Max Gilbert

  "I can't lift him any further," shouted Mark. "Something's got hold of him! From underneath."

  Chris pulled but, still lying on his stomach, his leverage was worse than Mark's.

  "Quick ..." called Mark. "They're coming."

  The Saf Dar were almost within arm's length. Their red faces were expressionless above the water; but their eyes blazed with menace. They sensed new victims.

  "Dad ... my legs ..."

  Chris cried, "They've got him. ..."

  This close. Christ. They might have to let David go after all.

  No. Not ever.

  As Chris hung on, another arm reached over his head.

  It grasped David by the back of his sweatshirt.

  When the arm pulled it seemed effortless. David came cleanly out of the water like a baby lifted from the bath. The force was enormous. As the arm raised David up, it lifted both Chris and Mark's upper bodies clear of the rock ledge.

  Chris twisted to see who had lifted David from the water with such superhuman strength.

  "Ruth."

  She completed the single-armed lift, her face blazing with concentration.

  Around her bare arm, muscles knotted into bullet-hard lumps beneath her skin, the tendons looked like steel rods raising the skin into ridges. It took three seconds. As soon as David was clear, the expression melted from her face and she collapsed back against the wall.

  Mark panted, "Get David inside!"

  The Saf Dar reached up their long red arms toward them, fingers as thick as raw beef sausages.

  "Don't worry about Ruth, I'll get her."

  Chris picked David up then ran along the ledge to the gates. John Hodgson was standing on the small area of causeway that was still dry, his son by his side. Both held their shotguns raised to their shoulders.

  Chris ducked in through the gates. Mark, carrying Ruth, followed them. Then the Hodgsons were inside, slanting the balks of timber against the locked gates.

  Mark set Ruth down on the floor against the wall. The arm she had used to lift David in a single mother-love-fueled pull had gone into spasm. Uncontrollably, it stretched out, rigid, as if it didn't belong to her; the muscles still bulged like clusters of walnuts beneath her forearm. She looked in agony, but she was more concerned about David. She made Mark sit the little boy on her lap. With her good arm she hugged him to her breasts and stroked his forehead with her fingers, rocking him and whispering softly.

  Mark looked at her in wonder. "You ... you hear about things like this. Mothers lifting up cars to free trapped children, and beating off bears attacking their kids to ..." He broke off embarrassed and moved away, dripping a trail of sea water, to sit next to Tony on one of the cannon.

  Chris watched mother and son, closer together than any man could understand.

  Then he walked into the center of the courtyard and looked up into the sky.

  The mist moved like smoke. Now it was flushed with a rose-pink tint.

  Around the walls the villagers watched. They were waiting to see what he would do next. Because they knew he would do something. Even before he knew he would.

  His body language sang out a message as old as humankind itself.

  The message rolled out from deep inside his mind. Some part of him that he shared with the first men on earth as they gazed in awe at a thunderstorm or painted animal-men on cave walls was telling him what he should do. It was not thought in words, it was a primeval, wordless understanding.

  A knowing.

  When you are hungry, you find food.

  When you are thirsty, water.

  When the old god that normally stands in the shadows of your soul steps into the light to be recognized, you know what you must do.

  Chris's lips, after the fourth attempt, clumsily shaped the word:

  "Sacrifice."

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Wrapped in a large blue-striped bath towel, cuddled by his mother as she sat on a straight-backed chair in the courtyard, David looked three years old.

  More than anything, Mark wanted to pick them both up and carry them away from this nightmare.

  David allowed his head to be hugged against his mother's breast; the still-dripping fringe partly concealed a bad graze above his left eyebrow. Already it was swelling, speckles of blood seeping through the scraped skin.

  The graze would be the least of their worries.

  She moved her arm to hold David more securely. She winced. The muscles still stood out through the skin in a painful cramp.

  "Ruth, you should get some ice on that arm," Mark told her gently. "A bag of frozen peas would do it."

  "There's nothing left." Ruth forced a weak smile. "Anyway, it's feeling better. ... Thanks, Mark. For all your help."

  Mark couldn't manage a reply. He felt like shit. He'd let them all down. They had depended on him to get help. All he had to do was get through a miserable half-mile-wide strip of marsh.

  "You might need this, lad." John Hodgson walked up, a shotgun in his hand. "It's loaded, and here's two more shells."

