'The touching,' he said. 'Has it happened again?'

  'When I came in this evening. It was more powerful than before, more lingering. I was sick afterwards, really sick. I'm not imagining it, Michael. It's happening to me, a real attack. Just like . . . just like the attack on you.'

  There! It was said. He would have to know, and now the moment was done, the first words spoken.

  Michael stared at his wife quizzically. 'What does that mean? Attack? You don't mean an attack of 'flu ... or heart . . . what the hell are you talking about?'

  He knew. He was just unprepared to say it.

  'Psychic attack. You know what I mean, I can tell.'

  'Oh come on, Ellen. Psychic attack ... by whom? Someone at the Ennean? Someone jealous of me? Or jealous of you? What the hell are you people working on down there, anyway?'

  Ellen placed a hand gently on his mouth. She shook her head, but tried to keep her expression one of understanding and friendliness, even though she felt like screaming at the man, screaming at him to find some common sense. 'Don't make light of it, Michael. And don't dismiss it. Everything that's happening to you, every symptom . . . the pain, the tension, the dizziness, the loss of appetite, it's all part of the pattern. Somewhere, someone is attacking you. If they stay at a distance, then we can fight back. But they're attacking me too, although in a way that makes no sense. They're wearing us down, weakening us. What for, Michael? Why are they doing it? We've got to get away. Let's pack right now and go, leave the country. Let's go abroad. Let's distance ourselves. . .'

  'Just like that!' Michael snapped his fingers, grinned and shook his head. 'You know I can't leave work just now.

  Promotion looms before me, and with it, luxuries unheard of. Psychic attack . . .' he laughed, ruffled Ellen's hair as she knelt beside him, looking exasperated. 'I'm tired, tense, exhausted . . . I'm apprehensive. That's all it is.'

  'I'm going to lose you. . .'said Ellen weakly, and she felt instantly depressed, instantly drained. Michael's rejection of her urgent plea had left her weakened, but now, almost as if the thought was as inevitable as rain in September, she sensed deep within her that she and her husband were lost to each other.

  She rose to her feet, walking mechanically, almost numbly, out to the kitchen. Michael came behind her, and though he seemed more jovial now, Ellen could see that he was still touching his chest, still labouring for breath; the dark lines about his eyes could not be banished by his simple, cheerful demeanour.

  'I'm hungry now,' he said. 'I've got my appetite back. I'll just go and freshen up.'

  They sat silently at the table and ate spaghetti, with meatballs that burned the back of the throat, since Ellen, without thinking, had made them with chilli powder. Justin ate only three, then pushed his plate away. Ellen listened to the driving rain, feeling chilled to the marrow.

  'Why don't we go out for a drink?' said Michael, leaning back in his chair. He waved his hand in front of his mouth. 'A cooling pint of lager.' He smiled as he spoke.

  Ellen was quite agreeable to the suggestion, although the thought of venturing out in that rainstorm wasn't the most inviting idea. But anything to get out of the apartment for an hour or so.

  She rose and gathered up the plates. A car drove along the roadway outside the block of flats, and its headlights struck the dining room window, eerily silhouetting the small trees that bordered the gardens. And Ellen dropped the plates in shock.

  There was a man standing outside.

  The light passed away, and there was just darkness beyond the rain-soaked window. Ellen crossed the room quickly and closed the curtains, reaching between them to lock the double-glazing . . .

  In the bedroom, the window was flung open. A vase, which she knew had been standing upon the bedside table, crashed to the floor with the wind that swept into the room. She could hear the rain driving in, the curtains flapping.

  'What the hell?' Michael got to his feet, walked down the corridor towards the bedroom . . .

  'Michael!' screamed Ellen, and he stopped, and turned. Justin had risen to his feet and was staring at his father, then at the dining room window, and his face was a mask of shock, all muscles tense, all blood draining.

  The lights went out.

  The dining room window exploded inwards, rain, wind and something ice-cold and painful sweeping into the suddenly darkened room. Michael came running back along the corridor, screaming Ellen's name. She felt herself picked up and flung bodily against the wall. Justin's screams turned suddenly into strangled whimpers, and then he was silent.

