Chapter Seventeen

Mark was pleased with the progress he was making. Halfway down the drive he was already starting to think ahead. He would return to the car, get it out of the bushes and drive it on the rims for as long as he could. Perhaps he would be able to get to civilisation before it scraped itself to death on the uneven road. If he didn't get that far he would have to walk the rest of the way. Walk to the nearest phone and call the police, then call home to let them know what was happening.

Then, once that was done, he could get a nice cold drink and an ice pack for his ankle. It was really throbbing now, each step sending a nauseating wave of pain up his leg like an electric shock.

He hobbled on, eyes fixed on what little of the path he could see in the moonlight. Ahead of him, emerging tree-framed from the darkness, the road hove into view. He stopped to rest for a moment, leaning against the ancient rotted wood fence.

His thoughts drifted to Jenny again. And that man, Garmondy. Worry had been replaced by anger now that he was free from immediate danger. How dare he drug them! How many other people had been victims of the old man without even knowing it? And what had he done with Winter and Christopher? What would he have done to him and Jenny if Mark hadn't been fortunate enough not drink the water?

Mark was so involved with his thoughts that when the fence post against which he was leaning exploded in a shower of hot wooden slivers, he was too shocked to do much more than stand there and blink. He heard the sound of the gunshot a second later, as though it had taken a while to reach his brain. And right after that he heard the sound of a gun being cocked again. That noise was what finally got him moving.

As the second shot cracked through the night Mark dropped to his belly. He didn't see it hit, since he was already crawling as fast as he could down the drive. He had no idea where the shots were coming from, whether he was in cover or out of it. Every nerve in his body was on fire, expecting any second to feel the sickening impact of a bullet in his leg, his shoulder, his head, his back.

"Stay where you are, boy," called a voice. It was a voice which Mark recognised, although it sounded much stronger now than it had done when last he heard it. Garmondy. Garmondy was out there in the dark, pointing a gun at him, trying to kill him.

And there he'd been thinking he couldn't like the old man any less.

Mark stopped crawling, froze where he lay in the dirt. His nose to the ground he could smell wet dirt, and the faint tang of gunpowder, sharp as vinegar on the night air. He strained his ears, trying to locate Garmondy by sound alone.

"Up you get now, boy. Come on and show yourself."

Mark frowned. "Show yourself"? Why was Garmondy asking him to stand? As it was he had him exactly where he wanted, lying in the dirt, defenceless. Perhaps he planned on marching Mark back to the hotel at gunpoint, like a prisoner on his way to execution. Or perhaps he didn't know exactly where Mark was.

If he was wrong, it could be the last mistake he would ever make. But Mark was damned if he was going to stand up and show himself to a man with a shotgun. With infinite slowness, wincing at every rustle of every leaf and every  snap of every twig, Mark began to crawl again.

"Come on out, boy. I know you're there." Garmondy's voice had a note of uncertainty in it now, and Mark smiled. Telling someone you knew where they were was a sure giveaway that you, in fact, had no idea where they were. He risked a glance up out of the ditch in which he crawled, and saw a flashlight beam probing the night with its yellow glow. Garmondy was close, no more than a hundred metres away, but he was moving in the wrong direction. Mark watched as the torchlight searched the bushes on the opposite side of the path.

Now was his chance. The man was old, weak, looking in the wrong direction. Mark could outrun him, lose him in the dark. All he had to do was get back to the car and then he'd be away. But he had to go now, this moment, before Garmondy changed his mind and started searching the other side of the narrow lane.

Now or never, thought Mark, and leapt to his feet.

He made it all of ten paces before the pain in his twisted ankle announced itself. In his excitement he had completely forgotten his injury, the pain overwhelmed by the wave of adrenaline that had accompanied the near-miss gunshot. Now that pain returned, vengeful and hungry for blood. Fire surged up Mark's leg and he collapsed back to the ground with an agonised squawk. In a second he was up again, favouring his good leg, hobbling, limping, dragging himself forward.

