Deadbeat
Author: Guy N. Smith
Date: 2012-03-14 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: Deadbeat by Guy N. Smith [Redrum Horror #3] SEX, SATANISM, AND ROCK N' ROLL! What is the compulsive beat that seems to invade the very soul of listeners with violent, terrifying visions? Having sent a demo tape to Donna Caryl, the lead singer of the Necromancers, Stephanie Insel is invited to meet the star. Very quickly Stephanie and her friend, Eddie Bannon, are enmeshed in the secretive world of this terrifying new band. When they find themselves becoming major participants in the demonic cult of Deadbeat, they uncover the evil intentions of Caryl and her neophytes. DEADBEAT...once you hear
Publisher: Redrum Horror

Deadbeat - Kindle Version 1.01

(c) Guy N Smith 2003 - 2013

Published by Black Hill Books, March 2013

ISBN : 978-1-907846-67-0

First Published by Bulldog Books April 2003.

Converted to Ebook from original paperback by Scan2Ebook.com

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Contents

Title

Part One - The New Generation

.. Chapter One

.. Chapter Two

.. Chapter Three

.. Chapter Four

.. Chapter Five

.. Chapter Six

.. Chapter Seven

.. Chapter Eight

.. Chapter Nine

.. Chapter Ten

.. Chapter Eleven

.. Chapter Twelve

.. Chapter Thirteen

.. Chapter Fourteen

.. Chapter Fifteen

.. Chapter Sixteen

Part Two - The Ancestors

.. Chapter Seventeen

.. Chapter Eighteen

.. Chapter Nineteen

.. Chapter Twenty

.. Chapter Twenty-One

.. Chapter Twenty-Two

.. Chapter Twenty-Three

.. Chapter Twenty-Four

.. Chapter Twenty-Five

.. Chapter Twenty-Six

.. Chapter Twenty-Seven

.. Chapter Twenty-Eight

.. Chapter Twenty-Nine

.. Chapter Thirty

The End

PART ONE
THE NEW GENERATION

Chapter One

Something stirred Eddie Bannon in the depths of his sleep, a sound that was insistent, vibrating, demanded wakefulness. He stirred restlessly, tried to stretch but there was no room in the cramped seat. He groaned, he was tired, his bemused brain made a futile attempt to ignore the interruption.

He tried to tell himself that it was the drone of the Boeing. Or the video which had instigated his drowsiness. Something was growing in volume, pounded at him, threatened to bring on a headache. Rhythmic, like the beat of tom-toms, getting closer; frighteningly hostile. Now there were words, incomprehensible to begin with yet strangely familiar so that he was able to ignore them.

Running, crying

Laughing, dying

Blood on the ground
here’s only one sound

Deadbeat.

He jerked awake. His first instinctive reaction was to tear his headphones off, shut it out. His fingers checked, fell away. There was no way he could stop the number until it had finished.

The film was still running, he could not hear the dialogue because of his Walkman. The jet was full, every row of seats crammed with dozing, eating passengers; nobody seemed to be taking much notice of the video. A hostess was serving drinks from a trolley, people jamming the aisle on their way to and from the toilets. Eddie glanced towards the windows, saw that it was dark outside; logically, it had to be because it was after nine before they had finally taken off from Heathrow and they were not scheduled to land at Kennedy until the early hours.

Eddie Bannon would be sixteen in August. His bright copper coloured hair was styled in the latest fashion to match that of the male members of the Necromancers as shown on the sleeve of their new album, a Mohican-type cut except that it was clipped rather than shaven. Freckled features identified him as the son of the woman who sat in the next seat.

He glanced sideways at his father. Arthur Bannon was huge of build, somehow he managed to squeeze himself into the small seat. Muscular, the only surplus flesh was a hereditary band just above his waistline that pressurised his shirt buttons. He looked ungainly in his tweed suit, unaccustomed to wearing anything other than overalls, his figure protested visibly at this civilized attire. His complexion was florid, a process brought about by continual exposure to the elements on the farm back home, his balding head pallid where a battered pork pie hat had shielded it from sun and rain. Meaty fingers twitched with this enforced period of idleness, his eyes were focused on the screen but his bored expression showed that he had long since lost the theme of the film.

He watched it as one might watch ducks swimming on a pool from the comfort of a deckchair.

The beat had Eddie stiffening in his seat, his sneakered feet picking up the rhythm, his fingers tapping on his knees. Fast. Getting faster.

Hear it on the Night

Hold on Tight

Carried Along

By the Beat and the Song

It’s Deadbeat.

A tap on his knee that wasn’t made by his own fingers. An elbow nudged him. He wanted to shrug it off, slap it away. Just another few seconds.

It’s Deadbeat.

‘Eddie!’

At last Eddie was able to push the headphones back. His body was lathered in sweat. His Necromancer T-shirt clung wetly to him. He felt weak almost to the point of exhaustion. His breath was coming in gulps. God, they had put him through it that time.

‘Eddie, are you alright?’ Mary Bannon was turned sideways, scrutinizing her son, anxiety stamped on her pretty features.

‘Yeah, I’m okay, Mum. Really I am.’

‘Well, you don’t look it!’ Her tone was reproachful. ‘I don’t want you going down with something whilst we are in America, and it’s cost us an arm and a leg even though we are staying with the Insels.’

‘He’s alright,’ Arthur Bannon had given up looking at the film. ‘It’s that damned music that’s doing it. Can’t understand these kids today, they have to carry it around with ‘em. If the bloody stuff was any good then there might be some logic in it. But it isn’t, it’s just noise, no tune to it, they should have been around in the sixties and listened to the Beatles, Billy Fury, Eden Kane.’

‘Alright, Arthur,’ Mary cast a disapproving look at her husband, ‘you might live in the past, can’t expect Eddie to.’

‘How long ‘til we touch down?’ Arthur Bannon attempted to ease his position, creaked the seat.

‘They said half an hour about ten minutes ago. So I think that we’ll be landing in about twenty minutes.’

Eddie switched his radio off. He felt suddenly refreshed, he had hit his peak of exhaustion and now it had gone. The beat revived him, exhilarated him. It had also made him angry for some inexplicable reason, the way it always did, and that was nothing to do with the tiresome delays.

Everything had been fine until yesterday evening. The Insels had been pressing the Bannons to go and stay with them on Long Island ever since Eddie had been a boy. His father always had a reason why they couldn’t go; he couldn’t afford it, agriculture was a contracting industry. And even if it hadn’t been declining then, Frank Hughes, their hired workman, wouldn’t be able to manage on his own for a week. So the Insels had offered to pay the fare, and no amount of cajoling by Arthur had succeeded in making Frank admit that he couldn’t run the place without the boss.

It would have to be April though, because the lambing would be finished by then. The winter snows would have melted, they wouldn’t be trapped up in the hills, unable to reach the airport.

They would fly from Manchester because Arthur had panicked and driven the Subaru down to the village, loaded up with suitcases, and Frank had brought him back in the Land Rover. By morning the snow had melted but it started by the time they reached Congleton. No matter, it was spring snow, Arthur was suddenly optimistic, it wouldn’t lie.

Their flight was due at 13:25. When they had not been called by 13:20 Arthur’s optimism waned. He stood staring out across the runway. There wasn’t a plane out there. Neither could they go back through customs to find out why. The departures screen offered no explanation other than “next info 14:00 hours”.

At 15:30 the 47 passengers for New York were advised that, due to snow on the runway at Gatwick, the plane from there had gone direct to Kennedy. The passengers waiting at Manchester would now be shuttled down to Heathrow in time to catch the 18:30 flight. The shuttle was late, the Heathrow plane was held back and they had finally taken off at 20:40.

Estimated Time of Arrival in New York – 02:30.

They touched down at 03:10.

‘The snow was just a convenient excuse,’ Arthur Bannon muttered as they filed off the plane into a rainy New York night, ‘I’ll tell you what it’s all about. There weren’t enough passengers waiting at Manchester airport to warrant flying a Jumbo all the way up north. So they shuttled ‘em down to London and crammed ‘em on an under-booked flight.’

He’s probably right, Eddie thought as they queued to go through customs, but what the hell.

His feet tapped to the beat which he couldn’t have shaken off if he wanted to. He would buy the Deadbeat L.P. this week, maybe a cassette, too.

The Insels, like the Bannons, were in their early fifties. Marvin was tall with thinning grey hair, wore thick lensed spectacles that gave him a vacant expression. But his voice was deep and powerful; it had to be to survive in real estate in New York City.

‘Hi there!’ He moved across to shake Arthur’s hand, kissed Mary. ‘Good job we rang the airport to check the arrival time. So this is young Eddie!’

Eddie felt his hand being crushed, winced. Charlotte Insel was much younger than her husband, probably under forty. Strikingly attractive with long raven hair, she had Eddie wondering what Stephanie looked like. He had not bothered much with girls so far, there wasn’t much scope living out in the Welsh Border hills. An unfamiliar feeling assailed him, one that was not altogether unrelated to Dead.

You’ll know it’s right.

You’ll love alright.

The Insels had most likely put Stephanie to bed hours ago. She was probably a drip like the few girls he knew back home.

Eddie sat in the back of the station wagon between the two women, Arthur in front alongside Marvin. A powerful vehicle, it dwarfed memories of Subarus and Land Rovers, cruised with seeming invincibility across the wet Kennedy tarmac.

‘Don’t go through the Pace Park, Marvin,’ there was a hint of uneasiness, almost fear in Charlotte’s voice that brought a faint tingling to Eddie’s spine.

‘Don’t worry, I won’t.’ Marvin accelerated, caught up with the central lane of traffic and eased into the central lane.

‘Pace Park?’ Mary Bannon asked. Maybe she had sensed it too, or else was just trying to make polite conversation with friends whom they had only met fleetingly some years ago and had corresponded with at irregular intervals.

‘A shanty town.’ Charlotte laughed, it sounded forced, ‘we’ll maybe show it to you in the daylight, not that there’s anything to see. Multi-racial, Puerto Ricans mostly, they sell drugs openly on the streets and there’s a whore standing every few yards. Fights, riots, a murder most weeks. The police stay clear most of the time. But it’s only a few miles down the road from Bellport and almost everybody has an alarm fitted to their homes. Most of them keep a guard dog of some kind. Nobody drives through Pace Park after dark if they have any sense. On more than one occasion the inhabitants have stood across the road, stopped a car and mugged the driver.’

The thirty miles journey to Bellport was completed in just under an hour. Marvin turning off in to an area that was in total contrast to the busy wide road, slowing as he entered a tree-lined avenue. Clapboard houses that bespoke affluence, partly hidden in their expansive grounds, even the rain and mist could not hide the natural beauty as the headlights arched on a bend.

Then the car was bumping down a stony track, easing to a halt in front of a wide verandah.

‘Welcome to Bellport.’ Marvin opened the doors, seemed oblivious of the fast drizzle. ‘It’s taken you a while to get here but I assure you it’s worth it.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I think we are all in need of a long cool drink, followed by an even longer sleep. Then, tomorrow, we’ll take you round.’

A small terrier yapped its welcome in the hallway. Eddie smelled the sweet scent of wood smoke from within, pine panelling that had darkened with age and was adorned with innumerable framed photographs. He found himself searching for a picture of a teenage girl, willed it to be like Charlotte Insel. There wasn’t one.

He had hoped for a beer, instead he was handed a Slice that was cold and fizzy, the ice clinking in the glass. The living room was spacious, filing cabinets and a word processor seeming to blend in with the antique furnishings, the carved dolphin table littered with papers. Marvin threw a log onto the smouldering ashes in the wide fireplace.

‘We get all our firewood from out of the swamp,’ he announced with undisguised pride. ‘We’ll show you our swamp tomorrow, it’s just beginning to wake up now the spring’s here.’

Still there was no picture of Stephanie. Eddie told himself it didn’t matter. In his mind, distant but powerful, he heard the beat again and began to tap his feet.

Sleep wasn’t easy for Eddie. The small emulsioned bedroom in the east wing was in total contrast to his untidy attic den where the wind buffeted the rafters in a soothing, homely manner.

The walls gave off an ethereal glow, the wind soughed softly through the trees outside and somewhere ducks were quacking incessantly. Peaceful, yet … alien. He had slept out on the plane, there was a limit to how much you can sleep. Then the beat came back again. If it had ever left him.

Hear it in the night

Hold on tight.

He clutched the bedsheets, screwed the cotton into balls in the palms of his sweaty hands.

And in his mind he saw Stephanie Insel, her unseen face in shadow, her naked adolescent body rocking to a frenzy so that it was shiny and slippery by the time she came to him.

He drifted into an uneasy sleep but the grey dawn awoke him, had him creeping to the window to look out, pulling back a curtain.

The swamp began where the circular driveway ended, a wilderness of trees and scrub that were just coming to bud, interspersed with pools of brackish water. An awe-inspiring spectacle, so different from his native hills and pine forests which were a way of life to him.

Ducks were in abundance, mallard like the ones which flighted into a small pond above the farm at dusk, squabbling, quarrelsome birds, the colourful drakes fighting each other for the privilege of chasing the few protesting females. Ducks were striking up, circling, gliding down and swimming back into the fray with renewed vigour.

Eddie dressed, put on his new denims that were stiff and restricted his movements.

Reluctantly he left the Deadbeat T-shirt in his suitcase, his mother had requested him not to wear it in the Insel household. This morning the garment seemed tired and lifeless, as if his sweat from the beat had exhausted it, too.

He let himself out on the landing. Downstairs a clock was striking; he counted the chimes. Six. Floorboards creaked as he moved, he stopped to listen. There was only silence. He was afraid that the dog might hear him and start barking but it didn’t. He reached the hallway, edged towards the front door.

This was stupid. He could have stayed in bed until the household was moving. He did not particularly need to go outside, he didn’t particularly want to. But he did all the same.

It had stopped raining. The eastern sky was turning to a pale shade of pink reflected in those swamp pools, and the mallard were quacking their alarms at his approach. A bunch took off with a mighty rush of wings, were beginning to circle as soon as they cleared the treetops.

The cat made him start. Not that he was afraid of cats, he had not expected to find one here. It sat at the base of a tall poplar, watching him. It had probably been watching him ever since he had left the house, it may have been there all night. So big, undoubtedly a tom, it reminded him of Tiggy, the farm cat, back home. There was something almost disapproving in its expression, a haughtiness, a dominance that reprimanded him for trespassing in its domain.

‘Hallo!”

Eddie jumped, turned and saw a girl standing amidst the bushes. Slim with long dark hair, she wore jeans and a checked shirt. In her hand she carried a sketchpad. He swallowed his embarrassment, without any doubt this was Stephanie Insel.

‘I’m sorry, I …’

‘You’re up early,’ she smiled and came towards him, reminded him of his fantasy last night and how it had ended. He experienced a sensation of guilt. A set of Walkman headphones were pushed back on her head, he heard the repetitive swishing of the reception. She switched it off, almost apologized. ‘I was going to do some sketching.’

‘Don’t let me disturb you.’

‘It’s all right, I’d already decided not to bother. It’s just that I love being about at this time of day. Anyway, I think we’re all going out today. Daddy’s got something planned and as he’s one for surprises I’d better not spoil it by telling you.’

‘That’s fine,’ Eddie smiled, asked, ‘are you coming too?’ He found himself tensing in anticipating of her answer. Suddenly, her company on the proposed trip, and he didn’t give a damn where they were going, was of paramount importance.

‘I might,’ she giggled suddenly. ‘It depends.’

‘On what?’ Oh, God, she was just the way she had been last night, coming toward him with that seductive wiggle of her hips, pouting her pert lips as though she might kiss him.

‘On how I feel.’ Now she was petulant, walking past him not even glancing back. ‘I might see ya later.’

He stood there, bathed in a rosy glow of the rising sun, heated and feverish, heady. Only then he was aware that Stephanie Insel had aroused him in a way which he had never experienced before. And, he knew, without any doubt, that she was coming on the outing today.

Chapter Two

Mary Bannon never felt at ease in her husband’s presence outside the boundaries of their remote farm. Throughout the drive into New York City she watched him apprehensively as he sat alongside Marvin Insel in the front of the station wagon. Arthur was unpredictable; at home she had learned to live with him over the years, had come to accept his sudden rages as part of her lot in life. She had married him, for better or for worse, old-fashioned as that was nowadays.

Mary had learned to think before speaking, even on trivial matters. One wrong word, or even one that was misinterpreted, more often than not brought a bellow of rage from Arthur.

Countless times at the table, he had hurled his plate, or hers, sometimes Eddie’s, at the wall. If it was destined to be your unlucky day then you got food over you. Once her cheek had been scalded by a near-boiling helping of mashed potato. She had lied loyally to the doctor, blamed it on a cooking accident.

Generally, though, Arthur was well-behaved in the company of strangers. Until he came to know them and slackened the reign on his temper. Her earnest hope had been that he would remain at home and let herself and Eddie go to the States without him. But she had pandered to pseudo-persuasion and, unexpectedly, Arthur had decided to come with them. She prayed that the Insels’ formality would extend to the end of the week; surely Marvin could not afford to sacrifice every day to taking his guests on sight-seeing tours and instead despatch them to some place of tourist appeal with maps and directions. She hoped so.

There was ample room on the rear seat of the car; Mary wondered if Charlotte had deliberately arranged it so that Eddie sat between them and Stephanie was next to her mother on the end. We don’t want your son making passes at our daughter, Mary. Eddie wasn’t like that, though, so far he had not, to Mary’s knowledge, shown any interest in girls. When the time was right he would choose some local farmer’s daughter, in accordance with rural custom. That way farms were kept within families, she did not agree with this current trend of selling out to strangers, letting these so called yuppies get a hold on the countryside. Many of the farms in the hills had been deprived of their traditional way of life, were being used as riding stables and other so called rural industries.

She stared out of the window, gripped the handrest in her nervousness. The traffic was frightening, bumper-to-bumper and travelling at speed. Those bright yellow taxis were the worst, cutting in dangerously and blaring their horns. Motorists even blew their klaxons whilst stationary at traffic signals, which was both childish and futile because nobody could move, anyway. It reminded her of Arthur whenever he drove into town on market days, a display of uncontrollable temper. She dreaded to think what he would be like when he was old.

Marvin had been conducting a commentary most of the way. Mary had not been listening, mainly because of her fear of being driven fast. She felt slightly carsick.

‘This is Wall Street,’ there was an undisguised note of pride in his voice. ‘That building is the New York Stock Exchange. See that statue, that’s George Washington.’

Mary’s bewildered gaze fixed on a prominent sign on the sidewalk. “ Don’t even THINK of parking here!” She almost laughed.

Marvin was slowing, easing into the kerbside. Either he ignored such warnings or else he was exempt from them.

‘We’ll park here,’ he killed the engine. ‘We don’t have far to walk.’

It was as though the entire population of the city had converged on Battery Park today, the warm spring sunshine luring them from their apartments.

‘You can’t tell the folks back home you’ve been to the States unless you’ve set foot on Liberty Island,’ Marvin gestured towards a queue some three hundred yards long. ‘We’d better get our tickets right away, I guess we may be in for a long wait.’

A ferry was just leaving, churning up the water as it pulled away from the jetty, seemingly dangerously overloaded and top heavy. Mary felt that the bout of carsickness threatened to return. Even now there was another twenty yards of queue, four or five abreast, behind them. Some acrobats were putting on a display, a colleague moving slowly along the waiting line, jangling a tin of coins. No opportunity was lost to make a fast buck. It was going to be a long wait.

Without Stephanie’s presence Eddie knew that he would be bored out of his mind. He could not take his eyes off of her, wondered if she was standing close to her mother on purpose to frustrate him, teasing him every time she moved her firm bottom in those tight-fitting jeans, hoped that nobody had noticed.

Overhead a helicopter was making a wide sweep over the harbour; chopper tours if you didn’t have time to wait for the boat.

They were within ten yards of the boarding ramp. They would make it on the next one all right. Eddie looked at his mother, her face was tense, watching Dad, she spent half her life watching Dad, wondering what he might do next. For once he was not looking at his father, he had someone more interesting to watch.

Stephanie had her headphones on, if it had not been for the noise of the helicopter he would have been able to hear that incessant shoo-shoo-shoo that Walkmans made. They were designed to deprive bystanders of music, annoy them with another sound. He wondered if Stephanie was listening to Deadbeat, she was rocking from the waist upwards.

Once aboard, you made for the side, secured yourself a place. Eddie stared down into the water, saw how murky it was, greasy with oil. He looked for Stephanie, she was further along wedged between her parents, almost as if she was hiding from him.

‘Don’t you get leaning over the side, Eddie!’ Trust Mother to administer a warning. ‘Can’t say that I care much for these old tubs. I hope they’ve got plenty of lifebelts on board.’

The boat seemed to wallow as it moved away. Its legal maximum load was 800 persons, Eddie had noticed. He guessed that there might be as many as 900 on-board. He turned his attention to the distant statue, watched as it grew in size, a flat concrete island in a sea of pollution.

‘That’s Ellis Island across there,’ Marvin Insel’s commentary vied with the engine noise. ‘All immigrants had to be “processed” there before being allowed in. Now you can really see the Statue, she looks really swell today.’

Eddie stared upwards as they neared the island. A symbol of freedom, somehow he found it sinister, a green giant towering above him, club held aloft to smash them into the water. Which was bloody stupid, he told himself. Nevertheless, he could not dispel that feeling of unease which was mounting inside him as they approached the long jetty. Already passengers were beginning to move toward the exit, creating an unnecessary crush.

He was cold, shivered. He could have brought a sweater. It was always cold on water, once they were ashore it would be warm again. He hung back, for some inexplicable reason he did not want to join the throng pushing for the ramp. His mother had followed Charlotte Insel, presumed that he was still behind her. If he stayed here, hid, then in a few minutes he could be chugging back towards the mainland. And safety.

‘Come on, what are you waiting for?’ Stephanie appeared at his side, was mocking him with her eyes. You’re scared, Eddie Bannon, I can tell. She pushed her headphones back.

‘I was just waiting for the crush to disperse,’ he lied saw how she stood back to let him walk in front. I saw how you were eying up my ass in the queue, you dirty bugger. This time you can go ahead of me and don’t think I didn’t see your hard, either. He knew he was blushing, his features a flushed rash of freckles.

He felt her eyes on him, burning like lasers. You’re shit scared, Eddie Bannon, I can tell.

He was terrified, on the brink of panic. Behind him he heard the ferry leaving, abandoning him on this hostile land. He wanted to scream, run to his mother the way he had that time when he was four and his parents had taken him into the spook house at the fairground.

‘What’s the matter, Eddie?’ Stephanie was right behind him, but she was not mocking him now, there was genuine concern in her voice. ‘You look … scared.’

‘I’m okay,’ he kept his fear at bay with an effort. ‘I … I guess I’m just not used to boats.’

‘Let’s find the others,’ she fell into step with him. ‘My guess is they’ll have gone straight to the museum.’

She was hurrying on ahead, fast steps that outpaced him as though she, too, needed the company of her folks. There was a cafeteria on his right with tables set out on the patio, a carpet of litter fluttering in the soft breeze that came in off the harbour. There was a queue stretching through the door, it seemed that most of the tourists were opting to eat out in the sunshine. Eddie ignored them, he must not lose the others. Or else his mother would start to panic, he tried to convince himself.

There was a crush inside the museum, visitors crowding the exhibits, meticulously reading the various information cards. A child was crying, its mother chiding it in a shrill voice. Eddie started to push his way through, get out of the way you stupid bastards, I have to find my mother. Not my father, ‘cause he’ll shout at me if he sees me like this. I’m frightened and I don’t know why.

It was claustrophobic in the stifling atmosphere of the museum. Eddie’s panic was escalating, he had to hold himself back from calling out for his mother. But there was no sign of her, nor of the Insels, as though that sinister statue had devoured them in an attempt to satisfy its century-old appetite.

He checked the souvenir shop but it was impossible to see through the milling throng of eager buyers. There were statues of innumerable sizes, plastic and metallic faces staring at him from every direction, eyes that singled him out, drove him one way then another, a giant reduced to cheap, miniature dwarf reproductions. And from each and every one of them Eddie sensed evil, the hatred, that came at him. Be gone from here, boy, before it’s too late!

They drove him out into the sunlight by sheer numbers, a combination of the evil, the hatred, that fused into a physical force. He backed up against a wall, closed his eyes, attempted to get himself under control. This was crazy, there was no reason.

There did not have to be a reason.

He was calmer now, stood watching the crowds. Everybody else was all right, they sat at tables, eating French fries out of paper containers, slurping cans of Coke; talking, laughing. There was nothing wrong.

There was.

He wasn’t going back inside. In all probability his parents and the Insels were going all the way up to the crown. On busy days that could take a couple of hours. In which case he was going to stay out here in the sunlight and wait until they returned.

He thought about eating to pass the time, rejected the idea at once. His stomach was churning, right now his breakfast was in jeopardy. A sensation of faintness came and went. It might be better if he went for a walk, did a slow circuit of the island. He would follow the perimeter right around, end up back here, take his time, make it last.

He moved away from the cafeteria, crossed to the low wall that separated the island from the water, glanced over. It was obviously low tide, there was a narrow shoreline below the stone wall, an area of mud that was littered with flotsam.

It was the island that was spooking him, he was sure of that. In effect, it was but an extension of the statue’s plinth, a man-made edifice that had become a living entity. Nobody else seemed aware of it, somehow he had tuned into it. He sensed it again, as though the concrete below his feet pulsed with life, vibrated with a trapped evil that was seeking to escape.

Which was why he clambered over the low wall, dropped onto the sticky shoreline.

The beach was maybe fifteen yards wide. The murky tide lapping softly at it. Eddie glanced quickly up and down, there was nobody else here, there wasn’t likely to be, he might have been the first person to set foot down here since the building of the statue over a century ago.

The mud sucked at his sneakers, oozed over them as if it was trying to drag him down, squelched loudly as he dragged them free. Oh, Jesus, whatever the evil was, it was down here too!

He clawed a handhold on the side of the rough wall, felt the panic starting to come back. He ought not to have come here, it was a stupid thing to do. He had yielded to an impulse.

He had been lured down here!

Far away he heard the sound of human voices, shouting and laughing, tourists who had tired of all the hyped history and were indulging in ball games on the grass and concrete. He wanted to call out to them, yell to them to come and help him clamber back over the wall.

It was then that he became aware that he was not alone down on this stretch of filthy shore.

The hunched figure was less than ten yards from him, he wondered why he had not noticed it before. Probably because he had panicked when he had sunk up to his ankles in the mud. Eddie stared, the sunlight was dazzling him, distorting his vision so that he had to shade his eyes with his hands in order to see.

The stranger was an old man, Eddie’s first thought was that the elderly tourist had fallen over the wall, was squatting waiting to be rescued. Like himself. No, the other was sitting cross legged, his bronzed emaciated body clothed in rags that were rotting to ribbons with age. Once gaudy colours that had faded. A partly concealed ribcage, a shrunken torso; Eddie’s frightened eyes travelled up to the scrawny neck, stopped. A sense of relief because the features were shadowed by the wide-brimmed hat and he did not have to gaze upon them, yet he sensed that they were so very old.

He almost screamed when the head was uplifted so that the sun fell upon the awful face like a stage spotlight, revealed cadaverous features that were near skeletal. The wrinkled skin seemed to be flaking off the bone, the eye sockets were dark as though they had long been empty; nostrils flared and bubbled mucus as the wasted lungs struggled to breathe. The lips were pouted, moving as though they uttered mute curses at this unexpected interruption.

Eddie’s fingernails scrabbled at the wall behind him, instinctively, for a hold as his legs threatened to buckle beneath him. A sensation of vertigo, a fear that he might faint and become a victim of the sucking mud and this awful creature in senile human form that it had spawned.

A stench assaulted his nostrils, threatened to suffocate him; an overpowering odour of putrefaction which he tried to tell himself came from the receding waterline, the polluted tide. But he knew without doubt that it emanated from this obscene ragbag that watched him with sightless eyes and cursed him with a soundless voice; that smell was that of decomposing human flesh.

Eddie almost fainted, somehow dragged himself out of the mist that hovered in front of his eyes, clawed at the wall until his fingernails were ragged and bleeding. Another fearful glance in the direction of the one who had terrified him to the point where his mind had almost blanked out and pitched him down into the dark abyss of unconsciousness. That was when he screamed, and screamed again.

For the expanse of shoreline, from where he stood, right up to the point where it curved away to follow the perimeter of Liberty Island, was empty. There was no sign of that terrifying caricature of humanity, it had disappeared as inexplicably as it had materialized. It had returned from whence it had come.

And in the throbbing of his temples, Eddie recognized the hypnotic rhythm of Deadbeat.

Chapter Three

‘Oh, thank God!’ Mary Bannon fought her way through the crowd of tourists, heedless of their curses as she pushed them to one side, trod on feet and knocked over a child who started to cry. ‘He’s here! Arthur, Eddie’s over here!’

Eddie was leaning on a litterbin, muddied and dishevelled, a streak of dried blood on his cheek. He saw his mother but appeared not to recognize her.

‘Eddie! Eddie, where have you been? We’ve been searching for you for hours. Are you all right?’ She stared in horror at his appearance, searched for wounds amidst the dirt. ‘Arthur, somebody’s attacked him!’

‘Balls!’ Arthur Bannon’s ruddy features were darker than usual, suffused with blood, relief at finding their son quickly turned to anger. ‘He’s been up to something he hadn’t ought to! Buggerin’ about, spoilin’ our day for us!’ His powerful arms reached out, thick fingers grasped the boy’s shoulders, shook him. ‘Come on, now, what’s the bloody game? Tell me or I’ll thrash your arse here and now, right in front of everybody!’

‘Arthur, please!’ Mary cringed, pleaded, she knew only too well that her husband did not make threats that he was not intending to carry out.

‘Shaddup! Come on, Eddie, let’s have the truth!’

‘I … I …’ Eddie tried to back away but his father was holding him, pulling him towards him, ‘I … don’t know.’

‘Crap!’

Eddie’s vision was blurred, his thinking was confused, momentarily he was unable to recognize his own father. The other’s wide brimmed Panama hat shaded his features. Oh, God, no! Eyeless sockets, lips that might have belonged to a long-extinct species of reptile, wizened and pouted, masticating on toothless gums, dribbling saliva. And that stench! Eddie turned his head away, tried to hold his breath but his whole system was impregnated with it. This time he wanted to faint but unconsciousness cruelly eluded him.

‘You stink like a bloody polecat!’ Arthur Bannon grasped his son’s cheek, pinched it painfully so that the boy cried out, forced those glazed eyes back and stared into them. ‘D’you hear me? You smell worse’n a trailer load of shit! Ugh! You dirty little bastard! Now, tell me what you’m been at.’ In his anger, he lapsed into his local dialect.

Mary Bannon feared to grab her husband, pull him away. Arthur was in one of his rages, he might do just anything. She glanced helplessly around, mutely seeking the assistance of the crowd who gathered to watch, glanced with embarrassment when she spied the Insels, Marvin and Charlotte with Stephanie following behind, forcing their way through the throng. ‘Arthur, the Insels are here!’

‘I don’t give a shit who is here!’ He was shaking his son, slapping his face. ‘You’ll bloody well tell me what I want to know, boy, or else I’ll have your trousers down and …’

‘Thank goodness we’ve found him,’ Marvin’s restraining hand rested on Arthur Bannon’s shoulder. ‘Don’t be too hard on him, Arthur, you know what boys are.’

Mary saw how her husband’s expression relaxed, his fingers loosened their grip. It needed the presence of a near-stranger to diffuse this situation. She would never forget that time when Eddie was nine and he’d climbed up on to the barn roof and was afraid to descend; Arthur had got him down with a ladder, then proceeded to strap the boy with his belt. The bruises had been evident for weeks. This had all the makings of a repetition of that day.

‘He needs to be taught a lesson,’ Arthur Bannon was backing down the best way he knew how without losing face. ‘I just wanted to frighten the life out of him.’

‘I’m sure he’s scared enough already,’ Marvin gripped the other’s sleeve, gently but firmly. ‘It looks like he’s had a fall.’ He stepped back, the others saw how his nostrils had wrinkled. ‘Fallen in something pretty unpleasant by the smell of him.’ Stephanie had moved forward, her Walkman headphones rested around her neck, concern on her moulded features. ‘Eddie, what happened?’ Almost a whisper, her husky voice denoted a closeness to tears. ‘You aren’t hurt are you, Eddie?’

Eddie shook himself as a dog might on emerging from a swim, fought for recognition; glanced again at his father just to be sure that there was no evil, cadaverous face beneath the hat. ‘No, I’m not hurt,’ his words trembled. ‘I … fell over the wall on to the beach.’

‘Fell over the wall!’ Arthur clenched his huge fists, ‘and what were you doing on the wall to fall off it in the first place?’

‘Walking along it like boys and teenagers do, I expect,’ Marvin Insel intervened again. ‘I remember Stephanie doing just that in the park when she was fourteen. She needed stitches in her head. Eddie’s lucky, just a scratch as far as I can see, plus a coating of that filthy mud. New York harbour isn’t the cleanest of places.’

‘You’d better go to the rest room and clean yourself up,’ Charlotte spoke kindly, pointed back behind them. ‘A good wash, followed by some strong coffee, and you’ll be as good as new.’

Eddie nodded, averted his eyes. Jesus Almighty, he couldn’t tell the truth, he daren’t. They wouldn’t believe him, anyway. ‘I’m sorry,’ he addressed the adults, nodded to Stephanie. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

The washroom was a gloomy place in spite of its white tiling. Eddie was glad it was crowded even if the others did back off and stare at him. He glimpsed a long-haired youth pinching his nose, jerking his thumb in the direction of the newcomer.

Somebody said ‘Shit!’; another replied ‘Naw, worse’n that!’ Coarse laughter, heads turning from the rows of urinals. ‘Smells like he’s fuckin’ died!’ More guffaws.

Eddie watched the water in the wash basin turn dark brown, foul fumes came up at him. It was the mud that smelled, of course. If that old guy stank it was because he sat in it, no other reason. Just a tramp. He’d let his imagination run riot. Well, he’d screwed up the holiday, all right. Dad never forgot and he never forgave. That larruping would be saved up until they were back on English soil.

He felt marginally better, looked at himself in the mirror. He had a scratch on the cheek, that was all. Maybe now they’d all go for a drink and catch the next ferry back to Battery Park. He turned towards the exit. Stopped.

At first he thought it was dizziness returning. Instead it was a strange sensation which at first he was unable to identify. A kind of … foreboding. A premonition.

Like somebody had just whispered a warning in his ear, words he had failed to catch but recognized them for what they were. He tried to recall them, willed them to come back. They did, accompanied to an all too familiar beat.

The time is nigh

The old will die

Then it was gone and as he hastened towards the doorway his legs went weak again as if they were reacting to some inexplicable self-preservation system, trying to throw him to the ground so that he would not go back outside.

This was crazy, he’d better not start acting up again, Dad was only controllable up to a certain point even by strangers. Eddie’s imagination was playing tricks now.

The screaming started even as Eddie emerged into the bright sunlight.

He recoiled, would have run back into the restroom had not the entrance been crowded. Heads were elevated. Every one of them gasping or screaming. Eddie looked up, saw the feet of the green giant, the top balcony on the plinth. A shape was hurtling from it, even at that distance he could make out the splayed arms and legs, a loose shirt billowing like an ineffectual parachute.

Eddie found himself screaming along with everybody else. Then suddenly there was silence as the watchers looked and waited, braced themselves for the sickening thud of flesh and bone pulping on concrete.

Only then did the screaming start again.

Eddie just stood where he was, had no wish to go forward, behind him there was nowhere to hide. His stomach heaved, had there been food in it he would have vomited. A blur of faces, he did not even recognize Stephanie Insel until she touched his arm, stroked it with feathery fingers. He wasn’t sure which one of them was trembling, probably both of them.

‘It’s okay, Eddie,’ she was teasing him now, he sensed a genuine sympathy, one scared teenager trying to console another. ‘Nothing to do with us. We’d better go to the cafeteria, our folks are in there already. You can tell me what happened to you later. If you want to, if it helps.’

There was a hum of conversation inside the building, there was only one topic under discussion. Who was it, man or woman? Fallen, pushed or jumped? A suicide probably. No consideration for others, right in the middle of a holiday crowd. Eddie tried not to hear it, he looked at Stephanie, willed her to arouse him like she had already done. But this time she failed him.

He had finished his drink before he realized that it was a Slice, that lemon and lime drink that vied with Coke and Pepsi. It hadn’t refreshed his mouth any, he could still taste that …

‘The last ferry goes at four-thirty,’ Marvin scraped his chair back, stood up. ‘We’d best get down to the jetty, there’s always a big queue for this one.’

A deafening noise had them looking towards the door, hearing and recognizing the familiar sound of a helicopter. Much louder than those which zoomed around the harbour and over Manhattan trying to earn as many bucks in a day as they could.

‘Harbour Patrol!’ Marvin said. People around him nodded, they did not need to be told why it had landed on the island.

There was the predicted long queue on the covered jetty, sombre this time, heads turning when the chopper took off again, heading in the direction of the Manhattan skyline. It was not hurrying. There was no need.

This time neither the Insels nor the Bannons were able to get near the rail, had to be content with standing in the midst of the lower deck crush. There was a delay, it surely could not be anything to do with the tragedy. People still spoke in low voices.

‘I was standing right by where he fell,’ a woman behind Eddie suddenly announced, there was a hush all around. Eddie tensed, wanted to clasp his hands over his ears and shut her words out. He tried not to listen but her shrill voice hammered at him as though it was intended for him alone.

‘Right by him, no more than a couple of yards away,’ she glanced around her, made sure she had an audience. ‘Terrible, it was. He hit the ground, thud, just like that. Just a mulch, you had to look closely to see what it was. It was like a truck had gone over him!’

Everybody else had fallen silent, spellbound by this ghoulish narrative, maybe secretly thrilling to it. It was all over and done with, the patrol chopper had taken the remains to the mortuary; it might make a mention in the USA Today in the morning. There was no harm in listening.

‘Splattered all over the concrete,’ she smiled with pseudo sympathy. ‘But there’s one consolation, he was old. That’s not so bad when you think about it. He must have been eighty, maybe more. Lord, who knows, he might have had a stroke tomorrow, maybe died of a heart attack next week. Now, if it had been a younger man then it would have been terrible.’

Eddie’s vertigo hit him so that, had he not been hemmed in by the crowd, he would surely have lost his balance. His heart seemed to flip, his pulses raced. He closed his eyes, braced himself, knew what was coming.

Blood on the ground

There’s only one sound

The engines started, the floor beneath him tilted. He opened his eyes, met Stephanie’s. She was smiling, had her headphones on.

And her slender body was already rocking to the beat.

Chapter Four

Stephanie Insel’s infatuation with the Necromancers had begun on her sixteenth birthday, two days before she left school. A classmate had given her their latest album, Dread. It was good, but not as good as Deadbeat was destined to be. The lyrics were poor but the beat was both fast and sensuous, an unusual combination. But it was the album cover that really grabbed her.

Almost a silhouette against a dark background, a low budget production that was destined to hide any of Donna Caryl’s wrinkles that stage lighting had failed to erase. A forty-year-old, blonde, also-ran singer, you would recognize if you were old enough to have been around in the early seventies. A come-back, which the promoters cunningly concealed in their hype. If you didn’t remember then they weren’t going to tell you, wiped a decade off her and presented a new image. Dread was the springboard that launched Deadbeat in a way that not even the group themselves could have dreamed up in their fantasies of superstardom. But that was just the beginning before the beat got out of control.

Stephanie’s fantasies were confined to her own room, the only place where rock music was acceptable in the Insel household; a stereo system, posters, magazines, her artwork began to suffer as a result. Her dream was to become a rock superstar, she mimed the words to the Necromancers’ records, even superimposed her own voice over the music on a tape. She was talented, every year she had sung in the school concerts.

An audition was out of the question, her parents would never hear of it. One day, on impulse, she sent her own recording to Donna Caryl, c/o Transatlantic Music Inc., lived with hope, that would, in reality, probably be dashed. At least her idol would hear Stephanie’s voice, that in itself was something. She might even get a reply, an acknowledgement, an autograph. After two months she had heard nothing. At least she had tried.

She read about the Necromancer’s forthcoming concert in the City Guide, the group had a one night only booking at Shout. Her parents would never let her go. They couldn’t stop her. They could and would try to. Whatever, she would go, regardless of the consequences. This meant she would have to be devious.

Stephanie arranged to stay in the city with Jos. Jos had no interest in rock, but that didn’t matter because Stephanie wanted to go on her own, anyway. She told her parents that she was going to the cinema with her friend, stopping overnight in her apartment. They didn’t query it which made her feel guilty. She didn’t like telling lies but in this case the means justified the end. Jos was twenty-two, she would look after her.

