The Walking Dead
Author: Guy N. Smith
Date: 1984-10-01 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: The black sullen water closed over his head. Bubbles of vile-smelling marsh gas rose from the slime and mud of the pool. Still deeper he sank, eyes staring, wide-open. Now strange figures - human figures - swam before him with weed-entangled hair and outstretched, beckoning arms. An unearthly siren song of desire and death swelled and rang in his ears. Soft water-bloated flesh stroked and nuzzled against him. Down, down they took him. The creatures of the pit, who were dead yet could never die, bone white in the inky blackness, sucked and pulled at him. Claimed him for their own.
Publisher: Black Hill Books

The Walking Dead - Kindle Version 1.0

(c) Guy N Smith 1984 - 2011

Published by Black Hill Books, November 2011

ISBN : 978-1-907846-335

First Published by New English Library (NEL) October 1984.

Converted to Ebook from original paperback by Scan2Ebook.com

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Contents

Title

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

The End

CHAPTER ONE

Once it had been a wood. Now it was a barren, unsightly wilderness, a festering sore on the landscape, the ultimate example of modern man's unceasing efforts to despoil Nature's beauty, decades of natural growth destroyed in a matter of weeks by cruel chainsaws with merciless bulldozers following in their wake. A battle that the might of modern machinery won easily, and then the victors departed and left their desecration behind them.

The maroon Subaru estate slowed on the adjacent main road, seemed to hesitate before pulling into the wide lay-by, came to a halt amidst smaller mounds of sand and gravel; a storeage place for the remnants of worked-out seams and soon it would all be gone. After that, nothing. A tract of once-beautiful countryside abandoned, ugly scars that would never heal.

There was a marked tenseness about the driver, a tautness of his body, lips a thin bloodless line beneath the new growth of beard, blue eyes that took in everything and were never still. Hands still clutched the steering wheel as though he was fighting against an urge to drive on and be away from this place, forget that he had ever pulled in here.

Once he had been lithe, athletic, but these last few years had seen a growth of surplus flesh, the waistband of his trousers a fraction too tight for comfort. Uneasily his hand fell to the door lever, hesitated. A decision; his better judgment warning him not to get out. Drive on, for this place has too many awful memories that will only bring back the old nightmares. Waking, lathered in sweat, seeing those faces in the darkness of the bedroom as though they still lived and had returned to exact a terrible revenge upon him. Snatching at the light pull and only then did they fade. But he would see them again and again in patches of shadow. Fiends that had lived in human form and had not been destroyed as he tried to force himself to believe they had.

Other memories, pleasant ones, sad ones; that was why he had come back. His fingers depressed the lever, clicked the door open a couple of inches. A sweet smell of May countryside pervaded the interior of the Subaru, a contrast to that which lay outside, a freshness where there was only barren land. His eyes misted briefly and he swung his legs outside.

Traffic; it was impossible to listen. He straightened up, let the door swing shut. Waiting his chance to cross the road, almost hoping that there would be no break in the flow of traffic and he would be forced to return whence he had come. He had tried, done his best. But his conscience would only drive him back here so it was best to get it over and done with, try to forget.

He made it, stood in the gateway opposite. The gate had long gone, just two rotting posts. His keen eyes picked out a broken sign lying in the grass, lettering which was barely legible but he knew the words by heart, had read them so many times before. DANGER - GUARD DOGS PATROLLING. There would be no dogs now because there was nothing to guard except maybe some heavy machinery in one of the quarries beyond. That rotted sign had once been nailed up by his own hands.

The Lady Walk. It was funny how names came back, hit you like a physical blow when you weren't expecting them. A soft sandy track, the only right of way that circled the perimeter of what had once been Hopwas Wood. A favourite place for lovers and courting couples, their cars often getting stuck in the deceptive surface, but they kept on coming because it was a kind of tradition. He wondered if they still came now.

His feet moved, he walked forward like an automaton, forcing himself to gaze upon the upheaval, the desolation.

Perhaps it was for the best, that this whole place should be destroyed, wiped off the face of the earth as though it had never been. No, not destroyed, just … altered.

A few hundred yards further on he stopped again and a faint smile touched his lips. Once he had owned this place, or rather Pat, his wife, had. Beyond that sandy rise, hidden by the last surviving belt of Corsican pines, their tops just visible, stood the big house. Unless it had been demolished along with everything else. Forbidding, but it had given him a few years of happiness, the only times he wanted to remember about this place and even they hurt now. Events came flooding back; Clive Rowlands and Jenny Lawson, victims of an ancient evil that had emanated from … The Sucking Pit!

Oh God, he'd never get it out of his system! Again he wanted to run but he couldn't. He had to see for himself if the quarrying had unearthed that awful bog that had been buried a decade ago beneath hundreds of tons of rubble. Surely they would not exhume the old evil, resurrect it. If that was the case then there was no hope for any of them.

He lit a cigarette with trembling hands, inhaled the smoke with relish. The Sucking Pit, a gypsy burial ground and a lot more besides. It had had its revenge on himself, given him Rowlands' wife, enough money, and more, to last him for the rest of his life. Taunted him, played cruel games with him. Woodland, a country mansion - all his, and a beautiful loving wife thrown in as a bonus. For a time the trauma had seemed worth it. Those faces came at night but they couldn't hurt him. Cornelius, the gypsy leader, mouthing Romany curses; Jenny Lawson a spiteful young witch now trapped in the shadows where she could not harm him. Old Lawson, the woodman, too. And Clive Rowlands shrieking for his wealth and lands to be returned to him. You stole my land and my wife, Latimer!
[i]

You could not escape them, no matter what you did, Chris Latimer reflected. They had got at Pat, too, and eventually she was waking up in the night screaming, clutching at him. ‘They're still here, Chris, I know they are!’

They had tried to console each other but it had not worked. Always there was something lurking in the background, an intangible force that had you looking behind you, sleeping with a light burning. That was what had come between them, destroyed their love and turned it into bickering and hate, wrenched them apart and set them against each other.

There were other contributory factors which you tried not to relate to the Sucking Pit. It was dead and gone, anyway. Wasn't it? The timber market had virtually collapsed. You blamed that on the economic recession like everybody was blaming everything, an excuse for bad management, inefficiency and a lot of other things. Hopwas Wood was a wealth of growing timber that was fast outgrowing itself: Christmas trees that were now too big for the seasonal boom, if it ever came back; larch that had grown straggling, some of it stunted because you couldn't afford to brash and clear the undergrowth when nobody wanted to buy the trees. In the end all you had was a forest wilderness that was no good to anybody except for firewood that was too costly to harvest.

Chris had agreed to sell up. They didn't have any other choice. If Pat had stayed here much longer her mind would have snapped. That sand and gravel firm had come in with an offer. In better times the Latimers would have stuck out for another fifty grand but there was no sign of the recession easing yet so they had accepted. Then the villagers had been up in arms, petitions and everything they could think of to prevent their natural heritage from being turned into … this! Latimer grimaced as he stared around him, knew that they had been right. He had really sold them down the river.

In more prosperous times their protests might have found a sympathetic ear but the planning permission had gone through and within a year the timber had been felled and quarrying had begun. The Latimers had moved away, to an executive-style bungalow in Warwickshire where they should have been able to shake off the Hopwas memories.

But they hadn't! The gypsy curse and Cornelius reached beyond the boundaries of the old wood. Indeed, they were restricted by no boundaries. Faces in the night, a cold clammy touch to wake you, and in the end the Latimers were sleeping with the light on again. And other things had started to go wrong too.

Chris had suspected that Pat might be having an affair but he stubbornly chose to ignore the signs. She had never taken to going out on her own at nights the whole time they had lived at Hopwas. But this was a different environment. Suburban. They had a wider circle of friends … no, acquaintances! Boredom was creeping in and when you got bored you did things totally out of character in an attempt to relieve monotony, to create excitement.

Oh Jesus, that day he found out! Just remembering it had him clutching his hands to his head in utter despair. The shock, the revulsion of actually coming home and finding them using the marital bed. A big man, huge and muscular, his dark skin reminding Latimer even in the midst of his mind-numbing daze of … Cornelius!

Truly the gypsy curse had turned a full circle: there was no escape from it, neither for himself nor Pat. For their marriage this was the end, that was an undisputable fact. Only now was he able to face up to it, a bitterness that ate into him like a malignant growth. It was stupid to have come here today, a pointless mission that could only bring back the heartaches and the … fear.

He shivered in the humid warmth of a May mid-morning, found himself glancing round. That same old feeling, the way it used to be, a sensation of being watched so that your skin tingled and you broke out into a cold sweat. That was ridiculous because the old wood was gone and there was nowhere here for anybody (anything?) to hide. All the same he scrutinised his surroundings. Nothing but sand and more sand so that you almost convinced yourself that you were standing in the midst of a desert. A number of quarries, some large, others small, one already beginning to fill with sandy coloured water. Like the Sucking Pit. No, nothing could be compared with that devilish boggy pool. The police had partly drained it that day when they were looking for bodies; they'd found Clive Rowlands, Lawson and Cornelius. That private eye, Kilby, too. And hundreds of skeletons from Romany ‘burials’ over the centuries. That was when the excavators began to push tons of rubble in to fill it up, because they couldn't go any deeper. The pit just went on and on. a seemingly bottomless mire. God knows what other secrets it held, refused to yield, horrors that were only covered up, not destroyed. He had to go and see for himself that it was still buried.

A monotonous hum attracted his attention. At first he thought it was the traffic on the distant road but no, it was nearer than that, heavier. A movement, a mechanical bucket swinging into view then disappearing again behind a sand mound. A JCB, still excavating, the company determined to exhaust every last seam before they … What the hell would they do with this place now it was virtually played out?

It's none of my business, Chris Latimer told himself. They can do what the hell they like with it. They paid for it, it's theirs. I should be grateful because they made me independent. But he wasn't; in his mind this was still his land, they had disfigured his empire. Usurpers.

He walked on slowly following the winding course of the Lady Walk. In his mind he saw his surroundings as they once were: tall pines lining the bridle path, the sweet scent of their needles heavy in the air. Nostalgia could often be cruel; frightening, too. He should not have come but it was too late now. He quickened his step, an air of urgency about his movements. Better get it over and done with, check that the Sucking Pit was still buried deep, satisfy himself. After that he would leave, never come back. Ever.

The excavators had had to leave the Lady Walk as it was because it was a public right of way; even they would not dare to incur the renewed wrath of the villagers. Sand spilled into Latimer's shoes, gave him a gritty sensation as though he was on a beach. Another bend, past a lone rhododendron which had somehow escaped the wholesale destruction of everything that sprouted green in this man-made arid landscape.

Another hundred yards at the most. His pulses quickened. The workings were petering out here, some sixty or seventy acres of scrubland, mostly silver birch and bracken, left untouched because the seams had ended. That meant they could not possibly have touched the Sucking Pit; it still had to be there deep down.

He barely recognised the place. Where the original rubble had been bulldozed level weeds had grown. The wind had carried silver birch seeds and now saplings sprouted. Land that was level, too level; artificial.

Latimer got the feeling again, almost smelled the evil, a powerful giant buried alive, screaming for his freedom. He held back, didn't want to go any further. He didn't need to because he saw everything that he had come here for, his worst fears groundless. They had not unearthed the Sucking Pit, thank God! He closed his eyes momentarily, offered up a silent prayer of thanks. He wasn't a religious man but there were times when …

And in that instant it was as though his prayer had been rejected, that evil had triumphed, had awaited his coming for this moment of freedom. He felt the vibrations, that buried giant growing stronger by the second, heaving at the soil and rocks. Any second they would spew up, the black waters of the pit being released in a gush of evil, the air thick with a foul stagnant stench. No, for Christ's sake, no!

Horror turning to relief, realisation as that JCB hove into view, a steel monster of destruction heading towards him, bucket raised. Slowing, stopping, the engine reluctantly dying away. A silence that was heavy in the humid atmosphere, a few seconds when nothing happened and did not look as though it was going to. Then the door swung open and a muscular man dressed only in a pair of jeans and heavy dusty working boots leaped to the ground. For his size he landed so delicately, the culmination of years of bulldozer driving; confident in an arrogant kind of way, clear blue eyes narrowing suspiciously as he sized up Latimer.

‘You lookin' for something, mister?’

‘Yes … and no.’ Latimer returned the other's stare, smiled. ‘You could say I've just come for a look, nothing in particular. I used to own this place years ago.’

‘That so?’ Disbelief.

‘I don't live round here now. I was just driving by and with an hour to spare I thought I'd look in and see what had happened to the old wood. But there isn't a wood any more. More like the Sahara Desert.’

‘The gravel's finished.’ The younger man kicked at a pebble, sent it spinning. ‘They can't complain, though. They found more than they expected, caught the market whilst it was right and now they've hit the jackpot a second time.’

‘How?’ A direct question from Latimer, an urgency that demanded an answer because it was of paramount importance to him. He still owned this place whether or not he held the title deeds; God damn, he'd never get it out of his system.

‘Haven't you heard?’ A slow soft drawl. ‘No, I suppose you haven't if you don't live round here. The sand and gravel firm are packing up, just a few bits and pieces of machinery to collect and then that's their lot. They've sold out to a building corporation … for an undisclosed sum!’ A harsh sneering laugh.

‘Building!’ Chris Latimer's brain reeled. ‘You must be joking, man. They can't build on here, it's Green Belt.’

‘Was,’ the other corrected him. ‘But it ain't no more. There was a hell of a hassle, scores of petitions. These villagers really got their rag off, employed a top lawyer from Brum but it didn't get 'em anywhere. If you ask me there was some jiggery-pokery going on behind the scenes. Even their MP couldn't help them and this feller Grafton won his case. He's got planning permission for fifty houses. They start levelling the site next Monday. Me, I'm self-employed and they hired me to clear this patch here. A piece of cake, most of it's level anyway, just these few young trees and some scrub. More a matter of just tidying up. Hey, were you serious, mister, about owning this place?’

‘I was.’ Latimer nodded. ‘Over ten years ago.’

‘Didn't live round here then. Thank God! Christ, it's a dead-alive hole. My missus hates it, but you can find yourself tied up in a place to such an extent that you can't get away, no matter how badly you want to.’

‘I know exactly how you feel,’ Latimer said, and thought ‘only too bloody well’. He went on. ‘but they're not going to build houses right here!’

‘They bloody are. They're starting this end, should have the first ones half built before those bleedin' excavations are finished being filled in and levelled.’

Chris Latimer was aware of sweat running down his face, tiny rivulets that suddenly chilled. He stared where the JCB driver pointed, saw the Sucking Pit as it used to be, every detail as though it was only yesterday that it had been filled in. Trees cast dark shadows so that the patches of water visible amongst the dense reeds seemed even blacker. So dangerous because you could not see where the pit itself really began, a stretch of grass that looked firm enough until you put your full weight on it, felt yourself start to sink in over your ankles, the thick black slime starting to pull you down. You struggled but it was hopeless, because you weren't just fighting against a bog - you were taking on a very powerful evil, one that had fed on human corpses for centuries.

‘They can't … not here … don't they remember?’

‘It's no good going on about it, mate.’ The man turned back towards his machine. ‘Everything's been said that's gotta be said. Me, I don't agree with it because if they go on building at this rate there very soon won't be any countryside left. However, it's work for me and I'm not grumbling. Now, if you'll just get out of the way I'll make a start.’

Some strange instinct was screaming at Latimer to stop this violation of an age-old Romany burial site. Lie down in the path of that machine, he won't dare run over you. But he didn't because his logic told him it would be futile, just a temporary inconvenience. The police would be fetched, Latimer would be arrested and hauled away, brought before magistrates and bound over to keep the peace. And if he told them the truth he might be sent for psychiatric treatment. There was no way he could win where hundreds of others had failed.

‘Tell me one thing before I go,’ he shouted up at the cab.

‘What's that, then?’

‘The house, the big house over there beyond the tall pines, does it still stand?’

‘It sure does,’ the other yelled back as the motor kicked and shuddered into life. ‘Grafton lives there now and who can blame him, bastard that he is?’

Latimer jumped to one side, stared at the huge, hateful machine as it lumbered by him. He wanted to shout and ask who the hell Grafton was but the other was in no mood to linger any longer. He was on piece work and time was money.

Tender birch saplings were uprooted, flattened instantly, the JCB taking a diagonal course, turning, coming back again. Ten years of growth were destroyed in as many minutes, as once more the site of the Sucking Pit was desecrated.

Chris Latimer turned away. He could not stay here. Much as he hated the pit this was the ultimate in degradation, the end of an ancient culture. The Romany death rites were gone for ever, just as Hopwas Wood was.

He found himself wandering away from the Lady Walk, suddenly became aware that he was heading in the direction of the big house. Something else he had to see once more before he left here for ever. Crazy, but that's how it was.

Miniature canyons and mountains created solely for the excavation of sand and gravel so that Man might create more eyesores, destroy the habitats of the creatures of the wild in his quest for supremacy, and eventually destroy Nature herself. God, they were all mad.

A sudden sense of guilt. This fellow Grafton, presumably the owner of the woods, could suddenly emerge, tell him to get the hell out of here. Latimer would have no option but to go; humiliating, particularly so when he had once owned these acres. Uneasy, but just one peep at the old house and then he would go. For good.

A steep rise, powdery sand that had been dried by the hot sun; two paces forward, slipping back one, scrambling the last few yards on his hands and knees. The summit, almost afraid to look over.

Shock, one that was illogical, because the big house looked exactly the same as it had always done, a huge rambling place in need of repair and decoration. He ought to have renovated it during the time he and Pat had lived there; he didn't know why he hadn't. Or maybe he did. Somehow it had seemed a sacrilege to interfere with the past. The house was a tradition, it had always been like that. The same could be said for the Sucking Pit except that he hadn't ordered it to be filled in. That had been done on police orders, which let him out. All the same he had ended up a victim of the gypsy curse.

He knelt there and his sweat ran cold again as he remembered that terrible night when he had discharged both barrels of a twelve bore shotgun into Cornelius. Self-defence, he didn't have any choice. Oh God, the memory would haunt him for the rest of his days. He had taken human life. One and a quarter ounces of number six shot had lacerated the Romany giant at a range of no more than fifteen yards and the giant had even withstood the second blast, brains and splinters of bone flying into the air. A faceless giant streaming with blood. Reloading, firing again, and only then had Cornelius toppled and fallen into the pit, the mire sucking him down.

The house seemed to scowl at him as though it remembered. Dirt-stained windows, a couple of cracked panes. It saw and knew him. It had the appearance of being deserted. Perhaps that JCB driver was mistaken and this fellow Grafton did not live here, maybe hadn't moved in yet.

He found himself trying to imagine what the interior looked like. That couldn't be the same because he and Pat had taken all their furniture with them. Maybe it was empty, a hollow shell in which windows rattled on a windy night, inexplicable noises, hollow footfalls and sounds like mocking whispers. He shuddered, again experienced that urgency to be away from here.

A sudden gust of wind whipped up the sand off the mounds, hurled it at him venomously. He turned away, pawed at his eyes in an attempt to wipe them free of the gritty particles.

The wind was getting up with a sound like a host of invisible demons shrieking at him. Begone, Latimer, before it is too late, for the Sucking Pit is not dead!

He slid down the excavation, oblivious of the sand which filled his shoes, shielding his face from the swirling gusts. Again he might have been in a remote desert far from civilisation. A moment of illogical panic; suppose he could not find his way back to the Lady Walk, wandered around in circles in this blinding miniature sandstorm. And when night came …

Ridiculous, but it lent an urgency to his step, almost running in places where the ground was firmer, taking a diagonal course that must eventually bring him out on the Lady Walk. The wind was almost gale force and he had to fight his way through it, head down, unable to look up.

Relief! That lone rhododendron on the sandy track. He reached out, squeezed its firm green leaves just to make sure that it wasn't a mirage. So still now, hardly a breath of wind, the sun beating down with full force. Had his clothing not been smothered in sand then he would have put it down to some kind of hallucination triggered off by his imaginary fears. All the same, his nerves were getting the better of him. Nostalgia gone wrong, a culmination of those awful nights ten years ago and his recent heartbreak.

He stood there listening, heard the faint drone of that JCB in the distance, a sound like avalanching rocks. Then silence. Perhaps the final destruction was complete, the site of the old Romany burial ground a flat and featureless strip of land awaiting the erection of modern box-like dwelling places. Ignominy.

But it was none of Chris Latimer's business. It was foolish to have come here and revived all those awful memories, stirred up the fear within himself again. Now it would take even longer to forget.

Exhausted, and with a sense of sheer relief, he spied the Subaru in the lay-by, almost welcomed the rush of unending traffic. There was a lot to be said for an everyday mundane world.

CHAPTER TWO

Mick Treadman had long ago got over the thrill of driving a JCB. In his boyhood years it had been the epitome of his ambitions, in much the same way as other boys fantasised about driving trains. He had spent hours on a building site close to his home, even played truant to go there, just to watch and listen to the noise of those mighty machines that sent the blood coursing through his veins. One day, he promised himself, he would be like his heroes out there, handling one of those invincible machines, tearing soil and rocks out by the bucketful, depositing his load in a cloud of thick dust. He didn't want to do anything else. Money didn't enter into it; he'd offer to do it for free if they would just give him a JCB to drive. Power, that was what it was.

But life didn't work out like that, as Mick Treadman discovered in due course. Whilst most of his friends had forgotten their train-driving dreams he still had his obsession with JCBs. Academically at school he had been a failure but he wanted it that way. If he had come out with a stack of ‘O’ levels his parents would have destined him for some stuffy white-collar job, but when you were made out to be thick all that was left was labouring jobs. But he had had to start on the very bottom rung of the ladder, making the tea and being a fetch-and-carry boy for the brickies on the new Caledonian Estate, the victim of ceaseless leg-pull and practical jokes.

‘Hey, Mick, ever seen anythin' like this?’ Ribald laughter as the full-colour centre spread of a much crumpled sex magazine was displayed for his attention, had him slopping hot tea all over his fingers, wincing with pain. Tell us, Mick. ‘ave you ever 'ad it off with a bird like that? Or, for that matter. ‘ave you ever 'ad it off at all?’ More laughing all round.

Mick hadn't had it off but the constant question was a double-edged one. If you said you hadn't then they teased you mercilessly and called you a wanker. If you lied and said you had, then you were plied with all kinds of intimate questions in an attempt to prove you a liar. So you laughed with them and remained non-committal. It was the only way. But it seemed that JCB drivers were always getting the best birds if you listened to them. Strong he-men that women fell over themselves for.

And that was where Mick Treadman made his first big mistake in life, just after his twentieth birthday. There were always girls hanging round the sites exchanging banter with the labourers, getting chatted up and sometimes doing much less innocuous things in the sheds or amongst the piles of stacked materials.

Mick Treadman reflected, as he levelled that patch of ground beneath which lay the devilish Sucking Pit that hot afternoon, that he had not really wanted to go out with Joy in the first place; he just dated her because it seemed that digger men went with women. For him it was a kind of ego trip.

Joy was fast, too fast for Mick. And in the pub he'd had two pints more than he usually did, a combination of needing Dutch courage and showing off. After that he was easy prey.

They had gone on to the old school playing fields where a lot of courting couples went who weren't fortunate enough to have cars at their disposal. It was a warm night with a hint of thunder in the atmosphere and a three-quarter moon giving just enough light to add romantic setting to the otherwise very ordinary suburban surroundings.

Mick's whole body tingled as she began to kiss him, her tongue pushing into his mouth, her hands smoothing over his thighs and threatening to go places any second. Christ, she got him so worked up that he almost orgasmed before she began to rub his hardness through his tight jeans.

‘I like you,’ she giggled; after three gins she giggled for the rest of the evening. ‘You and me ought to go steady, Mick.’

‘I'm going to be a digger driver one day,’ he announced proudly and would have gone into more details had her groping sensuous fingers not interrupted a detailed analysis of his ambitions.

Somehow she had got them both half-undressed, deftly removing any obstructing garments; a crash course in advanced foreplay, guiding his hands where she wanted them, showing him just where and how she liked to be stimulated. Her kisses became hotter and wetter, her body convulsing and tensing as though she was on the verge of some kind of fit. Then she hoisted herself up on top of him, put him where she wanted him.

Fears crowded Mick Treadman's mind, threatened to spoil the sheer bliss of his first mating. ‘Hey … hadn't I ought to be … wearing something?’

‘You leave that … to me,’ she grunted, and he had done just that, taking her at her word and fully believing that she was on the pill. Christ, a bird had to be careful for her own sake.

It hadn't lasted long, a minute or two at the most. Joy had really gone over the top, pressing herself down on him as though she couldn't get enough, clutching at him and scratching him with her long fingernails. He wished he could have made it a second time for her but that was impossible. Eventually his thoughts returned to JCBs and the rugged glory of the men who made building houses possible. Once you had achieved that status the birds would flock round you.

A few weeks later Joy delivered her bombshell. They had gone down to the pub, maybe afterwards they would have walked across to the playing field. ‘I'm pregnant,’ she said, just like that.

‘You can't be!’ He gasped in shock disbelief.

‘Why can't I be? You got me pregnant, I know, cause I haven't done it with anybody else.’

In those first awful moments of realisation he had wanted to strangle her, punch her face until it was unrecognisable. But he didn't. Instead he trembled, almost burst into tears, thought about running away and possibly would have done if he had had somewhere to go and some money. But he had neither. He was trapped and he knew it.

‘We'll have to get married,’ there was smug satisfaction in her tone. ‘but we would've done anyway, wouldn't we, Mick, so it comes to the same thing.’

Marriage to Joy was debatable, Mick decided - until now. A good-looking bird to boast about at tea break, almost a status symbol in that gathering of labourers on the building site. Once she was his wife that all came to an end. ‘'Ow's the missus, Mick? When's that baby of yours due?’

Joy had had a miscarriage and after that life had become exceedingly monotonous. Mick only went to the pub on Saturday nights and then she came with him, all part of the marriage trap. The rest of the week he tried to work overtime, not for the money but so that he didn't have to stop in the house.

Then the company had folded and he had spent a year on the dole. They had had to move up to the Midlands to find work, a brickie's mate, still eyeing the diggers with envy. And when that firm went bust Mick had gambled, bought a clapped out old JCB and started up on his own. Moonlighting at first but he made out. And now that he had got what he wanted he wasn't sure he wanted it after all. The initial thrill of digging and demolishing had faded into an irksome task and all he had left in life was Joy bitching and whining when he returned home. And she was desperately trying to get herself pregnant again. It was all she had left in life.

That was the irony of life, Treadman laughed aloud in his cab, you fought to get something and when you got it you didn't want it. Maybe Joy would be the same if she had her baby and then life would be sheer bloody hell.

He brought the machine to a standstill, surveyed the area he had just levelled. Not bad, but it could do with another going over; he always took a pride in his work.

He reversed, decided to traverse the area crossways, make it really even. Maybe when the building inspectors saw it they would find him some more work. Jobs were becoming scarce these days, there were too many at it.

He thought he felt the JCB sink a fraction; it could have been his imagination. The engine stuttered, picked up again and he checked the fuel gauge. Low, but enough to finish the job. Another half hour at the most.

A lurch and a tilt; decidedly not his imagination this time. A fleeting memory of that time when he was moonlighting and he had offered to plough a steep field for a farmer. Hair-raising if you looked down. Then, when he was right at the steepest point, the half shaft had broken. He had screamed his fear as he had felt the four-wheel drive tractor start to go, knowing that there was no way he could stop it. Bumping from side to side, gathering speed, miraculously not overturning. Cut and bruised he had resigned himself to death when suddenly the tractor embedded itself in a heap of gorse bushes which he had ploughed up at the bottom. It had bounced once, still remained upright and then come to rest. Gently, an anticlimax. In those few minutes following Mick Treadman had almost become religious.

But the JCB couldn't go anywhere here, the ground was flat, not even a gradual slope.

It tilted back the other way, seemed to sink into the surface, the clutch roaring, the wheels somehow failing to secure a grip. Mick leaned forward, looked down. Jesus Christ Alive!

It was as though the ground below him was opening up, a crack that was widening even as he stared down into its black depths, the JCB slipping a foot or so at a time, steel scraping painfully on rock, buckling in places. The JCB dropped another foot, vibrated and screeched its protest, an elevator going down in stages because somebody was clowning with the control button!

Treadman's first instinct was to try and open the cab door, jump out, but that was impossible because the bottom of the door was below ground level, wedged against tons of rubble that was already beginning to shift again. Another fall; his stomach churned the way it used to when his uncle took him for car rides when he was a boy and went over humpback bridges too fast.

Panicking, looking around for something with which to smash the heavy-duty glass windows, crawl out through a jagged hole whilst there was still time. His searching fingers located a fifteen-inch spanner, grabbed it, swung it. Another jerk and a fall, at least three feet this time, throwing him across the cab, his weapon spinning from his grasp.

Oh God, the pain in his back, he'd damaged his spine for sure. He tried to move, screamed in agony. The interior of the cab was becoming progressively darker the further the JCB slipped into the ground.

It had to be an earthquake, Treadman's crazed brain told him; a massive one, sudden and undetected by all the experts and their sophisticated gadgets. Maybe it would stop now, it couldn't last for ever. But even if it did he would not be able to escape from his steel prison wedged in this fissure.

He made a determined attempt to move, a few inches that brought indescribable pain to the base of his spine and he fell back sweating, writhing. Yelling for help but all he got were the echoes coming back at him in the confined space, taunting him. You'll die in here, Mick Treadman, because nobody will come to look for you until it's too late. In this heat you'll suffocate in a couple of hours. They won't start looking for you until tonight. Your wife's used to you working overtime. She won't even begin to get anxious until after dark.

He lay there on his back staring up at the last remaining oblong of light, had to turn his head away because he was looking directly into the sun's rays. A blaze of kaleidoscopic patterns before his eyes that speared right into his brain, reminded him of the one and only time when he had had a migraine. It sapped your strength and willpower, you found yourself surrendering, giving up. No, he had to fight; keep calm or else you're done for.

Oh, Jesus, the machine fell yet again, a long drop this time, several feet for sure, perhaps yards, an ungainly descent into the earth, bouncing and jerking as though its sheer weight was cutting a passage downwards. A grinding and snapping of metal; that was the bucket sheering off.

Now it was almost total darkness. Mick Treadman whimpered softly, writhed as the pain in his back linked up with the one in his head, a sensation as though his whole body was about to split in half in the same way that the ground had done. He closed his eyes but could not shut out those dancing, searing lights.

Crying softly; he hadn't cried since he was a boy and that stray cat he had fostered had been run over by a passing motorist. The bastard hadn't even stopped, had left him there on the kerbside nursing the dying animal, sobbing to it not to die. But it had. He'd almost forgotten the incident until now. This was a fitting place to think of death. Weeping unashamedly. In a way crying was a relief; men were conditioned, brainwashed, from adolescence not to cry, which was stupid. Why should women be privileged to show their feelings openly?

