Jen Tyler glanced in her rear-view mirror and, seeing her smeared mascara, rubbed the back of her hand angrily over her eyes. She adjusted the mirror to show the A7 South of Edinburgh snaking off into the darkness behind her and tried very hard not to cry. On the good side of thirty five, petite, dark, and pretty, Jen had had her fair share of admirers, some more dependable than others, but all of them just plain wrong. She felt she simply attracted the wrong kind of man.
They all started out the same - considerate, caring, attentive - but it was only a matter of time before the lapses began - presumption, dishonesty, possessiveness, sometimes even violence.
Her latest would-be jailor had turned out to be no better - a financial advisor in a large Edinburgh bank who shed his air of affability and tolerance with his raincoat. Within three months of moving in together, Jen had found herself routinely sitting by the window at six o’ clock, trying to judge by his walk from the car how his day had gone. From the first flying fist over a late dinner and the tearful reconciliation and promise of counselling that followed, Jen was able to project a future of beatings and tears and the constant spectre of domestic fear.
Against the advice of everyone who knew her, she stayed after that first incident. “He’s under a lot of pressure at work just now”, she would say, when incredulous friends saw the latest violet flowers blossoming on her pale skin. “I know he loves me - I just keep doing things to wind him up”.
Over the next two years of the relationship, the number of things which would “wind him up” became higher yet more trivial. Not folding clothes to his satisfaction would do it. Talking about her job as a web designer when he wanted to plan a holiday would see the tell-tale white spots rise in his cheeks. In the end, even just being there at the wrong time would set him off.
Then there was today. Jen had taken the afternoon off work to attend an appointment with her doctor. She arrived home looking pale and upset - understandable given the circumstances of her visit to the surgery. She let herself into the house and started at the blare of a horn behind her. She turned to see Paul pulling up in his pride and joy - an old MG Midget in British racing green.
Stepping out he waved cheerily. Jen waved back weakly and continued into the house, wondering why he was home early and wishing she’d told him she was on a half day. Standing nervously in the living room, she heard Paul enter and close the door quietly. She waited, barely breathing, for him to remove his coat and come through. “Attack is the best defence”, she thought.
“Paul, there’s something we need to talk about.”
Paul entered, smiling broadly - never a good sign.
“You’ll be wanting to tell me why you’re home early and I don’t know about it, I suppose”, he said.
“I’m pregnant, Paul. You’re going to be a father.”
Paul stopped in his tracks.
“You being pregnant doesn’t mean I’m going to be a father, you know.” His voice, quiet before, had dropped lower still. “All it means is that you stuffed up the precautions.”
“They’re not one hundred percent effective. You know that.”
“Not when there’s a dopey bitch like you involved somewhere down the line, no.”
Jen fell silent. She had half expected this reaction and had already decided her course of action. All that remained was to give him the choice.
“I’m having the baby.”
“And do I not get a say, then?”
“No.”
Paul’s face drained of colour. Jen stood her ground, her resolve iron. She would not back down on this.
“I can stay or I can go. I’d prefer to go,” she said. She drew her hands into tight fists to hide her trembling. Her legs felt weak but her eyes were iron.
The angry glow in Paul’s eyes was replaced by a look of complete disbelief. He laughed - a single barking exclamation.
“Go? Go where? Who’d have you?”
He took a step forward but Jen did not move an inch.
“Can I take it, then, that you want me to stay?”
Paul lashed out, backhand, catching her across the cheek and knocking her to the floor. Now the fury came.
“You’ll do what you’re bloody well told. You’ll get rid of it, you hear me? I don’t care whose it is, you’ll get rid of it or I’ll do it myself.” His face was purple with rage - worse that he’d ever been before. Jen closed her eyes and waited for his feet to start in, like they always did - waited for his feet to start kicking and stamping her back, her face. Her baby.
With a shriek born of two years abuse and oppression Jen shot to her feet and flew at him, flailing wildly. Trying to keep her nails from his face, Paul shoved her away from him as far as he could and took a step back. Through the haze of anger, Jen recognised that his shock at her reaction would be short lived and looked around for a weapon. Paul lunged forward, straight into the path of his own putting iron. He dropped on the spot, landing on his backside and shaking his head dazedly. The blow had been minor, but hard enough to take the fight out of him. Jen waved the club at him.
“I’m leaving, you vicious bastard, and that’s the end of it. Don’t worry about maintenance for your child - I want nothing more to do with you.”
With that, she’d gone upstairs and packed what few things she could carry into her suitcase and left. He didn’t try to stop her, never said a word. He’d simply stood at the window and watched as she’d backed her old Volvo out of the garage and driven off down the road.
Five minutes later she was out of Newtongrange and parked up in a bus stop, sobbing uncontrollably with fear and relief. She sat there for an hour, collected her resolve and then drove a few miles along the road to Gorebridge, where she had a light dinner in a small restaurant before tossing a coin to choose her direction.
Since then she’d driven south into the Scottish Borders with no clear plan of where she was heading. Somewhere nice she thought, a quiet bed and breakfast where I can think for a few days. Newtongrange was less than fifty miles behind her but already her nerves were settling, allowing her to relax and concentrate on the road.