"I see you, lad," shouted Garmondy, and a second later there was another deafening explosion. Mark didn't see where it hit; he was too focussed on covering ground, putting distance between himself and the murderous lunatic that stalked him. He arrived at the road. Behind him Garmondy was shouting again, coming on as fast as his aged legs would move him.

Why doesn't he shoot again? Thought Mark. He could be out of shells, but there was no way to be sure of that. This wasn't a movie, where the shot was bound to hit him in the shoulder or the leg. This was real life, and it was all too easy to picture his head exploding outward like that wooden post, blood and bone spraying across the muddy ground.

Mark limped on. Up ahead he could see the gap the car had torn in the bushes as it left the road. It wasn't far, and he risked a glance behind him to see Garmondy just arriving at the point where the dirt track met the road. The man paused there and raised a heavy-looking wooden shotgun. Mark threw himself to the side, scraping his shoulder and side against the road as he landed. The gunshot boomed through the air, and he was sure that he heard something whistle by overhead.

With a swift roll, Mark was at the side of the road, clawing his way through the undergrowth, hauling himself halfway to his feet once more. There was the car ahead of him, sitting comfortably at angle as though it had been there forever. Mark plunged a hand into his pocket, found the keys, wrenched them free...

And dropped them.

Chapter Sixteen

Winter couldn't be sure, but she thought that the mother was asleep. There had been no movement and no sound from the dark hole in the wall for a good ten minutes now, and most of the little spiders had disappeared back into the cracks and crevices from which they had emerged. Everything was peaceful, and but for the few remaining bloodstains on the concrete, she could have been in an ordinary basement.

Biting down on the gag, Winter pulled at the restraints again. Dull pain sawed at her wrists like a rusty blade, but she ignored it, thinking of Christopher. Poor, sweet Christopher, who had died without even knowing what was happening to him. Who had been torn apart and eaten. She pictured his face in sleep, calm and unworried. He always looked different without his glasses: younger and less troubled.

She pulled at the chains. Harder. Gritting her teeth against the pain. She thought of Christopher at work, the intent look of concentration. When he kissed her, the way his breath felt and tasted on her lips. She felt a trickle of blood making its way hotly down her arm.

Above her head, something creaked. Dust settled into her hair like snowflakes.

She pulled harder, a small noise of exertion escaping her lips. On the other side of the basement she saw the stirring of tiny creatures. Something scuttling along the wall, wriggly and quick. She ignored it. It was nothing. She had to get out, had to get away, whatever the cost. Anything was better than what waited for her here.

There came the creaking noise of metal in concrete again, and another shower of dust. This time she felt a definite movement. She yanked at her chains again, harder than ever, throwing her whole body into it. Her shoulders twisted painfully, pulling tight as ratchets, and then suddenly something above her popped free. Dust and small bits of wall cascaded down her back, and she toppled forward onto the floor, scraping both knees raw through her pyjamas.

Her arms, numb and lifeless fell to her sides, trailing long chains behind them. She saw blood there, and rubbed raw skin, and hissed in pain as pins and needles erupted from her shoulders to the tips of her fingers. Unsteadily Winter stood. Across the basement she could see many spiders moving now, crawling from cracks and holes, massing before the big dark cave where their mother slept. They were chittering frantically, sounding the alarm, waving spindly legs in the air. She didn't have long. If she was going to escape, now was the time.

She ran to the door through which Garmondy had left, heart thudding rapidly. She was clumsy in haste, and felt bizarrely guilty as though she was trying to sneak out of school. The penalty for being caught this time didn't bear thinking about. She grabbed the handle with both numb hands and frantically tried to open it. It was locked. Thoroughly and completely locked.

Almost sobbing, Winter stumbled across the room to the other door, but on opening it she saw only a tiny cupboard lined with tools and spare bits of wood, wheels and cylinders. No exit, not even a window.

