by Robin Jarvis
Kath bore this tirade in meek servility and, when Mr Ormerod was done, she asked if she was free to go.
'Usual read-through next week,' he reminded her as she made for the door. 'Oh, and before you depart,' he added sourly, 'the producers were greatly pleased with the information concerning this morning's bombing raid. A bouquet and a critics' award to you.'
'My aim is to serve,' she said, 'there was not time to inform you.'
'Was there not—I wonder? Are you not familiar with the emergency contact number?'
'And the code.'
Then make certain you use it next time, I have always said that to give someone in the wings access to sound equipment is counterproductive, only harm can come of such folly.'
'I will remember on the next occasion.'
'I do hope so—only, I have been compelled to alter the codeword or perhaps I ought to say words. It is now "over-ambitious fraulein", I'm positive you will not forget that.'
Suffering this last insult, the girl forced a polite goodbye from her lips then left the greenroom, leaving Mr Ormerod hissing through his teeth.
*
Angelo Signorelli traipsed wearily through the deserted streets and gave a whistle of relief when he eventually found Barker's Row.
Jumping over the garden wall of the end house, and cussing when he realised he had leaped straight into a compost heap, he slowly made his hurdling way to number twenty-three.
A perfect peace lay over the garden of the late Peter Stokes. In their tiny hut the chickens dozed serenely—not waking even when the American lost his shoe in the potato patch and took his irritation out on the woody stalks of last year's Brussels sprouts.
Brushing the soil from his trousers, Angelo crept towards the mound at the bottom of the garden where the ghostly tendrils of the strawberry plants hung over the entrance to the Anderson shelter.
Stealthily, he descended to the doorway and hissed softly, his breath gusting from his mouth in clouds of steam.
'Jean,' he called, 'Jean, you in there?'
The lieutenant waited a moment, then called her name again.
Inside the shelter there came the sound of disturbed sleep as Jean Evans turned drowsily and murmured to Daniel to keep quiet.
'No, Jean,' Angelo said a little louder, 'it's me.'
The woman's dazed voice floated to him from the snug dark. 'What're you doing out there?'
'Mind if I come in?'
'Wait,' she answered huskily, 'I'll come out.'
In a moment, she appeared—dressed in a siren suit, over which was pulled a large and baggy jumper.
Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she stared at the American in disbelief. 'What time is it?' she asked.
"Bout three o'clock.'
'In the morning?'
'No, some wise-guy warden's done blacked out the sun.'
"What are you doing here?' she asked, still not convinced that this wasn't some peculiar dream.
Angelo pulled the collar of his flying jacket a little higher. 'It's my buddy Frank,' he told her, 'I was wonderin' if your friend has seen him.'
The woman regarded him frostily as her muddled wits cleared. 'It's the middle of the night,' she said, 'and you're asking me about Kath's love life, I don't know who's madder, you for asking—or me for listening.'
'You don't understand!'
'Hush, my Daniel and Neil are in there, I don't want you wakin' them up. Things are bad enough.'
'Frank's gone AWOL,' he told her, 'the mission was a total screw-up and it got to him real bad. When we returned to base, first chance he got, he took right off.'
'And you went straight after him?'
'He had a coupla hours lead on me but I guessed where he was headin'. He's gonna be in deep trouble if I don't take him back to the camp—dammit, we both will. The guys are coverin' for us, but if we ain't back by tonight then we're for it.'
'Why didn't you go straight to Kath's?'
'Couldn't recollect the number,' he said, 'I wasn't exactly payin' attention to much else them nights. Didn't want to wake up the whole neighbourhood.'
Jean suddenly felt sorry for the anxious-looking airman, and remembered her harsh treatment of him at their last meeting.
'Well, you can't go round there now,' she sighed, 'let's go inside and I'll put the kettle on.'
'Aw, I couldn't put you to all that trouble,' he began.
'Well, I'm having one, anyway,' she said, climbing out of the Anderson trench and hurrying through the garden.
