8

            The scream I heard coming from the flats at the bottom of the hill stopped dead. It had been a woman’s scream. The way the high ululating sound had cut off so suddenly was somehow more frightening than the sound itself. The small block of squat three floor high tenements lay at the foot of the incline on which I was standing, about 100 metres downhill, and the morning air was so still that the sounds that followed carried with easy and terrible clarity up the hill to my position. An angry shout, followed by a second wail of terror, this time from a man’s throat. The voice rose in pitch till it rivalled the first woman’s scream in shrillness. It too was instantly silenced.

I could only stand there terrified as more and more screams and shouts floated up the hill to me from what had become the slaughterhouse below. There was a gunshot, a second, then no more. Terrible bangs and crashes accompanied the cacophony of panic, as if the building itself and not just the occupants were being torn apart. There was also the sound I feared the most. That sibilant hissing and sniggering, punctuated with alien screeches and howls, somehow echoing in the morning. Sounds that do not belong on this earth. The morning was light enough now that I could see a young girl, no more than a ten year old, standing at one of the second floor windows of the building dressed in pink pyjamas and desperately trying to lift the pane up. I could even make out the look of sheer horror on her young face, which now turned around as she sensed something entering the room behind her. I saw her mouth open to voice another scream, but she was abruptly jerked out of sight. A second later, the window where she had been standing a second ago exploded outwards, and amid the glittering rain of shattered glass, there grotesquely sailed a small headless and limbless torso, trailing rags of pink pyjamas now patterned with crimson. The body fell to the unforgiving concrete below. I heard the impact from where I stood. More windows in the building began to smash open and vomit forth dismembered bodies. The air was suddenly full of falling glass and corpses, and again, I ran. The sickening music of tinkling glass and impacting torsos followed me.

9

The thing in the charnel house that was once a human habitation stands in a destroyed and blood soaked room.

The feeding has been good here. A full 24 souls in one sweep, and the 13 already harvested. Only 12 remain before it’s task is done. Labhrainn’s blood runs still though, and the thing cannot return to it’s plane of reality until it runs no more.

Even after the frenzied slaughter of the humans in this small tenement, it’s infernal thirst and rage burns still. In other areas of the village, it is gathering more souls through other physical embodiments, extensions of itself. It experiences the carnage at each location, sings to the slaughter and continues bloodily and relentlessly on, until its quota is complete. The harvesting of souls is the very essence of it’s existence. It knows, nor cares for any vocation other than to hunt and kill.

It hesitates before moving on to it’s next killing ground. There is a presence close by. One with energy akin to it’s own, yet somehow opposing.

It’s essence rises upwards through the roof of the ransacked building and scans the outside terrain.

There. Moving at speed, away across the top of the hill. Labhrainn’s blood.

The thing sniggers and clicks alien limbs in anticipation of the kill. it’s prize quarry.

It follows.   

More to come soon hopefully. Won't leave it so long next time!

Sleepless nights

crb

10

I had no destination in mind as I fled from the hill. I just needed to move, and quickly. There was a sick feeling of pressure in my skull which I had last felt on the staircase of my home, emanating from the thing that had taken my father and, I surmised, many more. It was close.

This realisation made me pile on the speed, and then I was flying across the fields at a supernatural rate. The bracken and gorse bushes flew past me in a blur, I hurdled fences and dykes with ease, sure footed and never faltering on the uneven ground. I felt almost elemental, at one with the wind, and a great sense of excitement swamped my mind, pure and somehow dangerous. I again experienced the peculiar sensation of sharing my body with another presence that was at the same time part of me, and yet independent. The ecstatic feeling built in me as I ran, and I was suddenly shouting in ecstasy as I bombed across the landscape, accelerating further still, and feeling utterly indestructible.

The corrupt feeling of pressure in my head had gone, and I made a conscious effort to slow myself. As I came to an eventual standstill, I was stunned to find that I was standing in the middle of a fairway on the golf course located just past the south end of the village. The hill where I had been previously standing before I had started running was about two miles north of this point, and I estimated that I had run for about twenty seconds. Much later, I figured out that this meant I had been moving at a speed of around 360 miles per hour.

I turned in a circle, scanning the horizon and pondering my next move. I noticed that despite my miraculously swift dash across the fields to this point, my heartbeat remained slow and steady. I wasn’t even breathing hard and there wasn’t a drop of sweat on my brow.

