THE WOMAN WHO SLEPT WITH DEMONS

Eric Ericson

NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY/TIMES MIRROR

A New English Library Original Publ ication, 1980 © 1980 by Eric Eri cson First NEL Paperback Edition January 1980

Conditions of sal e: This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

NEL Books are published by New English Library from Barnard s Inn, Holbom, London EC1N2JR.

Made and printed in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co Ltd, Glasgow

45004541 2

PROLOGUE

The Apart

In times gone by, men and women did not accept the boundaries of the visible world as readily as we do today. They looked at the edge of darkness and saw that the unknown places beyond it were peopled with creatures very unlike themselves.

For much of human history these creatures beyond were thought of as gods and were worshipped, placated and their intervention and aid sought in earthly matters. But after the rise of Christianity, the priests of the new god taught that the beings beyond the rim of the dark were devils, to be feared and shunned. By threat of death in this world and everlasting damnation in the life hereafter, they weaned their congregations slowly away from their former ways.

But for all that, the Otherworld was still there. And it is still there today, whether we deny its existence, regard it as evil or as the natural order of things, ordained from the beginning. It is not a world of ghosts but a world as physically real as our own, though existing in another dimension of space and time. And i n the places where the Otherworl d overlaps our own world, men and women can still communicate with its creatures, as they have always been able to do. Those humans who consort with the hosts of the Otherworld learn strange things and gain the power to control minds and to direct events.

For all the teaching of the Church in the past or the scepticism of the utilitarian world of today, there are still men and women hardy enough to make contact with the Otherworld . They call themselves The Apart.

They use this name for themselves because they are set apart from ordinary men and women by what they have experienced and learned. They are not bound by ordinary human considerations and restrictions. They have different emotions and different needs. They think different thoughts and have different abilities. Neither the laws of socie ty nor the restraints of common humanity bind them in any way.

There are never more than a few of the Apart living at any one time. For the vast majority of people, the way to the Otherworld never opens and they remain unaware of its existence. And of those before whom the path opens, not many dare follow it Of those who do follow it, by no means all have the strength of mind or the cold courage to continue all the way, once they realize what is required of them. And so, as they can see no way back to the safety of the herd once their feet are on that path, they either go mad or kill themselves.

But those who follow the path all the way and become truly Apart, also become more man human and at the same time less man human.

The very existence of the Apart is suspected by almost noone, for what can the sheep know of the wolf? And yet sometimes a victim of the Apart becomes aware In time of their power and their viciousness and then, like a fly trapped on a sticky cobweb, he struggles to free himself before the spider sinks its fangs into him and sucks out his life and soul.

What follows is the story of Andrew Jarvis, an ordinary man who became ensnared by the Apart through no fault of his own and of his attempts to break loose from them.

Chapter 1

There was something very satisfying about having a big woman like Dolly, Jarvis thought as he drove home afterwards. With, her husband twenty miles away across the county, she had really let herself go on the sofa in her front parlour. She sighed and shook as he fondled her heavy breasts and eased her out of her clothes. She gasped and shivered when he parted her legs. When he mounted her, sturdy thighs clenched him tight to her broad belly. Their long and breathless ride made the old sofa creak and strain under their weight until her climactic cries of pleasure rattled the farmhouse windows.

She grinned up at him, her hair tousled and sweat gleaming in the valley between her breasts.

‘I reckon you’ve had more practice at it than me, though you’re younger,’ she said, her face still flushed.

That’s because I started earlier than you did.’

‘Never think it! You don’t know what we used to get up to behind the church hall over at Chudleigh Bridge at the Saturday night hons when I was just out of school. That’s getting on for twenty years now. Me and my friend Madge were devils for the lads. We used to dare each other.’

‘Which of you had it first, do you remember?’

‘Course I remember. We both lost our maidenheads the same night under a hayrick with the Sawyer brothers - the ones that opened the garage on the main road a year or two back.’

‘How old were you - about fifteen?’

‘You know what they say round here - when a girl’s big enough, she’s old enough.’

Twenty years haven’t cooled your enthusiasm for it, have they?’

‘I’m like you,’ she said. ‘I can’t get enough. That’s the trouble, being married a long time. The only time my Ted sees to me now is when he comes home with a pint or two inside him.’ But I’ve got a hot nature and I want more than that, else you wouldn’t be on top of me now, would you?’ „

‘He doesn’t know what he’s missing, your Ted.’

She laughed.

‘He couldn’t leave it alone when we were first married. Morning and night he’d have me on my back. And he’d more than likely have me across the kitchen table in the middle of the day after he’d had something to eat Ah well, nowadays he’d rather have a doze after his meal ’

‘I can’t imagine ever getting like that I’m nearly thirty, not much younger than your Ted, and I want it all the time.’

‘Not with the same woman, though.’

That’s true. I want all the women in the world.’

‘Mind you don’t wear it out, then. Ill tell you something, Andy Jarvis. One of these days some clever woman will catch you by that stalk of yours and never let go. That’ll put an end to your free and easy life tupping round the county.’

‘She’ll have to be very clever,’ he said, smiling down at her.

Dolly smiled back knowingly and stretched her big body comfortably below him.

‘Well see,’ she said. ‘I expect to be invited to the wedding, don’t forget, when you get caught’

The lane unwound itself in front of his car. It was a warm summer evening, the light fading fast now that the sun was down. Andrew switched on his lights. Through the open windows be heard the bleat of sheep in the fi eld to his left and a faint cawcaw from a rookery somewhere nearby as the birds settled down for the night In hal f an hour he would be home with something to eat and a bottle of cold beer. It had been a very enjoyable evening.

Round a bend and he saw a car parked ahead without lights, half on the narrow road and half on the grass verge. Courting couple, he thought, out for an hour of cuddling on the back seat He’d done plenty of that himself in his younger days.

A woman got out of the car as he approached it and stood in the roadway, waving at him to stop. Summer it might be, but she was wearing a full-length fur coat open over a thin dress. The coat looked very expensive. So did her car, he noted, as he pulled in behind it ‘Can you help me?’ she called to him. ‘I’ve broken down and I’m in a hurry.’

Andrew got out and looked at her. She was a head shorter than himself, with very pale blonde hair, fluffed out He put her in her early thirties,, about the same age as the woman he’d just left, but there were no other points of similarity. This one had the look of money about her and the assurance that went with it She was attractive in a city way, not Dolly’s sturdy country way. This was no fanner’s wife, hemmed in by keeping house and the small interests of the village, but a woman who had seen something of the world and knew how to cope with it Andrew fancied her.

‘I’m not very mechanically minded,’ he said, ‘but I’ll have a look.’

She had a torch. Andrew looked at the various parts of the engine while she tried the starter.

‘No good,’ he said. There’s petrol getting to the carburettor and electricity to the starter motor. The plugs look all right At least, there aren’t any loose ends of wire. So I’m afraid it’s beyond me.’

‘Damned thing,’ she said angrily, ‘it’s only six months old. Do you know where I can get a taxi?’ Andrew smiled at that

This isn’t quite the West End,’ he said. There’s a garage near where I live that has a hire car for weddings. But I don’t suppose Jim will want to turn out at this time of night He’ll be in the Black Bull. Where are you trying to get to? You’re miles off any main road.’

‘Ive got a map. I’ll show you - jump in.’

The inside of her car was luxurious. Andrew sat on real leather, soft as a glove, while she switched the overhead light on and spread out her map. He inhaled her perfume appreciatively as he leaned close to her to follow her pointing finger.

‘We’re about here, right?’ she said, tapping the paper with a bronze-painted fingar-nail ‘I want to get here, where I’ve marked it’

The spot she had marked in pencil was on a country road between two villages. Andrew had driven along that road many a time. He visualized it in his mind, trying to remember what houses or farms there were along there . He could think of none at all; ‘It’s not all that far from here,’ he said, ‘but it’s an awkward route. It means going round through Market Penton and doubling back to get on to that road. Is that the way you were going?’

‘I couldn’t see any better way.’

‘As the crow flies it’s only a mile or so across those fields to your right. Going round by road it must be five or six at least’ ‘Will you take me there?’ she asked. ‘It really is important’ There was something in her manner that Andrew found it difficult to put a name to. She was annoyed by the breakdown, but there was more than that - some sort of agitated emotion just under the surface.

‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘I’m in no great hurry to get home. I’ll drop you off where you want to go. You can get a garage to tow your car in tomorrow. Allertons in Market Penton will do it for you if you phone them.’

To his faint surprise, all that she brought with her into his Land Rover that smelled of disinfectant and dogs was her handbag. No luggage. That seemed strange. He reasoned that she would be staying the night at wherever she was going and that called for hand luggage. Unless, his lubricious fancy suggested, she sleeps naked and has all the make-up she needs in her handbag.

‘You live locally, do you?’ she asked as he drove off. ‘I’m the vet in these parts. My name’s Andrew Jarvis.’ ‘I’m Bianca Hallam and you were quite right earlier on about the West End. I do live in London.’ ‘I never doubted it’ ‘Why is that?’

‘I’m not sure. Your hair, maybe, or your clothes. Are you visiting friends?’

‘I imagined vets to be older,’ she said!

The only jewellery she wore was a wedding ring. Andrew wondered what she would be like in bed. She hadn’t answered his question and that made him wonder what sort of friend she might be visiting without her husband.

‘If s a bit different in the country,’ he said, “we’re not like town vets looking after poodles and pet cats. Most of my patients are cows or pigs. I did treat a dog a few months back, come to think of it . It was a sheep dog that nearly lost a foot in a snare.’

‘Were you successful with it?’

‘In a way. But it had a bad limp afterwards and its owner put it down because he thought it couldn’t do its job properly. Are you often in this part of the country?’

This is the first time. Have you always lived here, Mr Jarvis?’

‘Call me Andy. No, I’ve been here about four years. What happened was that my father died unexpectedly and left me some money from a life insurance policy and a house, soon after I’d qualified; My mother died years ago. So as I’d always wanted to live in the country, I came to work for the vet here , an old boy who wanted to retire. After twelve months with him I knew Td found the right place for me, so I bought the practice and his cottage and he went to live in Bournemouth.’

‘Very fortunate for you. Is this Market Penton we’re coming into?’

‘It is. Market days Wednesdays and Saturdays, as the guide book says. We go down past the garage - the one you can get to fix your car tomorrow - turn right at the church and we’re on the road to Steeple Ayton. From there we can pick up the road you want’

It was not yet ten o’clock but the High Street was deserted.

‘What do people do here in the evenings?’ Bianca Hallam asked.

‘Not much. The men go for a pint to the pub, the women stay at home and put the children to bed and dam socks. The teenagers sit in the Wimpey bar and drink imitation coffee until it closes at eleven. Not a bit like London.’

‘What is it that you like about living in the country?’

The space, I think. The distance between people and places. The simplification of life.’

‘Is your life so very simple then?’

He glanced sideways at her. She was staring at him with her head tilted to one side. Her expression was neutral, but he could see in her eyes that she was weighing him up.

‘I try to keep it simple,’ he said, shrugging lightly, ‘but complications will keep breaking in.’

At the road fork he turned right and followed the winding lane cautiously in the fast garnering dusk.

This is the road you marked on your map. The house you want must be a mile or so along. Will you recognize it?’

For the life of him he couldn’t remember any buildings along this lane at all, not even a cottage. Memory said it was open fields all the way to the next village.

‘I’ll tell you when we get there,’ she answered.

She sounded tense.

‘Isn’t there a local landmark along here?* she asked, It’s shown on my map.’

‘What sort of landmark?’ Andrew asked. ‘Oh, you must mean Longman’s Hill. It’s down here on the left I’ll point it out though it’s going to be too dark to see it from the road by the time we get there , I should think.’

‘Is it famous for anything?’

‘Not that I know of. The legend was that there was a giant sleeping under it and one day he’d wake up. It’s man-made, probably an old burial mound from whenever in the past they built that sort of thing. It’s never been excavated, as far as I know. They’re pretty rare here in East Anglia, you know. Mostly they’re over in the West Country.’ ‘Where is it exactly?’

‘On our left somewhere. Ifs well back from the road. There are three oak trees together and then a bit further on there’s a white five-bar gate into the field it’s in. Look, there are the trees now. And there’s the gate just down the road.’

‘Stop here,’ she said. I want to look at the map.’

He pulled up and switched on the interior light for her. He was amazed to see her open the car door and get out

Thank you for the lift You’ve been most helpful’

‘But I can’t leave you here. You’re a couple of miles from the nearest house.’

‘Good night, Mr Jarvis.’ He sat astonished as she closed the door and walked away. After a minute or so he drove on, his mind in a whirl. What on earth could she want on a deserted country lane, miles from anywhere, at this time of the evening? It made no sense at all.

It bothered him so much that round the first bend in the road he switched his engine off and coasted to a stop, turned his lights off and sat thinking.

When you arrange to meet someone, you don’t leave it as vague as halfway along a lane between two small villages. You pick a spot both parties can identify clearly, like outside the public library or in the saloon bar of the Black Bull. The only clearly identifiable spot along this stretch of road was Longman’s Hill , which she had asked about and where he had set her down. Therefore she must be going to Longman’s Hill, because there was nowhere else for her to go.

But for what possible reason would you meet anyone at so remote a spot so late hi the evening? Any activity requiring such a degree of secrecy had to be either illegal or very odd. And even then, it was easy enough to think of equally secret and far more convenient places.

‘Not my business,’ he said aloud, giving up the puzzle. He switched his engine on and men off again.

Damn it he thought, if I leave it like that it’s going to worry me all night I’ve got to find out what she’s up to. Besides, she might need help. A city woman on her own at night in the country - she could get lost or run into harm. She’s a woman I wouldn’t mind helping. Under that cool exterior of hers there’s real fire, I could sense it

He left his Land Rover with the lights off and set off silently back the way he had come, keeping to the grass verge. Five minutes brought him to the five-bar gate, its peeling white paint showing faintly in the dark. It moved as soon as he put his hand on it Country people don’t leave gates unlatched, he thought, she must have gone through it He went after her, across the cropped grass of the field. Ahead of him he could just make out Longman’s Hill as a black lump against the night sky. It was oval in shape, flat-topped and about twenty feet high. Not a natural formation, according to the experts, but built deliberately in the long-forgotten past by tribes of men and women carrying baskets of earth and piling it up. Probably a burial mound over bones that had flaked away to dust a thousand or more years ago.

There was no sign of the woman. He stood listening for a while in the dark. It was so quiet mat he heard a dog fox bark from very far away. And then he thought he caught a faint sound from op on the top of the mound.

He went up the slope very quietly, wondering what his mysterious passenger could be doing up there. If that’s where she was. He might have reasoned it out wrongly and be making a fool of himself. By now she could be a mile down the road or in another car, or anywhere.

He’d soon know. Near the top of the slope he lay flat on the short dry grass and inched forward until he could look over the edge without being seen.

The flat top of Longman’s Hill was about twelve paces by twenty paces across the oval. And there she was. In the faint starlight he could see th at she had taken off her expensive fur coat and spread it on the ground. As he watched, she kicked off her shoes, undid the back of her dress and pulled it over her head. Her white body gleamed against the black sky and showed him that she wore nothing under the dress.

What could she be up to, he wondered, stripping off on top of a bill in a field? The obvious answer did not seem appropriate, as she was alone.

Stark naked in the warm night air, she lay down on her fur coat, her arms stretched out as if crucified, her legs wide apart in invitation.

His mind was agog with lewd speculation. He could hear her talking quietly, as if to herself, though he could not distinguish the words. She sat up abruptly and pointed in his direction.

‘I know you’re there I’ she cried angrily. ‘You’re spying on me!’

Ashamed of being discovered in an act of gross voyeurism, Andrew rose to his knees.

‘I’m sorry,’ he called to her. ‘I was worried about you. I thought you might need help.’

‘Get away from here,’ she shrieked at him furiously, ‘run for your life!’

‘Are you sure—’

His question was never finished. Something large and hard slammed into him, as if Be had run blindfold into a brick wall. His mind a blaze of pain, he felt himself hurled over backwards. He rolled helplessly down the slope, struggling to draw breath into his bursting lungs.

He lay at the bottom of the slope for some time, unable to move. His chest ached as if his ribs had been stoved in and his head felt as if he had smashed it against a concrete floor. He tried to get up and his legs collapsed under him. If whoever hit him came down the slope to finish the job - the sudden fear made Andrew start to crawl across the grass towards the distant gate to get away. The effort sent waves of agony through him until he retched.

There was no room in his mind to wonder what had happened or who had done it. Only the need to keep moving towards the road and safety. There was no way of telling how many times he collapsed and lay stifling his moaning as he slithered across the field. It seemed hours before his trembling hand touched the wood of the gate and held on to it When he was able, he hauled himself upright hand over hand up the bars of the gate and clung to it He looked back the way he had come. Longman’s Hill stood out as a solid black lump against the starry sky, but his eyes were blurred and watering and the whole nightscape seemed to be reeling. He hung on to the gatepost while he unlatched the gate and got through. As soon as he let go of the post his legs folded again and he had to crawl down the lane towards his distant vehicle.

He tried to stay on the grass verge but he was badly dazed and kept weaving off on to the roadway itself. The hard surface lacerated his palms and knees and, each time this new pain

forced itself on his attention, he crawled back to the grass.

Several times he lay nearly unconscious face-down before he bad the strength to get moving again. When at last the Land Rover loomed up before him in the darkness, tears of relief trickled down his face. He fumbled the door open and hoisted himself in.

For a long time he sat slumped over the steering wheel He was too far gone to drive. He’d rest a while and then when he was up to it he’d follow the road to the first house he came to and get them to send for a doctor and the police. He lay down sideways along the front seats, every nerve and muscle jangling with pain and passed out

Chapter 2

Birdsong woke him slowly. He was cold and cramped. He struggled into a sitting position, wondering where he was and what had happened.

He was in his Land Rover, parked by the roadside. The dawn chorus of birds was in full voice. His watch was broken, glass gone and hands twisted, but he guessed from the advancing daylight that it was between four and five in the morning. He w as shivery all over, except for his hands and knees and they were burning. He looked down to see his scratched and dirty knees protruding through the shredded cloth of his trousers. His palms were equally torn and inflamed.

He pieced together the events of the night A woman he had picked up and followed. Someone hitting him in the dark when he saw her naked. A long slow crawl back. He got out of the Land Rover and found that he could stand. He stamped down’ the road, to get his blood ci rculating and to get the cramps out of his back and legs. Nothing broken. He opened his shirt and found no bruising. In fact, he realized with some astonishment, his only injuries were skinned knees and palms.

All the same, he thought, somebody’s going to pay for this. He’d drive to the village and put the police on to that yellow-haired bitch. Through her they’d find whoever had beaten him and he’d bring a charge of assault Besides any other charges the police would want to bring when they heard about the nude cavorti ngs.

He was back at the field gate before he knew it. It was unlatched and open, as he’d left it when he’d fallen through. Lucky there were no cattle in the field or they’d be halfway down the road by now. He stood looking at Longman’s Hill, green and smooth in the early morning light What the hell could that woman have been up to? It wouldn’t be Midsummer Night for another couple of weeks, so it wasn’t likely that she was one of th ose idiots they got round Stone henge at the solstices. Besides, they wore long white robes, as far as he knew. They didn’t prance around in bare skins.

For that matter, she hadn’t pranced, round either. She’d’ stripped off and lain down with her legs apart as if for a man.

She was some sort of freak, that was sure, and the man she’d lain down for had crept up and belted him with something heavy.

On an impulse Andrew went into the field and towards the hill to see if the strange Mrs Hallam, if that was her name, had left any signs of what she had been up to. Though if it was no more man kinky sex, he thought, you wouldn’t expect to find any signs.

The sun wasn’t warm enough yet to burn the dew completely off the short grass. He glanced back to the gate and could see his own footprints. They were the only ones. The lady and her rough-neck friend must have cleared off before the dew settled. Reasonable enough - an hour of rolling about naked would have cooled th em off.

Something caught his eye at the bottom of the slope. It was his pen. It must have fallen out of his pocket as he came rolling down. He felt through all his pockets to see if anything else was missing. His loose change was gone, scattered in his headlong fall, but nothing else.

He went up the steep slope, his feet slipping on the still wet grass. The lady was not there, of course. But her clothes were.

He looked at the discarded shoes and dress, damp from the dew, and an alarm bell sounded in his head. The fur coat was gone, but her handbag was there. That really worried him. It was just possible that after a sexual rave-up under the stars she had been so exhausted that she had put on her coat and gone home, leaving shoes and dress. But it was unlikely - and she wouldn’t have left her handbag.

He rummaged through it quickly. Lipstick, other make-up, a thin leather wallet containing eighty pounds in new ten pound notes and a couple of credit cards. Her name really was Hallam, it seemed.

He put everything back and stood up, his mind racing. It was entirely within the bounds of possibility that she had been killed, accidentally or purposely, and her body taken away wrapped in her long coat . But if someone had gone to that trouble, why leave her belongings here?

A local would have taken the belongings and left the body, knowing that it might be months before anyone climbed Long man’s Hill, by which time she would be hard to identify.

There was a distinct trail through the dew across the field below him, on the side away from the gate to the road. Something had been dragged. Without hesitating, Andrew went sliding down the grassy slope. He could see where the trail led - to a small tumble -down cattle shelter by the hedge. He knew the sort of thing well, three sides and a roof of corrugated iron. Inside there would be an earth floor trampled into ruts by cattle and a trough where the farmer could put feed for the animals when there was deep snow on the ground.

He found her in a corner of the shelter, a long still bundle wrapped in the coat, the silk lining on the outside, the collar turned up to cover her face. He crouched beside the bundle to see if there was anything to be done before he went for the nearest constable.

Poor silly bitch, he thought, what a way to go. I hope to God they believe me when I tell them what I know. I could well be number one suspect. What a bloody mess to get involved in.

A faint cough from inside the bundle made him start. She was still alive I He pulled the coat collar down and touched her white face. Cold, but not the cold of death by a long way. How badly was she hurt?

Carefully he turned her from her side on to her back and opened the coat The beautiful fur was stiff with caked blood. Her pale body was criss-crossed from neck to knees with cuts and scratches and smeared with bipod, some of it dry and some of it still sticky. The lacerations were most severe on her small breasts and between her thighs.

That’s what the newspapers call sexual assault and no mistake, he thought It must have been a madman who did that to her. He put his hand under her breast to check her heartbeat . It was regular enough, though weak.

To Andrew, who was used to coping with cows that had ripped themselves on barbed wire and sheep worried by rogue dogs, her injuries did not look desperately bad. One or two of the deeper gashes might need a stitch. She had lost some blood, but the lacerations looked mostly superficial . They would soon attend to her in the cottage hospital and then the police could takeover.

As he wrapped her in her coat again her eyes fluttered open. Pale blue eyes, frightened and blank.

‘It’s all right’ he said, ‘you’re not badly hurt I’m going to pick you u p and carry you to the road. Do you understand? Don’t be frightened. You’ll be in hospital soon, where they can look after you properly.’

She moved her lips.

“Don’t try to talk. You’ll soon be in good hands.’ ‘No hospital, ’ she whispered. ‘Don’t argue now. You need attention.’ ‘You do it then. I’ll make it worth your while,’ ‘I’m not a doctor.’

She managed to sit up, the coat falling away from her naked and bloody body.

‘You’re an animal doctor,’ she said weakly, ‘you told me so. You can take care of a few bites and scratches.’

‘But you’ve been attacked. I’ve got to report this to the police.’

‘No, you haven’t,’ she said, her voice a little stronger. ‘I don’t want people interfering and asking questions.’

Andrew wrapped the coat round her and picked her up. She was small and light, thank God - it was a fair trek across the field and down the lane to the Land Rover. Once he had her in it he intended to ignore her delirium and get h er to the cottage hospital at Ch udleigh Bridge.

Her tousled head lay against his neck as he carried her across the field. Close to his ear her lips began to whisper to him, though not in words he understood. It was just a murmuring of sound and as he tried to make sense of it, bright images swirled through his mind and blotted out the empty green field and th e rearing bulk of Longman’s Hill.

He was lying on Dolly, revelling in the feel of her body under him, her big soft breasts flattened by his chest, their hot bellies squeezed together. They were climbing up the slope of sensation together, not far from the top of it . She was panting and whimpering and pushing back against his thrusts. He felt his breath rasping in his throat as he laboured on her.

No, it wasn’t Dolly at all - it was Janice. She had locked up the public library for the night and taken off her heavy rimmed spectacles. In the dark of her room she whispered her fantasies to him while they lay side by side on the divan, his hands roaming over her flat belly and into the split of her thighs. These were the only times she could give words to the dreams that boiled up inside her schoolmarm front ‘… tied me up so I couldn’t move hand or foot and rolled me over face down on the carpet and stood over me stark naked with a riding crop in his hand and slashed it across my bottom. I was pleading for him to stop but he went on and on till I was screaming for mercy. He was threatening me saying this is only the beginning, what he was going to do to me next he was going to put it in my mouth and choke me with it He rolled me over on my back and whipped my belly till I looked at it I could see it jumping as he stood over me nearly a foot long thick and angry-looking . I knew he was going to kill me with it I was so terrified. Oh I’m coming Andy do me now.. -‘

No, it wasn’t brown-haired, slight Janice at Market Penton, no it was tall fair-haired Laura, walking over the fields with him in the evening, the sun an orange ball behind the distant church steeple. Laura, nineteen and spoiled by her well-to-do parents, an expert in petulance when she wished … ‘Why on earth you’ve brought me out here I simply can ’t imagine.’ Then the sweet struggle under the stand of oak trees to get her jeans unzipped. Take your ha nds off me, what do you think you’re doing?’ A ripe peach betwee n his fingers, soft-fleshed, lightly fuzzed, full of sweet jui ce. She clung tight and moaned in her throat when he split her peach.

Weekend in London with her later. Memories of Laura spreadeagled on a rumpled bed, her long legs thrashing. And kneeling in the warm sudsy bath, her firm pink buttocks thrust towards hi m as he climbed in behind her.

Andrew tripped and fell painfully to his torn knees, almost

dropping his burden. i

‘What the hell—’ he said aloud.

He had stumbled over the doorstep of his own cottage and was kneeling on the doormat The woman in his arms was clinging tightly round hi s neck. ‘How did we get here?’ he asked in bewilderment ‘You drove us,’ she said faintly. ‘You’re going to look after my scratches.’

That’s right’ he said doubtfully, trying to remember. He was confused and it seemed only a moment ago he had found her in the shelter.

Upstairs in the bathroom, he sat her down, still wrapped in her ruined fur coat while he took off his jacket and turned the water on. He noticed that she was holding her dress and shoes, bundled round her handbag.

‘How did you get those? They were on top of the hill’

‘You got them for me.’

When the bath was ready, he helped her out of her coat and into the water. “Lie and soak for a few minutes. I’ll get my gear.’ ‘It stings,’ she complained feebly.

‘I’m sure it does. Close your eyes and try to relax. Let the warmth seep through you. I won’t be a minute.’

The clock downstairs said ten to six. Andrew went outside to get his bag from the Land Rover parked by the front door. There was no one about yet that h e could see, but the village was only a couple of hundred yards down the road and they were early risers. He went back upstairs, taking the things he thought might be useful She was lying with her eyes shut and her head on the rim of the bath. The water was tinged with pink. Andrew held her in a sitting position with one arm while he cleaned the scratches and cuts round her breasts with wet cotton wool. Her nipples looked swollen and painfu l.

‘Who did this to you?’ he asked as he worked.

She shook her head wearily.

‘Not now,’ she said.

He lowered the water level in the bath to attend to her other abrasions. These were worse than the upper ones. She had gouge marks in the flesh of her belly and inner thighs, as if she had been clawed by a large and ferocious animal. Her pubic mound was smooth shaven and the scratches there looked very re d and angry on the soft flesh.

Andrew lifted her out of the water, wrapped her in a big towel and carried her to the bedroom.

‘This is going to hurt a bit, but I’ve got to put antiseptic on those scratches. I’ll be as careful as I can. Are you hurt internally?’

It seemed too intimate an action, to part those plump lower lips and examine her. She understood what he meant

‘No, only what you see,’ she said.

After that she lay with her eyes closed and fists clenched, catching her breath every now and then as he applied the antiseptic. Even as he worked on her torn body, one part of his mind kept insisting that she was a very attractive woman, her body exposed to him as to a lover.

Some lovers she has, he thought wryly, me with the antiseptic repairing the damage done by the one last night

Could it have been an animal? It seemed unlikely that human fingernails could have ripped her skin like that. A big farm dog on the prowl, maybe? No, because then she would have bite marks on her neck and hands where she would have tried to protect herself. And she had neither. Whichever way yon looked at it her wounds were wholly sexual in nature and the intention had been to hurt her but not to kill her.

He straightened his back at last, the final dressing in place, and covered her with a soft blanket

‘I expect you could do with a cup of tea and a couple of aspirins,’ he suggested. She nodded.

‘I’ll make it Then you’d better sleep for an hour or two while I think what to do next We can’t leave it like this, you know.’

He sat in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil. He felt played out He tried to recall what had happened between finding her and bringing her home, but his memory was a total blank. Had she hypnotized him in some way? The only other explanation he could think of wa s that the beating he had suffered the night before had concussed him slightly and his memory was playing tricks. That was another strange thing - he’d been knocked halfway across a field and hurt so badly that he couldn’t walk, but this morning there wasn’t even a bru ise-on him.

‘ He made the tea and took two mugs of it upstairs with the aspirin.

‘There we are. How are you feeling now?’ ‘Sore.’

He helped her sit up while she sipped the tea.

‘Have you decided what you are going to do?’ she asked.

‘I don’t see why you’re so reluctant to let me take you to hospital and call the police. You’ve been seriously assaulted surely you want to do something about it?’

‘You’ve got it wrong. I wasn’t assaulted. Let’s leave things as they are - there’s no real harm done.’

‘I’ll make a bargain with you. Tell me what happened last night and I’ll forget the whole thing and you can be on your way as soon as you feel up to it’ ‘You know what curiosity did to the cat?’

I’ll take a chance. Is it a bargain?’

She sighed.

It’s a long story and I’m not up to it just now. Let me sleep for a couple of hours and then we’ll see.’

‘Fair enough. I’ll wake you at lunch time.’

He drew the curtains to dim the room and went downstairs. He took the phone off the hook, left a note for Mrs Richardson when she came in to do his accounts and settled down on the sofa in the front parlour. He wanted no calls that morning to go and look at pigs with a rash or non-laying hens. He felt so weary that he didn’t care if every pig in the county dropped dead in its tracks.

He was dozing and half-dreaming about Longman’s Hill and a naked white-skinned woman lying on top of it. She had spread her arms and her legs wide in invitation to him to mount her. He thought he heard a soft step behind him and then something cool touched his temple gently, like a woman’s finger tips. He slid deeper and deeper into profound and dreamless sleep.

He woke up feeling refreshed and full of energy. There was a pleasant hardness behind his flies. If he could persuade the woman upstairs to stay overnight perhaps she would let him into bed with her. She wasn’t too badly hurt and he would be gentle.

The clock on the mantelpiece caught his eye. Ten past six. It must be later than that - it was nearly seven when he had dozed off. He checked his wristwatch, but it was smashed and useless. He l ooked at the window and saw that the sun was westering.

God Almighty, he thought getting quickly to his feet it’s six in the evening - I’ve been asleep all day!

He went up the stairs two at a time. The bedroom door stood open. She was gone. Only the rumpled bed and a blood-smeared bath towel remained to assure him that she had ever been there.

That was not quite true. On the dressing-table she had left him. fifty pounds in ten pound notes.

Chapter 3

The house was on Cheyne Walk, overlooking the Thames. A big house, a rich man’s house, thought Andrew. It was Sunday morning, bright and clear and a pleasure boat loaded with tourists was gliding up the middle of the river towards the bridge further up.

A tall man in a black suit opened the door to the belt He stared at Andrew impassively, taking note of his leather-elbowed tweeds and heavy brown shoes.

‘Mrs Bianca Hallam?’ Andrew asked.

‘Mrs Hallam is indisposed, sir. She is not receiving visitors.’

The door began to close.

Wait Tell her it’s the vet from Longman’s Hill.’

‘My instructions are clear. No visitors. If you wish to leave your name…’

The man’s tone indicated that the name would be forgotten the moment the door closed.

‘Damn that! You go and tell her who’s here. She’ll see me.’

The door was almost shut Andrew put a hand against it and pushed hard to hold it ajar.

‘If she doesn’t see me,’ he added, ‘I’l l be back in ten minutes with a policeman.’

The threat produced no change in black suit’s expression but it evidently got through to him.

‘If you’ll wait here, I’ll see if Mrs Hallam is well enough to see you.’

‘She’s going to see me, alone or accompanied by the law. You tell her that’

All the same, he was left on the doorstep for a good five minutes before the man returned.

This way,’ he said.

Walking behind him, Andrew saw that he was not only tall, he had broad shoulders and a solid way of putting his feet down. He looked as if he would know what to do in a brawl. It came into Andrew’s mind that this might well be the one who had crept up and belted him so hard on top of that damned hill.

He was shown into a large and handsomely furnished sitting room and told to wait . Black suit went away.

The most striking thing in the room, the object which seized the attention at once and held it was an oil painting of Bianca Hallam on the wall over the marble mantelpiece. She was depicted sitting in a high-backed wicker chair with an orange cushion, turned slightly away from the observer.

She was naked, her knees together and her hands joined in her lap. The expression on her face was uncanny. The painter had given her a blank, open-eyed look, a cold stare into nothingness.

It was unusual for a woman to display a portrait of herself like that for all to see, Andrew thought unless she inclined towards exhibitionism. Or perhaps her husband was like the king in the old legend who was so besotted by his wife’s physical beauty that he displayed her naked for his friends to admire and envy him his fortune in having such a woman. And that king came to a bad end, as Andrew remembered the story.

Whatever the motive, there she was on canvas, on show for everyone who was allowed into this room. Me, f or instance, he thought though I’ve seen and touched what the painter has hidden behind those clasped hands and closed thighs. Seen and touc hed, but not enjoyed. Still, I’ll know your little slit if I see it again, he thought grinning.

The door behind him had opened so noiselessly that he was only aware that she was in the room when he heard the rustle of clothes. He turned to face her. She wore a black silk dressing-gown, tied at the waist Her ash-blonde hair was brushed, but she wore no make-up and looked pale. She walked stiffly, he noted, as she crossed the room and sat down in an armchair.

‘You wanted to ‘see me, Mr Jarvis?’

The voice was freezing cold. Andrew was clearly a nuisance to be got rid of as quickly as possible.

‘I came to return this,’ he said, pulling out the fifty pounds she had left on his dressing-table.

‘Not e nough, I suppose. Very well, I’ll double it but that’s the limit’

Andrew was annoyed by the i mplication.

Ten times that wouldn’t be enough,’ he said nastily.

‘Ambitious, are you? Or plain greedy? If you push your luck too far, you’ll regret it I’m not afraid of your silly threats about policemen.’

Andrew’s temper was fraying.

‘I don’t want your money. All I want is a simple answer. If

you ha d trusted me after I found you, that would have been

the end of it But no - it had to be the mysterious disappear ance and leave a tip for the first-aid man. To h ell with that and

to hell with you too.’

He threw the money on the carpet between them. She glanced at it for a second and then back at him.

‘Mr Jarvis, what is it that you want from me?’

‘I want to know what happened on Longman’s Hill, that’s all’

‘And then you’ll go away and leave me alone, is that it? That’s it’

‘What can I tell you? I could make up any number of stories to explain what I was doing out there, but they wouldn’t sound convincing.’

The simple truth is all I want ’

The truth in this matter is not simple at al l. You wouldn’t

understand it’

‘I’ll tell you what you were doing in the dark with no clothes on,’ said Andrew, ‘it was some sort of witchcraft ceremony that got out of hand and you were accidentally hurt That’s what all the mystery is about You dont want to admit it because you think I’ll laugh at you.’

‘If that explanation satisfies you, I’ll admit it’ she said.’

“Now we’re starting to get somewhere. Only one more thing I want to know - who hit me?’

‘Surely you must realize by now that I haven’t the slightest intention of telling you anything at all. You can guess as much as you like. The thing that puzzles me is your persistence. I’d like to know your motive. How did you find where I live?’

‘Easy enough. I phoned round till I found the garage that towed your car in and repaired it It was no great problem to get your address from them.’

‘You went to this trouble because you wanted to track me down? Merely to satisfy your curiosity? It sounds too thin. Unless you are one of the Apart, of course. I wouldn’t have thought so, but I may be wrong for once. Are you?’

‘Am I what?’

‘No point in lying about it You can tell me.’ ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about ’ ‘Sometimes people don’t know it themselves. We’ll have to find out . Sit still for a minute.’ She stood up, untied the belt of her black dressing-gown and shrugged it off her shoulders. It slid down her white-skinned body to the floor. She had nothing on under it and Andrew’s eyes were drawn to the excoriations he had treated around her breasts and between her thighs. The angry red was starting to fade as the skin healed, but he guessed that she was still sore and tender.

‘Battle-scars,’ she said, moving towards him. “You did your job well - no sepsis.’

That’s one battle you lost,’ said Andrew huskily as she stopped beside his chair.

‘You’re wrong about that I won it’

She leaned over him, her small breasts near his face and put the palms of her hands on his temples. The coldness of her touch surprised him.

He tried to reach up and take her wrists to pull her down into his lap and fo und that he couldn’t move at all.

‘Sit still,’ her voice said from a million miles away.

It was like sitting before a cinema screen watching a film of himself. He saw himself standing alone in her sitting-room, as he had a few minutes ago, staring at the nude portrait over the mantelpiece. Then he was being shown in by the man in the black suit He was driving along the Embankment to Cheyne Walk, looking for the house number. He was driving into London, heading for the Embankment It was all his recent memory being played backwards. He struggled to stop it happening and found that be was unable to break the stream of images going through his head.

Like a film it rolled past his day’s work yesterday, visiting two farms, vaccinating pigs, examining sheep’s hooves for suspected rot joking with Frank Hodgson’s teenage daughter in the farm kitchen. Then the day before that faster and faster, like a tape-recorder on high-speed rewind.

The backward sequence of memory slowed down for the episode with Bianca. He watched himself treating her in his cottage, lifting her out of the bath, finding her in the cattle shelter before that crawling in the dark to his parked Land Rover, sick and hurt, sneaking up the hill to spy on her, driving her out there, meeting her by the roadside with her broken-down car.

It stopped and went back to where he was treating her lacerations as she lay naked on his bed. This time it went through the whole sequence slowly as if something in particular was being looked for. He lifted her from the bath, he drove her to his cottage, he found her huddled in her ruined fur coat, he crawled like a run-over dog along the lane in the dark.

After that the flood of memory flowed faster again. And faster still, until it was at a dizzying-pace, ft rushed back through his life so fast that he could hear himself screaming silently inside his head for it to stop. Days were compressed to seconds, years to brief sequences. Women, adolescents, schoolgirls, bared their bodies for his pleasure and were gone so fast that he couldn’t even recognize them. Years at university were gone in a flash, schooldays, his parents and home, childhood, everything he had ever done, everywhere he had ever been, everyone he had ever met His mind was breaking down under the strain. His consciousness was fading. People had gone, time had gone, every-‘ thing had gone. There was only warm darkness for an instant or two and then there was nothing at all.

When he came to, he was totally disoriented. His brain felt as if it had been shredded. Nothing quite fitted together. He couldn’t remember his name or where he was or why.

Through a blinding headache that forced him to keep his eyes closed, he began to discern that he was lying uncomfortably on his side with his knees drawn up. The thing he lay-on swayed and jerked, rolling him about slightly.

Eventually he made out that he was in a moving vehicle. He got up on one elbow, groaning at the racking pain that burst inside his skull. A man looked briefly over his shoulder at him.

‘Stay quiet and you won’t get hurt,’ he said.

It was the man in the black suit who h ad opened the door at Bianca Hall am’s house. And the vehicle was Andrew’s own Land Rover, with his vet’s gear in the back and the smell of disinfectant After a couple of false s tarts Andrew managed to speak. ‘Where are we going?’

‘You’re going home, sonny. Where I’m going is none of your business.’

Andrew put his hands to his head and the touch recalled Bianca’s cold fingers touching him.

‘What the hell happened?’ he asked. ‘Did you creep up behind me and hit me on the head, like the first time we met?’

‘I didn’t hit you. And I’ve never seen you before today.’

‘Bullshit You cre pt up behind me on Longman’s Hill and laid me out . So I owe you something. What’s your name?’

‘Braddock, if you want to know. You’re not making much sense, sonny, so you must be still rambling from what she did to you.’

‘She hit me? What with a poker?’

Braddock laughed in a most unfriendly manner . ‘Listen, chump,’ he said, ‘nobody hit you. Mrs Hallam didn’t exactly believe your tale when you turned up uninvited this morning. She’s got her own ways of finding out about people. It lays them out for a while. She gave you the full treatment . She gutted your brain like a herring and pulled the lot out . You won’t forget that in a hurry. You’ve been out cold all day in the cellar waiting for it to get dark enough for me to drag you out of the house and dump you. She doesn’t like the neighbours to see the trash being taken out’

Andrew realized at that that the day was gone and that it was dark outside.

‘What did she do?’he asked.

‘I told you. She knows all she wants to know about you now. Not that there’s anything worth knowing, if you want my opinion. I expect she wanted to make sure you weren’t up to anything. She could have saved her self the trouble and asked me -I could see you were nothing when I opened the door.’

‘She made me remember everything I’ve ever done. How did she do it-drugs?’

‘Don’t be simple. She doesn’t need drugs. She knows how to control people.’

‘She’s some sort of witch,’ said Andrew, surprised at his own words.

Braddock laughed again, a sneering noise that made Andrew wince with pain.

‘I suppose you believe in witches out in the sticks with the yokels. Do they dance round the holly-bush bare-arsed till the cows stop giving milk? Do you still burn old women in the market-place?’

Andrew recognized where they were. The next turn left off the main road would put him about seven miles from home. Braddock obviously knew where they were too. He pulled into a lay-by and switched off the engine.

‘Listen to me and listen hard,’ he said, his arm along the back of the driver’s seat so that he could turn and stare at Andrew crouched in the back of the Land Rover.

Andrew thought about punching him in the face. But he was feeling weak and his head hurt too badly for a sustained fight Braddock would surely get the better of it . So it would have to wait ‘Are you listening to me or have you dozed off aga in?’ the sneering voice asked. ‘I’m listening.’

‘Good, because I’ve got a message for you from Mrs Hallam. She thought you might be something special when you turned up today. But you’re not . So you go back to your pigsty and stop bothering he r. Got me? If you come round both ering her again, something very nasty will happen to you. She can do that make no mistake. All she wanted today was information - and look what that’s done to-you. If she really decides to hurt you, you’ll know all about it Got me?’

‘I don’t know what you’re threatening me with, but I’ve got the drift’ said Andrew, pulling himself together.

‘Right men. I don’t personally want to see you get hurt and I’ll tell you why. I’m the one that has to clear up the mess afterwards.’

‘You do a lot of that, do you?’

‘I do what I’m told. And if I get told to haul your remains out to some disused tip, that’s what I’ll do. So be warned and mind your own business from now on.’

Andrew said nothing. Braddock reached over the back of the seat and smacked his face open-handed, not very hard but enough to sting.

‘You’re on your own now, sonny. Don’t make the mistake, of following me out of this heap of tin and starting anything, because if you do I’ll give you the biggest thrashing you’ve ever had in your life. Just stay put till I’ve gone and then go on home to your cup of cocoa.’

Braddock got out leaving the door open and walked away. Andrew turned to see where he was going and saw the lights of another vehicle twenty yards behind him in the lay-by.

That must be Bianca following to pick up her trusty factotum, he thought Black-suit Braddock, butler, housekeeper, disposer of unwanted bodies. An unpleasant though useful person to have around a house like the Hallams’.

Right Braddock, I owe you a punch in the mouth and I won’t forget it He waited until the other car had turned across the road and driven off back towards London before he climbed into the driver’s seat and headed for home. His head ached unmercifully.

Chapter 4

Bianca stood looking at him, naked and white-skinned against a background of thick purple-black. Andrew could see that the skin of her breasts and thighs was healed and unscarred. The confident way she stood and stared at him made it plain that she was displaying her body to please and arouse him. And as he dreamed, he knew it was a dream.

It had not been like this before when he had scrutinized and handled her. She had been little more than a hurt animal needing his attention then. She was showing herself to him now in full glow. There was an aura about her that he had not felt before, a heavy sexuality that made his blood course, very different from the coldness he had divined in her when they had talked in her house. This new aura radiated out from her like the heavy scent of a flower to attract a bee to it She stood with her feet slightly apart. Her right hand lay at the join of her thighs, touching the smooth-shaven lips there. Even as he watched, her middle finger parted them and moved slowly up and down. Her left arm was stretched out towards Andrew, the palm open and upwards, in a gesture of invitation.

She is a witch, he mumbled through the stirring in his body, a witch making a spell. Casting a spell. Casting it on me. The warmth in my body and the pull I feel towards her comes from what she is doing to herself. She manipulates her own body to control my will through my body as it responds to hers.

He looked up into her face and into the eyes under curving thinly drawn eyebrows, trying to fathom her expression. Her wide mouth twisted in a half-smile. She spoke to him, he could hear her words distinctly, though she was not speaking in words at all .

Come to me, Andrew Jarvis.

He tried to speak and found that he had no voice. In his mind he objected strongly, Why should I do what you want? You threw me out before.

She heard his thought and answered it; Because I want you now. Come to me.

Andrew had more control of himself than he had thought and her answer wasn’t good enough.

‘Why do you think you can push me around? You skipped off when I was trying to help you and you got your gorilla to dump me by the roadside when I came to see if you were all right; Come to me, Andrew.

What do you think I am - Billy Baghot’s prize bull being led to a heifer on heat? Climb up and do your duty and then be led back to the stall by a ring through your nose?

The ring is through your nose, Andrew, and the end of the rope is in my hand. Come to me.

Not me, Bianca. You’ve got a nice body and I wouldn’t mind giving you a roll on the bed. But not on your terms. You’re a taker, not a giver. I don’t need you.

‘But I need you. Come to me.’

‘Why? Because you’re suddenly randy for me? I don’t believe that Inside that pretty body you’re cold and hard. You’re trying to catch me for something. Leave me alone - there’s nothing doing.’

Her eyes were half-closed and her mouth was open, sighing. The fingers between her thighs were moving rhythmically. Waves of sensuality emanated from her and beat at Andrew. He caught his breath for a moment almost overwhelmed, and then gritted his teeth and shook the sensation off.

No, he said inside his head.

You have no choice, Andrew. Look up.

He looked above her pale blonde head. There was only the purple-black nothingness of the background. He looked higher and higher, wondering what she had meant. It was odd, the way the background pulsated, as if it were at the same time solid and yet not quite solid. The colour of it was impossible to define. Purple-black, yes, but more than that . It gave the impression of having reds and yellows dissolved in it not visible and yet they were there. It was a colour for which he could, think of no name at all.

He looked higher yet tipping his head backwards. His heart bounded in sudden fright as he saw at last that what he had taken to be there darkness was a huge figure standing behind Bianca.

It was so enormous that she was dwarfed into insignificance by it like a pebble at the foot of a mountain. It was too big to see properly, it outspanned his field of vision. Then the perspective shifted and he saw it from much further off. Bianca was a tiny white-bodied doll at its foot and it loomed above her to a staggering height The outline of it wavered and changed, yet he could sense that the figure was solid enough to have weight and strength beyond anything he knew.

The configuration was roughly human, though the proportions looked wrong. There was a round, head-like shape at the top and Andrew had the impression of two arm-like limbs and two column-like legs supporting a massive trunk. None of the limbs showed separately, but even so he could feel that they were too short for the torso. In the wavering obscurity of its colouring it was not possible to make out features on the head, neither eyes nor mouth, except that he knew at once when the monstrously-sized thing directed its gaze towards him. There was a sharp agony inside his brain as if his skull had been pierced through with a long needle.

Bianca’s voice spoke again, tiny and from a great distance: You have no choice. Come to me.

Andrew had never lacked courage. In the grip of the sweating nightmare afflicting him he still managed to think NO.

There was a shift in the swirling opacity behind Bianca, like thunderclouds rolling, as the shape appeared to reach down and touch her for an instant At once she began to cry out, Yes, yes, yes—She was back close to him again, the vision of the dark thing gone. Her hand was clenched tight on the smooth lips between her widely straddled legs. The fingers of the hand reaching towards him curled like claws. Her eyes were staring wide open and sightless as in her orgasm she wailed, Yes, yes, yes—Yes, Andrew groaned, unable to say anything else men.

Her face relaxed slowly as the ecstasy receded in her. Her mouth settled into a smile of contentment She held out both arms towards him, sure of her power.

I am waiting for you, Andrew. Come to me now. Hurry.

Yes, he groaned again, Yes.

She vanished at once and he sat up, throwing the bedclothes aside. His chest was wet with sweat and he was gasping for breath. It was very dark. He felt for the bedside lamp and couldn’t find it Someone stirred and sighed alongside him.

It was then that he remembered where he was. He got out of bed carefully so as not to disturb his companion and groped his way to the window. He pulled the curtains back to look out The sky was still dark and set with myriads of stars, each a gleaming silver point He leaned his sweating forehead against the cool glass.

God, what a dream, he thought I’ve got that damned woman on my mind and now she’s giving me nightmares, even when I’m in bed with another woman. How the hell is it possible to have an erotic dream when you’ve just fallen asleep after making love? Besides, all that nastiness with Bianca Hallam was weeks ago. It was about the beginning of June when I. met her and it’s nearly the end of August now. Why am I dreaming about her?

Andrew had driven nearly thirty miles the evening before to meet Sandy and take her out to dinner. It had been three or four weeks since he had last looked her up, but she was always pleased to see him. After a solid dinner and a couple of bottles of good wine, he took her home and they were soon locked in each other’s arms, mouth to mouth. From that it was a short step to the bedroom and the shedding of clothes. He handled and used her body well, to the satisfaction of them both, until at last they fell asleep.

Andrew turned from the window his breath had steamed up to look across the room, over the girl sleeping in the dark, to the glowing numbers on the bedside clock. Two fifteen.

It doesn’t make sense, he said to himself. A couple of hours after doing it to Sandy, I’m having dreams about Bianca Hallam playing with herself. And all that stuff about her telling me to come to her -I suppose that was my libido informing me in its own devious way that I still fancy her. But the truth is, now that I’m awake, I don’t fancy her at all She’s cold and unsympathetic. I’d as soon stick it up a shop-window dummy. There’d be about the same response.

And while we’re on the subject of truth, one simple fact is that I’ve woken up from that dream with a hard-on. You can’t argue about what that means.

He groped around in the dark for his clothes and started to dress without realizing what he was doing.

Make the most of it, he thought Get back into bed with Sandy and stroke her very gently in the right places till she wakes up randy and ready. She’ll grab me round the waist as she always does, and pull me to her so hard that I’ll feel her breasts flattened against my chest I’ll ease my way inside her and ride her over the moon and back. Then we’ll go back to sleep feeling great He picked up his shoes and carried them so as not to make any noise and wake Sandy. He closed the door behind him very carefully.

In the Land Rover he put his shoes on and started the engine. Must come over and visit Sandy more often, he thought as he drove away. She’s really keen on sex and she’s got just the right comfortable build for it Can ’t imagine why she and her husband split up when she had all that to offer.