She slammed the door and glanced towards the hole in the wall again. There were more spiders than before, and the chittering and squeaking was reaching a fever pitch. Dimly in the dark, something stirred, massive pincers yawing, massive legs unfolding.

Fear coursing through her now, Winter cast around desperately for an exit. There were no windows, no other doors. Nothing but that great black hole in the wall, big and deathly as a mouth. Nothing except...

In the corner there were a pair of tiny doors, set at about waist height from the floor. Beside them was a set of brass and ivory buttons, gleaming dully in the low light of the basement. Winter ran to the doors and flung them open. On the other side was a tiny box of a space, dusty and cobwebby, but mercifully free of spiders.

It was a dumbwaiter. Winter had only ever seen them in films before, but she recognised it immediately. It was her only chance, and it filled her with dread. What if it wouldn't work? What if she crammed herself into that tiny space only to become stuck between floors? The little spiders would find her, come squeezing into that tiny dark space to eat her alive.

But she had no choice.

Winter threw herself into the tiny elevator, torso first, drawing her legs and arms after her. She fit, just, elbows and bloody knees wedged uncomfortably against the walls of the compartment. But she fit. She felt the whole thing sag with her weight, dropping a good few inches as the little used cable above stretched. Another fear added itself to the list: what if it snapped and she fell to her death?

No time to think about that now. On the other side of the basement something huge and black was emerging from the hole in the wall. White, filmy eyes gleamed at her like incandescent bulbs. She saw pincers moving, and a sound that could have been a scream filled her ears. Inhuman, terrifying, shooting through her like nails on a blackboard. As one mass the little beasties swept around the feet of their mother and across the floor towards her.

Reaching out with her one free arm, she felt for the buttons, found one, and stabbed down at it. It clicked, and somewhere distant in the house a bell rang once.  Winter felt herself moving slowly, jerkily upwards, the basement and its horrible company disappearing from view little by little until there was only a tiny sliver of space left over.

In the last moment, the very last moment, a hairy bundle of legs forced its way into the gap. Winter screamed around the gag, recoiling as much as she could in the confines of the dumbwaiter. The elevator didn't stop, and a second later the legs were caught and--with a crack and a squelch--sliced cleanly away.

Winter was plunged into darkness, rising steadily through the depths of the hotel.

Chapter Fifteen

Once, a few years ago, Jenny had had her drink spiked while at a club in her hometown. Nothing bad had come of it. Mark had been there to help her home and put her to bed, and they'd reported the incident in the morning. The only affect had been the deep and drugged sleep into which she fell that night as a result. Waking up in the morning had been like climbing from a deep, deep hole of sleep, every moment of wakefulness a struggle, every blink turning into another long nap.

That was how Jenny felt when she woke up in the hotel room. At first she just lay there, limbs too heavy to move, staring at the ceiling. She slept and woke again, slept and woke. When she had stumbled into bed last night she hadn't realised just how tired she was.

She rolled onto her side, and her arm flopped across the bed, expecting to feel the solid, reassuring bulk of Mark lying there beside her. There was nothing. He wasn't there.

What was more, the window was wide open and a cold breeze was invading the room. Sitting up (the weight on her shoulders felt like a backpack full of rocks) Jenny noticed that the heavy wardrobe had been moved from the corner of the room to directly in front of the door. Something was definitely up.

Unease fought with tiredness in her sleepy brain. Her body begged her to lie down, to return to leaden sleep, to wait until morning to think and move and do. But her brain was screaming to wake up, to pay attention, to work out what was wrong.

Jenny forced herself to her feet and started walking, pacing up and down the room. She rubbed at her eyes, slapped herself lightly about the face, took great whooping gasps of air. The dizziness of sleep wouldn't shift.

"Right," she muttered to herself, "nothing else for it."

She went into the bathroom, ran the sink full of cold water, took a breath and plunged her face down into it. When she emerged, she felt sufficiently refreshed to swear loudly for several minutes and flail around for a towel.

Sleepiness banished, Jenny got dressed and pulled on her shoes. She always felt less vulnerable when fully clothed. She took a drink of water from the tap, stretched, and rewound events in her head.

