CHAPTER TWO
The call was answered instantly. ‘Crozier.’
‘It’s Carter. This is worse than we thought. It’s degenerated very quickly, too quickly. There are some nasty physical manifestations.’ He described the events briefly.
There was a pause at the other end of the line and Carter could almost hear the other man thinking as Crozier’s sharp and well-ordered mind weighed the ramifications of what he’d been told and considered his options. ‘Is the girl badly injured?’ It was typical of Crozier not to use a person’s name if he could show some superiority over them.
‘Nothing major.’ He was damned if he was going to give Crozier the full details.
‘Careless, Robert.’ The evident pleasure at a possible Carter mistake was like the purr of a satisfied cat.
‘I know. I wasn’t expecting anything quite this violent.’ He had, though. As soon as he entered the house he knew there were powerful forces there. He needed to check a couple of things inside the house; then he would know which direction to take his investigation.
‘Hmm. Do you need a cleanup team or do you think you can deal with it yourself?’ Crozier said. He made the possible need for help seem like a definite sign of weakness.
Carter had reached the French doors. He shaded his eyes with his hand and peered in. There were no signs of anything unusual; nothing flying about the room, the wallpaper smooth and undamaged. ‘I think I can handle it,’ he said. He wouldn’t be reckless enough to deny help just because it was Crozier’s suggestion; he was far too professional for that. But there were suspicions he had that had to be confirmed before he could let others into the house.
‘Okay. Let me know how it pans out,’ Crozier said and rang off. Letting him make the decision about when help was given was as near to a show of courtesy as Crozier would afford Carter.
Carter slipped the phone into the pocket of his jacket and let himself back into the house. He stood in the center of the dining room breathing deeply, eyes tightly closed. It was time to open up, to let down his guard, to try to discover the secrets of the house. Four investigations in as many months, each one progressively worse than the last. Something was happening. Something out of the ordinary, and he felt it was down to him to discover exactly what was going on. This was no poltergeist upset at not reaching closure before death. This was no ghost whose violent death couldn’t be forgiven. What was attacking this house, using it, was far more dangerous.
The process of opening his mind was easy, rather like taking off a pair of sunglasses and letting his eyes see the brightness, but it had to be done carefully. If he exposed himself fully he would be vulnerable to attack. If he didn’t open himself enough he would learn nothing. He’d been preparing for this moment for days; increasing his work rate at the gym, pushing his body, getting it as fit and as strong as possible to be able to withstand the sheer physical toll that his mind would demand.
He spread his arms wide and opened his eyes.
Nothing.
He frowned, puzzled. The electromagnetic disturbance and the manifestations he’d witnessed in the house told him that there were very strong influences here. So why was he not picking up anything?
He tried again, concentrating more deeply, lowering his defenses still further.
Nothing.
It was as if the house was depleted, a flat battery, devoid of energy.
It made no sense. He took another deep breath, stretching his arms wider. ‘Come on,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Show me.’
A second later the forces in the house rushed at him like an express train and he cried out as he was lifted off his feet and hurled against the wall. He hung there for a second before sliding to the floor, his breath knocked out of him. ‘Shit!’ he said and struggled to stand.
It hit him again, this time with a more mental attack. His mind was filled with spiraling images. The beetles were back in the room, hundreds of them, flying at his face, nipping and biting his hands as he raised them to protect himself. In the next second they were gone and the image of a desolate landscape rushed into his mind. He felt himself transported, picked up and dragged through the air.
He was pulled upwards, through the ceiling of the dining room and the roof of the house, until he was hundreds of feet in the air. Unseen forces were holding him there, suspended over the house. He looked down and could see the streets of the town, the shops, the houses, the cars, and the people going about their daily lives. The church, easily identified from its steeple, was crumbling, brick by brick, as if it was dissolving into the ground. He blinked, once, twice and the scene changed.
He was staring down at the sea, choppy gray waves capped with white, rolling in on a clean sandy beach and crashing over rocks that guarded the coastline of a bleak, inhospitable island.
And then he was falling down to the ground beneath. He landed without impact, his body cushioned by pads of soft heather and bracken. Above him a pale sun glared down at him, its white light hurting his eyes. He squeezed them shut and when he opened them again he was staring up at a circular dish filled with electric lights.
He was lying on an operating table, a sharp antiseptic smell filling his nostrils. And he was seven years old again, at his most vulnerable, in hospital for a tonsillectomy, while about him white-clad figures stood watching him, their faces obscured by white masks, but their eyes earnest and threatening. A scalpel hovered in front of his own eyes, then with a swift downwards slash cut a line in his flesh from sternum to pelvis. Hands reached inside him, searching out vital organs. He could feel soft fingers caressing his liver, his spleen, his lungs, his heart.