He was well on his way to London before he became fully aware of what he was doing.

I must be out of my mind, he thought with a start, I’ve got out of a warm bed with an enjoyable girl and I’m halfway to London in the middle of the night to call on someone who had me dumped with a bad headache in a lay-by. All because of a dream-what the hell am I up to?

Not for a second did it occur to him to turn back. He hunched over the steering wheel, foot down hard, racing along the empty road, a man obsessed. Billy Baghot’s bull with the scent of a cow on heat in his nostrils. Fragments of his dream lingered in his mind, overriding his reason. Bianca’s thin wrist slanting across her belly so that her fingers touched her slit and moved along it Her mouth sighing with lust Her wailing cry of Yes, yes, yes.

It was nearly light when he turned along the Chelsea Embankment and made for Cheyne Walk. There was no one about City folks are late risers, he said to himself.

He braced himself for an argument with Braddock when he rang the doorbell.There was no need. Bianca opened the door herself. She was wearing the same black silk dressing-gown he had seen her in before, but this time it was parted down to the tie-belt to show a long inverted triangle of white and unblemished skin from her coll ar-bones to her navel. He recog nized her smile - it was the same smile of contentment as in his dream after she had compelled him to say yes.

‘Come in,’ she said, ‘I’ve been sitting up all night waiting for you.’

As if entranced, he followed her upstairs to her bedroom. He had never seen a room like it before. It was done in white, the carpeting, the walls, the heavy brocade curtains, and this gave prominence to the one mass of colour in the room - the wide, ornately carved, red-lacquered bed. It had the look of antiquity and immense value.

The undisturbed pillows and sheets were a rich crimson in colour and he soon discovered why. Bianca stood by the bed with her back to him to untie her belt. The black silk slithered down her body to the carpet and she lay on the bed holding her anas out towards him. The contrast of her white skin against the glowing red of the sheets was visually stimulating. Theatrical almost, but effective. ‘Come to me,’ she said softly.

Andrew fumbled impatiently with his clothes. He knew that this moment was a turning-point in his life. Though quite how, he was at a loss to explain to himself. A chance meeting in a country lane had brought him to the very threshold of some Immense and unimaginable experience. Nothing would ever be the same again after this.

What can be so important about it, the independent and sceptical part of him asked, as he hopped from foot to foot to get his trousers off. She’s only a woman, like all the others you’ve had. She’s not even as good-looking as some of them have been. She’s got the identical equipment all women have and it’s spread out there for you to see. Two breasts and a slit Not even big ones to hold on to, like Dolly’s. And that hairless slit makes her look too young for sex. Until you look into her eyes. Then you’re in no doubt that this one knows more about sex than all the women you’ve ever been with put together.

Free of his clothes, he put one knee on the soft bed and leaned over to take her face in his hands and kiss her. Her tongue flickered between his lips and into his mouth like a questing snake’s. She pulled him down beside her and he gasped in surprise as he felt the cold touch of her body. He ran his hands over her sides, marvelling at their coolness.

Even as he did so, she was no longer cool to the touch. As if a switch had been thrown or a furnace door opened, a flash of dry heat licked at him and set his senses ablaze. There was no time for foreplay and no need. His fingers between her parted legs found her open and wet . All thought of pleasure had been seared out of him by the fierce heat that engulfed him. He was driven by a hunger that was painful to penetrate her flesh and achieve release. Her hands tugged at him to mount her and he pushed deep inside, his loins jerking of their own volition.

There was a roaring in his ears, his breath rasped in his throat as he thrust and thrust with mindless violence, nearly at his moment Bianca’s face smiled up at him through his blurred vision. She was detached and unaffected by what he was doing to her. She was in control of herself and in control of him, mind and body. The last rational shred of his mind saw how she was using him, understood it accepted it and discounted it as he reached his climax.

Bianca’s small hands gripped him by the hair above his ears and pulled his mouth down on to hers. She sucked the breath from him at die same time that her belly sucked the seed from his spouting erection.

Andrew wailed into her mourn as he experienced the brief glory of the moth in the candle-flame, fluttering wings ablaze, body shrivelling and blackening in the consuming union.

Chapter 5

Andrew woke alone in the big red bed. There was no clock in the room but he could tell from the light coming in through the long windows that it was past midday.

He had the distinct feeling that something extraordinary had happened to him, but at first he was unable to say what He ran through the events of the night as he remembered them, starting with the dream,, followed by his headlong drive to London and the coupling w ith Bianca Hallam. The sheer in tensity of that had been like nothing he had experienced ever in his life. Never had he been so aware of a total loss of his own will and of being utterly in the power of another. In retrospect it was displeasing - and more. It was humiliating. He would do everything in his power to avoid being trapped into that situation with her again.

Yet some deeply implanted feeling tugged at him, refusing to be ignored or swept away. Bianca was not like other women. No one could make the mistake of thinking she was only a partner in sexual pleasure. She had the ability to command rather than to comply. She imposed complete submission. The unwelcome feeling that was nagging at Andrew was that she had become the only woman of importance in his life.

That was frightening in its restrictiveness. It made him vulnerable.

While he was sorting through his muddled emotions, Bianca. came into the room. She was fully dressed, as if to go out hi a pale green safari suit

Without a word of greeting, she set a white chair about a yard from the side of the bed and sat down. Naked under the crimson sheet Andrew stared back at her, not knowing what to make of the physical distance she had put between them.

‘You’re a witch,’ he said, to break the uncomfortable silence. ‘You put some sort of spell on me last night to bring me here. I never believed that such things were possible.’

‘I’m not a witch,’ she said, smiling mirthlessly.

‘Why bother to deny it to me? I know what happened. I’m here as living proof.’

“There are witches,’ she told him. They usually get together in little covens, as they call them, to develop their occul t powers. I’ve met one or two. I’m not one of them.’ ‘What are you then?’

That’s a long story and you’re not ready for it yet’

‘Ready or not, I shall explode with curiosity if I dont find out Why did you bring me here like that? You can tell me how you did it later - for now, just tell me why.’

‘Because I wanted you here.’

‘Why?’

She frowned slightly at the question.

‘Wasn’t that obvious? You can’t have forgotten what we did when you arrived.’

‘I remember all too well what we did. That’s why I’m asking. You’d like me to remember it as a marvellous night rolling about together in this bed. It wasn’t like that at all. It was like a spider feeding on a trapped fly. I was the fly and there was no pleasure in it for me. And I’ll tell you something else -there was no physical pleasure in it for you either. So what was it about?’

Her pale face set in a stony mask.

‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ Andrew went on, leaning on one elbow to face her and point a finger at her.

With a start he recognized the way she was sitting. It was the pose of the portrait in the sitting-room, straight-backed, knees together, hands joined in her lap. An open-eyed and staring look on her face. It terrified him, though he couldn’t say why.

‘No!’ he said quickly. ‘Whatever you’re going to do, don’t do it for a minute. Let me say my piece first. You’ve nothing to lose by hearing me out’

Her expression didn’t change, but Andrew took faint comfort from the sighing exhalation of breath he heard. At least she wasn’t going to strike him dead in the next few seconds, or whatever other condign fate she envisaged for him after he had revealed that he had not been duped by her performance in bed.

‘Your first spell worked,’ he said, picking his words carefully. ‘It dragged me away from another woman and brought me here. Even now I find it almost impossible to believe that anyone could have that power. But it happened. Then there was a second spell in this room, when you opened your legs for me. I didn’t have you - my God, no - you had me. If that spell had worked the way you meant it to, I’d be your lapdog at this very moment . Isn’t that right? You’re wondering why it didn’t work properly. So am I. You’re angry and you’re planning to get rid of me because I might be a nuisance now that you’ve brought me this far and not got me under control. Isn’t that about the size of it?’

Bianca said nothing. Her eyes still had the look of staring into nothingness.

The fact is,’ Andrew went on, ‘it seems to have half-worked. I don’t know what you want me here for, but I’m ready to go along with it You’ve achieved that much. I won’t jump when you snap your fingers, but I don’t think I shall ever be able to leave you alone. I don’t like you, but I’m hooked on you. If you tell that thug of yours to kick me out, I’ll put up such a fight that hell think he’s fallen under a threshing machine. You can’t ever get rid of me.’

The dead don’t come back,’ she countered.

‘Can you be sure?’

‘What do you mean by that? Do you know something?’

‘Only what I’ve been told. Not twenty miles from where I live is an old rectory so plagued by the dead that nobody can live there.’

‘Village pub gossip,’ she said, her mouth twisting.

‘Maybe. But a lot of people have tried to live there, people who didn’t believe in ghosts. None of them stayed long and they all told the same story.’

‘What sort of story?’

He had her interest now.

‘Someone crying in the night Messages for help scrawled on the walls of locked rooms. They’re pulling the rectory down now and building a row of council houses on the site. The locals say that the ghosts won’t vanish with the old building. They’ll sail be there with their ever lasting misery, whatever’s built.’

‘You believe this?’

‘I haven’t experienced it myself. I’ve only the evidence of other people, so I’ve no view one way or the other. If s a very consistent story, told over a long period of time, that’s all I can say.’

‘And you think that you could come back and haunt me after your death?’ Andrew smiled at her.

‘I’ve not the least idea. What I know for sure is that you have in some way implanted in me a strong drive towards you. Whether that would survive my death in some disembodied form, wh o’s to say? You’re the one who should know.’

Her stiff face relaxed and her eyes focused on him.

“No,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what happens to people when they die. I’ve never seen a ghost and I don’t believe there are such things.’

‘Well, you believe in something pretty strange. And I’m here in your bed as proof that you have psychic powers I didn’t believe in until last night ’

She said nothing for a while, evidently weighing up the position. Andrew watched her face, wondering what was in the balance. He felt like an addict waiting for a dealer, to supply him with a fix. Bedding her once had done that to him.

‘You need a shave,’ she said. ‘We’ll have lunch downstairs in twenty minutes.’

He took that as a small sign of encouragement

In the bathroom she showed him he found an electric razor and set to with a will. He studied his face in the mirror as the razor buzzed away round his jaw. He had always been slightly vain about h is looks. Strong nose, dark brown eyes, lean cheeks. Most women found him attractive. Not Bianca - she was indifferent to appearances. He had felt that at their first chance meeting. She had not got him to her house for either his looks or his ability in bed.

The wonder of how she had managed to drag him to her from so far away was still with him. But that was overlaid by the larger mystery of why she had exerted such extraordinary powers at all.

He reasoned that in the last few weeks, since the time she had caused him to black out in her sitting-room and had the manservant dump him on the roadside, something had happened to change her evaluation of him. At that time she had no use for him at all . Now she had a use. Her attempt to subjugate his will to hers in one frantic act of copulation suggested to him that her need for him was of mighty importance to her. And in turn that suggested that she had come to a crisis of proportions beyond his grasp. One thing he was sure of was that while he fully intended to do whatever she wanted him to do, he still had a fighting chance of surviving it with a whole skin. And the reason for his optimism was that he still retained control of his own will . Or felt that he did.

Bianca was waiting for him in the dining-room. Two places were set together at one end of the table that would seat ten. Braddock waited on them, serving lunch with the skill of long practice. He said nothing to Andrew at all . There was no need. His eyes were full of mute malice every time he looked at him.

“What’s the matter with him?’ Andrew asked when Braddock left the room.

‘What do you mean?’

“Come on - you must have seen his expression. If he could put arsenic in my food and get away with it, he would.’ ‘He’s jealous. It’s nothing to worry about’ ‘Jealous of me?’

There’s no need to sound so incredulous. You slept, with me. If s as simple as that’

‘And he wants to sleep with you?’

Her delicate shrug indicated of course.

‘As you’re being so frank,’ said Andrew, ‘answer me something else. I’m not the first to climb into the red bed with you. Does he behave like that towards all of them or is it only me?’

‘He’s like that every time. To tell you the truth, I find it tiresome. More than once I’ve thought of getting rid of him.’

‘Has he worked for you long?’

‘He and his wife kept house for my husband before we were married. They stayed on afterwards.’

‘His wife’s a good cook. This soup is excellent’

‘She left him. He does the cooking himself.’

Braddock came back into the room to serve lamb cutlets.

‘Mr Jarvis is being complimentary about your cooking,’ said Blanca.

Braddock scowled.

‘Your husband,’ said Andrew, when they were alone again, ‘what happened to him - are you divorced?’ ‘No, he’s abroad.’

‘Oh,’ said Andrew thoughtfully, that changes things a bit. I hadn’t reckoned on that’ ‘On what?’

‘What he will say if he comes back and finds me around.’

‘He’ll certainly come back in his own good time, but there’s no telling when that will be. The last time I heard from him he was in Sarawak.’

‘What’s he doing there?’

‘You’d have to know a lot about Edwin before you could understand that For aU I know he may be on a plane or a boat at this very moment heading for home. Or he may be away for years yet One thing I can promise - when he comes back, he won’t rush around asking “Who’s been sleeping in my bed?” Does that put your mind at rest?’

‘You’re on such distant terms with each other and yet you stay married?’

Bianca laughed at his simplicity.

If you knew anything at all about either of us you’d realize that sexual fidelity has no meaning for us, even though we are on closer terms than you could conceive. I don’t use the word love to describe our relationship because it means nothing to people like us. We are far beyond such restrictive emotions. Can you grasp that?’

‘About you, yes. You use other people’s emotions and your own sexuality to achieve your purposes. And from what I’ve seen so far, they’re pretty outlandish purposes. Is your husband the same?’

‘Edwin is one of the Apart,’ she said, answering his question indirectly, ‘just as I am. He achieved it first and he showed me the way. I’ve gone far beyond him since. The pupil outdid the teacher. It often happens that way.’

Andrew had finished his food. He looked across the table at Bianca’s tranquil face framed in ash-blonde hair and wondered what on earth she was talking about With anyone else of his acquaintance this conversation would be impossible and insane. But with her, he had no doubt that almost anything was not only possible but almost commonplace.

‘Apart; he said picking up her word, ‘apart from what?’

‘Apart from ordinary men and women. Enlightened, if you prefer the word. Illuminated, perhaps. Above the usual petty human considerations and restrictions. We have different emotions, different needs, we think different thoughts, we have a different knowledge and different abilities. The laws and rules that inhibit and bind ordinary people do not restrain us. They are sheep, we are tigers. We make use of them when we choose. We call ourselves the Apart’

She said it very calmly and without any emphasis but it chilled Andrew like a cold wind to hear her words and follow their implications.

‘Are there many of you?’ he asked.

‘Only a few. For the vast majority of people the path never opens and they are not aware of its existence. And even when ‘ the path opens, not many dare follow it. And of the few that do, not all have the strength and courage to continue, so, as there is no way back into the safety of the herd, they either go mad or kill themselves. As you see, there can’t be many of us at one time.’

It sounds daunting, to say the least. What are the advantages of being Apart for those who survive this far?’

Her dark blue eyes shone as she smiled at him.

‘For me, total freedom to do whatever I like, whenever I like, with complete immunity.’

‘Do you know,’ said Andrew, smiling back at her, ‘you sound like Dr Faustus. Have you sold your soul to the devil? Is that what you’re telling me?’

She laughed. ‘If only you knew the times I’ve been asked that question. Of course not There is no devil. You’ll never understand while you think in terms of Christian mythology, or any other mythology either.’

‘I dare say not How do you become one of the Apart - that may explain it to me.’

She fell silent as Braddock came in again to clear away the plates and serve cheese. He topped up the wine glasses from a crystal decanter and left

“You have to realize that there are other worlds than this,’ said Bianca, ‘very different worlds that exist in other dimensions of space. They are invisible to us even though they overlap our own world. They are as real as our world, not ghost worlds or spirit worlds. And they are inhabited by beings totally unlike us. Their powers are colossal by human standards, though there are things we can do that they can’t So perhaps it seems to them that we have certain colossal powers.’

‘You’re not talking about beings from other worlds within our own star system or even our universe, are you?’ said Andrew, following her words carefully. ‘You said other dimensions. Do you really mean that?’

‘Of course. In the places where their world overlaps ours you can communicate with them, if you know how. More than that you can physically be with them, so that they have an existence in our worl d and you have an existence in th eir’s, both together.’

‘Longman’s Hill,’ said Andrew.

That’s one of the places. There are many.’

‘So that’s what you were doing up there? Judging by the state you were in when I found you the next morning in the cattle shelter, the inhabitants of this mysterious overlapping world are a rough lot ’

‘Ordinarily no. They are gentle and well-disposed. In return for what they want they will teach you amazing things - ways of controlling people’s minds and of directing events.’

Andrew’s face must have shown that he was not taking her seriously. Bianca shook her head at him.

‘It doesn’t matter in the least whether you believe me or not,’ she said, I’m only telling you because you asked.’

‘You must admit that it sounds preposterous.’

‘To you it must. You’re one of the sheep, sticking close to the flock and nibbling grass. There’s nothing in your sheep’s brain to let you grasp what it feels like to be another kind of creature altogether. One with claws and fangs and the strength to tear sheep to pieces whenever it wants to.’

T

‘I know more about sheep than you do,’ said Andrew lightly, ‘and even a silly sheep knows enough to run away from an attacker.’

Bianca smiled sourly at him.

‘I called to you across a great distance last night’ she reminded him, ‘and you got up from bed and drove here to me. The last time you were here I wanted to know more about you, so I touched your head and you showed me every detail of your life back to the moment you were conceived in your mother’s womb. Would you call that power? Those were trifling things. There’s been no reason yet for me to show you what I can really do if I try. So tell me which of us is the sheep and which the tiger.’

There’s no denying that you have extraordinary psychic powers,’ he said cautiously. ‘I can only accept that fact and marvel at it But this business of consorting with unseen beings from an invisible world - that takes a bit of swallowing.’

To me it is an everyday fact I can be patient with you for not seeing it as clearly as I do. Well leave it for now and talk about it another time when you are better prepared for it’

‘You said that you learned this from your husband. Has he been up Longman’s Hill at night?’

‘No, that’s only for women, that way. Why do you think you were knocked down when you tried to spy?’

‘I wasn’t spying and I don’t know who knocked me down. I thought it was Braddock.’

‘He was here in London that night. It was the Great One who came to me. He thought that you wanted me and he hurt you to get rid of you. You were lucky you weren’t killed -their strength is unbelievable.’

‘You might have been killed yourself. In fact, I thought you

were dead when I found you. You’re telling me that a s pirit

raped you, is that it?’

‘Not raped -I went willingly. The Great Ones only come to the willing. I’ve done it many times before and never been harmed. Something went wrong that night Perhaps I’ll tell you about It when you understand more. And the Great Ones are not spirits in the sense that you mean. They are real, with bodies as solid as yours and mine.’

‘What do they look like?’

They manifest themselves only at night You can’t see them when you’re with them, only feel them with your hands and body.’

‘So how did your husband cross the barrier between this world and theirs?’

“He didn’t He has never found a way. That’s why I am so far in advance of him.’

‘But you said that he is one of the Apart!’

Bianca got up from the table.

‘I’ll have Braddock serve coffee in Edwin’s study,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you about him and then you will start to get a glimmering of what I’m talking about’

Chapter 6

Edwin’s study was expensively furnished. At one end stood a

leather-topped desk with a high-backed swivel chair and at the other four armchairs in soft black leather stood round a low square table. While Braddock busied himself pouring coffee,

Andrew explored the shelves of books that lined two whole

walls of the room.

He found atlases, trade year books, economic surveys, political memoirs, books on warfare and histories of various campaigns and wars. Dull stuff, he thought Further along he came to less prosaic material There were books on anthropology, and palaeontology, psychology and tribal religions, British pre-history … Andrew lost interest Hallam seemed to be a student of the roots of the human psyche. Andrew wasn’t He took a pragmatic view of people, tried to see them as they were, without bothering himself much about what external or internal pressures or drives had shaped them. To his way of looking at it once you started to probe at motives and the inner life you were led to comparing people with what they might have been if things had happened differently for them. That brought in value judgements, which were not only meaningless but outright misleading. Take a man for what he is, that was Andrew’s way - and a woman too, naturally.

He sat down opposite Bianca in one of the comfortable armchairs and took the coffee she handed him. While he spooned brown sugar into it he said: ‘In my experience, when you’ve talked to most women for a while, you can form a picture of the sort of man they’re married to. Especially if you go to bed with them. Women tend to take an imprint of their husband. But I can’t imagine any man making that sort of impression on you. I’m at a loss to imagine what your husband is like. This room says very little about him either. I would guess that you chose the furniture. The books indicate an interest in such a variety of subjects that the whole thing is self-cancelling.’

‘Surely, the fact that he is married to me indicates that he seeks direct personal experience of the transhuman.’

‘I’ve no knowledge of mysticism, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Mysticism … what an inadequate word. There was a time when Edwin had no knowledge of mysticism either. It came to him unsought for and unwelcome.’

‘How long have you been married?’

Ten years. I was twenty-three and Edwin was nearly fifty. He was like no one I’d ever met before and I’d met some unusual people. I knew men with power - physical power, political power, all that Edwin had this unmistakable inner power that was so intense that it was almost frightening. It was because he was one of the Apart, of course, though I knew nothing about that then. He told me about it after we were married and came back to England.’

‘You met him abroad?’

‘Yes,’ she said briefly.

She was silent for a moment. Her small and slender figure seemed almost lost in the big black leather chair.

‘How did he come to be Apart?’ Andrew prompted her.

It happened when he was in India during the war. He was a young lieutenant, fed up and drifting around Calcutta one day with nothing to do. He wanted a girl but he was afraid of catching something if he went with a prostitute. Twenty-two years old and painfully English. You realize, of course, that I’m telling you the story the way he told it to me a long time later.’

Andrew listened, building up a picture in his mind from her words. A naive young man in uniform, mooching around a foreign city, bored and depressed.

An Indian, lank and gaunt with rags wrapped around his middle, stopped Edwin and asked him in passable English if he wanted his fortune told. That raised a wry smile. Edwin knew his immediate future already. His unit was waiting to go into Burma to fight the Japanese. The future was crawling through jungle, being shot at The only question was which would get him first the Japs or the jungle diseases.

He was waving the Indian away when the man said something that caught his attention. He said that Edwin would live to be old and would die in his own country, not in a foreign land.

You will be set apart, not like other men, the Indian told him: it is in your face.

Edwin decided to go along with the man to see what else he might say. He had nothing else to do. At the back of his mind there was the faint hope that this might be a come-on for a girl. A nice, clean, young Indian girl who would strip for a reasonable sum of money and let him work off his pent-up frustration.

The man led him up alleys that stank, around and through a maze of shabby buildings that nearly touched each other overhead, noisy with the overflowing life of poverty-stricken Calcutta. After a longish walk they came to a hovel set between other hovels and Edwin hadn’t the least idea of where he was or how to get back.

There was no girl, as he’d hoped, only a boy of thirteen or fourteen, as skinny-ribbed as the man. That was not to Edwin’s taste at all The Indian asked him for money to tell his fortune and as he’d gone along this far, he gave the man what he asked. The boy took his rags off and squatted naked on the trodden earth floor, while the man poured something from an earthenware bowl into the boy’s cupped hand. To Edwin it looked like ink. The boy stared into the little pool of black liquid in his hand, his head hanging down, hardly breathing. The man squatted in front of him and went into a wailing song. It seemed to last a long time.

Edwin squatted on his heels with his back against the dirty wall, wondering what was going on and quite convinced that he was wasting his time and money. It was overpoweringly hot and stuffy in the small room and he was thirsty and sweating.

The boy seemed to have gone into a trance staring into his handful of ink. Then he lifted his head and growled. It was so curious a sound that it turned Edwin ice-cold in a second. The boy was making the sort of noises a big cat makes, a deep throaty rumble, not at all the sound a boy of that age could make normally. After a while the growling took on the intonation of words, though not English words. The man was listening closely, his head tilted to one side. To Edwin’s surprise, he began to look scared.

The boy turned his head to look at Edwin and his face was strange. His mouth was pulled back at the sides to show his eye-teem and his eyes had closed to slits. Even though Edwin knew well enough that the locals were skilled in the arts of duping foreigners for their money, he couldn’t get rid of the impression that something else had taken over the boy’s mind and body. He assumed that the boy was a medium of the type he’d heard about back home - people who claim that a spirit speaks through them. Not that Edwin believed in such things, but he knew that they went on.

He asked the Indian what the boy was saying. The man wouldn’t tell him. He shook his head, rolled his eyes, waved his hands about and finally asked Edwin to go. Edwin said he hadn’t paid for nothing and insisted on being told. The Indian threw his money on the filthy floor and told him to take it and go. That really got Edwin interested and he went on trying to persuade him.

The man got frightened and then surly. All the time, Edwin could hear the boy rumbling away like a big cat and he felt that it was important to him to find out what was being said. But the man wasn’t saying anything except Go , until Edwin lost his temper and shouted at him threateningly.

To his amazement, the Indian snatched a long knife from a pile of belongings on the floor and made menacing gestures with it to force Edwin out of the room. By now Edwin’s temper was really up. He grabbed the man’s wrist to hold the knife away and punched him hard on the jaw. The Indian went over backwards, Edwin stooped to pick up the knife and put it in a safe place while he found out what was going on.

As he bent over, something sprang on to his back with a shock that sent him staggering. It scratched at him with claws and bit at the back of his neck. Edwin threw it over his head and saw that it was the boy. He had gone berserk. He twisted in the air as he fell and came scuttling back at Edwin, screeching like an animal. Without a second’s thought, Edwin lashed out with his boot and got him on the temple.

Edwin was confused and frightened of what was happening - the sudden and inexplicable violence - but the moment his boot connected, he knew that he’d kicked too hard. The boy went down like a sack of wet sand. He lay on the floor on his back, his legs twitching, while blood trickled out of his ear.

Edwin stood appalled by what he had done, his shirt stuck clammily to his body by cold sweat. The boy lay in front of him, his skull cracked. The man lay across the other side of the hovel, unconscious. Edwin’s instinct was to run like hell and get as much distance as he could between himself and what he had done. But he was rooted to the spot by the gruesomeness of what was happening to the boy. Before Edwin’s eyes, the naked and unconscious boy’s thin penis stiffened, not gradually in the normal way, but in three or four quick jerks. It stood hard in a couple of seconds, then the thin belly convulsed and the boy ejaculated over himself. As he did so, his mouth gaped wide and he screeched like a tom-cat i n the night Edwin closed his eyes, numb with shock. When he opened them again, the boy was limp, his eyes rolled up to show the whites. He looked dead.

Without knowing why, Edwin threw his arms up over his head to protect himself from — from what? He could see nothing that threatened him and yet he felt a heavy shadow hanging above him. Then into his mind came the knowledge of what he had to do to protect himself.

He had no wish to be caught and tried for murder. Especially not with the boy’s body as it was - it would look as if Edwin had been involved in some sort of sex act with him. There was no telling what the Indian would say. He alone could identify Edwin.

Without hesitation, Edwin knelt on the unconscious man’s chest picked up the knife from the floor and cut the throat exposed below him. He had no qualms about it as he watched the blood gush out In fact it made him feel good, he realized. He enjoyed watching the man’s life pour out of him in a big spreading puddle.

Quite soon after that Edwin’s unit was moved into Burma. Although he could not explain it to himself, Edwin knew with absolute certainty that he couldn’t be killed by the Japanese. The events in Calcutta had changed his fate in a way that protected him physically. He led his men accordingly. The first time they clashed with a Japanese patrol, Edwin simply charged them head-on, firing his revolver from his hip. His startled men followed him and they wiped out the Japs with only one casualty of their own. A few more incidents like that and Edwin was on the way to becoming a living legend.

Soon he was going out of his way to look for trouble and find action. At first he shot the enemy soldiers, but it didn’t feel quite right He wanted the sensation he had experienced in Calcutta when he had cut the Indian’s throat and watched him die. So he started to carry an ordinary infantryman’s rifle and use the bayonet As soon as he skewered his first Jap through the belly, kicked him off the bayonet and stood over him watching him squirm and claw the earth with his fingernails, the sensation came surging back through Edwin, fiercely exultant Over a time, he came to understand that the spirit or whatever it was, that had spoken through the boy in Calcutta, had transferred itself to him. It liked killing. Not remote killing with a gun, close-up, hand-to-hand savagery was what it enjoyed - torn flesh, spilled blood and hard dying. Edwin did his best to see that it got as much of that as possible, because ie knew that it was protecting him from death in order to enjoy the taking of life. He had to keep his side of the unspoken bargain.

Edwin was mentioned in despatches, decorated and soon promoted to captain. His men didn’t have the same charmed life as he did and the casualty rate was high. That was to be expected. The Japanese got to hear about him from the few survivors who had seen him in action from the fringe of a skirmish. Their field intelligence took an interest in his whereabouts, hoping to kill or capture him.After a tour of duty which bad brought him prominently to the attention of his own and the enemy command, Edwin and his diminished unit were sent back to Calcutta for a rest He went back without the slightest fear of being apprehended for the two deaths he had caused there, because he knew that nothing could happen to him. Nor did he have any fear of going with a prostitute on his first day back. He was as immune to disease as to death.

After a ferocious orgasm, he came to himself lying on a naked brown girl he had strangled. He gazed down at the popping eyes and protruding tongue, his hand still locked round her bruised neck.

What he had done did not frighten him, but it dismayed him to realize that the spirit that protected his life had no use for sex except as a part of killing. For a young man in the flush of vigour to resign himself to celibac y was hard indeed. There was no other choice. He got away with it that time, but he had no intention of risking it again. He sweated out his leave until he could get back to Burma and give free rein once more to the blood-crazed thing which possessed him.

Before he went back, he found out more about it. A Hindu priest he talked to told him that there are earth-bound and disembodied forces roaming everywhere, hungry to break through into the world of warmth and sensation by possessing humans. This was their only means of escaping their own cold and silent plane of nothingness. When one of them found a human that would accept it it squeezed into his mind and enjoyed a vicarious life through its host Edwin asked him if he meant ghosts - spirits of the dead - and the priest said that the forces he meant had never lived and never could live without the aid of a welcoming human.

Are they all the same, was Edwin’s next question, to which the Hindu shook his head gravely and said that there were many different kinds. Some were delighted by copulation and made their hosts insatiable; some lusted after blood and turned their hosts into murderers. After that he looked closely into Edwin’s eyes and started to pray, hurriedly as he scurried away into the depths of his temple.

Edwin also consulted a Muslim to see if he would confirm what the Hindu had told him. This one said that such creatures were called Afrits and were spirits of destruction that sucked the souls out of men and put themselves in their place, so that they could walk the earth in human form and terrorize all they met Are there a lot of them in India, Edwin enquired. Yes, was the answer, and in every other country too. Our only protection against the Afrit is to seek refuge in God.

Edwin had no intention of doing that He was merely curious about his familiar. He was content to leave things as they were, owe his life to it and let it have the satisfaction it wanted in return.

Back in Burma the Japanese army was being rolled slowly southwards. Edwin threw himself into soldiering with total enthusiasm and dedication. He fully intended to be a war hero by the time it was over. Captain he might be but he did not stay back behind the fighting line relaying orders to his subordinates. That job he left to his second in command, while he went forward with his men. Not merely with them, in front of them, carrying an ordinary army rifle with fixed bayonet His greatest moment came at the assault on a fortified Japanese supply dump. It was stockaded and wired and behind the wire there were machine-guns, mortars and riflemen throwing everything they’d got at Edwin’s company. Not for a moment did he hesitate. He led his men in a screaming head-on charge through the hail of missiles until they were close enough to lob hand-grenades into the Japanese positions and follow up through the wire. Edwin lost a lot of men in the charge, but he had thinned out the enemy too and the odds were not overwhelmingly against him in the hand-to-hand battle that took place inside the dump.

A Japanese officer saw Edwin bayoneting men left and right and came running at him firing his revolver. Not one bullet touched Edwin, though the last two were fired from not more man six feet away. The Japanese threw the useless revolver at him an d as Edwin ducked to avoid getting it in the face, drew his sword - a long, curving, double-handed blade, razor-sharp along both edges. The spirit in Edwin roared out loud in jubilation at the sight This was the joy of its being, a fight to bloody death against an opponent who would not cringe away.

Bayonet against sword, they fought their crazy duel, sweating and panting in the muggy air. The Japanese screamed the fighting-words of the samurai as he rushed and swung, parried and feinted. Edwin jabbed with his bayonet at belly, throat and groin, weaved and ducked, roaring the whole time like a tiger. He knew that he was going to kill the other man and he was enjoying it The Japanese officer was a good swordsman and put up a tremendous fight . But he was only human. Edwin at that moment was something more.

His time came when his opponent began to tire. Edwin was still as strong as ever, buoyed up by the ferocious spirit in him. He ducked under a wild swing of the sword that would have taken his head neatly off and smashed his rifle butt into the other man’s face in the butt-stroke and kill move of army bayonet training. The Japanese went down, his nose and cheekbone smashed. Instead of following up with the kill thrust into the midriff, Edwin threw his rifle away and picked up the sword his opponent had dropped. He hefted it in both hands, raised it above his head with a scream of pure delight The Japanese saw what was coming and tried to scramble away, his face a mask of blood. Edwin slashed at him with the sword and took his right arm off just below the elbow. The man collapsed face-down on the trampled earth, his stump spurting blood like a tap.

Edwin put his boot into the man’s ribs to roll him over, face-up. He wanted him to see what was happening to him. The Japanese was shouting in fear through broken teeth and blood as the sword slashed down again and took off his other arm up near the shoulder. It was a wonderful sword and it seemed to sing in Edwin’s turbulent brain as he swung it again and again, chopping off the man’s legs one by one and men opening him up from chest to groin with a stroke that brought his lungs and guts spilling out . By then the man was surely dead, but Edwin sliced off his head with a final cut His company sergeant found him standing over the bloody mess, leaning on the sword, a smile of peace on his face.

‘All over, sir,’ he reported, looking away from-Edwin’s handiwork.

He had to say it three times and shake Edwin by the shoulder before he could get his attention.

‘All dead, are they, sergeant?’ Edwin asked pleasantly.

‘Most of them, sir. We’ve taken about a dozen prisoners.’

‘You should have killed them. Prisoners are only a nuisance. I’ll finish them for you.’

The sergeant left him quickly and went to get an officer to talk to Edwin. To the sergeant’s way of thinking, the captain had gone raving mad during the fighting and ought to be relieved of his command at once.

The destruction by nuclear bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made Edwin think about his future for the first time ever. He had lived in a blood-haze for nearly three years. That way of life was fast ending and the spirit was still strong in him. The symbiosis in which they depended on each other for mutual benefit was complete. Edwin had to look around for a course that would permit the spirit to vent its murderous desires as often as possible so that it would continue to safeguard his life while he acquired as much wealth as possible. Professional soldiering did not seem to be the answer.

In due course he left the army, by then a major, much decorated for gallantry in action, which is to say that he had single-handed killed a very considerable number of Japanese soldiers and had inspired the men under his command to do the same.

What to do was the question. It had to be dangerous and show good profits. After looking round and talking to people in doubtful places, Edwin made a start in the Mediterranean as a smuggler, with a bunch of hard cases he met in a bar in Marseilles. He’d had enough of the Far East climate and wanted to operate nearer home. At first it was cigarettes from Tangiers into Italy, a fast motorboat running into small harbours by night . There was the ever-present risk of meeting a coastguard cutter and either out-running them or standing and fighting. The shortage of antibiotics in Eastern Europe proved to be a more profitable venture. This run was either to Italian or Yugoslav drops, for overland transmission. They sailed armed. Twice, to Edwin’s delight they were compelled to stand and fight . He disdained the arms on offer and used the Japanese sword he had kept as a souvenir. The corpses went over the side to leave no evidence.

Edwin’s partners admired his toughness but decided that the time had come to part company with a man who so deliberately looked for trouble. To them it was a business that needed to be operated with a minimum of trouble with the authorities. They put it to Edwin that he would be happier as the skipper of his own boat, running his own show. Edwin agreed with them. By this time he had a lot of money stacked away and knew where to get all the backing he wanted. He acquired a boat, hired the toughest crew he could find in waterfront bars and went for the big stuff. His first cargo was narcotics - kif from Tangiers to Marseilles. He progressed with time until he was running opium from Turkey to be processed into heroin in Marseilles. By now his profits were soaring and the risks were high enough to delight turn. After he had murdered a number of interfering French and Turkish gendarmes and coastguards, he was known to both sides and a much-wanted man. Even the American authorities were taking an interest in him, since the final destination of much of what he shipped in from Turkey was the United States. Without knowing who they were, Edwin cut the throats of at least two US undercover agents.

By 1955 Edwin had a great deal of cash tucked away in Switzerland and even more invested in various enterprises. He was getting what he wanted out of his partnership with the Afrit, or whatever it was that possessed him. Unfortunately, the satisfaction was one-sided, as he discovered one night when he was tied up in Palermo harbour. He fell foul of a group of Mafiosi who were trying to take over the opium trade into Marseilles. They ambushed him and his crew as they went ashore. At the sound of the first shot, Edwin sprang into action howling with delight and was at once cut down by a burst from a machine-pistol. His protection had been withdrawn. The spirit had left him.

The only surviving member of the crew dragged him back into the boat and got it out of harbour and headed for the open sea. Not knowing what else to do, he made south towards the coast of North Africa, waiting for Edwin to recover consciousness and take charge.

The burst had caught Edwin in the right hip. The joint was smashed, the muscles and ligaments torn. When he came to, he staunched the flow of blood and hung on, in a turmoil of mind at what had happened to him, until they reached Tunis the next day. Through his business dealings Edwin had good connections in most of the North African ports and could get medical care without attracting the attention of the authorities. As he lay racked with pain in a safe house, he knew that his freebooting days were finished.

When he was well enough to be moved he had himself flown to England on a stretcher to get the best surgeons possible to do what they could for his hip. They pinned the bones back together and repaired the muscles to some extent . Inside a year they had him walking again. It cost a lot of money, but Edwin could well afford it He was left with a limp and the nagging awareness that he was now as mortal as any other man.

Chapter 7

The man you married has more scars on his mind than on his body’ said Andrew at the end of Bianca’s story. ‘What attracted you to him?’

‘If you should ever meet him,’ she answered, “you’ll see why. When Edwin walks into a room, people move back to give him space, without knowing why they are doing it In the thickest crowd, nobody ever jostles him or gets within touching distance of him. He is full of a strange virtue they cannot understand. He has an aura they can perceive. He is one of the Apart’

‘And he showed you how to become one? You’ve been possessed physically by the same sort of hobgoblin as he - is that what you’re telling me? Your rendezvous on top of Longman’s Hill was with something crazed like that?’

‘You haven’t been listening to me properly,’ she said warningly.

‘I assure you that I have. But this is so strange and incredible to me that I may have missed the meaning somewhere. The human psyche is not a field I know much about I know that it manifests itself in curious ways at times, but beyond that I’m lost . Surely there are psychiatrists who could explain the reasons why your husband came to have this belief in his own invincibility. And as for the business of killing for pleasure as a substitute for sexual activity, it seems to me that there are perfectly good explanations of that sort of behaviour. It’s a classic case of sadism, surely.’

He smiled as he said it but Bianca did not smile back.

‘Do you remember how I brought you here from a distance?’ she asked.

He nodded.

‘Then don’t forget it or I shall have to show you another and not quite so harmless a way of controlling you.’

It was the merest flick of the whip, but like a well schooled horse, Andrew responded as she wished, even while he wondered at his own submission.

‘You said that the thing which formed the association with your husband in India was - what were the words - an earth-bound and disembodied spirit that could only enjoy life and sensation through a human host ’

‘You can remember when you want to, I see,’ said Bianca, smoothing her hair back lightly with one thin hand. ‘Yes, there are spirits like that everywhere, looking for a chance to enjoy a brief span of life through a human. Edwin found one in Calcutta, or rather it found him. He destroyed its host - the Indian boy - and so it transferred itself to him.’

‘Against his will or without his knowledge?’

“Neither. They never come to humans without consent Edwin was ignorant of what it was, but he welcomed into his mind the sensations and knowledge it held out to him - how to extricate himself from a tight comer and avoid the consequences of his action.’

That was enough?’

That was the consent it needed. It entered his mind - ate his soul in the quaint Moslem belief - and he followed its promptings from then on. He started by killing the witness to his first killing. After that neither of them ever looked back.’

‘Such spirits are everywhere, you said. Here too?’

‘Of course. Edwin could just as well have met one in England. What do you suppose drives the really violent killers that have to be locked up in institutions for the criminally insane, as they are called? Have you ever wondered about the quite ordinary men who for no apparent reason go out one day into the nearest park and rape and then kill children? Why do they do it? Or the suburban housewives who one day cut their children’s throats after breakfast instead of sending them to school.’

‘But they’re mad.’

‘What a terribly convincing explanation! The fact is that they’ve let in through their own consent the sort of disembodied spirit that Edwin did. He was lucky, being in the middle of a war. He could let the spirit express itself in the way it wished. He derived benefit from it He tried to do the same after the war was over, but the opportunities were not the same. The spirit stayed on for a year or two and then left him and went to look for someone else who could serve its appetite better. There were wars going on in several places at the time. Maybe it could smell the blood from a long way off and it followed the’scent leaving Edwin to his fate. Or maybe it transferred itself into one of the men who were trying to kill him.’

‘You said that not all of these things are killers,’ Andrew reminded her. ‘You indicated that some of them are sex-mad rather than blood-mad. Is that true?’

That was what the Hindu priest told Edwin. He took it on trust at the time. Since then we have found out that if is true.’

‘You mean that you know someone possessed in this way?’

‘More than one.’

‘Do they enjoy it?’

‘Before long you may have the chance of finding out for yourself. I don’t mink you’ll enjoy the encounter much.’

Her answer was so curt that Andrew decided to leave the subject alone.

‘ ‘At lunch you said that the spirit of Longman’s Hill is not one of the sort your husband got to know. What is it, then?’

‘You weren’t listening closely. I’ll tell you again. There is another world than this and it exists in different dimensions of space and time. For all I know there are many such worlds. But one in particular overlaps our world. Perhaps more than one overlaps it, but it would take far too long to find out The one that I know about coincides with our world along a dead straight line that runs right across England.’

‘If you know about it, it’s fair to assume that other people know about it too. Why have I never read or heard about it?’

‘Why should you? Those who have access to it keep it a secret We live in a disbelieving age. The newspapers and the television tell us about the advances of science so glibly that people think that the world and the solar system a nd the galaxy and the universe i tself are machines which we are well on the road to understanding. The Americans devise the means of sending a man to walk on the moon for a few hours and we think that the cosmos is already within our grasp. Next year Mars and in five years we shall be colonizing the nearer planets and sending explorers out to visi t the next galaxy. After that it’s only a matter of time before we send the first delegation in space-suits to visit God. Isn’t that how most people see things?’

Andrew nodded slowly, impressed by the force of her argument

In times gone by,’ said Bianca, ‘people lived closer to reality and they understood far more than people do now, for all our science and progress. There was a time in human history, and it was a very long time indeed, when men and women did not accept the boundaries of the visible world. They looked at the edge of darkness and saw that the unknown places beyond it were peopled with hosts of creatures very different from ourselves. They looked upon them as gods or devils. They tried to talk to them, to placate them , to make pacts with them. At times they succeeded and at times they did not, but in one way or another they left a record of their trying, for those who can understand it’

This world that intersects ours,’ said Andrew cautiously, ‘did you discover it or did someone tell you about it?’

‘Edwin knew about it before I met him. After his personal experience of the non-human he took a great interest in the subject when he was on his feet again and had time on his hands. He got the first clue from a book about prehistoric British culture and customs. It’s up there on the shelves somewhere if you are interested. The man who wrote the book fifty years ago had noticed that churches are often built in straight lines across the countryside. Edwin didn’t believe it until he had looked at a lot of maps and seen for himself that in some regions of the country you can draw a straight line across a map through two village churches and find half a dozen others along the same line if you draw it far enough.’

That sounds very odd,’ said Andrew, ‘I’ve always assumed that churches were built where villages had grown. And from my travels around the country visiting farms, I know that villages are frequently where they are for geographical reasons, such as a ford across a river, or on a track that leads up a. valley, or on a bit of high ground that could be defended from attack.’

I’ve no doubt that a good many towns and villages are where they are for those very reasons,’ she said, ‘but Edwin proved to himself beyond doubt that many villages and towns and cities are where they are because the church was built there first and the houses grew around it’

‘I have to accept it if you say so.’

The maps and papers are in the desk behind you. You can see the lines Edwin drew.’

‘So why would the early priests build their churches miles apart along a straight line?’

‘Because the early Christian priests and missionaries built their churches on the sites of former pagan places of worship.’

‘Yes, I’ve read that somewhere. It doesn’t get us nearer the real answer. Why were the earlier holy places sited as they were?’

The temples to Saxon gods were built where temples to Roman gods had stood, and they in turn were built over the sites of the temples and altars of Celtic gods. The holy places were always along this.same straight line. When Edwin.had the clue, he spent time and money on finding people who: understood these things and could explain them to him. These are the places that have been known to: be holy since humanity in this country first emerged into conscious awareness of itself and its environment ’

‘By holy you mean places where men could make contact with beings who were not men. You sound a bit like a textbook.’

If I do,’ it’s because I’m telling it to you the way Edwin set it down in the book he eventually wrote.’ ‘Was it published?’

“Certainly not He had a few copies printed privately for his own use. Things like this are not for publication to everyone. They are for the Apart’

‘I see. As Fve understood you so far, you’re saying that the tribes who peopled this country in earliest times were more closely in touch with the non-human.’

That’s it exactly. With the passage of time and the dawn of settled civilization, ordinary people’s minds were forcibly closed by priests and kings. But before that happened, they had traced out the line where the Otherworld overlaps our own. They built their holy places along the line - standing stones, mounds, altars, groves of trees. These were the places where they consorted with the inhabitants of the unseen world.’

There’s a large element of speculation in this,’ said Andrew. ; I thought so myself when Edwin first told me about it. Then one night he drove me out to a place in Somerset where the edge of the Otherworld runs. He’d mapped the entire interface from Cornwall to Suffolk by helicopter and then on foot He knew every foot of it . The place he took me to is on the southern slopes of the Mendip Hills. There isn’t a house for miles. We left the car and walked a cross fields to the place he’d photographed a year or two before. There’s a standing stone to mark the line of the’ interface. It’s an old grey stone, about nine feet high, pushing up out of the ground like a giant finger pointing upwards. That marker stone was set there four of five thousand years ago by men who understood what it pointed to the Otherworld. There are many others like it along the line.’

‘Longman’s Hill is on this interface line?’ Andrew asked, guessing the answer. ‘Yes, it’s one of the markers.’

“Not a prehistoric burial mound, then?’

It’s that, too. In the long distant past someone of great importance was buried on the interface and a mound built as a sign of respect. But I was telling you of the time Edwin first took me to one of the interchange sites. Like you, I thought that his theory was interesting enough, but I didn’t believe that it had the significance he attached to it Prehistoric gods had little fascination for me, or any other gods, for that matter. All the same, there we were on a warm night on a grassy hillside, miles from anywhere, looking at this old stone. Edwin told me to take all my clothes off and lie down on the grass with my head to the stone, my arms stretched out sideways and my legs apart It seemed strange, but Edwin is a strange man and I thought that he had a kinky sex scene between us in mind, out there under the sky. I had no objection to that, as you can imagine, so I did as he said. The grass was cool under my back and I could see millions of stars above me in the sky. I waited and waited, thinking that Edwin was stripping off and getting ready to pounce. I was quite enjoying the build-up. What I didn’t know was that Edwin had slipped away in the dark and was sitting under a bush a long way off. I t’s just as well that I didn’t know or I’d have been terrified at what did happen.’

She shifted her position slightly on the armchair and uncrossed her legs. Her palms slid down her trousered thighs slowly in a movement that was almost a caress. Her voice became almost dreamy as she went on, ‘With no warning at all, there was a body lying on me, pressed close, against my breasts and between my legs. I took it to be Edwin, of course, as that was what I was expecting. But the body moulded itself to me in a way no man’s body ever had and in seconds I knew that it couldn’t be Edwin. By then it didn’t matter. Every part of my body was being touched, felt, stroked, kissed, squeezed, petted, all at the same time - face, ears, neck, armpits, breasts - all of me. It was indescribable. The sensations made me climax almost at once. I came harder than ever in my life before. And the orgasm didn’t fade away, it went on and on, getting more and more intense in a manner I am quite certain is impossible. I could hear myself crying out with pleasure and I knew that there could never be anything like this with an ordinary man. Even through the ecstasy I knew positively that this was no man. The penetration was not only phy sical, it was in my mind as well. There was another intelligence inside my brain with me , a distinct personality that I welcomed and clung to with my soul, just as my body was welcoming and clinging to the physica l part of the visitor.’ She trailed off in to reminiscent silence. After a pause, Andrew said, ‘A demon lover.’ If you like,’ she said softly, ‘Do you know what the word demon meant before the Christian priests debased it? It meant a god.’

‘How long did this visitation last?’

In time? It seemed to last an eternity. An eternity of unimaginable pleasure. When it left me it was still dark. My head was swimming and the stars looked blurred and faint, as if they were going out I was so exhausted from the prolonged orgasm that I fell asleep at once, naked on the cold ground. It wasn’t until first light that Edwin came back to me. He had a blanket and he wrapped me in it and carried me across the fields to where we’d left the car. I slept all the way home and for the rest of that day.’

‘You had become one of the Apart?’

She nodded, her mind only half on his words, the other half busy with her memory of the overwhelming visitation. Andrew watched her expression, her half-closed eyes and parted li ps.

‘Apart,’ she said at last, ‘and more than that The visitor from the Otherworld had changed me. It’s the ming lin g of minds that does it Afterwards you know things you didn’t know before. Strange and unlikely things. You discover in yourself abilities and powers that are hidden from ordinary people.’

‘Edwin was pleased, was he?’

‘He was pleased that I’d so completely proved the truth of his theory that another world overlaps ours and that it is easy to make contact with the inhabitants of it He had tried himself many a time and nothing had happened. He was not in tiie least pleased when I told him why he had always failed and always would fail.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Because he is a man. The inhabitants of the Otherworld will only come across to ours when a young woman offers her body on one of the interchange points.’

‘I find that strange and inconsistent’ said Andrew. ‘If sexual congress with human women attracts the males amongst them, logic says that the human male body should attract their females.’

‘Logic has nothing to do with it I don’t pretend to understand it myself. All that I can say is that they are not like us. They have great powers which they are willing to share with a woman who offers her body to them freely.’ . ‘After that first time, you went back again, I take it’ ‘Many, many times,’ she murmured, ‘not to the same place but to other marked sites along the interface. Not all of them can be used because some are now in the middle of towns or have churches built over them. But there are a lot still in open country.’

‘Is it the same personality you contact every time or different

ones?’

‘A different one each time, I’m sure. They have quite distinct personalities and impart different sorts of knowledge.’

Andrew was thinking about what she had said. - ‘If they can slide into our world at this interface,’ he said, ‘can we get into theirs?’

‘Yes, it works both ways.’

‘Have you?’

‘I’ve been tempted, but so far I’ve not dared. The Great Ones are so much above us that they might not let me come back if I once went there. I know that others have gone in the past because I’ve probed for this knowledge.’

‘Gone and come back?’

‘I can’t get an answer to that however hard I try. That’s what makes me unwilling to go, much as I want to see the Otherworld. It must be a marvellous place.’

Andrew was adding things up in his mind.

‘You make it sound as if all your contacts with these —

beings—have been pleasurable and rewarding. But what about your night on Longman’s Hill? That turned out otherwise, from what I witnessed afterwards.’