  Light flickered in the room, a torch she thought. In the instants before it was knocked from Michael's hand she glimpsed, by its thin, yellow beam, the horrors that had swarmed into the flat, creatures that walked upright, yet peered at her with the glittering eyes of animals, faces leering in bovine or reptilian ways, mouths wet and grinding. They were visions of demons, grotesque distortions of nature, and their horny, scaly hands plucked at her flesh, and struck down repeatedly at Michael and Justin.

  She heard words, names, laughter. A wind literally howled through the room, freezing the blood in her veins. She glimpsed Justin's body as it was held up and flung across one of the creatures' shoulders. She could hear Michael struggling, and the steady, sickening sound of flesh yielding to animal blows.

  Rough hands picked her up, but when she struck out in front of her she could feel nothing. She heard laughter. Justin moaned and she screamed his name, and he cried out. . . 'Mummy!' and it was the last sound she heard him make before he was carried through the window.

  The hands moved from her throat to her breasts, and she squirmed away and ran across the room. She hit a dark figure, and inhaled the moist stench of its breath as it laughed and flung her away.

  'Kill her quickly. Quickly!' came the words.

  'Disturbance upstairs,' said a woman's voice.

  'Quickly! Quickly!' came the repeated command, and she felt hands groping for her.

  Screaming with all her might, Ellen scratched down, and struck at the cowled beast that was trying to wrestle with her. Glistening saliva drenched her hand. She flung off its grip and leapt towards the window, tripping on the sill so that she fell heavily on the rain-sodden turf of the garden outside. Immune to pain, her head filled with the sound of her family's cries, she struggled to her feet and began to run.

  Behind her she heard a whoop of amusement, a cry, a command. And she heard the heavy sound of a footfall as of someone in pursuit.

  Screaming for a car, desperate to see something or someone who could help her, she ran through the stinging rain, scarcely able to see as the storm blew icily against her. Her legs pumped and she ignored the terrible ache in her muscles. She ran as fast as she was able, but the wind slowed her down, and her drenched hair insisted on flopping into her eyes, blinding her.

  When she stopped for breath, in the full glow of a street-lamp, she heard the sound of pursuit, glanced round and saw no man, nor even an animal. But she could sense the giant shape that followed her by the way the rain beat around it, running along its outlines: whatever it was it was monstrous, grinning, and closing the distance on her with amazing speed.

  She ran again, tripped, struggled and kept moving. Her voice could hardly find the strength to cry, now, and she abandoned the idea of calling for help. She prayed for a police car, or a lorry, or anything that could take her away from the horror that loped after her.

  Everyone was indoors, huddled in the safety of their homes, away from the miserable, wet night.

  At last she could run no more. She stopped, breathed deeply, wiped hair from her eyes, and screamed with every ounce of strength left in her body.

  She was still screaming when hands grasped her by the legs and swung her bodily from the ground, flinging her down onto the grass kerb. As she tried to struggle to her feet she felt an immense weight lay upon her, smelled a stink that made her gag, waited for the hands to clench around her throat. To a passer-by she would seem to have been lying there alone, legs apart, struggling, hands beating at thin air. She felt herself touched, handled, probed. She saw her blouse ripped away, her jeans torn, stripped down each leg in turn. Her flesh bled, bruising before her eyes as the hands slapped and beat at her; but all the time that invisible touch returned to her breasts, and to her groin.

  And then, as abruptly as it had arrived upon her so that abhorrent presence went away. She was hardly aware that it had gone, her body continuing to rack and shake with cold and pain. She thought she would feel those fingers forever. Slowly it occurred to her that the only touch upon her naked body was the bitter touch of driving rain. She sat up, wiped her hair from her face, looked down at herself; by the yellow glare of the neon lamp she watched the blood from her scratches mingling with the pure water.

  She reached for her tattered blouse and pulled it around her shoulders. Her jeans had been neatly torn in two, but she pulled them on like leggings, holding them at her waist.

