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<h2>31</h2>
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<p>“That’s the fourth time this week,” Helen said
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as David rewound the tape on the answering machine. “I never
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thought she was God’s gift to intellectuals, but I thought at
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least she’d have got the message by now.”</p>
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<p>The tape clicked to a halt. Helen’s eyes held a mixture of
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pity, contempt, and a flash of anger too. “You’ll have
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to tell her.”</p>
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<p>“I did tell her,” David said. “I can’t
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seem to get through to her at all. She’s got herself
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convinced that everything’s going to be sweetness and light
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again.”</p>
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<p>“She’s got a problem, David. She really needs help
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if she can’t get it into her head that it’s over
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between you.”</p>
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<p>“And I could surely do with the break.”</p>
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<p>“Me too. She’ll have to understand that it’s
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you and me from here on. It’s not easy maybe, but it’s
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a tough old world. To the victor, the spoils.” She gave him a
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look that measured him up and down, managed a half smile.</p>
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<p>“Even if the spoils are spoiled and don’t amount to
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much.”</p>
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<p>She ruffled his hair with a fast hand. “Tell her. After
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what we’ve been through, we’re sticking together. You
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won’t get rid of me easily.”</p>
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<p>“Or at all,” David said, “That’s a
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promise.”</p>
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<p>June’s ever more demanding messages were becoming more
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than an irritation. She’d sent him a mass of flowers while he
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was in hospital and then arrived in person, elbowing brusquely, and
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with obvious hostility past Helen. David had been mildly
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embarrassed then, but now he was becoming concerned, not for
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himself, though he wished she would take no for an answer in the
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hope that they could all get back to some semblance of normality,
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if anything ever could be normal since the frantic conclusion in
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the freezing, murky water of the canal. David had dreamed of the
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thing for nights after that, still did, though he never told Helen.
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He didn’t know that she was keeping the same secret from him.
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The thing still preyed on their minds all through the spring
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months.</p>
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<p>Neither would June let him go. He’d had the Christmas
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cards, and an expensive Gucci watch which he’d almost been
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tempted to send back by return of post, but that would only have
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been an insult. He still felt pangs of guilt that he hadn’t
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been able to give June what she wanted and never would. She’d
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sent him the valentine cards. She’d sent him letters. She
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called him at the office and she left messages on the tape at home.
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She contrived to bump into him in the street and every time he met
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her she had that desperate, hopeful, needful look on her face that
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made him feel at once guilty and repulsed.</p>
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<p>“She’s one creepy lady,” Helen finally said.
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“She can’t control her emotions, and if she thinks
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she’s going to have your kids, then she’s got another
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think coming. You’d better watch or you’ll end up in a
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fatal attraction scenario. You don’t keep a rabbit she might
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be tempted to cook?”</p>
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<p>“I’ll tell her,” David said. “I will.
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Honestly.”</p>
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<p>“Good man,” Helen told him, favouring him with a
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quick smile. “If anybody’s going to have your kids, I
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want first crack at it.”</p>
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<p>He spun round so fast he felt a harsh crick in his neck.</p>
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<p>“Kidding,” she said. “At least for a year or
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so. I want to make Chief Inspector before you do.”</p>
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<p>“No chance.”</p>
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<p>“Maybe, but I’m serious about the other thing.
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I’m sorry for June, but it’s us against the world now.
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I’m not a grasping person and I don’t plan to be a
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weight around your neck, but I don’t believe I’m going
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to let you go, not after what we’ve been through.”</p>
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<p>David eased towards her and drew her close. He remembered the
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regret down in the mud before everything had faded, the infinite
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sadness that he would lose her. She had been worth dying for.</p>
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<p>“Thank heavens for small mercies,” he said, and she
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leaned into his warmth.</p>
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<p>Helen had transferred to Western Division to work with Bert
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Millar not long after David had come back to duty. It had been a
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good move for her, and the right move for both of them. Working in
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the same office and living together would have done neither career
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any good and would have put too much pressure on them off duty.
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David was rewarded with what he wanted, a transfer to the murder
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squad. The drugs wars were heating up in the east and south of the
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city and the subsequent rash of street killings kept him busy as
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winter turned to spring and edged towards summer.</p>
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<p>Apart from June’s pestering, life almost got back to
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normal. Then, in late spring, two bodies were found on a narrowboat
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in the canal.</p>
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<p>It may have been coincidence (though both of them had long since
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stopped accepting coincidence so lightly) that David and Helen
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found themselves, that spring morning, on the banks of the canal.
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The sun was already high and the morning mist was burning off in
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the heat of the day.</p>
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<p>When she had arrived here, the memory of the frantic battle for
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mind and body had come rushing back to her, and she shivered
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silently, getting the same feeling she’d had in Levenford
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when she’d imagined that someone had walked over her grave.
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<em>Something was wrong</em>. A sense of threat scraped on her mind
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and she tried to tell herself it was only the association with this
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place and the memories it brought. The water here was deep and
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turbid, and in the early hours, the air was still except for the
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occasional twist of wind coming of the estuary where the wading
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birds piped and whined. The ice was gone, but there was a sense of
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life under the still waters of the canal. A dragonfly whirred by,
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metallic green on helicopter wings, and Helen recalled the scene in
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David’s photograph where he’d caught the insect
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emerging in transformation from the ugly skin of the larva. She
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shivered again, wishing she were elsewhere. This palace gave her
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the creeps, she told herself, and always would.</p>
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<p>At night, in the dark she could still see the thing glaring at
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her, reaching into her mind, while it stole her soul away. In the
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daytime, the image came unbidden. She blinked the memory away,
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tried to tell herself it was over. A group of people were coming
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along the track and that distracted her enough. She turned, drawing
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her eyes away from the dark water and saw the murder team arrive.
