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<h2>37</h2>
<p>She could sense it like the sub-audible chitter of bats, a
tingling whisper felt, rather than heard, at the base of her skull
where the messages from her brain shunted down the length of her
spine. It was like the stealthy scrape of chitinous nails on stone,
the rustle of dry winter leaves on a forest floor.</p>
<p>Jack had eased the car up Kirk Street and then along past the
station, following the line of the tracks as far as the old
warehouses, using his own mental map of the places where the
killer, the <em>Shrike,</em> had struck.</p>
<p>He stopped and turned the car around just past the old green
door of the derelict building, recalling for himself the dull sense
of hopelessness when they'd found the boy's boot lying face down on
the cluttered treads. When the lights swung across the crumbling
facade, they picked out the words Jack had seen in the dream when a
piece of the pattern had locked in place: <em>West Highland Railway
Company</em>. Beside him, Lorna let her breath out sharply.</p>
<p>"I saw it here," she said flatly. "That's where it took the boy.
It was using a woman then, I think." She shuddered, lips pursed
tight. "But it's not there now. I can feel the echo. Pain and hurt
and fear."</p>
<p>He reached across and gripped her forearm in a silent gesture.
The shiver subsided.</p>
<p>"Not here," she said. "I have to get away from this."</p>
<p>Beyond the warehouse, on the other side of the river, the twin
stacks of the furnace chimneys loomed up into the night. Whoever or
whatever had killed Neil Kennedy must have crossed the water on the
railway bridge. He tried to picture it in his head, a man or a
woman dragging the flopped body of a small boy, feet smacking up
and down on the sleepers, then the strange, preposterous climb on
the bare face of the flue, and the grotesque impalement on the
twisted lightning rods.</p>
<p>Why had it happened? There was no answer to that. There was no
semblance of reason.</p>
<p>Jack spun the wheel and retraced his route to the junction of
Strathleven Street where the old library stood on the corner.
Overhead, the sky was black, but the clouds beating in from the
west on the quickening wind had obscured the stars completely.
There was a change in the air since the afternoon, an electric
tingle of a gathering winter storm. The spindrift of ice was
beginning to change to flakes of snow, blown horizontal and
spiralling in the turbulence round the corners of dark buildings.
Jack thumbed the radio to call in his position, but all he got was
a burst of static.</p>
<p>"Where now?"</p>
<p>Lorna shrugged, a small movement he didn't see, but felt
nonetheless.</p>
<p>He followed the road past the entrance to the commercial estate
where the new do-it-yourself stores and garden centres crowded up
against the old factory buildings which were being renovated to
compete for business.</p>
<p>"That's where it got the boys," he told her.</p>
<p>She swivelled in her seat and the light from the street lamps
reflected back at him from her eyes as she looked past him.</p>
<p>"It came across the roof," she said, as if picturing the scene
again in her head. "Down through the hole. I didn't know it was a
roof, not then."</p>
<p>"But we all know now," Jack said. "Don't blame yourself. Nobody
knows anything. The town's gone crazy." He clamped his free hand on
her arm again and she gripped his fingers. Her own hand felt soft
and warm and somehow welcome.</p>
<p>"Anything yet?" he asked.</p>
<p>"Closer," Lorna muttered. "It's waiting somewhere, and it knows
we're coming. I'm sure. But I don't know where. Keep going this
way."</p>
<p>"How do you do it? What does it feel like?"</p>
<p>"Like sickness. As if it's touching inside me as well. I don't
know why it picked me. It knows something, something bad, but it's
hiding at from me. That's the feeling I get. Like being pawed by
something filthy."</p>
<p>He kept travelling west, past the line of scraggle-willows which
staggered unevenly on the banks of the small stream bordering the
Rough Drain before taking a twist and disappearing into the
overgrown acres of withered hogweed and tangled hawthorn. At the
far end, he turned and headed straight south, down the long road
which led to the castle, taking it slowly while the wind fluttered
the flakes against the screen. The radio coughed twice just then,
causing Lorna to jerk back in her seat, but when Jack picked it up
again, it only hissed at him.</p>
<p>Castlebank Church loomed on the left, and as they passed, Lorna
gripped his fingers tightly.</p>
<p>"What is it?"</p>
<p>"It was there," she said, voice hollow. "But there was badness
there before it came. She leaned forward in her seat, looking up at
the grey spire of the church, then drew her eyes across the stone
to the buttressed sides. "It used the bad there, because it was
weak and dirty. Because it was easy."</p>
<p>She drew back, mouth turned down.</p>
<p>"I don't want this," she whispered. "I don't want to
<em>feel</em> these things. I don't think I'll ever be clean
again."</p>
<p>"You're doing fine. Take it easy now," he said, twisting his
hand palm upwards to snare her fingers in his. "We have to find
where it's gone, and then it'll stop. That's a promise."</p>
<p>She gave a small nod, hardly a movement in the dark of the car,
and he moved on, right down the length of the road towards where
the volcanic rock hunched like a sleeping monster on the bank of
the firth where the river flowed into the estuary. Far down the
water to the west, lightning stuttered and flickered in the squall
whooping towards the town.</p>
<p>"This is where Annie Eastwood came," Jack said, prompting. "She
fell off up there."</p>
<p>Lorna followed his pointing finger. Up high on the second dome
of the rock, she could just make out the shadowy outline of the
balustrade wall. She got a faint residual sensation of black
despair, a strong and recent echo of bleak emotion, and beneath
that, images of violence and terror.</p>
<p>"It's old. There's been badness here too. So much of it, and for
so long. The stone is steeped with it, like that terrible house."
