All blood drained from her face and she felt her legs go weak. She edged to the corridor and peered round at the distant doors. They were still moving slightly, as if in a wind. A moment later she heard the doors at the other end of the ward, where King George opened into the general stairwell, slammed back against the wall, and repeatedly pushed. This was the second night running that this had happened. A patient, obviously from one of the other wards, had a very peculiar idea of practical joking. The previous evening she had heard the man - if man it was -running quickly away from the Victoria Ward exit, and had followed him for a few yards, but had not caught sight of him.

  She walked up to the swing doors and peered through the glass, but the stairwell was deserted, dimly illuminated by a single yellow lamp above. As she stood there, once again she smelled that strange pungency, less scented than before, sharper, bitter. It was just a hint, like the fleeting smell of burning incense caught outside a church.

  Nurse Baker walked slowly back along the corridor, peering into the private rooms, lingering outside Brady's room, and staring at the motionless man inside. Some thought nagged at her, some connection or subdued awareness, that she couldn't bring to the fore.

  Slowly she returned to her station, opposite the open bays of intensive care and special treatment patients. One of them was restless, making quiet, but disturbed sounds in his throat. For a second she couldn't identify, in the subdued light, who it was. As she recognized Mister Henderson, recovering from heart surgery and only regaining his strength slowly, she took a step towards him, checking the time on her watch.

  And something ice cold, like a tremendous gust of wind, swept past her, blowing her hair and clothes, and rattling the privacy curtains on their metal rails. The bed nearest to the nurse rolled away from the wall, and turned sharply in the centre of the room, the drip feed attached to its occupant crashing to the floor. The man in the bed sat up blearily, realized what was happening and yelled; his yell turned to a scream, and Nurse Baker ran towards him as he was tipped from the bed and apparently dragged across the floor, to be flung heavily against the window, which shattered spectacularly. The man's body vanished, leaving tatters of pyjama and flesh on the jagged edges of the window.

  The nurse shrieked and ran from the station, towards the small kitchen area. Her mind was spinning; she was shocked, terrified, and utterly confused. Confused, that is, save for one thing: whatever was happening was related to the mystery man, Brady. It was Brady. She had to tell someone.

  She picked up a blunt-edged bread knife and stared around at the rest of the kitchen area. She had no real idea what to do, except to run for help. The noise in the intensive care bay was loud, patients shouting, talking, calling for her.

  Clutching the knife in her hand - for what reason she had no idea, she just knew it felt good - she began to walk back towards the station.

  She had just reached the door when a sheet of glass from the broken window swept towards her, slashing across her throat in two rapid, powerful motions. She was knocked back against the wall, her eyes staring with that shock that immediately precedes death. With the third massive strike from the invisibly wielded fragment of glass those eyes rolled up into their sockets, staring white and blind as the blood-drenched head bounced yards along the corridor.

  4

  * * *

  He came up from the blackness, eyes opening and focusing on the ventilation grill in the ceiling.

  Three times before, his mind had gathered strength and pushed aside the shadows, rising towards consciousness through the chaotic images of fear, anger and despair. Three times the ghosts of that night just before Christmas had risen and begun to scream, the power of their emotion overwhelming and subduing the return to consciousness.

  Had anyone been watching, on those three occasions, they might have seen the man's motionless hands clench and then relax, his body twitch slightly, his head turn from right to left. A murmur in the throat would have given the lie to the explosive scream that had resounded through the drugged spaces of his brain.

  The time had not been right. The body was too weak and it drained strength from the mind.

  Now the body was strong again, and this time the return to consciousness was successful. The shadows parted. The darkness of night gave way to the colours of dawn, and a waking dream that hovered on the edge of nightmare, images and events that seemed to be waiting for the eyes to open . . .

  He saw the white ceiling; the shadowy edge of a light; a tube of colourless liquid attached to a deflating plastic bag . . .

  Waiting for the ears to begin to register sound . . .

