mirror of
https://gitlab.silvrtree.co.uk/martind2000/booksnew.git
synced 2025-01-29 02:36:16 +00:00
499 lines
29 KiB
HTML
499 lines
29 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>24</h2>
|
|
<p>“Oh she looked a lot older than this wee lassie,”
|
|
Mrs Cosgrove said, looking at Helen through the thick lenses which
|
|
made her eyes seem huge and staring. She stoked the coal fire in
|
|
the front room of her little cottage in Barloan Habour where Ginny
|
|
Marsden had stayed. Both the old woman and Helen Lamont were
|
|
ignorant of the fact that Mrs Cosgrove had already crossed the long
|
|
and sinuous trail of this affair many years before, as a friend of
|
|
Greta Simon back before the war years.</p>
|
|
<p>“And she didn’t look well, the poor soul,” she
|
|
quavered. “If it had been back in the war, I would have said
|
|
she was sick with consumption. There wasn’t so much as a pick
|
|
of meat on her bones.”</p>
|
|
<p>The description mirrored Nina Galt’s observations and
|
|
Helen wondered just what was it that Ginny Marsden had that could
|
|
transform her from the healthy and fit girl on the video into the
|
|
seemingly emaciated, much older woman that people perceived. Since
|
|
the first time she had entered Heather McDougall’s house she
|
|
had experienced that strange and disturbing prescience, a sense of
|
|
foreboding. Now that feeling was magnified and getting stronger all
|
|
the time. Whatever Ginny Marsden had, she did not want to
|
|
contract.</p>
|
|
<p>And David, adding his own weight to the old policeman’s
|
|
years of obsession, had almost convinced her of the sinister
|
|
connection. He had told her, in the early hours of the morning that
|
|
the baby was probably some kind of mutant, though what kind of
|
|
mutant he couldn’t even speculate.</p>
|
|
<p>They had fallen into each others arms again, both of them tired
|
|
and yet strangely excited by the new, menacing overlay to their
|
|
investigation, and in the night she had whimpered as she clutched
|
|
at him, powerfully desperate for his strength, matching him motion
|
|
by motion, thrust for thrust, carried on an irresistible wave of
|
|
her own drive and her own need</p>
|
|
<p>Sometime in the dark and cold hours of the morning, she too had
|
|
woken from a dream on which a wasp had stung her and laid a grub in
|
|
the pit of her belly and it was eating her from within. She had
|
|
jerked awake, trembling with fear, disoriented in the unfamiliar
|
|
shadows of his room, with a burning acid pain twisting under her
|
|
breastbone. It slowly died away and she lay back, listening to the
|
|
sound of David’s breathing, pressing herself close to him for
|
|
warmth and protection against the images in the dark. The fear
|
|
diminished, but it did not go away.</p>
|
|
<p>It was with her still, faint yet insistent, the next morning, a
|
|
sense of prescience that she could not shake. She had experienced
|
|
tickles of forewarning before, just snags of hunch. Now, there was
|
|
something deeper. She did not know how or why he knew that, but a
|
|
part of her she did not even comprehend recognised the approach of
|
|
danger. The odd, exposed feeling remained with her when she got the
|
|
call back from the bank. Celia Barker had contacted them first
|
|
thing on the morning, authorising them to give CID any information
|
|
they needed. From the description she had of Ginny Marsden’s
|
|
condition, Helen had not expected her to make a withdrawal from a
|
|
hole in the wall auto-teller, but she had thought back to the image
|
|
of Heather McDougall on video, dying, maybe even clinically dead
|
|
yet still crawling towards her baby and she wondered. Even as that
|
|
thought struck her she knew that she had crossed a threshold. She
|
|
had stepped from the world of the rational, to a dimension where