The big detached villa belonging to the Delaney family was close by. I could see the rear side of the house across the road which ran down the south side of the golf course to my left. I knew their son, Max from school, and although we never socialised, I was friendly enough with the guy having spent two years with him as a lab partner in my higher chemistry class and playing with him in the school football team. He was an okay guy. Fuckin’ fantastic left mid player. There were rumours that he’d been watched by scouts from Kilmarnock and even Rangers. I also knew his sister Susie, who was in the year below us and who I’d once winched at a school disco. Tall, pretty blonde lass with hazel eyes and a wicked tongue.

I needed to get to a phone so I could call Grant and enlist his help in getting out of town. I made my way toward the house, constantly scanning the horizon in all directions for any sign of the thing that hunted me. I still couldn’t feel the pressure in my head like an oncoming migraine that signalled the being’s near presence, but I couldn’t help turning round and looking over my shoulder every few seconds.

11

            Sergeant Stephen Grace glanced across at Ally Marshall, sitting rigidly in the passenger seat of the speeding police car. So far, the lad had done a decent job of hiding his fear, but it was in full unmasked clarity now. The young constable tried the radio for the tenth time since they’d sped away from the burning petrol station, his terror evident in the tremor of his voice.

“Foxtrot Sierra six to Control. Come in, Annie.”

Static.

He tried again.

“Come in Foxtrot Sierra seven. What’s happening at the Delaney place, Kenny?”

More static.

They’d heard no more from Kenny Young, the officer at the scene since his last panicked broadcast where he’d been babbling about mutilated corpses.  

Ally threw the handset down with a frustrated curse.

“Keep your fuckin’ heid, son,” Grace advised. “I don’t know what the fuck’s going on, but you need to stay calm. What’s your primary duty?”

“My what? Sarge, I don’t…”

“Your fuckin’ primary duty!” Grace roared. “What’s the first and foremost duty of a police officer? What’d they teach you at Tulliallan?”

“The preservation of human life, Sir,” Ally responded automatically, shocked into remembering how this had been drilled into him and all the other recruits at the Scottish police college. “The first duty of a police officer is the preservation of human life.”

“Good. Now sort yourself out, son. You won’t save no cunt’s life if you’re not calm.”

Grace’s own training officer had used this same method on him when he’d been a new recruit, a week fresh out of training and faced with a sprawling, vicious street brawl between Hearts and Hibs fans after an Edinburgh derby game in the early eighties. Grace had been petrified by the sight of the hundred or so men pummelling each other with fists and feet and slashing with blades and other weapons. The cacophony that accompanied the frenzied and brutal hand to hand combat and the sight of al the blood amid the unrestrained and widespread violence had temporarily unmanned the young recruit, and he’d froze.

His superior’s harsh reminder of his first duty had broken the spell the terrifying spectacle had cast upon him though. He’d managed to collect himself, and waded into the mass brawl in a seemingly impossible attempt to restore order.

He’d come away from the riot with a fractured cheekbone, a concussion and a shallow but painful stab wound to the leg, but he’d done his job. It was time for Ally Marshall to do the same

To be fair to the lad though, this situation was a lot different to a mob of football casuals knocking fuck out of each other. This was very different. And the only reason Grace was holding onto his calm better than his young charge was the benefit of experience, but also the strange feeling he’d had since the first call outs that morning. The feeling had been the very definition of irony. He’d been surprised to realise that the sudden outbreak of extreme violence was in fact not surprising to him. He’d realised with an internal shock that he’d actually been expecting something like this to happen sooner or later.

Unlike the rest of the small police force in the town, Stephen Grace had been born and raised there, only leaving at the age of nineteen to join the police force and then spending the next ten years on the beat in Edinburgh before returning home to take the post he currently held as station sergeant.

He’d spent the last thirty years working in the town and was now pushing sixty years old. This gave him forty years police experience. In his time on the force, he’d witnessed his fair share of human carnage, both physical and mental, and not all of it had been experienced in Edinburgh.

The village was small, and very few who lived there, presently or in the past, stayed for long. Most left for the bigger towns in search of employment, which was a rare commodity in a town with a population struggling to reach a thousand souls.

He could count on one hand the number of people who currently inhabited the town that had lived there for over twenty years, himself included.

Like many towns, it had it’s secrets which were only known to a few people, and these few folks weren’t often inclined to share their secrets with those they referred to as “outsiders”. To the hardcore locals, anyone who hadn’t lived in Tallanbrae for at least two decades fell into that bracket.

In other places, local legends were something to be shared with all, outsiders or not, but in the case of Tallanbrae, things were different.

