or if she was staying out she'd always call," Winnie said. She was a tall woman with silvering hair that had once been blonde. She wore no make up, or it had been washed away by tears and dabbed off by wet handkerchiefs. Her nose was red and her eyes puffy, but Helen could see the underlying elegance of the woman. Her hands, though shaking, were slender and smooth and her nails long and varnished. Two days ago she'd have turned heads in the mall. Now she was a weeping middle-aged woman with a dreadful knowledge in her eyes and despair eating her from within. She was forty six years old and looked sixty.
"And she did call to say she'd be late?"
"Yes, she did." John Marsden replied. "It was me who answered the phone and Virginia was surprised that I was home. I was early that day." He was a handsome man with wavy brown hair and strong, capable hands, one of which enveloped both his wife's hands when she finished dabbing her eyes. "She said she was going down to the shopping centre for some last minute bits and pieces. She always had a thing about Christmas. Made sure everybody got something, you know."
Helen nodded. "And she never came home."
"That's what we told the police yesterday. Night before yesterday in fact. They should have done something about it then." Helen could see the pressure of anger build up in the man's eyes. He was keeping himself under tight control for his wife's sake, and for his own sake too. "I mean, we knew she was missing. We checked with all her friends, and with Tony."
"Tony?"
"Her boyfriend. They're thinking about getting engaged. We checked with them all, but nobody saw her after she left the office. That's when we called the police, but they said there was nothing they could do."
"Yes, that's right. We have to give it twenty four hours at least unless it's a small child."
"But we knew she was missing, didn't we. We told the police that. She always comes home."
"Yes, I understand."
"Do you?" John Marsden demanded.
"I hope so. But I know I do want to help," Helen said. She did not even feel anger under the focus of the man's brimming emotion. His voice was tight and hissed through clenched teeth and a vein had risen on his temple. It was better for him to vent the pressure now, before something burst.
"It's not her fault, John," Winnie Marsden said placatingly. She turned her eyes on Helen, trying to apologise over the distance between them. "She wasn't there."
"Most young people do turn up, if it's any help," Helen said. "Ninety nine percent of the time they've spent the night at friends or boyfriends or at a party. Honestly, it's true." Helen tried her best but it did not help these people. It was odd, but their certainty that their daughter would have come home no matter what unless she had been physically prevented, was strong enough to convince her that something really had happened to Ginny Marsden. She had sat with many parents before, listened to them telling her how their boy would never run away from home, how their daughter could not possibly consider leaving, and seen them proved wrong. But for some inexplicable reason, this was different.
Virginia Marsden was twenty two years old and worked in a lawyer's office near the Riverside precinct of the city which had been made into a walk-way some years back. She liked to play badminton and had joined an aerobics class. She sang in the choir on high days and holy days and she never forgot a birthday or an anniversary. She was studying business administration at night school and was determined to carve out a real career for herself. She had everything to live for. She loved her parents. She always came home.
Helen knew that when she turned up, if she turned up, then the parents would be stunned and happy and would accept any explanation, no matter what. On the other hand, if she didn't, then the real questions would start and John Marsden would be put through the wringer. Every statement would be calibrated and measured, every photograph would be assessed and evaluated. They would turn him inside out to see if his love for his daughter was just what he said it was, or if it was something more than that, something darker and deeper. He would jump from one hell to another and his wife would see him peeled like an onion, layer by layer.
And the boyfriend would be opened up just the same way, so that he would not know himself and for the rest of his life would always question his motives and he would always wonder if he had done something terrible.
That was if she did not turn up. Police investigations are dreadful diggings into dirt and motive, a necessary function of the protection of life and property.
Helen Lamont hoped the girl would walk through the door. If not, the hell for the Marsdens and those close to them was just beginning to get stoked up.
"So she called just before she left to say she had errands to run?"
"Yes," John Marsden told her. "Christmas shopping. I'm sure that was it. I was watching the news at the time and Winnie was in the kitchen. She said she was going with Celia, I think. The television was on and I missed some of it, but Ginny was in a bit of a hurry, so I just told her we'd put the dinner in the over. It was lasagne."
