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<h2>16</h2>
<p>The baby was sucking hard, making small, quite feral grunting
sounds. Its fingers were clenched into her skin, gripping hard,
causing pain. There was more pain on her breast where it rasped the
already abraded skin and she squirmed against it.</p>
<p>Ginny Marsden had gone out into the cold in the early afternoon
and spent a few pounds in a charity shop which had baby clothes of
all sizes. The assistant watched as she chose a hat and a tiny
jumper and an all-in-one little jump suit, each of them in
different colours, as if she didn't care how the baby looked. There
was an old fashioned crocheted shawl which she bought. Up at the
back of the shop there was a selection of used baby-walkers and
buggies. Ginny hesitated for only a moment and chose an old blue
pram with high sides and a hood with a plastic weather shield which
could be raised and clipped to it. She paid the money and while the
assistant was putting it in the till, she turned, put the baby in
the pram, jammed the new clothes under the storm-cover and was on
her way out. The pram's left wheel squeaked.</p>
<p>Back at the small room, she wrapped the baby in the shawl,
tucking its thin arms tight, almost unaware of what she was doing.
She moved slowly, hesitantly, as if she was recovering from flu, or
just drained of energy. She was desperately tired and her vision
kept blurring at the edges, as if she was travelling backwards down
a tunnel. Finally she wrapped the small form snugly into the shawl
and went to lie on the bed. Her blouse was open to the waist, to
allow its small, snub face to press against the heat of her skin.
Her skirt was rucked up at the back. All she had taken off were her
coat and shoes. She lay down on the cold sheets, holding the baby
tight against her while the bed warmed up. Within a few moments,
the utter exhaustion overwhelmed her. Her last, vaguely conscious
thought was that she must have had a pair of tights on. She
couldn't remember where they were.</p>
<p>The darkness enveloped her as soon as her eyes were closed
against the silver line of moonlight that came through the gap in
the curtains and in a matter of moments she was sound asleep. As
soon as she slept, she tumbled into the black well of a
nightmare.</p>
<p>She woke up cold and hungry, stiff and sore with the baby
tugging at her nipple, draining her. The dreams had been so
malignant, so terrifying that it was a wonder that she had slept at
all.</p>
<p>All through the dark, visions and images had beset her. She had
dreamed she was being eaten alive by maggots which writhed and
pulsed under her skin. She had been unable to move, powerless to
act. She could feel her flesh tear and fragment, she could hear the
grinding, sucking noises they made when they fed upon her and she
realised, in the depths of the nightmare, that she would die.</p>
<p>All through the dark hours, the visions haunted her and she
shrieked in pain and fear and anguish, one moment fleeing in terror
from the grey and warted scuttling thing that pursued her and then
in that strange and incomprehensible rationality of dreamscapes,
the horror altered and again she was pinioned in the grip of a
spider the size of a spaniel dog, trapped in its web while it sank
its fangs down into the skin of her chest to fill her with a poison
that would dissolve her in rivers of pain before it sucked her dry
and left a wrinkled, crumpled husk.</p>
<p>She awoke with this image right in the forefront of her mind and
she almost screamed aloud.</p>
<p>The baby snuffled again and a shudder rippled through her, an
initial quiver of fear and loathing and repugnance every bit as
powerful as the dream terror of the night. It grunted and the air
filled with its scent and the dread was squeezed and squashed down
by the weight of the other emotion.</p>
<p>She had been in the act of turning and the grey dome of the
thing's head had just been visible in the edge of peripheral
vision, blurred and out of focus down below her chin. In the blink
of an eye, it resolved, the lines wavered and rippled confusingly
then positively defined themselves. The pink fuzzy curve of the
baby's forehead leapt into clarity. It turned, still suckling on
her and fixed her with a wide blue eye.</p>
<p>Something, a sense of contact, brushed across her mind with the
texture of slub silk, of cold, foetid damp. The panic was squashed
flat and the surge of the deep imperative to care for this baby
swamped her.</p>
<p>Yet once again, deep inside her own mind, that part of her that
was unaffected by the monstrous compulsion was bawling insanely in
fear and anguish and absolute terror at the imprisonment of her
very self and the subjection to the will of this loathsome
parasite.</p>
<p>Ginny Marsden tried to move and for a moment found that
impossible. Her limbs merely twitched, stiff and cramped from the
cold of the night and somehow drained of energy. She tried again,
succeeded in lifting one hand, one arm, though it felt as if it was
made of lead, pulled down by a monstrous gravity. Her skin was numb
and underneath it her flesh tingled in pins and needles which
instantly recalled the appalling images of the maggots writhing and
chewing underneath. She shuddered again, swallowing down on thick
and hot bile that threatened to surge up acidly from the back of
her throat. Her shoulder creaked, sending a seismic jerk though
her, while a hot and grinding pain flared there in her joint. She
stopped moving instantly, waiting until the pain died away. It took
a moment for it to fade down to a hot glow.</p>
<p>Down on her breast the baby was feeding greedily. She felt her
skin drawn down into its mouth and sucked and hauled painfully. Her
right breast was still rounded and engorged, tender with internal
pressure. Soon the baby - <em>the monster, that crushed-down part
of her mind protested -</em> soon it would move and fasten onto the
other one and drink its fill. It was getting stronger all the time.