The town already had the legend of Sawney Bean on it’s CV, and it was enough to tell curious visitors the grisly tale and maybe throw in a ghost story or two about spectral figures haunting Bennane Head.

Tallanbrae though, seemed to be a town cum village perpetually on the cusp of dying and becoming a ghost town, and Stephen Grace and the other long time locals thought it best that any other unpleasantness that may or may not have occurred in the area was kept as quiet as possible.

That incident last summer last summer with those kids was more than enough exposure to the outside world as far as he was concerned. It was certainly more than enough to him personally. The whole business had awoken memories in him that had long ago faded from his thoughts, and events of thirty years ago had no business in the here and now, thanks very much.

What had made that carnage last summer more chilling to him, as if it wasn’t bad enough already, was that one of those involved was from the same family involved in that other thing that had occurred in the sixties, just before he’d taken up the post of top polis in the village.

Young Dean Griffiths even bore a remarkable resemblance to his late grandfather, Alexander.

His thoughts were interrupted by Ally Marshall trying the radio again.

“Control, come in. This is Foxtrot Sierra six.”

Grace gripped the steering wheel more tightly and wrung the leather cover between his large calloused fists. His own training, forty years distant, hadn’t covered what the procedure was in the event of losing contact with your controller and all other cars and officers on shift. He doubted Ally’s more modern instruction had prepared him for dealing with such an eventuality either.

“Davie, are you there? This is Foxtrot Sierra six calling Foxtrot Sierra five. Control, come back. Kenny? Annie? Does anybody copy?”

Ally’s voice had taken on a pleading tone as he desperately sought a human response from the mocking static that was the radios only voice.

“Give it a rest, Ally,” Grace said. “We’re here.”

The car topped the rise in the road that ran parallel to the eighth fairway of the golf course, and the Delaney residence came into view.

Kenny Young’s car was parked outside, the driver’s side front door lying open.

Grace eased off the accelerator, braking to a halt just behind the other police car.

Ally was already scrambling out the passenger side door and Grace clumsily followed him, his arthritic hip sending a twinge of pain through his lower body as he manoeuvred himself out of the car. Ally was moving hastily towards the broad one storey villa.

“Wait, Ally,” Grace called after him. He knew from experience it was essential to check your surroundings before rushing into a potentially hazardous situation, especially a building.

As Ally Marshall pulled up and turned towards his superior, Grace came alongside the empty police car.

Nothing on the front or back seats. The house showed no signs of life.

The green painted wooden gate that gave access to the path running down the left side of the villa to the back garden was open and swayed back and forth lazily in the faint morning breeze. It’s unoiled hinges made a high pitched squeal with each movement. It was the only sound to be heard.

“Kenny. You there?” Grace called loudly, breaking the eerie silence.

There was no answer.

Grace became aware of an odour on the air. The sweet, subtle stench of something rotten. From the grimace on Ally’s face, he knew the younger constable had detected it as well.

He walked around the abandoned police car, searching for some sign of the missing constable. There was no sign of a struggle. No blood spots or any damage to the vehicle that he could see.

“Sarge, look at this,” Ally said behind him.

Grace turned around, seeing the younger man crouched down and examining the ground. The driveway leading up to the front of the Delaney’s house wasn’t paved with tarmac, but instead covered with those small round pale stones that made that pleasant and homely crunch sound under foot and tyre.

Ally was on his haunches, pointing to an area of the drive where the covering seemed to have been disturbed. There were a series of short parallel furrows dug through the small stones showing the dirt underneath, less than an inch apart, as if someone had dragged a small headed rake through them. Grace noted the marks ran in the direction of the front door of the villa, which was, like the door of Kenny Young’s squd car, lying open.

Grace slowly walked past Ally in that direction, following the same line of sight. The narrow furrows were only about a meter long before they ended. There followed an unmarked area of the ground for a further ten metres or so before the small driveway stones showed further signs of disturbance. This time, Grace could make out a wider, single indentation some four meters in length and a half meter across, as if a piece of wide tubing had been dragged along the ground. This marking ran all the way to the front door.

Grace squatted down to examine the indentation more closely and detected a faint but noxious odour, mingling with the other sweetly rotten stench that he now could tell was coming from inside the house.

The small stones of the driveway here also seemed to glisten somewhat in the morning light, and Grace reached down and ran his fingertips across the pebbles. They came away slicked in a viscous transparent liquid like clear snot. His fingers immediately began to tingle and he quickly wiped them on his trouser leg.

