Kristin (14 page)

Eighteen

The body of the flaxen-haired woman
inflated. He heard the gut-wrenching sound of tearing flesh. Blood gushed from
her nose, her open mouth. Her skin blackened, smouldered, peeled ... she was
aflame.

Thom awoke with a spasmodic
jerk, doubled over the hard, wooden table. The surreal happenings of the day
drowned his brain; the repellent odour of Greta Johansson’s incinerated flesh
still lingered, and he felt like sicking up. It was bitterly cold in the lounge
and frost had sketched
austere, alien patterns on the inside of the windows.

The image of Kristin’s
crazed, porcelain-white face, eyes like portals to the underworld, descended
upon him from the darkness.
Was she still alive
? He was sure she was, he could feel her presence
in the room, her love and her hatred. She left her mark wherever she went, like
a cat left its scent. She wouldn’t have tolerated captivity for long and her
captors would almost certainly be dead by now, leaving her to roam the violent,
everlasting night, all the time moving humanity inexorably towards extinction,
driven by the unholy entity that had exploited and engulfed her.

Gagging, he stood and felt
movement around his feet. Something was flowing across the floor darkly, peaks
in its surface picked out by the blue moonlight. He moved his foot — it
was tacky, like tar, but less viscous. Bending, he probed it with his index
finger; it was cold ... freezing, and skinned the tip.

He waded out onto the
landing. The black substance
 
cascaded down the stairs like a raven waterfall in hell. There was a
distinct current — it was flowing from the bedroom. He flicked a light
switch, but darkness held sway. Breathlessly, he progressed to the bedroom.

Three separate streams
exuded from beneath the bed. The first passed between and around his feet, out
through the door. The second poured silently into the old brick fireplace and
the third defied gravity, running vertically up the wall, exiting through the
smashed window.

He stood over the bed,
staring at the crumpled sheets, her discarded negligé, and rubbed briskly at
the tight pain in his chest. Then he breathed deeply and pushed the bed aside
with his foot. The black emanated from a splintered hole in the floorboards a
few inches in diameter. He squatted and looked down into the well. A tide of
constantly rising pitch wafted a freezing draught across his face, turning his
eyes to ice. And then he recognized the dreadful sound;
it was the same as the siren ... many
octaves lower
,
but the same.

As he moved backwards
through the fluid he was struck by an irrepressible feeling of guilt.
Something seminal
was happening in the room
,
a beginning
,
in which he
’
d somehow played his part.

His home had become an
asylum. He turned and ran, slipping and tripping down the caustic staircase he
would never climb again.

On the mindless streets he
roved without purpose or direction, isolated, friendless, each bloodcurdling
scream, each burst of maniacal laughter pushing him closer and closer to the
edge and after two hours, instinct alone had carried Thom to the only place on
Earth he would find sanctuary.

Margaret Sharman’s house glowed in the
subdued orange of the street lamps. But it was the only light visible and anxiety
surged through him. He entered and called out, checked every room, but she
wasn’t there; had she panicked and fled?

The power was still on. He
boiled a kettle, made some tea and fell into his father’s old armchair, picking
nervously at the loose fabric of the arms. As a young boy he’d been greatly
disturbed by a dream in which he’d arrived at his home in the dark, dead of
night to find it deserted, his
 
father, mother, and brother gone. Now it seemed that awful imagining had
become reality.

He finished the bitter tea,
found his mother’s precious address book and phoned everybody listed, everybody
who was contactable, but she’d not been seen or heard from. He took a pen and
notepad from a drawer by the phone and wrote her a letter in the hollow
silence:

Mum where are you
?
Came Tuesday
night. The house was dead just like my dream do you remember
?
Tried everyone.
Called the hospitals. You were right when you said I
’
d meet my destiny sometime. Think that day
may be close. Still don
’
t understand what I am what
’
s expected of me. Can
’
t explain this but I don
’
t think I
’
ll see you again
at least not in this life. Sorry I wasn
’
t there for you when you needed me can you forgive
me
?
I
believe this will all end soon one way or another. I hope you can be happy
again. Thank you for thirty-four years of unconditional love that I never
really returned. I will always love you. Thomas.