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Helen have David a small, not quite surreptitious wave when he got
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to the side of the canal with two young men and a tall, bulky man
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she knew was a chief inspector on the squad. David had told her he
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was very hard, but also very good. The narrowboat had been
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barricaded with police yellow tape. But for the numbers of police
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in uniform and the curious crowd of onlookers, nothing looked out
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of the ordinary. The surface of the canal was almost glassily
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placid, except for that part just beside the barge where the added
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weight made it dip slowly and send out a barely perceptible ripple.
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An early kingfisher flashed past, an emerald glitter close to the
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surface, a little visual bonus that heralded the summer to come.
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David recognised it immediately and almost automatically he noted
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it for future reference. He could come back here in the late spring
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and get some shots of the bird on fast film.</p>
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<p>Bert Millar came striding up the path, ducking under the tape,
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shook the senior man’s hand, then turned to David and did the
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same, favouring him with a nod of familiarity.</p>
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<p>“Two women,” he said. “Doctor Robinson
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estimates they’ve been here close to a month. We’ve got
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one of the McPhee boys banged up as we speak. He’s talking
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his head off. Crying his head off more like. That’s one light
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fingered wee bugger who wishes he’d never broken into a
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boat.”</p>
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<p>“Bad?”</p>
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<p>“Nothing much left of them. You’ll have a problem
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getting anything here. And another problem.” Bert Millar
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stopped and drew them towards the narrowboat and away from other
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ears. “I had a look at them. No matter what Robinson comes up
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with as the cause, I’ll give you any odds you name that
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it’s the same as that Park baby up in Middle Loan
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farm.”</p>
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<p>A cold touch trailed down David’s skin. The Chief
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Inspector raised his eyebrows. “David here knows what I
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mean,” Bert Millar said. “He was there.”</p>
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<p>“I heard,” the murder hunt leader said.
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“You’d better come with me then.”</p>
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<p>Helen watched as both of them stepped onto the barge. David
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didn’t look up, so she couldn’t wave, even
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surreptitiously. A light breeze riffled through the green reeds at
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the edge of the canal, making them rasp together in a
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conspiratorial whisper. The still water shimmered in the eddy of
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wind, bearing the scent of early hawthorn flourish and willow
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pollen. Overlaid on that, there was another, much fainter scent,
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barely discernible on the air.</p>
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<p>Helen breathe for an instant. The fine hairs on her arms were
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standing out against the cotton of her blouse. She sniffed, twice,
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caught the hint of it again. An itch crawled across the skin of her
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breasts.</p>
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<p>“No,” she breathed. Beside her, one of the other
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policeman turned, thinking she had spoken to him. The eddy passed
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by and took the trace of scent away. Helen shook her head,
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wondering. The sense of sudden threat had swamped her so quickly
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that she could feel her heart pound at double speed. Her eyes
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scanned the slow water where a bloom of algae was already spreading
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over the surface. If there had been a movement there, if some
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rounded head had poked out from the weeds, and if a glassy red eye
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had fixed upon her, she might just have run along the towpath and
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run and run until she had dropped. The deep and dark corner of her
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mind that could reach forward and sense the danger in the future,
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touched against something and she recoiled from it. David was at
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the edge of the barge, walking towards the cabin. The prescience
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suddenly swelled inside her, a black tide of foreboding. She wanted
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to call out to him, to tell him to stop and turn and get of that
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damned boat, but she knew she could not.</p>
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<p>“I know her,” David said, once he got his breath
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back. Despite the open door of the hatchway in the cabin, the air
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was thick with that clogging, musty scent of old death. Bert
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Millar’s men had searched the boat and despite the obvious
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difficulty the forensics boys would have in getting an identity on
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the two women, there had been enough personal effects to be fairly
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sure.</p>
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<p>“She’s one of the best wildlife photographers in the
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country.” He said. “A world expert.”</p>
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<p>Flora Spiers’ battered old camera bag was stacked on a
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ledge at the foot of the bed. On the wall, a world-famous shot of a
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wedge of geese crossing the face of the full moon dominated the
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other photographs, the same picture David had on his own wall.
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David had long admired the woman’s technique and style. If he
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hadn’t become a policeman, he would probably have tried to
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make a career of his hobby.</p>
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<p>“I never knew she lived here.”</p>
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<p>“According to the harbour keeper, they spent weeks here at
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a time. They’re both from London,” the other policeman
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said.”</p>
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<p>On the bed, two mounds which bore little resemblance to human
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beings lay parallel to each other. Any blood had long since dried
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and much of the flesh that had been left had been taken care of by
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the flies, even at this time of the year. The inside of the cabin
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was festooned with cobwebs as the spider population exploded to
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cope with the glut.</p>
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<p>Jasmine Cook’s head was canted to the left and her jaw was
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open so wide it made her appear to be screaming silently and
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eternally. A thick spider scuttled across one sunken eye socket.
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Her perfect teeth showed brilliant white against the grey of the
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taut flesh. On the side of her neck, where the flesh had shrivelled
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and dried, a gaping hole showed ragged edges. The mattress was
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matted with a hoary white fungus that rippled in the stir of air
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when any of the men moved. It looked like a dreadful infection, but
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David had seen it before. It was feeding on the dried blood.
