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<div class="section" id="xhtmldocuments">
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<h2>17</h2>
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<p>“Sure I saw her,” the woman said, holding the
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picture tilted to catch the light from the faintly flickering
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fluorescent bar overhead. Her eyebrows, carefully pencilled, arched
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in twin, proud curves, matching her jet-black hair. Her eyes
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narrowed as she remembered, accentuating the wrinkles around them.
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She had a kindly, lived-in sort of face.</p>
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<p>She turned round to call to the other woman in the steamy space
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behind the laminated counter where the sausages were sizzling on
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the flat skillet. “You remember the girl with the baby,
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Maisie?”</p>
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<p>“The one who sat all morning, yesterday,
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Margaret?”</p>
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<p>“Yes. That’s her. This is her picture, isn’t
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it?”</p>
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<p>The other woman came across, her hair that faded dyed red of an
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old women who remembers her bright young days. She walked with a
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waddling gait, centre of gravity dropped and getting lower all the
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time.</p>
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<p>“Aye, that’s the one. Poor soul looked half starved
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and half frozen. And scared half to death. I thought maybe there
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was somebody looking for her, or she was hiding from somebody. She
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never said, though.”</p>
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<p>David had gone east, following up some other lead and had left
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Helen to carry on her own search. It her two hours to find which
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bus Ginny Marsden had taken the day before. Two patrolmen thought
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they had seen a girl with a baby heading for the bus station close
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to St Enoch’s, not far from the Waterside mall. That had been
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in the early hours of the morning. Acting on the hunch, working
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patiently and taking the time to ask questions, she found a bus
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driver who said he thought he’d seen her sitting in the
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waiting room of the terminus. She pushed him a little harder,
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trying to find out which side of the room. It was a long, narrow
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corridor of a place, with several doors. The position somebody sat
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might give a clue as to the direction a person might travel. The
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four doors, north south east and west, in actuality corresponded
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with the directions the main-route buses would take from the centre
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of the city. Ginny Marsden had been sitting close to the west bound
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door, if indeed it had been Ginny Marsden. It was still all
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surmise, possibility rather than probability.</p>
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<p>Another stroke of luck found her the bus crew, now just going of
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shift. John Skelly the driver, a beefy man with mutton-chop
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sideburns, recalled the girl.</p>
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<p>“Just about fell upstairs. I thought she was drunk at
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first, but she was all right. Maybe just stiff with the cold. She
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gave me a tenner, which I wasn’t going to take - you’re
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supposed to give the right money, know what I mean? But what the
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hell, she was just a young lassie, far as I remember. I’ve a
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daughter who’s older than her and I wouldn’t like to
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see her out on the streets in the middle of winter, not with a
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baby. I’d smack her ear if she ever came home with one right
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enough, but I wouldn’t like to see her out in the dark at
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this time of the year.”</p>
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<p>Helen led him back onto the track, thinking for an instant, that
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he’d sidetracked himself the way David Harper was prone to
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do. She suppressed a smile. She couldn’t see David Harper
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driving a bus.</p>
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<p>“Anyway, she went up the back. There were two workmen,
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regulars, who were already there. They get the bus every morning,
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but you’ll have to get up early if you want to speak to them.
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I wouldn’t bother, for they sleep from here to Kirkland and
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only wake when I’m turning the bus outside the hospital. Ss
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she was up the back. Skinny thing. Looked as if she needed a good
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feed, big bags under her eyes. I thought she was older at first,
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but maybe she just had the flu. Oh, and what’s more, she
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could have done with a good wash an’ all. You don’t
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often get a girl smelling like that, but she was pretty ripe, I can
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tell you.”</p>
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<p>Helen’s ears metaphorically cocked up. “She
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smelled?”</p>
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<p>“Like a house full of cats. I should know. My auntie,
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she’s a bit wandered, she takes in every stray. The smell up
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in her place would choke a horse, swear to god. Well, this lassie,
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she was pretty powerful. I thought maybe it was the baby, maybe she
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hadn’t changed it for a while, for it was rank. Like shite
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and vomit and cat’s piss all mixed in, pardon the lingo.
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Maybe she had some sort of disease. Maybe it wasn’t the flu
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after all.”</p>
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<p>Helen thought that Ginny Marsden, if it really had been her,
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might have some sort of disease, but not a physical one. Anybody
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who stole a baby had to be sick in the head.</p>
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<p>“No. Tell you what. My uncle Jim, he had emphysema and his
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leg got gangrene. At the end of the day they had to cut it off at
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the knee, but it just got worse. The smell of that would have
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knocked you down for a mandatory eight count. That’s what she
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smelled like.”</p>
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<p>“And where did she get off?” Helen wanted to
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know.</p>
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<p>“Levenford. Just at the junction of River Street and Kirk
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Street. It was still dark and pretty damned cold. Soon as the door
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opened, there was snow blowing in. I wouldn’t like my girl to
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be out on her own in that, baby or no baby. It was a damned shame.
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She just looked like a poor soul. I nearly never bothered taking
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her money, but if the inspector catches you doing that, then you
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get your jotters, the sack, the old tin tack and no appeal.
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They’ve got hearts of pure stone, so they have.”</p>
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<p>Helen Lamont knew inspectors just like that, though not on the
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buses. She thanked John Skelly, appreciating his honesty and his
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ineffable cheeriness, and went out of the station. She called David
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Harper on the mobile, got a busy signal, and decided to head down
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on her own. She wanted to have something more positive to tell
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him.</p>
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<p>The drive to Levenford - fifteen miles, maybe a little more,
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west of the city - took nearly half an hour. It was mid afternoon
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when she turned at Roundriding Road, vaguely aware of having heard
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the quaint name before, wondering if someone she knew lived here.