Stephanie had experienced both nervousness and guilt. She had deceived her parents, there was always the chance that they would discover that she had lied to them, gone to the rock concert instead of the showing of the new British horror spoof I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle. Also she was in trepidation of seeing the Necromancers live for the first time. They might disillusion her totally. No, it was the beat that scared her, the way it got to you, like a drug. Not that she had ever taken drugs. The music dominated you, you went with it, there was no way you could stop yourself, and afterwards you were totally drained, like an early teenage masturbation orgasm. Dread always left her with a headache but still she played the record. The experience was worth the after-effects.

The concert was over-subscribed, the hall was a crush and outside ticket-less fans were clamouring for admission. The police had already called for reinforcements. Everybody, apart from the fans, had underestimated the appeal of this group which was still relatively unknown.

Stephanie quivered in her cramped seat, stared at the 1959 Cadillac above the stage. The video screens were running adverts, there was a fever of expectation amongst the audience, a buzz of conversation that had only one topic. There was a Bon Jovi tape being played. The show would be late starting, it was all part of the hype.

A rapturous applause greeted the rise of the curtain, dying down because it was only a supporting cast on stage, an unknown rock band for whom this might be their greatest occasion in a short-lived career. Tired numbers, mediocre talent, it was all part of the build-up.

It was over an hour before the Necromancers swept on stage to a deafening reception, luminous spectres in the half-glow of coloured spotlights, the building already started to vibrate. Stephanie stood on her seat, even then she only had a partial view of her idols. Two rows behind her first aid men were trying to reach the first fainting of the evening.

She would surely have fallen had it not been for the crush, her body swaying, rocking to the beat of the first number. It was hot in here in spite of the air conditioning, already a girl in front had stripped to her bra. Stephanie’s skull was pounding, the beat was getting to her, quivering her flesh, moistening her thighs like surreptitious fingers trying to explore her.

She identified the shadowy shapes on stage: Kelvin Schumacher at the keyboards; Vincent Carpentia, the guitarist; Joel Pass on the drums; Lawre Tom, bass. And Donna Caryl.

God, she was beautiful! The long sequined dress fitted her like a second skin, you saw her lithe body in almost naked detail, bra-less breasts with nipples that seemed intent on spiking their way to freedom through the flimsy material. Shoulder length blonde hair that swung forward to hide her features, then revealed striking beauty with stark unexpectedness. You see me, now you don’t. Hips that jerked and shuddered, thighs that parted and gyrated as she arched her back to a spine-breaking angle, her entire body juddering in an orgasm that might not have been feigned.

Come with me

Come. Come with me!

Stephanie found herself shuddering on the brink, the girl beside her was holding on to her, eyes closed, gasping and writhing. Then, tantalising the number cut out, left its participating audience in tortured limbo. Amidst the milling throng, white-coated figures were still struggling to stretcher out the unconscious.

You lost your seat, claimed someone else’s; shared it with another rocker. Their trembling hands strayed, so did yours.

Then Deadbeat fanned the flames into an inferno.

Stephanie was not sure whether she had shed her clothes or whether she still wore them. She did not care. A writhing mass that was no longer individuals had fused together: numbed, hypnotised by the beat and by the words. Loving, hating. Outside there had been a stabbing and the police were still attempting to control the hundreds-strong crowd.

Inside the minders and security guards were keeping the fans off the stage. The finale was imminent, Deadbeat for the third time. Bodies lay on the floor, slumped over the seats, bare feet trod on them, became entangled in cast-off clothing.

Donna was surely spent, holding the microphone between her thighs, pressing the head against her.

You’ll know it’s right

To love all night

She collapsed in a heap, turned away from the watchers, writhed her splayed body. Joel Pass had left his drums. He stepped across her. His strong voice carried, the acoustics were superfluous.

‘Thank you everybody. Tonight you have witnessed the birth of a New Generation. Deadbeat is here to stay, long after the Necromancers are forgotten. Remember, you will rule the world; the Young will triumph over the Old. The Awakening has been a long time coming. It is here now.’

The time is nigh

The Old will die

Blood on the ground

There’s only one sound

Deadbeat!

The curtain fell, dazzling light that was intended to sober the Deadbeat intoxicated. A sudden silence, bemused fans looking for their lost clothing. Stephanie was relieved to see that her sweat-soaked Levis still clung to her legs, her top on the floor, foot-stained, she struggled to put it on. The exits were jammed, it was going to be a long wait.

‘Hi!’

She turned to see a sallow-faced youth dressed in the grey uniform of a minder. He smiled, lit a cigarette. The smoke smelled sweet, not like tobacco.

‘Oh, hi!’ Half-embarrassed, her head still throbbing. She would probably wake with a migraine in the morning.

‘You’re Stephanie Insel, aren’t you?’ He moved closer, spoke in a soft, low voice.

‘Yes.’ Surprise, suspicious in case he had been tipped off by her father to look for her. Dad was powerful in New York City, had contacts at all levels because he was rich, and tonight, she had found herself hating him for that. She had not thought of it before.

‘You sent a tape in, some time ago. Donna liked it.’

Now this was crazy. She tried to speak but the words became jammed in her throat, just made inarticulate noises.

‘I recognized you from the photograph you sent with it. Donna said that if I happened to see you, she’d like to meet you.’

It was the beat that was doing this, some kind of hallucination. If Donna Caryl wanted to meet Stephanie Insel, then she had an address, a ‘phone number, a letter, call …’

‘Like to meet her?’

Stephanie’s vision swam, she held on to the back of a seat. If it was a dream, then she’d go along with it, didn’t want to wake up. Ever.

‘I’ll take you. Just stick with me.’

Stephanie could not remember how she arrived at the heavily guarded dressing room, whether they had gone up on the stage and through the curtains or outside and through a side door. Only that she was standing in a room that reminded her of a Fifth Avenue cosmetics store. Mirrored on three walls so that she saw herself, a pathetic schoolgirl summoned before her head teacher to account for some misdemeanour. Her escort had stepped back outside, closed the door behind him, left her all alone. There was nobody else here. It was a trick, a cruel one.

A plastic curtain in the corner swished, rustled on the naked body that emerged from the shower, wet hair plastered across the features, blue eyes peering through the strands. Heavily jewelled fingers swept them away, revealed that familiar wide smile, and when Donna Caryl spoke her voice was little more than a strained croak.

‘Good to see you, Stephanie.’ Her breasts glinted with droplets of water, her thighs were shiny. ‘Glad you made it. I knew you would be here tonight. I reckon you can sing some, too, by what I heard.’

Stephanie let the dream go on, forced herself not to wake up.

‘Hey, you are saturated!’ Donna smoothed her fingers down the wet denim. ‘What you need is a shower and a dry-off. Come on, I’ll step back in with you.’

It was all a dream so it didn’t matter, everything would be erased with waking. Stephanie tried not to notice the wrinkles on Donna Caryl’s neckline, thrilled to the soft touch of those ageing fingers, cried and clung to her as the water gushed down out of the showerhead.

The next morning when the dream ended in Donna Caryl’s Park Lane apartment bedroom, Stephanie gave up trying to convince herself that it had not really happened. Because it probably never would again and she would live with the memories for the rest of her life.

*  *  *

Stephanie confided in Eddie Bannon that she had actually met Donna Caryl, been backstage to meet her after the Shout concert last February. She didn’t go on to tell him what had happened afterwards, that was her most jealously guarded secret.

Eddie stared, she was not the sort to make up stories. She didn’t need to impress, she already did.

‘You don’t say!’

‘It’s true,’ she smiled. ‘Like to come up and see my signed Deadbeat album, maybe listen to it?’

Eddie agreed. The only reason he was being invited up to Stephanie’s den was because the adults had gone up town for the evening, a celebration to wind off their week. Tomorrow the Bannons would be catching the 15.40 flight to Manchester from JFK. Tonight they didn’t want the younger generation cramping their style.

The room was long and narrow, both windows overlooking the swamp. The walls were adorned with posters, every one Necromancer-related, centre spreads from rock magazines, limited editions available only by mail-order, sheets of music and lyrics.

It gave him a strange feeling, one almost of fear, akin in a vague way to how he had felt the moment he saw that hobo on the shoreline. He caught his breath, his heartbeat speeded up. Close-up pictures of the band seemed to stare at him, see him. Step inside, Eddie, and close the door behind you because this is going to be real good.

‘Close the door,’ Stephanie said. ‘Would you like to listen to Deadbeat?’

He said “yes” and closed the door. He started, thought for a moment that she was not wearing any clothes; it was a trick of the light, her cream two-piece had momentarily taken on a skin-like effect. She switched on the stereo.

‘See?’ She held up the sleeve and the provocatively posed Donna Caryl seemed to reach out for him. She turned it over, there were scrawled signatures on the reverse; she could have written them herself but he knew she hadn’t. ‘Like I told you, I went backstage, but my folks mustn’t know. Not yet, anyway.’

She tossed the sleeve on to the couch, the movement taking her straight into a rock. Twisting. Turning. He felt her starting to do things to him.

‘Come on!’ She yelled at him over the beat. ‘Anything goes, we’re the New Generation.’

Downstairs he thought he heard the terrier starting to yap its protest at the disturbance.

Touch me, feel me

Hold me, steal me

She reached out, touched him, stroked him, pulled him with her in a wild gyration. Arching back, holding him against her, her words joining in with the lyrics.

You’ll know it’s right

To love all night

Sweat stung his eyes, blurred his vision so that he could no longer be sure whether it was her two-piece or her nakedness, which rubbed on him. Heady, it was a strange sensation like standing back and watching himself. But the lights had dimmed and he could not be certain whether he had his clothes on, either. He hoped he hadn’t.

Reality ceased to exist the same way it had done a week ago on that muddy beach. Waves of dizziness came and came at him, finally exploded him into unconsciousness. Even then his body still throbbed to the vibrations of Deadbeat.

When Eddie awoke he was back in his room with slivers of grey dawn playing on the quilt. Outside the swamp ducks were quacking, quarrelling. His head ached and he closed his eyes again.

And when he remembered last night he began to tremble. In a way he was unable to understand, Stephanie Insel had been far more frightening than that barely-living apparition down on the Liberty mud.

After they were spent, they had lain on the carpet and she had talked, prophesied a New Generation that would rise up out of Deadbeat and destroy the Old, how the world would be ruled by the Young, and they would dance through the streets, rocking on a carpet of bloody corpses. And Donna Caryl would be their deity.

Already, Stephanie had confessed, she had given herself to the superstar, had become one of the Deadbeat Disciples. She had asked Eddie to join them so that he might live after death.

He wished that he could remember what his answer had been.

Chapter Five

Captain Nadel of the New York City Police Department lit a cigarette, inhaled and blew out the smoke in twin streams. A stalling process as much as a craving for tobacco. The expression on his lean features remained stoic, not so much as a twitch of a cheek muscle betrayed his inner feelings. He looked across the desk at Marvin Insel, gave the impression of a sympathetic listener. Anybody else, he thought, and he would have told them to get the fuck out of here. But Marvin was a big shot in the city, real estate was a big stakes game, it made contacts and money. Both were major factors in police department appointments and dismissals, promotion deciders. One had to diplomatic, however much it went against the grain.

‘But your daughter hasn’t actually gone missing yet, Mister Insel?’

‘No,’ there was a sharpness in the other’s reply. Goddam it, I’ve already told you she didn’t come home until after daylight this morning! ‘But she might any day. She’s threatened to.’

‘Kids are always threatening to leave home. Some do it and it often does ‘em good.’

‘Not when they go missing. As I know Stephanie will. These people have brainwashed her, Captain, turned her against her own parents. Just like the Moonies do. God Almighty, there’s been enough in the papers about these Necromancers and their Deadbeat. Surely you have had other complaints.’

‘Three hundred and seventeen. Eighteen, counting yours.’

‘Can’t you … do something?’

‘Like what?’

‘Haul these Necromancers in, charge ‘em.’

‘With what?’

Marvin shrugged. ‘Incitement to rioting, murder. Enticement of adolescents.’

‘No.’ Nadel flicked a length of ash at the waste bin. ‘The Necromancers have committed no breach of the law. They preach a New Generation, there’s no law against that, no matter how you interpret that. Provocative music, depends on how you look at it. Rock concerts are always troublesome. So are Pop. Only Country and Western can be termed harmless. It’s the kids that cause the trouble, the fans. A riot starts, somebody gets killed, and you can’t bring a murder charge against a rock group and try to make it stick. These kids’ll do what they want to do and we can only try to keep the peace as best we can. If your girl does go missing, we’ll do our best to find her, but until that happens we’re powerless. Parental guidance is all I can suggest. Take a tip from me, Mister Insel, try to ignore it, ‘cause kids these days will go opposite to almost anything you want ‘em to do.’

Marvin left, took a taxi back to Wall Street. Nadel was right in what he had said, the Necromancers had come up with a new recipe for anarchy; they peddled a beat that was the equivalent of crack, the only difference being that there was no law against it. A religion but they didn’t have a church, fans instead of disciples. Just different names that add up to the same thing. There have been crazes before, they died a natural death. He prayed that this one would, that Deadbeat would outgrow itself, the cycle would move on and leave the Necromancers behind. Just a bad memory. But until that happened every parent with teenage children had cause to fear the growing addiction.

He bought a paper, saw from the front page headlines that there had been a riot in Madison Square Garden the previous night. Three deaths, two crushed and a knifing. Nobody was being held. When your own daughter had not come home until after dawn you had cause to worry. Charlotte was frantic and that didn’t help.

‘I can’t take much more of this!’ Charlotte’s eyes were red rimmed, her usual immaculate attire was crumpled. Marvin guessed that his wife had probably spent most of the day lying on the bed upstairs, crying. ‘What did the police say?’

‘Nothing we don’t already know,’ he averted his eyes, stared out of the conservatory window across the swamp. The new foliage, the lush greenery, hid most of it from view. In amongst the vegetation the ducks were sitting on clutches of eggs, hatching their young. Many of the ducklings would fall prey to the vicious snapping turtles that lived in the mud. Most years he trapped the latter, shot at a few with his .22 rifle. This time he had too much on his mind.

‘Oh, Marvin, what are we going to do?’

‘I’ve had an idea,’ he did not turn around to face her. ‘I don’t know whether it’ll work, but at least we can try. We’ve tried everything else so there’s nothing to lose.’

From upstairs came the muffled vibrations of rock music, that foul Deadbeat thudding out deafeningly in Stephanie’s room. Lately she had taken to going up town at night, returning home in the early hours or after daylight. Sleeping. Then listening to music until her disturbing routine began again. At least she came home, that was something to be grateful for. A lot of kids didn’t.

You lived with the fear that one morning she would not be back in her room. Ever.

‘What’s your idea?’ Charlotte was depressed, had given up hope. ‘I can’t think of anything that will alter the situation. Stephanie doesn’t talk to us, doesn’t come down for her meals. And when she does, all we get is abuse. They’ve turned her against us, Marvin!’ She was starting to cry again.

‘I called the Bannons today,’ he turned to face her. ‘I thought that maybe we could persuade Stephanie to go to England for a few weeks. As she’s going to take art at college, we hope, then she needs to see London, the National Gallery etc.. The Bannons were more than willing for her to stay with them as long as she likes.’

‘Oh!’ Charlotte stopped crying, wiped her eyes with a tissue. ‘That’s a good notion. The problem will be getting Stephanie to agree. Anything we suggest is turned down on principle. All part of this Deadbeat brainwashing, hate your parents and hope they die.’

‘We’ll try,’ Marvin slipped an arm around his wife’s shoulders, kissed her. ‘But we’ll have to time it right, darling. Leave it to me. The wrong word at the wrong time, and that’s the end of that notion!’

That evening Stephanie came down to dinner. Marvin and Charlotte tried not to show surprise, acted as though they had expected her to join them at the table. She was pale, eyes pouched as though she was desperately in need of sleep. She nodded to them, started on her shrimp cocktail.

‘I wonder what happened to Eddie on the island that day?’ She broke the awkward silence midway through the chicken chasseur, did not look up.

‘I guess he just fell off the wall into the mud,’ Charlotte answered.

‘I think there’s more to it than that,’ she did not elaborate. ‘He’s cute. A pity they had to go back so soon.’

‘By the way, I had a call from the Bannons at the office today,’ Marvin lied a little, put the onus on their friends. That way he could lead in to what he had to say.

‘At the office?’ Stephanie was shrewd, a parental fabrication was far from easy. ‘Why didn’t they call home?’

‘Mary said they’d tried and couldn’t get through. Transatlantic calls are difficult sometimes.’

He tried to make it sound plausible. ‘She’s asked us to go and stay with them.’

‘I thought you were planning to in the fall anyway.’

‘I was, but real estate isn’t easy in a recession. Maybe you would like to go?’

Stephanie’s glance at Charlotte was hostile. Parental rejection was currently running at a high.

‘One alternative was suggested …’ Marvin left it open as to who had suggested it, these days you did not put a name to anything that came from adults.

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, as you’re intending to take art at college,’ he chose his words carefully, ‘a trip to England could be very beneficial. You know, the National Art Gallery, London, there’s exhibitions in most cities these days. I don’t think either your mother or myself could make it, but if you felt like going, we’d fund it. You could stay with the Bannons, they’d be delighted, use it as a base.’

Stephanie stared at her father, her expression gave nothing away, but at least she did not throw out the suggestion venomously, Marvin thought. And, in the current family climate, that was, indeed a bonus.

‘I’ll think about it,’ she said and reached for her peach melba.

That night Stephanie did not go out. From her bedroom Marvin and Charlotte could hear the thump of a rock beat as they lay tense and sleepless in their bed. They had something to be thankful for in that tonight, for the first time in weeks, their daughter had not gone into the city. They scarcely dared hope for more at this stage.

*  *  *

Stephanie caught the 18:30 flight from John F. Kennedy to Manchester a week later. It was a bright sunny evening as she sat in the departure lounge, resisted the temptation to switch on her Walkman, she had seven and a half hours before her in which to savour the orgasmic delights of the Necromancers.

Idly she browsed a table laid out with English newspapers. A bold front page headline on one of the tabloids caught her eye. “Deadbeat causes death.”

With fingers that shook she took the paper back to her chair, read the lead article.

“Doctors are concerned that the new rock craze which has hit Britain may shorten the lives of trendy teenagers. Head-bopping can cause brain damage, trigger off brain tumours. A leading neurosurgeon warned that the New Generation, as rock crazy fans term themselves, could become a race of zombies.”

“The American group, the Necromancers, are currently on a tour of the United Kingdom. Their first concert staged in Buckinghamshire two nights ago, resulted in a riot in which three people died. MP’s are urging the organisers to call off the tour, but a spokesman for Transatlantic Music Inc. insisted that the planned month-long tour would go ahead.”

“The Necromancers’ album, “Deadbeat”, is number one in the charts for the third week running.”

Stephanie felt her flesh beginning to goose bump, experienced a frustration because there were still ten minutes before the passengers for Flight 521 were due to be called.

She laughed softly to herself. Jesus, her folks were stupid. They thought she was going to England for the purpose of studying art! They had made it so easy for her to follow her idols across the Atlantic, a parental-paid trip. She would be able to prove her loyalty to the Necromancers, it might even hasten the coveted invitation which Donna Caryl had promised her, along with the chance to join the group. And in return she would give them what they wanted, her body and her soul. Perhaps Eddie Bannon’s too. That would be really nice.

Chapter Six

It was the familiar nauseating stench that woke Eddie Bannon, had him fighting for air all the way up from the depths of his nightmare; choking, gasping, trembling in the blackness of his attic bedroom. The way it used to be when he was small, cowering under bedsheets, screaming for his parents.

He almost called out for them now, checked himself just in time. God, his father’s rage was too terrible to contemplate, a stream of obscenities followed by physical, uncontrollable blows. Not just slaps, bunched fists powered by that quick temper which both he and his mother dreaded. Worse, in fact, than …

The Bogeyman

His small personal nemesis had lived in this room up until he was ten. Innumerable sleepless nights had been spent listening to its shufflings and creepings. If you covered your head and did not stare into the stygian blackness, it would not harm you. He had learnt that over the years. Of course, it was nothing more than the creakings of floorboards, the wind under the eaves, mice in the walls. All old houses made noises at night. He knew that. But he had never smelled it until now.

Just a faint odour, one that embodied putrefying flesh and decaying marine vegetation; he could taste it. Listening. The usual sounds, the night wind was rattling the guttering, the scurrying of a mouse in search of food, gnawing at the electric wiring; his mother was still trying to persuade his father to call an electrician to check but Dad refused. It might entail a complete rewiring job and that cost money. If there was a fire then the insurance would pay. A fear of spending money that was inherent in his bloodline, he hoped it would never happen, that if it did everyone would get out intact.

But Eddie’s terror transcended the possibility of being burned alive in his bed. He stared into the darkness, saw shapes only because he knew the room; the cupboard in the corner that served as a wardrobe, the worm-infested dresser that had been left over after a furniture sale and Dad had acquired for nothing. And others that frightened him.

Inexplicable half-silhouettes, an indefinable shape that could have been an old man clothed in rags, huddling with decomposing lips. No!

You’re stupid, he told himself. That ragbag, if he existed, was three thousand miles away, maybe sheltering from the Atlantic gales in the corner of that cafeteria, tables pulled around him to form a nocturnal den, surviving on food scraps which the sea birds had overlooked. Harmless, part hallucination. There was no way he could be here in this room.

Eddie stretched out a hand, his fingers brushed against the hanging light-pull cord, sent it swinging, eluding him as he tied to catch it. A wheeze like breath being drawn into wasted lungs; it was the night wind that blew through the gap where the window didn’t fit snugly.

He flooded the room with light, was momentarily dazzled so that if there was anything lurking, he could not see it.

There wasn’t. He had not really expected there to be.

God Almighty, it had been a bad experience, his pyjamas were soaked with sweat. In the comforting light he attempted to recall the nightmare. It was gone. Just a memory of somebody, something, following him, unseen and stinking. He had escaped.

But he could still smell it.

He lay there staring at the wall. Dad had had one of his tantrums yesterday, that hadn’t helped. Eddie’s GCSE results had come through on Monday, six passes at descending levels, two C’s, two D’s and two E’s. Average. In his own cunning way Arthur Bannon had revelled in the mediocre passes.

‘There’s absolutely no point in you going to college,’ he thumped the table, rattling the crockery, to emphasise his own selfish point. ‘You don’t stand a chance of getting an A-level, and what’s the point in getting in studying a trade when there aren’t any jobs to be had? Damn it, I’ve slaved on this farm all my life to make a living for you!’

Which was a lie. Arthur Bannon hadn’t wanted children, just a low-paid worker to take over from Frank Hughes, reduce the wages bill and keep the farm going. Retire and pick up the profits whilst Eddie did the work.

Eddie hadn’t answered back because he didn’t want a plate of steaming stew all over him. His mother had gone through the motions of eating. Whatever, her husband would have his way in the end, her son would be condemned to a near peasant lifestyle. That American trip hadn’t helped, it had changed Eddie, demotivated him, destroyed his frail defences. He would finish up on the farm, Arthur would see to that.

The only consolation was that Stephanie Insel was coming to stay for a few weeks. Not that she was to be here all the time, her folks planned for her to go sight-seeing. But it would be a nice interlude while it lasted.

Something glinted on the far wall, had him flinching from it. For one awful second he thought that it was that cadaverous face again. It wasn’t. It was a poster, reflecting the light so that the features on the glossy photograph were distorted, sheer malevolence until he moved his head and saw them more clearly. Jesus, his nerves were bad, the picture was of Donna Caryl. She had seemed different for that second. Evil.

She was watching him, her gaze was centred on the bed. As it had always been since he had fixed that magazine centre spread to the plasterboard with Blu-tack. Her gaze made him uneasy, which was silly. He continued to stare at it, in the end he averted his eyes. It was like she actually saw him.

He looked again. Her expression reminded him of Stephanie on that last night, the way she had come to him, taken him on the rhythm of Deadbeat, more than just two teenagers making love because everything had gone too far. She had dominated him, enslaved his mind and body, there was no way he could have escaped even if he had wanted to. That expression in her eyes had transcended love; indeed, love had been absent. Fanaticism. He had not realised until now that he had forgotten it in the mind blowing memory of everything that had happened between them. It was frightening. So was Donna Caryl’s picture.

And that awful stench still lingered in the room.

*  *  *

Eddie went with his mother in the Metro to meet Stephanie at Manchester airport. A tedious drive in spite of the blazing summer weather, stop-start through suburban areas, it was midday before they arrived at their destination. The plane from New York was not due until 1.30.

Mary had been looking for an opportunity to talk to her son away from the dominance of her husband. Today was as good a time as any.

‘You really wanted to go to college, didn’t you, Ed?’ They were in the cafe area, Eddie seemed transfixed by the array of chandeliers.

‘Yes,’ he didn’t sound over-enthusiastic.

‘Just to be away from your father?’

‘Maybe,’ he seemed embarrassed.

‘It would have helped if you’d got better GCSE’s.’

‘I did my best.’

‘I think maybe you fouled it up during the latter part. I know you’ve been playing your music when you should have been revising. I’ve heard it from your room, it’s a good job that your Dad spends all his time out on the farm. For both of us.’

‘He’s getting intolerable.’

‘I know.’ She looked away. ‘Eddie, that saxophone and synthesiser are going to cause trouble. Record and tape players can be turned down, but I can’t see Dad tolerating live music. Not if it makes the house shake.’

Mary had bought a synthesiser and saxophone for her son’s combined birthday and Christmas present. They were due to arrive any day now, she had sent the cheque off last week. Eddie had never asked for much in the way of presents. Until now. He had earned these. But they would cause trouble. Big trouble.

‘Your Dad doesn’t understand. He won’t tolerate them.’

‘I was planning to do up one of the sheds in the yard,’ it was strange how family plans were not discussed until they reached crisis point. ‘I don’t want to work on the farm, though, Mum.’

‘I know you don’t,’ she squeezed his hand in sympathy, her eyes were misty. ‘But … what else is there? There’s no work around apart from farming and forestry. And, Eddie … don’t go getting star-struck … I mean, rock stars are as rare as top class footballers, only one in thousands of hopeful kids make the grade.’

‘I’d like to give it a go. I mean, I got my Grade Six piano, I’ve had saxophone lessons at school and Mister King said I was talented. I don’t want to do anything daft, but if I persevere, I reckon I’ve got as much chance as the others.’

‘You need a job in the meantime. And at the moment I’m afraid that looks like working for your Dad.’

‘I’ll have to give it a go,’ he dropped his gaze.

‘Something else, Ed,’ she only called him Ed when there was something that they had to discuss between themselves. ‘you had a bad scare on Liberty Island that day. Care to tell me about it?’

He was silent for a moment. She saw him stiffen, noted how his fingers gripped the edge of the table, how he was trembling. Oh, Lord, whatever had happened had affected him badly.

‘All right,’ he said at length. Falteringly, white-faced, he recounted the whole terrible episode.

‘It was probably just a tramp,’ she said when he had finished. There was no other explanation. Even so, she didn’t believe it, no hobo, surely, could have made such a terrible impression on her son. Eddie wasn’t fanciful. The whole thing was disturbing, in a way she wished she had not pressed him to tell her. It had left its mark on him, all right.

The plane from New York landed on time; it was less than half an hour before they saw Stephanie filing through customs, wearing jeans and a denim jacket adorned with sew-on badges, mostly Necromancers’ emblems. Mary Bannon wondered if it had been a good idea to invite her to stay; Arthur was getting obsessional about the rock scene, she was dreading the arrival of Eddie’s presents.

Stephanie looked drained almost to the point of being ill; her features were pallid, her eyes black ringed. She walked as though she was exhausted, could barely stand upright, not noticing her friends that waved frantically in an attempt to attract her attention.

‘Are you sure you’re all right, dear?’ Mary kissed her cheek, there was no answering peck.

‘I’m fine,’ a faint smile, her gaze switching to Eddie. ‘Flying always makes me tired.’

‘Well, as soon as we get home, you can rest up,’ Mary sensed more than tiredness, an underlying reason why the other was so unresponsive. Perhaps Stephanie had problems at home, or it was the wrong time of the month. Whatever, this was barely the same girl that they had known just three months ago. A drastic change had taken place within her, one that was almost … frightening.

Eddie glanced at Stephanie in the car. Her eyes were closed, her headphones rested around her neck. She might have been sleeping but he knew she wasn’t. Their relationship on that last night may have been a fantasy that had become reality only in his own mind. He sensed a hostility, a rejection of those around her.

An obsession that divorced her from others. Suddenly he was no longer looking forward to having her around. In his mind he saw again that poster in his room, recalled how momentarily he likened Donna Caryl to that monstrosity on Liberty beach. And how Stephanie had once reminded him of the rock superstar. It was an impossible, terrifying association which he fought in vain to push from his mind.

Chapter Seven

Stephanie had switched off her Walkman about an hour after take-off. Because physically and mentally she could no longer take the beat. It had her twisting in her seat, had there been room it would have driven her to rocking in the aisle, heedless of her audience. Her feet hammered on the floor, she had to grip her hands tightly to prevent them from flaying.

Then it began to take her in most breathtaking way of all. It seeped into her system, numbed her brain, the tempo driving and thrusting her as it always did. Somehow she managed to tear off the headphones, shuddered her body to a halt on the very brink of an orgasmic explosion. It echoed in her brain, she heard Donna Caryl whispering to her, urging her. Go on, let yourself go, don’t hold on.

The way it had been a few nights ago when she had visited the superstar’s apartment.

After that first time beneath the shower, with the warm water spraying on to her, clutching at her mentor or else she would have fallen to the floor, there was no way back. Stephanie didn’t want there to be. Sobbing with ecstasy, she had pleaded with Donna to do it again.

‘You had better come and see my apartment,’ Donna had towelled her dry, then dried herself off in front of the young girl. Stephanie’s eyes had feasted on the older body, where there were wrinkles it was even more beautiful. So supple, every slight movement thrilled her.

Donna Caryl’s apartment in Manhattan overlooked the river, by day a greyish brown swirling mass, by night dark and oily, dotted with the lights of passing boats.

‘Jackie Kennedy lived along here,’ Donna reached to pull the curtains, ‘Marilyn Monroe over there.’

Awe-inspiring names but none so much as that of the new star born of the old. Stephanie stared at her companion, asked herself over and over again, “Did she really do that to me?” If not, then it was a dream too beautiful to awake from.

Donna wore a long dark dress which showed her features deathly white against it. Her feet were bare, her shoes lay over by the couch where she had been resting when her private security officer brought Stephanie up from the elevator. Stephanie felt self-conscious in her jeans and blouse, maybe she should have put on a dress before leaving home. It was too late now.

‘You sing well,’ Donna poured two glasses of wine, brought them across to the couch. ‘I think you have the makings. All you lack is training. I’d like to train you.’

Stephanie nodded, the words she wanted to say had dried up, the glass in her hand threatened to spill its contents.

‘Of course, it’s been a long hard climb to the top,’ Donna was watching her intently. ‘Very few make it. I’ve been there before, getting back was harder than the first time. But Deadbeat will sweep us all to fame … and a lot more besides! Tell me, just as a matter of interest,’ her voice was casual but her eyes betrayed the importance of her question, ‘Does the beat … do anything to you?’

‘Yes, oh, yes!’

‘Good. Tell me, because I want to know how it affects my foll … my fans.’

Stephanie was aware how she trembled, how her voice shook as she uninhibitedly told another all that the beat did to her; at the concert, in the shower, how it had got to Eddie Bannon, too. Donna nodded, smiled. ‘Good. But how does it make you feel toward other people in general?’

‘I … I …’ Stephanie’s gaze was fixed, almost hypnotic, her words a kind of recitation like she had learned them by heart somewhere; now she spat them out with a venom that scared her. ‘I hate them. The New Generation have arisen, the Old will be swept away in a tide of blood. I realized only today how much I hate my folks. I could kill my father and mother because they are trying to stop me!’

‘That’s how tens of thousands of young people like yourself feel this very minute.’ Donna stood up, an ageing goddess towering over her latest disciple. ‘The young are oppressed, now they are turning on their oppressors. Only Deadbeat could make them brave enough to do it. The might of sophisticated armaments are as nothing when they are faced with the uprising of those who have been enslaved for so long. Throughout the world, there will be a revolution. The tanks will not win in Peking this time. New York, London, a thousand cities will crumble under the surge for freedom. And every uprising will surge to victory, the Young Ones going into battle with the beat we have given them. They are invincible, this is only the beginning!’ Her voice rose to a peak, shrilled before it died.

Stephanie felt scared, took a swallow of wine; it was sharp, her vision blurred a little. Donna was more beautiful than ever, the posters didn’t do her justice.

‘Anyway,’ Donna relaxed, lowered herself down onto the couch alongside Stephanie, ‘we have to go on spreading the beat. Albums, tapes are not enough, these people have to see us, listen to us live. We’re going to tour Britain shortly.’

Stephanie almost said “I’d like to come with you,” but she checked herself. Her stomach seemed to ball, it was going to be a lonely time.

‘Let me show you something,’ Donna’s hand found hers, squeezed it and drew her up to find her feet, led her across the room towards an adjacent doorway. The oak-panelled door swung in noiselessly, a pungent aroma wafted from within, reminded Stephanie of incense.

The hidden lighting was dimmed, she had to wait whilst her eyesight adjusted to the gloom. The decor, the furnishings were dark, made it difficult to see. A music room, she recognized guitars, keyboards, drums, Lawre Tom’s bass.

Then she caught her breath, clutched at her companion as the shock waves hit her. The room resembled a chapel, an altar in the background draped with dark cloths, candlesticks to match. She cowered from the crucifix because it was inverted in a blasphemous denial of her strict upbringing. Plush dark carpeting from wall to wall and somewhere distant the beat was playing, scarcely audible. It might have come from her own pounding skull.

Stephanie’s instinct was to tear herself free of her companion, flee from here. She cringed, felt the hand that held her own tighten its grip.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ Donna spoke huskily, reassuringly. ‘Nothing will harm you because you are one of us. This is the shrine of Deadbeat, where it all began, whence it has spread out to all the furthest reaches of the world. It’s spawning place. We are but faithful disciples, without the power of our Master, from whom the beat originated when the earth was young, we would be as nothing. He has given it to us to pass on to those who hunger for the New World. Now, do you understand?’

Stephanie thought she did, it was too frightening to contemplate at this stage. Even now Deadbeat was drumming to a skull-bursting frenzy inside her head. She leaned against Donna, allowed the other to lead her from this temple of darkness, back through to the luxurious bedroom with its imposing four-poster.

Stephanie was totally drained, was barely able to lift her body up off the bed to enable Donna to undress her. That was the first time she had stayed away from home all night.

*  *  *

‘You treat this place as your home, Stephanie,’ Mary Bannon said. ‘Do just as you like. I guess you’ll be traveling about a bit, though.’

‘Thank you,’ Stephanie looked more refreshed since yesterday, her aloofness at the table might have been attributed to a combination of jet lag and shyness. ‘Yes, I expect I’ll be going away for a few days towards then end of the week. I’m not quite sure of my itinerary at the moment, though.’

Stephanie had not arisen until after ten, both Arthur and Eddie were out working on the farm. The sound of hammering came from the farmyard where Eddie was supposedly renovating some of the dilapidated outbuildings. Mary knew only too well that his work was cover for the construction of a “music room”. Arthur would doubtless throw a tantrum when he found out, but she would console her husband with the fact that at least the rock beat would be away from the house. She was grateful for that, too. This new Deadbeat craze was insidious, dangerous. It sparked off a riot at the Wembley concert, some fans had been killed. It numbed your brain, sort of reduced you to an automaton because you were unable to think properly. Loud music posed a health hazard, anyway, the doctors had been saying that for years, you risked damage to your hearing. She wondered how these youngsters could derive pleasure from a noise, for that was all that it was. There was no foot-tapping, sing-along tune to it.

‘I’ll go and see how Eddie’s getting on,’ Stephanie pushed her empty coffee cup away, stood up.

‘You do that,’ Mary lowered her voice, ‘but don’t say anything when my husband comes back at lunchtime. He’s a little short tempered where anything except work is concerned.’ She laughed, it sounded forced.

‘Hi, Eddie!’

Eddie steadied himself on the stepladder where he was attempting to fix sheets of hardboard to the interior of the rough stone wall. He recognized Stephanie’s voice, had not heard her come inside; it was almost as though she had deliberately sneaked up on him. His flesh started to goose pimple.

‘Oh, hi, Stephanie. How are you feeling this morning?’

‘Fine, thanks.’ It might have been the uncertain light in here but he thought her eyes were glazed as if they had cataracts. ‘So you’ve decided to work on the farm, after all.’

‘Temporarily,’ he descended the steps uncertainly. ‘At least until I find some other way of earning a living. I’ve been hanging around here for too long now, ever since I finished GCSE’s. There doesn’t seem much point in going on to college so I guess I’ll have to help Dad in the meantime.’

‘There’s a Necromancers’ concert in Birmingham on Friday night,’ as if by accident her slim fingers flicked the switch of her Walkman, let out the tinny beat from the headphones draped carelessly around her neck. ‘I thought perhaps we could go. It’s not all that far from here is it?’

He stiffened, his brain tuned into the rhythm.

You can hear it.

You can feel it.

‘I … er, it’s quite a way from here.’

‘How far?’

‘About sixty or seventy miles, a long way.’

‘We drive that for dinner back home.’ A defiant stare that would not accept a refusal.

‘I’d love to go,’ he glanced down at his scuffed sneakers, the hammer slipped from his fingers and clanged to the floor. ‘It’s just that …’

‘What?’

‘Well, Dad won’t like it much.’

‘Fuck your Dad!’

Her words hit him like she had slapped him, cowed him. He swallowed. ‘Stephanie, it isn’t easy here. Dad’s …’

‘Fuck him. I want you to take me to the concert, Eddie.’

‘I’ve only just passed my driving test.’ Two weeks ago, and only allowed to borrow Mother’s Metro for special occasions. He doubted whether this would be one of the approved times.

‘Then you can drive,’ her words were scathing. ‘There’s nothing stopping us going, Eddie, is there?’

‘I guess not,’ his guts were knotting, ‘unless they won’t let me have the car.’

‘They will!’ She laughed a shrill sound that echoed in the enclosed building. ‘Because I will ask your mother. It won’t be a rock concert we’re borrowing it for, Eddie. We’re going to an art exhibition in Birmingham. Got it?’ Or are you that fucking thick I have to spell it out for you?

Eddie’s mouth had gone dry and he thought he could taste that vile odour again. It was psychological, of course. Donna Caryl wasn’t a bit like that fleabag on Liberty Island and neither did Stephanie resemble the superstar.

The disturbing fact was that she did, if you saw her in the half-light of a tumble-down cowshed. Furthermore, he knew that he was going to a concert irrespective of whether permission was granted for them to borrow the car.

The crackle from the Walkman was, for Eddie Bannon, the deciding factor.

*  *  *

‘Now, just you take care of my car, Eddie.’

For some reason Eddie had expected, hoped for, a last minute change of mind, a refusal from his father that came via his mother. There was none. Because of Stephanie. That same underlying power that had dominated himself had worked on them. And where Arthur Bannon was concerned, that was nothing short of a miracle.

‘Don’t worry,’ Eddie reassured his mother. ‘I’ll park at Shrewsbury and we’ll go by train.’ Because he was ducking out of city driving, for no other reason.

It was four-thirty as the Metro bumped its way down the rough track and rattled the cattle grid that adjoined the tarmac road. Eddie pulled his sun visor down to shield him from the dazzling late afternoon glare. He glanced sideways at Stephanie; she had her headphones on.

They boarded the 5.40 train at Shrewsbury. It was full, mostly teenagers in a variety of outrageous wear, doubtless headed for the concert. The pull of Deadbeat had already infiltrated these rural areas, luring its followers from remote villages, commanding them to come worship at the latest shrine.

Stephanie appeared to sleep on throughout the train journey. Her headphones were in place but Eddie was unable to hear the repetitive shush-shush. She was saving herself for the big occasion.

Villa Park had not drawn such a crowd in its team’s last decade of top-flight football. Indeed, not since the visit of Billy Graham, some years ago, had the stands and terraces been packed to such capacity. Eddie and Stephanie queued for an hour before they made it to the turnstiles. Their seats were at the rear of the big stand, close to an exit flight of steps.

‘Afterwards, I’ll introduce you to Donna,’ Stephanie nudged her companion, showed him a card in a plastic wallet.

A sense of sudden fear taunted his intestines. He almost reminded her that they had to catch the last train, changed his mind. He just hoped they would make it.