He could hear a voice, whispering, the sound too muted to be clear, and then many voices, the sounds merging into one long sonorous drone. Finally silence.
Then ‘Take him back.’ Sharp, clipped. An order.
‘Will he return?’ A softer voice, almost female, but not quite.
‘He has no choice. Take the girl.’
And the light was switched off.
In the car Sian relaxed in the seat and leaned back on the headrest, closing her eyes. This was the worst ever. She couldn’t remember ever being this frightened. What ever the creatures were, elementals as Carter had said, or something else entirely, they had awoken in her a deep-seated, almost primeval fear. Somewhere, lodged in her trace memory, was the image of them, dark and scuttling, hiding in shadows, crawling into the light. They were at once foreign yet familiar.
She froze as she heard a soft whispering, like tissue paper tearing. She looked down at her chest. Something was moving underneath her clothes. With trembling fingers she undid the buttons and opened her shirt.
In the expanse of flesh between her bra and the waistband of her skirt, five lumps, no bigger than quails’ eggs, were moving under her skin. And, as she watched, the skin itself was turning gray, translucent, as the lumps moved actively beneath it. Panic surged through her and she prodded one with her finger. At her touch the skin split and a black antennal head forced its way through the bloody hole.
She screamed, but the sound was blocked by a horde of scrabbling creatures chasing the daylight glimpsed through her open mouth. They crawled up her throat, over her tongue, scrambling over her teeth and hanging from her lower lip before dropping to her chest. Within seconds the car was filled with the things as they exploded from every orifice—from her mouth, her ears, forcing their way down her nostrils, crawling out from her anus and, in a cruel mockery of childbirth, pouring from her vagina, ripping through the sheer material of her pan ties.
She struggled and in her panic the small gold cross and chain she wore was torn from her neck.
She reached for the door handle, but as her fingers connected with it the central locking mechanism activated and sealed her into the car. She looked round frantically, hoping to catch a glimpse of Carter through the bushes surrounding the car. ‘Come back!’ her mind screamed. ‘For pity’s sake, Robert, please come back.’ And then she slumped back into the seat as, inch by inch, the beetles devoured her.
He opened his eyes and he was back in the dining room. His body was soaked in sweat, his hair plastered to his scalp. He shook his head, trying to shake away the cobwebs that were draped over his thoughts. Gradually the cobwebs thinned and dispersed as rational thought reestablished itself.
Take the girl. The voice echoed in his thoughts, distant and inhuman. He pushed himself to his feet and raced from the house.
The car was where he had left it. He ran across to it and yanked the door handle.
Locked.
Locked and empty.
Of Sian Davies there was no trace at all.
‘Oh Christ!’ he said, and leaned against the car, his legs weak and trembling. He let his body slide down the metallic paintwork until he was crouching, almost slouching, on the ground. He was going to vomit; he could feel the bile rising in his throat. He retched, and his cell phone began to ring.
He fumbled for the talk button. ‘Yes?’ he choked back what ever was lodged in his throat.
‘It’s Crozier. I told you to report back.’ The impatience, the reprimand, was deliberate.
‘We only spoke a moment ago,’ Carter said, trying to gather his thoughts, wondering how he was going to explain what had happened to Sian.
‘It’s been over four hours, Carter. What the hell’s going on there?’
Carter took the phone away from his ear and stared at it as if it were some strange, alien artifact. Four hours! ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said shakily. ‘I need help.’
‘Details?’ Crozier’s clipped tones were legendary in the Department. He never used politeness when efficiency could do the job in half the time.
Carter was still trying to come to terms with the lost memory of the past four hours but a verbal battle with Crozier was always guaranteed to sharpen his brain. ‘Debrief me later. Just get a team out here as soon as you can.’
There was a slight pause on the other end of the line, and Carter knew he was weighing taking decisive action with a familiar rebuke that would be something like ‘I give the orders around here.’
Carter had to admire Crozier when he said, ‘Very well. Will you be around to brief them?’ Performing his job was more important than point scoring; at least he could give the man grudging respect for that.
‘Yes,’ Robert Carter said wearily. He suddenly felt exhausted, more tired than he had ever felt in his life. ‘I’ll be here.’ He switched off the phone and hugged his knees, lowered his head and closed his eyes.
He was in the same position when the cleanup team arrived an hour later.