A little after he carried Ellen's body up to the bedroom. He no longer cared about the police, or moving the evidence. He felt more than slightly lost without the woman. She had known so much, she had crammed her mind with so much research, during her months of seclusion.

  And now he had lost her, and he was alone again. And he had lost that touch of love, the growing bud of affection, that might have helped soothe the agonies of the search to come.

  And perhaps in a way that was good. He might have become complacent in Ellen's company. In time he might have lost the edge, and the hunt might never have been completed.

  He had very little to go on, but he had one thing that was more important than everything else put together.

  His family was still alive. He would not believe otherwise. Alison, Marianna, Dominick - whatever the purpose in abducting them, that purpose had not yet been achieved - they were being taken to the north, and they were still alive, and he would find them if it took him until the end of the century!

  He had a house that was strongly - if not completely -defended against any further psychic attack. He had a rudimentary knowledge of what he was dealing with, and that knowledge would increase. He had images: of a face, of an amulet; of a maze; memories of two voices that had spoken above his recumbent body; he had names: Arachne, Magondathog, Lazarine, Awakening. None of them might mean anything at all. Any one of them might lead him to the 'Collectors' who had visited Brook's Corner on a dark, cold evening three months before, and taken his whole life, his whole future.

  He walked distractedly around the house, hands thrust into his pockets, unsure of what to do. He hid the shotgun as thoroughly as he could, then walked around the garden, checking the zones of defence. He propped the broken front gate against its hinges, and listened to the still, silent night, he didn't know for what.

  There was an expectancy in him, a sense of waiting, but it defied all reason. He was at once calm, and yet on edge. There was something further to happen. He couldn't think what.

  And then, at two in the morning, the house began to whisper to him. It was an incoherent murmur, more hallucinatory than real. At first it frightened him, then puzzled him. He went upstairs to the bedroom, and the whispering was stronger. It formed no words, and yet it was a voice. A woman's voice.

  He went to bed and lay down next to the body of Ellen Bancroft, not afraid to turn and look at her choked, bruised features. He turned his head to the right and stared at the concealed mirror. The whispering grew a little louder.

  After an hour or so he began to smile, even though his heart was racing, his body shaking with a touch of fear, a great deal of excitement.

  He began to understand what was going on. The thought-form would decay from the trap - Ellen had hinted as much before she had died - but there was a more vital, more animate ghost left in the house, and it had remained there by its own choice.

  Brady sat up, resting a hand on Ellen's cold face. He felt contented, now, and strong. He didn't even question the bizarre fact that he had just come to accept . . .

  That he was not as totally alone as he had thought.

  That Ellen had decided to stay around for a while!

  He rose from the bed and switched off the light in the room. Then he went to the landing window, opened it and leaned out, breathing in the cold, clean night air. The land was in total darkness, save for the single, tiny beacon of a light far away on one of the hills. The stars were out.

  Somewhere, he thought . . . somewhere out there: a woman and two children, frightened and lost, being dragged through a nightmare world, perhaps already despairing . . .

  But I'll find you!

  He watched the darkness. He wondered if already, somewhere in the nightmare land, something was happening that would tell him where to search next, indicate where he should go -

  He wondered what hell for one innocent person might soon begin him hunting.

  Hunting Arachne!

  The girl was crying again. It was a persistent, irritating sound, and the man who guarded her paced the caravan restlessly, regretting bitterly that the family had been divided. The girl and her brother had been close. They had comforted filch other. It was bad that they had been split up. Without the brother the girl was troublesome. When the three of them had been together they had huddled, comfortable in each other's presence. The mother had screamed at the guardian, shouting abuse, but at least there had not been this continuous, unearthly sobbing.

  It was cold. Too cold, he thought. This was such a remote place, and the wind - that endless, mournful wind!

  Come on! Come on! Get it over with. They were just three among so many, three being taken to the place of the Awakening. What was the delay?

  The sooner it was done the better; the sooner the girl was used, the better. The girl had power, talent. That made her of use, of great use. The others probably weren't needed at all. Why not finish with them? The daughter was the one with the skill. Why bring the mother, the brother? But there were always uses . . .

  This time of gathering had gone on too long; the man was impatient to go north, for the time of change.

 

 

  Unknown, stalking

 

 

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