She closed here eyes and from nowhere came a string of images, men
in skins crooning round blazing fires while above them, in wicker
cages, things, people, squirmed and screamed in agony as the flames
crackled. She saw men in cloaks and with broad swords come running
down the stairways cut into the stone, hot with exertion, stinking
of fresh blood. She saw skulls on pikes along the parapet, pecked
by squabbling crows, mouths agape, sockets blind to the sky. The
pictures scuttered in rapid sequence across the forefront of her
mind, as if she was remembering something she herself had seen. She
blinked, shook her head and drew back.</p>
<p>"Not here," she said. "We have to go back."</p>
<p>Jack said nothing. He reversed, spun the wheel and drove away
from the castle. They reached the junction and turned left, slowly
cruising towards the oil-rig yard when Lorna gripped his hand so
tightly it caused his knuckles to grind together painfully.</p>
<p>Just at that moment, the radio sneezed again. Jack pulled his
hand away and grabbed the receiver.</p>
<p>"Fallon here,"</p>
<p>"Jack?" Static hissed and sparked around his name. "John McColl.
You'd better..."</p>
<p>"Say again?"</p>
<p>"Your sister," John started, voice fragmenting in the electronic
hiss. "You'd better get back. She says your nephew's gone
missing."</p>
<p>"She what?" Jack bawled, jamming his foot on the brake.</p>
<p>The radio spluttered and wheezed. John's voice disappeared into
it, each word broken up and scattered. Jack opened the car door and
got out, walking several yards to get a clearer signal.</p>
<p>"Julia said he went......trees....hurt."</p>
<p>"Forget it John," Jack shouted, trying to overcome the
interference. "I'm coming in. Give me three minutes."</p>
<p>He clicked the thing off, jammed it in his pocket and ran back
to the car.</p>
<p>"Come on. We have to get to the station. It's my nephew. He's
gone missing, I think."</p>
<p>Even while he spoke, the images were whirling around his head.
He hoped he'd picked the message up wrongly. The static on the
radio had left plenty of gaps, yet Jack knew that something was
badly wrong.</p>
<p>He gunned the engine and took off with a shriek as his back
tyres spun on the iced road, following the curve where the brick
wall of the old woodyard abutted the pavement. He came to the end
of the road, turned left again with hardly a glance for traffic,
hauled hard on the wheel and sped towards the gaunt black frame of
the derelict shipyard. He was doing nearly fifty, just passing the
wrought-iron gates when Lorna flew forward, both hands up against
her temples and screamed so loudly that Jack almost let go of the
wheel.</p>
<p>"Stop. Oh <em>God</em> I see it."</p>
<p>He floored the brake and both of them were thrown forward as the
car's nose almost crunched on the road. The tyres whined for
several yards before everything ground to a halt.</p>
<p>"What in the name of..." he blurted, but she cut him off.</p>
<p>"There," she barked. "It's in there."</p>
<p>"Where?"</p>
<p>She pointed out of the nearside window.</p>
<p>"There. In that place. It's waiting or us. Oh Jack, I can feel
it inside my head."</p>
<p>She rocked back again, hands still pressed to the sides of her
head.</p>
<p>"No. Oh please no." The words came tumbling out almost
incoherently. "Get you out of my <em>mind."</em></p>
<p>"Jesus, Lorna, I have to get back to the station," Jack started,
but quick as a striking snake, she turned and shot out her hand and
grabbed his in a fierce grip.</p>
<p>"No. It is showing me what it has. The boy is in there, and he's
alive. He's dreadfully hurt, but it hasn't killed him. He's saved
him to bring you here."</p>
<p>She turned right towards him, eyes incredibly wide.</p>
<p>"That's what it wanted. It wanted you to come. I don't know why,
but it wants you."</p>
<p>"But David's gone missing," Jack protested, but before the words
were even out of his mouth, it dawned on him. "It's got him?"</p>
<p>She nodded, face slack.</p>
<p>"Oh sweet mother of Christ," Jack spat. He grabbed the radio
again, thumbed the switch, and started bawling into it. The flare
of static hissed around them. Way to the west, but closer than
before, the lightning danced in the clouds. He slammed the receiver
down, while the images spun and swooped in his mind. David out in
the snow. Julia in her bathrobe, a towel over her shoulder as she
went up for her bath. Then from nowhere, little Julie's smiling
face turning towards him as her mother spun her round on a summer's
day. He tried to think past the images, tried to banish them so he
<em>could</em> think.</p>
<p>"I can't get through," he finally said. "I need back-up."</p>
<p>"No time," she said. "The boy needs help."</p>
<p>She closed her eyes and for the first time, she deliberately
thought <em>outwards</em>, reaching beyond herself instead of
passively waiting for the terrible images to flood her senses.</p>
<p>Beyond the gates, the air was different, somehow thicker, murky.