"Couldn't have been Celia," Winnie said. Her eyes seemed to focus down from their gaze on the far horizon and her slack brow tightened into a frown of concentration. It took some effort. "Really it couldn't."
"Why's that Mrs Marsden?"
"Because Celia's gone on holiday. They wanted Ginny to come along, but she didn't want to go. Said she'd never been away from home for Christmas. I told her, John and I told her that it was fine and she should just go and enjoy herself, because he'd worked so hard this year, but she said she always looked forward to Christmas dinner. That's just how she was. She would never leave without telling us."
Helen filed this for future reference. She'd have to check every friend and acquaintance.
She stayed with the Marsdens for two hours and when she left, she'd a clear picture of their daughter, plus a good colour print taken only a month or so before. It showed a slim girl, quite tall and with blonde, wavy hair tumbling down to her shoulders. She had a long dark coat that came almost to her ankles, the very coat she had been wearing two days ago when she left for work. She had her mother's elegant looks, the same high-cheeked bone structure. The difference was in the eyes. Ginny's expression was bright and alert, right on the cusp of a smile as she focused back at the camera. Helen was sure that three days ago, Winifred Marsden would have looked something similar, just a bit older. Now she sagged emptily, her mother-love twisted and shredded under the appalling pain of fear and loss.
David stayed up with his copy of the file on Thelma Quigley. Scott Cruden would be pressing him for something on the case, anything at all just to get a tab on the dead woman and clear her away neatly. It wasn't as if she'd committed a crime or was wanted by Serious Crime or Special Branch or SO 13. She was just somebody who died, someone they would call a Jane Doe on the other side of the Atlantic. Already David had heard the expression a couple of times in relation to this case and thought it was better than simply dead person. It gave a corpse a name, even if only a temporary one, but it turned a corpse into a human, somebody who'd had life. The two simple syllables were also easier to type onto the report form.
If he'd been asked he'd have said he wanted to clear up this case and get back to real police work, but that wouldn't have been the whole truth. The mystery snagged him and he wouldn't let it go until he knew all the answers. He'd brought the files home to go over them on more time before driving through to Edinburgh to find a connection. Inspector Cruden hadn't been overjoyed at the news, but since his own boss had sanctioned the effort, he went along with it.
When David left the office, still thinking about Helen Lamont and her offer of a date - and that had taken him by surprise too, and he didn't know if she was kidding or not - he'd dumped the file in the back seat and gone up to June's place on the Westland Hill near the university. She lived in a narrow avenue close to the old canal which meandered round the parkland where the trees stood bare and gaunt. The welcome he got on her doorstep was just as bleak as the winter view.
"So what happened to you?" The interrogation began as soon as she opened the door to his knock. She'd obviously watched for his car was ready for him. He had hardly touched the knocker when the door swung wide. June was a pretty girl, small and neat, with short fair hair and even teeth. She'd have been prettier if she'd been smiling. She wasn't. She stood there, legs braced apart, eyes flashing. She had one hand on the door and the other on the wall, unconsciously barring entry. On her feet she was wearing outsized slippers that looked exactly like pink bunny rabbits with huge eyes. For a strange, unreal moment the he saw the scene from two different perspectives. Part of his mind took in the incongruous stance and the anger in her eyes, coupled with the contradictory ridiculous appearance of the novelty carpet slippers.
And another, deeper part of his mind took in only the fact that they were furry animals, just like the ones in the boxes in the Jane Doe's apartment, the ones he had seen in his dream come tumbling down from their pyramid heap, somehow alive and threatening, to smother him under their warm weight.
He took a step backwards, momentarily wrong-footed.
"I...." he started.
"Yes?"
"I could stand out here if you like and let all the neighbours hear." He refound his balance and said the right thing. She lived in one of the old tenements that had been renovated and sandblasted and gentrified. The empty stairway outside her door would carry every whisper up to the top landing.
