He put his arm around her shoulder. She responded, to his delight, by leaning her head against him. ‘Not that I’m in that much of a hurry to get home,’ she said coyly.
‘Me neither,’ he told her. Feeling the abundant curve of her left breast pressing against him he hoped the train would never come. He would be content to stay on that platform forever . . .
Thomas walked into his bedroom and froze. Lying there naked on the bed, with her back to him, was Anne.
He felt a rush of relief. She wasn’t dead after all. It was all some ghastly mix-up. ‘Anne . . .’ he said softly.
She stirred, then rolled over to face him. ‘Hello, Clive,’ she said, smiling, i’m home again.’
He screamed.
Her chest was gaping open. The flesh on each side had been peeled back to reveal her rib cage and the organs within.
‘What’s the matter, darling?’ she asked. ‘What’s wrong?’ She got off the bed and stood up. The two great flaps of mutilated flesh quivered as she moved.
She came towards him. ‘Aren’t you going to give me a welcome home kiss?’ she asked.
He closed his eyes and screamed as loud as he could.
He felt her arms embrace him and then the wet, hideous touch of her raw torso . . .
‘Dr Thomas! Clive! Wake up . . .!’ -
He tried to push away the clutching hands but they hung onto him, shaking him. He opened his eyes. Robin Carey was bending over him and looking very alarmed. Then he realized where he was. He’d gone to sleep on the couch in Robin’s living room . . .
‘Oh God,’ he sighed with a shudder and reached out for her. ‘Help me . . .’ He put his arms around her and hugged her in a convulsive grip. She didn’t resist. Instead she eased herself down onto the couch and lay beside him.
it’s alright,’ she said soothingly as she held him tight. 'You were having a nightmare . . .’
He clung to her with atavistic hunger - he was hungry for her warmth, for the sense of security the feel of her woman’s body reawakened in him, for her very aliveness; he was hungry for every particle of her. He wanted to lose himself completely within her - to let all his senses be overwhelmed by the touch of her skin, her smell, her all-pervading femaleness . . .
The violent trembling in his limbs gradually died away but he continued to hold onto her. Nor did she make any move to let go of him.
What happened next seemed perfectly natural to him. He began to kiss her on the mouth. She responded eagerly . . .
His gentle caresses rapidly acquired an urgency which she met with an equal display of desire. The feelings of maternal comfort her body had given him had been totally evaporated by the fierce heat of his growing lust -now her body symbolized an entirely different kind of comfort.
Without exchanging a word they let go of each other. She stood up. He saw, for the first time, that she was wearing just a man’s shirt which she’d obviously flung on in a hurry when she’d heard him scream as only a couple of the buttons were done up. She undid them and took off the shirt. Beneath it she was wearing only a small pair of black briefs.
He looked at her, examining the length of her slim body with almost clinical precision, taking in her small breasts with their small, dark nipples, the smooth flatness of her belly, her narrow hips and her long legs. Her skin was very pale - so pale it seemed to glow.
She gestured for him to get up off the couch. He did so and stood there passively as she slowly undressed him. After she had pulled down his trousers and pants she got on her knees in front of him and took his erect penis into her mouth. The touch of her lips and tongue upon him produced a shock of almost intolerable pleasure. He leaned back his head and groaned as she sucked at him.
When he could stand it no longer he put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her away. He pushed harder than he’d meant to. She toppled onto her back and lay blinking up at him in surprise. Then she gave him a teasing smile, reached down and slowly, and provocatively, removed her briefs - then she opened her legs to him.
The sight of her like that sent his lust surging through the final barriers of his self-control like a flash flood.
He took her forcefully; almost angrily, pinning her body beneath him. He thrust himself into her as hard and as deeply as he could. The weakness he’d felt ever since she’d woken him from his starved, semi-drugged state was suddenly gone and his body now sang with a tigerish energy.
He dug his fingers into her breasts as he rode her. She groaned loudly, twisting her head from side to side, her eyes shut tight. He, in turn, felt her fingernails rake his back.
