Harvest (57 page)

Rachel looked to Cat with alarm.
“What are you saying?”

Helen turned away from the image
of the basement and stood between Rachel and Cat. She took Rachel’s
hands in hers as she had when she had told her she was dying. “If
you follow the path you have chosen, Cat will die.”

“
We are all at risk down
there.”

“
But if you face the
beast. Cat will not survive.”

“
Don’t say that.” Rachel
sagged in Helen’s grip her legs buckling beneath her. “It can’t be
– you can’t know for sure.”

“
Don’t let fear turn you
against an ability that you have always trusted and relied upon.
It’s why I am here. I have never needed to come back before, but I
saw the future and I had to come.”

“
No. You said Cat and I
had a future together?”

Helen smiled warmly. “There is a
future for you both. What you have chosen to do is noble and brave
– what I would expect of you, but it will lead to death and
pain.”

A guilty selfishness crawled
within Rachel. She could say to the others that she couldn’t sense
the thing, that they had got it wrong that they should leave before
they got caught by the fire-fighters and police. She could get Cat
out.

“
Rachel, it is your
decision but the course you have chosen has consequences, I will be
here for Cat when the time comes as I will be here for you in the
future when it is your time.”

Rachel had accepted that what
they were doing could be the end for all of them, but she had never
considered that she might survive and lose Cat. Cat was all she had
left in her life.

“
But all the people in
this tower… What should we do about them? We can’t abandon –
.”

Helen shook her head sagely. “I
didn’t mention abandoning the others, but not all battles have to
be fought by you or fought alone. Let others fight this one. You
are in control of your actions. If you warn them they will listen.
If you leave; they will follow.”

Chapter
Forty Five

Craig maintained the aim of the
nail gun at the locker despite the ache in his arms at holding the
weighty tool before him. He glanced around him at the fires that
continued to burn steady. He felt vulnerable having the open fire
door to the stairs behind him, but Kelly had their backs. But the
thing could appear behind them… His nerve went and he craned over
his shoulder. Nothing.

Rachel shrieked “Craig!”

Startled he glanced at her, saw
the panic in her eyes, her finger stabbing insistently for him to
look back at the lockers. The gap was no longer empty. A gaunt pale
woman, her blonde hair dirty with grime and dust, matted in places
and plastered to her face in others with sweat and blood, stumbled
out from between the lockers. Her clothes were filthy with dust and
dirt and her staggering exhausted movements all made her appear as
if she had crawled out of the ground itself. It wasn’t her presence
that startled Craig, but the voice that issued from the dry cracked
lips. “Craig. Craig, help me.”

Vicki fell to the floor but
continued to crawl away from the lockers. Craig went to lunge
towards her when he was halted by Rachel screaming at him.

“
No Craig! Look
out!”

The undertaker appeared in the
gap. Its mouth hung open in a cruel grin.

“
Shoot it, Craig!” Cat
hissed in his ear from behind him.

Vicki, rolled onto her side and
seeing the undertaker behind her, her crawl became a scramble.

This was it. It was
starting. Craig looped his fingers round the trigger and felt the
cold metal in his sweaty grip. It was strange to think that all he
had to do was pull the trigger and he would most likely kill the
thing. It was going to be over quicker than he thought. He was glad
too. He wanted this over. Wanted to kill the creatures and get
Vicki and himself out. There was gnawing doubt in his gut.
Why did he hesitate?

“
Craig –shoot it!” Cat
demanded, her voice losing it’s steadiness in his ear.

Craig’s finger tightened
against the resistance of the trigger, but the figure of the
undertaker was suddenly replaced by Cat. He remembered Cat had said
it might try and get into their heads.
Don’t trust your senses.
Craig closed his eyes
hoping his eyelids would wipe the image of Cat away and reveal the
undertaker, he opened them again and found it had worked, the
undertaker stood before him raising its knife threateningly at
Vicki as it advanced.

Suddenly it was Cat again.
“Don’t point that at me!”