Bianca’s face hardened.

‘It started badly, thanks to you,’ she said. The Great One was coming to me when you put in an unwanted appearance. He lashed out at you and hurt you. You were lucky you weren’t killed by him. After you’d gone away things improved as soon as he understood that I hadn’t brought you with me. He lifted me to the heights of sensation. He whispered in my head things you would not believe and I knew them for the plain truth. He gave me so much! Then he began to whisper that he wanted me to go back into his world with him before morning. They do not visit our world in daylight you see. Our light is wrong for them in some way. He whispered and whispered that it would be unimaginable pleasure non-stop. Their time is not like ours. There would be no rising sun to make him withdraw and vanish. The ecstasy wou ld go on and on and I would learn such secrets that no one in this world has known fully before. I was ready to scream out Yes and go with him into the Other world. I asked him to promise t hat I would be allowed to come back to this world when I wanted to. And that was a promise he wouldn’t g ive. Or perhaps couldn’t give -I don’t know. He became insistent that I should go with him, he tried to force me I could feel my soul being lifted out of my body and I knew that I was on the brink of passing through the interface. I was afraid because he wouldn’t give me the promise I wanted, so I resisted. He exerted his strength, I fought back. I shouted No, no, no I at the top of my voice because I knew that I had to consent before he could take me. You saw what happened in the struggle. He scratched and bit He was not the all-enveloping lover any more, he seemed to have teeth and claws that ripped at me. In the end I managed to get to my hands and knees and’ screamed at him to go away. And while I was screaming, he’d gone.’

‘By God,’ Andrew muttered, picturing the scene on the top of the low hill Bianca’s pale body bedaubed with her own blood as she fought off a thing he couldn’t begin to visualize.

‘Your will to survive must be very strong,’ he said.

The Apart do not give up their lives easily.’

He sat in silence for a while, hardly hearing the traffic noise outside the windows along the Embankment How much of what she had told him could he believe? That she had more than human powers to influence minds was established beyond question for him. But so did many people, as he had heard -hypnotists, mesmerists, mediums, spiritualists and others who -claimed to be able to communicate with incorporeal beings or the spirits of the dead.

So far he would go alone with her. But this tale of lovers from another world was in a different category. Obviously she believed it herself, which did not necessarily make it true. She could be the victim of a monstrous self-induced delusion. The tearing of her body on Longman’s Hill - she could have done that to herself with her nails in a trance or a seizure.

Then he remembered that when he had bathed her and treated her injuries, there was neither blood nor skin under her fingernails. She had not done it to herself that way.

‘You have had some remarkable experiences,’ he offered. It sounded lame, even to him. Bianca laughed outright There’s Scottish blood in you, Andrew Jarvis. You’re acting canny. You’re asking yourself whether I’m a raving lunatic. Well, time will tell and I’ve arranged a meeting for this evening that may shake your doubts a little.’

‘Like what?’

‘You’ll have to wait and see. I’ve something else in mind at the moment’ and she smiled at him. ‘What might that be?’

Talking and remembering past pleasures has put me in the mood to enjoy you now. Come and sit by me.’

I don’t think so,’ said Andrew. This morning was enough for me. There’s no exchange of pleasure with you, only a devouring of the male by the female. That I can do without’

‘It’s not always like that Andy. That was only a special ritual to bind you to me. You’re ensorcelled now - you can’t do it with another woman after that only with me. I can be as loving and tender and enjoyable as any other woman. More so, as I know more about the springs of sex. So as I’m the only woman you’ve got now, you must make the most of me.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ he said flatly.

‘Not now you don’t but you will, as soon as you try to go to bed with anyone else.’

Andrew had a churning feeling in his stomach that seemed almost a premonition that what she said might be the truth.

‘Anyway,’ she went’on, still smiling at him, ‘you cant refuse me. You belong to me. When I tell you that I want you, you obey me. You’ve no choice at all, so get used to the idea.’

Andrew’s pride refused point-blank to accept what she said.

‘No use frowning at me,’ Bianca said lightly, ‘it will do you not the least good, I promise you. That look will be wiped off your face when you’re between my legs. Come to me, Andy.’

‘I will not’ he said loudly.

‘But you will.’

. Without knowing it he had drawn up his legs in readiness to get up from the armchair. He put his hands on his knees and held his legs still. Bianca’s smile grew broader as she watched him putting out all his strength of will to resist her lure.

‘I enjoy seeing you suffer,’ she told him. The more you struggle, the better I like it’

‘Damn you - stop doing whatever you’re doing 1’ he said through clenched teeth.

‘Do you fish, Andy? This time you’re the trout on the hook and if s in too deep for you to twist away. I’m holding the rod and I’m playing you. I let you dash this way and that way and churn up the water. And when I’ve had enough of watching you struggle, I shall reel you in.’

‘Leave me alone, woman 1’ he shouted.

To his dismay, his legs straightened of themselves until he was standing up. He took a faltering step towards her against his will. She lay back in the deep leather chair, laughing up at him. Her thin hands were still stroking her trousered thighs slowly.

‘Come to me, Andy.’

I’m no demon lover,’ he groaned, ‘I’m only a man. I can’t give you what you want’

‘What I want at this moment is love and human warmth,’ she said softly.

His feet had carried him across unwillingly to her. He looked down helplessly at her slender body in the pale green suit against the soft black leather of the chair, her silver-gold hair and her broad face. Her legs parted and he sank to his knees between them. Her hands fluttered up to touch his face.

There was no more fight left in him then, only a desire to please her. His eager fingers unbuttoned her safari Jacket and unzipped the flies of her trousers. Her pale body seemed to him as ir idescent as mother-of-pearl. He bent his head and gently kissed the cool skin of her exposed belly.

‘Oh, yes,’ Bianca breathed very quietly as she stroked his hair.

‘ For Andrew, floating in a pink haze of delicate sensuality, it was almost a religious experience. He was a man worshipping at the altar of a deity, performing with a steady and joyful heart the ritual that led to communion with the god.

Chapter 8

This day of days still had surprises in store for Andrew Jarvis. By seven-thirty he was in Bianca’s sitting-room, enjoying a drink under the blank gaze of the nude portrait on the wall. He wanted to ask her about its significance but he was feeling too relaxed and at ease with himself to delve into more mysteries just then.

Bianca had changed into a clinging dress of plain black that emphasized the mildness of her face and bare arms and the seeming fragility of her body. Andrew had no choice but to wear the whipcord suit and checked shirt he had worn the night before for his evening out with Sandy in the country.

God, he thought, all that seems ages ago though it’s only twenty-four hours. This time yesterday I was sitting with Sandy in the restaurant and we were chatting and laughing about nothing in particular.

He tried to visualize Sandy’s face and found that he couldn’t He couldn’t even remember what she had been wearing. And in bed with her afterwards - what had it been like?’ Even that impression had been wiped away.

Because, he told himself, Sandy is only a woman, like other

women. Bedding her is no more than play, and not very interesting play once you’ve been through the real thing with

Bianca. Black-suited Braddock announced the guests Bianca was expecting. She kissed them both on the cheek and introduced them as Gilbert and Branwen Pight. Of Andrew she said casually, ‘Andy’s a friend from the country staying with me for the weekend.’

Braddock’s face was thunderous at that Andrew had no doubt at all that sooner or later he was going to have bad trouble with the man. In his present mood of quiet exhilaration, the prospect did not bother him unduly.

While Braddock was pouring drinks for the guests, Andrew tried to weigh them up, remembering what Bianca had said earlier that day - that she had something planned for the evening that would shake his doubts.

Gilbert Pight looked to be in his late twenties, about

Andrew’s own age. There were no other similarities. He was shorter than Andrew and plump. He had mousy-coloured, slightly too long hair and he wore an expensive looking plum coloured suit in Velvet Andrew found himself disliking him instinctively.

Now Branwen, he thought, that’s a different proposition. She was a bit taller than her husband, about the same age and had shining dark brown hair that flowed down to her shoulders. Her figure was good under her long green dress, well shaped breasts and long legs. She was inches taller than Bianca as the two of them stood by the fireplace, under the portrait, exchanging whatever talk women exchanged with Bianca. Andrew wondered about it ‘I said have you known Bianca long?’ Gilbert Pighjt repeated.

‘Sorry, I was thinking of something else. We met only a few weeks ago.’

There was a glint of curiosity in Gilbert’s brown eyes as he stared at Andrew. ‘Where did you meet?’

A warning bell tinkled faintly in the back of Andrew’s mind. He had a distinct impression that the other man’s questions were prompted by more than polite curiosity.

‘In the country,’ he said.

Gilbert was studying Andrew’s clothes.

‘What do you do in the country?’ he asked. If s impossible for a town dweller like me to imagine what goes on in all those green fields and thatched cottages. How on earth can anyone spend their lives in surroundings like that?’

The underlying sneer was all too obvious.

‘Come to that’ said Andrew, smiling, ‘it’s hard for country folk to imagine how anyone manages to live in a place like London. From the outside it looks li ke a big ant’s nest’

‘We all dislike the unfamiliar,’ said Gilbert. ‘But you haven’t told me what you do. Are you what they call a country gentleman, a squire of the manor, or something quaint like that?’

‘I’m a veterinary surgeon.’

‘Good Lord!’ Gilbert exclaimed in mock surprise and he called across the room to his wife, still in conversation with Bianca, ‘Branwen, imagine! Bianca’s country friend is a vet He looks after sick pigs. Would you have thought it possible?’

Branwen smiled briefly at the interruption and turned back to Bianca. ,

Tve never considered my profession a cause for surprise,’ said Andrew, ‘but everyone has an opinion, I suppose. What do you do in the big city?’

The answer was pompous in the extreme.

‘I? I cultivate my friends and develop my personality. And I am a necromancer.’

‘Are you?’ said Andrew, wondering what that could be. Is that a profession or more of a trade?’

‘A vocation,’ said Gilbert, nettled by the question.

‘Is there much call for that sort of thing around here?’ Andrew asked smoothly, getting his own back.

‘More than you would know,’ Gilbert answered abruptly and went back to his mocking attack, to me it is fascinating to meet someone who lives out his days amidst dungheaps and turnip fields. The intellectual attainments of your regular companions must be depressingly ordinary, though that may not worry you. What do you talk of in the evenings in the four-ale bar? The price of corn?’

‘Sometimes, in much the same way that I’ve heard town people rattling on about football Our talk is more often concerned with the basic themes of birth, copulation and death.’

‘Lord!’ said Gilbert, grinning. ‘A quotation, I do believe. T. S. Eliot, if memory serves me right Birth, copulation and death, eh? How interesting to think there are books to be found in the broad shires other than the cattle-breeder’s yearbook. There is some small degree of culture, then?’

The local Women’s Institute has a regular weekly knitting circle,’ said Andrew, straight-faced, ‘I believe they hired a coach to bring them to London last Christmas to see a pantomime.’

Gilbert peered at him incredulously for a moment before he realized that his leg was being pulled.

‘We devote ourselves more to physical entertainments man to intellectual sports,’ Andrew followed up, still playing the innocent

‘You hunt I suppose,’ Gilbert said with disdain.

‘Only occasionally. I’m not a good enough horseman to risk my neck all that often. I shoot a couple of times a week. Rough shooting, for the pot’

‘You like to kill things, do you?’

I like to eat things. That implies their death first We’re not so squeamish as town folk, who do not like to relate the meat on their plate to the living animal. Have you ever visited an abbatoir?’

Gilbert’s eyes closed in disgust

‘Yet I’m sure that you will enjoy the saddle of lamb at dinner,’ Andrew went on, even though you know that it’s part of the body of an animal that was swung up by its bind legs to have its throat cut before being gutted, decapitated and skinned.’

The women had dropped their own conversation to listen to the duel between Gilbert and Andrew.

‘You’ve put Gilbert off his food,’ said Branwen, laughing at her husband’s discomfiture. Gilbert glared at her.

‘Birth, copulation and death,’ he said, changing tack while Braddock moved round the room with more drinks, ‘you feel that these things are more real in hay-lofts than in cities?’

They’re the same everywhere. We probably see more of them in the country than you do here.’

‘And that naturally makes you more expert on them?’

Andrew could see he was being steered towards a trap and

twisted away.

‘Everyone is equally expert at being born and at dying. Or equally inexpert, if you prefer, as there’s no opportunity for practice.’

‘And copulation, are we equally expert at that?’

‘I’ve read that there are people whose minds get in the way of their instincts at bedtime,’ said Andrew casually. It makes it difficult for them to do what should come naturally. That sort of quandary does not seem to affect we simple folk.’

Branwen’s snigger earned a black look from Gilbert and put a thought into Andrew’s head that Gilbert might well have a sexual hang-up.

This yokel philosophy is transparently fraudulent,’ Gilbert snapped. ‘You have been conditioned into role-playing. Admit it’

‘Rolling and playing I enjoy. Role-playing sounds too sophisticated for me. Could you explain it?’

The pointless exchange of verbal hostilities continued right through dinner, though Andrew found it boring. Bianca made no attempt to halt it and from that Andrew concluded that she was in some way measuring him against Gilbert It was an uncomfortable thought .

When, after the first course, the lamb was served, Gilbert attacked it with more determination than appetite.

This creature whose demise you so picturesquely described,’ he said, ‘did it have a soul?’

‘A what?’

‘I’m asking whether your long experience in cowsheds and pigsties has given you any views on whether animals have souls. A simple enough question, surely?’

‘Do people have souls?’ Andrew countered.

‘Not even you could doubt that’

‘Animals have personalities,’ ‘said Andrew. I see that almost daily in my dealings with cows and pigs, since you seem most interested in those two species. As they grow up and mature, they develop distinct personalities. Not very complicated ones, though they are often amusing and can sometimes be cunning. In a lesser way the same must hold good for sheep, except that they are so flock-oriented that their separate identities tend to be submerged. If you reared one alone it would develop its own character traits, I’ve no doubt Is that what you mean by soul?’

‘Certainly not! You have eyes and you do not see, ears and you do not hear.’

‘Your turn to trot out a quotation. Bible, this time. Can you define what you mean by soul before I look at your question again?’

The soul,’ said Gilbert, ‘is the inmost being, the very essence, the indwelling and immortal spirit that animates the living creature. Intelligence and personality are only facets of it not the substance itself.’

‘Not a very clear definition. It sounds much the same thing as the life force, which clearly every living thing must have, man or beast I don’t know about the immortal aspect of ft You need to make a number of unsupported assumptions to claim that ’

The evidence is all about you,’ said Gilbert, ‘especially in the countryside. Have you been to Bodmin Moor? Three centuries ago there was a magistrate in those parts named Jan Tregeagle. He had more than human powers and the peasan ts said that he’d sold his soul to the devil, as that was the only way they could understand it He was, of course, one of the Apart . But he offended at last the Great One he was in league with, though it’s not known how. He offended so badly that the Great One bound his soul to earth and tormented him after his death. He is pursued by night across Bodmin Moor by a pack of spectral hounds, baying for his soul. If you have the courage for it, you can see and hear this hunt yourself whenever there is a storm on Bodmin Moor.’

‘Cornwall is fall of pixies and ghosts and the like,’ said Andrew, smiling. The locals make them up to boost the summer tourist trade.’

‘You mink so, do you? Have you heard of the huge black dog that has haunted East Anglia for the past thousand years?’

‘Why, yes. That’s where I live. I‘ve heard that, story many a time.’

‘I tell you that I have been close enough to that creature to touch his shaggy coat as he passed by. And like everyone else who has seen him, I would have died, but for the fact that I am under special protection. I could tell you of many other instances of animals surviving death, but you are unlikely to be convinced. Your mind is closed. You are only an ordinary man.’

That I’ve never doubted,’ said Andrew, slightly embarrassed by the conviction Gilbert displayed as he related his stories of ghostly animals.

Back in the big sitting-room after dinner, Braddock served coffee and brandy and was dismissed for the night Andrew looked at the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece and saw that it was nearly ten-thirty. The long curtains had been drawn ov er the windows and the room had an oddly isolated feeling.

Andrew seated himself away from Gilbert, who was talking to Bianca.

‘Your husband seems to have taken against me,’ he said, casually to Branwen, sitting beside him on the long sofa.

‘Don’t let it bother you,’ she said in a most friendly manner, ‘he’s nervous and has to take it out on someone. It would have been me if you weren’t here. It doesn’t mean anything.’

“Why is he nervous?’

‘Wouldn’t you be - oh, Bianca hasn’t told you, has she?’ Told me what?’

‘She invited us tonight because she wants Gilbert to divine for her.’ To do what?’

‘You must know what it means.’

I know what a water-diviner does. There’s one near where I live. Is it anything like that?’

‘In a way,’ Branwen said, smiling at him, ‘though it’s not water she’s looking for, is it? I’m slightly surprised that you’re here, for this when you are so obviously not one of us.’

The Apart? No, I’m not and nor do I want to be. How did you become one - the same way as Bianca ?’

‘I found a different way of my own. Maybe I’ll tell you about it one day,’ and she touched the back of his hand for a fleeting moment Gilbert and Bianca had finished conferring. She went to the door and turned the key noiselessly in the lock. She switched off all the lights in tie room, one by one, until the only illumination left came from a floor lamp in the far corner and the room was dim and shadowy.

To the astonishment of Andrew, Gilbert had started to peel off. his clothes. His plum velvet jacket was dropped casually on to a chair, followed by his tie. He unbuttoned his shirt and Andrew drew in his breath in surprise as Gilbert’s chest was bared. The skin was smooth and hairless and tattooed with large red, blue and green swirls from the base of his thick neck right down to his waist The shirt came off and as Gilbert turned to drop it on the chair with his jacket Andrew saw that the tattooing covered the whole of his back and sides, his shoulders and his arms to just above both wrists.

In fascination, he watched Gilbert kick off his shoes, unzip his flies and step out of his trousers. The coloured whorls on his skin twisted unbroken from his chest over his paunchy belly, to disappear inside the tight lilac briefs he was wearing. The pattern reappeared at his groins and ran down his -meaty legs and into his socks. As the socks c ame off, it became clear that th e tattooing covered his feet as well, instep and sole; With no sign of embarrassment, Gilbert stripped off his briefs and stood naked before them, arms hanging at his sides. With their eyes on him, he was almost preening himself.

Andrew blinked as he studied the extent and nature of the tattooing. It was the representation of a climbing plant with broad leaves. Its root was the thick shaft of Gilbert’s loosely hanging penis and from there the stem rose, putting out tendrils and leaves to spread luxuriantly over his entire body, covering every inch of his skin, front and back, up and down, except for his hands, neck and face.

‘My God!‘ Andrew breathed in awe.

Branwen at his side whispered to him quickly, That is the tree of life. You will probably never see another like it’

That I can well believe! What is its significance?’

It means more than I can explain to you now. But you will see for yourself that this tree attracts a strange song-bird to roost in it’

Gilbert sat himself on the carpet in the middle of the room, his. back to the only light and his face in shadow. Branwen went to him, opened her handbag and took out four bracelets of dull metal. She clasped one round each of his ankles and he tucked his legs underneath him.

Andrew moved across the room to stand near Bianca.

‘What’s she doing with those?’ he asked quietly.

‘Protecting us. The bracelets are made of iron, forged by a special process. They’ll keep the spirit locked inside him.’

‘You mean that this is dangerous?’

She looked at him briefly.

‘Every contact with die non-human is dangerous. I thought that you understood that We have to take precautions.’

‘What sort of spirit are we talking about?’

‘An earth-bound one, what else?’ ‘You mean like the one that befriended your husband in India?’

‘Not quite. Gilbert doesn’t attract that kind to him. Like calls to like. Sit down and say nothing, whatever you see.’

To be on the safe side Andrew sat on a chair well away from Gilbert. He watched intently what Branwen was doing. She kept the other two bracelets in her left hand, not putting them on her husband.

Gilbert bent his arms until his palms were facing forward at the level of his shoulders. Branwen held a small looking-glass from her handbag in front of his face to let. him stare at his own reflection close to. He was taking deep, quick breaths, forcing oxygen into his bloodstream and into his brain.

He’s not very fit, thought Andrew, eyeing the pudgy belly and fat thighs. Hyperventilating himself like that can’t be good for him. He’ll keel over and pass out in a minute.

But he didn’t He went on for some time, his chest rising and falling quickly, his eyes staring into the looking-glass from a distance of a few inches. When his breathing rhythm eventually slowed to normal, Branwen moved quietly round to stand behind him, the glass put away and an iron bracelet in each of her hands.

Andrew looked over his shoulder to where Bianca was sitting, face-on to Gilbert and only a few feet away from him. Her face was expressionless, her hands clasped in her lap. She was still as a statue.

A long gasp from Gilbert brought Andrew’s attention back to him. He seemed to be trembling. At least that was the interpretation Andrew put on the movement of the coloured pattern that enswathed his fleshy body. In the shadows it was almost as if the creeping plant was moving, its tendrils writhing over the man’s body and its leaves brushing together. There was even the sound of a faint rustling, as of foliage moved by a breeze, but that must surely be the sound of Gilbert’s breathing, Andrew told himself.

Behind her husband, Branwen leaned forward swiftly and in one smooth action had the bracelets clasped round his upraised wrists. His whole body twitched and from his lips came the oddest noise Andrew had ever heard from a human throat - a long melodic wail, as if a bow had been drawn across one string of a cello.

Gilbert’s body shook for a time, then calmed and he spoke. It was not his own voice. It was pure music, sustained and thrilling.

‘Why have you snared me? I came to sit in this tree and enjoy its shelter. Let me go.’

‘In a moment,’ said Branwen, still standing behind Gilbert. Her face was in shadow and Andrew was not able to make out her expression. It would be worth seeing, he thought to judge from the hint of suppressed hatred in her voice.

‘We intend you no harm, only good,’ she said. ‘You shall enjoy what you came here for. But first there is a question to be asked and answered.’

‘Ask, ask,’ said the improbably beautiful voice, climbing up from ‘cello to violin.

The question is not mine.’

Bianca spoke across the distance between her and Gilbert: The reward is sure,’ she said, ‘but answer me first’ ‘Ask, ask, ask.’

‘I do not wish to put my question into words for others to hear. How can I convey it to you best?’

‘Set me loose from this tree. I will come into you and no one

will hear what we say to each other. In the secrecy of your

mind I shall read the question and write the answer on your

memory.’

That is not possible,’ Bianca said curtly. Think of some other way.’

Is it not possible for you or not possible for me?’ and the sound of the words was like a piano phrase.

‘It is not possible for either of us. I am a consort of the Great Ones. There is no room for you, even if you dared sit in their place.’

The response to that was not verbal at all but a dear flute note of anxiety.

Bianca got up slowly and went towards Gilbert. She knelt on the carpet before him, put her hands on his leaf-strewn shoulders and looked into his blank eyes from a. few inches away.

This is as close as you and I can approach each other,’ she said huskily.

Andrew was straining to hear her words.

‘Read my question and tell me the answer. Read it in my eyes.’

There was a long and intense silence. From his chair, Andrew contemplated the trio in the middle of the room. Bianca kneeling by the naked, tattooed man, their eyes locked together. What impossible dialogue was taking place unheard between them? And standing over both of them, long-haired Branwen, silent and still, thinking unimaginable thoughts of her own. ‘ What in God’s name is all this about Andrew asked himself. The reluctance on Bianca’s part to let the rest of them hear her q uestion - that boded ill. She must feel vulnerable. The purpose of the divining had to do with the trouble that she was facing, that was an easy guess. Not so easy was why Andrew was present It had to be tied up in some manner.

Bianca sighed and took her hands away from Gilbert’s shoulders. She sat back on her heels and looked at him in disappointment ‘Is that all you can tell me?’ she muttered.

‘You must find one more powerful than me,’ the musical voice answered.

‘Very well. One more thing - what about him?’ she asked, pointing at Andrew. ‘Have I chosen wisely?’

‘I have answered enough of your questions,’ the voice rumbled in a tingling bass. ‘Leave me alone.’

This is the last I give you my word.’

Andrew sat tense, craning forward to catch the reply.

‘You have chosen well. He is yours to do as you wish with. He will do anything for you. He will die for you.’

‘Good. Take what you came for,’ said Bianca.

She stood up and went back to her chair. Andrew watched her slump down, clearly disappointed in her expectations. He was turning over in his mind the words he had heard, feeling very queasy. He will die for you, it had said. That was ambiguous. It might mean he is willing to die for you, which was.

no more man a bit of poetic licence. Or it could mean literally that he would die for Bianca. That was another matter entirely.

He was diverted from this line of thought by what was happening to Gilbert His body was swaying like a tree in a high wind, his arms shaking like wind-driven branches. The creeping plant tattooed over his body was writhing. The muted colours of the tattooist were shining vividly, glowing reds and greens and blues.

From Gilbert’s open mouth came a soaring symphony of music, the like of which Andrew had never heard. It was as if a thousand-strong orchestra played to the baton of an inspired conductor, but it was not earthly music.

No vocal chords can produce sounds like that thought.

Andrew, caught up in the superhuman drive of it Drums, brass, strings, woodwinds, he thought he could distinguish them all in a majestic flow that had him on the edge of his chair, enraptured.

This is not Gilbert Pight he said to himself. No human composer or musicians could produce this texture of sound. Something beyond humanity is using Gilbert as its instrument

After a while the music registered on his mind in another way. He heard no longer the conventional sounds of an orchestra. He discerned separate strands of sound woven together, the sounds of nature now, not of art There was the hurtling rush and. splash of a waterfall, the moaning of the wind over a desolate moor, the booming growl of a gale-swept sea breaking on a rocky coast the gentle patter of summer rain through a leafy forest the rattle of loose scree scraping down a hillside, the crack and roll of lightning splitting the sky. He marvelled at the intricacy of the music as he identified these and a dozen other strands, plaited together with consummate skill into music of unearthly beauty.

What disembodied thing can be so eternally isolated on a cold and silent plane of being that it finds its only expression in imitating the natural sounds of our world through an imperfect human instrument he wondered. What god or devil could be so malignant as to have created an intelligence with such needs and men denied them an outlet so that it must prey on a man like Gilbert Pight?

The music rolled on triumphantly, sweeping away his questions. Andrew stared at the tree of life, no longer seeing Gilbert at all. The foliage fluttered as the stem and tendrils thrust out from the sturdy root and the sap coursed through them, nourishing and sustaining its growth. All life grows like this,

he thought, bemused, it grows and flowers a nd shows its glory

to the sun.

The music built up to a devastating crescendo, sounded a deep, fulfilling, final note and faded slowly into silence. Gilbert collapsed backwards on to the carpet and lay still. In the dim ‘ light, his upturned face was drawn and pale.

Dranwen crouched beside the fallen figure and lifted his eyelids. Satisfied with what she saw, she unclasped the iron bracelets from his wrists and stood back. Gilbert’s plump body convulsed once and was still again.

‘You are free to leave,’ said Branwen. ‘You have had your reward.’

She waited a while and then asked Andrew to help her.

“What do you want me to do?’ he asked, going to kneel beside Gilbert.

‘Help me get him on the sofa. He’s heavy.’

Andrew felt for a pulse and found it, thin and straggly.

‘He’s right out,’ he said. ‘How long does it last - you’ve been through this with him before.’

“He’ll come round in a while, but he’ll be very weak.’

He took Gilbert under the arms and Branwen took his legs. Between them they heaved his bulk on to the sofa and made him comfortable. Bianca made no move to help.

That music,’ said Andrew, looking down at me naked man, ‘it’s not possible that he could have produced it’

There are many things possible that you wouldn’t think are. What did the music say to you?’

‘It was exhilarating and triumphant — I can’t find the right words for it’

Then you have a good omen. Be glad.’ ‘ Isn’t that the way you heard it?’

‘I heard fear and danger. I don’t know what she heard, but it couldn’t have been pleasant’

Andrew glanced across at Bianca, huddled forlornly in her chair.

‘You mean that everyone hears it differently?’

She nodded.

‘Are you staying here tonight?’ she asked him. ‘Yes, why?’

‘Bianca is going to need you, isn’t she? Go and give her a drink. And one for me while you’re about it’

‘You don’t like these necromantic performances of your husband, do you? Can’t you stop him?’

‘No one can stop him now. It’s too late. All his life goes into the tree. There’s nothing for me.’

She sounded miserable and was evidently off-guard. Andrew tried quickly while the moment was right

‘What did Bianca want to know that she wouldn’t put into words?’

‘We can’t talk about that here.’

Andrew gave up. He poured two stiff measures of brandy from the decanter, gave one to Branwen and took the other to Bianca.

She looked withdrawn. He touched her shoulder and she looked up at him uncomprehendingly for a moment as he held out the glass.

‘Drink it. It will make you feel better.’

She sipped at it while he perched on the arm of her chair and smoothed her pale golden hair soothingly.

‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘But I have a feeling that there is.

Tell me.’

‘I don’t understand it myself yet I dreamed that you could help me and so I drew you to me. But now I’m not sure.’

‘At least tell me what the problem is. Maybe I’ll think of something.’

She evaded the issue.

‘Gilbert is stirring,’ she said. ‘Give Branwen a hand.’

He went back to the sofa. Gilbert’s eyes were open and his hand had crept up to his throat Branwen trickled brandy slowly into his mouth from her glass. He croaked once or twice - and was silent again.

‘He won’t be able to speak for a day or so,’ she said. It strains his throat badly. One day hell go completely dumb and that will be the end of it’

In another few minutes Gilbert was strong enough to be helped to sit up. Branwen recharged the glass, put it in his trembling hand and steered it towards his mouth.

‘Are you all right now, Gilbert?’ she asked.

He nodded.

‘Good. Well get you dressed so I can take you home. You need sleep.’ ‘

Andrew helped wrestle him into his clothes awkwardly. It was like dressing a shop-window dummy.

‘Well be off,. Bianca,’ said Branwen. ‘I hope that the evening was what you wanted.’

Bianca got up from her chair at last and came forward to .them. She kissed the other woman quickly on the cheek but did not touch Gilbert

‘Are you sure that you can manage?’ she asked.

I’m used to it He’s conscious enough to walk as far as the car. I’ll soon have him home and in bed. Good night’

Thank you, Branwen,’ said Bianca, but there was no real gratitude in her voice.

Chapter 9

In the next few days Andrew went about his ordinary life and work with his mind full of wonder and foreboding about the .events of the weekend. Again and again he puzzled over the mysteries he had seen and the happenings he had been part of. However he analysed it, none of it made sense to him, not Bianca’s summons by sorcery, not the exhibition of Gilbert Pight’s powers of divination. He was certain that there was a secret of some magnitude, hidden from him, a secret which involved himself and his future. Only Bianca held the key to it Until she was ready to speak out be could only speculate uselessly.

When he arrived home on Thursday soon after six, there was an unfamiliar, sports car parked outside his cottage. He went in, wondering about it to find Branwen Pight in his sitting-room with a glass of his sherry in her hand. Her lustrous brown hair flowed down to the shoulders of the sun-yellow summer frock she was wearing. She smiled at him in a welcoming manner as he stood silently in the doorway.

‘How did you get in?’ he asked.

There was a woman here who let me in. She works for you.’ Andrew grunted non-commitally.

I thought you’d want me to make myself at home until you arrived,’ said Branwen, still smiling at him.

‘Well, as you’re here—- he let the sentence trail off while he topped up her glass and poured one for himself. He perched on the arm of the sofa, across the room from her.

‘Are you alone?’ he asked. ‘Or is Gilbert up in my bathroom?’

‘All alone,’ she reassured him.

Branwen was not exactly pretty, he thought studying her. Her face was just too long for that her teeth a fraction too protruberant her lower lip just too full. But she was a very attractive woman. Her every movement however insignificant, hinted at the warmth in her and the joyous drive that animated her. What a woman to take to bed she would be.

‘You don’t look at all comfortable perched there,’ she said,

‘you look wary and on guard. Why don’t you sit down properly so that we can talk?’ He did as she suggested.

‘What are we going to talk about, Branwen? You’ve had a fair drive to get here, so it must be important’

‘It’s always nice to talk to friends, don’t you think?” she said, postponing answering his question.

Andrew could see that she was edging round the subject that had brought her to see him all the way from London. She was evidently uncertain how best to broach it. There was no point in trying to force the issue. She would get to it in her own time. She did not give the impression of being an indecisive woman - on the contrary, she seemed to him on their short acquaintance to be an impulsive woman.

With a tiny frown, she got up and put her glass on the stone mantelpiece.

‘I hate dithering about’ she said. There are things I must talk to you about But before I can talk to you openly I’ve got to know that I can trust you.’

‘How can you know that?’

There’s a very simple way.’

She reached behind her back to unzip her yellow frock and pull it over her head. Andrew stared, round-eyed. She shook her long hair back and stood before him in small white briefs. His heart bounded within him. His eyes were on her long narrow breasts as she cupped them in her hands and held them up and towards him.

‘Like what you see?’ she asked, looking down at her breasts

as she squeezed them affectionately.

The trouble is,’ said Andrew slowly, hating to say it ‘I can’t do anything anymore. Bianca magicked me so that I’m useless with other women. I’ve tried.’

‘What did she do to you? Tell me about it’

He explained how he had been summoned from a distance in a dream.

Bianca nodded, still standing in front of him, holding her breasts.

This dream - tell me exactly what you saw.’

‘It was a vision of Bianca standing naked, playing with herself as she called to me. I kept saying no to her, but when she reached her climax I found myself saying yes. I couldn’t help myself anymore. So I got up an d drove to her, hardly knowing w hat I was doing. When I got there , we went upstairs and did it together. It was like being eaten alive, not like making love at all. She told me later what she had done to me. I thought she was trying to impress me or scare me, but she was telling the truth.’

‘If that’s all she did, you’ve nothing much to worry about,’ Branwen said cheerfully. ‘Even I can fetch men from a distance and I’m only a novice compared to her.’

‘You can?’ he asked, unbelieving.

‘I am one of the Apart, you know.’

The thing is,’ he confessed, shamefaced, ‘I can’t get it to stand up with another woman after that night with her. I’ve tried. I went to see a friend a couple of nights ago and I was useless.’

Branwen chuckled. ‘

‘Bianca certainly brainwashed you thoroughly. Of course you can still do it She’s planted a blocking thought in your mind, that ’s all ’

That much I guessed. The question is, how do I unblock it?’

The memory of his visit to Sandy two nights before still rankled. He had explained as best he could his silent departure in the night by saying he had woken up and remembered that he had promised to be on a farm miles away at six in the morning. Sandy had accepted his story with some reserve. But after a few drinks she warmed to him again and they eventually went to bed together. And there was the problem at once - her handsome body was spread out and ready for him and he was limp and impotent . Her well-meant efforts to rouse him came to nothing. They parted coldly and finally.

‘If you believe that you’re magicked, then you are,’ said Branwen. ‘Bianca works by controlling people’s minds. She’s expert at it but I can release you from that little spell of hers and then we can get to know each other.’

She slid her briefs down her long bare and golden legs and stood with her feet apart to display the brown fur between her thighs and the pouting lips under the fur. She ran her hands slowly down her sides, over her broad belly and let her fingertips rest in her groin.

‘Do you want me to release you, Andy?’ she whispered.

‘I’ll do anything if you can.’

‘Get it out and show me.’

Embarrassed, he spread his legs apart, ran his zipper down and pulled his underpants aside to show her his limp part ‘Keep your eyes on me,’ she said, ‘and let my words sink into your innermost soul. Don’t try to reason or understand or argue in your mind. Just be passive and receptive.’

He watched her closely as her long fingers moved caressingly over her own body. She spoke in a kind of sing-song rhythm.’

‘From this little acorn of yours a plant will grow, Andy. A sapling will raise, its head towards the sun. It wil l swell to a tall smooth trunk that pushes higher and higher. It will flourish and ripen until it is ready to shed its seeds.’

Her. fingers were parting the lips between her splayed thighs, showing him the pink and moist interior.

The tree of life stands firm,’ she whispered. It raises its head to the sky. The sap rises in it’

She slid her hands up her body to her breasts and came towards him.

For the first time since he had left Bianca, he was erect He looked down into his lap and then up at Branwen in gratitude. She straddled his legs and lowered herself slowly, one hand guiding his hard shaft, the other opening the way for it . She sank on to his lap, impaling herself delicately on his erection. Andrew sighed in pleasure, clasped her about the waist and kissed her warm breasts.

‘Don’t move,’ she breathed, her long soft hair cascading over his face as she leaned forward.

He felt her internal muscles clasping and releasing his member. She was hot and wet inside and it took an effort of will to prevent himself from thrusting in and out

‘Have nothing in your mind except my body,’ she said softly. ‘My hair on your face, my breasts against your lips, my grip on your shaft. Lose yourself in bodily feeling. The acorn has grown into a mighty tree of life. It has its own magic now, more powerful than any woman’s magic. The force that gives life wfll spring up through it, undauntable and not to be denied. I feel it throbbing inside me—’

Andrew cried out in release and spouted his semen into her, his hips and loins jerking convulsively. The pleasure was long and sweet, the best he had known for a very long time. He shook and moaned and kissed her breasts in thankfulness, while she stroked his dark hair and then pressed her fingertips to his temples hard.

When he opened his eyes, Branwen was sitting crosslegged and naked on the carpet in front of him, watching him with an expression he couldn’t fathom. He blinked and searched his memory. In some way there was a discontinuity between the last moment he remembered and the present moment He had no way of telling its duration - a second, a minute, several minutes - all he had was an uncomfortable feeling of a lapse in his perception of time.

‘What did you do?’ he asked, convinced that Branwen was responsible.

She gave him a reassuring smile.

‘What did I do? I released you from the bonds Bianca put round your mind. You seemed to enjoy it’

‘Not that! You did something else as well I can sense it. You’ve looked inside my mind.’

‘Nothing you need worry about I wanted to know whether I can trust you, that’s all. I told you that when I took my clothes off.’ ‘It sounds a bit one-sided to me. How do I know if I can trust you? Tell me what you did.’

‘Nothing complicated. Just for a second or so while you were coming, your soul was open to me and I looked in. If it bothers you, I’ll show you how it ’s done and you can do it to me. Then will you trust me?’

‘Soul,’ said Andrew, not answering her. ‘I seem to have heard that word more in the last few days than ever before in my life. I suppose you mean mind’

‘Suppose whatever you like.’

The implication of what she had offered struck him.

‘Would you really teach me how to do that? I’m not one of the Apart, you know.’

That doesn’t make any difference. It’s a simple thing.’

To you, maybe. To me it’s incredible.’

The point is, I know now that I can trust you, Andy, and I want you to trust me.’

‘What makes trust between us so important?’

‘You and I are in danger, that’s what makes it important. We might just be able to help each other. Neither of us has anyone else to turn to.’

Andrew tucked in his shirt and zipped up his flies while he thought her mention of danger had stirred a shiver of unease deep in his mind. His attempts to explain to himself why Bianca had summoned him to her and allowed him to learn as much about her as she had all ended at the same point - an inference that she was in danger herself and that she intended to use him to save herself if she could. The seance with Gilbert had rein forced his fears. What the danger was and what part she intended him to-play was beyond his speculation. What he guessed was that it must be a danger of monstrous proportions to intimidate a woman with Bianca’s powers.

And now here was Branwen, who had witnessed Bianca’s dialogue with whatever had possessed Gilbert, sounding the same alarm. Branwen, he reminded himself, was one of the Apart. Like Bianca, she wouldn’t scare easily.

‘What sort of danger are you talking about?’ he asked.

Branwen’s hands were clasped in her lap, her long hair lay about her naked shoulders. She made a fine sight sitting there on the carpet, a sight to make a man’s heart leap for joy. She was probably irresistible when she chose to make use of her sexual attractions, Andrew thought, and that made her a risk. She could in all probability convince him of anything she liked when she sat naked before him like that, her breasts swaying as she moved slightly. Beware, he thought ‘I don’t know exactly,’ she said. ‘Bianca is in some sort of trouble that I don’t understand. But it’s so bad that she wouldn’t let us hear about it . You were there - you know how she spoke to the spirit Gilbert attracted. She was afraid even to put her trouble into words. What did you make of it?’

‘Not much. Gilbert told her that she would have to find someone more powerful to answer her question.’

It wasn’t Gilbert who told her, ‘but never mind. It was that answer which made me realize how bad things must be. The earth spirits can answer everything you want to know, if the reward is right’

The ones she calls the Great Ones,’ said Andrew, ‘why doesn’t she ask them?’

‘Because her question is something to do with them, that much is obvious.’

‘Have you ever been with them?’ he asked her.

Her face paled under its tan.

‘I’ve never dared. Bianca is the only living person I know that has. They teach wonderful things and they give fantastic pleasure. But—’

‘But?’

There’s always a price to be paid for consorting with other beings. If it’s earth spirits, you know in advance what the price is - they want to use your body for a while. With the Great Ones, you don’t know what the price will be.’

‘How did you become one of the Apart, Branwen?’

‘I used Gilbert Years ago, when I saw what he could do, I persuaded him to let an earth spirit into him when we were alone together. I trapped it in him with the bracelets. You’ve seen how he is when he’s possessed. His body is docile and his mind is blanked out It was easy. I pushed him over on to his back on the floor and straddled him as he lay there helpless. I rode him until the trapped spirit found its way out through me.’

‘What was it like?’

She shivered slightly and then smiled.

There aren’t any words for it In a way it was like the

biggest and longest orgasm in human history, but there was

far more than that It was as if I looked down from a mile in

the sky at Gilbert and me, actually seeing myself sitting astride

him and screaming. And more than that - there was the sense

of someone else inside my body and by head, thinking different

thoughts and wanting different things - things that no sane

person could ever possibly want Afterwards I was frightened,

though not at the time. But once was enough. I’ve never done

it again.’

‘What was the price you had to pay?’

‘You don’t want to know about that. Let’s get back to why I came to see you.’

‘You mean that you don’t want to tell me. All right then, let’s get back to the trouble you think is on the way. What can we do to find out?’

‘You’re in a better position than I am. When are you going back to Bianca?’

Tomorrow. I’m invited to stay for a few days. Maybe a week. It’s not very definite.’

‘She’s hooked you properly. You’ve no choice but to run to her when she tugs the line. Poor Andy!’

‘No, if s just that I want to be with her and help her.’

‘Of course you do - she’s bent your inclination that way. You won’t believe me but the simple fact is that she owns your soul. I can’t untie that knot - Bianca is the only one who can free you from that I can only undo the lesser bond that kept you from other women.’

‘Why does she want me? What for?’ Andrew asked dejectedly.

That’s what we have to find out I smell danger - for her, for you and for me. You still have no idea of how powerful and how ruthless she is. You’ve seen nothing yet! If she can, she’ll throw you and me to the wolves to save herself and not give us a second thought I know it’

In the dream when she called me to her, there was a living thing standing behind her,’ said Andrew. ‘It was as big as a mountain. It wasn’t human, but it wasn’t animal either. It seemed to stand on two legs and have two arms. Not that I could see it very well. It reached down and touched her and its power flowed through her and destroyed my resistance.’

Branwen was listening with interest

‘She must have wanted you to see it or you wouldn’t have. It might be something that has stayed with her from her dealings with the Great Ones. Psychic force in a visible form, perhaps. Or at least visible in a dream. At least you know you’re not keeping company with an amateur who’s learned a simple spell or two when you go to her.’

She unclasped her long-fingered hands from in front of the patch of brown fur between her splayed thighs and touched her breasts in a gesture that drew his eyes to her nipples. They were long and erect ‘Now that you’re unhexed,’ she said, stretching her sun-gold arms towards him, ‘maybe I can persuade you to oblige me’

Andrew got up, took her hands and pulled her to her feet His arms went about her, pressing her naked body against him breathlessly.

It will be a pleasure,’ he said.

‘Bedroom this time. It’s more comfortable.”

He lifted her and carried her up the narrow stairs. And in doing so, a memory chilled him - carrying Bianca up, torn and bedraggled from her night on Longman’s Hill.

He laid Branwen on the patchwork counterpane of the bed, his memory comparing her golden skin and brown hair with Bianca’s white body and pale gold hair. Snow queen and earth daughter, something said inside his head. Bianca is a snow-covered mountain peak where the gods live in remote grandeur. No man could survive there long, though that never stops the intrepid and the foolhardy from scaling the ice-slopes to hear the gods speaking their mighty words out of a swirling blizzard. Branwen is the summer meadow at the mountain foot where leafy trees grow over a pebbled brook.

Branwen looked at his haunted face and guessed his trouble. She moved her silky-skinned thighs lasciviously against each other and Andrew was all right again, the comparison forgotten. He feasted his eyes on her golden body as he stripped off his clothes and lay beside her to take her in his arms.

Their second coupling was long and deliberate. Lips, fingers, arms, legs, touched, stroked, intertwined, until their entire bodies were so sensitized that each touch of skin on skin sent a shuddering wave through them. They lost all sense of time and place, murmuring meaningless sounds to each other. When at last Branwen rolled on to her back and pulled him towards her, he slid into her as easily and familiarly as if they had been lovers for years.

They were both so near to their climax that he moved cautiously, trying to delay the moment and prolong the pleasure. Branwen’s hands cupped his face as she kissed his eyelids.

Ecstasy took him unawares. She held him tightly as he ejaculated in strong and slow streams inside her. Above the roaring of blood in his ears he dimly heard her high-pitched cry of release. They lay in each other’s arms afterwards, not speaking, half dreaming, while at the window day faded into twilight and then into night and a white sliver of moon appeared in the sky.

Is it always like that with you?’ he asked. ‘

Branwen trailed her fingertips through the dark that of hair on his chest

That was my lyrical mood,’ she said. ‘I have others.’ ‘I’d like to see them too.’

‘Maybe you will. I won’t guarantee that you’ll enjoy all of them.’

‘As long as there’s no magicking.’

‘We’ve no need for that We’re good together.’

‘Now that you’ve lifted the spell she put on me.’

·Don’t let her know about that or you’ll be sorry.’

·You mean that she’ll hex me again?’

·Probably worse next time. Your soul belongs to her and she can do what she likes with you.’

·My soul’s my own,’ Andrew protested.

·But it’s not when Bianca tugs the strings, you’ll run to her. You can’t help yourself, so there’s no point in getting annoyed about it’

I’m not annoyed I just don’t believe it’ That’s part of if ‘So if you believe this, why don’t you help me?’ She laughed harshly.

‘How little you know, even now. Nobody can help you except the one who did it to you. Bianca will have to release you when she’s done with you.’

There’s got to be a way,’ he insisted.

let’s not worry about that now. I’m hungry and it’s getting late.’

‘Do you have to go home tonight?’

‘No, but I have to eat’

He pulled his trousers on and gave her his blue-striped dressing-gown to wear. Downstairs in the kitchen they decided on chops. Andrew opened a bottle of Beaune while she put the chops under the grill and set the table ‘One thing that has been made apparent to me,’ he said, watching her move about the kitchen, ‘the Apart are promiscuous.’

‘Are you complaining?’

‘No, I’m looking for enlightenment’

The Apart are called that because they are apart from the rest of the human race. Laws and morals don’t bind them as they bind others. Sexuality is to be enjoyed and to be used, not to be traded off against domesticity. I go to bed with whom I choose, simply because I can’t be any other way.’

‘And so does Gilbert, I assume.’

She sat down at the kitchen table opposite him.

‘I’ll tell you something about Gilbert. He doesn’t go to bed with anyone, not even me. The tree of life on his body absorbs all his strength and vital essence to nourish it As far as sex goes, Gilbert ’s been impotent for a long time. I told you that on Sunday when you helped me with him, but evidently you didn ’t understand me.’

‘But you told me this evening that you became one of the Apart by riding him. So which is it? You can’t have it both ways.’

‘When I did that with him the tree only covered him up to his navel He had only recently started to have it tattooed on him. He could still get an erection then and come. Now that all his body is covered, he can’t do either. Do you understand now?’

I’m damned if I do. How can a tattoo have an effect like that? I’ve seen circus people tattooed all over.’

‘Not with the tree of life pattern, you haven’t or they wouldn’t be exhibiting themselves in a circus.’

It doesn’t make sense, what you say. A pattern is a pattern.’

‘It’s like explaining things to a child,’ Branwen said impatiently. ‘Just take my word for it - that particular pattern is very ancient and very special. Seers have used it from time immemorial. It attracts earth-spirits the way a fruit tree attracts birds when it’s tattooed on a man’s body. But it costs him his virility.’

Then I’11 stay away from tattooists,’ he said, smiling.

‘You do that And be careful that Bianca doesn’t put you to sleep and have it done to you before you wake up. She needs the services of a diviner just now and Gilbert couldn’t get the answers she wanted.’

Andrew’s smile faded at the thought

‘Cheer up,’ said Branwen, seeing his expression, “you’d never be as good a diviner as Gilbert, so you needn’t worry. How about pouring the wine?’

Chapter 10

On the long and traffic-ridden drive to London the next day, Andrew thought about Bianca and the story which Branwen had told him about her background. It went some way to explaining why she had become what she had. Branwen had related it to him about three o’clock in the morning, when they were too tired to make love anymore and yet unwilling to sleep and lose sight of each other. Sleep had finally overtaken them as the sky was turning pale through the bedroom window and they had not woken until after nine, throwing Andrew’s morning schedule into chaos. Branwen left for London in her sports car after breakfast, leaving him to sort out his day as best he could.

Bianca was born in 1945, when Edwin Hallam was sating his monstrous familiar on the deaths of enemy soldiers in Burma. Her parents were well-to-do and they made the most of their daughter, educating and training her for marriage at the right time to a suitable young man of the same background and tastes. Or so they thought It didn’t work out as they intended because in Bianca there was an unexpected streak of stubborn rebellion against the world of her parents and a wild yearning for the exotic.

Her father worked in the Foreign Office in London and attended diplomatic receptions endlessly as part of his job. When Bianca was eighteen and out of private school, he started to take her along with him to broaden her horizons. So it did, though not in the manner he planned.

It was at one of these functions that she met a man twice her own age, a representative of one of the African countries that were emerging from colonial stagnation into a dynamic barbarism of their own. His name was so awkward for an English mouth that Bianca called him Miggy. She gave him this name at their second meeting - one her parents did not know about - when he took her to bed in the hotel he was staying in.

Miggy was a man of tremendous presence. He stood over six feet tall and was as broad-shouldered as a buffalo. His huge shiny black face and woolly hair fascinated Bianca, as her delicate whiteness fascinated him. A couple so totally opposite in every way - size, colouring and education - could hardly be imagined. Like negative and positive, they attracted each other so strongly that nothing could have prevented them from coming together.

At that first union, Bianca was a virgin, while Miggy had a wife or two and a string of children back home. Not that he mentioned them as his pink-palmed hands carefully peeled off her flimsy clothes to let him see her pale body. This first sexual encounter might have been a complete disaster for Bianca, in which case her life would have followed another path. But it turned into an emotional experience so overpowering that it jolted her right o ut of all the beliefs that had been so lengthily inculcated into her by her parents and her schooling.

The Government in which Miggy served had not been established all that long and was creaky. The newly independent state lacked trained administrators, resources and organization. Men who could read with difficulty had been made high, officials, colonels, provincial governors, because there was no one else to replace the whites who had been sent home. Graft was everywhere. Those who could acquire any sort of official job began to make money overnight from selling favours and contracts and permissions to do this and that t hose who had agitated hardest to get rid of the old imperialist system began to wonder what they had gained in its place. The time was fast becoming ripe for a change, a revolution to bring a different set of men to the top. Miggy knew it and wanted to be involved. There was no pride in being a second-grade functionary in London of a government that was known to be corrupt and inept He contrived his transfer back home, his mind full of plans and ambitions.