Its fingers shifted their grip on the soft skin covering her ribs,
pin-points of pressure and hurt. She was powerless to resist for
now.</p>
<p>A sigh, a moan of utter weariness escaped her and she tried to
move again. Her shoulder yelled its protest but she persevered.
Down in her belly, the cramps had started, pangs of hunger that
told her she had to eat. Using her left arm to lever herself up
from the swirl of blankets on the hard little bed, she gained a
sitting position, with great difficulty. All of her strength had
gone, it seemed. She felt as if she'd suffered a bad bout of flu
and needed weeks to recover her energy. Apart from her shoulder,
her joints ached fiercely. When she swung her legs off the bed, her
knees and hips groaned almost aloud. She could feel the edges of
bone snarl and grind against each other as if the contacts were all
pitted and ragged.</p>
<p><em>"I'm dying."</em></p>
<p>The thought came unbidden, but it landed with a deadly thud.</p>
<p>She understood the finality of it. Five days ago she had been
strong and as carefree as a girl can be at the age of twenty two.
She'd been fit and healthy and she'd been happy, content to stay at
home for Christmas, rather than jaunt to a hot island in the
sun.</p>
<p>Now she felt sick and used and rotting from the inside. Her
whole body ached and her mind reeled. Down on her chest, the baby
suckled lustily while she felt as if all the life, all the goodness
and the strength were drawn out of her. The hunger pangs twisted
again and she made it to the other side of the room, gaining her
feet with difficulty, walking slowly, like an old, sick woman. Over
in the corner, there was a kind of work surface beside the old
cooker where she'd lung the purchases of the previous afternoon.
She sat slowly down on the hard chair, listening to the creak of
muscle and bone, and opened the package of meat she'd bought with
Celia's money. She twisted slightly to enable her to use both hands
on the plastic wrapping, and freed the raw slices of dark
liver.</p>
<p>Without any hesitation she leaned forward and bit into it. The
meat was soft and spongy, though the surface membrane felt like
rubber before her teeth broke through. An instant taste of cold
metal flooded her mouth and her gorge reacted instinctively,
bucking against the slithery texture and the appalling taste. The
strength of the repugnance against eating raw liver was intense
enough to make her quiver.</p>
<p>Yet more intense was the sudden need to eat it, to swallow it
quickly. Her hands forced the meat between her teeth and she
gobbled quickly. It had the texture of wet and rotting mushrooms in
a cold October, and her mouth was clogged with the iron taste of
cold blood. It trickled at the back of her throat and slid down.