He looked up to inform Ally of this strange find.

But the young policeman was gone.

I've got quite a bit more written now. Say tuned for further carnage and twists so cunning you could pin tails on them a call them weasels.

13

            The harvester floats above the helpless, prostate human and enjoys this moment

of power.

With a mere flick of its consciousness, formed from nothingness into a physical

collection of atoms, it would now gut this interesting worm.

It feels the fear pouring off the human in waves and drinks it in, taking sustenance from

the pitiful being’s terror. It can also sense with new depth at these close quarters, the

strange otherness of this particular insect. Beneath the aura of fear and despair, there is

a spark of energy that is somehow like its own. It is a unique signature that only those

that travel on both sides of the veil possess, and it should not be present in a mere

human.

Interesting.

It senses other humans nearby. It had visited this location earlier this same morning in

one of its many simultaneous physical manifestations, and fed upon the souls of a family

of four and one other; what the humans called a “policeman”. A peacekeeper in the realm

of the living. It took particular pleasure in the devouring of those who fought to preserve

order in any dimension of existence, and has already tasted the spirits of another three of

their kind this very bloody and glorious of mornings.

While it holds the strange, yet helpless human beneath it, impaled through the shoulder,

it seeks out the other nearby humans and finds that they too are “policemen”.

It is a creature of sensation and can ill resist the alluring pleasure that slaughtering a

further brace of peacekeepers will bring. It is born of chaos, and exults in destroying

those who seek order.

With a single thought it separates itself, leaving part of it with the pinned human that

writhed beneath it, and goes on the hunt once again.

14

            There hadn’t been a sound.

Grace had turned his back to Ally Marshall for only a couple of seconds and he’d

vanished as if into thin air.

If the young constable had moved, Grace thought, he’d certainly have heard him as the

small white driveway stones made silent movement impossible. Even shifting your weight

from one foot to the other when standing still produced a quiet but audible crunch.

A very real fear now gripped Stephen Grace, and he drew the baton from his equipment

belt. This didn’t make him feel any safer in the slightest.

“Ally?” he called.

No answer. He hadn’t, in truth, expected one.

He very slowly moved back towards the two patrol cars on the driveway, noting the

crunch, crunch, crunch his steps made on those little polished pebbles underfoot. Unless

Ally had leapt, from a standing position, to the edge of the wide driveway and landed on

the grass verge, which was a good three meters away on either side from where he’d

been standing, all in complete silence, there was no way he could conceivably have

moved from his spot without Grace hearing him.   

He checked both cars anyway. Both empty of course. Under them. Nothing.

He checked the embankment on the each side of the road leading up to the house.

Nothing. No answers to his repeated calls either.

Grace once more stood by his patrol car, for the first time in forty years of police work, at

a complete and utter loss as to what to do next, and scared shitless.

“What’s your first duty?” he asked himself quietly.

While the mystifying disappearance of two of his officers, and the inablility to raise Annie

at the station or Davie Leish at the Densmore house was inexplicable, he had a duty to

protect the public, and he’d come here to the Delaney place in response to an emergency

call. His first duty was to protect the populace of the town.

Fortified somewhat now that he’d shaken off his indecisiveness, Grace boldly moved

towards the front door of the Delaney villa, the driveway stones crunch, crunch, crunching

loudly under his determined strides.

A soft, fluttering noise made him look up.

Falling from the sky were an assortment of objects. The fluttering came from the first of

these, which billowed out on the air, revealing it to be a white short sleeved shirt.

All around Grace, the following items fell to Earth, impacting undramatically on the ground

around him, making their own little crunches as they landed. A black boot, a police issue

equipment belt, a handheld radio, a police constables hat, another black boot, a single

black sock, closely followed by another. This one a different colour.

Grace, stunned by the impossible display, bent down to pick up the shirt, not even

noticing as a pair of white boxer shorts with bright red lettering proclaiming “LOVE GOD”

emblazoned over the rear landed on his shoulder. It was a standard police issue work

shirt.

With a heavy wet flop, a large, pale bag like object like a deflated balloon landed in front

of him, joining the assortment of equipment haphazardly strewn on the ground around

him.

“What the holy fuck…”

A tremendous smash of rending metal and pulverised glass suddenly erupted from behind

Grace with shocking, brutal force, causing his to spin round and fall backwards.

Grace landed on his arse atop the strange pale sack thing that had just a second ago fell

to the ground at his feet.

