She screamed; trying to silence herself with her hand. Too late. The sound was out and the giant was looking at her, straight at her, its malice piercing the window. Oh God, it had seen her, and now it was coming for her, loping across the yard, a naked engine, and grinning a promise at her as it came.
Gwen snatched Amelia off the floor and hugged her close, pressing the girl’s face against her neck. Maybe she wouldn’t see: she mustn’t see. The sound of its feet slapping on the wet yard got louder. Its shadow filled the kitchen.
“Jesus help me.”
It was pressing at the window, its body so wide that it cancelled out the light, its lewd, revolting face smeared on the watery pane. Then it was smashing through, ignoring the glass that bit into its flesh. It smelled child meat. It wanted child meat. It would have child meat.
Its teeth were spilling into view, widening that smile into an obscene laugh. Ropes of saliva hung from its jaw as it clawed the air, like a cat after a mouse in a cage, pressing further and further in, each swipe closer to the morsel.
Gwen flung open the door into the hall as the thing lost patience with snatching and began to demolish the window-frame and clamber through. She locked the door after her while crockery smashed and wood splintered on the other side, then she began to load all the hall furniture against it. Tables, chairs, coatstand, knowing even as she did it, that it would be matchwood in two seconds flat. Amelia was kneeling on the hall floor where Gwen had set her down. Her face was a thankful blank.
All right, that was all she could do. Now, upstairs. She picked up her daughter, who was suddenly air light, and took the stairs two at a time. Halfway up, the noise in the kitchen below stopped utterly.
She suddenly had a reality crisis. On the landing where she stood all was peace and calm. Dust gathered minutely on the windowsills, flowers wilted; all the infinitesimal domestic procedures went on as though nothing had happened.
“Dreaming it,” she said. God, yes: dreaming it.
She sat down on the bed Denny and she had slept in together for eight years, and tried to think straight.
Some vile menstrual nightmare, that’s what it was, some rape fantasy out of all control. She lay Amelia on the pink eiderdown (Denny hated pink but suffered it for her sake) and stroked the girl’s clammy forehead.
“Dreaming it.”
Then the room darkened, and she looked up knowing what she’d see.
It was there, the nightmare, all over the upper windows, its spidery arms spanning the width of the glass, clinging like an acrobat to the frame, its repellent teeth sheathing and unsheathing as it gawped at her terror.
In one swooping movement she snatched Amelia up from the bed and dived towards the door. Behind her, glass shattered, and a gust of cold air swept into the bedroom. It was coming.
She ran across the landing to the top of the stairs but it was after her in a heart’s beat, ducking through the bedroom door, its mouth a tunnel. It whooped as it reached to steal the mute parcel in her arms, huge in the confined space of the landing.
She couldn’t outrun it, she couldn’t outfight it. Its hands fixed on Amelia with insolent ease, and tugged.
The child screamed as it took her, her fingernails raking four furrows across her mother’s face as she left her arms.
Gwen stumbled back, dizzied by the unthinkable sight in front of her, and lost balance at the top of the stairs. As she fell backwards she saw Amelia’s tear-stained face, dollstiff, being fed between those rows of teeth. Then her head hit the bannister, and her neck broke. She bounced down the last six steps a corpse.
The rainwater had drained away a little by early evening, but the artificial lake at the bottom of the dip still flooded the road to a depth of several inches. Serenely, it reflected the sky. Pretty, but inconvenient. Reverend Coot quietly reminded De-clan Ewan to report the blocked drains to the County Council. It was the third time of asking, and Declan blushed at the request.
“Sorry, I’ll...”
“All right. No problem, Declan. But we really must get them cleared.”
A vacant look. A beat. A thought.
“Autumn fall always clogs them again, of course.”