She gagged, swallowed, gagged less, swallowed more. She guzzled the
stuff, lobe by lobe, chewing as quickly as she was able, snorting
and grunting in the sudden overwhelming need to get the rich meat
inside herself. Her hands were sticky and red, but she hardly
noticed that. The pound of meat disappeared in minutes and the
empty feeling in the pit of her stomach reversed itself to a sudden
straining pressure as the heavy liver sat there , so close to her
own. A wave of dizziness rippled through her as her body tried to
compensate for the sudden distress of distension, but already she
was reaching a bloodied hand to the packet of eggs on the surface
next to the empty liver pack.</p>
<p>She flipped the top, ignoring the sticky mess on her hands. The
six eggs nestled in the papier-m&#226;ch&#233; hollows. Without
hesitation she lifted one. It slipped from her fingers, almost
toppling from the box, but she grabbed it again and once more, in a
completely natural motion, she brought it to her mouth.</p>
<p>Revulsion lurched and her whole being shied away from the
thought of what she was doing. Yet she still opened her mouth and
thrust the egg inside, unable to resist the compulsion. Her teeth
came down on the shell and bit through. The yolk burst, raw and
slick and slid over her tongue and down her throat along with the
ropy trail of albumen. The glutinous, flowery taste filled her, but
she continued biting down on the shell. It crackled then crunched
like grit. She chomped hard, grinding the eggshell into smaller
pieces. They mixed with the remains of the egg yolk and she
swallowed them all. The shards of shell scraped against her throat,
but she ignored the rasp of their passage. Already she was reaching
for the next one.</p>
<p>A few minutes later, gasping for breath and her belly distended
so tightly it caused a pain to rival the ache in her joints, she
finished the six eggs. She waited for a while before she opened the
carton of full-cream milk and drank it as greedily as the baby
drank her own. The sharp edges of the shells had cut her gums and
the warm taste of her own blood mingled with the milk.</p>
<p>Ginny Marsden was no longer hungry, but a compulsion to eat more
drove her on. She stood up slowly, feeling the pressure of the
added weight of the meal she had consumed, and ran some water from
the tap. She held both hands under the cold flow, watching the
water turn pink from the residue of the liver on her fingers. Small
pieces of the meat, red as jelly and with a similar texture,
dropped into the metal sink and swirled down the drainhole. She
dried her hands on a dishtowel that bore a mitre-shaped burn from a
careless iron, alternately freeing one hand from its grip on the
baby's back. As soon as she was dry, it drew away from her nipple.
Ginny looked down and saw the teat, raw and abraded, still standing
proud of her breast. The baby snuggled closer against her skin and
closed its eyes. She heard its snuffling breath, the contented
breathing of a well-fed child. Her breast seemed still full and
inflated, but where it swelled just below the curve of her neck and
close to her armpit, she could make out the fine tracery of small
wrinkles.</p>
<p>Her tangled mind tried to fix on the filigree lacework where the
elasticity seemed to have leeched out of her own skin, but it was
difficult to force her mind to make the effort. Even as she looked
down, she experienced a powerful craving to chew on chalk or iron
rust and overlying that was the urgent compulsion to hold the baby
close to get and protect it from the cold.</p>
<p>She turned away from the sink where the tap was still dripping
an echoing metronome of beats and passed the mirror on the wall.