The noise was deafening, incessant, a chanting that drowned the tannoy’s cheap rock beat. Eddie was uneasy, the atmosphere unnerved him. More than just excitement, it was a vibrant force that you could feel, that trembled you before you got round to trembling yourself. It transcended the exuberance of 80,000 fans paying homage to their idols before the group even made it out to that tiny stage in the middle of the pitch; it was the roar of 80,000 wild beasts, demanding to be unleashed, lusting for the blood of their prey. There was no mistaking the undercurrent of evil.

Eddie recalled the beginning, the riot at Shout, the deaths at Wembley. Villa Park would be no different. Even his father had not been able to prevent Stephanie and himself from coming here.

He saw her out of the corner of his eye, the way she sat taut and upright in her seat, lips compressed with an intensity that went beyond adolescent excitement. She was a she-wolf in human form, her claws gripping his wrist as she clutched him, perhaps sensing his desire to get out of there.

It was impossible to see what was happening out there, people were on their seats, rapturous applause greeting the arrival of the Necromancers. An opening number, it silenced the audience but they did not resume their seats. Somebody, a couple of rows in front, collapsed; the body was left where it fell.

Even the most unwilling spectator became a cog in the rocking machine, the crowd took you with them, a swaying, stamping mass which the beat was whipping up into a frenzy. The Necromancers had saved Deadbeat for the finale, the survivors.

The time is nigh

The Old will die

The sound of feet

It’s Deadbeat

Eddie glanced back down the exit steps. A matter of seconds and he and Stephanie could be out in the street, fleeing before …

Her eyes screamed “don’t.”

He thought he could hear the wail of sirens somewhere but the beat was too loud to be sure. Screams, but they might have been the hysteria of the audience. He was screaming too. Stephanie had pulled him around to face her, she knew what she wanted to do to him. Suddenly he gave in; if she had not been holding him, he would have fallen.

People were pushing past in both directions, faces screwed up into masks of exuberant hatred; they lusted for prey but if you were young and rocking you were spared.

Eddie and Stephanie were swept along on the seething tide. He held onto her, wherever they were going, they were going together. Bodies littered the steps, he thought one was a uniformed policeman. If you fell, you were dead.

The street was packed from one row of terraced houses to the opposite row, a serpent that writhed on out of sight, slithered over obstructing vehicles. If you are not with us, then you are against us! House doors and windows were smashed, screaming occupants dragged outside.

Eddie smelled death, recognized the odour for what it was. It was no longer repulsive, it was heady and invigorating.

The overhead saffron sky had darkened, streetlights shone starkly until they were smashed. Up ahead a column of smoke was billowing, mushrooming.

Eddie gave up trying to recognize landmarks, abandoned his efforts to retrieve his sense of direction. Whither the crowd went, he and Stephanie would go. They had no choice. Deadbeat had commanded that they go forth.

Blood on the ground

There’s only one sound

The rampaging crowd took up the words, gathered followers as they went. The mighty army had doubled, trebled its ranks by the time it spilled into the city centre.

Where there was blood on the ground and only one sound.

*  *  *

The midday heat was on the brink of setting an all-time British July temperature when Eddie and Stephanie clanked over the cattle grid and on to the farm road. Eddie’s shirt was firmly stuck to the seat, his slippery hands had difficulty in holding on to the wheel as he negotiated the potholes and bumps. He squinted, scanned the track up ahead as far as the farmhouse. Maybe he should have phoned from Shrewsbury, let his mother know that they were okay. So that she could tell his father.

But he hadn’t. Because Stephanie had said it would be all right, she would see to it. Strangely he had believed her after last night.

‘Thank God!’ Mary Bannon came running into the yard. Even at this distance it was obvious that she had not slept. There was no sign of Arthur, he was probably still building up his rage indoors, waiting to administer the coup de grâce.

‘It’s all right, Mrs Bannon,’ Stephanie had the door open even before the car had stopped, her role that of an aggrieved guest whose misfortunes were beyond her control, spilling out her peace-keeping apologies.

‘When we came out of the art exhibition the streets were full of rioters. There was no way we could get to the station and the phones were all cut off. We managed to get back inside the art gallery and the organizers kindly let us spend the night there.’

Eddie thought for a moment that his mother was going to faint, but Stephanie was holding her, comforting her. When they made it inside the house there was no sign of his father.

His admiration went out to Stephanie, temporarily forgot the way she had picked up that half brick, thrown it with unerring accuracy at a mounted policeman, felled him. Because, had he found the missile first, then Eddie knew without any doubt, that he would have done the same.

For when Deadbeat pounded your brain, throbbed your body, you became one of the New Generation. Like Stephanie, he would answer the call whenever, wherever it came.

Chapter Eight

BIRMINGHAM ROCK RIOT:

40 DEAD, HUNDREDS INJURED

“The City of Birmingham erupted into full scale riots last night following the Necromancers’ concert at Villa Park. Police and emergency services were at full stretch as thousands of fans went on the rampage, looting and burning. Residents of some of the houses in close proximity to the concert were dragged from their homes and beaten up. Three houses were set on fire.”

“The Home Secretary has called an emergency Cabinet Meeting and will doubtless ban all future concerts on the Necromancers’ scheduled tour. Both Manchester and Glasgow organizers have stated that they have cancelled the proposed concerts next week, and Newcastle and Edinburgh are expected to follow suit.”

Mary Bannon folded the newspaper, dropped it on to the table. They had watched the horrific scenes on television that morning. Arthur had gone to market, thank goodness! Eddie was working out in the shed, Stephanie was probably with him. It must have been a terrible experience for both of them, getting caught up in all that, when all they had gone to Birmingham for was to view an art exhibition. All the same, there was no reason for Stephanie to return to the States, the rock concerts were finished. There wouldn’t be any more violence. Delayed reaction had set in, Stephanie was visibly shaken. Maybe she could be persuaded to stay on for a few more days, by then she might feel differently about it.

‘I’m catching the 1:25 flight home tomorrow,’ Stephanie informed Eddie. She was sullen and angry.

‘But why?’ He climbed down the stepladder, felt physically sick at her news.

‘Because the Necromancers are flying home today. It was mentioned on the TV.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Which meant that there was nothing he could say which would change her mind.

‘Eddie, I want you to come back to America.’ There was a crispness about the way she spoke that made it an order rather than a request.

‘I’d love to, but I don’t know when. If your folks could persuade my parents, then …’

‘I don’t want your folks to come. I want you to come to Bellport.’

He shifted from one foot to the other, looked down at the ground, up at the roof; anywhere so that he did not have to meet her penetrating gaze. ‘I’ll talk to my mother.’

‘You’re a wimp, Eddie. Don’t you ever do anything without your folks’ say-so?’

He flinched. ‘You don’t understand, Stephanie …’

‘I do, only too well. You’ve been brainwashed, indoctrinated, since you were a child. You’ll never be anything else! Jeez, your old man would have a seizure if he knew about what we did on the last night of your stay!’

Eddie paled visibly. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘I want you to fly back with me tomorrow!’

‘You have to book a month in advance.’

‘We could always try for stand-bys, cancellations.’

‘I’ll talk to my mother.’

‘Which means you won’t be coming,’ she sighed, ‘because your mother will have to obtain permission from your father, who won’t give it. Christ, if it was me, I’d either leave home or do the bastard in!’

‘Stephanie!’ He recoiled with shock because it was no metaphorical threat; her felling of that policeman had proved that.

‘Maybe I’ll see you again one day, maybe not,’ she turned towards the door. ‘But don’t think that that riot was a one-off, that banning the concerts has quelled the New Generation’s revolution. That was only the beginning! I’ll tell you this, Eddie, that before this year is out the whole world will resemble a battlefield. They’ve had it coming to them for a long time, Deadbeat only triggered it off!’

She left him shaking, a nagging headache thumping its way to migraine-proportions to the beat of the Necromancers’ number one hit.

*  *  *

‘I’ll take Stephanie to the airport tomorrow morning!’ Arthur Bannon announced through a full mouth at the evening meal.

Which meant that he, and he alone, would be accompanying their visitor on the first stage of her return trip to Long Island. Nobody else would be going along. Nobody even suggested it.

He had not even enquired why Stephanie was cutting her visit short after two days, did not express regret.

‘I wouldn’t mind visiting Bellport again,’ Eddie said in a barely audible voice, staring intently at the remnants of his apple pie.

‘What for?’ His father looked up, showered the table with pie crust crumbs.

‘I … I enjoyed our holiday. I’d like to go again.’

‘And make a right bloody fool of yourself playing in the mud again?’

Eddie did not answer. He knew he was blushing, that Stephanie’s contemptuous gaze was burning into him like a laser beam.

‘You’ve plenty of work to be doing here,’ Arthur Bannon was scraping the plate with his spoon. ‘And just because I’m away tomorrow doesn’t mean you can sit around. There’s a load of calf nuts to be fetched from the mill. And you can stop buggering about trying to turn that end shed into a fancy den. There’ll be ewes going around at the lambing time!’

Which answered all Stephanie’s questions. Eddie would not be returning to Bellport; at least not in the near future.

*  *  *

Eddie was relieved when the Metro finally bumped its way down the farm track towards the road. He wished that he had not come outside to say goodbye to Stephanie, far better to have let her go through the motions of a lukewarm farewell.

She was icily polite, handshake instead of kisses, her slim fingers limp and insincere when they took his outstretched hand. ‘See you sometime, Eddy,’ which meant she would not. Ever.

Arthur Bannon’s eagerness to be away was obvious to the point of rudeness. If this little cow hadn’t come in the first place then I wouldn’t have to lose a day’s work and a tank of petrol driving her back to the airport. But I’m glad she’s going now rather than in three weeks’ time.

A cloud of dust hid the final wavings. Eddie turned away, slouched across where the Mitsubishi pickup was parked. It would be a relief to go to the mill, on into town, just to be away from here for an hour or two. He wished that he did not have to return, that he had gone to the airport and gambled on a cancelled seat. But it was too late now. He wanted to forget Deadbeat, get it right out of his head, cancel the saxophone and synthesizer and turn the shed back into a lambing pen.

But you didn’t throw off Deadbeat that easily once it got you.

The time is nigh

The old will die

Some had already died, there would be many more. He drove slowly, he mostly did. Even with its power-assisted steering, the truck was a cumbersome vehicle to one only weeks after passing his driving test. There was a queue in the loading bay at the old mill, it was three quarters of an hour before the man with the forklift truck loaded him up.

He went on into town, saw by the clock on the tower that it was a quarter to twelve. There was just room to park on the triangular square behind the tower because it was Wednesday and the shops closed at one. Tomorrow was market day, then you’d have to try for a gap up by the church and walk back. He switched off the engine, sat staring back down the street.

He didn’t really have anything specific to do, no shopping nor chores. If his father had not been away from the farm then Eddie would have been expected back by now. Even then he would have been late by Arthur Bannon’s estimation of a return trip. Fuck you, Dad, you’ve screwed everything up for me.

A few shoppers, mostly farmers’ wives, loitered on the pavements. There was a delivery van causing an obstruction outside the ironmongery which also housed a cafe. Two buildings further down, an elderly man was perched high upon a ladder cleaning upper storey windows over the newsagents.

Eddie decided to kill time over a coffee. He locked the cab, crossed the street towards the cafe. Up above him the window cleaner was whistling tunelessly. At least it wasn’t Deadbeat and that was a relief.

Four middle-aged women occupied the table by the window, whispering their gossip. Eddie sat at the small table opposite.

‘Yes, please?’ The waitress was attractive, had a distinctive northern accent. An “outsider” in the local’s terms.

‘Coffee, please. And a scone and jam.’

He did not really want either but it was something to do. His father would not have approved. Fuck his father, for the second time. Stephanie’s advice came back but this time it did not shock him. If Dad died today, crushed to a pulp in a motorway pile-up, then Eddie wouldn’t weep. No way. Jesus, he’d have a ball, and when his music equipment arrived, he’d play it full blast and hope what was left of the bastard would hear it in his grave. But Arthur Bannon wouldn’t get himself killed, his sort never did, they lasted to a ripe old age.

Deadbeat was plaguing him again. He let it, and even considered means by which he might kill his father and get away with it. He wouldn’t really, of course, but only because he was shitscared of being found out.

The waitress brought his scone and coffee, smiled as though she understood. He could always loose the bull when his father was in the yard. Buster was fast for his size. Or kick the ladder when Dad was climbing up to the hayloft over the buildings. He’d come down headfirst, fast, smash his skull on the concrete. That method appealed most, because Eddie would have administered it personally, not got a bad-tempered bull to do his dirty work and condemned it to a Sunday roast for doing what came naturally. Yeah, smash the fucker’s skull, leave him where he fell, make sure you’re somewhere else until someone finds him.

Deadbeat was pounding at him so hard that his cup shook when he lifted it to his lips. The strawberry jam on the side of his plate reminded him of how Dad would look when he hit the yard.

Blood on the ground

There’s only one sound

Eddie finished his coffee, scraped the last of the crumbs off his plate. They tasted stale. He caught a whiff of that stench again, if he closed his eyes he could kid himself he was back on Liberty Beach. No way. It was all in the mind. He got up to leave.

The beat hit him hard just as he reached the doorway, so hard that he didn’t hear the screaming outside in the street. He felt dizzy, reeled, but it passed as swiftly as it had come. That stench was stronger, so very real, more real than it had ever been since Liberty. The smell of death.

He had stepped on to the pavement before he became aware of the screaming. People were rushing across the street, the traffic had come to a standstill because a smashed ladder obstructed the road. Everybody was staring. At himself.

No, almost but not quite. They were looking in horror at the mangled heap of bloodied overalls, the splayed arms and legs, which seeped scarlet fluid on to the grey paving stones only a metre from where Eddie stood.

He looked down and that was overpowering, suffocating. His pulses throbbed to Deadbeat.

Blood on the ground

There’s only one sound

Everybody was standing back, nobody brave enough to step as close as Eddie was to the window cleaner who had toppled his ladder and mulched himself on the ground. A swarm of flies had gathered, buzzed as they fed on this unexpected offering. Across the road somebody had gone into the phone box, dialled for an ambulance.

Then Eddie began to scream in chorus with the hysterical housewives.

Because the upturned corpse face was looking at him. And he recognized it. Oh. Merciful Mother, there was no mistaking those features, the flesh hanging in ribbons from the broken face, black cavities where the eyes should have been, the mouth pouted beneath crawling flies. Seeming to masticate. Mucus dribbled from the squashed nose.

Eddie closed his eyes, and in those few moments before he fainted he was back on Liberty Beach.

Chapter Nine

Stephanie had arrived back home a week ago. She had been missing for three days.

Charlotte was frantic, on the second day she had been up town, spent the entire afternoon and evening roaming the streets, checked many of the likely places where her daughter might have been. She picked up a City Guide, scrutinized the rock/pop ads for the week. There was no mention of the Necromancers; they were probably still in the UK causing death and mayhem. She would write a personal letter to the mayor of NYC, ask for them to be banned. First, she had to find Stephanie.

‘Nope,’ Captain Nadel studied the printout which the lieutenant had brought into his office, lit another cigarette. ‘Not on this one, I’m afraid, Mister Insel. We’re checking, the “found” list is updated daily. I’d’ve called you, naturally, if your daughter had turned up.’

‘But she has to be somewhere, Captain!’ Marvin leaned across the desk, tried to see the computer sheet as if he didn’t believe the other or else Nadel’s search had been cursory and he’d missed the name he was looking for.

‘They’re all somewhere,’ Nadel replied, and thought, some in the river, others on wasteland where they haven’t been found yet.

Marvin returned to Bellport, waited for Charlotte to come back. It was after midnight before he heard the Ford truck turn into the driveway. He was pouring two whiskies when she staggered in through the doorway, her immaculate dark hair straggling, her eyes puffy because she had cried all the way home.

‘They’ve taken her, just like they’ve taken hundreds of others!’ Charlotte’s voice was a half-scream. ‘They’re hiding them somewhere, in the subways or the sewers, brainwashing them so that they don’t want to come home. God, I’m going to rip those posters down in Stephanie’s room, smash the stereo, burn the …’

‘Hold on,’ he handed her a whisky, helped her get it to her lips, ‘that won’t solve anything.’

‘All right, what will?’

He helped her across to the couch, lowered himself down beside her. ‘I’m going to find that Caryl bitch, talk to her. If necessary, I’ll issue a writ, sue for enticement.’

‘First, find the cow,’ Charlotte stared into the amber liquid. ‘Litigation won’t help, Stephanie’s over sixteen. And, anyway, this lot are set on luring kids from their homes, they’ll hardly hand them back. We need to convince the mayor, get him to put pressure on the police to do something. Jesus, virtually every parent in the States is crying out for action, and the White House does sod all. What’s needed is tough new legislation.’

‘All we’ll get is a tightening up of public order,’ at least they were talking rationally now, eliminating the impossibles, ‘and as it’s the kids who are rioting then we’re legislating against our own sons and daughters.’

‘Stephanie was rioting in England, I just know that’s what she went over for,’ Charlotte took another gulp of whisky. ‘We were duped into footing the bill. She wouldn’t have lied, deceived us, a year ago.’

‘It’s called adolescence,’ his hand found hers, his voice was husky too. ‘Growing up, only nowadays kids grow up in a different way. Just let’s try to get Stephanie back, the rest can look after themselves.’

‘You serious about contacting Donna Caryl, Marvin?’

‘Sure. I’ll put money up if she’ll agree to let us have Stephanie back. Blood money, like she was asking ransom.’

‘They’re millionaires, they don’t need money. They just want kids to join their revolution. The New Generation, they call it!’ She gave a cracked laugh. ‘The most powerful army in the world, every nation eroded by its offspring. You don’t turn tanks and guns on your own kids, except maybe in China. It’s the biggest uprising in history. And our daughter’s fighting for them!’

‘I’ve checked on the Necromancers,’ he said.

‘How?’

‘The newspaper. They arrived back at JFK the night before last, a private jet that dodged the reporters, they only found out about it afterwards. When it was too late. I rang Transatlantic Music, got a recorded message asking you to leave your name if you wanted tickets to the next performance.’

‘And when’s that?’

‘Unscheduled. A lawyer gave Donna Caryl’s Manhattan number. I got through to reception.’

‘What did they say?’

‘Piss off.’

‘Which means the Necromancers have gone to ground. But, Marvin, Donna Caryl isn’t likely to have heard of Stephanie. They’ve got a following running into millions, a fan club in every country. They don’t know the kids, they just use them!’

‘We’ll just have to wait,’ he took her glass, went to refill it. ‘But in the meantime, don’t you go doing anything to her room, that crap is the only thing she’s ever likely to come home for.’

The Manhattan reception had left a message for Stephanie. She had prayed for it, hardly dared expect it. Only that night in the four-poster gave her a glimmer of hope. Which had become reality.

She picked up her pass, had spent three hours waiting for the jet to land at JFK airport. She had boarded it during the refuelling stop and they had flown straight on to Texas.

The ranch was on the edge of a desert, sand-swept scrubland. Wooden exterior much the same as any other between here and the Rio Grande. A façade designed to hide grandeur which lay within, protected by guard dogs, barbed wire and hidden marksmen.

Like a town that started above ground and burrowed down under in a series of giant gopher holes, Stephanie thought. She was scared to wander far from the apartment in case she became lost. People thronged the neon-lit subterranean streets, you seldom saw the same face twice. There was even a drugstore. The only thing you weren’t allowed to do was to go above ground; steel grills prevented you from doing that inadvertently. It didn’t bother her because it made sense; a spotter plane, press or television, would have the exact location of the Necromancers’ hideaway relayed worldwide within the hour. Every group had their secret retreat, they had to drop out of public view every so often, they were entitled to do so.

They were exhausted after their arrival. That first night, it might have been day because there was no sky to check by, Stephanie slept on her own in a small room adjoining Donna’s. The group just wanted to sleep, they had no energy for anything else.

Stephanie was left to herself for most of the day. She ate in the larger dining room, the other diners were mostly staff, cleaners, technicians and those who carried out other necessary duties in this place where no expense was spared. She tried to work out what this hideaway had been prior to its acquisition by the Necromancers; possibly a nuclear testing base for which the government had no further use. Scientific experiments of some kind, certainly, for no way could the Necromancers have built this in their swift rise to fame. It was a chilling thought, a kind of miniature city which was virtually unknown to the world outside.

There was non-stop music playing on the tannoy; not Deadbeat, for that would have been too much, would have disrupted the routine. Background stuff, you were aware of it but you didn’t listen to it consciously, without it there would have been an atmosphere of emptiness.

She thought about her parents, she should have left a note. She wondered how long she would be here for. It didn’t bother her unduly, it was a relaxed existence where you lost track of time. A kind of therapy, like a health farm. A retreat where you just dropped out.

Twice she glimpsed members of the group. Lawre Tom came out of the drugstore, hurried towards the main elevator. Kelvin Schumacher passed her in the main thoroughfare; their eyes met but he gave no sign of recognition. They were both disappointingly ordinary in casual attire.

It was evening before Donna came to her room, ghosted in silently. She wore slacks and a jade green sweater, her hair was ruffled as though she had been sleeping throughout the day. Refreshed now, but the brief tour had taken its toll on her.

‘You like it here?’ She closed the door behind her.

‘It’s fine. I’m rested now.’

‘Good. I thought we might be back here sooner than we planned.’

Stephanie stared. The British Tour had been a disaster, curtailed almost before it had started. The Necromancers would not be allowed back.

‘It was a fantastic success,’ Donna smiled, ‘even I had not dared to hope Deadbeat would have so much impact.’

‘But …’

‘Two concerts and we achieved what we had planned to do in ten. Records, tapes, posters all sold out. The company are rushing further supplies over there right now, working full stretch. Deadbeat is established in Britain, I hear that there has been rioting in other towns and cities. The authorities will no more eradicate it than they will AIDS!’ She laughed, a sound that had a little shiver starting at the base of Stephanie’s spine, creeping upwards.

‘Are you … going to hide out here for long?’ A fear that this was the end of the Necromancers’ public performances.

‘No,’ she sighed, ‘the momentum has to be maintained, we can’t rely on recorded music to keep it going. Concerts are being arranged even now, our fans are demanding them. The authorities know that to try to ban us could result in overnight anarchy, they will prefer to let us carry on in the hope that the craze will die as quickly as it began, as others have done in the past. But Deadbeat is here to stay, it will change the world before the year is out.’ She stood up. ‘But there is something I want to show you.’

Stephanie followed her through an adjoining door, down a steep flight of stone steps, going even deeper into the bowels of the desert. Another corridor, the lighting was a dim fluorescent glow, created an eeriness that had Stephanie’s hand seeking Donna’s. She recognized the beat that came from the hidden speakers, “Fade to Black” by Metallica. Somehow it was frightening down here.

Donna paused before a door, hesitated as though even she feared to enter. Stephanie’s instinct was to hang back but her companion was gripping her tightly.

‘It’s all right,’ Donna whispered, ‘there’s nothing to be afraid of.’ Even so, the older woman trembled slightly.

The dark oak door creaked inwards. Stephanie’s first impression was that somehow they had been transported back to the Manhattan apartment, were standing inside that eerie music room with its black altar and satanic emblems, the shrine of the Master from whom Deadbeat originated when the world was young. She gasped her fear, clung tightly to Donna.

That same overpowering scent prevailed. No, it wasn’t quite the same, it was tinged with a nauseating odour, like something was rotting somewhere. She remembered that time when the mice had moved from the swamp into the house one fall and her father had put down poison. It had cleared the rodents, all right, but many of them had died beneath the floorboards and you could smell them when their corpses began to decompose. She wrinkled her nose, felt slightly sick.

As her eyesight adjusted to the large room, Stephanie gazed around her in awe. The altar was much larger, so was the inverted crucifix which stood upon it. So much more frightening, as if the one back in Manhattan was merely a replica, symbolic of the powerful evil which pulsed to the background beat here in Texas.

There were other trinkets, strange carved symbols placed on the black drapes, a star, one that looked like three sixes joined by a serpent, all glowing as though they had been coated with luminous paint.

She noticed that they had stepped inside a chalk circle which incorporated the centre of the floor, interspersed with weird markings that were scary because she was ignorant of their meanings. Her eyes alighted on the instruments; they were surely the same, the originals. Guitars, bass, drums, all of them giving off that same unearthly glow. She tightened her grip on Donna’s hand, wished that they could leave. It was so cold in here, Stephanie shuddered. The stench was stronger now, made her feel sick.

‘Touch them, feel them.’ Donna was whispering now as though she, too, was afraid. ‘Go on.’

Stephanie reached out a trembling hand, her fingertips came into contact with a drumstick. It was so smooth, waxed, seemed to throb with a life of its own. Ice cold, just like when her mother asked her to fetch something out of the chest freezer for supper. She snatched her hand away.

‘Stroke the drum.’ A clipped order.

Stephanie ran her shaking fingers over the stretched fabric, felt the material vibrate with a noise that reminded her of an anguished protest. Again, that awful smell wafted up at her, had her jerking her head away heaving.

‘Nobody except the Necromancers has ever touched those instruments,’ Donna laughed mirthlessly. ‘You are honoured, you have much to live up to from now on. Do you know what the carvings are made from, the fabric on the drums?’

‘Ivory, I guess, for the drumsticks. Some kind of hide on the drums.’ Stephanie hazarded a guess. Did it really matter?

‘Close!’ A laugh that was sinister, had Stephanie wanting to wrench herself free, run. Except there was nowhere to flee in this desert hideaway. Also, she needed Donna Caryl. ‘The drumsticks are carved from – human bone, as are those emblems on the altar. The drums are covered with stretched human skin!’

Stephanie opened her mouth but the scream would not come. She heaved again, almost threw up. Her vision darkened, a blur that was streaked with red, and her legs threatened to fold under her.

The stench was that of rotting flesh, after all. Human skin, a corpse flayed so that the drums might be covered. Drumsticks, emblems, whatever, bones carved into exquisite works of art, an example of grotesque craftsmanship, laid out in Satan’s shrine; offerings to the blasphemous deity so that he might give his blessings to Deadbeat, the beat of death, send his youthful armies forth to conquer the world. So that evil might reign supreme.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ Donna was holding Stephanie to her in a maternal embrace, kissing her forehead with lips that had gone as cold as those awful bones. ‘It’s best that you know now, at the beginning.’

Stephanie tried to speak, her lips formed questions that were, perhaps, better left unasked. No sound came, as though the satanic force in this hellish temple had struck her dumb so that she might not know. It was enough that human bodies had been used in the making of these instruments that transmitted the infamous rock beat, drove their followers crazy so that they rampaged and killed in the name of Deadbeat. And Deadbeat was Satan.

She was aware that Donna was leading her back outside, supporting her as they trod the long flight of steps; half-carrying her back into that room of luxury where champagne was drunk from golden goblets.

Donna was smiling reassuringly as she laid her protégée on the silk-covered couch, kissed her with lips that were warm again.

‘One day you will be a superstar,’ she murmured, ‘the whole world will be at your feet. The New World, the New Generation worshipping you as they worship me now. Whatever you ask will be yours but …’ she hesitated momentarily, ‘there’s a price to pay!’

A knock came at the door. Donna Caryl stiffened, struggled to hide her annoyance at this interruption before she called out ‘Yes?’

A servant stood in the open doorway, his spotless white jacket in stark contrast to the dark brown of his Caribbean hands and features. Wide-eyed, there was no mistaking his awe, his role in this society.

‘Are you ready to order dinner, Miss Donna?’

‘I’ll order, but we have things to do first,’ Donna’s gaze flicked towards Stephanie and back again. ‘Caviar and champagne, when we are ready.’

The other bowed, withdrew, closing the door slowly as though he feared to click the latch.

‘Let us bathe and change,’ Donna helped Stephanie back up on to her feet. ‘Let’s take our time, there is no hurry.’

The Jacuzzi was set in the centre of the green tiled floor, the four walls a continuous mirror; even the door was mirrored. In whichever direction you looked, you saw yourself, viewed your nakedness as others saw it, became a spectator, as well as a participator, to whatever you chose to do. Stephanie watched herself undress, saw how Donna watched every movement.

Hand in hand, naked, they walked towards the bubbling water, lowered themselves gently down into it. They had viewed, touched, the epitome in atrocities; now it was time to cleanse themselves and indulge in the pleasures of the living flesh.

Stephanie moaned her delight aloud, marvelled at the length of time Donna was capable of remaining underwater. In the mirror, from all angles, Stephanie watched her legs threshing the water to a white foam, her back arching over the edge of the pool, her expression of ecstasy as she attained her peak of pleasure and started all over again.

Finally, Donna surfaced, had to help her shuddering companion up on to the side, positioned the trembling limbs how she wanted them, stood over her and indulged in voyeuristic delight.

It took Stephanie time to focus again. Her eyes travelled from the shapely ankles up to the dripping thighs, dwelled briefly in between them before passing on up the flat stomach to the perfectly proportioned breasts. Finally, she met those blue eyes and smiled her delight at everything that they had done together. Behind her, the water still frothed and bubbled as though echoing their orgasmic writhings.

‘Do you know how old I am?’ There was hesitancy, almost a fear, in the question, the fine features tautening as she waited for the reply.

Stephanie struggled to speak, thinking was not easy. ‘I haven’t … really thought about it.’

‘How old?’

‘You must be …’ Oh, God, she had read it somewhere, it has not been important lately. ‘I suppose … around forty.’

‘Fifty-one!’ Those full lips curled as though an agonizing pain has shot through her. ‘How old do you think I look?’

‘I …’ The slender figure blurred again; the wrinkles were gone, the neck was soft and slender, the breasts firm and young with their protruding nipples. ‘I guess you could knock twenty years off that?’

‘Seriously?’

‘I’ve never been more serious in my life.’

Donna Caryl relaxed visibly, her thighs opened up another inch or so as though commanding her lover to look again upon her moist, pink flesh. ‘I know you wouldn’t lie to me, I just had to hear you say it. Yes, I am young, and I shall always be young. That is what the Necromancers were promised in return for conquering the world. We shall never age. And neither will you, if you become one of us, and forsake others!’

There was a new intensity in Donna Caryl’s expression now, a mute pleading with the other. ‘Stay young with me, Stephanie, and it will always be like this. You and I together, here. The New Generation can have the world to themselves, to do as they please with it.’

Stephanie experienced a twinge of fear, scared that the other was mad, terrified if she wasn’t. She did not understand, neither was she going to ask.

‘Of course, you don’t understand,’ Donna seemed to read her thoughts, ‘and how could you possibly be expected to? I can’t tell you everything, suffice that this underground place was once a temple of the great Manitou, desecrated by a tribe of primitive redskins who, in the course of their obscene rites, succeeded in awakening the Evil One. They were the first disciples. Have you noticed the swarthiness of Joel Pass’s skin? It doesn’t matter if you haven’t.’

Something about the other’s tone had Stephanie believing, sincerity that defied logic. She just nodded.

‘We found this place during the days of our earlier success,’ Donna continued, ‘came upon it quite by chance. Tunnels and caverns, ideally suited for conversion to a hideaway. Some of the tunnels go on right under the desert, we haven’t explored them fully, for surely that is the domain of our Master. We built what you see here now, it has taken several years. But the Evil One was not dead, only slumbering, and one night he appeared before us. We were given a choice,’ she had gone deathly white at the memory, swayed precariously on the edge of the Jacuzzi so that Stephanie held her legs in case she fell. ‘Deadbeat was awful to hear, it drove us to the brink of insanity, we were cursed with it. But, in return for giving it to the peoples of the world, enslaving the young and destroying the old, we were promised eternal life. It was no false promise. Just look at me now if you doubt my word!’

Oh, God, Donna Caryl was surely the most beautiful woman in the whole world, youth had erased the ageing process, returned her to the peak of her pop-singing career in the early seventies. Lithe and sensuous, beginning to lower herself down on Stephanie in search of further, even greater, pleasures.

‘And so it shall be with you,’ Donna murmured as their lips brushed. ‘You shall be as you are now, always.’ She tensed, her expression changed, those full lips trembled. ‘But, as I said, there is a price to pay. But, as I discovered, the initiation is well worth it!’

Stephanie’s stomach knotted, her escalating sensations checked. She dared not enquire further.

‘Afterwards,’ Donna spoke quickly, skipped what lay between now and the future, ‘you will be one of us. You will sing with us, become a superstar. I will see to that. There are more concerts yet, our work is not finished, but the climax will be our greatest performance at a venue of which only I know at this stage, the pinnacle of Freedom where the New Generation will proclaim victory and the Old will concede defeat. After that they will need us no more, our work will be done, and our reward will be eternal life and everlasting love, greater even than it is now.’

Stephanie Insel had suddenly lost her appetite for love, her body had gone faint and her mind was numbed. She tried to convince herself that Donna Caryl was mad, that she had paid the price of a return to stardom with megalomania. That, at least, was credible. Her youthful body was not, it had impossibly defied the ravages of time.

Somehow Stephanie managed to feign everything that was expected of her.

Later, much later, she ate caviar and drank champagne from a gold goblet, still nauseated by that which she had seen and felt in the satanic crypt down below. She wondered whose bodies had been mutilated to provide those ghoulish effects and began to fear for her own safety. She managed to console herself with the prospect of superstardom, for there was nothing else left to her now.

Chapter Ten

There had been rioting in the Pace Park long before the disco at the Palace started.

The Whaley gang had clashed with the Nahas, which happened most weeks; it began with shouted abuse from opposite sides of the street, escalated to missile throwing, fruit from the stalls which had been tipped over in the melee. Pomegranates and overripe squash that burst on impact, did little harm to anybody they hit. Then stones and rubble. A youth lay on the sidewalk with a bleeding head. A sheriff’s patrol car passed by en route to Bellport; the officer gave little more than a cursory glance in the direction of the disturbance. The chief would not thank him for interfering. It would not do any good, anyway.

Knives and machetes were wielded, there was a brief encounter in the middle of the street, then the rival factions dispersed, left one of the Whaleys on the asphalt, blood pouring from a stab wound. The wounding would be avenged at the disco tonight, for sure.

An ambulance was summoned by a passer-by, principally because the injured youth was causing a traffic obstruction. Deputy Sheriff Vogel received a call in Bellport, turned back. He took his time, made sure that the ambulance arrived first. That way the casualty would be removed, all he had to do was file a report. No witnesses, no statements, the street traders made sure they didn’t see anything when there was a fight. Which made it nice and easy for everybody and life returned to normal within a quarter of an hour.

The victim died before he reached hospital. Shit, that made it a murder enquiry! The Sheriff would send a patrol in later. More paperwork, it wouldn’t go further than that. One day, Vogel thought, they might send the army in to clean the place up once and for all. But until the Deadbeat craze had died a natural death there would be neither time nor manpower available for an assignment on that scale.

Billy Dejesus had watched the skirmish from his folks’ apartment above the drugstore. He was eighteen, slight of build with greasy, dark hair. He was staying indoors today because he had stolen a new pair of jeans from the clothing store’s street display; by tomorrow the theft would have been forgotten. He might risk wearing them at the disco tonight. He needed a new shirt but that would have to wait until later in the week. Even in the Park you didn’t push your luck too far.

His mother was pregnant again, his father had gone out somewhere, probably to search for a beer. His girlfriend was pregnant too, and Frank Dejesus had told him to get the hell out of here and take her with him; two bawling kids in the same apartment would be too much for any law-abiding, self-respecting citizen to stand, even in the Park.

Billy might tag along with the Whaleys, they always looked after their own kind, they’d find a doss shed for him and Sharon if he played his cards right. His mother was asleep on the rugs in the corner, he switched his personal stereo on, hoped that the shushing noise wouldn’t wake her and start her complaining again. He sniggered to himself; Frank Dejesus thought the baby was his, he might even go on believing for years. But Billy knew different, because he’d been there when Jarl Amsel used to come round to screw Joseffe Dejesus whilst Frank was out looking for beer. But it wasn’t any of Billy’s business, he had his own problems.

Christ, he hated those Bellport jerks, they had made Pace Park what it was, turned it into a ghetto, used their power and money to manipulate the police to keep the town in poverty. But their day was coming. He began to rock to the beat that pounded his skull, his bare feet padding on the rough floorboards.

*  *  *

Billy Dejesus had it all worked out by the time he went down to the disco. The New Generation were going to rule the whole world, even the Park. The old had to die, and that included his folks. So, that way, he would have their apartment. At least, until something better came along.

Deadbeat shook the dilapidated clapboard building that served as a community hall, threatened to collapse it before the night was out. Something strange was going on, it took several minutes to realize it. The Whaleys and the Nahas occupied a far corner, shoved everybody else out of their way. And they weren’t fighting! Now that was really ominous.

Billy mingled with them, it wasn’t easy to hear what they were talking about over the music.

There was plenty of crack on offer but Billy couldn’t afford it tonight, all he had was fifty cents in the back pocket of his stolen jeans. With any luck somebody would give him a fix.

‘Here’s Billy,’ one of the Whaley brothers, wearing a ragged Amoco peaked cap, shouted.

‘You comin’ with us, Billy?’

Billy nodded, he would go wherever they were going because they might fix him up if he did; they wouldn’t be refused. There seemed to be some kind of truce in force, the killing had been forgotten. Whaley handed him a smoke and flicked a lighter for him. Now he would certainly join them.

‘Bellport,’ the big Whaley shouted in his ear, ‘that’s where we’re headed. All of us. We gotta couple o’ pumps.’

Billy’s guts churned, even with Deadbeat and crack he was scared. A brace of pump-action shotguns didn’t win a war on this scale. Bellport was a fortress, most of the inhabitants had guns of their own. The police would arrive in force at the first sign of trouble. It was crazy. But, the Nahas and the Whaleys were crazy.

Back in the crowd somebody was fighting. A girl’s nose was gushing blood, a tooth dangled from her split lip. Nobody took any notice.

‘We’ll hit ‘em hard and fast,’ Whaley said. ‘Like commandos. Get it?’

Everybody seemed to think it was a good idea.

‘That’s it, then, what are we waiting for?’

Billy fell into line as they filed back out through the door. Behind them Deadbeat was vibrating the summer night, shaking the building.

Blood on the ground.

Whose blood?

The thirty-strong raggle-taggle army marched out of East Patchogue in time to the beat as they heard it in their individual minds, an untidy column which smoked crack as they walked and frequently trod on the heels in front of them. Nahas and Whaley each had a shotgun partly hidden beneath their pseudo-leather studded jackets, barrels poking roadwards. Billy Dejesus brought up the rear. He could always turn back unnoticed if he decided to opt out. He didn’t like this one little bit, he was only doing it in the hope of getting a place for himself and Sharon, a grotty hovel where they could eat and sleep, and screw.

They branched out onto County Road 36, between Robinson Pond and Dunton Lake. The night was warm, there was little traffic and seabirds called out on the shoreline of Patchogue Bay. Nobody talked much.

Billy wished that his father and mother lived in Bellport. Not so that they could be filthy rich and live in a clapboard mansion but so that they could be shot along with everybody else there. They were to blame for what he was, they had bred him in the Park from which there was no escape.

The police had a roadblock stretched across County Road 36, a hundred metres east of the golf course. The column halted opposite Munsell Road, bunched when the searchlights hit them.

‘Turn around and head back the way you came!’ A loudhailer ordered them. ‘You’ve got thirty seconds.’

‘Fuck!’ Whaley said.

‘Fuck!’ Nahas repeated.

‘Whaddwedo?’ One of the younger Whaleys asked.

The older one eased the pump action down from under his jacket. It was loaded, he had five shells in his pocket. Guns made you feel big; crack even bigger. Deadbeat turned you into an invincible giant.

‘We give ‘em the fucking lot!’ He wheeled as he spoke, pumped three vivid flashes in the direction of the vehicles and riot-clad officers.

Nahas managed to get off just one shot before an answering fusillade spun him around, crumpled him in the road. Everybody was screaming; Billy Dejesus screamed with them.

They ran one way, then the other, like fear-maddened steers in a corral, lost their sense of direction. There was no more shooting, only beams of blinding light rounding them up, herding them. Now, piss off and don’t come back.

Billy’s foot kicked against something, almost threw him. He glanced down; without the police lights he would not have seen the twelve-gauge. He didn’t know whether it was Whaley’s or Nahas’; he didn’t care. He picked it up, ran with it.

Back down the road, safe in the half-darkness, he examined his latest acquisition. It was Nahas’ gun because there were still two shells in it. Whaley had fired his three rounds before they got him.

There was no pursuit, the police had a duty to protect those who paid their wages, a raid on the Park was something they might do when Deadbeat was dead and buried, everything was back to normal. In the meantime, they would shoot back if they were fired upon, they would not go looking for trouble.