  The clatter of a trolley, piled high with the empty dishes from breakfast; voices; someone calling, someone shouting instructions . . .

  Waiting for the skin to start to respond to sensation . . .

  Crisp, hard sheets below the hands; tickling, irritating sensation on the right arm where the drip connected; warmth on the skin; soreness on the back . . .

  Waiting for the nose to become aware of odours . . .

  The peculiar hospital smell of ether, disinfectant; the faint perfume of flowers; the distant, just hinted odour of faeces; a pungent, strange smell of burned wood, or herbs . . .

  Waiting for the mind to remember . . .

  An explosion of glass! Darkness! Cold! The glitter of animal eyes; the stench of their breath! Alison, held to the floor struggling, and little Marianna, her body lifted into the air, and Dominick, carried away! The dark confusion and the terrible screaming of a woman attacked in the most brutal way! And . . .

  Came awake!

  Sat up in bed and screamed at the top of his voice!

  The room shook and swam with images. Alison ran towards him, vanished; Marianna screamed from behind and he twisted in the bed, jerking the needle from his arm so that glucose and blood flowed onto the sheets. Dominick fled into the shadows, pursued by a robed figure that raised a jewelled sword and struck down at him.

  And Brady screamed, his eyes screwed shut again, his face flushed with heat and anger and agony. The sinews of his neck stood out like great ridges of rock; muscles burst, skin split, bones crushed together in his neck as he flung back his head and cried with every ounce of energy in his body, every tiny air space of his lungs. The volume of the cry became a wind, a harrowing gale of terror . . . and sadness.

  By the time two members of the nursing staff arrived, Brady was racking with sobs, bleeding from his mouth, and beginning to bruise where the effect of tension had ruptured his tissues. He was forced back down to a lying position, but he fought the nurses, crying, 'Alison! Alison! The bastards are killing her. Alison! My daughter ... my daughter Mari, Dom . . . they're killing them! Let me go, let me go!'

  He flung the nurses back and staggered from the bed, but his legs, white and shakey after so long without use, refused to take his weight, and he collapsed heavily, still screaming the names of his family. He was helped back to bed. His mouth was foam flecked, and the foam was shaded with red.

  At last a needle slipped into his arm, and a calming drug coursed through his veins, reducing the muscular tension in his body, and the terrible confusion in his mind.

  In the half-light of that dreamy, drug-controlled state there were other images: remembered images from the three months of coma, images seen, perhaps, through his closed lids, or sensed by his mind, or seen during brief seconds when his eyes opened and closed again. There were the anonymous faces of doctors and nurses, pale and intense, bland and mostly bored. There was a face he knew to be his brother-in-law Bill, peering down at him and shaking his head. Others, friends perhaps, colleagues, all staring at him, all expressing bemusement in their pallid features.

  And there was one face in particular, unfamiliar to him, a face that bent close, that was accompanied by a strange smell, the smell of burning. It was a woman's face. She was pretty, though her hair was unkempt. Her breath had an odour of garlic to it, in this half-remembered dream. She stared at him and stroked him; she whispered to him, and touched a strange smelling unguent to his face and neck. Perhaps he had dreamed her. Perhaps it was just another nurse.

  The face faded. The drugs faded. Memory of Alison and Marianna and Dominick returned, and with it a renewed burst of hysterical anger. The anger was furious and uncontrollable; he tore at the bed clothes, tore at the curtains on the window, smashed glass and trays to the ground, and beat wildly but helplessly at the nursing staff who sedated him.

  Then there was sadness. Uncontrollable weeping. He wept as food was helped into his mouth; he wept when he was washed; he cried Marianna's name through the racking sobs of a most awesome loneliness. He remembered her standing on the woodshed, all tiny and fragile, a doll with two gaps in her teeth and that impish grin; eyes twinkling behind tiny round spectacles; feet, clad in immense red Wellington boots, kicking off from the woodshed as she launched into his arms and snuggled to his breast.

  Marianna!