She concentrated harder, stretching her touch beyond the gates and
through the gaunt corrugated iron sides of the huge empty building.
She could feel the bleakness, the blackness, like a poison
cloud.</p>
<p>"It's high," she whispered. "Up in the dark. It likes the pain,
feeds on that. I can feel its hunger and emptiness. It is not like
us, Jack, not like people. It's just evil. Bad and corrupted."</p>
<p>She opened her eyes again.</p>
<p>"It's waiting."</p>
<p>Jack let out his breath and the indecision vanished.</p>
<p>"Right. I'm going in there. You keep trying the radio and tell
them we're at Castlebank Yard. Tell them I'm going after it, and
for Christ's sake tell them to send everything they've got round
here."</p>
<p>"I should come with you," she said, though the very thought of
going into the empty shipyard appalled her.</p>
<p>"No. If it's in there, I'll find it. If Davy's there, I have to
get him out. I'm putting all my faith in you, so you have to trust
me."</p>
<p>He reached into the glove compartment and rummaged until he
found the flashlight.</p>
<p>"Give it five minutes. If you can't raise them, get round to the
station and tell John McColl what's happening."</p>
<p>"But I can't drive."</p>
<p>"Oh great," Jack said harshly. "Bloody fantastic."</p>
<p>"I'm sorry. I just never learned."</p>
<p>"Forget it. Just stay in the car. Keep the doors locked and keep
trying the radio." He opened the door and turned to get out when
she reached forward quickly and took him by the lapel of his
jacket, levering herself upwards to kiss him quickly, pressing her
lips hard against his cheek. As soon as she did that, a picture of
Julie's smiling face flashed in front of his eyes then faded away
slowly. He eased himself away, got out and closed the door.</p>
<p>The huge gates towered three times the height of a man, rimed
with frost and on the sides of the iron spars, the thicker snow had
been glued by the wind. The air was freezing cold and the gusts
whined through the barbed wire tangles fixed to the top of the
wall. Far-off thunder rumbled as the storm powered up, like a big
animal looking for a quiet place to settle. The gates were locked,
but there was enough play in the padlock chain to allow Jack to
push them inward and squeeze through the gap. They groaned in rusty
protest, an eerie, almost human sound, then clanged back together.
He walked forward, into the shadow of the towering black building.
