mirror of
https://gitlab.silvrtree.co.uk/martind2000/booksnew.git
synced 2025-01-29 02:56:17 +00:00
676 lines
39 KiB
HTML
676 lines
39 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
|
|
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
|
|
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
|
|
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
|
|
<head>
|
|
<meta name="generator" content=
|
|
"HTML Tidy for Windows (vers 14 February 2006), see www.w3.org" />
|
|
<title>1</title>
|
|
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="imperaWeb.css" />
|
|
<link rel="stylesheet" type=
|
|
"application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" href=
|
|
"page-template.xpgt" />
|
|
</head>
|
|
<body>
|
|
<div id="text">
|
|
<div class="section" id="xhtmldocuments">
|
|
<h2>21</h2>
|
|
<p>“Now <em>you</em> look as if you’ve gone eight
|
|
rounds,” David told Helen as they went up the steps at the
|
|
city station in the sharp cold of morning. He was tired too, but
|
|
Helen looked as if she had some way to go before she’d be
|
|
properly awake.</p>
|
|
<p>“Christmastime exhaustion,” she said wearily.
|
|
“Family, food and fornicating.” Her words made breath
|
|
billows on the frosted air and her cheeks were rosy with the cold.
|
|
Her dark eyes sparkled with mischief.</p>
|
|
<p>“What, again?” he stopped, turning towards her. She
|
|
laughed out loud, a natural explosion of mirth.</p>
|
|
<p>“No, silly bugger, not <em>again</em>.” Her mirth
|
|
bubbled into the words. “You were enough, thank you ever so
|
|
much. Aftermath and afterglow, and I’m suffering from two
|
|
mornings after in a row. It’s good to get back to some
|
|
semblance of sanity, if there is any sanity in all of this. I need
|
|
the break.” She straight armed the fire door, giving it a
|
|
surprisingly vigorous push, though he should not have been
|
|
surprised for he’d felt the strength in her supple body,
|
|
almost slammed it into a young policeman who was adjusting his cap,
|
|
not paying attention.</p>
|
|
<p>“Have a good Christmas then?” she asked.</p>
|
|
<p>“I told you on the phone. It was fine. Quiet, friendly. My
|
|
mother fussed over me and I loved it.” He gave her an
|
|
appraising look in the empty corridor. “I could have used
|
|
some other company though.”</p>
|
|
<p>“Me too. I just called to say,” she started to sing,
|
|
then burst into laughter. “I just called to make sure you
|
|
weren’t floundering in guilt and angst. I’m glad I did.
|
|
My mother’s getting suspicious, naturally. She sees every man
|
|
as a potential rescuer from spinsterhood, so we’ll have to be
|
|
careful.”</p>
|
|
<p>He opened the door and held it. She walked past, did a quick
|
|
visual sweep of the room, saw there was no-one there. She stopped
|
|
then and gave him a very quick kiss, right on the ear, pursing her
|
|
lips and smacking hard. He pulled back fast as his eardrum almost
|
|
burst with the sudden vacuum.</p>
|
|
<p>“Be gentle for God’s sake,” he said. She
|
|
laughed again and pushed past him, taking off her heavy jacket. He
|
|
got to his desk sat down and the phone rang almost immediately. He
|
|
snatched it up while Helen rummaged for change and went down the
|
|
corridor to the coffee machine.</p>
|
|
<p>Phil Cutcheon the former CID boss from the east side apologised
|
|
for calling so early. He exchanged brief seasonal pleasantries and
|
|
then got straight down to business. The two of them talked for five
|
|
minutes or more. Helen came back with two coffees, and placed one
|
|
on the edge of his desk just as Phil was winding up. David said
|
|
he’d see him in an hour.</p>
|
|
<p>Two other detectives came in, both broad and beefy men who just
|
|
looked like cops in grey suit uniforms. They looked bloodshot and
|
|
grizzled with festive overload. One belched loudly, apologised to
|
|
the nearly empty office, wished David and Helen a merry Christmas
|
|
and asked if they’d both spent the night in the office. David
|
|
felt his ears begin to colour. Helen said she wished she had spent
|
|
the night in the office.</p>
|
|
<p>David had turned from his desk with the hot coffee, opened a
|
|
filing cabinet when the phone rang again. The big sergeant lifted
|
|
the receiver in the passing, growled a word, listened for a couple
|
|
of seconds then passed it to David.</p>
|
|
<p>“It’s your missus,” he said, winking.</p>
|
|
<p>Helen watched him over the rim of her plastic cup as he took the
|
|
call. June’s voice had that broken, hiccup quality of someone
|
|
who’s been crying for a while and might start again any
|
|
moment. She apologised for her outburst and her ultimatum, told him
|
|
how much she had missed him over Christmas, said she still had his
|
|
present all wrapped up and how she had suffered such a miserable,
|
|
blighted day. He listened, feeling his face colour now as Helen
|
|
watched him closely. She narrowed her eyes in mock threat, while
|
|
June babbled on the phone, cramming her words and sentences
|
|
together. Finally Helen tilted her face, almost challenging and
|
|
then, surprisingly, she mouthed him a silent kiss, not arrogantly,
|
|
more in support. At least, so he thought. The other thought that
|
|
occurred to him was the no-holds-barred status of both love and
|
|
war.</p>
|
|
<p>“I’ll have to think,” he said flatly. “I
|
|
really will.” He felt a sudden wariness, an odd sensation of
|
|
being trapped and he fought against it. She was having second
|
|
thoughts, no doubt exacerbated by the fact that she and he had not
|
|
been together at Christmas, and she wanted to make up, get back
|
|
together again. He did not want to hurt her, didn’t want to
|
|
turn her down flat, but at the same time, he recalled the powerful
|
|
relief and release of tension when she had walked out, telling him
|
|
that she had done what he should have had the guts to do weeks,
|
|
maybe months before. “No. I can’t right now. No.