  Thus, ungainly yet alive, she staggered back through the rain, back through the night, to face the ruin of her apartment flat.

  And the emptiness.

  9

  * * *

  The recounting of the horror to Brady had finally reduced Ellen to tears, and if Brady were honest with himself, it was only his attempts to console the woman that stopped him crying himself.

  She had spoken slowly, and at times with a confusion and an incoherence that Brady could both understand and sympathize with. It had left him a little dizzy, slightly unsure of some of the sequences and events. More importantly, it had made him shiver with the familiarity of it; what had happened to Ellen Bancroft had been precisely what had happened to him and his family, from the earlier sense of being watched, monitored, or whatever he chose to call it, to the cold words, 'Kill her. Quickly.'

  Those who were not needed could not be left to their own devices, to their sadness. They had to be killed.

  And in two cases - and the policeman, Sutherland, had hinted at there being only three incidents that he knew of-in two cases that killing had failed. Ellen had already referred to a weakness in one of the group, and that word, weakness, was a peg on which Brady began to pin a great hope.

  'Under the circumstances,' he said, as Ellen finally stopped her silent weeping, and dabbed at her face with a tissue, 'I think a drink is called for. Just one can't do any harm, can it?'

  Ellen glanced at him angrily, her eyes red, and sparkling with moisture. 'For Christ's sake, Dan. Don't turn out like Michael. He wouldn't listen to me. He wouldn't do what I said he should do, I beg you. Until you know better, believe that what I say is true . . . don't drink alcohol, in any form, in however small a quantity.'

  Brady was impressed by the woman's earnest plea, and the confidence of her words. He nodded quickly, accepting her ruling. 'Coffee, then. Strong coffee.'

  'I think I need it. Black. No sugar.'

  A few minutes later, when she sipped her drink and stared at the crackling fire, she sketched in the events of the few weeks after the attack on her.

  'I couldn't stay in the flat. A friend of mine took care of the selling of it and also helped me find an apartment in London, somewhere out of the way. It was a grotty place, as Michael would have said. Small, dirty, in bad need of decoration, but it was just what I needed. I moved everything I needed into it, and established defences around it . . .'

  Brady frowned. 'What sort of defences?'

  Ellen made a sniffing motion as she stared at Brady.

  Brady grasped her meaning. 'Little piles of ash; smears; funny smelling substances . . .?'

  'All part of it, Dan. Psychic defences. How else do you defend against psychic attack? You can't lock doors, or put up barbed wire, or sleep with a double-barrelled shotgun next to you. I turned that little flat into a fortress. Inside it, for a while, I'm safe. Outside, I can be targeted. I'm being targeted now, I'm sure, but it's not close. You are targeted too, Dan, and you're in deadly danger . . .' She gulped coffee. Brady stared at her, then glanced uneasily outside, into the garden; the afternoon was well advanced. It was a cloudy day, and the gloom was descending. 'Do you think we should get out of here?'

  Ellen shook her head. 'We're in danger, but it's not imminent. Trust me, Dan. There's something here . . .' she frowned as she looked around the room. 'But I don't understand what. It's not as strong as I remember it. When I first broke into the house, with someone's help, I could sense a powerful force of destruction. It threatened me badly, and frightened me. But it's not so strong now.'

  'You're losing me, Ellen . . .'

  She smiled, appreciative of Brady's struggle to learn, and of the way she was jumping from subject to subject.

  She picked up where she had left off. 'My flat is a haven. We must transform this whole house into a haven, Dan. It's big, it has a huge garden. Ideally it should be a town house - elemental forces work more potently in the country. But I don't think it matters. The house is defendable. But one immediate defence is this: don't trust anyone. Don't depend on anyone at all. Not even family. When I quit my work I didn't go back, I didn't show my face at the building again. I had one friend, one man who I had to trust. Perhaps we all need just one close friend, one person whom we must hold above suspicion. I needed him, and he helped me in so many ways that I can probably never repay the debt. And he hasn't breached that trust, and I think you can trust him too.'

  'When do I meet him?'

  Ellen smiled. 'You've met. He's at Hillingvale. Andrew Haddingham.'

