by Stephen Laws
Cath didn’t like the way he said it. Was there a suggestion of threat? It had come out in the sly and sexually suggestive tones of Kapler Dieterson. No, she was overreacting—just the way she had when she’d flashed back to the woollen-capped man who’d killed her husband. She snatched a glance in the rear view mirror. The dead-faced man was glaring forward—and now, somehow, the man in the woollen hat spoke again, but with an air of forced bonhomie that seemed to be an attempt to cover lost ground.
“We been working this building contract. On the new housing estate. Pinchill? Just north of Stamford.”
“Yes, I know it. About half-finished, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, ’bout that.”
“You’re builders?”
“Nothing so grand, love. Transient labour, that’s us.”
“Trans-yent,” laughed the baby face, staring out of the side window into the night and fogging it with his breath. “Hah.”
“Shut up, Crip,” said the injured man.
“Shutted,” said the baby-man, nodding his head with gravitas—an important instruction understood and registered.
“Been staying at a pub in Osford,” continued woollen hat. “Six-week contract. Bad bloody luck from the start. Pick a pub with the cheapest lodgings—a tenner a night—shared bath. Good grub, though. But the lousiest beer. So tonight, of all the bloody nights we coulda picked, we go out looking for another boozer with better beer.”
“Tree fellers,” Crip said, turning back to grin at them. “Get it? Irish, see? Tree fellers—that’s us. And there’s this tree, and it falls on the road. Tree fellers. Is that a joke, Tully?”
“Shut up, Crip . . .” The injured man—Tully—groaned, leaning forward in his seat to hug at his thigh.
“Is it still bleeding?” asked Cath from the front.
Tully did not reply. But when the woollen hat leaned back to look, he said: “Christ, yes.”
“Then you need a tourniquet on it.”
“Turn-the-key.” Crip grinned.
“What?” groaned Tully.
“A belt,” Cath said, braking gently as a tree branch flew disintegrating across the road, then putting her foot down when it swept from view. “Are you wearing a belt? Is he wearing a belt?”
Woollen-hat looked at her stupidly—but now Tully was emerging from that spasm of pain, and Cath caught a glimpse of him in the rear view mirror; nodding to himself as he yanked his belt free from his jeans, wincing again. Finally, when it was free, he looped it around his leg, then through his buckle, before pulling it tight across his thigh.
“Look,” said Cath at last. “You should loosen the belt for a few seconds every couple of minutes or so. You don’t want to cut off the circulation.”
“Yeah,” Tully said, now staring up in agony at the roof of the car. “Right.”
“Any of you got a mobile phone?” Cath asked.
When there was no reply, she glanced at the babyfaced man next to her, who was grinning as if she had just made a really good joke.
“A mobile phone,” she said again—and this time, when she looked in the rear view mirror for some kind of response from the other two, she did not like what she saw. The woollen cap was looking intently to the injured Tully with an uncertainty that seemed to be waiting for instruction. Tully was clutching the belt, still struggling with his pain.
Finally, Tully said: “No. I mean—we’ve got one, but we left it back in the Land Rover. Never thought. Just had to get out of there.”
A flurry of leaves blocked the windshield. Cath adjusted the wipers to maximum speed and cleared them.
“Here,” she said, reaching into the glove compartment and retrieving her own mobile, now quickly readjusting her grip on the wheel as the car hit another rut in the road and the vehicle jounced on its suspension. Tully hissed in agony.
“Sorry!” Cath made to hand the mobile to the babyfaced man, who continued to grin and made no attempt to take it from her. Cath tossed it over her shoulder into the woollen hat’s lap. Clumsily, he caught it.
“I think this warrants an emergency call, don’t you?” she continued. “The nearest hospital is in Marsham, which might be too far out—but there’s a clinic where they treat emergencies in Westerby. That’s about eight miles or so.” Glancing briefly in the rear view mirror again, she could see that the woollen-hat man was simply staring at the mobile phone in his hand with a blank expression on his face. “Look,” Cath went on. “You best make that call now. You see those lights down below? That’s a friend’s farm. Once we get there we’re in the hollow of a valley and we won’t get a signal until we drive out of it again.”
“A friend’s farm?” asked Tully. “He’s got a family—wife and kids, I expect?”
“No, he lives alone. Look, you’d better make that call before . . .”
“Is that right?” said woollen hat. “You hear that, Tully.”
“I hear,” said the injured man.
“What do you think?”
“I think we need somewhere until this bloody storm blows out.”
“What about the boat? Will he wait?”
“Look at it out there, Pasco . . .
Pasco, so that’s his name . . .
“You think that boat’s going anywhere in weather like this? He’ll wait. He doesn’t get the rest of his money otherwise. And believe me, he likes money.”
“What are you talking about?” Cath suddenly felt a tightening knot of anxiety in her stomach.
“And he’s a friend of yours, you say?” Pasco went on. “The man who owns the farm.”
“Yes, but look—we have to get that leg of yours seen to. Urgently. You can’t . . .”
Then Cath saw what had suddenly appeared in Pasco’s hand, and suddenly the wild terror of the savage night was right there in the car with them.