|
|
I’m too busy.”</p>
|
|
<p>It made him feel cruel and heartless, but right at that moment
|
|
he wanted her off the phone. He’d need space to think.
|
|
Already the complications had set in, and he’d had a full day
|
|
to think about Helen Lamont and himself and, strangely, he did not
|
|
feel any entrapment, any fettering there. He’d always
|
|
considered it a mistake to get involved with colleagues, but that
|
|
was the voice of reason. On Christmas morning he’d woken up
|
|
thinking about her and he’d spent most of the day doing the
|
|
same thing. She’d called to tell him the same story. He did
|
|
not regret what had happened at all. Finally the phone went down.
|
|
Helen came across, walking as casually as she was able. The two
|
|
other men were at their desks, bent over paperwork.</p>
|
|
<p>“You’re still one of the good guys,” she said
|
|
in a whisper. “I just want you to know that. Even if you do
|
|
go back to her.”</p>
|
|
<p>She stopped, turned and looked him right in the eye, and that
|
|
quick look conveyed a number of messages. One of them was that she
|
|
didn’t give herself to everybody, that she had put her trust
|
|
in him. Her voice was almost inaudible, even though she was right
|
|
up against him. One of the other men looked up, noticed the
|
|
closeness, grinned and looked away. “But I’d really
|
|
prefer it if you didn’t. That’s the truth.”</p>
|
|
<p>The phone rang. The first man picked it up, listened then called
|
|
over to Helen. “Transferring to you,” he said.
|
|
“Some chick asking for you. Says you left a message on her
|
|
machine. Lost her cat and her wallet.”</p>
|
|
<p>Helen picked up the receiver and spoke for the first time to
|
|
Celia Barker.</p>
|
|
<p>________</p>
|
|
<p>In the corner of the barn, in the dark gloom of that cold
|
|
Fhristmas Eve had been dimly aware of the mother’s racking
|
|
cough, but his attention was focused forwards. She groaned, and for
|
|
a moment it sounded like the wind through the eaves, but on this
|
|
gloaming winter afternoon, there was no wind. Somewhere outside the
|
|
barn, a dog barked, the high pitched, narking aggression of a small
|
|
terrier. Beyond it, a cockerel bawled its hoarse territorial cry.
|
|
Close by, a horse whinnied and jostled a stable door.</p>
|
|
<p>He was alone now and all of his instincts were wound up tight,
|
|
all of his needs and hungers. He was afraid too, caught almost in
|
|
the open while the mother was disintegrating. The sense of danger
|
|
and vulnerability swelled inside him like a cancer. The skin on his
|
|
back was peeling away, cracking into fissures while underneath the
|
|
tender new skin protruded. He scratched at his back, twisting his
|
|
oddly jointed limb round to hook a nail there to ease the dreadful
|
|
itch.</p>
|
|
<p>Behind him the used-up mother was finishing. He could sense her
|
|
glow diminish in his mind. Already he had released his grip on her.
|
|
It had taken effort to bring her up this far, forcing her every
|
|
step of the way, over the gate and up into the hay, while
|
|
everything in her was shutting down. the muscles and the nerves. He
|
|
had drained her even as she staggered upwards, stealing the last of
|
|
her, emptying the store for his coming change.</p>
|
|
<p>It was not quite dark, not yet, but it would be soon. He would
|
|
move then, when it was safe enough. Over in the corner, something
|
|
squeaked. He considered it, sitting as still as stone but let the
|
|
creature live, reaching out the merest tickle of thought to
|
|
encompass its glow. He might need all of his energy for the next
|
|
stage. He crouched there near the door, eyes closed, just sensing.
