The Jonah
Page 26
The sharp blasts that rang out caused her body to jerk violently and her hand dropped reflexively to her mouth. Fresh nausea swept through her as the creature turned towards the source of light, for more of its body was exposed to the glare. Ellie’s stomach heaved when she saw the two long, distended breasts, their flesh cross-thatched with dark veins and sores. The nipples were red and pointed, almost like tiny fingers protruding from the softer mounds.
Ellie finally screamed and vomit poured from her when something thudded into the creature’s face, tearing away the protuberance that was its nose. But the deformed figure hardly flinched and no blood flowed from the wound. It made no sound as it moved towards the torchlight.
The gunshots had shaken Kelso from his cataleptic state; his first thoughts were for Ellie and he wildly looked around for her. Another shot rang out and the bullet smashed into the stump of the creature’s arm. Pieces of bone shattered outwards and a thick tendril of flesh swung freely, but the hump-backed figure did not seem to feel any pain. It continued to shuffle forward.
Suddenly, the torch was dropped and the light vanished. As Kelso tried to see into the black void, he heard scuffling sounds, someone running, moaning noises that resembled the whimperings of a trapped animal. He made himself move, crawling in the direction of the girl.
She heard him coming and tried to get away. His hand had closed around her outstretched leg before she had the chance.
‘Ellie, it’s me.’
She hesitated, then he was holding her, pulling her face close to his own, and she knew she had been mistaken; the creature was no part of him. She wiped the sickness from her lips and tried to speak, but it was still too soon – no words would come.
Someone screamed, a demented howl that joined the wind, and they knew it was Slauden. Shapes in the darkness slowly became visible, but only a gunflash and its simultaneous roar helped them locate the fleeing figure. He was near the end of the long room, his back against the wall. They had briefly seen the hunch-backed shape silhouetted in the swift burst of light; it was only a few yards away from Slauden.
Now Slauden had moved towards the far window and they could see him against the lighter patch in the general darkness, beating against the panes, trying to force a way out. Glass shattered, but it was a futile effort; the window-frames were never meant to be opened. He turned to face the thing that was reaching out for him with one withered hand and one mutilated stump. He screamed. And screamed. And screamed.
The explosive collapse of the wall behind and the floor beneath him saved Slauden from the nightmare, but its sanctuary was death.
Kelso and Ellie cowered away from the sudden fiery brightness and their heads reeled with the roar. The floor heaved upwards and they clung to each other, sure that the floorboards would break up and they would fall through.
The wall at the far end fell away, the old bricks torn apart by the explosion that had come from below. Large sections of the floor at that end disappeared too and, through the dust and smoke, Kelso saw the far grain bin begin to topple, the grinding, tearing sound just another element of the madness sweeping through the feed mill. It vanished into the night like the sinking funnel of a lost ship.
Small fires had started in the rafters and beams of the old building, but the pounding rain did not allow them to spread. The storm rushed in, for now there was nothing at all to hinder it, and they were blinded by its force.
Kelso stirred himself; he shouted at Ellie, but the explosion had momentarily deafened both of them. He began to drag her limp body towards the stairwell. He tried to stand and pull her to her feet, but the effort was too much; he sank to his knees and cradled her in his arms.
Ellie’s fingers dug into his wrists and he winced at the sharp pain. Then he saw why she had squeezed him.
Through the swirling smoke and the pelting rain, through the shadows that were now disturbed by the weak flickering of dying flames, came the bent, black shape of the creature that Kelso had called ‘twin’.
Ellie staggered to her feet and tried to run, for the mutant wanted her. There was no reasoning behind Ellie’s fear, only instinctive knowledge. Her legs were too tired, her spirit too drained, for her to get far. She fell against a heavy rising beam and lay there, fingernails digging deep into the rotting wood, sobs racking her beaten body. She felt, rather than saw, the misshapen shadow loom over her, and her senses began to spin. It was hopeless; the creature wanted her dead because she had become part of Kelso’s life. Ellie understood, but did not know how she understood.