  And, in his more rational moments, there were the questions. Who had they been? And why had they attacked the Bradys? And why had they taken only the three of them, and left Brady himself for dead? What on earth - or in hell - had attacked him? Why them, why that one family?

  Who had they been? Where had they come from?

  Slowly the flooding sadness subsided, leaving a great, gouging ache in his breast, but no longer causing his mind to suffer the turmoil of madness. Other emotions began to make themselves felt: bitterness; and hate. Hate for those who had done this thing to him, terrible hate for their arrogance in invading his home, and his life, for their brutality, for their unspeakable crime.

  5

  * * *

  The day after he had regained consciousness, Daniel Brady received his first visitor. Brady was mildly sedated, and in a melancholy frame of mind, the fear, the hatred and the intense bitterness pushed down by drugs. He sat, propped up in bed, staring out of the window.

  The door to his private room was opened by a petite, blonde nurse who said softly, 'The police are here. Do you feel up to it?'

  Brady turned his head to look at her. 'How many of them?'

  'Just one. He's been here on and off for the last three months. I think he'll be able to tell you . . . you know, something about . . . well, that night.'

  'Send him in,' said Brady, easing himself a little more upright. He had felt a shiver of black anger as the girl had referred to 'that night'. He knew it was just a matter of hours before the phantom that he was suppressing came screaming out of the darkness again.

  Superintendent Andrew Sutherland was a tall, overweight man, with a ruddy face, and receding grey hair, combed back slick against his skull. He smiled broadly at Brady as he dragged up a chair next to the bed. He opened his tan raincoat, but didn't take it off. Brady thought that he might sit across the chair, leaning on its back, but the man sat properly, almost primly, legs crossed, hands folded neatly in his lap.

  'How are you feeling, Mister Brady? Or is that question as cruel as it is silly?'

  Brady tried to smile. The policeman's eyes were as grey as his hair, islands of pallid, unfocussed strength in the pudgy pink jowls. He looked like a country policeman but with the ice-eyed good looks of an actor.

  'I'm very weak. I'm very confused. I'm growing more bitter all the time. I can't get my daughter's face out of my mind. They haunt me, all of them haunt me. I'm telling you, Superintendent, I shan't sleep, nor rest, until I avenge Alison for what happened to her; I want those men killed. I will kill them myself.'

  The superintendent chose to ignore that last statement. He said, instead, 'You know then. You've been told . . .'

  Brady looked away. 'That they've disappeared? That they were taken without trace? I didn't need to be told. I think I knew when they took them; I think I knew while I was in a coma; I certainly knew when I came out of it.' He turned back to Sutherland. 'What else can you tell me?'

  Sutherland pursed his lips as he stared at the sedated man. 'Your brother-in-law, one William Suchock, found you . . .'

  'I know my brother-in-law's name.'

  'Sorry Mister Brady, force of habit. Mister Suchock found you on the same evening of the attack. You were as good as dead. The room had been burned, the Christmas tree, the carpets, the curtains, some furniture ruined; but you have an efficient sprinkler system which doused the fire before it could do any real damage.'

  Brady nodded his head, not for any reason except that within himself he was recognizing the advantage of farsightedness. In the months after he and his family had moved into Brook's Corner, Marianna had taken to sleepwalking, and ending up at the fire place, trying to light the fire with matches, or burning tapers from the gas stove. The reason for her strange, somnambulistic mission had defeated them, but the worry had been there that she might cause a fire. The sprinkler system had cost very little to install, and was an added security.

  Sutherland went on, 'He called an ambulance at once, and he called the police. You were as good as dead. You had been strangled, and your ribs crushed. It's something of a mystery - not to mention a miracle - that you're actually still alive. In fact, for a few minutes it's quite possible that you weren't . . .'

  Frowning, Brady said, 'I don't understand.'

