He plunged both hands into the firebox.
Mind shattering pain enveloped his arms, the gloves which he wore disintegrating in seconds as the flames devoured them. Harold found that he could not move and, as the agonizing pain began to spread through his entire body he actually saw the flesh of his arms turning black, huge blisters growing and bursting like flowering plants which spilled their fluid in thick gouts. Bone showed white through the charred stumps and finally Harold found the breath to scream.
He was still screaming when he woke up, propelled from the dream with a force he could almost feel. For long seconds he continued to scream but then, as he realized where he was, he quietened down and his screams turned first to whimpers and then to tears.
Curling up beneath the covers he sobbed uncontrollably.
Judith Myers stood before the bedroom mirror and studied her reflection in the glass. She ran a hand over the small, almost imperceptible bulge below her sternum then turned sideways for a better view. She touched the shape gently, allowing her eyes to stray momentarily from it, studying the rest of her naked body. Her hair was still wet from the shower she’d just taken and it hung in dark dripping strands, the droplets of water making brief circlets on the beige carpet. Her make-up had been washed off but her face was all the more striking for that. It seemed to glow in the half-light cast by the bedside lamp, her cheeks seeming sunken and hollow in the twilight. She ran an appraising eye over the rest of her body – the taut breasts, the unwanted bulge of her belly, the dark nest of pubic hair at its base. She’d put on some weight around her bottom and that fact made her even more irritable. Finally, after taking one last look at her slightly distended stomach, she turned away from the mirror and reached for the large fluffy towel which lay on the bottom of the large double bed. She began to dry her hair.
“You still intend to go through with it then?” said Andy Parker. He was stretched out beneath the sheets, watching her. He took a last drag on his cigarette and ground it out in the ash-tray on the bedside table.
“I thought I asked you not to smoke up here,” said Judith, still rubbing frenziedly at her hair.
“Don’t evade the question,” he said.
She paused for a second and looked at him.
“Yes, I am still going through with it.”
Parker held her gaze for a moment then he shook his head resignedly.
“Look, Andy,” she said, irritably. “We’ve been over this time and time again. Now I don’t want to keep talking about it.”
“I wonder sometimes if you’ve given it enough thought,” he said.
“Christ,” she threw the towel down. “I’ve done nothing
but
think about it ever since I found out I was pregnant.” There was a long silence then Judith retrieved the towel and set about drying her hair once more. Her tone was more subdued when she spoke again. “Look, I can understand the way
you
feel, but try and understand how
I
feel. A baby at this time just wouldn’t be. . .” She struggled to find the word.
“Convenient?” said Parker.
She nodded.
“I don’t know why you’re so worried, Judith. I mean, if it’s the money that’s bothering you, my wage is plenty for the two of us. We don’t
need
the money you bring in.”
“The money’s got nothing to do with it and you know that,” she told him, folding the towel. She shook her head, her shoulder-length hair flowing tantalizingly as she got up and crossed to the linen basket in the corner of the bedroom. He watched her, still naked, as she tossed the towel in amongst the other dirty washing. She stooped to pick up one of his handkerchiefs which was lying nearby. She glanced at it, saw that it was clean so proceeded to fold it neatly and push it into the drawer with the others. She was a stickler for neatness, everything must be in its place. It was one of the many little things which Parker had noticed about her during their six years together. She was twenty-five, eight years younger than him and they had shared each other’s lives for the past six years, four of which they had spent living together in a house on the edge of Exham town centre. There had never been any mention of marriage, in truth it was an unspoken fact that they would probably live out their days together without the intrusion of matrimony. It was something which suited them both. But the subject of children was another matter. At thirty-three, Parker was keen, almost anxious, to be a father. He had everything else he wanted. He owned a highly successful restaurant in Exham, he had gone through his hell-raising days and enjoyed every minute of it but now he was ready to set the seal on his success, their relationship and his own newly-found passivity by drawing the cosy cocoon of a family around himself.
Judith, apparently, had other ideas. She worked for one of Exham’s biggest firths as a graphic designer and she took her job very seriously. She was in with the chance of promotion, the opportunity to take charge of her own department and she certainly didn’t want to jeopardize the impending promotion by the unwelcome intrusion of a child.
She crossed to the dressing table and picked up a brush, sitting before the mirror to sweep the bristles through her hair. She glanced at Parker’s reflection as she removed the knots and tangles from her hair, brushing away enthusiastically until it sprang up to its usual lustrous fullness. She dug fingers into it then crossed to the bed and slid in beside him.
“Is this bloody promotion
so
important?” Parker demanded, scarcely concealing his annoyance.
“To me it is,” she told him. “I want that department.”
“You could go back after you’d had the baby,” he suggested.
She snorted.
“And start at the bottom again? No thanks.”
She put one hand on his chest, curling the thick hair with her index finger, tracing the outline of his muscles with her long nail, allowing it to glide down towards his navel. The muscles of his stomach tightened slightly as she drew patterns across his belly, working lower until she was at the forest of his pubic hair. The head of his erection nudged against the probing digit and she enveloped it with her whole hand, feeling its hardness. With her free hand, she reached up and touched his face, curious at his apparent lack of response.
“You realize the moral implications of what you intend to do?” he asked, unexpectedly.
She looked puzzled.
“You’re over four months pregnant.”
She released his penis immediately, rolling onto her back. Judith let out a long, angry breath then propped herself up on one elbow, glaring at him. “You never give up do you?” she said. Her voice took on a hard edge. “Just drop it, Andy. Once and for all. Drop it.”
“Judith, it’s a human life,” he insisted.