The light from the nearest street-lamp was cut off by the outside
wall and he was left alone in the dark. He jabbed the flashlight
button and a weak cone of light spread out in front of him. There
were no other footprints in the dirty snow but his own.</p>
<p>Back in the car, Lorna flicked the radio button on and off, but
there was no coherent sound over the electronic froth. All of her
senses were wound up to sizzling tension, and the strange
<em>other</em> sense was like a scream inside her head. She had
reached for the thing and she had touched it with that part of her
mind.</p>
<p>And it had laughed at her.</p>
<p>It was hunched there in the dark, still as stone, not far from
where the boy hung from a hook on the wall, small feet dangling and
lifeless. The sense of deep pain radiated out from the frail form,
but dulled by unconsciousness, body pain which juddered along
damaged nerves and tried to scream messages at a brain which had
closed itself off.</p>
<p>The black thing had sensed her own self and had let her
approach, showing her images of blood and rot, teasing her with its
foul mirth.</p>
<p>Again she saw the fire in Murroch Road, saw the shadowy thing
move among the smoke, clutching the little bundle. She heard her
own voice mimicked with foul sarcasm: <em>Ladybird, ladybird, fly
away home</em>.</p>
<p>It turned its thoughts and she saw the baby in the pram, jolted
awake by the violent blow, and smelled the fetid odour wafting in
the air. Sleepy baby eyes swivelled and saw the strange shadow,
then a bewildered, uncomprehending innocent mind was touched by the
filth of its thought and hunger. Instinctive panic welled inside
and a scream bubbled up.</p>
<p><em>Too late. Too late</em>. The scream was cut off.</p>
<p>...And Lorna was in Memorial Park when Annie Eastwood's dead
daughter came out from the shadows of the rhododendrons and glided
forward to embrace her mother, to squeeze her mother, to ooze
inside and <em>invade</em>.</p>
<p>She blinked her eyes, breath caught in her throat and the image
winked out.</p>
<p>It was <em>showing</em> her. The thing that had come into the
world in the back room of an old house where bad things had been
done down the decades, down the generations, was letting her in on
its secret.</p>
<p>It was mocking her, showing her how it made people do the
terrible things that had ripped her from sleep at night, or even
slammed into her consciousness while awake, and she knew she had
been right all along. This thing was not human and it was utterly
evil. It could take people and get inside them and corrupt them for
its own baleful use.</p>
<p>She thought of Jack walking into the dark and deserted shipyard
where the gantries and stairwells climbed in a web of tangled metal
to the soaring roofs and she realised he could not face this thing
on his own. He did not even know what manner of thing he was
hunting, did not know that <em>he</em> was the prey.</p>
<p>He would not sense it. It would come down from the heights where
it sat like a black gargoyle. It would come for him with such speed
he would have no time to react.</p>
<p>And then it would take him.</p>
<p>Horror flooded her at the thought of the creature inside Jack,
changing him, forcing him to do obscene things, making him sin
again and again, and finally twisting his mind and forcing him to
the ultimate degradation.</p>
<p>She reached for the handle and pulled the catch. Nothing
happened. She'd locked the door as instructed when he'd left.
Quickly Lorna flipped up the button and wrenched the door open.
Cold air swooped in, bringing a flurry of snowflakes. She got out,
closed the door behind her, and crossed to the gate. Using all of
her strength, she managed to move them forward the distance
necessary to part them then shoved her way into the shipyard
grounds. As soon as she stepped beyond the protection of the wall
and the street light as Jack had done only minutes before, she
heard the cold chuckle of laughter inside her head. It was thick
and oily and filled with vicious glee.</p>
<p>A primitive fear opened inside her and Lorna thought she was
going to be sick.</p>
<p>-------</p>
<p>Jack got in through a small door on the side of the vast shed,
like the entrance to a goblin's cave on the side of a mountain. He
had to brace his foot against the metal wall and heave hard before
it creaked open on rust-frozen hinges, and then suddenly it swung
back against the surface with a deep booming sound which
reverberated and echoed around the man-made cavern.</p>
<p>He stepped in while the noise slowly diminished, a vast and
fading drum beat, angling the flashlight in front of him and
cursing himself for not replacing the batteries after the last
night's search. As soon as he was inside the shed, where great
ships had been conceived and built and launched down the slips into
the tidal basin, the sharp wind was cut off. A few flakes of snow
eddied in beside him and sparkled in the feeble light. Behind him
the door slowly swung to and fro in the gusts of wind.</p>
<p>Inside it was deeply dark, a monstrous hollow place. The
torchlight picked out a length of chain, each link thick as a man's
chest, scaled with rust, coiled like a metal anaconda. Jack was not
given to flights of fancy, and his mind was on finding the Davy -
his belief in Lorna's strange perception was now total - but when
the wind through the doorway ruffled the rust-flakes on the hauling
chain, for one brief moment he thought it had moved and his heart
kicked against his chest so hard it hurt.</p>
<p>He swung the light towards the heavy coils, forcing his breath
to calm down, damning himself for an idiot scared of the dark. Jack
walked past the massive links, still creepily wary lest the thing
did actually move (<em>and if it did, oh what then?</em>) and moved
deeper into the vast space of the building shed.</p>
<p>The air smelt thick and oily, and underlaid by other smells.
Somebody had lit a fire in here some time ago, off in a corner
somewhere and the scent of charcoal and burned wood mixed with the
other odours. Dusty rust, flaking paint, rat droppings. Bird shit
and birds feathers, the throat clogging smell of a busy winter
roost. Jack walked on past a massive block of old machinery and a
stack of acetylene cylinders, giant ant cocoons scattered in a
heap.</p>
<p>The empty place was not silent. The wind was rasping grains of
ice against the high roof and the westward side of the building,
scraping the corrugated metal with the sound of shingle on a
deserted beach. Far off to the left, where the big hangar doors
were wedged shut, a light chain dangling from a crossbeam clanged
like a cracked bell against a stanchion. Somewhere close by, a
rodent made a sound like a squeaky shoe then pattered away unseen.