Last night she and Mark had gone to bed. Now, Mark was gone and there was a bloody great wardrobe in front of the door. Mark must have moved it, but why? And more importantly, how? He couldn't have done it from outside the room, and so he must have wedged the thing against the door while still inside the room. Which meant that he must have left through the window.

Jenny went to the window and peered down at the ground. To her it seemed like a pretty serious drop, but she had no doubt that Mark could have survived it. Besides, he wasn't there now, so he must have been able to walk perfectly well after making the jump.

"That's the how," she said to herself, quietly proud of her detective skills. "Now what about the why?"

Sweeping up the giant panda from the bed, she sat down and thought. The only sensible reason to wedge something up against the door was to keep someone out of the room. But who? The only other people in the hotel--as far as she knew --were Christopher and Winter, and the old man. None of them could ever do any harm to her or Mark. So... it must have been someone from outside. A wandering maniac. A serial killer, just like in the scary stories.

So, a knife-wielding maniac had come knocking on their door, and Mark had blocked it off with the wardrobe before jumping out the window to go fetch help. Simple enough.

Having reached her conclusion, Jenny got up and started shifting the wardrobe. There was no way she was going out the window, and there was no way she was going to stay trapped in the room all night with only a silent, stuffed panda for company. Serial killer or not, she was firstly going to go and pee, and secondly going to make good her escape.

Perhaps if she hadn't been quite so sleep-addled, Jenny would have thought twice about leaving the room. Perhaps, if there hadn't been quite so much tranquiliser in her system she would even have felt some fear at her situation. As it was, she was quite happy with her plan, and saw no way it could possibly go wrong.

Pulling the wardrobe yielded no result, and so after some experimentation she hit on the method of rocking it from side to side, gaining a few precious inches of movement with each rock. When there was enough space between it and the door, Jenny inserted herself into the gap and pushed with all her strength. The wardrobe slid clear.

"Yes!" She grinned and gave herself a brief, solo round of applause. She stumbled out into the corridor and headed down towards the door at the far end, muzzily trying to remember the route to the nearest exit.

Something scuttled across her path. Something too big to be a cockroach and too small to be a cat. She froze where she stood, her brain jumping immediately to thoughts of rats and mice. Jenny did not like rats and mice. Feeling her way clumsily along the wall she managed to locate the light switch. Her gaze fixed on the place where she'd last seen the scuttling thing, she flicked it.

Dim light flooded the corridor, and Jenny saw what it was that had crossed her. At the same moment the thing took off, motoring along on its many legs, coming right at her. Jenny leapt back, doing a weird dance as the fist-sized spider changed direction, zigzagging past her legs before worming its way into a hole in the wall and disappearing from sight.

"Ugh," said Jenny. "Bugs. Hate bugs."

Her brain was fogging over again, black mist creeping in, tiredness dragging down her limbs like concrete blocks. She shuffled on, and when she found the door at the end of the corridor locked she decided to sit down and rest for a minute. The fright she'd had with the outsize spider was already forgotten, and she sank down gratefully to the floor, head lolling forward as the drugs in her system tugged shut her eyes.

"Sleep first," she mumbled. "Escape later." And with that she was unconscious once more.

From the hole in the skirting board, eight tiny eyes watched her doze.

Chapter Fourteen

More chittering, squealing spider-talk. Winter wished she could block her ears as well as shutting her eyes, because the noise was every bit as horrible as the sight of the creeping mass of eight-legged things. Unfortunately her arms remained pinioned over her head, long-since gone numb from the restricted blood flow. A high pitched volley of chattering was followed by a deeper one: the children talking to the mother and the mother responding.

Garmondy, standing just to the side of where Winter was bound to the wall, twitched reflexively and hurried forward at the sound, an awkward approximation of the spider-tongue spilling from his mouth as he did so. Winter saw him kneel before the hole in the wall, lowering his head like a peasant before his queen. The little spiders that blanketed the floor parted before him, and seeing him there surrounded by such monstrous things Winter was reminded of how old he was, and how frail. How could he be responsible for something so evil as this?