In the kitchen, Jean lit the stove and warmed her hands on the gas flame before placing the kettle on it, then showed Angelo into the living room.
'Cosy,' he said gazing at the Stokes's clutter, then for the first time he noticed how worn and drained the woman looked. 'You OK, Jean?'
'A lot's happened since I saw you,' she told him. 'First the woman over the road was found murdered, then yesterday morning my dad never came back from his ARP. They've been looking for him all day but haven't found him. I don't know what to think, he wouldn't just go off like that, something must have happened to him. My gran keeps saying he's been got by the person who killed Mrs Meacham, I've tried not to listen to her but what other answer can there be?'
'Hey,' Angelo muttered, 'you really have been through it. I thought I had troubles. I brought a present for you!' he said jerking his head up again.
'I don't want any nylons,' she said wearily, trying to prevent the tears from falling as she thought about her father.
The American fished inside his flying jacket. 'Hey, I wouldn't bring you none of those,' he cried, 'here, look who I brought home!'
In his hands, Angelo flourished Ted and Jean managed a faint smile. 'Oh, that's marvellous!' she thanked him. 'Neil's been going spare, Daniel will be so happy to get his back, too.'
Angelo cleared his throat and his irreverent face assumed a guilty air.
'You have got Daniel's teddy, haven't you?' she asked.
'Weren't enough of him left to bring back,' he told her, 'the varmint didn't make it through the mission.'
'Oh well, Daniel seemed to like Neil's better anyway. I'd better just go and see to that kettle.'
When he was alone Angelo settled down into an armchair, yawning continuously.
"Why don't you get some sleep?' the woman asked, returning with two steaming cups. There's nothing you can do till the morning anyway.'
Angelo nodded. 'When you're right, you're right,' he drawled, unzipping his flying jacket and covering himself with it like a blanket.
Jean folded her arms and looked at him wryly. Unprotected by his veneer of brash impudence Angelo reminded her of a small, vulnerable child. Snuggling into the sheepskin lining of his flying jacket, he was just a boy in a grown-up's uniform and she realised, with a start, that she had missed him.
Sitting on the other chair where he had been discarded, Ted's eyes were gleaming.
'Always wanted to be present at a birth,' he chortled mysteriously to himself as he sensed a familiar presence waft into the room.
Jean covered Angelo with an eiderdown, then she stiffened as some will outside her own took control of her.
Stepping mechanically from the room with her eyelids fluttering down over her eyes as the possession overwhelmed her, she searched through the drawers in the kitchen and brought out the charred head of Angelo's old mascot.
Returning to the living room, moving like one in a dream, she gently pulled the flying jacket from under the eiderdown. Then, her eyes closed, the woman set to work with her grandmother's sewing basket, goofily resting her top row of teeth upon her lower lip and humming a waltz tune.
Chapter 18 ‘Snortin’ Round Its Boundaries’
Wandering cautiously through the bomb site, Edie Dorkins was feeling wretched and alone. For most of the day she had lain hidden under a sheet of corrugated metal like a snail under a stone, only daring to venture out when the light began to fail. Yet, ever since that time, she had been aware that a grotesque change had transformed h
er once-beautiful and secluded domain.
The whole atmosphere was different, the night was charged with a hideous, pervading terror that thrummed in the air and coursed through the ground like the pulse of some foul and evil heart. In certain areas of the desolation, close to the place she had considered to be her inviolate sanctuary, the ghastly veins of mindless terror were too powerful for her to approach. The sprite-like girl had been forced to skirt around the ruins, searching constantly for the companions she so desperately wished to find but as yet no trace of them had she uncovered.
Scampering lightly over the familiar, ragged terrain, Edie leaped on to a fragmented wall that was broken in such a way as to resemble, and serve, as a flight of extremely narrow steps.
Up this precarious staircase she ran, for it commanded an excellent view of her barren kingdom and this was now the fifth time she had scanned the gloom from this vantage point.
Hopefully, she strained her almond eyes, trying to see beyond the deep, shadowy gulfs that stretched below the demolished houses around her.
