'And if it strikes again?'

  'It will complete the deed,' she said. 'And I dread that. I feel sick even thinking about it.' Her eyes, fixed on the fire, were narrowed, and Brady could intuit something of the pain she was feeling. 'I dread it,' she repeated in a whisper. 'It's the most vile thing ... I think it would be better to be killed.'

  'But you are protected, now. You know how to protect yourself.'

  'To a degree, yes. I've researched the subject very hard. But there is something wrong, something weird in this attack. There's an uncontrolled feel about it, which worries me. Is that a strength or a weakness? I just don't know.'

  Ellen stood, quite abruptly, and placed the cup on the mantelpiece, crossing the room to stand by the french windows. Her arms were folded across her chest, and Brady could see that she was shaking. She was smaller than Alison, but seen in half silhouette against the fading day there was something familiar about the way her hair fell about her shoulders; that hunched stance, cold, almost angry, was the way Alison had often stood when they had rowed, or when she had been deeply upset, denying Brady's efforts to pacify her.

  His head was literally throbbing, that uncomfortable sensation of heart-blood surging through the skull, when the blood pressure is high, and the mind is clear, cold, aware. In his stomach he felt a churning knot of sickness and tension. He realized that he was forcing the memory of Alison's bestial treatment from his mind. But it was impossible not to remember, and though he kept the tears back, for a long minute or two he leaned against the mantelpiece, above the fire, and shook and shook, his attention half on the floor, half on the silent woman by the windows.

  From the garden, Ellen Bancroft was a dimly seen shape, her features highlighted from behind by the flickering fire. From the woodshed, no details of her face were visible. Beyond the woodshed, where the trees cast shadows on the lawn, any watcher might have had difficulty in telling whether it was a man or a woman who stood there, staring morosely out into the late afternoon.

  By the high wall, sixty yards from the house, there was a place where dead wood and decaying leaves, piled there before Christmas, still formed a substantial mound. From here, Ellen's figure was a dimly perceived shape, which abruptly turned from the window and retired into the room. She most certainly could not have seen the wall from where she had been standing, and she would not have noticed the slumped, charred figure that was half buried in this compost.

  Nor would she have noticed its hand rise from the leaves, wood tumbling as it sat upright, burned eyes staring blindly at the house.

  They went upstairs, and stood by the window in Marianna's room, peering out across the garden towards the neighbouring residence where old Mrs Dalby lived.

  Ellen was still cold, her hands shaking. 'There is something here,' she said, turning back into the room and leaning against the sill. She stared at the dolls piled up on the small cupboard, and at the childish pictures on the wall Pushed into a corner were the papier-mache models which Marianna had produced during the autumn. The room was tidy but lived in. To Brady, holding back his emotions as best he could, it seemed inconceivable that the untidy little girl would not come squealing and giggling into the room, and leap onto her bed, bouncing up and down as she greeted her father.

  Brady shook the memories away. 'I feel nothing,' he said. 'It worries me. Perhaps I should try and develop some psychic talent.'

  'You almost certainly have a degree of talent,' said Ellen.

  'And do you?'

  'Yes. A little. I have what Hillingvale calls PPS - Passive Psychic Resonance. We call it Echo Respondance.' She stared around the room, then reached out to pat the outside wall. 'The wall is cold. This isn't all brick, is it? It's stone, a lot of stone. Stone absorbs. Stone traps. Stone records.'

  'And you can become aware of that absorption?'

  Ellen nodded, as she tapped the wall with her knuckle.

  'It's confused and shallow, but I sense it. In the garden too. There's a focus of psychic energy below your garden - a well, perhaps, or part of an older house. I can't tell where exactly.'

  Brady thought hard for a moment, intrigued by what Ellen was saying. 'How about a Roman settlement? Could that be it?'

  'Here? Most certainly. Why do you say that?'

  Brady pointed to the distant pinewoods. 'Below that woodland. There's thought to be a villa. A bit of it was found in the eighteenth century and lost again, but it's never been excavated.'