Another fall, a more severe one, and he felt the sides of the cab buckle under the strain, the shatterproof windows cracking but, true to their claim, not breaking. One last tiny sliver of light from the world above penetrated the interior and then that was obliterated as rocks and soil began to avalanche on to the roof, bouncing at first then filling up into a solid block, wedging and burying the digger so securely that surely it could not move any further. Pebbles spilled down the sides, clattered against the damaged glass like thousands of tapping fingers.

Silence, so utter and complete, that it triggered off a new wave of mind-blowing terror inside the injured man. Catalepsy! he didn't know the meaning of the word but he knew only too well what being buried alive meant - a slow, fearful death all alone in the darkness, gulping down every last breath of stale air until all the oxygen was gone. A lot of people preferred cremation for that very reason.

‘No!’ he screamed. ‘I don't want to die, not like that anyway.’

His voice was flat and muffled, not even echoing. Staring into the blackness, trying to see, but all he saw were those blinding flashing lights that seared his eyes. Breathing heavily, trying to think of a dozen reasons why he should not be left to die like this. They had to come and look for him. Maybe that crazy guy who tried to make out that he once owned the place had heard the JCB being swallowed up. Maybe he had been buried too! Oh, Jesus Christ!

Treadman tried to move again but it was impossible. Pointless because even if the full use of his body had been restored to him there was nowhere he could go. Breaking a window would be futile because it would need another JCB to get him out of here. Possibly the crack had filled right up to the surface and they wouldn't even know he was down here! Another missing person, taken off with his only item of machinery to start a new life under another name somewhere else.

He lay there, gave up thinking about how he was going to get out of here, just wished that he could die quickly, get it over with. And if they did not find him then one grave was much the same as another.

A timeless void. He did not have a watch with him so it was impossible to check the passing of minutes, hours. The agony in his head subsided to a dull throbbing and the flashing lights faded. Just black impenetrable darkness. And if he lay still then his back stopped hurting.

It was beginning to get stuffy and he found himself consciously drawing breath, warm stale air that had him fighting for more. If only he could sleep then perhaps he would drift off and not be aware of death when it finally came.

He dozed, hovered on the brink of blissful unconsciousness. Then suddenly he was wide awake, jerking up into a half-sitting position and crying out aloud as his spine twisted, fell against a lever that gouged viciously into his ribs. A noise; perhaps he had dreamt it, his mind beginning to play weird tricks on him. Or maybe help was at hand and a rescue party was trying to dig down to him from above.

It was all in his fevered imagination. No, it wasn't; it came again. Tap … tap … tap …

A knocking on the window, tiny fingers rapping.

‘Who's there?’ he called out instinctively, immediately laughed at his own reaction. Don't be a bloody fool, there's nobody there because nobody could get down here. It was those falling stones again, a trickle of fine gravel finding its way down through the piled up rubble, determined to fill up every last nook and cranny as Nature completed her burial of the living, made sure no air could find its way down.

Tap … tap.

Oh, merciful God, there was somebody out there! Through the thick glass he could just discern an outline, a pale oval shape pressed against the cracked pane. A face!

‘Help me!’ In his desperation he became oblivious to the agony brought about by the movement of his limbs. If only he could find that spanner again, smash the glass. Scrambling feverishly on the floor of the cab but it was nowhere to be found.

Tap … tap … tap, tap, tap. An urgency about the tapping now, trying to attract his attention again. He stopped, stared. Good God, it was getting lighter now, it had to be for he could make out the features. They must have dug right down to him and yet there was no perceptive shaft of daylight visible, more a kind of glow like that of some cheap kiddies' luminous paint that was only partly effective.

She was young, no more than twenty at the most, would have been attractive if she had not been so haggard and dishevelled. He couldn't make out her body, just a face and a hand, slender fingers that tapped on the glass with broken and blackened long nails. The long hair was matted, fell from her in straggling strands and there appeared to be bald patches in her skull as though she suffered from some kind of mange. Probably a trick of the light, daylight playing on shadow.

Eyes that burned brightly, feverishly, with a greenish hue like sunlight dancing on algae-covered water. Unblinking, regarding him voraciously as a hunting stoat might look upon a rabbit trapped in a dead-end burrow. A finely tapered nose and a pert mouth except when it opened, the lips receding wolfishly to reveal a dark cavern that appeared toothless. She was saying something, seemed angry, but Mick Treadman could not make out the words. He wished that he had learned to lip-read.

‘Who … are you?’ It was an effort to speak, his lungs feeling as though they might collapse at any moment.

Now he could hear her, her reply like a gust of wind in an underground cavern, a chilling sound. ‘I'm Jenny. Jenny … Lawson.’

And who the hell was Jenny Lawson and how had she got down here? Surely a rescue party hadn't sent a strip of a girl down into the bowels of this black suffocating hell. It was crazy. But there was … something strange about her, something not quite … normal. Something he didn't like.

Something that frightened him far more than the suffocating blackness and the prospect of a terrible slow death!

He could see more of her now. Perhaps she had been kneeling and now had stood up. He was afforded a view down as far as her thighs. Oh Jesus, she was stark naked! In other circumstances the sight of this unknown nude girl who called herself Jenny Lawson would have aroused Mick Treadman, but here it was revolting. Her flesh … it should have been smooth and unblemished, perhaps virginal, but instead it was dirt-grimed and in places gave the impression that it was already in a state of putrefaction even though she lived and moved!

His eyes travelled on down, rested on the lower tuft of sprouting hair and as if she read his thoughts her legs eased open provocatively. Oh Jesus, he wanted to turn away, could not bear the thoughts she was trying to fill his mind with.

‘Look at me …’ A command that held him transfixed. ‘Would you like me? Open up and let me in, then I shall be yours.’

No way. You're bloody crazy. I don't know how you got down here but I'm not letting you touch me!

‘They've all had me.’

Her fists pummelled the window, soft thuds that had the cracked glass creaking. Her face was pressed against it, those awful features squashed into a horrific caricature, her eyes burning into him, scorching his brain in the same way that the bright sunlight had done earlier.

‘Go away, damn you, and get help. I'm dying, can't you see that? I'm bloody well dying!’

‘We're all dead down here. Soon you will be, too, and then you will be mine!’

He screamed, tried to turn his head away but it was impossible. She was angry, in a rage, beating frantically at the glass, trying to get to him, her pitiful breasts flattened but the nipples somehow remained erect. And he knew in that instant that, revolting as she was, she was arousing him also. If she got to him then he knew that he would mate with her, welcome the closeness of her seemingly decaying body against his own. Oh, Christ, I've flipped my top. She isn't really there, it's all in the mind! But the girl was still clawing frantically at the glass, flaunting her slim body, splaying her legs and laughing hysterically.

Suddenly from out of the blackness a huge hand gripped her, pulled her back. Treadman heard her scream, saw her struggling with a gigantic muscular man who had her by the throat so that her eyes bulged like oversize green marbles. A roar of bestial fury, and the JCB driver tried to cover his eyes to shut out the awful scene being enacted only feet away from where he crouched, a single pane of shatterproof glass preventing him from becoming one of the actors in this macabre play.

The newcomer's hair was wild and unkempt, his features swarthy, twisted into an expression of sheer rage, a large gold earring swinging from the lobe of one ear. Tattered, colourful clothing attempted to cover flesh that peeled from his powerful body, dark sockets that might have been empty yet still flashed with animal fury.

‘Cornelius!’ the girl screamed once before she fell from Steadman's view.

Now the big man was beating on the window, his fury directed at the prisoner in the buckled cab, thick lips slobbering strings of saliva. Mick Treadman cowered on the floor, babbled incoherent pleas, for surely this fiend had the brute strength to break through to him. A small shard of glass fell, clattered and splintered. Then another … and another.

Oh, Mother of God, the stench that filled that small enclosed cubicle! A foul odour that reminded the terrified occupant of a burst sewer pipe; putrid gases that you tasted and choked upon, gulped for breath but only drew in more of it, heaved and threw up.

Glass shattered and smashed into a thousand particles. Treadman screamed again but he knew he could not stop the intruder who even now was clambering inside. A massive hand touched him, as cold as death itself. Thick fingers encircled his throat, began to squeeze. A throaty maniacal laugh as the pressure increased.

Mick Treadman was forced to stare up into those empty eye sockets as the remnants of his life ebbed away. He saw the hate in that sadistic smile, sheer malevolence which was beyond his comprehension, the dark face of one who killed because he enjoyed killing.

And slowly that ethereal glow faded so that only darkness remained, complete and utter blackness, as cold as the big man's strangulating grip, until finally everything faded and even the pain was gone.

CHAPTER THREE

Ralph Grafton watched from the edge of the big sand mound as the two JCBs worked systematically, digging down into the huge inexplicable crack in that acre of flat terrain. The missing digger was down there all right, because they had just unearthed the broken arm and crumpled bucket. The driver had to be down there too, buried alive and certainly dead by now. Some kind of subsidence collapse, doubtless caused by the quarrying; it could not be anything else.

Grafton threw his cigarette away, lit another. Damn it, this could hold up the site levelling for weeks. The police would demand a full enquiry, maybe the surveyors would say that the land was unfit for building purposes. All sorts of complications might arise that could lead to the building permission being revoked.

Ralph Grafton had just seen his fortieth birthday. Tall and lean, he had the look of one who got what he wanted, a mixture of ruthlessness and determination. Handsome, but if you studied him closely you detected something which made you uneasy, knew you could not trust him. You found yourself swallowing nervously in his presence, felt the force of his personality like an impending thunderstorm. His open-necked shirt and cords failed to destroy the businessman image; typecast, but in a mould of his own.

Grafton's success had begun at the age of fourteen. Even at that age he was determined to eradicate his humble upbringing, was ambitious enough to wrest what he wanted out of life. A newspaper delivery round gave him his first chance. A couple of pounds a week was useful but there were untapped resources which he vowed to exploit. His motto was: ‘why do something for somebody else when you can do it for yourself?’ At fifteen he had a market stall selling second hand paperbacks for a shilling each. By the time he was twenty he had purchased his first newsagent's shop which he sold as a going concern three years later. After that he ventured into the building trade, caught the boom at just the right time and within a decade had made his first million, but he still was not satisfied.

And now he wasn't going to suffer a setback tamely just because some bloody fool of a digger driver had buried himself. His eyes narrowed, his heartbeat quickened when he saw chains being fetched. They had located the missing machine; all they had to do now was to drag it out.

‘Ground's soft under the surface,’ one of the men shouted. ‘We'll have to watch we don't end up down there too.’

A conference, police and workmen grouped together, peering down into the ugly excavation. But Grafton was keeping his distance. Let them get the bugger up first.

Chains clanked, the machines took the strain, heavy engines roaring their protest at this sudden taxing of their power. Metal screeched, an ear-splitting, skin-prickling tearing sound; rock and soil showered. And then the buckled remains of Mick Treadman's JCB was dragged into view, scarcely recognisable for what it was, resembling a battered item from a scrap metal merchant's junk heap. It came free in a cloud of dust, was pulled clear.

The engines died away. Silence. For a few moments nobody moved; a horrific traffic accident and you had to be a brave man to peer into the wreckage.

One of the plain clothes CID officers clambered up, looked in through the shattered cab window. ‘Jesus Christ!’ was all he said and when he jumped back down he was white-faced and shaking.

Grafton moved forward, unobtrusively joined the throng. It was just another fatal accident, he told himself. In the building trade you accepted them. A percentage of labourers got killed every year, statistics that were accepted, because you could not eliminate the risk no matter how many security precautions you took. There was no point in getting squeamish about it. He remembered that time a guy had slipped off some scaffolding in Birmingham, fallen a hundred feet on to the pavement below. Passers-by were screaming, a woman had fainted. Half a day's work had been lost as a result. You couldn't afford that; labour was expendable during this era of mass unemployment. He hoped it wasn't going to happen here.

They had to use steel cutters to get into the cab, everybody standing back. Violent death was always frightening no matter how many times you had seen it before.

Silence again except for the efforts of the men dragging the corpse out. Then Treadman's body was being lowered down on to the rough ground, laid out.

Gasps of horror, even Ralph Grafton felt the bile rise in his throat and had to make a conscious effort not to turn his head away. The injuries were slight, a few cuts that would not in themselves have been fatal. But that face, oh Jesus! Purple and swollen where he had fought for remnants of stale oxygen, the neck puffed like that of a hanged man. But it was the expression on those distorted features that had you almost throwing up!

The face was frozen into a wax-like mask of sheer terror! Eyes bulged until surely they must burst like soap bubbles, the mouth still open in a scream that had never really ended. Still shrieking, you could almost hear the cries.

But of course that would happen to anybody buried alive, Grafton told himself. Not very nice, admittedly, but you had to accept these accidents. Some were quick, others were painfully slow. Whichever, the unfortunate victim ended up dead.

‘Just look down there!’ One of the rescuers had clambered out of his machine, was standing nervously on the edge of the ragged hole from which the crushed JCB had been dragged. ‘Fucking hell!’

The others turned away from the corpse but Grafton beat them to it, was already peering down into the miniature abyss. Almost twenty feet in depth, a mixture of rubble and black slimy mud that gave off a nauseating stench, had him coughing, stepping back a pace. The bottom was a quagmire, already beginning to fill up with stinking stagnant water; you could hear it bubbling and squelching as though with jubilation at its new-found freedom, water that had been denied air and daylight for over a decade.

The Sucking Pit was alive again!

It was late evening when Ralph Grafton returned to the big house. The place gave him a depressing feeling but he tried to shrug it off; that was because it wasn't furnished yet apart from one downstairs room and a bedroom upstairs. Dereliction, dilapidation elsewhere but that would soon alter. Another week or two and the contents of his luxurious Home Counties mansion would be brought up here. The place had to be decorated first, some new windows fitted and a few other things besides. The builders and the decorators were due to start next week. Then Lynette would follow. He smiled at the thought. She was the only person on earth he had a soft spot for, drawing envious glances wherever she went. Without all this he wouldn't have her because basically she was as hard as he was but she knew which side her bread was buttered on all right. She needed him as much as he needed her.

He would eat out tonight. A wash and shave, a change of clothes and … the harsh ringing of the telephone in the hall interrupted his thoughts. He picked up the receiver, made a mental note to ring the telecom people tomorrow and ask them to replace it with a Trimphone, a wall model.

‘Grafton speaking.’

‘Good evening, sir.’ A condescending tone that at once had Ralph Grafton on his guard. ‘My name is Richardson … I work for the Star.’ An afterthought, almost an apology.

‘A reporter, eh!’

‘I'm ringing you about the Sucking Pit, sir.’

‘The Sucking Pit? I haven't a clue what you're talking about.’

‘Oh … but you must have, sir. The old legend, and the happenings of some ten years ago when …’

‘You're talking bullshit.’

‘There was a man killed there today. The ground gave way, buried an entire JCB.’

‘Listen.’ Grafton's hand shook slightly; he saw again in his mind that dead driver's face, the bluish complexion, the terror in those inflated eyes, the mouth twisted into a scream of fear that had never finished. ‘I'm not going to stand for you lot making up a far-fetched yarn over this. What happened was perfectly explicable. When the bog, or whatever it was, was filled in, whoever did it didn't make a very good job of it. Rubble on mud causes subsidence, any fool knows that. The weight of the JCB caused it to sink and …’

‘You know, of course, that that site is an ancient Romany burial ground, sir. It was full of skeletons when it was partly drained and …’

‘Bollocks!’ Grafton snarled, and experienced a sudden urge to pick the instrument up and fling it at the wall. ‘That was a load of rubbish invented by the press to sell their papers. I am giving you the facts and if you print anything else I'll be taking legal action. The accident was due purely to subsidence. The place will be drained, filled in properly and levelled. Get it?’

‘I see, sir. Thank you for your help.’ There was a click followed by the dialling tone as the caller replaced his receiver.

Grafton stood there staring at the wall, subconsciously tracing a maze of cracks in the plaster with his narrowed eyes, saw the lines merge, take shape. A face; a bloated, terror-stricken one. And he knew damned well that the papers would dig up that old gypsy legend.

He forgot all about phoning Lynette.

It was after eleven o'clock when Ralph Grafton left the Little Barrow hotel in Lichfield. A balmy night, it had him sweating, so he loosened his tie. First thing in the morning he must ring Claude Minworth, the Planning Officer; check that there were no snags. That hole could be filled in properly, no sweat over that. But the surveyors would doubtless want to check it over and that could take time. Two weeks, a month, written reports, further tests. Oh Christ, bureaucracy was designed to stifle anybody with any initiative. Maybe Minworth could get things moving.

As soon as he got back to the Woodhouse he must ring Lynette. He hated leaving her; had nagging doubts that were all his own imagination. She was getting pissed off but she wouldn't come up here and live in a house in that state. Don't worry, darling, I'm kicking a few asses right now and within a month it'll be a palace. It won't be a lonely remote spot for long because I'm building lots of houses round it, executive-style dwellings for people like us. You'll soon have plenty of company. I know it's been a drag but it'll have been well worth it. And I'll pop down next weekend.

She wouldn't swallow the sweet talk for much longer, and he couldn't blame her. There was only one way to get things moving: kick those asses so hard that people were shit-scared of you.

He slid behind the wheel of his Range Rover, eased it off the car park. A police patrol car hurtled by and he waited a few moments. It would be just his luck to get stopped. And then he would begin believing in that gypsy curse.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he turned off the A51, bumped on to the winding cinder track that led up to the Woodhouse. The Lady Walk forked off to the left. Jesus, he didn't want to go down there. Don't be so fucking stupid, Ralph Grafton, there's nothing down there to worry about, just a dangerous bog that somebody made a balls-up of trying to bury, but next time it'll be done properly. It would cease to exist.

A single line of tall Corsican pines stood on either side of the track, survivors from the felling programme. A patch of dense rhododendrons had also escaped the wholesale devastation.

A movement. Grafton instinctively eased his foot off the accelerator, slowed. Nothing. The powerful headlights were playing tricks: it could have been a fox, even a rabbit. Anything that was capable of making the foliage spring back, quiver when there was no wind. The vehicle picked up speed again and a couple of minutes later was swinging into the weed-covered, horseshoe-shaped drive in front of the big house.

Dereliction frowned down on Ralph Grafton once more, a shabby edifice scowling its hate for those who had neglected it and those who were going to alter it out of all recognition, destroying not just bricks and mortar but an era. Grafton sensed the foreboding, felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to prickle; a sure sign that he'd had too much to drink.

The front door slammed behind him, its hollow echoes ringing through the house as he flicked at the light switch with undue haste. Primitive man's fear of the dark hours. He glanced at the phone, half expected it to ring. But it didn't.

Nights were the worst time. Boring, essentially. Grafton's sleep requirements were a basic six hours, often less. He glanced at his watch. 11.25. He half-considered a trip into Birmingham, a nightclub to pass away the nocturnal hours. Maybe a woman. He had his women where he found them, left them there. That way he wasn't really being unfaithful to Lynette, not that that worried him unduly. Blessed was the man without a conscience, he once told an acquaintance. Consciences were self-made and served no useful purpose.

Yet tonight he wasn't in the mood, either for clubs or women and, anyway, he had drunk too much to drive safely into the city. That meant staying here. He grimaced, went into the bare kitchen and put the kettle on to boil. Strong black coffee. God, you missed curtains in an empty house, gave you a feeling of being watched. Vulnerable. All in the mind, like consciences. He tried to shrug the feeling off but it persisted.

He carried a steaming mug of coffee through into the hall, saw the telephone again, conspicuous because the small table on which it stood was the only item of furniture. A sudden impulse had him changing course towards it; he'd ring Lynette now, somebody to talk to. He should have done it earlier.

He set his coffee down, dialled the number, heard the connection click through and start to ring out at the other end. At least the front door had an opaque pane, so if there was anybody out there they couldn't see you, only your outline. Stop it, you're getting jumpy.

He found himself counting the rings, eight … nine … ten … Perhaps Lynette had already gone to bed. On her own? Don't be stupid, she knows when she's well off. A lot of seemingly ‘respectable’ housewives get screwed when their husbands are away, one-night stands that don't do anybody any harm. Lynette wouldn't need to, she uses a vibrator, openly confesses to enjoying masturbation. It's no substitute for the real thing, though. Not in Lynette's case; perhaps she's vibrating now, at this very moment, that battery-operated, plastic, phallic-shaped instrument giving her such ecstatic delight that it's to hell with the phone. Let it ring, she'll come when she's come. He laughed aloud at his own joke, a hollow nervous sound.

Twenty-five rings. She'd have answered by now if she was at home. What was she doing out at this time of night on her own? Getting herself screwed? Grafton dropped the receiver back on to the cradle. Inside his head he still heard it ringing out. Brr … brr … brr …

Another sound, one which took him several seconds to identify, a rapid scratching noise. Rats. He glanced round, tried to place where it was coming from. The kitchen. It was harsher than the usual rodent scraping, though, more like a hard sharp object on glass. The hairs on the back of his neck began to prickle again. He strode forward, flung open the intersecting door. He'd soon find out what it was, he had to.

Staring around the sparsely furnished kitchen, his vision temporarily blurred as he strove desperately to find out what had been making the noise. There were few places for a rat to skulk. Surely it would have bolted at his approach, scuttled to the safety of its hole. Nothing moved.

The sound came again, just once, loud and clear - from the uncurtained window! Ralph Grafton jumped visibly, thought he caught a glimpse of … something. But all he saw now was a square of darkness behind the dirt-streaked pane, his own face partly reflected. Nothing.

That tingling sensation spread right the way up into his scalp and his breathing quickened. On the verge of panic but drawing back in time, still trembling. It must've been a bird, he thought, some kind of nocturnal creature. Did owls tap on windows? Ralph Grafton was no ornithologist but he decided it was possible; always think positively and logically.

He went back into the hall, closed the door behind him. That coffee was getting cold and he needed it. Two gulps and then he stiffened, slopping some of it on to the floor.

Knock … knock. That rusted old front door knocker without a doubt. But who the hell could it be and why hadn't he heard their car approaching? Because they had come on foot, of course, half a mile from the main road.

He tried to see through the frosted glass, attempting to discern an outline. It was impossible without a light the other side and that damned porch bulb had gone; he'd found that out a couple of nights ago and had not bothered to replace it. Now, just when he needed it most …

Ralph Grafton was afraid of nobody. Nor anything, he told himself, as he crossed the length of the hall; his fingers rested for a moment on the Yale knob. Maybe whoever it was outside had been scratching on the kitchen window then darted round to the front door. But why? Why not try the knocker first?

Slowly he eased the door open, his foot against it, waiting for his eyesight to adjust to the blackness outside. Peering, trying to make out a shape. Anything. But there was nothing; nothing visible, anyway.

‘Who's there?’ Grafton's voice was a hoarse whisper that he scarcely recognised, tones that vibrated with his inner fear.

No answer.

For fuck's sake who's there?

There wasn't anybody. He threw the door wide and the light from the hall showed an empty porch, the darkness beyond seeming to hover threateningly as though any second it would close back in, bringing with it whatever nameless horrors it shielded. A warm summer breeze soughed through the trees, rustling the leaves.

Grafton's nose wrinkled; a stench that was so familiar, a vileness that had come up out of the bowels of the earth, a rancid odour of putrefaction that was unmistakable. The Sucking Pit!

He stepped back, slammed the door. Oh Christ, this was crazy, he was going mad. He pushed up the catch, locked the door, found himself looking behind him at the kitchen door.

Trying not to listen. I don't want to hear, I bloody well don't want to hear!

And at that very instant the telephone rang, a harsh jangling sound that stretched and jarred his nerves, had him cowering away. Answer it, answer that fucking phone! The hand that stretched out trembled so violently that the fingers were barely capable of holding the receiver.

‘Grafton speaking.’ His voice shook, tinged with the inner fear that was driving him back towards that brink of panic.

It took him several seconds to realise what the sound was that buzzed in his ear like an angry bumble bee; the dialling tone. There was nobody on the other end of the line.

He dropped the receiver. It fell, swung on the flex, bounced against the wall. Its momentum slowed, a steady knock-knock, the incessant dialling tone an echo of that inexplicable scratching sound a few moments ago.

Oh God, I'm going mad! He ran into the lounge, the only furnished downstairs room, flooded it with light, at the same time slamming the door behind him.

Those windows; rushing to them, pulling the curtains closed, catching brief glimpses of movements outside before he shut them out. Looking around. Nobody. The room was empty, thank God.

Feverishly he switched on the stereo, set a tape going. Music, loud and discordant, causing the room to vibrate but it didn't matter. Any noise as long as it was sane, that he knew what was making it. Deafening so that it drowned echoes in his own brain.

His body was drenched in sweat, his shirt sticking to his skin. He went to the cocktail cabinet, poured himself a large whisky, chipping the cut glass tumbler as he did so; a long gulp that scalded his throat, burned away that awful stench.

Only then did he sink back into one of the deep leather-covered armchairs, pulling it round so that he faced towards the door. If they came then he wouldn't hear them, he didn't want to. He always boasted that he needed little sleep, tonight he would do without. He was staying right here, wide awake, until dawn came creeping through the curtains. And tomorrow …

Chris Latimer read through the small item of news in his daily paper twice. His hands shook and his intestines seemed to flip one way, then the other. Not enough to make national headlines, just a page four filler. The print before his eyes blurred and icy fingers stroked his spine.

Treadman; that had to be the fellow he had been talking with, the one who was going to level the … oh God, he hardly dared think the name of that accursed place. It must have happened soon after Latimer had left, maybe even before he had reached his car on the main road.

Those greedy fools had opened up the Pit, freed the evil which had been trapped there for a decade or more. There was no way of knowing what the consequences would be.

Latimer threw the paper down, closed his eyes and saw a lot of things he didn't want to see, shadows out of the past reaching for him, screeching their hate.

And he knew now that he had to go back, break those vows he'd made only three days ago, resurrect the personal pain and memories. Because the people of Hopwas needed him: he was the only one who could save them from the vengeance of the Sucking Pit.

CHAPTER FOUR

The youths had always gone to the sand quarries on Sunday afternoons, a kind of ritual which they had established to combat boredom. Nobody bothered them, not even when they rode in on their bikes, L-plates flapping. It was a good place for scrambling because the sand was soft and when you came off you didn't hurt yourself. Also, in dry weather the wheels threw up clouds of dust and that looked spectacular, professional.

Soon the quarries would be filled in, the huge sand mounds levelled, houses built on them with residents who would complain about weekend biking. They were determined to make the most of the place whilst it was still there.

It was 2.15 when they rode into Hopwas Wood and followed the snaking Lady Walk - a steady pace, but they were throwing up plenty of dust. Cautious. There could be police around after that business the other day. Or Grafton patrolling and he was a right bastard. He'd had a flare-up with the local Hunt during the last week of February, a real set-to that had made half a column in the local paper. Both sides were to blame: sheer pig-headedness by the MFH against Grafton's stubborn ruthlessness. Hounds and huntsmen had gone across Hopwas Wood lands, maybe a nostalgic trip; it could not be anything else because there wasn't so much as a gorse bush left in which a fox could hide. Possibly the hunt were testing out Grafton or else it was a deliberate pinprick because most of the huntsmen were locals and they resented what had happened to their landscape. They blamed Latimer for selling out to the sand and gravel firm, the latter for desecrating it the way they had, and Grafton for planning to turn it into a housing estate. The flashpoint came when Grafton's Range Rover intercepted the Hunt and the building magnate asked them in no uncertain terms what the hell they were up to trespassing on private land, and unless they cleared off he would be taking a civil action against them. The Hunt had retired ungraciously and another wound was left to fester in the side of the villagers. But Grafton, for some reason, did not appear concerned about motorcyclists using his land on Sunday afternoons. Maybe he hoped that the noise of the bikes would disturb the irate villagers on the Sabbath. Whatever the reason, the five youths were determined to take advantage of it but they were careful not to push their luck too far.

They turned off the track, ploughed their way through loose sand, circling the steepest mound because they knew their machines wouldn't make it up the slope. A wide noisy detour that brought them on to the rise leading down to … the Sucking Pit!

‘That's it.’ Mule Skinner sat astride his bike, caressed the CB radio which hung suspended from his neck. ‘That's the place where that guy got buried.’

‘Christ!’ Whisky Mac licked his lips. ‘It's turned into a bleedin' pool since we was 'ere last week. 'Ow deep d'you reckon it is?’

‘They used to say -’ the other adopted an expression of superior knowledge, a pursing of his lips. ‘- that it had no bottom. My dad remembers it in the days before it was first filled in. But it has to have a bottom, doesn't it, else the water would all run out the other end? See what I mean?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Tobacco Joe fished the makings out of his pseudo-leather jacket, began to roll a cigarette, taking his time, demonstrating his skill in front of the other four. ‘You're right there. Say, why don't we go take a closer look?’

Hesitation. None of them wanted to go down there. But it was up to Mule Skinner; if he said go take a look, they'd go. If he said ‘no’ then that was the let-out they were hoping for.

Mule Skinner didn't say anything, just revved his bike, began the gradual descent, the others following in the order of seniority which they had come to accept, an integral part of their adolescent gang ritual. Whisky Mac, Tobacco Joe, Gun-toter and, bringing up the rear, Cherokee.

The sand petered out after a hundred yards or so and they felt firm ground beneath their wheels, rocks and rubble that merged with the furthest point of the latest excavation. Stopping again, the customary half-circle, so that everybody had an unrestricted view. There was no sign of the crack which had opened up to swallow Mick Treadman and his JCB, just a spreading sheet of still, silent black water, some fifteen or twenty yards in circumference. Just looking at it you got the feeling that it would spread further, reclaim the land for its own as the weakened ground around gave way to the subsidence. And deeper too; it wasn't hard to believe the old rumours about it being bottomless. The bikers shivered in spite of the heat.

‘It must've all collapsed, given way.’ Gun-toter spoke in a squeaky voice that had earned him the nickname of Pip until he had asserted his character with a CB.

‘You got brains, Gun-toter,’ Mule Skinner replied. There was a titter of laughter from the others that in any other place would have been coarse guffaws. But not here. The youths were uneasy, wanted to be away, but that depended upon Mule Skinner.

Whisky Mac was playing with his radio, picked up a wavelength, a garbled message from some ham that only the receiver it was intended for would understand.

‘Shut that fuckin' thing,’ their leader snapped.

The CB was instantly silent. They did not often see their leader as edgy as this, but they knew he could be bloody nasty if he got upset. Better do as he said.

Silence. The five of them sat there on their bikes just looking at that stretch of water. A bubble hit the surface, burst. They jumped; it was like there was somebody down there, dying just as Mick Treadman had done. The water edge seemed to lap like a tide, a movement that claimed another inch of ground. An optical illusion? It had to be.

‘Let's take a closer look.’ Mule Skinner dismounted, walked forward, still carrying his CB. A yard from the water's edge he turned, looked back at the others with a scathing expression on his face. ‘What's the matter with you buggers? Come on, it won't fucking bite you.’

