“There, there,” he said softly. “You’re safe. Tell me what happened.”
Kate felt her father’s strong arms around her shoulders, and immediately started to feel stupid for having woken him.
It was just a bird, she told herself. One of the big gulls. Stupid girl, scared of a bird when you live on an island. Now you’ve woken him up and you know how hard he works, how difficult it’s been for him since—
There was a soft thump behind her, and she felt her dad’s arms tense. She twisted, looked across the room, and bit her lip, hard enough that she tasted blood in her mouth. Otherwise she would have surely screamed again.
Standing in front of her bedroom window was a middle-aged man. He was wearing a pair of tattered blue jeans, so full of holes it seemed that they were holding together through sheer force of will alone. The rest of him was naked, although very little of his skin could be seen. His emaciated body was covered in tattoos, long loops and whorls of blue-black ink that stretched up and down both of his arms, across his narrow chest and concave stomach. Words she didn’t recognise mingled with pictures of screaming faces, skeletal wings, and patterns so intricate they made her head swim. Hair hung from his head in black greasy locks that rested on his chest. His face was inhuman, with blazing red eyes that stared at her from sunken sockets.
The man opened his mouth and let out a deafening screech; Kate saw bright white fangs protruding from below his upper lip, and fear flooded into her as a series of answering screeches floated through the window on the cold evening air.
Like animals calling to each other, Pete thought. My God, what is this?
He pushed his trembling daughter behind him, and faced the creature.
“What do you want?” he asked, shocked at how small and weak his voice sounded. “We have no money here.”
The thing by the window twisted its head left and right, its mouth curled into a grin of pure delight, as if Pete had told the most delicious joke.
“I want you,” it answered. “I want to make you bleed.”
It smiled again, then walked towards them.
“Kate, go!” shouted Pete, reaching back over his shoulder and yanking the bedroom door open, never taking his eyes off the thing that was slowly approaching, a look of terrible calm on its nightmare face.
“No, Dad,” she screamed.
“Now!” he bellowed. “Don’t argue with me!”
Kate let out a scream of pure terror and fled through the door. Pete heard her rattle down the stairs and throw open the front door.
At least she’s safe, he thought. The thing was less than a metre away from him, its arms out before it, a look of inevitability on its face. Pete ducked under the arms, noting as he did so in the slow-motion attention to detail that comes with panic, that the fingernails on the thing’s hands were thick yellow talons. He spun round the open door and made for the landing.
One of the thin, ink-covered arms looped through the opening and slammed across his throat, pulling him back against the wood of the door, cutting off his air supply. Pete Randall dipped at the waist, then drove himself backwards with all the breath he had left. The door swung in a sharp semi-circle on its hinge and he heard a satisfying crunch as the thing was driven hard into the bedroom wall. The arm around his throat came loose and he shoved it away.
He stepped forward into the bedroom, one hand on his neck, and kicked the door closed. The thing slid down the wall, leaving a thick smear of blood behind. Pete looked down at it.
The metal doorknob had pierced the thing below its ribcage, and blood was running from the wound in dark rivers. The white fangs had been driven through the thing’s bottom lip by the impact, and crimson streamed down its chin and neck. Its eyes were closed.
Pete looked at it, breathing heavy, the pain in his throat worsening by the second. He reached for the door, ready to follow his daughter down the stairs and out of the house, when the thing laughed. It was a terrible noise, full of pain and cruelty. The red eyes opened and regarded Pete calmly.
“Stay and play,” it said, the fangs sliding out of its lip. “There’s nowhere for you to go. I’ll make it quick.”
It spat a thick wad of blood on to the carpet.
“Can’t say the same for the girl, mind you,” it said, then winked at Pete, who kicked the thing in the face as hard as he could. He heard its nose snap, heard it scream in pain, and then he was moving, out of the bedroom and down the stairs, through the open front door.
Kate was nowhere to be seen.
Nononononono.
Panic rose through his stomach and settled into his chest.
“Kate!” he yelled. “Where are you? Kate!”
He ran down their narrow road towards the Marsdens’ house. She’ll have gone for a phone, he told himself. She’ll have gone to the neighbours. Please let her be at the neighbours.
He kicked open the gate and ran up the short driveway towards the house. He had reached the three wooden steps that led up to the front door when something fell to the ground in front of him with a horrible crunching thud, and something warm sprayed across his face and chest. Pete shrieked, throwing his hands up to his face and wiping the liquid from his skin. He looked down at the ground in front of him and Mrs Marsden stared back up at him from wide, lifeless eyes. There were two ragged holes in her throat, and the white dressing gown she was wearing looked like it had been dipped in blood.
He heard a triumphant screech and looked up. Staring down at him from the attic window was a woman’s face, the lower half smeared with red, the crimson eyes wide and devoid of humanity. The face jerked back from the window and he heard footsteps inside the house.
Pete Randall fled. He turned and ran back the way he had come, now hearing for the first time the sounds of violence and pain that were drifting from every part of the island, a terrible cacophony of screeches, breaking glass and screams.
So many screams.
He reached the gate at a flat sprint and when his daughter stepped out in front of him he threw himself to his right, crashing hard onto the pavement. He would have run straight over her if he hadn’t.
“Dad!” she screamed, and then she was crouched next to him, asking him if he was all right. He sat up, ignoring the grinding pain in his right arm where he had landed on it, and hugged her so tightly she could barely breathe.
“Where did you go?” he sobbed. “I couldn’t find you.”
“I went to the Coopers’,” she gasped, crushed against her father’s chest. “I went to the Coopers’. There’s no one there. There’s blood... so much blood.”
Pete let go of her and stood up, unsteadily. He was about to ask her if she was all right when the door to the Marsdens’ house slammed open and the woman he had seen in the attic window howled at them. There was an answering call, terribly close, and Kate looked around and saw the thing that had come into her bedroom walking down the road towards them, blood covering its face and neck. She scrambled to her feet, then her father took her hand and they ran down the hill towards the centre of the village.
Floating fifty feet above the top of the hill on which the village was built, Alexandru surveyed the carnage beneath him. Maybe half the villagers were already dead, and those who had survived the initial attack were fleeing towards the dock and the boats that would carry them off the island. He supposed a few of them would make it, and that was fine. They would add weight to the message he was sending.
He spun gently in the cold air and looked across the hill that formed the middle of the island, at the ancient stone building standing above the cliffs against which the North Sea crashed in plumes of white spray.