|
|
the inconceivable could actually be considered possible.</p>
|
|
<p>She wondered if Ginny Marsden was lactating now to feed her
|
|
baby.</p>
|
|
<p>“She’s in Barloan Harbour,” she said
|
|
excitedly, turning round as she out the receiver down. “She
|
|
made a withdrawal two days ago.”</p>
|
|
<p>“I know that place,” David said. “It’s
|
|
just a village. I used to fish on the canal and take pictures of
|
|
kingfishers when I was a kid. It’s not a big place, so if
|
|
she’d there we’ll find her.”</p>
|
|
<p>“And it’s between Kirkland and here,” Helen
|
|
said. “It’s on the same train line as Lochend, where
|
|
Greta Simon came from. Ginny must have got the train, but she got
|
|
off after a few stops instead of coming back into the
|
|
city.”</p>
|
|
<p>“When was the withdrawal?” David wanted to know. His
|
|
face fell when she told him it was Christmas Eve. The girl had had
|
|
plenty of time to move on, but they wouldn’t know until they
|
|
had checked it out. They got to the village in less than half an
|
|
hour and by the time they turned at the bridge over the canal and
|
|
down to the small station, clouds were beginning to gather,
|
|
billowing up the estuary, promising a dank and dismal rain or a
|
|
heavy fall of snow. The harbour here, where the waterway that
|
|
meandered through the city emptied itself into the old river, was
|
|
old and weathered and at this time of the year, there were few
|
|
signs of life apart from a pair of mallard ducks in the broken
|
|
reeds. Further along the waterway, the same canal that looped
|
|
through the parkland close to June’s apartment, was lined
|
|
with old and gaudily painted narrowboats. They all looked deserted
|
|
and empty and one or two were slumped on their sides in thick
|
|
patches of weed. David took a minute to reclaim childhood memories
|
|
of birdwatching here where the fresh water met the tidal brack,
|
|
attracting waders in their thousands, marsh harriers and herons. He
|
|
remembered this place in sunshine and summer warmth. Now it was
|
|
cold and bitter and somehow empty.</p>
|
|
<p>The railway angled past the canal harbour and under the arches
|
|
there was a little restaurant where he’d once taken June. It
|
|
was closed now, possibly for the winter, maybe for ever. There was
|
|
little passing trade in a place like this. Most of the village was
|
|
to the north of the canal, and further away from the flat where the
|
|
old locks held back the water, the land rose up to the Langmuir
|
|
Hills where the heath and bracken covered slopes were powdered with
|
|
snow. This had been a good place to come as a child, back then,
|
|
armed with a fishing rod and a camera and no complications.</p>
|
|
<p>In less than an hour after they arrived, he and Helen, they had
|
|
got the first clue in the corner shop where a thin, birdlike woman
|
|
with hungry, gossip’s eyes recognised the girl from her coat
|
|
in the photograph, told them she had bought a pound of minced beef
|
|
and had gone up the Loanhead Road.</p>
|
|
<p>“It’s a dead end,” she said.
|
|
“She’ll be in one of the houses there. They take in
|
|
lodgers, most of them.”</p>
|
|
<p>In five minutes, old Mrs Cosgrove was making tea.</p>
|
|
<p>“And her pram’s out the back,” she said.
|
|
“I couldn’t believe she would have left it, but she
|
|
must have just taken the baby and gone.” There was a faint,
|
|
familiar smell in the old woman’s house, hardly traceable,
|
|
but enough of a taint to make them both recognise it. Ginny Marsden
|
|
had been here. The baby had been here.</p>
|
|
<p>The old lady told them she hadn’t smelled anything, but
|
|
she said there had been a bloodstain on the sheets and she’d
|
|
had to wash them in bleach. “I don’t think the poor
|
|
girl was all there,” she said, tapping her temple.