"You'd better come in then," she conceded, dropping her arm. He could see the tension in her and right at that moment, his annoyance drained away. It was not her fault and it was not his fault. He passed her by, stooping to give her a kiss on the cheek. She let him, though he sensed her stiffness and wished it could all be easier. In the kitchen the coffee smelled good and there was something tasty cooking in the oven. He slung his coat over the back of a chair. She picked it up and hung it in a hall cupboard, the way she always did. He sat down, inadvertently scuffing the chair on the floor tiles, wincing reflectively and uncomfortably at her own irritated wince.
"You could at least have made an effort," she started, carrying on the phone conversation as if she'd never stopped.
"I could and I did," he said, not entirely truthfully. "I was busy, you know that. Donal Bulloch put me onto something and when he does that, you don't hang around. Anyway, you know what the job's like."
"But we had Peter and Jean round. I told you about it on Tuesday, remember?"
David went through the motions, feeling dreadfully uncomfortable. They had been seeing each other for two years and in the past year he'd begun to run out of excuses for not getting a flat together. She'd been prepared to give this place up, albeit reluctantly, but she would have done so and moved in with him. He'd countered that because of his irregular hours, the late night call-outs, that wouldn't be a good idea, but the pressure was on and he recognised it.
Most of June's friends were married and those that weren't were engaged. Her biological imperative was beginning to crank up to a crescendo. She wanted to get married. She wanted to settle down and be able to go out on foursomes and six-somes. All she wanted to do was get married and have children and live happily ever after.
He was fond of her. For a while, he'd been sure he was in love with her and now he wondered about that. He'd kept his own place where he had his books and his darkroom and his rock music and blues tapes from way back. One of these days he'd make a good father. One of these days, one of these years he'd make a damned fine father. Very possible. Sometime.
But not yet.
There were things to do and hills to climb and rivers to cross, physically and figuratively. He wanted to take his camera equipment to the wilds of Burma and Borneo, following in the trails of David Attenborough and Peter Scott and Flora Spiers while he still have the chance. He wanted to climb in the Alps and the Himalayas while his muscles were good and firm.
After that, he'd maybe get the urge to settle down. Maybe.
For now, he was running out of reasons. She was a good girl and he realised, despite the fact that he couldn't quite understand the drive within her body and her mind, the great hormonal shunt of reproductive need, that he was not being entirely fair. He didn't understand it, but he recognised it and he realised he could not, or would not, be able to give her what she needed.
She'd made a casserole and dished it out, talking all the while about the couple who'd been over the previous night, how disappointed they were that he'd not been there and how Jean had given her meaningful looks which she'd taken to be condescending. David tried to tell her that if her friend was like that she wasn't much of a friend. She had just got engaged to Peter who was something in hospital management and David, who'd grown up in Kirkland with three brothers sharing a room, was working class enough to take a dislike to him just for that reason. Peter was a suit who smelt of expensive aftershave and spent a lot of time talking about how the personnel didn't understand the problems of the unit and it had taken David half an hour to realise that he was talking about nurses and hospitals. Units and personnel. After three years on the beat before his transfer to CID, David had seen enough hard working nurses push themselves to the far edge to widen that dividing line between life and death on a rough Friday night in this no-mean-city on Clydeside.
As he ate the casserole, which was, as usual, another of June's triumphs, he mentally noted that he'd been right in the first place and he was glad he'd had other things to do. Shaking down Carrie McFall and dumping her on the sidings down by the river might not have been anybody's idea of fun, and wading through the reek in the dead woman's apartment had been no Sunday picnic, but, in retrospect, it had been better than a night with Peter the suit and Jean with the sparkly engagement ring flashing in front of June's mesmerised eyes.
He did his best to placate her, not willing to get involved in an argument, but half-way through the meal he realised his thoughts kept drifting back to the mystery that had landed in his lap. When he thought of the trail of the dead woman, he thought of Helen Lamont and saw her dark eyes flashing up at him. Later, in his own living room, he felt another pang of guilt at how he'd declined June's invitation to stay over. He could have made the effort, he told himself. He just wasn't sure that he wanted to.