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She drove down towards the centre of the town past the old Burgh
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hall that stood bare and weathered in the shadow of the great
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square red-brick bulk of Castlebank Distillery. A memory tugged at
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Helen as she went past the squat building. There had been something
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here, an incident a year or two past. She screwed her eyes up in
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concentration as she drove past the edge of the building, and saw
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the looming double hump of the old castle rock down on the mouth of
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the river.</p>
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<p>Levenford. Things had happened here a year or two back, she
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recalled. Some crazy killer had stalked the streets in a winter as
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bitter as this, picking off kids at first. She remembered the
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stories in the papers at the time, the bulletins on the
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six-o’clock news. The madman had left a girl hanging from the
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tall, slender steeple Helen was driving past. She shuddered at the
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thought of the brazen arrogance, the madness that would lead
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someone to snatch and kill a young girl and leave her dangling from
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the weathervane like a trophy.</p>
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<p>The distillery building drew her eyes. There had been something
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there too, had there not? She couldn’t remember, but she was
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glad she was not hunting a madman today. Maybe a crazy girl on a
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hormonal helter-skelter, but not a killer.</p>
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<p>Ginny Marsden was somewhere here, Helen told herself. She had a
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hunch that she had come here and stopped a while. This old,
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narrow-streeted town was the place where you could come and find
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some peace to sit while the chase went rumbling past. Helen parked
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her car down by the river and walked up an alley of foot-smoothed
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cobblestones, under the arch of a tunnel-pend that led beneath an
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old and crumbling building. As she walked underneath, into the
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darkness away from the weak light of a winter-morning sun, she
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shivered again, and not with cold. Something had happened here.
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Helen did not know how she knew, or why. All she got was a a tickle
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that itched at the back of her head, and she wanted to be away from
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that place. She walked quickly to get to the daylight at the far
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side out on River Street where the feeling of sudden oppression
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faded. She told herself not to be a fool. Yet the feeling had been
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real.</p>
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<p>The café next to the bus stop on the end of Kirk Street was
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quiet when she got there. Margaret and Maisie were grateful for
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something interesting to happen. They brought Helen a steaming mug
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of tea, big enough to take almost a pint of strong brew, and a
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fried egg sandwich, done just enough to let the yolk burst thick
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and wet. Both went down just a treat. Helen Lamont knew nothing
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about Ginny Marsden’s meal.</p>
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<p>“You look as if you could use another one, love,”
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Margaret said kindly. She pulled a chair and sat down. “This
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girl, what’s she done?”</p>
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<p>“She’s gone missing,” Helen said, giving
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nothing away. “Her parents are very worried.” She was
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really amazed that she had actually traced Ginny Marsden’s
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movements so easily. If it hadn’t been for the sheer luck of
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the two patrolmen remembering her, she could still be knocking
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doors round the city.</p>
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<p>“So they should be worried,” Maisie said.
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“There wasn’t a pick of meat on the girl’s bones.
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Margaret tried to get her to eat something, but all she would take
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was a coffee and even then it was hard enough for her to drink
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that. You’d have thought it was poisoned. She was just a poor
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soul. Is her boyfriend after her, or did her family throw her
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out?”</p>
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<p>“Nothing like that. I have to find her though.”</p>
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<p>“Well, you should try the hostel opposite Ship Institute
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Hostel,” Margaret chipped in. “She was asking for
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someplace to stay and that’s the only place I could think of.
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They take in the homeless there. Big Nina Galt, she helps run the
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place for the institute. She’s a cousin of mine on my
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mother’s side. Anyway, the girl was looking for a room for
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the night, maybe longer, I don’t know. I told her to go round
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to see Nina. I think she must have, because we got busy with a
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crowd of folk off the bus and heading for Creggan. By the time I
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served them their food and looked back, she and the baby were
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gone.”</p>
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<p>“Did you see the baby?”</p>
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<p>“Just a snatch. You know what it’s like. You
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can’t resist having a look. She was holding it tight, and I
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remember thinking the wee one should have a hat at this time of the
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year. Any time of the year come to that. But she was hugging it in
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under her coat. I pulled it back to have a look and the girl, kind
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of, what’s the word, jerked back. Like flinched? I just got a
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peek at the baby and for a minute I thought it was deformed, honest
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to god. I felt my coffee and bacon coming right back up again it
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was that bad.”</p>
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<p>“What do you mean?”</p>
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<p>“Och, the old biddy, she needs glasses,” Maisie
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interjected. “She wouldn’t recognise her sister from
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across the street.”</p>
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<p>“Nothing wrong with my eyes,” Margaret countered.
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The black eyebrows rose up in tandem arches. “No, when I
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looked at the baby, its head looked all wrong. I thought it was a
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doll at first and that maybe somebody had squashed its head. But it
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moved and I knew it wasn’t a doll. For a minute it was like,
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like....” Margaret searched for the words. “Like all
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out of shape, and a funny colour. But it must have been a trick of
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the light, because I coughed or something and my eyes watered and
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when I blinked them clear, it was fine, a lovely wee thing. I could
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have cuddled it to death.”</p>
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<p>Helen felt a strange, unexpected shiver run through her.
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She’d heard those words before.</p>
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<p>“It really was a bonny wee thing. I only got a glimpse,
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but I could see it was lovely. It was looking at me with a big blue
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eye, blue as the sea. Goodness, that’s like a poem,
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isn’t it?” She smiled widely, showing her impressive
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array of false teeth.</p>
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<p>“It made that sound new babies make, kind of shivery, just
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a wee whimper, and it brought it all back to me what mine were like
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when they were just born.”</p>
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<p>“And that wasn’t yesterday,” Maisie
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interrupted. “Her eldest’s thirty-eight and the way
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<em>her</em> daughter’s going, Margaret here’s going to
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be a great-granny any year now.”</p>
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<p>“Och, hold your wheesht,” Margaret scolded, but
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gently. “Anyway, it smelled just like a new baby, you know
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that hot milk smell?”</p>
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<p>“Did you notice any other smell?” Helen asked.</p>
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<p>“Oh, at first I thought the girl needed a good
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bath,” Margaret said, wrinkling her nose. “When I came
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across to her at first, it was like those tinkers down on the West
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Mains by the shoreline, dirty beggars. Some of them stink to the
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high heavens, so they do. Well, at first, I thought she smelled
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like that, but I must have been wrong.All I could smell was the
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baby, and you know, I just wanted to pick him up and cuddle him. I
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really took a notion then. Imagine it, me at my age, thinking about
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having a baby.”</p>
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<p>“It would be a bloody miracle, wouldn’t it?”