|
|
“Maybe she’d one of those unfortunates they’re
|
|
putting out of hospital and back into the community. It’s a
|
|
terrible shame. Maybe she’d gone back to somewhere she
|
|
knows?”</p>
|
|
<p>They had some tea, strong and welcome against the increasing
|
|
cold in the air when they left the cottage knowing they had picked
|
|
up Ginny Marsden’s trail, hoping they could find it
|
|
again.</p>
|
|
<p>“Where now?” Helen asked. He shrugged. The trail,
|
|
first hot, could go cold. The pram left few clues, for it had been
|
|
out in the cold since boxing day and had only been discovered that
|
|
morning. Even the blanket was hoared with frost. They went towards
|
|
the car and David was just about to put the key in the lock when a
|
|
white patrol car came labouring up the road. David held his hand
|
|
up, motioning it to stop. The local policeman seemed irritated at
|
|
the delay until David showed him his warrant card.</p>
|
|
<p>The young man, who looked too thin for his shirt collar which
|
|
gaped over a prominent Adam’s apple hadn’t seen the
|
|
girl in the picture, but he’d been in bed with a cold since
|
|
Christmas Eve. This was his first day out since and he maintained
|
|
his belief that he should have stayed under the blankets. David
|
|
thanked him and was about to move away when, for no particular
|
|
reason, he asked the local cop where he was going.</p>
|
|
<p>“Up to the Middle Loan farm,” he said. “Got a
|
|
call to check out the Park’s place. They’re not
|
|
answering the phone. Their in-laws have been trying to get them for
|
|
a couple off days. Lucky buggers have probably flown out to
|
|
Barbados and away from this bloody winter.”</p>
|
|
<p>He went driving up the road and they got in the car. David
|
|
started the engine, thinking.</p>
|
|
<p>“Do you think we should...?” they both asked at
|
|
exactly the same moment. Another coincidence. A cold and clammy
|
|
sensation caressed Helen’s mind. Without another word, David
|
|
put his foot down and followed the patrol car.</p>
|
|
<p>The policeman had stopped at the gate on Jack Park’s home
|
|
straight when they caught up with him.</p>
|
|
<p>“This is the worst thing about working out in the
|
|
sticks,” he said. “You spend more time opening and
|
|
closing these things than anything else. That and rounding up the
|
|
livestock when people forget to close them.” His name, he
|
|
told them, was Jimmy Mulgrew. He’d been in Barloan Harbour
|
|
for three miserable months of winter and out of the warmth of the
|
|
car, he looked as if the wind blowing up the estuary would knock
|
|
him down. His nose was scarlet with the cold and raw from rubbing
|
|
with tissues.</p>
|
|
<p>“Jackie Park and his wife Kate.” He dropped his
|
|
voice. “She’s a looker. Big girl, but classy.”
|
|
David gave him a man’s look which said he got the drift.
|
|
“Had a kid a few weeks ago and they were staying home for
|
|
Santa Claus and then going to visit her parents yesterday.
|
|
They’re not answering the phone. He does a lot of travelling,
|
|
so maybe he’s stuck somewhere. There was a hell of a fall of
|
|
snow over the borders in the past couple of days. The sergeant
|
|
asked me to have a look, just for the record.”</p>
|
|
<p>“We thought we’d give you a hand,” David told
|
|
him, and that was fair enough with the local man. He was a city
|
|
boy, not at home with the big shambling cattle on farms, not quite
|
|
ready to believe they weren’t ready to kick and rear and
|
|
maybe bite and gore.</p>
|
|
<p>“Don’t see smoke from the chimney,” Helen
|
|
said. The cold and troubling shiver that had gone through her had
|
|
left her with a quiver of inexplicable apprehension.</p>
|
|
<p><em>Something wrong.</em></p>
|
|
<p>Even she did not know how many times that mental warning had
|
|
flared in other people’s minds. All she knew was that, quite
|
|
unaccountably, this didn’t <em>feel</em> right.</p>
|
|
<p><em>Something wrong.</em> David Harper could sense the
|
|
wrongness, though he did not know why. An instinct had made him
|
|
follow the patrol car, an instinct that had no foundation in
|
|
reason, yet...<em>yet...</em></p>
|
|
<p>It was Christmas time. Up here, they’d have log fires and
|
|
there would be smoke. Over by the whitewashed edge of an outhouse
|
|
he could see the stack of wood piled on the lee side out of the
|
|
wind. There would be smoke on a day like this. <em>Something
|
|
wrong.</em> David was no city boy. He’d spent his childhood
|
|
up the hills, helping on farms, taking his wildlife shots.
|
|
Something was not quite right here. He knew it, not just in the
|
|
strange and threatening sense of foreboding, but in his rational
|
|
mind too.</p>
|
|
<p>The farm was silent. Dead silent.</p>
|
|
<p>Down in the woods a pheasant hawked, tin on stone, jarring the
|
|
air. Up on the moor a hawk bleated, high and plaintive, a strange
|
|
contradiction between hunter and prey. In the farm, no animal made
|
|
a sound. The hairs on David’s arms went walkabout again.