  'You will,' said Sutherland. 'Your brother-in-law will explain. I need to talk to you about more important things. The fact is, you are alive, and you've remained mentally alert after a most vicious, brutal and callous attack. Your family are missing. I have to tell you, with some regret, that they are missing without trace. We have done everything possible to find them, assured by Mister Suchock that they were in the house with you earlier that evening, and that they had no plans to go away. Airports, sea-ports, all were alerted. Our divisions throughout the country were given photographs of the three of them. We checked the roads, and country around your house across an area of several miles. We've contacted every one of your family, and friends, although we may have missed a few friends. Nothing . . .'

  'Nothing at all?'

  'Not a trace. I'm very sorry, Mister Brady. I must also tell you that this is the third such incident we have heard of in the past year. It's essential we hear from you what happened, and what you remember.'

  The third such incident! The words echoed in Brady's mind. It added, strangely, a sense of insult to his most horrifying injury. The animals that had attacked his family had attacked before, and twice before had got away with it! Not just Alison, Marianna and Dominick, but others, other innocent people, abused, defiled, perhaps killed, stolen . . .

  'Bastards . . .' he said, and repeated with as much vehemence as his weakened, subdued body could muster, 'Bastards!'

  'Tell me what you remember about them.'

  Sutherland's unflustered tone induced calm in Brady, who said, 'There were five or six. Hard to tell, they struck me down almost at once. One was a woman, youngish, chubby; she . . .' the words stuck in his throat and he felt tears rush to his eyes; but he blinked them back, swallowed the sour taste of vomit in his mouth, and said 'She raped . . . Alison. A sort of gold phallic object. Horrible. Why? Why would they do that? Why not just take her, why subject her to such a foul abuse?' He choked back the sudden anger, saying, 'Oh my God! I must find them, I must find them . . .'

  But he had started to become agitated, twisting in the bed, and struggling to sit up. Sutherland rose from his seat, pressured his shoulders and eased him back, uttering soothing words. A nurse came in, frowned, felt Brady's forehead. 'Will you be much longer? He really should rest.'

  'I'm alright,' said Brady, feeling gradually calmer. 'I want to get this over with.'

  The nurse remained in the room. Sutherland sat down on his chair again, and prompted, 'A woman.'

  'She seemed to be the leader. They wore dark robes, and animal masks; they might have been real animal faces. One ... he was fat, short, looked mongoloid. I shan't forget that face, like a grinning toad, but white, grey white, like death, like a corpse.'

  'What else?'

  'The others . . . just voices. Men, youngish sounding. One wore an amulet, like a severed head. Stone, or dull metal. One had a pattern on his robe, like the classic labyrinth, the pattern of turf mazes . . .'

  'Could you sketch that amulet if we asked you to?'

  'I could try.'

  'Can you remember any dialogue? Any words, any strange words?'

  Brady thought hard. The event was so confusing, and tinged with such pain in his mind, that little coherent memory came through.

  'Wickhurst. Something like that. "Is Wickhurst powerful enough" someone said.'

  Sutherland wrote down the word. 'That's useful. Anything else?'

  'One of them was forbidden to kill.'

  Something else . . . but he couldn't place it, couldn't remember.

  Sutherland said, 'One of them obviously wasn't. Although he didn't reckon on a man of your physical stamina. What time did they come?'

  Brady didn't know. 'Early evening. Marianna was outside. It was dark, maybe seven o'clock. Marianna. . .' As he said the name he turned back to stare at Sutherland, who was watching him with both compassion and interest. In Brady's mind was a peculiar image. 'She was lifted in the air. I couldn't see who was holding her. Lifted . . . spun around. I couldn't see how . . .'

  Sutherland scribbled frantically in his small notebook. Then he turned back a few pages and looked up at Brady. 'Do any of these words mean anything to you? Antherro-gatha.'

  Brady shook his head. Sutherland said, 'Baelenneas.'

  'Not a thing.'

  'Magondathog . . .'

  Brady turned sharply. The word, meaningless in itself, set bells ringing in his head. Yes, that word, that strange word, he had heard it twice as he had lain, tied and beaten in the darkness. He said so, adding, 'A place name, I think. What does it mean?'