Hungry Moon (32 page)

^{She saw him reach bottom and venture along the passage, paying out rope behind him. His face beneath the helmet looked drawn taut by his resolve, the skin over the cheekbones almost translucent. She felt grudging admiration and, most of all, terror for him. The light of the helmet found what was waiting in the blackness, and she saw Mann's face fill with loathing and shock.}

^{Perhaps he was most shocked by how small the thing was. The haphazard body had withered almost to nothing over the centuries. The smallness of it must have made him feel safer, for he approached, Diana pleading mutely with him to go back. The thing had gathered itself, and as soon as he was within reach it leaped, the leap it had been preparing for centuries. It closed all its rotting limbs around him, pressed its lipless mouth over his, cutting off his shriek.}

^{Loathing had paralyzed him. Diana could only watch as the crumbling limbs plucked at his clothes, as the pale misshapen body moulded to his chest. She couldn't even turn away as the body began to merge with his. His face was last to be invaded, its features swelling poisonously around his look of utter horror, then subsiding into a mocking replica of Mann's face, of his smile.}

^{It was almost a relief for Diana to be left in the dark as the thing that had been Godwin Mann flung its lit helmet aside and strode toward the upper shaft, toward its worshipful prey. Around her in the dark, eyeless creatures waited for its call. All this was only the preamble, and everything that had happened in Moonwell since the thing with Mann's face had emerged from the cave was just cruel play, the thing rejoicing in its powers, testing their limits. Soon it would tire of being worshipped by mistake, soon it would have its revenge. The dark seemed to close around Diana, trapping her in the vision, as she realized how complete its feasting and its revenge would be, realized what it planned to do to the world.}

^{FIFTY THREE}

^{Something dropped on Phoebe Wainwright's foot and brought her back to herself. She was slumped over an unyielding ridge in a cold, dim place. Her arms dangled beyond the ridge, her breasts ached against it, her distended belly dragged her down. When she heaved herself upright and twisted round to peer at the fallen object, she found it was a hymn book. She had been slumped forward against a pew. She was in church, and waiting to die.}

^{She managed to raise her ungainly body, her wrists trembling as she gripped the ridge in front of her, and sat back on the hard bench. If this was dying, it didn't seem too bad, and why should it? She believed that natural death was like stepping through a doorway you didn't even notice. Even her inflated belly didn't disturb her since she'd realized it must be swollen by hunger. Her starving body would let her out soon, and she would see Lionel again, not just the photograph she kept by her bedside. She would learn the secret he'd promised to tell her when he came home that day on which he never had. 'Just you wait and see, my love,' he'd said, kissing her on both cheeks before the real kiss on the mouth, and she'd been waiting all day to learn what had made his eyes sparkle so brightly when the policeman with the prim face had come to her door, looking so untypically saddened that she'd hardly needed him to speak. Now the sadness, the emptiness within her, was nearly done at last. She'd come to the church to make her peace with God in her own way, and she felt as if she had.}

^{Why then did she seem held back by having to complete a task? Of course, she remembered sluggishly, she ought to have told Eustace Gift she forgave him for what he'd said about her at the rally, since it certainly no longer mattered to her. She was sorry he hadn't been able to tell her to her face how he felt about her, rather than suppress it until it burst out of him in such a warped form. She wiped away a tear: she'd always been fond of him - she could have told him so if he had given her the chance. She hoped he would find someone to be happy with.}

^{Why did she still feel troubled? A memory plucked at her nerves, but it must have been a dream. Soon after she'd learned what he'd said about her, she'd dreamed of Eustace on her, his face changing into Lionel's and then into no face, just a smiling blankness out of which peered tiny gleeful eyes. She'd awakened lying naked on her bed, the moonlight covering her and pouring between her thighs. Just a dream, she told herself again. No, what bothered her was the way Eustace had been made to confess his feelings.}

^{Godwin Mann had done that, Mann and the hysteria he'd brought to Moonwell. Her body stiffened, her hands propping her on the bench became fists. Mann's influence in Moonwell had made her lose the baby, the first she'd lost in ten years, the first ever that had died because the parents had refused her services. That was why she felt she'd left a task unfinished. She wanted Mann to face up to having been responsible for the baby's death.}

^{Moonlight crept over the pews toward the altar, trailing faint distorted outlines of stained glass. Did Mann feel any responsibility for the grief he caused? No doubt he told himself it was God's will. The thought enraged her, made her body ache with a yearning to confront him. She wouldn't feel at peace now until she did.}