Up above, out of sight, nervous starlings twittered and chirruped.
He took a step forward and his foot kicked against an old rivet
which tinkled across the oily floor and struck an empty paint-tin
with a hollow clunk. Beyond the perimeter fence, outside the yard
altogether, the screech of tortured metal in the fabrication plant
shivered the walls. The men who worked round the clock there on the
new rig laboured on, unaware of the drama in the deserted
shipyard.</p>
<p>The place was empty, but it was alive with odd noises and unseen
life.</p>
<p>Somewhere in here, the killer had Davy. It was waiting for him.
Lorna had said it would be high, though he already knew that.
Somewhere, he knew, there would be a stairway, something the old
shipwrights had used when they built up the immense hulls of the
craft. He'd have to climb again, and the thought twisted at him.
But he'd climbed the chimney, re-living his own nightmares, and
that was just to find the emaciated, torn bodies of the missing
children. If Davy was up there - and he knew he was - he'd have to
grit his teeth and find him, no matter how high he had to go.</p>
<p>He followed close to the wall, skirting an old milling machine
and a pile of wooden boxes mouldering under a torn tarpaulin when a
clatter of noise erupted far overhead. Something solid hit one of
the steel spars with such force it sent a vibration right down the
framework and into the ground. Up in the dark, the starlings
screeched in panic. They took off, flying blind, so many of them in
flight that their wings roared in the air, like a predator bursting
from cover. Jack stopped, startled again. He could hear them,
fluttering and screeching up there, then there was a cascade of
noise, a series of hard drumbeats. For a moment, Jack was puzzled,
then he realised what had happened. The little birds were crashing
into the sheet metal sides of the shed. They were so terrified,
they were flying in the dark, unable to navigate. On the east side,
a dirt-encrusted array of skylights showed a flicker of lightning
and a cloud of birds fastened on the brief light. They smashed
against the glass, punching into the thick panes, killing
themselves as they darted for freedom.</p>
<p>Another loud boom spanged the air and the birds started to fall.
Jack jerked back as one of them hit him on the shoulder with
surprising force, a bunch of meat and feathers. The bird made a
little squawking sound as the air was driven out of its tiny lungs,
but it was already dead. Another one fell just two feet away,
bunching, a puff of feathers in the dim light, then another and
another, bird rain, drumming on the empty cans and steel
benches.</p>
<p>Way up in the darkness a hellish screech ripped the air.
Something crashed against the roof, fast and hard and powerful. The
noise of the starlings was cut off instantly. Whatever was up
there, jarring against spar and beam was moving fast, crossing the
whole width of the shipyard shed. Jack felt the hairs on the back
of his neck prickle in unison. When the noise reached for far side,
in a matter of seconds, the birds started to fall again, but not in
ones and twos as before. This time the flock, thousands of them
huddled for shelter on every cross-tie, came dropping, stone dead,
to the ground. They hit off Jack's head, smacked against his chest.
One struck his wrist and knocked the flashlight right out of his
hand. It landed on its face, glass tinkling, then winked out. He
stood in the darkness, all alone while around him the tiny bodies
of birds thudded as they hit until finally the downpour ended. He
warily walked forward, feeling his way with hands in front of him,
while his feet could not avoid crushing the soft little bodies
underfoot. He found the torch and shook it until the batteries made
enough contact to coax a wan light.</p>
<p>He could not turn back, despite the appalling sense of wrongness
that shivered through him at the thought of the cataract of dead
birds. This was something different, something unexpected and
alien. Even at that moment, no matter what he'd thought before, he
was still really expecting to find a man in the vast hangar; a
crazy man, obsessed or possessed. What kind of thing could have
scuttled across the girders and wiped out the winter flock of
starlings, he could not comprehend. It could not have been human.
He was in here, alone, trying to find that thing. Had it not been
for the certainty that Davy was in here with it too, he might have
turned back and ran.</p>
<p>He forced himself forward until he came to the cats-cradle of
stairwalks set onto the far wall. His knuckle rapped against the
bannister and a small pain flared in the bone. The torchlight was
all but useless, but it was all he had. He angled the faint beam
upwards, but it could penetrate no further than the first turn.