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Jasmine’s legs were spread apart in a dreadful invitation
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that made the obscenity somehow blasphemous. At the junction, the
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white fur had grown up the trail of blood to meet the dark
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triangle. On either side, both hips pushed like budding horns
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through drum-tight skin. The body looked hollow.</p>
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<p>Flora was on her side, neck twisted back so that her blind
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sockets gazed up at the ceiling. Thin, empty and leathery breasts
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hung down on either side of her arched chest. David could count
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every rib which poked up through the surface. Both hands were
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curled into claws, longer now that the flesh had withered and
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shrunk. Her nails seemed like black talons ready to hook and gouge.
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The hole in her throat was even more ragged, as if whatever had
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killed her had used considerable force. As if it had been very
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desperate.</p>
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<p>“It’s back,” David said aloud. He remembered
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Helen waking in the night, her body shivering like a tuning fork,
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unable to say what had woken her, what scared her. She hadn’t
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known, not in words, what was happening. But she had known.</p>
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<p>“What’s that?” Bert Millar asked, turning back
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towards him. David only shook his head. The smell here was now
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quite cloying, rasping on the soft membranes in his nose and
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throat. He had tried to kill it, the thing that had sometimes
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looked like a baby and sometimes wavered into something else
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entirely, and he had failed. He had put it down under the mud and
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it had not died.</p>
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<p>His mind flicked back to the cot up in Kate Park’s farm.
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He had crept into the bedroom, his nerves jumping, every one of
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them expecting attack. He had looked over the rim of the crib and
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he had seen the strange circular wound in the baby’s neck. He
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was looking at the same wound now, only this time, the ragged gape
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was bigger.</p>
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<p>Both women had been raped too. He could see that from the trail
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of fungus up the trickle of blood. At least they’d been
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penetrated, damaged inside.</p>
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<p>What in the name of God had it done? Mentally he rephrased the
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question. This had not been done in the name of any god.</p>
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<p>His eyes scanned the cabin, looking for any trace of the thing,
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but he saw nothing and smelled nothing except the flat and somehow
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powdery odour of flesh that was bloodless and dry and the bitter,
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somehow alien scent of the hoar-fungus. The thing he’d shoved
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down into the mud was back. Of that he was suddenly and completely
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certain. It had somehow stayed alive after he’d been dragged
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unconscious from the mud at the bottom of the canal. The frogmen
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had searched and the stretch of waterway had been dragged with
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weighted hooks and nothing had been found except for a couple of
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pike and some drowned dogs. They had missed it. It had got away,
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and now it had come back to kill again.</p>
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<p>The wizened corpses on the bed might tell the forensic team a
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few tales, might give them some pointers. David could tell, because
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he’d seen it before, that they would find veins collapsed
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from lack of blood. They would find torn ligaments and muscles,
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burst blood vessels. He knew that as a fact. The experts in minutia
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would come up with reams of documents to show what had caused the
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deaths of these two women.</p>
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<p>But they would not show the killer. David knew it had a shape
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and a face, something that rippled and changed and hurt the eyes.
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It was a face from nightmare.</p>
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<p>Some time later, Helen saw him come out from the cabin and step
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down onto the bank. Even at the distance separating them, she could
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see the blank, hollow look on his face and she knew something was
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badly wrong.</p>
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<hr />
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<p><em>He was moving.</em></p>
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<p>With uncanny and utter silence he followed the line of the
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hedgerow, hungry now, ferociously hungry again. He had come out of
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the stand of spruce trees, a dark and shadowed place bounded by a
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high fence. He had left the last skin there, an opaque but
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translucent remnant caught on the sharp branches, a pale image of
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himself. After all the changes, after all the mothers, he had
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finally <em>become.</em></p>
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<p>The feeding frenzy had glutted him as he drained the two mothers
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in his penultimate transformation. He belly had swelled and
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distended like an insect’s abdomen and as soon as he had fed
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he had felt the numbing drowsiness overtake him, but he had shaken
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it off because he knew he could not wait here in the narrow
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confines. He had to find somewhere dark and isolated for the next
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development that already was beginning to work inexorably on him
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and within him. Instinct drove him on in the darkness as he
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silently followed the strand of willow that bracketed the canal
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until he found the coppice of thick rhododendrons and brambles. He
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stalked through them, a bloated shape on thin, stick-like legs,
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moving with predatory quiet. In the sky a cloud moved slowly and
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let the light of the moon shine down through the thick branches,
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limning his body with its silver, making his skin gleam like exotic
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metal. Things scuttled and rustled down in the undergrowth, but he
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ignored them. Early bats whispered their subsonic chatter, chasing
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the few insects flying at this time of the year. They avoided him
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as instinctively as he headed for the centre of the coppice,
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through the impenetrable mounds of bramble and hawthorn. Over in a
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gnarled oak, a tawny owl opened an eye and saw hiss shape moving.
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It opened the other, let out a hoot of alarm and took off on
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whispering wings. He felt its fright radiate in the air, but
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ignored it, his concentration fixed on his own need.</p>
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<p>In the centre, he found a hollow under a toppled elm that had
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fallen over an ancient stone hut that must have existed before the
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trees themselves had taken root. He forced his way into the hollow
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and found the shelter he needed beyond that. A family of rats
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bolted out into the night, shrieking their terror. He found a
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corner willed with leaves and bracken and swirled them around him
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until he was covered, the way a weasel nests in the heat of the
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day. The sleep was rushing on him and in the sleep he knew there
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would be change again and he sensed that this would be the last.