The dawn was turning the sky grey over the Gardiners Bay when Billy Dejesus crept barefooted up the ramshackle wooden steps to his parents’ apartment. He still had the gun, a shell pumped into the breech. He stood listening outside the door until he heard the sound of snoring. Only then did he go inside.

*  *  *

Deputy Sheriff Vogel received the call just as he turned in for duty. That skirmish last night would be a bonus on his pay packet, he would have to make his sleep up some other time. He felt tired, exhausted, the morning was going to have been spent filing reports on the two shootings. Right now that would have to wait. Jeez, the last place he wanted to go was the Park again. He didn’t have any choice. The Sheriff wasn’t likely to volunteer, they were short on men so the deputy got the runaround. Fuck the Deadbeat, there was a spate of suicides now, kids who couldn’t take it, chose the easy way out. Suicides were no problem, homicides created plenty.

There was a triple murder out at the Park. The caller hadn’t given details, just the name and address. Dejesus, that was Christ Almighty funny at a time like this. Maybe the family had crucified themselves!

Vogel checked his gun, went out to his car.

His practiced eye recognized two murders and a suicide. If it was Frank Dejesus, then the autopsy would identify him. Death by shotgun blast, a charge of a BB had blown most of his neck away so that his head hung down on his torso. Joseffe had been blasted in the abdomen, a gaping hole that had spewed her intestines all over the pile of rugs which she used as a bed. If you looked close, you found traces of an embryo. Blood spattered all four walls.

Vogel studied the ceiling before he checked the third corpse. Arterial blood like a map of freeways and turnpikes; he knew that the kid had slashed his wrists before he even got around to looking at him.

Billy Dejesus was slumped in the sagging armchair, cut wrists crossed on his lap. Hey, there, look, see what I done! The pump action lay on the floor by his side, Vogel smelled the burned powder.

The youth was naked, he had not bathed for weeks. Across his chest, scrawled in his own blood, were five words. Vogel stooped to read them, had to take a letter at a time because the blood had run.

TO LIVE IS TO DIE

The deputy wrote in his notebook, went back downstairs to await the arrival of the death wagon.

That made four suicides to date, the ones that couldn’t stomach it. That was within the Long Island boundary. Multiply that by … arithmetic had never been his best subject at school. He let it go at that. Maybe this was how it was going to end for this so-called New Generation.

Their Deadbeat was turning on them. That way it solved a lot of problems. He leaned up against the doorpost, swatted half-heartedly at the flies that were trying to settle on him.

Chapter Eleven

Stephanie tried to tell herself that she wasn’t back down in that awful satanic temple; that it was all a nightmare and she would wake up to find Donna beside her in the four-poster bed. Donna was by her side. Kneeling in that dreadful circle in front of the fearsome altar.

They were all here, the entire group and many others as well. She turned her head slowly, saw them, teenagers mostly, confined to the background as though they had been allowed in here under sufferance. To watch.

And every single one of the occupants of this room, including herself, was stark-naked!

Stephanie shuddered, only partly because of the cold. The temperature was surely ten degrees lower than it had been on her visit. The dim lighting came from the candles, they were as black as the holders which supported them, the flames flickering, created shadows that became living, unearthly shapes.

There was a second crucifix above the altar, identical to the first, but larger and stronger. Inverted, of course. Life-sized. Death-sized.

The music, doubtless relayed from hidden speakers, wasn’t Deadbeat. The same kind of rhythm but slower. Like church music adapted to rock, the tempo reduced. It was … sinister. Like everybody and everything else here.

Heads were bowed, Stephanie sensed the atmosphere of dread. Even Donna was scared, she could feel the rock star trembling against her. A waft of cold air told her that the door behind them had opened; she heard it closed softly, then footsteps padded across the floor.

The newcomer was clad in robes, a cowl hid his face from view. He stood before the altar, sank to his knees, began to mumble words which Stephanie’s strained ears failed to catch. An incantation of some sort, it was mumbo-jumbo like everything else here. They were playing at black magic, pretending to communicate with the devil. Stephanie had read reports of such gatherings in the papers from time to time; it didn’t mean anything, it was all a silly game. Afterwards they would all go back upstairs and …

The priest rose to his feet, turned to face them. His features were still hidden. She checked the main members of the group again. There should have been five, including Donna Caryl. There were only four. So it was one of them. A process of elimination; she arrived at the answer within seconds. It was Joel Pass who stood before them, the carver of human bones, flayer of corpse skins.

Identification should have reassured her because it was no dreadful stranger. Instead, it had her wanting to scream.

‘Children of Deadbeat,’ his muffled words were scarcely recognizable as those of the group’s drummer. ‘We are gathered here tonight to pay homage to our Master, the Almighty One who has given us the strength to overthrow the world and rule it in his name. He has promised the New Generation eternal life. I have asked him, on your behalf, to accept another disciple. He has granted an initiation, but, in return, he demands a supreme sacrifice.’

Intakes of breath, gasps of terror, came from those lining the wall behind. Donna’s hand found Stephanie’s, squeezed it reassuringly. She whispered, ‘Don’t be afraid.’

Stephanie was very much afraid.

‘Bring forth the chosen one for the Master!’

Stephanie cringed as Vincent Carpentia and Kelvin Schumacher rose, came towards her. Their hands reached for her, gripped her bare shoulders. Donna patted her reassuringly. Go on, my dearest, then you’ll soon be back with me.

Stephanie could barely stand, when they knelt her before the cowled figure; she would have fallen had they not been supporting her. He reached out, uplifted her chin so that her eyes stared into his. His features were hidden in shadow, she saw only his eyes, twin orbs that seemed to flicker. It must have been a reflection of the candlelight.

‘Do you deny God?’

‘Yes.’ A wave of vertigo hit her, the black decor became streaked with crimson.

‘Do you swear to follow in the footsteps of the Master, do his bidding, whatever, and take the lives of fellow humans in his name?’

‘Yes.’ It was easy now, once you had denied God you had sunk to the very depths, anything else was merely a continuation of that rejection of Christ. Not that she would keep her vows, she tried to offer up a prayer that he might understand her predicament. Later she would pray hard in an attempt to absolve herself.

‘The breaking of the vows you have just taken is punishable by death!’

Oh, God, he knew what she was thinking, had used some kind of black telepathy. Or guesswork. She nodded, heard her teeth clicking like castanets. She was shaking as though with a fever. It was surely now colder than before.

‘We are gathered here to take communion with our Master. He has demanded a sacrifice, a life in return for a new disciple. Let us, his chosen ones, drink blood and eat flesh with the Unholy One!’

Stephanie thought that she fainted momentarily. She sagged in those strong, cold hands. Then the screaming jerked her back to awful consciousness. Behind her a girl was shrieking in terror; struggling frantically as she was dragged into the circle.

Stephanie saw, if her vocal chords had functioned then she would have screamed with that slender girl as her captors upturned her naked body, lifted her up on the upside-down cross.

They nailed her out full-stretched, crossed ankles uppermost, gushing blood as the pointed steel ripped flesh and gouged bone before it sank into the wood. Her hands became scarlet; her head hung, pale neck exposed. A dark leaden chalice was placed beneath it.

No!

Stephanie closed her eyes tightly. The scream was silenced. Then something was spurting, a sound that resembled a tap turned on to full pressure, a swishing of thick liquid that gurgled and bubbled.

‘Let us drink his blood!’

Stephanie was barely conscious, those hands were holding her jaw, she felt the cold metal prising her lips apart. She heaved, tried to reject the thick, warm fluid that tasted bitter, trickled its way down her protesting throat.

Her eyes flickered open for a second. She shut them again tightly, but it was too late. That which she had seen would be indelibly stamped on her tortured mind, waking and sleeping, until her dying day. For the bleeding figure on the crucifix still struggled feebly, the gashed throat sluggishly dribbled blood. The sacrificial victim still lived whilst the perpetrators drank her blood!

Stephanie groaned to herself, wondered how much her tortured brain could stand before it snapped.

‘Let us take flesh, that the Unholy One may eat!’

Oh, God, no!

Stephanie braced herself, anticipating a slicing of the still quivering body on the blasphemous crucifix, a revolting offering shoved into her mouth for her to masticate on. She would throw up, spew it out.

There was another movement from the rear of the room. But this time the expectant screams and struggles were not forthcoming. Instead, bare feet padded, passed where she knelt, walked willingly up on to the dais where the priest stood. Stephanie squinted through half-closed eyelids.

It was a young man, no older than twenty. The candlelight shone full on him, revealed his terror but he made no attempt to resist. He stepped forward, stood against a small table which was level with his thighs. His hands shook visibly as he laid his flaccid organ on its surface.

Something scintillated in the priest’s fingers, Stephanie saw that it wasn’t a knife. It was a triangular shield, fashioned from shiny metal. Deftly those same fingers pinched the foreskin, threaded it through a hole in the centre so that it expanded and flowered, shone pinkish, submitted with a kind of pride. It was pulled, stretched, made ready.

‘Be circumcised in the name of the Master!’

The knife was smaller, its blade barely two inches long, but it cut sharply and swiftly.

The victim, freed, stepped back, held himself and walked with an undisguised pride back across the circle. Stephanie heard the door open and close again. Obviously the male followers of Deadbeat gave of their flesh willingly, a kind of martyrdom which, even in her state of sheer terror, she admired.

It was then that she finally fainted.

Some time later she regained consciousness and found, to her relief, that she was back in the four-poster bed. Donna was lying by her side.

‘I’m proud of you, Stephanie. You’re a full disciple now, and tomorrow you will begin to audition with the Necromancers. Here,’ she reached something off a table by the bed, a necklace with gold chain, a pendant that showed starkly white in the subdued lighting. ‘I had it carved specially for you as a memento of tonight.’

Stephanie stared as the chain was draped over her head, the pendant came to rest above her small breasts. It was a miniature crucifix. Inverted. The figure on it was female, in every detail. She even recognized the tiny features, they were so perfectly produced.

She stiffened, nearly screamed. For the bone from which it had been fashioned was still warm.

Chapter Twelve

Stephanie was physically and mentally drained after her ordeal. For two whole days she remained in the luxurious bedroom, slept fitfully, awakened from her dozing by constant nightmares of that ritual. Once she thought she heard that unfortunate girl screaming, the shriek cut off just as it reached its peak. She lay listening, bit her lower lip until it bled. Blood was spurting, bubbling into the leaden chalice. She cried her relief aloud when she discovered that it was a tap in the basin which she had not turned off properly.

Donna came and went, frequently checked on her protégée, smiled her reassurance and told her ‘you’ll be fine in a couple of days. I was just the same after my initiation, but once it’s over you feel great. Nothing worthwhile is achieved easily.’

Stephanie didn’t feel great, she felt depressed, and her terror had not lessened. That poor girl had been … murdered! And by participating in the vile ceremony, Stephanie had become an accessory to murder. She trembled at the realization. Another thought troubled her, how many more initiations would there be, how many more human sacrifices?

‘There is something else I must ask you.’ Donna was strangely uneasy, a feeling that was transmitted to Stephanie. Her mentor had been holding something back, perhaps afraid to tell her. Oh, God, no! I can’t stand any more.

‘When I became the Master’s Chosen One,’ the rock star chose her words carefully, slipped an arm around Stephanie’s shoulders, ‘I pledged myself to him. In return for giving the world Deadbeat, establishing the New Generation, I pledged to bear a child, male or female, to be his spawn, his offspring to walk the earth. Unfortunately,’ her voice broke, her expression was anguished, ‘I must now accept that I cannot bear a child. I am barren. I have tried everything … there is no hope for me.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

‘Stephanie,’ those soft lips kissed her neck. Tenderly, and when she spoke again, Donna’s voice was a shaking whisper, ‘I want you to bear that child!’

Stephanie almost screamed, she would have torn herself from the other’s embrace and fled from the room had there been anywhere to run to. There wasn’t.

‘No, please!’

‘You must. For him. For me. It hurts me to ask you this, my love. Our love is so complete, so beautiful, that the very thought of you lying with a man is painful to me. But I had to do it and I must confess, the mating was not altogether unpleasant. They all tried, Kelvin, Vincent, Joel and Lawre. Many times. But I was proved to be barren, so that part of my relationship with them ended. Now, you must try. Tonight!’

Stephanie turned away so that the other might not see her expression, the fear and revulsion. At length she said, ‘I don’t want a baby, Donna. Not for anybody. Ever.’

‘Neither did I,’ Donna leaned over and kissed her again. ‘My maternal instincts are non-existent, always have been. But don’t worry, after the birth, the baby will be taken away, cared for. You can forget it then.’

Forget it! Mother in heaven, she didn’t understand!

‘Please, do it for me, for our love. It is a small price to pay for eternal life.’

Just lately there were a lot of small prices to pay, Stephanie thought. Human sacrifice, drinking the victim’s blood at a black mass, bearing children you didn’t want. How many more were there?

‘All right,’ Stephanie had no option. If she refused, they might rape her, she might be the next crucifixion victim.

‘Thank you,’ Donna reached across and pulled a gown over herself. ‘I’ll take you to them. But I don’t want to stay, it would be too hurtful for me.’

Stephanie tried to close her mind to what was happening, desperately attempted to switch off whilst her body did what was demanded of it. The male members of the group took turns with her, Lawre first. Then Joel. She kept her eyes closed, did not care which of them it was, counted as they came off her to be replaced with another. At least they were gentle, there was no hint of lust. She thought that they might be doing it because they had been commanded, not because they wanted to. It might be as distasteful to them as it was to her. Her own sensations were void, she lay there in the same position until it was all over. It was Joel Pass who escorted her back to Donna, squeezed her hand as he left her in what might have been an apology.

Donna comforted her, held her close. She did not mention the matings; they were over and done with.

‘Soon I want to begin auditioning you,’ she said at length. ‘You already have the necessary talent, the rest will come naturally. And when we begin the concerts again, you will be up there on stage with us, a new star for the fans to worship.’ Suddenly, for Stephanie, the prospect of superstardom was no longer appealing. She fell asleep thinking of Eddie Bannon, and hated herself for what she had done to him. In all probability, she would never even see him again.

Two days of auditioning followed. Stephanie was given her gear, black Levis with silver seams, calf-length leather boots to match. The leather jacket was studded with the emblems that she recognized as matching those strange signs in the satanic temple. A white T-shirt with the unmistakable logo of the Necromancers emblazoned on it, a skeleton with a noose around its neck. Perhaps one day the unknown figure might be condemned to a blasphemous fate, crucified on an upturned cross. She shuddered at the thought.

Thankfully, the music room had no bizarre decor, her fear was that she might be forced to sing in that vile crypt. Instead, it was conventional, with the door closed it might have been a recording studio in London, New York or Toronto. She was apprehensive, wondered how she would cope with Deadbeat in a participating role.

It wasn’t Deadbeat, the nearest they came to it was with some Bon Jovi numbers. Mostly they concentrated on the lighter stuff, some Status Quo. Donna asked her to sing a couple of Jennifer Rush songs, presumably to test the power of their neophyte’s voice.

Stephanie sweated, her heavy clothing clung damply to her lithe body, she felt exhausted, but she kept going. There was no respite, they broke briefly for a light lunch, continued until late afternoon. The second day was much the same. Strained as her vocal chords felt, her voice seemed to grow in strength.

‘I guess that’ll do,’ Donna gave her a hug. ‘You were great, any improvement will come with experience.’

Stephanie felt weak, drained. She could not have managed another number, but the others didn’t know that.

‘You’ll be in the next concert,’ Donna told her later that night, ‘but we don’t know for sure when that’ll be. A month perhaps, at the moment we’re best off the scene. Our followers seem to be coping well. Apart from a few.’

‘A few?’

‘Those who can’t handle it. They’re taking the easy way out. For themselves. I guess it was only to be expected.’

Stephanie felt sick. Guilty. Because she was part of it.

‘I want you to go back to your folks!’ The words hit Stephanie like a physical blow, a mixture of shock and relief. Escape from what lay within this place was being offered to her. Superstardom, the ultimate dream, was being snatched away just when …

‘Oh, only for a while,’ Donna laughed, kissed her. ‘I couldn’t bear to part with you for long, a week or two will be painful … A month, sheer agony. But it has to be.’

‘Why?’ Stephanie’s brain felt drugged, almost the same way the beat robbed her of logical thinking. There didn’t seem any logic in this.

‘A number of reasons,’ Donna held her close, kissed her. ‘For a start, if I was to return to New York, I’d be in the spotlight the whole time, just as the rest of the lads would. But we need a disciple there to monitor things, tune into the wavelength, if you see what I mean. You can’t rely on the media, they go for sensationalism to sell their news. I want you to find out how things are really going, if the New Generation is ready for the final overthrow of society. Our concert in September will be the climax to everything, we need to time it right. By then you should know if, if …’

‘If I’m pregnant?’

Donna squeezed Stephanie’s hand, kissed her.

‘Yes. As the Master promised, the world shall be the playground of eternal youth, and our creed shall be do as you will. The birth of your child will herald the coming of the Great One, his return to earth in human form. A triumphant homecoming, he will already have been revenged upon the so-called civilized peoples who once cast him down into hell. That has been our work, it is partly done already. He is well pleased with us. One final warning, though.’

Stephanie cringed inwardly. There had to be a snag, a proviso. ‘What’s that?’

‘You have given yourself to the disciples of Deadbeat, you have taken their unholy seed. On no account must you copulate with another during your absence from here, for to give birth to a child who is not the promised one would be an adulterous act against the Master himself. Not just yourself, but all would be punished. We could expect no mercy.’

Stephanie did not sleep that night, her thoughts were in anguished turmoil. Again she found herself thinking of Eddie Bannon, clutching at memories which suddenly became important to her. In her mind she saw him again, dazed and frightened, mud-streaked from his nightmarish experience on Liberty Beach.

He, too, was a victim of Deadbeat.

Chapter Thirteen

‘I’m damned well going to find out where she’s been these past three weeks!’ Marvin Insel’s initial relief at his daughter’s unexpected homecoming, just when he and Charlotte had resigned themselves to never hearing from her again, turned to anger.

‘Well, she won’t tell you, I know Stephanie well enough by now,’ Charlotte snapped, ‘and if you want her to go straight out the door back to wherever she’s been, you’re going the right way about it. If she decides to tell us, she will. If she decides not to, she won’t. It’s as simple as that.’

‘Christ, we don’t know what she’s been up to!’ He blustered, turned away to pour himself another whisky. His third in the space of an hour.

‘She certainly won’t tell us that!’ She thought she might cry again, if there were any tears left. ‘We just have to be grateful she’s back, and hope that she doesn’t go away again. We’re lucky, Marv, hundreds of parents in New York are still searching for their kids.’

Marvin sat down, hoped his wife didn’t notice that he was shaking. Relief hit you in a number of ways, didn’t let up in a hurry.

Stephanie had walked in the door at four o’clock that afternoon, dressed in the same clothes she had been wearing on the night she had disappeared. She looked as though she had not slept for forty-eight hours, probably hadn’t.

‘Hi!’ She said, just like she’d been down the road to the drugstore to fetch a Coke. ‘I’ll see you later.’

She had gone up to her room, they knew she was sleeping because she hadn’t put the stereo on. Charlotte had slumped on the couch, Marvin thought she had fainted, but if she had, it was only briefly. She had cried for an hour. He had reacted by phoning Captain Nadel.

‘She’s back!’ He got his exuberance out of his system in that one shout.

‘That’s great. I’ll amend the file.’

That was all, the bastard didn’t give a shit, would probably have preferred Stephanie to stay missing so he didn’t have to fuck about with computer files. That triggered off Marvin’s anger.

There were extended news bulletins, newsflashes, throughout the twenty-four hours of every day. Deadbeat had got its fangs into society, had bitten deep and was holding on. New York seemed the worst hit but that was probably because you knew every riot scene, had walked it or driven it at some time. The New Generation were holding their concerts in Central Park, kids who could neither play nor sing, rocking to the beat like they had got it right. Then, when their frenzy reached a peak, they went on the rampage.

They had inflicted considerable damage to the Helmsley Palace, the Park Lane Hotel and Trump Tower, society’s bastions in their crack-crazed minds. Only armed police reinforcements had prevented them from taking control of all three. The television cameras showed Fifth Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas littered with bullet-ravaged corpses. Charlotte had knelt close to the screen trying not to recognize her daughter amongst the slain.

A mob of several hundred strong had run riot in the Empire State Building; it had taken the police four hours to get them out; most of them were carried to the wagons, dead.

The statisticians worked it out that there was a suicide every two minutes throughout the States. Deadbeat ones, they didn’t count anybody over twenty.

‘Lemmings,’ Marvin had said, jumped whenever the phone beeped. ‘At this rate the cops won’t have a problem left in a week.’ Which had been the wrong thing to say in front of Charlotte.

The White House had declared a state of emergency which meant that you didn’t travel unless your journey was absolutely necessary. Places of entertainment had been closed down until further notice, a ten-till-six curfew had been imposed on all major cities, and armed guards travelled the subways and buses. Propaganda had it that law and order was winning the battle; almost everybody knew they were losing it, conceding ground every day. Some days were quieter than others, the city centre was almost back to normal at times. Unless you lived in Harlem or the Bronx you only saw spasmodic outbreaks or rioting.

‘I’ll leave it to you to talk to Stephanie, then,’ Marvin passed the buck on to Charlotte, eased his conscience and kept face.

The Insels did not see their daughter for two whole days. Then she turned up at the table for supper, still wearing those same jeans. Her complexion was pallid, her eyes pouched. Her arrival instigated a 10-minute embarrassed silence. For her parents. Stephanie did not seem aware of it.

‘Have you heard from the Bannons?’ She asked the question casually, almost as though she thought they might have been expecting it.

‘Er … no,’ Marvin stared at his soup. ‘We … er we haven’t exactly got around to phoning them.’

‘Why don’t you? Tonight.’

‘No reason. No reason at all. That’d be nice. But we thought that … that you hadn’t enjoyed your stay there and …’

‘It was great. Really I wouldn’t have come home except that … I had to.’

‘Oh, that’s fine, then.’ Charlotte wished that she didn’t have to go through the motions of eating. Stephanie had changed. Again. Not sullen, defiant this time, rather condescending, patronizing. It was worrying.

‘Maybe they’d like to come and stay?’

‘I’ll ask them,’ Marvin slurped his soup, ‘although I think that Arthur won’t want to come twice in a year. He has a farm to run.’

‘I’m sure Eddie would like to come. He doesn’t like working on the farm. His father is an abominable man when you get to know him.’ Previously she would have said “bastard”. Her niceties were disconcerting.

‘I’ll phone later,’ Marvin promised.

The awkward silence drifted back. Stephanie finished her dessert and took her coffee upstairs to her room. Marvin and Charlotte listened but there was no distant thumping of rock beat vibrating the upper storey.

Later Marvin went through into his office to call the Bannons.

‘Arthur and Mary will come,’ Marvin looked puzzled when he returned, ‘but it’s no-go where young Eddie is concerned.’

‘Oh!’ She did not try to hide her disappointment. ‘I was praying he would, for Stephanie’s sake.’

‘Maybe he’ll change his mind. I don’t know whether Arthur’s making him stay behind to mind the farm or whether the boy hasn’t forgotten that episode on Liberty. I’d love to know what really happened that day, there was more to it than him just falling off the wall into the mud. He was scared out of his mind. I wouldn’t be surprised if this Deadbeat nonsense had something to do with it, he was listening to it on the boat. It could’ve given him hallucinations. Christ, it’s driving kids out of their minds the world over!’

‘Maybe,’ she stared at the wall. ‘Did Mary say anything?’

‘She couldn’t very well with her male chauvinist pig of a husband standing right by her. But I sort of got the impression that they’re having problems with Eddie. She hinted that he’s become very much a loner, built himself a music room in one of the sheds and has taken to playing the bloody stuff as well as listening to it!’

*  *  *

Deadbeat thumped Eddie Bannon out of his nightmare, had him screaming to a crescendo and grabbing the light pull with both hands.

Oh, my God, Dad’s dead!

Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, after all.

It was. Not just the death, the manner of dying. Eddie had seen his father’s corpse face at the end of the dream, it has flopped over to stare at him with its empty sockets. Eddie had screamed when he saw how the weather-beaten flesh was starting to peel, coming away from the bone in strips. A toothless mouth, stringing old man’s phlegm down onto the rotting clothes.

That familiar stench as though Arthur Bannon had been dead a fortnight in mid-summer, crawling with maggots. Eddie yelled out loud that it wasn’t his father, that it was old Matheson, the window-cleaner fallen off his ladder again.

It wasn’t Matheson because the skull hadn’t been mashed to pulp.

The hobo on the beach, then? But the hobo had been Matheson, now he was Arthur Bannon. Eddie couldn’t get it straight in his numbed brain, how could all three be one and come out as his father?

He sat up in bed, tried to work it all out. Every corpse from now on would have that decomposing face, however he dreamed it. Matheson has died, everybody said it was Matheson. Eddie had seen for himself that it wasn’t.

But his father was still alive so it was all in the subconscious. It had happened in the States because Eddie had recognized the clapboard houses lining the road. He didn’t remember how or why Arthur Bannon had died, just that he had. Violently.

But they were back in England now so the nightmare was all nonsense. They … oh, Jesus, his parents were going back to America, the Insels had phoned last night and invited them!

Please don’t go or else Dad’ll die! I’ve wanted him dead, but I don’t now. Not like that!

Eddie panicked, almost went down the attic stairs to check his parents were all right. He didn’t, but he left the light on for the rest of the night.

‘I wish you’d come with us to America,’ Mary spoke wistfully, drained her teacup. Arthur had gone out half an hour ago, work couldn’t wait where her husband was concerned. ‘There’s no reason why you can’t go. Frank will be able to manage. Goodness, the Insels surely won’t ever pay for us to go again. And I’m sure Stephanie will be disappointed if you don’t go.’

Eddie had been tense throughout breakfast, hardly eaten anything. It was no good saying anything to Dad, he would react in the only way he knew how, bacon and egg all up the wall.

‘Mum, I … don’t want you and Dad to go. Especially Dad!’

Mary Bannon stared at her son in disbelief. ‘Eddie! You’re being selfish, you don’t want to go so you’re trying to stop us going. Well, your father and I are certainly going.’

‘No!’ It came out as a shriek.

She jumped, knocked her empty cup over. ‘Eddie, there’s something troubling you, I’ve known for weeks, ever since we came back in April. Is it something to do with what happened on Liberty Island? Or Stephanie? She didn’t have to leave like she did the last time.’

‘No … yes, well in a way,’ he stammered, could not meet her gaze. ‘But now it’s worse.

Mum … if Dad goes to America, he’ll die. He’ll be killed. I’m not sure how, but I know that he will!’

‘This is ridiculous!’ The boy was going out of his mind, it was listening to all this rock music that had done it. ‘Look, Eddie, the best thing you can do is to come with us, it’ll be kind of therapy. You know what they do when racing drivers have a crash, they get them back behind the wheel as soon as possible. Otherwise they lose their nerve. D’you understand what I’m trying to say?’

‘I’m not going!’ Eddie was adamant. ‘No way.’

She sighed heavily. There was something else that was worrying her, all these teenage suicides that were happening daily, kids caught up in this dreadful cult who couldn’t stand it any longer and were taking the easy way out. Eddie’s nerves were shot, you only had to look at him to see that. Already she was half-thinking of trying to talk her husband out of this trip. The farm was a haven from everything that was happening in the outside world, Eddie’s Deadbeat was the mole in the camp. If they could destroy that, then perhaps they would be safe. He spent too much time out in that music room of his, it was having a frightening effect on him.

‘How do you know your father’s going to be killed if he goes to America?’ She watched him carefully, looked for a reaction.

‘I dreamed it,’ he replied.

‘Oh, come, come, Eddie, dreams can be interpreted in any way you want to. I dreamed once that my parents had been killed and they’re still alive.’

‘This is different,’ he was white and trembling, ‘I …’ he checked his reply, it was no good trying to tell her about Mr Matheson because he would have to explain all about that terrifying apparition on Liberty Island. She would pour scorn on both. ‘I just know he’ll die if he goes.’

‘You’d better go on and help your father and Frank with that fencing,’ she began collecting the dirty crockery. ‘Try not to think too much about it. We’ll sort something out, I’m sure.’ Tonight she would speak to her husband. Not because she believed that there was the remotest chance of Eddie’s nightmare becoming reality, but because she was afraid for her son. This rock craze had got to him, like drug addiction. He needed watching. Carefully.

Broaching any subject was not easy where Arthur Bannon was concerned. She was amazed at his enthusiasm to embark upon a return trip to the States; the first holiday had amazed her, the prospect of a second was almost unbelievable. Prior to that it had been nineteen years since they had last been away, before Eddie had been born. Arthur had always made it clear that holidays were unnecessary, nobody needed to go away from home, it was just an excuse for laziness. And now he was actually relishing the prospect. And she had to try and talk him out of it; not because of Eddie’s nightmare, but because she was afraid to leave her son on his own.

Arthur’s routine seldom varied once his day’s work was finished. Mary was expected to guess the exact time of his homecoming, have the meal ready to set before him as soon as he came through to the living room from washing his hands. He seldom conversed, ate voraciously, noisily, slurped tea between mouthfuls. A belch was a sign of appreciation. When he had finished, he slouched across to his favourite armchair and watched television until bedtime at ten-thirty. If he had a preference for a particular programme, then Mary was expected to forsake the channel she was watching without complaint. He would have his own way, always had, so arguing was futile.

Tonight she let him finish his meal, broaching any subject was risking abuse, at the very least. Eddie had gone outside to his music room. She was nervous, half decided to put it off until tomorrow. But there was no time, they were due to fly out next week. It had to be now or never.

‘Arthur?’ She gave one of her habitual, nervous coughs.

‘What?’ He was up from the table slopping his way across to the television in frayed slippers.

‘Arthur … do … d’you think it’s wise us going to the States?’

‘Whadder you mean?’ He chose a channel at random, came in midway through a riot scene. Some cars were blazing, something exploded. The setting looked too exotic for Britain.

‘I mean …’ she was unable to say what she meant, ‘I don’t think it’s wise to leave Eddie here on his own.’

‘What the bloody hell are you talkin’ about?’ His features suffused to a deeper shade. ‘It’s his bleedin’ fault he’s not coming with us. Anyway, Frank’ll be around.’ His attention was focused on the television screen.

‘Frank goes home at five-thirty, six at the latest.’

Arthur Bannon wasn’t listening. The cameras had switched to a suicide. A brief shot of the hanging body, the victim was a teenager, probably Asian by his skin colouring. The hanging skeleton logo was filmed close-up.

‘Arthur!’

‘Now what?’

‘Arthur, I don’t want to leave Eddie here on his own!’ That anonymous suicide had given her the courage she needed, her son’s life was in the balance.

‘Like I said, that’s up to him. Now, just let me get on watching this.’

‘That could happen to our own son!’ She almost screamed at him.

For a moment she thought that he had not heard. Slowly, his head turned, his lips curled to a sneer. ‘Well, if he will keep soaking himself in that rubbish, that’s his lookout. And if you’re that worried, then you’d better stop and hold his bloody hand for him until I get back!’

‘All right,’ Mary’s features had gone white, her fists clenched, for a moment she almost smashed one of them into her husband’s leering face, ‘I’ll stay behind with Eddie. You can go on your own.’

She had anticipated an outburst of uncontrolled rage. There was none. He did not follow her through to the kitchen, grab her arm and shout. Instead, he stayed where he was in front of the television until bedtime.

She thought the argument might merely have been postponed until bedtime. In bed, Arthur made no mention of it, did not even sulk the way he often did.

Nothing more was said. At all. Mary presumed that at some time when she was not around her husband must have phoned the airport and cancelled her booking, because three days later just his ticket arrived by post. He had taken her at her word, in his own way was trying to punish her for her suggestion.

‘I’m not going,’ she told Eddie a few days later, ‘but your father is. There’s no point in trying to stop him.’

Eddie nodded. On the morning of Arthur Bannon’s departure, Mary and Eddie watched him drive the Metro down the farm track towards the road. Eddie knew that his father would not be returning alive. Somehow, Mary had got round to thinking that, too, had conditioned herself to it. In all probability it was all in her mind, she was picking up her son’s vibes.

Now she didn’t care if her husband died because she had realized why that night he had not attempted to change her mind about accompanying him. It had come as a shock at first, she had been washing the dishes at the time and she had cried. But she would not cry when they phoned her with the news, she was certain of that.

Because Arthur did not want her along with him, she had presented him with the excuse for which he was looking, to leave her behind.

Eddie was her only worry. She would watch him carefully.

Chapter Fourteen

Arthur Bannon’s flight was delayed by two hours; he fumed at the airline desk, phoned the Insels to let them know.

‘Don’t you worry, Arthur,’ Marvin was reassuring, ‘I’ll check the times before setting out. Have a good trip.’

Arthur didn’t have a good trip. The 737 was packed to capacity, the meal was poor and he found it difficult to sleep. It was just before midnight when they landed at JFK. At least, this time, it wasn’t raining, it was a balmy night and the customs delay was minimal.

‘Good to see you again, Arthur,’ Marvin shook his hand. ‘A pity Mary couldn’t make it.’

‘She’s worrying herself sick about the boy.’ Arthur climbed into the station wagon. ‘Scared to let him out of her sight. He’ll grow up a real cissy, and all this music isn’t helping.’

‘I think she’s wise to be worried,’ Marvin eased into the exit road. He told him about Stephanie, how she’d been gone three weeks. ‘I was kinda hoping Eddie would come along, I know Stephanie was looking forward to seeing him again. I guess it’s that business on Liberty that scared the hell out of him.’ The whole idea of inviting the Bannons again so soon was to get Eddie and Stephanie together, maybe that way they could have worked something out for each other. Having Arthur around on his own for a week would be something of a pain in the ass, Marvin thought. And it was unlikely to resolve anything.

Marvin was worried about Stephanie, he wasn’t concentrating on what his companion was saying, driving at a steady 60 mph and not thinking too much about that, either. In many ways he and Charlotte should have been grateful for the way their daughter had changed. Whereas, prior to her disappearance, she had been rebellious, at times abusive, now she was withdrawn. Sometimes she would appear at the table, often she was absent, shut away in her room. She played her rock music but not continually like she used to; now they heard her own voice singing in time with the record or tape.

Okay, most kids sang or mimed to their records, there was nothing strange in that. Except that now Stephanie’s voice was almost as good as those of her idols. There was no mistaking her talent, and in this era of a rock craze through which anarchy, rioting and suicide swept the world, to a parent it was the most frightening feature of all, your offspring threatening to rise to superstardom on a blood-drenched stage.

She wouldn’t though, out of millions of aspiring rock and pop stars, you could count on the fingers of one hand the number that made it to the top. Marvin couldn’t come to terms with Deadbeat, never would be able to. Fashions came and went, teenagers shaved their heads, died their hair; punks, heavy metal, the latest craze trying to out-shock the one that had gone before. But Deadbeat was different, insidious; it had crept in through the back door, found its own niche. Studded jackets, a backward step one would think, but these Necromancers had slipped their Deadbeat in amongst the rest and swept the board. If they had a secret formula, it wasn’t easy to spot. They brainwashed the youngsters, turned them against their parents, sent them on the rampage against society. Like the devil himself was at the helm. Marvin’s skin prickled.

Arthur was still talking. Marvin had no idea what his companion had been saying these past ten minutes. It didn’t matter, the guy was a bore.

‘Blast!’ Marvin’s foot touched the brake pedal, came off it again.

‘What’s the matter?’ Arthur turned, startled.

‘Nothing really, I wasn’t concentrating, too busy listening to you.’ For Christ’s sake, shut up, just for five minutes. ‘I should’ve stuck to Route 27. I’ve cut off, wasn’t thinking.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Not really, distance-wise, it’s shorter.’ Except that it takes us through East Patchogue Park, Pace Park. And the Park wasn’t a nice place to drive through after dark, especially these days. Marvin remembered how a bunch of Puerto Ricans had tried to march on Bellport; they hadn’t got far, but that was because the police had been tipped off. It would probably be quiet tonight, you kept your foot down hard and didn’t stop for anybody. Nobody would ask too many questions if you ran down a Parker.

‘What Eddie needs is a bloody good thrashing!’ Arthur was tired after the flight, he reacted in the only way he knew how. He wished that his scapegoat was within arm’s reach.

‘I don’t think that’ll solve anything,’ Marvin failed to disguise his contempt but his companion wouldn’t have noticed anyway. ‘The whole problem has to be solved at the roots. This Necromancers group are the perpetrators, they carry the can for everything our kids do. Nothing new in that, look how our generation were influenced by the likes of the Beatles.’

‘They didn’t make any impression on me.’

‘No, I guess they didn’t,’ the sign up ahead said East Patchogue. ‘This ageing star of the Necromancers has virtually become a goddess in her own right. She’s in her forties but the kids think she’s the best thing since Eve came out of the Garden of Eden. She’s done her homework, none of this studded leather jacket gear for her, she has to be unique. She is, as the whole world knows to its cost.’ He was reminded of Stephanie’s singing, the way her voice came over, just like Donna Caryl’s, prickled the back of your neck. It was a frightening thought. But it wasn’t just his imagination. And Charlotte’s. They couldn’t both be wrong.

‘They should bloody shoot her,’ Arthur muttered.

‘Who?’

‘That slag. There’s kids getting shot, hanging themselves, so who’d miss her? One bullet in the right place would do it.’

‘Believe it or not, this is a democracy.’

‘And that’s the bloody trouble, Marv. If you want a democracy then you have to deal with anybody who threatens it. Shoot em.’

They were approaching the outskirts of Pace Park. Marvin found himself checking that the window was fully wound up, petrol and temperature gauge at a safe reading. They couldn’t risk a breakdown.

There seemed to be a lot of people about, groups of youths lounging on the sidewalks, one bunch throwing at another across the width of the road. Something splattered on the driver’s door; it was probably an overripe peach.

‘Don’t you have any bloody police around here?’ Arthur asked.

‘Not in Pace Park. Except when there’s a murder. They leave them to sort themselves out.’

‘A kind of ghetto, huh?’

‘That’s right. There must be a disco on, probably in the community hall. The locals call it the Palace.’

Even with the station wagon’s windows fully wound, the occupants could hear the beat of rock music at full blast. They could hear the words loud and clear.

The time is nigh

The old will die

‘That should be banned for a start,’ Arthur shifted in his seat. ‘Words likely to cause a breach of the peace.’

Marvin detected a slight shudder of the steering wheel, it made his hands tingle. He told himself that the wheels needed balancing but he knew that it was Deadbeat that was doing it. The way it throbbed his temples, started off a headache, when Stephanie had her system turned up too loud. It affected everything, everybody; there was no escape from it. For once Arthur spoke the truth, it should be banned.

Marvin glanced in his rear view mirror; there were no vehicles following. Neither were there any to be seen on the road ahead. Everybody was giving Pace Park a wide berth tonight. Except himself. It was the fault of this prick beside him, distracting him so that he had missed the expressway.

Shit! There were some kids in the road, youngsters playing a game of football with a melon which they had pinched from one of the stalls. Seven or eight of them, spaced over both lanes. He blared his klaxon. They looked ‘round but didn’t move.

His foot eased up off the throttle, went back down again. Maybe he could weave through them, if he slowed then they would think they could stop him. He flicked the headlights on to full beam, picked a gap and pulled over into the centre lane.

Figures moved, ran; gaudily-clad spectres of the night, running, spreading out. They stood with arms at full stretch, fingertips touching, laughing crazily. Dancing like grotesque string puppets.

Deadbeat

‘Fucking hell!’ Marvin was aware how his palms sweated on the juddering steering wheel. His instinct was to take his foot off the accelerator, stamp on the brake pedal. He didn’t.

‘Bloody fools!’ Arthur Bannon gasped, clutched at the hand rest.

‘I’m not stopping for anybody!’ Marvin yelled as if he had to hear himself say what he was going to do. Otherwise he might have braked. ‘It’s them or us!’

Even then he expected the line to break, their obstructers to leap away, a game of chicken in which he had out-bluffed them.

They did not move. Too late he realized that they were going to stand their ground. Perhaps they expected him to brake, slew sideways. Probably they didn’t. Kids who hanged themselves were not too bothered about being run down by a car.

The boy dead centre of the headlights could not have been more than twelve, his undernourished body only partly hidden by a torn red and green poncho. Laughing.

He was still laughing when Marvin hit him at 85. The emaciated figure was airborne, hurling itself at the windscreen, a vampire of the night hours determined to smash itself through the toughened glass in order to reach its intended victims.