Motorcycles were abandoned as the other four reluctantly obeyed, stepping nervously across the ground which was surprisingly soft, boots sinking up to the heels in places.

‘I don't care much for this,’ Tobacco Joe muttered.

‘Chicken,’ Mule Skinner sneered. ‘Afraid o' gettin' your feet wet?’

They stood on the edge of the pool, stared down into its black depths. Dead water, nothing could live down there. A stench, not just that of rotting vegetation, an acrid odour that caught you sharply at the back of the throat. After a while you got used to it and didn't notice it or else it had wafted away.

Mule Skinner experienced a sense of vertigo, clutched at something to steady himself; the strap of his CB radio. The water seemed to come up to meet him, then receded. His legs felt weak, jellified. After some moments the sensation passed. He just kept on staring down at the pool as though compelled to do so. It did not seem so forbidding any longer, in fact it was quite a friendly place. What a shame to fill it in and bury it. That guy who had been buried alive had got what he had asked for. There was no point in wasting any sympathy on him.

‘It's nice, ain't it?’ Gun-toter piped shrilly, breaking the lengthy silence. ‘Can't see what folks were scared of. I hate those sort of folks. I'd like to … kill 'em.’

‘Look!’ Tobacco Joe pointed down at the water. ‘See that?’

The others stared. A slight ripple that must have begun in the centre and spread out to the sides. Another bubble; it burst immediately. Nothing else.

‘What?’ Cherokee asked timidly.

‘There is somebody down there.’ Tobacco Joe's tone was high pitched with excitement. ‘I saw 'em.’

‘You're nuts.’ Mule Skinner's reply lacked conviction but he bent over and peered even harder. ‘There's nobody down there. They'd be dead, drowned.’

‘I tell you I saw 'em. A face, looking up at me. A girl.’

This time nobody contradicted him, none of the other four spoke, just kept on staring down into the murky depths. Nothing moved; all the same, you got the feeling that maybe it wasn't as dead down there as you thought, and you could stay here for ever. Just looking.

Voices. Scarcely audible, a jumble of words that came and faded, came again. Sort of lilting, like music where the words didn't matter just as long as there was some kind of vocal accompaniment.

‘Who's got their CB switched on?’ Mule Skinner asked but he did not turn round.

No answer.

‘Well?’ The big youth whirled, suddenly angry, his pale blue eyes blazing cold fire. ‘Are you fucking deaf, you lot?’

They shrank back from him, flinched as his gaze flipped from one to the other. He shook his head slowly, that unexpected anger dying away. None of them had tuned in, those whisperings had not come from any of their radios. Where, then? He made as if to ask, changed his mind, shrugged his shoulders.

‘We'll have to be going,’ he said at length, consulting his watch. ‘It's after five.’

‘What!’ Four youths simultaneously checked their own timepieces, looked at one another in amazement.

‘We've been here three hours!’ Cherokee grunted. ‘It only seems like minutes.’

‘We're going.’ Mule Skinner turned, began to walk back towards the bikes.

‘Whereto?’

He reached his bike, paused. Now that was something he had not thought about, only that he got a kind of feeling that they had outstayed their welcome at the Sucking Pit. It had been worth it, though. Like a trip to the sauna, you went in feeling tired and jaded, came out fresh and alert with a new sense of purpose. Looking at water was supposed to be a kind of therapy. It worked, too.

‘We're goin' into town tonight.’ His voice was soft yet purposeful. A statement that was in itself an order.

‘What for?’

Always stupid fucking questions. He had to fight to control his impatience. Jesus, Tobacco Joe was bloody thick.

‘Carl Wickers is on at the club.’

‘Carl Wickers!’ Whisky Mac echoed. ‘He's a load o' shit. What d'you want to go and listen to him for? Sunday's always a dead night anyway.’

‘You don't like country and western, eh?’ Mule Skinner's question, a direct challenge, was addressed to Cherokee.

‘It's all right.’ The other swallowed, blushed with embarrassment. ‘But we always go to rock dances.’

‘Well, they don't have rock dances on Sunday nights, stupid,’ Mule Skinner's jaw jutted defiantly. ‘Or any dances for that matter. Just folk and country music to listen to and for once we'll go along, all of us. Anybody got anything to say?’

‘It'll be an old fogies night,’ Gun-toter squeaked. ‘You know the kind that'll be at the club, Mule Skinner.’

‘Sure I do, prim and proper fuckers that have been to church and are kidding themselves that they're cleansed of their sins and all that kind of crap. The sort of folks who'll be screaming blue murder to get that lot bulldozed in.’ His finger stabbed in the direction of the pool they had just left. ‘I vote we go along and show 'em a thing or two.’

‘We don't want no trouble, Mule Skinner.’

‘We don't but they do. What's goin' to happen to our scramblin' ground, eh? Let me tell you, they'll bulldoze it flat and build snobs' houses on it. Show 'em a bike then and they'll be ringing for the fuzz. We're nobody, we don't count, because we got nothin' and we never will have as long as they keep takin' it off us. Where we gonna ride on Sundays then, eh? Just the roads, with the fuzz waitin' to pull in bikers. I tell you, let's go sort some of these fuckers out!’

‘But why the club, Mule Skinner?’

‘Like I said, there'll be old fogies in there straight from church. We hate their guts, don't we?’ He didn't add. ‘Because I can't think of any other place to find these snobs all bunched together except at the golf club and we'd never get past the door there.’

‘Maybe the people at the club don't come from around here.’ Whisky Mac desperately sought an excuse not to go along. ‘They probably ain't interested in what happens in Hopwas Wood. We could be all wrong. Anyway, we never started any trouble before.’

‘Carl Wickers comes from Hopwas.’ Mule Skinner's features were dark with escalating fury. ‘And he's one who's been screaming for this lot to be levelled. He's making a fortune singing that rubbish of his, kidding everybody he's good, all dressed up in his fancy gear. He's after a posh house up here, you can bet your life. Wasn't he a mate of the Latimers when they owned the wood? Sure he was, and it was Latimer who had the Sucking Pit filled in. So we'll go and spoil Wickers' party for starters.’

‘We'll be in trouble with the law,’ Cherokee whispered, half-hoping that Mule Skinner wouldn't hear him. ‘We've never bothered 'em before. My dad'll …’

‘Sod your dad.’ Mule Skinner half-raised a clenched fist. ‘We've lain down and let everybody shit on us up until now. Well, things are goin' to change, I promise you that. And after we've taught Carl Wickers and his fine friends a thing or two -’ he paused, turned, pointed towards where the tops of some tall pines could just be seen above the sand mounds. ‘- we'll maybe come back and see what that big fucker's got to say for himself. Right, let's go.’

The other four glanced at each other, nodded their mutual agreement. Mule Skinner was right; he usually was. They were ready to fight for what they believed in. Things had certainly changed; from the moment they had stood and stared down into the black depths of the Sucking Pit.

CHAPTER FIVE

Strangely, Chris Latimer found the atmosphere of the social club relaxing. Half an hour and the tension which had tautened every nerve in his body was beginning to relinquish its hold on him. The soft strumming of Carl Wickers' guitar and the younger man's lilting strong voice almost had him at peace with the world, nearly had him forgetting what he had come here for. He would think about that tomorrow.

Carl was certainly on form tonight: a small lithe country and western singer, his hallmark was his pseudo fringed buckskin jacket and Stetson - the latter he usually removed after the first half hour. A tan that was probably the result of some means of artificial ‘sunbathing’; Wickers slept by day and worked by night. Not exactly handsome but his latest acquisition, a Mexican-style moustache, improved looks which some might regard as weak. Eyes that smiled, made you feel that you were his number one fan as they flicked from one member of the audience to another. He had talent, though, the ability to move from a slow smoochy number to a faster beat so naturally that you were hardly aware of the change in tempo. Feet tapped on the bare boards in time with the music; you found yourself wishing that it was any other night except Sunday so that you could get on your feet and dance.

Carl always had his problems, basically stemming from one source - women! Once he had been married; that was back in the days when the Latimers owned Hopwas Wood. An attractive girl with whom he had been passionately in love but for the club singer there always had to be another woman. Separation, divorce, and then girlfriends who were two-timed. A way of life, perhaps subconsciously emulating stardom with all the glamour of infidelity. It would always be that way, love and heartbreak alternating.

Chris Latimer stole a sly glance at the girl seated beside him on the second row. Small and dark, petite in fact, everything about her from her short dark hair down to the varnished toenails protruding from her dainty shoes: perfection. Pamela; she objected to being called Pam, so Wickers had informed him when he had introduced her at his house earlier in the day. A friend of Carl's current girlfriend, Samantha. Chris had wondered at first if the two girls were sisters, or perhaps cousins, because there was a distinct physical similarity. But it transpired that they were merely friends, two of a kind.

Carl had whispered to Chris that Pamela's marriage had broken up a couple of months ago and she had been suffering from acute depression so Samantha had invited her up to stay for a week or two. Latimer felt his pulses quicken, had the impression that Wickers might just be matchmaking. But he would play it carefully; after Pat he had become very wary of the opposite sex. All the same, he could not help stealing glances at his companion.

The audience was sparse. Sunday wasn't a good club night or maybe it was the old story of a prophet in his own country, Chris Latimer reflected wryly. A singer needed to travel further afield than his nearest town to receive acclaim.

Faces that were unfamiliar to Latimer. He didn't know them and it was doubtful if any of them remembered him. That was fortunate; a man who had sold a local heritage to a sand and gravel firm was a traitor. He had begun the chain of desecration which had terminated in Grafton's arrival. And now the Sucking Pit had risen from its own unfathomable depths.

The beat faded, was replaced by sparse clapping.

‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.’ Carl Wickers unslung his guitar, propped it up carefully on the stage. ‘I'm taking a short break now. If any of you have any special requests I'll be pleased to try and play them after the interval. Just write your favourite song on the back of a five-pound note and hand it to me!’

Delayed laughter made the joke seem feeble. On a Saturday night it would have set them roaring with mirth.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ Chris turned to Pam, experienced a twinge of nervousness like asking a girl for a first date, holding your breath in anticipation of the reply.

‘Thank you.’ She smiled, her eyes meeting his, holding his gaze as though seeking something there. ‘Gin and lemonade, please. Plenty of lemonade.’

‘I'll be right back.’ Damn it, he sounded just like Carl. The other's mannerisms were infectious. It might be a half-empty clubhouse but the singer certainly got through to his audience.

Everybody seemed to be at the bar. Chris felt a sudden impatience. Damn them, he could be sitting talking to Pamela instead of standing behind a middle-aged man who was buying a seemingly unending round of drinks, placing the glasses one at a time on a battered tin tray.

People were still coming into the club. Chris turned, saw five youths dressed in biking gear, wondered why the door steward had allowed them in. Probably because they were members. It was a sign of the times: any club nowadays was glad of membership subs and the opportunity to sell a few extra drinks. The borderline between solvency and bankruptcy was a narrow one. You didn't have to wear a collar and tie any more to gain admittance.

The five of them stood there surveying the room, or that was what they appeared to be doing … until you saw their expressions, their eyes. Chris Latimer started, felt his skin begin to prickle. There was something sinister, frightening about these bikers. Eyes that were glazed, like dead orbs, limbs that were stiff as though in the grip of rigor mortis, moving jerkily, robots controlled by some unseen malevolent power. You sensed evil. Drugs, probably; he tried to find a logical explanation. No, that wasn't quite right. Drink? They appeared to be sober enough, making their way towards the bar, a sort of slow march as they filed in behind the big fellow who was obviously their leader.

Nobody appeared to be taking any notice of them. Possibly they came here regularly and the novelty had worn off. A slow, arrogant advance on the bar.

And in that one moment Chris Latimer's brain spun, an uncontrollable rollercoaster that brought with it a wave of nausea and dizziness, his vision blurring, his flesh going icy cold as the goose pimples spread, his intestines knotting. The big fellow, his expression moulding his features into a face that was unmistakable, one that still haunted the ex-reporter in his nightmares. Cornelius, the evil Romany leader!

Latimer clutched at the bar, afraid that he might faint. It was ridiculous, a suburban club and the old memories were threatening to take him over again. It was coming back here again that was responsible. He should have kept away, he couldn't do anything. If the evil was abroad, he was powerless to stop it, it was none of his business any more.

They cut a path through the throng, people moving aside, some beer slopping on to the floor. A sudden silence, everybody watching them, stepping back. The barman looked up, said something that sounded like ‘yes?’ but the word caught in his throat; he seemed preoccupied with nervously pleating a dishcloth.

Mule Skinner turned, headed towards the dartboard hanging on the wall; jerky steps, an arm reaching up and plucking out the darts embedded in the cork. The other four were helping themselves to drinks off the polished mahogany surface, clumsily spilling pints of bitter and lager, nobody attempting to stop their blatant act of theft.

Chris Latimer had backed away, his one thought the girl called Pamela: she must not be left alone.

Somebody screamed, a shriek of pain and terror. It was the grey-haired man on his way back to his seat balancing that tray of drinks. Glasses hit the floor, exploded like bursting grenades; the tin tray clanked, rolled.

The man was still screaming, clutching at his eye, trying to pull something out. Latimer stared in horror, almost vomited with revulsion. A dart had found its mark, its needle sharp point going in deep into the pupil, puncturing it, blood pouring out.

A hail of darts, vicious messengers of bloody mutilation, sped across the room. Everybody seemed to be screaming, incapable of defending themselves against this unexpected attack. A girl slipped, fell headlong on to some upright shards of broken tankards. A woman was trying to tug a brightly coloured array of feathers out of a dress that was fast turning crimson, the steel tip of the weapon buried in a fleshy breast.

Latimer ran, ducked, felt something brush against his shoulder, heard the dart hit the pine panelling. Pamela was cowering on the floor between two chairs as he flung himself on top of her, attempted to shield her with his own body. Oh, Christ!

Everybody was diving for cover, the injured left to fend for themselves. Five crazed youths continued their attack: the supply of darts exhausted, now it was glasses of every shape and size, hurled with unerring force and accuracy, smashing on the barricade of chairs, exploding into thousands of flying fragments.

Latimer peered between frail chair slats, trembled at what he saw. So coldly calculated, no crazy drunken assault, as though the attackers were working to a preconceived plan. Those expressions, like … zombies resurrected by evil houngans for some sinister purpose. And still he saw Cornelius!

A fragment of glass caught Latimer's hand, a sharp pain on the knuckles and he saw the blood beginning to ooze but he ignored it, held Pamela close beneath him. She was sobbing, trembling violently.

The youths had moved into a kind of formation, three in front hurling the missiles, the other two passing them from the shelves behind the bar, a conveyor belt of human disfiguration. So organised, so deadly.

Moving towards the door, not a retreat, more of a tactical withdrawal by troops who had conquered and had no reason to delay longer, a parting hail of glassware. And then they were gone.

Mule Skinner kicked his bike into life, heard the other machines follow his example. He let out the clutch, eased forward then picked up speed. He did not look back, his companions were no longer his responsibility. Their mission was accomplished, nothing else mattered. It was time to go.

Five bikes burning up the suburban roads, a crazy weaving array of blinding headlights as they negotiated the evening traffic, strung out, bunching together, stringing out again. A desperation to keep up with their leader. Failing.

Mule Skinner saw the approaching flashing blue light, was already taking evasive action, knew that the police car would do a U-turn on screeching tyres and pursue them. He hunched low in the saddle, saw a gap in the oncoming traffic, a trundling articulated lorry with a car overtaking. Somehow he made it through the narrow space in between, never once eased his pressure on the throttle. A glance in his mirror and he saw the start of the pile-up. But it was none of his concern; somewhere he heard the calling of a place that transcended death commanding him to return there. There was no way he could disobey.

Too late the overtaking car driver saw the lorry pulling out, the police vehicle swerving into the nearside, coming out again. He braked, a worn tyre throwing the Escort into a skid. Slewing, a rear wheel catching the tail of the lorry. Spinning. Four bikes doing close on a ton and he knew there was no way he could avoid them, whimpering and panicking, resigning himself to his fate.

The Escort buckled, the bikes ploughing into it. One cut straight through it, Gun-toter instantly beheaded as he hit the torn metal of the roof at neck height. Cherokee and Tobacco Joe were airborne, broken bodies that still lived and were cruelly denied oblivion. Up and still going up, flailing arms and legs, coming down again in a macabre sky-dive, thudding on to the tarmac, dead before the wheels of the jack-knifing trailer flattened them and smeared their remains across the highway.

Whisky Mac might have made it. Driving relentlessly, oblivious of the fate of his companions, his features a mask of blank expression; the evening's events were gone from his memory and all he knew was that he had to catch up with Mule Skinner. They had been summoned to return to … he hit the police car head on, a crunching impact that ploughed his machine into the bonnet, hurled him against the windscreen. A fly squashed on a window, a bloody unrecognisable morass that obscured the driver's vision. Next second they had gone under the snaking artic, a mangled heap of mobile metal that suddenly exploded, a coffin in the cremation furnace.

Death and destruction littered the road for several hundred yards. A grinding of metal terminating in the roar of flames; and the cries of the injured, drowned a few minutes later by the wail of approaching ambulance and police sirens.

Mule Skinner sped on, his speedometer needle flickering on 105, goggled eyes fixed on the road ahead; overtaking, cutting in, overtaking again, senses numbed, oblivious to everything except a call that could not be denied, unaware that the others were not following in his wake, that they were dead. Even that knowledge would not have brought a spark of emotion to his features.

He cut on to the A51, did not even hear the blare of angry horns, neither saw the flashing headlights; a homing pigeon relying on its instinct, landmarks meaningless in the single beam of his headlight. He just knew where he was going.

He hit the sand quarries without slowing, dust clouds flying from his spinning wheels but somehow they maintained their grip, sank in the soft surface of the Lady Walk but still kept going. Now his speed was checked, down to sixty, and a grunt of impatience escaping his compressed lips. Faster, faster: your master calls.

The big mound: earlier that day he had chickened out, bypassed it, but now he did not hesitate. The machine roared, slid, but the sheer willpower of its rider drove it on. He could barely see but he did not need to, knew when he hit the summit, went straight into a crazy descent down the other side.

The motorcycle churned to a halt, had to be pulled out of the sand by brute force, by muscles ten times stronger than they would have been a few hours ago. Mule Skinner kicked the starter, forced it to fire. It was sluggish but it obeyed, whined on downwards until it found firmer ground. Only then did the rider hesitate, a split second in which he surveyed the expanse of black water at the bottom of the gentle slope. Larger than before, more beautiful. Oh, so beautiful, calling him on.

Gripping the handlebars, a stunt rider mentally whipping his mount for the final assault on some seemingly impossible obstacle; bracing himself. The front wheel hit a protruding rock, machine and rider airborne, a wild cry of exhilaration. It was as though he was suspended in mid-air, denied that which he had striven for, trying to force the bike downwards.

Then he hit the water, its coldness refreshing to his sweating body, aware that the bike had left him but that was OK because he had no further use for it.

Down, down. Blackness enveloping him and then he felt hands reaching out for him, fingers gripping him with welcoming reassurance. It had not all been in vain and he had nothing to fear because he had obeyed them and returned here when his work was done.

He was not alone.

CHAPTER SIX

‘How s your hand?’ Pamela asked.

‘About the same as Carl's face.’ Chris Latimer nodded to where Carl Wickers sat in an armchair, a strip of Elastoplast down the length of one cheek. At least neither of the girls had been hurt, Jesus, he'd never forget last night, that guy tugging a dart out and his eye coming with it like a speared mussel. Those terrified faces streaming with blood, somebody with a severed artery, a fountain of crimson spraying the ceiling. Everybody screaming hysterically.

‘I don't see how the Sucking Pit can have any bearing on all this.’ Carl's expression was one of bewilderment. ‘Christ, I know those lads, they come from the council houses on the other side of the village. Nuisances, but not really yobs. You'd find a hundred or more of their kind in any of the towns round here. They just live for their bikes and their CBs. If they can go to the quarries on a Sunday afternoon and knock hell out of the sand mounds they're as happy as pigs in clover. The worst thing they ever do is to go into either Tamworth or Lichfield at night and ride round and round the streets, making a bit of a nuisance of themselves, but they've never been involved in any real trouble. Now they've smashed the club up, injured people, caused a crash on the dual carriageway killing four of them, a car driver and two policemen.’

‘You might just have hit the nail on the head.’ Latimer's eyes narrowed. ‘It happened to be a Sunday night. The odds are, then, that they were burning up the quarries earlier in the day. In which case they were in the proximity of the Sucking Pit …’

‘I don't see what that has to do with last night.’

‘What about that JCB driver, then?’

‘He rode his machine over a patch that was weakened by subsidence,’ Carl Wickers replied, his scepticism obvious to the others. ‘It collapsed and buried him alive.’

‘That's one solution.’ Latimer shook his head slowly. ‘But I remember the Pit as it used to be, Carl. I felt its evil then just as I sensed it the other afternoon when I was unwise enough to go for a nose around there. An ancient burial ground and I know the forces which lurk down there. You can't destroy them with just a few hundred tons of rubble. It should have been exorcised although I doubt whether that would have been successful, it's so powerful. Let's just suppose that those lads were messing about down there, came under the Pit's influence. I saw their expressions in the club …’ He paused, decided not to mention the big youth's likeness to Cornelius. ‘I thought at first they were high on drugs. But I'm sure they weren't, and neither had they been drinking. It was as though they were … hypnotised!’

‘Try telling that to the police.’ Carl's laugh sounded hollow. ‘They're still busy trying to find the fifth guy, Peter Hasden, known to his CB colleagues as Mule Skinner. He escaped the accident and rode on, hasn't been seen since. Never returned home.’

‘My God!’ Latimer stiffened. ‘It figures.’

‘What does?’

‘That he returned to the place which spawned the evil.’ Chris Latimer's voice sunk to a whisper. ‘If he's gone back to the Sucking Pit then I just hope you'll take my theory seriously.’

The frogman licked his lips nervously, tried to think of a reason why he didn't have to go down there. Maybe the kid's dumped his bike in the Pit, tried to throw us off the scent; panicked because he's caused one fuck of an accident. Then find his bike, Bradburn. And after that show us his tracks where he walked away. He couldn't hide them in all this soft sand, unless of course he was airlifted out!

Reg Bradburn knew that he would have to dive. The only alternative was to say. ‘No, I'm not going because I'm shit scared.’ He almost said that but his pride won the struggle. When you were out of work you needed some kind of a morale booster.

‘He's down there, all right,’ the tall CID inspector stated; in the same tone of voice he might have said that the weather looked like keeping fine. ‘Not satisfied with what he'd already done he came back to the quarries for a crazy burn-up. You can see where he lost control on the slope back there, then just rode blindly down. Probably never saw this pit hole until he hit it.’

Reg Bradburn adjusted his mask, tested his oxygen supply. Now the others were shut off from him as surely as if he had already gone below water. He shuddered, felt slightly sick. It reminded him of those days at primary school when he went to the baths for swimming lessons. What are you standing about for, Bradburn? Get in the water, boy! Bloody hell, things hadn't changed much over the years. Twenty years after learning to swim he had become an instructor at the Chasewater aqua club, albeit an honorary appointment. Masochism, he had to be mad. He'd found bodies below water for the police three times in the last year. Now whenever somebody was missing they called him in to search canals and filthy marl holes.

This is the bloody last time, and I mean it. A promise which he knew would be broken next time. He tried to work out why he kept on doing it. In decent waters it was exciting, exhilarating, venturing down into another world, a beautiful silent place where you were somebody, not just another number in the dole queue. You escaped reality for a short time. Down there you were your own boss, nobody had control over you.

He stood on the edge of the water, looked down. The blackest hole he'd ever seen; a yard below the surface and there would be no daylight. He adjusted his lamp, switched it on. One more look behind him. Hoping, praying. ‘I don't think we'll bother searching this one after all, Bradburn.’ His prayers weren't answered, the detective nodding, a mute. ‘Get on with it, then. What are you waiting for?’

Reg Bradburn braced himself, forced his thoughts to switch to Judy. It was a technique he employed on unpleasant dives such as this. Fix your mind on a bird, try and get a hard-on. You never did but at least you kept your sanity down there. Corpses weren't nice things to bump into unexpectedly. You hoped you didn't find one but until you did you thought erotic thoughts.

He lowered himself gingerly over the side, shivered at the penetrating coldness. Judy was the best thing that had ever happened to him since he and Marlene had split up, a marriage that was a failure from the moment they left the church. Judy was different; uninhibited, she'd slept around and didn't make any secret of it, but she had only gone from one feller to another because she couldn't find one to settle down with. She'd had a baby when she was still at college, forced her to pack up her studies and ruined a promising nursing career. Even in these so-called enlightened times there was still a stigma. ‘That's the girl who had a baby when she was at college. Lost it, too. Good thing.’ Bastards! That was how people were, pointing fingers and whispering behind your back. Just as those cops were talking about him now. Bradburn's getting chicken, you know. Fuck 'em!

It was blacker than he'd thought, a watery world of eternal night. Even his light had difficulty in cutting a path through the Stygian blackness. Keep thinking about Judy, boy, that first night you dated her.

She worked in a scruffy snack bar in town, a place that was once a transport cafe until they altered the traffic flow and cut out the heavy lorries. Dirty floor, unwashed crockery littering the tables until the cups were in danger of falling off. Judy wasn't posh but when you've had a failed marriage to an upper class woman you look further down the scale in search of something more approachable.

Reg had been prepared to settle for a kiss and a cuddle in the lay-by on that first night, was determined not to even feel at her tits through her tight-fitting sweater. God, she was hot stuff, opening her mouth wide and inviting him to French-kiss her. Then, without warning, she'd had a deliberate feel at him, squeezed and rubbed his hardness inside his trousers until he'd almost ejaculated.

He jumped as his hand touched something, swung his lamp. A piece of timber, rotted and heavy so that it couldn't make the surface, slime growing all over it. Phew! The globules of moisture on his face were icy. Keep thinking of Judy or you'll flip your lid.

‘I'm desperate to be fucked.’ She'd said it just like that. Another girl might've said. ‘I'm desperate for a smoke.’ Or a drink. But Judy made no bones about her physical needs, half ran his zip as though he might not have taken her seriously.

So they had clambered over into the back of his old Viva. A bit cramped but Judy was undaunted, slipping her clothes off with a dexterity that told him it wasn't the first time she had been screwed in the back of a car. But he wasn't worried about that.

Strewth, he'd got an erection going over it all again in his mind, one of the few occasions he'd managed it underwater. Maybe this place wasn't so bad after all, a kind of turn-on. It did things to you if you let it.

And suddenly he saw Judy! Amazement, trying to make his brain accept what his eyes saw, but logic rejected it. It was impossible! It couldn't be her, and whatever, the naked girl floating in the beam of his light had to be dead because nobody could possibly live down here. He stared, tried to make out the features but something cast a shadow across the pallid face and he could not be sure. He hesitated. Her body arched backwards, came up, legs opening and spreading wide, and this time no obstructing shadow obscured his vision of her lower body.

Oh God! Instinctively his fingers reached out, tried to grope between those thighs but they floated tantalisingly away from him. He grunted, sensed his erection straining inside his tight-fitting wetsuit. The bitch!

She was disappearing into the blackness; he made a despairing lunge, caught up with her again. Damn it, her face was still in shadow. He couldn't be sure. ‘Judy!’

Laughter, mocking him, those shapely legs kicking open again, firing his lust, back-pedalling away from him. That sensation in his lower regions was building up, the beginning of an orgasm like those erotic dreams he used to have as a boy, waking up to discover his pyjamas saturated. It was happening again now, just like a dream. Judy, I need you. Taunting him, he knew she was laughing even though he could not discern her features. It had to be her, though. But she had never acted this way before; usually it was she who took the initiative, was ready and naked for him when he came back into the bedroom from the bathroom. Sometimes when he was tired she wouldn't let him sleep, or awoke him in the middle of the night with sensuous fingers that had erected him in his sleep.

‘Stop being so bloody stupid!’ A shout which she could not possibly have heard. His frustration was building up to a peak; in seconds he would be ejaculating and there was no way he could stop it. ‘I'll fucking well kill you for this!’

In those few seconds he meant it, experienced a desire to encircle her neck with his fingers and squeeze the life out of her. That was how these cheap tarts got murdered, teased fellers until they couldn't stop themselves from unleashing a terrible lusting fury.

You've got to catch me first, Reg. Come on, then.

He made a grab for her, his fingers almost grasping an ankle but the limb appeared to melt back into the dark waters, materialised again a yard or so further back. Tinkling laughter. Come on, Reg. Her fingers came in between those open thighs, began to stimulate the pink flesh beneath the sparse hair. Oh Jesus, he couldn't hold back a second longer.

His orgasm hit him like an underwater detonation, the full force of it shuddering every nerve in his body, convulsing him. He kicked and flailed wildly, threshed the water around him so that his view of her was distorted, a water nymph changing shape, laughing cruelly. Once he thought he caught a glimpse of her face but it was gone before he could fully recognise it. All the same he was sure that it was Judy.

Christ, he couldn't ever remember climaxing as hard and as long as this before. Like that time he had first masturbated, an electrifying experience, a frightening one, too, because it had gone on and on so that he had thought it was never going to end, wondered what he had done to himself. But that was nothing when compared with this. His back arched until he feared lest his spine snapped, and throughout it all he was conscious of the shooting liquid warmth inside his wetsuit. You bitch, I'll kill you for this!

He reached his peak with devastating force. Then, gradually, the feeling subsided, an overwhelming weakness that left him treading water, a sapping of both mental and physical strength. The beam of his light appeared to have dimmed to an insipid yellow that penetrated only a few feet into the black cold water around him. He peered, strained his eyes, but saw nothing except for a few strands of floating dead vegetation.

‘Judy… Judy!’

A silence except for the roaring in his own ears. She had to be here somewhere.

He swam around, realised the futility of those shouts inside his own headpiece. God, he felt tired, it was almost too much of an effort to swim. Just float, let the water take you. But it did not because there was no current. Nothing but blackness beyond the range of his light.

He wondered how deep this place was. Suddenly he did not want to find out for it was cold and frightening. He'd had some kind of strange erotic fantasy, thought too hard about Judy and got himself all worked up. It had been so real down in these awful depths, alone in his own world, real enough to make him think he had seen his girlfriend, real enough to trigger off a blinding orgasm. And it was still very real.

Damn it, the cow had tantalised him all the same, whether she was here or not. He hated her for it; that was illogical but he despised her all the same. She was a cheap tart and all he saw in her was her voluptuous body. Once the physical attraction had gone for him there would be nothing else. No intellect. He'd go back, screw her for all he was worth, and then she could pack her bags. He'd kick her arse through the door if she protested. Go and get somebody else to shag you, you little whore. And only a short time ago he was convinced that he was in love with her. It just went to show you that a good screw could blind you to everything else. He trembled, sensed a fury that had to be vented on somebody.