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The moonlight sent a shard of silver down through a hole in the dry
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stones and that was the last thing he saw. The pressure in his
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belly pulsed and his eyes closed and he sensed his organs already
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begin to disintegrate.</p>
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<p>It seemed no time at all. It seemed forever.</p>
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<p>He awoke again, so suddenly it was like a birth. He woke trapped
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in a hard case. He flexed and the case split with the sound of
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snapping branches. He opened an eye. His limbs creaked into motion
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and he uncurled his body. He opened the other eye, snuffled the
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air. He smelled the roots and the insects. He scented birds in the
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air, but they meant nothing to him at all. He snuffled and got a
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far-off scent, so faint it was no more than one or two atoms and a
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hunger wrenched inside him.</p>
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<p>He was grown now. The last change was over, and the new hunger
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was a hot pain deep inside him. He could no more deny this than he
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could have refused to feed before, when he had needed the
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mothers.</p>
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<p>Now his needs were different.</p>
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<p>He stretched his limbs and got to a crouch, squeezed himself
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with some difficulty through the narrow entrance hole, which was
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much smaller to him now. He moved quickly and silently, strong now
|
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and powered by the new fierce imperative. His nerves sparked and
|
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jumped and behind his eyes, a pulse throbbed. Whatever passed for
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blood in his veins was now pumping fast within him, strong and
|
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vital and urgent. Overhead a cloud was pushed across the sky, just
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enough to let the moon shine through. It was full again, leprous
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pale in the black of the sky. It pulled at him, swelled the tide
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within him and it drove him on and on.</p>
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<p>This emerging had not exhausted him, because his blood was
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singing with the energy the final mothers had provided. All of his
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senses were keyed to fever pitch and he moved silently and fast, a
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thin, gaunt thing of shadows and edges. Here and there, little
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points of lights would flicker on his consciousness, lives flaring
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briefly. He could extinguish them if he only looked, but he had no
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time. The new urgency spurred him on, dug into his being, dragged
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him along. Every now and again he stopped, sniffed the air, turning
|
|
his small, domed head this way and that, before moving on.</p>
|
|
<p>The clouds swung closed and the world went dark. It was morning,
|
|
but black as pitch here. He had followed the line of the canal,
|
|
using its hedges and trees and reeds as cover as he moved east,
|
|
ever east, following the pull of the wordless demand. His whole
|
|
being was tuned to that and could not waver or deviate. Here and
|
|
there, on the locks, as the canal approached the city, there would
|
|
be lights, but he was able to cope with them now, even if the glare
|
|
seared his skin. The orange glow of the road-lights would have
|
|
melted his eyes if he stared into them, but now he had a
|
|
nictitating membrane, a secondary pair of lids that came flicking
|
|
down to dim the light. It allowed him to see as he moved.</p>
|
|
<p>The canal wended slow and sluggish towards the city, a snake of
|
|
water that had been re-developed for the new millennium, an inland
|
|
waterway that bisected the north side before it crossed over to
|
|
Blane on the east coast. It may have been coincidence that all of
|
|
the towns that had featured in his long and alien life, through all
|
|
of the changes, they had all been connected by river, lake and
|
|
waterway. It may have been coincidence.</p>
|
|
<p>The morning air was still and damp. Once or twice, it heard the
|
|
incomprehensible sounds of human voices, low and muttered from
|
|
inside an outhouse close to the canal, loud and fretful from a
|
|
house some distance away. He heard the clump of a policeman’s
|
|
feet and had to fight the instinct to strike. He heard the patter
|
|
of a fox bitch as it crossed a pipe spanning the canal. He did not
|
|
know that it had smelled him when it reached the far side and had
|
|
instantly aborted, in dreadful agony, the seven cubs she would have
|
|
laid the following week. They writhed weakly on the grass until the
|
|
cold stopped them.</p>
|
|
<p>He drew nearer where he had to be. The drive, the force inside
|
|
him, was now a singing screech of physical demand. He was complete
|
|
now and this was his hour.</p>
|
|
<p>He only had one purpose.</p>
|
|
<hr />
|
|
<p>June Whalen had come by taxi, bearing David’s birthday
|
|
cake. She had called him at the office and discovered he
|
|
wouldn’t be home until later. She had arrived at ten and it
|
|
was now close to midnight. It was dark, but not too cold, though
|
|
there was a hint of rain in the air. She wondered if she should get
|
|
a taxi and go back home again, but she wanted to see him on his
|
|
own.</p>
|
|
<p>She had made a big mistake, she knew, and if she could only get
|
|
the chance to make him see, everything would be back to normal
|
|
again. When she had walked out, it had been in the heat of the
|
|
moment. She had rushed him, tried to force him and that had been
|
|
the wrong thing. She knew that deep in his heart, he loved her and
|
|
she knew, with the same certainty, that they would be together
|
|
again. He would come round. They would get married as she had
|
|
always planned. They would start a family and he would see she had
|
|
been right all along. It would just take time, and she had time.
|
|
She was still young.</p>
|
|
<p>There was no question of her trying to find another man. She had
|
|
been crazy about David since the day they had first gone out
|
|
together, and she still was, no matter what arguments they had had.