  Ellen smiled. 'Well there you are. I think part of it at least is underneath your grounds. That'll help -'

  'Help? In what way?'

  'You'll see.'

  Brady thrust his hands into his pockets and stared at the plastered wall of the room. 'So you're saying that the "presence" that scared Bill, and you, might be part of the thought-form that attacked me and which is still trapped in the stone?'

  But Ellen didn't know for sure. 'What I felt when I came here before was almost tangible, some living thing, moving freely through the house. It watched me, but it didn't attack me. It didn't go away when I set up some simple defences. If it isn't an echo of the elemental that attacked then I can't think what it could be, but it didn't seem powerful enough to do any harm. It scared your brother-in-law. It terrified the man I employed to work for me.'

  'Who was that?'

  'A private detective, a very unsavoury man, as the English would say. And unreliable. I never met him, but I observed him. Andrew set the thing up. The man's name was Baron, but he was useless. He discovered nothing that I hadn't discovered myself when he tried to find Michael and Justin. And here, well . . . nothing either.'

  'Just a ghost,' said Brady quietly. 'The Stalker, waiting for my return. But it didn't wait long enough.'

  'It may have decayed. That invariably happens to unbound psychic substance. It fades away . . .'

  As they walked back down to the kitchen, Brady's thoughts were in a turmoil. There was so much he didn't understand, and so many things that he wanted answers to, and one question which nagged was the coincidence he now faced. Could it really be simple coincidence that the two survivors of attacks on three families happened to both work in the field of the paranormal? Had he and Ellen in some way drawn attention to their families because of their work, set their families up as easy targets for the men who had taken them?

  But the thought which was foremost in his mind was that the man behind the Stalker was both a danger to be suppressed, and a source of information that he needed. He was a hunter now. There was nothing left for him but the search for Alison and his family, and that search could not begin until the Stalker was destroyed. The man who had projected the thought-form was one of them, but there were so many others, and he had so little to go on. He could vividly see the amulet with its screaming head, the warped labyrinthine pattern, the hideous face of the mongol, the jewelled phallus used by the black-robed woman. The details in his mind were crystal clear, but without some hint as to where to go first, they were just so many memories.

  He needed the man behind the Stalker. He would kill him - what else could he do? The thought of it filled him with nothing more than a vague unease, for it would be no worse than killing a vicious animal. But before he dispatched that first of the enemy, the man had to be made to talk. He had to talk.

  And Brady knew that to get to that source and extract information from him, he had to understand the nature of psychic attack far better than he did.

  'This thought-form ... it hits but it cannot be hit.'

  'That's right.'

  'It strangles, but it cannot be strangled. It can be felt on the body, but when you feel for it . . . there's nothing.'

  'That's right.'

  'It can be seen under certain conditions.'

  'Ordinary people can't see it. If you're the target you can see it sometimes, especially if you're tired. And if you have some slight psychic awareness, the inner vision that some people have, you can glimpse it too. Other targeted people see thought-forms as shadowy presences.'

  'But non-targeted people can still be killed, be touched. They can be made aware of the Stalker, and affected by it.'

  'That is what is so strange about this case. Such non-targeted aggression is something I've never heard of, nor read of before. Its consequences are very frightening.'

  When Brady said nothing, waiting to hear what exactly she meant, Ellen said, 'It sounds as if the power generating this Stalker is using an unfamiliar technique, perhaps a new technique, perhaps a more ancient one. Whatever is happening, the Stalker seems to behave independently of its master. My fear is that it will become detached from him; that it will function totally independently, that it will no longer be affected by its master's own power, fading when he grows tired, only pursuing us when he is actively concentrating on the task of pursuit.'

  'How well will your defences function then?'

  Ellen shrugged. 'I wish I knew. All psychic attack works from mind to mind; all defence against such attack is designed ultimately to affect the mind behind the attack. I just wouldn't know what to do if the thought-form became detached from its creator. Which is why the sooner we set up proper defences around the house the better. We shall have to do a lot of learning from experience . . .'