TWENTY EIGHT
With sodden rope, left lying in a loose pile by a nearby fence, Drew had made a noose; lassoed the flapping corrugated metal roof of the outhouse and—using his body weight to haul it down—secured that roof around the door lintel and open window frame. There was a controlled and yet fierce strength of purpose in that task—and he knew that it had to do with what had just occurred between Cath and himself. But it was something that he didn’t want to think about too intensely—because he was afraid to think about it too carefully—and this brute strength of purpose in securing the roof in the midst of this wild storm was serving that purpose.
Don’t be afraid, said a voice in his head. This is good—and it’s important. Don’t shy away from it.
“I’m not!” he shouted into the storm, and meant it.
The storm doors leading down to the cellar were secure but rattling, as if something was trying to get out, and as Drew hurried to the cattle stalls at the side of the farmhouse, he felt another pang at what was lying in the cage down there.
The cattle and horses were secure but frightened. There was nothing he could do about that other than to tighten the fastenings and hasps on loose doors and gates; move amidst them and make calming sounds and gestures as he laid out more feed and hay—unnecessary, given that the animals had more than enough—but resisting the urge to move too quickly and suddenly lest he ruin the calming effect he was trying to achieve. The pigpens were quiet, with all of the animals obviously taking refuge inside, the concrete structure safer than the stalls, stables and barns. One of the henhouses had been destroyed, and there was no sign of the former occupants—not even a feather. The birds inside had been blown away into the storm. Fences were down everywhere, and it would mean a hell of a lot of work when the storm had blown over.
I don’t care, thought Drew as he battled around to the front of the farmhouse. Whatever the storm does to the property, I’ll fix it. I’ll fix everything as good as new—because it’ll be like starting again. Starting afresh and . . .
“Starting new!”
As if in answer to his cry, there was another sound—a regular crash-whump-crash, crash-whump-crash. It sounde
d like the outhouse roof—but that was definitely tied down and secure—and this sound was more distant, coming from somewhere up ahead on the rough track leading to the valley side where they had first encountered the Big Cat, and where everything in Drew’s life, he now realised, had begun to change. He strained to see in the darkness, swung his flashlight beam way up ahead—but the light diffused in the storm blur and he could not make out where it was coming from.
Drew ran on ahead, past the front of the farmhouse and up the rough track.
At last, he knew where the sound was coming from.
It was the shattered door of the barn.
The place where he kept the monster that had killed his wife.
And as the storm wind snatched and tugged at him while he ran, it was as if he was being called up there by the hideous thing that had destroyed his life. It had held him back from ever being able to move on with his life and was even now trying to turn him back to the farmhouse—the prison cell of his own making.
So Drew ran full tilt toward that barn, denying that once-powerful urge of withdrawal from life; because now that strait jacket was in shreds and tatters—and he was running to confront the beast.
Now the torch beam revealed what he knew it would reveal.
One side of the barn door had blown open and shattered, its boards and planks flapping loose in the frame or lying scattered on the ground.
Gasping for breath, bent double with hands on thighs, Drew finally raised his head and pointed the light directly into the barn.
The storm wind had blown the dust and cobwebs from the huge, hulking carapace of the combine harvester. The once grimed-over ‘eyes’ of the beast had taken on a new and lustrous shine of life in the torch beam. For a moment, it seemed that the wildly flapping and shattered half door was being propelled by some invisible energy from the thing inside the barn, rather than the storm wind.
“Except that you’re not alive!” shouted Drew.
The combine harvester remained fixed in its idiot grin.
Drew moved slowly and carefully forward, shining the torch beam over the bulk of the machine.
And then, shoving the torch into his belt, he moved quickly to the shattered door, grabbed it with both hands and yanked it wide open on its rusted hinges. The top hinge cracked away from its support straight away. Drew slammed it back again, yanked down hard—braced a foot on the bottom rim—and tore it away completely. Flinging the half door aside into the night, he stood back and stared at the machine again for a long time as the storm snatched at his hair and clothes.
Then—stooping—he picked up a rock.
Straightening again, he hefted the rock in one hand.
“You’re dead!” he yelled—pitching the rock straight at the thing. The rock punched a hole through the windshield, cracking the rest of the glass. “You were never alive!”
He turned his back on the barn, and on the lifeless thing inside.
“I’m sorry, Flora.”
Drew fell to his knees then, and wept.
They were the sounds of grief that had been pent up inside since the accident, and Drew gave them up to the fierce energy of the storm. His voice called and howled in a once-suppressed, now-released agony that was animalistic in its pain and ferocity but deeply human in its heart-rending expression—fiercer even than the storm itself.
Finally drained, and with no sense of how much time had passed in that limbo of pain and storm and loss and letting go, Drew looked up and then down into the darkness of the valley hollow where the wind was raging around the farm.
“Take it all if you want to,” he said. “I’m starting again.”
And out there in the night, that which had taken temporary refuge from the storm, heard the howling cry of an animal that was not of its kind—even above the savage wind—and recognised something within that call that it also felt deep inside.
The loss of a mate taken away.