In between villages, the A7 southbound is dark - the type of darkness that those who live in cities rarely see. There is no light pollution here, no orange glow seeping upwards into the sky and robbing the vault of heaven of its sparkling celestial glory. The darkness here is complete, heavy, almost with a volume of its own.
Through this darkness, Jen’s car swept; headlights scything a path through the night, which glowed red and slammed shut behind her. The tires crunched, running over the thick gravel at the road’s edge, and Jen realised she’d drifted a little too far to the left. Time for a break. She’d passed a parking sign a few hundred yards back. A few seconds later she pulled in and switched off the ignition, stretching back as far as the seat would allow and closed her eyes.
Whether it was the stress of the day, or the relief of her escape, Jen was asleep within moments. Her car lay dark and silent at the side of the road, a mechanical intruder in the rolling countryside around it. Her breathing was soft, regular, unconcerned. And then the dream came; confused images of violence and of blood. Paul’s face rose before her, twisted with rage, screaming silent abuse. She saw a child’s hand reaching out to her - reaching, then falling away. Red eyes in the night. Eyes, or pools of blood. Both alive with sick malevolence. She was running through a broken world, decay around her, within her. Screaming high-pitched laughter echoing behind, ringing in her ears like the baleful toll of a broken bell. She swam in mist, a fog so thick it seemed to hamper her movement. There were things with her in the mist - indefinable shapeless somethings that leered and capered, always on the edge of vision. Then the mist was rent apart, from top to bottom, with an audible roar and she found herself lying beside a lake. The water was clear, almost perfectly so. The confusion, the noise, all were gone. She rose, the sky above her dark and clear, the grass beneath her dark and cold. There was someone there. A man.
Sergeant Joe Miller pulled over at the side of the road and stepped out into the dank night air. The rolling fog had sprung up over the space of five minutes, rolling in from the north and forcing him to cut his speed to twenty miles per hour. He cursed under his breath as the seeping coldness crept inside his uniform. “This was no night to be out chasing poachers,” he thought. An image of his Margaret sitting in front of the telly with a mug of tea leapt into his mind and he cursed again. He flicked on his torch and cast the beam up at the roadside sign, proclaiming Wakely Home Farm.
He sighed and trudged down the rutted track. No point bringing the patrol car in here. Having to dig it back out of some sinkhole wouldn’t be the best way to end an already ruined evening. Pat Wilson, the farmer, had called thirty minutes ago. Someone, he had claimed, was wandering about in his fields and if Miller didn’t get out there and sort it out then he’d do it himself. Silly old fool was likely to do himself an injury one of these days. Seventy Six years of age was too old to be living on a farm, particularly when it wasn’t producing anything.
Miller followed the track carefully, stepping around the larger puddles and attempting to stay on the central ridge. On either side of him, he could see the wire fence faintly through the fog. Beyond that was a sea of nothingness. A yellow glow ahead told him the farmhouse was only a few meters off. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket and stalked forward, reaching the farmhouse door in a few short strides. He rapped hard on the peeling green paint, wincing at how loud it sounded in the damp air.
He turned and looked back down the path while waiting for Wilson to come to the door. The night air was utterly silent. He knocked again, this time with the handle of his torch. “Oh for God’s sake,” he muttered. He walked over to the front window and peered through. The room inside looked warm and inviting - a blazing coal fire producing most of the illumination. There was no one at home.
Miller pulled the radio afixed to his collar round. “Alpha Tango this is oh-one, over.”
There was a loud crackle. “That you sarge?”
“Aye, it’s me. I’m up at Pat Wilson’s place, but he’s not around. I think he’s gone off on his own again.”
There was another crackle of static. The voice on the other end of the radio belonged to Constable Dave Shaw, a new lad. He’d only been on the force for a year, but in that time he’d shone as a responsible and conscientious officer. One day, Miller thought, that lad’ll have my job - assuming the city don’t poach him first.
Shaw’s voice came through again, the words snatched and broken by static and feedback.
“Come again, lad? I never caught that.”
The radio emitted a loud whine and fell silent. Miller tapped it twice and checked the battery readout. Flat. “Christ, just what I need.” The radios had been charged, as they always were. “Must be the bloody fog,” he thought. “Water seeping into everything.”
He gave a last longing look into the farmhouse and began to trudge around the back, looking for Wilson. Away from the glow of the window, the path around the side of the house lay in deep darkness. The night air defeated the attempts of his torch to penetrate more than a few feet, and Miller found himself automatically reached his right hand out to follow the wall of the house. He grimaced at the cold clammy texture of the wall, but trailed his fingers along it nevertheless. As he listened to the scrubbing of his feet on the gravel pathway, he pondered the absence of other sound - unsual for this neck of the woods. There was always something scuttling around in the undergrowth this far from the main road. Not tonight.