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Maisie snorted, and both women burst into laughter.</p>
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<p>“And not just for me,” Margaret said. “I think
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my Billy’s forgotten how it’s done.”</p>
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<hr />
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<p><em>He screamed</em>.</p>
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<p>She had abandoned him. The realisation triggered an
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uncontrollable fury and panic. He had fed, guzzling on the milk and
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the thick proteins the mother’s changing body had
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manufactured for him, feeling his new strength swell. Already the
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skin on his back was tight, shiny with pressure, aching with the
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need to slough. He was changing again and this was different from
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those other times. The change was imminent and it was immense. He
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could sense it with every cell of his body.</p>
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<p>He was becoming something <em>other.</em> He had not the words
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or the capacity to understand what.</p>
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<p>The past few sleeps had not been easy. He had dreamed again,
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dreamed of dark and shadowed places, of the long and arduous pain
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of birth, recalled and echoed in a strange and fearful replay, as
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if all of his being was resonating with his own long history. He
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dreamed of hunger and thirst and the overwhelming need now building
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up inside him, a bewildering, confusing want that felt like another
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hunger but was something more powerful.</p>
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<p>It was the change he could recognise, rushing in on him.</p>
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<p>And now she had abandoned him. She had waited until he had
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slept, stupefied by the feast and the lethargic torpor the changes
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wrought. She had bound him in the swaddling. He wriggled and fought
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against the sheets, feeling the fabric rasp against his drying,
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peeling skin. He kicked and pushed, rolling this way and that. He
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screamed all the while, sending his mental blast out so loud it
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rattled the windows and shivered on the floorboards.</p>
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<p>He knew she could hear him because the reaction inside her
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flared in his senses, like a beacon of pulsing light throbbing hard
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on the forefront of his mind. He located her and demanded that she
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return. She shivered and her own mind shrieked in awful sympathy
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with her fear, deliberately defying him as she had resisted him
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before.</p>
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<p>This one was different. The others had been cattle; complacent,
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contented; bovine. They had taken him and given themselves to him
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even as he drained them of their substance.</p>
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<p>But this one was different. He had chosen too quickly, seizing
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the opportunity in the midst of his own panicked vulnerability, and
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he had chosen wrongly. He could not completely dominate her. She
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would not subjugate to him.</p>
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<p>She was not a proper <em>mother.</em></p>
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<p>Even then he could sense her disintegration. He was draining her
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quickly, leeching her away, sucking her dry, and that too was new.
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A mother lasted longer than this, so long that time meant nothing
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at all. He would feed and sleep, feed and sleep and finally when a
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mother wore dry, he would chose another. This was different,
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because his needs were different, hotter and more urgent. He could
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feel the change in his own needs and in the feeding. He was taking
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not just what she could produce for him, what his own cells,
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speeding round in her bloodstream, commanded her body to
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manufacture. His feeding had altered. The new growth was able to
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probe into the veins inside her and drain directly, absorbing the
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elements, the nutrients, the building blocks his rapidly altering
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state demanded.</p>
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<p>Yet she was not a proper mother. She fought and struggled and
|
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that was new. She tried to defy him, tried to deny him, and now she
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had bound him in the cocoon of fabric. She had ticked him and now
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she had marooned him while she escaped.</p>
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<p>Awesome anger bubbled up inside him. This had <em>never</em>
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happened before. For a second, the dreadful panic threatened to
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swamp him and his mind shrieked in fear and hate. He sensed her
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falter, touched her pain. He probed instinctively at the fractures
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and crevices within her mind where he could manipulate and trigger
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the responses.</p>
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<p>She fought desperately against his touch and he snarled, still
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wriggling frantically to free himself from the sheet. His head
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worked free and he rolled to the left, swivelling like a
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caterpillar weaving its own cocoon, rolled too far and fell off the
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edge of the bed. He hit the floor with a solid thump. A sensation
|
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akin to pain lanced across his back where the skin was thin and
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tender. Something tore and the urgency welled up from deep inside
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him, hot and corrosive as acid.</p>
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<p>Down below, beyond the door and down the stairs, he heard the
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caterwauling of another female, cacophonous in his consciousness.
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For an instant he debated sending a call in that direction, then he
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realised, again instinctively that she was old, too old to be of
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any but momentary use. The older ones were harder to control
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because of their own changes. He screeched again, drilling the
|
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mother with the awl of his imperative need. She paused on the
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steps, almost drew back, then moved further away. He commanded
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desperately, felt another hesitation, another refusal, a mental
|
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protest made in abject fear. She took another step, another. He
|
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could feel the vibrations through the floor, seismic ripples picked
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up by the supersense he possessed. She was getting further away and
|
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he knew his influence was waning with the distance. He put out
|
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feelers, conscious tendrils of thought, to the rooms above and
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below, seeking contact, trying to find another human it could latch
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onto.</p>
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|
<p>In behind the wall, a hibernating mouse woke up, screeched and
|
|
died. The dendrites of its brain sparked and jittered, shattering
|
|
themselves in the sudden blast of energy. Under the eaves, two
|
|
roosting starlings fell from their perch and hit the frosted
|
|
flagstones with muffled thumps. Their eyes leaked out onto the ice.