He switched on the television, made himself a coffee which he knew he would regret in the dark hours as he tried to get to sleep, and watched the news which was full of doom and despondency and nothing of particular interest to anyone. There was a game show or sport on every other channel, so he automatically reached for the remote for the video and began to play something he'd taped. It was one of the natural history series he'd missed the previous year and was now collecting as it re-ran, adding to his library of nature films. The familiar presenter's voice came out in a whisper as the screen showed a naked and shivering hatchling in a nest of grass and moss. As David opened up the file on the real Thelma Quigley, the motion caught his eye.
The tiny bird, shivering with cold and effort, its huge eyes still shut blind and its skin bare and pink and vulnerable was squirming in the nest, bracing its skinny legs on the edges, twisting and turning against the nearest egg. It took several tortuous minutes and at every stage the hatchling stopped, exhausted, panting with exertion. Finally it got the egg onto its back and carefully raised itself up until it was in danger of toppling out of the safety of the nest. It was the egg which dropped.
And the baby cuckoo will continue until the other pipit eggs are disposed of, the famous voice intoned, thus ensuring it has a monopoly on all the food its foster parents will bring, and ultimately, it's own survival.
David watched the whole operation, fascinated at the effort and the evolutionary imperative that made the cuckoo a successful brood parasite, even to the extent of mimicking the colour of the eggs in the victim's nest. As a ten-year-old, using his uncle's camera, he'd managed, more by luck than design, to get a picture of a cuckoo sitting on a Robin's nest in his own back garden, and had been overwhelmed with pride when the photograph had been used in a nature magazine.
For a while he sat at the table, the papers momentarily forgotten, as he watched the cuckoo's progress as it grew and grew, demanding more and more food from its exhausted foster parents who could do nothing but respond to its yellow gape and shrill cries.
Finally he switched the television off and turned to the file and the pile of papers he'd found in the woman's apartment. He went through the Quigley file again, skimming the words for anything he may have missed and then reached for the 1967 diary. As he did so, his hand nudged his half-empty coffee cup and in trying to prevent it from spilling its contents onto the papers, he dropped the diary. It tumbled, fluttering to the floor and landed with the pages fanning the air. A piece of paper tumbled out and landed on the carpet nearby. David bent and picked it up.
It was another newspaper cutting.
HOPE FADES IN HUNT FOR MISSING WOMAN.
The headline was grey against the yellow of the paper which was so thin and dry it looked as if it would crumble to dust. The title was not evident but a part of the date, just the six and the seven told David it had to be from the same hear. The paper had been stuck in against the back cover. He unfolded it carefully, moving slowly in case it shredded, and managed to get it spread out on the table.
Police hunting for missing secretary Heather McDougall fear she may have been abducted and killed. The story read.
And they believe she could be the victim of the brutal killer of Thelma Quigley whose mutilated body was found in a shallow grave near Duncryne Bridge in March.
Miss McDougall, who vanished two weeks ago, worked in the same whisky brokerage as the murdered girl and they were the close friends. The disappearance, months after the murderous attack on Thelma Quigley, who was set for a glittering stage career and had just landed a major part in a musical show, has led to speculation that Heather McDougall is the latest victim.
And if this is the case, although no body has been discovered, then it is almost certain that the two women knew the killer.
While police have claimed that such speculation is not relevant to the case, local people have been quick to spot the link between the killing and Miss McDougall's disappearance. Both of them worked together for several years. They often went out together and even travelled abroad. They were in the local Treadboards Theatre Group where Thelma Quigley starred in Calamity Jane only months before the murder.
It is also clear that the police have made the connection, because a massive search has been in operation for the past week in the heavily wooded area around the bridge and the stream. Teams of tracker dogs have spread the hunt up over the north side where the public paths lead to a well-known lovers lane.