The voice was faint in her ears, for the deafness had not yet fully cleared. It sounded like Kelso. She forced her head around so that she could see.
He was on his knees between her and the monstrosity, one hand on the floor to keep his exhausted body upright, another hand raised against the creature.
Kelso looked at the sister who had never left him, who had been there all his life, seen only as something lurking in shadows, or sometimes in the periphery of his vision. An ugly, deformed sister, who had not lived after birth, who had been abandoned with him by a mother they had never known. But the sister had refused to succumb completely to death; her spirit had wanted to live, to experience life just as her brother would. She had clung to his life, living off him as a parasite lives off its host. Her spirit, her soul, had grown, just as his earthly body had grown, for she fed on his psyche, and had developed with him. Always there, always watching, the manifestation of her spirit always strongest on the anniversary of their birth. Who was their mother? What woman would so cruelly reject her offspring? And what manner of creature could spawn such an abomination?
He gazed up into the dull black eyes and his own filled with tears. Thoughts that were not of his consciousness were pushing into his mind. Their mother was unimportant: she had paid for perverted copulation and the abandonment of those whom she should have cherished, yet whom she considered to be the physical marks of her own shame. She was dead but her torment went on.
And through the alien thoughts, Kelso knew this miscreation despised him, envied him the life that had been denied to her, his sister. And yet she loved him, also. The twisted seed of hate had grown as they themselves had grown, but her torment of him had been tempered always by that stronger instinct of kindred love. She protected him because he was her life-force; without him there was nothing but dark eternity for her. She loved him and despised his loves. No one would share him with her. Not even the couple who had reared him as their own. No friends. No women. No one.
Kelso’s tears stopped. He stared at the creature in disbelief. ‘No!’ he screamed. ‘Oh, God, no . . .!’
He struck out at the figure before him, but his fist touched nothing.
‘Leave me alone!’ he cried. ‘Stop haunting me! For God’s sake . . . please . . . please . . . leave . . . my . . . life . . . please . . .!’
He bent forward, his face buried in his hands, body swaying backwards and forwards.
Ellie hardly understood what was taking place; she reached out for him, but was afraid to move closer – the creature was too near. She could only watch, emotion wrenching at her, pity and a burning love for this man who knelt before the strange gargoyle, fighting against the terrible dread she felt inside.
She watched, the dread deepening until it clawed at her throat, as the hunched figure touched Kelso’s head with its withered hand.
And then it was gone, fading into the shadows like an apparition.
Kelso had raised his head, was looking around, searching. Searching for something that was no longer. When he turned back to Ellie, she knew the burden had been lifted, for she could sense the new hope in him, could feel it emanating from his exhausted body and flowing towards her.
For one brief moment, she felt a sickening apprehension, the dread returning like a swift debilitating disease. Her mind spun and she thought she would collapse. But it quickly passed. She held her arms out towards him.
20
They sat huddled in the b
ack of the boat as it sped them, and others, towards the safety of higher ground. The rain was just a thin drizzle and the wind no more than a chill breeze. The daylight was still grey, wintry, but it held no threat.
Kelso pulled the oilskin further down over their heads and smiled at Ellie. ‘It’s all over,’ he told her.
She smiled, but did not reply. She gazed into the distance towards the low-lying hills where warmth and comfort waited.
The helicopters had come at dawn, one appearing at the open end of the mill, coming into view like a giant dragonfly projected onto a huge grey screen. The dust and grain its whirling blades disturbed blinded them at first, even though they were far back inside the building, perched at the top of the metal stairwell, the only structure in the mill that they still considered safe. Kelso had stumbled forward, waving his arms and shouting, and the pilot had given him the thumbs-up sign in acknowledgement. Later, when the boat had arrived to collect them, they learned that the RAF had been particularly curious to study the damage done by old World War Two mines that had been uncovered from tombs of silt and raised to the surface once more by the floodwaters. Apparently the feed mill had not been the only building in the area damaged by the old defence weapons.