|
|
The big beasts were nervous, somehow aware of his presence and not
|
|
liking it at all. They skittered and banged on the stalls. He
|
|
ignored them. They would taste bad, his own senses told him, but if
|
|
necessary, if he had to, he would</p>
|
|
<p>change one of them if he could. He did not know if that was
|
|
possible, but the intuition told him the creatures were big and
|
|
warm and female. Instinctively it noted their presence.</p>
|
|
<p>The moon finally rose in the sky, dim at first in the fading of
|
|
the day, but gathering brightness. The silver light did not hurt
|
|
his eyes the way the day would, the way the street lights would
|
|
burn. The moonlight was a cold balm on his dry and itching skin. He
|
|
edged closer to the barn door, letting his eyes open slowly, taking
|
|
in the new night. With equal care he moved out of the barn, a
|
|
small, thin thing, scuttling on all fours, back arched and blunt
|
|
face held low. The two flat eyes were red despite the silver of the
|
|
moon, wide and alert, devoid of anything resembling humanity. The
|
|
cold was intense here and automatically he speeded up, getting
|
|
close to the stable wall. He rounded it, almost rat-like, keeping
|
|
very close to the masonry. Here, the smell of horses was powerful,
|
|
but there were other smells too, the dry scent of birds feathers,
|
|
the bitter reek of cats and the flat odour of dogs. Over and above
|
|
that, the real smell came, thin and far off. Enticing and
|
|
intoxicating.</p>
|
|
<p>The smell of a <em>mother</em>.</p>
|
|
<p>He had scented her before, sensed her before, instinctively
|
|
leading the old one up the hill towards the new.</p>
|
|
<p>He scuttled round the whitewashed corner of the tables, skirting
|
|
the rain barrel, then round into the farm’s small courtyard.
|
|
Here, the angle of the roof cut off the moonlight, throwing this
|
|
part into inky blackness. He sat there, reaching out his thought,
|
|
sending tendrils to probe ahead. He touched a trundling black
|
|
beetle under a slate and it died with a click of its jaws, legs
|
|
folding up under the carapace. Over in the dovecote the pigeons
|
|
panicked again, taking to the air in a clatter of alarm. He saw
|
|
them as warm, fluttering dots of light in his outreach.</p>
|
|
<p>He took two crab-steps, staying close to the wall, emerged into
|
|
the courtyard proper. Two of his glands pulsed, audibly hissing as
|
|
they expelled their payload into the air. He waited while it
|
|
drifted away from him, revelling in his own scent. He reached out
|
|
with his extra sense and paused for a few tense seconds, crouched
|
|
in the shadow.</p>
|
|
<p>Bedlam erupted.</p>
|
|
<p>On the far side, the wire door of a small brick chicken coop
|
|
punched outwards as every bird went into a frenzy of hysteria.
|
|
Feathers tumbled out into the cold air, wide snowflakes slowly
|
|
swinging towards the ground. A tall cockerel came barging out from
|
|
an outhouse doorway, crest erect, chest feathers bristling with
|
|
instant outraged aggression. It stood on its toes, started to crow,
|
|
harsh and brittle..</p>
|
|
<p>From the shadows nearby, a black cat came rocketing out,
|
|
screaming in absolute fury. It clamped its jaws on the bird’s
|
|
head. Bone crunched and the cock’s brains dribbled out of its
|
|
skull. Instantly its wings thrashed in its death convulsion. The
|
|
cat did not even stop. It crossed the courtyard, a black streak,
|
|
heading straight for the corner.</p>
|
|
<p>He turned to it, touched hard with a pulse of thought. The cat
|
|
went veering off and ran straight for the chicken coop, hitting the
|
|
door with such a crash that it shook on its hinges. Its claws
|
|
snagged the wire and it hung there, screeching like a demon while
|
|
inside the coop the already mad chickens pecked ferociously at each
|
|
other and whirled in crazed circles.</p>
|
|
<p>The two terriers, half asleep in their basket just inside the
|
|
storm door where coats and boots were stored, came instantly awake
|
|
and came bolting out, ears erect, sniffing at the air, growling in
|
|
the back of their throats. He hardly needed to reach and touch them
|
|
at all, such was their sensitivity to the powerful scent. One
|
|
flopped to the ground, got up again, snarling, saliva already
|
|
beginning to foam in its mouth.</p>
|
|
<p>Inside the byre, just through the wall from where he crouched,
|
|
seven jersey cows, sheltered from the harsh winter, simultaneously
|
|
began to leak milk in identical streams from each udder and inside
|
|
their vast wombs, seven unformed calves died. Beyond that, two
|
|
fillies began to stamp their feet in the stables and then, as one,
|
|
began to lash out at the door with their heavy hooves, sending
|
|
shards of wood whirling into the air. One of them, the lead horse
|
|
on the way uphill, kicked so hard that a bone in its foot broke and
|
|
burst through the skin. It bled until morning.</p>
|
|
<p>The second terrier jumped on the first, clasping it round the
|
|
chubby waist and started bucking uncontrollably. The first one,
|
|
still drooling saliva howled in protest as its brother mounted it
|
|
and penetrated in two savage thrusts. It turned, fighting the
|
|
weight and snapped hard, taking hair and flesh in its jaws, rending
|
|
both. Blood flowed. Its teeth clamped on the carotid artery, bit
|
|
through and blood fountained. Its brother, a white cairn terrier
|
|
kept on bucking and thrusting even as its lifeblood drained away.
|
|
It was unable to stop. It carried on in a frenzy as it died while
|
|
the other tried without success to pull out of its locked embrace.