Miss McDougall's mother Catriona was unable to comment, but her aunt, Mrs Janet Ferguson said: "There doesn't seem much hope now, after what happened to Thelma. Heather is a very quiet girl and she would never have gone off without saying anything. My sister fears the worst."
Superintendent Philip Cutcheon, leading the investigation said: "At the moment this is a missing person operation. Anything more is pure speculation."
Mr Cutcheon's men have already spent several days in the Duncryne Bridge vicinity after the recent horrific accident in which woman was injured and a baby killed when it was thrown from its pram into the river below. The tragedy happened two weeks ago when spinster Greta Simon was struck by a lorry. The baby in her care is believed to have fallen into the gorge. Its body has not been recovered. Police are also trying to trace the parents. The search continues....
The story ran on, regurgitating all the malevolent facts of the body-in-the-woods murder, as it was described back then, and more details of the horrific accident back in the sixties. It carried a photograph of Thelma Quigley which was instantly recognisable, but of much better quality than the one on file and another of a shy looking chubby woman with thick, dark hair. Heather McDougall was not looking at the camera. She was not pretty, but she was attractive in a moon-faced way. Three small moles lined her cheek.
David put his hands on the paper, flattening it down to the surface of the table, and sat thinking for a while. He'd just been handed another mystery.
He was changing. The change was deep inside, a growing thing, a sense of alteration. The panic had flared again when his outreach senses told him of their approach in the old nesting place. He would have felt the vibration, but his questing sentry, his mental radar had touched them as they came nearer and the fear of exposure had shocked him awake.
He had reached out, eyes wide in the dark, while the mother slept fitfully, dreaming her jumbled visions. He had stretched and made contact, just a light stroke at first, on the warmth of another female. He pulled back instinctively, stretched out again with his mind, and touched once more. There had been two of them, a female, a potential mother - he tasted her automatically, like a dog sniffing the air - and then scraped on the surface of the male, sensing danger there as always. Males were different, unpliable, deadly, he knew from the depths of his instinct. He felt the danger and he had woken her then, roused her with a jittery mind-squeal and she had slammed awake. There had been no time. He simply stabbed her with his need and she picked him up and moved to the back of the house. He always ensured he had a nest with an escape route. That was as natural as breathing, as instinctive as the suckling reflex. He made her move and she pushed out into the cold air. He huddled from it, burying himself close to her heat. He made her move, trying to pick a direction to travel, taking pictures from her mind, urging her on. The approach, the warm one - could she be a mother? There was something in that brief slither of contact that had jolted him - and the deadly male, receded, but still he had to hurry fast, to find another nest place.
After all this time of suckling and feeding, he was changing at last. The new sense of transition was burgeoning all through him, quickening all the while. He could feel it spurt and stretch and he was he carried helpless on its bow-wave.
It was a huge thing after all this time and instinctively he knew it was right. Tiny tremors rippled through flesh that was beginning to toughen, bones that were starting to lengthen. Sinews pulled and hauled, testing themselves. Where there had been gristle and cartilage, new bone was forming and as it happened his hunger grew. He needed more now, more than just the milk and the leechings of blood.
He would need a place to shelter and stay quiet until the change was complete. Down below, in the room where he had made the mother carry him, he could sense the movement and noise while inside the new mother he could hear the steady pound of her heart as the hot blood raced inside her, carrying his essence along with it. It would change her as he was changing, but for the now it was not easy. Too much of him, too much of his mind and his energy was invested in the new thing, the metamorphosis, that she was not completely subdued, not completely transformed to be his mother. That would take time. He could feel her mental bayings and her rational terror as she kicked and heaved against his goad. It would take time and he did not know if he had the time to take.
Down inside the mother, the blood was hot and fine but she was resisting, constantly resisting and he had to use energy and strength to direct her. This one was different, he realised now. He had blundered, caught unawares and vulnerable. When the old one had fallen he had sensed only his own need and the new one's potential, smelled her scent as she had smelled his and he had reached and grabbed in panic and fear.