Coot made a roughly cyclical gesture, intending a sort of observation about how it really wouldn’t make that much difference when or if the Council cleared the drains, then the thought disappeared. There were more pressing issues. For one, the Sunday Sermon. For a second, the reason why he couldn’t make much sense of sermon writing this evening. There was an unease in the air today, that made every reassuring word he committed to paper curdle as he wrote it. Coot went to the window, back to Declan, and scratched his palms. They itched: maybe an attack of eczema again. If he could only speak; find some words to shape his distress. Never, in his forty-five years, had he felt so incapable of communication; and never in those years had it been so vital that he talk.
“Shall I go now?” Declan asked.
Coot shook his head.
“A moment longer. If you would.”
He turned to the Verger. Declan Ewan was twenty-nine, though he had the face of a much older man. Bland, pale features: his hair receding prematurely.
What will this eggface make of my revelation? thought Coot. He’ll probably laugh. That’s why I can’t find the words, because I don’t want to. I’m afraid of looking stupid. Here I am, a man of the cloth, dedicated to the Christian Mysteries.
For the first time in forty odd years I’ve had a real glimpse of something, a vision maybe, and I’m scared of being laughed at. Stupid man, Coot, stupid, stupid man.
He took off his glasses. Declan’s empty features became a blur. Now at least he didn’t have to look at the smirking.
“Declan, this morning I had what I can only describe as a ... as a ... visitation.”
Declan said nothing, nor did the blur move.
“I don’t quite know how to say this ... our vocabulary’s impoverished when it comes to these sorts of things ... but frankly I’ve never had such a direct, such an unequivocal, manifestation of—”
Coot stopped. Did he mean God?
“God,” he said, not sure that he did.
Declan said nothing for a moment. Coot risked returning his glasses to their place. The egg hadn’t cracked.
“Can you say what it was like?” Declan asked, his equilibrium absolutely unspoiled.
Coot shook his head; he’d been trying to find the words all day, but the phrases all seemed so predictable.
“What was it like?” Declan insisted.
Why didn’t he understand that there were no words? I must try, thought Coot, I must.
“I was at the Altar after Morning Prayer ...” he began, “and I felt something going through me. Like electricity almost. It made my hair stand on end. Literally on end.”
Coot’s hand was running through his short-cropped hair as he remembered the sensation. The hair standing bolt upright, like a field of grey-ginger corn. And that buzzing at the temples, in his lungs, at his groin. It had actually given him a hardon; not that he was going to be able to tell Declan that. But he’d stood there at the Altar with an erection so powerful it was like discovering the joy of lust all over again.
“I won’t claim ... I can’t claim it was our Lord God—”
(Though he wanted to believe that; that his God was the Lord of the Hardon.) “—I can’t even claim it was Christian. But something happened today. I felt it.”
Declan’s face was still impenetrable. Coot watched it for several seconds, impatient for its disdain.
“Well?” he demanded.
“Well what?”
“Nothing to say?”
The egg frowned for a moment, a furrow in its shell. Then it said:
“God help us,” almost in a whisper.
“What?”
“I felt it too. Not quite as you describe: not quite an electric shock. But something.”
“Why God help us, Declan? Are you afraid of something?”
He mad
e no reply.
“If you know something about these experiences that I don’t.. . please tell me. I want to know, to understand. God, I have to understand.”
Declan pursed his lips. “Well...” his eyes became more indecipherable than ever; and for the first time Coot caught a glimpse of a ghost behind Declan’s eyes. Was it despair, perhaps?
“There’s a lot of history to this place you know,” he said, “a history of things... on this site.”
Coot knew Declan had been delving into Zeal’s history. Harmless enough pastime: the past was the past.
“There’s been a settlement here for centuries, stretches back well before Roman occupation. No one knows how long. There’s probably always been a temple on this site.”
“Nothing odd about that.” Coot offered up a smile, inviting Declan to reassure him. A part of him wanted to be told everything was well with his world: even if it was a lie.
Declan’s face darkened. He had no reassurance to give. “And there was a forest here. Huge. The Wild Woods.” Was it still despair behind the eyes? Or was it nostalgia? “Not some tame little orchard. A forest you could lose a city in; full of beasts...”
“Wolves you mean? Bears?’