She saw the thing pressed against her. In that fraction of a
second, she saw a grey and ridged thing, arms and legs splayed out
like a frog, wrapping themselves to clutch onto her skin. Its head
was elongated as was its narrow, slat-ribbed back, and the limbs
were long and thin and sinuous. It twisted in her arms, sensing her
distress. The image in the mirror wavered and blurred again, even
as her eyes sparked with tears of anguish and fear, and in that
split second it was a baby once more and the overwhelming need to
mother the thing came rushing so powerfully that it made her feel
she might faint.</p>
<p>Yet in the far depths of her mind she knew who she was and knew
it for what it was and she screamed and screamed and screamed in
silent terror. She could still make no sound.</p>
<p>Ginny slowly passed the reflection of the pink baby snuggled in
against her. Her blouse, now five days unwashed and grey at the
collar, was opened right down the front and her breasts protruded,
ballooning out, from the gap. They were thick and rubbery, dotted
with the patchwork of haematoma bruising, like purple explosions,
where it had sucked hard enough to draw a trace of blood through
her pores. The breasts themselves were rounded and turgid, heavy
and slightly drooping, twice the pert size they had been only days
ago, before the baby had started to change her.</p>
<p>She raised her eyes to her own face and almost reeled back in
dull shock. Her blonde hair was streaked with grey in close to the
roots and the wrinkles on the skin of her body were mirrored here,
in crows feet on the sides of her eyes, in the fissures spreading
upwards from her lips.</p>
<p><em>Oh Jesus help me I'm growing old.</em></p>
<p>Heavy bags puffed under her eyes, almost as dark as the bruising
on her breasts, and the whites of her eyes were no longer clear and
pure. Now they were ringed with a nicotine shade of yellow, as if
there was some sluggish poison accumulating in her blood. Less than
a week ago, she'd been vainly and justly proud of her high
cheekbones, inherited from her mother, which gave her classy
hollows that needed no make-up to accentuate.</p>
<p>Now they were pits sunk into the sides of her face. They held
shadows of their own and her cheek bones stood out in ridges. She
was gaunt and emaciated. If anybody who had known the woman who
called herself Thelma Quigley had seen Ginny Marsden at that point
they would have thought both women had suffered from the same
wasting disease. Ginny saw herself look back, and the dawning
realisation of the enormity of her disintegration was evident in
her own blank stare.</p>
<p><em>I'm dying,</em></p>
<p>It was a reality, not merely a notion. She could see it for
herself in this moment of sudden clarity. At the age of twenty two,
she had aged so much - in less than a week - that she looked forty
or more. But it was worse than that. Inside, she felt as if her own
body was decaying, as if all the good was being sucked out of her,
all the life.</p>
<p>The baby she held snuffled to itself, a sound pitched at such a
level that her body reacted immediately. It was sated and asleep.
Inside her the muscles of her belly cramped and she felt a trickle
of blood drain down inside her, the trickle that had started on her
way out of the mall and had continued unabated ever since. She was
sick and she knew why.</p>
<p>She lay on the bed, very slowly, careful not to disturb its
sleep. The squashed down part of her mind had managed to push open
the barrier and was fighting to be free. She tried to calm herself,
aware that panic would rouse the thing's senses. Even at that
moment her own will was battling the compulsion it forced upon her,
but she fought the fear down, making herself be calm.</p>
<p>Inside her distended stomach, a bubble of gas rippled upwards
and burst from her throat, giving her another taste of the foul mix
of raw eggs and bloody liver and her own tainted blood. She
swallowed against it, turning over carefully. Her coat was on the
stand beside the door. Her shoes were there too. She was still
wearing her skirt and even though it was rumpled from sleeping, but
that wouldn't matter.</p>
<p>A thought had formed.</p>
<p>She moved again, pushing very gently at the baby, trying to keep
her breathing slow and even, listening to the purr of its own
respiration. It sounded just like a tiny baby, snuffling peacefully
and gentle. Very slowly, despite the grind inside her, she pushed
its little hands off her skin, holding her own hand against its
back to maintain the pressure contact. It made a little shiver and
snuggled against her, letting her turn it slightly. Its legs were
now drawn up and crossed over each other. With infinite care, she
got the sheet of the bed and began to wrap the baby.</p>
<p>Even now, as it slept, she could see its outline blur and
ripple. It was like trick photography, a sort of double exposure
effect. Its skin would shimmer and the colour would, for the
briefest of moments, fade away. It was asleep, sound asleep,
comforted by the pressure of her hand, safe in the knowledge that
it was being mothered. She wrapped the sheet tight around it,
holding it close and keeping up the pressure so that it would never
know it was being moved. Finally it was cocooned in the sheet,
though still held tight against her own body. Its breathing was
deep and even.</p>
<p>Outside, a sussuration of ice crystals scraped against the
window, reminding her it was still winter out there, bitter and
cold. Inside herself she felt as if winter had settled for ever. A
frigid and icy fear was creeping through her as her mind tried to
free itself of the monstrous imprisonment.</p>
<p>Still moving almost imperceptibly, she drew both pillows down
from the top of the bed and pressed them firmly against the sheet,
piling one atop the other. Only then, when the baby was under the
new weight, did she move, drawing herself back out of the bed,
moving with glacial slowness. It took an age. At one stage the bed
creaked with the motion and the baby made a grunting sound, high
and feral. It's head turned, as if its mouth was seeking the nipple
again. He put her hand on top of the pillows and pressed down, her
own heart speeding up and her mind willing it to slow down. The
grunt turned into another snuffle. The head turned back down
again.</p>
<p>Ginny Marsden waited a full ten minutes before she eased herself
off the bed and, with delicate and deliberate care, stood up.