|
|
A cat prowling at the kitchen door, looking for scraps, turned
|
|
tail, yowled a strange sound that was like fingernails scraping
|
|
down a blackboard, ran out of the narrow alley and under the wheels
|
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of the very bus that Ginny Marsden had taken from the city down to
|
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Levenford. It made a greasy smear two yards long on the road.</p>
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|
<p>Out in the back yard, a pit bull terrier, the property of Nina
|
|
Galt’s ne’er-do-well brother in law Campbell, (whose
|
|
son had once faced something even more preposterous and terrifying
|
|
than the thing which shrieked after Ginny Marsden, and survived
|
|
that dreadful contact) suddenly went berserk and attacked the stout
|
|
wooden door of the old brick outhouse where Campbell Galt kept it
|
|
out of sight of prying eyes. He had trained it for a major fight
|
|
set for after the New Year, forcing the wide-jawed and somehow
|
|
manic beast to bite on an old bath towel and then dangling it from
|
|
a third floor window for hours at a time until its facial muscles
|
|
were so strong and distorted that the dog looked like a grotesque
|
|
gargoyle. Now those jaws attacked the wooden door, twenty five
|
|
yards from the hostel, down an alley which could only be approached
|
|
from River Street. Nobody noticed until it had gnawed its way
|
|
halfway through the door, its face a bloodied mess, spiked with
|
|
wooden skelfs and splinters, its mind completely gone. Campbell
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|
Galt killed it with a single, catastrophic blow of a garden spade
|
|
the following night.</p>
|
|
<p>The mother hesitated no more, despite the fearsome command the
|
|
thing radiated as it writhed on the floor. She took another step,
|
|
another, got further away. He was getting beyond his range. He
|
|
panicked, rolling this way and that, the strange circular mouth
|
|
rolling back from the almost perfect sphere of tiny, glass-shard
|
|
teeth. Its mottled face twisted and torqued. Under the wrinkled lid
|
|
of a protuberant eye, the skin tore in a series of jittering rips,
|
|
exposing a purplish underskin that looked as if it was filled with
|
|
exotic poison. Every gland under his upper limbs opened and pulsed,
|
|
but he was still wrapped up. The chemical messengers, the powerful
|
|
pheromones that he had used to manipulate the mothers and other
|
|
humans before his mind had grown strong enough to command, sprayed
|
|
directly into the fabric, almost dissolving the cotton, but it
|
|
absorbed them so efficiently that the smell could not escape.</p>
|
|
<p>For an instant he was completely powerless. She was escaping,
|
|
leaving him on his own. If he remained here, he could be
|
|
discovered. He might be found another human who could not be
|
|
influenced, a male. The chemical messengers in his glands could
|
|
take a mother, make her love him, but on a male they would only
|
|
drive him made with rage. He knew from somewhere in the past that a
|
|
male could not tolerate him. Instinctively he knew he could be
|
|
destroyed.</p>
|
|
<p>Fresh fear erupted. He was not strong enough yet to survive
|
|
alone. The change was imminent and disabling. He could not travel
|
|
on its own. He would be trapped here, trapped without a mother, and
|
|
in an hour, maybe less, he would have to feed again. The urgency
|
|
and panic swelled again.</p>
|
|
<p>Then the mother stopped on the stairs. The vibration in the
|
|
floor faded and died. She had stopped on the landing, no more than
|
|
thirty feet away.</p>
|
|
<p>Everything went silent. He stopped breathing, sensing out. Very
|
|
slowly, finally figuring it out, he rolled to the left again.
|
|
Almost miraculously the sheet began to unravel. His brain, or what
|
|
passed for a brain, an organ that worked more on instinct than
|
|
true, coherent thought, recognised the possibility of release. He
|
|
rolled further until he fetched up against the base the bed, then
|
|
astutely, he wriggled back to where he had started and rolled some
|
|
more. The pressure of the sheets lessened. He twisted and managed
|
|
to get his shoulders out.</p>
|
|
<p>She was still stopped on the stairs. Even as he moved, he could
|
|
sense her turn. She radiated fear and dilemma. Her hesitancy was a
|
|
vibration on the air, her awful apprehension a tremble resonating
|
|
across the distance. The mother turned completely. She took one
|
|
step upwards. The board creaked under her foot, a protest that
|
|
sounded like a small animal’s alarm. Now he had his shoulders
|
|
free, his arm reached out and clawed on the carpet, dragging it
|
|
towards him. The carpet’s far corner was snagged under the
|
|
leg of the bed. The slither across the floorboards stopped. He got
|
|
his other arm out, clawed his elongated fingers on the rough,
|
|
matted pile. The motion drew him out of the wrap of the sheet, like
|
|
a caddis fly emerging from its protective case. His breath whistled
|
|
as he hauled strongly, and a small grunt that was both satisfaction
|
|
and exertion mirrored the groan of the stair tread under the
|
|
mother’s weight.</p>
|
|
<p>Enormous excitement washed through him. She was coming back. He
|
|
pulled again and rolled free of the wrapping, tumbling right across
|
|
the rumpled carpet to the bare floorboards. His skin slithered and
|
|
scrabbled on the polished surface. His nails got a purchase between
|
|
two boards and he got himself to all fours. His lower limbs,
|
|
scrawny and stick-like and oddly jointed, took his weight and he
|
|
swivelled fast in a jittery, spidery motion. She came up the
|
|
stairs, moving as fast as she could, the exhaustion evident in the
|
|
heavy drag of her feet on the boards. He could make out her
|
|
laboured breathing and the rasp of grinding pain in her joints.
|
|
Still she came.</p>
|
|
<p>He moved in a scuttle across the floor to the edge of the bed,
|
|
half covered by the trailing sheet, small and scrawny and
|
|
slat-ridged, a grey, blurring thing. She got to the door, an unseen
|
|
presence beyond the doorpost. A pale and fluttering hand reached
|
|
in, fumbling in the air, as if the mother was too afraid to look
|
|
inside herself, which was utterly true. The fear radiated from her
|
|
in pulses. The door had hit against the wall and rebounded slowly.