The windshield exploded into a kaleidoscope of opaqueness but did not shatter. Marvin heard the boy bounce on the roof, a springy metallic sound. After that he probably pulped his skull on the asphalt behind. Which was fine, nobody would cry over him. They were through the human barrier, would probably have made it had it not been for the loss of vision; in those few seconds after impact, Marvin lost his sense of direction. The road was straight and wide, he could have slowed, punched the glass out. Instead, he panicked. That could have been due to the pounding beat that drummed him, temporarily robbed him of his instinctive reactions.

Hear it in the night

Hold on tight

Carried along

By the beat and the song

He swerved in case there might have been an obstacle in the path of the hurtling car; there wasn’t. He yielded to the temptation to brake, squealed the tyres, went into a skid.

Arthur was yelling that they were going to hit the sidewalk because he could see it through his side window. Marvin wrenched the wheels out of the skid instead of going with it; a tyre exploded with the force of a July 4th magnum cracker.

The kerb reared up the front of the station wagon, sent it plunging, its grill snapping the front of the wooden shanty to matchwood, radiator steam hissing its anger. This time the windscreen shattered, the seatbelts jerked Marvin and Arthur, threw them back with whiplash force, left them staring up into the night sky, their shocked brains picking up the beat where it had left off.

The sound of feet came from all sides. Fast bare footfalls thudding to the rhythm, beating it out with their fists on the sides of the dented car. The doors screeched as they were forcibly dragged open. Hands reached inside; knives were used to cut through the webbing belts.

Marvin landed face downwards in the road, grazed his face and tasted blood.

Blood on the ground

His arms were pinioned behind his back, his trousers tore as he was dragged up into a kneeling position.

‘You fucker!’ A practised booted foot found his testicles in unerring aim, had him screaming, writhing as they pulled him upright and held him in position for the big youth with the baseball bat.

The younger Whaley shattered both Marvin’s kneecaps at one blow, grinned his delight at his achievement. He had never managed a two-in-one before. They hoisted their victim as high as they could reach, strained to hold the slumped figure whose legs dangled at impossible angles, slithers of scarlet bone protruded through the cloth. Whaley swung again, tried to snap it but only succeeded in bending it.

Three of the others were holding Arthur Bannon. His florid complexion was white, his muttered obscenities had turned to pleas. Both the Whaleys and the Nahas liked to hear their victims plead for mercy.

Nahas had spent the whole week making the knife which he now held. Virgin steel, honed until it was sharper than a razor, ornate handle fashioned into the shape of a crucifix; the figure on it was skeletal. He dared not even test the sharpness of the blade with his thumb.

Everybody was rocking, even those holding Arthur so that they threatened to pull him apart.

‘Hold him still!’

They slowed to a halt, limbs shaking with the strain. From the Palace the beat grew louder, stronger.

Hold on tight

They held as tight as they could. Waited.

Arthur tried to wrest himself free but a generation of peasant strength was no match for these beat-charged thugs. Nahas stepped close to the trembling farmer, unzipped himself. Arthur Bannon cried out as though the stream of urine scalded him, he wanted to faint but its stench was like ammonia, stung his nostrils and watered his eyes.

Strong fingers prised his mouth open, thick lips spat into it. He vomited down his shirt-front.

Nahas knew that the others were becoming impatient. When the beat got to you, you didn’t hang around. His homemade knife kept time. Deadbeat had taken over, was working him up to what he had to do. Even had he wished, there was no way he could have stopped himself. He was its slave, its robot programmed to mutilate; to kill. When it was ready.

You can hear it

You can feel it

The knife was a conductor, picking up the vibrations, transmitting them to his body. He swayed from the waist upwards, his head butted Arthur’s face, broke the nose with a loud crack. The blade was extended, surprisingly steady. It pricked with its point, the victim shrieked.

There’s no way you can escape it

Nahas was snipping the buttons as expertly as he might have done with a pair of scissors, pinging them into the road, slicing through clothing, hardly scratching the flesh beneath. Baring the body, lusting for the white paunch.

The time is nigh

The strike; one upwards slash that began from the groin, travelled a deep scarlet path right up to the neck. Twisted once; was withdrawn to unplug a spout of crimson blood.

The Nahas and the Whaleys stood back, watched Arthur Bannon bleed to death. The genitals hung by a sinew, the gut was opened deep so that the intestines unravelled and spilled out, entwined around the kicking feet.

Blood on the ground

Again.

They held him until he died, and then deposited him in the gutter. His wallet and his watch had long since been removed. Heady with the beat and the smell of blood, they rocked all the way back to the Palace, forgot all about Marvin Insel who still lay in the road, smashed but still alive.

Deputy Sheriff Vogel received the call on Hagerman Highway at 1:40 am. He made it to the Park by 1:45. There was nobody on the streets except the two victims. The Palace shook dangerously with Deadbeat.

He thought Marvin Insel might make it if the ambulance did not take too long to arrive. The other guy was a trash bag job.

This was the fifth death call tonight. Two had been suicides. Across at the hall a fight had started, somebody was screaming. They increased the tempo in an effort to drown it. After daylight the police would send in a wagon to collect the corpses. Right now he would let them get on with it.

The ambulance arrived within ten minutes. Marvin Insel stood a fifty-fifty chance of survival.

Chapter Fifteen

Mary Bannon only cried because Charlotte was crying. Together they wept on the phone for half an hour. Over Marvin. In a way, Arthur’s death came as a relief because Mary accepted it as inevitable long before the news came at 7:30 that sunny, summer morning. She had not even needed to brace herself for it. She had awoken in the knowledge that her husband was dead and it had nothing to do with Eddie’s nightmare the week before.

Eddie was unmoved when she went outside and told him. He just nodded from the top of the trailer where he was unloading straw bales.

‘They’re flying his body home on Wednesday,’ her tone said that she wished they didn’t have to, that they could have disposed of it in some way in America.

‘How’s Mr. Insel?’ Eddie threw another bale down.

‘Both legs broken, facial injuries, but he’ll mend. In time. I guess we’ll have to have a talk, Eddie, see how we’re going to cope. But first we have to get the funeral over.’

She turned back towards the house. She wasn’t going up to bed to grieve, or anything like that. She had a batch of scones and a cake to bake for the church coffee morning tomorrow. She would carry on as normal. She wondered about Eddie, whether a reaction would set in later. She would watch him carefully, just in case.

After her son and their workman had finished baling the cornfield behind the house, she heard Eddie in his music room.

He had left the door open so that the beat infiltrated the house. She could not help listening to it, and after a time she realized how much she had hated Arthur these past few years. She knew how Eddie felt, too. It was something to do with the music. She closed the kitchen door in an attempt to shut it out, but it vibrated and echoed in her brain for a long time afterwards.

She found herself stirring the cake mix in the bowl with an illogical anger, the morass of flour and butter was her scapegoat. For Arthur. God, look what he had done! To herself, to Eddie. He had made a recluse of the boy, deprived him of all the things which other children enjoyed. No parties because kids in the house were a nuisance and parties cost money. Don’t let him go to other folks’ parties because you’ll be expected to reciprocate. The music room had been a big concession. Because it got Eddie out of the house, out of the way. Except that it had backfired. On himself, on the whole world. Mary experienced a desire to rock, remembered Bill Haley and the Comets, Rock Around the Clock. Deadbeat had got to her, like one of those catchy tunes that you couldn’t get out of your mind until it nearly drove you crazy. Deadbeat was driving everybody mad. It throbbed her body, her brain. She stirred faster and faster.

Then the bowl cracked, split open, spilled its contents onto the scrubbed pine table.

‘Fucking hell!’ She shouted, snapped the wooden spoon in two in her rage.

She had never said that before in her life; it frightened her. She stared at the mess, saw how it trickled in all directions, dripped steadily onto the quarried floor. That was how Arthur must have looked when his attackers had finished with him. She laughed an uncontrollable shriek.

‘Mum!’ Eddie stood in the doorway, stared at his mother in disbelief. His features were shiny with sweat, it could have been the heat. He was shaking uncontrollably.

‘It’s all right,’ she scarcely recognized her own voice, fought to get herself under control. ‘The mixing bowl broke.’ She hoped that he had not heard her swear, she could never look him in the face again if he had. She didn’t know if he had turned his music off; if he had, then it still throbbed in her brain.

‘Oh, I see,’ he pretended to pass it off as a routine domestic accident, which made it easier for both of them. ‘I’m going to help Frank with the pigs.’

‘Good,’ she tried to smile, felt her lips trembling. ‘You do that, Eddie. Life has to go on as before,’ No, that wasn’t quite right, neither of them wanted it like it used to be. ‘We still have a farm to run. Later we’ll have to sit down and talk things over.’ That wouldn’t be easy.

*  *  *

Frank Hughes was in his early fifties, short and stocky, had lost all his teeth a decade ago but still managed to clench an aluminium-stemmed pipe firmly between his gums. Occasionally he stuffed the bowl with strong shag tobacco and went through a ritual of lighting it. It invariably went out but he did not seem to notice.

He always dressed the same, summer or winter, a brown smock fastened around the waist with a length of binder string, a checked cap pulled firmly down to cover a shock of iron grey hair, leather boots that had split with age and wear. A bachelor, his widowed mother had died two years ago and he continued to live in their cottage on the outskirts of the village two miles away. He had worked for the Bannons since he’d left school. For Arthur and his father before him. Arthur’s death spelled the end of an era for Frank; maybe Mary would keep the farm on, certainly Eddie wouldn’t want it. If it was sold then his own future was bleak; he knew nothing except from farm labouring and it was a dying trade with the trend towards production cut-backs, conservation, and farmland being put to alternative schemes.

Frank had accepted his boss for what he was, neither liked nor disliked him. It was a job, it put food on the table, paid the rent and enabled him to enjoy a nightly drink at the Barley Mow. Apart from that, he asked nothing more of life.

Now, for the first time in his life he was uneasy. This newfangled music was to blame for the current state of the world. He had watched the rioting scenes on the television behind the bar in the pub; they had not disturbed him unduly at first because they were remote, divorced from this part of the country, were happening in alien places of which he had only heard. He had never travelled, wasn’t likely to, had no wish to. Then Eddie had brought it all here. He blamed the boy; there had been a disco in the village hall, they played it there. It had ended in a fight, the police had been called to break it up.

Now the “noise” was even getting to himself, affecting the animals too.

The sheep were bunched in a corner of the field, bleating, disturbed for no apparent reason when they should have been grazing peacefully. The pigs in the sty were squealing, milling around. Because they had heard that bloody music! Eddie had left the door of his shed open, played his records, tapes, whatever, at full blast. Frank supposed that it was because it was too hot in there. He didn’t like it one little bit, the beat brought bad luck in just the same way as when the Hamptons up at the big house had bought a peacock. Within a year Mr Hampton had died of cancer and their playboy son had been killed in his MG.

And another thing, it was downright disrespectful of Eddie to put his music on when his father had just been killed. In his own mind, Frank Hughes blamed the boy for Arthur’s death, just like Eddie had murdered him himself. It was as though a bad moon had risen, spread death and evil in places where previously there had been only rural tranquillity.

*  *  *

Eddie returned to his music room once the day’s work was finished. His mother was busy clearing out some of his father’s belongings, there were already three bags of clothing destined for the church’s bring-and-buy. She had made no move towards the “talk” she had hinted at earlier; that would probably come about tomorrow or the day after. He didn’t want to take on responsibility for the full running of the farm. If she wanted to remain here, then he would continue to work for her. For a while, anyhow.

He adjusted the spotlight, focused it on the huge Necromancers posters with Donna Caryl in the foreground, dimmed the bulb until he achieved the effect he sought. She was beautiful, the subdued lighting gave her a lifelike appearance. That dress, its subtle flesh colour created an impression of … he caught his breath, nakedness! He switched on the stereo, tonight he wanted to rock, not play his saxophone.

The beat hit him right away, threw him back, jerked him forward. Every muscle, every nerve was throbbing, thrilling to the electrifying, captivating sound. Louder and louder, it encompassed him in an aura of frenzy, the walls and floor vibrated, tingled his body. Began to arouse him.

At first, he thought it was Stephanie who rocked with him, a shapely nymph in the shadows, coming for him, flitting back every time he reached out for her. Only when her eyes met his did he see that it was Donna, had come alive and left the Necromancers on the wall in two dimension. Seeing him, willing him to join her in a breathtaking version of Deadbeat such as he had never experienced hitherto.

Her clothes were gone, he saw her in full nudity, nipples so hard that they threatened to spike him every time she came towards him; she arched her back, legs wide, let him see between, then closed them tantalizingly. Laughing, teasing, urging him to join her just as Stephanie had tempted him that last night in Bellport.

You can hear it

You can feel it

He fought to pull his damp T-shirt over his head, struggled and felt the material rip. His jeans were clinging wetly to his legs, he almost overbalanced trying to peel them off. Then, he was naked just as Donna Caryl was, letting her feast her hungry eyes on him just as he had feasted his on her. Laughing together, reaching out, touching; springing away. Rocking, simulating their thoughts, jerking their thighs and then smoothing their fingers down each other’s shiny bodies.

You’ll know it’s right

To love all night

It didn’t matter how she had got here, only that she was here. Deadbeat was driving them together, her arms came around him, pulled him close. The beat was doing it all for them; they let it. There was no let-up, their bodies were joined, trembling and shuddering, rocking in unison to an even greater frenzy. Breathless, seeming to float in the heavy atmosphere, holding on whilst they still had the strength.

She was taking him with her, back across the floor to where the group were still chained to their glossy pull-out, still and lifeless around the gaping hole which their lead singer had occupied.

No, please don’t go back!

Eddie tried to hold her but he had not the strength. Her smooth arms extricated themselves from his, she slid off him. Now her face was in shadow and he could not be sure that it was her. It might have been Stephanie all along, her dark hair dyed blonde, playing a cruel trick on him. But it didn’t matter if it was Stephanie, did it?

It wasn’t, because Donna was back on the laminate poster, motionless, he thought she was clothed again but it was difficult to be certain. Reaching out for her; he touched her hand, felt the wall behind it.

The record was finished but the beat went on inside him, trembled his spent body. He sank to the floor, groped for his cast off clothing, pulled them on to his slippery body. Oh, God, it had been beautiful while it lasted, spellbinding in its orgasmic fury. It was almost as though he had left his body, just as she had left her glossy image, that their joining together had been some astral miracle that had allowed them to partake in bodily pleasures.

He had not the strength to play it again. To have done so would have destroyed that which had gone before, she would mock him for his impotency. He stood up shakily, found the light switch and plunged the room into darkness. The far wall had a kind of luminous glow about it, an indecipherable pattern where Donna Caryl was pinned to the poster board, alive and waiting until he was ready for her again. She would still be here tomorrow, he did not doubt that, relished their union and despised himself for his physical weakness.

When he entered the house the telephone was ringing. His mother answered it.

It was Stephanie calling.

Chapter Sixteen

Eddie had not spoken to Stephanie, his mother had done all the talking, maybe had not even realized that her son was standing in the kitchen listening.

‘Well, yes, of course you’d be welcome,’ Mary sounded surprised at Stephanie’s request to fly over. ‘The funeral’s on Wednesday. It’s very nice of you to want to be there. I’m sure Eddie will be over the moon. How’s your father? Are you sure your mother doesn’t mind you coming?’

Marvin was still in intensive care, they had discovered that a broken rib had punctured a lung. His bones would take time to mend. Charlotte had suggested that Stephanie came over to represent the Insels at the funeral.

‘You’ll never guess …’ Mary’s expression changed when she saw Eddie come into the hall. ‘Eddie, whatever’s the matter with you? You look dreadful!’

He had to lean on the doorpost to support himself, his T-shirt and jeans were saturated, his shoulders bowed with exhaustion.

‘I guess I’m tired, Mum.’

She went to him, held him as she used to do when he was small. ‘Oh, Eddie, it’s been a dreadful day for both of us.’

He experienced an urge to push her away. No, Mother, it’s been a wonderful day. Somebody has carved up that bastard of a father and husband for us. And I’ve just fucked Donna Caryl. You can’t get much better than that in one day. Instead, he whispered, ‘I’m okay. Really, I am. It was hot in the music room. I think I’ll go straight to bed.’

‘Stephanie’s coming over,’ she said, ‘that was her on the phone just now. The Insels want to be represented at the funeral. Charlotte can’t come whilst Marvin’s in hospital but she thought the break would do Stephanie good. It’ll be nice to have her here again.’

‘Yes, it’ll be great,’ he murmured, and recalled how for an instant tonight he had likened her to Donna. But, right now, he was too tired even to think of that.

*  *  *

Stephanie had dressed in black for the funeral. Black leather gear studded with strange silver emblems. Calf-length boots to match, her features starkly white against her dark attire. Mary was embarrassed to the point of uneasiness, but at least Stephanie had fastened her jacket to cover up that T-shirt with its blasphemous logo.

Eddie wore some dark cords with a matching jacket. His mother consoled herself in the knowledge that funerals no longer demanded formal, sombre attire. Some of the locals had turned up in jeans!

Nobody wept, it created an air of unreality. The vicar glanced at the family pew, perhaps he guessed that the semblance of mourning was being enacted for the sake of respectability. Arthur Bannon, and his father before him, had both been renowned for their male chauvinism and frequent rages.

The service was over in twenty minutes, the burial lasted barely five. Eddie found himself trying to visualize what his father’s remains looked like inside that polished oak coffin. All carved up, perhaps in several bloody pieces, shroud stained scarlet. He suppressed an urge to snigger. Arthur Bannon had met his match in the inhabitants of Pace Park, all right.

Stephanie was strangely subdued. Eddie presumed it was because of the funeral atmosphere. She was almost formal in her manner towards him. In fact, he almost believed that his memories of that April night were no more than erotic fantasies. She was changed, even more so than she had been during her brief visit a few weeks ago. A kind of superiority that was not flaunted but was, in its own way, frightening. Like a latent power being held in check; you sensed it, dreaded lest it was unleashed.

He did not invite her to the music room that evening, his mother might have objected to a blatant show of disrespect for the dead, even though the recently departed was Arthur Bannon.

Towards dusk he went into the yard to feed the pigs. They were quarrelsome, leaped up at the walls of the sty as though they were trying to get to him. Cleopatra, the Tamworth sow, stood in the far corner, watched him with her small eyes. There was no mistaking her malevolence. It made him uneasy, usually she was docile, almost a pet rather than farm livestock. He told himself that she was probably demonstrating her protective instincts because of her litter, even though the five piglets were almost weaned. And the sheep were still huddled in a corner of the field, too. Like Frank said last week, the animals sensed that something was wrong.

He started, he had not heard Stephanie come up behind him. She had not changed out of her rock gear, her boots were flecked with dust.

‘Sorry if I startled you,’ her voice was husky, her smile just a faint movement of her lips, ‘guess it’s no good my lying and saying I’m sorry about your father, is it?’

‘No,’ he replied, ‘because I’m not sorry. I knew he would die if he went to America.’

She nodded. ‘I knew it, too. I didn’t know how he would die, though. Only that he would. Like there will be other deaths.’ She turned, looked back towards the farmhouse, let her gaze rest on it.

Eddie’s scalp prickled, he felt suddenly sick. Behind him the pigs were snorting and squealing their rage.

*  *  *

Mary could not remember the last time Frank Hughes had failed to turn up for work. If there had been another time then it was probably in Arthur’s father’s day. Their workman was more reliable than the alarm clock; if you overslept, then you were awoken promptly at 7:10am by Frank cycling into the yard, and the dogs barking at his arrival. Patch always barked at Frank, he barked at everybody. This morning he did not bark, and that was her first intimation that something was not as it should have been.

‘Frank hasn’t turned up,’ she told Eddie when he came downstairs at 7:30am. ‘I hope he’s all right.’

‘Frank’s always all right,’ he did not sound convincing. ‘Maybe he’s had a puncture. Or …’ There was no alternative suggestion to hand. Eddie frowned. Sod it, if Frank had to be ill once in his lifetime, he would go and bloody choose today to be absent! It was a relatively quiet time of the year now that the harvest was finished and the youth had planned to spend as much as possible of the day with Stephanie. Still. Frank might just be late, there was plenty of time left yet.

‘He’s not here,’ Mary moved to the kitchen window, looked out. Eddie was finishing the last slice of toast; she would let Stephanie sleep in as late as she wanted. The poor girl was undoubtedly still jet-lagged.

‘If he was coming today, he would have been here by now. Maybe it’s a reaction to the funeral.’

Eddie almost said “bollocks!” Frank is glad that Arthur was dead, just as everybody else is. He couldn’t be ill, he never was. ‘Perhaps I’d better pop down to the village and see,’ he offered.

Frank did not have a phone, there was no way he could let them know.

‘One of us can go later,’ she began washing the dishes. ‘First, though, we’d better see to the stock. You go and look around the sheep. I’ll feed the pigs. And if he isn’t here by then, we’ll go and see what’s the matter.’

Eddie went out through the side gate, followed the track that led up to the steep field behind the house. He could see the sheep from here, all forty-two of them bunched in the apex below the spinney, bleating restlessly. Stupid bastards! He thought about going back, they were all right, just acting strangely. All the same, he’d better go on up and see if he could find out what the problem was.

Deadbeat started up inside his head. It couldn’t be the music that was frightening the sheep, that was just too ridiculous. He hoped it wasn’t one of those big cats that sometimes showed up in the hills, a menagerie escapee, made the news for a few days and then was never seen again. That wasn’t impossible, just improbable. More likely it was just the incessant heat. Perhaps he ought to move them into the upper field on the other side of the wood where they would have some shade.

He might just do that. Tomorrow.

*  *  *

‘Come on then, get your breakfast …’ Mary’s voice died away, she lowered the bucket of pigswill to the ground, stared in dismay over the wall of the sty. ‘Now, what’s the matter with you lot?’

Cleopatra lay in one corner, stretched out, eyes closed. The litter were in the opposite corner, huddled as though they were sleeping. Only the steady rise and fall of their bodies told Mary that they weren’t dead. Yet. But there was something drastically amiss, usually they were squealing and grunting for their food the moment they heard her coming across the yard.

‘Oh, Lord!’ Mary’s shaking fingers fumbled with the latch on the gate, another improvisation of Frank’s that might have been fine for their workman but only served to make life difficult for everybody else. She had to use all her strength to prise it free.

There was a sinking feeling in her stomach as she stood in the entrance surveying the pigs. They were undoubtedly ill. Very ill. Some kind of virus, perhaps, or even poisoning. She would have to call the vet immediately. She turned away, checked. She had better examine them first, at least look at the symptoms. Mr Markham always wanted to know the problem before he set out.

‘You poor porkers,’ she advanced on the big sow. ‘What on earth’s the matter? Have you been eating something you shouldn’t?’

Cleopatra’s capacious stomach rumbled. It looked like it was poisoning, after all. Mary stroked the soft, sandy body gently. An eye opened, stared up at her.

The expression in that eye had Mary catching her breath, snatching her fingers away. She expected self-pity, even pain, to be reflected in that tiny orb.

Instead, there was sheer malevolence. The Ultimate in pig evil.

Cleopatra’s jaws snapped, missed Mary’s fingers by inches. The beast snorted in anger. And in that awful moment of realization, Mary heard the piglets squeal their rage, come at her in a rush.

She screamed as the stampede hit her, flung her face downwards into a morass of excrement. Something seized her ankle, she felt the bone snap, almost blacked out. The animals were all over her; pawing, snuffling. Biting, tearing at her flesh. She struggled as they began dragging her to and fro, rooting beneath her clothes in their voracious attempts to expose the bare flesh for which they hungered.

She hit out in panic, her fists beating futile tattoo on solid flesh and bone, tried to kick them away but her feet were held by tusks that ground and crunched. In her writhings she glimpsed those milling, attacking, reddish-brown bodies streaked with blood. Her blood.

The pain was unbearable, there was a scarlet haze before her eyes, darkening rapidly. She tensed herself for one final scream before she blacked out, prayed that Eddie would hear her.

Mary never made that scream because Cleopatra tore it from her throat before it reached her bloodied lips.

*  *  *

When Eddie came down from the sheep field there was no sign of his mother. He saw that the Metro and the pickup were still parked outside the implements shed, looked in the house for her. She wasn’t downstairs. He called upstairs for her.

‘Good morning, Eddie,’ Stephanie appeared in the bathroom door, her dark hair matted, a bath towel draped around her.

‘Hi!’ He caught his breath. ‘I … have you seen Mother, by any chance?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ she smiled, ‘I’ve only just finished bathing. Why, is anything wrong?’

‘No-oo,’ he was aware of his own uncertainty, that familiar sense of foreboding. ‘It’s just that Frank hasn’t turned up for work and I thought maybe she’d gone down to the village to see if he was okay, but the vehicles are still in the yard.’

‘Perhaps she’s walked down.’

Like the presence of a marauding big cat, it was an improbability, not altogether an impossibility. Mother never walked when she could ride. ‘I’ll just go and check the yard again.’

‘Eddie?’

‘What?’

Her eyes found his, and even at this early hour, with Frank and his mother inexplicably missing, he felt her power of arousement. ‘Are we going to have some music today?’

‘Sure,’ his skin prickled, there was a pleasant sensation in the lower half of his body. ‘I’ll just check first, though.’

Fuck it, the bloody pigs had got out! The sty gate was open, they had rolled the slop pail into the yard. He didn’t look any closer because they most certainly would not be in their enclosure. Doubtless his mother had fed them but had not latched the gate securely.

He heard them in the orchard, went and checked them from the hedge side. They were all there. They would stop there all day, they loved the orchard. He would leave them there until later, a bit of fresh ground would do them good. His mother must have walked down to the village in search of Frank Hughes after all.

He found Stephanie in the music room; the stereo was already playing Deadbeat. And for two mind-blowing hours Donna Caryl came out of the poster again.

*  *  *

Frank Hughes was found hanging from a set of ladders in his lean-to tool shed later that morning. His milk money was left in a coffee jar just inside the door on Thursdays. The milkman was in the act of counting the coins when he spied a pair of dangling feet.

He ran all the way to the phone box opposite the church and dialled 999.

The Panda car pulled into the farmyard just after two o’clock. There appeared to be nobody around so the young shirt-sleeved officer went on a tour of the outbuildings.

The pigsty gate was open so he looked inside. There was blood splashed up the walls, a pool congealing amidst the churned up filth. Nothing else.

He presumed that the Bannons had been slaughtering their pigs, had probably taken the beasts into town for sale or jointing. In which case he would look back later. Routine, really, just to enquire if they knew of any reason why their hired labourer might have taken his own life.

There was no urgency. He might even leave it until tomorrow.

PART TWO
THE ANCESTORS

Chapter Seventeen

There had been a memorial service for Mary Bannon in the village church a fortnight ago, the day after Frank Hughes’ funeral. Tomorrow Eddie was flying back to Bellport with Stephanie.

Cleopatra and her litter had been slaughtered; Mary’s remains had been found in their intestines and in their droppings in the orchard. A funeral was out of the question, at some future date a suitable inscription would be added to Arthur’s headstone.

An inquest had decided that Frank had taken his own life whilst of unsound mind. Loneliness and depression had been instrumental factors; there was nothing to connect his death with a teenage suicide in the village a week previously. Tommy Evason had been discovered hanging in his bedroom with his tape recorder still pounding out Deadbeat.

Eddie had sent all the farm livestock to market. Even Patch had difficulty in rounding up the sheep, one had broken through the hedge and was still somewhere in the big wood. As far as Eddie was concerned, it could stay there. Patch had been found a home at one of the neighbouring farms, and all that remained now were the farm implements and the farm itself. In due course both would be auctioned, but that might be a year hence. There was nothing to keep Eddie here in the meantime.

‘You’d best stay with my family until everything is sorted out,’ Stephanie had suggested after the church service. ‘You can’t stay here on your own, Eddie.’

He could. And he wouldn’t be alone because he had Donna Caryl. They could do what they liked doing best, every day, every night. America was a terrifying prospect.

‘I’ll have to stay here,’ he averted his eyes from hers, ‘There will be things to do.’

She did not reply. She took his hand, led him across to the music room. Some time later, much later, when his strength and his willpower were completely sapped, he agreed to return to Bellport with her.

That same night he smelled that putrefying odour again, its nauseousness creeping into his nostrils whilst he slept, stirring him uneasily. A moment of stark terror on waking, snatching for the light pull, catching it at the second panic-stricken attempt. In those few seconds he glimpsed the old man over by the window, a hunched silhouette that masticated with toothless gums and dribbled phlegm. Then the stark artificial light destroyed it.

He glanced down at Stephanie. She slept on, totally unaware.

*  *  *

The journey was like a rerun of a film Eddie had seen before. He knew that there would be a delay at Manchester Airport. This time they couldn’t use the snow on the runway at Gatwick as an excuse, they blamed it on an air traffic control work to rule. Which resulted in a shuttle to Heathrow, the New York flight from there being delayed so that the half-empty 737 could be filled.

Eddie almost expected to find his parents seated beside him. Déjà vu. But there was only Stephanie listening to her personal stereo.

Charlotte Insel was waiting for them at JFK just after midnight. It was raining, a fine drizzle. Everything was the same, nothing had changed.

Until they walked out to the station wagon. That was when Eddie Bannon’s terror hit a peak.

The evil came at him out of misty darkness, a vibrant force, swirling shadows; fetid breath from stinking, rotting lips.

It was waiting for him to return, had lured him back to destroy him just as it had destroyed his parents.

No, please!

‘Eddie, are you all right?’ There was concern in Charlotte Insel’s voice as she held the door open for him.

‘He’s all right,’ Stephanie spoke from the interior, her slender body hunched in a corner of the back seat. ‘He’s tired. Like me. He’ll be okay.’

Eddie slid on to the seat, the upholstery was cold, hostile. Like everything else here.

Charlotte drove home in silence, ensured that she took the route which avoided passing through Pace Park. In the distance Eddie thought he could hear Deadbeat. It was probably in his own mind. It had manipulated him, brought him back here for some frightening inexplicable reason. It had enslaved every teenager in the States, it didn’t need him.

He knew that it did, that he was somehow a cog in the fate which it had determined for him. There was no way he could escape, Stephanie had been sent to bring him back to where it had all begun.

The swamp gave off its own humid heat, clouds of mosquitoes hovering over the pools of brackish water. Something dived from beneath an overhanging tree, made a loud splash, stirred the mud as it disappeared into the depths.

‘That was a snapping turtle,’ Stephanie said. ‘There seem to be more than usual about this year. They’ve taken a lot of ducklings.’

He felt a pang of pity; sentiment was one of the reasons why he could not commit himself to a life on the farm. Lambs were sweet, you fell in love with them but they grew into sheep. Sheep had to become roast lamb if you were to make a living. He could not find it in himself to hate the pigs for what they had done to his mother, if he could have reprieved them, he would have done so. Living was all about dying.

‘They’re vicious,’ he said. Stephanie was behind him, she had changed her rock gear for jeans and a faded blue shirt. He liked her better that way.

‘Everything’s vicious, we’re all predators in our own way,’ she spoke dreamily, almost apologetically. ‘Dad will be out of hospital in a fortnight, so Mother says. He was lucky. I’m sorry about your father, Eddie.’ She wasn’t, nobody was. ‘Your mother, too.’

‘I think you knew she was going to die,’ he said.

Stephanie was silent for a moment, looked down at her sandaled feet. ‘Yes, I knew she would. Everybody has to die sometime. I didn’t think it would be so quick, though.’

‘It’s Deadbeat,’ he watched her carefully. ‘It killed my parents, our workman. It almost killed your father, too. Like you say, he was lucky. Have all the older generation got to die?’

‘I don’t know,’ she smiled sadly, it seemed. ‘The New Generation are going to rule the world, but I don’t see why everybody over thirty or so should have to die. Provided they accept us, of course, and don’t try to fight us.’

He shivered in spite of the balmy atmosphere. ‘You don’t want your own parents to die, do you?’

‘No, of course not. I think my father was spared because of me. Indirectly. Don’t ask me to explain, please. I just think that the one who controls our destiny saved him because of what I am and what I have to do. He’ll be as good as new in a year, broken bones mended. We already have a new station wagon, the insurance paid out. It was a warning.’

‘You came to England deliberately to bring me back to America, didn’t you?’ He saw how she pursed her lips, licked them nervously.

‘Yes, Eddie. I did it because I wanted you, not for any other reason.’ He sensed that she was holding something back from him. ‘I wanted you to come back with me the first time but … a lot went wrong.’

‘It’s something to do with what happened to me on Liberty Island, isn’t it?’

‘No. Please don’t say that, Eddie.’ Her eyes were glistening in the shafted sunlight through the dense undergrowth.

‘What happened that day, Stephanie?’

She started, seemed to recoil from him. ‘I … I don’t really know, only what you told me. Alright,’ she had started to tremble. ‘I don’t know for sure, I am only guessing. Liberty Island was once an ancient Indian burial ground in prehistoric times. The Canarsie tribe lived on it. It’s all in the guide book, you can read it for yourself. I think that the old man you saw was a spirit, one of the long dead Indians. They were robbed of their land, even their graveyard was submerged beneath a foreign statue, a symbol of freedom but they had long lost theirs.’

‘That tourist fell from the balcony and was killed as a result?’

‘Like I said, Eddie. I’m only guessing.’

‘And it’s all because of Deadbeat. The beat not only spreads death, it also raises the dead?’

‘I … don’t … know.’

‘You tricked me, used me for your own purposes, and I’m scared to even think what they might be!’ For the first time ever he felt anger towards her, blamed her for his mother’s death, for Frank’s. But not his father’s.

‘No, no! Eddie, that’s not true. Oh, Eddie. I need you more than I’ve ever needed anybody in my life!’ She was on the verge of tears, was fighting them. ‘Eddie, there’s something I have to tell you. Nobody else knows, and I don’t want them to.’

‘What’s that?’ He was sceptical. Afraid, too.

‘Oh, Eddie …’ Stephanie’s hand went to her mouth as if to stifle the words. ‘Eddie … I’m … I’m pregnant!’

It was as though he had been dealt a kick in the groin, cramped his stomach. He felt instantly sick, an illogical urge to turn and flee. He remembered that last night in April, how the beat had seduced him. As it had since. It had trapped him in its clutches, the Necromancers had sent one of their disciples to ensnare him. I’m with child, Eddie, and you can’t leave me now. You’re stuck with me, whether you like it or not. You wouldn’t leave me in the lurch, would you?

But for Christ’s sake, why me?

He tried to say something but the words would not come. Then she was in his arms, her face pressed against his chest, unable to hold back those tears any longer. He let her cry, felt himself shaking with her as though they both rocked to Deadbeat.

You’ll know it’s right To love all night

‘Eddie?’ Her white face surfaced, her makeup was streaked where it had run with the tears. ‘Eddie, I didn’t want it to turn out like this, I promise you. But. Like I said, I need you. I need you more than you can ever guess. Will you stick with me, help me to see it through, and hope that everything will come out right for us, no matter what happens to anybody else?’

He nodded, found her upturned lips and kissed her. And as they embraced he thought that he felt something move inside her just as Deadbeat started up again in his pounding head.

Chapter Eighteen

Eddie knew that he would always remember those three idyllic days following his arrival on Long Island. It seemed that Stephanie had shed herself of a huge burden after she confided her pregnancy in him, purged herself with her tears and from now on everything was going to be all right.

She did not invite him into her room, not once did he hear the throb of Deadbeat from behind her closed door. The beat had even ceased to vibrate within his own mind. Temporarily, of course. He knew it was only a lull.

Cloudless blue skies and blazing sunshine had the effect of making recent events seem years away. Bellport was a haven of tranquillity, a refuge from the rest of the world. He and Stephanie walked down to the beach, sat and watched the Atlantic rollers for hours on end. They didn’t talk much, everything that had to be said had been said.

She made no further mention of the baby she was expecting. Of course, her parents would have to be told, doubtless she was timing her announcement for when her father returned from hospital. Eddie dreaded that moment. He would be expected to marry Stephanie, it was an exciting thought. Perhaps their child would be the means by which they could break the hold that Deadbeat had over them, and they could embark upon a more conventional lifestyle.

‘I’m going to town to see your father this evening,’ Charlotte announced when they joined her in the conservatory for afternoon tea. Afternoon tea was a ritual in the Insel household, served promptly at 4:30. Tea and cakes, intended to carry through until dinner at eight. ‘You can both come with me if you wish.’

‘Perhaps tomorrow,’ Eddie found Stephanie’s polite refusal on his behalf a little disconcerting, as if she had already made plans for the evening. Maybe she just wanted to rest up.

‘That’s fine,’ Charlotte smiled, she appreciated the intimacy of her husband’s private hospital ward without even family intrusion on occasions. ‘Doubtless your father has already begun the running of his business from his hospital bed. I shall insist that tomorrow evening there are no filo-faxes or phones within reach.’

They all laughed. Shortly afterwards they heard the station wagon leaving. Eddie remained in the conservatory watching a duck on the lawn with three ducklings; doubtless the snapping turtles had preyed on the rest of the brood. Stephanie had gone up to her room.

Some time later Stephanie reappeared and Eddie was surprised to see that she wore her black rock gear, the jacket hanging open to reveal that sinister Necromancers’ logo on her T-shirt. She smiled and for some reason it had his skin prickling.

‘We’re going out tonight,’ she stepped close, kissed him.

He did not ask where, just fell into step with her down the driveway. His brain was already beginning to reverberate with an only too familiar rhythm.

The Palace had been spilling out rockers since long before dark. The carnival had begun earlier in the day, a jamboree of drunkenness that had packed the streets of Pace Park, would probably last for most of the following day; good natured for the first few hours with just isolated fighting.

Neither the Whaleys nor the Nahas were to be seen, they did not concern themselves with family festivities. They would emerge after darkness, vampires of violence, each faction hungry for the other’s blood. The earlier truce forgotten.

For both sides, tonight would be the final showdown.

Eddie and Stephanie walked from Bellport to East Patchogue. She walked a step ahead, he had the impression that he was commanded to follow, there was no hint of this being an evening stroll by two people in love. She carried his baby but that was all. Tonight he was here to do her bidding, her slave.

He had no idea where they were heading until he saw the sign, slowed his pace, experienced a sense of dread. Oh, God, no! My father was murdered here!

‘What’s the matter?’ She turned impatiently.

‘This is where …’

‘Where your father was killed and mine was beaten up,’ her expression was impassive. ‘That’s all in the past.’

She began walking again and he trudged after her. Now he could hear the music, carnival sing-songs, Deadbeat in the background like the jungle drums of some fierce tribe preparing for war.

Crowds thronged the streets; gaudy costumes, sideshows, people were sitting drinking at tables on the sidewalks. Old and young together.

The time is nigh

The old will die

Stephanie had to be crazy to come to Pace Park. Everybody avoided it even in normal times. Yet nobody so much as glanced in their direction, they had blended into the background. Which Arthur Bannon and Marvin Insel had failed to do.

‘That’s the Palace,’ Stephanie caught Eddie’s arm, pointed across the street to where the large, rickety wooden building seemed to vibrate as though earth tremors shook it. ‘We don’t stand a chance of getting inside,’ she had to shout in his ear to make herself heard.

Several hundred people clamoured outside the community hall, pushed and being pushed back. Somebody screamed, fell to the ground. The bouncers were wielding batons, enforcing their own crowd capacity rules.

Stephanie seemed to know where she was going, it was all that Eddie could do to keep up with her as she threaded her way through the throng outside. His greatest fear was that he might lose her.

A few minutes later she was nowhere in sight, the gap through which she pushed had closed behind her. Some youths shoved him back as he tried to prise it open. One pulled a knife. Eddie backed off, almost panicked. He would never find Stephanie now.

Nobody took any notice of him if he didn’t try to push past them; act like everybody else and you became one of them. He had no distinguishing features, nothing that made him different from them, that way he was reasonably safe. He wandered one way, then another, let the flow of bodies take him wherever they were going because one direction was as good as another.

He had abandoned all hope of finding Stephanie. If only he could find his way back to the Expressway, he could walk the few miles to Bellport. Sometime later Stephanie was bound to return home. He didn’t like leaving her in the Park, particularly as she was pregnant. He would keep on looking but if he found his way out of here during the course of his search then he would go back to the Insels.

A gang of youths were fighting. One of them staggered away, his grubby white sweatshirt turning crimson. He staggered, fell. The others closed in on him. Eddie followed the line that was giving the skirmish a wide berth.

The music was hammering at his skull, both inside and out, as if it was trying to split it open. Surely he was too far from the Palace now for its deafening beat to hit him that hard. Unless, of course, he had gone round in a circle, was back whence he had started.

No, the environment was different. As far as he could see in the flickering, multi-coloured lighting, the shanty streets had converged on an area of open ground, a rubble-strewn square maybe an acre in size. In the centre a crude platform had been erected out of the debris of some houses that had been demolished by one of last winter’s hurricane-force gales. The boards sagged under the weight of a group and their instruments, shadowy silhouettes who played and rocked oblivious of the danger. Eddie saw how the stage swayed on precarious supports, how it tilted, threatened to collapse.