Beyond that was pure blackness. The shivery fingers were still
crawling down from the nape of his neck, spiders down his spine,
but he ignored them as best as he could, put a foot on the first
tread, pointing the flashlight ahead of him, and began to climb. He
reached the turn and something happened to the air. It was as if it
had suddenly become charged, somehow more solid than before. He
paused, taking a deep breath, and a sickening scent of rot
enveloped him. His throat clamped against it, cutting off the
reflexive urge to vomit. This was worse than the bodies in the
chimney, more putrid than mere fleshly decay. It was a stench of
utter foulness. He tried to hold his breath, realised the futility
of that, and carried on. The reek abraded the soft membranes in his
throat and his nose and made his eyes water glassily. Still he kept
climbing.</p>
<p>And far overhead, he heard something chuckle in the dark. It was
a sound so coldly gleeful that he actually felt the skin on his
shoulders pucker and cringe. It was waiting for him.</p>
<p>"Bastard," he hissed.</p>
<p>Jack reached the first landing and swivelled left, gripping the
rusty bannister with his free hand. The torchlight was fading fast
to a rosy glow and as he turned, the connection failed and the
light went off. He shook the thing again, trying to worry the
batteries together when he heard a faint noise behind him. He spun,
almost losing balance, and a hand clamped round his elbow. Huge
fright exploded in the pit of his stomach. He jerked back, raising
the heavy torch to slam it against the thing when Lorna said:</p>
<p>"It's only me."</p>
<p>Jack had to throw himself backwards to prevent the flashlight
cracking her skull. A surge of cold relief flooded through him,
followed by hot anger and dismay. His legs suddenly felt weak.</p>
<p>"Jesus god, you scared the crap out of me," he finally managed
to say.</p>
<p>"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to," she said, reaching out to take
him by the elbow again.</p>
<p>"I thought I told you to stay with the car?"</p>
<p>"I couldn't. The radio isn't working and you can't find the boy
by yourself. I can."</p>
<p>"No," he said, shaking his head, though she couldn't see the
motion. "There's something in here. It's too dangerous."</p>
<p>"I know it's here. It's up there," she said. He knew she was
pointing in the darkness. "It's waiting for you."</p>
<p>"And that's all the more reason for you to be out of here. I
haven't the time to keep an eye on you. Now will you get back to
the car and let me get on with this?"</p>
<p>"No Jack. You won't find the boy, and even if you did, you can't
get him out. Not with that thing in here. I can find him and get
him out if you can keep it away."</p>
<p>He stood in silence for a moment, thinking. It was wrong, he
knew. It went against everything he was to allow the girl to stay
in the black shipyard shed while the thing (<em>not a man</em>)
that killed children and could slaughter a flock of birds in an
instant was somewhere up in the high gantries lying in ambush,
waiting for him to climb to it. Yet she was right. It had brought
Davy here as bait to lure Jack inside. All that mattered was
getting the boy out of here, and it would surely try to stop him.
But if he could deal with the killer Lorna might somehow get Davy
to safety. He shrugged and reached for her hand.</p>
<p>"Right, but stay close to me," he whispered. "Really close."</p>
<p>He pulled her towards him and she put a hand around his waist,
brought him close and pressed herself to him in a spontaneous
gesture of solidarity. In the brief contact, he could sense her
tension and fear and he wondered at her courage in coming into this
metal cavern in the dark to face the thing that had driven her
close to madness since the night Marta Herkik had died.</p>
<p>"Come on," Lorna said. "We have to climb."</p>
<p>Very carefully, they followed the narrow metal staircase, level
by level until they came to the crosswalk close to the top of the
hangar. Above them, the dirty row of skylight windows flickered in
gauzy rectangles as the sheet lightning of the approaching storm
lit the sky.</p>
<p>"Where now?" Jack asked.</p>
<p>"Up further. He's close, and so is the other. It's waiting."</p>
<p>"Well, I'll be ready for him, don't you worry." Jack said,
though he wasn't sure he was ready and his intestines felt knotted
with anxiety. He groped around, hoping to find another flight of
steps, but there were none. Instead, in the dark, he fumbled until
his fingers clamped around the first cold ring of a ladder set
against the wall. His heart sank.</p>
<p>"You wait here," he told Lorna.</p>
<p>"No. I have to come with you," she protested, but he put his
hand on her shoulder and squeezed.</p>
<p>"No chance. Two of us on a ladder gives us no room to
manoeuvre." He thought of the birds flopping in their hundreds, the
powerful smack of a solid form hitting the corrugated walls. "If
anything comes up, or down, then we're stuck. You wait here. I'll
find him and bring him down, and then we can take care of the
whatever else happens."</p>
<p>Lorna said nothing. Jack turned and started to climb, biting
down the looping vertigo, holding tight to the rungs. There were
eighteen steps in all to the first catwalk. He counted them all,
through gritted teeth, and at the top he gingerly stepped out onto
the scaffolding planks. He followed the skyway, gripping the
bannister carefully, shuffling his feet so as to maintain contact
with the beams until the next ladder which would take him almost to
roof level. Men had walked and worked here, when he'd been a boy,
welding and rivetting the mighty hulls of ships which still sailed
the Atlantic. They'd worked in the light, not in this gloom. He
climbed the narrow ladder slowly, feeling the sides of the building
vibrate under the onslaught of the west wind against the bare wall
until he reached the final level just under the crossbeams.</p>