  Mark looked around the courtyard. All the villagers were there. Waiting expectantly. They'd fed their hopes of escape from this place. Now they hung around unwilling to accept the idea that they were still trapped here, the food all gone.

  What next? They had discussed sacrifice-why not slip back further into the mire. Cannibalism. In a couple of days it would be an option.

  And he wondered about Chris. As he walked across the courtyard, he'd worn an expression that he'd never seen before. Fear wriggled inside him like a bellyful of cold worms.

  Tony was sitting on the floor, his back to the wall. He seemed absorbed in some problem.

  What the hell was he thinking? Another idea to get them out?

  Shit. ... They'd finally run into the brick wall at the end of the road. There were no more ideas. No more hope. All they could do now was wait. What for? Mark no longer believed in miracles.

  Body aching, he walked across to Tony and squatted beside him. Behind the glasses the man's eyes twitched quickly from side to side. Mark shivered. It was like looking into the eyes of a man who had been struck blind.

  "Tony ... You okay?"

  Tony did not answer.

  "Tony. Hey, Tony. Anything I can get you?"

  Tony suddenly snapped out of it. He looked up at Mark, his face bright like a kid who'd just been shown the world's biggest Christmas tree. Surprised-and almost frightened by its stupendous size.

  "Mark ... It's happening ..."

  "Now?"

  "Yes ... Oh, yes. Now. Can't you feel it? I never thought it would be like this ... I didn't think I would feel things ... Or see things. But it's inside my head. Sort of... ideas-images mental. No, er, I-I mean ... mental images. It hurts in a way ... something I don't want. Frightening. Hurting. Then I do want it, badly. Feels like ... or should I... Feels like I should reach out and pull it to me. Hold it to me. Tight."

  Mark listened to the low babble of words.

  " 'S always been there, you know. Always. I think it ... You-remember Williams? Ralph Vaughan Williams. What he said when he first discovered folklore, folk music. He ... He said: 'I had a sense of recognition ... here was something which I had known all my life, only I didn't know it. ... It's like that. Known it. But didn't know it. Know it deep down. ... Like babies knowing how to suckle. Instinct. Born down the ... eggs waiting to hatch. Eggs ... small eggs ..."

  Speaking in tongues? To Mark it made no sense. But he knew Tony was trying to communicate something of enormous importance.

  "You know, you feel as if your mind is a single thing inside your head. It's not, you know. Not at all. It has different parts. Now ... I feel as if part of it is becoming separate. ... Sort of moving away from the other parts. Like two people who've danced together so closely, for so long, you think it's one person. ... But ent. ... ent-uh ... but it isn't." His speech was disintegrating.

  "They're hanging apart now. And you realize that's how it was long ago. When we wer
e covered in black bristles and lived in the forests. You know ... You know, that's what makes us human. For us the separate minds inside our head dance so closely together, they seem like one. Always in the same step ... you know, like a waltz. Two dancers-one young, one very old. Both following the same step so closely you think it really is one entity." His eyes darted up at Mark. "Don't you feel it?"

  Mark shook his head. His old friend had not been able to keep a tight enough grip on his sanity. Now it was slipping from him.

  "Weird ... 'S weird ... Like it just shouldn't happen. Like holding a radio battery in your hand and watching it grow in size; to as big as a brick ... fills the room. The battery keeps growing and growing until it's bigger than all the airplanes in the world put together. ... And they sort of melt into one that's so big ... Only it's inside your brain ... growing and growing until it wants to split your head apart. Ha, a pregnant brain. That could be it. Your brain's pregnant and it's growing and growing ... only the skull's too small, too tight. ..."

  The grip on Mark's forearm tightened. He looked down. Tony's eyes had suddenly cleared.

  "Mark ... You'd better warn everyone. It's coming through. Warn them things are going to start happening. We're-we're going to see things, hear things ... probably experience things, physically."

  "Look, Tony ... Take it easy. You need-"

  "Listen, Mark, listen." Tony Gateman's voice was crisp now. "Everything we've seen in the last few days will be nothing compared to what will happen in the next few minutes. All that with the Saf Dar, Wainwright, the Fox twins ... Forget it. It's nothing." Tony watched the walls as if expecting the stone blocks to bud eyes, noses, mouths and call strangely down to him.