Bianca went with him. The two of them were so deeply involved in each other that the idea of separation was unthinkable. Her parents were shocked and shamed beyond words when she packed a bag one morning and told them that she was leaving and where she was going. Her utter devotion to Miggy carried her unscathed through the ensuing row and by that afternoon she and he were sitting side by side, holding hands, in an airplane bound for his homeland. By the time of her running away, Bianca had learned rather more about sex than most married in a lifetime. Miggy was good for her in that respect He was a hot-blooded man and even months of familiarity with her small body had not lessened his ardour. She had only to take of f her clothes and show herself to him to arouse turn to heights of passion. The same held good for her. All she need do was unbu tton his shirt and run her palm over his black barrel of a chest and she was as ready for coupling as he was. He taught her to shave off her pubic hair, in the manner of his country and when he engulfed her bare lower lips with his own thick-lipped mouth, she usually orgasmed at once just by watching what he was doing, long before his wet tongue insinuated itself into her.

Since Miggy was the first and only man she had known carnally at that time, she took his sexual appetite to be normal. Five or six orgasms were usual for her, lying on his rumpled bed in the London hotel, under his hands, his tongue and finally his snake as he called it In this way she became accustomed to sexual pleasure of an intensity and duration beyond what she might have experienced in the bed of one of her own countrymen and this was to lead her into a bizarre relationship later in her life.

Miggy’s country came as a shock to Bianca, used to good-living and few problems. It was oppressively hot, run-down and shabby. The people spoke a number of languages, none of which she could make head or tail of. The ones who spoke English, Miggy’s friends, seemed to her either boring or pompous, when they were not being downright stupid. They treated her with more familiarity than she cared for. From their point of view, she was Miggy’s white woman and if she lay down for him, maybe she could be persuaded to do the same for them. So they tried, endlessly and tiresomely.

Meanwhile, a self-styled revolutionary council was forming secretly, making plans and extending the most delicate of feelers towards the men who controlled the ramshackle armed forces on which the internal security of the country depended. Miggy was in the thick of it and Bianca became involved unwittingly. To be the proprietor of a young, beautiful and clever white woman brought Miggy considerable prestige among his countrymen, many of whom had spent their adolescence privately lusting after the white wives and daughters of their now-departed colonial rulers. Miggy was obviously a man who understood Europeans and their ways to have acquired such a prize. That marked him out as a useful man when the Government fell and was replaced by the new men.

Bianca had been there about a year before the change took place. While the country was large, the revolution was small though bloody. Most of the population lived in thatched huts in villages widely separated and were only vaguely aware that the white colonialists had been gone for years, so little difference had it made to their way of life. To seize power required only the seizure of the capital, the main port, the airport and two small provincial towns. That meant the support of at least half the army to do it When after endless discussions and negotiations, enough of the military men who mattered had been given the assurances they wanted about their own personal future and the provisional Government’s plans for expanding the armed services and increasing the defence budget, the coup took place.

Miggy had been gone for days on secret business when Bianca was woken one sticky hot dawn by the rattle of rifle fire somewhere in the city, not far away. Faithful to his instructions, she stayed at home with the doors locked. Halfway through the morning two grinning soldiers turned up in charge of a corporal to stand guard over her flat, on Miggy’s orders.

The regime in power was not without its supporters, mainly those doing well out of the system, including part of the military. In the two days of street fighting that swept through the capital, casualties mounted high on bom sides. From behind her shu tters, Bianca could see plenty of fly-covered corpses sprawled in the street outside by the end of the first afternoon. By the next day she could smell them.

Neither mercy nor commonsense were shown on either side. Soldiers and civilians, men and women, were shot down or bayoneted without a thought. The presidential palace was mortared heavily throughout the first day and set on fire. The country’s entire air force of a dozen obsolescent fighters flew sorties over the city, first rocketing and then machine-gunning any target big enough for them to hit - the central post-office, the hospital, the taller business buildings - until the other side captured the airstrip and gunned the pilots down when they landed to refuel and re-arm.

After nightfall the looting and raping got under way, both sides falling to it with brute enthusiasm. Bianca had barricaded her door with furniture by then and was dreading the outcome. She heard the guards outside her door screaming as they were machine-gunned. Her door and barricade were sprayed with bullets and kicked in. Four black soldiers swarmed in and dragged her from her hiding-place under the bed. One of them held her from behind by her hair, nearly tearing it from her scalp, while another ripped he r dress and underwear off. She w as thrown naked to the floor and three of them held her while the fourth lowered his trousers and threw himself on to her.

Bianca screamed, kicked, swore and prayed as he rammed into her, but it made no difference. The shining eyes of the other three soldiers were on her as they waited their turn, jabbering and laughing at her. The first man made grunting noises as he ejaculated into her and was pushed aside by the others before he had finished and the next man was into her and thumping away as if to tear her guts out By the time he had finished and made way for the next Bianca could only sob in despair and plead with God to let her die. Before the third man had finished, a hand-grenade was thrown into the room through the shattered door.

The two soldiers holding her wide-apart ankles were killed outright being nearest the door. The man on top of her shrieked as bits of metal tore into his back and the one holding her wrists above her head let go and fell over backwards, his hands to his face. Bianca was unhurt - the men around her had absorbed the explosion and she suffered no worse harm from the grenade than shock and temporary deafness. She climbed shakily to her feet and stared at the carnage. The man who had been inside her at the explosion was crying out in agony and writhing on the floor, his kidneys and liver torn to shreds. The other survivor was hunched up, covering his face with his hands, blood seeping down through his fingers.

Bianca picked up one of the rifles they had discarded in their eagerness to get at her, cocked it and forced the muzzle into the mouth of the man twitching about on the floor. The shot took most of the back of his head off but she didnt hear it deafened as she was.

She shot the other survivor too, pressing the smoking muzzle of the rifle to the crown of his head as he hunched over, sobbing to himself and hiding his face. After that she collected the other rifles and took them with her into the next room, where she sought refuge under the bed again. Through the rest of the night and the next day roving bands of looters peered in through the broken door, saw the bodies and grenade-torn room and went away, thinking there was nothing of value left Bianca stayed under the bed all night and all the next day, four cocked rifles in a row by her hands. She intended to fight it out to the end with any more marauders and was fully determined to die rather than be raped again.

A less tough-minded woman would have dissolved into hysteria and helplessness after what had been done to her. The stubborn streak that had brought Bianca to Miggy’s country against her parent’s wishes helped her survive this ordeal too. Her fear and agitation hardened over the hours into determination. She even found it possible to wonder whether the four soldiers had been on Miggy’s side or the other side. There was no way of telling - they all wore the same uniform. Neither was there any way of knowing whether the grenade thrower had been on the same side as the men who had raped her or the other side. It made no difference, she concluded. They all reverted to savagery when the frail bonds of discipline vanished in the dark.

By sun-down on the second day the shooting outside died away. Bianca crawled out of her hiding-place, put on a dress and found something to eat She took the food back with her under the bed and checked her weapons again.

Towards midnight she heard Miggy’s voice in the other room, calling her name in alarm. She went out, taking one of the rifles with her. Once he saw that she was alive, he was joyous with the news that the coup had succeeded and that he and his friends had taken over the Government He had already taken in the import of the scene - the dead soldiers, one with his trousers down and his parts exposed. He grimaced and pressed his thick lips together and said nothing about it . Nor did Bianca. She sensed that it could bring about a change in their hitherto loving relationship. She knew enough about Miggy to understand that he was Europeanized only on the surface. Under his missionary school veneer there stfll lurked primitive beliefs and drives. Her position would be impossible if Miggy’s friends ever learned that his white woman had been raped by soldiers.

They made the best of it Miggy told Bianca to fasten up the dead man’s trousers before he sent for more soldiers to drag the bodies away and load them into a truck. He took her the next day to see die corpses hanging upside down by their ankles from the lamp-posts in the main square, but by then they were covered with buzzing flies and were starting to bloat . The story he put about was that his woman had taken part in the glorious revolution and had personally shot dead four soldiers sent by the other side to kidnap her and use her as a hostage against him. As a result of his lie, Bianca was held in high esteem by the new regime and received a decoration from the new president Most important, Miggy’s own prestige rose to new heights as the owner of a heroine.

Things got back to normal slowly. The dead were cleared away. The wounded either died or recovered. The raped women who had not been murdered as well were sent back to their families by their husbands as no longer worthy to be their wives or else turned out on the streets to beg. The new administration ran out of revolutionary fervour quite quickly after they had installed themselves and their relatives and friends in all the important jobs.

Miggy was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs. He and Bianca lived in a big old colonial house, had a score of ill-paid servants to attend on them and entertained such diplomats as the rest of the world thought appropriate to send to represent them in this backward and not very promising country. After the new president’s American-educated black wife, Bianca was the second lady of the capital It took a few years of this life before she was ready to face the fact that all was not well She had never been much interested in politics, thinking it boring and devious. Her interest had been in Miggy as a person, not as a revolutionary politician. And now he and the times were changing. In most respects the new regime was indistinguishable from the former regime - it was as corrupt and as inept in almost every possible way. But it had brought about o ne change. It no longer looked towards Europe as a source of education, trade, culture, technology or inspiration. It deliberately taught a pride in its own past and its own culture before the first white men came. In this changed milieu Bianca realized that she was becoming an embarrassment to Miggy.

The story of her part in the revolution was long forgotten. The servants sniggered and said things to each other behind their hands when they thought she was not looking. The signs were there for her to read - her reign as mistress of Miggy’s household was fast coming to an end. Not that he was unfaithful to her. It was worse than that She became aware gradually that there was talk going on that he might marry one of the president ’s daughters, a slim, straight-backed fifteen year old. Though his manner had not changed towards her, Bianca knew that Miggy wanted to get rid of her so that he could conclude arrangements for his dynastic match.

She thought at first that she should go home to England and forget him. Then she discovered that she was not to be allowed to leave the country. Neither Miggy nor the Government wanted stories of torrid love and rejection published in the European press. The past had to be erased and leave no trace. When Bianca finally nerved herself to confront Miggy, he made it clear to her that she had to stay in the country, though not in his house anymore. His suggestion, which dumbfounded her, was that she should take up with a good friend of his, a man she had known since she first came to the country with him and whom she disliked. He had been one of those who had forever been trying to paw her breasts and bottom in the early days. He had the regulation number of black wives already, but he fancied a white mistress and would be h appy to install her in a small h ouse in the capital.

A vision of her future unrolled before Bianca’s horrified eyes. Passed on by the only man she had ever loved to a friend. And when he tired of her in turn, passed on to a friend of his as a favour. And then another, until eventually the only course left open to her would be to join the other public whores in the house behind the post office building. In her anger she even considered killing Miggy, but the draconian laws of her adopted country deterred her. She had more than once witnessed whippings and executions in the main square, for relatively minor offences. The execution of a murderer of a Minister of State would surely be terrible beyond belief.

She had even seen one of the whores from the brothel being whipped, tied naked to a stake. The crowd roared and jeered at her, pointing at her great loose breasts flopping this way and that as she twisted and shrieked under the whip. Her crime was to have been accused by the Minister of Education of giving him gonorrhoea.

Such was Bianca’s unenviable position and uncertain future when she met Edwin Hallam. After his long recuperation from his hip wound he had spent a year or two pursuing his occult studies in England until he had traced out to his satisfaction the line where the Otherworld overlapped this one. For all his efforts he could make no contact with the denizens of the Otherworld, so he left this matter unresolved and looked for others like himself who had personal experience of contact with a non-human intelligence. He met a few, learned what he could and witnessed manifestations that would have terrified an ordinary man.

Yet he could find no means of coaxing a disembodied spirit to himself, which was what he was seeking. He determined to travel abroad and try his luck in less civilized parts of the world. The money he had salted away during his freebooting days produced an income big enough to let him do whatever he wished.

He chose Africa as his hunting-ground. The emergent nationalisms and tribalisms and the vast upheavals as the old colonial powers pulled out had a promising look. With so much long-suppressed barbarism erupting in prolonged acts of violence from the North African coast down to the Zambesi ri ver. Edwin reasoned that t he afrits should be clustering thi ckly about the slaughter and torture. He hawked his services round the new countries as a military expert and trainer of troops, to keep himself close to the action. His heavy limp barred him from combat, but his record in Burma stood him in good stead with the leaders of the new republics, some of whom were already looking with envious eyes beyond their own frontiers.

Bianca met him at a reception given by the Minister of Defence. She was twenty-two and in the prime of her physical beauty. Hallam was more than twice her age but the impact he made on her was instant and extreme. She ascribed it to his personality, not knowing that what drew her was his quality of apartness. He perceived in her a potential she was unaware of. He was fascinated by the possible uses to which it could be put They swiftly became friends and then lovers. Hallam unpossessed could bed women without harming them. Bianca was a rare treat to him after a diet of African women.

He arrived at her house in a hurry one morning, an hour before dawn. Miggy had not been home for two days and Bianca was alone in the big bed when Edwin came in through the window from the verandah. He told her that soldiers were on the way to arrest her on Miggy ’s orders. She never doubted it for a moment While Edwin ransacked the room for anything of portable value, she pulled on a shirt and trousers and they fled together.

Edwin had a car outside and while they drove away from the city he told her the rest of what he knew. He had been tipped off by an army officer with whom he had struck up a friendship. Miggy had been having Bianca watched and knew all about her brief affair with Edwin. He intended to take advantage of this undreamed-of opportunity to rid himself of her.

During their years together Miggy had never thought fit to go through the formality of marriage with her and she had committed no legal offence, even by the restrictive laws of Miggy ’s country. Such considerations did not stand in the way of a man of his position and ambitions. Without the inconvenience of a hearing of any kind, he had given orders for her to be arrested and flogged in the market-place. After that she would be trucked by the army to a brothel in the provincial capital, two hundred miles away. Miggy had sold her to the owner, a cousin of his. A white woman’s body would be a big attraction there and with any luck she ought to last five or six years.

The military were also looking for Edwin, which was why his army friend had tipped him off, to give him a chance to get out Miggy did not want Edwin telling tales abroad after the disposal of Bianca. When the soldiers caught him, they would drive him out into the bush and finish him off. The official story would be that he had gone exploring alone up-country, against the advice of the authorities. Missing, presumed dead.

Edwin had no desire to be beaten senseless and dragged off to his death. There was no way out of the country through the airport as die troops there would be alerted to watch for him and Bianca. Similarly, the port would be watched. And the borders. So Edwin headed north-east towards the most distant frontier, thinking that it would take time for Miggy’s men to start searching in so unlike ly a direction. By heading that way he was making for the heartland of Africa and countries where he had friends and people he had worked with in training troops. In the back of the shabby car he had stolen he had an army rifle, fifty rounds of ammunition, a can of drinking water and some canned food.

They kept going hour after hour until the car ran out of petrol. They hid it off the road and took to the bush on foot Because of his stiff hip, long-distance walking was painful and tiring to Edwin. It was nearly as bad for Bianca, who was unused to more than half an hour on foot But neither of them were quitters and the thought of what awaited them if they were caught was an effective spur. They dragged themselves along, day by day, keeping away from roads and as far away as they could from villages. After six da ys of this, Edwin reckoned that they must have crossed the frontier, slow though their progress had been.

They hobbled into the next village they came to. The first to greet them was a graining black soldier who came round a hut and pointed a submachine-gun at them. Edwin had been wrong about the distance and their position. Whil e Bianca burst into tears of frustration at being caught so easily after so much hardship, Edwin acted. He was still a fighting-man. He threw himself awkwardly sideways against Bianca, knocking her to the dusty ground, and as he fell on top of her, he fired his rifle from the hip and got the shouting soldier through the chest before the man’s slower reflexes could get the spluttering machine-gun on them.

The shooting brought the rest of the patrol running to see what was going on. By the time they reached the scene of the action, Edwin had dragged himself across the parched earth to the dead soldier and got his gun. A sergeant and two more soldiers ran straight into a hail of bullets as Edwin knelt beside die first man he had killed and sprayed lead.

The villagers ran away in alarm from the shooting. Edwin and Bianca rustled through a few huts for provisions and water and took off in the patrol’s jeep. They headed across country, away from the track.

When they ran out of fuel and abandoned the vehicle Edwin was certain that they had now crossed the border. This time he was right. From then on it was relatively easy. A few hours walk took them to a village, where Edwin bartered for a ride in a bullock cart to the nearest small town. From there they rode in a rickety bus full of chattering and staring locals and crates of chickens to the city. Long distance telephone calls established Edwin’s credit an d he bought two tickets on the next, flight out It was going to Cairo, not that it mattered. What he wanted was distance between himself and Miggy, before the authorities were persuaded to arrest Bianca and himself and send them back on some charge or other. There were plenty to choose from - including murdering four soldiers. Cairo would be safer.

One problem they encountered was Bianca’s passport. It had expired some time previously and she had not bothered to bring the one issued to her by Miggy’s country. She had long since lost any desire to be a citizen of that country.

Edwin telephoned the British consul’s office. He had friends and contacts in many places. Bianca was eventually allowed through passport control. They settled into a luxury suite in the biggest hotel and two days later they married in Cairo.

Chapter 11

It was not long after two in the afternoon when Andrew arrived at Cheyne Walk. He rang the bell, bracing himself to meet Braddock’s hostile face and manner. He was pleasantly surprised when a girl opened the door for him.

He put her at about fifteen. She was pretty, though a little too thin for her height Her straight, dark-brown hair hung halfway down her back and she wore a version of the normal teenager uniform, blue jeans and a checked shirt with the tails outside.

‘Mr Jarvis?’ she asked in a light and pleasing voice. ‘Yes. Who are you?’

‘I’m Mandy. Mr Braddock’s my father. Come in, please. It’s his afternoon off and I was told to expect you.’

Leading him to the sitting-room, she told him that Mrs Hallam was out and would be back later. He was to make himself at home.

Andrew scarcely took in her words at all. The moment he crossed the threshold he had been enswathed in a sensation that threatened to overwhelm him. The house was quiet, yet he had a sustained high-pitched whistling inside his head that made it nearly impossible to think. It was more a feeling than a sound, as if he were standing close to a huge fly-wheel rotating so fast that it gave out a note far above the level of hearing.

The house looked wrong. The broad entrance hall felt no bigger than a box. He could have sworn that if he reached up he would be able to touch the ceiling and the walls on either side seemed to brush his shoulders. The sitting-room, expansive as he remembered it gave him the same choking impression of claustrophobia. The furniture appeared to huddle together in a confined space, though he knew it to be well spread out From above the fireplace the nude portrait of Bianca stared at him in disdain so total that he averted his eyes.

What the hell is happening to me, he wondered. A cold finger of panic trailed along his spine at the way his head was swimming. Was he ill?

He looked at Mandy. At the door she had been calm and cheerful. Now he detected a startled look in her eyes. When she wiped away a bead of sweat from her upper lip with a hand that trembled visibly, he was sure that she also was experiencing this strange bending of perception.

‘Are you all right, Mandy?’ he asked, to see what she would say. His voice sounded clogged and distant to him.

She cocked her head, listening intently.

‘Did you hear anything?’ she asked nervously.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Maybe it was the baby crying. I’ll go and see.’ The way she said it indicated her reluctance to go anywhere in the house on her own.

Andrew felt the same reluctance to be left alone while this inexplicable sensation was upon him. It felt like dread, but there was nothing to fear that he could see.

“Whose baby is it?’ be asked, to delay her departure.

‘Mine. Would you like to see her?’

He nodded. Any excuse to go with her. Anything at all was better than being left on his own in the sitting-room. He saw the expression of relief in the girl’s eyes when she knew that she would not have to be alone. Without another word she showed him the way down the back stairs to the basement flat . It was not too large, though reasonably furnished.

Mandy’s bedroom had a cot in a corner with a baby fast asleep, sucking a tiny thumb.

‘I usually put her outside to get the fresh air, but I can’t today in this drizzle. Isn’t she lovely?’ said Mandy. She was chattering superficially, her mind wrestling with something else.

‘She looks like you,’ said Andrew, also trying to get to grips with a mind that felt half-paralyzed. ‘How old are you?’ ‘I’ll be sixteen in December.’

Her teeth were chattering slightly as if in terror. It was wrong that so young a gal should be a mother, Andrew thought dimly, but he was too occupied with his own mental distress to pursue the thought any further.

Mandy fussed with the cot blanket

‘We mustn’t wake her up,’ she said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

Andrew gratefully accepted the suggestion as it promised human company. He had an impression that if he were alone, something definitely not human would manifest itself to him.

.Mandy made tea in the basement kitchen and they sat side by side on a brown sofa in the living-room of the flat to drink it What Andrew really wanted was a large whisky to still his contracting stomach and stop the crawling feeling at the back of his neck. The cup rattled on the saucer and spilled a little tea when Mandy passed it to him with a shaky hand.

‘You’re a very special friend of Mrs Hallam, aren’t you?’ she said.

‘Am I? What makes you think that?’ ‘Because my dad said so.’ ‘Why does he think that?’

‘Well, you stay all night with her sometimes,’ she answered with a nervous grin. There’s not many get invited to stay. My dad doesn’t like it when people stay with her.’

‘He’s made that obvious. Why should he care?’

‘He fancies her himself, didn’t you know?’

Her voice sounded hollow and echoing.

‘You’re a bit forward for your age,’ said Andrew, trying to hold his thoughts together, ‘and you’re much too young to have a baby. How old is it?’

‘Her name’s Ruth and she’s nearly six months.’

‘You could only just have past your fourteenth birthday when you became pregnant Have you got a mother?’

She shook her head emphatically.

“Why didn’t you have the child adopted when she was born. Surely that would have been the best thing to do.’

‘No, I love looking after her. I’m good at it. I love her.’

‘Maybe so, but that’s not the point’

Mandy smiled sideways at him.

‘Some things I can’t do,’ she said, I mean, I couldn’t feed her myself.’

The whistling inside Andrew’s head slid down the scale to a drumming, like a heartbeat felt rather than heard. He shook his head to clear it but the steady thrumming did not go away.

Mandy unbuttoned the front of her shirt from hem to collar and pulled it open to display her small bare breasts.

‘My titties are too small, you see,’ she said.

She took one nipple between finger and thumb and pulled at it

‘Mandy - you mustn’t show yourself to me like that! ‘ “Why not?’ she demanded in a fast and blurred voice. ‘Mrs

Hallam’s got little ones, hasn’t she? I bet mine are nearly as

big as hers.’

‘Button your shirt up,’ said Andrew, forcing the words out as if through a smothering gag.

‘I want you to look at them so you can tell me if they’re as big as hers. Nothing wrong with that’

It must feel something like this when you suffer a stroke, Andrew thought; noises in your head and a semi-paralysis that makes it hard to talk. Aloud he said slowly and thickly:

‘If it’s any satisfaction to you, they’re nearly as big as hers. Now do your shirt up.’

She was plucking at the other nipple, teasing it to stand firm, a glazed look in her eyes.

‘I bet you’ve seen plenty of them before now,’ she said.

That’s different’

‘Why is it different’

“You know very well When a girl lets a man see her like that, it means that she’s going to let him make love to her.’

He tried to look away and couldn’t The girl’s fingers plucking at her nipples held his gaze in spite of himself. The drumming in his head thudded through his whole body, a steady and deliberate beat a second. He felt it in his chest in his belly, in his loins and in his standing part . The recognition that he was erect brought about a change in his mood, from dread of a situation he couldn’t understand to acceptance that it was beyond his control.

He leaned back on the sofa, his breathing no longer laboured. Who would have thought that this little devil would liven up an afternoon for him by putting on a show of her body? He could hear the words whispered in his head. No wonder she had a baby if this was how she carried on with men.

Mandy ran the tip of her pink tongue round her lips and smiled at him as she squeezed both her breasts.

‘Do you like making love, then?’ she asked.

He nodded, unable to speak.

She let go of her breasts and moved her hands down to her waist He watched as she unfastened the top of her jeans and unzipped her flies.

‘Am I sexy?’ she asked tremulously.

Andrew found his voice to say huskily, ‘I think you’re very sexy, Mandy.’

He felt at the back of his mind that they were following a script that had been written for them, her questions, his answers, all laid out in advance by someone else. He had no choice but to go along with it and play the part allocated to him.

Mandy pulled the waistband of her white cotton panties down to show him the patch of curly brown hair below.

‘Why don’t you touch me?’ she asked.

He moved closer to her and kissed her while his hand cupped a soft little breast He felt her fingers trace the outline of his hard standing part through his trousers. She pulled her mouth back from his and looked at him, her brown eyes not quite in focus.

‘Come into the bedroom so we can lie down properly,’ she whispered.

She led him by the hand out of the living-room, her other hand clutching her undone jeans round her waist

‘Not my room, we don’t want to wake Ruth up,’ she said. ‘Come in here.’

It was a larger room than hers, with a double, bed. She lay on it and waited for him.

Andrew slipped off his jacket and shoes and lay beside her, kissing and feeling her body. She wriggled out of her checked shirt while he was sucking her nipples. He peeled off her jeans and panties and kissed her narrow belly. He pushed his tongue into her tiny navel and traced wetly the pink caesarean scar below it Mandy sighed and squirmed as his fingers touched and parted the moist lips between her thighs.

He rose from her briefly to strip off the rest of his clothes and was between her parted legs before she missed him. The throbbing that was shaking his body was too urgent for him to delay. Mandy trembled underneath him, her body twitching as if she were wired to him and receiving the same regular electric shocks. He slid straight into her, not even a little surprised by the ease of it He could sense that the whole thing was predestined and nothing could stop them from playing the scene through to its end. Mandy’s legs came up to grip him and her heels thumped against his plunging backside.

‘Don’t stop, don’t stop!’ she moaned.

There was no way he could have stopped. He slammed into the child beneath him, oblivious to everything but the intense drive in him, until he exploded wetly into her. She cried out and scratched his back with her fingernails.

The pleasure was abrupt and short. The instant it was done, the feeling of dread that had afflicted him since he entered the house came flooding back into him, stronger than ever. He rolled off the girl, who had covered her eyes with her forearm.

‘Mandy,’ he said in senseless anxiety, ‘you won’t get pregnant from that, will you?’

Her voice was muffled, though her arm did not cover her mouth.

‘No chance of that. My dad made them sterilize me when Ruthie was born. You don’t have to worry about putting me in the family way. Nobody can.’

‘What? Why did he do a thing like that?’

‘Because it suited him. She’s his, you know, and he didn’t want it to happen again.’

Andrew sat up quickly on the bed, shocked by what the girl had said.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Suit yourself, but it’s true. I was a kid of fourteen and a virgin and he raped me - his own daughter.’ “You’re making it up!’

‘You don’t know him. He’s wicked. Mum was out shopping one afternoon and he took me into my bedroom and said he wanted to make sure that I was growing up properly and developing. He told me to take all my clothes off and stand there while he looked at me. Then he felt me all over. I didn’t know what he was doing and I was frightened. He put his finger inside me and got red in the face. I was really scared then. I tried to get away from him but he pushed me on the bed and lay on top so I couldn’t move. I screamed and cried but there was nobody in the house except him and me.’

‘Mandy, this can’t be true; You’re lying. Stop it’ ‘ She uncovered her eyes and looked at him.

‘Don’t like to hear about it do you? What makes you mink he’s any different from you? You’ve just done it to me.’

‘But he’s your father. Besides, I didn’t force you. You wanted me to.’

‘Now I did, but I didn’t want to that day. He hurt me. He squashed me under him and puffed and poked away inside me till he’d done his business. Then he told me to go and wash myself and say nothing to anybody or he’d make me sorry.’

‘Good God,’ said Andrew, believing her at last, ‘the man must be insane.’

“Not him. He knows what he’s about, right enough. He’s evil.’

‘You said you didn’t have a mother when I asked you. What happened to her?’

‘I don’t know. I was too terrified to say anything to her

when she came home, but she guessed anyway and there was a terrible row between them. I ran into my room and hid and I could hear them shouting at each other and mum saying she was going to fetch the police and have him put away. Only

she never did.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he stopped her. After the shouting stopped I fell asleep. I must have been worn out from the shock and everything. I woke up in the night and I could hear dad shuffling about outside and he locked my door. He told me to go back to bed and shut up. After that ther e was dead silence. All the next morning when I woke up again I banged on the door and shouted, but nobody came. It was the middle of the afternoon when I heard him come in from outside. When he let me out, mum had gone and her clothes had gone. He said she’d run off and left us, only I think he killed her and hid her body.’

‘Why didn’t you tell somebody at the time?’

‘I was too scared.’

‘Surely -Mrs Hallam must have asked what had happened to your mother?’

‘She was away at the time. It was a month or more before she came back. Dad told her some story and that was that’

‘Didn’t she ever talk to you about your mother’s disappearance?’

‘You don’t know a lot about Mrs Hallam, do you, even though she lets you do it to her. Why should she care about me?’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘For all I know, my dad might have told her the truth about what he’d done. She wouldn’t care a bit She’s weird. She doesn’t think about people as if they mattered at all. If my dad told her he’d raped me, she’d very likely think it a big laugh.’

The girl was aware that Bianca was not like other people. She didn’t know what the Apart were, but she was sensitive to the difference. Yes, Andrew thought with a heavy heart, Bianca might well have been amused if Braddock had confessed that he had raped his own daughter and killed his wife. Mandy was completely right in believing that ordinary people meant nothing at all to Bianca.

What’s to be done about this mess, he asked himself miserably. He couldn’t leave things as they were now that the girl had told him what had been done to her. There was only one thing for it - he would have to tackle Bianca when she came home .and insist that Mandy be separated from her father.

‘I’ll try to help you, Mandy,’ he said, sliding off the bed and starting to dress, ‘though goodness knows what I can do.’

Mandy sat up on the bed with her arms round her drawn-up legs and her cheek on her knees.

“You’re scared, aren’t you?’ she observed softly. ‘I thought it was only me that was scared. What are you scared of, do you know?’

‘Never mind that,’ said Andrew, scrambling into his trousers, ‘I promise that I’ll get you out of this.’

‘Promises are easy. You don’t know what it’s like. Ever since my mum disappeared, my dad’s been doing it to me whenever he fancies it I couldn’t count the nights I’ve been flat on my back on this bed with him on top of me ramming away. When I got pregnant from him and had to go into hospital, he made me lie to them. I had to say it was a boy I’d met in the park.’

‘I wonder he didn’t arrange an abortion, in the circumstances,’ said Andrew.

‘He doesn’t hold with that’

Andrew sat on the bed to put his shoes on. The confusion had returned and was nearly blotting out his mind. He was struggling to think of something comforting to say to the girl when he heard a door slam and Braddock’s voice calling out: ‘Where are you, Mandy?’

Startled, he looked at the girl A gleam came into her eyes, as if she had suddenly thought of something astonishing.

‘You’re a special friend of Mrs Hallam, aren’t you?’ she asked quietly.

‘What the hell’s that got to do with anything? How can I get out of here without him finding me?’

‘I’m in here, dad,’ she shouted, a malicious grin on her face.

The bedroom door opened and Braddock looked in. His eyes bulged and his face went dark red as he saw his daughter naked on his bed and Andrew half-dressed. He uttered a strangled sound and rushed out of the room.

“You little bitch - what are you playing at?’ Andrew snarled.

He grabbed his jacket and tie to make a fast retreat but before he could get out of the room, Braddock was back with - .a sharp-bladed kitchen knife in his hand.

‘Get away, you maniac!’ Andrew shouted in alarm as Braddock rushed at him. Braddock gave no sign that he heard as he flung himself across the room, his face a mask of bestial fury. Andrew side-stepped, hands out to protect his body from - the blade. Mandy scrambled off the far side of the bed.

It was too late for Andrew to skip out of the door and away and leave Mandy to face her father. In his rage he might well harm her badly. He punched Braddock on the side of the face and then again in the side, as hard as he could, just below, the ribs.

Braddock sprawled over the rumpled bed. Mandy jumped in to get her father by the wrist and immobilize his knife arm.

‘Get him,’ she shrilled, ‘hell kill us both!’

Andrew threw himself at Braddock to wrestle the knife away from him, was kicked in the groin by a flailing foot and reeled back in pain. Bent over and holding his hurt parts, he saw through watering eyes Mandy throw the weigh t of her slender body on to the wrist she held to force the knife down towards her father’s face. Braddock punched at her head with his free hand. She cried out and let go, sliding down out of sight behind the bed.

There was bright red blood on Braddock’s face now. The knife had sliced across his temple and right eye. But he came up into a sitting position on the bed, one hand to his cheek, and spoke for the first time since he had found them together in the bedroom, ‘You’re dead, both of you!‘ he roared.

Andrew gritted his teeth and went in again to get the knife away from him. This time he came in from the side to avoid another kick, grabbed the wrist with both hands and twisted it As he had guessed, Braddock was strong. As they scuffled, half on the bed, half off it Andrew had a close view of Braddock’s face that almost made him retch. There was a six inch long cut that exposed the white bone under his eyebrow and his eyesocket was filled with blood. For all that be was still too strong for Andrew, who was near sobbing with exertion. Mandy appeared over the far edge of the bed. She looked dazed and there was blood from her father’s face wound smeared on her little breasts. She locked both hands into Braddock’s hair and hauled him backwards, using her weight Quick to see his chance, Andrew let go of the wrist and swung left-handed and hit Braddock’s face. He felt the man’s nose flatten, under his fist then the knife fell to the bed as Braddock reached back with both hands to break the grip on his hair.

‘Get the knife!‘ Andrew gasped at Mandy, punching at Braddock’s unguarded face and body.

Hurt though he was, Braddock fought on, dumb and determined. He came off the bed fast as Mandy snatched the fallen

knife away, and groped for Andrew with both hands. Andrew stepped away, sure that if the other man once got hold of him he would be finished. He threw another punch at him and then skipped round the bed and took the knife from Mandy.

‘Keep away,’ he threatened Braddock, holding the blade out’ in front of him, ‘the boot’s on the other foot now.’

But Braddock came straight at him, never pausing, and Andrew had trapped himself in the narrow space between the

bed and the wall, with the girl whimpering behind him and her demented father in front of him. The sheer stupidity of the position exasperated Andrew and threw him into a blind rage.

‘Right, you bastard - you’ve asked for it!’ he bellowed hoarsely.

The drumbeat in his head surged louder and faster until it triggered him into insensate action. He took a quick step forward and kicked the oncoming man low in the belly with all his might Braddock fell to his knees, his red-smeared face turned upwards in silent agony.

Andrew was shaking in the grip of a most unnatural fury. Without hesitation, he kicked again and again, hearing with savage pleasure the thud of his shoe into Braddock’s unprote cted belly and chest And when Braddock still knelt in silent suffering and still did not fall to the floor, Andrew stepped in closer and slashed the long kitchen knife across, the man’s exposed throat with a backhand sweep that would have gutted a horse.

The instant gush of bright red blood brought him to his senses. Aghast at what he had done, Andrew threw the knife across the room to get rid of it Braddock was down on his hands and knees now, a red pool forming on the carpet below him. Before Andrew could move he fell face down, his legs twitching.

Horrified at what he had done, Andrew knelt to get hold of Braddock and heave him up on to the bed. The slippery blood ran under his fingers as he tore Braddock’s collar open and felt for the pressure points that might check the bleeding.

‘Get help,’ he said to Mandy. ‘Get on the telephone quick for an ambulance before he bleeds to death.’

Mandy was pressed against the wall, naked and bloodstained. She grinned wanly at his words.

‘Let him,’ she said.

‘Who cares whether he dies or not?’ she asked.

The dark stain crept across die bedcover as Braddock’s life drained away. He was unconscious and as pale as wax.

‘Die, you wicked bastard,’ said his daughter. If there’s a God in heaven you’ll suffer for what you did to me and my mum. I hope you burn in helL’

Andrew knew that he was wasting his time trying to keep Braddock alive, but through habit he persevered a little longer. All too soon Braddock stopped breathing.

Andrew left him and went to sit on the chair near the door, holding his sticky hands away from his clothes.

‘Get dressed, Mandy,’ he said flatly. ‘I must think what to do next’

‘Is he dead?’ she asked in a strained voice. ‘He’s dead.’

Mandy put her hands to her face and broke into sobs of relief.

Chapter 12

After Braddock died the house cleared itself of the crushing atmosphere that had - distorted Andrew’s perception and actions. Mandy was a white-faced and frightened child, shivering in a corner of the sofa, her hands round a cup of tea laced with whisky which Andrew had made for her. He himself was not the lust-crazed killer he had been for a few catastrophic minutes but an ordinary man meshed in a plot he could not understand and from which he could see no escape.

Plot it was, of that he was sure now that he had time for reflection. Bianca had set a trap and caught three people in it, as she intended. The logic was direct and simple, now that it was too late to change things. Bianca meddled with my mind, Andrew reasoned, so that I was impotent with anyone but. herself. She couldn’t know that Branwen had put me right again. So obviously Bianca freed me herself so I could do it with Mandy. The force I felt when I stepped into the house -it was Bianca’s doing. It affected me and it had the same effect on Mandy. Primitive urges were deliberately unleashed in both of us to suppress our natural commonsense and to lure us together sexually.

Braddock was brought back to the house on purpose to find them together in the bedroom. His behaviour was also forced by whatever Bianca set up in the house. If the situation had been normal, maybe Braddock would have waded in with his fists. But his instant urge to kill was as over-emphatic and inappropriate as the instant desire for sex between Mandy and myself. Bianca left some sort of spell here that nullifies restraint and allows the most basic urges in our natures free play. That would no doubt be highly amusing to Bianca - to throw ordinary people at each other stripped of the restraints of civilization that made them human, so that they were at each other like animals, ruttmg and killing.

At first the brutality of the outcome so concerned Andrew that his thinking went round in circles. Eventually he began to look for reasons for what Bianca had done.

There were two that suggested themselves to him. She had got rid of Braddock. Perhaps he had been even more troublesome to her than she had admitted. He knew too much about her way of life for her to dismiss him in the usual way. Now he was silenced forever, with no physical intervention of her own. And hitting two birds with the same stone, she had involved Andrew in a squalid murder that would be exceptionally hard to explain in a court of law, if that was her intention.

He could predict how it would sound - father comes home to find under-age daughter naked with a man in the bedroom. He remonstrates in paternal anger and concern. A quarrel arises. The seducer of his daughter viciously beats and knifes the father, while the daughter cowers terrified in the corner. What a hell of an accusation to put up a defence against, Andrew thought ruefully. The only possible verdict would be Guilty and the sentence would be heavy.

Suppose Mandy told the story about her father raping her and murdering her mother - would that help? He knew the answer as he posed the question to himself. Bianca was so able to control minds and actions that Mandy would be brainwashed into telling quite a different story. Any defence along those lines would be written off as a flimsy excuse, a product of a warped mind.

There was not the least point in telling the plain truth. No policeman, lawyer, juryman or judge would listen to tales of powers that compelled him to act against his will. The best he could hope for in that direction was a long confinement in an Institution for the criminally i nsane, if anyone believed that he was sincere.

No, he had to resign himself to the conclusion that Bianca had won hands down. All that he could do was to wait for her to come home and tell him how she intended to handle the situation.

He did not have to wait very long. He heard her footsteps on the back stairs to the basement flat and stayed where he was, one arm protectively around the still shaken girl. Bianca came into the basement sitting-room and stood looking at the scene, a faint smile on her face. She looked very beautiful and very cruel. , ‘How touching,’ she said. ‘Where’s Braddock?’

Andrew gestured in the direction of the bedroom and Bianca went to look.

“Don’t leave me alone,’ Mandy pleaded, pressing closer to him.

‘Ifs all right,’ he soothed her, knowing full well that it wasn’t

Bianca came back and stood watching the pair of them for a moment or two.

There are things to talk about’ she said. ‘Come upstairs, Andrew.’

‘I can’t leave Mandy down here on her own.’ There’s no need to. Listen to me, Mandy.’ ‘Yes, Mrs Hallam,’ the girl said, as forlornly as if she, had been thrashed.

‘Mrs Pight is outside in her car. Take Ruth and go with her. You’re going to be staying with her from now on. Off you go - pack your things and hurry up.’

Without a murmur the girl slipped away from Andrew’s enfolding arm and left the room. In minutes she was out of the house, her baby in a carry-cot in one hand and a small case of her belongings in the other. She said goodbye to neither Andrew nor Bianca in her haste to be out of the house and gone.

Upstairs in the big sitting-room, Bianca sat down and looked at Andrew curiously.

There’s more to you than I thought,’ she said.

‘What do you mean - was Braddock supposed to kill me?’

‘I didn’t expect to find such a shambles.’

‘But I was supposed to kill him for you, wasn’t I?’

It was not really a question, more an accusation.

That’s that what you think?’ Bianca asked. ‘Tell me what happened.’

Andrew’s temper began to simmer.

‘You know damned well what happened because you planned it He found me in his own bedroom with Mandy and went berserk.’

‘I’m sure he did. He loved his daughter in his own way. Were you on top of her when he found you? Was it the indignation of seeing his little girl’s legs apart and a grown man between them that infuriated him?’

‘Damn you, no. It was all over and I was getting dressed. He was like a wild animal - nothing would stop him.’

‘And what were you like?’ she asked with a faint smile.

‘I was caught up in the same frenzy. I hardly knew what I was doing. None of this can be any surprise to you - you meddled with our minds to make us behave as we did. But why - that’s what I’d like to know.”

‘A little experiment, if you like. It got Braddock out of my way and it proved something to me.’

‘It proved something to me too. You are a callous and blood-thirsty bitch. You use people as if they were rag-dolls to be played with and ripped apart and thrown away when it suits you.’

‘So they are,’ she said quietly. ‘Now enough of this ridiculous innocence. There are arrangements to be made.’

Then make them. I don’t want to know.’

‘What you want is of no concern, Andy, unless it happens to be what I want Stop grating your teeth together and use your brains. You’d like to strangle me with your bare hands, wouldn’t you? I can see it in your face. Come here and put your hands round my throat’

To hell with you and your games,’ Andrew answered huffily.

Bianca’s pale blue eyes opened wider. ‘If you behave like a child, I shall treat you like one,’ she said.

There arose a screeching inside Andrew’s skull that doubled him over with pain. He pressed his hands to his ears to block it out but the noise was originating inside his skull. He could feel the bone structure vibrating between his palms. It felt as if his brain was being shaken to a sloppy jelly. He whined in torment as he slid off his chair and crawled on his knees across the carpet towards Bianca.

With each shuffle that took him closer to her, the noise lessened. When he knelt shuddering at her feet it was gone completely.

‘I knew you would do what I asked,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Now stand up and put your hands round my throat. Go on -I won’t bite you.’

He rose shakily to his feet and leaned over her. She sat comfortably, her hands joined in her lap. She was wearing a dress of cornflower blue that left her arms and neck bare. Fearfully, Andrew stretched out his arms and put his hands round her throat As ever, there was the little shock of the coolness of her skin.

She looked up into his face, her expression unfathomable.

There you are. All you have to do is squeeze with your hands until you’ve strangled me. You’ve big hands and I’ve only a small neck. It would be very easy. Then you would be free to go back and get on with your life as if you’d never met me. Go on, I won’t resist’

God, what terrible game is she playing now, Andrew wondered bitterly. My hands round her throat Squeeze, she says. It wouldn’t take much. Her hyoid would crush with the first pressure. I could flatten her neck arteries and windpipe and she’d be unconscious in seconds. She wouldn’t be able to resist after that Then how long before I could be sure that she was dead. Two or three minutes to make absolutely sure.

‘Why are you waiting?’ she asked. ‘Afraid of the consequences? There won’t be any. Braddock’s dead. The girl’s gone and she’d never tell. You know that she hates me. Branwen and Gilbert are the only others who would know it was you. They’d never say a word to anyone not of the Apart . So as you can see, you’d never be connected with my death.’

‘But you are one of the Apart,’ Andrew mumbled, ‘you don’t die that easily.’

‘We can choose to give up our lives. Just like anyone else.

You want to be rid of me - I’m offering you the chance.’

‘Tell me something. Did you know that Braddock raped his daughter and murdered his wife?’

‘He told me about it ages ago. He wanted to become one of us. When he found that incest and murder didn’t achieve his goal, he decided that he had to sleep with me to become Apart He was a lumbering and clumsy fool and his presumption was irritating.’

‘He was no real threat to you -how could he be?’

‘He had to be punished suitably.’

‘And I was the knife in your hand?’

‘Violent death is so exciting,’ Bianca murmured languorously.

Andrew’s mind was plucked painlessly out of his body. He was looking down, as if from a considerable height at two small figures below him. A fair-haired woman in blue sat in a chair and a man crouched awkwardly over her, his hands round her slim neck in an ambiguous embrace. They were like figurines in porcelain, the curve of the man’s back as he leaned forward duplicated i n reverse by the curve of the woman’s body as she half sat half lay, under his hands. Before he could recognize the scene and the actors, it receded and was lost in the far distance, and then it was gone.

He was a disincarnate intelligence, looking down from the sky at a steep green ridge along a valley. He heard the wind sweeping along it, driving the lowering grey clouds over the ridge and away. There were no trees, no sign of human habitation, just t he long slope and the valley bottom with a dark brook winding along it A bleak and desolate landscape, devoid of meaning, merely a backdrop for some scene of violence planned by humans.

Over the moan of the wind he caught another sound, growing steadily louder, until he recognized the baying of hounds. He saw three men running up the valley, strung out in a line. He could hear the thud of their feet on the turf and the rasping of their breath. They were following the line of the brook, one man well out in front the middle one twenty yards back, and the straggler fifty or sixty yards behind him. Their heads were down as they slogged on, heavy-footed, so that from his high viewpoint Andrew was unable to see their faces.

The pack of hounds swept past below him. There were a dozen huge liver-coloured animals, tongues lolling from open mouths as they voiced their excitement at having the quarry in sight Andrew studied them with a touch of professional interest immune from the implications of what he was seeing below him. The hounds had squarish heads, short muzzles and upstanding ears. They were bigger than any breed of dog he had ever seen, much bigger. He estimated that they stood nearly four feet at the shoulder and weighed more than a fully grown man. The ripple of heavy muscle under their sleek coats reminded him of what Gilbert had said about the hound he claimed had haunted East Anglia for a thousand years. But that couldn’t be one of these, he thought Gilbert said that he had touched it and it had a shaggy coat Then another thought came into his mind - could this be the pack which Gilbert said hunted a dead man across Bodmin Moor on stormy nights?

The middle man looked back over his shoulder at the closing pack and broke away up the ridge in a slanting direction. The two others pounded on along the easier ground, visibly near the end of their tether. The hounds lolloped on after them, ignoring the man staggering up the steep hillside.

The hunter cantered past below, twenty or thirty yards behind the last of the strung-out pack. It was Bianca, mounted bare-back on a tall grey horse. Her costume was bizarre, part dress and part armour, a tunic of dark-tanned leather, with pointed cones of dull metal inset to protect her breasts. From the waist down the skirt of her tunic was of metal-faced leather strips that fell away from her pale thighs clasping the horse’s sides. She rode easily and in total control, holding the reins in one hand.

As she passed below Andrew’s viewpoint, she leaned forward

over her mount’s neck, urging on the belling hounds with high-

pitched cries of ‘Haro! Haro!‘ and pointing forward at the

quarry with a heavy whip.

The hounds responded to her cry and surged forward until they were on the heels of the last man. He screamed in fear and then the leader of the pack had him by the hip and the man went down wailing in despair. The rest of the pack were on him at once, howling and snapping at each other in their eagerness to get at him as be thrashed about on the turf while fangs ripped at his limbs and body.

Bianca cantered up and halted her horse a few yards away to watch the hounds tear the man to bloody tatters. It took some time, until one of the hounds got him by the neck and shook him like a rat until his vertebrae broke and he lay limp as they tore at his flesh. Before they had more than a taste of his blood, Bianca drove them on after the next man, now two or three hundred yards away but hardly able to keep his weary legs moving, even with death just behind him.

‘Haro! Haro!‘ Bianca called to the pack as they raced on, baying tremendously now as they shortened the distance between them and the man ahead. In a gesture of despair that chilled Andrew to the soul, the man sank to the ground, huddled over, head between his knees and waited for death to catch up with him…

Again Bianca reined in her horse and watched the pack tear at their unresisting victim. This one died quickly. When he was no more than a red-stained bundle of rags the hounds worried at, Bianca forced her mount to walk into the snapping pack, cutting at them with her whip until they backed away snarling.

Her mastery of horse and hounds impressed Andrew. In spite of the brutality of what he had witnessed, a dark admiration for her welled up in him.

The hounds broke into vehement yelping as she made her horse trample the tattered body in contempt The grey snorted and plunged, its hooves smeared with blood. She turned it and nudged it into a trot calling to the hounds to follow her. One or two of them made a rush halfway towards their kill, but the habit of obedience was too strong and in moments the whole pack was in full cry again, streaming diagonally up the ridge after the last man, now well above them and a long way ahead.

What’s the best thing for him to do, Andrew asked himself, go up over the crest of the ridge and down the other side, taking a chance on what he would find? Or keep going up the valley, hoping for some way of escape in that direction? Over the ridge was no good. The pack would run him down easily on the far slope, where four legs would be more secure than two if the drop was steep. Up the valley was his only chance and even that looked hopeless. This was a well chosen killing-ground.

While he pondered the question, it ceased to be academic and became his own immediate problem. He no longer looked down god-like from above on hunter and hunted. He was the man slogging breathlessly along the ridge. His lungs were painful, his heart pounded, his legs felt as if they were made of lead. Behind him was the cry of the hounds, less than half a mile to the rear, hunting him in full view.

There was no time to wonder why and no profit in it His only thought was to keep ahead. He tried to close his mind to the memory of the other men being ripped and savaged in case it weakened his resolve to keep going until he found a way out He had no need to look back to see where his pursuers were - the growing loudness of the baying told him well enough that the gap was diminishing. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his band and tried to focus his blurring eyes on something he could see ahead.

It was an outcrop of rock, punched up through the green turf like a grey fist Andrew compelled himself to concentrate on it The side of the rock overlooking the valley was almost sheer up for perhaps twenty feet to the top. The side facing the ridge was not much better, though five or six feet less because of the slope of the ground. Could Bianca’s hounds jump that high? He puzzled at the question as he pounded on towards the rock. They were damned big animals, as tall as a man when they stood on their hind legs. But they were heavy. It was unlikely that they could jump very high.

There was only one way to find out If he guessed wrongly, it would be fatal. On the other hand, he could see nowhere else to go. The valley stretched on with no other break in the ground for as far as his eyes could see.

His shirt was plastered to his back with sweat Without missing a step, he dragged it off and dropped it behind him. It might slow the pack for a second or two while they sniffed at his scent on it-And seconds were going to be important . It was going to take time to scramble up that rock face and he wanted to be as high as he could get before the pack arrived. They were not far behind now. He could hear the thud of hooves over their howling and Bianca’s voice urging them on to the kill.

A last agonizing sprint took him to the back of the outcrop and he scrabbled at it with fingers and toes to heave himself up. It went up at an angle of about seventy degrees, but it was scored with crevices and tiny ledges which he clung to and pushed against as he inched his way up. The hounds were directly beneath him, crowded together and trying to get him by the legs from standing jumps. For all their howling, not one came within a foot of him.

He dragged himself at last over the rounded edge of the outcrop and lay panting. The top was a cracked and pitted platform about twelve feet across. The hounds were still leaping and howling but he was safe from them for the time being. He crawled over the rough surface of the rock to look down the other side. Bianca was below, sitting on her horse, looking up at him. The horse was blowing from the long chase up the valley and the ridge. Bianca looked coldly determined.