A second-rate local band, probably who sought to compete with the main billing in the Palace. The amplification was up to full blast, they were trying to confine their rivals to the precincts of the community centre. If you could not gain admission to the Palace, then you came here. Outdoors, they could accommodate a larger audience.

Their lead singer had a powerful voice, Eddie felt like she had singled him out even if she could not see him in the crowd. Hi, there, Eddie, just you stay awhile and listen to me.

You can hear it, you can feel it

There’s no way you can escape it

It wasn’t the words, nor the beat, that had Eddie starting to push his way through the crowd. It was the voice itself; it might have been a recording of a Deadbeat tape but he knew it wasn’t. For the first few seconds it had fooled his numbed brain into thinking that it was Donna Caryl singing.

Suddenly he knew, without any doubt, that it was Stephanie Insel up there on that ramshackle stage!

A makeshift spotlight on a nearby telegraph pole focused on her and he saw her in detail. Her features were corpse white against the blackness of her gear, she was working herself up into a frenzy as she spat words out with terrifying viciousness. All around her, the crowd began to rock, skulls clicked as they banged together. Shouting. Chanting.

Blood on the ground

There’s only one sound

DEADBEAT

There was no chance of reaching Stephanie. Eddie felt himself borne along as the human tide gathered force, foamed. People fell, screamed as they were trodden, fanned out. Rocking crazily.

Suddenly the vibrant night was split with hideous cries, war whoops that might have come from some band of wild, marauding Indians. Everybody was panicking, trying to escape from something that cut swathes through the masses.

Eddie ducked, used the youth in front of him as a shield, felt the other slump in his clinging arms. The iridescence glinted on burnished, naked bodies, features that were twisted into malevolent masks by the brain-pounding beat, a nightmarish army that attacked with machetes and knives, wielded crude clubs with rusted nails that split and gouged any skull within reach.

Eddie’s limp human protector took a second blow, he felt it jar his own body, sensed warm blood on his face and prayed it wasn’t his own. From opposite sides of the tract of waste ground they came, rival factions surging, crazed to do battle with each other, felling any who stood between themselves and the foe which they had hated for a generation. For the Whaleys and the Nahas, this was their Armageddon, by sunrise there would only be one gang ruling Pace Park.

Eddie found himself up against some flimsy board fencing, clambered over it. He seemed to be in a backyard of some kind, a shadowy area adjacent to a darkened building that stank of urine. He crouched down, wondered why nobody had joined him in this place of refuge. Out there they were still screaming and killing, the sickening thud of axe blades splitting skulls, limbs hanging partly severed, the death cries now the chorus to Deadbeat.

The group still played on as if deliberately whipping the hatred, the fury, to a climax. Stephanie’s voice, now barely recognizable over a faulty microphone, screamed

Blood on the ground

There’s only one sound

DEADBEAT

Eddie smelled death, it was almost tangible, the sultry night heavy with its sickly sweetness. He cowered every time somebody rubbed up against the other side of the fence, threatened to demolish it. But nobody climbed over to hide with him.

The battle raged for perhaps an hour, an incessant medley of screams and curses to the tempo of Deadbeat. Eddie peered through a gap in the frail woodwork, but all he saw were rushing, milling bodies. It seemed that others appeared out of the darkness to take the place of the fallen. If you lived in the Park, you supported one or the other of the two gangs, hoped that choice would be the stronger. When the pendulum swung, you changed sides. It was a way of life. And death. There were no neutrals.

Eddie knelt and vomited, remembered what they had done to his father and Marvin Insel. And thousands of others. He would meet the same fate if they discovered him because Deadbeat was indiscriminate in its frenzy to rule mankind. It would sacrifice a multitude of the New Generation in its bid to annihilate the Old.

The streets were deserted. Litter rustled in the soft night wind, an occasional body sprawled on the sidewalks; they might just have been drunks. The Park slept or cowered in its hovels and filthy apartments. Tomorrow they would forget tonight and life and death would go on as before.

Eddie had given up hope of finding Stephanie. She was probably dead, her unborn baby with her. He wandered on, not knowing where he was going, not caring. One street merged into another, maybe they led to the Expressway. Maybe they didn’t.

She found him in a darkened avenue, hurried to catch him up as though he had merely gone on ahead of her. She fell into step with him, took his hand.

They did not speak throughout the tiring trek back to Bellport. Dawn was beginning to lighten the eastern sky as they turned into Gerrard Street with its tall poplars. A red cardinal watched them inquisitively from an overhead branch, hopped on to another bough to follow their progress. Ducks were quacking in the swamp. It was as though the events of the past few hours were some terrible nightmare that retreated into the subconscious with the coming daylight.

The station wagon was parked in front of the verandah. There was no sign of Charlotte Insel, if she had maintained a nocturnal vigil to await their homecoming, then she had abandoned it.

As they opened the front door the telephone started to shrill. Stephanie caught it on the second ring, began to talk in a low voice. Eddie went on up the stairs, whatever the purpose of the call was he did not want to know.

Some time later he heard Stephanie’s footsteps on the landing, heard her go into her room and close the door softly. He lay on the bed, unable to sleep in spite of his exhaustion. Last night the girl who carried his child had incited a mob to go on a rampage of killing, had whipped them into a frenzy with the power of her voice. He could hear her now, those vibrant echoes in his numbed brain that might have lingered on from the Necromancers’ tape which he had last played on his Walkman. It was almost as though Stephanie Insel and Donna Caryl were one and the same person.

Chapter Nineteen

Charlotte was baking a tray of biscuits in the kitchen when Eddie came downstairs. He glanced into the lounge but there was no sign of Stephanie.

‘Good morning, Eddie,’ Charlotte saw him through the half open door. ‘I trust you’ve caught up on your sleep. I don’t think Stephanie’s up yet. No wonder, you must have been late last night. I got back just after midnight and there was no sign of you. I was too tired to wait up.’

‘How’s Mister Insel?’ Eddie hoped he could change the subject without appearing to do so.

‘He’s making marvellous progress,’ she stooped to slide the tray into the oven, slammed the door and set the timer. ‘In fact, the surgeons reckon he’ll be home much sooner than they originally predicted. Maybe you’d both like to come to see him tonight.’

‘Yes, that would be fine.’ At least it would keep Stephanie away from any more Deadbeat gatherings.

‘I saw on the television that there was a big riot up at Pace Park,’ she glanced furtively at him. ‘One of those rock gatherings again. Nineteen dead, many injured. The police kept out of the way until it was all over, and who can blame them? There’s always trouble in the park, anyway. I say if these Puerto Ricans want to kill each other, let them get on with it!’

Racist bitch, he thought. ‘Stephanie and I went for a long walk last night.’ At least, he didn’t lie.

‘It’s risky,’ she was at the sink, scrubbing saucepans. ‘Bellport’s pretty safe, the police see to that. They know who pays their wages. Take a tip from me, keep within the boundaries.’ She glanced at the clock over the pine units. My, Stephanie’s sleeping in late. Perhaps you’d … I’ll go and check that she’s okay.’

He waited in the kitchen, stood by the long window that looked across the swamp. A red cardinal was perched on a pine branch, looking towards the house. It might have been the same one that had viewed their homecoming with disapproval. Some mallards were circling, dropping their paddles as they glided in. Upstairs, he thought he could hear muffled voices, then a door closed and Charlotte was returning.

‘Stephanie’s not well,’ there was a mild concern on her features. ‘She’s been sick, looks like death warmed up, as they say. I really do think both of you should have one or two early nights. Anyway, we won’t be late home tonight. I’ll see to that. Provided, of course, that Stephanie is well enough to go. If it’s a virus then she won’t be able to go into the hospital.’

Eddie’s stomach curdled. If Stephanie had started being sick in the mornings, she would not be able to conceal her condition much longer. Selfishly, he found himself hoping that Marvin Insel would not be coming out of hospital just yet.

Stephanie did not appear for lunch, neither was there any sign of her at afternoon tea. Eddie washed the dishes, found himself looking for that cardinal again but it was nowhere to be seen.

‘Stephanie must have some sort of bilious attack,’ Charlotte came into the kitchen. ‘I’ve just peeped into her room and she’s asleep.’ She pursed her lips. ‘I’m wondering what to do about tonight. I’ll have to go. I promised Marvin I would. I guess it’ll be okay for us to leave her.’ In the hallway, Pip, the terrier, yapped as if to assert his status as guard dog to the household. ‘Stephanie’ll be fine. I’ll ask the McKinnons at number one to look round.’

‘I don’t mind staying,’ Eddie said. ‘Much as I’d like to see Mister Insel …’

‘No, I think you’d best come,’ there was a flicker of suspicion in Charlotte’s expression. ‘I’d like some company on the drive.’ I’m not having you two getting up to anything in my house, even though Stephanie’s not well enough for that sort of thing. ‘Maybe we’ll get a pizza out, save time and cooking.’

According to Charlotte, her daughter was still sleeping when they left at a quarter to seven. The drive took them just under an hour, following the Expressway across Williamsburg Bridge and into Manhattan to the private hospital on Park Row, just off Wall Street. “Don’t even THINK of parking Here”. Charlotte thought about it and parked there. If she got a fine then it was only an inconvenience. The cops were too busy to bother about minor traffic offences these days.

Marvin Insel raised a hand in greeting, his other was busy holding his mobile phone. He talked in jargon that was incomprehensible to Eddie. If Charlotte understood what he was saying then she was indifferent to her husband’s conversation.

‘Sorry about that,’ he holstered his phone, slid it almost guiltily beneath the bed sheets. ‘Hey, where’s Stephanie?’

‘She’s sick,’ Charlotte replied. ‘Nothing serious, she’ll be fine by the morning. Marvin, I really think you should give business a miss for a week or so. You’re supposed to be resting.’

‘I am,’ he laughed. ‘Damn it, I haven’t had a heart attack or anything like that. I only have to rest my body. Talking of bodies, there was a right set-to in the Park last night. The current death toll is fifty and there could be more. I just hope the bastards who did this to me, and killed poor Arthur, got what was coming to them! They’re saying on the television that the whole thing was sparked off by some teenage girl who incited the crowd with the Deadbeat rubbish. It was these Whaley-Naha factions who caused most of the trouble, they were stripped off like their bloody ancestors, those that survived scalped some of their victims. Bring back the Seventh Cavalry, I say, massacre ‘em, never mind about keeping ‘em on reservations!’

Charlotte laughed with her husband.

They left Marvin shortly before nine, found a Pizza Hut. It was after eleven by the time they were back in Bellport.

‘I’ll just check on Stephanie,’ Charlotte kneed the bounding Pip out of the way, made for the stairs. The phone started ringing. ‘Get that will you, Eddie. I won’t be a minute.’

It was Mrs McKinnon on the line to say that her husband had been ‘round earlier. The dog had barked frantically so they hadn’t used their key because everything looked fine. It wasn’t; Eddie could tell that by Charlotte’s expression, the way she came running down the stairs.

‘Eddie, Stephanie’s gone!’

He could have made all kinds of stalling excuses for her; that she was in the bathroom, or had gone for a walk down to the edge of the swamp because it was a fine, warm evening. He didn’t, though, because he knew that she was really gone by the way his stomach churned.

‘Oh, not again!’ There was despair in Charlotte Insel’s shriek, the way she wrung her hands helplessly together. ‘This time she won’t come back. Ever! I know!’

She grabbed the phone from Eddie, stared at it, slammed it back in its cradle. Because there was nobody to ring. Captain Nadel would be no help, no more than he’d been the last time. We’ll put her on file, ma’am. We’ll let you know if anything turns up. Because there were thousands of kids going missing daily. There was no point in phoning Marvin; he couldn’t help, he would only worry. The McKinnons had just said that Stephanie was fine, they didn’t know otherwise.

‘Where do you think she’s gone?’ Charlotte shouted, stabbed an accusing finger at Eddie.

‘I … don’t … know.’ He was shaken, confused. He tried to think. Stephanie had been sick earlier in the day, that was due to her condition. He couldn’t tell her mother that. The rest was faked, she’d got the house to herself, had the opportunity to leave unnoticed. He remembered that phone call just as they’d come in at dawn. His guts churned again. Somebody had summoned her. It hurt to think that she had gone and left him behind.

‘You must know!’ Charlotte was becoming hysterical. ‘It’s something to do with this Deadbeat that she’s mixed up in. They’ve lured her away again like they did before.’ She sank down into a chair, started to sob.

‘I’ll make some coffee,’ Eddie said. People always made coffee in a crisis, it was something to do more than the need for caffeine.

Charlotte stared at the wall through her tears. She and Marvin had thought that having the Bannon boy here might have a steadying influence on their daughter. It hadn’t worked.

She took the mug that Eddie handed her, set it down on the table by the phone. ‘You’d better go to bed, Eddie. I’ll wait here by the phone. In case she calls. Or somebody else does.’

Eddie found the square of white cardboard, edged with black, beneath the top sheet when he went to turn it back. It reminded him of the cards they had had printed for his parents’ funerals.

In memoriam … NECROMANCERS’ CONCERT. AUGUST 29 CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK. 7:30. The hanging skeleton logo was superimposed over an inverted crucifix background.

He stared at it, transfixed. It was some time before his trembling fingers turned it over. He recognized Stephanie’s neat handwriting on the reverse.

‘See you there.’

Chapter Twenty

The taxi was waiting at the end of Gerrard Street just as Stephanie knew it would be, glinting bright yellow beneath a street lamp. She thought the driver was Polish; he made small talk all the way to the airport, seemed oblivious of her silence. She wasn’t listening, she was too nervous, all the same she knew that he had bought a lottery ticket because he must have told her twenty times. This was going to be his lucky week, he had waited twenty years for it.

Joel Pass had flown the private jet up from Houston. Stephanie noted that he wore a skull necklace, doubtless carved by himself, draped over his jacket. It was hard to imagine him as a Necromancers’ drummer, or even as a pilot. In the glow of the runway lights his ancestry was predominant, the survivor of a proud warlike race. She wondered if he had Canarsie blood in his veins; more likely it was Apache or Comanche.

She recognized his companion as the pilot who had flown her to Texas on the previous occasion. Doubtless Donna had not put her trust solely in Joel’s three-year-old licence.

‘You can sleep for most of the journey,’ his eyes met hers, seemed hypnotic, eerie. ‘It’s a long way and you are already tired.’

She fell asleep soon after take-off. She stirred just as they were making the final run-in, blinked in the glare of the desert sun, and remembered Eddie with a sense of guilt. She would have liked him to have accompanied her but there was no way that would have been possible. The telephone call had been a command which she dared not disobey, it was almost as if they had known that she had been on stage at the Park, had timed her return home to perfection. If they knew about Eddie then he was just a family friend staying for a few weeks. If they guessed.

She was sick on arrival, like it had been catching up with her because she hadn’t thrown up this morning.

Donna was in the lounge wearing jeans and a blouse. Her welcoming smile was strained, she seemed to have aged whilst Stephanie had been away.

‘It’s been a long time,’ she kissed Stephanie, held her close. ‘You’ve done well.’ Those slender fingers caressed Stephanie’s abdomen, stroked and probed gently. ‘There’s a baby there, I can tell.’

Stephanie nodded. ‘Yes, I’m being sick in the mornings now.’

‘I had Doctor Wictor flown in yesterday, just in case. Just a feeling I got. You’ll be okay to go on stage on August 29th?’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Good. It’s only a short time after that until the Big One. Then, I guess we can take a backseat for a while, maybe do a few recordings, until after you’ve had the baby. By then it should all be over. According to the news reports we’ve got ‘em on the run. The Peking regime are making a last stand. Hong Kong has fallen, they’re flying capitalists out of there by the plane load, mostly to London and New York. As if it makes any difference, there are no hiding places left. The world economy is collapsing along with the Christian religion. The governments are putting out a lot of propaganda about how everything is under control, urging people to stay calm. Which is why they’re letting us go ahead with the Central Park concert … and the Big One. Because they know they can’t stop it either. Soon we tell ‘em about The Coming. Lawre and Kelvin have composed the number, you have to sing it. It’ll be the biggest thing that’s happened since Christ. The Antichrist. We’ll go back to Year One, start again. The New Generation, the New World!’

Stephanie was scared by the other’s fanaticism. Oh God, if only Eddie was here. I pray to God that it’s Eddie Bannon’s baby!

Donna was hungry for her that night. Stephanie let her do what she wanted, went through the motions of responding. The other did not seem to notice anything was different.

Just after daybreak Stephanie awoke and rushed for the bathroom. She was violently sick.

*  *  *

Doctor Wictor had been on the verge of a brilliant career in gynaecology when the medical profession had struck him off the register. “Gross professional misconduct” was the finding of the panel which investigated him; two specific complaints from outraged young housewives and innumerable rumours which brought the profession into disrepute. A five-year ban was to be reviewed at the end of the period. He escaped the courts simply because the women involved had persuaded their husbands not to sue.

Stephanie found him repulsive from the moment she first saw him in his “consulting room” underground hideaway. He was in his mid-thirties, high cheekbones accentuating his cadaverous features, thin almost to the extent of emaciation. Like Joel Pass, his ancestry was definitely American Indian, his skin colouring light copper so that it shone in fluorescent lighting.

It was his eyes that disturbed her most, deep-set and piercing, his unblinking stare never wavered. She was tense, her mouth dry. His welcoming smile was merely a stretching of his thin, bloodless lips.

‘Ah, Stephanie, I’ve heard so much about you,’ long, thin fingers grasping her own, lingered a moment too long. ‘You look in the peak of health.’ She didn’t; only that morning she had studied her reflection in the mirror, saw how her features were white and drawn, her eyes puffy with tension and tiredness. Like Donna. ‘Do come and make yourself comfortable on the couch … oh, just slip your clothes off, will you?’

The request was made to sound casual, she knew it wasn’t. She hesitated. Surely he only needed to check her temperature and blood pressure, she had little idea of what pre-natal examinations involved. Her fingers shook as she fumbled the buttons on her blouse, almost over-balanced in struggling out of her tight-fitting jeans. Surely bra and panties would suffice. His eyes never left her body, she felt her temperature heating up under their gaze, her pulses starting to throb. She licked her lips, unclipped her bra, dropped her panties on top of her jeans. It was hot in here, she was sweating, but she shivered. She lay on the couch, instinctively pressed her thighs together.

‘Now, let’s see,’ he took her blood pressure, pumped up the band on her arm, watched a dial on the wall behind her. ‘Good. Excellent, in fact!’ He let the pressure down. A thermometer touched her lips, slid beneath her tongue.

His smooth brown hands went to her breasts, caressed them slowly; he took his time studying the nipples, squeezed each one gently. Stephanie closed her eyes. Whatever he did, she did not want to see. Do what you must and get it over with!

She tensed her thighs, kept them firmly shut when she felt his fingertips on them. Slowly, firmly he prised them apart.

‘Excuse me, Stephanie, but I must just check to ensure there is no vaginal discharge.’

Her teeth clamped on the thermometer, threatened to snap the glass gag that was intended to discourage any dissent. Reluctantly, she allowed her thighs to be parted, knew that his head was bent close over them. His fingers moved, rubbed and probed. There was no discharge, her dryness was almost painful.

He straightened up, removed the thermometer from her mouth. She opened her eyes, met his penetrating stare again. His gaze barely shifted, just a cursory glance at the reading.

‘You’re in superb shape,’ his free hand rested on her abdomen, ‘and the baby’s fine. It’s a boy, by the way.’

‘Oh!’ She sensed that he spoke with conviction, it was no wild guess.

‘It has to be,’ his tone was like an incantation. ‘The Master has ordained that you shall bear him a son in his own likeness.’

Stephanie shuddered, bit her lip until she tasted blood. No, it’s Eddie’s child. Please, let it be Eddie’s.

‘When did you lose your virginity?’ A direct question, he watched her closely.

‘I … when they took me!’

‘It is very soon,’ his brow furrowed. ‘Too soon, but with the Master everything is possible. He cannot wait, he has speeded up the growth of the embryo. You will give birth early, we may have to incubate his spawn.’

It is Eddie’s then! She checked her instinctive euphoria. This doctor was believing what he wanted to believe, he dared not think otherwise. His fanatical beliefs overshadowed the growth process of a normal human embryo. Whatever sex her baby, it would be the one for which the New Generation clamoured. The Coming of the Antichrist.

‘Intercourse is forbidden to you between now and the Coming,’ it was as though he had to force the words out against his will, a command from a higher authority which he had been ordered to convey to his patient.

Stephanie nodded her assent, let out her breath in a sigh of relief. Thank God for that, at least.

‘And afterwards, intercourse must only be with the circumcised,’ his orbs appeared to glow briefly.

Again she nodded her assent, recalled the horror of that flesh sacrifice in the temple.

‘The law of the New Generation will demand the circumcision of every male throughout the world,’ his skeletal features were rigid, his voice shook. ‘An ancient law that has not been enforced over the centuries. It will eradicate cervical cancer. It is only logical, the disease is virtually unknown amongst the Semitic races. More important, the Master demands that every male shall give a flesh sacrifice to himself!’

Doctor Wictor stood back, motioned to her to get dressed. As she obeyed, Stephanie noted that he seemed to be holding himself in check, struggling to overcome some primordial instinct that lusted within him, a leashed dog held by a chain when the scent of a bitch had aroused it.

Stephanie hurried back up to the apartment, was grateful to find that Donna was not there. She needed time to be alone, to think. If only Eddie was here. No, that was selfish, these people would have no mercy on him, they would sacrifice him to this evil entity that lived in the crypt below.

And if they so much as suspected that he was the father of her unborn child, instead of one of their own disciples, then they would seek him out and destroy him. And they would sacrifice her on their own blasphemous crucifix for having defiled their own god of filth.

Stephanie lay on the four-poster bed and sobbed her terror until at last she fell asleep.

Chapter Twenty-One

‘I really don’t know what to say!’ Charlotte Insel buried her tear-stained face in her hands, agonized with her frustration. Stephanie had not returned; she had phoned the police, her daughter’s name was once more on the daily increasing list of missing teenagers. Charlotte had not told Marvin, there was no point. Now Eddie was wanting to go up town to search for Stephanie. ‘You won’t find her, that’s for sure. And New York City is no safe place to be, day or night.’

‘I’m going anyway,’ Eddie said.

She stared at him. She admired him; in this case, she thought he was a fool. But she wasn’t responsible for him, she did not have to account to his folks if he didn’t come back, either. That was the deciding factor. Selfishness, she really only cared for her own daughter.

‘Alright,’ she looked up, saw her reflection in the mirror and knew that she would have to work wonders with her make-up box before she went to see Marvin tonight. ‘If that’s how you feel, go ahead.’ Don’t sound beholden to him, it’s his choice. ‘I can give you a lift when I go to the hospital.’

‘No, thanks, I want to go earlier than that,’ Eddie glanced at the clock, it wasn’t midday yet. ‘I’ll go by train.’

‘Please yourself.’ She did not want to discuss it any further. In case he changed his mind. Go on, Eddie, go and find my daughter. I’m not asking you to go, that way I won’t feel guilty if you don’t come back. There had been a riot in Harlem last night. It had left twenty-three dead. Four of those were cops. But, what else could you expect in Harlem?

Last night Eddie had crept into Stephanie’s room. He didn’t know what he was looking for, if anything. He had a ticket for the Central Park concert, but so had thousands of others. He didn’t stand a chance of getting close to the group. Unless … He found the pendant in a drawer of Stephanie’s bedside table. A hand-carved skeleton, the noose attached to the gold chain. It wasn’t any ordinary souvenir that you bought at concerts or music stores, he knew that it was something special, made of bone by the slippery feel of it, waxy to the touch. Revolting, in a way he did not understand, like some repulsive reptile.

She knew he would come, she was relying on him to contact her. She had not gone willingly, she could not resist the call like rats compelled to follow the Pied Piper. They had her under their influence; brainwashed, indoctrinated, call it what you will, it had begun with idol worship, the same way that it had for tens of thousands of others around the world. Kids killed, hanged themselves, because Deadbeat had turned them into programmed automatons. Somehow Stephanie had got to the Necromancers, they were using her. They had used her two nights ago in Pace Park. They were going to use her again in Central Park tonight. In her own way she had called out to him for help; that phone call had been too powerful to resist, so she had obeyed. Now her only hope was that he found her, rescued her.

He took a train, arrived at Penn station in just over an hour. The city was crowded, mostly teenagers wearing Necromancers’ T-shirts. There was an atmosphere of euphoria; hostility would come later. These kids had made the pilgrimage to the shrine of their gods from all over the States; there was no way the authorities could have stopped them. Just kids on the streets, nobody else. The older generation had stayed at home. Traffic was light for New York, mostly police patrols and taxis. Commerce had closed down, a few of the stores and restaurants, mostly takeaways, hoped to make a killing. The New Generation were out to make one, too.

Eddie had several hours to idle away. He need not have left Bellport until five, he just wanted to make sure nothing stopped him getting here. Now he was here.

He wandered with the crowds; new sights, some that he remembered from the time when he had come here with his parents. Trump Tower was protected by armed guards; the Empire State Building was closed to the public, they weren’t risking teenage lemmings making the jump.

Youths were roller-skating on the Rockefeller Center rink. Eddie sauntered on down Eighth Avenue. The traffic, such as it was, was at a standstill. Motorcycle police kept the crowds back. Eddie thought that maybe it was some visiting VIP touring the city; if it was, the guy had to be crazy. It wasn’t. A procession of circus elephants were being escorted down the middle of the road. The animals seemed to respond to the crowds, gambolling, trunk waving. Then they were gone and the traffic moved again. Showbiz didn’t stand a chance against Deadbeat, the circus was leaving town.

He bought a baked potato with spiced chicken filling, backed up to a wall to eat it. Nobody took any notice of him, because he was one of them. He made sure that the pendant was out of sight inside his T-shirt. They would kill him for that alone.

He made his way towards Central Park in the late afternoon, queued outside the Park Lane Hotel; it still bore signs of the recent attack on it, steel mesh guarded the entrance. He glanced up, saw faces at the windows. Police marksmen without a doubt.

It was an hour before the ten-deep shuffling file reached the dais. Nobody was making any trouble so far, they mostly wore Walkman headphones. On the grass a partially clothed couple were copulating. Hardly anybody spared a glance.

The shush-shush of the headphones were like waves gently lapping a shingle beach. They grated on your nerves. Eddie was becoming edgy, this was an impossible mission. He wouldn’t get within two hundred yards of the stage in this crowd, more likely he would be trampled when they ran riot. He tried not to remember Pace Park, it had been a tiny gathering by comparison.

The sky was turning saffron by the time he reached the Great Lawn, found himself standing on the Summit Rock side. The stage was way out in the centre, just a silhouette in the gathering dusk. There was a marquee right beside it, a canvas tunnel up to it. Doubtless that was where the group would emerge; he wondered if they were already in there, if Stephanie was with them. It all seemed so unreal. Maybe it was, and he would wake up back in his farmhouse attic bedroom, smelling putrescence, and his mother would come running when he screamed in the darkness.

The audience was tightly packed, the queues probably stretched right back to Central Park West and Fifth Avenue, tannoys relaying the beat to those who could not get into the Park. Tonight New York was going to go wild.

The crowd sensed the Necromancers even before the group stepped into view. The screaming began, escalated to a hysterical pitch. A girl in front of Eddie, she could not have been more than fourteen, fainted. Nobody noticed. A gap was created, filled as people closed in; somebody stood on her inert body in an attempt to see over the heads in front.

Only Deadbeat could have penetrated that noise, thumped through it. Eddie strained on the balls of his feet, could just make out miniature figures against a psychedelic background, a kaleidoscope of multi-coloured lights that created instant surrealism. He tried to count the group, it was impossible. Only the voice was familiar. Even then, he could not be certain whether it was Donna or Stephanie.

Guards ringed the platform, even from where Eddie stood it was obvious that they had dogs. Big ones, Alsatians or Rottweilers, maybe both or crosses. Nobody would get past them.

Everybody was rocking, head cracking, attempting to keep time with the drum beat, lost it but it did not matter. Some were already naked, having shed their clothes or had them torn off. A hand grabbed Eddie, pulled him round. He rocked with the silhouette of a girl because there was nowhere else to go, the tide caught you and took you with it. They were pressed close together; the only reason she did not arouse him was because he was thinking of Stephanie. Then he lost her and rocked with those around him.

Somehow Eddie found himself closer to the stage. The human tide eddied, swept him with it. Both Donna and Stephanie were up there on the boards.

They shared a mike, sung together; a new number, one that had yet to be released. Donna wore her skin coloured dress, she might even have been naked, it was impossible to be certain. Stephanie was in black leather, her features spectral white against her raven hair.

He’s coming

Today, tomorrow, who knows?

Risen from his tomb

He stirs in the womb

Coming alive

Feed him flesh

Feed him blood

He’s coming

Out of the mud

Eddie’s mind reeled, he clutched at somebody who didn’t thrust him away; rode the waves of nausea, tried to hold his breath to keep that familiar stench of putrefaction out. A thousand faces around him, each one with the flesh peeling off, lips pouted over toothless gums and dribbling phlegm.

Somehow he fought his way out of it, clawed himself back. Somebody grabbed him, another pulled. He felt his T-shirt shred. He stumbled out of the crowd against a strand of electric fencing, screamed and fell as the low voltage current hit him.

One of the dogs strained at its leash, would have had his throat if the guard had not jerked the snarling beast back. Eddie was dimly aware of somebody bending over him, rough hands scraping on his bare chest, fingers closing over the skeleton pendant.

Barely conscious, he felt himself being dragged beneath the live wire, dogs going crazy to get at him but somehow being restrained.

Then, for him, the rainbow lighting suddenly extinguished.

*  *  *

The Manhattan edition of the Daily News. Dated August 30th, reported:

CENTRAL PARK ‘DEADBEAT’ RIOT. HUNDREDS DEAD.

“Last night saw one of the worst riots in American history. 200,000 fans had converged on New York City for the concert in Central Park. Throughout the day the city was quiet, with only odd skirmishes. Police reinforcements ringed the Park in anticipation of trouble but none could have foreseen it on this scale.”

“Rioting commenced shortly after 11:30pm at the termination of the concert. Central Park became a seething mass of rocking and fighting fans. Police stationed in buildings around the perimeter of the Park used rubber bullets and tear gas. Three officers were killed and over thirty injured. Hundreds of crazed rioters rampaged through the city streets, looting and burning. Many buildings were damaged, including the Helmsley Palace and Trump Tower.”

“The rock group, the Necromancers, were besieged by their fans, eventually escaping in a helicopter. Their current whereabouts is not known, but it is believed to be somewhere in Texas. It is now clear that Deadbeat is a satanic cult, and their latest number, performed for the first time last night, prophesying the Coming of the Antichrist, a child to be born to one of their disciples and reputed to be responsible for the growing number of teenage suicides.”

“Simultaneous rioting is reported in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Ontario, London, Sydney, Hamburg and other major cities around the world. An emergency World Summit meeting has been called for early next week in Geneva. With emergency measures already in force throughout the United States, there is a White House meeting today to decide upon further action.”

“Public outcry has demanded a total ban on all future concerts, such as exists in the United Kingdom, but a White House spokesman refused to comment. It is thought that the authorities do not have sufficient manpower to enforce this.”

Central Park smouldered for two days and nights, the grass and undergrowth fires creating a massive smoke mushroom which darkened Manhattan. An awesome spectacle, those who had listened to The Coming believed it to be a sign that the unholy birth was nigh. Those who did believe in a satanic birth feared the total collapse of civilized society throughout the world and the ensuing regime of the New Generation.

Chapter Twenty-Two

It was the first time that Stephanie had seen Donna angry. Gone was the artificial youthfulness with its delicate beauty, her eyes were black-ringed, her cheeks hollowed. Without lipstick her lips were cracked and bloodless, snarling where previously they had smiled. Her hair was awry, her bra-less breasts sagging pouches. She seemed slightly overweight inside the nylon negligee.

‘I want to know who the hell this boy is!’ The superstar’s childish petulance was escalating towards a tantrum, an uncontrollable rage. She clenched her fists, shook them. ‘Why was he wearing the skeleton pendant I gave you?’

Stephanie wanted to cringe, to make excuses. Apologize. Somehow she retained her courage, her dignity, remembered something that her father had once told her. Anybody who loses their temper, loses an argument. She took a deep breath, tried to count to ten but only made it to four.

‘He’s just a family friend from England. He’s staying with my parents.’

‘Why did he have the pendant?’

‘I don’t know!’ She feigned indignation. ‘I suppose he must have found it in the house, decided to wear it to the concert. How the hell should I know. I was with you.’

‘Why weren’t you wearing it? It’s the emblem of a disciple.’

‘I forgot. Because I’d been out all night at Pace Park, then the guy from Transatlantic phoned me to meet you. I was exhausted, everything was happening too fast. I’m sorry.’

Donna unclenched a fist, held out the missing pendant. ‘Don’t ever let it out of your sight again!’ She closed her eyes, opened them again. ‘But I’m far from satisfied about this youth’s involvement with you. Apparently his name is Edward Bannon.’

‘That’s right.’ Stephanie’s stomach cramped. Where was Eddie? What had they done to him?

‘You don’t seem to realize,’ her tone was condescending but the anger still burned in her eyes. ‘You are the Master’s Chosen, you are carrying the Antichrist in your womb. Don’t you understand that?’

‘I understand,’ Stephanie fought for indignation, feared lest she might break down. ‘I can’t see what Eddie has to do with all this. As I told you, he’s just a friend …’

‘Yours or your folks?’

‘A family friend. His parents have both been killed recently. He came to stay with us to get over it. That’s all.’

‘Has he fucked you?’ Donna’s head was thrust forward, her cheeks were fiery, a human incendiary bomb that might explode at any second. ‘Tell me!’

‘No.’ Stephanie forced her eyes to meet the other’s, held her gaze. She did not blink, her lips did not quiver.

Donna Caryl’s relief was only too evident. Her eyes closed again, she swayed slightly on her feet, muttered, ‘Thank God!’

‘Where is he?’ Stephanie had to know.

‘Does it matter?’ Donna looked up, her features hardened again and the suspicion was back in her eyes.

‘Yes. He’s friend of the family and I feel responsible for him.’

‘Then don’t.’

‘I want to know what you’ve done to him!’ If you’ve harmed him, I’ll find a way to kill you.

‘Nothing,’ Donna laughed. ‘Not yet, anyway. He’s living in luxury, got a room all to himself even if it hasn’t got any windows so that he can look out and see where he is.’

‘You mean … here?’

Donna nodded.

‘But … but he wasn’t on the plane.’

‘He was. He travelled with the luggage. He’s right here and won’t be leaving, take it from me. But he hasn’t come to any harm. He tried to rush the stage like a lot of others, hit the live wire and knocked himself out. It just happened that one of the guards noticed the skeleton pendant, otherwise Eddie would be one of the roasted bodies in Central Park right now. I wasn’t taking any chances so I told security to bring him along with us. And in case you’re about to ask if you can see him, the answer is definitely “no”.’

‘Well, at least I know where I stand,’ Stephanie laughed, an empty sound.

‘Relax,’ Donna’s mood changed suddenly, she helped her companion slip the pendant chain over her neck, pushed it down so that it nestled between Stephanie’s breasts. ‘You’re a very important person now, you know,’ she kissed her lightly. ‘You were absolutely fantastic at the concert. You drove ‘em crazy, even crazier than I could have done. Every fella out there wanted to screw you and half the girls would have had an instant lesbian relationship with you. They’d have died for you. A lot of ‘em did!’ She smiled. ‘But we can’t risk any guy fucking you, my dear. Not now. And maybe not ever again, because I want you all to myself. Just think of it, the Master has granted us eternal life, we’ll be able to love the way we do for ever.’

Stephanie let Donna kiss her, let her lead her through to the bedroom. The thought of what they were going to do revolted her, but she had to go through with it. She was going to have to fake every damned bit of it.

*  *  *

Eddie Bannon could not work out where he was. The room was roughly the size of his bedroom at home, emulsioned walls, the bed on which he was lying when he awoke, and a table and chair. There was a curtained alcove in the far corner which doubtless housed toilet facilities. The most disconcerting omission was any form of window. He swung his legs off the bed, felt dizzy when he tried to stand. His head was throbbing, there was a sour taste on his palate. He was shocked to discover that he was stark naked. He almost panicked, looked around for his clothes but there was no sign of them.

He overcame the vertigo, made it to the door. It was locked. From the outside.

Waves of nausea sent him back to lie on the bed. He closed his eyes, tried to think. He remembered the concert in Central Park, the way he had been pushed by the crowd, stumbled against that electric wire. After that – nothing! A sudden thought had him feeling at his neck. Stephanie’s pendant was gone, it had probably been stolen whilst he was unconscious.

But where the hell was he?

He was in prison, of course. One of the New York City gaols, a solitary cell, awaiting interrogation. They would accuse him of rioting, charge him with some public disorder offence. Well, they could ring Marvin Insel in his hospital bed. Marvin was a powerful guy in the city, he wouldn’t stand any shit.

Eddie thought about hollering for assistance when he heard the door lock click; the knob was turning. The door swung soundlessly inwards. He envisaged some burly uniformed officer stepping into the room, a holstered pistol at his waist, jangling a bunch of keys.

It wasn’t like that at all. It was a blonde woman dressed in a close-fitting, skin coloured dress so that he thought at first that she was naked. It was only because she looked so much older than when he had rocked and copulated with her in his music room back home, that it was not until she had closed the door behind her that he recognized her. It was Donna Caryl, alright.

‘So you’re Eddie?’ She smiled, seated herself on the edge of the bed.

Eddie knew that he was blushing with embarrassment, crossed his hands over his groin. It was so clinical in here, anywhere else and he would probably have had an instant erection. He swallowed, nodded instead of speaking. He wasn’t overawed by her sudden appearance, he was … frightened; scared of the way she looked at him with those sunken eyes that seemed to bore into his brain, reading his innermost thoughts.

‘I’ve heard all about you, Eddie,’ she smiled but it was no more than a facial movement, ‘from Stephanie.’

‘Oh!’ He could not contain his relief. Stephanie was here, wherever “here” was. He had set out to look for her and he had found her. But all this was so sinister. He asked, ‘Where am I?’

‘Perfectly safe, Eddie. This is where the Necromancers retreat when all the publicity gets too hot. Which is why we can’t let you go, just like that. You understand?’

‘Yes.’ He didn’t.

‘Stephanie has been asking about you. You’ll be able to see her later. She’s a good friend of yours, isn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ again.

‘Just … a friend?’

He hesitated before answering, ‘My folks visited hers. My folks are dead now so I went to stay with the Insels for a while.’

‘Marvin Insel’s a pretty big shot in the city, isn’t he?’

‘So they say.’

‘Well, he isn’t any more. The city has collapsed. I’d say right now he’s a pretty big shit!’

He flinched before her eyes. Deadbeat was starting up inside his brain. No, not Deadbeat, the new one. The one they performed last night or whenever the concert had been. The Coming. He didn’t like it but the beat imposed itself on you so that you could not get it out of your head.

‘I take it you know that’s Stephanie’s pregnant?’

He dared not deny it, he didn’t know what Stephanie had told her. ‘She told me the other night.’

‘I see. Did she tell you who the father is or did you already know?’

‘I guess not. Some boyfriend, she didn’t say.’

‘Have you been screwing her, Eddie?’ Those eyes were like laser beams burning into his confused brain, whipping up the beat until he thought his skull would split open. Her expression was one of latent anger, being held in check until he gave her his answer.

‘No.’ Because it was you I was fucking.

‘I just hope you’re telling me the truth, Eddie,’ she stood up, backed towards the door.

‘Because if you aren’t, then may your God help you!’

He lay there trembling long after Donna had left.

He lost track of time, it might have been minutes, hours, before he heard the door being opened again, cringed on his bed in case Donna Caryl had returned to exact her wrath on him.

It wasn’t Donna. It was a man who was most certainly of Indian extraction, wearing a spotless white coat. His expression was stoic, his movements decisive as he walked towards the bed.

Doctor Wictor did not speak, the stethoscope was ice cold, had Eddie’s skin goose pimpling as the medic listened to his chest. If he wanted the patient in a certain position, he moved him with those strong fingers. He probed muscles, tested reactions, always in silence.

Eddie’s crossed hands were forcibly removed from his loins, his testicles were squeezed until he gasped with pain. The doctor’s finger and thumb grasped the youth’s foreskin, stretched it until it would surely tear, released it slowly. Doctor Wictor studied the wrinkled, reddened skin intensely, pursed his lips.

