by Stephen Laws
‘Helen! Get down!’ And there was another savage blow, a thunk of something solid and the hissing of shattered glass as thousands of glittering fragments showered into the car. Joanne instinctively shielded her eyes, felt glass stinging on her cheeks and hands; Helen was still screaming wordless, bawling cries of sheer terror. Then Joanne saw the man for the first time. In an instant, she had taken in the ravaged, stained face, the matted filth, the wild streaked hair, the ragged jacket and trousers. He was pulling an iron railing back across the bonnet of the car. She could see the insane glittering of his eyes in the half-light as he lurched around the front of the car, making his way towards where she sat, raising the railing in one hand like a spear. The next few seconds seemed to go on forever.
Joanne thrusting the gears into reverse and switching on again. The engine coughing into life as the wild man rounded the front of the car and moved towards her, grasping forwards with his free hand. Her foot lifting from the clutch pedal as the other pumped hard at the accelerator. A flurry of tattered coat sleeve as a blood-streaked arm clutched at her through the gaping aperture where the windscreen had been, seizing the lapel of her coat. The face leering sideways at her through the aperture; the arm drawn back to plunge the iron spear into her body.
The car hurtled backwards up the drive with a screech of tires. Joanne saw the man twist away from the hood, but he was still clutching at the frame of the windshield and she could see his legs trailing in the gravel as the car dragged him backwards. She hammered at his fingers with the heel of her free hand, steering blind with the other, and heard a shivering clang as the iron railing spun away across the drive. Now the man was clutching the metalwork with both hands as the car slewed off the drive into the garden and continued backwards towards the house, with Helen screaming: ‘Mummeeeeee . . .’ Then the hands were gone from the car and Joanne could see the ragged body rolling over and over on the grass, smashing into the ornamental fountain and knocking it into the pool. She twisted round, correcting her steering as the car roared towards the front of the house, tugged desperately at the wheel, braked . . . and then the car slammed sideways into the porch. More glass flew through the air; Joanne was jerked to one side as the panelling of the offside door crumpled inwards under the impact. There was another muffled thump as Helen fell between the seats in the back.
Joanne grabbed the keys from the dashboard, kicked open the door and climbed out. The man was still lying on the grass, moving faintly and dazedly. She opened the car’s rear door. Helen was sobbing and Joanne lifted her quickly out from between the seats; the Looby-Lu doll fell forgotten onto the pathway. Joanne held Helen to her as if she were only six months old again, cradling her daughter in her arms as she ran round the car to the front door of the house. She could feel her heart pounding, her neck aching badly due to the whiplash effect in the car. She groped at the lock with her keys, glancing backwards over her shoulder to see the man rising groggily to his feet. Stifling a cry, she jammed a key into the lock. But it wasn’t the right one; it was the key to the back door – not the front – and the lock would not turn. The man was looking around on the grass; he had retrieved the iron railing and was picking it up as Joanne fumbled for the correct key, found it and rammed it into the lock. When she looked back, the man was shambling across the lawn towards her and gabbling like a maniac, his head bowed and with the railing clenched in his fist. Helen was whimpering, her arms wrapped tightly around Joanne’s neck. She began to shout: ‘He’s coming, Mummy! He’s coming . . .’
The door was suddenly open and Joanne was through quicker than thought, slamming it shut behind her and leaning heavily against the wood. Fighting for breath, she twisted the lock and felt a muffled thump on the other side. She tugged her daughter’s small reluctant arms from around her neck and lowered her to the floor, focusing her attention on the telephone at the other end of the hall. The door shuddered under a heavy attack from outside. Another blow, and this time Joanne was appalled at the ferocity of the impact; instinctively, she braced herself against the panelling. Helen stood crying in the middle of the hall, not knowing where to go or what to do; wondering why her mother couldn’t make the horrible man go away.
A sliver of wood whirled into the hall as the pointed tip of the iron railing burst through the wooden panelling only three inches from Joanne’s head. Helen screamed again, holding her hands across her eyes to blot out everything as Joanne lurched away from the door, grabbed her daughter and moved desperately to the telephone. With a splintering crack, the railing pierced the door again, wriggling and twisting as the man pulled it free. An entire length of panelling twitched to the carpet. Terror mounting inside her, Joanne snatched up the telephone and dialled 999 – she could see the man now, a blur of shadowed movement through the long rent in the woodwork as he launched a savage attack on the door.