‘For God’s sake call them off!’ Andrew shouted.

Without a sign that she had heard him, she walked her grey round the outcrop and Andrew scrambled round the edge to follow her movements. She shouted to the hounds, waving her whip at them. They stopped their useless leaping and fell silent Another order and, with a sick feeling in his stomach, Andrew saw the hounds spread themselves right round the base of the rock in a ring. Another shouted word from Bianca and they sat red tongues the size of a man’s hand hanging out of their mouths as they waited, their eyes turned up towards him. Like damned circus dogs, he thought Bianca brought iter leg over the grey’s back and slid to the turf. She threw her whip down, checked that her hunting-knife was loose in its sheath at her belt and started up the rock face. She lay well into the face as she climbed, testing footholds and handholds with care, not like Andrew’s desperate scramble up it . She was in no hurry; her quarry was cornered and she could take her time. Andrew heard the scrape of her metal breast-guards against the rock as she moved up. The pale yellow crown of her head came up towards him until he backed away across the platform and stationed himself in the middle. He stood well balanced, his breathing under control again, poised to fight if that was what she had in mind.

Her head came into view over the edge and she stared at him. There was no recognition in her pale blue eyes, hard and glittering as gem-stones. One bare arm slid quickly over the edge, holding the heavy hunting-knife, point towards him in case he rushed her and tried to kick her off the rock.

The blade was nearly a foot long and as broad as the palm of a hand. Wielded with determination, it would make a dreadful wound in a man.

Her leather-covered shoulders came into sight, then the grotesque cones that covered her breasts. She held the dagger higher, ready to rip upwards into his groin if he came within reach. She had one white knee on the rock, then with a surge she was up on her feet The strip-metal skirt rattled as she sidled towards him. Her left hand was forward to block a grab at her knife-hand, the dagger held low and pointing upwards, its sharp po int level with his exposed navel.

She meant to kill him. There was not the least doubt in his ‘ mind. He circled away from her slowly as she moved in, her bare feet sure on the rock. Andrew weighed up the options frantically in the seconds left to him. Jump from the rock, risk breaking a leg, or worse, try to get to her horse before the waiting hounds pulled him down. Rush her and try to overpower her by sheer strength? She looked as if she knew enough about knife-fighting to counter that . She was assuredly quick enough on her feet to dodge his rush and use the blade on him. Andrew winced at the memory of his own butchery on’ Braddock when die positions had been reversed.

He stepped sharply backwards as she feinted at him and as he did so he saw that she was only testing the speed of his reactions. She grinned briefly and mirthlessly, evidently satisfied with what she had seen of his reflexes in action.

There were no real options, he saw. He had to risk everything on one fast gamble. Quite likely she would see it coming in time to avoid it and that would be the end of the fight A rugby tackle was useless - she would have th e heavy dagger into his spine while his arms went round her thighs. He had to keep his body out of her reach.

As she came in again, he circled slowly to his left Her face was a mask of concentration. He kept his eyes on it, not on the blade. He let her approach a little closer and made his Move with all the speed he was capable of - throwing himself down to the left to land on his arm while his legs swept round horizontally to connect at knee level and knock her off balance. Pain jarred up through his arm from the Impact on the rock, but he managed to cut her legs from under her. Instantly he rolled and was sprawling on her back, pinning her down with his weight He pulled her arm up behind her back and got the dagger away from her. In one quick move he flicked it over the edge of the rock to fall below somewhere. Then feeling safer, he let go of her and stood up. Round the base of the outcrop the hounds were barking wildly, ready for him if he slid down to try for the horse. There was no escape for him that way unless Bianca called off the hounds.

Moving a step or two back from Bianca, he said, ‘That evens things up a bit Do you still want to fight or shall we call it quits?’

Bianca rolled over slowly and propped herself up on one elbow to look at him. She was unruffled.

‘We weren’t fighting,’ she answered. ‘You’d be dead by now if we were. I saw that move coming. I could have skipped over your legs and had the blade in you before you knew what was happening.’

‘If that wasn’t fighting, what were we doing? I saw the others killed.’

‘They lost the game. Come and help me out of this tunic. Or would you like me to keep it on while you lie on me?’

He looked at the gleaming points of the cones covering her breasts and shivered. There would be no pleasure in lying on those. He knelt beside her and looked for the fastenings of her strange corselet . The belt round her narrow waist was of flexible metal links, the dull colour of unpolished silver. It was fashioned like a snake and the buckle was the snake’s head swallowing its own tail. —While he held the buckle in his fingers and turned it this way and that to discover how it came apart he felt his movements becoming slower and slower, as if the symbol were exercising a fascination over him. His field of vision had narrowed down to the joined head and tall. At last it came loose. Drawing the tail from the snake’s open jaws seemed to last for a silent eternity.

The belt fell away from Bianca’s waist as slowly as dust drifting down in a closed room. He held it in his hand, mesmerized by it, his mind full of the notion of slow revolving galaxies; change was eternal and time was measured in aeons, not in centuries or in men’s life-spans.

The snake slid through his paralysed hand and took on a life of its own. It stood on its tail, its head swaying from side to side as he knelt helplessly before it. The dull metal scales of its body slid over each other without a sound. It struck at him with almost stately deliberation, jaws wide apart to reveal its sharp fangs. Andrew tried to move backwards out of harm’s way. His time sense was so slowed down that it seemed to take hours for his body to lean back an inch or two. And all the time the flat reptile head was arching in towards him.

There was a brief sweet pain as the fangs pierced his flesh

and held. The snake was attached to his navel and was sucking his life away. Ponderously he ros e to his feet, the silver snake hanging from him, its tail flick ing. He got his hands round its throat to tear it away from h im and dash it to the rock. The metal was unyielding and he cou ld neither crush it nor pull it away. He stood swaying bac kwards and forwards as his life was leeched away, while below him Bianca smiled up ten derly at him.

His soul left his body and once more he looked down from a distance to see a man leaning over a woman in a blue dress, his hands about her throat She had opened his trousers to let his spike of flesh jut free. The f lat palms of her hands were on either side of it rolling ft slowly between them. Her face was pressed to his exposed belly, her tongue flickering into his navel.

But that’s — that’s — he gasped through the flood of sensation that engulfed him and was about to drown him. He was trying to say That’s me but before he could do so, the woman drew away from his navel and took his straining part into her mouth. He jerked convulsively, his loins thrusting forward, his face upturned as he cried out in the delirium of his ejaculation.

Then all was quiet and dark, like a dreamless sleep.

Chapter 13

Andrew woke alone in the sitting-room, sprawled across, the armchair in which Bianca had been sitting. The light was fading outside the long windows. He must have been asleep for some time. From old habit he glanced at his wrist . There was no watch there - he still had not bought a new one to replace the one smashed beyond repair the night he h ad first met Bianca and was sent tumbling down Longman’s Hill in the dark. Why he had not replaced it, he was not sure, except that he felt it would be a pointless thing to do. Something more than a watch had been broken that night A whole pattern of life had been splintered and could not be reset .

The sleep had refreshed him and had smoothed away the anxiety that had gnawed at him since Braddock’s death. He felt differently about it now. Braddock had been a surly nuisance in life, death had reduced him to a there inconvenience.

He had no recollection of slumping into the chair and falling asleep. He could remember vividly the events that preceded it, the wild visions which Bianca had induced in his mind, and some of their significance.

The snake that swallows its own tail, he thought. It devours itself and is reborn from itself. I think I understand it The snake is an emblem of all creation, physical and spiritual. Nothing can ever disappear, even though it may die. Everything changes form perpetually. There is an endless cycle of dying and being reborn, of destruction and creation.

Where the hell did I get that notion from, he asked himself. Here I am explaining the mysteries of die universe to myself because of what I thought I saw in a trance. Not even a trance, really, just one of Bianca’s dreadful mind-games. - His trousers were unzipped and his limp part was on show. He zipped them up and went to look for Bianca.

He found her in her bedroom, freshly out of the bath and wrapped in a white towelling robe. She was sitting before a mirror, brushing her golden hair.

‘We’re eating out this evening,’ she said casually, glancing at him. Tomorrow I’ll get on to the domestic agency in Walton

Street and have some new staff sent round. Living out this time, I think.’

Her words reminded him of the mutilated body stiffening on the bed in the basement flat. There was that problem to be resolved. Bianca guessed his thought from his expression.

There’s a job for you to take care of later, Andy. You’ll have to wait till well after midnight before its safe to move him out I’ve already made the arrangements by telephone.’

‘Where am I to take him - the same place he took his wife?’

That’s far too risky. My way is much simpler.’

‘What did he do with her?’

‘It sounds insane, but he disposed of her in the sea. He put her in the boot of a car and drove all the way to Cornwall through the night. He threw her in somewhere on the coast not far from Mevagissey Bay. I made him write it down for me at the time in case it should ever come in useful’

‘But that’s stupid - bodies wash up with the tide.’

‘You underestimate Braddock’s intelligence. He was in the Navy when he was young. He knew a lot about tides and currents. He put her over the cliff in a cove where he knew the current would take her right out into the Atlantic. He told me it was certain and he was right because she never washed up on the coast anywhere and by now the fish have eaten her.’

That explains why he was gone so long. Mandy said that she was locked in her room all night and half the next day. It’s the best part of five hundred miles there and back.’

Bianca stood up and slid out of her towelling robe to dress. Andrew stared in frank admiration at her pale-skinned body, so beautifully proportioned. The abhuman sexual excesses with visitants from the Otherworld had left no traces on her body, no scars, no lines, no wrinkles. She was as flawless as a statue carved in alabaster.

‘So if it’s not down to the sea this time to rid ourselves of the inconvenient dead, where do you want me to take him after dark?’

‘Only to Islington. Ill show you on a street map how to find the place.’

While they were talking she had put on a pair of shiny black silk briefs that made her skin seem whiter by contrast

‘You11 need money for the trip,’ she told him. The safe is behind that picture on the wall Take two thousand pounds.’

‘Is that the price of disposing of him?’

‘Unless you want to drive to Cornwall and spend hours looking for Braddock’s cove and waiting for the tide to be right Two thousand is cheap and guaranteed.’

Andrew crossed the room to look at the picture. It was a small water-colour of a landscape, very expertly painted. In the left foreground was a rough-hewn standing stone, grey-white in colour, pitted and cracked from top to bottom. It leaned out of true. To the right the dark green countryside rolled away for a vista of miles to a line of low hills. One of them was notched two-thirds of the way up its slope and from the viewer’s position, the morning sun was just lifting over the notch.

Andrew tried to estimate the size of the stone from the young trees growing close by it His best guess was eight or nine feet tall and about two feet in diameter at the bottom, slightly less at the top, since it seemed to narrow to a blunt point There would be more of ft below ground, of course, perhaps half as much again, to keep it standing firm like that for thousands of years.

It was an unlikely picture to find in a bedroom and it set Andrew thinking. The artist’s initials meant nothing to him.

‘Who did the picture?’ he asked.

‘A friend. Ifs good, isn’t it?’

‘It must be one of your markers, I suppose.’

The most important of all, to me.’

The picture hinged out from the wall down one side to reveal a small safe with a combination dial.

‘It’s locked,’ he said, pulling at the handle.

‘Try seven eight four five.’

‘That’s your birthday.’

‘Otherwise I’d have to write the numbers down.’

‘You are very trusting, to tell me the combination.’

‘Not really. I know that you won’t steal from me and I’m certainly not afraid of thieves breaking in.’

‘You should be. This is the sort of house that attracts them.’

He dialled the numbers and pulled the foot-square steel door open.

From inside the safe something totally malignant raged out at him. There was nothing visible, nothing tangible, but he staggered back several steps, his hands to his face, under the impression that he had been clawed.

‘What the devil’s that?’ he gasped, backing further away.

He looked at his hands, quite expecting to see them bloody, but there was nothing.

Bianca laughed at him and went to the open safe.

‘Just a little guard dog I keep in there,’ she said. ‘Now you know why I’m not afraid of burglars.’

She looked vulnerable in only her black briefs as she put her hand into the safe, murmuring something Andrew couldn’t hear properly. She took out two bundles of brown ten-pound notes and turned to give them to him.

‘What sort of guard dog?’ he asked.

Over her bare shoulder he could see into the safe. There were many more bundles of money and two black jewellery boxes. Nothing else.

‘I had Gilbert trap it for me. It’s effective and it costs nothing to keep. It never comes out, never needs feeding and no one but me can control it. Whatever I put into that safe is secure from everyone.’

Another little demonstration of her power, Andrew thought sourly. She did that to remind me that she’s the boss. Damn her. Aloud, he said, ‘You keep a lot of cash in there. Don’t you trust banks?’

‘Not overmuch. Banks keep records of payments in and out and those records are accessible to all sorts of prying people. I have a bank account to pay the household expenses, that ‘s all ’

‘Prying people like tax inspectors and policemen, I imagine you mean.’

‘Amongst others, yes. The bulk of Edwin’s income comes from abroad and he doesn’t want a whole trail of bank transfers that could be followed back to the source. So it comes into the country in various ways, usually by courier, sometimes in cash and sometimes in gold, sometimes in other forms. For the sake of appearances he has some open investments in mis country which go through a bank account, to keep the tax people happy.’

‘Should you be telling me all this?’

‘Why not? I can afford to trust you.’

He tucked the two flat packets of money into his inside jacket pockets while Bianca went back to her dressing table.

There was a doubt in Andrew’s mind whether her last words bad been intended as a compliment. Probably not he decided. She most likely meant it in the sense of being able to trust him because he was incapable of betraying her trust Like a dog. Like the invisible and immaterial thing she kept in the safe to look after her valuables - a useful thing with no mind of its own. No, she hadn’t intended a compliment It was not until they arrived at the restaurant she had chosen that Andrew learned that Bianca had invited a number of other people. Gilbert and Branwen Pight were there with two other couples. What struck him was that the others were there first and waiting. Evidently no one came late when Bianca issued an invitation.

Gilbert was as insufferable to Andrew as on the first occasion they met Not nerves this time, Andrew concluded, just plain bloody-mindedness. Had Gilbert got an inkling of Bran wen’s visit to the country? Did it matter, anyway? Gilbert amused himself by introducing Andrew to the other guests as a country cousin up to see the sights of London as a change from looking after sick cows. For a moment or two Andrew seriously considered punching him in the face for his grat uitous rudeness, but a bleak smil e from Bianca made him unclench his fist. Branwen, looking warm and attractive, was friendly to him, though not overly so while Bianca was watching.

The two other couples had an odd look about them. The Grinlings were both in their fifties, he very tall and thin, with stooped shoulders. His wife had short-cropped grey hair and the body of a wrestler. Andrew imagined her for a moment strangling people with her bare hands for her husband’s entertainment He put the ridi culous thought aside. The Addis combes were twenty years younger and seemingly better matched. After a while it dawned on Andrew that neither of them ever smiled and that they had identical eyes - jet-black and hard as obsidian. No matter who was talking or what was being said, every couple of minutes the Addiscombes turned their heads slowly to stare blankly for a second into each other’s reptilian eyes.

The uncomfortable aura emanating from the Grinlings and the Addiscombes must be because they were of the Apart Andrew guessed. God alone knew what nauseating secrets were locked into their skulls or what indescribable practices their bodies had experienced. Old Grinling was looking at Branwen’s breasts, his thin mouth twisted in a lustful grin. Had he and she… Andrew closed his mind to the subject and watched the Addiscombes do their trick with their eyes for the tenth time. What could it signify, he wondered; were their brains somehow connected like mental Siamese twins?

It was a long, and to Andrew, boring, dinner. The conversation was largely meaningless to him. They were speaking to each other in English but the things they said made no sense to him at all . Quite definitely he was not one of them. He ate the food, which was good, and drank the wine, which was excellent, thought his own thoughts and smiled at Branwen or Bianca when opportunity arose.

They sat on for a long time after dinner, talking about whatever they were talking about. An occasional word or phrase had a meaning Andrew thought he grasped - aberrant departure from usage, earth-dragon, conjuration, psychism but the sum of the conversation was beyond him. When they were ready to leave Bianca signed the bill and, as they rose to go, she hung behind for a moment and gave Andrew a door key.

‘We’re going on somewhere else for an hour or so,’ she said. Take a taxi back to the house and get that little job done.’

Then she was gone, leaving him standing alone at the restaurant door, key in hand, feeling foolish. He’d forgotten about Braddock until then. Now he had his orders, given as casually as if he had been an employee of Bianca’s.

It was after one in the morning when he set out for Islington, the stiffening body in the back of his Land Rover, well bundled up in bloodstained bedclothes. He followed Bianca’s instructions to the letter and drove with extreme caution, having no wish to be stopped by a police car on the look-out for drunken drivers. His cargo would take too much explaining.

Islington was quiet and deserted at that hour. He turned off the main street and zigzagged through a maze of meaner streets, looking for the one he had been shown on the map. It was an old terrace of small shops and houses and the house he wanted was on the corner. The faded facia said in peeling paint Polish Bakery and the display window was empty and dark. Upstairs, in what he took to be the living-quarters, lights could be seen behind drawn curtains.

As Bianca had directed him, he drove slowly round the comer and down the side of the building. It extended for some distance along the side street in a single storey brick construction. About halfway along there was a closed wooden gate big enough to admit a van.

As quietly as possible, he backed his vehicle up close to the gate. He could see no one about in either direction as he got down and knocked sharply though not too loudly. It took some time before he got a response. The wooden gates parted an inch or two in the middle and a man looked out He looked squat and bulky, standing with the light inside the premises behind him. He was wearing a soiled white vest and baggy white trousers. The smell that caught at Andrew’s nostrils over the aroma of baking bread was a mixture of sweat and alcohol. For some moments the man contemplated Andrew and his vehicle without saying a word. His unshaven triangular face had rolls of fat above the cheek-bones that made slits of his eyes.

“You’re expecting me,’ said Andrew, trying to get things moving so he could get his bundle off the street and into a place of safety.

‘You stay here,’ the squat man announced in a strong foreign accent ‘I call the missus.’

To Andrew’s annoyance, the gates were closed and audibly bolted, leaving him out on the dark street If he were challenged now, he would have a hell of a lot of explaining to do. He sighed in relief when he heard the bolt rattle again and the gates opened inwards.

Alongside the man he had seen before stood a big woman in a quilted nylon housecoat her bare feet in carpet slippers.

‘What can we do for you?’ she asked brusquely. There’s no bread for sale till eight o’clock.’

‘Stop playing about I’m from Mrs Hallam.’

‘Which Mrs Hallam would that be?’

‘You know damned well. She telephoned you. Mrs Bianca Hallam.’

Tall, thin woman with grey hair?’

The woman’s accent was pure Islington, not Polish as the man’s had been.

‘Small blonde woman,’ said Andrew through gritted teeth, ‘lives by the river. Satisfied?’

‘Got to protect myself, haven’t I? You could be anyone, for all I know.’

‘For God’s sake, let me in. Someone might come along and see me standing out here.’

She reached out with a big hand, took him by the front of his jacket and pulled him inside.

‘You’re in a right panic, aren’t you? People round here don’t bother about vans and such in the middle of the night If you’re from who you say you are, let’s see the cash.’

He handed it to her and she riffled through each of the two bundles of bank-notes, making sure that the total was correct, before she put one into each pocket of her faded housecoat ‘Who did you say you were?’ she asked.

‘Does it matter?’

I never do business with strangers. That’s too risky for my liking. You know who I am because my name’s on the shop-front - Amy Krasner. So who’re you?’

‘Andrew Jarvis. Now can we get on with it?’

She chuckled, a deep-throated sound of genuine amusement

‘Anyone can see if s the first time you’ve been on a little errand for Mrs Hallam. You’ve got the twitches. All right Stefan, give him a hand.’

The Land Rover stayed outside while Andrew opened the back and the two of them carried the shrouded Braddock inside. He was quite stiff in his wrappings and easy to move with one taking the head and one the feet Amy Krasner led the way into the bakehouse, where fiat metal trays covered with dough pieces ready for baking and wooden trays of fresh-smelling loaves testified to Stefan’s diligence.

‘Everything’s been ready for the last hour or more,’ said Amy, ‘we expected you sooner. I dozed off on the couch upstairs waiting for you. That’s the oven we use for bread now, all modem and reliable. And over there’s the old brick oven we used to bake in. Lovely bread it used to make. Still, you’ve got to keep up with progress.’

It was hot and close inside the bakehouse as she led them across to the old oven, a big metal door set in brickwork. Stefan let go of Braddock’s feet abruptl y and Andrew nearly dropped him altogether. He grimaced and said nothing, while the morose baker opened the hot oven door with the spade he obviously used for stoking the fire.

A breathtaking wave of heat rolled out through the open door. Inside it, Andrew could see that a good part of the brick floor of the oven had been hacked away and replaced with an iron grill, about seven feet long and three feet wide. The fire-bed below it was a red-hot mass of glowing coals.

Stefan grabbed Braddock by the feet again and steered him through the oven door. Sick at heart, Andrew pushed at his end until only the wrapped head and shoulders were sticking out The bedclothes were already smouldering, giving off an acrid black smoke that made Andrew cough.

Stefan took over, rammed Braddock right into the oven and flicked the metal door shut and latched with easy skill.

‘How long does it take?’ Andrew asked hoarsely.

There’ll be nothing left by morning,’ Amy reassured him, ‘just ashes and loose teeth when Stefan rakes it out He knows his job with that oven.’

‘And he bakes bread as well?’

The customers will be here queuing for it when the shop opens. We’ve got a good trade round here. Come upstairs for a drink before you go. It’ll put some colour back into your cheeks.’

Andrew nodded, staring sickly at the oven door. Behind the hot metal Braddock was charring away slowly to white ash, his flesh, muscles, guts and bones.

‘Now mind you keep that fire going well, Stefan,’ Amy admonished the Pole, ‘we don’t want to let a good friend like Mrs Hallam down. I’ll settle up with you in the morning before you go off. Just you mind you don’t spend it all on drink and tarts.’

She took Andrew up to her flat over the shop. He sat in a gaudy armchair while she went to a bamboo-fronted cocktail bar in the corner of the sitting-room.

Tve got gin, Scotch and vodka,’ she announced, ‘besides fancy liqueurs, that is. What’s your fancy?’

‘Straight Scotch, please.’

‘Coming up. I like a drop of gin myself, though I think Scotch is more of a man’s drink. It was my poor Ted’s drink and that’s no lie.’

‘Your husband?’

‘I called him Ted, even though that wasn’t his real name. Teodor, it was.’

Andrew took a long swig from the half-tumbler of neat whisky she handed him.

‘You’re not Polish, are you?’ he said.

‘Not me. Born and bred in Islington. Never thought I’d marry a foreigner, but I did. He was a good provider, only he liked the bottle too much and it did for him in the end. He took his car out one day blind drunk and went smash into a bus. I’ve been a widow five years or more now. Stefan down in the bakehouse is Ted’s cousin, though you’d never think it to look at him.’

As the whisky warmed his stomach and thawed out his brain, Andrew began to take note of his surroundings. Amy’s living-room was expensively and garishly furnished. Too many pieces, too many bright and clashing colours. For all that, it looked lived in and homely.

‘Have you known Mrs Hallam long?’ he asked.

That would be telling. What you don’t know won’t hurt you. I’ve done her a few favours from time to time.’

‘Like tonight, you mean?’

‘You drink your whisky and stop being inquisitive.’

Amy resembled her flat, overflowing and gaudy. Her short, full hair was dyed a brassy yellow. Andrew guessed her to be in her middle forties. She had a square jaw and a straight mouth, not unattractive. Under the tatty housecoat her breasts appeared to be enormous. The coat ended just below her knees and had opened as she sat to reveal round knees and sturdy legs.

She caught the direction of his eyes and grinned.

‘Not what you might call glamorous, my old housecoat, is it? I wear it for cleaning the flat I only put it on tonight because I thought it might be a bit chilly down there at the side ga te. I go in for something a bit more frilly as a rule when I have visitors up here for a drink.’

Andrew smiled at her.

‘Don’t think I’m too big for frilly things, do you?’

‘Not a bit of it You’re a fine figure of a woman, Amy.’

‘I’ve been told that before more than once. Well, I wouldn’t want you to leave here thinking Amy Krasner’s an old scrubber in cast-offs, so you help yourself to another drink while I just put something on that’ll show you there’s plenty of life in me yet’

Before he could say anything, she was out of the room. Andrew finished his drink leisurely, feeling it relaxing him. His natural good spirits began to reassert themselves. What was done was done. Braddock had been disposed of and that was the end of it He poured himself another drink at the corner bar, a smaller one this time. He stood leaning with one elbow on the bar, sipping the whisky.

It was a good five minutes before Amy came back. She had fluffed out her brassy hair and changed into a swirling black negligee with a pink lining gleaming through.

‘How do you like that?’ she asked, twirling round. The carpet slippers had been changed for low-heeled black satin slippers. For a fleeting second she reminded Andrew of Dolly. Big, fat-breasted Dolly, the farmer’s wife he had been with on the night he first met Bianca in the twilight ‘It suits you,’ he said, sure now of the drift of Amy’s intentions.

‘So it should. I paid twenty-five quid for it and what goes underneath, which isn’t much. Not enough to keep you warm in the winter, anyway. Pour me another drink, Andy. Gin and a dash of tonic ’

He mixed the drink and banded it to her as she flounced down on the sofa, her negligee billowing wide from her waist to show muscular thighs.

‘Amy, listen,’ he said, picking his words with extreme caution, ‘I think that you and I could get very friendly, given the right circumstances. There’s nothing I’d like more. You’re magnificently built and you’ve got a warm nature, I can tell that’

‘So where’s the problem?’ she asked, frowning.

The problem is me. Since three o’clock yesterday afternoon I’ve been with two women, fought a lunatic with a knife in his hand and driven halfway across London sweating with a body behind me. I’ve just about had it’

‘Been with two women, have you? I was right about you -when I saw you at the gate I said to myself: Amy, there’s a man who likes to put his body about So you’re not one of them who call themselves Apart, are you?’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because they never turn an offer down from a woman, not even the old ones. It’s something inside them, just like clockwork. They can go on doing it all day and all night Believe me, I know what I’m talking about’

‘Not all of them. I’ve met one who can’t do it at all, or so his wife says. And he’s young.’

‘He must do something else instead, something peculiar.’

That seemed to describe Gilbert Pight adequately.

‘You’re not one of them yourself,’ said Andrew, ‘that’s obvious from the way you speak about them. Have you ever wanted to be?’

‘Not me. They’re too different from ordinary people.’

‘Yet there was a certain admiration in the way you mentioned Mrs Hallam earlier on.’

‘I wouldn’t mind having her money and her looks, but that’s all. Not that I’m complaining. Ted left me with a good living here. I please myself what I do, I’ve got two grown-up kids and I’m forty-four years old. I’ve got plenty of good times ahead of me yet’

While she was talking she casually undid the bow at her waist that held the flimsy black and pink confection together round her body. It parted to reveal an almost transparent nightdress of the same material underneath, so short that it only just touched her thighs as she sat with crossed legs.

‘Been with two women, have you?’ she said, grinning at him. ‘You’re a bit of a devil, you are. Why don’t you come and sit here with me so we can have a bit of a cuddle. Come on - no need to be bashful . You don’t have to do anything if you don’t feel up to it’

Andrew finished his drink and sat beside her, intending to put his arm round her broad shoulders. Before he could do so, she picked up the hem of her short nightdress in both hands and hoisted it up to her throat ‘Have a good look at them,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

Her immense breasts hung unsupported to the crook of her elbows. Her nipples were introverted, forming hollows in the flesh instead of standing clear.

‘I’ve never seen a pair like that before,’ said Andrew, his interest aroused.

‘Funny, aren’t they? I used to worry about it when I was a young girl but the doctor said it. didn’t matter and there was nothing to be done about it Mind you, they stand up like anybody else’s when I’m in the mood.’

‘Do they?’ said Andrew, enchanted by the idea. ‘Let’s see.’

He bent his head and pressed his mouth to the nearest breast to suck at the strange blind nipple,

‘You don’t waste time, do you,’ Amy breathed. ‘Suck harder.’

The nipple engorged and grew between his lips. He released it and looked down to see it standing proud nearly half an inch.

‘Now the other one,’ she said.

That erected even quicker than the first one had. The brown-red teats stood straight out from the skin of her breasts without any noticeable surround at all

‘Look all right now, don’t they?’ she asked.

Andrew fondled their massiveness and felt the wetness of his saliva over the standing nipples.

They look magnificent to me,’ he said, licking his lips.

‘I told you they were like anybody else’s when I get in the mood.’

They’re not at all like anybody else’s, Amy, and you know if

‘You like them, do you?’

He nodded, though into his mind crept the unwelcome memory that only a few hours ago a pair of breasts had tempted him into a sequence of events that was now ending with Mandy’s father incinerating in the oven downstairs.

Amy caught the shadow on his face and jerked her shoulders to make her melons roll about and distract him. With mock modesty she said:

‘I don’t know what I’m about, sitting here with no drawers on, exposing myself to you like this. I can’t think what’s come over me. It’s downright indecent, that’s what it is. Still, I’ve got a lovely big backside on me as well and you might as well have a look at it’

She rolled away from him off the sofa, bundling the billows of her loose negligee round her waist to display two great pink cheeks. She watched his face over her shoulder, her eyes gleaming as he reached out to squeeze the soft flesh.

‘I knew you’d fancy me the minute I set eyes on you,’ she said.

The dark thoughts cleared from Andrew’s mind as he handled her warm bottom.

‘Feel like taking me on now?’ she asked softly.

‘You couldn’t stop me now even if you shouted “Rape”.’

‘Come on then, let’s have a bit of rape. I’m gasping for it’

To Andrew’s surprise, she slid to the brightly patterned carpet on her knees and put her head down on her folded arms on the sofa. Her clothes were hitched up about her waist to expose her wide bottom.

‘Don’t mind, do you?’ she asked, ‘I love it like this.’

Andrew knelt behind her, between her parted legs. Her oval mound, like a split peach cupped between the join of her thighs, was open to him. He unzipped and guided his hard member into her, then lay along her solid back and reached for her great pendulous breasts.

‘Ah, ah, ah,’ she said, with relish.

He rode her slowly, inching into her slippery depths until his belly was pressed to her buttocks. It was like rolling on a water-bed, bouncy and cushioning at the same time. He floated in a bath of pure sensation so heart-warming that his anxiety about being inadequate to the coupling melted away. The worries, woes, horrors and despairs that the day had brought him were dissolved. His quick and forced tumble with Mandy that had left him on edge and capable of venting a murderous rage on her father, the dreadful vision-laden orgasm into which Bianca had manipulated his mind and body, the deep malaise left behind by these perversions of his sexuality was stilled and healed by immersion in Amy Krasner’s wholly physical lust She shuddered and panted underneath him as she reached her climax, her fat bottom smacking backwards against him to drive him in deeper. He sensed her tremors through the golden euphoria that enveloped him and he swept on rhythmically, the goal of release not far ahead. His euphoria kindled into exaltation, then flared into a blaze of urgent expectation, while all the time Amy bucked and heaved under his weight like a plunging mare.

His hands clenched deep into the flesh of her breasts, his body pounded her yielding buttocks. With eyes staring into nothingness, mouth agape in a soundless cry of triumph, he gushed into her as if he would never stop. It was more than physical release he experienced, it was a cleansing and p urification of his tainted soul. For some time after the throes faded he lay trembling on her back, inwardly blessing the woman who had been the means of this unexpected spiritual purification.

After a while they both climbed back up on to the sofa and she pillowed his face against her breasts in an unlooked-for gesture of affection.

‘My God, Amy, I needed that’ he said at last ‘thank you more than I can say.’

Thank me for what?’ she answered with her fruity chuckle. ‘For doing the honours? You brought me off four times and that’s all the thanks I want’

She was unaware of what she had done for him. Andrew let the matter drop.

‘Four times?’ he said. ‘You really were gasping for it then.’

‘I thought you were going to do me to death, whacking away that long, straight I did. You’ll always be welcome here, anytime you feel like dropping in. Come round sometime when you haven’t had it up twice already - I can’t imagine what you’d be like then.’

‘You are a refuge from insanity, Amy.’

That made her chuckle again.

The only refuge I’ve got to offer you is between my legs,’ she said, ‘and you can make use of that any time. Had a bad day, have you?’

“You could put it like that’

Take a word of advice from me. No offence meant, but Mrs Hallam and her lot will get you all wound up if you let them . You’re not one of them, so she’ll use you for the dirty work, like tonight . All you’ll get out of it will be a roll on the bed now and then to keep you hooked. You’ll get a load of aggravation, no doubt about that So either join ‘em properly and play them at their own game or else get out and leave them to it’

Thanks, Amy. The trouble is, I can’t get out now and I don’t want to be one of them. I’m stuck in the middle and I don’t like if

‘I’m sure you don’t. Sit up and I’ll get you another drink.’

He ran his hands lightly down her body in appreciation, over her ballooning breasts with their now-retracted nipples, down her plump belly to the small patch of coarse hair between the columns of her thighs. She stood up and her nightdress slid down from around her chest and the creased negligee swung into place, like curtains being rung down on a stage at the end of a theatrical performance.

She stood at the bamboo bar pouring drinks, an oversized woman with brassy hair. There were bad secrets inside her square head, Andrew thought as he watched her. She disposed of the dead victims of the Apart . And quite possibly she did worse than that for them. All the same, she had a warmth in her, a humanity and a generosity of spirit that was conspicuously lacking in Bianca and the Pights and the others he had met Amy lived in her body. Its needs and its desires shaped her mind. The Apart played cold and deadly games with their minds and distorted their sexual energy to fuel their mental passions.

‘You’re looking mighty thoughtful all of a sudden,’ said Amy, handing him a glass with a single measure of whisky in it

She stood near him, holding her own glass. The warm smell of her big body was a joy in his nostrils. He smiled up at her and emptied the glass in one swallow.

‘I was thinking about the difference between being human and being Apart’

‘Don’t It doesn’t bear thinking about I’ve told you what you ought to do. Now off you go and let me get to bed. I’ve got to be up and about soon to open the shop.’

‘I’ll be back to see you soon, Amy’’

‘That’s up to you.’

Down in the bakehouse he found Stefan lifting fresh-baked bread out of the oven and stacking it to cool. There were big wet patches of sweat on his grubby vest

‘Everything all right?’ Andrew asked, nodding towards the’ old oven in the wall

The Pole nodded.

‘Not so much left’ he said in his heavy accent ‘I stoke up half hour ago. No trouble I do this plenty times before.’ ‘Goodnight then.’

‘Missus gone to bed?’ Stefan asked, a sudden gleam in his little eyes.

Andrew nodded and let himself out through the gate.

It was after three o’clock in the morning and the only vehicle he saw on his way back to Bianca’s house was a newspaper van tearing along the deserted Pentonville Road as if the driver’s life depended on it Andrew went south across central London, halted in empty streets by traffic lights serving no purpose at that time of day.

Bianca’s circle of acquaintance was wide and useful, he thought Necromancers who conjure spirits out of nowhere to tell the future, disposers of unwanted corpses. What other horrors which she accepted as normal would surface next? He was too weary to worry about it He wanted to crawl into bed and sleep till midday. He let himself into the house in Cheyne Walk and went quietly up the ornate staircase. If Bianca had returned and gone to bed he had no intention of waking her up. Sexual connection with three women in twelve hours was enough for him, he did not want her to get him started again.

He was halfway up the stairs in the dark when he became aware of a noise that puzzled him. He stopped and listened. It was up ahead, coming from the direction of Bianca’s bedroom. A mewling sound, something like a small kitten. Instantly he was sure that something was amiss and went up the rest of the stairs fast Bianca had left her door ajar for him. Her room was in darkness, a darkness so thick that it looked almost touchable, compared with the dimness of the stairs and landing. He pushed at the door, felt it give a fraction, but it would not open. He put his shoulder to it and heaved. The door was jammed solid against something immovable inside the room. Alarmed, he tried to reach round the door to find what was stopping it and at once pulled his hand back as if he had been stung. The darkness that filled Bianca’s room was touchable.

Gingerly he put his hand out again. The blackness was not exactly solid but it was impenetrable. Nor was it still - he could feel slow vibrations from deep within it, distant shiftings and ripples. And it was warm to the touch. Not hot, but warmer man his hand.

The mewling continued unabated, a distant and curious thread of sound. There was no distress in it, in-fact no evidence of any kind of intelligence in it at all. Andrew stood back from the impassable door, his mind whirling in speculation. Wha t in hell was going on in there? What kind of perverted game was Bianca playing? Had she brought another man home with her, to entrance with visions and phantasms while she sucked the soul from his body? A red rage exploded in Andrew’s mind at the thought and he threw himself at the door to smash his way through and strangle the bitch and whoever she had in bed with her.

His hurtling weight moved the door perhaps an inch inwards, then it snapped back so fast that he was thrown bodily across the passage. His back struck the wall opposite, winding him. He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the thick carpet In his mind things clicked into place and he knew what was happening in the bedroom.

It was the night on Longman’s Hill all over again, the night he first met Bianca. She had gone there to lure a Great One through the interface of two worlds to steal his knowledge and power. She had done that many times since the first time in the Mendip Hills, when her husband had pointed the way. But tonight was different - this time the Great One had slid through the gap from the Otherworld without being summoned by the lure of her body. He had hunted her to her home to enjoy her body in her own bed.

The moment he grasped the enormity of what was taking place on the other side of the door, Andrew sat very still. This thing, or one like ft, had hurt him badly when he intruded upon it the first time. If it now became aware of the presence of a living man in close proximity to where it was enjoying its pleasure, it might well lash out at him, maybe lethally this time. Bianca had said that he was lucky not to be killed the first time.

He put his arms round his bent knees silently and waited, watched and forced himself to think rationally in order to calm his sick fear.

The visitant had no fixed shape or size, that was clear. It could make its substance flow into whatever mould was convenient On top of Longman’s Hill it had been too dark for him to even glimpse it before it swept him aside. Here, it had fitted itself into the shape of Bianca’s bedroom. He was prepared to bet that if he went outside and looked up, he would see that impenetrable darkness sealing up the windows of her room.

The thing was unquestionably alive. More than that, it had purpose and intelligence. It had come through the invisible frontier between contiguous worlds somewhere along the interface Bianca had told him of and it had traced her across seventy or eighty miles of countryside and picked her out of the millions of women lying asleep in bed in London. That argued intelligence, even if only on the level of the hunter’s skill. But the driving force that had brought it here was not intelligence, it was lust for a woman.

We may be unlike to look at, Andrew thought wryly, this Great One and me, but we’re brothers under the skin in that respect It was lust for Bianca that brought me here too. It would seem that we have that In common.

His own thought revolted him. He could guess well enough

from what Bianca had told him the nature of what it was doing to her. It had shaped itself to t he contours of her torso as she lay on her back, its substance adapting itself to f low into the openings of her body and stimulate her with an inhuman

eroticism that carried her through uncounted orgasms until

her entire being was exposed to it In that state it could com municate with her, to impla nt its own unthinkable thoughts and knowledge into her an d to take from her - what? What could, such a creature want fr om her other than physical con tact?

Intelligent life-form you may be, thought Andrew, but you are not of this earth and you have no right to do what you are doing to a human, whether you were invited or not And I’m damned sure you were not invited tonight A strange memory came into his head, a verse from the Bible:

And it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born unto them that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and they took them wives of all that they chose.

Immediately he rejected the thought Andrew was in no way

a religious man, but his concepts had been shaped by religious education at school and by the prevailing beliefs of the society in which he lived. He had no belief in a good God nor in a bad one. The thing in the bedroom with Bianca was alien to all that he knew and understood, but that did not necessarily make it either holy or evil. It was simply unknowable to him, except at second-hand through Bianca’s description. He tried to recall what she had told him about the Great Ones. She had said that congress with them raised her to the heights, of sensation and then they whispered inside her mind - he couldn ’t remember her, words, but it was something like that And another thing she had told him - the Great Ones couldn’t tolerate our light and went back into the Otherworld before the sun rose.

He glanced at his wrist and again swore silently that he had

never replaced the watch that had been broken on Longman’s

Hill. There must be some component of the sun’s rays that

hurt these visitants from the Otherworld, some wavelength of

radiation that was damaging to them. They o nly came through the interface when the sun was hidden on the other side of the globe.

So this one would have to leave soon. The clock on Amy’s mantelpiece had said ten past three when he left her,. The drive back had taken how long - say half an hour, maybe a bit less. How long had he been sitting here on the floor watching and thinking? That was hard to estimate. Not less than ten minutes, maybe longer. So it was getting on for four o’clock in the morning. At this time of the year sunrise was about four-thirty. It would be first light soon. The sky would turn grey and the stars pale out long before the red rim of the sun made its appearance over the edge of the world. A little patience and this alien thing would have to go back to where it came from. .

Bianca had said that whenever she offered her naked body as bait along the interface line, she had lured a different Great One each time. She believed that because she felt that she experienced differing personalities. The one she had encountered on Longm an’s Hill had tried t o lure her across the gap into its own world with promises of uninterrupted ecstasy. When she had been reluctant to go, it had tried to take her away by force. The fluid substance of i ts being that had been shaped into pseudo-organs for her delight had turned into claws and teeth to rip at her flesh.

This is your demon lover from Longman’s Hill, come back for another try, Andrew thought grimly. You made a mistake going there, Bianca, this one wants you for keeps. That’s the trouble you are in - that’s what all the compulsion of my mind and body is about I understand your predicament now. You thought I could be used to protect you from this unwanted suitor. When you wake up, if you ever do, you’ll know that your plan is no good unless I sleep with you every single night to keep him aw ay. You don’t have to go to him anymore, he can come to you. And I doubt if my presence will keep him from you for long.

So where the hell does that leave me? Reduced to the status of a watchdog to bark at dangerous intruders. About as important as the non-human thing in your safe to frighten burglars away. Only not as effective. This particular intruder won’t be kept away for long.

The door to Bianca’s room had latched when it had slammed shut on him. From the window at the end of the landing the light. Has creeping greyly in and he knew it would be safe now. The Great One would have fled back to the line where the worlds met and across into the safety of its own unimaginable environment Andrew got up stiffly and went to the bedroom door. It opened easily enough and in the pale light of dawn he saw Bianca lying naked on her huge red bed, arms and legs spread wide, her body pale against the crimson of the sheets. From where he stood she looked dead.

He went across the room slowly, afraid of what he would find. He touched her face and it was cold. He put his hand beneath her left breast and to his joy found a fault heartbeat She seemed very small and frail to him, her skin almost translucent After a moment’s thought he searched around for blankets, covered her warmly and left her to sleep and recover. The events of the past day and the night had utterly drained him. He lay down beside her on the big bed, still in his clothes, and fell asleep at once.

Chapter 14

When Andrew woke up about two in the afternoon Bianca was still locked in the sleep of total exhaustion. He left her undisturbed and went down to the kitchen to make himself eggs and bacon and coffee. Then with time on his hands, he explored Edwin’s study thoroughly, his objective to learn as much as he could about the interface between the worlds through which such terrifying visitants could slide in the dark to consort with human women.

One whole drawer of the big desk was filled with large-scale maps of southern England. Across each of them, from left to right, a straight line had been drawn, so that when the maps were laid out on the floor together the lines joined into one long slanting line tha t ran from Cornwall to Suffolk. Andrew got down on the floor to acquaint himself in detail with the rotite of it, from where it began in the Atlantic, across England, through Longman’s Hill and out into the North Sea.

It took him only a few minutes of searching the bookshelves

to find half a dozen copies of the book Edwin had written and

caused to be printed for his own use. It was a thickish book,

handsomely bound in green leather with gold tooling. Its title

was Gateway to the Otherworld and Edwin’s name was shown as the author.

Flicking through a copy, Andrew saw that Edwin had devoted a chapter to each of the marked sites along the line, moving from west to east There was a description of the nature of the marker, a line-drawing of ft and some fairly lengthy historical notes filling in the known background and any local legend about each of them.

According to the first chapter the first marker on the line was St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall Andrew had been there and knew what it was like - an island at high tide off Marazion near Penzance, though at low tide it is possible-to walk across a causeway to ft It was once a part of the mainland, according to the geographers, but the land had sunk and so the sea cut it off at high water.

At low tide the fossilized remains of the forest which once surrounded the Mount can still be seen. In Edwin’s book

Andrew read that the old Celtic name for St Michael’s Mount was Carrick luz en cuz, which meant the old rock in the wood’. Highly appropriate, in the circumstances, he thought Amongst local legends attaching to the site, Edwin had noted that it was believed that if a woman sat on a rough stone seat within the castle on the Mount, she would dominate her husband. That made sense to Andrew; if a woman had connection with a Great One either there or anywhere else, she would learn enough to dominate any ordinary man afterwards.

Edwin had written a lengthy explanation of why this site

had been renamed after St Michael and why so many churches dedicated to St Michael were to be found along the Otherworld line. In early Christian belief , Michael had fought with God’s enemy - either a dragon or the devil himself and had been victorious. Consequently, when the Christian missionaries in Britain started to build their first churches on the holy places of the earlier religion, they ha d dedicated them to St Michael, in the belief that he would slay the lurking pagan god or spirit and so sanctify the site to their own use. There were many examples quoted, with local m yths and events adduced to sup port the argument Andrew skipped through the book at first, noting the places where Edwin described markers. From St Michael’s Mount the line ran up across Cornwall, through quite a few villages where churches had been built on it, across Dartmoor, where the route was marked by standing stones and beacons at regular intervals, through Taunton and its church, across Somerset, to the ancient and mysterious holy place of Glastonbury. Edwin had written a great deal about Glastonbury, the reputed site of the first Christian church to be built in England, but a holy place for thousands of years before that Kings, heroes, saints, holy men, magicians - all had been to Glastonbury according to the long legends. And a Great One, Andrew thought, no doubt about that Further along the line he was surprised and interested to see that it did not pass through Stonehenge but ran miles to the north through the old stone circles at the little-known village of Avebury. This, he read, is the largest prehistoric monument in Europe. The illustration included in the book by Edwin showed that the standing stones were not the carefully hewn uprights and cross-bars of Stonehenge but old, gnarled, only roughly hacked uprights, a hundred of them arranged in a vast circle nearly a quarter of a mile across. It was very much older man Stonehenge, Andrew read, and a most important

marker along the line. The exchange with the Otherworld had continued here long after England hail become nominally

Christian, so much so that in the Middle Ages the Church had

become alarmed by what went on there and had given orders

for the standing stones to be taken down and buried out of

sight They had given up the task as hopeless when mysterious

accidents happened to the labourers.

The great line ran on, roughly north-east by east, south of Oxford, north of London, through Luton and into East Anglia, south of Cambridge and through another holy place of the past, Bury St Edmunds. At Luton, he read, there was a burial ground for executed witches during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - probably women who had consorted with the Great Ones.

At Bury St Edmunds there had been a place of worship for many thousands of years, the book said, second only to Glastonbury in importance. The old name for it had been lost and it had been renamed, after King Edmund when he was buried there in the year 870, after the Danes had shot him full of arrows and cut his head off. Edwin speculated in his writing that the monks had buried Edmund there to Christianize the she and chase away the gods previously worshipped on the spot After that the line ran .on through village churches until it reached the North Sea north of Lowestoft At this point Edwin recorded that the maker that should have stood on the coast at this important point was gone.

In between the main sites he had listed every standing stone, every planted grove, every burial mound, village church, beacon and other marker that stood along the line, including Longman’s Hill. It must have taken him a considerable amount of time and work, to plot the course, follow it and collect all this information together. Having nothing else to do just then, Andrew sat down to read it in earnest, looking in on Bianca from time to time as she slept The day passed and the evening. Bianca woke up about ten o’clock. She looked drawn and worried. Andrew made soup for her and told her that he had seen the visitation the night before on his return and now understood her predicament . She eyed him askance at that but evidently decided that she needed his assistance. After she had eaten, she insisted on making a telephone call to someone she called Shafik to say that she was coming to see him the next morning. Seemingly more at ease after that, she bathed and went back to bed and asked Andrew to make love to her. He hesitated, saying that she was still exhausted and that it would be meaningless and not in the least enjoyable for either of them . She dismissed his objections as trivial and eventually he complied with her wishes. She lay limp and unresponsive beneath him the whole time and for him too it was no more than a mechanical exercise - friction to induce an ejaculation. The point was, he thought queasily afterwards as she lay sleeping beside him, she wanted his semen inside her and his man’s scent about her body to ward off any return visit from the Great One. He dozed off at last in a depressed mood.

The next day was Sunday. They had breakfast about nine and set off in her car. Shafik lived in a decrepit street of terraced houses off North End Road in the shabbier part of Fulham. Andrew eyed the dirty net-curtained windows and peeling door with distaste. Bianca’s expensive car looked out of place parked by the kerb between a fifteen year old Ford with flat tyres and a rotting van painted dull black.

Shafik the Egyptian matched his surroundings. Thin, slight, about thirty, wearing soiled blue denims with frayed bottoms and a green pullover that should have been thrown away years previously. He greeted Bianca warmly, kissed her on both cheeks while he held her hands. His lustrous black eyes alone redeemed his o rdinary face. He stared hard at Andrew as he shook his hand, until Andrew was compelled to look away ’. His manner towards his visitors was almost servile. Because of Bianca, Andrew thought; he fears her to some degree and at the same time she fascinates him. All slightly unpleasant Shafik led them through a dirty-walled passage to a room at the rear of the house. An old-fashioned three-piece suite upholstered in threadbare beige filled most of the space around a circular brass-topped low table of the type every tourist once bought in the souks of North Africa.

Two women sat together on the sofa. They looked at the visitors as they came in but said nothing.’ Bianca made the introductions, not Shafik.

‘Joan and Eileen,’ she said, flicking her hand towards them, ‘this is Andrew Jarvis. How are you both?’

‘All right’ said Eileen, while the other woman nodded vaguely.

‘Sit down, please,’ said Shafik. ‘We will have coffee. Move yourselves, you cows and let my guests be seated.’

Bianca took an armchair as of right Andrew perched beside Eileen on the battered sofa. Joan got up and went to the kitchen. Shafik hovered for a moment and men sat on the other side of Eileen on the sofa so that he would be near to Bianca.

‘It is a great pleasure to have you here in my house,’ he said to her. ‘I have not seen you for a long time. You have been busy?’

Shafik’s two women must be sisters, Andrew thought. Both were in their twenties, both with the same mouse-coloured hair and nondescript features. Both in the same dreary blue denim trousers and grubby T-shirts over unsupported and already sagging breasts. It struck him as a dreadful and closed-in setup. He needed to see no more of it than he had, to know the full awfulness of it Shafik had established himself as king-emperor in a hovel with two stupid Fulham girls as his willing subjects. He undoubtedly treated them like dirt and they undoubtedly loved it The one in the kitchen came back with a boiling kettle and put it on the metal-topped table. She fetched a tray with cups and saucers and a jar of Nescafe. Andrew watched in disbelief as Shafik spooned out the po wder into cups, mixed it to a paste with a little water and then filled the cups from the kettle. Bianca was served first, of course, then himself, then Shafik . The sisters were not offered any and did not seem surprised or put out He had not been listening to the conversation between Bianca and Shafik. He knew that she had come here for a reason, but what it could be was beyond his guessing. With her, it was best to wait until she was ready to reveal her motives.