^{She levered herself to her feet and glanced wistfully about the church. There no longer seemed to be much to make her wistful. The figures crowded into the long windows looked unnaturally thin and faceless; the moonlight made one group appear to have a single body, the shadows of willows set all the figures dancing grotesquely. It couldn't only be the light that made the church feel cold, dusty, abandoned. Mann had done that too, by claiming that Father O'Connell was less godly than himself. She could almost believe he had somehow been responsible for the priest's death.}

^{She'd do herself no good by letting her imagination roam, especially not when she was so shaky with hunger now that she'd stood up. Moonlight touched the altar as if to display how empty it was, and she saw a large spider scuttle off the altar cloth. She stumbled along the pew, supporting herself with both hands, and handed herself from pew end to pew end as far as the back of the church.}

^{She wouldn't get far without a stick. She limped past the willows in the churchyard and stopped at the oak. By hanging onto a low branch, she broke it off, so immediately that she fell against the rough trunk. At least she had support and was glad to be able to leave the church behind: she was beginning to imagine that one of its heads, even patchier and less complete than the other gargoyles under the sloping roof, had Father O'Connell's face, grinning down raggedly. She didn't think she would return to the church after she'd confronted Mann. She would feel more peaceful at home with Lionel's photograph.}

^{She hobbled down the High Street toward the hotel, her stick creaking whenever she leaned on it. People stared out of shops at her, but nobody offered to help. She had to rely more on the stick once she was in the deserted square. Just as she lurched onto the pavement in front of the hotel, the stick broke.}

^{She floundered through the doors and onward. The lobby was crowded with Mann's followers, one of whom jumped up with an outraged squeak as she saw Phoebe reeling toward her chair. Phoebe plumped herself down, panting open-mouthed. Eventually she heaved herself to her feet and limped over to the reception desk, where the manager was gazing glumly at the moonlit shadows the crowd was making on the carpet. 'Could you tell me Mr Mann's room number?' she murmured.}

^{'Nobody can go up.' He raised his head from the crutch of his cupped hand, oval forehead gleaming through strands of red hair, and peered blankly at her. 'He's got the whole top floor to himself now. As long as their rooms are paid for, that's their business.'}

^{A matronly woman with a cross in the shadow of her breasts tapped Phoebe on the shoulder. 'Godwin only sees people by appointment now.'}

^{'He's changed his tune then, hasn't he?'}

^{'I'm sorry, madam, there's nothing I can do,' the manager said, and turned toward the switchboard as it emitted a hiss like an indrawn breath. She saw him stiffen as a soft voice spoke through the headphones. 'Please send her up.'}

^{'Mr Mann, is it?' The manager stooped gingerly toward the microphone; he was clearly bewildered by how the switchboard was behaving. 'Send whom up, sir?'}

^{"The midwife.'}

^{He must have seen her crossing the square and then overheard her through the switchboard, Phoebe thought, disgusted by the awe on the faces of his followers. 'Can I have a word?' one murmured.}

^{'Help yourself,' the manager said, shrugging.}

^{The young man crouched before the microphone, almost kneeling. 'Godwin, are you sure you wouldn't like some food brought up to you? We'd all be glad to do without a little.'}

^{'I appreciate your loyalty,' the soft voice said. 'Don't trouble yourselves. Nobody need go without. Please have my visitor helped up to my floor.'}

^{So many people crowded around her that Phoebe thought they meant to carry her bodily upstairs. Eventually two men took her arms and steered her away from the counter. One switched on a flashlight as they reached the edge of the lobby, and they followed the patch of lit carpet upstairs.}

^{The murmur from the lobby faded as the men heaved Phoebe onto the first floor. They supported her up to the second, between walls that seemed to swell like flesh as the light almost reached them. The landing felt padded with silence, a respectful hush Phoebe yearned to break. She stumped toward the third floor, but the men had to grab her arms as she stumbled inadvertently backward down the stairs. 'I don't suppose he'll mind if we just help you to the top. He told us all to leave him alone unless he asked for us,' the man with the flashlight said.}

^{They let go of her as soon as she stepped onto the top floor. She clung with both hands to the end of the banister rail and watched them retreat, the glow of the flashlight bobbing around the corner, gone. She heaved herself away from the stairs and almost choked with panic, for she was swaying about within arm's length of the open lift shaft. She staggered to the wall across the corridor and leaned there panting.}