Suddenly he remembered the body he was supposed to be searching for. Well, it wasn't here. It had to be - the kid had ridden his motorcycle right into this pool. Where was the bike, then? Embedded in the mud at the bottom, probably pinning the corpse down beneath it. Go and look for it, that's what you're here for. No bloody fear, I'm not going any deeper in this place. If they want the body that bad then they can damned well get somebody else to dive for it.

He struck upwards, sensed at the same time that his oxygen was running low. The equipment had to be faulty, then, because he could not have been below water for more than twenty minutes at the most. Relief as the blackness above turned to a greyish hue and then he broke the surface, swam to the side. Jesus Christ, he was almost too knackered to haul himself up on to dry land. His pulses were racing so that for one awful moment he feared he might be having a heart attack. Then the feeling passed and he was gulping in fresh air, staring up at the anxious faces which looked down at him.

‘Where the hell have you been, Bradburn?’ the detective-inspector's features were strained, his voice terse. ‘We were on the point of radioing for another diver to come and look for you. We thought you must have got caught up in some undergrowth or something.’

‘No.’ Reg Bradburn thought how strange his own voice sounded, almost as though he was miming the words and the sound was being dubbed. ‘There's no undergrowth down there. Nothing could live down there. It's a dead place.’

‘You've been gone almost an hour. A dive like that shouldn't take more than twenty minutes at the most.’

‘An hour!’ Incredulity flooded Bradburn's features. ‘I don't believe it!’

‘Fifty-four minutes to be precise.’ A uniformed sergeant checked his watch. ‘Your oxygen must be about spent.’

‘Well, did you find the body?’ The inspector dropped on to one knee, his expression almost accusing. They had wasted enough time already.

‘No.’ Bradburn dropped his gaze. ‘I didn't. It isn't there.’

‘Of course it's down there.’ The police officer could not conceal his annoyance. ‘The youth rode his bike straight into the pool. Even if the body isn't there then the bike has to be. Nothing could leave without leaving tracks.’

‘Well it isn't there, neither bike nor body, and if you're not satisfied then you'd better get somebody else to dive for it. I'm not a bloody copper, thank Christ.’

‘But if there's no vegetation in there then body and bike shouldn't be hard to find.’ The detective's eyes narrowed. ‘Are you sure you went right down to the bottom.’

‘No I fucking well didn't!’

‘You didn't!’

‘No, because you can take it from me, there ain't no bottom. The Sucking Pit's bottomless, just like they always said it was.’

‘This is ridiculous.’ The policeman straightened up. ‘No pool can be bottomless, that's an impossibility. Still, if you're not prepared to dive the whole way down, Bradburn, there's no way we can force you to. You'd better get dressed.’ He turned to the uniformed man at his side. ‘We'll get this pool dredged tomorrow, Sergeant. Arrange for the council to supply us with a dredger and we'll explode all these local superstitions about the pool being bottomless. And afterwards we'll fill the damned thing in once and for all!’

Reg Bradburn felt heady, a kind of faraway feeling as though he was a spectator to his own actions. Perhaps he was sickening for the flu. He could not get that underwater experience out of his mind either. As he turned the Mini into the council estate he knew that he was getting an erection again. Damn Judy, he'd meant everything he had threatened down there in the depths of the Sucking Pit, he'd fuck the arse off her and kick her out through the door. For good.

He pulled the car into the kerb, scuffing the tyres, slammed the door as he got out. His erection was pushing hard as though trying to fight its way out of his cords. Almost running up the short concrete path, hurling the back door open. Where the hell was the bitch!

Judy was in the front room, sitting on the sofa staring at a flickering badly adjusted television picture, the sound turned off. She glanced up as he entered, her eyes red-ringed as though she had been crying. A towel was draped around her naked body, her hair straggling and wet. Oh, Christ Almighty, he clutched at a chair for support, she had been down there after all!

‘Where've you been?’ he snarled and a crimson mist seemed to creep into the room, a fog that gave off foul vapours, a stench that was only too familiar. The Sucking Pit: she reeked of its vile putrefaction, the smell of ancient death.

‘I've just got out of the bath.’ She spoke angrily, the words interspersed with sobs. ‘If it's any of your bloody business, Reg. And before that I went down to the clinic. I've got some news for you.’

‘What?’ He had to force himself to concentrate. She was going to give him some spiel, try and make out that it had not been her flaunting herself below water earlier this afternoon. But it had been. Listen to her first though.

‘I'm … pregnant!’ She had to force the word out, a kind of confession. She was on the verge of crying again.

It took some seconds for the meaning to register in his crazed brain and then the veins on his forehead were standing out starkly, his features suffused with blood. ‘You lousy little tart,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘It's right what folks say about you, you're on the game. Aren't you? Well, aren't you? Bloody well answer me, you poxy little bitch!’

She rose to her feet shakily, her face pale, lips curling in anger. ‘How dare you, how bloody dare you! I've fucked around in the past but I've never once been unfaithful to you, Reg. Not once. I've got a baby because you gave it me.’

‘You're on the pill,’ he spat out; he could barely discern her through the crimson mist. ‘You can't be pregnant. You're lying, just as you've lied about coming out of the bath. You've been swimming in The Sucking Pit, haven't you?’

‘You're mad!’ She stepped back a pace, tripped and almost fell.

‘Take a look at this!’ He moved forward, unzipped himself in one deft movement and as his erection sprang free, pulsing and swelling still further, he gave a harsh laugh. ‘You fuck-crazy cow I'm going to shag you till you can't come any more, and then I'm kicking you through that door so you'll have to run naked up the road and all the neighbours will see you as you really are!’

She would have screamed but he was upon her with one bound, his strong grimy hand clapped over her mouth, stifling the sound. She gurgled, tried to fight but he was too powerful for her, suddenly imbued with unbelievable strength. He kicked her legs from under her, bore her to the floor, going down on top of her.

Judy stared up into those eyes and knew instantly that Reg Bradburn was mad, the way they bored into her with a terrifying hate and lust. He wanted her, but he also wanted to hurt her.

She screamed another gurgle into the hand pressed suffocatingly over her mouth. It was as though some solid unfeeling inanimate object had been thrust into her, a thousand times more painful because she had not lubricated in readiness. His weight crushed her, the sharp open zip gouging her pubic flesh as he slammed back and forth. The hand was removed from her mouth but she dared not scream. Fingers gripped her nipples, stretched them, twisted them until surely they must be torn from her small breasts; afraid to scream because he would kill her if she did.

Reg Bradburn's eyes were glazing, his breathing becoming constricted, every muscle trembling violently. Any second now … She felt the gush of warm semen inside her and in that moment of orgasmic fury he went berserk, his fingers leaving her mutilated nipples and gripping her throat. One futile attempt at a scream and then the breath was being choked from her. His contorted expression was blurred, he was shouting something, the words like muffled echoes coming up from a deep mine shaft. ‘It was you down there, you whore, I know it was. I couldn't catch you then but I've caught you now and now you know what I'm going to do to you. I'll kill that fucking baby inside you as well as you!’

Everything was slipping from her in a darkening room. She did not know whether they were still coupled, nor whether his hands still throttled her because her whole body was numb, devoid of feeling, like you got in your leg when you had been sitting on it, before those agonising pins and needles began. She was beyond the terror barrier, incapable of thinking coherently, just hurt because the man she loved had done this to her.

‘Don't lie to me, Judy. You were down in the Sucking Pit, weren't you?’

She thought she nodded. A confession. Anything. Then for her the whole scene was swamped by blackness and the body which Reg Bradburn shook was limp like a child's rag doll.

It was some time before he disengaged himself from her, staggered to his feet and vomited. Realisation, a sudden receding of the madness that had gripped him.

For some minutes he stood there, just looking down at her, wanted to kiss her, pour out his remorse on her, but it would all be futile. She would never know because she was dead and he had murdered her. It was too late.

Stumbling, falling once and barely having the strength to drag himself up again, he made it into the kitchen. He tugged at a drawer, pulled it right out so that cutlery showered all over the floor. Knives, dozens of them, but all too blunt. Then he saw the one he wanted, a bread knife with a serrated blade, grabbed at it in case it should suddenly elude him like that terrible vision in the Pit which hadn't been Judy after all.

There was no hesitation as he slashed fiercely at his left wrist, then transferred his grip and gouged at the right. Twin jets of blood hit the ceiling above, began to drip stickily to the floor, and that scarlet mist came back again.

He staggered, fell, saw that face again, the one which had been shielded by shadow down in those murky depths. Now he could see clearly and he uttered a cry of mingled joy and sorrow because it wasn't Judy after all. So haggard, the flesh rotted in places so that whitened cheekbones were exposed, the eyes dark sockets that saw and still taunted.

Naked, of course, the lower half of her unblemished as though it had been preserved for some awful purpose. Reg Bradburn knew only too well that those thighs would open invitingly, luring him now just as they had before. He tried to resist but it was impossible. Can't you see I'm dying?

Once, just once, before you die, Reg Bradburn.

He reached out with fingers that were sticky with blood and this time she did not move away. He felt her coldness, the touch of frozen wastelands, her mirthless laughter rendering him heady and mindful of but one desire.

She moved in on him, a leg stretched out fully on either side in anticipation of an unholy mating, a whispering in his ears like the distant roaring of a train. Come to Jenny Lawson for I need you. You have obeyed and shall be rewarded.

Reg Bradburn glanced down, saw that he was ready, pulsing with a desire that should have been revulsion, a calling that was as old as the beginning of his species. He leaned forward, prepared to enter, to surrender to this water nymph who had pursued him on to dry land.

Then from somewhere came one spark of defiance, a moment of hatred for this awful wench who called herself Jenny Lawson, and shame for himself. He still had the knife; one swift stroke downwards, all his remaining strength behind the slicing blow.

Momentary pain beyond human endurance, final euphoria that he had defied her at the final hour, and then Reg Bradburn died.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘Well, we can't dispute the evidence any longer, no matter what theories the police come up with.’ Chris Latimer's face was pale, etched with lines that had not been evident to his friends a few days before. ‘The evil in the Sucking Pit has been released. Violent death, and there will be more unless we can stop it.’

‘They're going to dredge the Pit and fill it in today.’ Carl Wickers' reply lacked conviction. He felt he was obliged to say something, principally for the benefit of Pamela and Samantha.

‘They're too late.’ Chris wished that the two girls had not been here, that some urgent message had summoned Pamela back to London and Samantha had decided to accompany her. ‘Another load of rubble won't solve the problem.’

‘And what can you do about it?’ Carl fingered the cut on his cheek gingerly. The plaster had been removed and the narrow scar was visible. It would heal in time. But suddenly time was a commodity that seemed to be in short supply.

‘I don't rightly know except that I've got to try and do something. I'm going down to take a look at the Pit, maybe I can come up with something, although God knows I'm stuck for ideas. The locals are nearly out of their minds with fear. They haven't forgotten what happened ten years ago.’

‘Don't go, Chris.’ Pamela's hand shot out, gripped his arm. ‘Please don't. It can't do any good.’

‘I must. Just to take a look anyway.’

‘They'll have started the dredging by now.’

‘Then I'm going right away. Don't forget, I can recognise things which might be overlooked by them. I know the place better than most, even the locals.’

‘Then I'm going with you.’ Pamela's expression was one of determination.

‘No, and that's final.’

‘You can't stop me, Chris.’

He sighed, knew damned well he hadn't a hope of preventing her from accompanying him if she was determined to come along. He admired her for that. Two choices were open to him; take her with him or stay away.

‘In all probability there won't be anything to see,’ he said lamely.

‘We'll come too.’ Carl Wickers nodded to Samantha. ‘A fine sunny afternoon and what better way to spend it than a walk in the woods?’

The four of them could hear heavy machinery working beyond the mounds, a monotonous hum and grinding noise, interspersed with the sound of showering rubble. Beneath their feet the sand on the Lady Walk had been compressed into a flat surface, the imprints of heavy caterpillar wheels stretching on ahead of them.

‘They've really got the tack for the job this time,’ Carl Wickers muttered.

They'll need it too, Chris thought, deciding not to voice his thoughts. Nothing short of a nuclear bomb could destroy the Sucking Pit totally. You buried it but the evil lived on, a powerful force imprisoned beneath the surface waiting for release. Only this time that evil had already escaped; it was truly shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted.

‘Look.’ Pamela stopped, looked skywards. ‘It's clouded over. We haven't seen anything more than a fluffy white cloud for weeks now.’

Latimer caught his breath, found himself instinctively clutching at her hand as though to protect her from some unknown danger. A little shiver ran up his spine. She was right: without warning, a dark cloud formation had spread in from the west, a mass of grey shapes that you could let your imagination run riot with, a lowering sky frowning down on those below.

‘I hope it's not going to rain.’ Samantha spoke in a hushed whisper. ‘We'll all get soaked. There was no mention of it on the weather forecast, this high was supposed to continue for a few more days at least. Maybe we're going to get a freak thunderstorm.’

‘Could well be,’ Chris Latimer replied. ‘It's very humid and …’

A distant rumble far away that might have gone unnoticed if they had not been listening. All of them were thinking the same thought: maybe we ought to turn back. An excuse, a way out without losing face.

‘Come on.’ Chris moved forward, still holding Pamela's hand. ‘Or else by the time we get there the Pit will be filled in.’

They topped a sand mound, found themselves instinctively bunching together as though seeking one another's protection, looking down on the scene below. A crowd had gathered, probably locals come to witness the end of the dreaded death bog. They were standing well back; possibly those uniformed policemen had ordered them to keep clear. Police and orange-clad workmen lined the edge of the pool, the centrepiece of the action being a huge crane with a ‘grab’ on the end of a length of chain, a kind of bizarre fishing expedition. The chain creaked and clanked as it was unwound, going on down and down to its full length, checking; being winched back up. A shower of filthy black water as it came clear. Nothing. Empty.

Back down again.

‘They haven't touched the bottom, that's for sure,’ Latimer breathed. ‘and that chain's got to be all of fifty metres.’

A repeat performance, those supervising the operation seeming to realise the futility of it all. A conference, another roll of chain replacing the first one. Everybody was edgy now, the two waiting bulldozers moving forward a few yards, their operators wanting to begin pushing rubble into the pool, get the job over and done with.

A rainspot hit Latimer on the face, a cold droplet that trickled down his cheek. He shivered, tensed because he had anticipated the clap of thunder. Pamela moved up against him; maybe they really should leave. But nobody made a move; it was as though they were hypnotised by this bizarre setting.

The sky had darkened but still the rain held off. Everybody and everything was waiting, even the elements holding back.

The grab went down once more and it seemed an interminable length of time before the empty winch checked and gave off a metallic screech. The chain tautened, began to lift; you could tell it had caught up something by the way it strained, seemed reluctant to break from the water as though some unseen force was obstructing it. A splash and it was free, a mangled shape being revealed as the water gushed free. A motorcycle - at least it looked as though it might have been once.

The wreckage was lowered on to the side, police moving in to inspect it. The chain and bucket snaked free, hit the water with a mighty splash as it was lowered hurriedly. An urgency, the crane driver unwilling to delay a second longer than was absolutely necessary. Everybody wanted to be away from this awful place. But first they had to find a missing body.

A crack of thunder, followed seconds later by a vivid flash of sheet lightning that lit up the darkened sky. Latimer shuddered; the gods were protesting at this attempted exhumation from an ancient burial ground.

Suddenly the crane seemed to tilt as though some gigantic underwater creature had seized the chain and was hauling on it, the cab angled at twenty-five degrees, the rear of its caterpillar clear of the ground. The door swung open and the driver leapt out, hit the surface at a run. He was shouting something but the noise of the engine drowned his words. Now the bulldozer drivers had deserted their machines in an inexplicable retreat.

‘What's happening?’ Pamela was holding on to Chris and he could feel her body begin to tremble. In a different situation it would have been erotic but here in full view of the Sucking Pit it was unnerving.

‘I don't know,’ he muttered, because he didn't. He could only guess, remembering only too well what had happened to Mick Treadman.

‘My God, look!’ It was Samantha who screamed, and at that second the entire scene was lit up by a blinding flash of lightning as though the forces of evil were determined that the human spectators should witness their terrible power. Cries of alarm came from the small crowd of villagers down below, several scattering, running in blind panic. Flee, before it's too late!

The pool, hitherto a sheet of dead black water, suddenly seemed to move as though propelled by a current from the depths, an incoming tide hitting the shore in a cloud of filthy spray; falling back, gathering force. The crane tottered, an inanimate object suddenly fighting for its balance, losing out. It toppled, almost gracefully, so slowly as though it had found a means of defying the laws of gravity, a sideways lurch and then it was lying on its side. And as it hit the ground a crevice opened up, a zigzagging abyss of indeterminable depth, the machine slipping, lodging in it.

The watchers heard the water before they saw it, a roar like a bursting dam, then a huge wave of dark foaming spray powering up from the depths below, bursting its newly-opened banks and flooding the area of flattened rubble, battering the two bulldozers. The heavy machines held their own, their bright yellow paintwork a film of filthy scum.

The water swirled, settled; frothing and hissing, bubbles bursting and giving off foul vapours. A rumble of thunder directly overhead as though a triumphant trumpet call from the gods of war who had conquered once again, reclaimed territory which had been stolen from them.

‘My God!’ Carl Wickers was white and shaking. ‘Did you see that?’

‘I saw it,’ Latimer whispered. ‘You wouldn't believe it if you hadn't.’

The water below them was still again, just a few ripples that faded and died. The crane was gone, finally slipping into that fissure, the bulldozers half-submerged, but everybody watching knew that they would sink into the mud before long.

‘The Sucking Pit has reclaimed its old boundaries,’ Latimer said. ‘Almost to a yard, the same area … the same shape!’

‘We can't do anything just standing here,’ Carl held out his hand, felt the heavy drops of thunder rain. ‘It's going to pour down any second.’

‘I guess we might as well go.’ Chris turned, began to pull Pamela up the sandy slope, resisted the urge to break into a run.

And even as they retraced their steps he experienced that unnerving feeling of being watched, as though the deep black pool below them was a huge living eye following his every move, hating him because he had come back. Seeking to possess him.

Ralph Grafton stared in horror and disbelief. Within less than a minute an area of hard dry land had been turned into a dark black lake, a crane swallowed up and two bulldozers sinking fast.

Everybody just stood and watched; nobody asked why, because there was no answer. Subsidence would be offered as an excuse, a half-hearted explanation, but nobody would believe it.

The tall police inspector was shaking his head in bewilderment; later he would experience frustration. The mangled remains of that motorbike were gone, caught by that mighty burst of water, washed back into its grave. They hadn't found that youth's body, they certainly wouldn't now!

‘The ground just seemed to … open up,’ the sergeant said, and felt silly the moment the words were out; everybody had seen it, nobody could explain it. Except perhaps the locals with their superstitions which were fast becoming reality. But you didn't want to start listening to them or else you found yourself looking over your shoulder …

Grafton moved away from the throng, felt physically and mentally sick. The major part of the site for his proposed executive-style houses was under water, a firm landscape reduced to water and bog. Deep down, beyond the reach of the surveyors' instruments, there had to be some kind of faulty rock formation, maybe weakened by the daily vibrations of heavy quarrying, and in the end the pressure had been too great for it. Impossible to drain, unsuitable for building on. Permission revoked. He grimaced: land that was no good for anything, unmarketable.

There was still the remainder of the quarries, so far sound. But once levelling began …

He was oblivious of the rain, not even quickening his pace as his shirt and slacks became saturated. So dark, it might have been night instead of four o'clock on a late May afternoon. He reached the big house, fumbled for his key in a pocket that squelched and oozed water down the inside of his leg. He'd grab a change of clothes, maybe see if he could get hold of Minworth. The Planning Officer might still be at the office, otherwise he'd ring him at home. Something had to be done before this situation got out of hand, if it had not already done so.

The lock was stiff, he had to exert pressure, almost bent the key. Damn it, a new front door was overdue and there wasn't a sign of those builders yet. He'd chase them tomorrow, but right now there were more important matters pressing. Like …

The telephone cut into his thoughts, he could almost see it vibrating on the small table as though emphasising the urgency of the call. Lynette, maybe, angry because he hadn't rung. But he had. His wet fingers secured a grip on the receiver.

‘Grafton.’

He waited, anticipating the voice at the other end but it didn't come. Silence except for a faint crackling on the line.

‘Who's there?’

No answer, but he had an unnerving feeling that the line wasn't dead; not so much the sound of somebody breathing, rather a … presence. He shivered, realised for the first time just how cold he was.

‘What's going on?’ Almost a shout, his grip threatening to snap the headset. ‘Who's there?’

And then the line went dead, just a vibrating dialling tone that had him slamming the receiver back, pausing, taking it off again and laying it on the table. Some cranky local, he tried to laugh aloud but the sound was harsh, loaded with his own fears. Well, if they tried to ring back they would be wasting their own time, not his.

He walked towards the stairs, his footsteps echoing across the unfurnished hall. Stopping, listening again, subconsciously anticipating the noise he dreaded most.

A scratching sound … like rats! Except that there weren't any rats.

He didn't know where the noise was coming from, didn't care because there would be nothing there when he looked. He broke into a run, took the stairs three at a time, burst into the bathroom and turned the taps on full, hoped he would be in time to drown that … tapping on the window!

Oh Christ, running gushing water, he'd never get it out of his memory, the roar of that huge deluge coming up from the bowels of the earth, filling up the old Sucking Pit again!

He slammed the bathroom door, forced the rusted lock to work. Only then did he feel comparatively safe.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘You've taken money from him, haven't you, Claude?’ May Minworth fixed her husband with an accusing, dominating glare. ‘Don't lie to me, you've accepted a bribe and that's corruption. And you could go to prison if you're found out!’

Claude Minworth licked his lips nervously, turned his head so that his wife could not see his expression. At forty-two he was overweight, with a pinkish complexion which years ago his parents had referred to as a ‘healthy rosy red’. Sleek black hair brushed straight back and plastered down with Silvikrin; a mass-market tailored suit which fitted him just too snugly, and failed to hide the roll of fat overflowing his waistband. Dapper, his confidence was a façade which he and May had built up over the years on the long climb up the ladder to the position of Planning Officer. More often than not he worked at home and thus May Minworth had unofficially become Planning Officer.

‘Well?’ She stepped sideways so that she now had a view of his face, saw that his complexion was paling. ‘What have you got to say for yourself, Claude?’

I didn't break the window, Mummy, honest I didn't. My ball just bounced up, hit it. ‘It wasn't a bribe.’ His face was suffused with blood again suddenly, his lower lip trembling.

‘What was it then?’

‘A gift. Just Mr Grafton's way of showing his gratitude.’

She caught her breath, let it out slowly, her left foot beginning to tap on the floor the way it always did when she was really angry, temporarily at a loss for words. At forty-eight she was fighting a battle to preserve her looks: a blonde tint to disguise the grey hairs which were creeping in, the lines on her features smoothed and hidden by a variety of creams. Slim because she dieted drastically and her figure had not been spoiled by motherhood. She didn't need children, she told herself, because she had Claude and he took enough looking after. Without her he wouldn't be where he was now, although she often thought that it might have been preferable to have spurned marriage and concentrated on a career for herself. She could have made it to the top, and the likes of Grafton would not have corrupted her!

‘It was a bribe.’ She let the words out slowly. ‘That's why we've got a Maestro in the garage, that stupid video, new fitted carpets all over the house. You lied to me, Claude. You didn't have a rise, you had a backhander from Grafton and now he's getting nasty because his proposed building site has flooded and the planning permission is likely to be revoked. He wants you, us, to stick our necks out to try and save him. And aren't we unpopular enough in this village as it is, since the original outline planning was passed?’

‘The Committee passed it,’ he said weakly, entwining his fleshy fingers until the knuckles showed white. ‘It isn't up to me.’

‘No, but you influenced them, put pressure on every one of them, persuaded them against their better judgment. Every single member of that committee has been wined and dined at this house, all of it paid for by Ralph Grafton. Where did you put the money he gave you? How much was it?’

‘Six grand.’ He was overwhelmed by a sudden desire to blurt out his confession, to cleanse his conscience so maybe he would be able to sleep at nights now. ‘Another four once they start building. All in cash. I spent it, they can't trace it.’

‘Don't you be so sure.’ Her eyes narrowed and she hated him more than ever now for the way he squirmed and was still trying to justify his own actions. ‘You would never stand up to a police interrogation. Still, we must hope that it doesn't come to that. But just look what you've done to me in this village. I've had to resign from the WI and we can't attend any local function without receiving hostile looks from everybody. We're ostracised, we're traitors. We've sold these villagers down the river - not that I've much time for them anyway,’ she added acidly.

An awkward silence ensued; the ticking of the electric clock sounded deafening.

‘I could give Grafton his money back.’ Minworth's tone was shaky, as though he was on the verge of tears,

‘You've already spent it.’

‘We could sell the car and the video.’

‘It's too late,’ she snapped. ‘What's done is done.’

‘He's coming here.’ He swallowed. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘What!’

‘He rang, wants to see me.’

‘I'll bet he does, but he's not coming to this house, Claude, you can take it from me. And you can tell him that!’

Another silence except for the tapping of May's foot, faster now, and the fleshy sound of Claude's hands as he rubbed them with an invisible lather, the clock like a metronome trying to set the beat.

‘I don't know what I'm going to do,’ she said at length. ‘You've involved me in all this deceit.’

‘It's nothing to do with you.’ Almost defiant.

‘It is. The car, the carpets, the video, I've accepted them as much as you have. I entertained him, without even guessing. You will go to prison, Claude, but I shall have to share the stigma. I can already hear what these villagers will be saying: “That's Minworth's wife, he's in prison, you know. Corruption.” Haven't you blackened our name enough? Oh my God, if I'd only guessed what you were up to.’

She turned, stalked out of the room, slammed the door behind her. He heard her footsteps on the stairs, the banging of the bedroom door. Wearily, trembling, he sank down on to the sofa. Suddenly his hopes, everything, had turned into a ghastly nightmare, and Grafton wasn't going to let up. The bastard was in a corner: if he couldn't build on those quarries then his whole empire faced ruin, their only assets a tract of flooded wasteland that nobody would want to buy except maybe some conservation society who would want to beg to turn it into a waterfowl sanctuary; it wouldn't be any good for anything else.

Minworth hadn't told May that he was going down there this afternoon to inspect it; that would only have added more fuel to the already blazing inferno. He had to see it, so far he had only Grafton's word for it and what he had read in the papers. Maybe it wasn't as bad as they said, and it could be drained, filled in. Surely modern technology wasn't going to surrender to a bit of subsidence coupled with a ridiculous local legend.

Think positively. It wasn't easy; he crossed to the sideboard, poured himself a shot of malt whisky. Another of Grafton's presents. It tasted hot and bitter, scorched his throat so that he coughed. May was making too much of all this, looking on the blackest side. Grafton had simply shown his appreciation in various material ways; there was no question of bribery. The Planning Officer had only been doing his job, put the picture in perspective to the Committee. There had been no pressure, just persuasiveness. Surely that couldn't be termed corruption!

It could. He poured himself another whisky; this time it didn't burn so much. Anyway, it was no good thinking about what might happen, he needed to see the ground, come up with some alternative plan, keep Grafton quiet. Stall.

Claude Minworth found himself tiptoeing into the hall, a schoolboy sneaking from the house when he was supposed to be doing his homework. Creeping into the shiny Maestro outside in the drive, rolling it back down on to the road before he fired the engine, his shirt damp with sweat. He had promised to check into the office later to sign some documents but that could wait.

He parked in the lay-by opposite the entrance to the wood, had to await his chance to cross the busy main road. Once on the Lady Walk he found himself glancing around guiltily, suddenly a trespasser. Suppose he met Grafton down here? It wasn't likely. Or the police, still carrying out investigations into Peter Hasden's death? It didn't matter; he was the Planning Officer come to take a look at what the subsidence had done. There was nothing wrong in that. Except in his own conscience.

The Sucking Pit. He stood there looking, saw the expanse of black water which failed to reflect the bright sunlight, a sheet of murkiness, a stagnant stench which you could smell from a hundred yards away. Starkly sinister, powerful, an invisible force of which you were instantly aware.

Deserted, not a soul in sight. That was a relief, anyway. Then Minworth saw the barbed wire fence, a hurriedly constructed surround, posts driven in at unequal distances, two strands of wire stapled to them. A notice, red lettering on a white board, probably one borrowed from the sand quarries; a single word - DANGER.

There was danger all right; you saw it, sensed it, wanted to turn and run, but something held you here spellbound. Minworth reached the fence, snagged his trousers climbing over. To hell with that, he had to have a closer look, see if there was any chance of … what? You could not build on this site a thousand years hence.

You're wasting your time, Claude Minworth, go back and tell Grafton there's no chance. But he stayed, just standing there looking down at the water, his thoughts returning to May. Christ, she was a bitch, she had made his life hell in a surreptitious kind of way ever since they had been married, dominated him so that he accepted her word without querying it. Indoctrination. And now she was angry with him, the mask had slipped from her features revealing her true self. She would never forgive him for coming down here, trying to find an escape route for Grafton. And himself. And May, if it came to that.

‘Hello.’

He started, almost lost his balance as he whirled round, gaped in amazement at the girl standing only a couple of yards from him. He couldn't understand how she had been able to approach so close to him without him hearing her. She was no more than twenty at the most, a strip of a girl with wide dark eyes that mirrored a sadness even when she smiled. A long dress of some kind of hessian material swirled around her ankles when she moved, her arms hidden in voluminous sleeves. A bit old-fashioned, Minworth thought, or maybe she's some kind of hippy. The younger generation had a lot of strange ideas on what was fashionable. He could almost visualise her in some protest march or other, the kind who campaigned for other people; the kind you felt like telling all your troubles to because you knew she had a sympathetic ear. All this came over in a matter of seconds, made him feel like he had known her all his life. Not particularly sexy, just nice.

‘You're upset about something.’ Her voice was soft and lilting, her smile melting into an expression of genuine concern.

‘Yes.’ He nodded, felt extremely sorry for himself all of a sudden, almost on the verge of tears. ‘I am.’

‘You'd better tell me all about it.’ She moved close to him, squeezed his hand, a grip that was chilly as though she had just washed in cold water. ‘Come on, let's see if I can help you.’

‘You can't.’ Minworth tried to avert his gaze but somehow couldn't, found himself gazing into those dark and very appealing eyes. ‘It's no good, nobody can help me.’

‘You won't know that unless you tell me, will you?’ She smiled again, a gentle movement of her mouth that had him wanting to cry even more. ‘A trouble shared is a trouble halved.’

‘Oh … all right.’ He gulped, felt his eyes start to water so that his vision was suddenly distorted; she reminded him of a reflection in a pool when somebody had tossed a stone into the water. ‘But you'll be bored to death.’