But no, not one single, ghostly figure could she espy and, unhappily, she skipped back to the ground.
Edie missed the souls she had restrained and kept bound to herself and the earth. It was a frightening, confusing time for her, for she knew the nature of the dark one that had come amongst them and turned her joyous, firework-filled, velvety world on its head.
Trailing morosely past the flattened remains of a collapsed house, where only a segment of burned-out hallway was still standing, she wiped her sprouty nose and snivelled into the pixie hood which she had dragged from her head.
‘Miss Edie!’ called a terrified and unexpected voice.
The girl whirled round and peered into the shadow-filled hallway.
From the darkness flashed a pale, podgy hand and the stubby fingers beckoned her nervously.
‘In here!’ the spectre cried. ‘Quick!’
Jubilant, she sprang across the rubble and stared up at the quivering, rotund features of Arnold Porter.
Cringing as far into the shadows as possible, the phantom warden sobbed with relief when she joined him.
‘Bleedin’ Nora!’ he whispered in a tremorous breath. Thank Gawd you're safe an’ sound. I thought you was a gonner—so help me, I really did.’
Shaking with fright, he almost hugged her before realising how futile that would be and instead held the sides of his head as though it were about to explode.
‘You been lookin’ for the others?’ he asked. ‘Well, you needn't bother no more. I seed it all, I was there. It nearly got me as well. Oh, strike me pink! It were the most terrible time of my life—beggin’ your pardon, Miss.’
The girl scowled at him, her expression demanding to know more.
Arnold's shade crumpled up his face when he thought of it and begged her not to make him tell, imploring her instead to leave the bomb site without delay. But Edie's mad mind was still too masterly to refuse and so, with many a shiver, he complied.
‘After that nasty business last night,’ he, yammered, ‘when poor Peter Stokes was taken, as you know everything grew pretty quiet. Until the early hours of the morning like, after you'd gone to sleep. I was over by what used to be Snickets Corner when all at once we knew. That... that thing were on the move again.
‘Black as me hat, an’ blacker it came, stalkin’ us through the night. Like rabbits caught stupid in the light, I saw the first ones get got, and you know what it did to them—that... that foul filth? It et ‘em, sucked them poor beggars down like they was mother's milk.
‘Then how the rest of us scarpered, terrified we was and terrified I still is. It liked that, it did, it liked the sport we gave it, havin’ to chase us like some perishin’ cat. I was lucky I escaped, jus’ when I thought my turn had come it gave up. Awful big it got, Miss Edie, and with each and every one of us it got bigger an’ bigger.
‘Can't you feel how strong it's grown? All day long it's holed up in your old place, asleepin’ it off like a big Sunday dinner. But it's stirrin’ now, an’ it's hungry again. There ain't nothin’ can stop it, Miss. Not a bleedin’ thing.’
The phantom covered his mouth with his hands as the full horror of what he had said scared him all the more, then his overweight shape twitched and a spasm of fear rifled through his vaporous body.
Edie shuddered, as she too felt the horrendous atmosphere of malevolence increase in intensity.
'It's full awake now,’ Arnold murmured tearfully, ‘that house can't contain it no more; it's grown too big. Hark, Miss Edie, it's leaving that place, it’s prowlin’ over the wasteland, on the hunt fer more souls to feast on.’
Shrinking into the hallway, the girl's fingers tightened around the incendiary she wore about her neck and listened as a distant, lumbering pounding was carried to them on the chill night airs.
‘Snortin’ round its boundaries,’ Arnold remarked with a whimper, ‘that's what the brute's doin’. Like a dog sniffin’ fer scraps. Oh, no—hark at that!’
To her distress, Edie heard. The fiend was coming closer, the noise of its trampling was growing steadily louder and abruptly, a thunderous trumpeting blared into the sky.
‘It’s on to summink!’ Arnold wailed. ‘An’ that means us!’
Biting her lip, the girl cringed next to the last member of her spectral family and waited breathlessly as a deep shadow came stealing towards the ruins where they cowered.