Then he left as abruptly as he had come and Eddie heard him locking the door after him.

Oh, God, what did they want from him? This place was as evil as the beat it had spawned, as malevolent as the muddy shoreline on Liberty Island on a spring afternoon.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Stephanie prayed it was all a nightmare; a recurring one, because the black mass had just been a bad dream, too. She tried to wake herself up, pinched the flesh on her naked thighs until she almost cried out loud with the pain.

She did not awaken.

She bit her lower lip until she tasted blood. She closed her eyes tightly, opened them again. She saw the altar with its inverted crucifix, the chalice beneath it; the black waxen candles flickering ominously. Donna kneeling by her side; Kelvin, Vincent and Joel. And Lawre. They were all here. In which case there was nobody to play priest and inflict death and mutilation upon some hapless sacrificial victim. She would let the dream run its course, wake up sweating and trembling in the bed alongside Donna. She wanted to scream but she dare not.

Because it was real.

This time she feared for her own safety because Donna had been angry with her. Stephanie had lied to her mentor and she was afraid that she had not been believed. But that element of doubt in their minds would protect her, for they were not absolutely sure that her unborn child was Eddie’s. If they sacrificed her to their god of evil then they risked sacrificing his spawn and that would bring his terrible wrath upon them.

They dared not! Dare they?

They were to thank him for honouring a disciple with his son, Donna whispered to Stephanie as they had filed in. The Master might, or might not, demand a sacrifice.

The crypt was packed, it seemed that the entire workforce of this hideaway had forsaken their duties in order to be present. Perhaps they gloated in the spilling of blood, the taking of human life as long as it was not their own.

The door opened and closed, footsteps echoed down the aisle, entered the circle. Stephanie peered from beneath lowered lids, saw the robed, cowled figure, felt a pang of terror because it was not one of the group this time. It could not be, for they were all here. She checked them again just to be sure.

The newcomer halted before the altar, knelt and upraised his arms. He chanted something in a low tone. Stephanie thought it sounded like Latin. The candles flickered, wafted smoke.

She shivered, it had suddenly gone very cold.

There was something familiar about the priest, his walk, the way he hunched his shoulders. It was probably her imagination, like a witness at a police identity parade recognizing a hitherto stranger.

‘Master, your promised one lives in the womb, waits to be born so that you may walk amongst us, rule the world that is rightfully yours and was stolen from you.’

Stephanie felt Donna’s hand on hers, grasping it tightly. This time Donna was afraid, seeking comfort from her protégée. The shadows seemed denser, took on weird shapes; changed, edged forward. The candles flickered, threatened to go out, wafted pungent smoke. Somebody behind coughed, tried to stifle it in case they offended the deity which they worshipped.

Stephanie sensed the terror of the others, a chattering of teeth like a distant machine-gun fire. She tried to close her eyes, keep them shut until it was all over, but it was as if her eyelids had been glued open. She wanted to flee, hide, but the strength had gone from her limbs. She found herself praying; please, spare me, for I am carrying your child, the Antichrist!

Liar!

She flinched, trembled with Donna. This time the other did not whisper to her that it would be all right. Every one in this satanic temple feared for their lives, their very souls.

‘Master, hear us, give us a sign if you desire human flesh and it shall be yours!’

Stephanie recognized the priest’s voice, related it to the posture, the movements. It was none other than Doctor Wector! She experienced a stab of fear, saw in her mind those eyes that smouldered with insatiable lust. His very tone was pleading with the Evil One to demand human flesh, hungry to do the Master’s bidding.

Silence. The atmosphere was latent with a power that breathed icy breath, the shadows stretching out from every corner. Somebody, somewhere, was whimpering their terror. A gust of air tore at the candles, extinguished them, plunged the crypt into impenetrable darkness.

Stephanie heard Donna moan softly, lean on her. She thought she might faint.

‘The Master demands human flesh!’ Doctor Wector’s voice was shrill, a near scream.

Suddenly Stephanie found that she could see again. A kind of luminescence that emanated from walls and ceiling, a soft, ethereal light that revealed silhouettes, created fearsome shadowy shapes in the corners. It had to be some kind of hidden background lighting, she told herself, a trick designed to instil terror and subservience into the gathering.

The priest was on his knees, head bowed, muttering to himself. It was all a carefully rehearsed act. Donna’s fingernails were gouging Stephanie’s wrist, she was sobbing with fear.

She heard the door open and close, padded footsteps and laboured breathing as though the newcomers struggled with a heavy burden. Stephanie didn’t want to see; she found her head turning, she was unable to stop it. Oh, my God!

Three youths struggled to carry a naked form; she thought it was a male but she could not be sure. The sacrifice was being borne to the altar!

She smelled blood, tasted it, a cloying, bitter odour that remained in her mouth and nose since the last time, had her starting to heave. She would surely vomit. Her gaze travelled to the crucifix, it seemed to pulse in the half-light, a living entity that scented its prey.

Stephanie willed herself to faint, craved unconsciousness that would spare her this vile ritual, but her dizziness receded. She sensed that her companion’s trembling was excitement now rather than fear, relief that none of them had been singled out for sacrifice. Her breathing was fast, she craned her neck in order to see, dragged Stephanie with her.

The priest was back on his feet, moving away from that altar and that upturned cross, motioning to his servants to position their captive before the small table. Stephanie saw how the victim’s head hung forward, how his wrists were bound behind his back. They had to hold him upright or else he would have slumped to the floor. He was blissfully unaware of his imminent fate, either he had fainted or he was drugged. It might spare him the pain and the terror, but it would not save him.

Doctor Wector, for it was undoubtedly the shamed gynaecologist, produced something from beneath his robes which glinted in the light. Stephanie saw it clearly for a second, recognized the metallic shield with its triangular orifice, for what it was. Soft, pliant skin was being threaded through the hole, spread delicately by the doctor’s deft fingers.

She almost shrieked at him to have mercy, to stop the proposed mutilation before it was too late. Only the sight of that towering, blasphemous crucifix and the prospect of her own fate stopped her. She consoled herself with the thought that the unfortunate youth, whoever he was, might escape with his life.

Doctor Wector gripped a small knife between the forefinger and thumb of his right hand, pulled the foreskin taut with his left. His cowled head was upraised.

‘Master, we offer you flesh!’ He cut swiftly and expertly.

It was then that the crypt began to vibrate, a shaking that grew in intensity and showered lime mortar from the cracks in the ancient stonework; swirled dust in an icy wind and fogged the strange light. Stephanie felt its grittiness on her lips, her eyes smarted but refused to close. All around her the watchers were moaning their terror aloud, cowering from the misty, shadowy forms that were blending into one above the altar.

A thing that was terrible to behold, a head that was bloated and grey, saw you with its cavernous, empty eye sockets. It breathed life through ragged, black nostrils, pouted its filthy lips and dribbled slimy mucus. It fought for life from beyond the grave, its rotted lungs struggling to breathe. You saw it, heard it, tasted a foulness that transcended putrescence.

And all the time, it masticated with its toothless, decomposing gums, on a spongy strip of neatly severed, bloodied human flesh.

Stephanie screamed but no sound came, she heaved and bile scorched her throat. The dust clouds eddied, a marshland mist that thickened to a fog, brought with it blessed obscurity. The glow faded, the darkness surged back. Only the stench and the sound of a slurping, inhuman mouth remained in the infinite blackness.

Then it was light again. The altar candles had been relit and the priest was back on his feet. There was no sign of the victim whose flesh that monstrosity had manifested itself to claim.

Donna was shaking uncontrollably, mouthing something incoherent in Stephanie’s ear. Stephanie glanced around her, saw that some of the gathering had fainted, lay slumped on the floor in and around the circle. A thin film of dust covered her own naked body, began to itch.

‘Master, we thank you for accepting our humble offering. The one who gave it has been circumcised in accordance with the law of the New Generation, your law, as given to us in your teachings. May your child be born in your likeness and lead us to eternal life.’

He turned slowly to face those who knelt or lay prone before him. Stephanie felt something move inside her, writhed with revulsion as tiny feet kicked her womb, a pre-natal response to the materialization of that unholy being that had claimed it for its own. She winced, sensed the viciousness, the way her unborn child taunted her for being the one chosen to carry it.

‘Disciples, followers,’ the priest’s voice was shrill, manic, ‘we have witnessed something that has, until now, been denied to mortal eyes, the Father of Darkness who has chosen one of us to bear his child, that is himself reborn, into this world. You saw with your own eyes his omnipotence, his strength and beauty, which time immemorial has preserved in another dimension. The Coming, the Son, will be in his father’s image, for he will be his father. One and the same, he will rule over us. We are his Chosen Ones, the New Generation.

‘He has given us the sound, which we chose to call Deadbeat, that embodies his message, his power, wherever, or by whoever, it is played or heard. It is invincible, as those who oppose it are discovering. Its followers are as many as the grains of sand in the desert, sweeping their enemies before them.

‘The Master has promised,’ he paused, glanced nervously behind him at the altar as though he feared a second manifestation, ‘that he will appear again at the final Deadbeat, a Coming in triumph, for by then the New Generation will rule absolute. He will appear to us in a place that has been a hallmark of the old so-called Freedom, to denounce that tyranny and to proclaim the new Freedom. Fear not, if any of you should die before then, for you will return, as he has, to eternal life. Those who have taken their own lives, as so many of the New Generation have, will live again. It is his way of rewarding his followers for their loyalty.’

Only then did Stephanie finally faint, would have slumped to the floor had not Lawre Tom caught her. With Joel Pass’s help, he carried her back up the steep stairway to the apartment above, laid her gently on the four-poster bed.

With Donna Caryl in their midst, the group stood and regarded her reverently, bowed their heads. For truly it was the Master himself who bulged that once flat belly, ballooned it daily as he grew and made ready for the Coming.

Some time later Donna dressed, made her way along the maze of corridors until she came to Doctor Wector’s quarters. The door on the left was that of his “hospital”, as he termed it, where patients were treated for any accidents or illnesses that befell them here. She entered the door opposite.

Wector was seated at a roll-top desk, looked up as she entered. His features were white and strained, the ceremony had taken its toll on him.

‘I had not anticipated a manifestation yet,’ his voice trembled slightly. ‘He has spoken to me many times before but I have never seen his face until tonight. Tonight was obviously special to him, because of the child that grows in the womb of the Chosen.’

‘Perhaps,’ she replied. ‘Or maybe it was because of the sacrifice.’

‘It was merely a circumcision, we did not offer a life.’

‘I mean the victim,’ she inclined her head in the direction of the recovery room opposite. ‘How is he?’

‘Fine. No problems. He’ll be up and about tomorrow. A little sore for maybe a week.’

‘Can I see him?’

‘Go ahead.’ Wector made no move to accompany Donna as she walked towards the opposite door.

The youth was sleeping, a single sheet covering him. Donna stared fixedly at him. Suddenly she was afraid because she sensed that his presence here was no coincidence. A kind of gut feeling that terrified her.

Had the flesh of the one who was called Eddie Bannon been powerful enough to summon up he who had been cast down into hell when the earth was still young? Did he in some way threaten her own power, the eternal life which had been promised her?

She cursed herself because she was barren, that she had been unable to conceive and bear the child of the Master. She beat her fists on her bosom and silently cursed Stephanie for usurping that conception.

She wondered if it was possible for both Stephanie and Eddie to die and not to be reborn.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Eddie was back on Liberty Island beach.

He didn’t know how he had arrived there, only that he was wallowing in the sucking mud, the wall which separated this quagmire from the concrete walkways was only a matter of a couple of metres away. He had to reach it, clamber over to safety before …

A thick mist had come in from the harbour, damp foul-smelling vapour that seemed to leave a film on his skin. He tasted it, coughed, spat.

With some difficulty he extricated a foot, lost his balance and fell forward, went in the ooze up to his elbows. He started to panic. It might suck him down like quicksand, drag him down into its depths so that his body would never be found.

His shout for help bordered on hysteria. It seemed to bounce back at him off the grey wall, a sound barrier that was swirling to trap him, touching him with its cold tentacles.

There should have been tourists only a short distance away. He could not hear voices, it was probably this fog that was blanketing the sound of shouts and laughter. He freed his arms but both feet were stuck firmly. He remembered a story he had read about some guy who had blundered into a bog, saved himself by lying flat, spreading his weight. He tried it.

Slowly, laboriously, his legs slid out of the slime until he was lying flat, exhausted by his struggles. He eased himself on to his side. He had lost his sneakers and socks, that was only to be expected. He glanced down at himself, saw with shock and amazement that all his clothes were gone, that he was stark naked, his trembling flesh coated with this revolting, oil-streaked mud.

His terror escalated, he began to scream. Nobody would hear him because there was nobody there. Liberty Island was deserted, the last trip had gone, abandoned him here, alone with …

He heard that terrible, decomposing stranger coming long before he saw the familiar outline in the fog. Those lungs struggled to breath, phlegm rattled and snorted, somehow the skeletal feet managing to traverse the soft surface. Eddie lay there, knew that he would not make it to the wall, gave up trying.

He stared with bulging eyes at the apparition that came out of the mist, watched as the terrible face materialized in detail. Nothing had changed, the scabby lips still dribbled saliva, the gums masticated noisily.

‘Please,’ Eddie found that he could speak, ‘let me go, I didn’t mean to trespass here.’

The cadaverous features regarded him steadily, malevolently. The mouth stopped pouting, the lips stretched, and when the words came they were surprisingly strong and resonant.

‘You stole our lands, desecrated our burial ground!’ The twin orbs seemed to glow. ‘This was once a land of freedom, you enslaved our people, erected your own false Manitou.’

‘I … I just want to go home,’ Eddie said.

‘Look at me!’

Eddie was already looking, cowering, hypnotized by this inexplicable being that had followed him back to his native land, haunted every waking and sleeping moment. It had lain on the pavement in town with a smashed and bloody skull, had called itself Matheson, the window cleaner. It had lurked in the shadows of his bedroom, terrified him with the stench of its rotting body.

Even though much of the facial flesh had decomposed, he recognized the features as Indian, the slightly hooked nose, the pride of an ancient race that still lingered on.

‘See what you have done to me.’ There was a note of self-pity in the other’s voice, a scrawny finger pointing to his face, his wasted body. ‘I lay in peace, deep in this ground, which you have covered and erected your false god on. My spirit had gone to another hunting ground but your sacrilege recalled it to my body. My flesh is gone. Give me yours!’

Eddie tried to draw back from the corpse fingers that stretched out for him, but there was nowhere to go. He screamed but no sound came. The other’s touch was cold, probing the mud that coated his shaking body, feeling beneath the stinking slime until it found what it sought.

No! You dirty, filthy bastard! Eddie saw the small knife, its carved hilt, the blade which bore no traces of rust. This time he managed to scream. A piercing shriek of terror and physical pain, as the honed steel sliced through his taut, tender flesh. That was when he fainted.

Eddie felt those eyes scorching him out of oblivion, forcibly drawing him back to a state of awareness. He tried to resist but it was futile. Please, leave me in peace, you have taken what you wanted.

His head throbbed, picked up Deadbeat, pounded him mercilessly. His vision was distorted, the face that leaned over him blurred, shimmering in a dazzling light that sent sharp pains into his skull. He managed to close his eyes but he was unable to shut out the glare, could still see the old Indian in his mind.

‘That was most satisfactory,’ the voice was familiar but somehow different. ‘Most satisfactory.’

Gloating fingers stroked Eddie’s lower regions, he flinched from them. Something had changed; it took him several seconds to realize that he was not wallowing in filthy mud, that it was not trying to suck him down into its stinking bowels. He was lying on soft, cool linen. He was in a bed. And the bright light came from a fluorescent strip above him.

He squinted fearfully from beneath partly closed eyelids, grunted his amazement, almost relief, when he recognized the features that looked down upon him. They were not those of the wretched creature that inhabited the Liberty shoreline.

They belonged to Doctor Wector.

Eddie stared, did not try to understand, moaned softly because he was in pain. Right now he couldn’t work out exactly where it was coming from. His thinking was confused, he had been asleep, had had that awful nightmare again. Only this time it had inflicted physical harm on him.

The doctor was checking a thermometer; there was no way of telling from his expression whether or not he was satisfied with the reading. He tossed the sheet back over Eddie’s naked body, turned towards the door.

‘What … what have you … done to me?’ There was alarm in Eddie’s voice, that dream had been so real. And he was aware of that taste in his mouth again, so strong that he knew it was not psychological. The old Indian who claimed to be a prehistoric descendant of the tribe who had inhabited Liberty Island was no figment of Eddie’s subconscious.

‘You’ve been circumcised, that’s all,’ Wector’s tone was supercilious, almost contemptuous.

‘Nothing drastic. It is the law of the New Generation, there will be many, many more. You’re lucky! You ask Daniel if you get to meet him.’

Eddie heard the door being locked from the outside, Wector’s footsteps receding down the corridor. Eddie threw back the sheet, saw that the other had spoken the truth.

I want your flesh, boy. Mine has rotted away!

He lay there, tried to control his panic. He was a prisoner in his room, his only consolation was that the light was left on, kept his Nemesis at bay. Why were they holding him here? Had that revolting creature, who claimed to have been called back from the ancient graveyard, taken his flesh as he had been about to when Eddie fainted? What did the Necromancers want of him?

And who was Daniel?

*  *  *

Eddie was kept confined to his hospital-like prison for almost a week. Doctor Wector’s visits grew less frequent, obviously satisfied with the progress which the youth was making. Servants appeared at regular intervals with food. There were magazines to read, mostly rock publications that featured the Necromancers, most carried centre spread pull-outs of the group. Suddenly Eddie did not want to read them; his Walkman was on the bedside table but he did not listen to it.

God, he hated them for what they had done to him, for taking Stephanie away from him. Once his thoughts turned to suicide; he struggled to push them away. No, not me, I won’t take the easy way out like thousands of kids have done.

One morning he heard the door being unlocked, tensed because Wector’s visits were frightening him. The doctor’s eyes reminded him of that old man, the way they burned into his brain, seemed to read his thoughts. But it wasn’t Wector this time. It was Donna Caryl.

‘How are you, Eddie?’ Her wide smile was disarming, sent his pulses throbbing. She wore a thin, cotton dress and he could see that she was bra-less.

‘I’m okay,’ he was sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed.

‘I’m sorry about what happened to you,’ she seated herself beside him. ‘I’m afraid it’s the law of the New Generation. Like the Jews. Hygiene, basically. You do understand, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’ Put that way, he understood. But there was an awful lot he didn't understand.

‘Stephanie’s fine,’ like Doctor Wector, she seemed able to read what he was thinking. ‘You’ll be able to see her soon. At the moment she’s got a bad headache, a migraine. We’ve been rehearsing for the big concert and it’s taken it out of her. Nothing to worry about. Tell me …’ she paused, ‘has there … ever been anything between you two?’

He found himself swallowing. ‘We’re … good friends.’

‘I see,’ she wasn’t smiling any longer. ‘As you know, Stephanie’s going to have a baby. It’s going to be a … very special baby. I need to know that … that it isn’t yours!’

His temples were pounding. ‘No. No, it isn’t mine. We … weren’t like that.’

‘Good!’ It sounded like forced relief. If she did not believe him then she was forcing herself to.

She didn’t want to know the truth if it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. ‘That’s fine. You see, either someone else is the father, like yourself, or, well, the baby’s growing very fast. Much faster than it should.’

His brain was numbed. If Stephanie had conceived that night in April then the birth would take place in the New Year. If it was more advanced than that, then Stephanie had been with somebody before he’d met her. The only other alternative was too frightening to contemplate.

‘Don’t you worry about it, anyway,’ she let her hand rest on his knee. ‘You don’t need to be locked in here any longer, feel free to wander about the place. There’s shops, a restaurant, I’ll see that you’re fixed up with some money. Everybody works here, so maybe you’d like a job with the group?’

‘Oh, sure!’ His eyebrows raised. ‘I’d like that.’

‘Good, I’ll fix it,’ she stood up. ‘See you around, Eddie.’

She did not lock the door behind her when she left.

*  *  *

Eddie went on his own exploration tour of the Necromancers’ hideaway. Its sheer size amazed him, one could easily have become lost in the maze of underground corridors had it not been for signposting. The main area consisted of a kind of shopping precinct that would have matched any small town; each office door was labelled, money had been no obstacle to the construction of what was virtually a subterranean township.

His apartment was a small two-roomed place at the very end of the avenue of offices; living accommodation that included a bath and shower, yet you were obviously expected to eat at the restaurant or takeaway.

That afternoon he went above ground. The heat hit him like an inferno after the air conditioning down below, the sunlight was dazzling. Just a single building on the surface, a flat-roofed oblong of clay bricks that blended into the desert surroundings, it was hard to believe what lay beneath it. He looked for a runway; there was a level strip that might have been an old drovers’ route. From a distance the entire set-up could have been mistaken for an old adobe ranch that had been abandoned to the shifting sands.

Then he saw the fencing. It was difficult to discern against the desert background, encompassed, maybe fifty or a hundred acres, barbed wire that might have been there to keep cattle within their boundaries. Except that Eddie knew it wasn’t, guessed its purpose only too well. Like the lock on the room in which he had been a prisoner for a whole week. It was damnably hot out there, but he shivered all the same.

A movement at the furthermost corner attracted his attention. He squinted in the brightness, tried to make out what it was. An animal of some kind, it was following the inside perimeter of the fence, stopping every so often. He decided it was a dog, perhaps one of those coyotes like he’d seen in cowboy films. Or a fox. He didn’t know if there were foxes in this part of the world.

‘I wouldn’t get going too far, man!’

Eddie started, whirled, his heart beginning to pound wildly. The youth was standing within a couple of yards of himself, an overweight figure dressed in jeans and checked shirt. His features were rotund, slightly overweight, his complexion dusky. He was smiling. Really smiling, not just a stretching of the lips. Eddie thought he might have been someone with Down’s syndrome.

‘Oh … hi!’ Eddie recovered his composure. ‘You scared me, creeping up on me like that.’

‘You learn to go quietly around here,’ the other pushed his hands with some difficulty into his waistband. ‘You never know what you’re likely to run into.’

‘Oh!’ Eddie licked his lips nervously. ‘I was just having a look around. I’m new here.’

‘That’s obvious,’ the stranger’s voice was squeaky, almost shrill, as if he had some problem with his larynx. ‘If I was you, pal, I wouldn’t get wandering too far out there. See them dogs?’

Eddie stared where the other pointed. There were now two of those creatures he had been watching, both of them prowling the boundary fence like wild animals constantly pacing the perimeter of a zoo enclosure. They were a long way off; they looked big even from here.

‘Guard dogs, they call ‘em,’ his companion had moved up alongside him. ‘Alsatian-cross-Doberman-cross-Rottweiler, the worst of all three breeds minced into one. They got a kid a few weeks back, a guy who’d wandered out there out of curiosity. New, like you. Man, they fucking ate the lot, not a bone left!’

Jesus, alive! Eddie stepped back a pace, checked how far it was to the building behind.

‘Don’t worry, they don’t come this far. They stick to the fences, mostly in case anybody tries to get in! But they don’t know the difference, see, as to whether anybody’s getting out or in. They set on anybody up close to the fence.’

‘That’s scandalous!’

‘Maybe, but the folks are entitled to their privacy. The Press don’t let up on the Necromancers. If they get wind of this place, they’ll do everything to get inside. Particularly these days, with all that’s going on back home. Hey, kid, where they find you?’

‘Find me?’

‘Sure. Me, I was walking along in Brooklyn one evening and this car pulled up. There were two guys inside. They asked me did I want a lift. A ride in a car anywhere, when you ain’t got one and can’t afford a taxi, is something you don’t refuse. I wasn’t going nowhere, but I jumped in, just like that. Ended up here.’

‘But why?’

‘Because they need kids like you’n me, for lots of reasons. Work, for one, else how’d you think this would keep going? Then they need …’ His high-pitched voice fell away, he scuffed his feet in sudden embarrassment as though he had said too much.

‘For what?’ Eddie’s guts had seized up, he really did not want to know any other reasons why the Necromancers lured and kidnapped teenagers. But he had to know; for himself and Stephanie.

‘They done anything to you yet, kid?’ The other’s voice was a squeaky whisper. Maybe he was afraid in case somebody might overhear. But there was nobody in sight, they had this small patch of desert all to themselves.

‘Yes,’ Eddie’s soreness started to throb again as if on cue. ‘They circumcised me.’

‘They must like you, or else they’re keeping you for something special!’

Eddie swayed on his feet, the barren landscape around seemed to go into orbit.

‘Hey, I didn’t mean to scare you.’

‘It’s okay.’ It wasn’t, even if his surroundings were beginning to steady. ‘It’s just that … you see, I’m new, like I’ve already told you. I’ve been here a week and … well, I told you what they did to me.’

‘Did they do it in the temple?’

‘The … what?’

‘They must have drugged you first. Look, I hadn’t ought to be telling you anything because they obviously don’t want you to know … yet!’

‘Please, tell me.’

‘Alright,’ the youth glanced around him again, checked that there was still nobody within earshot. ‘Everybody knows that Deadbeat is the word of the devil, Satan, call him what you like. He’s spread his teaching through the beat, got millions of kids like you and me rooting for him. But there’s a price to be paid, killing off the old isn’t enough. He wants young sacrifices, like you’n me. Get it?’

Eddie nodded, he was beginning to understand only too well.

‘So they mated this girl with him, so they say,’ his voice was so low now that Eddie had to lean an ear up against the other’s thick lips in order to catch the words. ‘Me, I reckon that Donna can’t have kids so she had to find some girl to take her place. The one they brought in here before. I guess the group all fucked her with the Master’s blessing, and now she’s got a kid growing inside her double fast and she’ll pop it out any time.’

‘Go on,’ Eddie felt incredibly sick.

‘Now, they’ve got a new number called The Coming all ready for the big day. But in order to keep the Master happy and make sure everything goes all right, they’ve got to keep feeding him tender young flesh. Sometimes it’s a black mass, and pray to God that you don’t get roped in on one of those. They crucified a young girl, nice kid, I knew her, about a week or so ago. You were lucky, they just fed him your foreskin and you’ll be okay. For a time, anyway.’

Eddie retched, his hamburger nearly came up.

‘They plan to get every young male in the world sacrificed to the Master, there’ll be mutilation rituals in every country of the world, really celebrate the Coming. The Master will gorge himself on the lot, have a banquet, that’s what they’ll preach once the kid’s born. Like I said, you were lucky. Luckier even than me. So far!’

Eddie held on to his companion for support, felt how the other trembled with him. Like himself, he was scared to hell that hell would soon rule the world.

‘I’m Eddie, what’s your name?’

‘Daniel.’

Eddie stiffened, recalled Donna’s advice. You go talk to Daniel, Eddie.

‘Daniel … what’d they do to you?’

Daniel’s dusky complexion had faded, his flabby, sweaty hand squeezed Eddie’s until it hurt.

‘You really want to know, Eddie?’

‘Yes.’

With his free hand Daniel tapped the zip of his jeans.

‘They call me “Daniel the Eunuch”,’ he said.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The New York edition of Newsday for September 9th carried the front page headline Deadbeat Cult’s Mass Grave.

“The bodies of 15 teenagers were found yesterday buried on waste ground in Brooklyn, victims of the infamous Deadbeat cult’s human sacrifices, authorities said.

“It was like a human slaughter house,” a Police Department spokesman said. “Among other findings there were saucepans, filled with cooked limbs, from which human organs, including brains and hearts, were eaten.”

Investigators displayed photographs, one of which showed a cauldron containing a dark red liquid and what seemed to be bones.

“All of the bodies had been mutilated in a variety of ways,” the spokesman added. “ Mutilations ranged from circumcisions and castrations to disembowelments.”

The grisly discovery was the latest in a wave of killings sweeping the United States. Teenage suicides are increasing at the rate of 10% daily, and the latest finding of mass human sacrifices is thought to be the beginning of a new horror. Fresh outbreaks of rioting have been reported in New York, Los Angeles and Boston with areas of all three cities still burning. The White House has promised increased measures in an attempt to quell the rise of anarchy which the authorities fear is already out of control.

It is rumoured that the rock group, the Necromancers, plan to return to New York with yet another mass concert. The venue is unknown but is certain to be banned.”

*  *  *

The London Evening Standard of September 10th carried the front page headlines on all its editions: 57 POLICE INJURED IN DEADBEAT RIOTS.

“The final death toll in the Central London riots yesterday is still not known. 57 police were injured and over a hundred civilians killed. There were over 300 arrests.

The “ Battle of Trafalgar” started around 3pm. Tens of thousands of teenagers had converged on London for an unofficial rock festival. Buskers played the infamous Deadbeat on every street corner and amateur groups congregated in Trafalgar Square. The trouble is believed to have been started by about a thousand anarchists who infiltrated the gathering and incited drug-crazed rock fans to riot.

In the mayhem, fires were started which burned for several hours. Shops were looted and scores of store fronts were smashed. Cars were overturned and set alight.

Many of the injured suffered head, face and rib injuries after being struck by bottles, bricks and other missiles. Police victims included a chief inspector, one inspector, four sergeants and eleven policewomen. About 70 injured, including 30 police were ferried to St. Thomas’s, Westminster University and Guy’s Hospitals. An ambulance service spokesman reported that one policeman was seriously injured. A Scotland Yard spokesman reported that there had been about 300 arrests and the figure was still rising. The main riot had been broken up, he said, and smaller skirmishes were still taking place throughout Central London.

Police in riot gear and on horseback were fighting battles with rock rioters which had spread from Trafalgar Square along Whitehall, and was heading towards Downing Street. It is believed that the crazed fans were intent on launching an assault on No. 10 where police reinforcements had been brought in, in anticipation of this. The Prime Minister and members of the Cabinet were reported to have been escorted to a place of greater safety where a crisis meeting was being held.

More than 60 firemen with nine fire appliances fought a blaze at the Grand Buildings in Trafalgar Square. A London Fire Brigade spokesman said, “ Flames reached at least 40 feet and dense smoke hung over the Square. Firemen wearing breathing apparatus went in to see if anyone was trapped in the building. The rioters pelted the firemen with a variety of missiles throughout, whilst mounted police and snatch squads attempted to keep the crowd back.”

More fires, mostly blazing cars, were being fought in The Strand, St. Martin’s Lane, St. Martin’s Place, Northumberland Avenue, Charing Cross Road and Garrick Street. Regent Street shops had their windows smashed as Deadbeat rioters headed for Oxford Street and other parts of the West End. Garrards, the royal jewellers, Tower Records, The Rack, Aquascutum and Next all suffered damage as blocks of concrete and litter bins were hurled through their windows.

Throughout the mayhem, buskers and the would-be rock groups played Deadbeat. Ominously a new number was heard for the first time, an obscenity and an incitement to the rampaging teenagers, one that prophesied the coming of Satan in a parallel of Christ’s birth, and the subsequent rule of the devil over the world.

The Prime Minister is due to make a speech on television tomorrow when new emergency measures are forecast.”

*  *  *

The SUNDAY MERCURY gave a detailed and chilling account of the Birmingham riots which had raged for four days and resulted in the closure of New Street Station, thereby restricting rail communications throughout the Midlands. However, an item which had been relegated to page 12, was perhaps the most chilling news of all, especially to those residents of the inner suburbs, who witnessed the increasing number of supposedly stray dogs roaming the streets in recent weeks.

KILLER DOG SAVAGES GIRL

“Mandy Waterson, aged 16, of Sparkhill, was cycling from her parents’ home to visit her grandparents, when she was chased by a pack of stray dogs along the Stratford Road. Pedestrians and motorists watched helplessly as the creatures dragged her from her bicycle and proceeded to savage her.

There were some 14 dogs in the pack, reported by horrified watchers as Dobermans, Alsatians and Rotweilers. By the time an armed police patrol arrived at the scene, the dogs had fled, leaving behind the mangled, bloodied remains of their victim.

Similar packs of dogs have been seen in the Northfield, Acock’s Green and Erdington areas of the city. An RSPCA spokeswoman said that the number of strays in Birmingham has been increasing alarmingly in the past few weeks, and that twice their inspectors had been attacked by them. Dog patrols have been put on full alert.”

The Deadbeat momentum was gathering force, nearing its peak. The Coming was nigh.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Stephanie was very frightened. The foetus in her womb was growing with alarmingly, unnatural rapidity. Her stomach was distended far beyond supposedly five-month pregnancy. No longer was she able to wear the black leather trousers with their silver emblem studded seams, but had been forced, on Donna’s advice, to exchange them for a skirt of similar design.

She knew she would never complete the normal period of gestation. The birth was not even weeks away. It was days. Rehearsals were exhausting. Doctor Wector had ordered that she was to reduce her working time to an hour a day.

She dreaded her daily check by the gynaecologist, the way his fingers probed her, seemed obsessed with her breasts and his apparent concern for the quantity of milk which they might give. She tensed with revulsion when he peered closely between her thighs as though he expected to catch a glimpse of the baby.

‘Excellent!’ His final comment was always the same, rubbing his slender fingers together, his smirk of satisfaction combining with the lust that glowed in his deep-set eyes. ‘The Coming will be sooner than either of us expected.’

‘How long?’ she dreaded his reply.

‘When the Master is ready.’

She had not seen Eddie since his arrival here. Donna had promised, but there was still no sign of him. Her enforced confinement, her attempts to rehearse with the group for the big concert, had restricted her opportunities to find him.

‘He’s around,’ Donna replied casually when asked. ‘I caught a glimpse of him yesterday. He’s working with the props. I’ll ask him to come around.’

But so far, there was no sign of Eddie. And Donna’s attitude towards her had changed over the past week. Although they still shared the four-poster, the superstar made no move towards her young lover. Presumably because of the pregnancy, Stephanie decided. Yet there was an underlying aloofness that puzzled Stephanie; Donna turned to face in the opposite direction when they retired for the night, there was no comforting arm reaching out for her, no hand stroking her beneath the sheets. Donna’s body was tense, there was no mistaking the barrier that had come between them.

Because Donna Caryl was smouldering with jealousy that grew as fast as Stephanie’s baby. Not just because the older woman had been cursed with a sterile womb, that she had been forced to find a surrogate mother for the Antichrist, that was only part of it. Donna feared lest her own superstardom might be usurped.

Stephanie eyed the bottle of paracetamols in the medical chest in the bathroom with a sense of terrifying temptation.

*  *  *

Eddie was bored. The props were arranged before and after the Necromancers rehearsed. Often the stage settings were the same, left in place for the next day. It seemed that it was deliberately arranged so that the stage hands were segregated from the performers, never came into contact with them. There was little work to be done, maybe an hour in the morning or evening, the rest of the day was your own. There was a video and a music theatre which was used by the workforce to kill time.

His attempts to contact Stephanie had met with failure; there was a permanent guard on the group’s quarters. You didn’t get through without a signed pass and Eddie was still to discover where those passes were obtained. He wrote a short note just to let Stephanie know that he was around, gave it to the guard. The guy nodded, pocketed it. Eddie doubted whether it had got any further than the garbage bin.

There were rumours about the “Big Concert”. It was to be held sometime towards the end of September. Speculation was rife concerning the venue. Some said Madison Square Garden, others the Palladium. Nobody was sure. The authorities would try to ban it. In the end they would concede because they were fast losing the battle against the New Generation. Popular opinion had it that the New Generation would be in total command by the end of the month and that the concert would be a victory celebration.

Eddie had retired for the night, switched off the light, when he heard the door of his apartment open. He sat up with a start, maybe somebody had mistaken his quarters for their own.

They obviously hadn’t. It was Donna Caryl who stepped inside, flicked the light switch and pushed the door closed behind her.

‘Hello, Eddie.’

He stared at her, it must be a trick of the light or his tired eyes, but she appeared to have aged a decade since that time she had visited him in the treatment ward. Even her make-up failed to hide the lines in her face, her body seemed to sag inside that flesh-coloured dress which for the past year had been the hallmark of her rapid rise to fame. Her smile was a visible effort, her trembling lips barely made it. And when she seated herself on the bed, it was as though she needed to rest her exhausted body. He found himself pitying her in a way that was frightening, that poster on the wall of his music room back home was no more than a glossy paper sham, a fading erotic memory.

‘I believe what you told me, Eddie,’ it was an apology. He got the feeling that she might cry at any second.

‘Oh, that’s all right.’ He was embarrassed.

‘No, it isn’t all right. I wish to God you’d screwed the ass off Stephanie and got her pregnant.’

He felt himself starting to tremble.

‘She’s going to have the baby before the morning. I know. So does Doctor Wector.’

He managed to stop himself from saying, “that’s impossible”. Because it was against all the laws of human childbirth. Unless, of course, Stephanie had been with another guy before last April. He knew she hadn’t.

They just sat there in silence. He could not even guess what Donna was thinking except that she was shocked as himself.

‘It is the Antichrist after all!’ She spoke in a jerky, croaky whisper. ‘Because even I didn’t believe it would happen. Not until the night when we circumcised you, Eddie, and he manifested himself to us. It was all a game until then, and now we’re caught up in it. We’ve spread his word, sent his troops on the rampage, and there’s no turning back for any of us. From now on it’s all for real. I’m ageing, because he doesn’t need me anymore, he’s got Stephanie. He’s taken her from both of us. I wanted that child, Eddie.’

He just nodded his head. No words would have comforted her.

‘Maybe there’s still time.’ She turned her gaze on him and he saw how her eyes glistened in the light. ‘Eddie, I have to confess something to you.’

He tensed as her hand lifted the bed sheet, threw it back and exposed his nakedness. Suddenly those erotic nights of living fantasy with Deadbeat in his music room were a million miles away. He doubted whether he could make an erection even when her fingers began to caress his limpness.

‘Eddie, I have something to tell you,’ her lips brushed his, her tongue flicked his ear, and her shaking voice was barely audible. ‘I had you circumcised for me, not for the Master. Because it is the law of the New Generation that their women shall only copulate with the circumcised.’

Eddie sensed that she was starting to arouse him after all. She had aged but the magic was still there; it had slumbered, now it was awakening. She pushed him back, lifted herself astride him.

‘Make it good for me, Eddie,’ her hips began to gyrate. ‘Give me a baby!’

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Master was lying astride Stephanie, those rotting, emaciated lips pressed against hers, breathing putrid, suffocating fumes into her choking lungs, stifling her screams. She writhed, struggled, but her efforts were in vain. He thrust deep into her womb, she felt it starting to tear. Her abdomen was ballooning, being squashed beneath his weight, any second it would burst in every direction.

She squelched in the saturated sheet beneath her as his diseased semen flooded her, overflowed. Pushing with him, clutching at him, feeling her fingernails ripping away his decomposing skin, scraping the bones beneath. Her body shuddered, the agony was unbearable. She tried to faint, stared up into those lusting eyes.

The seed of Satan will bear fruit, you are about to give birth to the Antichrist!

Just as she started to slide down into a black bottomless abyss, dazzling white light jerked her back to consciousness, hauled her from the brink. Sobbing, staring fearfully into those burning orbs.

The eyes of Doctor Wector.

‘Push!’ His voice seemed to come from afar. ‘Push!’

She pushed with every vestige of strength that she could muster, screamed with pain. He was bent over her, his aquiline features white and strained. Behind him she glimpsed Donna. Maybe the others were here, too: Kelvin, Vincent, Joel and Lawre. Where’s Eddie? Oh, please, I want Eddie.

Because I want him present at the birth of his child.

It is not his child, it is the Master’s, born to rule the world with unsurpassed evil.

‘Relax. That’s fine. Now, push again.’

She felt the baby starting to come, slithering and fighting its way out of her womb, tearing frantically at her vagina. She caught a glimpse of Donna’s face before it was jerked away, saw the expression of sheer revulsion. Even Doctor Wector was standing back.

Oh, God in heaven, what foul creature have I given birth to?

Stephanie’s physical and mental endurance were at their limit, this time she was really starting to slide down into that chasm, felt her senses beginning to slip away.

Somehow Donna managed not to scream. Between splayed fingers she watched as Doctor Wector assisted the birth, his fingers dripping with slimy, stinking afterbirth. God, the stench! Only once before had she smelled such vile putrefaction, that time when the Master had showed himself to them.

Now he was back, his tiny, hideous infantile form, wriggling, beginning to shriek with demonic fury, an accusing finger pointing in her direction. Unfaithful whore, may your womb fester in your treacherous adultery!

Donna shrank back, clutched at a chair to save herself from falling. It knew that she had hastened to the Coming direct from the bed of the youth she had seduced in her last desperate bid to bear the Master’s spawn!

Wector was working with feverish haste, pushed her aside as he reached for towels, his pallid features a mask of terror as he lifted the child, cut the cord.