‘Try me then.’

Falteringly, he told this young girl all about Grafton and the planning permission for the quarries, how he had got deeper and deeper into the deal until it was too late to pull out. How everything had gone sour. Claude Minworth felt a lump form in his throat as he finished his story, his voice wavering, every nerve in his body trembling. Damn it, he would have denied everything a few hours ago and now he had not only told May but also this strange girl. God, he was putting the noose around his own neck fast.

‘You … won't tell anybody else, will you?’ The plea came out accompanied by a sob.

‘No, of course I won't,’ her expression was thoughtful. ‘I told you I only wanted to help you.’

‘That's impossible,’ he groaned. ‘I've got myself into the biggest mess of my life. If I had the nerve I'd kill myself.’

‘That would be silly.’ She gave him another cold reassuring squeeze. ‘Your wife sounds a real callous bitch.’

‘She is, always has been.’ He spat the words out, no longer able to control his hatred for May.

‘Then why don't you kill her?’

It took some seconds for the meaning of the girl's words to sink into Claude Minworth's confused brain. Surprise turned to shock and horror, but somewhere inside him a voice was whispering, the germ of an idea starting to sprout. He caught his breath, gulped. ‘What a terrible thing even to contemplate. That's murder!’

‘And she's done some pretty terrible things to you over the years, by what you've told me.’

‘They send you to prison for a long time for murder.’

‘And for corruption, too.’

His mind numbed, went into a spin. Once, a couple of years ago when May had taken the car to go down to London on some WI business, he had considered, not very seriously because he knew he'd never have the courage to do it, tampering with the car so that it would crash. Brakes or steering, but he didn't have enough mechanical knowledge not only to carry out the sabotage but to cover up what he had done. It was a nice thought, though, and after she had left he had found himself hoping that by some quirk of fate she would have a genuine accident, hopefully on the M1 where the traffic hurtled along at such a speed that there were few survivors from any accidents. ‘Planning Officer's wife killed in horror crash on motorway.’ Eye-catching headlines in the Herald or the Mercury, maybe even a mention in one of the dailies. Too good to be true but he wouldn't shed more than a few crocodile tears at the funeral. But May hadn't crashed; she'd arrived safely back and started griping at him again.

‘But if they didn't catch you they couldn't send you to prison.’ She spoke as casually as though she was discussing some mundane topic at the vicarage garden party, polite conversation.

‘They'd catch me all right. They catch most murderers and, anyway, I'm not clever enough.’

‘They wouldn't catch you.’ There was a determined edge to her voice now. ‘Because I would see to it that they didn't. I promise you.’

He found himself staring into those eyes again, dark orbs which flickered with wild passion and understanding, seeming to read those thoughts which he dared not put into words. ‘You're capable of it but you just need someone to help you. Like me. Without her you'll be free, able to do what you want. And if Grafton was dead as well, nobody would know that you'd taken his bribes, would they? Except me, and I'm not going to tell anybody.’

Claude Minworth's body went cold, as cold as those slender fingers which were entwined with his own. A sensation of vertigo, holding on to his strange companion in case he lost his balance and fell, gazing into her eyes still and reading a lot of exciting things there which he didn't understand.

‘It makes sense, doesn't it?’ Her voice was a far-off murmur now, like the inexplicable whisperings inside his own head. ‘Doesn't it?’

He nodded dumbly, felt his fear lessening, being replaced by another feeling, a more positive one. This girl talked sense. She wanted to help him, too, and they wouldn't give him any longer sentence for murder, no, manslaughter, than they would for corruption, If they caught him.

‘They won't catch you.’ She could read his thoughts, after all. ‘I give you my word. But we've got to plan this very carefully, Claude.’ He could not remember having told her his name but he couldn't be sure; it didn't matter anyway. ‘You've got to kill quickly and silently, make sure she doesn't scream or attract attention.’ The girl smiled sweetly, belying the cold-bloodedness of her words. ‘Kill her when she's least expecting it, no warning.’

‘There's an axe in the woodshed.’ His earlier stammerings had completely disappeared and he spoke as calculatedly as he did at the monthly Planning Committee meetings. ‘I could hit her with that. Hard.’

‘Good.’ Her eyes narrowed, bored into his own as if searching for something he had not told her. ‘And what about Grafton? He won't be so easy.’

‘He's coming to see me at home tomorrow night.’ Claude Minworth gabbled his words, an eager schoolboy blurting out the answer to a teacher's question before the rest of the class could beat him to it. ‘I could kill him then. Nobody will know he's come to see me because he'll want the meeting to be subversive because …’

‘Excellent.’ She raised a steadying finger. ‘But take your time. This is what you must do. Kill your wife, either tonight or tomorrow, and keep her body hidden. Then, when Grafton comes, kill him too.’

‘And what about me?’

‘I was just coming to that.’ A tone that reprimanded him for his interruption. ‘You will come back here, where I shall be waiting for you.’

‘But … where are we going?’

‘Don't you trust me, Claude? Do I have to spell everything out for you?’

‘No … of course not.’ A brief feeling of guilt, as he experienced when May admonished him, but it was gone almost at once. This girl was different. They would go away together somewhere, be happy. His pulses raced, his heartbeat quickened, but this time not with fear and apprehension but with something which also caused a pleasant, almost forgotten, feeling in the lower regions of his body. ‘I'll be back. Tomorrow night, sometime after dark.’

‘I'll be here waiting.’ Another squeezing of his hand and an unexpected peck of a kiss on the cheek with lips that were as cold as those fingers. And then she was gone, walking swiftly away, her dress billowing with her movements until the mountainous sand heaps hid her from his view.

Claude Minworth felt more relaxed than he had done for years, whistled tunelessly to himself as he climbed back over that barbed wire fence and snagged his trousers a second time. That girl, whoever she was, had acted as the kind of therapy he needed, had given him a new purpose in life. He was going to enjoy killing May, and Grafton as well. Suddenly in his own mind it was no longer murder, rather a necessary job that had to be done.

CHAPTER NINE

Chris Latimer was aware of an unpleasant, nagging physical sensation in those few moments before waking. Realisation that he had a headache, one of those which you woke up with and gradually got worse as the day progressed. He groaned softly, opened his eyes and winced at the early morning sunlight, closed them again. Then the memories of yesterday flooded back to plague him.

He wondered for a moment if he was sickening for something, perhaps a chill after that soaking in the thunderstorm. He certainly felt odd. Somewhere in the house somebody was moving about, footsteps, voices. He glanced at his watch: 6 a.m. It was too early surely for the household to be moving. Nevertheless, if they were he had better join them. A premonition, but he threw it off.

He swung his feet off the bed. The room seemed to spin and he had to wait for it to steady. Christ, his head was throbbing like a turbo engine had started up inside it. He grabbed a shirt, pulled it over his head, struggled into his jeans, and with sneakers still unlaced he made it out on to the landing. Down the stairs, clutching at the rail in case he fell, that feeling again that something was terribly wrong.

‘Chris!’ Samantha was in the hall below, Pamela by her side, both of them fully dressed. His heart seemed to miss a beat as he saw their expressions. Alarm. Something was wrong.

‘What's up?’ He stopped, looked from one to the other.

‘Carl has gone!’ Samantha snapped.

‘Gone?’

‘He's nowhere in the house.’

‘Maybe he's …’ Latimer couldn't think of an explanation, nothing logical anyway.

‘He was restless in the middle of the night,’ Samantha went on. ‘Once I woke up and found him standing by the window just looking outside. When I spoke to him he didn't answer and eventually I persuaded him to come back to bed. But he didn't sleep, I could tell by his breathing. Then when I woke up a short time ago … he wasn't there! I've looked everywhere, Chris, in the garden as well, but he's nowhere to be seen. I'm almost out of my mind, I know he's very disturbed and …’

That wave of dizziness returned, had Chris Latimer clinging to the banisters again. A sudden thought, an awful one, praying that he was wrong. They were all badly affected by yesterday, almost like having gone on some kind of ‘trip’. Carl Wickers had left his bed, left the house. There was only one place he could have gone.

‘I'll go and look for him.’ Latimer descended the stairs slowly. ‘You two stay here, I'll be back shortly.’

‘No, we're coming with you.’ Samantha and Pamela closed in on him, one on either side.

‘No, please.’

‘We're coming, Chris, because we know where you're going!’ Female fingers gripped his arms; any further argument was pointless and time-wasting. ‘Carl has gone to the Sucking Pit, hasn't he?’

‘I … don't know.’

‘He has. You know it and so do we.’

‘We'll check there first, anyway.’ He tried to sound casual but there was no disguising the tension, the fear in his voice. ‘We'll take the Subaru. It'll be quicker because we can make it most of the way down the Lady Walk in four-wheel drive. Come on, then.’

Seconds later Latimer was backing the shiny maroon estate car out on to the road, Pamela in the passenger seat by his side, Samantha in the back, leaning forward between the front seats. God, I hope I'm wrong, he thought. He tried to think of a dozen reasons why Carl hadn't gone to the Sucking Pit but by the time he was swinging in to the Lady Walk entrance off the A51 he had not convinced himself of any of them.

Changing into four-wheel drive, the surface hard-packed so that he would probably have made it anyway but he wasn't taking any chances. Wanting to speed but checking because of the girls; they were frightened enough already. He must not alarm them further.

He slowed, came to a halt in the middle of the track, almost an anticlimax as the engine died. The three of them piled out, left the doors wide, bunched together as though they needed to boost one another's confidence to go any further.

And then they heard it: distant strains of music on the still morning air, the surrounding quarries seeming to magnify the sound, beautify it like the sound of a harp in a huge empty cathedral.

‘What … is it?’ Pamela breathed, clutching at Latimer until her fingernails dug into his arm.

He did not answer, the pounding inside his head seeming to increase in time with the beat, making him wince, wondering if by any chance he was still in bed and this was but a continuation of those earlier uneasy dreams. Reality though; familiar, but trying to place it.

‘It's a … a guitar!’ Samantha closed her eyes, the implication not lost on her, a sensation that she might faint. She could not take much more after yesterday.

Latimer had to force his body into motion as though it had suddenly become petrified, communication between brain and limbs sluggish. ‘Come on.’ He broke into a fast walk, pulling Pamela along with him, Samantha close behind them. Oh thank God, he's still alive!

Up the big mound, cursing beneath their constricted breath as their feet slipped in the soft sand, clawing their way up.

And then they heard the voice, soft and rhythmic, coming from afar yet so clear that Carl Wickers might have been using his amplifiers, singing at some vast open air concert.

‘Roll me home, deep waters …’

‘Never more will I ever roam …’

A slight pause, the guitar strumming slowly, mournfully.

‘It's him,’ Samantha burst past them in a monkey-like crawl on hands and knees, reached the top, showering sand back down on the other two. ‘He's there!’ She broke into sobs, kneeling there as though waiting for the other two to catch her up. Or perhaps she was afraid to go on ahead.

‘Take me back, deep waters,’

‘To the old ones that I left at home.’

They saw Carl Wickers down below them, starkly framed against the sinister dark setting of the Sucking Pit. He was dressed in full western regalia, his Stetson slipped off his head and held suspended on his shoulders by the thong around his neck, white buckskin breeches spottled with mud, a relaxed posture as he leaned against a temporary fencepost staring fixedly up into the pale blue of an early morning sky.

‘Take me back, deep waters,’

‘Never more will I ever stray …’

‘Carl!’ Samantha screamed, at the same instant bursting into a headlong descent, falling, sliding, picking herself up. ‘Carl, can you hear me?’

It was quite obvious to those following Samantha that Carl Wickers could not hear her, that he was totally oblivious of their presence. A chill prickled Latimer's spine. Now the three of them were on the gentle firm slope leading down to the pool, running, Samantha still in the lead.

She reached the singer, pulled up in front of him, recoiled with a gasp of horror. His blue eyes met hers but he did not see her. His mouth opened. ‘Take me home, deep waters,’

Chris Latimer pushed forward past Samantha, saw the vacant expression on Wickers' features and in that same instant his hand shot out, wrested the guitar from the other's grasp.

Silence, a pregnant stillness for perhaps two or three seconds and then Carl's mouth opened.

‘Never more will I ever stray …’

‘What is it, what's the matter with him?’ Samantha's shout was on the verge of hysteria. ‘For God's sake tell me!’

Latimer did not reply, knew in that moment of confrontation with his friend that the country-and-western singer was in some kind of trance, completely unaware of his surroundings. The ex-reporter's arm went back, a blur of movement as the flat of his hand struck sideways, a pistol-like retort as it made contact with the other's face.

Carl Wickers staggered back with the force of the blow, stumbled and would have fallen had not Latimer caught him by his buckskins, pulled him back upright.

‘Carl, it's us. Chris, Samantha and Pamela. Can you hear me?’

‘Chris … Samantha … Pamela …’ Names pronounced in a meaningless monotone, eyes glazed but clearing slowly. ‘Chris … Samantha … Pamela …?’

‘It's us!’ Latimer resisted the temptation to shake the other. The trance was breaking; take it easy and he'll be OK in a minute or two. Maybe we were just in time.

‘Carl, whatever made you come here?’ Samantha pushed close to her boyfriend, took his arm. ‘Why here?’

‘They wanted me.’ The reply was an intonation, those eyes shifting, staring across at the still, unbroken surface of the Sucking Pit.

‘They? Who're they?’

‘They wanted my music.’ His voice had sunk to a whisper. ‘They were listening, then … then you stopped me.’

Heads turned, following the singer's stare, saw that sheet of water. For a brief second it seemed to ripple as though something lurking near the surface had dived back down into the depths. Then it was still again; it could have been a trick of the early morning light. Or an optical illusion.

‘Where … where am I?’ Carl straightened up, shook his head and drew his hand across his eyes, fingered the red patch tenderly where Latimer had struck him. ‘What the blazes am I doing … here?’

‘You've been sleepwalking,’ Chris Latimer snapped, before either of the girls could voice their thoughts. ‘No harm done.’ God, I hope not. ‘Come on, the car's back there. We can be back for breakfast in ten minutes.’

The four of them were seated around the kitchen table; they had nibbled toast and tried to act normally. In the end they gave up. This façade was pointless. They had to face up to facts, if there were such mundane things as facts any more.

‘I can't remember a thing, not even getting out of bed.’ Carl Wickers leaned back in his chair, his eyes threatening to close, the lids heavy with loss of sleep. ‘Nothing at all until you hit me. Now I've got a thumping headache. Christ, I hope it's not a migraine, I've got a booking at nine tonight.’

‘I guess we could all do with some sleep,’ Latimer stood up, scraped his chair back, nodded to Samantha. Don't let him out of your sight. She smiled back weakly; I won't, don't worry.

Jesus, climbing those stairs was nearly as much of an effort as that big sand mound, Chris thought. A sleep might help, on the other hand daytime slumbers often aggravated a headache. But right now he couldn't think of an alternative.

He flung himself full length on to the bed, closed his eyes and wished he could conjure up some darkness from somewhere. Even the light filtering in through the closed curtains seared his eyes. If Carl was singing tonight then they would all go along. He winced, remembered the other evening, those bikers, their trance-like expressions identical with Carl Wickers' as he sang down by the Sucking Pit. So awful, even on a bright summer's morning. They had found him just in time. A few minutes later and there would have been another irrecoverable body rotting deep in those black waters. He shuddered at the thought, then tensed as he heard the door latch click.

Opening his eyes, wincing again, then forgetting the pain as he saw Pamela standing there framed in the doorway. Demure, almost apologetic, still holding the door as though she might retreat with dignity whilst there was still time.

Her dark eyes said, may I come in? None of us ought to be alone really, had we?

He smiled, shifted his body further along the bed to make room for her, saw how she swung herself up so daintily to lie beside him. Even the Sucking Pit had its advantages; without this last frightening episode Pamela would not be joining him on the bed now.

CHAPTER TEN

As Claude Minworth turned into the drive of his large Victorian house he noted that the curtains of the bedroom were closed. May was still in bed; it wasn't surprising. When she had one of her tantrums she would often stay up there for hours. Christ knows how she passed the time. Sleeping? Tossing herself off? He laughed aloud at the idea. Sex in any form was not one of his wife's favourite pastimes, not that he was aware of anyway.

He got out of the car slowly, closed the door gently, found himself tiptoeing stealthily around the side of the house. A quick look in through the French windows just to make sure that she wasn't in the living room. She wasn't. He breathed a long sigh of relief and hurried across to the woodshed beyond the coal bunker.

It took him a few minutes to find the axe, rummaging amongst empty cartons and piles of old newspapers which were awaiting collection by the Boy Scouts. Finally he located it beneath a roll of frayed matting which May had thrown out over a year ago. He experienced a tingling sensation in the back of his scalp, a quickening of his breath. Euphoria. He couldn't wait.

With an effort he checked himself. He must not rush it, there was nothing to be gained by being impulsive. If he did not kill May until tonight, or even tomorrow morning, it didn't matter. He would still have to wait for Grafton to arrive tomorrow evening. The waiting would be the worst part, alone in the house with a bloody mutilated corpse. He should savour the situation: hadn't he suffered the entire span of his married life just waiting for this very moment? There must be no slip-ups.

He studied the axe. A three-foot shaft and a rusted blade; it didn't look sharp enough to split a log of wood. But it did not have to cleave anything so solid as timber, just split a frail skull so that the brains and blood spewed out. One blow. Perhaps two or three more afterwards just to make sure. The blood was pounding in his veins, a roaring in his ears. He fingered the weapon lovingly, wiped cobwebs and dust from it with a piece of dirty rag kept for cleaning the lawn mower. If he'd had the time he would have polished it up, put a shine on that blade, honed it to razor keenness on the whetstone.

Almost reluctantly he tucked the axe under his jacket, crept furtively from the shed. The door thumped shut behind him, made him jump. Damn it, that was careless of him. He glanced in through the French window again; there was still no sign of May.

He let himself in through the back door, stood listening in the kitchen. Not a sound except for the faint whirring of the electric clock on the cooker. He crept into the hall, waited again, only hearing the thumping of his own heart. This was going to be fun, he would enjoy every second of it; a pity it had to be over so quickly. Like shooting a pheasant: a bang and a thud, a heap of feathers on the ground and it was all over. All you had left then were memories, reliving that moment of instant death. He would do that all right, my God he would. Note every detail so that they were indelibly imprinted on his brain, his own personal video recorder to play back whenever he felt like it.

Halfway up the stairs his thoughts drifted back to the girl by the pool. He saw her as clearly now as he had done then, perhaps more so. More time to savour her, seeing things he had overlooked earlier. A lithe young body beneath that voluminous hessian dress. Seductive.

With a start Claude Minworth realised that he had got an erection. He glanced down, watched the protrusion in the front of his trousers. Exciting; it was a long time since he had had a hard-on. He wished he had asked the girl's name; it was bound to be something cute and sexy. He would know it before long, though.

Another reason for getting rid of May. He was going back to the Sucking Pit to meet that girl, they would go off somewhere together; no way would it be a platonic relationship. She had to have fallen for him otherwise she wouldn't have made all these elaborate plans. He held the axe in both hands, tested it with a short sharp swing, smiled to himself. Suddenly he had power, the power of life and death in his hands. Like God. It was a tremendous feeling and he wondered why he had not thought of it before. But he was glad he hadn't because then he would not have become involved with that beautiful girl.

He could see her now, naked, milk-white flesh, unblemished. A virgin. He groaned softly, dropping a hand from the axe handle on to that bulge behind his zip, a temptation to free it. Why not? He gave a little laugh, ran the zip and felt a rush of cool air on his warm flesh as it sprang free. If only May could see him now, oh God it would be worth anything just to watch her expression. It's not for you, May, it's for a lovely little girl I met down in the woods and I'm not even going to allow you to touch it, not ever again. That's why I want you dead so that I don't have to listen to your whining and bitching ever again.

He stood on the landing fingering himself and listening. The bedroom door was closed; he put his ear against it.

Damn it, the roaring in his ears was so loud that he couldn't hear May's breathing, didn't know whether she was awake or still sleeping. She must not be allowed to utter a scream. Kill her quickly and silently. Now!

His damp sticky fingers clasped the door handle, depressed it slowly. His knee pushed against the woodwork, eased it open a couple of inches, just enough to see inside. She was there on the bed all right, thank God. Facing towards him, lying on top of the creamy quilt, clad only in bra and pants so that she blended into her background, almost invisible. Her eyes were closed, asleep.

Claude Minworth's eroticism escalated; holding the axe in his left hand, rubbing himself gently with his right finger and thumb, an urge to speed up his hand movements, step up close to her and … God, one of the few times in latter years when he could have screwed her with enthusiasm, lust.

I'll be here waiting for you when you've killed her.

He felt a twinge of guilt, betrayal. Damn it, with May out of the way he could fuck that strange young girl for the rest of his life. He closed his eyes, swallowed.

And when he opened them again May was staring up at him, her blue orbs wide with horror and disgust, struggling up on to an elbow!

‘Claude, are you mad? Whatever do you think you're doing and what have you got that axe in here for?’

The sweat on his body went cold. He snatched his fingers guiltily away from his pulsing erection, almost ran from the room.

‘You filthy beast!’ she shouted. ‘How dare you, you make me feel sick. You're depraved!’

And somewhere inside him a voice was shouting. ‘Go on, kill her now before it's too late, you fool!’

He gripped the axe, lifted it, started to swing it up, and at that moment full realisation of the situation hit May Minworth, sparked off the instinct of self-survival. Her husband was a sex maniac and her own life was in jeopardy. Panicking, grabbing at objects on the bedside table by her side, finding something and hurling it with all her strength, not knowing what it was.

The small hand mirror struck Claude Minworth full in the face, ebony striking bone, glass splintering. A jagged shard stabbed into his cheek and he reeled back with a cry of pain, almost dropped the axe.

Shocked horror froze May Minworth's actions. A sudden dive and she would have made it through the door and beaten her husband to the stairs. Instead she stared transfixed at his bloody features, the twin rivulets of scarlet oozing from his broken nose, the ugly gash on his cheek; thought perhaps that she had done enough, struck first and won, survived.

Go on, kill her or your chance is gone. Stop her screaming!

Blindly he wielded the axe, swung it sideways, heard the crunch of mincing bone as it took her in the ribs, crumpling her back on to the quilt, blood spraying it in a macabre polka-dot pattern. The blade was embedded, he had to tug it free, her fingers weakly grasping at it in a vain attempt to wrest his weapon from him.

She was trying to scream but instead her open mouth spewed blood with a bubbling sound like she was trying to gargle. The axe went back and he hit her again, a clumsy bludgeoning blow that was intended to smash her skull; instead it gouged deep into her shoulder, splintering bone and sticking. He tugged, couldn't pull it free, using both hands, a foot on her convulsing body, her spouting blood saturating his clothing.

With a jerk the axe came clear, had him staggering back across the room, crashing into the dresser, falling on to the floor; looking up at her, reading the pain and hate in her expression, her struggles growing feeble. Thank God she couldn't scream.

He rose to his feet, almost slipped again on some blood which had not had time to seep into the carpet, retrieved the axe. Next time would do it, she hadn't the strength to dodge him now.

Breathing laboriously he stood over her, glanced down and was surprised to see that he was still erect. Crazy, but exciting. Killing was almost pleasurable; in some strange way that he could not understand, it was related to sex: like an orgasm, a wild frenzy.

Make sure this time. Positioning himself with feet apart, hoisting the axe right above his head. His weapon was suddenly much heavier, at least ten pounds more than when he had first found it in the woodshed.

Steady yourself, pick your mark. May's head was lolling sideways now, her burbling breath coming in wheezing liquid gasps. He swung, his whole body going with that devastating blow, saw and felt the skull open up, splitting clean in half as though the blade had honed itself to a sharp cutting edge. A morass of crimson and grey, an exquisite colour scheme, so perfectly matching.

Claude Minworth fell forward, his heavy blood-spattered form directly on top of his wife. He laughed, a shrill broken sound. Just like fucking her and a thousand times more satisfying because probably for the first time in his life he was the dominant partner. And then his emotions were erupting, a blinding sensation that had him convulsing and flaying, gripping the torn flesh with an intensity that had his fingernails gouging fresh wounds. Sobbing, crying his exultation out aloud. ‘How's that, my darling, I've done what you wanted me to do and now I'm yours for ever.’

How long he lay there he had no idea. An hour, two, three. It was fully dark when he stirred, had to exert every muscle to lift himself off the blood-soaked bed. He stood there trying to collect his thoughts. Night-time, today or tomorrow? Today, at least he thought it was. That meant he had twenty-four hours to wait, hours that would be an eternity and before he joined his loved one down by the Sucking Pit he must kill again. The thought revitalised him, a stimulant that brought movement back to his limbs.

He picked up the axe, fondled it. It had served him well and he prayed that it would do so again. Next time he must be more positive, the first strike a death blow. That would not be so enjoyable but it was a necessity for Grafton would be a much stronger victim.

Minworth went into the kitchen, peeled off his blood-sodden garments and left them in a heap on the floor. He ran the bath, leaned over the side and watched the water splashing, filling up. He liked water, it reminded him of the Sucking Pit, so relaxing, so mysterious. And the girl, Christ he wished he had asked her name. She would be well pleased with him. He wondered where they would go; it did not matter as long as they were together.

At length he turned off the taps, lowered himself into the water. So relaxing, all the time in the world; he could stay here until tomorrow evening if he wanted. Another pleasant sensation, one that grew and became stronger. He smiled to himself, let his fingers go their own way, do what they wanted. He would relive that euphoric killing, go over every detail and savour it again.

And somewhere he could hear the girl's voice again, laughing softly.

Ralph Grafton was stiff in every limb, a sour taste in his mouth and he had a slight headache. With the dawning of a new day he felt slightly foolish, ashamed of himself. The bathroom floor was not the most comfortable of places to pass the nocturnal hours.

All his fears were in his own mind, turned into bizarre reality by the happenings of the day before. Logically there was an explanation for everything that had happened. The Sucking Pit had flooded due to a collapse of the terrain around it, the results of quarrying. The noises in the big house? Every old property had its noises, floorboards that creaked, windows that rattled and sounded like somebody tapping on the outside. Rats, too. Just because you didn't see them did not mean that they weren't around; they were cunning, kept out of sight.

Pull yourself together, Ralph Grafton. He began shaving, the hum of his razor a welcoming sound, so mundane and everyday. All the same his hand shook.

More realistic worries. Perhaps he ought to call round on Minworth now, not wait until this evening. The Planning Officer was virtually crapping himself, he would eat out of his hand. You're in the shit, too, Minworth, so you'd better come up with something fast. Yes, he'd take him by surprise, go now.

A sense of relief at the prospect of getting away from the house and the wood. He boiled the kettle in the kitchen, poured himself a coffee and munched on a cracker biscuit whilst he waited for it to cool. Looking out of the window; it was going to be hot again today. Shit, he'd really let his nerves run riot last night. Maybe he ought to book in at a hotel until Lynette moved up here. Jesus, he stiffened: he'd better ring her.

A buzzing sound from the hall; the receiver was still off. He picked it up, began to dial, heard the connection clicking through. Seconds later the instrument screamed at him, a harsh monotone that had him jerking it away from his ear. The unobtainable tone. He tried the number again with the same result. Fuck it, there was something wrong with Lynette's phone. He'd report it from Minworth's, another reason for going to see the Planning Officer right away.

He finished his coffee, gulping it down, not wanting it because it was just something else to delay him. Any second that scratching might start up again. Or the tapping on the window.

Something was wrong with the front door. Jammed. Tugging at it, using his foot on the jamb as a lever. Cursing, sweating. The wood must have swollen after that storm. Where the hell had these builders got to? He'd call them from Minworth's place.

The back door; a sigh of relief when it opened, stepping gratefully out into the morning sunlight, glancing around. A feeling of being watched again. Auto-suggestion.

The Range Rover stood in the drive, majestic in spite of the film of fine dust which gave it a fawn colour instead of white at first glance. Mud-spattered wheels. He climbed in, turned the key. Escape!

The starter motor turned over sluggishly, groaned. He tried it again; slower, tired, straining. Globules of sweat formed on Grafton's forehead as though his efforts were physically demanding, began to trickle down his face, made his eyes smart. Fire, you bastard, fire!

It didn't, each turn becoming more sluggish until finally it didn't turn at all. He sat there gripping the steering wheel, gave way to a momentary wave of despair. Something was trying to trap him here, make him a prisoner in his own house, hold him here until night came again.

Fuck 'em, whoever they were! He swung the door open, jumped out, stood there looking defiantly about him. They had shaken him, undermined his arrogance, forced him to spend a frightening humiliating night locked in the bathroom. Now the front door was stuck, the Range Rover was immobilised. But Ralph Grafton was still very much alive. Nothing dissuaded him once his mind was made up. He thought about going back inside, phoning a breakdown service or even the AA. But he didn't want to enter the house again; he was out and he was staying out. Christ, he'd sure run up Minworth's telephone bill today.

Walking, fast determined steps, trying not to keep looking behind him.

He felt easier once he was clear of the grounds, away from that oasis of pines and rhododendrons that could have concealed … anything. Viewing the desolation now, seeing it in its true disfiguration of the surrounding countryside. He was doing these villagers a favour by building on it otherwise it would remain wasteland for ever, a dozen more pits filling up with water, always the danger that children might be drowned. But they couldn't see it that way, didn't want to. We want our woodlands back. Oh sure, an instant transformation back to its original state, plant a hundred and eighty acres of thirty foot pines, sow the rides with grass seed.

People were emotive, blind to logic. They made you fight them.

Twenty minutes and his shirt was clinging damply to his body. But at least he could see the village now, the small picturesque church right up against the wood boundary looking starkly pathetic now that the trees had gone.

Grafton cut through the churchyard, followed a gravel path that emerged on to a private road, houses lining the one side, an orchard and the parsonage on the other. A couple of hundred yards brought him to the main A51, turning left down towards the main part of this pretty little village.

Hopwas was deserted, a feeling that everybody had just packed up and left. Because of the Sucking Pit.

Grafton licked his lips, still had that feeling of being watched, empty windows eyes that saw and hated. Minworth's large Victorian dwelling knitted its upper storey bow windows into a frown. Go away. Like it was hiding a dark secret.

Ralph Grafton pushed open the gate, saw the Maestro standing silently on the drive. Somebody had to be at home.

Sensing that something was wrong. Of course it was, a fuck of a lot had gone wrong these last few days. They had to be put right and Claude Minworth had to be forced into doing that. Right away.

Grafton walked up to the front door, had a sudden instinctive change of mind within a few feet of it, altered course and followed the flagged path round the side of the house, lifted the latch on the wicker gate. Stealth now, glancing around, an uneasiness dictating his movements.

He was about to knock on the back door; instead his fingers rested on the handle, pushed it slowly down, eased the door open a few inches. Listening. An electric clock was humming somewhere, nothing else.