  "All that's happened is trivial," whispered Tony, his thin fingers digging painfully into Mark's arm. "The events of the last few days. Those things the Saf Dar did, killing Wainwright, resurrecting those dead men from the sea and dancing them across the beach; they were just like a few dry leaves that the breeze can slide across the street. What's coming now is the real force of the gale. The kind of wind that can lift the roof of your house or blow a car into a river. Mark, it's coming. That old, old, old god is going to enter this place ... And Mark. ..." He pulled Mark's arm toward him. "We're not ready. He will expect to make the trade; we have nothing. We have no sacrifice."

  Tony Gateman crouched against the wall, looking almost fetal.

  Mark turned away, not wanting to see his friend like this.

  As he did so his hand brushed the wall.

  He stopped and stared at the wall. A buzzing filled his ears. He reached out and pressed his palm to the stone blocks.

  They felt warm.

  As if, impossibly, hot-water pipes ran beneath this two-hundred-year-old fortress wall. He took his hand away.

  It left a palm-print.

  Not dirt or sweat. The pressure of his hand had actually deformed the wall. As if he had pressed his hand against a block of soft plasticine. The print stayed.

  Instinctively, shotgun in hand, he moved back to the mother and child. Instinct, yes. Back to the tribal pack. Males protect females and children.

  Ruth looked up at him, trustingly. David stirred briefly to touch his grazed forehead with his little fingers.

  But who are you protecting them from, Mark? he asked himself.

  Who?

  The Saf Dar? They were still beyond the locked gates. But for how long?

  From the Reverend Horace Reed? An old man, a drunk, unarmed. Hardly. But as Mark looked across the courtyard at him, sitting on the caravan steps, his broken dog-collar sticking out, he noticed seven or eight villagers standing around him; an impromptu congregation listening carefully to the words peeling from those dry lips. After all, the man had been parish priest for thirteen years. He still carried some authority. Even now he might be telling them that the easy way out was to make the sacrifice. Kill David.

  The villagers were dividing into two camps. If the Hodgsons chose to go under the black wing of the Reverend Reed, then life would get very difficult very quickly.

  Or was he protecting mother and child from Tony's god of this little island, the boundary post between ocean and prehistoric swamp? What could he do? Without his trying, the image oozed into his mind of that ancient time-bleached spirit or god or whatever you wanted to call it stepping into this world as easily as a psychotic killer steps into a bedroom full of sleeping children.

  Or-the thought sneaked into his mind-or was he really protecting the child from Chris Stainforth? The man's face had suddenly become terrible-and terrifying-before he had walked determinedly toward the building and disappeared inside.

  What was he planning?

  Stainforth's face had completely altered. Was he gripped by the same contagious madness that infected Tony? Now that madness seemed to be infecting Mark. Because he could believe that Chris had been possessed by the spirit of an old man. No, not an old man, but a man from long ago, so long ago that the eyes that blazed from the face occupied some place between human being and beast.

  Tony had told Chris about the old ways-fathers sacrificing their children. The most potent sacrifice of all.

  Releasing a torrent of emotion for the god to feed on.

  Would he have to protect the son from his father? He looked up into the sky.

  It had changed.

  The color was pink, like blood-flushed skin.

  He wished he could believe in a benevolent god, who would gather them up and take them away from this.

  He hated seeing this skin of civilization torn from every man and woman here. It was ugly. Even more ugly was knowing that the primitive man-beast had been there all along, inside them all. That as soon as the civilising forces were removed it rose up through the depths, like an ugly ape emerging from the undergrowth-to take control again.

  "Mum... I'm cold."

  David was looking up at his mother, shivering. She wrapped the towel around him more snugly and whispered something to him; David nodded. Ruth looked up at Mark.

  "I need to get David some dry clothes. And a warm drink."

  Mark looked across at the Vicar and his flock congregating around the caravan.

  "I'll get him some. It might be best if we went into the sea-fort, though. Can you manage with David?"

  "I'll manage, Mark. If you could just-"

  Bang.

  The sea-fort doors crashed open and Chris strode out.

  Mark watched him stride purposefully across the courtyard toward Ruth and David. In his hands he held the huge hammer.

  He did not like the look in the man's eye.

  He looked as if he had made the most difficult decision of his life. One that he was determined to see through to the bloody end.

  Mark thumbed the safety catch of the shotgun and,holding it at hip height, raised the barrels until they pointed at Chris Stainforth's knees.

  This was shit. Mark hoped the feeling he was getting from Chris was wrong. He liked the man. Christ, if it came to blasting his legs ...