And the light was switched off.
In the car Sian relaxed in the seat and leaned back on the headrest, closing her eyes. This was the worst ever. She couldn’t remember ever being this frightened. What ever the creatures were, elementals as Carter had said, or something else entirely, they had awoken in her a deep-seated, almost primeval fear. Somewhere, lodged in her trace memory, was the image of them, dark and scuttling, hiding in shadows, crawling into the light. They were at once foreign yet familiar.
She froze as she heard a soft whispering, like tissue paper tearing. She looked down at her chest. Something was moving underneath her clothes. With trembling fingers she undid the buttons and opened her shirt.
In the expanse of flesh between her bra and the waistband of her skirt, five lumps, no bigger than quails’ eggs, were moving under her skin. And, as she watched, the skin itself was turning gray, translucent, as the lumps moved actively beneath it. Panic surged through her and she prodded one with her finger. At her touch the skin split and a black antennal head forced its way through the bloody hole.
She screamed, but the sound was blocked by a horde of scrabbling creatures chasing the daylight glimpsed through her open mouth. They crawled up her throat, over her tongue, scrambling over her teeth and hanging from her lower lip before dropping to her chest. Within seconds the car was filled with the things as they exploded from every orifice — from her mouth, her ears, forcing their way down her nostrils, crawling out from her anus and, in a cruel mockery of childbirth, pouring from her vagina, ripping through the sheer material of her pan ties.
She struggled and in her panic the small gold cross and chain she wore was torn from her neck.
She reached for the door handle, but as her fingers connected with it the central locking mechanism activated and sealed her into the car. She looked round frantically, hoping to catch a glimpse of Carter through the bushes surrounding the car. ‘Come back!’ her mind screamed. ‘For pity’s sake, Robert, please come back.’ And then she slumped back into the seat as, inch by inch, the beetles devoured her.
He opened his eyes and he was back in the dining room. His body was soaked in sweat, his hair plastered to his scalp. He shook his head, trying to shake away the cobwebs that were draped over his thoughts. Gradually the cobwebs thinned and dispersed as rational thought reestablished itself.
The car was where he had left it. He ran across to it and yanked the door handle.
Locked.
Locked and empty.
Of Sian Davies there was no trace at all.
‘Oh Christ!’ he said, and leaned against the car, his legs weak and trembling. He let his body slide down the metallic paintwork until he was crouching, almost slouching, on the ground. He was going to vomit; he could feel the bile rising in his throat. He retched, and his cell phone began to ring.
He fumbled for the talk button. ‘Yes?’ he choked back what ever was lodged in his throat.
‘It’s Crozier. I told you to report back.’ The impatience, the reprimand, was deliberate.
‘We only spoke a moment ago,’ Carter said, trying to gather his thoughts, wondering how he was going to explain what had happened to Sian.
‘It’s been over four hours, Carter. What the hell’s going on there?’
Carter took the phone away from his ear and stared at it as if it were some strange, alien artifact.
‘Details?’ Crozier’s clipped tones were legendary in the Department. He never used politeness when efficiency could do the job in half the time.
Carter was still trying to come to terms with the lost memory of the past four hours but a verbal battle with Crozier was always guaranteed to sharpen his brain. ‘Debrief me later. Just get a team out here as soon as you can.’
There was a slight pause on the other end of the line, and Carter knew he was weighing taking decisive action with a familiar rebuke that would be something like ‘I give the orders around here.’
Carter had to admire Crozier when he said, ‘Very well. Will you be around to brief them?’ Performing his job was more important than point scoring; at least he could give the man grudging respect for that.
‘Yes,’ Robert Carter said wearily. He suddenly felt exhausted, more tired than he had ever felt in his life. ‘I’ll be here.’ He switched off the phone and hugged his knees, lowered his head and closed his eyes.
He was in the same position when the cleanup team arrived an hour later.
CHAPTER THREE
If there was a bleaker, more godforsaken part of the world than Kulsay Island, John Harrison had yet to visit it. Lying three miles off the east coast of Scotland and subject to a ferocious battering by the North Sea, the island was a hard, desolate place, hunched and compact and resolutely self-contained.
As he flew the helicopter in from the mainland he could see the band of empty crofters’ cottages on the south of the island, decaying and rotten, their gray slate roofs gaping with holes, the stone walls, moss covered and crumbling, a testament to the harsh, ripping winds that blew in from the sea, and to the years of neglect. They were falling apart, tumbling down, as if the wretched landscape of the island was reclaiming them as its own. In a field to the right of the cottages were handfuls of scraggy sheep. They looked thin and unkempt, their fleeces matted and tangled, caked with mud. They had defied the odds (and the gods) to survive at all, but Harrison imagined that it was a cruel, grinding existence, trying to find ready grazing in such harsh and unforgiving circumstances.
He was heading to the north end of the island. A group of people had been stranded here as some sort of initiative course. No one had heard anything from the island in two days and the company the group worked for, Waincraft Software, was in a state of panic. The owners of the island had been contacted and Harrison had been dispatched by them to investigate, and if necessary, airlift the group off.
As he left the crofters’ cottages behind he stared down at the gradually changing landscape. The further north he flew the harder and more extreme the conditions. There was a wooded area at the heart of the island, mostly larch and spruce, but the trees seemed stunted and tortured, their crowns sorry affairs, sparse and spare, home to the ragbag nests of huge black crows who took flight in a cacophony of flapping wings and throaty cries as he passed overhead.
Harrison had been flying charters for the best part of ten years since his demob from the U.S. Air Force. Flying gun ships during the Gulf War had prepared him for any hazards he might encounter. But as he stared down at the gnarled and twisted trees he couldn’t suppress a shudder. There was something decidedly unpleasant about Kulsay: the hostile landscape certainly, but it was more than that. Experience had taught him that you get a feel for places, something deep-seated, instinctive. And Kulsay Island was working on him at this deepest level, making him feel uneasy and anxious to complete his mission and get the hell out of there again as soon as possible.
Beyond the trees the land was more uneven, with rocky crags and verdant peat bogs jostling for space within the island’s confines. There were the ruins of a small church, evidence that the community of Kulsay had once spread across the entire island, and half a mile away stood the old Manse, a great gray edifice of Aberdeen granite, imposing and austere. It was here the group was meant to be based, but as he flew over the building there was precious little evidence of habitation.
He decided to circle the island one more time before setting down. He increased throttle and the Bell AP139 bucked in the air before climbing higher into the dull, overcast sky.
Harrison had been told he could set down in the Manse’s sprawling garden, but he was concerned there were no signs of life below. If, as he had been told, the group had run into difficulties, then the sound of the helicopter should have provoked at least one of them to come out into the open. Unless something was stopping them.
As he came in for the landing his eyes searched the stand of trees surrounding the grounds, looking for any sign of life. Below him the scrubby grass of the lawn was flattened by the downdraft from the blades as he took
