In one swooping movement she snatched Amelia up from the bed and dived towards the door. Behind her, glass shattered, and a gust of cold air swept into the bedroom. It was coming.
She ran across the landing to the top of the stairs but it was after her in a heart’s beat, ducking through the bedroom door, its mouth a tunnel. It whooped as it reached to steal the mute parcel in her arms, huge in the confined space of the landing.
She couldn’t out-run it, she couldn’t out-fight it. Its hands fixed on Amelia with insolent ease, and tugged.
The child screamed as it took her, her fingernails raking four furrows across her mother’s face as she left her arms.
Gwen stumbled back, dizzied by the unthinkable sight in front of her, and lost balance at the top of the stairs. As she fell backwards she saw Amelia’s tear-stained face, doll-stiff, being fed between those rows of teeth. Then her head hit the banister, and her neck broke. She bounced down the last six steps a corpse.
The rain-water had drained away a little by early evening, but the artificial lake at the bottom of the dip still flooded the road to a depth of several inches. Serenely, it reflected the sky. Pretty, but inconvenient. Reverend Coot quietly reminded Declan Ewan to report the blocked drains to the County Council. It was the third time of asking, and Declar. blushed at the request.
‘Sorry, I’ll. . .’
‘All right. No problem, Declan. But we really must get them cleared.’
A vacant look. A beat. A thought.
‘Autumn fall always clogs them again, of course.’
Coot made a roughly cyclical gesture, intending a son of observation about how it really wouldn’t make that much difference when or if the Council cleared the drains, then the thought disappeared. There were more pressing issues. For one, the Sunday Sermon. For a second, the reason why he couldn’t make much sense of sermon writing this evening. There was an unease in the air today, that made every reassuring word he committed to paper curdle as he wrote it. Coot went to the window, back to Declan, and scratched his palms. They itched: maybe an attack of eczema again. If he could only speak; find some words to shape his distress. Never, in his forty-five years, had he felt so incapable of communication; and never in those years had it been so vital that he talk.
‘Shall I go now?’ Declan asked.
Coot shook his head.
‘A moment longer. If you would.’
He turned to the Verger. Declan Ewan was twenty-nine, though he had the face of a much older man. Bland, pale features: his hair receding prematurely.
What will this egg-face make of my revelation? thought Coot. He’ll probably laugh. That’s why I can’t find the words, because I don’t want to. I’m afraid of looking stupid. Here I am, a man of the cloth, dedicated to the Christian Mysteries. For the first time in forty odd years I’ve had a real glimpse of something, a vision maybe, and I’m scared of being laughed at. Stupid man, Coot, stupid, stupid man.
He took off his glasses. Declan’s empty features became a blur. Now at least he didn’t have to look at the smirking.
‘Declan, this morning I had what I can only describe as a … as a . . . visitation.’
Declan said nothing, nor did the blur move.
‘I don’t quite know how to say this . . . our vocabulary’s impoverished when it comes to these sorts of things … but frankly I’ve never had such a direct, such an unequivocal, manifestation of-‘
Coot stopped. Did he mean God?
‘God,’ he said, not sure that he did.
Declan said nothing for a moment. Coot risked returning his glasses to their place. The egg hadn’t cracked.
‘Can you say what it was like?’ Declan asked, his equilibrium absolutely unspoiled.
Coot shook his head; he’d been trying to find the words all day, but the phrases all seemed so predictable.
‘What was it like?’ Declan insisted.
Why didn’t he understand that there were no words? I must try, thought Coot, I must.