A vile, heinous laugh came echoing to mock them, and the ancient force that was Belial poured into the fragmented hallway as a pool of black despair.
Clutching the incendiary to her chest, Edie Dorkins screamed. Rising over her, a formless, dark mass splayed itself wide, blocking one end of the ruin with ravening, whip-like tentacles, as a grotesquely distended mouth bore down on her.
‘Watch out, Miss!’ Arnold Porter yelled, stumbling forward, interposing himself between the snapping jaws and their helpless prey.
‘Get back—you ruddy ‘orror!’ he bawled, uselessly nailing his ghostly arms before the demon's savage maw.
Relishing the amusement this paltry soul afforded him, Belial let out a malignant cackle. Then the darkness of the hall was dispelled as an infernal glare came bubbling up from the gaping throat. Out of the ghastly jaws a greedy tongue snaked out, lashing round Arnold's waist and dripping with hellish flame.
‘Aaaiieeee!’ the spectre screeched as the demon dragged him towards his waiting mouth.
‘Run, Miss Edie!’ Arnold cried in his terror. ‘Run...’
With a final howling shriek, the ghost of Arnold Porter disappeared when the terrible jaws closed over him, and the light from the dribbling flames was extinguished.
Racing from the ruins, Edie fled the hideous scene, the dead warden's tormented shrieks reverberating in her head.
Over walls and hills of debris she pelted, not daring to turn back. The air was trembling as Belial gloated in the dark, allowing her a head start before he came thundering after.
Then, with a low, rumbling chuckle, he came—rolling over the bomb site.
Hearing the rumour of his swift progress, Edie squealed. She would never escape—soon those jaws would come snapping for her and she too would be dragged into the fiery maw and down into oblivion.
Stumbling through the night she ran, till her heart raced and the metallic tang of blood danced in her mouth.
Suddenly, tearing blindly down a scree of brick and timber, the girl blundered into a tall, dark shape.
Screaming, Edie was plucked from the ground and thrown into the air by a pair of strong hands and, no matter how much she kicked and fought, her captor would not let go.
‘Hey now,’ an astonished, buttery voice called, ‘cut that out, will ya? You nearly had m-my eye out.’
So taken aback was she by the warm friendliness of that sound, Edie stopped struggling and gazed down at the man who held her.
‘What you d-doing out so late, sweetpea?’ Frank Jeffries asked. ‘Does your momma know where yo
u are?’
Edie stared at the kindly face that beamed up at her. Behind those soft blue eyes she could see the turmoil that haunted him, and sensed the affinity between them. He, like her, was also on the run. With an impulsive grin, she found that she liked the gawky American—then the girl remembered the danger she was in.
Turning her wild, frightened eyes, away from him, she stabbed an urgent finger into the darkness behind.
‘What is it, honey?’ Frank asked, lowering his arms and placing her upon the ground. ‘You look scared half to d—death—believe me, I know what that's like.’
Edie caught hold of his hand and tugged it fiercely.
‘Can't you speak?’ he asked. ‘What're you so fuelled up for? Hey, that g-gadget round your neck, it kinda looks like...’
The girl glanced fearfully past him, dreading the spectacle that would swiftly come rearing over the rubble heap.
With renewed vigour, she tore at his fingers and almost as soon as a weak smile spread over his face, the airman heard.
Coming from behind the ridge, was the unmistakable roar of an aircraft.
‘What is this?’ he murmured as the din grew louder. ‘What's g—goin’ on here?’
To the girl's dismay, Frank clambered up the slope and stared at the tortured landscape beyond.
Speeding over the waste ground, with its engines whining and every gun turret spitting out flaming streams of death, the vast shape of a B-17 came lurching towards them.
The nightmare that Frank Jeffries had fled the base camp to escape from plunged through the ruins, crashing over the remaining walls, smashing the fallen beams—unstoppable in its horrible majesty.
‘Can't be,’ the American muttered as his fear mounted, ‘this ain't happenin’.’
