‘Take your hands off me,’ I snarled, ‘or I’ll put this bloody axe through your face.’
‘Hear your grandfather out, James,’ Toran urged. ‘He’s not speaking ill. Your father isn’t a Man. Neither am I. Neither are you. We are different from Man.’
‘Oh, because of our big toes. Right.’ My voice was laced with sarcasm. ‘OK. We belong to the silly toe tribe. Now get your damn hands off me.’
‘James.’ My grandfather spoke softly now. ‘It is true. Look up into the valley. See what approaches? It looks like a dark stain on the landscape, doesn’t it? That is our sworn enemy. That is Man.’
I looked in the direction of the mountains. He was right about the dark stain. It looked like the mountains were bleeding. Now a dark mass flowed across the dull green grass.
‘The advance troops will reach us in less than ten minutes,’ he told me. ‘Then you will meet our true enemy.’
Toran checked that the spearhead was still firmly embedded in the shaft. ‘A zoologist would classify them as Primates of the genus Homo Sapiens.’
‘But that’s what we are,’ I protested.
‘We share the same physical shape. Our biology is different. Subtly different.’
Grandfather added, ‘And just like Man wiped out Cro-Magnon and the Neanderthal so they strive for our extinction, too.’
‘But I’m married to woman … a human woman.’
‘Absolutely. We conduct the war anyway we can. Even on a genetic level. We invest our genetic material in their species.’
My look of bafflement must have said it all. In turn, my grandfather shook his head. He glanced across to the dark stain that was thousands of enemy troops. ‘They’ll be here in a matter of minutes. As soon as you were old enough your father should have spent months teaching you about our history. I’ve got seconds. But listen, James. The Earth doesn’t consist of one ball of rock. There are many Earths side-by-side like pages in a book. In your Earth Man has colonized the planet. On this Earth we hold most of it, but as you see Man has established a bridgehead and intends to conquer this one, too … then he will exterminate us. James; they are more numerous than us. Man is winning.’
‘Then what’s the point of fighting?’
Toran flinched at my passive response. ‘You’d fight to save your family, wouldn’t you?’
‘I don’t mean to be defeatist, but if we can’t win?’
My grandfather placed his hand on my shoulder. Those familiar grey eyes locked on mine. ‘We fight for our species. If we don’t, then Man will burn our homes. He will slaughter our families.’
‘They’ll be here any minute, Grandfather,’ Toran warned.
But the old man didn’t break eye contact with me. ‘James. Whenever we can we pursue a covert war. That is why we have infiltrated your version of Earth. We intermarry so we mix our blood with them. Every so often our blood is stronger and children of our species are born. In your Earth, Man has forgotten all about our species so we see an opportunity of recolonizing it. To do that we have to weaken its human population. We must be subversive. Our people commit acts of sabotage there. It doesn’t matter how small. Some of us work in the media to perpetuate stories of man’s inhumanity to man. We reinforce Man’s belief that they are a self-destructive race. You might even secretly throw stones at one neighbour’s window so he will suspect another neighbour of the damage. This will foster disharmony; it will breed distrust of one’s fellow man.’
‘You mean we have a programme of vandalism and negative propaganda?’
‘And murder and fraud and spreading infectious diseases. They’re like these.’ The old man raised his sword. ‘They’re all weapons. We use every single one at our disposal to prevent our extinction.’
‘Here they come.’ Toran gripped the spear in both hands.
A hundred metres away I saw the first wave of men approach. They were armed with swords, too. In another Earth, in another time, were my people fighting Man with guns?
My grandfather stood back; he still fixed me with that steel-hard gaze. ‘So, James, are you ready to fight?’
I nodded. Then raised my axe in readiness of the first onslaught.
The old man took the axe from me. ‘Then go home. Kill your wife and son. Burn down your house.’
‘What?’
‘Your son has not inherited your gene. Kill them both. Then move on. Change your identity. Find a new wife. Make her pregnant. You’re an archeologist. Write history books about humans massacring each other. Write about warplanes bombing cities. Describe torture chambers. Minefields. Gas chambers. Make Man wade through an ocean of his own cruelty. Undermine society. Do what you can to weaken them before we invade.’
Arrows flew from our lines. I saw a hundred attackers fall writhing, screaming; blood gushing from their wounds. Behind those dying were thousands more men howling for our destruction.