|
|
That was all in the past. She could make him see that, no matter
|
|
what silly mistake he had made with that other <em>bitch.</em>
|
|
There was no-one else for her.</p>
|
|
<p>She waited on the corner, knowing he would arrive any moment. He
|
|
would drive round the side, to the off-street car park in the
|
|
shadow of the trees that led onto the waterway park. She hummed to
|
|
herself, as she strolled round the corner where the Virginia
|
|
creeper was just bursting into a leafy tumble on the wall.</p>
|
|
<p>The air stirred. Something moved. She heard a high-pitched
|
|
buzzing in her ears. She turned.</p>
|
|
<p>“Who’s there?” She was not alarmed. There
|
|
would be no danger next to David’s house. Maybe, she thought,
|
|
he had come from round the back. She took a step forward down the
|
|
path, out of the light. A shadow moved and she stopped, saw it was
|
|
only the shade of the juniper tree ruffled by a gentle breeze.
|
|
Something moved again in the deeper shadow at the side of the
|
|
house. She stopped once more and a figure came looming out. At
|
|
first all she saw was a black silhouette, about the height of a
|
|
man.</p>
|
|
<p>“David?”</p>
|
|
<p>It came towards her and as it did, she heard the fruity little
|
|
hum get louder. The air thickened and a powerful, sickly scent
|
|
enveloped her.</p>
|
|
<p>“What...?” she began. For an instant her vision
|
|
wavered, watered. She blinked, turning to the side.</p>
|
|
<p>The shadow came forward, very quickly. It took hold of her
|
|
shoulders. It turned her round to face it and two eyes flicked open
|
|
with audible fleshy clicks. They glared into hers and she felt the
|
|
power of its will force its way into her brain, and her mouth flew
|
|
wide open. A scream formed in her throat but died there unblurted.
|
|
The world went red and then it went dark.</p>
|
|
<hr />
|
|
<p>Helen Lamont was on her way home after a long, footslogging day.
|
|
She had walked most of the western end of the canal, as far as
|
|
Barloan Harbour, asking questions of the few boatmen who were on
|
|
the water at this time of the year.</p>
|
|
<p>Every step on the bridle path reminded her of the chase after
|
|
the girl and the gargoyle thing clutched in her arms, every swirl
|
|
in the water when a pike came rising to snatch a minnow, would
|
|
cause her to start and turn, eyes wide, alert to the potential
|
|
threat. Since she had breathed in the faint, cold trace of its
|
|
passing, she had realised that this was not over. She could not
|
|
share her fear with anyone else, here with her new team-mates. She
|
|
told herself she should be thankful that this was not the high
|
|
summertime when the waterway would be teeming with weekend
|
|
navigators and the basin filled with yachtsmen and power-boaters.
|
|
Yet it would have been better if there were more people on the
|
|
stretch of canal. In the distance the arch of the bridge showed
|
|
movement as cars and trucks passed over the wide span of the river,
|
|
but here there were few people. She felt vulnerable and exposed. At
|
|
night she would have felt in dreadful danger.</p>
|
|
<p>She also told herself that she was wasting time here. She had
|
|
seen the photographs of the two women on the barge. She had read
|
|
the report and she knew they were looking for no murderer. They
|
|
were looking for something which killed and fed. Bert Millar knew
|
|
it, but there was an unspoken agreement between them. He did not
|
|
want to get involved in this one. Murder squad could handle it.</p>
|
|
<p>She and David had talked it over and they both knew the little
|
|
beast was back again. If she hadn’t seen the evidence, she
|
|
would have known anyway. Her prescient sense itched and nagged,
|
|
telling her to beware. The thing would no doubt kill and feed
|
|
again. They would have to wait until it did, and then they would
|
|
have to kill it dead. They would make sure this time.</p>
|
|
<p>Helen steered the car round by the trees, to the little car park
|
|
behind the house. The wind was picking up, rustling the branches
|
|
that overhung the quadrangle. The light was off in the house, all
|
|
the windows dark hollows on the wall. She knew David might not be
|
|
home for some time. She was only on the periphery of the inquiry,
|
|
but David was there, unable to say what he thought, what he knew.
|
|
The night before he had woken, lacquered with sweat, gasping for
|
|
breath, just as she had done. In his dream, he later told her,
|
|
sides heaving in the aftermath, that he had been fighting with it
|
|
again, down there in the mud.</p>
|
|
<p>“It’s been a month,” Helen said, tying to
|
|
convince herself and failing. “And nothing’s
|
|
happened.”</p>
|
|
<p>“It was three months before that, and it still came
|
|
back.”</p>
|
|
<p>“You’re sure?” Stupid question. She was sure
|
|
herself. There was no mistaking it. She had sensed its
|
|
existence.</p>
|
|
<p>Now she eased herself out of the car, pulled her bag out and
|
|
slung it over her shoulder. She turned, stuck the key in the lock,
|
|
crossed the little yard under the trees, walking towards the
|
|
house.</p>
|
|
<p>Then she froze.</p>
|
|
<p>Every cell of her body lurched. She stood rigid, still as a
|
|
statue, completely motionless, mouth agape, while inside, her heart
|
|
fluttered like a trapped and desperate bird.</p>
|
|
<p>Something had touched her.</p>
|
|
<p><em>IT</em> had reached out. <em>IT</em> had stretched to
|
|
touched her. She felt its caress, its damp, dank, slither and she
|
|
recognised it from before, but now it was different. The tendrils
|
|
of its foul touch slid over the surface of her mind and she
|
|
recoiled in utter disgust. Right on the heels of the uncontrollable
|
|
repugnance came the immediate fear, so powerful that it almost
|
|
spilled her to the ground.</p>
|
|
<p>“Oh God,” she managed to blurt out.</p>
|
|
<p><em>Oh God it’s</em> here!</p>
|
|
<p>Her legs had simultaneously frozen solid and turned to jelly.