Donna saw its face. God forbid that such a being should be born into the world! Its flesh was purplish as though it choked, the head bloated beyond the proportions of its revolting, almost reptilian body, scabbed as though with oozing scales. Limbs that were too short, hands and feet that might have been webbed, deformed.

As she stared with blurred, distorted vision, she choked back a scream; not just because it was a living epitome of evil, truly born in the Master’s own form, but because in accordance with the law of the New Generation, an already circumcised babe had crawled from the womb of the chosen.

Stephanie stirred restlessly, surfaced into consciousness, shied from the creature which Doctor Wector held up for her to see. A moment of disbelief, then her terror erupted into a piercing scream.

‘No! Don’t let it touch me!’ She scrabbled in the soaking bed sheets, tried to hide beneath them. A rejection of her offspring that had the doctor laughing, cruelly, pushing her baby at her, guiding its slobbering, stinking lips on to an erect nipple.

Stephanie shrieked, tried to beat it away, but with his free hand, Wector grabbed her wrists, pinned them to the pillow. It was as though the gums were hardened, bit with the strength of toothless senility, twisted and pulled as though it sought to rip the teat from her tender bosom.

That was when Stephanie’s reason cut out, her mind blanked into an acceptance of something which it no longer feared. She shuddered once, then lay quiet, even smiled as the suckling fed with a voracity that defied the physical capabilities on one who had been trapped in her womb only minutes ago. Her hands came up, smoothed over the slippery flesh, her fingers going in search of the male organ as if to ascertain that it had truly been born in accordance with the laws of the New Generation. She had delivered the promised child, brought about the Coming, and she was well pleased.

Her lips moved soundlessly, mutely singing to the obscenity, the living blasphemy that clung to her.

Feed him flesh

Feed him blood

It’s the Coming

Out of the mud

*  *  *

Eddie had been told that Stephanie had given birth, that it was all right for him to go and visit her. The message had been delivered to his quarters via Daniel.

Eddie stared in disbelief, he had not been expecting to see her again. Ever. His thinking was sluggish, his brain still reeled from Donna’s visit last night.

‘They say it’s okay for you to see her,’ Daniel held out a square of paper, an official pass that would enable the other to infiltrate the closely guarded Necromancers’ suite. ‘I hear it’s a boy, but you’ll see for yourself.’

‘Thanks,’ Eddie’s fingers shook as he took the pass. He swallowed, tried to think of some excuse why he needn’t go. Because of his guilt. He had copulated with a hag, an ageing whore. He had bathed but he still felt unclean. Donna has used him for her own reasons, like the others had used Stephanie. ‘I’d better go and see her.’

A girl in overalls sweeping the corridor floor pointed to a door when he asked for Stephanie, neither looked up nor spoke, seemed to be hurrying her task as though she wanted to be away from here as quickly as possible. Eddie hesitated, it was an awesome prospect, visiting his own child for the first time, especially when these people were proclaiming it as the devil’s offspring. He hesitated, saw again in his mind that putrefying face, the way it had lusted for his own flesh. And then taken it.

No, this was ridiculous, a hyped fantasy. Doctor Wector had circumcised him on Donna’s orders, and the rock superstar had had her own reasons for that even if they were just crazy. He pushed the door open.

Christ, the room stank! Eddie recoiled from the stench, recognized it instantly, anticipated the presence of that loathsome old man, his body rotting, dripping beach mud. He pushed the door to the extent of its hinges, surveyed the interior of the small room fearfully.

It was much the same as the room in which he had been confined in for the week following his mutilation; whitewashed walls, sparsely furnished; a bed with a crib drawn up alongside it. And Stephanie sitting upright in the bed, naked down to the sheet that was draped across the lower half of her body, clutching a dark-skinned infant to her full breasts.

She did not appear to be aware of his presence, stared fixedly, vacantly, at the wall opposite. Her expression alarmed him, then it was temporarily forgotten as the baby slurped its mouth off a nipple and turned to stare at the newcomer.

God in heaven, what he saw was not possible, it had to be that recurring nightmare manifesting itself to him in infantile form! The tiny face was instantly recognizable, the pouted, toothless mouth; the way it slobbered congealing mucous, eyes that receded until all that was visible were dark, empty sockets. A deformed hand came round, pointed at him. The features were screwed up into an expression of recognition and lust.

Give me your flesh.

It struggled to extricate itself from its mother’s hold, fought with her with unbelievable strength; he knew that it would have flopped its way towards him like a stranded seal had she not held its slimy body and restrained it. The cry which came from its vile mouth was no human screech, it was a shriek of manic rage, a sound that vibrated Eddie’s eardrums, had him clasping his hands over them in an attempt to shut it out.

There was no possible doubt in Eddie’s mind that this was his Nemesis, the old Indian from Liberty Beach, reborn with all the evil of his former life.

The child ceased its struggling, regarded him with hatred, saliva stringing from its mouth as if it hungered for his body. Had it not been for Stephanie, Eddie would have fled.

She was watching him with eyes that were filmed as though she had cataracts. Just looking, no welcoming smile, no curiosity in her expression. And not even recognition!

‘Stephanie?’ It was not her, but he had to ask now that he was here. He wished fervently that he had not come, that he had never set eyes on her again, had been spared this awful meeting.

‘Yes?’ Her voice was expressionless, barely recognizable. She was looking towards him but she gave no hint that she knew who he was. Just a caller, maybe a servant come to clean up, mop up the baby spew.

‘It’s me. Eddie. Eddie Bannon.’

There was a pause as if she was trying to remember. But there was no flicker in those staring eyes. ‘What do you want?’

‘I … I’ve come to see you, Stephanie.’

‘Why?’

‘Because …’ He glanced away because the baby, if it was a baby, was glaring hatefully at him. Any second its flesh would begin to peel, it would age and become … ‘Because we used to be friends.’

‘I … don’t … remember.’

It was eerie, scared him as much as that monstrosity which she cradled in her arms. Its head was turned away from him now, he heard it starting to suckle again.

‘You stayed at our farm, I stayed with your folks, too. Twice.’

There was no response. She was looking at the wall again, her eyes opaque orbs. She seemed to be totally unaware of his presence, had forgotten that he had even called.

Her lips were moving, she appeared to be miming words, having difficulty in getting her voice to function.

Eddie was back outside in the corridor before he heard her strong tones, more powerful now than they had ever been. They echoed in the confined space, their beat throbbed his brain and there was no way he would have gone back inside that convalescent room.

Perhaps it was intended as a lullaby to that evil, repulsive babe that suckled her teats, an uncanny combination of rhythm and timing such as he had never heard before and never wished to hear again. The words drove him, had him staggering down that passageway, fleeing from them. I never saw you before, Eddie. Get the hell out of here and don’t come back pestering me!

Feed him flesh

Feed him blood

You’ve seen him before

Out there on the mud

Eddie did not begin to scream until he was back in his apartment.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Eddie Bannon slept the sleep of the dead, a deep void of which he was somehow conscious, enjoying the luxury of nothingness without full awareness. In his subconscious he knew that he slumbered, did not ever want to wake and face reality. He sensed a security that had been absent for a long time, a cocoon of invincibility that even his bogeyman could not breach with nightmares. If this was death, then he was happy in eternal peace.

‘Eddie. Eddie!’

Somebody was shaking him, gently at first, then more urgently, fingers digging deep into the skin of his exposed shoulder, rocking him to and fro.

‘Eddie, wake up.’

He moaned softly, stirred, still tried to keep reality at bay. Something dreadful had happened, he could not remember what it was, he did not want to. He tried to push away the hand that disturbed him but he had not the strength. Let me sleep on. Forever.

‘Eddie, it’s time to go.’

It was the bright light which finally unlocked his slumber, had him turning his head away. He stretched, it was beautiful. He yawned loudly. Then he stared up into Donna Caryl’s face and tried to recall who she was. Recognition slowly filtered through the floaters which obscured his view of her.

‘We’re going on a long journey, Eddie. Remember?’

He didn’t. ‘Uh-huh.’

‘You’ve been asleep a long time, you needed it. And you can carry on sleeping on the plane.’

Stephanie came back to him, and with a rush of nausea, the baby too. Or whatever it was. He shied from it, instinctively threw up a hand to protect himself in case it had slimed its way up on to the bed, was craving for his defenceless flesh.

‘I’m sorry that you had to see Stephanie, Eddie,’ Donna held his hand, squeezed it. ‘But it’s only right that you know what’s happened. You wouldn’t have believed it unless you’d seen it.’

‘I guess so.’

‘It’ll be different with us,’ she stooped, kissed him on the forehead. ‘Not like that!’

Eddie shuddered. He didn’t like babies, anyway. He was confused, could not think properly. Donna had wanted him to make her pregnant, but if she was sterile, how could he? He was too exhausted to think it out logically.

‘You’d better get dressed,’ she reached his clothes off the chair, laid them on the bed. ‘The plane goes in under an hour.’

She stood back, seemed transfixed by his naked body as he swung his legs to the floor. There was a wistful expression on her face. If he had not already made her a baby then there would be plenty of time to try again when they reached their destination. She was certain it was still possible.

It had to be.

*  *  *

Eddie’s head was muzzy with sleep, his legs felt too weak to support the weight of his body up the long flight of stone steps and across the floor of the upper building. Without Donna supporting him, he was sure that he would not have made it; he would have lain down on the floor and drifted back to that blissful state from which she had dragged him. Even the night air did not revive him fully.

There were three other passengers on the small jet besides himself and Donna; Kelvin, Vincent and Joel. He found himself scanning the seats, fearing lest he might see … No, Stephanie and her baby were not on board and the plane was already preparing to taxi. Either they had remained behind or else they were travelling separately with Lawre. He hoped that it was the former. He was too tired to ask; he was afraid of the answer. He sensed the aircraft lifting off and then he was slipping back into that wonderful, dreamless sleep. He was dimly aware of Donna’s hand resting on his own.

Eddie slept for a long time. He was dimly aware of the plane landing, being escorted by Donna out into the cool night air where there was bright neon lighting, the roar of aircraft landing and taking off. A queue; he leaned against her and she held him. They filed through an exit that was marked CUSTOMS. Nobody troubled him, Donna, or one of the others handled the documentation. His next realization was of being in a car, a spacious, luxuriously upholstered rear seat that was more comfortable than the one in the plane. A sensation of travelling at high speed, an engine that purred drowsily.

City street. The car sped, slowed; idled. Only innumerable traffic controls impeded its progress. Once he stirred, looked outside and saw crowded sidewalks, people shouting, chanting. There was fighting, police cars. He slept again until they stopped and this time the engine was killed.

Walking, Donna’s arm around him, his leg muscles rebelling against a short incline where the floor was wooden instead of concrete. He smelled diesel, the way his surroundings swayed and rocked gently told him that they were on a boat. He squinted through leaden eyelids, saw that they were in a crowded bar. Again he searched for Stephanie, relief when there was no sign of her.

The floor vibrated, he felt the engines surge. Wherever they were, they were leaving.

‘It won’t be long now,’ Donna said and helped him to drink from a plastic beaker of chilled orange juice.

Even in his state of near-somnambulism, Eddie picked up the vibes around him; the ecstasy, the tension. The fear. People were talking in a bid to overcome their inner terror, everybody was on edge.

‘The Big Concert is only twenty-four hours away,’ Donna nudged his consciousness up a gear, he got the feeling that she was in need of his support. ‘I think that everybody will be glad when it’s over. After that, everything will be fine.’

He hoped so. He wondered why his awareness was so fogged, why he was in this semi-dreamlike existence. His head ached slightly, his mouth was dry and there was a coating on his tongue that even the orange juice failed to remove. A kind of hangover, like when you sleep through until Monday morning. It was pleasant while it lasted, but you paid the price afterwards.

The gentle swell of the water was relaxing, the tilt of the boat leaned him up against Donna and she caught him when it threw him back.

He heard her say, ‘We’re almost there.’ But it was too much of an effort to peer out the porthole behind him. Right now he didn’t care where they were, where they were going. All he asked was to be allowed to lie down and go back to sleep uninterrupted.

The boat bumped against some kind of mooring, there was shouting above the hub-bub of voices. People began to file out through an awning. Eddie felt the gentle slope beneath his feet, the unsteadiness of a gangplank fixed to a bobbing boat.

The jetty was roofed, lit by an array of coloured lights, reflecting on either side in the oily blackness of deep water. His hand clutched Donna’s tightly, a new terror was beginning to manifest itself in him, a fear of an unknown that threatened to become familiar. Inwardly, he cowered from it.

With a determined effort he fought against the drowsiness, shook his head in an attempt to clear it. Momentarily the sleep haze lifted, loosened their shackles from his other senses. Only the thumping headache remained.

His terror escalated, brought with it a sweat that dampened his shirt, chilled in the cool night air. Then came the stench, putrefaction that was a thousand times stronger than before, a vile vapour that wafted off the dark waters, singled him out amidst the throng as though it had lain here awaiting his return.

Eddie cried out but his half-scream was drowned by the shouts and laughter all around him. He tried to free himself from Donna’s grasp but she was holding him too tightly. Hands shoved him from behind, impatient because he hung back, impeded the progress of others.

Donna was dragging him now, perhaps unaware of his reluctance to follow, his panicked urge to flee. His drug-induced drowsiness was starting to roll back, his struggles were slowing.

But not before he became aware of his surroundings, identified them as surely as if it had been only yesterday when he was last here. He stared in horror and disbelief, saw the squat buildings, the walkways and the balconied stone plinth that rose up into the night sky, followed it on up with his eyes even as the misty haze began to roll back over his strained and distorted sight. An artificially lit night where the lights of Manhattan reflected a kaleidoscopic glow, glinted eerily on the green features of the giant statue 300 feet above. Where the oily waters of the harbour lapped over a mud-covered shoreline against the perimeter wall. Where the stench of a living dead prehistoric tribesman drifted in and nauseated those who had stolen his lands and his burial ground.

Seconds before that anaesthesia spared Eddie the full trauma of his realization, he knew the location of the Necromancers’ final concert, the venue from which Deadbeat and the Coming would spread total anarchy throughout the globe.

It was as if that decomposing ragbag of evil, who he had first met on that distant April day, had lured him back to play some awful final role in the overthrow of the Christian world.

Just as his awareness fogged again, Eddie knew without any doubt that he had returned to Liberty Island, that this symbol of Freedom was to be desecrated and usurped by Satan and his followers, that it would become the heartbeat of evil to enslave Mankind.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Eddie felt that he had slept for an eternity. Waking was a pleasant, refreshing sensation. Until he recalled the events of the last two days.

He sat up in the makeshift bed, saw that he was in a small room that was obviously used as some kind of office. Stacked in a corner was a desk and a matching seat, a computer with its dust covers on, some software and various stationery. The floor was uncarpeted, and bright sunlight shafted in through the small window. The door was closed, probably locked. He did not even bother to try it.

Gone was his tiredness, the craving for sleep, in its place, stark, frightening awareness. His guts knotted, he could have vomited with very little effort, the way he used to do when he was young and wanted to stop off school. His mother had always fallen for it. There would be no sympathy from these people.

Why? Oh, Christ, why had they done this to him? Obviously he had been drugged to facilitate his transportation here. But, surely, now that they had Stephanie and her blasphemous baby they did not need him. He had nothing to offer them. Had he? It was a disconcerting, terrifying possibility.

Donna craved the Antichrist’s child, she had been deprived of the role of satanic motherhood by her sterility. Eddie did not believe her insistence that he could give her the baby she wanted. Even if that was possible, then it was too late, the Coming had already happened. Had he been brought here for some insidious purpose. He moved across to the window, stood looking out across the brilliant sunlit island. The patio and recreation areas teemed with crowds, another boatload was just arriving. Kids, like himself, wearing their Deadbeat T-shirts, there was a queue stretching from the cafe entrance right around the corner. Music was playing over a tannoy, he tried to close his ears to it. Suddenly the Necromancers’ beat had become a terrifying sound that thumped his brain threateningly. We’ve got you now, Eddie Bannon.

He did not hear the door open, jumped when somebody touched his arm.

‘Feeling better, Eddie?’ It was Donna. At first glance he thought she was naked but it was that same flesh coloured dress that gave the impression of total nudity. As it was intended to. She looked less haggard, maybe she, too, had slept since their arrival.

‘I’m okay,’ he was pale and trembling, there was no mistaking the anguish in his expression.

‘Relax,’ she stepped forward, brushed his lips with her own. ‘There’s nothing whatever to worry about. I’m sorry that you were drugged for the journey but I thought it might do you good to blank out for a while. I shouldn’t have let you see Stephanie and her child. It was thoughtless of me. I guess I just wanted you to understand how I felt.’

‘I understand,’ he murmured. ‘Is she here?’

‘Of course, she is going to be the star on the Big Night. I’ve been upstaged!’ There was undisguised bitterness in her tone. ‘But after tonight, Eddie, things will be different. For both of us.’

‘I guess so.’ He couldn’t possibly guess how anything could be different from now on.

He turned to look out of the window again. Some youths were piling up a mountain of empty tomato crates, cardboard cartons, trying to sweep the litter from beneath the feet of the crowd.

‘What are they doing?’ He asked.

‘Building a bonfire,’ she moved to his side. ‘A real big one, Fourth of July style. You always have a fire at a celebration, don’t you? The Master will appear tonight to give his blessing to his child.’ She sounded uneasy.

Eddie tensed, he didn’t want to look upon that rotting creature again. He could still taste its putrescence, it was in the atmosphere here, as though this island had been the lair of the Beast since time immemorial, where it had slumbered in the mud awaiting … the Coming.

‘Don’t try to go outside, whatever you do, Eddie. Those bums out there are drug-crazed. Before dark there’ll be knifings and muggings, girls will be raped. That’s how the Master wants it to be. The Indian tribes are going to rise up and claim back their stolen lands. They will avenge themselves for nearly four centuries of enslavement. The New Generation will massacre their oppressors in every country of the world. And this will be the starting place!’

He shuddered, that note of fanaticism was back in her voice.

Outside, the workforce were relaying a chain of tyres up from the jetty, a boatload of them had obviously been brought across from Battery Park.

‘It’s going to be a big fire,’ she squeezed his hand with a sudden intensity, there was no affection in her grip. ‘And they’re putting up an inverted crucifix. The Master will demand human flesh for such an occasion and he will not be content with morsels like castrations and circumcisions!’

Eddie was scared, scared of the hell in which he was trapped.

*  *  *

Stephanie had fed her child and it was sleeping in its crib. Her movements were jerky like an automaton as she crossed to the window and looked down on the scene below. Her nipples were raw where her offspring’s hardened gums had fastened on to them, her breasts scratched and bruised where it had repeatedly clawed her tender flesh. She was tired. She was always tired these days, she could not envisage being otherwise.

The island was overcrowded, the throng below stood shoulder to shoulder, jostled for places where they would remain until nightfall. Ellis Island and Governors Island were starting to fill up too; next best viewpoint if you had not been able to secure a place on Liberty. The US Coast Guard had withdrawn from Governors, a tactical withdrawal rather than a retreat. Resources were stretched beyond their limits, they would snap before this day was out. But Stephanie understood none of this, only knew that the world and his wife were flocking here to view her baby. She had no idea why, just accepted that they were.

She heard Donna come into the room but did not turn around. Stephanie was still staring fixedly, blankly down upon the milling thousands when the older woman touched her arm.

‘You should be resting, Stephanie, conserving your strength for tonight. It will be a long climb up to the crown.’

Stephanie nodded even though she did not comprehend. Today sadness, grief, pervaded her state of near mindlessness. Last night a dream had infiltrated her deep sleep, so strong that it had stamped itself indelibly upon her subconscious so that she remembered it, even recognized the people in it. Marvin and Charlotte Insel. Her parents. They were both dead.

A crazed mob, two thousand strong had attacked Bellport, breached the armed defences. Her father had been sleeping in a downstairs room because he could not manage the stairs with his walking frame. The attackers had come from behind, across the swamp, burst into the house. They had axed Pip to death, then disembowelled Marvin, hacked his head from his shoulders and set it up on the sideboard. Charlotte had come screaming to the top of the stairs and they had got her, too. They didn’t mutilate her, just took her, one after the other, queued up the stairs for her. Long before the last one was spent she was limp and impervious to their lust. They had left her there on the landing and then set fire to the house.

Stephanie had forgotten how to cry.

‘You will be their goddess tonight,’ Donna looked at the other carefully, failed to hide her own jealousy. ‘You will stand in the statue’s crown, show them their ruler for the first time. Then …’ She lapsed into silence. Nobody, not even herself, dared to guess what would happen after that. The Master had shown himself to them that night, when they were convinced that this was all some kind of game that would end with the Necromancers’ anarchic domination of the world. But self-induced fanaticism had turned into mind-bursting reality. The Coming had happened. Tonight would be its climax. Only Donna’s barren womb had deprived her the supreme role.

Stephanie was not listening, she had withdrawn into her own world of silence, not even alone with her thoughts as she did not have any. Donna went back down to the museum where the group had their temporary apartment.

*  *  *

Eddie stood by the window looking out on the seething mass, saw how they piled the bonfire higher and higher, piling it up on the plinth and the walkway. He was tense, uneasy. The flames would spread, lick up to the feet of the mighty statue.

Of course that was the intention. They intended to destroy the old Freedom, replace it with their own. The charring, blackening of Liberty, for surely it would not burn, would remain as a symbol of the Coming, a reminder to the world of how Satan had finally triumphed.

Now they were fixing an inverted crucifix at the base of the kindling, a pole that had probably been wrenched from the jetty, leaned at an angle but it would suffice for the vile sacrifice which they would offer to appease their god of evil.

The sky was turning saffron, a delicate haze was drifting in off the harbour. The distant lights of Manhattan twinkled through the opaqueness like stars that had fallen in shame. In the distance Eddie heard a burst of sporadic gunfire. Maybe it was a final token protest from the besieged forces of law and order.

He sensed a change in himself, it had probably been coming on unnoticed during the last hour or two. His terror had receded to be replaced by something else. Anger.

A smouldering fury that gripped his chest, had him clenching the sill. He hated them all, not just the Necromancers for bringing about the rule of anarchy, but those who scrabbled to obey their wishes. They had destroyed his parents. Stephanie and her folks too. And himself. You had no choice, they took your mind, your body, did what they wanted with it. It was too late now, but he saw how they had used him for their own purposes. It had all begun that warm, April afternoon on the shoreline out there.

The old Indian had risen up out of the mud, had singled him out to take the evil back across the Atlantic. It was as though the other’s spirit had accompanied him, found a way to infiltrate the youth of a distant land.

Gone forth with himself to spread Deadbeat and decadence.

Eddie checked a blind rage that would have been futile, an impossible desire to kill and mutilate that embodiment of living dead evil. He would not lie down and worship as millions of others were doing, if his own fate was to be death and the loss of his eternal soul this night, then he would curse that entity for eternity.

Night came, and with it an iridescent, soft glow that was a reflection from the mighty statue above, casting her final ray of dwindling hope to any who still believed in the old Freedom.

Eddie knew that they would come for him soon, understood why Donna Caryl had brought him back here. The ancient evil that had used him was now demanding him for its own. Out there the blasphemous crucifix awaited the ultimate sacrifice, its mindless followers were baying for his flesh and blood. And the old one would rise again from the stinking mud for the final repast.

Chapter Thirty

Eddie walked out ahead of Donna and the Necromancers, stood on the cafeteria patio with armed guards keeping the crowd at bay. The watchers had gone strangely quiet, he sensed an atmosphere of awe. Because they knew who he was, why he was here. See this youth, no different from yourselves, it was he whom the Master chose first to show himself to, Eddie, that’s his name, is imbued with a power of his own and he became the Chosen One, to go forth and spread the word in the beginning. Now the Master has called for him to be returned to the land of eternal darkness.

The illuminations hid the crowd from Eddie, dazzled him so that all he saw beyond the stone flagged stage was an area of darkness, felt the evil that surged beyond, the crazed lust. Nobody held him, there was no point, there was nowhere to flee. He would not struggle.

It was as though the kaleidoscope of lighting was a spot lights on the stage. Donna moved forward with a seductive grace, her dress giving the impression of nudity. Eddie thought that perhaps she was naked, he had not really looked. The others had filed away to their various instruments; Kelvin was seated at his drums, Lawre by his base. The Big Concert, their last bow, was about to commence.

Eddie experienced a brief moment of self-consciousness, one of those occasions when you did not quite know what was expected of you. He shifted awkwardly, in a way it was worse than the thought of what lay ahead. He glanced around the circle of light, caught a glimpse of an overweight figure standing on the fringe by the door. It was Daniel, the eunuch smiling benignly.

Everybody was waiting. For something. A pause, a void, a rare moment of silence that was broken only by the intake of thousands of breaths.

A gasp of fear that began like the soughing of the sea breeze, growing in magnitude. Heads were uplifted, clustered bodies were cringing, cowering in unison, huddling together. Somebody screamed.

Eddie looked up, followed their line of vision, wanted to scream with them.

Three hundred feet above the harbour’s waters, that eerie green glow seemed to centre on the statue’s crown where a distant figure was just visible at one of the windows. Eddie started, knew without any doubt that it was Stephanie, even though he could not discern her features. Her stance, her silhouette, he would have known her without either of those, sensed her rather than recognized her. But it was not Stephanie at whom they were looking, gibbering in terror. It was the wriggling obscenity which she held aloft in her outstretched arms, the tiny form that exuded evil, in every one of its struggles, its vibrant squealing harsh and terrible to the ears. Look upon the antichrist, all of you who promised to serve and obey, see for yourselves the Coming.

The atmosphere was alive, those tentacles of mist, icy fingers that reached out to stroke every one of the watchers, wisping amongst them, their trembling lips muttering words of obedience to the Promised One who had been born to Deadbeat, prostrating themselves, bodies lying upon bodies.

Feed him flesh

Feed him blood

He is born

Out of the mud

Even the beat could not drown the manic cries of the infant. It drew the worshippers back on to their feet, had them clutching at one another, beginning to rock crazily in a mindless frenzy. Eddie felt an urge, an inner calling that started to twist his guts, to join them but he fought against it. The feeling subsided. Oh, Jesus Christ, he was stronger than the force that had driven the New Generation to kill and mutilate, to take their own lives in self-sacrifice to the power that dominated their very souls.

I am not afraid of you!

He wrenched his gaze from the scene, saw again that upturned crucifix, stared in horror. A face had been carved out of the woodwork, crude whittling that had resulted in the features that were only too familiar, slivers of timber hanging from it in a bizarre symbolization of peeling, rotting flesh. The pouted mouth seemed to masticate, it had to be an optical illusion. The structure had transcended blasphemy, had become the totem which the prehistoric tribe, who once inhabited this land, whose remains were interred below the concrete, had called upon to give them power. They had pledged their souls to this symbol of darkness and now it had arisen, a Manitou of evil, to lead them in the destruction of civilization.

The gouged eyes seemed to centre on Eddie, the mouth widened in a leer. I’ve already tasted your flesh, boy, now I want the rest.

You bastard!

The totem shook visibly. Again, it could have been a trick of the multi-coloured lighting.

Eddie elevated his eyes, felt them being drawn back to that bizarre offspring of darkness. Above it, the statue seemed to frown down angrily. The freedom for which it had fought was being threatened.

Donna was singing, shouting the words as if competing with the beat. The concrete was vibrating like an earth tremor, was registering its protest. And the Antichrist was shrieking insanely, fighting in Stephanie’s grasp as though it sought to tear itself free in its manic desire to launch itself on to the shuddering human flesh down below.

‘Give us the sacrifice. Give us his flesh and blood!’

Eddie recoiled as the words tore at him. Strong fingers grasped his wrists, began to lead forward. The Master could wait no longer for the offering. That totem face was a moving contortion of malevolence, the mouth seeming to shout in unison with its vile spawn above.

Let go of me!

They didn’t. A hand twisted his wrist cruelly. It was Daniel’s. The eunuch was grinning, leering. His tongue protruded, licked his thick lips. He, too, was hungry for human flesh and blood.

Eddie started to panic. He could see the ring of faces now, animal countenances pressing in on him, slobbering, hands reaching out as if they wanted to drag him into their midst, rip his flesh from his bones, slurp his jetting blood. Only the presence of the Antichrist kept them in check, for the unholy repast belonged to the Master. The leftovers would be thrown to his followers.

Eddie stood facing the totem, felt the iciness of its fetid breath, recoiled from its stench. The infantile shrieks were deafening, Donna was rocking towards him, her shiny features mocking him. Now you see why I brought you here, Eddie. Because the Master demanded it, he has craved you since the day he first saw you. You have served your purpose, he has bestowed the highest accolade of all upon you. Be grateful and die in his name.

‘You bitch!’ He hissed. ‘You senile cow, see how age is taking its toll of you. You’re not beautiful, you’re a hag. He doesn’t need you, you couldn’t give him what he wanted. I had to give him his child bearer!’

‘Crucify him!’ She screamed, thrust her face close to his. ‘Give him to the Master!’

His captors closed in on him. Daniel’s hand came from behind him, Eddie flinched at the sight of a mallet, some heavy, six inch nails. Daniel was still grinning, in his own way this was his revenge for what they had done to him.

Eddie twisted his head for one last look upwards. Stephanie seemed to be fighting a futile battle with her offspring, any second it might squirm from her grasp, plunge downwards. They were both bathed in that green, translucent glow.

His eyes travelled on, saw the strong features again. The expression appeared to have hardened, a glint of anger in those eyes where previously there had only been tranquillity. A flicker of anger, the torch of freedom was uplifted defiantly. The gigantic body trembled, it might have been with the vibration below it.

Eddie was sure Miss Liberty’s head moved, bowed, but not in humility or surrender. She stared down, seemed to fix her gaze on himself.

‘Help me! For God’s sake, help us all!’ Eddie screamed as they lifted him up on top of the crucifix and Daniel stepped forward, nails held in his mouth like gargantuan malformed teeth.

Eddie was pushed against the grotesquely carved head. He retched at the stench of its breath, the kiss of putrefaction.

At that very second the lighting went out, plunged the island into a kind of greenish darkness.

People were milling, shouting. Eddie felt himself thump to the ground, lay there dazed. Momentarily, he seemed to be forgotten.

A rush of air had him covering his head, sensed the object that hurtled down from above, heard its scream, a wail of fury that reached a peak and ended with a sickening thud.

Eddie knew what it was, felt the vomit in his mouth even as he turned to look, saw the bloody mulch on the concrete, a heaving scarlet mass that was already rising up out of its pulped, infantile body. A dwarf thing that died and grew, blood-smeared flesh that stretched and bulged, its mouth forming scarlet bubbles that burst as it learnt to breathe again. The Master, the Antichrist, had risen to reclaim the world from which he had once been cast down.

That strange luminous glow revealed silhouettes but hid detail, showed the cowering multitude coming to life to welcome their Master. Yet, they, too, had changed. They had cast off their restrictive clothing, their naked bodies moved to the beat that still pounded from the stage, their wild countenances reflecting the demonical frenzy of a killing dance, their burnished bodies terrible to behold.

For with the Coming, the long-dead tribesmen had risen from their ancient burial ground to take their revenge upon the foreign foe which had subjected them to enslavement and humility.

‘Kill the white eyes!’

Eddie knew that they saw and recognized him, that even this ethereal half-light could not hide him from these demons who had followed their lord from hell. Strong hands reached for him, dragged him to his feet, thrust him back towards the totem of death.

He screamed, not because he was about to die but because that carved likeness of the Evil One was gone from the crucifix, those features now living obscenely on the one who had resurrected himself out of the remnants of his own crushed offspring!

Daniel, grotesque in the ancient nudity, had his nails ready. Eddie’s body was lifted, upturned, his arms stretched along the cross of the sacrificial pole.

‘Nail him ready! Prepare to light the fire!’

Eddie felt the blood rush to his head, tried to adjust to his distorted vision. Even the Master, who stood before him, had changed. In the place of the bowed, decomposing monstrosity, stood a proud, handsome warrior chieftain, his only item of dress a necklace of carved trinkets, hideous miniature skulls that had been fashioned from human bone, symbols of death that trembled around his neck. His movements were no longer shambling, his erect body was lithe and powerful. An evil Manitou who thrilled to his return to life and would celebrate it with death.

Somebody was screaming Eddie’s name. It seemed to come from all directions, shrill and familiar. He moved his head, tensed his neck muscles so that he could look upwards. There, framed against that tiny window, high above, he saw Stephanie’s pallid, shocked face. No longer was her expression vacant, her eyes shone in the weird darkness. She screeched her terror, yelled for them to spare him.

The Manitou turned, saw her. ‘Silence, whore! Your purpose has been served. You, too, will die!’

The ground trembled, somewhere something toppled and fell. None heeded it, for the Necromancers still pounded out the Coming, a hymn of welcome to the dreaded Antichrist. A stone flag cracked, split. Masonry crumbled and showered from the plinth.

The Master stood transfixed, head still uplifted, but his gaze had travelled on beyond the girl who had borne the child which was himself. His eyes fixed on the mighty green face of the one who towered over them, and for a second it seemed that there was a flicker of fear in his own dark eyes.

‘Be still, for I, the Great Manitou, older than civilization, more powerful than …’

A block of stone hurtled down, smashed at his feet. The music ceased abruptly, just echoes that swirled away with the last of the mist in the cold wind that howled off the water. A sudden freak hurricane, it wafted discarded clothing like leaves in an autumn gale, buffeted the squat buildings, rocked the mighty statue so that it gave the appearance of stepping forward. It swayed angrily, the torch was wielded rather than held, a weapon poised to smash any adversary to Freedom.

The Indians were howling with the wind, had thrown themselves flat on the ground. Daniel had dropped his nails, writhed as he choked on one that had slipped down his throat. Eddie slumped forward, his limbs suddenly freed, lay and watched with the rest of them.

Only Donna was still on her feet, a pathetic, naked figure that staggered forward, had difficulty in walking, her once shapely body now bent and wasted, her flesh wrinkled and sagging. Her cheeks had hollowed, she pleaded with a shrunken, toothless mouth.

‘Master, you promised eternal youth!’ A desperate plea, even Eddie pitied her tragic transformation, tried not to remember all that had been between them. He had hated her, but now he forgave her. She had pledged her life, her soul, to this god of darkness and now the ancient Manitou was reviling her for her fidelity.

‘Wither and die, barren strumpet!’

Donna appeared to disintegrate at his scathing command, her flesh shrinking, peeling from her frail bones. Her long hair streamed in the wind, was torn in tufts from the balding skull. Her pleas became shrill, muted squeaks. A skeleton that somehow stood upright, tottered before the elements, finally crumpled to a pile of bones that might one day be used for carving blasphemous trinkets, drumsticks to beat out a prophesy of death and mutilation.

Only Stephanie was screaming now.

The Antichrist stepped forward, was pushed back as though some mighty, invisible hand had struck him. Defiant, perplexed, only his dark eyes showed the sudden fear that gripped him. His lips curled in an ancient curse but the wind tore it away before it was born.

He staggered back a step, almost fell, regained himself. He dropped into a half-crouch, grabbed for his necklace, held the tiny skulls up. For a moment the luminous light dimmed, flickered, but it came back again. Even stronger. Behind him the huddled tribesmen were wailing their fear, moaning that might or might not have been the wind.

Eddie lay flat, dared not move except to look at the crown again. There was no sign of Stephanie. Miss Liberty had a look of strain on her features that embodied a physical and mental struggle. The torch was thrust forward, downward, as though it was a flame about to ignite …

The bonfire.

Kindling crackled, flames leapt, fanned by the wind, an inferno that was a veritable explosion as the petrol-soaked timbers and cardboard were enveloped in a rush of flames. Eddie staggered to his feet, stumbled away as the heat came at him, a burning, raging gale. Driving him towards …

The beach.

No! He trod over limp, naked bodies, fought against the instinct to climb over the low wall, drop down into the dark shadows beyond.

Now the island was illuminated by a green and orange light that created flickering, moving shadows. Tribesmen rose, withered and fell; others took their place. And in their midst their Manitou raged, urged them to overthrow this new god, this entity which symbolized a new kind of freedom and was bent on the destruction of an evil that was older than mankind.

For this was Armageddon.

Two forces were locked in the struggle for supremacy; the loser faced total annihilation, there would be no compromise. Suddenly, the Indian stiffened, stretched to his full height and beyond, arms upraised. Eddie screamed into the night wind, for surely this was a salute of victory, the conquest of a hated foe.

The Manitou stood erect, then he seemed to go limp. The taut skin split, a gutted rabbit spilling out its entrails. The noble features were disintegrating, the mouth toothless once more, only capable of muttering curses and dribbling saliva; the nose had shrunken to twin, ragged, mucus bubbling orifices.

Humbled in defeat, hunched as it turned and staggered away, a mortally wounded beast of the chase slinking back to its lair. To die the living death.

Eddie lay amongst the fallen, squinted through spread fingers as it passed within a metre of him, retched as its latest putrefaction enveloped him. But it did not see him, its only desire to return to the mud in which it had lain buried for countless centuries.

The illuminations were back on. All around people were stirring, groping for discarded garments, intent on clothing themselves against the cool night air and their own inhibitions. A silent, sullen throng, they huddled around the fire for warmth, stared blankly at one another as they tried to remember.

Eddie rose to his feet, looked up. Miss Liberty was as she had always been. If there had been an earth tremor then she had survived with only minor cracks to her plinth. She had withstood a century, she would survive many more. The evil that had lain beneath her had been returned to its ancient burial ground.

Forever.

*  *  *

Stephanie was standing at the foot of the stairs that led up to the crown, holding on to the wall for support. Naked, her body was scratch-marked and blood-smeared, dried mucus encircled her like some revolting necklace, as though snails had crawled around her, left their trail to congeal and dry.

The floor was littered with bodies, teenagers who stirred and groaned, covered their eyes, in case they looked upon the thing which they feared most, drug addicts hauling themselves out of a self-inflicted coma.

‘Eddie!’ Stephanie swayed, he caught her in case she fell. ‘Oh, Eddie, what happened?’

‘I guess it was the final conflict between Good and Evil,’ he held her shuddering body close. ‘Miss Liberty won. She would have, anyway, regardless of anything else.’ That strange feeling of power had left him, if it had ever existed. He had only been a spectator, he was grateful to whatever power had won the day, that he and Stephanie were spared.

‘Where … where is … it?’ She clung to him, shrank back.

‘Gone, I guess. Like the thing it grew into. Banished back to where it came from, it might even be destroyed. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know for sure. Whatever, it’s all over now.’ He kissed her.

They walked back through the souvenir shop, stood in the doorway and looked out on a smoky, fire lit scene where teenagers were sitting up, searching for their lost clothing. The Indians were gone, vanquished with the Manitou who had summoned them. Somehow the silence was beautiful, even the fire was dying down, the breeze wafting flakes of charred cardboard like a gentle spring snowstorm.

Eddie sniffed the air, it smelled fresh and clean, the lingering putrescence had dispersed. Across the harbour the lights of Manhattan looked much the way they always had.

Tomorrow the ferries would run again, gradually things would return to normal. Deadbeat had come and gone, the cycle would begin again. It was time to rebuild. Life had to go on, the New Generation had learned their lesson.

Tomorrow it would be different.

The End

Thank you for purchasing this ebook.
I hope you enjoyed the read!.
Guy.

This ebook is the sixty-seventh 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 mid 2013.

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.

35. Throwback.

36. The Wood.

37. The Neophyte.

38. Abomination.

39. Snakes.

40. Cannibals.

41. Alligators.

42. Bloodshow.

43. Thirst II: The Plague.

44. Demons.

45. Crabs: The Human Sacrifice.

46. Fiend.

47. The Island.

48. Mania.

49. The Master.

50. The Camp.

51. The Festering.

52. Phobia.

53. The Unseen.

54. Carnivore.

55. The Black Fedora.

56. The Resurrected.

57. The Knighton Vampires.

58. Witch Spell.

59. The Plague Chronicles.

60. The Hangman.

61. The Dark One.

62. Dead End.

63. Dead Meat.

64. Water Rites.

65. The Pony Riders.

66. The Busker.

67. An Unholy Way To Die.

68. Deadbeat.

The next book will be :

69. Blackout.

"In a hunting lodge in the remote American Midwest, a family prepares to sit out a devastating storm. In the morning the hut is still standing, but has deteriorated and is filled with a dreadful, pervasive stench. Outside, their station wagon has corroded and the tyres have rotted. The trees in the forest have withered with age. The family is trapped, surrounded by baying wolves. Then a stranger appears, a trapper from the past, with talk of "Injuns" and wild animals. Suddenly it is all too real: the storm has created a time warp in this remote valley, and the family fight for survival in an ancient and hostile land ..."

Recently published (but not part of back catalogue conversion) :-

Night of the Werewolf

The Eighth Day.

Killer Crabs: The Return.

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.