  But Brady was more positive. 'We have to get to the man behind the attack, before his mind gets to us. But how do we get an idea of who it is? How do we see him?'

  Ellen smiled almost cynically. She crossed her arms and stared beyond Brady, perhaps seeing nothing at all but her own anxiety. 'There is a way,' she said. 'I've already mentioned it. It's just that. . .'her gaze, turning suddenly on Brady, was intense and terrified, almost pleading. 'I can't face it. I couldn't face it . . .'

  Brady knew what she meant, and there was no doubt in his mind that the solution - that she should actually encourage another attack by the Stalker in an attempt to psyche out the man behind the projection - was a solution that could not be entertained.

  At least, not by him on Ellen's behalf.

  Changing the subject quickly, before Ellen's anxiety turned to melancholy, Brady said, 'So is this Stalker the way psychic attack always works?'

  'Commonly,' she said, 'but not exclusively. In its commonest form, psychic attack is simply the willing, from some distance, of debilitating and distracting effects upon the victim: headaches, dizziness, lack of concentration, depression, hallucination and physiological changes that result in death.'

  'Sounds familiar,' said Brady lightly. 'Also sounds like a hangover.'

  Ellen smiled. 'Worse than a hangover. Anyway, this simple psychic attack can be given shape, human or animal form. They become artificial elementals. There's a form called the Watcher - what it sees, hears and smells becomes known to the man creating it as soon as the psychic substance is resorbed. Then there's the Stalker, which is strong and destructive. You need special defences against a Stalker, but imagination is one of the best.'

  'How?'

  'Things created by the mind, can be destroyed by the mind,' she said.

  'If the mind is strong enough.'

  'Exactly. The strongest thought-form is generated by several minds. It's persistent and independent, but weak in other ways. All this generation requires great concentration by the assailant, including a period of fasting and meditation on the hatred felt for the victim. And at some time, parts of your bodily exudates will have been obtained. Your hair, nails, almost certainly your blood and urine. And semen.'

  Brady was astonished. 'How on earth would they have got a sample of that?'

  Ellen shrugged. 'Many ways. Your wife's clothing; tissues not adequately disposed of; your sheets; a medical. Haven't you had a medical recently?'

  'May of last year. I did give a sample for a sperm count. That's a horrifying thought . . .'

  Ellen went on, 'You'll have had a sample of your clothing stolen, and a mannikin made from the material, with all the exudates incorporated.'

  'Witchcraft,' Brady said. 'It sounds like witchcraft. . .'

  Ellen just smiled at that. 'If you like. But it's sympathetic magic. A focus for the attacking mind; a scent for the powerful force that the mind creates.'

  'Then the attack begins . . .'

  She nodded. 'First the ordinary symptoms, dizziness and all that. Then a Watcher to explore the victim's location. Then the Stalker to kill. The horror of the Stalker is that it exists both as a projection from the attacker's mind, and as a nightmare belief in the victim's. When the two things come together the victim helps create the Stalker in its true horror, seeing a foul face, a terrifying shape, reacting to it with acceptance and not the scepticism that would weaken it. Soon after, it strikes, often disembowelling or decapitating, or crushing the victim to a pulp.'

  'It still sounds like witchcraft,' said Brady, staring out at the darkening garden. A neighbouring cat had leapt onto the window-sill and stared in for a moment, and Brady had been distractedly thinking of his own two cats. What had happened to them? 'But I know it's not. My darling little gerbils were sending short bursts of extrasensory energy to each other in times of great danger. I'm not surprised that the human mind needs something to focus onto for its concentration.'

  Ellen was looking tired. She leaned against the sink, biting her lower lip thoughtfully. After a moment she asked, 'And did you have any of those symptoms? Any unusually persistent headaches?'

  'Yes I did. Migraines, very bad. Since about July. And indigestion. And I didn't sleep well through the autumn.'

  'How about manifestations?'