He rounded the corner at the back of the house and stepped into the rear courtyard. Light was streaming out of an open back door and Miller immediately stepped in against the wall. Pat Wilson wasn’t the type of man to go out and leave his door open. He positioned himself beside the door and took a quick peek around the corner, his heart beating wildly. He reached for his radio then thought better of it. Another squeal from that thing could give the game away. He looked around the doorway again, lingering this time. There didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary in the back hallway. An old wooden hatstand stood just inside the door, a pair of mud caked rubber boots propped at the bottom. Gingerly, Miller stepped inside the house. Pat’s old cloth cap was on the hat stand. If he had gone out, he’d gone out in a hurry.
Miller stood in the hallway and held his breath, straining to pick up the slightest noise from inside the house. In the thick silence, his breathing seemed frighteningly loud. Miller leaned across the hallway and pushed the kitchen door open with the end of his torch. The kitchen was empty, deserted. Miller stepped inside, apprehensive but glad to be out of the clinging fog. The kitchen blinds were drawn. Miller poked a finger through one of the slats and squinted out into the night. He turned and walked back into the hallway, gaining a little more confidence. The house felt empty and Miller had been a policeman long enough to trust his instincts. He’d find nothing here. He sighed and decided to give it another go.
“Pat? It’s Joe. You in?”
There was no reply. Miller walked to the end of the hall and into the front room. A mug of tea sat on a small table holding a telephone and a copy of the Yellow Pages. Miller felt it - still warm. “Well, wherever the old goat is, he’s not far off.” He picked up the telephone and listened. No dial tone. He frowned, wondering where Wilson had called from earlier. Mobile phone, perhaps.
Miller turned briskly and walked along the corrider, police issue boots clumping on the ancient farmhouse floorboards. He flicked his torch on and walked outside, shivering with the renewed onslaught of cold mist.
“Pat? You out here?”
He waited for a few minutes. “Christ, there’s no point in me tramping out there on my own in this weather.” He flicked the switch on his radio, hoping. Still dead. “Bugger.” He thought for a minute. The best course of action would be to go back to the car, and come back with a couple of constables. An image of Pat Wilson lying injured in a field flashed across his mind, and he succombed to his guilty conscience, trudging mournfully towards the barn at the back of the farmyard.
He yanked the barn door open and flashed his torch inside. “You in here Pat?”
A scuffle from the back of the barn caught his attention and he cast his torch over, holding it above his head and resting a hand on his night stick. “That you, Pat?” His voiced was answered by a low growling, throaty and wet. Something was moving back there behind the tractor. He stepped forward slowly and then stopped when his boot knocked against something. He looked down. There was an old shoe lying on the floor of the barn. He knocked it aside with his foot and stifled a cry of surprise when he realised the shoe wasn’t empty. He dropped down, covering his mouth with his free hand. The bloodied stump protruding a few inches from the top of the shoe was clad in ridiculous tartan socks. There could be no doubt as to the owner of shoe, sock and foot.
Miller straightened slowly, drawing his night stick. He pressed his lips together in a grim and angry gash and moved to his left, circling around the tractor. As he moved round, he began to pick out a shape on the floor, lying behind the tractor. Slowly, it came into his field of vision; a shin, a knee, a leg. Miller stepped forward slowly, casting the torch in a shallow arc around the body, trying to avoid looking at the head of his friend until his duty demanded it. He crouched down again. The damage done to the old man was terrible; he’d been laid open from throat to crotch and, Miller shuddered, eaten.
The nightstick fell from his nerveless hand as he bent over and retched, each aching expulsion followed by a desperate gasp for air. He barely heard the sound from behind him. In a moment he had swept up the nightstick and spun, his stomach still heaving. As he turned, he became aware of a dark shape with flickering demonic eyes leaping through the air at him. He lifted the nightstick, bringing it round in an arc. The stick connected with something and Miller stepped aside quickly as it flew past and hit the tractor with a resounding thud.
A low growl rose from somewhere off to his left. “Christ, there’s a pack of them,” he thought. He backed slowly towards the tractor, casting the beam of the torch through 180 degrees. At one point, it brushed against something dark and wet which scuttled out of the weak light. A sudden movement from his right made him turn and swing out with the nightstick. He buckled as something hit him from the left, landing on his back, the torch rolling from his hand. Reeking, fetid, breath poured into his face like oil and hovering, dripping eyes loomed above him. He brough his arms up. His hands met cold, dank flesh, and he shoved then rolled, sweeping up the night stick and torch.
The beam of the torch picked out the shape of a massive dog, black and hairless. It’s muzzle was drawn back over yellowed and broken teeth and its eyes wept red fluid. It snapped at him twice in succession but made no attempt to move towards him.
Pain lanced through Miller’s side and he reached across to hold it, his fingers coming back wet with blood. Slowly, Miller backed towards the barn door holding the nightstick in front of him like a crucifix and keeping the torch fixed on the snarling creature in front of him. When he reached the doors of the barn he quickly slammed it closed and dropped the crossbar into place to lock it. He stood for a few moments, panting deeply, his mind swimming with what he’d seen. A jarring blow to the barn door shredded his reverie and Sergeant Miller ran as though the hounds of Hell were after him. They were.
They really are. It’s not normal for cats to sit like that. Anyway, this is Mewsly, one of two (the other is called Cornflakes) moggies who let us live with them. 
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