Declan shook his head.
“There were things that owned this land. Before Christ. Before civilization. Most of them didn’t survive the destruction of their natural habitat: too primitive I suppose. But strong. Not like us; not human. Something else altogether.”
“So what?”
“One of them survived as late as the fourteen hundreds.
There’s a carving of it being buried. It’s on the Altar.”
“On the Altar?”
“Underneath the cloth. I found it a while ago; never thought much of it. Till today. Today I. .. tried to touch it.”
He produced his fist, and unclenched it. The flesh of his palm was blistered. Pus ran from the broken skin.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he said. “In fact it’s quite numb. Serves me right, really. I should have known.”
Coot’s first thought was that the man was lying. His second was that there was some logical explanation. His third was his father’s dictum: “Logic is the last refuge of a coward.”
Declan was speaking again. This time he was seeping excitement.
“They called it Rawhead.”
“What?”
“The beast they buried. It’s in the history books. Rawhead it was called, because its head was huge, and the color of the moon, and raw, like meat.”
Declan couldn’t stop himself now. He was beginning to smile.
“It ate children,” he said, and beamed like a baby about to receive its mother’s tit.
It wasn’t until early on the Saturday morning that the atrocity at the Nicholson Farm was discovered. Mick Glossop had been driving up to London, and he’d taken the road that ran beside the farm, (“Don’t know why. Don’t usually. Funny really.”) and Nicholson’s Friesian herd was kicking up a row at the gate, their udders distended. They’d clearly not been milked in twenty-four hours. Glossop had stopped his jeep on the road and gone into the yard.
The body of Denny Nicholson was already crawling with flies, though the sun had barely been up an hour. Inside the house the only remains of Amelia Nicholson were shreds of a dress and a casually discarded foot. Gwen Nicholson’s un-mutilated body lay at the bottom of the stairs. There was no sign of a wound or any sexual interference with the corpse.
By nine-thirty Zeal was swarming with police, and the shock of the incident registered on every face in the street. Though there were conflicting reports as to the state of the bodies there was no doubt of the brutality of the murders. Especially the child, dismembered presumably. Her body taken away by her killer for God knows what purpose.
The Murder Squad set up a Unit at “The Tall Man,” while house to house interviews were conducted throughout the village. Nothing came immediately to light. No strangers seen in the locality; no more suspicious behavior from anyone than was normal for a poacher or a bent building merchant. It was Enid Blatter, she of the ample bust and the motherly manner, who mentioned that she hadn’t seen Thorn Garrow for over twenty-four hours.
They found him where his killer had left him, the worse for a few hours of picking. Worms at his head and gulls at his legs. The flesh of his shins, where his trousers had slid out of his boots, was pecked to the bone. When he was dug up families of refugee lice scurried from his ears.
The atmosphere in the hotel that night was subdued. In the bar Detective Sergeant Gissing, down from London to head the investigation, had found a willing ear in Ron Milton. He was glad to be conversing with a fellow Londoner, and Milton kept them both in Scotch and water for the best part of three hours.
“Twenty years in the force,” Gissing kept repeating, “and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Which wasn’t strictly true. There’d been that whore (or selected highlights thereof) he’d found in a suitcase at Euston’s left luggage department, a good decade ago. And the addict who’d taken it upon himself to hypnotize a polar bear at London Zoo: he’d been a sight for sore eyes when they dredged him out of the pool. He’d seen a good deal, had Stanley Gissing—
“But this... never seen anything like it,” he insisted. “Fair made me want to puke.”
Ron wasn’t quite sure why he listened to Gissing; it was just something to while the night away. Ron, who’d been a radical in his younger days, had never liked policemen much, and there was some quirky satisfaction to be had from getting this self-satisfied prat pissed out of his tiny skull.
“He’s a fucking lunatic,” Gissing said, “you can take my word for it. We’ll have him easy. A man like that isn’t in control, you see. Doesn’t bother to cover his tracks, doesn’t even care if he lives or dies. God knows, any man who can tear a seven-year-old girl to shreds like that, he’s on the verge of going bang. Seen ‘em.”