  'My PSO!' said Brady, surprised totally, then explained, 'Principal Scientific Officer'.

  'I'm familiar with Civil Service ranking,' Ellen said. 'As I told you, I ran a team at the Ennean Institute. I worked with Geoffrey Dean, the famous Professor Geoffrey Dean. When I say worked with him I should say I worked, and every month when he surfaced from his Devonshire estates he would read my notes, grunt, and later use my results for some talk or other. To watch us you would think he hardly knew I existed.'

  'And your work?'

  'Mainly psychic manifestation, especially apportations. That's -'

  'Carrying objects through space and time. I know.'

  'I was also part of the liaison group set up between the Ennean and Hillingvale, comparing notes, swapping ideas. I knew most of the department chiefs at the Station. I even remember seeing you, on occasion. But I was closest to Andrew Haddingham.'

  Brady was catching up fast. 'In fact, I think he may have talked about you. And it was Andrew who told you about the incident . . . here. The attack on me.'

  'He told me immediately. He was very distressed, Dan. I think he regards you as a good friend, and you can trust him. I'm sure you can. He told me where you'd been taken, and I realized that you wouldn't survive a second attack. It was still incomprehensible to me that you could have survived the first.'

  'So you came to the hospital, scattering your ashes, and smearing your herbs. You set up defences around my room . . . Good God.' Brady was impressed. He watched Ellen closely.

  'I set them up around the whole ward,' she said. 'Defences have to be set up in zones. I protected your bed, your room, and the whole area. There were three killings on the ward . . .'

  'So I heard.'

  'The Stalker - you probably heard that word, or thought-form, or fetch, something like that - the Stalker broke through the outer defences on two occasions, and expended its violence on other patients and two nurses, I think. It couldn't get close to you. It's one of the most terrifying things about this particular attack ... the thought-form does not retire if it fails, it strikes out around it. The projection is immensely powerful, but similarly, it weakens quickly.'

  Brady understood. 'Because the man who is creating it grows tired.'

  'Very tired,' agreed Ellen. 'He's doing too much . . .'

  'Or she is ... It could be a woman behind it.'

  But Ellen shook her head, quite emphatically, 'It's not a woman. It's a man. I can't be totally sure, I just. . . well, I'm ninety-nine percent sure. It weakens so quickly because, firstly, just creating a thought-form is draining on the body's energy. Second, this man is targeting the Stalker on two people. The thought-form that has been stalking me is the same one that is now targeting on you. When I came to the hospital, maybe the third or fourth time, the thing was there. I sensed it; I even saw it, interacting with the light in the stairwell. I recognized it at once.'

  Brady rose from his armchair and placed a new log on the dwindling fire. It was not that it was particularly cold in the room, just that the flickering wood fire was a warm cosy focus for his attention during this bizarre indoctrination. 'So our man, the man trying to kill us, is dividing his effort, and this is crippling him slowly.'

  'That's right.'

  He said, 'Can you see the man? Can we go to him? Can we find him?'

  He was thinking: He's one of them. He's one of those who were here that night. The first. He was here as mind alone, but he was here, and he will be the first. I must find him.

  'Not yet.' said Ellen. 'The image isn't strong enough. . .'

  'But you're aware of him to a degree, then?'

  Ellen shivered. Brady glanced round, aware of that moment of intense discomfort. She said, 'I'm beginning to suspect. It's what I meant by the weakness. The man is dividing his projection, and that must be making him quite exhausted. He's also reluctant to kill me. Three or four times the Stalker has done no more than sexually assault me. Psychic assault, and so far it has held back from a full attack.'

  'The man wants . . . what? To rape you? He has that sort of violence in mind?'

  'It's more subtle than that. He knows me and he is experiencing desire for me, strong feelings of love. When the thought-form attacks it responds to the unconscious wishes of the man creating it, and instead of killing . . . it feels, it tries to make love. Each encounter has grown in determination.' She was pale-faced and huddled, sitting on the edge of her chair, the empty cup cradled in her hands. Brady remained crouched by the fire, watching her.