|
|
The blue plastic tab dangled from the key in the lock. Her arm
|
|
reached out for it. He could see her shoulder, then the side of her
|
|
face. Inside he felt the irresistible pressure building up, the
|
|
unendurable strain of his glands as they powered and clenched. He
|
|
held it, held his own thoughts, instinctively waiting for the
|
|
moment.</p>
|
|
<p>She half turned, her eyes catching the scuttling motion on the
|
|
floor. They flared wide. Her fingers touched the key. Her mouth
|
|
began to open as she saw him.</p>
|
|
<p>He screeched his command and his glands blew, sending an almost
|
|
visible spray into the air. She froze, eyes so wide they looked as
|
|
if they would blurt blindly from the sockets.</p>
|
|
<p>Then he <em>moved.</em></p>
|
|
<hr />
|
|
<p>Helen finished a second cup of tea, a decision she knew she
|
|
would regret later. Mentally she made a note to find a toilet
|
|
before she started the drive back up to the city. A group of
|
|
grey-suited clerks from Castlebank distillery had come in, all
|
|
looking like accountants or lawyers. They ordered burgers and
|
|
sausage rolls, quick food for the office class, and both Margaret
|
|
and Maisie had to reluctantly give up their gossiping to serve the
|
|
food. Helen put a few coins under the outsize saucer and made her
|
|
way out into the cold air. The sky was clear, the glassy blue of a
|
|
cloudless midwinter, and the haze of river mist was curling round
|
|
the corners of the alleys which led down past the old bakery on the
|
|
other side of the road towards the quay. The air was still and cold
|
|
and the tendrils of river mist <em>haar</em> were like translucent
|
|
tentacles probing the day. Even in the watery brightness they crept
|
|
eerily. Helen shivered with more than just cold. She turned, took a
|
|
step along River Street and she shivered again, this time more
|
|
violently.</p>
|
|
<p>“Somebody must have walked on my grave,” she
|
|
muttered to herself, feeling the shudder still ripple insistently
|
|
down her back.</p>
|
|
<p>It was as eerie as the probing fingers, an odd and inexplicable
|
|
sensation of wrongness.</p>
|
|
<p>She took another step forward, two, then she stopped. It came to
|
|
her with sudden clarity. She’d felt it before, the feeling of
|
|
being watched, of eyes upon her. She was young enough, certainly
|
|
attractive enough to be aware of the glances she would draw from
|
|
scaffolders or road workers, the traditional public oglers. She was
|
|
aware of it from men in cars, catching their pale faces turn away
|
|
as she glanced to challenge their stares. She was also aware of it,
|
|
more strongly, at other times, when she walked into a crowded bar
|
|
and she would feel eyes peeling her, picking her clean, some
|
|
hostile, some hungry. It was a kind of sixth sense which was
|
|
valuable when it alerted the other senses to the possibility of
|
|
danger.</p>
|
|
<p>Now she felt it again, though more strongly, inexplicably so. It
|
|
was somehow <em>different</em>, this sensation of surveillance.</p>
|
|
<p>She stopped and turned, drawing her eyes quickly back along the
|
|
walkway to where Kirk Street connected at right angles with the
|
|
main road through the town. Two men, burly in thick overcoats, were
|
|
walking quickly together, a matching pair of lawyers coming round
|
|
from the sheriff court sitting. By the bus stop, a couple of
|
|
teenagers with shaven heads which looked vulnerable and cold, were
|
|
hunched, sharing a cigarette. For a second Helen did not recognise
|
|
them as girls until one turned round and blew a plume of smoke into
|
|
the air through pouting rosebud lips.</p>
|
|
<p>The sense of being observed died abruptly. The inspection, if it
|
|
had been that, was over. For a brief moment, Helen felt
|
|
disoriented, as if she had imagined it, but she was left with a
|
|
strange and uneasy sense of contagion. It was as if something had
|
|
touched her and left a stain. She shivered again, an invisible
|
|
vibration, told herself to get a grip. There was no-one else
|
|
around, apart from the portly fat cats and the skinny idlers and,
|
|
further along the street, several stout old ladies weighed down by
|
|
age and large bags of groceries. She moved on away from the cafe
|
|
and the trickling sensation under her skin, the resonance in the
|
|
long nerves down the length of her spine, died away. If somebody
|
|
had stood on her grave, they had moved off again.</p>
|
|
<p>The Ship institute was on the other side of River Street, up a
|
|
narrow lane. The Victorian building had been imposing in its day,
|
|
when the town was rich from shipbuilding and shipping, when the
|
|
tobacco barons and tea-lords reigned supreme. Now it was a
|
|
mouldering monument to days gone by, the carved stone cargo ship
|
|
above its wide doorway, an anachronism. The town built no more
|
|
ships. It built nothing at all these days.</p>
|
|
<p>The hostel, which once housed sailors home from a windjamming
|
|
run from Cathay, was incorporated into the building, sheltered from
|
|
the prevailing west wind, and therefore better preserved than the
|
|
once imposing institute proper.</p>
|
|
<p>Nina Galt took a wary look at Helen’s warrant card.
|
|
“We’re not really supposed to talk about our
|
|
guests,” she said.</p>
|
|
<p>Helen couldn’t be bothered going through the rigmarole of
|
|
worming her way in. “I could come back,” she said
|
|
flatly. “I don’t want to fall out with anybody or have
|
|
a dispute on the doorstep. But I could go and get some paperwork
|
|
and come back. But that’s going to mean an awful lot of
|
|
trouble for me, and naturally, that’s going to spoil
|
|
everybody’s day.”</p>
|
|
<p>Nina Galt started to speak, but Helen held up her hand:
|
|
“Here’s the base line. I’ve got a missing girl
|
|
whose parents are worried to death, and my boss has asked me to
|
|
find her. She’s been reported missing and it’s now my
|
|
job. This is the law. She might be here, and she might not be. What
|
|
I want you to do is have a look at a picture and tell me. On and
|
|
after that, we’ll talk, but in the meantime, just have a look
|
|
for me, okay? We both want to have a nice day.”</p>
|
|
<p>Nina Galt looked Helen in the eye, weighing her up. She’d
|
|
had a hard life of her own, growing up with a family of boys who
|
|
were never out of trouble with the police, and then marrying a
|
|
husband who had spent many a Friday night in the slammer of the
|
|
police station down by College way. She had no love of the police,
|
|
but she was herself a law abiding person. She did, however, have a
|
|
loyalty to the people who passed through the hostel, some of them
|
|
on the run from trouble of one sort or another, some of them not
|
|
wishing to be found.</p>
|
|
<p>“She’s really missing?”</p>
|
|
<p>“Yes. And she’d not in any trouble, not official
|
|
trouble.”</p>
|
|
<p>“Show me the picture.”</p>
|
|
<p>Helen took it out from her inside pocket. Nina Galt held it up,
|
|
drawing her eyebrows into a frown. “Yes. She came here
|
|
yesterday. She’s got a room upstairs. There’s always a
|
|
couple just before Christmas. We just give them a room until social
|
|
services find them a place.”</p>
|
|
<p>“I told you, there’s no trouble for her, not from
|
|
us, nor her parents,” Helen said. She wasn’t telling
|
|
the entire truth. There could really be trouble for Ginny Marsden.
