He heard a scraping noise coming from the stairs; a slithering, dragging noise. He looked up and saw that Casey had heard it too; she had frozen against the wall, her eyes looking at him in terror. He turned his head towards the stairs. The slithering noise continued, growing louder, now coupled with the sound of breathing. Holman stared at the empty space at the top of the stairs, unable to move, transfixed by the sounds, dreading what he would see. A hand appeared on the top stair, the fingers whitening as they pressed against the floor to grip and pull. Holman looked at them in disbelief, his head only two feet away from them. And then suddenly, he was staring into the evil, grinning face of Barrow! Blood was flowing from his nose and a deep cut above his eyebrow, giving his face an even more frightening aspect, but he grinned at Holman, his broken body shaking with exertion. He began to chuckle, his mouth opening in a wide grimace, the sound rasping from the back of his throat. He began to pull himself forward, over the top step. He wanted to reach Holman.
Holman slowly lifted his body, reached for the gun in his shoulder holster and clicked off the safety catch with his thumb. Then he put the barrel inside Barrow’s grinning mouth, and pulled the trigger.
He knelt beside Casey, pulling her away from the wall and cradling her in his arms. Overhead, he could hear the hum of the low-flying aircraft and he knew they had reached his sector.
‘The worst is over for us now, darling,’ he told her, holding her close, rocking her gently back and forth. ‘We’ll never be the same, too much has happened to both of us, but we can help each other. I love you so much, Casey.’
He pulled her to her feet, and she wept against him.
‘When this is finally finished, when they’ve done all they can for those who’ve been harmed, the people are going to find out exactly how it happened. I’m going to make sure of it and, I think, there are others who will too. But now, Casey, we’re going to sleep. We’re going to lie down together, and drift into a long, long sleep.’
She managed to smile up at him and they walked towards his flat, his tired and aching body leaning on hers for support.
He closed the door behind them.
The Fog
James Herbert is not just Britain’s number one bestselling writer of chiller fiction, a position he has held ever since publication of his first novel, but is also one of our greatest popular novelists, whose books are sold in thirty-three foreign languages, including Russian and Chinese. Widely imitated and hugely influential, his twenty-three novels have sold more than forty-eight million copies worldwide.
Also by James Herbert
The Rats
The Survivor
Fluke
The Spear
The Dark
Lair
The Jonah
Shrine
Domain
Moon
The Magic Cottage
Sepulchre
Haunted
Creed
Portent
The Ghosts of Sleath
’48
Others
Once
Nobody True
The Secret of Crickley Hall
Graphic Novels
The City
(Illustrated by Ian Miller)
Non-fiction
By Horror Haunted
(Edited by Stephen Jones)
James Herbert’s Dark Places
(Photographs by Paul Barkshire)
First published 1975 by New English Library
This edition published 2010 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2011 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Basingstoke and Oxford
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www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-447-20239-4 EPUB
Copyright © James Herbert 1975
The right of James Herbert to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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James Herbert, The Fog
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