|
|
She tried to back away, and her feet refused at first to move, her
|
|
weight made them feel week and unable to support her. The breeze
|
|
carried the smell towards her, not faint now, but a harsh reek, a
|
|
foul taint, and her vision wavered. Her heart stopped fluttering
|
|
and kicked madly, painfully in her chest.</p>
|
|
<p>Something moved in the shadows, deeper black on black and for
|
|
some reason, the fright unlocked her. She turned, grabbing her bag
|
|
as she did so. She snatched the mobile phone and was keying the
|
|
number as she moved. The bag spun away and landed against the
|
|
garden fence.</p>
|
|
<p>Behind her a snuffling sound seemed so close she could feel cold
|
|
breath on her neck. She scuttered across the yard, head down, got
|
|
to the car. She tried to open it, couldn’t get the key in the
|
|
lock. Feet scrabbled behind her and she realised she’d never
|
|
make it in time.</p>
|
|
<p>The scabrous touch reached out and into her and she reeled in
|
|
horror from the appalling sense of filth in the alien contact. She
|
|
turned from the car, unable to make herself look back, knowing that
|
|
of the thing fastened its eyes on her it would sear her brain. She
|
|
jinked to the side, trying not to whimper, trying to concentrate
|
|
despite the huge eruption of fear. She got to the far side, along
|
|
where the privet hedge bordered the thicket. She was running under
|
|
the overhanging trees. The telephone beeped at her as her thumb
|
|
pressed the numbers, pressing so hard that her nail bent back in a
|
|
rip of pain which she never even felt. In her mind she could see
|
|
the gaping wounds on the dried and shrivelled bodies of Jasmine
|
|
Cook and Flora Spiers side by side on the narrowboat. She saw the
|
|
white fungus growing up the scab of dried blood between their legs
|
|
and the fear bucked madly inside her. She ran under the light,
|
|
heart kicking, breath suddenly tight and constricted as if her
|
|
lungs could not haul enough air to fuel her escape.</p>
|
|
<p>It scuttled behind her. She could hear the scrape of <em>nails?
|
|
Claws?</em> feet on the road, a deadly, predatory sound of
|
|
pursuit.</p>
|
|
<p>“Emergency, which service do you require?” The
|
|
operator’s voice came loud and clear, with none of the tinny
|
|
interference she would normally expect. The woman could have been
|
|
standing next to her. The sound of another human voice was somehow
|
|
miraculous.</p>
|
|
<p>“Help,” Helen managed to blurt.
|
|
“Please.”</p>
|
|
<p>All her training, all of her toughness had gone, evaporated in
|
|
the flick of an eye when she had smelled the sweet-rancid scent as
|
|
she rounded the corner and saw the shadow move in the deep shade.
|
|
It had reached and touched her, pushing into her mind and in that
|
|
moment it had changed her into a primitive, fleeing organism,
|
|
running for life, running in abject and indescribable terror.</p>
|
|
<p>“Which service please?” the woman asked again.
|
|
“Hello?”</p>
|
|
<p>Helen’s feet pounded the road. Her eyes swung ahead,
|
|
beyond the house to the left. She was in a cul-de-sac. The road
|
|
dead-ended at a picket fence. Her heart almost stopped dead. The
|
|
touch slithered on the surface of her mind, digging in at her,
|
|
trying to force its way inside. She felt the feral, supernatural
|
|
hunger, sensed the sizzling heat of its need; the mindless panic
|
|
erupted.</p>
|
|
<p>“Please,” she whimpered again. Her fingers were dug
|
|
into the plastic case, clenched so tight that the thin shell
|
|
creaked. Even as she spoke she was swerving to the right, cutting
|
|
across the road, pulling out of the dead-end. It had gained
|
|
silently on her as she turned, she sensed with quivering nerves but
|
|
she put on a mad spurt of speed, getting to the far corner under
|
|
the spread of chestnut tree branches which overhung the
|
|
pavement.</p>
|
|
<p>“Hello? Can you give me a number? Hello” The phone
|
|
was still pressed to her ear and the woman’s voice, the
|
|
wonderful, natural human voice was speaking directly to her, an
|
|
illusion of contact, of succour, while the diseased touch of the
|
|
shadow chasing her tried to clamp her down and burn her
|
|
thoughts.</p>
|
|
<p>“Get away,” Helen screamed. “Get away from me.
|
|
Oh Jees...”</p>
|
|
<p>Her foot caught the edge of the kerb, twisting her ankle
|
|
violently and throwing her off balance. A crack of pain bolted up
|
|
to her knee as she fought to compensate, still clenching the
|
|
telephone. Her shoulder hit against the upright of a trellis fence
|
|
with a crash and the thin partition vibrated with the impact. The
|
|
force of it threw her round, wheeling for balance. Behind her the
|
|
shadow snorted. She could feel its eyes on her, sense long arms and
|
|
hooked talons reaching for her and she spun through the gap in the
|
|
fence.</p>
|
|
<p>“Police,” she blurted again, almost incoherent.