|
|
Jimmy Mulgrew heard nothing and did not realise that was
|
|
extraordinary. There were no cattle lowing, no dogs barking. That
|
|
was not necessarily odd, though almost any approach to a farm will
|
|
get a response from the guardian dogs.</p>
|
|
<p>Even more peculiar, there was not a sound of poultry. Chickens
|
|
did not have the sense to stay silent. A cockerel did not have the
|
|
ability to stop proclaiming its territory. Yet there were no sounds
|
|
of either. As Mulgrew closed the gate with a rattling clang, David
|
|
looked over the cropped hedge and into the field beyond. A pigeon
|
|
loft, one of the old fashioned ones that might have braved the
|
|
storms of centuries stood squat in the middle of the field. Beside
|
|
it, scattered around its stone bulk, light shapes fluttered in the
|
|
gathering wind.</p>
|
|
<p>David held up a hand to shield his eyes from the watery glare
|
|
reflecting from the snowclouds but he already knew what the shapes
|
|
were. A flock of dead pigeons lay on the short grass, their hapless
|
|
wings fluttered by the impending storm. The sensation of cold
|
|
expectation swelled. He waited until Mulgrew got back into the
|
|
patrol car before following on, a small convoy moving slowly along
|
|
Jack Park’s home straight.</p>
|
|
<p>“Something’s not right,” Helen said;.
|
|
“But I don’t know what it is.”</p>
|
|
<p>“You got the second sight?” he asked, trying to make
|
|
it light, but he could sense it too, though he didn’t know
|
|
what it was or how he could sense danger. “As the cavalry
|
|
say, it’s too quiet. It <em>is</em> too quiet. There’s
|
|
no sound at all, and that’s unnatural.”</p>
|
|
<p>They drew round the corner, in the gap between byre and barn,
|
|
turned sharp to negotiate the space, and found themselves in the
|
|
small courtyard. Helen turned in her seat and pointed to the gaping
|
|
door of the garage. A Range Rover stood next to a small Volkswagen.
|
|
Two cars. The jeep’s door was wide open.</p>
|
|
<p>“Wonder how many they’ve got,” Helen said.
|
|
Both of them knew this just didn’t look right.</p>
|
|
<hr />
|
|
<p><em>He heard their approach.</em></p>
|
|
<p>It was a faint vibration at first then a rumble in the air. It
|
|
stretched its perceptions and an instant panic flared when it felt
|
|
something familiar.</p>
|
|
<p>They were both coming now.</p>
|
|
<p>It woke the mother with a hard, brutal twist of thought while
|
|
its glands pumped up reflexively. It forced itself to be still,
|
|
listening, now fully alert after the miasma of the shedding. He had
|
|
pushed and squeezed, expanding and contracting until the split had
|
|
widened down his back and then he had laboriously freed himself
|
|
from the dry sheath. A breeze had carried the discarded, papery
|
|
skin away across the field as soon as the mother had opened the
|
|
door. It had flipped over, that translucent, fragile image of his
|
|
former self, tattered and torn, shrivelling in the cold as the wind
|
|
scraped it over the far thornbush hedge. He had taken a while to
|
|
rest, but now he was fully awake. The mother moaned, coughed
|
|
huskily until he forced her to stop. The gate clanged, the same
|
|
sound he had heard before, when he had taken the mother. Now there
|
|
was a new threat and his survival instinct kicked in hard.</p>
|
|
<p>With another wrench he had forced her to absolute stillness. He
|
|
could feel the thud of her heart magnified in the hollow of her
|
|
ribs and he could perceive its liquid rush in the veins of her
|
|
breasts. The skin there was dry and scabbed where he had fed
|
|
hungrily, draining this one even more rapidly than he had drained
|
|
the last.</p>
|
|
<p>Up here it was dark and for the moment he was safe.</p>
|
|
<p>But they were coming. <em>She</em> was coming, and the peculiar
|
|
hunger, the different hunger tried to swamp his wariness. Tyres
|
|
rumbled on the cobbles, making the building shiver. The smell of
|
|
dead chickens filtered up, an oily smell on the dusty air. He sat
|
|
perfectly still, his great eyes closed, sensing outwards.</p>
|
|
<hr />
|
|
<p>Helen felt the touch again, registered the sensation she had
|
|
experienced before and for a bewildering moment her vision
|
|
swam.</p>
|
|
<p>“All right?” David asked. He too felt his nerves
|
|
tensed up. Jimmy Mulgrew was whistling. If he had seen the two cars
|
|
in the garage, he made no mention. Helen nodded in silent response,
|
|
clamping her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. Her skin felt
|
|
as if it was trying to shrink on her. For some reason, a flare of
|
|
discomfort pulsed in her breasts and her nipples scraped against
|
|
her brassiere. Instantly she recalled the sensation in the hostel.