‘James, go home.’
Toran glanced back at me. ‘Do as he says. Fight for our people there!’
The yells of the attackers came in a wave of fury. I saw the bloodlust in their eyes.
‘James! In the name of our ancestors, go home!’
That’s when I did run. It was a dreamlike race back through the forest. There was no way I could find my way back to the house. I knew that. Instead, I followed Woody, my Dalmatian dog. Unerringly, he sped along invisible paths marked by the scent of our earlier journey to the edge of the forest and the battlefield beyond.
The battle?
Did we win? Did we lose?
How can I know? That’s another world.
At last I staggered clear of the trees. The house stood just a few paces away. Woody already sat at the back door his nose almost touching the woodwork as he waited to be let inside. Groggy with exhaustion now, I opened the door. Woody rushed across the kitchen to gulp water from the bowl as if he’d just walked across a desert. Not that I was far behind. Pulling a bottle of milk from the refrigerator, I thirstily downed it in great panting sucks. The moment I finished I thought about the forest. I imagined those wild men who had attacked my people. I pictured them tracking me home. Then bursting through the door.
I ran at the door to lock it. Through the glass I saw the sun rising over the meadow. The only trees within thirty metres of the house were our apple trees. When I swung open the door to step outside I realized the heavy scents of the forest were gone. Woody joined me to check out the garden. And it was just our old garden again. A lawn in need of mowing. Our orchard. A line of roses against the garage wall. Admar’s swing caught the warm breeze. It swayed gently. In the distance the first bus of the day trundled along the road to the village. This was a typical peaceful summer’s morning in Mill Bank Road, Thorpe Sneaton, in a county whose acres outnumber the words of The Bible.
When I walked through the hallway I recalled what my grandfather had told me as we stood awaiting the onslaught: ‘… go home. Kill your wife and son. Burn down your house.’
I began to climb the stairs to where Piet and Admar lay sleeping. I’d left my muddy footwear in the kitchen. So in the morning light I noticed my big toes sink into the carpet. My distinctive toes. My ‘silly-toes’ – which is, as I’ve already said, a corruption of Shillito. The skin of the big toes without nails was shiny, smooth; the regimental badge of my kind.
Kill your wife … kill your son … burn down your house….
Slowly, I eased open the bedroom door. Then I whispered, ‘Piet? Are you awake?’
Karen
Thanks for the mysterious manuscript found in the house you were renovating. Of course it intrigued me as you knew it would, you minx, you. When I read in my local paper of residents in one suburban street being plagued by a phantom stone slinger I couldn’t help but think that all those broken windows and dented cars amounted to more than puerile vandalism.
Digression aside, I aimed to track down this James Shillito, the author of the document – or should that be confession? I couldn’t check details with you because yo
u were at the conference. Nevertheless, I asked your site manager, Nick and he tells me the house in Mill Bank Road wasn’t damaged by fire – and no one, thankfully, was murdered there. My amateur sleuthing reveals that James Shillito and family, formerly residents of the house that you now have on the market, emigrated five years ago. To where exactly God only knows.
One odd detail emerged, though. Shillito was an archeologist, yet before he left the country he retrained as a nuclear power station technician. From the mystique of archeology to the dark arts of nuclear power seems to me an unusual, not to say a bizarre leap. So, to close on a philosophical note: You’re not thinking what I’m thinking, are you?
Jeff
DEMON ME
When Jackie Vorliss saw the horse’s head that was as dark as death itself rise up behind her daughter she wanted to cry out to Caitlin to run for her life.
Jackie held the mic in her hand, her thumb on the talk-button, watching her daughter on the closed-circuit TV screen. All around the teenager, the deserted supermarket formed a gloomy cavern that swarmed with half-seen shadows, while air-conditioning fans sent un-mouthed whispers murmuring and sighing across canyons of dead aisles to haunt those distant corners. Slowly, Caitlin moved along the aisle of a thousand cereal packets toward cardboard cut-outs that had become shadowy humped figures laced with menace.
Jackie tried again; only the scream couldn’t force its way through her throat. Her vocal chords had knotted tight. She stopped breathing; her heart thudded with a doom-laden rhythm to slam inside her skull. Run, Caitlin! The words blazed inside her, but she could no more speak them than dig her hands into cold grave soil and raise her husband from the dead.