He stepped over the threshold, experienced the guilt of a housebreaker. His flesh began to creep the same way that it had done back in his own house only a short time ago. With an effort he pulled himself together, moved out through the adjoining door into the hall. I couldn't make anybody hear so I came inside for a look. Shit, he didn't need to make any excuses, it was Minworth who had to crawl.

Suddenly Grafton wrinkled his nose, smelled a faint unpleasant odour, a stench that was vaguely familiar.

Then he recognised it and the perspiration on his body turned instantly cold.

The smell of death.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Chris Latimer stirred, began to surface from an extremely pleasant dream, one that was already fading with waking like an early morning mist being dispersed by sunlight. He did not open his eyes immediately, tried to grasp at the vanishing dream but it wafted away, gone for ever. He was vaguely aware that he had an erection, a sensation similar to the tantalisations of early puberty, thrilling but frustrating, things beyond your control happening to you.

And then he saw Pamela, stared in shocked amazement. She was kneeling up, stark naked, her slim perfectly proportioned figure trembling slightly, her soft red lips parted in a smile that had his pulses beginning to race. Her flushed expression was one of lust, a desperation for mating like some female animal species on heat. Eyes that devoured him, slim fingers reaching for his clothing, ripping at buttons, not caring if she snapped the threads. Gone was her naivety as though it had been but a mask, a few hours sleep turning her into a woman who craved for uninhibited sexual pleasures.

Or was there a more sinister underlying reason for this startling transformation?

The moment he felt her touch he didn't care; didn't care why she did it as long as she did. Fervently she tugged at his jeans and he lifted up the lower half of his body so that she could drag them off; a combined effort to tug his shirt over his head. Then she was falling on him, crushing her lips to his firm flesh, her tongue tracing a damp path downwards, finding what she sought and giving a sigh of relief and pleasure. Latimer tensed, almost cried out aloud at the sharpness of her teeth, the way they scraped and bit in their eagerness, her lips now like a limpet, a suction pad that had him squirming. A few hours earlier they had been just very good friends, now they were passionate lovers and he was a willing slave to her desires. She didn't want him to do anything, she would do it all.

She came off him, looked up. Another grin of carnal lust, squeezing and rubbing him as she hoisted herself astride him, laughing aloud with sheer delight. Then he felt warm moistness swallowing him up and knew that they were coupled, her stance reminiscent of a jockey on a large racehorse that required the utmost in human physical effort to obtain the maximum performance from the beast. Leaning forward so that her firm breasts were tantalisingly within his reach, then jerking herself back just as his hands came up. From a fast canter into a gallop, mount and rider flecked with sweat, breathless, twisting one way then the other. Faster, faster, something had to give soon.

Chris Latimer hit his orgasm, bucked wildly as though trying to dislodge the girl who rode him but her fingers gripped him, cruelly raking his flesh with sharp nails, her expression one of sheer lust as she gyrated, pushed downwards to meet his upward thrusts. Exploding violently in unison, the beast of burden urged towards even greater limits.

Pamela was slowing, breathless, and that was when he pulled her down on to him, held her struggling climaxing body against his own. One brief moment of nostalgia, a flash of his memory like the lens of a camera showing him a picture and then obliterating it as though it should never have been disclosed. Jenny Lawson; the sexual urge that had obsessed her at the time of her possession and how it had led to a parting of their ways; with a finale of violent death for the nymph who had been returned to the depths of the Sucking Pit. [ii] Fear checked Latimer's euphoria, had him stiffening and wanting to push Pamela from him, almost yelling at her ‘for Christ's sake, they've got at you too!’

She sobbed audibly, went limp, pressed her face to his chest so that he could not see her expression. Two spent lovers, sapped by the fire within them that had burned them out, their exhaustion returning to claim them.

Perhaps they slept or just dozed. Chris was not sure except that when he opened his eyes again the sunlight in the room was much brighter. And his headache had gone. Pamela still lay across him and he could tell by her breathing that she was awake.

‘I'm sorry.’ Her voice was a whisper when it came, she might even have been crying. ‘Oh God, I'm sorry, Chris. Will you forgive me?’

‘For what?’

‘For what I did. Oh Chris, I don't know what came over me. How can I ever look you in the face again?’

‘Just by lifting your head up.’

She raised her head and he saw that her eyes were red-rimmed, her even white teeth biting on a trembling lower lip, blushing deeper than he had ever seen her blush before.

‘I'm no better than a common tart,’ she said. ‘Honest, I've never done anything like that in my life before.’

‘I thought you'd been married.’

‘Yes but Dave and I never did … things like that!’

‘And if you had done you'd probably still be married.’ He smiled, squeezed her hand. ‘And I'm glad you aren't.’ His lips went in search of hers, found them.

‘I came over all strange,’ she went on. ‘I'd gone to my room when I got this urge. I hadn't given much thought to sex for months but suddenly I couldn't do without it any longer. I came to your room just for that,’ she stammered and added. ‘well … not quite just for that.’

He laughed. ‘And now you've broken the ice maybe we won't have to sleep in separate rooms any more.’

She clutched at him, pulled him close. ‘All the same, Chris, it was frightening the way the feeling came on me. No warning. I do believe that … that I'd've gone out and found a man, any man, if you hadn't been here! I'm glad you were.’

He closed his eyes so that she would not see the flicker of fear in them. Pamela would need watching carefully. He could not afford to let her out of his sight. Soon he must confront the evil powers which had come up out of the Pit, somehow find a way to destroy them before it was too late.

‘We'd better make a move.’ She extricated herself from his embrace. ‘It's after midday and I can hear the others moving about downstairs.’

Samantha was busily making up a salad in the kitchen, Carl checking through a list of country and western songs, mentally preparing himself for the coming evening. Both of them looked refreshed as though they had forgotten the events of a few hours ago. Except that nobody could forget anything like that, ever!

‘At least it's a dance tonight.’ Carl leaned back in his chair. ‘Concerts frustrate both audience and performer, as though you're being prevented from doing something that your body is screaming out for. It's just a village hop, you don't have to come along.’

‘We're all going,’ Latimer said. ‘In fact, for the time being we're an inseparable foursome.’

‘I think you're making too much of this morning,’ the singer snapped, his mood suddenly changing. ‘I guess it was delayed shock from what happened the other night. I've got it out of my system now. I'll be OK. Anyway, there's no harm done.’

Latimer was watching the other closely, noted a fleeting expression in those eyes that came and went, a look that reminded him of an animal in a zoo; not tamed, just caged.

‘I'm going to call on Grafton after lunch,’ Chris announced. ‘Pamela's coming along with me. You two are invited as well.’

‘Carl ought not to go back … there! Samantha's reply was defiant, not turning round from the sink.

‘We don't go near the Pit,’ Chris lowered himself into a chair. ‘We can get to the big house through the churchyard. Ten minutes' walk at the most.’

‘Whatever do you want to see Grafton for?’ Pamela asked.

‘Because indirectly he's responsible for everything that's happened these past few days,’ Latimer said. ‘Maybe somehow through him we can get at the evil forces.’

‘Poppycock.’ Wickers pulled a plate of salad towards him. ‘You two can go if you like but Sam and I are staying here. I've got to run through a few of the songs for tonight.’

Latimer glanced towards Samantha but she dropped her gaze. This time she was not making any mute promises. Like Carl, she was becoming sceptical of the legend. They had all had a bad experience and it had played on their nerves. Nothing more.

Pamela linked her arm through Latimer's as they crossed the churchyard. A depressing place on a hot day, a place of the dead. The sooner everybody came to terms with cremation, the better: there would be more land available that way and perhaps beautiful tracts of countryside such as Hopwas Wood had once been would be left alone.

She was tense, uneasy again. It was stupid to return here after what had already happened. Pointless, too. But she wasn't letting Chris out of her sight. Thank God he hadn't been angry about what she had done. Apart from the way that irresistible urge had come upon her, it was the most thrilling experience of her life and the erogenous zones in her body still tingled at the memory, vibrating like a cast-off violin which had been unexpectedly picked up and played by an expert musician. Only once before in her life had she had an experience resembling anything like that. She'd been fourteen at the time, doting parents ensuring that her upbringing was sheltered, protecting her. Dire warnings about what would happen if she ‘touched’ herself. Temptation, curiosity; one night both got the better of her. Straying nervous fingers had brought electrifying sensations, had her convulsing frenziedly in the bed. And afterwards the guilt had nearly driven her out of her mind. Just like today. Except that her misguided parents had been wrong and there was no evil in what she had done, simply yielded to perfectly natural adolescent desires. In which case there was no harm in what had happened between herself and Chris Latimer. At least, he didn't appear to think so. Looking at it that way made her feel easier.

They had to negotiate a barbed wire fence, clamber over the long grass of the cemetery into the bare sand, step round yawning holes where trees had been dragged out by their roots leaving ugly abrasions which would remain unless they were filled in.

Now the sand was powdery like the promenade end of a beach which only very high tides reached. The incline was becoming steeper, slowing them down.

‘The big house is in the middle of those rhododendrons and pines.’ Latimer pointed up ahead. ‘The official route for callers is the hard track which branches off from the Lady Walk.’

‘So we're trespassing.’

‘Technically, yes,’ he replied. ‘Just like we were this morning.’ He wished he hadn't said that; he was aware of Pamela's tenseness, her grip on his arm tightening.

They took the path through the rhododendrons, overhanging leafy boughs seeming to reach out for them, springing back viciously as they pushed their way through. Close by a magpie called, a chattering mocking sound. If you listened carefully it seemed to say. ‘Keep away, keep away, keep away.’ The winding track was shaded, devoid of grass or bracken where the rays of the sun never penetrated. A dense world of darkness. Evil.

Latimer felt Pamela heave a sigh of relief as they emerged into bright sunshine again, a wilderness that had once been a large garden with a horseshoe-shaped weedy gravel drive looping in front of the large house.

‘Well at least Grafton's at home.’ Chris nodded towards the silent Range Rover, saw in the same glance that the back door was open. ‘I suppose it's polite to go to the front door, though.’

He noted the bell pull in the stone wall, tugged on it; there was no tension, the rusted knob slack, not retracting. It had been like that when he had lived here, something he had intended to get repaired and never had. Nobody else had either. He clenched his fist, rapped on the woodwork, a dull sound that echoed reluctantly within.

They waited, listening. Nothing except a scratching sound that came from somewhere on the upper storey. Latimer hammered on the door a second time, louder. The scratching stopped suddenly.

‘Grafton could be in bed, or in the bath.’ He felt he had to say something. ‘Let's take a stroll round to the back door. This is a big house and if you're at the other end sometimes you don't hear people at the door.’

The back door was wide open. Chris knocked again, sensed the hopelessness of their mission. Grafton didn't have to go everywhere in his Range Rover. The quarries were within easy walking distance, so was the village.

‘Maybe we ought to take a walk up to …’ His words died away as he caught the sound of an approaching vehicle coming along the track that branched off from the Lady Walk. ‘Somebody's coming.’

They stood there, experienced again the feeling of trespassers, guilt because for some reason in their own minds Hopwas Wood was ‘out of bounds’. For Chris Latimer it was humiliating; once he had been the owner of this place, now he could be ordered to leave without being given a reason. The law stated that a trespasser refusing to vacate private land could be removed using ‘no more force than was necessary’. Thrown out on your ear, in other words.

The car was travelling fast, gravel showering on its underside, bumping its way through the potholes; changing down to negotiate the bend into the main drive. Slewing, braking, the engine dying. A couple of seconds of silence and then the door slammed.

As Latimer walked round to the front of the house again he knew in his own mind it wouldn't be Grafton, had that feeling of futility again. A cloud of dust hung in the air and through it he made out a blue Mini, a tall girl in blue jeans with sweater to match striding towards the front door.

‘Hallo,’ he said. It sounded trite.

She stopped, whirled on them, sunlight glinting on long coppery hair, her features a mass of freckles.

‘Who are you?’ Her voice had a ring of authority to it. ‘What are you doing here?’ Blue eyes narrowed, almost hostile.

‘I …’ Latimer found himself swallowing. ‘I'm … we're looking for Mr Grafton, but he doesn't appear to be at home.’

‘What were you doing round the back?’

‘Knocking on the back door.’

A confrontation, an arrogance about the newcomer that had you answering her questions automatically. Guilt again; we're trespassing.

‘I want to see him too.’ Angry, flicking her hair back as she pushed past them, trying the front door then thumping on it. They stood there watching her. Let her find out for herself that Grafton's not in, it's no good trying to tell her. She hit the door again, turned back angrily. She obviously wanted Grafton badly.

‘The back door's open,’ Latimer said.

Her lips curled but no words came. All the same, you knew what she was thinking. I suppose you've been nosing around inside, eh. Trespassing.

They followed her round to the back again, embarrassed but curious. Who the hell is she? Latimer asked himself. Well, if Grafton is around she'll surely find him.

She went inside but Chris and Pamela hung back. They could hear her hurrying footsteps, doors opening and closing, going upstairs. Coming down again. Back outside, looking dishevelled, worried, an almost apologetic expression that said. ‘You were right, he's not here.’

‘Who are you, anyway?’ she asked at length.

‘I'm Chris Latimer.’ He waved a hand towards his companion. ‘And this is Pamela.’ It might not be the moment to tell this insolent stranger that he had once lived here, owned these woods.

‘I'm Lynette Grafton.’ Her mouth puckered and in an instant that façade of arrogance was gone. Her eyes were misting and she was fighting to hold back the tears. ‘I … want my husband.’

‘He can't be far away,’ Latimer said.

‘I've been trying to get in touch with him for days but the phone was either permanently engaged or else there was no reply. I got the idea that he might have taken the receiver off for some reason. Then I read in the papers about … about all these terrible happenings.’

‘He's around,’ Chris Latimer smiled reassuringly. ‘We saw him only yesterday. His Range Rover's still here and if he isn't in the house then he's probably somewhere around the quarries.’

‘I'm going to look for him.’ Determination, a threat: if you won't come with me then I'll go alone.

‘We'll come with you.’ He took in her slim figure at one glance, felt Pamela's hand squeezing his. They were all going to search for Ralph Grafton. ‘You'd better not go alone … you might get lost in these quarries.’

Chris Latimer led the way, the two girls bringing up the rear. Nobody spoke; the tension was back again and it was not simply because Lynette had arrived. You got the feeling that something awful was going to happen again. Maybe Grafton wasn't around; there were innumerable permutations of where he might have gone, why he didn't need his Range Rover.

‘What's that place?’ Lynette pulled up, pointed down to where a sagging barbed wire fence separated a sheet of dark water from the rest of the landscape.

‘That's …’ Christ, he should have made a detour, kept her well away from this place. ‘That's the … Sucking Pit.’

She stared as though transfixed, lips compressed, fists clenched. Awe, fear, but the place commanded her fascination. A few photographs in the newspapers but they could have been of any pool anywhere. You had to see the Sucking Pit to appreciate its true atmosphere, smell its rank odours, feel its cold dampness sinking into your bones; hear its mute calling drawing you to its edge.

‘I want to go down there,’ Lynette Grafton said softly.

‘There's no point.’ Latimer felt Pamela's grip tighten on his arm. ‘We can see from here that your husband isn't there.’ Unless he's drowned, been sucked down into those foul depths where his body will never be recovered.

‘I want to see it for myself,’ she snapped, and added. ‘After all, we do own it.’

‘All right.’ There was no way she was going to be dissuaded. ‘We'll take a quick look. Mind how you go, though, this sand is soft and treacherous. An avalanche could bury us all.’

They descended in silence, picking their way carefully, sliding, filling their shoes with sand. Once they reached level ground Lynette increased her pace, pushed on ahead of them as though there was some urgency. She reached the wire, rested her hands on it, stared at the water. Not a ripple, not even a sparkle of sunlight. Just dead.

‘So this is the place,’ she breathed. ‘This is the Sucking Pit.’

‘Just a deep dark pool, that's all,’ Latimer lied.

‘There's something about it,’ she murmured. ‘It has a character all of its own. You can feel it. Like a … a person!’

Chris Latimer's scalp prickled. This was no place to linger. From those depths came death, violence and … sexual savagery! Jesus, he'd experienced the lot all too recently. Pamela shouldn't be here, none of them should.

‘Let's go and look for your husband,’ he said.

‘In a minute.’ She swatted at a cloud of midges; they backed off, came in again. ‘I want to look at it properly.’

He watched her closely. She appeared to be concentrating her gaze on the surface as though trying to see beneath it, every muscle in her body rigid. ‘I could stay here for ever.’ Her words were expressionless like a badly dubbed film. ‘It's so … peaceful.’

‘We'd better go.’ He almost grabbed her arm.

‘All right.’ She turned away reluctantly. ‘I guess we'd better find Ralph. But it would be a terrible shame to fill that pool in. It's local gossip and a few accidents that have got it a bad name. When you see it for yourself it's so peaceful. I shall come here again before long.’

He wanted to shout at her. ‘For Christ's sake, keep away from it. You don't realise what it does to people. I know!’ But he knew his warning would not be heeded. It was her pool and if she wanted to come back here then nobody was going to stop her.

They climbed back up the big mound and up on to the next one from where they could see the main quarries. There was nobody in sight. Grafton certainly was not around.

‘Your husband may have got a lift somewhere with someone.’ He did his best to sound convincing. ‘Or maybe he's walked on down to the village.’

‘Ralph doesn't walk anywhere.’ That flicker of fear was back in her eyes. ‘If he could drive his Range Rover to the loo he would.’

Despair. Walking on aimlessly knowing that they weren't going to find Ralph Grafton. A circular route which brought them back on to the Lady Walk, and then veering off on to the track which would take them up to the big house again. The Range Rover had a desolate look about it as though nobody would ever use it again, abandoned by its owner to gather layers of fine sand until it became buried, rusted away like a shipwreck on the ocean bed.

‘I'll wait in the house.’ Lynette stopped by the back door, no invitation to the others to come inside. ‘Ralph will surely be back before long. Thank you for your help.’ And don't go prowling about our land again because you're trespassing.

Then she was gone, leaving them standing there. Latimer turned away, took Pam's hand, began retracing their steps, those sunless rhododendrons bringing a shiver to the spine, the boughs clutching as they forced their way through as if trying to hold them there; imprison them until darkness fell.

‘I don't like it,’ Pamela whispered. ‘Did you notice how strangely she acted down by the Pit? It was as though … she underwent a personality change.’

He nodded. ‘I saw it. And it frightens me. We shouldn't have left her there on her own but what else could we do? If we stayed without invitation she would order us to leave, fetch the police probably if we didn't go. So we don't have any choice except to leave her there all by herself.’

‘I have an awful feeling that she'll go back down to the Pit,’ Pamela said. ‘As though she just can't wait. Finding her husband has become second on her list of priorities.’

‘And I wanted a word with him too.’

‘Can't anything be done about the Sucking Pit?’

‘I've been thinking.’ He pulled her close to him, wished that they were far away from this place that had so many terrible memories for him. ‘There are places like the Sucking Pit cropping up from time to time, haunted houses and the like. And what do they do? They exorcise them and most cases are successful.’

‘You mean … exorcise the Sucking Pit!’

‘And why not? It's worth a try. Tomorrow I'm going to try and contact the Church authorities, put it to them. But in the meantime we've got to keep an eye on Carl. He's had a bad experience already today and I'm not sure that performing tonight will be a good thing for him. But we've no more chance of getting him to cancel his booking than we have of preventing Lynette Grafton from going back to the Sucking Pit.’

‘Perhaps her husband will be home soon. Maybe he'll be able to keep an eye on her.’

‘Maybe.’ Chris Latimer was grateful to see the church again, the village of Hopwas nestling below it. ‘But you can feel the forces now, like living invisible things, even by day. It may even be too late to exorcise the Pit if the demons from its depths are already abroad!’

CHAPTER TWELVE

Ralph Grafton felt the bile rise in his throat, felt an urge to flee from this house. It was the smell of death all right which pervaded the hall, that unique odour which once you had smelled you never forgot.

But he stayed because he had his pride and in his own estimation of himself he wanted to make amends for last night. Locking himself in the bathroom was sheer cowardice. He had to put the balance right.

A sudden awful thought: maybe Minworth had panicked, committed suicide, was hanging from a beam upstairs. Hell, that would be the end of any plans for building in Hopwas Wood. He had to take a look, see for himself.

Halfway up the stairs he paused. Perhaps he was mistaken, had let his fears run riot again. He had imagined tappings and scratchings so it was conceivable that he had imagined the stench of death. All the same, he had to check for his own peace of mind. Minworth had probably decided to go into the office today in which case Grafton would have to wait until this evening. He had given way to panic all along.

Doors leading off the landing, all of them closed. Try them, one at a time, starting from the left. He licked his lips; there was a foul taste in his mouth, the taste of …

No, it wasn't. You're shit-scared and the only way to cure it is to look in every room and when you haven't found a body you'll know it was all in the mind. Go on!

A spare bedroom, judging by its unused look and the smell of mothballs. He drew the camphor odours deep down into his lungs, savoured their sharpness. But that other smell was still hanging around. Stronger. He heaved, almost threw up.

A box room. Stale because it was shut up most of the time. Suitcases and cardboard boxes stacked neatly, not a thing out of place. It figured; May Minworth was obsessional, house-proud.

And then Ralph Grafton saw the body, knew instantly that his sense of smell had not deceived him!

He clung on to the handle of the bedroom door, almost sprawled headlong on the carpet. Christ alive, the room was like an abattoir! Walls and ceiling were blood-spattered, rivulets that had run and become sluggish, congealed, encrusted. His eyes were drawn back to the bed and that was when he threw up, bent double and spewing from an empty stomach, almost passing out.

That body; oh my God, it could have been anybody, totally unrecognisable, the head split and crushed, the trunk opened up so that the intestines were visible, some of them spilling out like butchers' tripe.

It was a woman so it had to be May. Staring between the splayed legs, the pink slit beneath the fuzzy hair seeming to grin, mock him. I'm yours, Ralph Grafton, if you want me. He didn't, oh Christ, he didn't even bloody well want to look, but he couldn't drag his eyes away.

Claude had killed her, it could not be anybody else. A fit of madness, flipping his lid after a lifetime of bitching and nagging. The final straw.

The stench of death was overpowering, had Grafton retching, but there was nothing left to vomit. It was as if the corpse had already begun to decompose. Then, amidst the sheer horror and revulsion he heard a noise, rather sensed it than heard it, a stealthy movement. Trying to turn, overbalancing … and that was what saved his life.

He felt the rush of air ruffling his hair as the bloodstained axe skimmed his skull, embedded itself in the oak dressing table, jagged splinters of wood flying in all directions. Leaping up, crouching, expecting another blow but the weapon was buried deep in seasoned oak so firmly that it defied Claude Minworth's frenzied efforts to free it.

Silence except for the stentorian breathing of the two men as they eyed each other, hate and bitterness fusing.

The Planning Officer wore only pants and singlet, a comical sight in any other situation. A ragged cut on his face that was still seeping blood, eyes bulging, staring, the veins in his forehead threatening to burst at any second.

‘I killed her.’ A confession that embodied pride and a boast, lust and hatred. ‘Me! I did it, Grafton, d'you hear me?’

Ralph Grafton nodded, swallowed and grimaced as bile scalded his throat. ‘If you say so, Claude, but why?’

‘Because she told me to.’

‘May wanted you to kill her?’ A homicidal maniac trying to justify his own killing. Grafton glanced at the axe stuck in the woodwork, dismissed the idea of getting it out. There wasn't time. Think of something else, man. Quick.

‘No, you fool!’ Spittle sprayed Ralph Grafton; any second those eyes of Minworth's would surely pop.‘She told me to kill May. The girl by the pool. The Sucking Pit!’

Grafton's brain whirled, brought with it a fit of momentary dizziness. Christ, the Sucking Pit was responsible for this, too. Homicide and insanity. ‘I see,’ he said lamely.

‘She told me to kill you, too, Grafton, but you came too soon. I wasn't expecting you until tonight, but no matter. I can kill you now. But I shall have to wait here until darkness before I can go to her down by the pool.’ His eyes wandered, flickered with uncertainty, rested on the axe and passed on; searching for another weapon, anything that was heavy enough to club a man to death or sharp enough to stab with. But there was nothing.

‘You're going to lose an awful lot of money if you kill me,’ Ralph Grafton tried to speak calmly but there was a tremor in his voice. Keep talking and try to think. ‘Your four grand's down the drain if I'm not around to give it to you.’

‘Money!’ Amazement, contempt. ‘I don't need money. She'll look after me.’

‘What's she like, this girl. What's her name?’

‘I … don't know her name.’ A film spread across Minworth's eyes, an instant cataract. ‘She's, she's …’ His breathing quickened. ‘She's beautiful. Young, with skin so soft and cool.’ A pleasant stirring in his lower regions, limp flesh starting to straighten out, stiffen. ‘Young and beautiful.’

Grafton noted the growing protrusion, the flimsy material of the other's pants beginning to push outwards. A distraction, play on it; exploit a weakness.

‘Have you screwed her yet, Claude?’

‘I …’ Minworth gulped, the very thought a shock to his system. ‘No-o-o … not yet … but tonight … oh yes, tonight, Grafton. She'll let me, I know she will because she loves me. She wouldn't ask me to go back to her if she didn't would she? Would she?’

Something pink and rigid popped out of the vent in the Planning Officer's pants, had him glancing down, an intake of breath.

‘She does things to you, Claude?’

‘Yes, she gets me like that because …’

Ralph Grafton leaped, a spring powered by flexed calf muscles, a human cannonball who knew his life depended upon his ability to fight and win. A clenched fist swinging wildly, a lucky blow striking the other's face, bone crunching on bone, splitting open that cut again.

Minworth shrieked with pain, staggered backwards. Out on to the landing, trying to get a grip on his attacker's throat. Grafton punched again, a short jab below the elasticated waistband of those briefs, heard Minworth's yell of agony. Fist moving with the momentum of a steam-piston; back, thud, back, thud, back, thud. A frenzy of blows, halting only when he realised that the Planning Officer was beyond resistance, a convulsing heap of flesh that barely had the strength and the breath to groan with pain. Only then did Grafton go back into the bedroom to fetch the axe.

He had to use every ounce of his waning strength to extricate it from the seasoned oak, and finally it came free with a rush that hurled him back across the room. Scrambling up he tested its weight, a trial swing. The blade was blunt but that would not matter because it was heavy enough.

Minworth's eyes opened, that film gone, only terror remaining. Fear because he knew what his fate was to be, how his plans had rebounded on himself. Sanity returned, grim reality replacing crazed fantasy. A background of blood and mutilation, all his own work. Murderer! Meeting Grafton's gaze, seeing in those narrowed eyes mercilessness, the lust for killing which had been his own until a few seconds ago. Now he could only plead mutely.

No, Grafton, you don't have to kill me. I can help you and you don't have to pay me a cent. I can guarantee the building permission will stand. We'll get that pool filled in. We'll …

Grafton stepped to one side, struck a devastating downwards blow with such ferocity that even the dull blade bit through flesh and neck bone. Instant decapitation!

The head parted from body, rolled. A gush of spurting crimson fluid splattering the mahogany banisters, making crazy patterns on the striped wallpaper beyond. A body that still moved, legs and arms twitching, fingers flexing as though making one last desperate effort to retrieve the skull and jam it back on the shoulders.

Slowly everything came to a standstill. Limbs ceased to jerk, gave up their hopeless quest, the flow of blood became sluggish, oozed, dripped steadily to the hallway below. Those staring eyes in the severed head dulled to sightless orbs.

Grafton expelled his pent-up breath slowly, let the axe fall from his fingers. He smiled, did not even tremble. Then he went downstairs and into the lounge, poured himself a generous measure of malt whisky from the cocktail cabinet.

He needed to think, to plan. He dismissed the idea of calling the police. It would be difficult to prove that he had struck in self-defence, that he hadn't murdered May Minworth before beheading her husband. He wished fervently that he had been granted that pleasure. Oh yes, he would have enjoyed taking that stuck-up snob of a bitch apart, screwing the arse off her into the bargain. He laughed, a harsh sound, took a swig of whisky.

With Claude out of the way things might be an awful lot easier; the rat was all set to desert the sinking ship anyway.

His mind conjured up a vision. A young girl, he couldn't see her face, only her body, naked unblemished flesh, waiting in the darkness of a balmy summer's night down by the Sucking Pit. Eager. He would go to her, keep the appointment which Claude Minworth had made. She would be pleasantly surprised.

It was difficult to think clearly. Fatigue had him slumping into an armchair, closing his eyes because his head was throbbing abominably. He would sleep, there was plenty of time. Recharge himself for tonight and after dark he would make his way to the Sucking Pit where all his problems would be solved.

The village hall was packed to capacity by 9.30. Hot and stuffy; you only noticed the B.O. when you came in; after a few minutes you became acclimatised.

There was a small bar in the corner, just a hatch where drinks were slopped and served to a never-ending queue. A 1.30 extension and if you did not like dancing then at least it was somewhere where you could get a drink after the pubs had closed. It wasn't taking any trade off either the Chequers or the Red Lion so everybody was happy.

Carl Wickers moved into his fifth successive slow smoochy number, ‘The Shelter of Your Eyes’. After that he would do ‘Put Your Sweet Lips a Little Closer to the Phone’. And after that …

Kids, mostly, it was difficult to discern any particular couple beyond the glare of the stage lights. Chris and Pamela were somewhere out there. Samantha, too; he wondered who she was dancing with. Maybe herself. A pang of jealousy. He didn't like it when he couldn't see her, particularly after the strange way she had been acting this afternoon. Aloof, as though she was in a world of her own, hardly aware of his presence. Like something was eating into her.

‘Put Your Sweet Lips a Little Closer to the Phone’. A girl dancing by herself, her body swaying seductively just below the stage. He started, almost dropped a key. Samantha. No, it was Marian Preece, a similar figure, the same kind of body movement. Looking up at him, smiling.

He started again, his pulse rate quickening, remembered the summer before he'd met Sam, those few months when he'd dated Marian. One of the reasons why his marriage had broken up. Just seeing her sent a thrill like an electric shock through him. She'd been away somewhere; he thought (hoped) that she would not come back. Rumours that she'd left the village to have a baby. His. He did not know if that was true; if it was then in all probability it was his baby. But she had not contacted him, done the decent thing and got on with her own life, kept out of his. Until now.

Her hips were moving seductively in time with the rhythm; his rhythm. His strumming fingers were making her do things just as they had years ago, dominating her. She stayed in that same place just below the stage, eyes fixed on him. Hallo, Carl, I'm back. Remember me? Remember all the things we used to do together? You're turning me on again. A suggestive jerk of her hips like she was on the verge of an orgasm. I haven't changed any Carl, not one little bit. Wouldn't you like me again, just once, for old times' sake? Of course you would.

He swallowed. ‘Put Your Sweet Lips a Little Closer to the Phone’. It didn't come out like that though. His fingers, his voice, his backing had other ideas.