He became aware of a few things simultaneously. The first was that his patrol car’s entire

front end was destroyed and a red mannequin was draped across the ruined bonnet.

The second was that the deflated balloon object in which he’d inelegantly planted his

backside was wet and warm. He dumbly lifted a hand to his face and saw that it had

turned bright red, like he’d inadvertently donned a shiny festive gardening glove without

realising it.

Grace pushed himself to his feet in a panic, backing away from the weird bloody pile on

the ground. That’s when he noticed the hair on it. And the tattoo.

A stylised gecko, drawn in an Inca or Mayan style, he could never remember which. Ally

Marshall had had that done last year and took great pride in showing it off round the

station.

He whirled around again, facing his pulverised car once more, and the wet crimson tailors

dummy that now adorned the smashed front end, like the worlds most grotesque hood

ornament.

It was breathing.

With very slow steps on very stiff legs, Stephen Grace approached the skinned human

being that had fallen from the sky and wrote off his vehicle.

Will the insurance cover this? He thought crazily.

The eyes, shockingly white in the raw red flesh of the face (what face?) stared at him

intently with a surprised look.

Of course he looks surprised. He doesn’t have eyebrows. Or eyelids for that matter,

Grace thought.

“Saaaaaaaj… Saaaaaj…” Ally Marshall pleaded him, one flayed arm reaching out to his

superior. His words distorted due to the lack of lips on his peeled head.

Grace’s legs and bladder went at the same time, and he sat down for the second time

that morning on the Delaney’s crunchy driveway, his urine staining those expensive little

white stones.

Then something else dropped out of the sky and landed before him. This was not however

human. Nor was it a pair of odd socks.

It stood a good nine feet tall. Partly skeletal, partly insectoid, partly arachnid, and wholly

alien. A shifting mass of glowing orbs, fangs, claws, tattered wings and tentacles.

Grace couldn’t look at it. He bowed his head and found himself looking at those little

narrow furrows that had been dragged into the stones covering the driveway.

“Fingers,” he said aloud. “That’s what made those marks. I’ll bet there’s a fingernail in

amongst the stones there somewhere. And that other one by the door with the slime.

That’ll have been made by a tentacle, eh?”

The thing before him let out a weird hissing, stuttering series of clicks and whoops that he

somehow understood to be laughter, and he was suddenly not afraid anymore.

He was angry.

“What’s your first duty?” he asked himself again.

He remembered that day in the backstreets of Leith, Edinburgh. How he’d momentarily

been paralysed by fear, but had overcome it and steamed into the affray, taking

punishment, but protecting human lives. He remembered the exultation he’d experienced

once he was in amongst the massive brawl; the heat of battle, the huge surge of

adrenaline born of a potent mix of fear and excitement that had meant he hadn’t even felt

the knife biting into his thigh.

He looked at his hand and found he was still gripping his baton.

Sergeant Stephen Grace pushed himself to his feet once more and faced the impossibly

real, otherworldly thing that he suddenly knew had brought about much violence and

death that morning in his town.

“Fuckin’ ‘mon then, ya big cunt,” he snarled.

Stephen Grace steamed in.

Ah, good to hear from my number one fan.

Poor old Phil's about to reach that point where he'll either break or open up some serious containers of whoop ass. Place your bets...

15

            Back in school, in the biology lab, there’d been a glass case mounted on the wall which displayed a collection of insects that had been pinned through their wings and bodies with thin nails to a felt covered board. There’d been a small magnifying glass attached to the side of the display case with which students could get a close up view of the unfortunate bugs, and I’d always been a bit creeped out at the sight of the insect’s faces when viewed at close quarters.

As I lay on the ground that morning, pinned to the ground through my own shoulder, I felt real empathy for this poor wee dead insects.

I was once again waiting to die. To all intents and purposes, dead already. Dead as those desiccated moths and wasps in that dusty display case.

I was also being scrutinised; examined just like an interesting and strange insect. To the thing that held me there, that’s exactly what I was.

I could hear it inside my head, through the pain. Could feel its contempt for me. I was nothing more than an ant to this thing, alien, demon, whatever the fuck it was.

What are you? it whispered to me silently.

Somehow, some sort of link had been established between it and myself. Perhaps because a part of its essence was physically impaling me to the ground. I could feel its contempt, its puzzlement, its gloating satisfaction at having me at its mercy. I was also aware of its ability to split its consciousness and physical self, and I understood that while it held me here, another part of it was elsewhere, hunting.