“Yes?”
“Oh yes. Seen ‘em weep like children, blood all over ‘em like they was just out of the abattoir, and tears on their faces. Pathetic.”
“So, you’ll have him.”
“Like that,” said Gissing, and snapped his fingers. He got to his feet, a little unsteadily, “Sure as God made little apples, we’ll have him.” He glanced at his watch and then at the empty glass.
Ron made no further offers of refills.
“Well,” said Gissing, “I must be getting back to town. Put in my report.”
He swayed to the door and left Milton to the bill.
Rawhead watched Gissing’s car crawl out of the village and along the north road, the headlights making very little impression on the night. The noise of the engine made Rawhead nervous though, as it over-revved up the hill past the Nicholson Farm. It roared and coughed like no beast he had encountered before, and somehow the homo sapiens had control of it. If the Kingdom was to be taken back from the usurpers, sooner or later he would have to best one of these beasts. Rawhead swallowed his fear and prepared for the confrontation.
The moon grew teeth.
In the back of the car Stanley was near as damnit asleep, dreaming of little girls. In his dreams these charming nymphettes were climbing a ladder on their way to bed, and he was on duty beside the ladder watching them climb, catching glimpses of their slightly soiled knickers as they disappeared into the sky. It was a familiar dream, one that he would never have admitted to, not even drunk. Not that he was ashamed exactly; he knew for a fact many of his colleagues entertained peccadilloes every bit as offbeat as, and some a good deal less savory than, his. But he was possessive of it: it was his particular dream, and he wasn’t about to share it with anyone.
In the driving seat the young officer who had been chaffeuring Gissing around for the best part of six months was waiting for the old man to fall well and truly asleep. Then and only then could he risk turning the radio on to catch up with the cricket scores. Australia were well down in the Test: a late rally seemed unlikely. Ah, now the
re was a career, he thought as he drove. Beats this routine into a cocked hat.
Both lost in their reveries, driver and passenger, neither caught sight of Rawhead. He was stalking the car now, his giant’s stride easily keeping pace with it as it navigated the winding, unlit road.
All at once his anger flared, and roaring, he left the field for the tarmac.
The driver swerved to avoid the immense form that skipped into the burning headlights, its mouth issuing a howl like a pack of rabid dogs.
The car skidded on the wet ground, its left wing grazing the bushes that ran along the side of the road, a tangle of branches lashing the windscreen as it careered on its way. On the back seat Gissing fell off the ladder he was climbing, just as the car came to the end of its hedgerow tour and met an iron gate. Gissing was flung against the front seat, winded but uninjured. The impact took the driver over the wheel and through the window in two short seconds. His feet, now in Gissing’s face, twitched.
From the road Rawhead watched the death of the metal box. Its tortured voice, the howl of its wrenched flank, the shattering of its face, frightened him. But it was dead.
He waited a few cautious moments before advancing up the road to sniff the crumpled body. There was an aromatic smell in the air, which pricked his sinuses, and the cause of it, the blood of the box, was dribbling out of its broken torso, and running away down the road. Certain now that it must be finished, he approached.
There was someone alive in the box. None of the sweet childflesh he savored so much, just tough malemeat. It was a comical face that peered at him. Round, wild eyes. Its silly mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. He kicked the box to make it open, and when that didn’t work he wrenched off the doors. Then he reached and drew the whimpering male out of his refuge. Was this one of the species that had subdued him?
This fearful mite, with its jellylips? He laughed at its pleas, then turned Gissing on his head, and held him upside down by one foot. He waited until the cries died down, then reached between the twitching legs and found the mite’s manhood. Not large. Quite shrunk, in fact, by fear. Gissing was blathering all kinds of stuff: none of it made any sense. The only sound Rawhead understood from the mouth of the man was this sound he was hearing now, this high-pitched shriek that always attended a gelding. Once finished, he dropped Gissing beside the car.