When he finally climaxed his orgasm was so powerful it seemed his body was being shaken to pieces. Then he gave a last drawn-out cry and collapsed on top of her, the sweat pouring from him.
After a time he rolled off her. She lay unmoving on her back. Her eyes, half-open, were glazed. Her mouth hung slackly open, a thin thread of saliva running from one corner. If it wasn’t for the rapid rise and fall of her breasts he would have thought she was dead. Like Anne.
Anne. He was suddenly overwhelmed with guilt and self-disgust. How could he have made love to her, of all women, while he was still grieving for Anne? And the way he’d made love to her. He shut his eyes. ‘We shouldn’t have done that,’ he sighed.
He heard her chuckle. ‘Well, I’m jolly glad we did,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it.’
He looked at her again. She had propped herself up on one elbow and was regarding him with amusement. Like him she was dripping with sweat. He saw a drop trickle down her lolling right breast and fall from the nipple onto the carpet. Then he noticed the red finger marks on 'her breasts and experienced another wave of guilt. ‘I hope I didn’t hurt you,’ he told her, even though he knew that had been his intention.
‘You didn’t hurt me. You would have known damn quickly if you had, I assure you.’ i’m not normally like that . . .’he said brusquely.
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘I would imagine you’re not.’ She gave him a lascivious smile.
‘Maybe I should go . . .’ He started to sit up.
‘Shush. You’re going to spoil things with all this post-coital angst and depression, just stay right where you are, doctor. Lie back, relax and think of England.’ She got onto her knees and made him stretch out so that his head was resting on the edge of the couch. Then she bent over him and, using her tongue, had him hard again in a remarkably short time.
When he was fully erect she got up, straddled him and then slowly lowered herself down over him. It was like being gripped by a warm, silken glove.
She looked him directly in the eyes and said softly, ‘The last time was fun. I like it that way occasionally but most times I like it gentler, like this . . .’ She leaned forward and kissed him.
‘Here’s the train,’ said Shirley. ‘At last.’
‘Yeah,’ said Ross. He too felt the rush of stale air from the tunnel that signalled the approach of a tube train. He looked up at the indicator but it was still blank. He hoped it was the High Barnet train as conditions were getting had on the platform. More and more people had poured onto it during the thirty minutes he and Shirley had been waiting and it was now packed to the point of being dangerous, especially for those nearest the edge. With this in mind he’d led Shirley to the back of the crowd some minutes ago. They’d have trouble getting on the train but it was better than falling onto the lines.
‘Ross,’ said Shirley, her voice sounding odd. ‘Ross . . . the train’s coming from the wrong direction.’
He realized, with a shock, that she was right. The breeze of stale air was blowing out of the northern tunnel mouth, which was fifteen feet away from where they were standing, when, of course, the train should have been coming from the south . . .
As Ross stared, mystified, at the tunnel mouth a woman started to scream. Other voices joined hers - there were shouts of alarm and more screams. Immediately the mass of bodies surged backwards, away from the edge of the platform, pinni
ng Ross and Shirley against the wall.
Shirley, being quite short, couldn’t see over the people in front of her and cried, ‘Ross, what’s happening? What’s wrong?’
‘I don’t know!’
Panic was spreading along the crowded platform like a forest fire and people were pushing frantically in all directions as they tried to get away.
And then he saw something. It rose above the heads of the crowd like a great black snake, its headless tip swaying back and forth as if searching for something. Then it darted forward . . .
16
The thing disappeared from view briefly. When it rose into the air again Ross saw it was holding aloft a struggling girl. She was shrieking and kicking wildly but the thing was coiled tightly around her waist. As Ross watched, the shiny, black tentacle withdrew into the darkness of the tunnel mouth.