The queen spoke again, and then Garmondy, bowing even lower as he did so. Though it was hard for Winter to read emotion from the insectile half-language that was being spoken, she thought that he seemed scared, perhaps even contrite.

The conversation concluded, and Garmondy backed away from the hole in the wall, still stooped in supplication, taking infinite care not to stand on any of the spiders that milled about his feet. Once he was clear of them, he stood, crossed the basement and disappeared through a narrow wooden door on the other side. When he re-emerged from the door he was wearing a heavy brown duffel coat and  holding a shotgun in his hands.

Adrenaline shot through Winter in a sudden, coppery burst. She threw herself from the wall, tugging at the chains that held her there, only succeeding in cutting her wrists still further. Meeting Garmondy's eyes, she shook her head frantically, trying to appeal with her eyes. But he strode right past her, paying her so little attention that she might as well have been another item of furniture.

"It seems," he said over his shoulder, "that one of your friends has escaped. Her children saw him, limping through the woods. Off to get help, no doubt."

Winter's mind raced. Mark! Mark must have woken up, realised what was going on, and found a way out of the hotel. She felt a fountainhead of triumph in her chest. If anyone could save her and Jenny it was Mark. He would make it, she knew he would. And he would fetch the police and they would come and when they saw what was here they would burn this place to the ground.

Almost as quickly as it had come the optimism faded, cold, oily fear taking its place. Why was Mark limping? Was he injured already? What if he didn't make it? What if Garmondy caught up with him and shot him? Then what would happen to her? If Christopher could be killed then so could Mark, and so could she. She thought of her friends, her family. All of their families. Four sets of parents waiting anxiously for news, and never knowing what had happened, never understand how and where and why their children had disappeared.

Garmondy checked the gun over, slotting bullets into it from a pocket in his coat. Every metallic noise he coaxed from the device made Winter wince as if he'd hit her. Then, evidently satisfied with his weapon, Garmondy strode towards another door in the opposite wall.

"I'll be back soon, my dear. Her children will keep you company while I hunt." He paused. "Don't try to escape while I'm gone," he said, his voice suddenly more earnest, almost caring. "Please believe me, you would not get away, and I would hate for you to die before your time."

And then he was gone, and Winter was alone in the basement. Alone with the spiders, helpless as a fly in a web.

Chapter Thirteen

Five minutes after the sounds of tearing flesh finally stopped, Winter opened her eyes. The basement was still, almost peaceful. The creature had retreated back into its hole in the wall, and the trolley to which Christopher had been tied now lay on its side. Thick, bright blood was everywhere, smearing the walls and floor, coating the steel struts of the trolley. There were parts too, white bits of flesh and bone, misshapen and horrible. Among the scraps Winter discerned a curiously shaped lump, and a moment later realised that it was Christopher's hand. She groaned and shut her eyes, a hot blush of sickness rising up her throat.

"I really am very sorry," said Garmondy, quietly. "Believe me, my dear, I didn't chose this anymore than you."

Even if it were not for the gag, Winter was beyond talking. She groaned again. A tear slipped down the side of her nose and fell to the floor. In her head she heard Christopher's last few screams over again, almost drowned by the chittering, squealing noises of the thing that had torn him apart. And she had been just here, right here not more than ten paces away, unable to do a thing to help. And now Christopher, everything that made up the person she had known and loved and spend her years with, all of it lay in bloody pieces on the concrete of this horrible place.

There was another flurry of squeaking, insectile noises from across the basement, and Winter tensed, not wanting to see nor hear the monstrous thing from the hole ever again.

"Don't worry," said Garmondy. "She is full, for the moment. Her children shall finish what remains."

And despite herself, Winter cracked open her eyes. The wall on the other side of the basement was moving--at least, that's what it looked like. There was a slight distortion to it, a rippling as if it were seen through a heat haze. It took her a moment for her to realise what she was seeing.