‘Roll me home, deep waters,’

‘Never more will I ever roam.’

Her eyes were closed, her features suddenly bathed in shadow. Responding, shuddering.

‘Take me back, deep waters,’

‘To the old ones that I left at home.’

There were just the two of them, everybody else had gone, faded into the shadows. Sam didn't exist; just himself and Marian, how it used to be. The way it should be.

He flicked a switch and his tapes took over, carried on as they always did during his ‘break’. Nobody seemed to notice, if there was anybody else there besides himself and Marian Preece. Going to her, her body slipping against his with a familiarity that the years had not dulled, her soft lips brushing against his. Moving together, a kind of musical copulation.

‘Never more will I ever roam.’

He followed her, willing to go where she led, not questioning. Nothing had changed. If there had been intervening years they had been a fantasy, like going to sleep and dreaming, waking up and carrying on where you left off.

Outside. Cool sweet night air fragrant with cherry blossom. The smell of pines. They were still here, a whole wood full of them, tall giants that defied time and the efforts of Man to destroy them. In his dreams they had been felled, the land quarried and disfigured. But everything was all right now and his nightmares had faded into oblivion.

Through the churchyard, a brief fragrance of cut flowers on the graves; so temporary. Tomorrow they would wither and die whilst everything else around them lived.

The tall woods, pine needles a luxurious carpet beneath their feet, low fir branches stroking the lovers affectionately. Welcome home.

‘Never more will I ever roam.’

The trees seemed to echo the words, hang on to them. Suddenly the atmosphere was chilly, made him wish he'd brought a jacket with him. Just buckskins and that ridiculous Stetson; Midnight Cowboy. He laughed softly at his own joke.

Moonlight and shadows. He tried to make out Marian's features but they were bathed in darkness. It didn't matter, though, because he remembered every detail. That mole just below her left eye, her pert nose. Like Sam in a way. Who was Sam? Just a nymph in a dream that had vanished.

The Sucking Pit. He saw its shape, a patch of blackness that was blacker than its surroundings. Just the same as it always was, fringed by thick reeds, the outlying grass soft and squelchy so that you sank in above your shoes. Only tonight he was wearing calf-length pseudo leather cowboy boots. They weren't waterproof because he could feel the cold water beginning to saturate them.

‘Where are we going?’ A whisper that the woods took up. Where are we going? Going … going …

‘Home,’ she said, stopping and pulling him round to face her.

Now he saw her face for the first time. Different. More mature; no, ageing. The cheeks were hollow, the eyes sunken and glowing brightly as though she had a fever. Perhaps it was the moonlight that silvered her hair. Slim, her long dress almost transparent so that her slender form was partially visible. He drew in his breath sharply; those breasts which he had kissed and fondled so often sagged with a repulsive shapelessness. Thighs and legs that had an emaciated look about them, twisted and wasting, giving her an ungainly stance.

‘Marian?’

It was her and yet it was not. The same smile but without the warmth, almost leering. Clutching at him.

‘Kiss me, Carl.’

His instinct was to back away, to shout. ‘You're not Marian, you've tricked me.’ But her lips found him first, smothered the words. Ice-cold, her breath stale. Her fingers clawed him, held him as her tongue forced its way into his mouth, her lifeless breasts squashing against him, her thighs pushing at him, gyrating in an attempt to arouse him.

He shuddered, made one feeble effort to push her away but she only held him tighter, working her body faster and faster against his own, her breath coming in stagnant gasps, her fingers feeling for him, caressing him so that flaccid flesh grew stiff and pulsing.

Wanting her now, desperate for her; it had been a trick of the moonlight, the coldness and stench coming from the nearby bog. She was young and beautiful, warm-blooded and desirable, her sweet scent heady and overpowering like wild woodland flowers.

Entwined they sank down on to the grass, tearing off their clothes with the eagerness of youth, trembling bodies pressed close together. A maelstrom of lovemaking, convulsing together, crying out aloud for each other.

And afterwards they just lay there in each other's arms, too tired to move, to go wherever they were supposed to be going. Not caring, listening to the soughing of a summer breeze whispering through the trees around them.

‘Take me back, deep waters,’

‘To the old ones that I left at home.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘Carl's gone!’ Samantha found Chris and Pamela in a corner of the crowded hall. Her face was white with consternation, and she had to shout to make herself heard above the noise of the amplified tape recorder.

‘That's ridiculous.’ Latimer set his glass of shandy down on the floor beneath his chair. ‘He was on stage a few minutes ago. He's due for a break, he's probably at the bar.’

‘He isn't, I've looked. He's nowhere in the hall.’

‘Calm down. He could be in the gents. I'll take a look. Stop here with Pamela.’

He knew he would not find Carl Wickers in the dowdy gents' cloakroom, knew before he even forced his way in there, but he had to satisfy himself. A small queue for the single WC which was being used as a urinal. Four youths but no Carl. Latimer went back outside again. Why the hell didn't the organisers put the lights up during the interval?

‘Well?’ Samantha and Pamela had vacated their chairs, come to meet him.

‘He's not in there.’ OK, you told me so but I had to check before we start panicking. ‘He can't have gone far because he's due to start playing again in ten minutes.’

‘He was with a girl!’ Bitterness and jealousy in the way Samantha spat it out. ‘He switched over to his tapes and the next thing I saw was him smooching with this woman.’

‘Probably somebody he knew.’

‘You can bet your life he knew her all right by the way they were holding each other! They say a leopard never changes his spots.’

‘Let's not jump to conclusions. He could be outside somewhere.’

‘If he is then he's only gone out for one reason.’ Samantha was already heading for the door, struggling to push her way through a throng of drinkers who weren't particularly interested in Carl Wickers' whereabouts or whether he was going to start playing again.

Christ, Latimer thought, I hope Carl isn't as stupid as I think he could be. If he's left the stage and come out here with a bird then all hell's going to be let loose when Sam catches him!

Cars and motorbikes were parked everywhere on the small space of waste land adjoining the village hall, spilling out into the road; those in first would have to wait for the latecomers to go. Kids snogging in the shadows; a girl was giggling uncontrollably hidden behind the body of a black-jacketed biker who was pressed up against her.

Latimer caught up with Samantha. This wasn't Carl's scene.

‘He's not here.’ She turned to face the other two and they saw her expression in a shaft of light from one of the windows. Anger had turned to despair, almost hopelessness. ‘Oh my God, where can he be?’

They guessed, remembered that same morning, and were afraid to voice their thoughts. Oh God, no!

‘He played that song just before he finished,’ Samantha whispered. ‘You know, Deep Waters or whatever it's called. I've never heard him sing it before until … until this morning!’

Standing there looking at one another. A pang of guilt hit Chris Latimer like a stiletto knife being driven into his stomach. We'll all go to the dance with Carl tonight so that we can keep an eye on him. And what a bloody brilliant job we've made of it: let him walk right out on us!

‘He's gone back to the Sucking Pit.’ Samantha's voice trembled. ‘I know it. I know that's where he's gone!’

‘I'll go and check. You two go back inside the hall and I'll rejoin you in a bit. It's not far, three-quarters of an hour there and back on foot at the most.’

‘I'm coming with you.’ Samantha's tone was firm now.

‘And so am I,’ Pamela added. ‘You said yourself we've all got to keep together, Chris.’

‘All right.’ He hadn't the strength to argue. His brain was spinning again. Christ, didn't anybody ever go anywhere except to the Sucking Pit. ‘But stick together, don't get any ideas about going off on your own.’

They walked quickly, uphill over the canal bridge, turning off the main road on to the rough track past the parsonage. Through the churchyard.

‘Listen.’ Pamela stopped suddenly, and they all listened. Just the distant strains of Carl Wickers' tape, his voice, coming from afar, filtering out of the open village hall windows and lingering in the still atmosphere. Taunting them, like a film star's widow seeing her beloved husband again on the screen. So impersonal. A voice that was dead, floating back from the grave.

‘It's …’ Latimer began and then another noise interrupted him. A long rumbling sound like a distant convoy of heavy vehicles. Dying away.

‘Thunder,’ he said. ‘Come on, we don't want to get caught in another storm.’

The atmosphere was sultry; in all probability there would be another storm before morning. They came to the barbed wire which separated the cemetery from the start of the wood, Chris holding the strands down with his foot whilst the other two clambered over, then hurrying to get ahead of them. He did not want to risk Samantha forging ahead on her own again.

Suddenly he halted, the other two bumping into him.

‘What's up?’ Samantha was tense, impatient. ‘If we keep stopping to listen to every clap of thunder …’

‘Look!’ Latimer pointed, his voice a low whisper. ‘Something's wrong. This should be barren ground leading up to the quarries. But there are trees growing here just like there used to be!’

The three of them stared in disbelief but it was true what he said. All around them towered mature Scots' pines, huge straight trunks which had stood firm through fifty winters. A sweet almost sickly smell of resin laced with masses of bluebells, like the pungent aroma of funeral flowers.

‘We … must be … wrong,’ Samantha edged up to Chris and Pamela's fingers found his. ‘We've come to the wrong place.’

But they all knew they hadn't. A wood which had been murdered in its prime had risen again like a phoenix out of the ashes, had defied all the laws of Nature.

‘It's impossible,’ Latimer breathed. ‘but it's true. Unless we're all having hallucinations. We'd better go back.’

‘No. Carl is somewhere in here and I'm going to look for him no matter what you two do. You can go back if you like.’

Chris Latimer walked forward, saw this strange landscape in the ethereal glow of the moon. Dark shadows that took on weird shapes, a winding path thick with pine needles seeming to beckon them on. A track which undoubtedly led to the Sucking Pit!

Susan Taplow looked forward to dance nights at the village hall with relish. Not because she enjoyed dancing or ever went to any of them (that would have entailed either dancing on her own or else finding another girl who was willing to partner her), but because that meant babysitting at the Whitmore's house. Three quid just for sitting watching the telly or reading. The Whitmores went to all the local hops, usually went back to somebody else's house for coffee afterwards which sometimes earned her another hour. Money for old rope. Little Thomas seldom woke up, a darling baby of six months and Susan often longed to bring him downstairs and nurse him, but that could have posed her some problems, if he'd woken up and started crying. One day she would, though.

At seventeen Susan was one of life's unfortunate teenagers. Short-sighted, she needed to wear glasses all the time and her wages at the factory on the new industrial estate did not allow for anything more than a very basic pair of NHS frames. Her hair always straggled no matter how much she washed it; often shampoo made it worse. A lot of her colleagues at the factory spent their whole lives trying to slim, always had a surfeit of weight. Susan had desperately attempted to gain weight, without result, and this last six months she had given up trying. She was slightly knock-kneed, noticeable particularly when she danced. So she didn't dance any more. Her favourite pastime seemed to be giving things up, abandoning all hope, just accepting her fate. Vegetating.

Another regret: she was a virgin. Not through want of trying, she told herself with some bitterness. One night, out of sheer desperation, she had gone into town and tried to get herself picked up, without success. She'd missed the last bus home, thumbed a lift with a real rough-looking type, and when she had dropped a very unsubtle hint he had pulled into the kerb and told her to walk the rest of the way.

Susan did not just want to lose her virginity; she wanted a baby. By any man who would be willing to give her one. She would not try to trap him into marriage or sue him for maternity payments. Just give me a baby and I won't ever bother you again. I promise. But even that hope was beginning to fade. Until this afternoon.

She had gone for a walk across to the quarries, an aimless stroll, and in due course had found herself by that fenced off pool. The Sucking Pit, people called it. She shuddered at the name but actually the place wasn't like that at all. It was really quite nice, a bit bare perhaps but in due course algae and reeds would grow and break up its stark appearance.

Susan had sat down inside the wire perimeter, just relaxed, the presence of water comforting. It reminded her in a strange way of a place which she had once visited in Derbyshire on a bank holiday coach trip with her parents - the Wishing Well. You tossed a coin in, heard it go plop, and as the ripples spread out you made your wish. Don't tell anybody what you've wished or else it won't come true.

On a sudden impulse she delved into the pockets of her slacks, found a 5p coin. Waste of money. No, anything was worth a try when you wanted a baby as badly as she did.

She walked closer to the edge of the pool, the coin gripped in a sweaty palm. Now! She threw it, watched it reach the apex of its arc and begin to fall, glinting. Magic. Spellbound, she saw it hit the water, heard that familiar ‘plop’. Ripples, growing larger, faster, hurrying to reach the edge. She laughed softly to herself.

Please give me a baby, Sucking Pit! Well, those few moments of hope, just doing something positive, were worth 5p.

She looked at the clock on the Whitmores' mantelpiece. Nine-thirty. They wouldn't be home for another three hours at least. She got up, crept up the stairs. A quick peep into the small bedroom. Thomas was fast asleep, a dummy jammed firmly in his mouth. Sheer contentment.

She left the door ajar and as she moved away became more stealthy. Furtive. Into the big bedroom, checking that the curtains were drawn before she put on the light, her gaze centred firmly on the wardrobe in the far corner.

Her breathing quickened, her excitement bringing on a slight asthmatic wheeze. This was another of her secrets, one which would surely get her the sack as babysitter if she ever got found out. Over the last few weeks she had tried on all of Sheila Whitmore's dresses, including the new cream trouser suit which had come from Rackhams. Slightly large but they looked good in the full-length mirror. More than that; sexy! I'm Mrs Whitmore and I've got a young baby, you know. That proves I'm not a virgin, doesn't it? I've been … fucked by David Whitmore!

The very thought had her goose pimpling and on one occasion her fantasies were so strong that she'd lain back on the double bed in full view of the big mirror, and with her borrowed dress lifted up to her waist had done all those things to herself which she did most nights in the privacy, and loneliness, of her own bed. God, she'd come and come, had had David Whitmore lying on top of her thrusting into her. Electrifying, but it hadn't got her pregnant, nor was it likely to.

Flipping through the dresses again, trying to make her mind up; it wasn't easy. And then she spied the nightdress draped on a coat hanger at the back. White with embroidered pink flowers, no longer than knee-length - for her, anyway. An instant picture in her mind. David naked and fully aroused pulling up Sheila's nightie, prising her legs apart and feeling in between, rubbing and squeezing. Then going in hard, ramming as fast as he could go.

Susan closed her eyes, swayed slightly. God, Mrs Whitmore had surely been screwed wearing that. The girl fumbled at her own clothing, tugging to get all her garments off. Naked; Sheila Whitmore wouldn't be wearing anything underneath.

She pulled on the nightdress, cheeks flushed as she studied her reflection in the mirror. It was sexy, all right, the silky material against her goose pimpled skin so sensuous. She lay back on the bed, saw David Whitmore again, closed her eyes because she didn't want to watch, just to feel. Jesus Christ, he was randy tonight, baring her body right up to the waist, making her squeal with delight as his fingertips slid up the insides of her thighs. Closer, closer … she writhed, virtually did the splits for him.

He couldn't wait. Her fingernails bit deep into the palms of her hands as his thickness entered her, went all the way in, began to thrust, slowly at first but building up to an unbelievable speed.

Susan knew she couldn't hold on any longer. She wanted to wait for him so that they could explode together but it was physically impossible. An eruption of every nerve in her body, legs kicking wildly, still at full stretch, fists pummelling the quilt on either side of her. Spinning wildly, airborne.

A slow descent, alighting gently on the bed, sobbing softly. She opened her eyes, saw that David was gone. That was OK, she would make no demands on any man who screwed her.

Stark reality filtered back like waking after an erotic dream. It had been wonderful but she wouldn't get herself pregnant that way.

Please give me a baby, Sucking Pit!

And in one flash of awful inspiration she knew how she could have a baby. The shock, the realisation, hammered her like a physical blow. Terrible to contemplate, wicked to even think such thoughts, but the moment it occurred to her she knew that she would go through with it. There was a baby in the adjoining room - all she had to do was to pick it up and walk out of the house with it! Thomas would be hers, they would never find her. He wouldn't mind, he liked her. They would be very happy together.

One last glance at herself in the mirror. She would keep the nightdress on, leave her own clothes here. It seemed fitting. In all probability Mrs Whitmore had got herself a baby whilst wearing it and Susan Taplow would do the same.

Thomas stirred, murmured some unintelligible infant sleep talk through his dummy but did not wake up as she lifted him out of his cot. Barefooted, cradling him to her, she went downstairs and let herself out through the backdoor.

The moon was too bright; she slunk back into the shadows. A lot of noise, most of it coming from the hall. Mexican Girl, scratchy as though it was a recording but she recognised Carl Wickers' voice.

She peered out into the road: it was deserted except for parked cars. Everybody was in the hall. A glance down, pulling the cot blanket over Thomas's head, then hugging him to her she began to walk fast. Nobody was going to stop her, she wouldn't let them; she had her baby and nobody was going to take him from her.

A fleeting white shadow, Sheila Whitmore's nightdress billowing, padding bare feet on the pavement, turning up into Church Drive. Stones gouged the soles of her feet but she did not notice the pain. Once she reached the wood they would never find her, a sanctuary for a desperate mother.

Her nightdress tore on the barbed wire, a fragment left fluttering. The wood, she inhaled the smell of the pines gratefully; it would be as it had always been, it couldn't be anything else, tall trees casting dark welcoming shadows; hiding her.

She followed the narrow path, more relaxed now, a feeling that she was not alone but that did not worry her. Her friends were here, nobody would harm her. They would protect her. Hurrying again, she didn't know why, an instinctive calling.

Bursting out of the trees, seeing the Sucking Pit thirty yards or so in front of her, a stretch of beautiful black water. Holding Thomas to her breast she began to walk towards it.

A movement, shapes materialising out of the darkness. Susan gave a little cry, almost turned to run but some strange invisible force checked her, held her. You cannot leave now you are here!

Silhouettes but she recognised them as surely as though she could see their features. Romanies!

A half-circle of horse-drawn caravans, untethered animals cropping the lush grass noisily, men and women in bulky attire, heads swathed in scarves, standing in a silent group by the waterside. Watching her.

She caught her breath, clutched her baby to her, felt their eyes boring into her, hostile stares that sent a shiver down her back. An old woman reclined on a litter, pointing with a crooked finger, toothless mouth moving in a mute order to the huge man who stood by her side.

He stepped forward, a lumbering giant with a single gold earring in one ear, the moonlight glinting on it as it swung gently. Long deliberate paces, coming towards her.

Flee! She tried to turn and run but her limbs refused to move. She wanted to scream but it was as though her jaws were locked by tetanus. A yard or so from her he halted, stretched out both hands, his arms a human cradle.

‘Give me the little one. We have been waiting for him.’

No! I will die first.

‘You will die anyway, as surely as we all have died once; have been entombed and now are risen again. The Sucking Pit demands human life, death in exchange for our freedom as it always was. It is the Romany law and Roon demands that we carry it out! An innocent babe first, followed by those who have been commanded to come here tonight!’

Susan Taplow's arms moved against her will. Her crazed frightened brain tried to fight. No, I won't hand over my baby. But she did, extended the still sleeping Thomas at full stretch, lowered him gently into the big gypsy's arms.

‘So it shall be.’ His swarthy features creased into a smile of sheer malevolence. ‘He shall not suffer, that I promise you. The others shall, but not the babe.’

She watched in a state of mind-blown terror as the other turned, those same calculated slow motion strides, back to where the old crone lay. A cradle, Susan hadn't noticed it earlier, a crude structure made from woven dried reeds. Transfixed, she watched as the baby was lowered into it.

‘Do not delay, Cornelius.’ A cracked voice, that hooked finger wagging its instructions once more. ‘The waters are impatient.’

Cornelius lifted the cradle, carried it to the edge, a gentle giant whose main concern might have been not to wake the sleeping infant. Lowering it, releasing it. The water rippled slightly, began to swirl as though some forgotten current had suddenly come to life; took the cradle, floated it out towards the centre, spinning slowly.

And that was when Susan Taplow's limbs came back to life: she staggered, tried to run, almost fell. Sheer desperation fired her efforts, dragging her feet out of the sucking marsh grass. No longer had she eyes for the watching assembly, only for that floating box, saw how it was sinking slowly below the dark surface.

‘My baby. My baby's drowning!’

She heard the chanting, a tuneless crooning, growing in volume. The Romanies made no move to intercept her, their funeral hymn mocking her, an age-old ritual which they had not forgotten. Life to death, so that the spirit lives on and will rise again. Thunder rolled like some accompanying organ in the heavens.

Susan did not understand, heard only the cries of the awakened Thomas, saw a tiny white hand stretched upwards. Without hesitation she plunged into the water, tore her feet from the sucking quagmire, heard the mud gurgling its own contribution to these macabre death rites.

It was deeper now, deep enough to swim, forcing her arms and legs to strike out in spite of the numbing cold which threatened instant cramp. The cradle was sinking fast; infantile cries urged her to even greater efforts.

Almost there, and then just as she reached out to grab the crib it sank from view, left her grasping foul water, swallowing some, choking. Diving. She had only once tried to dive in the baths and it had been a terrifying experience but she gave no thought to her own safety now.

Total darkness, groping blindly. Her hand touched something, that waterlogged cradle; searching inside it with her fingers. Empty!

Suddenly she saw Thomas floating a yard or so from her, still swathed in that white cot blanket. A desperate lunge but he seemed to float away. Deliberately. Going after him again.

Then she saw his face, not the terrified bloated features of a drowning child but serene and smiling, the dummy gone, his lips moving, forming words beyond his ken, words which she heard!

‘Come with me, Susan.’

She followed, still trying to catch up with him but always he eluded her, his tiny limbs kicking the water, propelling him on. Downwards.

A dark silent world where eyes glowed like a myriad of stars on a frosty night and invisible hands caught her, pulled at her. And now she was not fighting them any longer, content to go where they led. Because she was with Thomas and he was happy; they would be together for evermore.

The Sucking Pit had granted her wish. Susan Taplow had the baby she craved, in a place where none could take it from her.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lynette Grafton knew that her husband would not be returning to the big house, accepted the fact in the way one does when all possible reasonings have been eliminated. He had left, just walked out because his whole empire had crashed. Or else he had committed suicide.

Funny, she did not panic at the thought, her brain simply processing the idea, coming out with a few more ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. Ralph wasn't the type, he was a survivor in most situations, in command of almost any crisis. Grafton (Properties) Ltd might go into liquidation at the end of the week but steps would have been taken to transfer most of the assets to another company before the Receiver was called in. It had all happened before; Grafton (Enterprises) Limited had gone bust owing nearly half a million, but Ralph had bounced back soon afterwards, smiling at his creditors like a hunting lion surveying its prey. He knew all the tricks, he wouldn't top himself.

In which case he still had to be around. Lynette lit her last cigarette, tossed the empty packet at the waste bin; it bounced, rolled across the kitchen floor. He was around somewhere, he never expended energy needlessly. But something decidedly odd was going on.

A glance at the window told her that it would soon be dusk, the deep golden rays of the setting sun making elongated patterns on the wall. She wondered if there was another woman involved. She didn't think so because her husband ‘wouldn't have time’, one of his favourite catch phrases. Women cost money, they weren't an investment. She was finding that out fast, ought to have come to terms with it a long time ago but she had stubbornly clung to the belief that Ralph was doing all this for her. He wasn't, she was just a showpiece like his new Range Rover, this house when it was renovated; something to show off, prestige. A millionaire's chattel. He was creating his own image and she was a part of it, nothing more. Which was why she was determined to walk out on him: not an instant decision, more one that had grown on her. She was independent, she didn't have to tag along behind anybody.

She ground her cigarette out in the ashtray viciously, shredding the filter tip with her long fingernails as though she bore it some personal malice. She would go and find Ralph, tell him the score. Now.

He would be down by that pool in the quarries, that was where she would find him. Her flesh tingled and for a second she experienced a sense of dizziness: too many cigarettes and no food since breakfast. The feeling passed and she went to the door, looked out. The sky was saffron, hazy, heavy; as if there might be a thunderstorm.

Outside, glancing at the Range Rover and the Mini, dismissing them, her feet already beginning to move as though her body was working ahead of her conscious thinking, knew exactly where it wanted to go. She saw that pool again, every detail, its starkness. Yet it had ... character. It was the sort of place you could sit and relax, absorb its atmosphere and it would sort out all your problems for you, put you in a more decisive frame of mind. Like leaving Ralph. You had toyed with an idea for weeks but suddenly you were thinking positively. Ralph might be down there now, in the stillness of dusk, trying to sort himself out.

She would go that way, take a look, and if he wasn't there then by the time she got back to the house he might have turned up. If he hadn't, she would leave a note. She had nothing to lose either way.

Darkness was coming fast, that build-up of cloud in the western sky was hastening nightfall. She ought to have brought the small pocket torch out of the car but it was too late to go back for it now. Anyway, she would probably be back before it got fully dark.

The quarries: God they were an eyesore. She stood on a ridge looking down on the maze of sand canyons. It seemed almost an impossibility to fill them in, level the ground. But modern machinery was mightier than Nature, one of Ralph's quips. It was immoral desecrating a tract of countryside like this. You had to pull a few strings, pay some hard cash to the right man to make such a violation possible. She winced: she was an accessory. Not any more, though. She didn't want any part of it. Ralph Grafton, you're on your own.

Funny, they hadn't felled and quarried this part of the wood. She came upon it suddenly, started at the towering trees, the dark shadows they cast as though night was already here. She did not remember seeing any trees before except those pines around the big house on her earlier exploration. But this was a big place, mounds like miniature mountains hiding tracts of land. She wondered for a moment if she had come to the right place, maybe she had better go back before she got lost. No, she was right, she just knew. Intuition.

A well-worn path led off through the trees, probably a favourite walk of the villagers, savouring the last of their heritage. An unexpected pang of pity brought tears to her eyes, misted up the gathering gloom. It was wrong, all bloody wrong. She wished there was some way she could give them back their woodlands, unblemished, the way it used to be. But that was impossible. At least, though, they would not have a housing estate overlooking them now. Not even Ralph Grafton's money could buy planning permission after what had happened. It would not be much of a consolation to the locals, though; stark crevasses left to grass over, the entire repair job passed on to Nature. She wouldn't hurry, a couple of generations maybe before there was greenery here again. The Green Belt, Lynette laughed softly to herself. Sheer hypocrisy. God, civilisation was bent on self-destruction.

The wind was getting up, rustling leaves, this place giving its own sigh of despair. Sadness. A more forceful gust; anger. A branch whipped across her arm and she gave a startled cry. Don't blame me, d'you hear me? I didn't do this to you, I didn't want it this way. I'm sorry. I'm sorry!

The silence was gone. Twigs snapped, either broken off by the wind or crushed by prowling nocturnal creatures. She cowered, choked back a cry of fear. She would go back, run all the way to the house, not even go inside it. Jump in her car, drive away from here, never come back. She would leave. Now.

Turning, peering into the blackness. The path, the one she stood on, branched off behind her into several directions.

Which way?

That way. No, that one. Right. No, left. Oh Christ!

It was growing darker, colder. Thunder rumbled somewhere, died away, and then the wind dropped so that that awful stillness rolled back.

Only one direct route: the path stretching on ahead of her, straight and well-trodden as though it knew where it was going.

She stepped forward, testing the ground in front of her with her foot before putting her full weight on it, arms outstretched to protect her face from slapping branches. Wanting to run but scared to. Please, I didn't do this to your wood, my husband did, and I'm going to leave him. I don't ever want to see him again.

It's too late, the damage is already done. Somebody must pay.

Not me, please! Please let me go.

The wind again, a roaring angry beast, branches flailing, so many of them, whipping at her with a fresh fury, stinging the arms which tried to ward them off. Forcing her to break into a run, a headlong flight, trees stepping out into her path. A blaze of multi-coloured lights before her eyes, her senses reeling, crawling now and still the victim of a bizarre flagellation. Her clothes torn, tattered and shredded, cruel briars securing a hold on the flapping material and ripping it from her body, exposing naked flesh so that it could be whipped even more painfully.

She would have given up, just lain there in the darkness, not caring whether she lived or died, except that they drove her on like a straying beast being mercilessly flogged back to its herd. Punished. Bumped from one tree to another until she was not sure whether she still followed the path, did not care.

She hit another tree, groaned, crawled to the right of it, bumped into another. Then she stopped, for a second or two impervious to the incessant lashing. It wasn't a tree, not resistant enough. Nervously she stretched out a hand, felt at it. Material, some kind of cloth, something hard beneath it. A leg!

A moan of terror escaped her bleeding lips as she realised what had obstructed her. A leg … two. Looking up fearfully, just able to discern the silhouette of a man standing over her.

And then she screamed.

Ralph Grafton had slept deeply and as he stirred in the armchair he felt fully revitalised. The events of the past few hours came flooding back to him but gone was the shock and despair. Thinking clearly, planning.

Things had come to a head, which was better than having them dragging on for weeks. An unfortunate major subsidence of the land had put paid to all his plans for building. He would go bankrupt, or rather Grafton (Properties) Ltd would. The company was dispensable. He would form a new company, buy up the land for a song. Right now he wasn't quite sure what he would do with it but he would think of something. His only problem was how to avoid his involvement in what had happened here in this house. His fingerprints were all over the place, it would take the police about a couple of hours to nail him. We're charging you with murder, Ralph Grafton. You killed Claude and May Minworth. No, Claude killed May then tried to kill me. Self-defence, I had to kill him. Prove it.

Funny, he got to thinking about that Sucking Pit place again. Crazy. They wouldn't catch him there, like a refuge. Invincible. But you couldn't hide in a pool.

His mood changed. Whichever way you looked at it he was in the shit, a murder rap hanging in the background as threatening as those storm clouds which were filling the late evening sky. Form another company, buy Hopwas Wood for a pittance and get stuck with it. That didn't make sense and, anyway, he was fast running out of companies. He closed his eyes, tried to fight off the thought which was trying to bomb him like an angry mosquito. Take the easy way out, no problems. You've nothing left to live for; and there's some guy knocking your wife off as well!

Depression merged with anger. He poured himself a malt whisky, swigged it back. You've killed, Ralph Grafton, there's no getting away from that fact. You didn't have to kill Minworth, he wasn't any threat to you when he was lying there on the landing. You beheaded him because you wanted to, enjoyed every second of it, be honest with yourself. Murderer!

His eyes gleamed. OK, I'll be honest, I loved every second of it. I'd kill again if I got the chance.

Then kill your wife!

An electrifying sensation, a rush of blood that set his pulses pounding. Lust, he smelled the stench of death again, the acrid iron odour of freshly spilled blood. A gulp of whisky, draining his glass. One more look upstairs before he left, he could not resist it.

Beautiful! Carnage undreamed of, mutilated flesh, a severed head that seemed to cringe in his very presence. Power, and Ralph Grafton thrived on power. In his mind he saw Lynette lying where May Minworth sprawled, gashed so that her intestines overflowed, legs wide, an invitation to him even in death. Lynette, you stuck-up lousy bitch, I'd make this boyfriend of yours screw you like that, then I'd take him apart! His veins felt as though they would burst, a pounding in his head.