As Ross tried to comprehend what he’d just witnessed the mass of bodies that had been pressing Shirley and him to the wall suddenly divided in front of them and he saw, to his horror, that there were more of the things. One of them, like a badly made elephant’s trunk, was wrapped around the leg of a heavily built young man with a punk hair style and was dragging him across the platform as if he weighed nothing at all.
Other tendrils, some as thick as a man’s waist, were emerging from the tunnel mouth like the tentacles of a giant squid.
Behind him, Shirley started to scream. He looked around desperately. There was an exit along the platform to their left which led to the southbound platform but it was jammed with an unmoving press of struggling bodies. The nearest other way out was the stairs at the end of the platform, but being next to the tunnel mouth they were in easy reach of the questing tendrils. But he saw that at least people were succeeding in moving, if slowly, up the stairs . . .
He made up his mind. Grabbing Shirley by the arm he pulled her towards the stairs. She resisted, screaming that she wanted to go the other way. But he ignored her protests and charged through the crowd towards the stairs. He pushed, shoved and elbowed his way into the mass, not caring what damage he inflicted, He was even taken aback only momentarily at one point when he realized he was walking over the writhing body of some poor bastard who’d obviously lost his or her balance in the melee and fallen underfoot.
Eventually they reached the bottom of the stairs. He looked over his shoulder at Shirley. She was white with shock and fear and there was an ugly bruise on her left cheek. ‘Put your arms around my waist!’ he yelled, pulling her closer to him. ‘And don’t let go!’ He was going to need both arms free to fight their way up the stairs.
As she was doing as he’d ordered he glimpsed a movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned and saw one of the black tendrils curving round out of the tunnel towards them. As it swayed overhead he noticed that, unlike the others, it had a bulbous shape on its end. Then, slowly, the bulk opened up like a flower. There was a popping sound and suddenly the air was filled with long, grey, glistening threads . . .
Like the contents of some giant party popper the grey threads floated down onto the panic-stricken crowd below.
Ross didn’t wait to see what happened next. He turned and redoubled his efforts to fight his way up the stairs. Behind him the screams rose in volume.
At last he began to make some progress. With Shirley clinging to him tightly he fought his way up to the first landing. Soon they would be in the pedestrian tunnel that led to the escalators and would be safe. Surely those tendrils couldn’t reach that far . . .
All of a sudden he couldn’t go any further. Shirley was pulling him back. He looked round and gave a crazed cry of dismay. One of the grey threads had wrapped itself around Shirley’s neck. Tightly. Her face was dark blue, her eyes were bulging and the end of her tongue protruded blackly from between her lips.
She was dead.
The grey thread was pulling on her. Ross tried to remove her arms from around his waist but the fingers of her two hands were locked together in a death-grip. He couldn’t get free and, like her, was dragged inexorably back down the stairs.
They were not alone. Several other people were also caught in the coils of the threads and were being reeled in like so many helpless fish.
He hammered at her clenched hands, trying to break her grip, but it remained fast. Then he lost his footing and fell backwards. Together they rolled to the bottom of the stairs. Then they were pulled slowly along the platform.
As he struggled he turned his head and found himself looking into the terrified eyes of a middle-aged woman less than three feet away. She too was being dragged along the ground, a grey thread tightly wrapped around her left ankle. She was digging her fingers into the platform surface but to no avail. For a few seconds they stared silently at each other in mutual terror and then this last human contact of Ross’s short life ended when the woman disappeared over the edge of the platform. It wasn’t long before he followed her.
, Dazed from the fall onto the tracks he was only half-aware of being dragged along the tunnel, still in Shirley’s dead embrace, and into the darkness.
Of all the passengers trapped in the tube train stalled in the tunnel between Pimlico and Vauxhall only Farrukh Ikoly was happy with the situation. While the hundreds of other passengers in the crowded, hot train waited impatiently for release from their prison Ikoly moved from carriage to carriage picking pockets with all his usual consummate skill. By the time he’d covered two thirds of the train his carrier bag was beginning to get quite heavy with stolen wallets and purses.