On screen three her daughter was in close up. Her long hair tied back in a neat pony. Her eyes, catching what little light there was, looked as if they’d caught fire.
Screen six. The overhead cam high in the supermarket roof looked down as if through the eyes of a hovering vulture. There’s Caitlin walking slowly. Behind her, a pulpy shadow, closing all the time. A dark horse’s head rising above the tiled supermarket floor, something submarine breaking the surface from whatever depths it called its lair.
Closer, closer.
Run, Caitlin!
Formed from an uncanny post-mortem darkness, the horse’s head bobbed eerily along the aisle; faster now; homing in on the seventeen-year-old girl.
Close up on camera two: head height. Caitlin, still unaware of what stalked her, shivered as if cold fingers fumbled down her spine. She folded her arms across her breasts.
Caitlin, run!
The horse’s head rose higher, the neck arching – now suggesting something more cobra than mammal. Even the mane was more membrane than hair. Once more Jackie tried to force the warning scream from her mouth, her eyes locked on the dark shape that bore down on her daughter. Instead, her breath hissed through her lips:
‘I remember you. Good God, I remember you.’
‘What’s that you said, Jackie?’ Ben looked round, speaking through the pencil gripped between his teeth. ‘Has number eighteen gone down again?’
‘No, it’s … nothing.’
‘Uh?’ He glanced up from the technical manual to check the screens, his broad forehead gleaming under a wispy fringe. ‘Camera eighteen’s the lemon if we’ve got one. I’ll go down and check it.’
‘No, not yet!’
He looked stung by her razor voice. ‘OK. You’re the boss, Jackie.’
She no longer heard him. Thumbing the mic button, she said, ‘Caitlin. You might as well come back to the pod. We’ve got glitches.’
On six TV screens Jackie saw the blonde head nod. Quickly now, the pretty seventeen-year-old jogged along the aisle toward the office. Jackie immediately hit monitor keys firing up cameras in her wake.
Where are you? Where are you? She searched the aisle behind Caitlin, hunting for the horse’s head that moved with that churning motion. At the same time she listened for her daughter’s feet on the stairwell, willing her to get through the pod door so they could shut—
Shut it be damned. Lock it tight. We’ll barricade the door. We won’t let that monster in. We’ll—
‘Hey, Jackie.’ Ben whistled. ‘What the hell’s that in aisle three?’
‘Hurry it up, Caitlin.’ Jackie snapped the words into the mic: they rolled across the canyoned face of the supermarket like the word of God. On three monitors, one in distorted close up, Caitlin glared up at the camera. Yes, Mother dear. Any more orders, Mother dear? The girl’s scowl said it all.
Jackie shot a glance over her shoulder. ‘Ben? Where are you going?’
‘Didn’t you hear? I told you I was going to check out what’s on aisle three.’ He watched her strangely now. ‘Do you feel OK, Jackie?’
She whipped her face back to the screens, scanning each one that Caitlin passed through either in dwarfish miniature or bloated giant.
‘Jackie?’
Jackie glared at aisle after empty aisle. The horse’s head shadow had vanished. Behind her the door opened. Caitlin entered with a flash of rebellion in her eye. ‘It’s like an oven down there. I’m not going out again until I’ve had a Coke.’
A melting sense of relief poured through Jackie. Taking a steadying breath, she said, ‘Ben, you said you saw something in aisle three. Where exactly?’
‘Screen five. It’s a ceiling cam. I can’t make it out.’
‘Where? I don’t see it?’
Jackie noticed Ben raise an eyebrow at Caitlin that as much said Why’s your mother playing the super bitch today? Then he added, ‘At the top near the intersection. It looks like someone lying on the floor.’
Rolling the tennis ball-sized camera remote, she zoomed in on the thing that lay like a fallen corpse, its swollen head at the foot of a cereal stack.
‘Aw, he’s gone and fallen over.’ Ben grinned.
‘What is it?’ Jackie’s voice was brittle.
Ben’s grin broadened. ‘Don’t you see?’
‘Would I ask you if I could?’
Caitlin answered. ‘It’s only the Honey Bear cut-out. I must have knocked it as I passed.’ She shook her head. ‘Jeez, Mom, what are you so up-tight about?’
‘Nothing. I’m all right.’
Ben said, ‘Look, Jackie, you’ve been burning the midnight oil on this job for too long, why don’t we—’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Take a look in the mirror, Jackie. Those bags under your eyes … we could carry groceries home in them.’
