kicked and struggled, and the chair tipped sideways, so that I was left in the air with my feet furiously pedaling.
Another man reached down and grabbed my left sleeve. My shirt tore, but he got a grip on my elbow. Between the two of them, the Screechers started to haul me upward through the trapdoor, scraping my shoulders on the wooden frame. It was dark inside the attic, but I could see five or six more of them, including two women, and they all came clustering around me, snatching at my shirt and pulling at my hair. I saw knives shining, and I suddenly felt a sharp wet cut across my knuckles, and another one across my forehead.
Christ, they were going to cut me open and drink my blood, and there were enough of them in this attic to drink me dry.
I realized then that they were too strong for me, and that they were going to pull me up into the attic no matter how hard I struggled. So I stopped kicking and swinging my legs, and instead of trying to wrench myself free, I took hold of the gray man’s coat and hauled myself upward.
The Screechers were all pulling me so hard that I almost jumped up into the attic, and the gray man lost his balance and fell backward. I rolled over and rolled over again, colliding with a stack of suitcases and knocking over an old standard lamp, but as I rolled over the second time I was able to reach behind me and pull out my gun.
The gray man was practically on top of me, so close that my nostrils were filled with the sweet smell of his rotting insides. I pointed the gun at his face and fired, and even in the semidarkness I could see a large lump of his head fly off, including his ear. He fell sideways on top of the suitcases, his heels drumming on the floorboards like a stricken horse.
I fired again. The noise of the shot made my ears ring, and the attic was filled with gunsmoke. I fired a third time, and one of the women Screechers fell backward and toppled through the open trapdoor. A fourth shot brought down another man — and even though their knives were raised, the rest of the Screechers hesitated. They knew that I couldn’t kill them, even if I blew bits off their heads, but they weren’t impervious to pain, and even Screechers don’t relish disfigurement.
I stood up and approached them, pointing my weapon at each of them in turn. The dim light that came up through the trapdoor showed me what a sorry, hideous collection of lost souls they were — their faces haggard, their clothes caked in dried blood, their eyes milky. They were in the last stages of degradation as
From down below I heard shouting. “You all right, sir? What’s the ’ell’s going on?”
“I’ve found your ghosts!” I shouted back. “There’s a woman down there. hold on to her and don’t let her get away!”
I edged toward the open trapdoor, keeping my gun pointed at the Screechers. They were growing bolder now, and one of the women lunged toward me, hissing in contempt, and crisscrossing her knife in the air. I pointed my gun at her head and pulled the trigger but all that I heard was a metallic click. All of my Last Supper bullets had been fired, and the clip was empty.
I didn’t hesitate. I swung myself through the trapdoor and jumped down to the landing below, stumbling over the fallen chair. The woman who had fallen through was already halfway down the stairs, her hair wild and her blue cotton dress spattered with dried blood. The two police officers had just reached the foot of the stairs below her, and they were staring up at her in horror.
“Bloody ’ell, you’ve shot ’er!”
“Stop her! Don’t let her get away!”
The woman threw herself down the stairs toward them, screeching. The officers made a fumbled attempt to hold her, but she flailed her arms and wrenched herself free and ran along the hallway to the open front door.
“There’s another one!” exclaimed one of the officers, pointing to the trapdoor above my head.
Another woman Screecher was climbing out of the attic. She was wearing a green skirt and a stained yellow cardigan. Unlike the first woman, she didn’t drop to the floor. Instead, she crawled upside down along the ceiling, so that her skirt hung down and I could see her laddered stockings and her garter belt. She crawled all the way down the sloping ceiling above the staircase, above our heads — all the way along the hallway ceiling, and out of the front door. We couldn’t have reached her to pull her down to the floor, even if we had had the nerve to do it.
As soon as she had gone, the man in the gray suit appeared in the trapdoor. His hair was sticking up wildly and the left side of his skull looked like broken, bloodstained china. I could see the other Screechers crowding close behind him, and I knew that it was time to get the hell out of here.
I jumped down the stairs, three and four at a time. “Come on, there’s too many of them!”
The man in the gray suit was already crawling across the ceiling, and a balding middle-aged man with liver- spotted hands was following him. There must have been more Screechers in the attic than I had realized, because they came pouring out like spiders, swarming down the walls. I didn’t stop to count them, and neither did the two police officers. I grabbed my Kit from the receptionist’s office and we ran out into the night.
Halfway toward the front gates, one of the officers turned around and drew out his baton. “Right, then!” he said, defiantly. “Let’s see how they like having their ’eads cracked!”
I seized hold of his arm and pulled him away so violently that he almost fell over. “You’re out of your frigging mind! They’ll kill us! Let’s go!”
“Come on — they’re only a bunch of women and old geezers!”
“Listen to me — do you want to have your goddamned heart cut out? Because that’s what they’ll do to you!”
The officers hesitated. “Let’s
The Screechers were already running out of the front door and across the shingled driveway. The officer suddenly realized that they were intent on coming after us and doing us serious harm, even if they were women and middle-aged men. Three or four of them reached the car and started to beat their fists on the windows and pull at the door handles, and it was then that the officer started up the engine and jammed his foot on the gas pedal. We roared off the grass verge and bounced on to the roadway, with the Screechers still banging on the roof and trying to mount up on to the running board.
A mile up the road, the officer slowed down, although he kept looking nervously in his rearview mirror.
“What the hell were
“What the hell were what?”
“Those people. Normal people can’t crawl across the ceiling. Jesus Christ.”
I was dabbing at my forehead with my handkerchief. The cut extended all the way from my hairline to the side of my left eye, but fortunately it wasn’t very deep.
“We never saw any people, crawling on the ceiling or otherwise.”
“But — ”
“Official Secrets Act, OK? Now, can you patch me through to George Goodhew at MI6? He needs to know what hasn’t happened.”
Blasphemy
The two police officers drove me to Croydon Police Station, a monumental redbrick Victorian building in the center of town. Just as we climbed out of the car the Town Hall clock struck twelve midnight, but the air was still humid and warm, and moths still swarmed around the blue police-station lamps. We walked along corridors with shiny brown tiles and highly polished linoleum floors and the whole building echoed like a public swimming bath.
I found Inspector Ruddock in the main operations center. The room had high vaulted ceilings but it was badly lit and hazy with cigarette smoke. Fifteen or sixteen young officers were sitting at rows of desks, wearing headsets with trumpet-shaped Bakelite speakers.