‘Emergency. Which service, please?’ said a tinny voice at the other end of the line. The railing stabbed inwards again. Turned, twisted and wrenched an entire square panel from the door.
‘Police, please! And hurry . . . Oh, God . . .’
‘Connecting you . . .’
The man’s hand was scrabbling through the aperture towards the lock, fingers spasming and fumbling for the catch.
‘Mummy! He’s getting in!’ Helen clutched tightly at her legs. Another shivering blow at the door. A voice on the other end of the line. But it was too late now. Too late even to blurt out an address as the door burst inwards. Joanne dropped the telephone, leaving the receiver swaying and dangling on its flex, scooped up her daughter again and bundled her into the kitchen. She slammed the door shut and could hear heavy breathing in the hall as the man entered, the heavy tread of his feet crunching on the fragments of wood that littered the hall carpet.
There’s no lock on the kitchen door! Joanne realised, with horror thrilling through every fibre of her being.
She could hear an insane babbling and ranting as the man reached the telephone; a light tinkling as he picked it up, and then a frenzied scrabbling and ripping as he began to tear at the receiver like a wild animal. She could hear the snapping of the cable as it tore loose from the wall; the slam and clatter as it was thrown across the hall.
With one sweep of her arm, Joanne knocked everything from the kitchen table and, in slow motion, watched herself drag the table across the floor to the door; watched as she up-ended it, the legs sticking out into the room. The door handle was already turning as she thrust the table forward and jammed the rim underneath it. She could hear him laughing crazily as he began to throw himself at the door, knowing at the same time that it was only made of flimsy wood, that he could punch his fist right through at any moment. She moved quickly back to the kitchen bench, to the rack of table knives hanging on the wall. She took the thick, brown-handled knife with the sharpest cutting edge and turned back to face the door.
The man was still laughing, only now it was a horrible, low, chuckling noise as he twisted at the door handle and began to push with all his weight against the door. The door was opening, a shriek of protesting wood on floor tiles as the table rasped aside. Joanne moved purposefully, the terror thrust behind her, feeling ice-calm and collected deep inside as she pushed Helen down into a corner, turned the knife over in her hand so that the blade was pointing downwards and then forced herself to move towards the opening door. A claw-like hand was thrusting around the corner of the door, grasping at the wood like a mottled, hungry spider. Joanne saw herself raise the knife high, bring it down hard and sharp on the tattered arm, felt the blade sink deeply. The man shrieked and suddenly the arm was yanking away, dragging the knife backwards with it. Joanne twisted the knife away, felt the tip of the blade snap inside the arm. And the man was screaming and screaming. Quickly she threw her hip at the door, slamming it shut again. She pulled the table back into place, wedged it there and listened, panting in desperation as she held the knife high and waiting. The man was g
ibbering and crying, retreating from the door. She could hear his footsteps on the littered carpet again, the slight creaking of the ruined front door as he moved outside.
My God, she thought, he’s going away . . . going away . . .
But Joanne knew that the logic of nightmare demanded that he would not go away, that he had merely retreated for an instant. She looked at the large glass windows, realising that if he should move round into the back garden, there could be no stopping him from getting to them. She could not hear him anymore, could only hear her own ragged breathing. Quickly, she moved to her daughter, crouched down low amid the shattered crockery and waited. She resisted her first impulse to push the table aside and fling open the door, to dash up the stairs to the bedroom – and the telephone extension on the bedside table. What if he was still out there, lurking in the hall and waiting for her to open the door? Pressing Helen close to her breast with one hand, keeping the knife raised high in the other, she strained to hear every sound from the back garden. Just one noise was all she needed, one tell-tale sign of movement – his breathing or a footstep – and she would know that he was out there, that she could make a dash for the stairs.