Ellie shivered and Kelso slipped a hand around her waist, pulling her closer. He was tired, his eyelids heavy, his limbs aching dully. And he was dirty, his chin unshaved, his hair matted and full of dust. But he felt a lightness inside, the feeling of just having overcome a long, wearing illness. He was exhausted, but he felt alive, exhilarated.
‘She’s gone, Ellie,’ he said again, for he had tried to explain everything to her before they had fallen into an exhausted but troubled slumber. ‘She listened to me. Maybe somewhere inside her she knew it was wrong to cling to my life. Maybe she really loved me enough to let me go.’ The sound of the boat’s engine drowned his words from the others around them.
‘Or maybe the power she had just burned out.’ Kelso shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said simply. ‘The LSD made me regress, made me see what had been happening all these years. It unlocked my mind, Ellie, and I think that was also the key to her manifestation. It unleashed some psychic power in me that she used. Oh, God, how she used it.’
He thought of the explosion. He thought of Bannen’s horrific death. And Slauden’s. He thought of the flood itself.
Kelso wiped a tired hand over the stubble of his chin. He needed a smoke, but felt disinclined to ask for one from the dispirited people in the boat. Their homes and lives had been wrecked by the flood; they had their own wounds to lick.
‘She came to me that first night in the cellar. I didn’t know if it was for real or just part of the nightmare. Even now I’m wondering if it wasn’t all some mad hallucination.’ He laughed quietly. ‘But you were there too; you saw what happened.’
She nodded and her hand closed over the top of his.
‘I feel free, Ellie,’ he said. ‘I can start again. No more bad luck – no more than anyone else gets, at least. No more Jonah, Ellie. Just me, on my own. Unless you want to be part of my life. I’m kind of counting on you.’
She squeezed his hand and smiled, then turned away, releasing his hand to pull the slipping oilskin back over her shoulder.
Kelso stared at her as she continued to gaze into the distance. His face had drained white again. Had he imagined it? Was the drug still playing tricks with his mind?
For one brief instant as he had looked into her eyes, they had been totally black. No whites, no irises. Just a dull, reflective black. But before she had turned away again, they had become a clear blue, the pupils large but normal. He shook his head: it had to be his imagination. He was too tired and too much had happened. Jesus, he was going to sleep for a week after this.
A slight stinging sensation made him glance down towards his hand. He froze. Parts of the skin were pressed inwards: five tiny but deep indents. Indents that looked as if they had been made by a clawed hand.
He looked up at Ellie, but her face was turned away from him. She seemed to be scanning the distant hills as though discovering a new land.
The Jonah
James Herbert is not just Britain’s number one bestselling writer of chiller fiction, a position he has held ever since publication of his first novel, but is also one of our greatest popular novelists, whose books are sold in thirty-three foreign languages, including Russian and Chinese. Widely imitated and hugely influential, his twenty-three novels have sold more than forty-eight million copies worldwide.
Also by James Herbert
The Rats
The Fog
The Survivor
Fluke
The Spear
The Dark
Lair
Shrine
Domain
Moon
The magic Cottage
Sepulchre
Haunted
Creed
Portent
The Ghosts of Sleath
‘48
Others
Once
Noboby True
Graphic Novels
The City
(Illustrated by Ian Miller)
Non-fiction
By Horror Haunted
(Edited by Stephen Jones)
James Herbert’s Dark Places
(Photographs by Paul Barkshire)
First published 1981 by New English Library
This edition published 1999 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2011 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-447-20327-8 EPUB
Copyright © James Herbert 1981
The right of James Herbert to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title page
Author biography
Contents
April, 1950
1
2
3
4
5
April, 1953
6
7
8
9
April, 1960
10
11
April, 1969
12
April, 1976
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Copyright page