Walking barefoot, ignoring the squeal of protest in the bones of
her ankles and the sudden need to cough, she made it to the
door.</p>
<p>For the first time in five days, she was more than three yards
from the thing that had ensnared her in the mall. In that distance,
its influence was fading.</p>
<p><em>Move now. Go on. Get out.</em> Her own mind, now struggling
to break completely free, shrieked urgent and panicked commands.
<em>Go Ginny!</em></p>
<p>And underneath that, she wanted to turn round and strangle the
thing. To batter its head against the solid edge of the basin until
its brains burst like the lobes of liver its compulsion had made
her gorge. To drown it in the cold water until its unearthly heart
stopped beating, until its purring breath stilled. The part of her
that was completely her own self wanted to utterly destroy it, tear
it limb from limb and wreak an enormous revenge on the thing that
had stalled her in the mall and had fed on her until her skin
wrinkled and stole the life out of her.</p>
<p>Yet despite its slackening influence as it slept, she was still
under the powerful compulsion that she had to fight every inch of
the way. From the distance of three yards, it was still a baby. The
lines were blurring sickly. The colour was running. She turned
round, even as she forced her right foot into her shoe, and she
could see its head, barely visible in against the swaddling of the
sheet. It was rippling and pulsing as if the skin itself was
melting under the flare of internal heat</p>
<p><em>Go. Get Gone!</em> Her mind squalled desperately. <em>Run
for your life.</em></p>
<p>It was now or never. She forced her other foot into the shoe,
not waiting, not daring to unlace them. Her heel wriggled hurriedly
and bent the back leather edge inwards with the pressure and haste.
Her mother would have scolded her for that ten years ago, though it
could have been a hundred years ago for the horror and strangeness
of the last few days had distorted Ginny's subjective comprehension
of time.</p>
<p><em>Hurry hurry hurry</em></p>
<p>The jittery panic was beginning to well up in a dark tide. She
tried to calm herself, knowing the importance of keeping herself
emotionally stable just for the next minute or so, just until she
got out of the door.</p>
<p>The thing on the bed was wavering and changing. Its breathing,
at first slow and deep was now beginning to quicken. She sensed its
uncanny senses picking up the wrongness of its situation. Any
second now it would awaken, and when it woke, it would pull her
back, it would make her...</p>
<p>She got the shoe on, reached for her coat. The tab caught on the
curved hook of the stand, making it wobble. It swung forward then
back, clunked against the wall. In the bed the thin, ridged thing,
now no longer pink at all, but a mottled, somehow shiny grey,
snorted gutturally.</p>
<p><em>Oh please don't let it...don't let it...</em></p>
<p>The coat came free. With her left hand she reached towards the
doorhandle. It was cold and smooth under her fingers but the
contact sent a jar of pain through her knuckles and elbows. It felt
as if her bones were fragmenting and turning to chalk. The handle
turned smoothly, without a sound., She pulled, sensed a muscle
twist in her shoulder, a small flare of heat and pain. The door
refused to open.</p>
<p><em>Oh God let me out of here</em></p>
<p>For a second she was stunned, completely bewildered. Her
reeling, panicked mind could not comprehend the door's
reluctance.</p>
<p><em>The key the bloody key turn it you stupid bitch</em></p>
<p>Her hand jerked off the handle. There was a blue plastic tab
hanging from the key in the lock. She snapped it quickly in a
counter clockwise twist. The bolt shot back with a solid thump of
brass on steel.</p>
<p>The thing growled behind her, high and bestial. Ginny had never
heard a stoat in a hole before but that's exactly the kind of sound
she would have expected a small, fierce predator to make. Her heart
catapulted into her tight throat and pulsed so hard her breathing
stopped.</p>
<p><em>Oh Jesus please</em></p>
<p>Another sound behind her. The mortise bolt shot back, snapping
hard. She reached for the handle and gave it the same twist as
before. Behind her something rustled. Instantly every nerve in her
body started to shiver. A scrape of cold slither dragged across the
surface of her mind, not yet focused, not yet concentrated, just a
dull and mindless questing. She pulled the door, trying to make it
open quickly, but by now everything was going in a dreadful slow
motion as if all her reactions had been dulled down, frozen to a
wintry slowness. It was like wading through glue, through treacle.