|
|
After a short while, both dogs toppled over, the first one still
|
|
twitching but dead, the second covered in blood and gasping for
|
|
breath, bleeding from its ruptured anus.</p>
|
|
<p>Over at the coop the cat still hung on the wire, screeching like
|
|
a banshee.</p>
|
|
<p>A flock of starlings, as ever susceptible to the emanations of
|
|
the alien mind, were first startled by the howling of the cattle as
|
|
their udders clenched of their own volition and expressed their
|
|
milk onto the shit-bestrewn floor. Then the touch scraped over
|
|
them. They took to the air in a whirr of wings, trying to find an
|
|
escape. As one they wheeled and as one they crashed into the far
|
|
wall of the byre and dropped with soft little plops to the
|
|
ground.</p>
|
|
<p>The moon rose over the roof of the outhouse as he moved forward
|
|
towards the door, all of his senses now sharp as fangs and his
|
|
glands pumped up so hard he could feel the skin over them rip and
|
|
tear.</p>
|
|
<p>Inside of him the hunger and the need was vast.</p>
|
|
<p>______</p>
|
|
<p>“I always thought he was a bit cracked, the old
|
|
fool,” Phil Cutcheon said. “Now it could be me
|
|
that’s been the fool all along.”</p>
|
|
<p>Between them sat a folder which bulged with papers. It was tied
|
|
with an old fashioned piece of ribbon, like a lawyer’s
|
|
brief.</p>
|
|
<p>“I dismissed old McBean way back in the sixties, but it
|
|
might just turn out he was a better policeman than anybody ever
|
|
gave him credit for. Way back then, before the Duncryne killing and
|
|
the thing that happened to Greta Simon, old Ron had a theory. It
|
|
became an obsession with him. He approached me in confidence round
|
|
about that time, maybe the year after Heather McDougall went
|
|
missing. I thought it was just an fixation with him, and it
|
|
probably was, but he was certainly a methodical old beggar. This is
|
|
his obsession box. I got it from his grandson, who was on the
|
|
force. He left to start his own security firm.”</p>
|
|
<p>“And what is it?” David asked. The office was still
|
|
half empty at this time on Boxing Day. All he could offer the
|
|
retired policeman was a bitter coffee from the machine, but Phil
|
|
smiled and told him it took him back to the good old days.
|
|
“Coffee and ulcers. Sore feet and rain always dripping down
|
|
the back of the neck. Good old days? I must be dreaming.”</p>
|
|
<p>He took a big swig of coffee and smacked his lips, relishing the
|
|
nostalgia, then opened the file.</p>
|
|
<p>“It was when you came to see me that I remembered this. I
|
|
hadn’t thought about it for a long time, and if I’d
|
|
done my job properly, I would have made the connection.”</p>
|
|
<p>“But what is it?” David repeated. Helen had gone
|
|
round to Celia Barker’s house, alone again, though she was
|
|
hardly in any danger now the girl was home. He would have preferred
|
|
to have gone with her but something in Phil Cutcheon’s tone
|
|
had made him stay.</p>
|
|
<p>“It’s a list of connections, just like yours, only
|
|
much older. I have to be honest, I probably rejected them because I
|
|
was busy with a murder and because I didn’t have the balls
|
|
even to consider the possibilities. Old Ron McBean came to me with
|
|
a crazy story and I told him to shove it. I didn’t want
|
|
anybody to think I was crazy.”</p>
|
|
<p>“What are the connections?”</p>
|
|
<p>Phil leaned forward and drew out an old fashioned police
|
|
notebook. “You told me about Greta Simon and the McDougall
|
|
woman and now this young girl from your neck of the woods.
|
|
You’ve got a connection between Greta and Heather and now
|
|
you’ve found a link between Heather and your girl.”</p>
|
|
<p>“Ginny. Virginia for long.”</p>
|
|
<p>“Yes. Her. Now this little lot takes your links and makes
|
|
a daisy chain of the whole lot. You might be able to make some
|
|
sense out of it, for what I think doesn’t make sense. Either
|
|
there’s something getting passed on like a disease, or
|
|
there’s something really crazy happening that I don’t
|
|
want to think about.”</p>
|
|
<p>He leaned back and his brows gathered down, making his seamed
|
|
and benign face look very grave. “Ron McBean stumbled onto
|
|
something that he couldn’t let go. His grandson tells me it
|
|
became a real obsession with him, long after he left the force. He
|
|
died about ten years ago.”</p>
|
|
<p>He tapped the file, flicked open the flap and drew out a few
|
|
sheets of paper. The top page was white except for a yellow border
|
|
at the very top where it had been exposed to sunlight at some time.