She could hear moaning. A low, desperate moaning from somewhere in the darkening gloom of the back garden. She was sure of it. Now! she told herself. Now! And they were both moving forward, shambling across the kitchen below the level of the window sill towards the table, Joanne’s eyes glued to the large panes for any sign of movement. She was pulling the table edge from under the door handle, wincing as the wood scraped harshly on the floor, and realising that the man must be able to hear the noise. She stood up quickly, pulled the table roughly aside and, heedless now of the noise, tugged the door open. As she turned back to Helen, she could see the dark and rearing shape beyond the kitchen window; stifled a scream as two outthrust arms lunged through the glass towards them in an explosion of glistening shards. She grasped Helen to pull her away, but the impetus of the arms was greater. Clawed fingers tangled in Helen’s long blonde hair, jerking her backwards away from Joanne and towards the window sill as sheets of glass cracked, splintered and shattered around them. The man was laughing triumphantly. Helen slammed into the wall, lost her footing but was kept from falling to the floor by the remorseless grip on her hair. The other arm snaked downwards over the shattered sill towards her.
And then Joanne was at her daughter’s side, slashing at his arms with the knife, feeling the sharp cutting edge slicing through the ragged sleeves and into the flesh. An arm twitched away and covered his head as she lashed out in frenzy at the black tattered mass which was his face. But the other gnarled fist remained clasped in Helen’s hair as the little girl twisted and screamed. Joanne felt the blade slice across the man’s forehead, saw him lurch backwards and fall away from the window, dragging Helen upwards towards the jagged fragments of glass jutting from the shattered window sill. Sobbing, she seized a handful of hair close to Helen’s scalp, gripped hard to counteract the dragging force of the man’s hand and sawed furiously at the rope of hair between her own hand and the man’s unbreakable grip. She felt the hair finally part and saw the man’s hand vanish over the sill, still clutching a handful of Helen’s beautiful hair. Helen was deathly white and silent as Joanne snatched her away and ran out into the hall. Oh God, she thought, she’s in shock.
The man was howling as he clambered over the window sill and into the kitchen.
Joanne stumbled up the staircase, hearing the insane screaming and the crunching of broken glass behind her; she was crying out angrily and bitterly in her mind: Where are you, Mark? Why aren’t you here? Reaching the landing, she hurtled into the bedroom, swung Helen quickly onto the bed and moved to the wardrobe beside the door. She could hear him coming up the stairs towards them, could hear the heavy, irregular breathing, the muffled tread on the stair carpet. She could feel the invisible rushing of air as the man blundered quickly towards the door. And in one slithering motion, she had pulled the wardrobe in front of the door, a small part of her mind recalling, even in the immensity of her terror, that it had taken Mark and herself almost a quarter of an hour to move the wardrobe from one end of the room to another when they were redecorating. She threw her weight against the wardrobe and twisted round to the bedside table and the telephone. The man was throwing himself at the door, howling and moaning in frustration, sounding more animal than human. Joanne saw Helen sit up, get up off the bed and walk calmly round to the other side, saw her pick up the telephone and begin to dial.
‘Ask for the police, darling! Tell them our address . . .’ But Helen looked up at her from the telephone, tears brimming in her eyes.
‘It’s broken, Mummy.’
And Joanne realised how stupid she had been. With the downstairs extension destroyed, the cable ripped away from the wall, there could be no chance that the upstairs telephone would be in working order. The connection had been severed. And now the wardrobe was easing away from the door under the onslaught from the other side. Joanne turned back to her daughter to tell her to hide in one of the cupboards, to get out of sight. She was completely unprepared for the inhuman impact that followed. She was falling away from the wardrobe onto the bed, the wardrobe itself toppling over backwards from the door. The door crashed open on one shattered hinge. He couldn’t be so strong, thought Joanne. Nothing could be so strong. She struggled to her feet as she saw the blur of motion which was the ragged man-thing lunging at her from around the door. She saw the swinging railing and felt the blow on the side of her head, but there was no pain. Everything was disjointed. She realised that she had fallen across the bed again as the ceiling swam into view and she saw the shattered door swaying on its hinge. Her angle of vision tilted crazily again across the room and now she could see the impossibly tall, ragged man standing in the middle of the room, shoulders hunched, head bowed and iron railing dangling from one horribly mangled hand. She could hear his strangled breathing. And then she saw the small blonde figure which stood before him, looking up intensely into his insane face. Joanne heard the childish voice, lonely and forlorn in the suddenly vast bedroom, and could see her daughter’s face set in outrage and defiance.