^{This floor of the hotel was full of moonlight. It was brightest at the end of the corridor where her guides had told her Mann's room was, and now she saw that it was streaming through an open doorway. Surely it couldn't all be coming from there? She hadn't time to ponder that, the way she'd begun to shiver. Perhaps that wasn't only weakness; her breath was misting the air in front of her. Realizing that revived her a little, and she began to waddle along the corridor, one hand on the wall. She'd passed one closed door when the soft voice said, 'Glad you could make it, Mrs Wainwright. I wanted you to come of your own free will.'}

^{Phoebe's distended belly tightened. 'You took the trouble to find out my name, then. Had a guilty conscience, did you? Think you're the one who needs to ask forgiveness for a change?'}

^{The soft voice laughed, so cruelly that Phoebe's breathing faltered. She heard boards creak in the open room; it sounded as if the entire floor was creaking. 'Why Mrs Wainwright, that isn't why you're here.'}

^{Phoebe doubled over the sudden twisting pain in her belly. 'You may be able to predict your followers,' she said through clenched teeth, 'but don't be so sure you can do it to me.'}

^{'I know everything there is to know about you, Phoebe. I've taken a special interest in you ever since you took charge of dressing the cave.'}

^{'What do you mean, ever since? That was years and years ago.' She straightened up, eyes streaming, and what the voice had said seeped into her like the chill. She stared along the blanched corridor. 'Who are you?' she blurted.}

^{'Don't you know who I am after I've been waiting for you all this time? And yet here I am knowing so much about you,' the soft voice said with grotesque coyness. 'Why Phoebe, you and I want the same thing, and that's why I've given it to you.'}

^{Phoebe slumped against the wall and clutched her belly. The pains felt so nearly familiar, and yet they couldn't be. 'What are you raving about, you fanatic?' she groaned.}

^{'Exactly what you're feeling now. It's what you think it is. What you always wanted but thought you couldn't have because you'd lost your husband.'}

^{Phoebe began to drag herself backward along the wall, one arm pressed against her belly. She would have to let go of the wall to reach the stairs, shove herself toward them. Best to cross the corridor beyond them rather than risk the gaping lift shaft. But she was only abreast of the shaft when the hand came out of Mann's room.}

^{It wasn't a hand, her mind tried to plead. Hands weren't so pale, or so restlessly patchy; fingers shouldn't move like worms. Besides, it was too large even in proportion to the arm, which she realized numbly was reaching halfway down the corridor. But when it spread its fingers, it looked all too like a hand, until the light she'd thought it was holding blazed up so fiercely that the fingers seemed to turn into rays of light, white light which felt like spears of ice as it fastened on her distended belly. She reeled backward, arms flailing, and sprawled on the floor opposite the lift shaft. 'Come to me,' the soft voice said.}

^{It had tricked itself, she thought wildly. By making her fall over it had rendered her incapable of obeying. She closed her eyes and willed herself to die before the voice could claim to know any more of her secrets, before the spasms in her crotch and belly could prove to mean what the voice had said. 'Come to me,' the voice said peremptorily, and Phoebe was about to give way to hysterical laughter when she realized it was no longer talking to her.}

^{She squeezed her eyes shut tighter as if that might make the outrage go away, but she felt long fingers or the icy light on her. Her clothes tore suddenly, and something squeezed out of her between her legs. She shoved her wrist in her mouth and bit until her teeth crunched on bone, and then she forced her eyes open.}

^{A baby was crawling away from her down the corridor, toward the open door. It was fat and unhealthily pale, but it was managing to crawl. Its cord was tugging at its twin, or however many were still inside Phoebe, kicking impatiently now. It was crawling toward the light that streamed into the otherwise deserted corridor, crawling toward the call of whatever was waiting in Mann's room.}

^{Phoebe dragged herself around on the carpet until her head was nearest the baby. Her lack of strength made her weep. She rolled over on her belly, crying out with the pain, and managed to grab the baby by its slippery shoulders and lift it toward her. It was blind, she saw -eyeless, and with little you could call a face. It struggled in her diminishing grasp, turning its head from side to side, waving its limbs as it tried to crawl in the air. A shudder of horror at the baby and at herself for having borne it, however she had, passed through her, draining some of her pittance of strength. One thought kept her going: that however dismaying the creature was, it still had life - a life that only she was able to protect from the thing in Mann's room. She shrank from wondering what the thing was or how it came to be in the room or what it wanted with the baby: her mind shrank until it was hardly there at all. She clutched the squirming baby to her chest and levered herself up on one knee.}