That had been the mistake, because this one was different. She had fought him, squirming and twisting to wrench out of his control. Whatever thing he touched inside the other mothers, it was somehow different in this one. He had snatched her because she had been close at his moment of greatest need, instead of choosing her because he could reach inside and alter her to suit his needs.
It was too late now do anything but wait. He had invested too much in her to reject her and find another. He needed her to last through his new phase, whatever this was. Instinctively once again, he knew it was momentous and powerful and that he would be strong.
Maybe he would not need a mother.
That was a new thought.
Maybe he would be able to feed for himself.
The concept was so colossal that it sent a shiver of excitement through him, causing him to rasp against the skin. Immediately, without any conscious thought, he clamped his mouth on the feeder and sucked. Automatically, he shot out his tongue onto the smooth swelling of the skin to let the tiny denticles on the surface to abrade a layer so he suck the blood up through the straining capillaries, but his tongue was changing. It was smoother now than before, unable to scrape at the skin.
A small tumult of panic lurched within him but he forced it away. In his gums, there was a gnawing pain, throbbing under flesh hardened from a lifetime of suckling. Already the skin was swollen tender and beginning to break. He could feel the tiny slivers pushing through, sharp and close set. Reflexively he turned his head and pressed down with strengthening neck muscles.
She groaned in her sleep and tried to turn.
He had woken hungry in the night.
The craving came on him fierce now, more savage than before. It was all different and he could feel the change inside and out. His skin was tight and dry and pained him when he moved. The new joints had grown quickly and they tensed and flexed, needing to try their strength, needing to move. His leg kicked involuntarily, striking the mother on the thigh. She grunted in half-sleep. The room was dark, but there was light outside, not the harsh light of day that seared his eyes, or the lights in the street that caused him to flinch, but the white moonlight catching the frost on the widow and limning the room with an eerie blue. He could feel the pull of the moon on the tides within and knew his time was near.
He had struggled to get his mouth to the teat and snagged it with his dry lips. The skin was peeling on the top edge and he could feel the swell of new flesh underneath. The milk and his own essence came welling up into him, filling his mouth and he suckled noisily, grunting his new, deeper sound of satisfaction. He sucked harder and the mother shivered in the sudden pain, turning against the pressure. The fabric surrounding them pulled on his skin and rustled like dry leaves. He turned away from his own discomfort and opened his eyes wider to savour the blue light of the moon. His legs twitched again, flexed and bent. His toes spread wide and there was a pulse under his armpits where new pressure squeezed at him.
The excitement of it made him twist his head as he nuzzled, drawing back his dry lips. He sensed the tracery of heat under the mother's skin, and followed it, letting the nipple slide out of his mouth. It made a faint popping sound which he ignored and followed the deep stream of heat, clambering over the mound of swollen breast to the vein which throbbed temptingly. He got his mouth over the spot and nuzzled in again, driving his head down. It took a while. There was some resistance as the surface pressed away from him and then a faint tick of release.
An instant gush of taste flooded his mouth.
The mother whimpered in her torpor, twisted as if trying to wriggle away from pain but he held on, held her with his concentration while the flavour of her gushed into his mouth and down his throat in spurts of intense ecstasy. The heat and energy suffused him, sending trails of fire deep down inside him and then radiating it outwards to tingle on his skin. His eyes widened as he let the sensations surge inside him, the taste and essence, the pull of the moon, its wan and perfect luminance, the surge of new blood and the inescapable change in his own body.
It would be soon.
He nuzzled closer and another strange sensation impinged itself on his mind.
Down below, between his new limbs, the caudal appendage had begun to shrink and shrivel while the buds formed themselves into jointed legs way a tadpole's tail shrinks as it develops its limbs. Between them, the boneless flesh was narrowing down, resorbed and altered, but still a part of him. He felt it twitch and turn, almost as if it had a mind of its own. A new centre of heat developed within him, a new sensation of awareness.
The appendage uncoiled like a soft, prehensile tail, like the tongue of a butterfly. It unravelled from its tight twist of flesh, probed slowly and found the warmth. Without hesitation, but so softly it seemed to simply flow, it moved inside.