|
|
The writing was thick and blocky, a big man’s writing, slow
|
|
and careful. Phil turned it so David could read it. He drew his
|
|
finger down to the third paragraph, drawing David’s eyes with
|
|
it.</p>
|
|
<p><em>There is no doubt in my mind now, none whatsoever, that the
|
|
chain will continue. It confounds all reason and the Good Lord
|
|
alone knows the why’s and wherefores of it all. I remember
|
|
speaking to the divinity professor at Heriot Watt University who
|
|
told me there was no historic proof that Herod sent out soldiers to
|
|
slaughter the innocents. He told me that was from a more ancient
|
|
Hebrew myth. He told me there have been many occasions in history,
|
|
when baby boys were hunted and slaughtered without mercy. There are
|
|
books in the library which confirm this. There is a necropolis in
|
|
Ghassul, in the Holy Land, by the Dead Sea, where hundreds of
|
|
infants have been uncovered, all of them with wooden stakes through
|
|
their heads. In the mountains near Lake Titicaca, they have
|
|
uncovered the dried remains of many baby boys, all of them
|
|
murdered. The professor told me of this madness happening again and
|
|
again all down through the years. Perhaps the hunt for a new-born
|
|
baby was not a search for the King of Kings at all. They could have
|
|
been looking for the devil incarnate.</em></p>
|
|
<p><em>The Simon woman does not have all of her faculties back yet
|
|
and the doctors say she never will again. Dr Tvedt tells me it is a
|
|
miracle that she is alive at all, though in all honesty, I am
|
|
hardly minded to consider miracles. The opposite in fact. I only
|
|
wish the records went back further, but they do not. All I know is
|
|
that it appeared on record some time in the past century. It will
|
|
appear again, but where and when, who knows. All I can say, with
|
|
absolute clarity and conviction, is that it will emerge again and
|
|
anything that can do that, time and time again, is not
|
|
natural.</em></p>
|
|
<p><em>Nobody is prepared to accept any of this research, and I can
|
|
hardly blame any of them, even seasoned officers. They do not
|
|
believe in the un-natural, but as God-fearing men, there is no
|
|
shame in it. I have tried and failed, but I will continue to try.
|
|
It will be seen again, with some other poor woman. All I am able to
|
|
do is check the library for news of a sudden death and the
|
|
disappearance of a child and I will know it is still alive. It may
|
|
not be for many years and I don’t know how many I have yet
|
|
allotted. God willing, and I pray every night that he is, I hope I
|
|
am alive and I hope I can hunt it down.”</em></p>
|
|
<p>“A shade dramatic,” David said. “And
|
|
pedantic.”</p>
|
|
<p>“He was a bit old fashioned, and a bit serious too,”
|
|
Phil agreed. “He was an elder of the church, but not a Holy
|
|
Willie. We all put him down as an obsessive but there was never any
|
|
harm in him, so people, including me turned a blind eye. I kept it
|
|
turned, most of the time, but I did go along to see Greta Simon
|
|
every now and again and I was never sure why. I never told you
|
|
that. I thought you should see her for yourself. Anyway, now I
|
|
don’t have a pension to lose. Old McBean’s grandson
|
|
says we can have this. He’s not interested. Thinks the old
|
|
man was a bit wandered.”</p>
|
|
<p>“Sounds as if he was,” David said guardedly.</p>
|
|
<p>“Aye, there’s that possibility. But he was just
|
|
following leads, and he was never even a detective, just a small
|
|
town sergeant and a god-fearing man. Not sophisticated like you and
|
|
me.” David recognised the irony in Phil’s voice.
|
|
“But like you, he thought he was on to something and he dug
|
|
away. Like you. You turned up at my door because you’re just
|
|
doing your job, checking out the possibilities. Most folk would
|
|
have got an I.D. on the dead woman and left it at that, but you
|
|
stuck with it. You think there’s something odd going on here
|
|
and when you mentioned this baby and the women involved, it gave me
|
|
something to really consider. I wasn’t going to turn a blind
|
|
eye like I did all those years ago.”</p>
|
|
<p>David started to speak but Phil held up a hand.</p>
|
|
<p>“At the end of the day, there might be nothing in it,
|
|
nothing at all, and I would rather like to believe that this is the
|
|
case. But if you put what you know and what Ron McBean turned up,
|
|
put them all together, then, I have to tell you I have my doubts.
|
|
You’re on to something, and I don’t mind telling you
|
|
that it makes my skin crawl.”</p>
|
|
<hr />
|
|
<p><em>Something was wrong.</em></p>
|
|
<p>Kate Park heard the racket from the back of the house and for a
|
|
moment she thought it was something on the television. The baby
|
|
whimpered softly in its cot and she pulled back the coverlet. Her
|
|
eyes were crinkled up tight and she was making little, blind
|
|
sucking motions, even though she was fed and fast asleep.
|
|
Kate’s cousin Jill who had baby-sat while she and Anne
|
|
Collins had gone for a canter down on the bottom fallow, had got a
|
|
lift home in Anne’s jeep, and while Kate herself had felt a
|
|
pang of guilt about getting a baby-sitter less than a months after
|
|
the birth, the easy ride had felt good, even if her muscles were
|
|
unused to the exercise and even if the saddle stretched the tender
|
|
skin where she’d been stitched. The hot shower had soothed
|
|
the stiffness of muscles. Her hair was still damp, ringletted in
|
|
dark chestnut curls. She was unbending when the racket started up
|
|
out at the front of the farmhouse.</p>
|
|
<p>Instantly she knew something was wrong. The skin between her
|
|
shoulderblades puckered, drawing over her spine in a creeping
|
|
contraction. She moved out of the bedroom, closing the door slowly,
|
|
aware of the tremble in her hand and unable to explain it. She
|
|
shivered, pulled the dressing gown close.</p>
|
|
<p>Out beyond the front door the dogs were howling. Or one of the
|
|
dogs was howling, or coughing. Two of the cockerels were squawking
|
|
as if they were in a fight to the death. Behind her, in the
|
|
baby’s room, little Lucy whimpered again.</p>
|
|
<p><em>Something wrong.</em></p>
|
|
<p>The slam of the horses hooves against the stable doors came like
|
|
hammerblows, muffled only by the thick walls. The cattle were
|
|
lowing, their cries, high and pained echoing out through the
|
|
ventilation slits of the metal-roofed byre.</p>
|
|
<p>She stood in the hallway, undecided. The dogs were not howling,
|
|
they were snarling as if they were tearing each other’s
|
|
throats out. There were other sounds. The caterwauling of the cat,
|
|
the frenzied clucking of the chickens.</p>
|
|
<p>What was happening out there?</p>
|
|
<p><em>Something wrong something wrong something wrong</em>. The
|
|
message came from deep inside of her, as clearly as a voice in her
|
|
head. There was somebody out there. The dogs fought and slavered.