There, feasting on the blood and scraps the creature had left were a thousand tiny version of it. The little beasts tumbled over one another, gathering in a rustling mass wherever a particularly juicy piece of meat was found. They were tiny compared to the thing that had killed Christopher, but still big, each one the size of Winter's closed fist. As they moved and ate they made a noise, like the crumpling of a thousand cigarette papers. With wide eyes Winter saw the glint of their sticky jaws, their many eyes, their legs flowing and tangling and wriggling.

Winter had always hated spiders.

Chapter Twelve

Mark was starting to worry now. A good fifteen minutes had passed since he discovered that he and Jenny were locked in, and nobody--not Christopher, nor Winter, nor the old man--had shown up. Jenny remained in her semi-comatose state, not moving, barely drawing breath, her skin cold and clammy as that of a corpse.

He sat on the bed beside her and tried to come up with an explanation, but nothing he came up with fit. There was no way that Winter and Christopher would have left the room of their own accord, at least not without waking him and letting him know. Therefore something must have forced them to leave, perhaps in a hurry since they left behind the coats and shoes. And why would Garmondy lock his hotel guests in at night? That was just wrong.

And then Mark remembered the noises he'd heard just a few moments before he'd discovered that Jenny would not wake. The footsteps, the thumps and dragging noises. He tried to think back and remember as much detail as possible.

For a start it had been only one set of footsteps. One person. And where had they gone? To one of the hotel rooms further down the corridor. Could it have been Christopher and Winter's room? Mark thought that one over for almost a minute, before concluding that yes, it probably was. The pair would never have left the door unlocked, not after Winter was so creeped out by the old man, and yet the door had been open when Mark went to find them.

Which meant that someone--that same someone who had come wandering up the corridor so late at night--had opened their door.

Why hadn't either of them woken up when whoever it was opened the door to their room? The locks and handles on these doors were big clunky things, and they made plenty of noise: enough to wake even the deepest of sleepers. Had Christopher and Winter already left the room by that stage? Was the noise he heard in fact one of them returning to the room for some unknown reason before sloping off again to who-knows-where? Or...

Or were they, in fact, unconscious instead of asleep. Slowly Mark looked down at Jenny. Something had happened to her and now she would not wake. What if the same illness had afflicted Christopher and Winter? What if...

And then he had it. He understood. It was so obvious and so startling that he couldn't believe he had failed to see it before. The hot chocolate they had all drunk before bed! All except himself, who had instead decided to stick to Jenny's drink from the park. The old man, Garmondy, must have put something in the powder sachets, or in the kettle, or in the water. And then, when everyone was soundly unconscious, he could come creeping in at night to do whatever perverted things he liked.

A shiver ran through Mark, and at the same moment another piece of the puzzle suddenly fell into place. The other sound he'd heard, the rumbling noise that he had thought might be a wheel moving over boards. It had been the battered old hotel trolley he's seen stashed in a nook on the way up to the room. The old man had wheeled it along to the room, loaded the sleeping bodies of his friends on board and then wheeled it away again.

At any other time Mark might have thought twice before acting, might have written off his fears as paranoia. But not tonight. There was something about this place, about the whole situation that was deeply and upsettingly wrong. The nails on the road; the shock of the accident; the sheer emptiness of the hotel and the creepiness of its owner; the fact that Jenny, his girlfriend Jenny, lay beside him so deeply asleep that he could have mistaken it for death.

He was scared. He had to get away. Get help.

Leaving Jenny for the moment, Mark got up from the bed and went down the corridor once more. Action suited him. When he was busy doing something there was no chance for the worry to set it, no chance for the fear to gnaw at his gut like rats on a wire. He arrived at the locked door at the end of the corridor and, without preamble, tried to kick it down.