Jackie knew Ben was trying to lighten the atmosphere with a joke. And maybe that was it. Maybe she was overtired. But this was the biggest contract yet. Everything must work; everything must be one hundred and one per cent before the supermarket reopened.
Ben realized he’d penetrated her shell. ‘Let’s call it a day. I’ll fix us all a big cold salad while you unwind with a gin and tonic. Sound good to you?’
Jackie sighed. ‘It does sound good to me. In fact it sounds damn wonderful. Call security and get them to open the door.’ She touched icons on the computer screen that would activate the automatic system. Now any intruders (and any guards tempted to lightfinger a bottle of Scotch) would be caught on video. ‘Done,’ she announced. ‘Let’s get some fresh air.’
The pod exited directly into the supermarket parking-lot. All part of the new thinking in security. To avoid ‘contamination’ by supermarket employees, CCTV operatives sealed themselves in their sterile pod at the start of their shift and exited by a separate door at the end of it. No fraternization; no social intercourse: no colluding.
Jackie’s business machine was fuelled by hi-octane paranoia – supermarket owners don’t trust customers; supermarket managers don’t trust their staff; security guards on the day shift don’t trust those on nights: so Jackie Vorliss wins an heiress’s ransom to staunch that cash bleed-out.
Sun scoured the car-park. Its new blacktop filled the air with tarry fumes so thick you could almost cut slices with a knife. Jackie
’s white BMW sat out there as lonely as a skull on a desert plain.
Ben and Caitlin flinched before the onslaught of summer heat. But at that moment Jackie felt a freezing sensation run up through her bones to the back of her neck. Suddenly she was no longer in the parking-lot with her daughter and boyfriend. She was thirteen years old. Standing in the warehouse back in a cold northern town where winter gales from the sea cut like a blade. That’s where she’d seen that sinister horse’s head before. It had risen from the floor, a mass of veined black with monstrous eyes. Seconds later Melody Tranter had burst against the warehouse wall. Coroner photographs recorded the rare butterfly pattern left there in luscious crimson daubs.
Yes, I remember you … Jackie Vorliss walked in her own envelope of mid-winter air on that blazing August day. She raised the image in her mind: the horse’s head of shadows, Bible black, all veined and somehow engorged with sinister promise. Yes, I remember you.
That evening, Caitlin and Ben treated her like an invalid. Dressed in her bathrobe, Jackie was made to sit in the cool of the air-conditioned lounge while she sipped a gin and tonic over boulders of ice. She could smell the garlic they crushed for the salad dressing floating from the kitchen. Their voices came ghosting into the lounge, too.
Ben said, ‘I haven’t see her like this before.’
Caitlin replied, ‘It’s that supermarket job. It’s got too big for her.’
‘She hasn’t been sleeping well either.’
‘I’m worried, Ben. It’s like she’s not really here.’
‘If she’s not any better in the morning I’ll get her to see a doctor.’
‘You mean you’ll try. She’s a walking-talking definition of stubborn.’
Although Jackie heard them it seemed it didn’t relate to her and really they were talking about a stranger. Meanwhile, her past had begun to exert its own gravitational pull, tugging her from the four-bedroom house with its serene pool lying in the grove of trees. In a strange, dislocated way she seemed to look down through the eyes of a hovering bird of prey. She saw the distinctive tiles that were the colour of ripe cherries and the pink stucco walls. Good God, she was fiercely proud of that house. Once in a red heat of fury she’d chased a would-be housebreaker in her bathrobe. The police officer said it was a good thing she hadn’t caught the intruder. She’d interpreted that as the thief might have harmed her, but Caitlin and Ben agreed it would have been the thief who was the one in real danger. They said it jokingly … well, half jokingly over breakfast the next day. The police did arrest one John T. Dardis. What’s more, Jackie identified Dardis (age thirty-eight, former mailman, former school caretaker, former security guard) as the man climbing in through the kitchen window, and he did have fifteen previous convictions, but the police maintained that ‘evidence was insufficient’. And released him. But what happened later caused Ben to comment that perhaps there is Divine retribution after all. Dardis wound up in six meaty hunks on a railway line. Cause of death: multiple injuries as a result of being diced by a locomotive seemed obvious – only the rail authorities insisted that no trains had run the night he died.