Being subjected to its thoughts in this strange way was nauseating to my very soul, and has forever tainted me. Through our physical and psychic connection, it showed me what it did to Ally Marshall. I saw it lift him silently into the air while sergeant Grace’s back was turned, and with horrifying and unnatural speed and efficiency, skin him alive before dropping him, his clothes and his discarded skin back to Earth. I saw what it had done to all the others that morning. What it had done to my brother. To my dad.

What are you? it asked again inside my head.

It twisted the stiletto like talon that pinned me down, bringing a fresh blast of agony searing through my body. Yet it would not let me scream.

I don’t know how the experience of being one with it did not drive me permanently mad. Being essentially an extension of this thing was something impossible to describe in any language known to man, because it was not of this plane of existence. Mental rape would be the closest description I can offer.

Its thoughts were my thoughts, its memories my memories, and though much of it was beyond human understanding, I knew that it was a harvester of souls. It had a quota to meet. It was particularly interested in me, though it knew not why I was important. It was a soldier, carrying out its orders in the name of some other, unquestioningly. It had no name.

Through my agony, I thought I could perhaps find answers in this things mind if I had courage enough to look. As I expected to die anyway, I thought, fuck it.

Without thinking about how this would be accomplished, and just doing it, I mentally pushed at the things invading thoughts, and incredibly felt it reel back in alarm. My mental touch was as repulsive to this being as it’s was to me, and I understood that it felt a moment of real fear. Fear of me. 

Its hold on me, both physical and mental wavered for a second before it pushed back at me with its mind and claw. The flare of pain rocked me, but through the fear and torment, I felt a slow anger begin to build.

I pushed back with my mind again, harder and more focussed than before, eliciting a satisfying scream from the foul entity. In that flash of time, like a split second long frame of lunatic film, where I was the one invading its thoughts, there was a name. The name of its master. The one who’d sent it to this dimension to kill and harvest.

Ozay.

I felt its fear again for a moment, but when it came, its retaliation was brutal in this psychic battle of wills; blasting through my consciousness like a black train. I almost passed out from the force of this mental invasion. It took from me the memory of my dream like encounter with Sam the previous night.

Why, human? It hissed at me. Why do you commune with the dead? What are you?

It gave another savage twist of the bony talon spearing my shoulder, keeping up both its mental and physical assault.

Through the pain, my anger flared brightly again.

Fuck you! I mentally screamed back at it. I’m Phil Densmore. I play centre midfield for Tallanbrae Juniors. I support Glasgow Rangers and love to listen to soul music. Fuck you. Sam Anderson was my best mate and he’s IN HERE.

I pictured Sam the previous night, placing his hand on my chest.

“We’re in here, Phil,” he’d said to me. I pictured my heart, beating strong in my chest with hatred for this thing that violated me, body and spirit.

I felt a raging heat build in my chest, emanating from where Sam had held his hand. Just over my shirt pocket. Without knowing what I was doing, I used my free right hand to reach across my chest and into the pocket. My anger reached a crescendo.

The thing above me obscenely sprouted another clawed appendage from its dark, roiling cloud like mass. The huge talon, jointed like a skeletal finger and wickedly tipped, reared back above my face.

Aware of its thoughts, I knew the creature now meant to kill me. Its curiosity regarding me was now outweighed by apprehension and fear of me. The wicked, bony blade started to descend towards my eyes.

My fingers closed around an object in my shirt pocket, and with a scream, I drew it out and slashed it through the air above me, simultaneously feeling the inner fury in my chest explode in a great purging wave.

There was a brilliant, blinding blue white flash, and in my mind I heard the harvester scream again in anguish of its own. And it was in pain.

The claw that was about to tear my face off shattered, as did the one pinning me to the ground, and both evaporated into the air.

I looked and saw that my right fist, clutched around the object I’d pulled from my pocket, glowed with the same blue and white flashing aura, and I instinctively struck out at the shifting mass of blackness that still hovered above me.

There was another great flash of light, accompanied with the scent of burning ozone, and the entity abruptly vanished. I felt its retreat from my mind instantly, and I was suddenly on my feet, burning with an intense and righteous fury.

I could hear the harvester, the other part of it, on the driveway in front of the Delaney’s house. During my unholy mental congress with the thing, I had witnessed it landing in front of sergeant Grace and the big polis’ brave, yet suicidal challenge. I could hear its hellish and alien chatter as it turned its fury upon him.

Before I knew I was going to do it, I was already bursting through the undergrowth towards the Delaney’s driveway, a guttural snarl in my own throat, and burning for vengeance.