<p>He paused to get his breath back and something moved above him
close to the slant of the roof. Even in the dark he could make out
the quick, scuttling motion. Lightning flashed again and he got a
glimpse of a shape scrambling with spiderlike speed on the metal
ties. It spun on one long limb, grabbed a spar, flipped over and
landed with a violent thump which jolted the wooden planks under
Jack's feet and almost tumbled him over the edge of the narrow
gangway. He clenched the safety barrier with both hands, head and
chest leaning out into the void. He couldn't tell how high he was
and the blackness below looked as if it went down and down
forever.</p>
<p><em>Forty days and forty nights.</em></p>
<p>The words came in a whispery scrape inside his head. Even as he
gripped the rail, white knuckled, centre of gravity perilously
close to the point of no return, a part of his mind wondered where
the phrase had sprung from.</p>
<p><em>And they fell from the light to the outermost darkness where
there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.</em></p>
<p>The thought scrabbled on the inside of his skull, a hideous
invasive abrasion.</p>
<p>"What on earth..." he blurted aloud, heaving himself back from
the edge.</p>
<p><em>Not of earth, fool.</em></p>
<p>Ahead of him, in the dark, a deeper darkness, a pure blackness
so profound it seemed to suck the rest of the gloom in to itself,
hunched just above head height. A sensation of dreadful cold and
awesome malice radiated out from it, a chilling aura which made the
skin of his scalp crawl.</p>
<p>Down below, Lorna called up, her voice echoing in clean, clear
tones from the walls.</p>
<p>"Be careful, Jack. He's close. He's coming."</p>
<p>"Too late," he thought, holding himself dead still.</p>
<p><em>Too late, too late</em>, the voice in his head chanted, and
then the voice changed, became a grating chuckle that was more like
the growl of a hungry animal than a laugh.</p>
<p>"Who are you?" Jack thought, or asked, although he did not quite
know which. He jammed his thumb hard on the button on the
flashlight, willing the thing to work, but nothing happened. The
darkness, and the oppressive malevolence flowed over him.</p>
<p><em>I am the other. I am the spirit. I am that which is Eseroth.
I am what AM.</em></p>
<p>"Where's the boy?" Jack asked, this time aloud, and all the time
wondering why he was asking, why he was perched up on the skyway,
talking to a shadow.</p>
<p>In the blackness, two eyes flicked open with an audible
<em>click.</em> Poisonous orange orbs swivelled towards Jack and
speared him with a blind gaze. He felt the blind-sight crawl over
him like the touch of a leper.</p>
<p><em>Come into my parlour, little man. Come eat of the flesh and
drink of the blood and do this in memory of me.</em></p>
<p>"Go take a flying fuck to yourself," Jack bawled back at the
eyes, anger suddenly sparking hot enough to wrestle the fear.
Lightning stuttered stroboscopically along the line of skylights
and the eyelids closed with a meaty slap. The flickering
luminescence danced for several seconds and for that time, the
weird greenish light illuminated the central part of the huge shed,
throwing harsh shadows from the cross-hatched girders against the
walls. Jack blinked against the sudden glare and inside his head a
blare of pain stabbed from temple to temple. Through blurred
vision, he saw a dark shape scuttle back away from him.</p>
<p>"Light," he whispered to himself as the alien <em>other</em>
pain faded. Realisation sparked in a duplication of the lightning.
"It needs the dark." He didn't even realise he had stopped thinking
of this killer as <em>he</em>.</p>
<p>He turned back along the gangway, past the ladder he'd climbed,
feeling his way carefully, quickly as he could. The walkway turned
abruptly at the corner and followed the far wall. He called Davy's
name, hearing the word ricochet from wall to bullwark, breaking up
on the high girders. The wind shrieked through the holes in the
thin steel plate and rattled the corners of the roof in a sudden
cacophony of sound which reverberated round the hangar.</p>
<p>"David! Can you speak to me? It's Uncle Jack."</p>
<p>The wind whooped in response. "If you can hear me, Davy, make a
noise."</p>
<p>"You're close Jack," Lorna's voice soared up. "He's near to
you."</p>
<p>The metal plates clanged together as the wind slammed against
the west wall. The sound faded away, then Lorna's voice ripped
through the dark.</p>
<p>"<em>Move,"</em> she shrieked. "Jack it's coming!"</p>
<p>He heard it behind him. Something clattered across the girders,
each contact causing them to ring out like gongs. It came from the
left, swung straight to the right, leaping an impossible twenty
feet, slammed against the wall behind him. Jack started to turn,
disoriented in the dark.</p>
<p>Just out of the corner of his eye, he saw the dark move with the
speed of a striking snake and land with a jarring thump on the
platform just ahead of him. In the corner the thing merged with the
shadows, and he only had a fleeting impression of something squat,
limbs elongated and oddly jointed, blacker than coal. Chittering
sounds crackled in his ears and then the scrapy voice came
scratching into his mind.</p>
<p><em>And he took him to a high place and showed him all that lay
before him and offered it all, if he would fall down on his knees
and adore him.</em></p>
<p>The words grated with sly menace. Jack stood his ground, trying
to make out the shape squatting on the walkway.</p>
<p><em>All of this</em>, it rasped, like stone grinding on stone. A
picture flashed into Jack's head, completely unbidden. Julie's face
wavered just in front of his own, beside her mother. They were
staring at him oddly. Completely bewildered, Jack opened his mouth
and closed it again.</p>
<p>They were covered in blood. He could see the great jagged shard
of glass poking out from the front of Julia's dress, and the red
river blurted down the flowery pattern, making it glisten slickly.