|
|
Lucy whimpered again, a troubled little kitten-mew, faintly
|
|
tremulous. Kate stood still, wondering what to do. Jack’s
|
|
guns were in the front room cabinet. His cartridge belt was still
|
|
hanging in the hallway stand, illegally of course for they should
|
|
have been secured, but this was a working farm. She stood
|
|
undecided, her heart tripping joltingly, breath held in. She lifted
|
|
a hand to her brow to push back her short auburn curls.</p>
|
|
<p>A faint noise came from just inside the porch. Her eyes flicked
|
|
to the door. The dogs normally sat there in the corner of the
|
|
porch, out of the wind. The sound came again, a soft scrape of
|
|
noise that was suddenly and incongruously loud, reaching her over
|
|
the madhouse cacophony out in the yard and beyond.</p>
|
|
<p>Something made a faint whining sound, almost like a kitten, but
|
|
unnervingly, terrifyingly alien. Her blood turned to ice. She
|
|
backed off. The letter box rattled, the knocker rapped several
|
|
times in quick succession against the plate. A faint squeal, the
|
|
familiar sound the postman made when he delivered the mail, creaked
|
|
out from the slot where Jack had always promised to oil the hinge
|
|
and spring.</p>
|
|
<p>A hand and an arm came through. For an instant it looked grey
|
|
and slender and somehow tattered. Her heart stopped, kicked,
|
|
stopped again. Her vision swam.</p>
|
|
<p>A baby’s hand was scrabbling through the slit.</p>
|
|
<p><em>Oh my oh my...</em></p>
|
|
<p>Her mouth worked, no sound came out. She thought she would pass
|
|
out and that thought seemed to shunt her heart back into life
|
|
again, hammering against her ribs, suddenly louder and as violent
|
|
as the horses hooves on the door.</p>
|
|
<p>The baby’s hand reached out into the hallway, the small
|
|
pink fingers splayed. A baby whimpered, soft as a lamb and as
|
|
insistent and she knew it was not Lucy. Behind her Lucy cried out,
|
|
a shivery, pitiful little fearful cry. In that instant, Kate Park
|
|
felt her soul wrenched one way and another. Yet her mind was
|
|
suddenly frozen in abject and utter terror. She was here alone with
|
|
her baby in a farmhouse, a mile above the town. The animals were
|
|
going crazy out in the yard, whooping and howling and snarling as
|
|
if they all had indeed gone mad.</p>
|
|
<p>A baby’s hand was reaching through the letterbox of her
|
|
front door.</p>
|
|
<p><em>Poison,</em> she thought. Jack had warned her about the
|
|
sheep dip organo-phosphates that had caused a series of hill
|
|
farmers no end of mental and physical problems. Had some of it
|
|
spilled, sprayed from Upper Loan Farm and drifted down on the
|
|
wind?</p>
|
|
<p>Yet she knew it was not poison. She was here alone with her baby
|
|
and another baby, a mite hardly bigger than her own, was clambering
|
|
on her door, reaching its hand inside, grasping mutely at the air,
|
|
trying to get in at her, trying to come in.</p>
|
|
<p>It was the most ghastly, most terrifying sight. It was a scene
|
|
from a mother’s worst nightmare, made more hellish because
|
|
her own motherly instincts were so strong.</p>
|
|
<p>It was impossible. It was completely impossible, she tried to
|
|
tell herself, but her eyes were watching the creepy waving motion
|
|
as the pink arm reached and the small baby fingers grasped
|
|
emptiness.</p>
|
|
<p>“Go,” she heard her voice blurt. “Go away. Get
|
|
away.”</p>
|
|
<p>She backed up the hallway. The hand stopped moving. It stayed
|
|
there, still and outstretched, completely and utterly
|
|
incomprehensible, completely and utterly terrifying.</p>
|
|
<p>Lucy squealed and Kate’s heart kicked again as her
|
|
mother-self recognised her baby’s fear and alarm. Lucy had
|
|
somehow sensed the threat. She felt her knees give way just a
|
|
fraction. He was a strong and robust woman, more muscular than
|
|
slim, able to hold a rearing horse or help push a heifer into the
|
|
stall. She was a farmer’s wife who could confidently do a
|
|
man’s work on any day of the week.</p>
|
|
<p>Yet the sight of a baby’s hand reaching through the
|
|
letterbox of her door had simply robbed her of strength.</p>
|
|
<p>Without warning, the hand withdrew. The letterbox lip slapped
|
|
shut with a rattle of metal. A weight dropped to the tiles outside.