He was expecting the door to be as flimsy as it looked, but each kick that he landed barely sent a tremble through it. It was heavy, solid as a rock, rooted into the frame with big metal bolts. After half a dozen heavy kicks that caused more pain to him than to the door he gave up and hobbled back to the room.

The doors, then, were out. That left the window. Opening it as far as he could he stuck his head out and peered down at the ground. They were one storey up in the air: a drop of about twice his height, less if he lowered himself down from the ledge before falling. He could manage it, he told himself. Of course he could manage it.

Before he went, he shut and locked the hotel room door, and then heaved the heaviest item he could find--the big wooden wardrobe--against it. Satisfied, he made sure that Jenny was lying safely on her side, and covered her over with the blankets.

"I'll be back," he said. "Soon. I promise," he said to her, feeling vaguely silly for talking to someone so deeply unconscious. He kissed her, and for a moment felt a powerful urge just to crawl back into bed and pretend that everything that was happening around his was nothing more than a dream. He ignored it, stood, and went to the window.

Climbing out was the easy part. There was a wooden ledge just below the sill of the window that Mark was able to set his feet on as he slid the rest of his body through the gap. He took a firm grip on the edge and lowered himself down to the extend of his arms, shoulder joints screaming the whole while. He tried to peer down past his body to judge how far he had to fall, but it was impossible.

Well, he decided, nothing else for it. Time to go.

And he dropped. His landing on the scrubby grass below was almost perfect. Almost, but not quite. He felt his ankle turn underneath him, and white, blaring pain made itself known in his calf. He tumbled to the side, grunting in pain, and smacked into the ground, the smell of dirt and leaves entering his nostrils.

Mark lay for a long time on the ground, holding his ankle, breathing deep, waiting for the pain to subside. When it was down to an insistent throb, he hauled himself to his feet and set off hobbling through the woods.

Chapter Eleven

Winter searched frantically around the room for some way out, some means of salvation. There was none, but she noticed something then that she hadn't seen before. In the far wall, almost directly opposite her, was a large jagged hole. It was the size of a small door and so dark that it seemed to suck in what little light there was in the basement. The sight of it filled Winter's insides with dread, slick and seething.

Christopher was waking up. His limbs stirred feebly against the weight of sleep and his eyes flickered open. His mouth formed awkward half-syllables. Winter recognised the confusion.

"Chris," she yelled. "Chris, it's me! Chris, can you hear me?"

He was so close, barely a few steps away, and yet they could not reach one another. He raised his head and peered drunkenly about for her. "Winter?"

"Yes!" Even though she knew she couldn't reach him she pulled away from the wall, straining against the chains. Somehow she felt as though if she could just touch him, if the two of them could be in this situation together then it would all end up okay. "Chris, it's the man. Garmondy. He's tied me up. He's here..."

And then Garmondy was before her, fingers at her mouth, stuffing a wad of salty fabric in between her teeth. A strip of tape followed, gagging her completely, and she could only watch and make muted sounds of distress as the old man returned to the trolley to which her boyfriend was tied and wheeled it towards the hole in the wall.

"Winter," said Christopher again, less thickly this time. He was waking up. The sound of his voice worked at Winter's heart like a pin vice.

"Hush now," said Garmondy to Christopher, almost gently. The trolley was directly before the hole now, Christopher laid out like a sacrifice on an altar. The old man took half a dozen steps back and then opened his mouth. What came out was no language that winter recognised: a hideous volley of clicks and squeals that sounded as though they couldn't possibly be formed by a human tongue.

A moment later, something from within the hole answered him. Winter heard a rustling, as if of many things moving. A skittering and many tiny squeals.

Garmondy came and stood beside her. "I'd close my eyes if I were you my dear," he said conversationally. "It's not often a pretty sight."

Winter didn't close her eyes. Her gaze was fixed on Christopher, who struggled now against his bonds, teeth clenched, muscles tensed. Then beyond him she saw movement within the darkness of the hole, and a second later the creature within emerged into the basement.

Even with the gag clamping her mouth firmly shut, Winter couldn't keep from screaming.