‘You hurt my mother.’ It was a simple, childlike condemnation carrying with it an impossible, hopeless threat. Joanne was screaming, groping helplessly across the counterpane towards them and feeling the pain bite at her temple. The man was raising the iron railing in a painfully slow arc as Helen stood, her lip trembling, the same condemnation of the monster above her impressed on her features. The man was chuckling as he brought the railing to its fullest height.
It was inevitable, Joanne knew, and she screamed at the awful fate which had brought this thing to her house, screamed a wordless plea and felt the universe swing and tilt as the railing began its descent.
And now everything was exploding into chaos, into a frantic whirl of action. The man was falling away from Helen as something hurtled into the room from the doorway and took him around the waist. She could hear a man shouting, saw the monster whirl round as the form pinioned his flailing arm. They were crashing across the room and the man-thing was lunging and thrashing like a wild beast. But Joanne did not believe what she saw. It was a nightmare and she knew that the worst things always happened in nightmares. It was a cruel joke. Helen lay broken and dead on the carpet. She knew that this could be the only truth before she fainted away into a maelstrom of pain and colour.
Nine
‘Oh, no . . .’ Davies said in a small voice as Chadderton drove up to the gateway of his house. Chadderton could see that there was a Morris Marina bent around the front porch of the building, with smoke billowing from the radiator. Broken glass glinted sharply in the garden. Chadderton seemed to feel a familiar thrill of horror permeating the air as he swung the car savagely into the drive and towards the house. He could feel the same dank chill in his bones that he had felt on the day that his wife had . . .
He could see that the front door appeared to have been hacked apart. Davies was yelling at him to hurry, had opened the car door and jumped out even before Chadderton had braked to a halt. Chadderton was close behind, feeling a dreadful familiarity as Davies vanished through the frame of the front door. Wood splinters and fragments littered the carpet, the kitchen door was open and Chadderton could see that the kitchen window had been broken. Davies bulleted ahead of him to look into the kitchen as Chadderton moved to the living room door.
‘Joanne!’ Davies’ eyes were starting from his head in horror-stricken desperation. And then they both heard the crash and the scream from upstairs. Chadderton reached the stairs before Mark, took them two at a time without realising it and rounded the top of the staircase. He saw the shattered bedroom door and heard a small, tearful voice from inside the room. Chadderton hurled himself at the doorway. Moving fast, he saw the ragged shape standing in the middle of the floor, towering over the small child, and took in the prone figure of a woman on the bed groping towards the two others. Chadderton kept moving, saw the iron railing in the man’s hand raised high to strike and collided with him as he started to turn, grabbing the upheld arm and keeping it there. Chadderton was a heavy man, his bulk carrying the man sideways away from the child and into the far corner of the room. But the man was incredibly strong and Chadderton could feel his grip twisting on the man’s arm as the latter whirled simultaneously to wrap his other arm around Chadderton’s neck.
Chadderton had a vision of a wild, blood-streaked face; of insane, staring eyes and straggling matted hair as they collided with the bedroom wall. The man was moaning and gibbering and Chadderton realised: God, he’s trying to bite me! Chadderton slammed him backwards against the wall again, jerking the arm which held the pointed railing away from him and jamming it as hard as he could against the wall. Davies was suddenly at his side and had seized the railing, twisting it with all his strength from the man’s grip. As the railing left his hand, life seemed to vanish altogether from the tattered scarecrow. It’s as if somebody’s pulled the plug out, thought Chadderton grimly as the man collapsed against him, sliding down the wall and finally coming to rest on the carpet, eyes closed, breathing heavily and painfully. Chadderton stood back from him and turned to look as Davies strode quickly across the room to his wife and cradled her in his arms. Chadderton moved over to them and saw the blood on the woman’s temple.