|
|
She’d taken the baby. Yet something inside Helen, a mere
|
|
hunch, an intuition, told her that the missing girl was in a
|
|
different kind of trouble altogether.</p>
|
|
<p>“Is she in now?”</p>
|
|
<p>“I reckon so. We don’t keep much of a check on the
|
|
clients. We give them bed and board and make sure they’re not
|
|
taking anything illegal. They’re free to come and go as they
|
|
please.”</p>
|
|
<p>“Did she give you a name? Show you any
|
|
identification?””</p>
|
|
<p>“Celia,” Nina said after a moment of concentration.
|
|
“Celia Barker. It was on her bank card.”</p>
|
|
<p>Out in the back of the hostel, a dog was barking furiously, the
|
|
sounds hardly muffled by the distance or the thickness of the
|
|
walls. Nina Galt got a master key from a hook underneath the front
|
|
counter and led the way towards the stairs. Just at the foot of the
|
|
steps, where the ornate banister curled round in a smooth, polished
|
|
sweep, she stopped and looked along the narrow corridor behind the
|
|
stairway where a line of coat hooks, old brass, stood out from the
|
|
wall at eye level.</p>
|
|
<p>“She’s moved her pram,” Nina said. “It
|
|
was there this morning.”</p>
|
|
<p>Helen’s heart sank. She wanted to get this over with and
|
|
get back to what she considered real police work, catching
|
|
criminals.</p>
|
|
<p>“Maybe somebody shifted it,” Nina went on. “We
|
|
don’t like to have the hallway cluttered up. The fire safety
|
|
inspectors don’t like it, but we can’t expect the girls
|
|
to haul their prams upstairs. It could be out in the back
|
|
yard.”</p>
|
|
<p>“Let’s check the room first,” Helen suggested.
|
|
Nina shrugged and led the way upstairs. She was about to slide the
|
|
master key into the hole when she stopped abruptly. An oblong of
|
|
blue plastic was lying on the floor, partially hidden under the
|
|
door itself. She stooped, picked it up, drawing the key through the
|
|
narrow gap as she did so. She straightened and without hesitation,
|
|
she opened the unlocked door.</p>
|
|
<p>“Jesus God,” Nina said, turning back, nose wrinkled
|
|
in a sudden grimace which sent frown ridges gathering on her
|
|
forehead. “Something’s gone and died in
|
|
here.”</p>
|
|
<p>Helen moved past her. The smell was thick and stale, and she
|
|
recognised it from the previous times. It was weaker than before,
|
|
as if it had faded from the air, but it was still discernible,
|
|
still rank and foetid. She felt her eyes sting and her heartbeat
|
|
cranked up to a faster level. Her pulse beat behind her ears and
|
|
for an instant the bright outline of the unshaded window wavered in
|
|
her vision. She shook her head and backed away from the door.</p>
|
|
<p>The entire room was visible from outside in the hallway at the
|
|
top of the stairs. The blankets were swirled on the bed, the way
|
|
they had been in Heather McDougall’s home, the way they had
|
|
been on Celia Barker’s neat little divan.</p>
|
|
<p>On the floor a sheet was stretched out, crumpled but unravelled.
|
|
A dried bloodstain , the colour of old rust, smeared down the
|
|
middle of it. The carpet was twisted and rumpled.</p>
|
|
<p>“What the hell’s been going on here?” Nina
|
|
asked.</p>
|
|
<p>Helen stood stock still. Her eyes scanned the room quickly,
|
|
taking in the open door of the tiny bathroom, and the wall cupboard
|
|
on the far side. The room was empty.</p>
|
|
<p><em>Something wrong</em> her instinct told her. A shivery
|
|
sensation scuttered over the skin of her back, prickling the
|
|
follicles on the back of her neck. It felt like a rash of
|
|
goose-bumps.</p>
|
|
<p>Nina Galt turned to look at her. The young policewoman’s
|
|
face had gone pale, chalk white in contrast to the black sheen of
|
|
her short-cropped hair. Helen Lamont stood, breathing hard,
|
|
wondering what to do next. The memory of what had happened in Celia
|
|
Barker’s kitchen, when the dead cat had got up and danced and
|
|
when the walls had begun to pulse and breathe and when the two
|
|
headed monster had come rushing out, twisting and distorted in her
|
|
vision, it all came back in a rush.</p>
|
|
<p>She did not want to go into the room. All of a sudden she knew
|
|
she should call in, get David Harper here. She did not want to do
|
|
this alone any more. The voice of instinct was so powerful that she
|
|
could almost hear it clamouring in words, but there were no words,
|
|
just an uncanny certainty that this whole thing was out of hand,
|
|
suddenly and incomprehensibly out of control.</p>
|
|
<p>She was not dealing with anything natural. The realisation
|
|
abruptly crystallised within her.</p>
|
|
<p>Outside, beyond the window, the dog howled and grunted and
|
|
slavered quite madly, adding to the insanity of the scene. Beyond
|
|
the window, beyond the wood of the brick outhouse door, she could
|
|
hear it growl and froth, throwing itself against the door which
|
|
slammed against the upright. Below, on the ground, two dead birds
|
|
were being slowly covered up by tiny snow crystals blowing off the
|
|
roof. In a cavity in the wall, the soft and jellied brain of a
|
|
mouse was leaking from its southernmost ear.</p>
|
|
<p>Helen’s nerves felt as if they were all on the outside of
|
|
her skin. She was aware of Nina Galt looking at her askance, even
|
|
though the other woman’s throat seemed to be involved in its
|
|
own contraction, trying to choke down a rush of bile. She was
|
|