Cat’s voice from behind him
urged him on. “It’s not me. Shoot it.”

It was using Cat’s appearance to
get around him. He channelled all his hate for the
trickster-stalker that tried to confuse his mind and focussed it
into the finger on the trigger to loose a stream of nails into its
face.

“
Don’t point that at me!”
Cat snapped at Craig as she stared into the eye of Craig’s nail
gun. This was no time to be mucking around. Especially not with
that thing. Cat shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other,
and the nail gun tracked her movements. “Craig, what are you
doing?” He didn’t answer. Her voice only seemed to anger him more.
He didn’t trust her. Kelly had made it quite clear she didn’t trust
her, as had Jason, and Rachel had no reason to trust her after the
way she had treated her. The wait for something to happen must have
gotten to Craig’s nerve and turned him paranoid.

“
Craig it’s me, Cat.” She
stepped towards Rachel hoping that he might not risk firing if
there was a chance he might hit Rachel. “It’s me I’m on your
side.”

Rachel wasn’t stepping in. She
still fixed her stare into the gap. Suddenly Cat understood. She
could sense tenebrous tendrils reaching out from the gap in the
lockers into Craig and Rachel, another snaked its way through the
fire escape door and up the stairs with the smoke. To Kelly? It was
controlling their minds. Distracting them. Dividing them. Turning
them against each other.

“
Cat we need to get out of
here. The emergency services will be here any minute, and I don’t
sense anything down here. I think we were wrong.” Rachel said
urgently, oblivious to Cat’s predicament.

Cat turned to her. “Oh, I think
were in the right place.”

Rachel pulled at Cat’s arm.
“Come on, we are going to get in trouble, and that won’t help
anyone.”

“
Don’t move! You stay away
from her.” Craig shouted at Cat.

The thing was distorting his
perception of her struggle with Rachel, but she couldn’t break away
from the older woman’s grip. “Craig it’s me.” It was no use.

She closed her eyes and conjured
the faces of Craig, Rachel and Kelly, their clothes, the way they
stood and moved; every detail that she could imagine. She felt for
the muscular portal in her mind and centred on it as she had during
her earlier visit to the basement. This time she knew what to
expect from loosening the muscle and she channelled as much mental
concentration as she could into controlling the volatile power
straining within.

Suddenly Cat was the epicentre
of a swell in the atmosphere, then the pressure broke and rushed
away from her, and the atmosphere became calm and still once
more.

Chapter
Forty Six

Kelly could feel Ian’s hands on
her neck, he was staring into her eyes, his lip was trembling with
sadness at what he had done to their relationship or fear at how
she might react to him kissing her. Kiss me. Her thought shocked
her. Is this what she wanted? She wanted Craig. That meant trusting
someone new. It would be so easy to kiss Ian, to give in to him.
She closed her eyes. His grip on her throat was firm, if it was
anyone else it would be uncomfortable, but with the electric
promise of a kiss, of their love being rekindled it only made her
want him more.

A sobering gale forced itself
over her, except she didn’t feel it disturb her clothes or hair,
didn’t feel it on her skin but in her mind. Something rushed
through her thoughts, and the tingling anticipation of Ian’s kiss
was swept away with it leaving only the sensation of her throat
being gripped too tightly.

The shrill sound of the fire
bells crashed back in on her senses in a jarring tumble of noise
that reverberated through her head and into her teeth. There was no
longer carpet underfoot, no longer a rose in her hands. She opened
her eyes and stared into twin wells of green light glowing from a
rotting face inches from her own. Its noxious stench in her mouth
and its slick fingers at her throat, the undertaker stood close to
her with its knife drawn back ready to stab. From beneath the
shadow of its tall hat, its dark rotten grimace drew over its teeth
in a wicked grin.

She squirmed and squealed, but
couldn’t break free from its hold. From abject panic she pitched
herself into anger. She brought the head of her axe up sharply
under the creature’s chin, with its concentration shattered its
knife arm flailed wildly and the creatures grip on Kelly’s throat
flinched. It was all she needed. She pushed herself backwards and
broke free.