  'Not me. I saw nothing. Not then. But Marianna. . . she was haunted by something she called the Smokey Man. I think I saw it outside the hospital ward. Wraithlike, insubstantial, but definitely humanoid.'

  Ellen smiled thinly. 'That's it. That's a Watcher. Your daughter must have a talent or two you weren't aware of. It probably studied you all, but only she could see it. A natural psychic. That helps. That will help.' When Brady just stared at her, she added, 'In the search, Dan. It'll help the search.'

  In the lounge, the phone rang. It was the first phone call since Brady had returned, and it made him jump. He stared at the kitchen door for a moment, then walked quickly through the hallway, Ellen following him.

  Alison? It couldn't be, could it? A ransom demand? The police?

  He pushed into the lounge and didn't bother to turn on the light. It wasn't so dark, yet, that he couldn't see his way across to the phone. Ellen walked in behind him. There was a peculiar smell in the room, and it was cold. She noticed that the french windows were open.

  'Did you open these?' she said, walking across to close them. Brady had snatched up the phone, and after a moment he said to Ellen, 'It's Andrew. Andrew Haddingham.'

  'Did you open these windows?' Ellen repeated, looking towards him.

  'No,' he said, and then froze as he saw the look on Ellen's face. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open. She was staring beyond him, and a moment later she gave a short, stifled scream.

  Brady whipped round, slamming the phone back towards the cradle, but missing. What he saw standing there, its arm reaching out for him, made him back away in terror, crying an obscenity.

  It was a man, burned from head to foot, and still clad in the charred, tattered rags of its clothing. It took a step towards Brady and its mouth opened, to show grey teeth and a pinkish tongue. The eye sockets were hollow, half concealed by the brittle, blackened lids..

  Brady ran to the fire-place and drew a heavy poker from its stand. Turning back into the room he advanced upon the shambling corpse. He was white and afraid, and his heart was racing. He saw foam bubbling from the silently open mouth of the creature, but he was more aware of the hand, still reaching towards him.

  'Dan! No!' cried Ellen suddenly, and Brady froze, the poker raised above his head as he moved in to the attack.

  'Why the hell not? At least I can see this thing. Christ, what is it?'

  Ellen had stepped towards the burned man, waving Brady back. She peered hard at the charred face. 'Oh my God,' she whispered. 'Dan, it's Jack Baron. . . I'm sure of it. Jack Baron. The private investigator. God, how horrible!'

  Fire suddenly erupted from the figure's mouth, a great jet of flame that licked towards Brady causing him to back away. The fire died down, then welled up again, appearing in the eye-sockets too, licking out, covering the blackened head in a halo of yellow light. As the fire burned in the creature's mouth, so Brady thought he heard a whining voice, a distant sound, emitted by the apparition.

  He stood there in that eerie dusk, watching the burning head before him, aware of Ellen, her face yellow-bright with sweat and wonder. She walked slowly around the motionless corpse of Jack Baron. 'It's speaking,' she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper. She reached out towards the silent fire and Brady frowned as he saw her passing her hand through the flame. She jerked her fingers away suddenly, shaking her hand. 'It's hot, but it's not real burning.'

  'Is he alive? Can he possibly be alive?'

  Ellen shrugged, but kept her gaze on the charred body of the man she had once hired to help her. 'I don't think he is. Something is animating him. The body is possessed . . .'

  And as she said the words aloud, so the fire-drenched head turned to regard her. The whining voice deepened suddenly, and Brady, by listening with all his attention, could hear the word.

  It was something like 'TAAN', an eerie, drawn-out sound, repeated three times before the flames died from the lips and eyes and the burned figure collapsed forward onto the carpet, buckling at waist and knee.

  Ellen knelt beside the body, reached out to touch the scorched head with one tentative forefinger. 'What did it say?' said Brady, and for just a second Ellen shook her head, puzzled . . . sensing something, but not sure exactly what . . .

  And it was as her face brightened, and she looked up at Brady, a half smile of realization on her lips, that Brady began to feel dizzy, becoming aware of a shadow moving swiftly around the room.