But Shafik knew why she was here. He was saying:

‘I am at your complete disposal at all times. It is an honour to me that you should seek my assistance.’

There was an unspoken but on the end of his sentence. Bianca heard it and replied:

‘Naturally, I don’t expect you to help me without some reward. ‘I like to be generous when I can.’

Shafik’s face was tense and clearly etched now that the haggling had begun. His eyelids half-covered his shining eyes as he stared at Bianca’s feet in an attitude of sham humility.

‘My help is freely given, especially to a great lady like yourself. There is never any question of payment between friends who understand each other.’

Bianca was equal to him.

‘Indeed not,’ she said, ‘but if there is any way in which I can be of service to you in return, I am only too pleased.’

‘If you would teach me one-tenth - no, one-hundredth - of what you know, my complete services and talents would be yours forever.’

That may be,’ she said, ‘but there is no way I can do that’ There is only one way to what you want and you have to take it yourself. I’ve told you that before. If you want to follow the path I have, I can show you how to start - in fact I have shown you already. But you have to follow it on your own because there’s no other way.’

Shafik shook his head quickly.

‘I do not feel ready to risk that yet. Perhaps in another year.’ ‘Whenever you say,’

‘But I will help you, even so,’ he perked up, ‘though I am only a poor student in this city. You know that it shames me to live like this, among s tupid peasants. My home is not li ke this. My father has a large house with gardens and fountains and se rvants to wait on him. That was my life too, until I came here.’

Andrew had taken a dislike to the man.

“You’ll be glad to get back home, then,’ he said acidly.

Bianca frowned at him.

‘Pay no attention to. him,’ she said to Shafik, ‘you mustn’t ever think of going back. Your friends want you to stay here in London.’

The gentleman is right’ said Shafik, looking oddly at Andrew, ‘I often long to return to my old life, where I am valued and respected. But I think of my many friends that I have here and I think about how much there is for me to do here. So I stay in the cold and the rain of your country and suffer being a poor man until the time comes when all will be changed.’

Neither Joan nor Eileen had said a word or taken any apparent interest in the conversation. They sat dull and lifeless.

‘Poverty is bad for you,’ Bianca said sympathetically, “it cramps the souL I hope you will let me do something to help you.’

She delved into her handbag and offered him a sheaf of five pound notes with a paper band round them. From where he - sat Andrew could see the printed figures £100 on the band.

“You are kind,’ said Shaflk, making no move to take the money, ‘but how can I accept this from you? It puts me under an obligation which I cannot repay.’

There is no obligation. I give it as a friend. I hope you will take it in the spirit it is offered.’

‘No, no. It would humble me too much to accept this from you. Even though I am a poor man, I am still proud. You would not wish to destroy my pride.’

‘Certainly not,’ said Bianca, a slight edge creeping into her voice.

She. took another sheaf of notes the same size as the first from her handbag, put both on the table beside the coffee cups and closed her bag with a snap. The offer was clear. Two hundred pounds was as high as she was prepared to go.

What could she be trying to buy, Andrew wondered. Something only Shaflk could supply, though it was hard to imagine what that could be. Whatever it was, Shafik decided, after a few moments of silence, to sell. He reached for the money and stuffed it into the back pocket of his trousers, then leaned over low to kiss the hem of Bianca’s skirt The gesture surprised Andrew and increased his dislike of the man.

‘You are a true friend,’ said Shafik, touching his fingertips briefly to his heart and lips, ‘I am your servant’Whatever, small talent I have is entirely at your disposal. Is it to be now?’

’If you’re ready,’ Bianca said.

‘And the gentleman - do you wish him to stay.’

That’s why I brought him.’

‘Does he know why you are here?’

‘He’ll very soon learn.’

Shafik nodded and turned to the sisters.

‘Get downstairs;’ he ordered them.

Two pairs of dull brown eyes turned to him.

“Don’t want to,’ Eileen protested feebly.

‘Do as I say, you bitch, I Would you shame me in front of my guests?’

The menace in his voice caused the two women to get up and sup quietly out of the room. Shafik caught the look on Andrew’s face.

‘Do not concern yourself about them,’ he said, as fawning as a dog licking its master’s hand. ‘You think that I treat them harshly, but you do not know them as I do. Believe me, I am their friend and their protector. You would not believe how stupid they are. Without my protection they would be cheap prostitutes standing in doorways for a pound a time. By now . they would be dead of disease; I give them my home to share and a place in life.’

Andrew kept his thoughts to himself.

‘You must not think of them as human beings like you and me,’ Shafik added, ‘they are only things.’

‘Women’s Lib should hear this,‘ said Andrew, smiling at the other’s seriousness.

‘Because they have slits, they are not women,’ said Shafik very earnestly, they are only female things I use for my purposes.’

I’m sure you do.’

Shafik looked at Bianca in question.

‘He has not taken the great step,’ she told the Egyptian; ‘our world is still closed to him, that’s why he says these things. Pay no attention.’

‘Does he know anything at all?’

‘He has seen a little and I have told him a little.’

Then we shall open his eyes, if that is what you wish.’

Bianca nodded.

Then we are ready,’said Shafik.

Bianca got up and ‘Shafik led the way out of the overcrowded little room to a scuffed door in the passage and down a bare wooden stair to the cellar. Andrew went down last, following Bianca. At the bottom of the stairs he stood looking in dismay at what he found.

An uncovered light bulb hung from the ceiling to light the rectangular cellar. The plank floor was dirty and a small window high up in one wall had been tightly blocked with old plywood. A filthy and stained mattress lay on the floor. The whole place stank of damp, rot and sweat Andrew looked at the heavy hooks set into the overhead beams. God Almighty, he thought we’re all set for some bloody awful bondage scene. What the hell is Bianca after, coming to a dump like this?

One of Shafik‘s women was lighting charcoal in a rusty metal garden barbeque, pouring methylated spirits over it and choking on the clouds of smoke she was creating. The other woman kicked the mattress out of the way and dragged a small rickety table over to the wall On it she stood a table lamp without a shade and plugged it into a wall socket Shafik busied himself with a pile of junk stacked under the sealed-off window.

Andrew looked at Bianca and raised his eyebrows.

‘Keep your mouth shut whatever happens,’ she said in an undertone. I don’t care whether you like what you see or not It’s important to me. Shafik mustn’t be interrupted, do you understand?’ ‘What’s he going to do?’

‘You’ll see for yourself in a minute. Stand out of the way at the bottom of the stairs and keep quiet’

Her inner coldness was there to feel in her words. Andrew rubbed the back of his neck, where her words had made his hair bristle. He nodded and stood back to wait

Eileen covered the glaring bulb of the table lamp with a thin blue scarf. Her sister had the charcoal burning well. The two of them stood looking at Shafik sorting out his junk, waiting for him to tell them what to do.

‘Turn the top light off, Andy,’ said Bianca, pointing to the wall switch.

He turned it off and sat down on the dusty stairs. The blue light from the table lamp combined with the glow of the charcoal to give the cellar a most unpleasant and claustrophobic appearance.

‘Get ready,’ Shafik called back to them over his shoulder.

Joan and Eileen immediately started to take their clothes off, though with signs of reluctance. Andrew looked at them as they pulled their T-shirts over their heads and unzipped their flies. They dropped their clothes to the dirty floor, trousers, panties, ratty slippers and stood naked, side by side, looking at their master. The dim blue light made their flesh look hideous.

Andrew took in their hanging breasts, bulging bellies and shapeless legs with distaste. How the Egyptian could bring himself to get into bed with them after seeing them like this was more than he could imagine. Perhaps he had been right after all when he described them as female things, not women.

Shafik was ready now. He tied the end of a yard-long cord round Joan’s left wrist and the other end round her right wrist, leaving plenty of slack between them. He did the same to the other woman with a similar cord. As far as Andrew could tell in the bad light, their face s were sullen and lifeless still.

He glanced over to where Bianca was standing with her back to the wall As she licked her lips, the blue light made her tongue look black, and her face looked yellow-Old, yellow and cruel.

Shafik climbed up on a battered wooden kitchen chair to reach high and put the loop of cord joining Joan’s wrists over one of the hooks in the ceiling. She stood impassively, feet apart, arms pulled up high over her head. Her sister showed more spirit . She backed away from Shafik when he reached for her cord. ‘No, I’m not going to! You can’t make me!‘ Shafik jumped down from the chair, his arm raised and his fist clenched. As Eileen raised her arms to protect her face, he punched, her in the belly. She doubled over, gasping, and he was able to take hold o f the cord and drag her back to the chair.

‘No, please,’ she whimpered as he climbed up again and yanked her arms towards the ceiling.

The Egyptian got down and moved the chair out of the way. He had hung the two women on hooks so that they faced each other, about a foot apart Joan was standing stolidly, staring in front of her, like a bullock waiting to go into the slaughter-house, terrified but resigned. Eileen was slumped down, dangling dejectedly by her wrists, her hair over her face.

Shafik looked at Bianca and raised his hands in a gesture that said ‘What can you expect from such creature s?’ Andrew looked away from.Bian ca’s answering smile of understanding and approval The cellar was hot and stuffy from the glowing charcoal Shafik stripped off his dingy pullover and sat himself cross-legged on the floor, a yard or so away from the women. His chest was narrow and hairless, the rib-cage showing through the thin flesh. On the floor in front of him he set a sort of wooden drum, little more than a carved cylinder with open ends. He held two wooden sticks, about a foot long, crudely carved to make them thicker at one end than the other. Like his drum, they were grimy with age and handling.

He attacked the drum vigorously with them, beating but a fast staccato rhythm. The drum gave off a flat unmusical sound when struck, and to it the Egyptian added his voice in a rising and falling wail Whether he was chanting in his own language or some other, Andrew had no way of telling. Perhaps it was no language at all, he thought only a vocalizing to match the wooden rhythm he was beating out of his unlikely-looking drum.

His stringy arms jerked up and down as he slammed the crude sticks against the cylinder and soon sweat was trickling down his chest The noise he made began to have an effect on the two strung-up women. Eileen, who had been damped down from her bonds, was standing upright again. Both women were shivering and twitching. Andrew heard the scrape of their bare feet on the planking of the floor and realized that they were starting a kind of shuffling dance. As Shafik wailed on and thumped away, the contortions of the women’s bodies increased. They threw their heads back and stared sightlessly up at the ceiling from which they dangled by their up-stretched arms. They rolled their heads from side to side and threw their ratty hair about . Their drooping breasts flopped from side to side as their bodies swayed and jerked.

Some kind of hysteria, Andrew thought Shafik had trained them to go into a self-induced trance which he triggered off with his unpleasing music of voice and wooden drum. Presumably he hooked them to the ceiling so that they woujd not throw themselves about the floor and injure themselves. Perhaps.

Their hips were in spasm, forwards and backwards, their bellies alternately sucked in and bloated outwards. They were wailing mindlessly over the din. Shafik was making, throwing themselves about in wilder and wilder movements. Spittle ran from their mouths and fell on to their flapping breasts as they stamped and shuffled in time to the rhythm of the drum.

Eileen hung from her bound wrists as she kicked her legs forward together and clamped them round Joan’s waist She hung there, ankles crossed and locked, convulsing and crying out In sick fascination Andrew saw that she was rubbing her exposed genitals against her sister’s belly by thrusting at her with her hips.

Shafik jumped up at once, leaving his drumming. In his hand was a leather-thonged whip about two feet long. He slashed with it at Eileen’s back and Andrew winced as he heard the crack of the thong on her bare flesh. Again and again Shafik struck her, shouting someth ing Andrew could not understand, until she released the grip of her legs and swung back on her bonds until her feet hit the floor. She stood leaning towards Shafik, her teeth showing in a snarl that was animal in its intensity. At that moment Andrew had no doubt that if she were free she would have clawed Shafik ‘s eyes out and bitten through his throat That’s why they’re both strung up, he thought it’s for his protection, not for theirs.

The other woman had caught the scent of killing too. She raged at Shafik and kicked out at him. Shafik side-stepped her kicks and thrashed at both women with his whip, shouting at them the whole time. Joan shrieked and threw herself forward as her sister had done a few moments ago, grasped Eileen round the waist with her thighs and rubbed herself desperately up and down against her until Shafik beat her down with the whip, Andrew was sickened by the red weals on the thighs and backs of both women and the trickle of blood from torn skin. He saw them kick and scream at Shafik until at last be mastered them with the whip and they stood trembling in their bonds, glaring at him with eyes that glowed like a cat’s in the dark.

Shafik stood well clear of them and pointed at Bianca, out of harm’s way by the wall He shouted something at the bound women and repeated it several times, until their heads turned and they were both staring at Bianca over their sweat-shiny shoulders.

Tell her!’ he ordered them in English.

Joan’s head rolled from side to side between her upraised arms as if her neck were broken.

‘I cannot,’ she said in a deep unnatural voice.

Shafik slashed her viciously across the breasts with the whip.

Tell her!’

‘ ‘Give me what I came for,’ she growled. ‘After. I promise. Tell her what she wants to know first’ He whipped her across the breasts again, cutting down between the two facing women with the thong. Eileen shrank back as far as her bonds would allow, to escape the lash of the whip.

‘What do you want?’ the voice from Joan’s mouth asked Bianca.

‘Why do the Great Ones come to me when I have not invited them?’

‘You have pleased them. They want more.’

‘But they’ll destroy me!‘ said Bianca.

Joan’s mouth opened wide in a roaring laugh that staggered Andrew. No human could express so great a depth of contempt and malicious amusement in a single laugh. Shafik cut at her with the whip until she was silent ‘What shall I do?’ Bianca asked in an unsure voice - the first time that Andrew had ever heard her sound uncertain.

They will take what they want. That is all I know,’ the voice replied.

There must be something I can do to-protect myself,’ Bianca protested.

Joan said nothing, even when Shafik cut the whip across her sweaty buttocks a time or two. He turned to the other woman and cracked the lash across her back.

‘Speak I’ he shouted at her.

‘I know no more than she does,’ said Eileen; in the identical throaty growl that had come from Joan.

She groaned and threw herself from side to side as Shafik’s arm rose and fell half a dozen times, scoring her back with red marks.

‘You are lying I’ Shafik accused her. ‘You always lie to me. I want the truth from you or I will flog your skin to shreds. Speak!’

‘I do not know the ways of the Great Ones,’ the voice said through Eileen. They are too far above me.’ ‘You are lying!’

There may be a, way. Give me what I came here for.’ ‘Soon. Tell her the way first’

Efleen’s head turned so that she was glaring at Bianca through eyes that seemed to have grown enormous.

‘Put another in your place,’ she said, ‘perhaps they can be deceived.’

‘But how?’ Bianca asked quickly, the Great Ones only come to the willing.’

‘I cannot tell you that Ask the painted man - he knows more than he has told you. Make him talk.’ Bianca nodded slowly.

‘Can the Great Ones be deceived?’ she asked, smiling faintly.

‘Even the greatest can be deceived if the plan is clever enough.’

‘And Gilbert can help me with this?’

The man painted with the tree of life. I do not know his name.’

Bianca looked at Shafik and inclined her head towards him. ‘You have what you wanted?’ he asked. ‘Enough for my purpose.’

‘Good, I do not think that they can tell you any more.’ “You have done well,’ he said to them, dropping the whip

and backing well away, ‘take your reward now.’ Instantly Eileen and Joan screeched like cats and flung

themselves at each other to the limit of their bonds. Andrew

thought for a moment that they were trying to kill each other as their bare bellies smacked together and their legs kicked and wrestled awkwardly. Then he understood what they were doing. Bodies strained together, they had interlocked thighs and were rubbing their genitals and breasts against each other at furious speed.

In the dim blue light they looked like two demented creatures locked in a death-struggle as they writhed and heaved and their howling rose to a crescendo. The wet smell of sexuality and sweat was acrid in his nostrils as he stared appalled at the scene.

An ear-splitting shriek from Eileen announced that she had reached her frantic climax. Her back arched like a bow and her movements were a blur. Then Joan was shrieking too as her spasms began. Andrew stared in blank disbelief as the two women’s bodies clung together, their feet off the floor, hanging from their wrists and swinging wildly about at the end of their cords.

As suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The noise stopped, locked legs fell apart and the sisters hung limply away from each other, knees bent and legs sagging, streaked with sweat and the blood of their whipping. Both looked unconscious.

Bianca smoothed back her hair delicately and smiled as if at the end of an entertainment

‘Thank you, Shafik. You have done me a considerable favouf and I shall not forget’

Shafik touched his fingertips to his breast and lips and ducked his head as she crossed the room, high heels clattering on the planks, past Andrew and up the dusty stairs.

‘Quite a performance,’ said Andrew, at a loss for words that would mean anything.

‘It Is not yet over,’ Shafik replied. ‘Do you wish to stay longer?’

‘What do you mean?’

As he spoke, Shafik unzipped his soiled blue jeans and took them off. His stubby part was erect The spirit that speaks through them has gone now that it has had its pleasure in their flesh, but it leaves traces of itself behind, as when a fire bums through a house - the warmth, lingers a while in the ashes. And by experiencing that trace I grow in knowledge of the spirit and its power.’

He dragged Joan round to face him as she hung slackly by her wrists, forced her limp legs apart with his knee and penetrated her. Andrew stared in incomprehension as the Egyptian took her round the waist and started to thrust vigorously into her wet parts.

‘Ah,’ Shafik groaned, ‘I feel the warmth of the spirit that was in her—’

Turning his head to look over his shoulder at Andrew, he gasped:

‘You may have the other woman if you wish. Be quick, be quick, for the traces are fading and she will be nothing again—’

Andrew shook his head and went up the rotting stairs, leaving Shafik humping into the unconscious woman as if she were a sack of grain hanging from a rafter for his corrupting pleasure.

Chapter 15

Andrew sat behind the steering wheel of Bianca’s car at Terminal Three of London Airport It was six days since the night of the visitation, five since the gruesome consultation with Shafik and his women. Since that time Bianca had refused to let him leave her side.

‘You don’t want to consort with the Great Ones anymore?’ he asked.

“Only when I choose the time and place. I won’t be used their way.’

‘You once told me that the woman had to consent to the union and invite the consummation.How can you consent while you are asleep - or were you still awake when it happened?’

‘I was asleep. I don’t understand ft myself. It was a Great One ‘I’d met before - the one who wanted me to go across into his world with him.’

‘I guessed that But he didn’t use force this time, did he?’

‘he’s learned patience. He wants me to go with him but he’s working on me to get me to agree.’ ‘You still haven’t answered the question - how can this thing come to you of its own will, without your invitation?’

Bianca shook her head.

‘If consent is necessary,’ said Andrew, then perhaps some deep level of your mind consents while you sleep. This hobgoblin of yours has learned the knack of bypassing your conscious mind and appealing directly to the more basic part of you. And that part obviously consents to his advances. I think that you’re in great danger.’

‘He wont harm me,’ Bianca said sharply. ‘What is going on is a struggle between two wills. He wants me to do what he wants and I want him to do what I want That’s not unusual between male and female, is it?’

‘Maybe not, only we’re not talking about male and female. We’re talking about human and non-human.’

‘Not quite. He may be non-human, but I’m one of the Apart That makes me more than just human.’

Or less than human, Andrew thought though he did not sayit

He stayed with her that week because he had no real choice. Her control over his will was complete. They went shopping - together and. she bought him suits and shirts and underwearv and shoes. He telephoned his office helper and arranged for his calls to be transferred to a colleague in the county. At Cheyne Walk the domestic agency sent in daily cleaners, a cook and a manservant . Each night he slept in the big red bed with Bianca, but to allay, her anxiety she insisted on sex every night She displayed interesting ways of arousing his desire, night after night, but he did not enjoy the knowledge that he was being used.

The telephone rang about nine on Friday morning while Andrew was having breakfast in bed and Bianca was up and about She came rushing into the bedroom, her pale yellow hair flying around her head.

‘It’s Edwin!‘ she said breathlessly. ‘He’s at the airport that was him on the phone. Get up quick, we’re going to collect him.’

‘Edwin? You said he was in Borneo or somewhere!’

‘He’s back! Come on – hurry!’

‘At least let me shave.’

‘No time for that He’s waiting for me.’

At the airport, Andrew stayed in the car to protect it from the attention of traffic wardens and policemen, while Bianca ran into the terminal building. He had never seen her so excited. He sat in the car trying to picture the man he had heard about The soldier-mystic. The young officer who had killed again and again with his hands, not in cold blood but in a berserk rage of exaltation. The freebooter who had smuggled drugs and anything else that was profitable in and out of Mediterranean ports. The man who had been machine-gunned to within a fraction of death and had the guts to save himself and put himself back together. The mystic who had traced the interface across England and had deliberately laid his wife naked as bait to attract a being from the Otherworld. To have done all that Andrew thought he must be a giant among pigmies.

Bianca came out of the terminal doors, walking slowly, Edwin Hallam on her arm. Andrew stared at him open-mouthed in shock.

Hallam was thin and bent His right leg dragged as he walked. If Andrew had not known that he was in his late fifties, he would have put him at seventy. His hair was sparse and silver-white, his face haggard. He was wearing a crumpled bush shirt over khaki drill trousers.

They were almost at the car before Andrew recovered himself and scrambled out Hallam’s deep-set eyes flicked over him with ironic interest This is Andrew Jarvis,’ said Bianca. ‘He’s been staying with me this last week.’

Andrew held out his hand and then dropped it. Close to there was something so overpowering about Bianca’s husband, frail and ill though he looked, that Andrew was almost afraid to touch him. Hallam smiled briefly, as if he had experienced this reaction many times before.

‘How do you do, Andrew,’ he said. Take my bag from the porter. I’m very tired and I’d like to get home.’

‘Is that the lot?’ Andrew asked the porter, while Bianca helped Edwin into the back of the car.

‘Just the one,’ the porter replied, handing him a travel-stained canvas holdall ‘He must travel light’

Bianca was in the back of the car with Edwin. Andrew slung the bag on to the front seat and got in behind the wheel. In the rear-view mirror he could see Bianca sitting close to her husband, her arm linked in his.

My role’ in this drama is a very minor one, he thought as he threaded his way out through the airport traffic; bed-partner, second murderer, watchdog, corpse burner and now chauffeur. She’ll have me doing the washing-up next I’m so glad you’re back,’ he heard Bianca say. ‘Your last card was from Sarawak. Were you there till now?’

‘No, I stayed only a few weeks there. I went up into the hill country to talk to the tribes in the long-huts. I thought that just possibly some lingering trace of their head-hunting ancestors might linger in the blood. But I was wrong. They’re tame now. I moved on to New Guinea when I heard a rumour of quite recent cannibalism, but there was nothing to it Some newspaper man’s tale, I suppose. I went on to the Northern Territory of Australia and that was starting to become interesting when I knew that you needed me here, so I came as fast as I could.’

‘How could you know that? Neither of us has ever been particularly telepathic’

Andrew could hear the surprise in her voice.

‘I just knew it I was squatting under a tree in the scrub, trying to talk to an aborigine spirit-man. It was the middle of the day and very hot. One moment his blue-black face was inches from mine and then your face was there, white and frightened. I knew I had to get back quick, but if s taken me nearly a week. Am I in time?’

‘Of course you are — just as you were the first time, when you rescued me from Miggy’s thugs, all those years ago.’ - There was real affection in her voice, such as there had never been in any of her dealings with Andrew.

‘Good,’ said Edwin softly, ‘it will be all right now. I know” the answer.’

‘You found what you were looking for?’

‘Not what I set out to find, something much bigger that explains it’

I’m glad,’ she said in a tone that really, meant it . I hope you will be. It’s important to both of us.’ Tell me.’

‘Later. Tell me about your young man here. How long have you known him?’

‘Only a few weeks. My car broke down while I was on my way to a marker and he gave me a lift His curiosity got him involved and here he is.’

I’m sure you needed someone, but why him especially? He’s not one of the Apart He couldn’t even shake my hand. What are you planning, Bianca?’

‘Nothing, really. He’s bright and eager and I thought it would be amusing to have him around for a while.’

They talk about me as if I’m bloody well not here at all Andrew thought seething with indignation. Aloud he said for Edwin’s benefit:

‘She hasn’t told you that I became involved with her out of concern. I thought she was in danger. I didn’t know men how well she can look after herself. I found her hurt and looked after her. That might have been the end of it except that for her own reasons she chose to drag me back forcibly into her schemes by magic and mumbo-jumbo. In the last week she’s compelled me to have sex with an under-age girl, kill a man and dispose of his body - and not content with that she lured me to witness the most degrading spectacle of my life with a bunch of degenerates in a slum base ment I’m sure that she’s found i t very interesting and amusing, but I haven’t ’

There was silence in the back of the speeding car for a while. In the mirror Andrew could see Bianca’s face, tight and angry.

When Edwin spoke eventually, there was a tinge of asperity in his voice. ‘Why do you complain to me about Bianca? I am not her keeper.’

‘You’re her husband. Make her set me free so that I can go back to my own life.’

‘You are a free agent. Your life is in your own hands.’

‘But it’s not She has magicked me.’

‘Only the willing can be magicked, as you call it’ said Edwin. ‘No one can compel us - we acquiesce in their will because we choose to. No one can degrade us - we degrade ourselves, You are surely mature enough to understand that’

That’s easy for you to say - you’re Apart You have powers, though I doubt whether you’re equal to her now. You’ve been gone a long time and she’s been to meet the Great Ones again and again. What chance do I have against her?’

‘As much as you wish to have. You believe that Bianca has ‘ corrupted you, just as you probably believe that I originally corrupted her. But I tell you now that the only person any of us can corrupt is ourself. Bianca is a very attractive woman. When you met her, it would be normal for you to lust after her body. She knew that because women always do know that about men. So she tempted you with her body and you were prepared to pay any price she exacted from you.’

‘It wasn’t like that’ Andrew said angrily. ‘She dragged me halfway across the country in the middle of the night by a vision of herself. I was helpless.’

‘You wanted to be helpless because you desired what she was offering you. She can only work her charm on a willing victim.’

‘All right defend her,’ said Andrew, ‘just so long as you persuade her to let me go.’

‘As to that’ said Edwin, ‘I have every hope that you will shortly return to wherever it is you want to be. What I had to say was for Bianca alone, but after what I have heard, it seems sensible to include you, if only to correct your mistaken atti tude of mind.’

He sounded utterly weary.

‘Andy, you’ve said quite enough for now,’ Bianca said | sharply. ‘Shut up and let Edwin rest’

Then to her husband she said with tenderness, ‘What you I need is a few days in bed-and good food. You’ve exhausted | yourself, travelling about these last two years. I’ll soon have you well again, I promise.’

I wish it could be so,’ he answered, ‘but illusions are not for people like you and me. I’m dying. You know it and I know it We don’t have to pretend.’

‘Edwin!’

It’s no great matter. Once I was invulnerable and immortal, but that was withdrawn from me. I’ve lived long enough. I’ve come to the truth at last and that’s enough for anyone. You remember I told you about the fortune-teller in India - the one who started it all off for me. The first man I ever killed. No, the second - I’d just killed his boy by accident At least, in those days I thought that it was an accident…’

‘What about the fortune-teller?’ Bianca asked.

‘He caught my attention in the street by telling me that I wouldn’t die for many years and that when I did, it would be in my own country. He told me that I would be Apart’

‘Don’t talk now,’ Bianca soothed him, ‘put your head back and rest till we get home. It won’t take long now.’

‘He was right about everything,’ Edwin continued as if he hadn’t heard her. These last two years I’ve been strong and well I’ve walked for days through bu sh and scrub and enjoyed it But as the plane approached England, there was a sensation of finality inside my guts. I recognized it at once. When the wheels touched down and we rolled along the runway, I could hear above the jet engines a sort of whispering in my blood and along my veins. It was as if the various parts of my body, heart, lungs, liver, were telling each other that it was time for them to start running down towards a standstill And then when I came down the steps and set foot on land, I could feel death nibbling away at the marrow in my bones.’

‘Don’t don’t’ Bianca almost sobbed.

There’s no cause for distress, believe me,’ Edwin reassured her. I knew it would be like this when I decided to come back. I’m ready for it’

Then why did you come back? You could have sent for me and I would have taken the next plane to anywhere on earth to be with you.’

‘It wouldn’t have worked that way. You needed help and nobody is better qualified than me to give it But more than that I have to make reparation and this is the only way I can do so, by surrendering the thing that has always been most valuable to me.’

‘Your life?’

Andrew was listening in amazement to the talk behind him. This Edwin Hallam was not the man he had expected to meet As for Bianca, he would never have believed that so cold and self-contained a person could show so much genuine emotion. None of it made sense. A quick glance in the mirror showed him that Edwin seemed to have dozed off, his head on Bianca’s shoulder. He drove carefully, so as not to wake him, over the Chiswick flyover, down to Hogarth roundabout, into London and down Earl’s Court Road to the river. In Cheyne Walk he parked as close as he could get to the house and watched Bianca help Edwin slowly out of the car. She stared at him hard when he made no move to help her, but his aversion to touching Edwin was too great The temporary butler from the agency came hurrying to the door as they let themselves in.

‘Saunders,’ said Bianca, ‘Mr Hallam is not well and he’s had a long and tiring flight Help me get him upstairs so that he can rest’

‘Certainly madam,’ said Saunders, stepping forward. ‘Welcome home, sir.’

Andrew watched, wryly amused. Saunders put out his hand to take Edwin by the arm, then drew back sharply. Edwin managed a tired smile.

‘I can manage perfectly well,’ he said. ‘Let me sleep for an hour or two and then there are things I must tell you, Bianca. You too, Andrew.’

The three of them stood in the hall, watching Edwin drag himself painfully up the staircase, one hand on the banister. He’s indomitable still, thought Andrew; he has no illusions about himself - he’s a few days at most from death and he’s still proud enough to climb up that staircase by himself.

Halfway up Edwin paused, perhaps to rest for a moment He looked down on the serious faces watching him and asked,

‘Where’s Braddock?’

‘He left rather suddenly,’ Bianca answered, ‘I’ll tell you about it later.’

Edwin’s eyes were on Andrew.

Don’t ask about Braddock, Andrew was thinking; he’s dead and gone, ashes raked out of an oven and thrown away. And don’t ask about Mrs Braddock either - dead this long time and melted away, her bones lit tering the Atlantic sea-bed, a thousand fathoms deep. As for their daughter, raped, a mother, sterilized and an accomplice in patricide. This is your household, Edwin, you created it This is what you have come home to.

As if he had read Andrew’s thoughts, Edwin turned abruptly away and hauled himself up the rest of the stairs.

‘Saunders,’ said Bianca, ‘bring some coffee into the sitting-room and tell cook we shall be three for dinner and maybe three for lunch, if Mr Hallam wakes up by then. Make sure he’s all right upstairs.’

‘Yes, mnrf»m-When it is convenient I would appreciate your instructions on which room Mr Jarvis is to occupy tonight’

Andrew felt himself blushing. That aspect of the homecoming had not crossed his mind till now.

That’s for Mr Hallam to decide now that he’s home,’ Bianca said icily.’Go and get the coffee.’

‘Yes, madam,’ said Saunders impassively.

When they were alone in the sitting-room, Andrew said:

‘Edwin is not at all what I imagined.’,

‘He’s changed,’ said Bianca, suddenly near to tears. ‘I ought to have gone with him but he wanted to be alone. I should have insisted.’

‘He looks very ill. Shouldn’t you call a doctor?’

‘What good would that do? Edwin’s not ill of a disease. His body is collapsing because his will to live has gone. I understand such things. No doctor can cure that But I can -that’s why he’s come home, because he knows that I ha ve the power to restore his soul. You’ll see - in a week or two he’ll be as strong again as a man in his twenties.’

‘I hope so. He said some strange tilings in the car.’

‘Only because his will is gone and he wants to die. He’ll laugh at himself for that when I’ve restored him.’

‘Do you want me here now that he’s back? You’re going to be busy with him.’

‘You? I don’t need you anymore. You can go as soon as you like.’

‘Just like that? You bring me to you and disrupt my life when it suits you and then you give me my marching orders when you have no more use for me - is that it?’

She nodded.

‘What gives you the right to make use of other people?’

I have the right because I choose to have it, like all the Apart. You are nothing, less than nothing. Do you understand?’

‘Set me free then and I’ll be on my way,’ he retorted angrily.

‘Set yourself free. You heard what Edwin said. No one can compel you unless you wish to be compelled.’

There’s a damned sight more to it than that - otherwise you wouldn’t be afraid of the thing in the night that compels you when you haven’t consented. At least, you said you hadn’t . You tell me that I’m free to go and I know that I; can walk out of the door. But there’s something inside me that tells me I shall never be free until you undo whatever it is that you’ve done to my mind. I shall fret myself to a shadow away from you, even though I want to be away. You said it yourself that time - I’m caught on a hook and you’re holding the rod.’

Tear the hook out then.’

‘I can’t do it by myself. You’ve got to do it If I’ve been of any use to you, at least repay me that much now.’

‘Why should I? I owe you nothing.’

‘I cared for you when you were hurt and helpless. That

deserves something.’

‘I didn’t ask for your help.’

‘Of all the cold-hearted bitches—’ he began and then stopped, seeing that she was laughing at him.

‘You amuse me,’ she said in a voice that chilled him to the heart, ‘you and your half-baked notions of gratitude. How often do I have to tell you that the Apart are above such stupid ties and emotions?’

‘I thought so until this morning,’ said Andrew doggedly, ‘but I’ve seen that you share one emotion with ordinary people, whether you want to admit it or not’

‘What is that?’

‘You love Edwin. That’s a very human emotion.’ She was on her feet in a flash, her face set in rage. ‘Don’t dare speak to me about that ! What do you understand about what Edwin and I feel for each other? Dreary, little humans don’t even begin to comprehend what love is. They pair off and set up house together and breed children like themselves and bore each other into indifference. They think that love is sleeping with their partner and nobody else. Not that you’ve even gone that far along the trivial scale of human values. What can you know about the total union of soul that the Apart experience?’

Andrew was genuinely afraid of her, but he said, ‘nothing, I grant you. There is no way I can understand the Apart But this much I do understand - you have been reunited with the one person in this world who means more to you than the world itself. You were transfigured with happiness when he telephon ed from the airport I’ve never seen you look so beautiful as you did then.’

She stood tense and poised, as if about to attack him, but her face was softening.

“With happiness like that’ he went on, ‘you’ve no possible use for me anymore. I can see that from your point of view a gesture of kindness to someone like me looks like weakness and ordinary humanity. But it would be an act of strength. I can’t begin to understand the Apart and my way of life looks pointless, to you because of your kno wledge and power. But it’s all I’ve got and there’s no advantage to you in destroying it Out of your happiness that Edwin is back, set me free that’s all I ask.’

She stood in thought for a moment

‘You’ve a smooth tongue,’ she said at last Don’t think you fool me for a second. You’re a sheep asking a tiger to let it go back to the flock. You’ve picked a time when the tiger has a full belly. Kneel in front of me and give me your hands.’

In apprehension he did so, hoping that she intended him no harm.

She took his hands firmly in her own and told him to look into her eyes. He did so and his vision blurred into rolling clouds of red mist A pang went through his heart that made him cry out sharply in pain. He felt himself falling and he heard a voice say ‘Bianca’.

He was lying on the floor, weak and trembling. Bianca loomed over him, her hands held towards him with the fingers stiff and spread. She was looking over her shoulder, away from him. Andrew raised his head from the carpet to see Edwin limping into the room, still weari ng the same stained clothes. , ‘What are you doing, Bianca?’

‘Our friend here asked to be set free. I was obliging him.’

‘No need for that’ said Edwin, lowering himself carefully into a chair.

‘Why aren’t you resting?’ ‘I lay’ on the bed and tried to sleep, but there’s too much on my mind. I had to come down to talk to you.’

Andrew got up sheepishly from the floor.

‘Can’t it wait until you are more rested?’

I’m going to my long rest soon, so there’s no point in waiting. Listen to me. You’re going to find it hard to believe what I have to tell you. I couldn’t believe it myself for a long time. I can’t begin to tell you of the days and nights of anguish I went through, trying to hide the truth from myself. Well, that ’s all done now. I’ve accepted the truth and made peace with myself. That was hard enough. Now I’ve got to make you understand and that’s going to be even harder.’ ‘Edwin, you know I wil l follow you down any path you choose. Haven’t I proved that to you times enough since the day we met?’

.’Follow me down this path then. What I have to say is that since that day in Calcutta over thirty years ago my entire life has been evil and wasted. I have deceived myself. I have taken lives. I have inflicted terrible pain on others. I have committed uncounted crimes against man and pod. I am deeply sorry for my blindness and for my offences and I pray that sometime, somewhere, there may eventually be forgiveness for me. If there is not, then I shall pay the price for what I have done and I shall not complain because I have well deserved it’

Bianca was speechless with shock. ‘It began so easily,’ Edwin continued, almost as if talking to himself, ‘I was an ordinary young man pitched into somewhat extraordinary circumstances by war. But the real start .of it was when I gave way to gross anger and kicked in the head of a misguided boy who had allowed himself to become a vessel of evil. I should have faced the consequences of my act then and there and gone to the authorities. But I was tempted by the evil thing in the boy, which whispered to me that there was an easy way out . God forgive me, I listened to it and killed the witness of my murderous anger. Of my own free will I gave this evil a hold over me. It promised me life and freedom and I accepted. In the old days they would have said that I’d sold my soul to the devil in that dirty room and in a sense they would have been right They would have burned me at the stake and that would have been right too.’

‘Edwin!‘ his wife exclaimed in anguish.

Tell me this, Bianca, what amends can I make at the end of my life to the scores of men I have brutally killed? To their families? To those whose lives were ruined by the drugs I ran across the sea? To the African villagers whose lives will be made hideous by murderous regimes for whom I have trained soldiers? To the many I have destroyed without even knowing that I was doing it Do you see the burden I am carrying, Bianca? When I first came to feel its weight on me, I wanted to escape into madness or death. But that’s too easy a solution and so it is no solution at all. Only God knows what waits for me after I die, but the penance has started already in this life, from the moment I knew myself to be evil ‘

‘Edwin, you’re tired and unwell. You don’t know what you’re saying. Let me help you upstairs and give you a sleeping pill. Tomorrow you’ll see things in a different light and we can talk then.’

‘Don’t try to humour me. I know perfectly well what I’m saying,’ and he paused to stare at Andrew, standing dumbstruck.

‘Listen well,’ he admonished him, ‘look at me and see what

lies at the end of the evil road you have started along. Before

you take another step towards destruction, listen to my words

and think. Make what amends you can to those you have

injured already. The dead you can do nothing about I read

in your heart what you did with Braddock. Set yourself a

penance and trust that in the fullness of time God may forgive

your wickedness.’

‘What is this talk about God and forgiveness?’ Bianca asked, her voice suddenly shrill. ‘What God? We are the Apart - we do not hide behind superstition.’

‘We are certainly Apart’ said Edwin mournfully. I have learned what Apart means. It means that we are apart from God’s goodness and grace. It is another word for damned.’

‘I never thought I’d hear expressions like that from you,’

Bianca snapped at him. ‘You lived for years with transhuman

forces. You mapped out the line where the Otherworld touches

ours and you showed me how to make contact with beings

from that world. They taught me incredible things. -And here

you are talking like a Salvation Army preacher. It doesn’t

make sense.’

‘It makes a very nasty kind of sense. These forces, these beings from the Otherworld - it’s all deception. They are all the same thing.’

‘But they’re not! I’ve been with them. I even know, the names of some of them. They are different personalities.’

There is only one evil in the world and it takes on many different forms to deceive us into doing what it wants. You must face the truth, Bianca, as I had to face it You and I are the willing servants of evil - and this frightened young man of yours too, in his lesser way.’

‘I don’t accept that,’ said Bianca, in control of herself again. ‘My experience tells me otherwise. You are wrong.’

‘Your experience is delusory. You flinch away from the simple truth. You are blinded by the pleasure of these encounters and by the power you have derived from contact with evil. You are still in its grip.and so it is hard for you to see the facts as clearly as I do.’

‘How strange it is,’ said Bianca, ‘you went away to find a disembodied spirit to make you live fully again. And instead, you come home with naive religion and dying. Do I look to you as if I am at death’s door? Well, look at me - shall I strip off and stand here while you inspect me? No, when you left here there was not one line, not one wrinkle, on my face or body. And there isn’t now. Inside my head there are wonderful things I have learned and abilities that would astound even you. I am alive, Edwin, alive and well and strong. You are decrepit and used-up. Do you seriously expect me to believe that you are right and I am wrong?’

‘Bianca, for God’s sake leave him alone,’ Andrew muttered. ‘He’s unwell.’

She turned her wrath on him at once.

‘You too? Are you catching religion from my wreck of a husband? Right, then, let me see you get down on your knees and ask this God of yours to forgive you your sins.’

Her pale blue eyes stared into his for a second and Andrew felt his legs buckling. Try as he might to stay upright, he sank to his knees.

‘Bianca, stop that at once!’ Edwin thundered. ‘And you get up, you fool. Remember that she can’t make you do anything without your consent It’s all suggestion, nothing more. Be a man, not a submissive child.’

‘Really?’ said Bianca, turning slowly to look at her husband. ‘If that’s what you think, my dear, you’re behind the times. As I shall prove to you.’

Andrew was a reluctant onlooker at the silent battle of wills between them. Bianca’s palms were pressed tightly together and every muscle in her body was taut as she put out her mental strength to bend Edwin. The very air between them seemed to thicken and darken with unseen forces. Edwin’s teeth were clenched and sweat stood out on his face as he resisted whatever it was she was willing him to do.

It lasted a long time, with neither of them gaining any advantage. Bianca relaxed and smiled.

‘Your will is as strong as ever,’ she said, ‘or did your God protect you?’

‘I protect myself,’ Edwin answered faintly, mopping his face. I do not think that I have the right to ask anything of God after the life I have led.’

‘At least that’s in character. You always believed in standing on your own feet’

‘Bianca, I have not thrown my life away by coming back to England to quarrel with you. I’m here to tell you the truth I’ve found. Whether you accept it or not is out of my hands. I’ve said what I had to say. If you ask, I shall say it again and try to explain, as best I can, while I’ve still time. Otherwise I shall remain silent on the subject and do whatever I can to help you out of your present trouble.’

If he loves her that much, Andrew thought, then he can’t be as bad as he makes out Or at least that sort of selfsacrifice must redeem him to some .extent in God’s eyes, if there is a God.

‘You’re mistaken,’ said Edwin, who had read the thought in Andrew’s eyes. To love another human to the exclusion of God and His goodness is a worse evil than not loving at all since it is a corruption of a good.’

Andrew sighed. Theology is beyond me,’ he said. ‘In my simple world you do good by helping others and bad by harming them.’

“That is true as far as it goes,’ said Edwin, ‘but it leaves too much out. You are an intelligent man, you must know that’

‘Let’s be friends, Edwin,’ said Bianca, ‘I’m sorry I tried to hurt you. I can’t tell you how happy I am to have you home again. It was when you said those unexpected things - I lost my temper. It won’t happen again.’

She perched on the arm of his chair and stroked his thin hair.

To hell with Edwin’s nit-picking theology, thought Andrew, this cold-hearted bitch loves Edwin, so even she can’t be wholly bad.

‘What would you like to do?’ Bianca asked her husband. ‘Are you hungry?’

‘No, I think I can sleep now. I’m very-tired.’

That’s my fault’ she .said contritely. ‘I’ve exhausted you with that silly struggle. Forgive me.’ - ‘It’s all right’ and Edwin patted her hand. ‘Will you help me upstairs? I don’t thi nk I can make it on my own this time.’

She helped him to his feet ‘Andrew?’ she said.

For once it was not a command but a genuine request Andrew nodded and went to Edwin. Close to, the psychic energy that radiated from his thin body was formidable. Andrew gritted his teeth and took an arm. It was like touching a live electric socket - a vibration that was almost physical ran through him. Andrew steeled himself to put an arm round Edwin’s waist and help him to the door. Getting him up the stairs was like climbing a mountain carrying a dead weight . In the bedroom he stood panting while Bianca took Edwin’s shoes off and covered him over.

Try to sleep;’ she murmured, touching her lips to his forehead. ‘I’ll have some broth made for when you’re ready to eat ’

She drew the curtain to dim the room and closed the door quietly. Once downstairs again she surprised Andrew by saying, “Thank you for helping Edwin. I didn’t think that anyone not of the Apart would have the courage to touch him. You’ve pleased me for once.’

‘Are you sure you shouldn’t call a doctor? He really is ill’

‘He’s worse than you know,’ she answered and Andrew could have sworn that there was the shine of tears in her cold blue eyes. ‘His mind is going as well as his body. You heard how he rambled. That’s not the Edwin I know. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’ve got to get him back to what he was. I’m sure I can do it given time.’

‘Is there anything you want me to do?’

There’s nothing you can do. You go back to your sheep and farmers’ daughters.’

‘What about the nights? Will you be safe?’

‘With Edwin here? Of course. He may be sick but he’s full of power. You should know, you touched him.’

‘Goodbye then.’

She nodded, lost in thought Andrew left the house and walked down the road to where his Land Rover had been parked for a week.

I’m free of-her at last’ he said aloud.

Chapter 16

Elbow to elbow, Andrew and Branwen leaned on the five-bar gate and looked across the buttercup-strewn meadow to the green shape of Longman’s Hill. The afternoon sun was warm on their backs. Right across the other side of the field, beyond the hill, a dozen black and white cows were grazing slowly.

‘Why did you want me to bring you here?’ Andrew asked. ‘What are you hoping to find?’

‘I know what’s here, but I had to see it for myself.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s not easy to explain,’ she answered, smoothing back her shiny brown hair.

‘You’re not thinking of copying Bianca and lying up there at night, are you?’

She shivered and shook her head.

‘What then?’ he persisted.

“The fact is,’ she said slowly, ‘we know that Bianca’s bitten off more than she can chew. From what you’ve told me, the Otherworld creatures can find her anywhere now at night , They don’t have to wait for her to visit this mound or any of the other marked spots.’

That I can vouch for. I saw it lying on her with my own eyes, in her bedroom. I even touched the thing by accident’

‘And you were afraid?’

‘Petrified. But I’m not one of the Apart’

‘I’ll tell you something,. Andy. I am one of the Apart by my own choice, as you know, yet the thought of that thing lying on me frightens me more than I can say. I think that I’d rather die first’

‘Now that does surprise me. You’ve had experience of these spirits from another plane. Your, husband attracts them to him deliberately. You must have talked to them many a time.’

‘Earth-bound spirits can be controlled. You’ve seen it done. The thing that comes from the Otherworld is uncontrollable.’

‘Bianca fought it off,’ he reminded her. ‘She was hurt but not seriously. Over there’s the cattle shelter where I found her.’

‘She didn’t fight it off. She held out until daylight, that’s all. She managed to do that because the thing wanted her consent That was then. It’s changed since - she can’t refuse her consent anymore. That thing can take her back into the Otherworld whenever it likes. It’s playing with her and she’s frightened. She’s frightened far worse than you were, because she knows more about it than you do.’

Her anxious tone caused Andrew to put an arm round her shoulders in a friendly way.

‘Bianca is a woman who can cope with anything,’ he said. ‘Her problem is hers to worry about not yours.’

There you’re wrong,’ she said sharply. ‘Her problem is very much mine. That’s why I wanted to come here.’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘How could you begin to understand - you live in a different world from the Apart’ Tell me then.’

She pulled away from his arm and started to climb the gate, hitching her loose skirt up round her long thighs. ‘Come on,’ she said impatiently, ‘I want to go to the top.’

He followed her over the gate and they strolled across the grass towards the Hill.

‘Bianca’s very worried about Edwin, you know,’ she said, changing the subject slightly.

‘He looked seriously ill to me the day he arrived home. I haven’t been near London since.’

That’s two weeks now. He’s gone downhill a lot since. Bianca thinks that the illness is in his mind and if she can cure that his body will recover too. But I’ve listened to him. He’s so rational that I’m confused. If what he says is true, then we’re all damned and done for.’

Andrew said nothing to that. Since leaving Bianca he had returned to his normal life with huge relief. In retrospect he had almost reached the conclusion that she was mad and that all those who called themselves Apart were mad. Bianca’s sick mind had managed to weave an extraordinary spell about him and immerse him in delusion. All the time he had been near her, she had been infecting his mind. Edwin had been as mad as the rest of them for most of his life. With the decline of his health his sanity had returned and he was plunged into remorse for the dreadful things he had done.

In this way, the passage of only a little time was enabling Andrew to rationalize events he could not explain otherwise and which he was not prepared to accept at face value now he was free of the spell .

‘I didn’t tell you,’ he said, his memory jogged, ‘Bianca made me see an amazing vision about hunting and a snake. And then she became the snake. It really was most strange.’

Branwen looked at him quickly.

‘You’d better tell me about it’

He related to her the grisly vision of being hunted up the valley arid the end of the chase on the rock, where the belt-snake had come to life and struck at him.

‘She really bound you to her,’ was Branwen’s comment

“How do you mean?’

The hunting was only a rather cruel game she was playing with you, to demonstrate her power over your mind. But the snake sucking out your life - which was Bianca - was the most powerful act of domination there is. She owned you before that but when she took your semen that way, you were lost past any chance of ever escaping her.’

Thank God I persuaded her to free me.’

I find that very unlike her. You must have got her at exactly the right moment’

At the bottom of Longman’s Hill. Branwen stopped for a moment and looked up at the top.

There’s nothing up there,’ Andrew reassured her, ‘it’s only after dark that these insane things happen.’

‘You sound sceptical all of a sudden. That thing comes from the Otherworld to the top of this mound when it is invited. You experienced it here yourself. You said it knocked you down. And in London you actually touched it Do you doubt the evidence of your own senses?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘You’ve seen Gilbert in action and you’ve seen Shafik’s girls possessed. You’ve heard earth-spirits speaking through them. Do you doubt that?’

‘ I know what I saw and heard; What I doubt is the interpretation you put on what happened. The human mind is a complicated and strange contraption. In the grip of hysteria and fear such as Shafik induced, the mind is capable of very odd manifestations.’

Branwen smiled at him crookedly.

‘Bravo,’ she said in mockery, ‘I’ve found a rational man. Right then, come up to the top of this mound with me and we’ll see.’

‘We’ll see nothing but grass, that I can promise you’. Hand in hand they climbed the steep side to the flat top, ‘Can you see the next marker along the line?’ Branwen asked.

There’s an isolated clump of trees over there on the skyline, east by north. There’s no reason for it to be there. It looks as if it’s raised up on something above ground level - a low mound maybe. Could that be it?’

He was not over-interested but he remembered Edwin’s book.

‘I expect that’s it I can’t pick one out in the other direction. There are too many hedges and trees. It might have been ploughed under. Or if if was a stone, someone may have taken it down and broken it up to build a cottage wall.’

Andrew sat on the turf.

‘On a summer afternoon like this,’ he said idly, the English countryside is at its best’

‘You say that knowing where you are?’

‘From ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties, good Lord preserve us,’ he answered, grinning up at her. ‘Do you know that old prayer?’

It’s a litany against fear, and it is so appropriate to what we are talking about that I find it hard to believe that it came into your mind by coincidence. You may be scoffing, but down in your unconscious mind you feel the truth.’

Her tobacco-coloured frock showed off the lines of her body well.

She became immediately aware of the direction of his interest

‘Is that what you’re thinking about?’ she said. ‘But then, you always do. You’re out of luck - this is not the place for it’

‘Why not -Here on the cool grass under the sun and the blue sky - what better place in the world, is there for making love? It beats town bedrooms every time.’