|
|
“It’s hunting me it’s going to get me
|
|
its.....” her voice cut off.</p>
|
|
<p>“Hello, please, where are you?” The operator sounded
|
|
suddenly very concerned indeed.</p>
|
|
<p>Helen had crashed through the gap which gave on to the little
|
|
woodland bordering the waterway park. As soon as she was off the
|
|
pavement, she realised she had made the wrong move. The cul-de-sac
|
|
would have been better. There were houses there and lights. She
|
|
could have run to one of them and demanded sanctuary. She could
|
|
have done, but she had not thought. The primitive animal fear had
|
|
swamped her and all she had known was the need to run, to cover
|
|
distance, escape from this nightmare. Her other shoulder slammed
|
|
into a birch sapling and spun her again. She almost fell, but still
|
|
she held on to the telephone. Her feet crackled over twigs and
|
|
through burgeoning brambles.</p>
|
|
<p>Behind her, the beast-nails scraped on the road mettle again,
|
|
then went silent for an instant before it reached the grass under
|
|
the trees. A twig cracked loudly, the sound of breaking bones and
|
|
the enormity of her mistake sunk in to her. She should have kept on
|
|
the street and not come into the trees. Even then she knew to have
|
|
done so she would have had to turn and face the thing and that
|
|
would have destroyed her. Yet here, in the dark, it had the
|
|
advantage. It was a night thing, she now understood. It was a
|
|
devil. She ran, blundering through the dark of the copse, the phone
|
|
held up against her ear, one hand outstretched to push through the
|
|
undergrowth while all the time she could hear the steady, fleet
|
|
pursuit of the thing that snuffled ferociously behind her.</p>
|
|
<p>The beast reached out to her and she felt its hunger yawn. Hot
|
|
and febrile thoughts scurried and scratched over her own. It was
|
|
getting closer, she could feel that, and she could hear its
|
|
progress, quieter than her own, swift and deadly, a rustle here, a
|
|
scrape there, and all the time the fast and feral snort of its
|
|
breathing. She got down to the pathway between the trees, reaching
|
|
the flat ground, forcing her legs to move, though they threatened
|
|
to stop working and simply spill her to the ground. Helen knew she
|
|
had to put some speed on to get away from it.</p>
|
|
<p>All the while, throb the thicket and the bramblethorns the
|
|
operator’s voice was scratching out from the receiver, but
|
|
Helen had no breath to spare now no time to waste. Her breathing
|
|
came in ragged, desperate gasps. The moon stuttered its light
|
|
through trees, a pallid strobe that marked her frantic passage. Off
|
|
at the edge of the forest, something small panicked and screeched.
|
|
Close by, to her left, a shadow flickered in peripheral vision.</p>
|
|
<p>The touch squeezed at her and a bolt of shattering pain slammed
|
|
into her head.</p>
|
|
<p>“Oh,” she said. Nausea looped. The pain flared,
|
|
burned, faded a little. Sparks danced in her eyes. The moving
|
|
shadow veered towards her, hurtling in from the side. It hit
|
|
against her, surprisingly light, grabbed a hold of her neck. She
|
|
felt a sharp abrasion, a touch like sandpaper. It hauled, letting
|
|
its weight slow her.</p>
|
|
<p>She spun and hit at it, cracking the telephone against the side
|
|
of its body. The blow jarred her right up to her shoulder. It was
|
|
like hitting rough tree bark. Its skin was hard and leathery. It
|
|
grunted and twisted to the side, its grip on her momentarily
|
|
broken. It twisted, a mere blur in the dark. The eyes glared
|
|
briefly but she was turning away and missed the force of it. The
|
|
shape came at her again, reached in a flick of motion. She batted
|
|
it away again, feeling the scrape of the skin, like sharkskin, like
|
|
sandpaper and she knew this thing did not belong, should never have
|
|
existed on this world. It grunted again, leapt to the side, came
|
|
bulleting in again. A hand, a claw, whatever it was snatched for
|
|
her, crabbed her shoulder. She screamed and hit out at it, but it
|
|
gripped her hard enough to drive fingers or nails almost through
|
|
her skin. A grip like a thin, hard bird claw snagged her ankle,
|
|
tripping her forward and her feet slipped on wet leaves from the
|
|
winter’s decay.</p>
|
|
<p>A cry blurted from her. The beast snuffled, questing at her, the
|
|
sound of a beast in the shadows, the sound of a hunting predator.
|
|
The image of Jasmine Cook’s gaping bloodied neck came back to
|
|
her again and she bucked in terror, trying to shuck it away.</p>
|
|
<p>She screamed again, stumbling to the side, trying to gain her
|
|
balance, failing, tumbling. She hit the ground with a wordless
|
|
grunt as the air whooshed out of her in a rush. Her head slammed
|
|
against the soft springy loam and sparks whirled and spangled in
|
|
the darkness. She hit out, a desperate flap of her hand which
|
|
accomplished nothing. She tried to kick out and connected with air.