The storm had stolen the scent, but its acute hearing had pinpointed the source and location of that cry and even now, it slithered from its hiding place—uncaring of the wild night, so alive with movement—and headed at once toward the place whence the sound had come. But whereas this Two-Legs’ cry had been the cry of loss, it lacked something that now surged through the breast of the creature which sped through thrashing undergrowth toward the hollow of the valley.
It lacked the fury and the anger and the ferocity of that which was hell-bent on retrieving what had been stolen, and of exacting a terrible and ferocious vengeance on the creatures responsible. With a savage intent, it streaked blacker-than-night through the storm—with a terrible power neither human or inhuman, but infinitely ruthless and deadly.
TWENTY NINE
“It’s all right, darling! Everything’s all right. It was only a dream.”
Faye held Rynne tight, feeling the sweat on her brow and her heart hammering.
Outside in the wild night, the sound of the rushing wind around the eaves had become a shrill whistling moan.
“It was the man,” Rynne cried. “The man who was a cat. He wanted money and he wouldn’t go away.”
“It was a dream, Rynne. That’s all. Just a nasty dream.”
Faye settled Rynne back into bed, and moved to the bedroom window. There were no trees close to this side of the house so the chances of anything coming down on this side, or branches snapping and coming through the window, were unlikely. The tree at the front of the house had been uprooted in the storm, the source of the terrible crash that had so alarmed Faye and also woken Rynne from her bad dream. But even though the tree had fallen away from the house, Faye was still filled with a dreadful anxiety about what might happen next in this terrible and violent weather.
“Where’s Mum?” Rynne asked.
“She’s gone out for a while, dear. She’ll be home soon.”
“Where did she go?”
“She went to see Drew.”
“The Big Cat man?”
“Yes.”
“The man in my dream was like a cat, Faye! And he was going to get us! Will Mum be okay, Faye? Is she safe?”
Faye hurried back to the bed and took Rynne in her arms again.
“That was just a nightmare. That’s not real. Your mum will be home any moment. Now—come on downstairs and I’ll make you a nice drink.”
Rynne was still hot, her brow sweating, as Faye led her downstairs. She hoped that the child wasn’t developing a fever.
“Why did Mum go out?” Rynne asked as they descended the stairs to the living room. “Why has she gone to see Drew?”
“Something . . . I think something to do with the book she’s writing.”
“Bad people can’t turn into bad cats—and cats can’t turn into people. Can they, Faye?”
“Only in dreams,” said Faye. “Only in nightmares . . .”
And then the lights went out, and Rynne screamed as night invaded the house and the storm wind shrieked new fury around them.
THIRTY
Drew had almost reached the farmhouse, had paused for breath that had been stolen away by the wind—when he realised something was wrong.
He looked around in the wild darkness of the night, at the wind-thrashed trees and branches. He had lashed down the feed shed’s roof, had seen to the animals, had secured what could be secured—had even faced down the beast in its den—but there was something else, something now unsettling and disturbing in a more immediate and dangerous way.
Could it be something to do with Cath? Was she all right? Had something happened to her on the drive back to Rynne and Faye?
“I should never have let her go back in all this!” Despite his anxiety and concern for her, something instinctively told him that this wasn’t it. Drew pulled out the flashlight, breath regained, and battled on through the wind toward the farmhouse. No, this was something else. Something still formless and shapeless but nevertheless something that was growing in threat and becoming more palpable and real with every step that he took.
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Something is coming.
Something is coming here on the storm.
That something, Drew felt, was traveling fast, and he could not shake the feeling that its sole purpose was to harm him.
The front door of the farmhouse was open, banging back and forth in the wind.
It had not been open when he’d left it.
A curtain on the porch beyond had flapped out through that front door and was snagged in the top frame, beckoning to him as he ran toward it.
“Cath!” he called as he reached the doorway. Her car was nowhere to be seen, but the feeling that someone or something had entered the house was overwhelming. There was mud on the mat in the entranceway, but this could have been blown in by the storm. Drew stepped warily inside. The feeling of imminent danger was still palpable.
The interior door to the living room was open.
Could have been the wind . . .
Drew struggled to close the door behind him against the wind, which now had a different sound; moaning and whistling like a living thing. Drew moved through the porch, stood in the interior doorway and looked around the living room. Sheets of newspapers and magazines had been scattered all over the room, but he remembered that from the time that Cath and he had first opened the front door and gone out into the storm. It seemed like a very long time ago.
There was a stillness in the room, an air of expectancy and watchfulness. It made Drew’s flesh creep.
“Who’s in here?”
Drew moved across the room to the staircase, half expecting to see mud on the stairs as a sure sign that someone had come in. There was none. He strained to look upstairs, resisting an urge to run up there.
In the kitchen, the door to the cellar was open.
But surely that had been open before?
From the cellar, he could hear the rattling of the storm doors as the wind plucked at them. Mad light and shadow danced in the kitchen as bushes thrashed and clutched at the window beyond. The mud on the kitchen floor leading to the cellar door must surely have come from his and Cath’s shoes? God knew—they had been too preoccupied in each other to have noticed something like that. Drew moved into the kitchen, stooped to examine the mud marks. They were still fresh and damp.