Rae's eyes were wide open and glaring.</p>
<p>"You should have been there, Jack," she said, though her voice
had that same scratchy undergrowth rustle he'd heard before.</p>
<p>"But you can come with us now," she said and then she smiled,
but it was not her smile, not the lazy smile of gentle humour he
remembered. It stretched into a leering, hungry grin. She reached
out her hand. Julie did the same, her small blood-slathered fingers
splayed out. Despite the sudden wave of horror and unbalancing
loathing that surged inside him, Jack felt himself reach. He took a
step forward, felt the edge of the parapet under his sole and
reflexively snatched for the safety bannister. His hand groped in
the air, clenched on nothing. He felt himself begin to topple and
instinct took over. The grotesque wavery vision winked out. In a
panic, he swung his hand to the side, found a stanchion and grabbed
at it just in time.</p>
<p>Raucous laughter yammered in his head.</p>
<p>He pulled himself back to the platform, gasping for breath.</p>
<p>"Bastard," he hissed, turning round to face the squat thing, and
just then, another image was forced into his mind.</p>
<p>He saw Davy hanging on the side of a wall, his little body
twisted to the side, eyes glazed and drying, a trickle of saliva
and blood dripping from his slack mouth. Beneath him, Lorna Breck
was lying spreadeagled and naked on the perforated metal of the
skywalk. Her head was thrown back and her legs splayed while
between them, the wizened figure of Michael O'Day nuzzled and
slobbered. He could see her writhing, mouth agape, making little
jerking motions. Revulsion squeezed at him. He closed his eyes,
wishing the sight away, but it persisted, dancing at the forefront
of thought. O'Day lifted his head up and his eyes locked on Jack's
own. His emaciated face was skull-like and his skin was peeling.
His mouth was open showing two blackened teeth. Blood was smeared
round his mouth, and a wet piece of red flesh trembled at the
corner of his lip.</p>
<p>Jack shook his head, eyes tightly closed. O'Day began to laugh
and he could hear the lecherous, manic madness in it. He pushed
away from it.</p>
<p>"No," he bellowed into the dark. "Get out of my head!"</p>
<p>The surge of anger and adrenalin was so powerful that the
picture disappeared instantly, leaving him standing on the
gangplank, chest heaving, heart pounding.</p>
<p>The force of his anger drove him forward, towards the black
shape. It leapt to the left, bounding right over the safety rail,
hit a spar which clanged in resonance, spun, tumbled in the air and
crashed against the wall behind him. He half turned and something
hit him on the back with such enormous force that he was catapulted
forward towards the corner of the wall. His cheek hit against a
support beam and he heard the bone crumple just under his eye.</p>
<p>Very far off, he heard Lorna scream, then the sound faded away.
Little whirling lights danced in front of his eyes and as they
began to fade, Jack realised he was losing consciousness. A
dreadful sleepy numbness oozed through him. Somewhere in the
distance, he heard a series of metallic booms, like sounds heard in
a dream. How long he'd lain crumbled on the skywalk, he had no
idea, though it could only have been a few seconds while his brain
struggled against the creeping lethargy. He rolled over, groaning
as his cheek scraped against the floor. As he turned, the
flashlight flickered on and at the far edge of the beam, a shape
jinked behind a cross-tie.</p>
<p>His vision faded again and he slumped to the floor, fighting the
fuzzy clouds of dizziness. A loud noise thudded behind him. He
tried to turn, couldn't make the effort and a second crushing blow
slammed into his back. A dazzling white light flashed in front of
his eyes and a purple afterimage swallowed it and he felt himself
falling into complete oblivion.</p>
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