She tried to make herself move faster and the world simply refused
to get off slow time.</p>
<p>The door creaked loudly. Like a branch rending in a high wind,
like a plank of wood torquing under pressure. The sound cut into
the sudden silence in a jet shriek.</p>
<p>From ten feet behind her, another shriek erupted, though whether
it was a true sound Ginny never knew. The rustling noise came again
and all the hairs on the back of her head crawled in unison.</p>
<p><em>It's awake oh it's coming</em></p>
<p>She half turned. Inside her head the shriek was going on and on,
like a pig in a slaughterhouse, loud as a stone saw, vibrating
inside her head.</p>
<p>She turned fully and saw it wriggling in the wrap of blankets.
Her heart, still in her throat, kicked madly. Her mouth opened and
she tried to turn away. Despite the shriek inside her head, there
was an audible creak and the thing's eyes opened wide. Absolute
revulsion washed through her on a surging tide of pure fear.</p>
<p>The red eyes speared her, widening like the aperture of a
camera, a sudden blare, a sudden glare. It lanced across the
distance and transfixed her.</p>
<p>She was paralysed with fright. She stood there trembling.</p>
<p>It wriggled frantically, trying to free itself from the
swaddling of the sheet she'd wrapped around it. Ginny stood, coat
draped round her, legs braced apart, one hand on the door handle. A
shard of blackness showed the door was open six inches wide, hardly
more. Her free hand was a pale bird, trembling in the air. Her
hair, lank and lifeless, was swishing across her shoulder from the
motion of turning her head.</p>
<p>The creature growled. Its eyes were wide as saucers, picking up
the faint light from outside.</p>
<p><em>Vampire.</em> The thought came crystal clear and cold as
ice.</p>
<p>The eyes had the red glare of every vampire she'd seen in the
cinema, every one she'd ever read about or imagined. But this was
no Count Dracula, no handsome European who would bend to drink the
blood of beautiful women. This was a monster, a mindworm who sucked
and probed and controlled. In five days it had drained the life out
of her and it still wanted more.</p>
<p>It was awake now and it was coming for her. She could see the
frantic wriggling and writhing under the sheet as it fought to get
free. Inside her head she could feel its dreadful mental blast, its
awesome demand for sustenance and mothering. She could also feel
the heat of its anger, alien and malignant and utterly, completely
ferocious.</p>
<p>She tried to move, managed to turn her head away from the thing.
She pushed the door open wider. Down there, down the stairs, she
could hear the early morning stirrings of the hostel, the clatter
of pots down in the kitchen. Low early morning voices. The normalcy
of muffled human conversation hit her so powerfully that sudden a
desperation welled inside her. She needed them. She needed to get
there, down to the kitchen and warn them of the danger.</p>
<p>The thing growled and snarled inside of her head, its
inarticulate demands and injunctions scraping on her brain, mental
claws rending at her, hooking into the substance of her own
thoughts. The taste of blood was sour in her mouth.</p>
<p>Downstairs somebody sang a few lines of a song. A warm, woman's
voice, the sound of someone at ease enough to sing on the dank of a
winter's early morning. It drew her like a magnet. On the bed, the
writhing, snuffling thing tried to hook her like prey, like so much
meat on a butcher's slab.</p>
<p>Ginny pushed her way through the door, desperately resisting the
compulsion to turn. It was hauling at her, pulling invisible cords.