|
|
David came round beside her.</p>
|
|
<p>“It doesn’t sound right, not even a starling or a
|
|
sparrow.”</p>
|
|
<p>“You’re right. There’s no sound at all,”
|
|
she agreed. “That’s weird.”</p>
|
|
<p>Over by the chicken coop, a small whirl of air spun a handful of
|
|
white feathers in a will o’ the wisp circle. Over by the
|
|
farmhouse proper, beside the angle of the porch, a white heap lay
|
|
on the cobblestones. At first it looked like a dead sheep. All
|
|
three walked forward, Jimmy Mulgrew huddled against the cold, his
|
|
keys jangling beside his cuffs. For all of ten seconds they stood
|
|
and looked down at the dead dogs, and the now black pool of
|
|
congealed blood. It was clear that one had bitten the other. They
|
|
were frozen in their bizarre embrace.</p>
|
|
<p>“What the fuck...?” Jimmy asked, he looked at Helen
|
|
and apologised with his eyes. She hadn’t even heard him. Her
|
|
heart was revving up now, pounding harder and faster. Her breath
|
|
was shallower and for a reason she could understand, but not put
|
|
into words, she wanted to be out of there, driving fast down the
|
|
hill from the farm, and looking in her mirror to make sure nothing
|
|
was racing after her.</p>
|
|
<p>The alien touch slid on the surface of her thoughts and a
|
|
shudder of nausea ran through her.</p>
|
|
<p>David went quickly to the front door, eyes flicking from window
|
|
to window for the merest hint of movement. Of a sudden he felt
|
|
dreadfully exposed. Anyone could be watching them and he
|
|
didn’t even have a baton with him, though he could see Jimmy
|
|
Mulgrew carried his night-stick. It was still on the loop of his
|
|
belt and in a flash of uncharacteristic contempt, David thought the
|
|
village constable was a congenital idiot.</p>
|
|
<p>They got to the door, David taking natural command of the
|
|
situation, pushing the younger man to the side, away from possible
|
|
danger. Anything could come through the door, an axe, a bullet. He
|
|
stood away from the direct front, tried the handle. It turned
|
|
without any resistance. The door opened.</p>
|
|
<p>The smell of blood came billowing out, cold and familiar,
|
|
carried on the sickly smell of death.</p>
|
|
<p>His heart blagged against his ribs. The knowledge of complete
|
|
vulnerability was right up there at the forefront. Adrenaline
|
|
socked into his bloodstream in the instant preparation for fight or
|
|
flight, made his leg muscles tremble. His throat tried to swallow
|
|
the excess of saliva. Behind him he could hear Helen’s harsh
|
|
breathing, accentuated now in his heightened senses. Jimmy Mulgrew
|
|
started to say something and David jabbed him with the edge of his
|
|
hand.</p>
|
|
<p>Very slowly, very silently, his whole body now hypernaturally
|
|
aware, he edged inside, motioning them to stay back. If someone
|
|
came round the corner of the hall, pointing a shotgun at him, he
|
|
could throw himself to the floor. Maybe he could. Silence and speed
|
|
were his best weapons in this situation, he knew. A very reasonable
|
|
part of his mind told him to get the hell out of here <em>right
|
|
now.</em> Another part told him that people here could be in danger
|
|
if they were not already dead. He could smell the death in the air.