The undead creature recovered
and stabbed at her. She ducked to one side and swung her axe back
at the undertaker. Its grimace didn’t break as its head and hat
tumbled over the banisters and into the smoke, it ricocheted
noisily as it fell to the basement and landed with a muted
crash.

The creature’s knife slashed
down at her. Somehow the thing was still being directed. Unprepared
for the creature to still be fighting, she was slow to react, the
blade missing her by millimetres. She hacked again and the knife
clattered to the floor, the hand still holding the blade but the
arm no longer attached to the body. With all the power and
bitterness she could summon from the nightmare she had just
experienced she pitched the axe behind her and swung it forward,
hacking at the twitching body that stood before her in denial of
its own mortality.

Its remaining arm dropped to the
ground. Another hit cleaved down through its neck into its chest
and the cadaver fell clumsily to its knees. She stepped aside
letting it fall onto its front. It was motionless. She had seen too
many horror films to be fooled by that. She hailed down six more
blows, almost quartering its body. She rested on the hilt of her
axe and swiped a slick of sweat from her face allowing her
aggression to subside into satisfaction that the creature would not
be resurrected any time soon.

“
Craig it’s me.” And this
time it was Cat. Vicki was gone and there was no disturbance of the
dust and dirt of the floor that suggested she had ever been there.
He dropped the nail-gun to his side and rubbed his head with his
other hand. “I’m sorry.” He was suddenly certain that Vicki had
been a victim of this thing. His finger ached from his sustained
draw of the tools trigger. “Cat, I’m so sorry.” He clenched his
eyes against his grief for Vicki and the thought of nails slamming
into Cat’s head, shredding her face. He had come so close to
pulling the trigger. His stomach lurched and he doubled over and
wretched, but couldn’t be sick. He could feel Cat rub his
back.

“
It’s okay; it was in your
head. Trying to trick you. Using your fear and imagination against
you.”

“
Yes.” Rachel’s voice was
thick, her face twisted up with a rage and hatred he didn’t
understand. What had it done to her? She held up a Molotov. “Let’s
burn it.”

A green glow lurched from the
back of his eyelids. A triangular shape that angled up into horns,
a demonic Rorschach head with seven dark gashes torn into a face of
burning energy. Sharp mandibles flicked open from under its head in
a jagged jaw and it screamed an unnatural voice of a thousand
infants and it burned with a sudden painful intensity. He dropped
his weapon, gripped his head and fell to his knees, dimly aware
that Cat and Rachel had also been felled and were also clutching at
their heads.

The pain subsided and the ghost
image receded. “What was that?”

“
A cry of anger from the
thing that had been in our heads,” Cat answered.

“
That face… It was so big.
Just how big is this thing?”

“
It doesn’t matter.”
Rachel stated blankly. “Were going to kill it.”

Craig and Cat grabbed a bottle
of petrol each; their home-made Molotov’s, and lit them from the
piles of smouldering rubbish about them. All three hurled them in
unison between the lockers; the only place their attacker could be
hiding. The glass shattered and the combustible liquid ignited
spreading violent fans of gorging flames across the broken uneven
floor within.

Craig took up his nail
gun again and levelled it at the lockers. Cat stood with her flare
gun, Rachel brandished her sword with both hands. They watched the
gap and waited. The maelstrom of flames reduced the darkness in the
gap and the room beyond to a relief of shifting blacks, yellows and
oranges. Each tumult and movement of colour threatened to be a
glimpse of the
thing
they
waited for. Braced in readiness they glanced about themselves
warily, he was prepared for the very air around them to suddenly
manifest the evil they had come to face.

“
Now what?” Craig found
himself asking after some time had passed.

Cat suddenly doubled over and
cried out in pain. “I can see it, in my head. It’s breaking out of
its chrysalis. It sees me.”

“
Shut it out Cat.” Rachel
demanded with concern carved across her face.