|
|
The thing had downed her, leapt back quickly, spidery fast. It came
|
|
rushing back in again and she got an image of a slender, disjointed
|
|
shape that was all edges and angles, like a black mantis. Its arms
|
|
moved with incredible speed and shot forward. Fingers clamped
|
|
themselves to the side of her head. Two hands gripped her
|
|
ankles.</p>
|
|
<p>She was screaming now, screaming high and clear, an ululating
|
|
blast of pure fear. The thing’s eyes opened and its glare
|
|
burned into her soul. The eyes were huge and glassy, polished stone
|
|
slabs that had no iris, no pupils, just a red surface that caught
|
|
the moonlight and looked as if poisonous blood vessels pulsed just
|
|
under the surface. Its appalling need shunted into her, a dreadful
|
|
obscene hunger.</p>
|
|
<p>She screamed and the operator pleaded tinnily, a whisper of
|
|
noise now from her outstretched hand.</p>
|
|
<p>The smell came again and invaded her. She saw the baby in the
|
|
cot and the horrible apparition that Ginny Marsden had become. She
|
|
saw the scuttering thing at the side of the canal, pulling on her
|
|
emotions and dragging her with it. She saw Kate Park’s
|
|
wizened, raddled body.</p>
|
|
<p>More than that, she saw herself in all of this, a prisoner of
|
|
the thing.</p>
|
|
<p>The smell pulsed again and infused her head and in that instant
|
|
she realised that this thing did not want to feed.</p>
|
|
<p>“No,” she bleated. “Oh God no....”</p>
|
|
<p>The eyes blared into her, connecting her with a consciousness
|
|
that was old and evil and deadly and so appallingly different from
|
|
any other that her mind twisted desperately in a futile bid to
|
|
break that awesome link. The probe reached and touched in a deadly
|
|
sharing and the hollow of other sense in her mind opened up and</p>
|
|
<p><em>she saw....</em></p>
|
|
<p><em>She saw Kate Park</em>. Her face was angled up, as if seen
|
|
from below, eyes wide and staring at something in the distance, a
|
|
dribble of saliva running down her chin. Her cheeks were hollow and
|
|
gaunt and she looked as if she was damned forever.</p>
|
|
<p>She saw...Ginny Marsden, hurrying through the dark, her face a
|
|
pale oval. A grinding vibration creaked upwards and Helen felt it
|
|
inside herself, as if she was two people at once. She felt Ginny
|
|
Marsden’s pain of disintegration and dissolution, and the
|
|
desperate, mute prayers for help.</p>
|
|
<p>Ginny’s doomed expression faded and flickered and Helen
|
|
saw Heather Quigley, young and fresh, with the three moles in a
|
|
constellation pattern on her cheek, gazing down, mindlessly
|
|
obsessed. In her own breast she felt the sucking of its lips and
|
|
the drain from within.</p>
|
|
<p>The images came in rapid fire succession while the thing reached
|
|
into her own head and stole her mind.</p>
|
|
<p>Greta Simon crooning a lilting lullaby.....Harriet Dailly in her
|
|
little shack ...another face with cheerful, healthy cheeks...a thin
|
|
woman with mad eyes...they came flickering like an old
|
|
film...faces, postures, sensations, all riffling on the front of
|
|
her own mind...</p>
|
|
<p>She saw a hawk-nosed men in armour drag babies from their
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mothers arms in a night of fire and screaming and impale them on
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stakes and she knew she watched the hunt for vampires.</p>
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<p>She saw different, darker men rampage through a dusty city
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|
dragging new-borns into the night while the narrow streets ran with
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blood and madness ran in the night.</p>
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<p>She saw men in skins cast out a woman and her child into the
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dark away from the fire, back in a distant, awful past.</p>
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<p>Her mind catapulted back from then and Helen Lamont saw
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|
something in the future and the force of it was so dreadful it
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|
almost killed her. The awful realisation slammed her into the
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|
present and she squirmed against the poison of its scan and the
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|
pestilent scent of its flaring body. All she could hear was the
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|
whistle of its breath and the crack and rustle of the leaves and
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|
twigs under her writhing body.</p>
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<p>It had her by the wrists. Prehensile feet on the end of skinny
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shanks grasped just above her feet, clamped to tightly she felt the
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|
bones grind together. It flexed powerfully, suddenly enormously
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|
strong, irresistible, stretched her wide, forced her apart. It
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|
sniffed its strange and terrifying scenting breath, a mindless
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|
sound that was appallingly alien. She felt the pain in her joints
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|
and muscles and knew she could not compete with its supernatural
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|
strength. Helen tried to draw her hands back, tried to turn, but it
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|
was futile. Panic soared.</p>
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|
<p>“David,” she screamed. “Help me. Please. Oh.
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|
<em>Help me!</em>”</p>
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|
<p>Her desperate cry reverberated from the trunks of the trees and
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|
vanished in the depths of the thicket.</p>
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|
<p>She felt its heat and its hunger and smelt its rot, now
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|
dreadfully aware from the picture that had flashed into her mind
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|
that the hunger was truly different from before. It did not want to
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|
feed. It had no need now. Its wants were deeper than hunger, more
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|
powerful still. It stretched her further, making her muscles and
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|
tendons stretch beyond their capacity. Something tore in at her
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|
pelvis, then another thing, a dreadful thing that was rigid and
|
|
sharp and hard jabbed in at her. She felt a rip of fabric, felt a
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|
rip of skin, felt a burning pain that at first was outside of her
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|
and then, <em>oh then</em>, it was shrieking and rending inside of
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|
her, in the very depth of her being.</p>
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|
<p>The nightmare bucked on her spread-eagled body and its cold was
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|
through her, the alien cold of pure badness. In the heat of her
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|
pain she felt the dreadful, unnatural cold spear inside as it
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|
bucked upon her, thrusting viciously again and again and again.</p>
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<p>She soared on the crest of unbelievable pain.</p>
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<p>Helen’s scream went on and on and on.</p>
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