Taste exploded all through him, the taste of his own essence and the taste of the changes he had wrought. Here was another source, but an infinitely richer one now. The other part of him pulsed and flexed in a strange peristalsis that brought the new sustenance into him. For a second he was completely suffused with the flavour and the heat of it, his cold mind suddenly hot with new excitement.
Instantly his body responded. All of his muscles quivered uncontrollably in a spasm of ecstasy and in that surge he could feel the change speeding up.
This was what he needed. He had been feeding on honey, but now he had royal jelly to advance the transformation. His entire being seemed to surge with new-found energy.
Ginny Marsden felt the sudden pain and woke from one nightmare to another.
In that moment, she knew who she was and her mind reeled in the enormity of her fear. It was feeding on her, draining her away. It had turned its mind away from her, removed the tight focus of its attention and she knew who she was.
Yet she was paralysed. It was all over her, its mouth was on her shoulder, close to her neck and she could feel the rasping burn where her skin had broken. It was like a series of pin-pricks, not much more than a scrape, but she could feel the drain of her own blood.
She moved, just a shiver, a sudden quake as her body reacted to the dreadful knowledge and the thing tensed. In the dark she could see nothing but a faint outline in the dimness of the room, but she could feel everything.
Oh Jesus it's in me.
Her mind shrieked. It was on and over and inside of her. The dryness of its skin rustled and dragged over her own smoothness. Its mouth moved on her surface and she felt the rasp of its lips and the lap of a cold tongue.
And down between her legs she felt the awful peristaltic pulse of that other part which probed deep inside and drained her from within.
Holy mother please save me
She knew she was in hell. She was in hell and a devil was feeding on her.
Ginny Marsden was locked in the horror. Her body tried to react but couldn't and her mind was split and split again in the enormous terror of it. A part of her, an icy bubble of her own self tried to think, tried to remember what had happened. Had there been an accident? Had she been hit by a bus on the way to the Mall?
Yet another part of her recalled the dreadful dream where she saw the woman collapse to the tiles and she remembered the beckoning pull inside her head, the slow approach towards the old black coach-pram. She saw herself bend and look inside at those big baby eyes drowning her with their irresistible appeal.
No...no
She tried to shake off the memory of the huddled scurry along the precinct. She remembered it as if it was a distant dream, as if it had happened to someone else, yet she recalled the sensation of the frosted air rasping in her throat an the sudden and all encompassing nee, and deeper still, the twisting alteration inside her even as she scurried, not knowing where she was going, where she was being led, to the shelter they needed.
And now it was on her and in her and she was powerless. She shuddered again and it tensed once more. Its fingers were splayed on her skin and they closed slowly, nipping at her flesh. For an instant the nuzzling stopped. The pulsing inside her slowed. There was no sensation in the pin-prick punctures, none at all, but she could still feel the leakage, and on her breasts the milk oozed under her own strange internal pressure. It smelt sweet and warm, but in it there was another smell and she knew it was the smell of the thing that suckled at her. She felt infected.
It moved slowly and she could not turn her head as it turned its own towards her . The eyes were huge and glassy, wide open and bulging. The head swivelled and the eye reflected the pale light of the frosted moon, just enough to cover the red-black with a silver ice. It blinked once, making an audible snick of sound then fixed her with its stare. It squeezed down on her, using arms and legs and she felt the probe of its mind, like the touch of a dead but still crawling hand, impinge on her own brain. She tried to writhe and twist away from it, but it flexed again and the cold air was suddenly saturated with the musky scent. Ginny Marsden reared back from it, trying to hold on to her own thoughts, knowing she had to get away, free herself from this nightmare, and realising under it all that it was no dream. The scent filled her and she felt her own self fading away. It made a grating sound, like pebbles crunched underfoot, like the rending of metal, but she only heard the bleating, the defenceless baby whimper of need and she responded to it. It vibrated within her, mirroring her own resonance and she was lost to it.
But in the deepest corner of her mind she was still screaming in utter terror.