|
|
He got to the end, closing his mind to the sickly smell. There was
|
|
no buzzing of flies, not at this time of the year, but the house
|
|
had not quite frozen. He reached the end of the corridor, turned,
|
|
flattening himself against the wall. A door lay wide open.</p>
|
|
<p>David eased round the threshold and saw the dark splash on the
|
|
wall. He held his breath, succeeded only in making his heart pound
|
|
a deafening pulse in his ears. He exhaled slowly, drew his eyes
|
|
down and looked into the eyeless sockets of Jack Park.</p>
|
|
<hr />
|
|
<p>Kate Park awoke cold and shivering, her skin almost blue with
|
|
the cold, trying to scream but unable to make a sound. There was no
|
|
sensation in her toes and her mouth tasted of blood. She wondered
|
|
if she had bitten her tongue. She came clawing up from the pits of
|
|
hell where her dreams replayed the catapulting body of her husband
|
|
over and over again. She saw him slam against the wall, saw the
|
|
spade spin away, tumbling in slow motion while Jack turned,
|
|
twisting in an ungainly pirouette, his hands disappearing in
|
|
fragments.</p>
|
|
<p><em>Kate it’s...Kate it’s...Kate it’s</em>
|
|
...his voice echoed in its own mantra, the words repeated over and
|
|
over and over in her head as if an endless loop was running in her
|
|
brain, unable to switch off. She had come awake on that black surge
|
|
of unendurable horror, still seeing him, spin away and then hearing
|
|
his voice overlaid by the dreadful sucking sounds the baby had
|
|
made.</p>
|
|
<p><em>Monster.</em> The core of her own self recognised it and
|
|
repeated Ginny Marsden’s mental shriek. It had been at the
|
|
cot, at the crib. It had sucked there and she had done nothing
|
|
because the baby, the baby <em>devil</em> had captured her.</p>
|
|
<p>It had fed on her and it had fed on them all. In the fog of
|
|
shock and mental paralysis, she had seen its red, glassy eyes blink
|
|
once, and then it had turned from her and crawled across the room,
|
|
its image wavering and blurring and then it had sucked at the still
|
|
twitching body that had been Jack Park, the husband who had tried
|
|
to save her, who had put the baby inside her. It had slobbered and
|
|
sucked and then it had come back to her, the mental bonds tight and
|
|
unyielding. Over by the wall, Jack’s mouth was open and his
|
|
eyes were mere shadows. The dark hollows stared accusingly at her
|
|
and she knew again she was damned forever.</p>
|
|
<p>Now she was here in the cold and the dark, in the musty confines
|
|
of the back barn where they had stored the hay before the new barn
|
|
was built. It smelled of mice, though not one sound could be heard.
|
|
It smelled of bird shit and old hay and the dried out carcasses of
|
|
long-dead rats. She had moved once, only taking the narrow stairs
|
|
in the early morning when it was still cold, to get a drink of
|
|
water from the trough at the corner of the wall, sucking up the icy
|
|
drink with her face almost submerged while the baby, a greater
|
|
weight now, clung tight to her, dangling like a long, thin
|
|
monkey.</p>
|
|
<p>It had changed in the night. She had heard the grunt and strain
|
|
of the thing and for a little while, the mental connections sparked
|
|
and fizzled and she was almost herself again. Without warning she
|
|
came tumbling out of its control, back into the real and awful
|
|
world where she could suddenly think.</p>
|
|
<p>For a ghastly, unbearable moment, everything came flooding back
|
|
to her, all of it, every movement, every noise. The sounds of the
|
|
dogs and the horses and the cattle and her own husband slamming in
|
|
a thudded crunch against the wall. She heard again the gobbling
|
|
mucous sound form the cot and knew that everything in her life was
|
|
gone. It was dark in the old loft. A few stray rays of moonlight
|
|
came through the holes where a few slates had come loose, solid
|
|
silver rods in the dusty air. The thing was close</p>
|
|
<p><em>not a baby it’s a fucking devil.</em> She did not know
|
|
that she was only repeating Ginny Marsden’s desperate
|
|
protest. She did not know that the emaciated, skeletal thing that
|
|
had been Ginny Marsden was lying stiff and frozen less than twenty
|
|
yards away, feasted on by a horde of rats, the only creatures which
|
|
had survived the proximity of the thing.</p>
|
|
<p>The beast was a black and twisting shadow, roiling on the floor
|
|
close to the angle of the roof where the cobwebbed beams sloped
|
|
down to the flat. It grunted, though the sound wasn’t quite a
|
|
grunt, more of a hollow and flaccid gulping noise. It was like
|
|
nothing she had ever heard. She knew, right then, that this was
|
|
something like nothing else on earth. This was something that
|
|
should never have existed in this world.</p>
|
|
<p>She turned, almost able to hear the protest in her joints. It
|
|
was squirming there, making an effort. Its mental pulses swelled,
|
|
flickering randomly on the surface of her own mind, unfocussed
|
|
little jolts of energy. It was concentrating on its escape. In the
|
|
dark shadow, she could hear ripping sounds, but the motion was oily
|
|
black, shadow upon shadow.</p>
|
|
<p>Yet she was free. Everything in her life was gone and Kate Park
|
|
had no intention of running now. There was nothing for her to gain.