|
|
Something scuttled. Kate leaned against the wall, willing her heart
|
|
to slow down. She did not know what to do, what to think. The
|
|
apparition had been so unnatural, so malignantly alien that her
|
|
entire reasoning process was struggling to cope. In the room, Lucy
|
|
was howling frantically and Kate wanted to turn towards her, but
|
|
she was scared to take her eyes off the door, in case that
|
|
impossible little hand came groping for her again.</p>
|
|
<p><em>Think, damn you, think.</em></p>
|
|
<p>She tried. There was something she should consider. She knew
|
|
that, but her mind, fizzing and sparking under the enormity of the
|
|
horror, wouldn’t let her think rationally. She kept seeing
|
|
those grasping fingers reaching for her and that precluded real
|
|
thought. She turned, bumping her substantial breast on the corner
|
|
of the wall, ignoring the dull thud of pain.</p>
|
|
<p>There was something else. Some other danger. She heard the
|
|
scuttle, imagined she heard the scrape of dog’s nails on the
|
|
flagstones round the side of the house where she kept the kitchen
|
|
garden. Imagined she heard the scurry of some small but heavy thing
|
|
crunching over the smooth stones bordering the path. Imagined she
|
|
heard the creak of the</p>
|
|
<p><em>Oh no it can get in through the</em> cat flap.</p>
|
|
<p>The sound came from the back of the house. The cat flap opened,
|
|
snicked closed with a whump of compression. Something moved,
|
|
skittering on the red tiles just inside the door. She jerked
|
|
around, an insane fear twisting up inside her, shuddering up the
|
|
whole length of her spine. Lucy screamed. The sound of movement
|
|
came down the back hall. She whirled to face whatever it was, every
|
|
nerve glassy with tension, the hairs on her neck crawling with a
|
|
life of their own.</p>
|
|
<p>Something dark came skittering around the corner of the back
|
|
hall, moving with jerky speed. Its limbs pistoned, hit against the
|
|
wall as the momentum carried it to the side, then surged down the
|
|
narrow hallway. Kate Park saw it black and tattered, then grey and
|
|
thin, altering, blurring as it moved towards her, turning into the
|
|
pink form of a baby, still moving with spidery swiftness, its round
|
|
face held up, eyes fixed on her. She gasped, tried to turn. Her
|
|
heel caught the carpet, threw her off balance. She fell backwards,
|
|
slamming against the door which whipped open to crack against the
|
|
wall. Lucy screeched in shivery terror.</p>
|
|
<p>Kate tried to scream. She was tumbling backwards, unable to get
|
|
her balance while the monstrous little baby scuttled towards her,
|
|
the lines of its face wavering as if melted under heat. It was a
|
|
baby, and it was a monster, a double-image monster which shrivelled
|
|
out of the pink as if bursting out of a skin, to become a red-eyed,
|
|
staring thing with a flat grey face and a circular, pouting mouth
|
|
which opened and closed like a sphincter, showing a ring of glassy,
|
|
needle teeth.</p>
|
|
<p>It moved like an awful insect.</p>
|
|
<p>She fell against the wall, spun, went clattering to the floor,
|
|
feet scrabbling for purchase. Lucy was screaming, infected with the
|
|
horror and the panic, her blank baby mind sensing some kind of
|
|
threat. Kate rolled, got a hand up to fend the thing off, to slam
|
|
it against the wall.</p>
|
|
<p>It came scrambling up her body, faster than she would have
|
|
believed, a nightmare in motion. It clambered up, its nails digging
|
|
into the towelling of the robe, snatching at the rough dry fabric,
|
|
digging into her skin. It got there and its eyes opened, flat blank
|
|
and fathomless red depths with the dry texture of polished stone.