He divulged everything he'd experienced,
unburdened himself to an aghast, but willing listener, choked when he told her
he’d taken the life of another human being. Would she understand what had
driven him to such lengths, forgive him? He told her about Nathan, about what
the black-eyed girl had done to him, about what he’d done with Nathan’s
remains, and her head dropped. She joined him on the couch and put a consoling
arm around him, but he couldn’t feel it. Her face was entirely colourless, as
white as her hair. She looked like a ghost.

‘Everything Nick said, his
prophecy, it’s all become reality,’ he said.

‘A prophecy is a vision of
the future. If all this was meant to be nothing you could have done would have
made any difference.’

‘But if I hadn’t stopped to
help her, hadn’t let her into my life?’

‘She would still have found
you.’

He glanced at her. Her
faced had changed, become his father’s.

‘You were fated to meet.
There’s a reason for everything that’s happened.’

‘
A reason
?’

‘You’re its antithesis, its
polar opposite. Your coex-istence on this Earth isn’t down to pure chance.’ She
left it to her son to decode her words. ‘Remember what Nicholas told you, that
you would one day realize your destiny? And remember how I told you I always
knew you were special?’

‘It happened again. There
was a bird, a magpie, that lived near the flat. It died and then flew away
after I laid it to rest.
She killed a nun
,
the woman died in my arms
. Later that day the hospital phoned to
tell me she’d come back to life. The following morning she came to the flat and
thanked me for saving her.’

‘But you couldn’t save
Nathan?’

‘No. I accept, now, that I
may have God-given powers, but
I
’
m
not God. If I was I’d find a way of exorcising the evil inside her.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me
about her, Thom?’

‘
A girl off the street
? What would you
have thought?’

‘I know you’d do anything
to help anyone, that is your nature.’

‘I didn’t just help her, I
made her my lover.’

‘Thom ... I’m sure any
human qualities that it possessed are long gone.’

He shot an angry glance at
her. ‘That’s not true. She’s fought it every day of her life.’
 

She seemed to move ... to stand
and go to the window. And yet she still sat beside him. ‘It has to be stopped,
one way or another.
You must stop it
,
Thomas.
’

Clad in a loose-fitting, white robe he sat
at a large table in a warm, airy room. All around, he could feel the affection,
the unequivocal loyalty of many close friends and allies. He divided the loaf
of bread before him into equal parts and passed them around. Then he sipped red
wine from a wooden chalice and handed it on.

He’d left his friends and was deep in prayer
in a peaceful garden when the soldiers came and manhandled him away into the
night. The vision faded.

He was on trial before many people, could
feel conspiracy, a travesty of justice. A man in authority exonerated him time
after time, but he sensed persecution and treachery from unexpected corners. He
was made to carry a great weight upon his shoulders and to walk, doubled over,
through narrow, cobbled streets lined with hysterical crowds. There followed
prolonged, tortuous pain, agony that finally ended high on a hill, overlooking
a great walled city, as his friends and relations wept helplessly at his feet.
But he didn’t die.

The droplets hitting the carpet ended the
dream abruptly. He opened his eyes, but crippling fear stopped him from lifting
his head to see what was present in the darkness of the lounge.

Lungs rattled.

‘Thom? Are you awake?
Please talk to me, I’m so alone,’ whispered a clear, familiar voice.

He pulled himself up in the
armchair.

Kristin stood naked, her
arms outstretched. The pores of her skin secreted watery blood that streamed
down the length of her body. ‘I’ve tried to be strong, but I can feel it
winning. My hands are already stained with the blood of thousands.’

He tried to answer her.

‘Please, Thom, please
listen. There isn’t much time left. This is only the beginning. I know what it
wants to do, what it’s capable of doing. It won’t stop until it’s murdered half
the human race and enslaved the remainder. It may turn to means already here to
speed up it’s plans. You should look to the West, and to the Eastern World. I
can’t tell you any ... ’
Be quiet
,
bitch
,
thou hast said enough as it is
! it interrupted, venomously. ‘I
won’t be able to speak to you for very much longer.’

‘ ... What do I do?’

‘Kill me.’

‘ ...
Kill you
?’

‘And make sure that I’m
dead.’

‘I could never hurt you.’

‘Do it for humanity.’

‘But I love you.’

‘You must find a way of
living without me.’

‘You couldn’t die by your
own hand, how would I succeed?’

‘Find its achilles heel,
you’re ….’
Hold
your tongue, bitch
!

He braced himself against
the sudden onslaught of pain that surged through his hands and feet. When it
had passed, she’d gone.