|
|
All she could think of was that the thing had to be destroyed. She
|
|
moved, rolling away on the rough boards, getting towards the hatch.
|
|
She reached the edge of the rickety stair and did not hesitate.
|
|
Down she went, on hands and backside, like a disjointed crab. She
|
|
got halfway down when she heard it scuttle above her, heard it howl
|
|
its silent, cerebral shriek.</p>
|
|
<p>Down at the bottom she turned. It came scuttling like a spider,
|
|
still making the hollow sound and sending dreadful commanding
|
|
pulses at her. Its anger and rage sizzled ahead of it reaching out
|
|
towards her. From its hind legs trailed a whispery translucence
|
|
that for a moment looked like crumpled old polythene sheeting. She
|
|
turned away from it, lurching towards the wall. An old pitchfork,
|
|
one that hadn’t been used since before Jack had been a boy,
|
|
was stuck into the soft and rotted wood of the walls. She grabbed
|
|
it without hesitation. It came out with a singing vibration,
|
|
humming as she spun it round. The beast came at her, its red eyes
|
|
glaring poisonously. She hefted the shaft, raising the curved
|
|
tines. It jinked to the side, its edges blurring and wavering again
|
|
as it pushed its thoughts at her. She leaned into the thrust,
|
|
snagged the papery trailing flutter which merely ripped away with
|
|
the sound of dry leaves.</p>
|
|
<p>The ghostly thing whipped round, a pale image of the monster
|
|
floating upwards. It snagged her attention for a fraction of a
|
|
second. The black and rippling thing scuttled under the prongs,
|
|
came for her, snatched at her coat. She gasped, turned to face it,
|
|
trying to get the pitchfork down onto it. She lunged hard again. It
|
|
blared its command into her and a huge and glassy pain exploded in
|
|
her head. Her eyes went blind in that instant and her whole body
|
|
convulsed under the force, as if an enormous electrical charge had
|
|
gone right through her. The fork came down, twisting with the
|
|
motion of her body. The spike slammed down onto her foot, stabbed
|
|
through the skin and flesh, bored between the bones of her toes and
|
|
continued through the sole of her shoe and down into the soft earth
|
|
of the bottom barn.</p>
|
|
<p>The little monster scrambled up her coat, fingers scrabbling at
|
|
her skin, got close enough to fix on her and snatched her mind just
|
|
as the hurt of the stabbing reached her brain. It probed, touched
|
|
and pushed. Kate’s muscles contracted again, sufficient to
|
|
pull the pitchfork from her foot. A distant scrape of pain
|
|
accompanied the motion. The implement dropped to the dry muck where
|
|
her blood was now mingling with the shit of long dead cattle. It
|
|
held her there, her whole body vibrating with the power of its
|
|
seizing, unable to move a limb. After a while, it made her walk to
|
|
the door, keeping to the side of the building, and made her drink
|
|
until her belly was hugely distended. She could not refuse.</p>
|
|
<p>When she had opened the door, the ghostly white thing had
|
|
tumbled away, drawn out in the draught of air. It had looked like a
|
|
ghost. It had looked like her worst nightmare.</p>
|
|
<p>Much later, in the dark of night, she crouched in the cold,
|
|
waiting for the next thing to happen. At her breast, the baby
|
|
mewled, now heavier than before, now grown more. Pains creaked out
|
|
in her joints and every beat of her heart gave her an odd,
|
|
wrenching discomfort. Her gums bled and her back ached and the
|
|
pounding between her temples made it hard to see in the dim
|
|
light.</p>
|
|
<p>She could do nothing but watch and wait while the baby drained
|
|
her and would not let her die. Day and night passed. All she took
|
|
was water. It fed like a glutton.</p>
|
|
<p>When the sounds came, sounds of the approaching cars, she did
|
|
not hear them. She sat still as stone in the shadow of the barn
|
|
until the baby roused her and made her move.</p>
|
|
</div>
|
|
</div>
|
|
</body>
|
|
</html>
|