|
|
It looked right into her eyes, bored its glare deep inside her.</p>
|
|
<p><em>Lucy,</em> she tried to say. <em>Oh Lucy its got me</em></p>
|
|
<p>It clung there. The eyes fastened on her. Some dark and foul
|
|
touch scraped across her mind, poked and probed, snagged like black
|
|
and poisonous thorns. The thing flexed, arched its back. The
|
|
swellings down its side seemed to expand and then deflate. For an
|
|
instant a watery, unpleasant hiss seared the air. Then the scent
|
|
hit her.</p>
|
|
<p>She opened her mouth in a soundless scream. The eyes began to
|
|
close, rippling down from red. The scent invaded her pores. The
|
|
room spun crazily and the baby on her chest looked into her eyes
|
|
with its own which were turning from red to black and then to blue,
|
|
now were closing very slowly. It held her tight, fingers digging
|
|
into her skin while the scent, at once bitter and rancid and
|
|
somehow sweet as honeydew, flowed into her. Instantly her breasts
|
|
ached. Her nipples swelled to painful tautness. A shudder of some
|
|
desperate need swelled deep inside her and an awful warmth spread
|
|
down in her tender womb.</p>
|
|
<p>Behind her Lucy screeched in fear, but Kate never heard the
|
|
sound of her own child. The baby on her chest looked in her eyes
|
|
and stole her away.</p>
|
|
<hr />
|
|
<p>“I knew we should have checked,” Helen said. David
|
|
had waited until he came back, unsure of what to tell her. He had
|
|
read the papers Phil Cutcheon had dropped on his desk and what they
|
|
contained had set up a powerful resonance, an oscillation of
|
|
thought. They had brought back the conversation he’d had with
|
|
Helen, the day after he’d phoned her in a blur of alcohol and
|
|
confusion.</p>
|
|
<p><em>What kind of baby would steal a mother?</em></p>
|
|
<p>He had not been the first to consider that possibility, however
|
|
impossible, however unearthly. It was all in the laboriously
|
|
written pages in the file, compiled by the careful hand of an old
|
|
policeman who had got a glimpse of the unusual and had followed its
|
|
trail. The dead hand of old Ron McBean led him down through the
|
|
years.</p>
|
|
<p>Was it real? Was it true? David had asked himself the question
|
|
over and over again,, always coming up with the same answer. It was
|
|
a history, a strange and continuing history, of lives touched,
|
|
lives affected, and by the looks of it, lives distorted and
|
|
destroyed. Where McBean had broken off, David Harper had started,
|
|
linking the past to the present. There was now no doubt in his mind
|
|
that this was real and that something dreadful was repeating itself
|
|
over and over and over.</p>
|
|
<p>“I knew we should have checked,” Helen repeated when
|
|
he looked up from the papers. “Celia Barker confirms that
|
|
Ginny Marsden was supposed to look after her pets. She had a key to
|
|
the place. She’s just back from holiday, lucky little bitch,
|
|
and she finds out her bank card’s missing. Ginny Marsden has
|
|
her pin number.”</p>
|
|
<p>Helen was flushed, most likely with sudden heat inside the
|
|
office, but she looked elated. “We should have checked to
|
|
find out where she was staying and contacted her direct.”</p>
|
|
<p>“But she wouldn’t have known the bank card had gone
|
|
missing.”</p>
|
|
<p>“Or about the dead cat and goldfish. You’d think
|
|
she’d stumbled across the bullet-ridden bodies of her parents
|
|
the way she’s going on. I told her the cat probably starved
|
|
because nobody fed it. She found it in the bin.”</p>
|
|
<p>“That’s where I put it,” David said.
|
|
“The flies were at it. Its eyes were gone, poor thing.”
|
|
Even as he said that, he realised there was something wrong there,
|
|
something he’d missed. He tried to reach for it, but his mind
|
|
was full of other matters to consider. It wasn’t that
|
|
important.</p>
|
|
<p>“Anyway, all we have to do now is get to the bank
|
|
tomorrow. They’ll tell us what branch the Marsden
|
|
girl’s been dipping and we’ll find her.”</p>
|
|
<p>“Assuming that she’s used the card,” David
|
|
said. He was itching to show Helen the old McBean file. She turned
|
|
on him, telling him not to be such a pessimist, her dark eyes
|
|
flaring just a little but more theatrically than in anger.
|
|
“So what did you tell her?”</p>
|
|
<p>“Who?”</p>
|
|
<p>“The girl who wants to kiss and make up and come
|
|
back.”</p>
|
|
<p>“I told her no,” he said, not quite truthfully,
|
|
wishing he had, now determined to make it the truth. The smile
|
|
Helen gave him made the small lie worth while. All was fair in this
|
|
war, and it was that smile that finally made his mind up
|
|
completely. It conveyed a feeling so powerful, and something so
|
|
welcome, that he wondered at the strength of it, and the instant
|
|
effect it had on him. He only wondered why he hadn’t felt its
|
|
power before.</p>
|
|
<p>They both went back, at his request to David’s place when
|
|
they finally cleared their desks. One of the other detectives said
|
|
something, leaning across to his colleague who sniggered. Helen
|
|
stopped at the door, turned back and leaned over the desk, putting
|
|
her face right up against his.</p>
|
|
<p>“I can hear the slither of your grubby little mind,”
|
|
she whispered, quite softly, almost seductively. “You should
|
|
go back to vice squad where you can get free rides any day of the
|
|
week. It’s better than playing pocket pool with yourself and
|
|
letting your imagination run riot.”</p>
|
|
<p>“But I...” the other man started to say.</p>
|
|
<p>“But nothing,” Helen said, very slowly. “I
|
|
hear any rumours and, I’ll be back, big boy. Got
|
|
me?”</p>
|
|
<p>The man, who dipped the scales at twice what Helen weighed,
|
|
nodded. She had a reputation for taking no prisoners.</p>
|
|
<p>“What was that all about,” David asked. His mind had
|
|
been on other things and he hadn’t noticed the exchange of
|
|
looks and the laugh.</p>
|
|
<p>“Nothing I can’t handle,” she said.
|
|
“Girl talk.”</p>
|
|
</div>
|
|
</div>
|
|
</body>
|
|
</html>
|