Nineteen

Thom opened his eyes slowly. He was standing
upright. Sparkling, crystalline frost had bonded his forehead to sharp, rusted
metal and his knees were locked solid, numb.

He separated himself from
the ridged steel, tearing his skin. Icy rain fell, stabbing at his face like
needles. He lurched against the garage door, saw he was at the end of a dank,
narrow access road. And he realised he was entirely alone in the world. He
headed for the light at the end of the road.

At the junction he veered
left and tried to focus his eyesight through the sheet of fine rain.
He knew this area
,
recognized the parade of small shops and bistros on the other side. Somehow,
he’d returned to the streets of Greenwich. But the parade no longer bustled or
welcomed, its shops had long since closed. Charcoal shadows, bristling with
disquiet, pitted its frontage and its drenched roofs spiked the night sky with
gothic horror.

Thom crossed the road and
passed slowly along the row until he came to a delicatessen, cursing his
stupidity in not having eaten when he’d had the chance. He stepped towards the
darkened entrance, tripped on something and a foot lashed out at him.

‘You made me fucking jump,
you bastard!’

‘I ... I didn’t see you,
I’m sorry,’ he stammered.

Three legs trailed from the
doorway.

‘What do you want?’

‘Some food, that’s all, I
want to get into the shop for some food, I didn’t mean to startle you.’

‘There’s nothing in there,’
the well-spoken, faceless man growled.

‘Do you mind if I look, I’m
starving?’

‘We’re all fucking
starving! There’s nothing inside, I finished off what was left three days ago.
All these places were cleaned out soon after the siren.’

‘
You heard the siren
?’

‘Of course I fucking heard
it! Didn’t all civilisation? I’m just lucky I retained my mind. My wife wasn’t
so fortunate,’ he said, sucking on something wet.

‘What happened to her?’

‘She had no resistance to
it. She couldn’t live with it inside her head. She smashed a bottle and gouged
out her own eyes, and then cut through her wrists. I found her afterwards.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘
You
’
re
sorry?’ So am I. Sorry I didn’t join her.’

‘How have you lived, how
have you survived?’

‘From one day to the next,
what other way is there?’ He swore, spat, and a chunk of bleeding gristle
landed on Thom’s shoe. Then a face emerged from the darkness, a mouth coated
with bloody saliva. ‘If you’re truly starving maybe I can help you,’ he smiled.
His top lip retracted, revealing long, reddened teeth, and he hauled something
into view. ‘Please, join me in my feast.’

The green eyes of the dead
girl stared at Thom. She was naked apart from a pair of flowered briefs, and
her left arm had been eaten down to the bone.

‘This is my lovely
daughter, Anna,’ he whispered, smoothing a hand over her belly. ‘
Isn
’
t she beautiful
?
I’ve only just killed her … the meat is still warm.’

With madness burning in his
eyes he produced a rusting penknife and slashed open her abdomen. He forced his
fingers into the hole, extricated a bloody mass of organ and connective tissue
and held it out in offering.

Thom reeled. Then he ran,
faster then he’d ever run
 
before.
And from somewhere he knew he’d summon the strength to keep on running.

Thom ran along abandoned streets, through
pedestrian areas littered with with debris, human waste and human bodies. He
ran through terrifying, unlit parks, fending off attack after attack from the
deranged. He tried to put the memory of the cannibalistic father behind him, to
forget what he’d seen, but strength of the image had claimed a permanent place
in his mind. His legs tired, begged him to rest them for a moment but a brick,
flung from the upper window of a townhouse forced the to keep moving beyond
their limit.

‘FUCK YOU! Bawled the
woman. ‘FUCK ALL OF YOU! PISS ON YOUR CHRIST! SHIT ON YOUR GOD!’

Near the burned out ruins
of the Maritime Museum his legs capitulated and he collapsed onto the wet
ground beneath a telegraph pole. He looked up. A body dangled from the top: The
victim had been crucified — fixed in position by metal stakes driven
through the feet and between the eyes, and then burned, so badly he couldn’t
tell if they’d been male or female.

The icy wind blustered and
sodden flakes of carbonized skin settled upon him, got into his hair.
Frantically, he brushed himself clean of their contamination and moved on at a
crawl for another hundred yards before accepting he could go no further. He
wedged himself beneath the stairwell to a block of grey council flats, drew his
coat over his head and slept.