That may be, but not this particular spot’

All the same, she was unbuttoning the front of her dress as she spoke. Andrew watched her slip it off. Her skin was golden brown against the lacy white of her briefs. He stretched out his arm to touch her thigh, but she moved slightly away from him.

‘There are things you have to know,’ she said, looking at him with a solemn expression. ‘Anything you like,’ he answered lazily. ‘Lie on your back.’

He smiled and did as she said, thinking that she was going to kneel over him. Her briefs landed on the grass beside her frock and then she moved round behind his head and knelt

‘Put your head on my lap,’ she said in a low voice.

He raised his head and felt her thighs slide under it. The nearness of her body tantalized him and he rolled his head sideways to press his cheek to the warm skin of her thigh.

‘You’re burning for it, aren’t you?’ she observed. That’s good - you’ll be full of energy.’

Above him her breasts bobbed as she leaned forward to put her palms on his cheeks.

‘Look straight up into the sky, Andrew, not at me. Look at the blue sky and try to see through it’

The touch of her palms on his face was soothing. He stared into the cloudless blue sky above him until something began to happen inside his head. He felt dizzy and disoriented. He could hear Branwen whispering but it seemed a long way off and he couldn’t make out what she was saying. He tried to sit up and without the least exertion of force the soft hands on his face kept him where he was. The blue of the sky darkened to cobalt and then to black. He found himself looking at Longman’s Hill from somewhere nearby in the meadow. But there was no meadow, no hedges, no five-bar gate, no road, just an empty expanse of rough turf that stretched away to the limits of his vision. While he was grappling with that problem, a small procession was moving towards the Hill from his right A burly bare-footed man led the way, long-haired and bearded. He was dressed in a coarse tunic that fell below his knees and he had a leather belt around his waist with a long knife through it There was an air of authority about him that said he was a tribal king or a priest or both. Behind him walked a woman wearing the same sort of belted tunic, though hers was dyed a dull blue. In the dusk she looked to be in her early twenties, short and stocky, with hair that was in need of combing. After her trailed half a dozen me n, all bearded and armed with me tal-bladed spears. The littl e procession moved in unnatural silence, not even the shuffle of a foot on the grass.

They passed within twenty feet of Andrew but they gave no sign of seeing him. He realized that he had no existence in their world. They’re not real, was his thought at first it’s only a vision. But then a nother interpretation came into his mind they were real and he was not At the foot of Longman’s Hill the leader halted his procession, raised his arms towards the darkening sky and seemed to shout a prayer, though the silence was unbroken. When he had finished he turned to the woman and held out his hand. She unfastened her belt and pulled her tunic over her head and gave it to him. Briefly Andrew took in her heavy breasts, muscular legs and body, before she turned, away and bega n to climb the slope of the Hill. In seconds she was at the top and out of sight . The burly man’s mouth opened again and he was clearly uttering an invocation at the top of his voice. The other men joined in, mouthing in silence to Andrew, and kept on until the light had completel y gone and the stars could be seen hard and bright Celts, perhaps, Andrew thought.This must be before the Romans came to Britain. Those spearheads are probably of hammered iron. In the time it took him to think that much, the night passed away and the sun’s light was slanting in from his aide. At the foot of the hill the little group of men were crouched on the grass, huddled together. The big man stood up stretched his arms and legs and said something. Two of his men got up at once and trotted up the hillside. When they came down again they were carrying the woman awkwardly between them. Her head hung backwards so that her long hair almost trailed on the grass.

They set her down near the big man and stood respectfully away. She lay sprawled limply, legs apart Andrew looked over her body carefully, from lolling breasts to black-bushed fork and could see no scratches or bites. She had lain down consenting. He could see from the movements of her chest that she was alive, though unconscious. A combination of physical and mental exhaustion, be thought, remembering that Bianca had looked much the same.

Go back further, a faint voice inside his head ordered.

The landscape shivered as if it were a painted theatrical backdrop. When it was still again, the group had gone but Longman’s Hill was the same and it was evening again. A woman on her own came from somewhere behind Andrew and made for the slope. Her matted hair hung to her waist and she was wrapped in an animal hide that went over one shoulder and under the other. It was tied loosely at the waist with a thong. Without the least hesitation she went straight up the hillside under the fast darkening sky, undoing the thong as she climbed.

No, further back still, said the voice in Andrew’s head. Then it added, She will die up there and not come down again.

The scene before him trembled, as if in the grip of an earthquake. When it re-established itself, Longman’s Hill was gone. Twenty or thirty people were at work in broad daylight where the hill had stood. Andrew looked at them curiously. They were short and thick-shouldered, though mostly young. Some of them wore a piece of animal skin round their loins, some of them were naked. All of them were daubed with spiral patterns on the bodies and limbs.

They had laid a corpse on the ground between two marker stakes which they aligned with distant landmarks. There were no signs of violence on the body. It was a young woman, painted like the rest of them, tousle-haired and dirty. It was not the woman he had watched go up Longman’s Hill on her own and he knew that this was a much earlier time, though he had no conception of the centuries or millenia involved.

Around the body they built a low fence of flat pieces of stone and then roofed it with other flat stones. Then they dug the ground laboriously, using flat shoulder-bones which Andrew recognized as from deer. They shovelled earth up over the stone coffin they had erected until it w as covered from sight and they had a small mound, maybe three feet high by seven or eight feet long.

If this is the beginning of Longman’s Hill, Andrew reasoned, it will take thousands of years of people adding to it before it becomes as big as I know it Hundreds of thousands of years, more likely. Millions perhaps.

The voice in his head said, Tribes will come and go. Some will add earth to the mound, some will leave it as they find it. The time-span from your Longman’s Hill to this small mound is longer than your imagination can ever grasp. But even this is not the beginning. Go back further still …

The voice trailed off as if exhausted and once again the air about him heaved and shook. The small mound was gone and in the twilight the landscape was bare and desolate. A creature was approaching in the gathering gloom which Andrew took to be a large animal, perhaps a bear, from the way it kept stopping to snuffle the air in its shambling progress. It grunted and snorted when it reached the site where the painted people would bury the dead woman in what Andrew had then thought of as the remote past and which from where he now stood was the unthinkable future. With dawning horror he saw that the creature he had taken for an animal was human. Or at least, semi-human. The body and limbs were hairy, the forehead low, the jaw brutal.

‘My God,’ Andrew whispered aloud, ‘it’s a woman.’Then he corrected himself and said, It’s a female.’

Down on all fours, she snuffled at the ground, felt it and even put her face down and licked at the sparse grass, as if sensing a difference between seemingly identical patches of earth. At last, finding what she was seeking, she squatted on short, crooked legs and turned her face up to the sky. Andrew could see her hairy-backed hands down between her thighs, rubbing and plucking there.

No, he thought, this I do not believe. This is a fantasy put into my mind from outside. Even as he thought it, the female put her head down on her forearms on the ground so that her rump was turned up to the sky. As the light faded, Andrew heard her howling in brutish lust . Her primitive offer had not been refused.

‘No, no, no,’ Andrew groaned, struggling to get possession of his mind and put an end to these visions. The voice was in his head again, very faint and tremulous now, Do you have the strength to reach back to the very beginning?

There is no beginning, Andrew argued silently, what you have shown me is speculation and there projection from books.

Please, said the voice, please… I’ve only seconds left and I must see the beginning …do this for me …

‘One last scene then,’ Andrew groaned, realizing how tired he was. His energy had been drained away and he wanted to sleep.

The night scene trembled and broke up, the ecstatic howling of the female creature vanished. For a split second Andrew saw a new landscape, bare broken rock, fissured and smoking, dull grey and black under a thunderous red sky. A jagged ravine ran from horizon to horizon and from deep below came the grinding of rock on rock, as if the earth were in catastrophic turmoil. Before Andrew could properly take in the scene a leathery bulk reared up before him, as if aware of his presence, and reached for him. The thing was gigantic, not human though somewhat human in shape. It raised in Andrew’s memory a flicker of the massive thing he had seen standing behind Bianca in the dream when she called him to her.

His instant recoil from the loathing he felt for what he saw caused the entire landscape to vanish before it had. been in existence for more than a single second. In the total darkness that followed something heavy fell on to Andrew’s head and chest He shouted in fear and struggled to release himself.

It was Branwen, naked and fainting, who bad toppled on to him. They were lying on the grass under a golden afternoon sun. Andrew was trembling as he took her in his arms and held her close to him and waited for her to recover. It was a minute or two before her eyes opened and she looked at him. wearily.

‘Damn your visions,’ he said softly, I’m exhausted.’ She nodded slowly, her hands clutching at his arms. ‘You saw it’ she whispered, “you saw that thing?’ ‘I don’t know what I saw - hallucinations conjured out of your mind and into mine. It means nothing.’ She shook her head.

‘Don’t try to close your mind to the truth,’ she said. ‘We nearly saw the beginning of it. But you’re not Apart and you couldn’t face it You pulled away as soon as it started to form.’

‘Branwen - whether it was a vision or something more I don’t know, but ordinary men can’t stand face to face with a thing like that Evil is too small a word to describe whatever it was. The thing you made me see at the end was an embodiment of total and everlasting, destruction, body and soul.’ I’m afraid; Andy,’ she whispered, her eyes closed again, her hands still tightly clenched on his arms. ‘I don’t know what I expected to see here, but nothing as awful as that Let’s get away from here.’

She got to her feet, fatigue slowing her movements, to put on her clothes.

‘Help me,’ she pleaded, ‘I can’t stay here another minute.’ Her distress was so apparent that Andrew slipped her frock over her head, picked up her shoes and underwear and supported her d own the slope of Longman’s Hill. Going across the field she stumbled more than once and would have fallen if he had not held her firmly about the waist In truth, he was not feeling good himself. He felt as exhausted as if he had walked fifty miles across rough ground, but that was the least part of what ailed him. In his mind was stuck the image of - a monstrous creature, learner-black, powered by blind hatred arid inhuman lust, a being that had always existed and would endure until the end of eternity, that had power and might beyond anything a man could imagine, a thing which could enter and leave this world at will Bloody nonsense, he told himself, my imagination’s running away with me. Whatever I thought I saw, it was only for an instant, perhaps the length of a single heartbeat. Certainly not long enough for me to devise all this rubbish about it And in the final resort, I saw nothin g with my eyes. Branwen trans ferred some apocalyptic vision of her own into my mind and drained off my energy in doing so.

Once in his Land Rover she lay back on the seat and fell asleep even before he moved off. He made for his cottage, wondering what to do for the best Branwen was clearly in no state to drive herself back to London and he had no intention of going there .

All the time, overshadowing his train of thought was the

image of the grotesque and ambiguous life-form that had

reached out for him. It was indelibly printed on his memory

and he knew that it would be the source of countless night-

mares to come.

The green and peaceful countryside did nothing to steady him. Perhaps the fields of standing wheat and grazing cows were no more than a painted screen behind which there waited rabid demons ready to burst through the flimsy barrier and prey on humans. He brushed the thought away as best he could.

Outside his cottage he parked alongside Branwen’s white sports car and shook her shoulder gently. She was too deeply asleep to stir. In the end, he picked her up and carried her quickly inside, trusting that no one would come down the lane and see him. As he had with Bianca, weeks before, he carried her up the narrow stairs and put her on the bed. Another victim of that damned hill, he thought . She sighed and rolled over on to her side, her legs drawn up. He threw a cover over her and went downstairs.

Mrs Richardson had left half a dozen messages for him in the office, but he was in no mood to bother with them. He poured himself a fair-sized dose of neat whisky and took it with him as he clambered back upstairs like a man twice his age. Branwen was as he had left her. He kicked off his shoes, threw his jacket towards the chair and missed, drained the glass and lay down beside the sleeping woman.

The instant he closed his eyes the vision of the impossibly huge creature loomed up and reached for him. He fought down his panic and waited until the whisky made him feel

better and blurred the outlines of the horror in his mind Eventually he dozed off.

When Branwen woke him up it was dark outside. He could see the stars through his bedroom window.

‘Please wake up,’ she was saying, ‘I must talk to you.’

Not like the first time she was here in this bed with me, Andrew thought hazily; that time she was in control of herself and set the pace. Now she’s been scared out of her wits and she’s looking to me for help and comfort . What use can I be? I can ’t even help myself. The shotgun downstairs will not frighten her demons away - or mine either.

I’m listening,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

‘Edwin was right’ she said quickly. ‘Do you see that now?’

‘Right about what?’

‘Bianca said his mind had gone and after I’d talked to him I nearly agreed with her. He said that we’d been the willing instruments of evil for years. I almost laughed at him, he was so serious. But I’ve seen it for myself now and you were with me. You’ve seen it It’s an utterly evil thing. That’s what the’ Apart have been serving. It’s not a be ing from some other world at all, it’s a devil. So are the earth-spirits we think we use for our own purposes - they’re all devils. Don’t you see that?’

I’m not a church-going man,’ said Andrew; ‘I can’t see things in those terms. Anyway, I thought there was supposed to be only one devil.’

‘One or many - what does it matter? All that I’m certain of is that I’m tied to it by being. Apart and I’ve got to get free before it sucks me into its jaws and swallows me whole.’

Take it easy,’ said Andrew as she burst into hysterical sobs.

He got under the cover with her and held her tight to still her shaking.

‘Now listen,’ he said, when her sobbing slowed, ‘I dont know the first thing about this Apart stuff and I don’t want to know. You’ve been playing with forces you don’t understand and can ’t control Look what happened to me when I let myself be drawn Into Bianca’s cobweb I murdered Braddock. So what can I do about it? I bitterly regret what I did and I mean to have no more to do with Bianca.’

‘You can’t get away as easily as that’ Branwen said, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

‘Yes I can. Edwin said it and in another context Bianca herself said it - these forces cannot harm or control you unless you consent They offer you a bribe and if you take it they’ve got you. Right? Now that I know that I refuse to consent And after what you saw this afternoon on the hill, you don’t consent anymore either. So there’s an end to it For me if s easier, because all I have to do is stay here and get on with my life and walk warily, watching out for gifts with hooks in them. You’ve got to make some sort of decision what you will do about your husband. As I see it, if you go back to live with him, you’re consenting in a sort of way. But that’s up to you.’

‘You still don’t understand what I’m talking about do you? You’re right to say that it’s easy for you to stay out of it though it won’t be as easy as you think. Now that devil has your scent it ‘ll be on your trail. Maybe you’l l have the strength to resist its offers. But if s not like that for me. If I never see Gilbert again, that won’t change things.’

‘Why not?’

“You’re blind, you’re blind I think - Bianca wants to be free of the thing that comes to her in the night, doesn’t she? She doesn’t think of it as evil - to her it’s an inconvenience that encroaches on her free will. She thinks that she can get .rid of it though if s obvious now that she never can. So she has a plan - to substitute me for her. Now do you see?’

That’s impossible.’

‘Of course it’s impossible. The creature we saw this afternoon can’t be deceived like that It will take me and then go back to Bianca afterwards. But that doesn’t help me, does it?’

‘It can’t come to you without your consent’

‘You fool I consented years ago when I became one of the Apart. There’s no-going back on that’

‘Yes, there is,’ he said stubbornly.

She sighed into his ear.

‘Oh, Andy, I’m lost I Bianca has such power to control minds that she will be Able to make me consent to anything, don’t ’ you see that? One night soon shell have me lying on my back on top of that hill.’

‘What makes you think that she has any such plan in mind?’

‘I got it out of Gilbert last night There’s a way of making him talk and answer questions when he’s asleep, without any ‘ossession by spirits. He’s helping her.’

‘Why should he - where’s the advantage to him?’

‘I have to spell everything out for you. Edwin is dying, you know that Bianca has promised Gilbert he can move in with her if he helps her. I’m the price he has to pay.’

‘Would he do that?’ ‘He’s already agreed to.’

‘What use is Bianca to Gilbert? You told me that he is sex-

less.’

‘It’s not her body that Gilbert wants, it’s her powers. She has promised to teach him all he wants to know - that shows you how desperate she is.’

Andrew imagined the warm, breathing woman in his arms spread out .on the cold grass under a night sky, waiting for the visitation of the monstrous creature he had glimpsed that afternoon. He felt sick.

‘But— he objected feebly, ‘Does Gilbert have no regard for you at all? No affection?’

” That went a long time ago. He’s utterly obsessed by the spirits he can attract to himself. They’ve taken him over, though he doesn’t realize it yet’

‘He must have loved you once,’ said Andrew. ‘And you him. How was it when you were first married?’

‘We were different then, both of us. We weren’t Apart. We met when we were students at the Royal College of Music. In those days Gilbert was slimmer than now and very good-looking. He was also a very fine musician. He wanted to be a composer. After we left the College we got married and I managed to get a job with the London Symphony Orchestra to keep us going while Gilbert worked at his composing.’

Andrew was surprised by what she was telling him.

.You must be very good to get a job like that. What do you play?’

‘Cello. It’s ages since I’ve touched one.’

‘Not all that long. You can’t have been married more man five or six years. What happened to Gilbert to change him?’

It’s a long story,’ she said miserably. ‘Gilbert worked away for a couple of years, not having much success. Then we met Bianca at a friend’s house. She fascinated Gilbert from the start I thought at first that he just wanted to sleep with her and I was furiously jealous . God, if it had only been that!’ He had a lot of time to himself, you see, while I was at rehearsals or playing, especially when we went on tour. Anyway, I came home one day after a tour of Holland with the orchestra that had lasted three weeks and there was Gilbert, stark naked at the piano, playing and singing the most stupendous music I’d ever heard. He didn’t even know that I was in the room with him I thought that he was in a creative trance of some sort .

So I sat down and listened and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. After a time he collapsed in mid-note and slumped over the keyboard. I dragged him across to the sofa and I saw that he’d had himself tattooed while I’d been away - a flower pattern in his groin tha t reached nearly up to his navel ‘

‘His whole body is covered with it’

‘It is now, but it wasn’t then. When he woke up I made him tell me about it. It was Bianca, of course, that had started him off. He’d been seeing her a lot while I was away. She’d promised him that if he followed her directions he would be able to tap the deep creative urges inside himself. He believed her and she sent him to a man in Stepney to have the tattoo done. Since then he’d been producing the most wonderful music and was well into writing his first symphony. I couldn’t make much sense of the tattooing part but I could .hear the music because he’d been taping it as he went along. When he had all of it he was going to transcribe it and orchestrate it . It would have made his name, only it never happened that way.’

‘Why not?’

‘He was too driven by whatever in him was producing the music. He kept going back to the man in Stepney to have more of the pattern tattooed on his body. He thought that the music was his own, that it came from inside him. So did I at-first . After a while I began to wonder. I’ve told you how I became one of th e Apart by riding Gilbert when h e was possessed that was the moment that I knew for sure that he really was possessed. I was afraid and I went to Bianca and asked her what to do. She told me how to control the spirit that entered him by putting the iron bracelets on his ankles and wrists. It wasn’t long before it became obvious to me that Gilbert would never finish his symphony or anything else, because the spirit had more and more control of him and would only make music for its own pleasure. He’d consented, you see and couldn’t get free. Naturally, it was Bianca who told me how to turn the situation to advantage.’ ‘How?’

‘You’ve seen for yourself. People pay to have. Gilbert’s familiar answer their questions. I limit it to two or three sessions a month because of the strain on him and we’ve got over a year’s waiting-list for seances. We can ask any price we like because the answers are always truthful. If I told you the names of some of the people who have paid two or three thousand pounds for a session with Gilbert, you’d mink I was romancing. Businessmen, politicians, film-stars - they’re all on the list’

‘Did Bianca pay you that time I was there?’ ‘No. Not that it helped her much.’ It triggered off a c ourse of action that led to the death of Braddock.’

‘Not really,’ said Branwen, ‘you never understood what that was about, did you? After the session with Gilbert, you left her and she was alone at nights. She took Braddock to bed with her all that week you were away.’

‘What?’

‘She told me so herself. The trouble was that Braddock wanted too much for his services. He wanted to become one of the Apart and Bianca didn’t want that because she might then lose her control of him.’

Into Andrew’s mind came a nauseating vision of burly, sweating Braddock labouring on top of Bianca in the big crimson bed.

That can’t be true,’ he said. ‘Mandy told me he made her sleep with him every night’

‘Mandy is a little liar. Braddock only had her when he fancied her after the novelty wore off. She slept in her own bed that week while Braddock was upstairs with Bianca. Do you understand now?’

There’s no bottom to the depravity and deceitfulness of that woman!’

‘Braddock had to be got rid of because he was trying to put pressure on Bianca. She chose you as the instrument of his death and then put you in his place afterwards.’

‘Bitch, bitch, bitch!‘ Andrew muttered, a slow rage burning in him.

His fingers clenched hard into the flesh of Branwen’s waist and made her cry out He ran his hand angrily down over the curve of her hip to her thigh, twisting the flesh to hurt her. Her frock was rucked up almost to her waist and it was all she had on. She moaned and gasped at the pain he was causing her but made no effort to stop him or to pull away. As his punishing fingers bruised her bare buttocks, his anger turned to lust and her whimpering s topped as her hot mouth found h is. He groped for her furry mound, still trying to hurt her, but her hands were already at his trouser zip and his fury transferred itself from his hands to his standing part He went with her as she rolled on to her back, jabbing between her parted th ighs with his erection until he pierced her and sank deep inside with a brutal thrust He rode her ferociously, growling in his throat like a dog with its teeth into a rabbit’s neck.

Branwen lay quaking beneath his assault her knees drawn up on either side of him, her fingers intertwined with his to keep his hands away from her throat After a while she started to shriek aloud as the savagery of his plunging impelled her into orgasm as brutally as if he had pushed her off a cliff.

Andrew came like a volcano erupting, a spout of liquid fire and convulsions that rocked the bed they lay on, overwhelming them both with the force of a massive underground pressure breaking through to shatter the solidity of their surroundings, hurling them both out of their senses with waves of irresistible fury.

Then the slow settling of fluffy grey volcanic ash drifted through their minds as they lay sweating and panting in each other’s arms, locked together, drifting into sleep that was like non-being.

Birdsong awoke Andrew as the sky outside began to lighten. He felt good, as if he had been relieved of a heavy weight of oppression. He stroked Branwen’s long brown hair away from her face and kissed her cheeks until her eyes opened. “Wake up,’ he said gently, “we’ve got to go.’

‘Go where?’

To London. Well talk to Edwin and get him to put a stop to this plan of Bianca’s, once and for all. He’s the only one who can make her listen.’

Chapter 17

In faded grey pyjamas, Edwin Hallam was sitting at the top of the stairs with his back to the wall, facing Bianca’s bedroom door.

‘Oh, my God!’ said Andrew, remembering how he had sat in that very posture himself, the night the Great One had visited Bianca.

‘What is it?’ Branwen asked, two steps behind him.

Then she saw for herself.

Edwin was dead, there could be no doubt of that , even without touching him. He sat propped up by the wall, his eyes open and dull. His jaw had dropped to expose his yellowing teeth.

Andrew knelt beside him to touch his face. It was cold to his. fingers, as he had known it would be. He closed Edwin’s eyes.

‘He’s been dead for hours,’ he said.

‘What killed him?’ Branwen asked fearfully.

‘It’s, not too difficult to reconstruct what happened,’ said

Andrew dully. ‘He tried to get into Bianca’s bedroom and was

thrown across the passage. The shock was too much for his

weakened heart He sat here like a se ntinel and just quietly

died.’

‘He was my only hope,’ said Branwen. ‘We’d better go no w - I don’t want to see any more.’

They were startled by footsteps crossing the hall below.

‘It must be the day-servants,’ Andrew whispered, his mind racing. ‘What the hell are we going to do?’

‘Wait till it’s clear and then tiptoe down the stairs and away,’ Branwen whispered back. ‘Bianca can clear up her own mess for once. Don’t get yourself i nvolved again, Andy, or you’ll regret it’

‘If it’s the same as last time, she’ll be lying in there uncon scious and helpless.’

‘She asked for it and now she’s got it Come away.’

‘I can’t walk away from it just like that Listen - Saunders has seen you b efore. He knows you’re a friend of Bianca. Go down and tell him the servants are not needed today. Send them away.’

‘What can I tell him? He’ll want to see Bianca.’

Tell him the truth— that Mr Hallam died in the night, and - Mrs Hallam can’t see anyone. He ’ll believe that Go on.’

‘Andy, I know what I’m talking about - don’t get involved. Let’s slide out and leave all this. You don’t need it I’ll come back to the country with you. I ’ll stay with you as long as you like. I ’ll show you pleasures you never dreamed possible. Only please don’t get us mixed up in this.’

‘Do as I say!’

‘On your head, then.’

She smoothed down as best she could the wrinkled brown dress in which she had slept and in which he had taken her so forcefully a few hours before, straightened her shoulders and went down the ornate staircase, her head high. Andrew watched her out of sight “with approval in his heart Branwen had character as well as warmth and sensuality. Gilbert had been a damned fool to throw that away for some malevolent non-human contact that helped him to compose music which no one would ever hear played in public He lifted Edwin in his arms easily. The power had gone out of his emaciated body and there was no shock on contact Edwin was skin and bones now and not much else. He carried him down the passage to where a door stood half open and laid him on the rumpled bed. This must have been where he was sleeping last night Something had aroused him and he had got out of bed and limped along to aid Bianca. And to his death.

Only God can add up Edwin’s account Andrew thought covering up the body and face. Evil though his life was, he repented at the last and threw away his life to persuade Bianca of the truth. In that he had failed. Or had h e? Perhaps his death would finally convince her that her so-called Great One was the epitome of all that was dark and evil.

If the visitation ran true to form she would stay unconscious for hours yet . When she woke up Andrew had a lot to say to her. He patted the covered body lightly on the shoulder.

Rest easy, he said silently, you did your best for me when you came home and I’ll do my best for you. You could still be out there on the other side of the world, practising erotic charms and spells with black-skinned women, but you chose to come back to certain death. I don’t believe in heaven or hell, Edwin, but if I did, there is no way I can imagine you in hell with that sickening monster-thing, after an act of selfsacrifice like yours. If I were in charge of things, I’d rank you with the martyrs.

He closed the bedroom door quietly behind him and went back towards the stairs to meet Branwen.

They’ve gone,’ she said, without enthusiasm. ‘What next?’

‘When Bianca comes to, we must convince her of the wrong ness of her ways. Or at least, I must . If you want to go I won’t try to keep you here.’

‘I’ll stay with you. My life depends on whether you can persuade her or not I don’t think you’ve a hope in hell.’

He opened the bedroom door and waited for Branwen to go in. She gasped loudly and stopped.

‘What is it?’ he demanded.

‘She’s dead! And Gilbert!’

He pushed past her into the big bedroom. On the crimson bed Bianca lay naked, arms and legs sprawled wide. She was so still and her skin was so pale that she looked like an obscene statue carved in translucent stone.

‘Andrew rushed to the bed and felt under her breast for a heartbeat There was nothing. His hands trembled, blood thundered in his ears and he broke into a cold sweat He was like a man demented.

“Quick, the mirror!‘ he shouted at Branwen, but she was crouched over by die wall, where Gilbert lay facedown and naked. The foliage pattern that covered his body was dull and faded.

To hell with him!‘ Andrew snarled. ‘Help me with Bianca!’

There was a hand-mirror on the dressing-table. He fetched it and held it to Bianca’s slightly parted and pale lips. He waited in a fever of anxiety, five seconds, ten seconds … he could wait no longer. He turned the glass over and groaned aloud with relief when he saw the faint misting on it ‘She’s breathing!‘ he called and tried again to find her heartbeat He put his ear to her cold chest and listened intently. Slow, hesitant, ghost-like, her heart was just beating.

He lifted her carefully to put her under the bedclothes. Her head lolled back limply over his. arm. Then he had her well covered to try to get her warm. Only after that did he turn to where Branwen was still crouching by Gilbert ‘I s he dead?’

‘He’s a live, but I can’t wake him.’

Out of the way ’

She looked up in surprise at his tone and moved quickly back from her husband. Andrew bent down and rolled the over-plump Gilbert on to his back. He felt his pulse and watched the slow rise and fall of his chest for a moment or two.

‘He’s all right He’ll wake up by him self before long.’ ‘And Bianca ?’

‘Just alive by a thread. She’s in as deep a coma as I’ve ever seen.’

‘Are you going to call a doctor?’

There’s nothing a doctor could do for her. Her body’s not damaged in any way. Her mind has retracted somewhere so deep that I don’t know whether it will ever come back.’

Then she’ll die. Does it matter to either of us, Andy?’

‘Yes, it does! I want her alive.’

‘Why?’

‘She’s got to know the truth. She owes Edwin that much.’ Branwen’s eyes were on his face, appraising his expression. There’s m ore to it than that’ she said. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Do I have to spell it out for you? Ever since you came into this room and thought that she was dead, you’ve been acting like a man out of his wits.’

‘I have not!’

‘Face it Andy - you’re not free of her after all,’ she said gently.

‘Of course I am! ‘ he shouted and then stopped, struck by his own inexplicable vehemence.

‘But she set me free,’ he said, puzzled.

‘You thought she did. But you said that Edwin interrupted her.’

‘Good God,’ said Andrew, a chill in his marrow, that must be it - she never finished the f reeing. Edwin stopped her with o ut knowing what he was doing. He said I could free myself anytime I wanted to.’

‘He was mistaken. He’d been away too long to know what power she had. When you told me yesterday how she sucked you dry in the form of a snake, I knew that she meant to hold on to you forever.’

Andrew turned slowly to look at Bianca’s bloodless face above the coverlet ‘If she dies now,’ he asked, ‘wi ll that free me?’ . He was talking to himself. He knew the answer to his question even before Branwen shook her head.

If she goes now,’ he mumbled, ‘I ‘m still hooked on her line. She’ll pull me after her. I won ‘t last a week. She’ll pull me down into the grave after h er! What shall I do, Branwen?’

‘I don’t know. How far gone is she?’

He shook his head. It was if he was being pulled down into deep water by a heavy weight tied to his feet It took a great effort of will to shake off the load of dumb misery that was threatening to take him too far down to ever get back.

‘I’ve got to act fast’ he said. ‘It can only be a matter of hours before I’m capable o f no more than huddling in a corn er and waiting to slide into death. Gilbert can tell us what went on here last night He’s got to wake up fast Get me some cold water.’

As soon as she was out of the room he turned his attention to the tattooed man. He smacked his face roughly from side to side and shouted at him to wake up. Gilbert gurgled, but his eyes stayed shut Andrew drew back and kicked him half a dozen times in the side.’

‘Wake up, you fat slug !’

All the response he got was a few moans and twitches. Branwen came back with-a large bowl of cold water. Andrew took it from her and threw about half the contents into Gilbert’s face. That seemed to stir him - he moved his head restlessly and his mouth opened. Andrew threw the rest of the water and Gilbert choked and cough ed as much of it went into his mouth and down his throa t A few more face-slaps and Gil bert’s eyes rolled open blearily.

‘Gilbert!’ Branwen called sharply, ‘Wake up!’

He lifted his head from the wet carpet and took in his surroundings. When he saw the carved red bed, his eyes opened wide in terror and he began to gibber like an idiot ‘No, no - let me go—’ he mouthed and tried to scramble up.

Andrew pushed him down again.

‘You’re not going anywhere until you’ve told me what happened. Start talking.’

Gilbert was in a blind panic now that he knew where he was. He came up off the floor so fast that he took Andrew off-guard and sent him sprawling. Then he was scuttling on all fours towards the door.

‘Grab him!‘ Andrew shouted, struggling to get up.

Branwen kicked one of Gilbert’s arms from under him as he crawled animal-fashion across the room. He collapsed facedown and Andrew got to him in time to kneel on his hack and keep him pinned. He twined his fingers in Gilbert’s long hair and pulled his head up.

‘You’re not getting away until you’ve talked.’

At that, Gilbert began to gibber again, his eyes rolling, making no sense at all. Andrew kept a tight grip while he waited for him to calm down. Gilbert rambled on in meaningless syllables and half-words until, in the middle of his raving, Andrew caught the suspicion of a musical tone. He looked up quickly at Branwen and from her expression of dismay he saw that she had heard it too and recognized its portent ‘We have to get away from him,’ she said rapidly. ‘I haven’t got t he iron bracelets to contain it. We might be in terrible danger if ft fully possesses him now.’

To hell with that Go down to the basement quick and bring me a sharp knife from the kitchen.’

‘You’re not going to kill him!’

‘Hurry!’

While she was gone, Andrew hung on to the man beneath him, hearing with mounting apprehension the increasing frequency of the musical notes interspersed with his babbling. The earth-spirit or whatever Gilbert’s familiar was, undoubtedly was on the way, sliding into his mind and taking control of it But it was coming very slowly, as if unsure of the . situation.

Hurry, hurry, Branwen, Andrew was thinking.

She ran into the bedroom, breathless from the stairs, and held out a short-bladed, wooden-handled cook’s knife. Andrew took his weight off Gilbert and heaved-him over on to his back. He took the knife from Branwen and said, ‘Grab him by his hair, both hands; and hold on tight if he struggles.’

Gilbert’s chest inflated, making the foliage tattooed on it appear to flutter. A rolling chord of pure music came from his throat but by then Andrew was kneeling heavily across Gil bert’s hairless thighs. He touched the sharp point of the knife lightly to the base of Gilbert’s limp penis.

‘Gilbert,’ he said urgently, ‘before your musical friend takes complete control of you, look down. Don’t struggle - I’ve only to make one quick slice with this knife and the root of your tree will be cut through.’

Gilbert raised his head from the carpet to look along his body. When he saw the blade touching his member he shrieked and lay stil l’

‘What happens to a tree when its root is severed?’ Andrew asked. ‘It withers and dies, Gilbert . That’s what will happen to your tree if I move my hand an inch or so. Be very careful ’

The look in Gilbert’s eyes was one of pure insanity. Bran wen’s grip on his hair stopped him from rolling his head from side to side, but he was drooling from the corners of his mouth.

Tell your visitor to go away,’ said Andrew. ‘He can come back later - if there is still a tree of life for him to perch in and sing his song. That will depend on you. Send him away for now.’

Spasms of fear wracked Gilbert’s body. The pattern on his chest and belly was shaken as if a storm were blowing through a leafy glade.

‘Help me, Branwen,’ he mumbled in his own voice.

‘Help yourself,’ she answered. ‘I’ve n o reason to help you.’

He started to sob noisily, until Branwen banged hi s head

down hard on the floor.

‘Listen to me,’ Andrew said with determination, ‘I want to know everything that happened here last night fell me and I won’t hurt you.’

The mention of last night caused Gilbert to babble brokenly again. Andrew waited for the outbreak to pass. When Gilbert was quiet again, he said: ‘I’m losing patience. This is your final chance. Tell me what I want to know or I’ll slice it right off.’

Gilbert’s fear-filled eyes were on Andrew’s face.

The Great One came to Bianca,’ he stuttered. ‘I was here.’

He shrieked again at the memory.

‘Why were you here?’ Andrew insisted. “Where was Edwin?’

‘I was here all evening. She phoned me to come over. Bran wen was out’

‘I know that What did Bianca want you for?’

‘What?’ said Gilbert, a sudden gleam of slyness in his eyes.

‘Don’t get clever with me,’ Andrew said coldly, ‘I’m going to cut it off whether you tell me or not just to put a stop to your nasty ways.’

‘No - you mustn’t! I’ll tell you everything I know.’

‘Good. Now, Bianca wanted to talk to you about her plan to substitute Branwen for herself. I know that so there’s no point in lying. Go on from there.’

‘You can’t know that! Bianca told no one but me.’ ‘Just get on with it’

Once past the hurdle of the thing he had wanted to conceal, Gilbert talked more easily.

‘Edwin was in bed all day. He was very weak. Bianca wanted him to sleep peacefully so we helped him into another room and she made me stay the night with her. Not for sex just to protect her from the Great One. She said that he wouldn’t come to her if there was a man in bed with her.’

‘But he did.’

Gilbert’s face froze in terror as he remembered. I was asleep. Something threw me out of bed and I woke up on the floor. The whole room was full of him—’ He broke off and sobbed aga in in fear. Andrew gave him a moment to get over it ‘What did you see?’ he asked.

‘See? I don’t know exactly. Seeing and feeling was all the same thing somehow. Bianca was on the bed on her back and he was covering, her. She was making little noises in her throat-oh God!’

‘What did you do - just lie there on the floor?’

‘I couldn’t move an inch! He filled the entire room. I was pinned to the floor - there was nothing I could do except watch—’

‘What about Edwin?’

‘I heard him shouting outside the door. He was trying to drive the Great One away. He forced the door open and pushed his way into the room.’

‘You’re lying,’ said Andrew. ‘I stood outside that door myself when that thing came here before. There was no way any . mortal man could have opened the door and got into the room. What really happened?’

‘I swear it’s the truth! Edwin pushed his way into this room full of the Great One. He was dragging his bad leg but there was such an aura of power about him that he looked as if he were on fire - a blazing white fire about him that shone right through the Great One’s substance.’

Bianca caught her breath sharply.

The way that Edwin loved her,’ she said, ‘he could have done that, if anyone in this world could.’

‘He did, I swear it,’ Gilbert said hurriedly. ‘He got nearly as far as the bed before the Great One overcame him and threw, him out through the door.’

Threw him out h ow?’

‘I can’t explain. Edwin just came to a standstill and the fire round him flickered and went out . Then he was hurtling backwards across the room and the door slammed after him.’

‘He died fighting it’ said Andrew in awe.

‘And he knew that he couldn’t win a fight like that’ Branwen added.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Gilbert quickly, the words spilling over each other as he spoke, ‘he was stupid. He must have known he couldn’t win against a Great One. He threw his life away in sheer stupidity.’

Andrew reached forward with his free hand and struck Gil bert open-handed across the mouth so hard that it made his lip bleed.

‘We don’t need your opinion of Edwin,’ he said thickly, ‘just the facts. What happened after that?’

‘I could understand what the Great One and Bianca were saying to each other because I was contained within his substance fill ing the room; God, ‘I was frightened. If he decided to swat me as he had Edwin—’

‘You had no reason to fear,’ said Andrew viciously. ‘Only functioning males are in danger. You’re nothing. All the virility in your balls is drawn up into that design on your body. The thing ignored you because you’re neuter. You were never at risk.’

Gilbert stared at him, round-eyed.

‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Andrew went on. Tell me very quickly what Bianca and the thing talked about before I end this farce with one clean cut’

The determination in his voice made Gilbert speak fast The Great One was persuading her to go back with him into his world. She refused at first but as time passed her resistance got weaker. In the end she was saying, Yes, yes, yes, take me. And then he was gone and I think I passed out’

‘But she’s still here, in bed.’

‘Her body is here. Her soul has gone with the Great One.’ ‘Will it come back to her body?’

‘Why? The world of the Great Ones is so much more wonderful than ours that she’d be a fool to leave it’ ‘How do you know that?’

‘He was telling her about it all night and giving her a taste of some of its pleasures. To me it sounded like paradise.’ ‘Explain.’

There’s no way I can explain it to you. The Great One’s world is a state of prolonged ecstasy, like music or sexual sensation, or anything else you like.’

Is that how it explained it to Bianca?’

“Not in words - there’s no way of putting it into our language. But the meaning was unmistakable.’

‘So she consented to go?’

‘She went willingly and gladly.’

‘Have you told me all you know?’

‘Yes - I give you my word. Please don’t hurt me!’

Andrew nodded to Branwen and they released Gilbert. At once he scuttled on all fours across the carpet to the far end of the room and sat with his back pressed into a corner, legs drawn up. His hands were between his thighs, protecting the root of his coloured tree of life.

‘You know about these things,’ said Andrew. ‘How long

can her body survive without her soul?’

‘If we had her moved into a hospital where they fed her intravenously and looked after her, it could be a long time. But there’s a thread that links soul to body, you see, so that while her body is still alive, she can come back to it anytime she wishes. I don’t think that’s the problem.’

Then what is?’

If this Otherworld is as marvellous as Gilbert seems to

think, she could decide that she wants to stay there forever

and deliberately break the thread. Then her body would die

at once.’

‘What you’re saying is that the thread can be broken from either end. And whichever way, she would be dead in this world. So there’s only one thing to do - somehow I have to get through to her and persuade her to come back to her body.’

There’s no way you can reach her, Andy. Besides—’ and she stopped.

‘What?’

‘You and I saw that awful thing on Longman’s Hill. It’s cruel and wicked. Its pleasure is in destruction. It has nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of paradise, has it?’

‘My God, no!’

Then it lied to Bianca and deceived her, just as it deceived Gilbert.’

Tve got to move fast,’ said Andrew. ‘Will you help me?’ ‘Help you do what?’

‘I’m going to see Shafik . I’m certain that his women can tell me how to reach Bianca before it’s too late.’

‘Even if they can, think of the danger of going anywhere near the monster we saw !’

It’s a chance I have to take. If she dies before she frees me, I’m dead anyway.’

Branwen covered her face with her hands, ‘Being dead might not be the worst thing that could happen to you, Andy.’

‘Damn that! I’m going to try. I won’t ask you to come with me because there’s no point. Ill take Mandy –she ’ll do-very well. Let’s go to your flat and I’ll get her. You stay there and take care of her baby while we’re gone.’

‘What are you going to do with Mandy?’ she asked desperately.

‘Never mind now. Let’s go,’ and he pulled her towards the door.

‘What about Gilbert and Bianca?’ she protested as he hustled her along.

They’ll not come to any harm for a few hours.’

Halfway down the staircase they heard the first fluting chord

of music from the bedroom. They p aused for a moment and

the music cam e again, growing in intensity.

The spirit’s come back to him,’ Branwen whispered. ‘What shall we do?’

‘Nothing,’ said Andrew as he dragged her by the arm down the staircase. ‘For all I care he can sit there and sing till he goes dumb.’

Chapter 18

The late morning sun shining through the unwashed window

made Shafik‘s living-room stuffy and unpleasant Mandy sat

between the sisters on the dingy sofa, hiding her anxiety as

best she could. The women had given her a cup of their coffee

and were whispering to her and giggling, while Eileen stroked

Mandy’s long brown hair.

‘I want to talk to you privately,’ said Andrew, his gorge rising

at the squalor of his surroundings. ‘

The Egyptian nodded, his dark eyes ashine, and took him into the kitchen. The dirty sink was filled with unwashed dishes. Files buzzed round greasy saucepans on the old gas-cooker.

‘You have come because you wish a consultation,’ said Shafik, leaning casually against the sink. ‘Has the lady sent you to me?’

‘I am here on her behalf .’

Andrew did not want to explain too much in case Shafik took fright and refused to help.

‘But she does not come here herself?’

‘She’s not very well.’

Shafik frowned deeply and Andrew guessed that he had said the wrong thing. Maybe people with Bianca’s powers of mind over body were not subject to ordinary human ailments.

‘Look,’ Andrew went on quickly, ‘the point is that I have questions to ask of your women. Important questions.’

‘I cannot help you. Please leave my house.’

Shafik evidently felt that something was not as it should be and wanted no further involvement

The questions are very important’ said Andrew, who had come prepared for this possibility. Therefore the payment is very special.’

‘Payment? What are you talking about? I do not take payment when I put my abilities at the disposal of my friends. Do you take me for a shopkeeper? You must leave my house at once.’

The girl who came with me,’ said Andrew, ‘Mandy, she is not yet quite sixteen. She has no father, no mother, no relatives. Her body is slim and attractive, not flabby and used-up like your two women. Imagine her naked and lying on her back with her legs spread apart for you.’

‘Why do you tell me this?’ Shafik asked softly, his eyes lustrous.

The first time we met you told me that Eileen and Joan were not women, only female things. As such they serve your purpose down in the cellar very well, I’m sure. But for pleasure in bed they’re about as sexy as a couple of worn-out old whores. Mandy is different She is not a thing, she is a young woman with a soul. And with a slit too, as that interests you. Think what you could do with her.’

Shafik‘s mouth was open and the tip of his tongue was visible.

I will give her to you,’ said Andrew. ‘She will do as I tell her. I will go away and leave her’ here for you. Nobody will come looking fo r her. You can strip her and do whatever takes your fancy. She will be your property for as long as you have use for her.’

The bulge in Shafik’s grubby denim trousers testified to his easily aroused sexual excitement But that did not blind him to the facts.

“You have changed very much since you came here before with the lady,’ he said thoughtfully. Then you knew nothing and spoke to me despitefully. Now you come offering strange bargains. Something very big has happened to you since I saw you before.’

‘A lot of things have happened and my eyes have been opened. But that’s neither here nor there. Is it a deal?’

‘You are impatient Are you afraid of something?’

I’m afraid of many things, like everybody else is. That’s not the point either.’

The Apart are never afraid,’ Shafik observed.

‘Don’t you believe it! I scared one of them witless only this morning.’

Shafik’s dark eyes widened at that

‘You are a strange man if you are telling me the truth, as I think you are. Tell me what can frighten the Apart and I will listen to anything you want’

‘Later, if you’re interested in that. There are questions I need to have answered first’

‘What questions?’

‘You wfll hear them when I ask the spirit that comes to your women.’

Shafik considered for a while. Andrew could see that he was enjoying the haggling and would stretch it out for as long as he could before he made his mind up.

This young girl you are offering me - is she virgin?’

‘No.’

That is a great pity. Is she pregnant?’ ‘No.’

‘How can you be sure of that?’ ‘She has been sterilized.’

‘I think you are a truthful man, but I am still puzzled by your offer. It is too much for what you can hope to gain. Why should you pay such a large price? That worries me. You saw how much the lady gave me when you came with her. You are not rich like she is, but you could find that much money if you wished.’

‘It will be difficult to get answers from the spirit to the questions I want to ask. You will have to work hard. Maybe when we’re finished you won’t think the price I’m paying is too high.’

Shafik nodded in understanding.

‘You think that I may have to whip one of my women to death to get the answers from the other one. Now I see why you offer so great a reward.’

‘I hope it won’t go that far,’ said Andrew.

Shafik was already off on another track, not in the least worried by the implications of his own statement of the possibilities.

‘Have you done it with this girl yourself?’ he asked. ‘Once.’

‘Was it good with her? Did she respond?’

‘We were a bit hurried, but it was all right’

‘When an Englishman says something is all right he usually means that it was very good. Yet you do not wish to keep her for yourself. That puzzles me.’

Andrew sighed in faint exasperation.

‘She’s too young for my taste,’ he said. ‘I prefer grown-up women,’

‘like my women, you mean?’

‘My God, no. I wouldn’t do it to either of your women if I was stranded for life on a desert island with them. I think they’re both dreadful. Just look at Mandy in comparison. Shall I tell you what she looks like with her clothes off and her long hair hanging down her back? Her body is slender and clean. She has little round breasts that don’t sag. Between her legs she has a small, patch of curly brown hair that does not cover her slit . Her thighs are long-and smooth to wrap round your waist—’

He broke off, seeing Shafik‘s eyes glazing over.

‘Half an hour with your women to answer my questions, that’s all I want. Then you can leave them tied up in the cellar while you undress Mandy up here. You can play with her all day and all night if you’ve a mind to. Every day, every night for as long as you’ve the stamina. What do you say?’

Shafik roused himself from his lubridous revery.

‘I accept’ he said thickly. ‘Come with me.’

They left Mandy curled up on the threadbare sofa in the living-room while the four of them went down to the basement. Andrew kept back out of the way while Eileen and Joan prepared the dank room, stripped off their clothes and submitted to having their bound wrists hooked to the ceiling. Shafik rushed through his preparations, drumming furiously, clearly anxious to keep his side of the bargain and get upstairs again to enjoy his reward.

The two women shuffled and jerked to his drumming, and after a while their faces turned to stare at Andrew over their bare shoulders.

The spirit knows, he thought; it knows without a word being spoken and it turns their eyes to look at me.

‘What do you want of me?’ asked the deep and guttural voice from Eileen’s throat

‘You know already what I want’ be answered, taking a step towards the hanging women. I want to speak to Bianca. How can I do so?’

The most appalling caterwauling of terror came from both women at once. Shafik sprang into action with his whip.

Tell him!‘ he screamed, his arm rising and falling to the crack of the leather lash on their flesh. Tell him what he wants to know!’

Both women raged and twisted, kicking out at Shafik with their bare, dirty feet He kept just out of their reach and flogged them mercilessly across their backs and buttocks. Their demented shrieking was deafening in the confined cellar. Andrew gritted his teeth and waited.

Eileen collapsed first and hung from her bonds, knees bent and body limp. With an imprecation, Shafik turned his whole attention to Joan, cutting at her and ordering her to speak. But Andrew’s eyes were still on Eileen. Her head hung forward, with her ratty hair in strands over her face. But her eyes were open and glaring fiercely at him. In the dim blue light they looked like black puddles with a pinpoint of light gleaming in their depths. Andrew shivered as their gaze met and locked.

A tiny voice whispered inside his head, promising him what he wanted in return for what Eileen wanted - or rather, what the spirit possessing her wanted. Even though he had expected it to be like this, Andrew hesitated now that the moment of choice had arrived.

Eileen’s tongue licked round her lips, black and thick in the half-dark.

The offer had been made by the spirit Andrew silently accepted it He took two short steps forward and kicked Shafik behind the knee. The leg went numb and as Shafik stumbled, off-balance, Andrew kicked him again - this time in the buttocks, as hard as he could. Shafik pitched forward on to his knees between the two hanging women. ”Eileen exploded into screeching action. Her knee smacked up into Shafik’s face. His cry of pain was cut short by her thighs locking round his neck and shutting off his breath. Joan attacked him before he could get loose, kicking him again and again between the thighs until he crumpled to the dirty floor.

Andrew watched the sisters kill their master. Shafik was on his back, heaving and struggling to break free. Eileen stood on his throat, bouncing up and down with all her weight to crush his larynx. Joan was stamping on his belly, one foot after the other, deliberately pulping his internal organs. For Shafik it was a long, hard dying. His arms and legs thrashed about, his back arched and strained, he tried to scream but could only gurgle up blood. The women had him and there was no escape for him . His struggles weakened as they trod him to death and even when at last he lay still, they continued their inhuman assault It seemed a very long time to Andrew before the women’s treading slowed, like a pair of clockwork toys running down. Then the only sound in the cellar was their harsh breathing as they stood flat-footed by the body, arms bound above their heads. Both of them turned awkwardly to stare at Andrew.

The spirit spoke through Eileen.

‘You are lord now that pig is dead. What do you want from me?’

Andrew looked briefly at the whip that lay beside Shafik’s out-stretched hand, but he made no attempt to pick it up.

The woman who came here before and brought me,’ he said, ‘you remember her?’

A howl of guttural laughter from Eileen greeted his words.

The white-skinned bitch who opened her legs for the Great Ones-is she dead?’

‘No, but they have taken her.’

‘She was warned. She came to ask how to escape them and the pig hurt me until I told her. If they have taken her it is too late.’

‘But is it?’ Andrew persisted. ‘Is there any way to get her back?’

There was no answer at all.

‘Is there any way?’ he asked again.

This time the voice answered from Joan’s mouth.

‘If a Great One has taken her, only he can give her back. I cannot help you. The Great Ones are too far above me.’

‘How can I reach them, at least?”

‘You are not one of the Apart and so you cannot Become Apart and you will understand.’

‘How? Her way doesn’t work for men. She told me that’

”She told you the truth,’Joan growled.

‘But there are other ways, aren’t there? Her husband was Apart. The tattooed man is Apart. How did he do it?’

‘I do not know. I have never seen either of them.’

‘But you know the ways. Tell me.’