conscious of the other woman’s presence on one level, but
|
|
deep in her primitive core she was only aware of a dreadful feeling
|
|
of supernatural fear.</p>
|
|
<p>On the video, she had seen Ginny Marsden stop dead in her tracks
|
|
as if she’d been garrotted. It had happened when Heather
|
|
McDougall was writhing in her death throes on the floor of the mall
|
|
and the girl had turned and lifted the baby, the infant the woman
|
|
had brought, from the pram. Now, here, the air was still thick with
|
|
the scent that had sickened her in McDougall’s house, the
|
|
scent that had twisted her emotions like some sort of
|
|
hallucinogenic drug. It was the same smell as at Celia
|
|
Barker’s apartment, the girl whose name Ginny Marsden had
|
|
adopted.</p>
|
|
<p>It was all connected, she understood now. The strangeness of it
|
|
all twisted once more at Helen Lamont, contaminating her with the
|
|
unfathomable sensation of threat.</p>
|
|
<p>“Close the door,” she said. “And lock
|
|
it.” She backed away while Nina Galt swung the door closed,
|
|
her throat still working against the reaction caused by the
|
|
cloying, rancid smell. The key went into the lock, turned and
|
|
clicked. The smell faded almost instantly. Beyond the door, the
|
|
noise of the madly barking dog was muffled down to a series of
|
|
distant howls.</p>
|
|
<p>“What on earth was that?” the other woman finally
|
|
said. She could see the policewoman’s hands were trembling
|
|
slightly, as were her own, for no reason. She felt dizzy and
|
|
nauseous and disorientated. The policewoman looked scared to death.
|
|
“What in the name of God is that smell?”</p>
|
|
<p>“I don’t know,” Helen finally said, “but
|
|
I’ll find out. Don’t let anybody in there yet.
|
|
I’ll have to have it checked out.”</p>
|
|
<p>“I’ll have to have the place fumigated,” Nina
|
|
Galt added. “That would make you sick, so it would.”
|
|
She pulled back from the door, shoulders working in a swivelling
|
|
motion as if she itched. She lifted a thumb and dug it in under her
|
|
own armpit and twisted, pulling the fabric away from herself. Helen
|
|
recognised the motion. She was adjusting a brassiere that had
|
|
suddenly become uncomfortable. She froze, realising that she
|
|
herself was doing exactly the same thing.</p>
|
|
<p>She looked down at herself while the other woman was turning
|
|
away to walk to the head of the stairs. Her nipples were throbbing,
|
|
pulsing with every beat of her heart, and the pressure of the
|
|
cotton weave was suddenly uncomfortable and rasping. The nipples
|
|
were straining against the thin sweater she wore under the flying
|
|
jacket, standing proud. She pulled her jacket closed, hiding the
|
|
tell-tale swellings, while the sensation of pressure continued as
|
|
she walked down the stairs. The motion rubbed her turgid flesh
|
|
against the cup and made it rasp sensitively.</p>
|
|
<p>Helen thought the thick, cloying smell would make someone more
|
|
than just sick. The sensation that somebody had walked over her
|
|
grave came back to her, strong as the vibration of a bowstring</p>
|
|
<hr />
|
|
<p>It had come at Ginny fast. It had come at her like a
|
|
<em>spider</em>.</p>
|
|
<p>She was reaching for the key, while a fear so terrible it felt
|
|
like it could shatter her into fragments was shuddering inside her,
|
|
blacking out everything except the urgent need to close the door
|
|
and lock the baby</p>
|
|
<p><em>monster it’s a fucking monster it is a</em> devil.</p>
|
|
<p>inside the room and close it away. She had to trap inside. It
|
|
was, despite the crippling terror, the bravest thing the girl had
|
|
ever done in her life. It was the first time she had ever had any
|
|
<em>need</em> to be brave. It was struggling up there, she could
|
|
hear it thumping against the floor and she could imagine its
|
|
twisting and desperate writhings to be free of the sheets.</p>
|
|
<p>She had almost got away. She had stopped on the landing and then
|
|
trudged back up the impossibly steep cliff of staircase, battling
|
|
the horror and the pain in her joints and the creeping exhaustion
|
|
of her muscles. She reached the doorway. Inside the room it was
|
|
panting and snuffling desperately, like a trapped and vicious
|
|
animal and making that horrible screeching sound that was so high
|
|
she couldn’t physically hear it, but her brain could somehow
|
|
pick up the anger and supernatural fear it was broadcasting. She
|
|
reached towards the door handle, knowing she had to expose part of
|
|
herself to its gaze.</p>
|
|
<p>Ginny thought she could do it, imagined she could get the key,
|
|
turn it in the lock. She held her breath tight against the demand
|
|
for air caused by her painfully thumping heart. Her vision wavered,
|
|
going dark then coming light again.</p>
|
|
<p>The key was stuck in the lock, but it was on the other side of
|
|
the door. She had to reach further while all the time the white
|
|
sizzle of its distress and anger flared and burned on the bones in
|
|
the back of her skull. She forced herself forward.</p>
|
|
<p>It hissed. It called to her. It demanded. It
|
|
<em>commanded</em></p>
|
|
<p>She tried to force her fingers round the key, but they were
|
|
white and numb. Pins and needles danced on the skin of her arms and
|
|
throbbed in her hands along with the new and grinding pain. It
|
|
commanded and she felt her head turn, entirely against her will.