But you must go to the Sucking Pit first!

Of course. He backed towards the stairs, having to tear his gaze away from the grisly scene. An urgency now, almost falling on the stairs, noticing that it was dark. God, he must have been upstairs longer than he'd thought. He took a deep breath, fought to bring himself under control; he could not take any chances of being stopped. His clothes were bloodstained, his shirt ripped where Minworth had clawed him in his death throes.

Grafton eased the door open, peered out. Orange street lamps reflected on a line of parked cars, the strains of a guitar coming from some distance away. A dance or something at the village hall, it was all in his favour. Nobody would be bothering about him.

He slunk outside, kept in the shadow of a tall privet hedge, pressing himself back into the foliage when he heard somebody coming. A youth and a girl, arms entwined, kissing and laughing. Stupid buggers! They passed him by and he moved on again, darting from one patch of shadow to another. Back the way he had come, breaking into a fast trot once he reached Church Drive and away from the street lighting.

The quickest route to the Sucking Pit was via the big house, through the rhododendrons. He was breathing heavily on the uphill climb, not slowing his pace, dimly aware of the surrounding trees but not questioning their presence; just one object in mind, blind to everything else. The Sucking Pit called him!

The rhododendrons were thicker than before, tangling across the overgrown path, forcing him to fight his way through them. Out into the clearing that had once been a garden, moss and gravel beneath his feet. The Range Rover; something metallic glinted in the moonlight a few yards from it. Another car, a Mini. His brain had almost dismissed it, then something inside him screamed. ‘Don't you recognise that car? It's Lynette's, and you're going to kill her!’

Wheeling, a hunting beast from the wild that had nearly overlooked its prey. Lynette. LYNETTE!

He approached the car, circling, stalking. Empty. Instinctively his hand felt at the radiator; the engine was cold. He looked towards the house, no sign of light. Deserted, like the car. But she was around somewhere, maybe he should go and look for her or else wait here until she returned. Again the blood was roaring in his ears, he could smell its rancid odour; Lynette sprawled beneath him, sobbing, pleading. Somebody's been fucking you, haven't they, you dirty little whore? Yes, yes. A confession. Tearing at her flesh, raking her features with his fingernails, disfiguring her. Nobody will want you now, you bitch, not even me. Hands around her throat, her convulsions becoming weaker as he squeezed the life from her once beautiful body, laughed insanely as her eyes bulged just like May Minworth's in that bedroom. And after you're dead I'm going to …

The Sucking Pit is becoming impatient!

His vision swam, his surroundings distorted, wavy like he viewed them through rippling water. Jerking himself away, stumbling on across the drive and out into the wood. A path; he followed it, heedless of low branches, snapping dead twigs in his haste. There was no time to be lost.

The wood became thicker, darker because the overhead branches cut out the moonlight, just weird patterns on the pine needles. And much colder as though the temperature had dropped. His sweat cooled and he shivered, jumped as thunder rolled in the distance. There was going to be a storm.

Suddenly he stopped, listened. A faint noise; his senses had picked it up, commanded him to stop. A rustling, it could be a badger on its nightly hunt for insects; it was too heavy for a rabbit. The sound came again and he stiffened. It was no creature of the wild, that was a certainty. Coming this way …

He pressed himself back against a tree trunk. A sobbing human! He could hear the other more clearly now, crawling, fighting against briars that ensnared limbs, tore flesh. Stopping, gasping for breath, fighting again.

Ralph Grafton stared, focused his gaze on a wan patch of moonlight that criss-crossed the path adjoining the main track. Whoever it was would have to pass through that and he would catch a glimpse of them. Hurry, the Sucking Pit is becoming impatient. He felt its pull, fought against it. Just a few seconds, but he had to see …

Jesus God, it was a woman! Almost naked, her lacerated flesh bleeding, sprigs of undergrowth caught up in her hair, clawing at her eyes to free herself from a trailing bramble that had curled itself across her face. Unrecognisable, just a female.

Grafton stepped out into the path, waited silently in a patch of shadow, his pulses starting to race again. A faint sensation, a hint of arousal as he remembered what had happened to May Minworth. He was not interested in what this unknown girl was doing here, only that she was here. That was enough!

Hidden by the darkness he could only hear her now, her progress becoming slower. And slower. Sheer exhaustion. He smiled to himself and then her head bumped against his leg. A sharp intake of breath, recoiling.

‘Ralph!’

It took him several seconds to recognise the voice, so familiar but not in these surroundings. A cry of relief, fingers grasping his legs as she tried to pull herself up.

‘Ralph, is it really you?’ Or is it some hideous nightmare sent to torture me in this vile place?

‘You filthy whore!’ He kicked her hands free of him, drove hard with his foot, felt it sink into flesh. A strangled cry of pain, a puppy that has come seeking affection and instead has been chastised.

She fell back, rolled into a sliver of moonlight and for the first time he saw her face clearly: a mass of cuts and scratches, eyes puffed and almost closed, hair tangled. Barely recognisable but there was no doubt in his mind. Lynette!

‘How obliging of you to come.’ He laughed, pinned her down with a foot. ‘It has saved me the trouble of coming to find you.’

‘Ralph.’ She was barely capable of speech, writhing from that boot in the stomach. ‘Ralph … please …’

‘Now you're pleading,’ he snarled, his features screwed up into a mask of fury. ‘I suppose your lover has kicked you out now he's done with you so you've crawled back to me, eh?’

‘You … don't understand, I …’

‘I understand, all right.’ He dropped a knee on to her stomach, lowered his full weight down on her, laughed aloud when she screamed. ‘You couldn't do without a man so you've come back to me. And by God, you'll pay for it!’

A bunched fist drove downwards, crunched into her upturned face. He felt bones snap, swung his other fist. Pulverising, blow after blow, her screams an accompanying orchestra. Pausing to inspect the bloody mulch: it could have been May Minworth, or any other woman. Facially Lynette Grafton did not exist any more.

The mouth moved, blood trickling out; the eyes would not open again. Ripping away the remnants of her clothing, the sight of those shapely unmarked breasts infuriating him still further. Clawing, a ravenous lion flaying the gazelle it had run down, digging deep and making the blood flow again. By God, you'll pay, Lynette, with your life!

Her head lolled and he shook her roughly. There's no easy way out, not until the end. She groaned and that was when his strong fingers began to caress her throat, tenderly at first, then tightening. She gasped, somehow forced those swollen eyes open, her terrified gaze meeting his. Pleading, but it was useless. Thumbs together, pressing downwards, leaning his full weight on her neck, squeezing and pushing at the same time, making those eyes stand out, the blood pouring fast from the mouth that gulped in vain for air.

He felt her go and was sorry; sorry that she had not lasted longer, that the end had been so quick. But she knew, and that was all that mattered. Punching her again, his fury still not spent, a whirlwind of rage that only began to slow when the Sucking Pit called to him out of the darkness.

Hurry, we are waiting!

He knelt up, turned to go when an idea filtered into his crazed brain. Take her with you, show the Sucking Pit what you have done!

With childish enthusiasm he dragged her up, somehow managed to get her across his shoulders, staggered a few paces but miraculously kept his balance; got his momentum on the downward track. He would make it all right now.

He stumbled out of the trees into bright moonlight, his breath wheezing in his lungs; saw that semi-circle of painted caravans but showed no surprise. From now onwards he accepted everything, questioned nothing; just obeyed.

Ralph Grafton knew that it was a funeral gathering even before he reached them, staring at the assembly, Lynette sagging across his bowed shoulders. The old woman grinning toothlessly and pointing towards him, making some kind of signal to the huge Romany with the single gold earring who stood at her side; the others, men and women, children too, their faces in darkness as though they deliberately hid from him. Just one who was out of place, who stood apart from the company as though ostracised from an ancient culture. The man was dressed in pseudo-western attire, calf-length boots that had sunk into the mud above the heels, arms held by his side and staring straight ahead of him as though he was in a trance. Grafton recognised him vaguely but could not place him; it did not matter, anyway.

‘We have been awaiting your coming.’ The tall gypsy came forward, arms outstretched.

There will be more before this night is gone. The depths were robbed of those laid to rest there[iii] and they must be replaced. The old ones are angered by the sacrilege and demand fresh corpses. There have been several already but it is not enough. Give me the woman!’

Grafton half turned, felt his burden slip but the other caught it, lifted Lynette apparently effortlessly, began to stalk back towards the break in the rushes.

Thunder rolled and as if it was a signal for the rites to begin the watchers broke into a low tuneless chant. Whispered words in a strange tongue that might have been the wind rising, strengthening, whipping the reeds, bending them over in homage to the forces that lurked beneath the surface.

The old woman was sitting upright, arms raised; a shadow crossed the face of the moon and when it had passed Ralph Grafton saw that the gypsy held the naked body of Lynette aloft. Waiting.

A sign from the hag on the litter and Lynette was gone, a crumpled lifeless form hitting the water with a splash. A cry in unison from the assembly, dying slowly away. Then a voice singing, deep and mournful, words that were meaningless to Grafton yet sent a chill of horror to knot and freeze his stomach muscles. That cowboy fellow, he was part of this setup, far more sinister than the Romanies because, like Grafton, he had been lured here for some devilish reason. Realisation broke the spell that held Grafton, a rush of fear combined with guilt at what he had done. Oh, God Almighty!

He turned to run, fought to drag his feet through the sucking mud, knew in his heart that he would never make it; mentally surrendered to his fate before the huge hands of the giant gypsy reached out and pulled him back. He felt himself being lifted up, did not even struggle as he was borne back towards the Sucking Pit.

‘May the old ones take you,’ Cornelius boomed, and waited for the thunder to die away. ‘You have served us well and you will be rewarded, also punished for desecrating a holy place. The balance is even, the Sucking Pit will decide.’

Mercifully Grafton passed out as he became airborne, not even the shock of the icy depths reviving him as he plunged downwards.

Cornelius turned slowly, acknowledged Roon's smile.

‘Soon the Sucking Pit will again be the burial ground of our people. we await the coming of the one who violated it in the first place, attempted to destroy us too. But we live again and will have our revenge, for surely the one called Latimer will come tonight!’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

‘My God, it's Carl!’ Samantha breathed. ‘Who are those people, what have they done to him?’

Chris Latimer grasped her arm firmly, afraid that she would rush down towards the bizarre gathering by the pool below them. His brain refused to accept what he saw. Merciful God, it was impossible. The dead had risen and were living again! Pamela clung to him. If they were not already mad then they soon would be. This was beyond the concept of the human brain.

‘It can't be,’ she whispered.

‘I don't understand it,’ he replied. ‘Astral projections of a kind, maybe reincarnations, but tangible. Evil and dangerous. The dead have risen out of the Sucking Pit!’

They watched in silence. Gypsies of a past generation, clad in their colourful costumes, gathered by the waterside, the old hag reclining on a rough stretcher, the big man in attendance. All just waiting; for what?

‘That's Cornelius,’ Latimer muttered. ‘and unless I miss my guess there's only one person he's waiting for. Me! I put four charges of shot in him once and even then he didn't die right away. But I don't think guns would be any good against this lot now, even if we had them.’

‘They've done something to Carl,’ Samantha cried. ‘Look at his face now the moon's shining on it; it's like a wax mask!’

And as if to shield her from the horror, clouds moved in across the moon and the scene below them was reduced to shadows and silhouettes.

‘A form of hypnotism,’ Latimer said and remembered how Pamela had acted that morning. It seemed a thousand light years away now. Another nightmare. But that was why they were all here. By strange means the Sucking Pit had summoned them to return so that it could exact its vengeance on them! Lives for lives, the living for the dead.

Low mournful tones hung in the air, a sad ballad of bygone gypsy days; almost a whispered monotone. Carl Wickers intoning words that were incomprehensible to the three watchers, head uplifted to the dark sky above him. On and on, the gathering taking up the chant, a rush of words that grew in volume like a rising wind before a storm.

‘What's happening?’ Samantha was white and tense. ‘He can't know what he's singing.’

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Latimer's eyes were fixed on the pool beyond, sensing at first, rather than seeing, a movement. A faint rippling as though fish fed close to the surface but there could be no fish in there, only …

Thunder: nearer, louder. Vibrating.

‘The pool.’ Pamela clutched at him, sobbed her fear. ‘It's … something's coming out of it!’

The black waters seemed to heave up, a rumbling that shook the ground all around, the water splashing, foaming. And then they saw the girl standing on the side, small and slim, some kind of white shroud draped around her body, wafting in the breeze; it should have been saturated, clinging wetly to her lithe body but it was dry! One glimpse of her features and then the cloud blanked out the moon again.

‘Jenny Lawson!’ Chris Latimer grunted. ‘Oh my God, they've called her up too!’

‘Who's Jenny Lawson?’

‘You wouldn't understand, only that she was evil then, a young girl possessed, and that possession has been resurrected. And they've used Carl for that purpose!’

The girl called Jenny Lawson walked forward jerkily, heading towards Roon and Cornelius. Was it a trick of the light or did the huge Romany back off a step? Roon was silent. Suddenly the wench from the Pit was dominating the proceedings.

Seductive, her body swaying as though she went through the motions of some erotic dance, moving on from Cornelius to the gathered gypsies. They shrank back. A peal of harsh laughter and then she was approaching Carl, her silhouette miming copulation.

An outstretched hand flicked at his shirt, bared his chest, stroked the flesh beneath. Close to him now, rubbing her breasts against him, arms encircling his neck, pulling his face down to her own; lips meeting in an obscene kiss, her cold breath reeking of the odours of foul stagnant water.

‘No!’ Samantha pulled herself free of Latimer's hold, burst out into the open. ‘You foul bitch, get away from him!’

‘Come back.’ A token protest from Chris but he knew it would have no effect. The anger of a woman scorned dominated Samantha.

‘Oh God!’ Pamela half-screamed.

‘Stay here.’ Latimer whirled on her. ‘Don't move from here, do you understand?’

She nodded and he stepped out of the trees, aghast at what he saw below. A sense of sheer foolishness, a kamikaze-type bid to save Samantha. It would be futile, he would pay for it with not just his life but his soul. But he had to go because otherwise he would never be able to live with himself again.

The creature he knew as Jenny Lawson turned, lips drawn back in a lusting grin as she saw the girl bearing down upon her.

‘You dirty whore!’ Samantha yelled. ‘Take your vile hands off him. He's mine!’ Breathless, her feet squelching in the soft grassy surround of the pool.

Jenny Lawson raised a hand and Samantha came to a halt, mouth open to scream further abuse but no words came. A clap of thunder overhead, the echoes taking their time to die away. Everybody watched, even Cornelius seemed afraid.

‘You fool!’ the girl from the depths of the Sucking Pit hissed. ‘To even think you can stop me.’ Another peal of laughter. ‘Nobody can stop me because the power of the Sucking Pit has been bestowed upon me by those who live below. This is not your man, he is mine for just as long as I want him. I brought him here in another form, mated with him in a union which gives him to me. Yet you shall not be parted from him because you, too, shall live in this place for eternity, shall serve us!’

She hesitated, dark orbs flickering, glancing beyond the girl she addressed, saw the figure running towards them down the slope. An intake of breath followed by a piercing cry.‘He comes, Cornelius. Do you see him? It is Latimer. He is yours, remember what he did to you, to all of us. Now our hour of vengeance is nigh! We shall live whilst these others die!’

Samantha was still and silent, her expression vacant, seeing Carl Wickers but no longer recognising him. Hearing Latimer approaching but his coming meant nothing to her. She was here to serve, to obey, had not Jenny Lawson commanded her thus? She would not question the other.

Cornelius moved with surprising agility for his size, his swarthy features creasing into a grin, yet his eyes blazed a merciless hate. Only too well he remembered, had never believed that this night was possible. For a decade he had suffered the agonies of a tortured hell-imprisoned soul and now the moment of freedom was upon him. Freedom and revenge.

Chris Latimer halted, jerked his head to one side so that he did not meet Jenny Lawson's eyes, screamed at himself. ‘In the name of God, don't look at her!’

‘Lat-imer,’ Cornelius spoke softly, hands flexed in anticipation. ‘You have come as I was promised.’ His long greasy locks swung like the pendulum of a clock in time with that single earring.

‘I want Carl Wickers.’ Latimer's tone was even, low. ‘And Samantha. Give them back to us and we'll go. I promise I won't trouble you again.’

‘Just like that, eh?’ A sneer.

‘Just like that.’

Silence, the two men eyeing each other, both of them remembering the last time they had met; an identical setting, this foul pool giving off its evil vapours, an icy mist that fingered the body, stroked it. Just one difference: then they had both been mortal and Chris Latimer had had a gun.

A snort like an angry bull and Cornelius ripped his shirt open, displayed a muscular torso. White flesh that had once been matted with thick hair only now that hair had withered and died, revealing skin that had a perforated appearance, pockmarks that had festered, still oozed yellow fluid.

‘You did that.’ The Romany tapped his chest, flinched. ‘Four blasts it took to kill me but I have risen again!’

Latimer caught his breath. No quarter asked or given, only this time he could not kill the other because Cornelius was already one of the living dead; as they all would be soon.

‘What do you want Carl Wickers for?’ he asked.

‘We need him. He knows the old ballads, words and music which enable us to live again because the old ones hear him.’

‘Take me and let Carl and Samantha go.’ Clutching at straws now. He wondered about Pamela. She could flee, steal away from here and they would not see her go. But he knew that she would not leave.

‘Nobody goes.’ A grunt, another step closer. ‘Soon you will learn what it is like to live in death, Latimer.’

A peal of thunder directly above them. Cornelius checked, glanced upwards: the sky was illuminated by a vivid flash of lightning, and for the first time Chris Latimer saw Jenny Lawson's features clearly. Shock, revulsion as he recalled how once they had been in love before that fateful day when she had gone to stay with her Uncle Tom here in this very wood. From then onwards everything had changed. He saw her as she used to be, the petite figure with long dark hair falling tantalisingly below her shoulders, immaculate in every detail. Saw her now … oh God, it wiped out everything he had ever felt for her. Sensuous in silhouette, but when you saw her clearly you noted how that face had become haggard, creamy flesh turned deathly white, translucent in places as if it had already begun to decompose. Eyes sunken deep into dark sockets, the mouth a black cavity when she opened it. Not slim, wasted. A corpse risen from its watery grave, bent on revenge and destruction.

‘Finish him, Cornelius.’ A harsh cackle that might have come from the aged Roon. ‘Then we can truly live again.’

Cornelius came on. Perhaps he remembered how things had once been between himself and Jenny, that the man facing him posed more than just a threat to their resurrection, old wounds smarting in dead flesh to remind him, to rekindle the fury.

Latimer glanced once at the watchers. A gladiator cast to the lions, there could be only one possible outcome. Carl and Samantha staring vacantly, uncomprehendingly.

And suddenly he heard Pamela's scream, frantic splashing footsteps as she forged her way through the marshy grass. ‘Chris. Chris, run. Don't fight him!’ She, too, had been lured down here, spurned her chance to escape. The evil ones had cast their net and the haul was complete.

A diversion but it could only be temporary, an extension of life by a few minutes at the most.

‘Go back!’ He knew it was useless but he yelled it just the same.

The Romany giant hesitated, saw the onrushing girl. But it was Jenny Lawson who beat him to it, seemed to glide forward like a white water wraith into Pamela's path, arm upraised in that commanding gesture again.

Pamela stumbled, slithered to a halt. Her mouth was open to shout again, but she closed it. Gone was the headlong panic, the desperation. Her features became impassive, eyes staring straight ahead of her, not even seeing Chris now.

Cornelius was upon Latimer, hands reaching out for him. Retaliation rather than hope, a wildly swung punch, a final gesture of defiance; Chris felt his fist strike solid flesh, the impact jarring his shoulder and causing him to grunt with pain, revolted by the icy coldness of that contact like touching a slimy reptile. Throughout his life he had had a fear of coldblooded creatures and now that terror was brought to the ultimate climax.

Cornelius had him in a bone-crushing grip, a crooked arm threatening to snap his neck, the other pinioning his arms behind his back. Powerless, an infant caught playing truant and being forcibly returned to school by his form master. If it had not been for the pressure on his throat he would have screamed. Kill me, Cornelius, and get it over with!

‘I could kill you in a second.’ The Romany seemed to read his thoughts. ‘But it would be too quick, Latimer. I have not forgotten how you sent me to the depths, bleeding from a score or more wounds. Down there, if you still live, you see things which drive you mad and even insanity does not dull your terror. I want you to go down there alive, let them kill you and make you one of us. Then you will serve us for eternity!’

‘And this wench, too, Cornelius,’ Jenny Lawson's raucous hate-filled voice cut in. ‘Throw them both in, give them an unholy baptism together!’

In one sweeping move the Romany released his neckgrip on Chris Latimer, swung him under his arm, that child still being carried back to school, shifted to a more comfortable position. The other arm swept up Pamela, and with an unbelievable demonstration of sheer inhuman strength he lumbered off with them in the direction of the Sucking Pit.

Latimer's brain reeled, struggled against hypnotic forces; perhaps it would be better to concede, to go to those foul depths mindlessly.

There was a roaring in his ears like a thousand waterfalls, other sounds trying to penetrate. Voices, chanting. Somebody was singing a tuneless ballad:

‘Take me back, deep waters.’

‘To the old ones that I left at home.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Chris Latimer hovered on the brink of unconsciousness, a dark chasm seeming to yawn beneath him. He fought against it, desperately clinging to those last few moments of life.

A drowning man's whole life was supposed to flash before him; he wondered if that would happen down in the Sucking Pit, or would he be shown a glimpse of the living death which was to be his fate?

The roaring in his ears was louder still, drowning Carl Wickers' ballad. He couldn't hear the gypsies' funeral chant either. Oh God, any second now and he would feel the icy water close over him, claim him. Pamela, too.

His thoughts switched to her. She was too beautiful to die like this, snatched from his grasp by an ancient curse. He tried to struggle but his captor's grip was too firm, the strength of three ordinary men. Death had not changed Cornelius.

Blackness seared by flashing light, the storm was building up to its peak. Cascading water, icy cold, thunder crashing as though huge cannons were opening up in the heavens above. You felt their force, their power, realised just how weak you were.

Cornelius had stopped. Latimer opened his eyes but it was too dark to make out his surroundings. Wait for the next flash of lightning; like one of those old Frankenstein films they repeatedly showed on late-night TV. Wait for the lightning, we can't begin without it. Corny until it happened to you.

They must be on the edge of the Sucking Pit, the end of the road. Tensing in anticipation, preparing for the shock of cold black water claiming him. Fighting, trying to reach Pamela before they were sucked down. Facing the end together. For God's sake get it over with!

Thunder again but no lightning. Funny, it sounded somehow different, muffled like an underground explosion; taking longer to die away this time. Latimer felt the vibrations, a shuddering that came up at him, had his entire body quivering. Crying out because it hurt, hearing Pamela's scream but it was drowned in the roar of another rumbling; building up instead of subsiding, every bone seeming to quiver, shake. And again, more powerful this time.

Suddenly Latimer was falling, called on every reflex to brace himself. No, that was wrong, you should relax, soften the impact. Any second he would hit the water, go under. Strike out, search for Pamela immediately. Another fear, suppose she couldn't swim. It wouldn't make any difference because they were both going to drown anyway. He'd read somewhere that drowning was a pleasant way to die.

Impact, jarring his shoulder. Something was wrong; his brain had slowed up and it took him a second or two to work it out. There wasn't any water, he was lying in sodden marsh grass, still able to breathe, not even having to swim and cling despairingly to the last few seconds of life!

Wallowing in mud, so dark he could not see what was happening. Where was Cornelius? And Pamela? Why had they not been thrown into the Sucking Pit?

Torrential rain lashed his face as he clambered to his knees, sensed those tremendous vibrations again, a quivering that began in his legs and travelled upwards, electric shock treatment on full voltage, numbing mind and body. Oh God, where was Pamela?

Thunder, but nothing when compared with the rumblings and shakings that came from below ground. He staggered to his feet and it was all he could do to keep his balance. Swaying, groping for something to hold on to. Then his hand touched living human flesh, fingers that gripped and clutched him and he gave a shout of relief.

‘Pamela!’

‘Chris!’ She was holding on to him, yelling something, but the tearing gale whipped her words away before they reached him. Latimer stepped forward, feeling his way, fighting against the elements, afraid that at any second they might blunder into the Sucking Pit, totally disorientated. What had happened to Cornelius?

A blinding flash of sheet lightning illuminated the scene, a second of heavenly neon lighting that had them shielding their eyes but it was enough to tell them all they wanted to know, seeing but still not believing; staring aghast.

Cornelius was gone, as was that watching group of gypsies, nor was there any sign of Jenny Lawson. Nor Carl and Samantha. Nobody; gone as surely as if the forces that had lured them here had whisked them away. Just Chris Latimer and Pamela, floundering in a wasteland that was already awash and flooding fast.

The sand mounds to their right were disintegrating, breaking up arid avalanching as the rain lashed them, turning them into rivulets that ran red and fast as though with a bloody carnage. The ground shook, cracks were appearing and swallowing the gushing torrents, filling up and then opening still further to take the volume of water. And beneath their feet the sodden surface shook as though hundreds of pneumatic drills were at work, boring upwards from the bowels of the earth.

Chris Latimer held on to Pamela, dragged her along with him, now had a sense of direction. Their only chance of survival lay to the left but they had to hurry. Even now they might not make it to higher ground before the inevitable landslide caught up with them.

It was impossible to rim. Once they sank into a bog up to their knees, almost panicked as they fought to extricate themselves. Water swirled around them, gurgling as though with triumph at having caught them, but they dragged themselves free and splashed on their way.

Another vivid flash, vicious forked lightning this time, zigzagging down out of the sky, spluttering and fusing as it struck water, hissing angrily as though it had met with the demons in the Sucking Pit. The wind howled, cries of anguish from the damned, howls of despair from hell itself.

Chris felt himself tiring, only his determination, the will to live, driving him on, for Pamela's sake; he did not even know if she was still conscious. At any second the ground might split open, catapult them down into a deep abyss, bury them as surely as the Sucking Pit would have done. The surface was shaking more violently now, the water from the quarries flowing faster and faster. A tremendous crashing sound; that had to be the big mound going, yielding to a mightier force.

Running, summoning his very last reserves of strength, half-carrying his companion, trailing her legs. Oh please God, it isn't far now. The surface heaved up, settled back down again, and suddenly the ground beneath their feet was firm and hard. Walking, staggering, their feet no longer sinking in, scraping on bare rock. Keep going, you can't afford to stop. You're not clear yet; stop here and you die.

Climbing on bare wet ground but it was solid. Dragging themselves along a yard at a time until finally they could go no further. Arms around each other they sank down, weeping their relief unashamedly.

Once again the elements revealed to them the scene below, had them gasping their disbelief and trying to tell themselves that they hadn't really been down there. The ultimate in desolation, a whole landscape being washed away, avalanching, flattening. Burying the Sucking Pit!

It had stopped raining; the wind had dropped, the storm had moved on elsewhere and the moon had ventured out again, almost apologetically casting its ethereal glow over the area. A trickle of running water somewhere, but no other sound. So peaceful.

‘What .. happened?’ Pamela's white face was streaked with sandy mud and she knew that she would not be able to stand without Chris's help. Mentally and physically drained, too exhausted to comprehend clearly. Perhaps it was better that way, sparing her the anguish.

‘Subsidence.’ He found himself whispering. ‘At least, that's what the surveyors' findings will be, land quarried until it couldn't take any more, undermined and weakened. And all that was needed to cause it to collapse was one tremendous thunderstorm.’

‘But the trees and …’

‘In our own minds -’ he looked away. ‘- like Cornelius and Jenny Lawson. Something we'll never, ever know. Gone, just as the Sucking Pit is gone, destroyed for ever. We got caught up in it but we were spared. Why, I don't know.’

‘Carl and Samantha …’ Pamela's voice quavered. ‘They … they're buried down there too.’

‘I'm afraid so. Maybe they were already dead before, the living dead, because they looked into the eyes of a witch by the name of Jenny Lawson. We'll never know, perhaps it's best not to. Neither can we tell what we've seen tonight unless we want a lengthy spell in a mental hospital. We just have to leave everybody else to figure it out, try and come to their own conclusions. And nobody will even remotely guess the truth. The only people who have won are the villagers. They've got their land back and it won't be built on now. It'll just be left to Nature to repair the damage.’

His arm came around Pamela, pulled her close. Tonight had been a nightmare, tomorrow they must try to forget it, not that they ever would. The Sucking Pit had risen, spread violence and death, and now it was buried again. They prayed that it would stay that way, interred in its own grave, the spirits of the evil Romanies laid in their final resting place.

Two people walking out of Hopwas Wood in the moonlight; the only survivors. They wouldn't be going back. Ever.

[i] See The Sucking Pit (Book Details)

[ii] See The Sucking Pit (Book Details)

[iii] See The Sucking Pit (Book Details)

The End

Thank you for purchasing this ebook.
I hope you enjoyed the read!.
Guy.

This ebook is the thirty-fourth book to be published as part of a project to convert Guy's entire back catalogue to ebook format. Beginning July 2010 it is expected to have all books available by the end of 2012.

The list of books so far published is :

1. Werewolf by Moonlight.

2. The Sucking Pit.

3. The Slime Beast.

4. Night of the Crabs.

5. The Truckers 1 - The Black Knights.

6. The Truckers 2 - Hi-Jack!.

7. Return of the Werewolf.

8. Bamboo Guerillas.

9. Killer Crabs.

10. Bats Out of Hell.

11. The Son of the Werewolf.

12. Locusts.

13. The Origin of the Crabs.

14. Caracal.

15. Thirst.

16. Deathbell.

17. Satan's Snowdrop.

18. Doomflight.

19. Warhead.

20. Manitou Doll.

21. Wolfcurse.

22. Crabs On The Rampage.

23. The Pluto Pact.

24. Entombed.

25. The Lurkers.

26. Sabat 1: The Graveyard Vultures.

27. Sabat 2: The Blood Merchants.

28. Sabat 3: Cannibal Cult.

29. Blood Circuit.

30. Accursed.

31. Sabat 4: The Druid Connection.

32. The Undead.

33. Crabs' Moon.

34. The Walking Dead.

The next book will be :

35. Throwback.

"Another GNS disaster novel finds much of the populace of the western world reverting to primitivism, in body as well as mind...the product of some form of biological warfare caused by USA? Russia? Iraq? The CIA? Jackie Quinn has grown hair and muscle and reverted to savagery, whilst her husband Jon and his mistress Sylvia, safe from the biological agents in the nuclear shelter on the Quinn's organic farm, haven't. Whilst Jackie fights the reversion and regains some semblance of humanity, Jon and Sylvia are fighting to stay alive amidst the chaos that the country has become."

To view all ebooks currently available, including the one above, please follow the link below.
View Ebook Catalogue

Best regards,

Guy and all at Black Hill Books.