There was no response. Andrew stepped forward slowly until he could put a hand on the sweaty shoulder of each woman. He felt like a circus performer venturing into a cage with a pair of edgy, tigers. He steeled himself not to flinch from the clammy touch of their skin under his hands.

He kicked Shafik’s body to draw attention to it.The sisters glanced down and then back at him. He managed not to shudder as the two stupid faces with incongruously glowing eyes full of non-human intelligence confronted him.

‘I gave you a first reward,’ he said. ‘You enjoyed that I will give you another reward if you will help me.’

The women turned their heads to stare at each other for a moment. When they looked at him again their faces had lost their stupid look and were alive with feverish anticipation.

‘Set me free,’ said the rumbling voice from Eileen’s mouth.

‘Yes, set me free,’ it said through Joan.

Andrew had known that would be asked of him.

‘Free,’ he said slowly, ‘unbound and in a human body that’s worth a great deal to you. Will you help me first?’

‘Yes!’ both women croaked eagerly together.

Then I will free you after you have told me what I need to know.’

‘You must become Apart before you can understand,’ Eileen growled. ‘How can I become Apart?’ “Now - through me.’

‘Do you mean the way that Shafik tried?’ Andrew asked, sickened by the prospect

‘That pig was too afraid,’ Eileen answered. ‘He waited until I had gone out of the woman and fed on my leavings. Join me now in her body and you will be Apart’

Almost paralysed by fear, Andrew made no resistance as the two women nudged him between them with their hips, until he was facing Eileen and had his back to Joan, both of them pressed to him. The sweat of their bodies reeked in his nostrils. Eileen’s face was close to his own. She was hissing and strands of her unwashed hair were plastered over her face. Behind him he could hear a mindless crooning from the other woman and feel her hot breath on his neck.

‘Be quick!’ the voice grated from Eileen’s mouth. Put it in the woman.’

The eyes close to his own seemed to bore into his brain. Not even stranded on a desert island with them, he had said to Shafik upstairs. Yet the eyes staring into his held a power that triggered off a desperate sexual rage in him and brought him up hard instantly. He w renched at his zip to expose his genitals and gasped as Eileen lunged forward with her hips and impaled herself, forcing his erection into her loose, wet slit . Joan began to bump herself fast against his buttocks, driving him into Eileen with each thump.

Under their assault Andrew‘s rationality vanished. The repulsiveness of the women and the circumstances and the corpse at his feet were wiped out by a mindless wave of eroticism.

Lost to all but the physical sensations tearing through him he tupped as madly as the women were doing and howled aloud with them. Dimly he was aware that Joan had swung herself up off the floor and was clinging round his waist with her legs, rubbing herself against the skin of his back where his sweater had ridden up.

Eileen’s head hung backwards between her pulled-up arms, her eyes rolled up until only the whites were showing. Her mouth gaped open in an unearthly scream as she achieved her orgasm . The sound of her screaming sent Andrew into a furious ejaculation. He sank his teeth into the muscles of Eileen’s upper arm and shook it like a dog killing a rat . Behind him Joan began to scream in ecstasy and the grip of her legs almost drove the bream out of his body.

Something slid into his mind while his semen was spurting, an alien spirit that possessed him completely. Its knowledge flared i n his head like a bomb-burst, illuminating things which had been hidden and secret from him until then. He was more

man human and less than human while his jolting loins

s quirted his seed into Eileen.

The throes faded as he was drained. Eileen slid limply away from him and hung in her bonds. Joan’s crushing legs unclenched from his waist and she fell back. His head swirling, his heart racing, Andrew tottered a couple of steps away from the sisters and fell to the floor. He was totally overwhelmed by the experience he had been through and the revelations it had brought He lay weakly on the planking, waiting for his breathing to steady and his heart to calm down. His arms and legs shuddered uncontrollably, his stomach retched and there was the taste of bile in his mouth and blood from where he had bitten Eileen. As the physical symptoms of distress eased and he regained possession of himself, a certain knowledge grew in his mind. He had trafficked with unclean spirits and was one of the Apart . The way to the Great Ones was open before him.

He got to his feet slowly and zipped his trousers.

“Untie me,’ Eileen growled huskily. The spirit had not left the women immediately after its pleasure this time. It was still there, waiting for him to carry out his side of the bargain. He could see it peeping at him through their eyes as they stood facing him, arms held above their beads by thongs, ungainly bodies shiny with sweat For a moment be hesitated. Shafik had kept them tightly bound during the time of their possession because they were dangerous then. They would kill without qualm, as he had seen for himself, once he had delivered the Egyptian into their power. The trampled corpse lay on th e floor as a reminder and proof. Would they attack him now if he kept his promise and freed them? Or rather, would the spirit that used them?

A bargain’s a bargain, he thought wryly, whoever it was struck with. He had put himself in their power once and bad not been harmed.

‘Untie me!’ both women snarled at him together. , ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You kept your word and I’ll keep mine. What will you do when I untie you?’

‘More pleasure,’ said Joan, ‘more and more and more - as much as this woman’s body can stand.’

‘It can stand a great deal,’ said Andrew, making no move towards them. ‘You did well to pick women’s bodies. They are capable of far more sustained sexual pleasure than a man’s.’

He was answered by a slobbering grunt of agreement

‘One last question before you become too busy with your pleasure to talk to me - why did you want to kill Shafik?’

‘He would never have set me free,’ said the voice through Eileen. ‘He doled out the pleasure in little bits as a reward for telling him the things he wanted to know. I want to feel it all the time, this hot pleasure which human bodies can generate.’

“Why did you think I would free you if Shafik was dead?’

‘You wanted a great thing from me. I saw it in your mind when you stood behind him and he was hurting me with the whip. You would let me have all the pleasure.’

Andrew nodded. He felt reasonably sure that the spirit that possessed the sisters was not fundamentally a murderous one, like the one that had possessed Edwin in his youth. This one took its delight not in death but in sensuality. Shafik’s death had been only incidental to its craving.

All the same, it never hurt to be prudent He had no desire to be raped into insensibility by two possessed women needing an instrument for their lust He took the wooden chair Shafik had used to stand on when he hooked the bound wrists over the ceiling hooks, put it close to Eileen and stepped back.

There you are,’ he said, ‘you are free. Climb up and unhook,

yourself.’

Like a cat Eileen sprang on to the chair and pushed her wrists up to the ceiling to get herself loose. Andrew turned and went swiftly and silently to the stairs. His intention was to get out and bolt the cellar door behind him to safeguard his retreat He need not have bothered. A glance over his shoulder as he took the stairs two at a time showed him Eileen scrabbling Joan free from her hook and a second later the two women were rolling over each other on the dirty mattress. Their legs waved wildly in the air as they humped each other towards another frenetic climax, while the body of Shafik lay unregarded on the floor an arm’s length from them.

Chapter 19

Mandy had dozed off on the sofa in the dead Egyptian’s living-room, her shiny hair spread out over the tattered cushion. In sleep she looked even younger than she was. Andrew shook her gently. Her eyes opened and looked at him, at first un-. comprehending, then suddenly afraid of what she saw in his face.

‘We’re leaving, Mandy.’

‘You’ve been ages,’ she said, sliding away from his touch. ‘What have you been doing with those creeps?’

‘Never mind that now. Let’s get out of here before anything happens.’

As they went along the .passage past the closed door to the cellar they heard a distant high-pitched squealing. Mandy averted her face and hurried out of the house.

Andrew had taken Bianca’s car to get to Shafik‘s, his own vehicle being back home. Once in it and moving, he asked, ‘Where to, Mandy? Back to the Pights?’

‘Do I have any choice?’

‘All the choice in the world. There’s nobody to tell you what to do or where to go. Your life is your own.’

‘Alone with a baby and no money, no home and no family? Yes, my life’s really my own, isn’t it You’ve all done what you liked with me, starting with my dad. Now I’m on my own all of a sudden. Thank you very much.’

The bitterness in her voice startled Andrew.

‘Is it really that bad?’

‘What do you know about it? You’re a man and you’re grown up. You can do what you like. I’m a girl and I’m under age and I’ve got a baby to take care of. So there’s no choice for me at all, is there? It’s got to be the Pights because they ’ll give me a room and feed me and let me keep Ruthie as long as I do what I’m told and help in the flat At least he doesn’t fancy me - that’s one small mercy to be thankful for.’

‘Do you have any relatives anywhere?’

‘Mum had a sister somewhere in Wales. We went there once and I didn’t like her. Dad never talked about his family, so I don’t know.’

‘I see. Suppose you had a lot of money - what would you do?’

‘I’d go away from London and find a litde flat by the seaside where nobody knew me. I’d find a job, like being a waitress or something. I’d find so meone to look after the baby while I was at work and I’d be happy.’

‘Why would that make you happy?’

‘Because then I’d really be living my own life and nobody would be able to push me around.’

‘If that’s all it takes to make you happy, I’ll give you enough money to get started like that Are you sure that’s what you want?’

The traffic was thick along Fulham Road and Andrew drove slowly.

‘Why should you?’ Mandy asked suspiciously. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘I feel that I owe you something, since I was part of the trouble you’ve been through, even though I didn’t understand at the time what was going on. Like you, I was a victim.’

Mandy was silent for a while, thinking.

‘Why did you bring me with you today?’ she asked at the end of her train of thought.They were awful, those people. They gave me the horrors just to be near them.’

‘I knew Shafik would do what I wanted if he saw a pretty girl like you with me.’

That’s a lie. When you were out in the kitchen with him you promised to let him do it to me, didn’t you? That’s why you said you owe me something. I’m not stupid, you know.’

‘It’s far more complicated man that Mandy. Believe me, the less you know about Shafik, the better you’ll sleep at nights. Nothing happened to you and I had no intention of letting it But I’m grateful to you for going there with me.’

He turned the car towards Cheyne Walk.

‘Why are we going this way?’ Mandy asked at once. ‘You said we were going back to Mrs Pight You promised.’

‘So we are, but there’s something I have to collect from Mrs Hallam’s house first It won’t take a minute. You can stay outside if you want’

‘Nothing’s going to get me back into that house!’

In Andrew’s mind the alien and corrupting knowledge of the Apart had suggested a plan of action while he had been talking to the girl. It would require a lot of money as bait.

He left Mandy sitting in the car while he went into the house and was glad that he had when he opened the front door. The whole house was ringing with music, as if a record-, player was on at full volume. As he climbed the stairs it got louder, almost, engulfing his mind. It thundered of freedom, of release from dark confinement into the sunlight, of the joy of the material world and of life itself.

He went into the big bedroom, flinching from the sheer volume of sound. Gilbert Pight still sat naked in the corner, but he no longer crouched in fear. The coloured patterns on his body glowed with life and movement as the orchestral - hymn of triumph poured from his throat On the crimson bed Bianca lay unmoving and pale as death, though Andrew knew with an inner conviction that allowed no doubt that she was still d reaming. He went to the wall-safe behind the painting of the marker stone and dialled the combination which Bianca had told him in mockery. He stood aside as he pulled the door open and the incorporeal guardian inside the safe flared out in rage. It had driven him away before, but now he was one of the Apart and understood the nature of Bianca’s watchdog. He concentrated his thoughts on quelling the thing’s ferocity and reached inside the safe to help himself to bundles of banknotes.

In one of the wardrobes he found an airline bag to put the money in. He had taken fifteen thousands pounds, plenty for what he had in mind. Down in Edwin’s study he spent a few minutes checking the maps. A marker stone on the southern slope of the Mendips, Bianca had said of the painting in her bedroom. He found it clearly marked along the black line Edwin had drawn across the appropriate large-scale map. On reflection, he stuffed the map into the airline bag with the money and left Mandy was watching for him anxiously through the car window when he went outside. He got in beside her and looked at her, not switching on the engine.

‘Mandy, I want to talk seriously to you about your future. And your baby’s future.’

‘What do you mean?’

“You said that you’d go back to live with the Pights. But I’m pretty sure that the Pights won’t be together much longer.’ ‘Whynot?’

‘Gilbert Pight is cracking up. You’ve seen what a peculiar man he is while you’ve been living there. I’m positive that before long he’ll have to be put away in a home for his own safety. What his wife will do then, I don’t know, but I can’t imagine that shell want to stay on alone in their flat I think she ’ll pack up and go. So what will happen to you?’

‘I won’t go back to the Hallams I won’t!’

There was near-panic in her voice .

‘That’s not possible anyway, Mandy. Edwin Hallam died - last night and Bianca is in a state of shock. She doesn’t want anybody there now.’

‘So what’s going to happen to me and Ruthie?’ the girl asked in desperation, not far from tears.

The usual thing is for homeless children to be taken into care by the local authority. They’ll put you in an orphanage, though they don’t call them that any more. Whether they’ll let you keep your baby, I don’t know. They might want you to have her adopted, you being so young.’

Mandy began to weep. Andrew put an arm round her.

‘Please help me,’ she gasped through her sobs. ‘Let me come and stay with you in your house. I’ll do anything you like as long as I can keep Ruthie. I’ll go to bed with you every night if that’s what you want ’

Before his visit to Shafik Andrew would have been moved to pity by the sight of tins sobbing child offering the only tiling she had of value. But now that he was Apart, there was a more urgent priority set for him and she was merely part of his plan.

‘You can’t live with me, Mandy. I live in a small village and everybody would know about you. There would be a lot of nastiness and at .the end of it you’d still wind up in care.’

‘You’re the only one who can help me - you’ve got to do

something’

‘All right Stop crying and wipe your eyes while I tell you what I can do.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked, sniffing and sitting up.

Her perceptiveness no longer surprised Andrew. He unzipped the Air Maroc bag and showed her the bundles of banknotes.

‘Look at it’ he said, ‘feel it There’s fifteen thousand pounds in there. Imagine what you can do with that much money.’ ‘Did Mrs Hallam give it to you?’ ‘Yes,’ he lied. “Does it matter?’ ‘So she wants something doing.’

I’ll tell you about that in a minute. A while ago you said you’d like to go to the seaside to live. If you had this much money you could start your own life and do what you wanted, not what other people make you do. You could rent a small fl at by the sea and buy food and clothe s. And if you find a job as well then with this much you’ll be all right for the next five or six years if you are sensible and don’t wast e it Think of that - five or six years. You’ll be over twenty then and grown up and maybe even married to someone your own age. Ruthie will be going to school by then and nobody will be able to take her away from you.’

‘What do I have to do for the money?’ she asked. ‘You’re not going to give me that much for going to bed with you. Everybody expects that for free from me. It’s got to be something really bad you want’

‘I promise you that it’s nothing frightening or dangerous. If s not even against the law,’ and he smiled at his own irony.

‘So what do you want me to do?’

‘It may sound crazy to you, but I’ll give you the straight truth. I want you to .come with me to a spot out in the country, about a hundred miles from here. There’s a particular place we have to find by evening. It’s a lonely sort of place and there won’t be anybody about . When it gets dark you take your clothes off and lie on the grass. That’s all there is to it’

‘Who jumps on me - you or somebody else?’

‘I shan’t touch you.’

‘Who then?’

‘I promise you that not a living soul will lay a hand on you.’ ‘ ‘I don’t get it - why do I have to take my clothes off?’

‘If s an experiment If I explained any more it would spoil it because you might do the wrong thing.’

‘It sounds creepy. Suppose somebody comes walking along and finds me without any clothes on?’

‘Nobody will. It’s the sort of place nobody goes to after dark and anyway, I’ll be near you to watch out for you.’

‘I don’t like it’

‘We all do things we don’t like at times. Think what you get for doing it - all the money in this bag. Isn’t that what you want?’

‘I don’t trust you. You’re not telling me the truth.’

I realize it must sound strange to you, but I give you my word that there’s no trickery and nothing else you have to do. I’ll drive you straight back to London afterwards, we’ll pick up the baby from Mrs Pight and I’ll take y ou to the station with your bag of money and put you on any train you like to the coast’

‘How long do I have to lie on the grass with no clothes on?’ ‘We shall know if the experiment’s a success in five or ten minutes,’ he said. Then we’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.’ ‘I still get the money even if it’s not a success, don’t I?’ “Yes, you do.’

‘Where will Mrs Hallam be while this is going on?’ ‘I’ve told you - she’s unwell and in bed. That’s where she’ll be tonight ’ ‘How about Gilbert?’

‘He’ll be in London too. It will be just you and me, nobody -else.’

‘You’re not one of these maniacs who goes round killing girls for kicks, are you? I’m beginning to wonder about you; I saw you stab my dad to death. Now you want me to go with you after dark to somewhere deserted and strip off. I don’t like it’

‘Mandy, I’m not a sex maniac and I don’t want to kill you. What happened with your father was self-defence. You saw the way he tried to kill both of us. I only wanted to knock him out to stop him, but he kept coming at me with the knife. I think that must have been the worst moment of my life.’

‘I know it’s some sort of kinky sex you’re planning,’ said Mandy, ‘but I don’t mind. It was nice with you that time. Only I want to make sure that you’re going to give me the money afterwards.’

‘I’ll tell what we can do - well go to Victoria Station now and put the bag in a left-luggage box. You take the key and hide it anywhere you like. Tomorrow when we come back to London you can collect Ruth and pick up the money at the station when you catch your train. How’s that?’

‘Sounds all right’

And so it was agreed. Even with Edwin’s map it was not all that easy to find the marker stone from the road. It was shown as being in a large triangular tract of land between two con vergent roads. The first road Andrew tried when they got there proved to have no simple access, the country road being bordered for miles with scrubby hedge and wire fence. With some difficulty he turned the big car in the narrow road and drove back to the fork and tried the other road until at last he found a gate through which he could get the car and conceal it from sight of anyone passing along the road. Not that on balance it was likely that anyone would in the late evening.

He had chosen this marker along Edwin’s line because even now he could not resolve satisfactorily the question of whether visitants from the Otherworld were separate and distinct personalities or not Bianca claimed that they were all different and she had personal experience of coupling with them. If they were all different then Andrew wanted nothing to do with the one he and Branwe n had glimpsed at Longman’s Hill. On the other hand, Edwin had been convinced that they were all the same, that there was only one and that it changed its form to deceive humans. If Edwin was right then Longman’s Hill was as good a spot for Andrew’s purpose as anywhere else. But while the question was unsettled in his mind, Andrew decided upon the sit e which had been important to Bianca, the scene of her initiation into the Apart, the place where she had first consorted with the Otherworld.

It was a long walk across rough turf while the orange ball of the sun sank slowly to their left Eventually, on the lower slopes of the hills they found the marker stone, a hoary finger of granite pointing skywards. Andrew looked at the sun and estimated that it wou ld be another half hour before i t was dark enough.

He spread the car rug he had brought with him on the ground and sat down with Mandy. She needed reassurance. Now that she was far from London and there were no signs of human habitation she had become nervous.

‘You promised nothing bad would happen,’ she reminded him.

‘And I promise it again. There’s nothing at all to worry about’

‘Do you want me to strip off now?’

‘Not yet I know you are anxious to get it over with so we can be on our way back, but the timing is very important’

‘You haven’t got a watch,’ she said, glancing at his wrist ‘How will you know when it’s the right time?’

I’m going by the sun.’

‘Well, the sun’s gone. If you’re so clever, what time is it?’

‘We’re not going on clock time.’

‘What then - moon time?’

‘There won’t be any moon tonight’

There’s always a moon.’

To pass the time and keep her attention occupied, he explained to her the phases of the moon and its rising and setting. As he talked, he kept a careful eye on the fading light

‘Time now, Mandy. Take your clothes off.’

I’m scared.’

‘You’ll be all right’ he reassured her.

Reluctantly she stood up and pulled her sweater over her head. Andrew could recollect Bianca’s words quite clearly when she had described her first experience at this site to him. She said she had taken her clothes off and had been directed by Edwin to lie on her back with her head to the stone pillar, her arms stretched out sideways and her legs apart He instructed Mandy what to do and she obeyed, complaining that she’d catch cold.

Andrew backed away quietly, keeping his eyes on the pale blur of Mandy’s outspread body through the fast gathering dark. He was not at all sure how far he had to be from her to be safe. On Longman’s Hill that first time he had been at least a dozen paces away from Bianca and the visitant had casually lashed out and sent him sprawling. Against that, if he got too far away from Mandy, she might panic and get up.

Five or six yards away from her he halted and said as calmly as he could:

‘Mandy - close your eyes and start whispering: Yes, yes, yes. Do you understand?’

‘You’re cracked, you are,’ she answered, ‘do you know that?’

There was a curious tingling in the air. With the knowledge of the Apart Andrew recognized it at once. He whirled round and ran lightly over the turf away from the girl. He heard her squeal in surprise as he fled.

Nothing had hit him so he must be at a safe distance. He stopped and sat down on the ground, hugging his knees, his back towards where Mandy lay.

He had no desire to see what was happening, even if there had been starlight enough to show him. In his imagination it was vivid enough. The translucent black presence he had encountered in Bianca’s bedroom had once more materialized in this world and spread itself over Mandy. From its shapeless ness i t had put out questing little pr otruberances, like a snail’s eyes on stalks, to penetrate and stimulate the orifices and erogenous zones of Mandy’s body. She was locked tight in its grip and rocketing through sexual delirium to the point where the layers of her conscious mind were peeled away and the deepest and innermost part of her could accept and fuse with the thing that covered her like a living blanket For Andrew there was a long and agonizing wait through the night-hours. Now he was Apart, it came naturally to him to use Mandy in this way to gain his own ends, whatever the cost to her. Apart meant being apart from the common restraints and prohibitions set upon humanity by conscience, natural law or divine inspiration. Bianca had made use of this same girl’s body to rid herself of Braddock. In his unregenerate days Edwin woul d have done the same without the least, qualm.

Yet Andrew was still afflicted by pangs of conscience for what he had done to Mandy. It was less than a day since he had let the spirit that possessed Shafik’s women enter his mind and insinuate its fearsome knowledge and aspirations. From this uncomfortable mental state he concluded that Apartness was a matter of familiarity. The first step did not sever all ties with common humanity, nor perhaps the second or even the third. Maybe there was always a way back to humanity, though Edwin had not been encouraging on that subject He had felt that he was damned past all redemption, even after he had turned from his old ways. But Edwin might be wrong. - Edwin had also said that no one is corrupted by another, only that men and women corrupt themselves. In his lonely vigil on die hillside Andrew felt the force and truth of that saying. There had been moments of choice when he had deliberately taken the left-hand path. There was the moment when the evil spirit in Eileen’s eyes had looked out at him and promised him all that he wanted. He had accepted and pushed Shafik to his death under the feet of the bound women. There had been another moment-when the same spirit had offered him the knowledge of die Apart if he would couple with Eileen and let the spirit enter him through her. And he had done it aware of the choice he was making.

A whisper unbidden in his head said that corruption is a word which timid people frighten themselves with. In what way are you worse off now than before you visited Shafik and sank your spike into Eileen’s slit? The only problem you have is whether your plan will work. You are dealing with a Great One, don’t forget not a hungry little earth-spirit . You are putting your life at risk.

His position was much like that of Branwen, Andrew considered. She had set herself Apart by letting the spirit in Gilbert possess her. Her motive may have been no more th an curiosity, but it was hardly innocent curi osity. After that one time she h ad bee n too frightened ever to try it again. From that setting apart she had acquired a certain power to manipulate the minds of others through the use of her own sexuality, but she lived in apprehension, halfway between two states of mind, uneasy in both. In that she was very unlike Bianca, who revelled in being Apart, who had pursued the denizens of the Otherworld and had sped down the path they showed her. To what? That was the unanswered question that nagged at Andrew. To eternal death and destruction, or, as the new little voice in his head suggested, translation to an existence of unimaginable beatitude in th e Otherworld?

Cold and forlorn, Andrew sat on the ground, his mind torn this way and that, his emotions in painful turmoil Eventually he roused himself and crawled very slowly towards where the marker stone stood. His progress was made very cautious by the need to stop every yard and feel gingerly in front of him. He had no wish to push his head into the thing possessing Mandy.

His questing fingers brushed it lightly. The same warm, slightly rippling substance he had touched in Bianca’s bedroom. He lay quietly on the ground within reach of it, collecting his thoughts and screwing up his determination. There was still a long wait ahead of him.

In the darkness Mandy lay silent, not mewling in ecstasy as Bianca had done. Andrew wondered what interchanges were taking place between her unconscious mind and the Other world mind that had penetrated right into her soul. He brushed the thought aside, or tried to. The silent voice in his, head said, There is no reason to flinch away from reality - a great and wonderful thing is happening to Mandy, the end of her virginity.

Virginity - but she’s already had a child by her own father, Andrew thought in astonishment; in what sense can she be thought a virgin still? How you turn away from what is in front of you, the voice answered him wordlessly. Sexual coupling between ordinary men and women is no more than a children’s game compared to what Mandy is now experiencing. Why do you suppose that Bianca kept visiting the high places? Beyond this friction of bodies and sexual organs, this stimulation of nerve endings, there is the true coupling as t he Great One penetrates her soul opening it to new concepts, impregnating it with his wisdom. This is the true end of her virginity as she becomes one of the Apart.

The eastern sky was changing subtly as the night drew to its end. Andrew steeled himself for the insane act he intended. He reached out gently and found the visitant with, his fingertips and kept his hand there. He would have only a moment when the time came. If he missed this chance, he might never have the courage again to try.

The faint tremors in the warm substance under his fingers slowed and stopped. The Great One sensed the approaching sunrise and was ready to slide back into the Otherworld. With all the power and knowledge he had gained from the spirit that had flowed into him from Eileen, Andrew projected his thoughts into the warm and living thing he was touching.

Instantly the world about him vanished. He felt his soul plucked out of his body and all around him was jangling noise and black chaos. The Great One had retreated into the Otherworld and taken Andrew with him.

Chapter 20

Andrew floated in a dark void, confused and afraid.

Vague masses like clouds billowed around him, steel-grey, purple-streaked, shot through with the black of night Nothing made sense to him, not the sights, nor the rolling thunder nor the musky scents that oppressed him. Like Jonah in the belly of the whale, he had been swallowed up entirely by the Great One and was lost to the world of men.

There was a whisper from nowhere, cold and sardonic It said, ‘All that a man has he will give for his life. What will you give me for yours?’

Andrew gagged and then fought his fear down. He knew instinctively that spoken words were not necessary but they helped to shape his thoughts.

‘I have already given you Mandy,’ he said.

‘You gave me the girl in order to speak to me.’

‘No, I gave her to you so that I could speak to Bianca.’

“Would you rather speak to Shafik instead?’

The mockery was so open that Andrew felt as if his mouth had been stuffed with sand. He guessed that he had nothing much to lose and spoke as boldly as he could.

‘Shafik got what he deserved. I’m not afraid of him, dead or alive.’

At once he was engulfed in a c linging black mist he perceived as the personality of Shafik. It wreathed and clung about him, trying to choke and kill him. Andrew fought back, using thoughts as if they were fists.

‘Shafik, you snivelling, cowardly fraud - the door to the Otherworld was open to you and you turned away from it . The spirit spoke to you many times through your women and you were afraid to listen. You waited until it had gone out of them and performed your miserable little act on their senseless bodies. You were a s cavenger, feeding on carrion. And now you are nothing:’

The clinging mist thinned and dispersed to the faraway sound of frustrated sobbing. ‘No, you are not afraid of Shafik,’ said the icy whisper.

‘Let me speak to Bianca.’

‘Shafik is Bianca. Bianca is Shafik. Both are me. I am both of them. I am everything.’

That’s too confusing for me to understand. Let me see Bianca in a shape I recognize.’

Her arms were a bout him, her cool body pressed against him, her pale straw hair gleaming in the enveloping gloom. Andrew stared at her in wonder. She was transfigured as if by an inner joy that shone around her like an aura of gold.

‘Bianca is it really you?’

‘What do you want here, Andy?’ she asked in a voice that thrilled him.

To see you and to understand what you have chosen. Is it really as you believed?’

‘Far, far better than ever I imagined. Stay here and share i t with me.’

There are things I want to do on earth first’

‘Nothing you can ever do there is one-millionth as good as just to be here with him.’

‘Do you know the answer now - is there only one Great One or are there many?’

There is only one. He is so mighty that on earth I could only catch glimpses of him when he came to me. It was like seeing someone at different angles in a dim light and I was misled into thinking he was many.’

‘You have what you want, then?’

‘Oh yes!’

‘You could still return to your body on earth if you wished.’ She laughed pleasantly.

‘Andy, what reason is there to leave th is fulfilment of every possible wish to return to a body that will limit me more and more as it ages? You can’t be gin to understand the pointless ness of your suggestion.’

‘I suppose not I wish you well, Bianca. Free me and I will leave you to your fulfilment’

‘Free you? But I did.’

‘Edwin interrupted.’

‘So he did. Poor Edwin, he had the key to everything in his hand and he threw it away. He will never be here with me unless he finds the way again.’

There was no love anymore in her voice when she spoke of Edwin, Andrew noted, only contempt From that he could judge how much she had changed and he almost wept That love ought to have been inextinguishable.

‘Ah!’ he gasped as a pang tore through his chest ‘You are free, Andy; Do what you must on earth. I shall be here when you decide to come back.’

Now the bond between them was broken Andrew saw her differently. The golden light that shone round her was a mixture of muddy browns and s mokey reds. The delicious coolness of her skin was the coldness of the grave. What he had taken for deep contentment in h er eyes was no more than bemuse ment She was loathsome to him.

He controlled his feelings as best he could and loosed himself from her grasp.

‘Goodbye, Bianca,’ he said softly.

She was gone and he was alone in the befuddling and billowing dark. Not quite alone - the mocking whisper was there, ‘If I snap the fragile thread that connects you to your living body on earth you will stay here with Bianca for all time.’

‘What gives you the right to do that?’ . ‘I have the power, I have the right I am all-powerful,’

The choice must be mine,’ Andrew argued, cold fear welling up inside him. ‘Men and women must come to you consenting.’

‘You have already consented.’

‘When?’

‘When you coupled with Shafik ‘s woman. I was in her mind and in her body. You came to me then of your own free will. And you are with me now of your own free will. You have set yourself Apart . You are mine to do with as I please.’

‘You mean that I have set myself Apart from God, is that it?’

‘I am God.’

To hell with that for a story !‘ Andrew shouted-and pulled himself away from the encircling gloom, back down into his body.

The sardonic whisper followed him all the way, ‘You cannot escape from me. There is nowhere for you to hide, on earth or elsewhere, not even in death.’

He was lying on the cold grass, face-down, his head spinning sickeningly, the echo of the whisper still in his mind. He felt soiled by what had taken place, as if he had fallen into a farmyard dungheap and climbed out beslimed and reeking. The sensation was so strong that bile rose up into his mouth . He retched painfully and then vomited.

When he felt a little better he sat up and looked about him.

The first hint of grey was in the eastern sky. His journey into the Otherworld and back seemed to him to have lasted a long while, but on earth no time had elapsed at all From that he dimly saw that time does not run in the Otherworld - a second, a century and eternity are the same, Mandy lay at the foot of the grey marker stone, arms and legs spread wide on the car rug in the cold dawn. Andrew went to her and wrapped her in the rug. The hideousness of what he had caused her to do was so unbearable that he burst into tears, kneeling there beside her.

God forgive me, he prayed; I have done wrong beyond anything I ever thought possible.

There was no answer from God, only the memory of the words that had pursued him back into his body, There is no escape from me.

After a time he picked Mandy up, bundled in the rug, her clothes tuc ked under his arm, and started back towards .the distant car in the garnering light .

Chapter 21

Mandy lay unmoving, huddled in the car rug on the rear seat while Andrew hammered the big car towards London along the motorway. She was still deeply asleep when he drew up outside the block of flats where the Pights lived in St Johns Wood. The time was just before seven in the morning.

The milkman’s electric truck stood outside the block but there was no sign of the man himself. Nor could Andrew see anyone else about He got the sleeping girl in his arms and hurried across the pavement and into the building, hoping that the porter was busy about his d uties elsewhere. Into the lift and up, and his luck held. On the fifth floor he rang Branwen’s bell long and urgently.

Early as it was, Branwen was already dressed in sweater and trousers when she opened the door for him.

Thank God you’re all right, ’ she said, standing aside for him to push hastily past her with his burden. ‘How’s Mandy?’

‘Only asleep. She’ll wake up in a few hours. Where’s her room?’

‘Down there - the last door. You look all in I’ll make some fresh coffee.’

In Mandy’s room the baby slept soundly in her carry-cot laid across a chair. Andrew unwound the car rug and put the girl to bed. To his touch her naked body felt slightly cooler man it should, but that might have been his imaginati on. Her face was peaceful, her expression almost withdrawn, as if in silent contemplation. She was as limp as a rag doll when he laid her down and covered her. What had been planted deep in her unconscious during her night on the bare hillside was a matter he did not care to speculate on.

He found his way to the kitchen, feeling tired and guilty. Branwen had the coffee percolating and a bottle of whisky to hand in case it was needed. Andrew slumped into a chair and rubbed his unshaven face.

‘Has Gilbert come home?’ he asked.

‘No, he must still be at Bianca’s. You look awful, Andy, as if you’d seen a ghost’

‘I’ve seen worse than that, believe me.’

“What made you take off so suddenly yesterday? When I got your phone call from Bristol asking me to look after the baby till Mandy got back, I was nearly frantic. What did Shafik say to send you chasing across the country like that?’

‘Shafik’s dead. The sisters killed him.’

‘Oh,’she said softly.

‘I helped them do it, may God forgive me. And I became one of the Apart’ ‘How?’ she asked wildly. ‘Why?’

The same way you did. While the women were possessed I—’

He broke off, unable to think of words appropriate to describe the act he had performed with Eileen while she hung bound from the celling.

‘But why, Andy, why?’

‘It was the only way I could see to get through to Bianca.’ ‘ The coffee’s ready,’ Branwen said flatly, ‘you’d better have some.’

While she poured it Andrew went on, ‘So I became Apart and learned the secret The way to get through to Bianca was to offer a woman to attract the Otherworld thing. So I used Mandy.’

‘Did it work?’

He shuddered at the memory of what he had experienced.

‘I saw Bianca. At least I think I saw her. I talked to her and she set me free at last . But in the cold light of morning, the hard truth is that I paid too high a price for my freedom from her. It would have been better if I’d pined away and died with her. At least I’d not have the guilt of what I’ve done to Shafik and Mandy.’

Branwen sat down with him at the kitchen table and put her palm-against his bristly cheek.

‘You feel remorse,’ she said. That’s good. It means you still know the difference between what is right and what is wrong. The real Apart see no difference at all.’

He shook his head doubtfully and kissed her palm.

‘What are you going to do now?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’

The being that you attracted with Mandy - was it like the one we saw on Longman’s Hill? Or was it the superior being Bianca believed in?’

‘It was evil Edwin was right and Bianca wrong. She is lost beyond hope and doesn’t even know it I tried to persuade her to return to her body, but she was completely lost in illusion. The being is only waiting for her to break her connection with life and it will reveal itself to her in its true light .Then there’s no way back for her. She went to it consenting.’ ‘What will it do to her?’

There’s no telling the depths of evil she is sinking into.’

He drank his coffee at a gulp and stood up.

I’m going to her house. I must kn ow whether she’s still

alive.’

‘But you said that you’re free of her!’

‘Free of her, yes, but not free of my own guilt . Are you coming with me? Gilbert’s still there.’

I never want to see him again. But I’ll come with you. Will Mandy be all right alone?’

‘Shell sleep for a long time yet’

On the way to Cheyne Walk he tried to explain to Branwen the insight he had gained during the night ‘When we saw that visio n of the spirit on Longman’s Hill we felt that it was the source of all wickedness. But what I think I found out last nigh t when I was with it is that evi l has no separate existence of its own. I don’t really understand this maybe we need a priest to explain it to us. But it dawned on me somehow that evil is a sort of parasite on good, if words like good and evil have any meaning on their own. That grotesque thing told me that it was God. Maybe it was trying to deceive me by lying, as it had Bianca. Maybe it believes that it is God, because if it compares itself to ordinary men and women, men it is infinitely more powerful. But at the very moment that it told me that it was God, I knew for sure that it wasnt’

‘How did you know?’

“Simply because it told me.’

I don’t follow that at all,’ said Branwen.

‘No, I’m not explaining myself very well. Edwin had the same problem in explaining what he knew. I feel like him now - I’ve soiled myself by dealing with something unclean. There’s a stain on me so deep and revolting that I may never be able to wipe it off. At least I know the stain is there and can try to erase it’

‘Edwin believed that the Apart are damned for ever.’

“Edwin also died trying to save Bianca from that tiling in her bedroom. He knew that he was throwing his life away by tackling it but he went in with fists swinging. Selfsacrifice on that scale can only be reckoned as the highest, virtue, I think now. For the greatest part of his life Edwin was a homicidal madman, but underneath there was good in him and it showed in deeds at the very end. I don’t know if all this makes any sense, but I hope that it is a sign that there’s hope for all the Apart, if they choose to see it’

They left Bianca’s car as near to the house as they could and walked slowly to the front door. Andrew let them in with the key she had given him the night he took Braddock’s body away to be destroyed. They stood in the hall, listening, Branwen holding his arm nervously with both hands. All was quiet After a moment or two Andrew threw the door and car keys on to the hall-stand. He expected to use them no more.

‘When I left here yesterday,’ he said, ‘Gilbert was singing. He’s quiet enough now.’

They went up the staircase, Branwen one step behind him, still holding on to his hand anxiously. Bianca’s bedroom door was ajar, as they had left it Andrew pushed it open and they stood on the threshold, looking in.

Bianca lay in the red lacquered bed as she had the day before. Gilbert was slumped where they had seen him, his back into a comer of the room, his hands between his thighs. It was as if time had stood still for twenty-four hours and nothing had changed.

Branwen stayed rooted in the doorway while Andrew went into the room alone. There was no need to go near Gilbert to see that he was dead. The once luxuriant foliage tattooed over his body looked withered and shrunken, its .reds and greens faded to muddy greys.

For a moment or two Andrew stood by the bedside looking at Bianca before he touched her face. Her white skin had yellowed, her coolness had sunk to the coldness of death. He reached under the covers and grasped her arm and found that it was stiffening into rigor mortis. Sometime while he had been driving back to London from his encounter by the marker stone, Bianca had chosen to sever the tenuous link that bound her soul to her body. All that lay in the bed was an empty husk.

He stood hi thought until Branwen called his name from the doorway.

They’re both dead’ he said in explanation. I’m wondering what to do.’

She came into the room reluctantly and stood by him to look down at Bianca’s face.

There’s nothing you can do,’ she said. ‘Let’s just leave and forget them.’

“It’s not quite that simple. They’ll be found sooner or later and there will be an investigation. I’m certain that an autopsy will show that Bianca died of natural causes. But Gilbert squatting naked over there in the comer is a bit of a complication. I suppose the spirit that possessed him sang and sang through him until his heart gave out . But his presence here will take some explaining. And if that ’s not bad enough, there’s Edwin laid out in another room. It’s all going to look very odd to the police. When they manage to identify Gilbert they’ll come asking you questions. And those temporary servants Bianca hired from the agency can identify you and me.’

“We’ll never be rid of the bitch!’ Branwen exclaimed in anger.

‘Let me just think. There are no marks of violence on Edwin, though you and I know how he died. To a medical examiner it will look as if his heart simply stopped. And you told the temporary butler that he was dead yesterday and that Bianca was prostrate with grief, or something like that And although we know tha t Bianca deliberately ended her own life, no one else could know that They may well assume that she died of grief for Edwin. Her heart simply stopped beating.’

‘Ha!’ said Branwen sarcastically, ‘Grief indeed!’

‘The Apart who knew her may deduce otherwise, but that’s another matter.’

‘Gilbert is the one who spoils the picture, right?’

‘I’ll have to move him.’

‘He’s not coming back to my home,’ Branwen said instantly. -‘He’s caused me trouble enough since he first met Bianca and listened to her. I’m glad he’s dead. I hope he burns in hell.’

‘I didn’t mean that I know another place to take him to - a place in Islington where he. will vanish from the face of the earth forever. If you are ever asked about him, you can say he just left you. He will never be traced, believe me.’

‘What sort of place?’

Andrew put his arm around her shoulders and led her out of the bedroom and down the stairs. From the hall-stand he took the front door key - he was going to need it again after all.

They left Bianca’s car where it was parked and strolled along the Embankment looking for a taxi. Branwen asked him to tell h er more about his intention for Gilbert’s body.

It’s where I got rid of Braddock for her,’ he said. There’s a fire in Islington that consumes unwanted corpses to order.

When they rake it out in the mornin g all that’s left is a few teeth in the ashes, they told me. It costs a certain amount of money, but in Bianca’s bedr oom there is a safe with enough still in it.’

‘Are you sure if s safe to do this?’

‘Ifs the best I can think of.’

‘When will you do it?’

Tonight after dark. I ’11 telephone as soon as we get to your flat and make the arrangements.’

‘And after Gilbert’s gone, what happens next?’

‘One thing at a time,’ he answered wearily.

“What are we going to do about Mandy? She knows more than she should.’ ‘Damn, I’d forgotten her.’

The whisper in his head said, Mandy is a living threat to you. Get rid of her while you can. You and Branwen are the only ones who know she’s even alive and you’ll be the only ones to know she’s dead. No one will come looking for her.

Andrew listened in fascination. He was one of the Apart and such thoughts came naturally to him now.

There’s no need to fear her, the whisper continued; act boldly and you can have Bianca’s fine, house and her money too. Edwin’s income will keep on being delivered, in cash and in gold, as Bianc a told you. Better you should h ave it and enjoy it rather than see it go to waste. All you have to do is to take Bianca’s body and Edwin’s body up to Amy Krasner with Gilbert’s. Then you can move into Cheyne Walk and live in style. It will all be yours.

But what about Mandy?

Take her out into the country again. She trusts you and shell go along. Find a nice quiet place after dark, rape her and cut her throat She can ’t be traced back to you . Her death, will be writte n off as a sex murder by a local.’

And her baby?’

Easier still. Drop it into the Thames at night from one of the bridges.’

Andrew recoiled from where his train of thought had led him.

No, he said silently; ‘I’ve had dealings with you before and I want no more. I’m going back to my real life.’ ‘Doctoring sick cows and pigs?’ ‘Yes, damn you to hell.’

You can’t escape me. You chose to become Apart. You are one of mine.’

In Branwen’s flat they found Mandy up and dressed and eating eggs and bacon in the kitchen. She looked pale but cheerful. ‘

‘Hope you don’t mind,’ she said to Branwen, ‘I woke up with a terrific appetite. I’ve finished all the bacon.’

Andrew sat down across the table from her.

‘Feeling all right?’ he asked.

‘Great, thanks.’

‘No ill effects from last night?‘ ‘Should there be?’

‘How much do you remember of what happened?’ Mandy giggled.

I don’t have to tell you about that,’ she said. ‘All the same, I’d like you to.’ ‘In front of Mrs Pight, you mean? I couldn’t !’ I’ve told her already. We’d like to hear what you think about it’ “ ‘Well, all right There’s not a lot to tell, really. I hadn’t been lying on the grass for more than a minute or two before you jumped on me and gave me the most fantastic doing. I never guessed it could be like that I mean, that it could go on and on for so long. It’s always been over so quick before. I must have passed out in the end from the sheer pleasure, because the next thin g I knew was when I woke up in b ed here.’

Branwen looked enquiringly at Andrew over the girl’s shoulder. He shook his head slightly in warning.

That’s all you remember, Mandy?’

She smiled and spread marmalade on a slice of toast I had a funny dream, but I can’t exactly remember it It was like you were telling me somethi ng very important I expect it will come back to me eventually.’

God forbid that it should, Andrew thought ‘What happened about the experiment?’ Mandy asked.

‘What?’

The experiment we were out in the wilds for. Did it work out the way you expected?’

‘It did,’ he said, and to himself he added, I wish to God that it hadn’t ’

‘You got your money’s worth, then?’ the girl persisted. ‘You could say that’

That’s all right then. I don’t want you changing your mind and getting nasty about the money now you’ve had what you wanted.’ .

The money’s yours, Mandy. I told you that yesterday. What are you going to do with it?’

She looked at him in surprise, a smear of marmalade oh the corner of her mouth.

I’m going away, of course, like I told you. I’ve packed my clothes and fed Ruth. I’m all ready. I’m going down to the station and getting on the first train to Brighton.’

‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’ Andrew asked, troubled.

‘I’m even surer today than I was yesterday. I’m not afraid of being on my own anymore. I can look after myself and Ruthie.’

‘You’re so young, ’ said Branwen.

‘No, I’m not,’ the girl answered firmly. Tve grown up in the last week or two. I was only a kid when my dad raped me. But since I helped Andy kill him, a lot’s been going on in my mind. There was something funny about that afternoon. If you ask me, Mrs Hallam drugged us both to make us do what we did. I was scared about sex because of what my dad did to me and I wouldn’t have stripped off for a stranger if I’d been my normal self. Anyway, it doesnt matter now. I’m not a kid anymore. I feel different inside.’

The word is Apart, thought Andrew; I hope you never learn what you are.

‘If your mind is made up, ’ said Branwen, ‘we won’t try to

stop you. Do you want me to phone for a taxi to take you to Victoria?’

‘Would you? It’s like going on holiday ’

Branwen left the kitchen to telephone. Andrew hardly knew what to say. He felt responsible for Mandy and he knew that she would not allow him to be responsible for her. By his actions-he had set her on the path she now intended to follow. Nothing he could do or say would turn her back.

‘Mandy, be careful in your new life,’ he said lamely. There are plenty of people who will try to take advantage of you. They’ll be after your money and your body. Some try force and some try persuasion.’

It sounded silly as he said it and it made the girl grin.

‘You think I don’t know that already? Look, Andy, I like you because ever since my mum was murdered you’re the only person who’s been nice to me. I’ve got a lot to thank you for.

You got me free from my old man and you’ve given me the money to start on my own. I shan’t forget that’

‘Mandy, I haven’t been good to you. I’ve brought a lot of evil into your life.’

‘Don’t you believe it! You’ve given me a life of my own. All you’ve got out of it is having me a couple o f times. I’ve got the best of th e bargain. I’ll never forget you, I promise.’

‘You should try to. And when you’re settled, in a year or two, look for someone to love.’

I’m not going to wait that long, not now I know how terrific it can be.’

‘I don’t mean sex, I mean love. Like the way you love Ruth.’ That’s a funny thing to say.’

‘It must sound so to you now. But keep it in mind. It’s the best advice I can give you.’ ‘If you say so.’

Branwen came back into the room. The taxi’s on its way,’ she said.

‘I’ll go down and wait for it at the entrance,’ said Mandy, getting up.

Andrew helped her carry down her pathetically small case of belongings and the baby in its carry-cot “Have you got the key to the left-luggage box?’ he asked.

She nodded. A taxi drew up at the kerb.

‘Good luck, Mandy.’

‘Shall I see you again?’ she asked.

I don’t know. If you get into bad trouble, call me.’

She kissed his cheek and scr ambled into the taxi with the carry-cot ‘Victoria station,’ Andrew said to the driver and stood watching as the taxi pulled away into the traffic.

Back in Branwen’s flat he looked up the number in the directory and telephoned Amy Krasner. She was pleased to hear from him.

Want to come round here?’ she asked with a throaty chuckle.

Tonight, late. I’ve got th e same sort of job for you as last time.’

‘Oh, business is it?’ she asked, her tone changing. ‘Make it about one in the morning. Same price as last time.’

‘I’ll have everything ready, ’ she said, and then her tone changed again as she added, ‘and I’ll be wearing my new frillies this time.’

Andrew was bone tired. His night-long vigil and the gruesome encounter he had brought about had drained him. He went to bed, asking Branwen to wake him at nine in the evening if he were still asleep then.

Tired as he was, to fall asl eep was hard, there was so much on his mind. Bianca’s unstable world of evil had disintegr ated

so swiftly. Her vast power had in the end proved illusory and vain. Edwin was dead, Gilbe rt was dead, Bianca herself was dead. Above all, the monstrous en tity that believed itself to be God had claimed that it owne d him because he had given him self to it ‘

I must sleep, he thought or I shall be in no condition tonight to do what still has to be done. I have to dispose of Gilbert In his mind’s eye he saw the oven door and the glowin g red of the fire when they had put Braddock in.

His thoughts turned to Amy Krasner. He found some relief from the fears that haunted him in the remembrance of her huge soft breasts with the inverted nipples. He fantasised fondly about her broad fleshy buttocks which he had pressed himself against as he had thrust into her welcoming depths. He remembered the chuckle with which she had said, You brought me off four times. Amy had brought him a kind of spiritual peace that time. Perhaps she could do so again, though his trouble had multiplied infinitely since then. His erotic reverie calmed his fears and gradually he drifted off into sleep.

It was an uneasy sleep, hag-ridden by unformed terrors and forebodings. Two or three times he started up in bed, sweating in the clutch of panic. And soon he descended to the very nadir of despair. It seemed to him that a great leathery hand had him by the throat and was hauling him down into a miasma of evil that was as tangible and revolting as a cesspit In the last moment before his head went under, he heard himself cry out in agony of spirit My God, why have You forsaken met The answer was instantaneous, God has not forsaken you. You have forsaken Him.

Help me, help me, he choked, his mouth filling with ordure, I can’t get back to Him by myself.

His involuntary prayer was answered. The grip on his throat eased and vanished. The stench of evil drowning him faded away. For a moment he was breathless with anticipation and then a gentle glow of hope suffused him. The sense of hope grew into a certainty. Joy coursed through his veins, through his mind, through his entire body, and swelled into exaltation.

He woke with the exaltation fierce in him. He was lying on his side and Branwen, naked, had lain down beside him. Her hands clasped his straining part. Dazed by the race of feeling in him, he felt her throw one leg over his and guide him into her slippery cleft ‘Oh God !‘ he gasped, thrust twice and spurted into her.

Branwen held him tight during his throes of release. When he lay still again she mopped his face gently with a corner of the bed sheet ‘You were having a nightmare,’ she said. ‘I heard you crying out from the other end of the flat’

‘I think I was dying,’ he said. ‘You saved me. Thank you, Branwen, thank you, thank you,’ and he kissed her breasts again and again in gratitude.

‘Was it that bad?’

‘You answered the question for me, ’ he said.

‘What question?’

‘Are the Apart damned for ever.’

‘Are we?’

He thought for a moment or two, trying to get into clear focus what he had felt ‘No, there is always a way back for us. I’m sure of it What makes it so difficult is that we can’t stand face to face with God, as we can with the demon Bianca invoked. But we can find him in each other. That’s what Edwin came to understand eventually, though he couldn’t make Bianca understand. Perhaps you and I can.’

‘Andy, there’s no God in me for you to find. I’m only a woman.’

I’m only a man. However insignificant we feel we are, God is in us, otherwise we would be less than human.’ ‘What do we have to do?’

‘We have to be ourselves, not less than human, like the Apart’

‘But we are Apart, both of us.’

‘Not forever. When Bianca’s demon whisp ers in our minds, as he will to our dying day, we spit in his face and laugh at his worthless offers of power and knowledge.’

‘It sounds too easy.’

Andrew sat up and stroked her long hair. ‘I don’t suppose it will be easy at all. The offers will get bigger and better and will take different forms.’

‘I don’t know if I have the strength of will.’

‘Neither do I. But there’s no other way for us now. To morrow, after I’ve cleared up in Cheyne Walk, we’ll leave here and go to my place. Well live together and we’ll try very hard to love each other. Then we’ve a chance.’

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

Chapter 1

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 9

Chapter 11

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21