Then came trouble. He was just slipping his hand into the shoulder bag of a young white woman who was standing pressed against one of the glass partitions by the doors when she looked round unexpectedly and caught him in mid-snatch. He quickly withdrew his hand.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded loudly.
‘What you on about, lady?’ he cried in a tone of outraged innocence. That was rule number one if you ever got challenged by your pigeon. Make it sound as if they were picking on you. Face them down. It threw them off-balance and gave you some extra time . . .
‘You had your hand in my bag!’ she accused him. By then the people surrounding them were beginning to show an interest. It was a diversion from the heat, the boredom and the stifling conditions in the packed carriage.
He glanced round. Too many white faces. Normally they’d be unlikely to get involved in such an incident but in these unusual circumstances, with the normal reserve of tube passengers already broken down by the shared ordeal, anything could happen. He began to feel worried - trapped. Automatically he reached into his trouser pocket for the five-inch switchblade. First move anyone made against him he would cut the girl and then try and push his way through to the next carriage in all the confusion . . .
The girl screamed.
He couldn’t understand why. He hadn't taken the knife out yet. Was she a mind reader? Then he saw she was looking past him. She was looking at the door behind him.
He turned. Pressed against the glass panel of one of the doors was the wet tip of what seemed to be an elephant’s trunk hanging down from the roof of the train. That was alarming enough but the fact there was some kind of eye in the tip made it even worse.
‘What is it?’ screamed the girl as she cowered away from the doors.
‘Buggered if I know,’ said Farrukh, drawing his knife and extending the blade with a click. The eye, round and crude like that of a fish’s, seemed to be staring right at him through the glass. It had to be some kind of crazy joke, he told himself.
Everyone standing near the doors tried to back away from them, though it was impossible to move far in that press of bodies. Then the girl screamed again. ‘Look!’
A long, black tentacle had joined the thing that looked like an elephant’s trunk. It began to prod at the rubber inner edges of the two doors as if trying to prise them apart.
Two more black tentacles slithered down the glass and joined the first. The tip of one pushed its way be
tween the rubber strips. Slowly, the doors were forced open until there was a gap of over a foot between them. Then the tentacles entered the carriage . . .
There were screams and yells as people tried to get away from the things but the increasing jam of bodies made escape impossible.
Farrukh, trying vainly to push his way through an impenetrable barrier of backs, could hear screams from the other end of the carriage. Were there more of the things? Was the whole train being attacked?
Panic seized him. He thrust his blade into the small of the back of the man immediately in front of him. His victim cried out and tried to turn. Farrukh stabbed him again and again but the man stayed standing, held up by those pressing against him on all sides.
Then Farrukh felt something cold, soft, but very strong, grip his left ankle. He tried to shake it off but it clung to him even tighter. Then it pulled him back towards the door. . .
He tried to cling onto his dying victim but he was dragged inexorably backwards. He fell to the floor then twisted over onto his back. As he’d feared one of the tentacles had fastened onto him. There were several of them protruding into the carriage now, waving and writhing like a nest of giant snakes.
Then he saw something that fuelled his panic tenfold. It was the girl he’d tried to rob. She was sitting slumped beside the partially open doors. The tip of one of the smaller tentacles had imbedded itself in her stomach, looking like some hideous umbilical cord. There were rippling movements running along the tentacle, away from the girl. Farrukh screamed shrilly as he saw her start to crumple in upon herself. First her face shrank inwards, causing her skin to wrinkle like that of a 100-year-old woman’s. Then her chest caved in and the sleeves of her denim jacket sagged as her hands turned into withered, boneless sacs of skin. It was as if she was a plastic, blow-up woman that someone was deflating . . .
Out of his mind with fear, Farrukh slashed at the tentacle around his ankle with the knife. At first the blade had no effect on the tough skin of the tentacle but then he felt it go in. A black, jelly-like substance squirted out of the incision and the tentacle instantly let go of him.
Simon Ian Childer Page 12