“For God’s sake, shut up about the bloody child.” She sat up, looking down at him. “For the last time, I’m having the abortion. Don’t start this philosophical crap about taking a human life because, apart from being about the lowest trick you’ve pulled so far to try and stop me, it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to the way I feel. Nothing you can say or do will make me change my mind.” Her face was flushed with anger and it was reflected in her voice. “I don’t
need
this baby. I don’t
want
this baby.”
She suddenly sucked in a tortured breath as a violent stab of pain lanced through her.
“Oh God,” she gasped and rolled onto her back again.
Parker threw back the sheets, seeing that her hands had gone to her belly, were pressing the slight distension. She winced again. It felt as if someone were jabbing her stomach wall with a red hot knife, just below the navel. She inhaled deeply and the movement brought a renewed wave of pain. As a child she had been bitten by the family cat once, and the pain which she now felt inside her abdomen reminded her of that pain.
She allowed her hands to slide away from her belly and both she and Parker watched as the flesh rose slightly, first above the navel and then to one side of it. Her stomach undulated slowly for long seconds then was still. The pain ceased as abruptly as it had come.
She lay still for what seemed like an eternity, afraid to move in case the agonizing torment returned. Her forehead was greasy with perspiration and her breath came in shallow gasps. Eventually she touched her stomach. There was no discomfort.
“What the hell happened?” Parker asked, anxiously.
Judith smiled thinly, her face pale.
“I don’t know. I think it must have been a muscle spasm,” she said. But, even as she spoke, she looked down at her stomach, remembering the undulations.
She turned, trembling, to face Parker, who took her in his arms.
It was a long time before either of them slept.
Randall got out of the car and walked across the pavement towards the front of the cinema. A few red letters still hung from the track which ran around its canopy, others had been displaced long ago by the wind. He looked up and read:
TH P LA E
“I can remember when the Palace used to be the best cinema in Exham,” P C Higgins told him, scanning the front of the building.
“Well, it’s been empty for two years,” said Randall. “It’s as good a place as any to hide.”
“You don’t really think he’d pick somewhere in the middle of town do you, guv?” asked the constable.
“I doubt it,” Randall confessed, “but we’d better check it anyway.” He pulled a large key from his jacket pocket, one which they’d picked up from the owner of the building earlier that morning. He owned both The Palace and The Gaumont further up the road and had asked why the police should be showing so much interest in the deserted cinema. Randall had told him there’d been a spate of arson recently and they wanted to check the building out in case the fire-raiser should strike there next. The owner had not asked any more questions.
“You stop in the car,” Randall told his driver. “Just in case anything comes over on the two-way.”
Higgins hesitated for a moment.
“I’ll be OK,” the Inspector reassured him. He waited until the constable had retreated to the car then inserted the key in one of the padlocks which hung from the four sets of double doors. The Inspector threw his weight against the doors and they swung open reluctantly. He coughed at the smell of damp and decay inside.
A door to his left led into the stalls, to his right, a staircase which would take him up to the circle. He checked the stalls, the beam of his torch scarcely able to penetrate the gloom. Dust, at least a couple of inches thick, swirled up and around him, the particles drifting lazily in the glow of the torch.
The circle was worse.
Seats had been tom up and piled at both sides of the balcony and Randall had to put a handkerchief across his face so foul was the odour of decay. He checked everywhere, including the projection box, but all he found up there were a couple of yellowed copies of
Men
Only
. He glanced through one, smiling thinly to himself then dropped it back into the dustbin. Rusted spool cans lay discarded on the stone floor.
Satisfied that the cinema was, indeed, deserted, Randall made his way back outside and across to the waiting Panda car.
“Not a bloody trace,” he said, dropping the torch on the parcel shelf.
It had been the same story all day, not just in the places where Randall had searched but from the other members of the force. The Inspector had ordered hourly reports from each car but, as yet, with the time now approaching noon, no sign had been found of Harvey. There was no hint that he was anywhere near, let alone in, Exham. As Higgins moved the Panda gently out into traffic, Randall looked at the people who thronged the streets of the town. Some were shopping, some stood talking. There were children with their mothers, youngsters standing in groups smoking. The Inspector exhaled deeply wondering what any of them would think or say if they knew that there was a psychopath heading for their quiet little town. If that fact was correct of course. Randall hated trusting other people and he felt especially reluctant to trust the opinions of a prison psychiatrist and a jumped-up bastard like George Stokes.
As yet another report came in, again drawing a blank, Randall began to think that he and all of his force were on one big wild goose chase.
Paul Harvey slept until almost one o’clock in the afternoon, a fitful, dreamless sleep which he awoke from abruptly. He tasted something bitter in his mouth and he spat as he clambered to his feet. He stretched, the joints in his arms cracking loudly. He bent and picked up the sickle, gripping it tight in one huge hand. From his perch inside the barn, he could see the farmhouse. His stomach rumbled noisily and he belched loudly. Perhaps there was food in the house.
Either way, he decided to find out.
Harold Pierce worked unsupervised now and, freed from the watchful but helpful eyes of Greaves, he became more confident. Now, as he mopped the floor, he hummed a tune merrily to himself.
Harold was still humming his tuneless ditty when the lift nearby opened and Brian Cayton stepped out. He too was dressed in a porter’s overall, a small blue name badge attached to his lapel. Cayton was a young man, yet to reach his thirties, with a shock of red hair and a smattering of freckles, Harold had seen him about the hospital many times.
“Harold, do me a favour will you?” he said.
Harold put down his mop.
“What is it?” he asked, smiling, noticing that Cayton made a point of not looking at him. He was one of the few members of staff who had not yet become accustomed to the sight of the vile scar.
“There’s some work to be done down in bloody pathology,” said Cayton. “I would help you only there’s an emergency op. about to go ahead on nine and I’m supposed to be there. So, if you wouldn’t mind helping them out down in pathology.”
Harold’s smile faded quickly and he swallowed hard.