Her hips ground painfully as she took a step. Inside her the liver
and the eggs turned and pressed against her abdomen. She wanted to
vomit, fear making the internal peristalsis try to reverse
itself.</p>
<p>Something thumped on the floor and she couldn't help but turn.
It all happened so quickly. She was turning, though still walking
away, aware of the danger, terrified of being caught, needing to
get to the other humans and warn them, get to the comfort of their
safety. Something thumped on the floor and she turned. It had
fallen off the bed. The sheet had half unravelled.</p>
<p><em>Go, get out of here</em></p>
<p>The door swung back and hit the wall.</p>
<p>"You've woken them up with your singing," a woman's voice came
floating up. Another woman laughed infectiously.</p>
<p>"Free bed, board and entertainment, what more could they want?"
The second voice chuckled.</p>
<p>"Help," Ginny tried to respond. Her mouth opened and a small
rasp of noise came out, a dry hiccup that sounded as much animal as
the grunting little thing that twisted and humped on the threadbare
carpet.</p>
<p>She reached the top of the stairs, forced herself forward,
stretching the invisible bonds, feeling them weaken. She turned,
away from the room, and the pressure of the compulsion
lessened.</p>
<p>"Do you want a cup of tea before we get started?" somebody
asked. The image of a cup of steaming brew flashed in her mind in
an astonishingly powerful picture. Tea and sympathy. Tea and
comfort and company and protection. They would protect her, surely,
her fellow women. They would hold her and mother her.</p>
<p>"Sure. Tea and a cigarette before the day starts. Best way to
get the engine running." Another woman's voice, gruff, rough and
ready, full of humour. She laughed again, a smoker's laugh, the
laugh of a woman with little expectation and content with her lot.
It tugged powerfully at Ginny Marsden who stood poised on the top
step, a ghost of a woman, slim and tall, now gaunt and decaying in
the shadows. She hovered there, forcing her foot down, working
against the pain and the fear and the sudden exhaustion, her hand
grasped the cold wood of the banister, gripping it tightly as she
could. She felt herself sway, managed another step, then another,
down to the landing. Six tortuous steps in all. Behind her the
thing clattered and thumped on the hard floorboards. Ginny got to
the level, turned, feeling it easier with the distance, sensing the
weakening of the mental compulsion the thing radiated. Knowing she
could make it if she tried.</p>
<p>Something clattered upstairs in the room.</p>
<p><em>Should have shut the door!</em></p>
<p>The realisation hit her like a physical blow. She should have
closed the door and locked it from the other side. How could she
have forgotten? She could have locked the thing inside the room and
it could never have got out. Ginny froze for an instant. She could
still go back. She turned, once again feeling as if she was wading
in syrup, and looked at the mountain of stairs she had to
climb.</p>
<p>Five days ago she would have bounded up there, taken them two at
a time, three at a time; skipped up without effort, without losing
her breath. Now the climb stretched ahead of her, a range of
Himalayan proportions, a cliff of wood, of risers and treads. It
had taken all of her strength to get here, to get down them. Did
she have a chance of scaling those heights?</p>
<p>It was only six steps. It was a hundred miles. It was only six
steps.</p>
<p>She had her mind back again, most of it, the part that wasn't
shivering and trembling in abject fear and utter panic.</p>
<p>It could still get to her. If it freed itself from the wrapping
of the sheets it could get her. She had seen it scuttle in the dark
of the garden hut, had seen it slither out of reach in the shadows
when the cat came in through the flap on the door. She knew it
could move quickly, like a spider in the night. Even in her memory,
it had that odd, double image, a plump and pink baby skin grafted
over something so alien it was madness in motion. If it reached the
door, it would come clambering along the floor and it would reel
her in like an exhausted, dying fish. It would have her again. And
if it got her she would die.</p>
<p>Ginny Marsden took the most courageous decision of her entire
life.</p>
<p>Down in the kitchen, a woman had started to sing again in a
rough, but melodic voice. A steam kettle's whistle began to quaver
and sing along. The sounds pulled at the very fabric of her being.
She turned though, forcing them out of her mind, aware only of the
need to close the door on the little monster.</p>
<p>She began to clamber back up the stairs.</p>
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