|
|
The blanket was unravelled, unravelling still on the carpet which
|
|
was pulled into a crumpled roll, caught by the leg of the bed. A
|
|
small, dark and angular shape moved and she tried not to look.</p>
|
|
<p>It shrieked inside her and she gasped with the ferocity of the
|
|
hurt its sending caused deep in her centre. Ginny tried to turn
|
|
away, hearing the small metallic tinkle as the tab twisted on its
|
|
loop. Her fingers got to it, fumbled for the key. It rattled,
|
|
pulled out a mere fraction.</p>
|
|
<p>Her head was jerked round, hauled by the irresistible force of
|
|
its demand.</p>
|
|
<p>The thing rolled and squirmed beyond the edge of the bed. Her
|
|
hand pulled at the key. It tumbled out of the lock, slowly twisting
|
|
in the air in slow motion, whirring softly as it fell. Her senses
|
|
were cranked up to supernatural perception. Every cell of her body
|
|
was suddenly and completely aware.</p>
|
|
<p>The monster twisted round to face her. Flat red eyes glared in a
|
|
small and flattened face. The round mouth opened and closed in a
|
|
sucking motion, showing her the lamprey circlet of teeth slivers.
|
|
Its limbs were scrawny and stick-like, its skin wrinkled and
|
|
mottled and slatted grey, the way she had seen it in the
|
|
mirror.</p>
|
|
<p>It came at her like a spider. It scuttled across the floor,
|
|
small and spindly, a grey, blurring thing that moved so fast she
|
|
could hardly make her eyes follow it. The key hit the floor with a
|
|
low, metallic <em>thrum</em> and bounced out of sight. Down in the
|
|
kitchen, a million miles away, the sound of the woman singing was
|
|
now a monotone drone, drawn out and slowed to incomprehensibility.
|
|
A steam kettle’s whistle sounded like a distant ship’s
|
|
foghorn.</p>
|
|
<p>The thing came in a scuttling rush. Its outlines fuzzed and
|
|
blurred as the swellings on its sides pulsed and clenched like
|
|
small lungs, like poison sacs, sending a fine mist into the air
|
|
around it. Ginny’s mouth instinctively shut like a trap. She
|
|
tried to move, found her feet were glued to the floor. Her hand was
|
|
still reaching for the key that had long gone and the thing on the
|
|
floor launched itself at her.</p>
|
|
<p>The smell hit her at the same time as the monster scuttled and
|
|
leapt, taking her at waist height and then climbing up with
|
|
arachnid speed, its small, wizened hands reaching to grab the sides
|
|
of her face just under the jawline. The fingers, elongated and
|
|
warted digits, like the hands of some reptilian lemur, clenched on
|
|
her skin, almost hard enough to break through into the underlying
|
|
tissue. The eyes glared, great saucers of red, up so close against
|
|
her that they lost definition like twin, flaring lava pools, like
|
|
mad moons.</p>
|
|
<p>The stench enveloped her, infusing her pores and passages with
|
|
its chemical power while the thing’s mental blast seared her
|
|
own mind.</p>
|
|
<p>In that instant she was recaptured.</p>
|
|
<p>Its outline wavered and blurred in her vision, first grey and
|
|
rough, then pink and smooth, then back again, as if the camouflage
|
|
was no longer completely necessary. It fixed its eyes on her,
|
|
drilling its singularity into hers. Her heart seemed to expand like
|
|
a balloon under her ribs, swelling with sudden pain. She gasped and
|
|
its essence went down her throat, swirled into her lungs. Every
|
|
nerve bucked, every muscle twitched, every joint ground like stone.
|
|
Fear and need fought with each other, desire battled with the
|
|
incredible loathing. The compulsion to mother the thing vied with a
|
|
powerful desire to kill it and be gone. She wanted to run and hide,
|
|
to kick and scream, to twist free of its grasp and go somewhere to
|
|
be sick while alongside that she was forced to obey its overriding
|
|
domination. Over all of it lay an appalling weight of utter despair
|
|
and loss.</p>
|
|
<p>It had her now and she would never be free.</p>
|
|
<p>Ginny Marsden backed against the wall, hit it with a thump,
|
|
slowly slid down to her haunches, her coat stripping off a loose
|
|
sliver of old flaking wallpaper. The thing in her arms continued to
|
|
glare into her eyes, mesmerising her with a brutal mental blaze
|
|
that sizzled into that part of her brain which gave her volition
|
|
and seared it with its own baleful heat.</p>
|
|
<p>A rope of saliva drooled from the corner of her mouth. She
|
|
moaned slightly while out beyond the window the mad dog went even
|
|
crazier, attacking the wooden door with snout, teeth and skull.</p>
|
|
<p>After a while, after a long while, she began to stir. The thing
|
|
that was still clenched onto her skin loosened its grip a little
|
|
and after a while, the great red eyes, glassy as garnet, slowly
|
|
closed. It lowered itself, moving like an emaciated and scaly
|
|
monkey, down over her breasts and began to burrow in once more.
|
|
After more of a while she felt it clamp on her skin and then she
|
|
sensed the thin and slick probing between her legs.</p>
|
|
<p>But this time she was not aware on any conscious level.</p>
|
|
<p>What there was of Ginny Clark’s own self, her own
|
|
comprehension of being, was clamped down and trapped in an
|
|
impervious bubble within her, buried down there in the dark where
|
|
its screaming, panicked cries could not be heard.</p>
|
|
<p>Ginny Marsden, the <em>mother</em>, let it suck on her, let it
|
|
probe her until, once more, it was sated. The draining sensation
|
|
deep inside her was like a cold and constant trickle. She ignored
|
|
that. All she knew was the need to do its bidding and the creeping
|
|
ache that had invaded her whole body.</p>
|
|
<p>After more of a while, the baby told her to move. Her eyes could
|
|
make out its shape. Somewhere within, her thoughts translated the
|
|
visual image into something resembling a baby, but by this time it
|
|
did not matter. It had taken her now and she was no longer her own.
|
|
She belonged to it.</p>
|
|
<p>Outside, as she pushed her pram down to River Street, it held
|
|
her tight. Every now and again, she would bend down, leaning under
|
|
the hood, the mothers do when they are pacifying a small child,
|
|
comforting an infant, just letting it know she is there.</p>
|
|
<p>The pram’s left wheel squeaked its protest as she slowly
|
|
went down the alley, moving like an old woman.</p>
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