useless.' The ambulance passes, its tyres sinking through the damp sand. Its siren deafens them. Tom shouts something, but Dante doesn't hear him. 'What is it?' he repeats, just as the ambulance kills the siren.
'An arm!' Tom yells, his voice bringing a fresh surge of woe from the woman in the police car.
'It's an arm,' Tom repeats, his voice subdued. 'A human arm.'
Two paramedics slip past the policemen and cover the red thing on the beach with a rubber sheet.
CHAPTER THREE
Thin unseen hands paw her body. Just like the night before. Until long fingers grip her shoulders and yank her upright in bed. Then her face is touched by something sharp before her limp shape is thrown down to the mattress, so it can clamber upon her. Rustling, as if spidery limbs are being drawn in, it perches upon her chest. Before lowering its face. To whisper.
Punched from sleep, Kerry's long blue eyes open. Pebbles of sweat cool on her forehead.
Only the dream. She exhales. It's over now, it's gone.
Should have gone to sleep on my front. I'm sure I went to sleep on my front. But understands the bad dream came back to turn her over.
Out of dream-time, Kerry glances around her dark room, cocooned within the sturdy walls of St Salvator's Hall of Residence. Moonlight filters through the thin curtains and transforms her quiet chamber into smudges and silhouettes. She swallows to calm her staccato breaths, and the waking moment brings tears to her eyes and a shudder beneath her ribs, as if she's just climbed out of cold water to seek a towel. There is an urge to cry, to call Sarah in from next door so she can cling to her neighbour's gown in these first moments of waking. But beside the window she sees the outline of a Sheryl Crow poster and above her desk Brad Pitt hides in shadow, with his shirt off, square jaw clenched and strong hands still. Familiar things kill her desire to cry. This is Kerry's real world in real time, and safe from nightmare.
Smiling through her tears, she hears the little ticks from the Homer Simpson alarm clock. At nine in the morning he'll shout 'Doh!' and she'll phone home. Her thesis is nearly finished and she's ready for her dad's comfy arms and her mom's raised eyebrow. Back to Kent, back home and away from the nightmares. Relief makes it possible for Kerry to almost smell dad's pipe-smoke, to hear her little sister's piano, Jasper barking in the conservatory, and her grandmother cackling before the television. She can even hear . . .
Something moving.
No God, please.
A sniff and then a rustle out there in her room.
Please, please, please, no more. She's awake. It can't continue.
The sounds are coming from the dark annexe by the en-suite bathroom. Something is on all fours as it pads through the murk of night. She can hear it feeling its way about the floor, as if blind but intent on being close to her.
Kerry tries to move her head and sit up. No use. A familiar tingling, a paralysis, fastens her down beneath disturbed sheets still damp with sweat. Her legs and arms are immobile, useless. Not wanting to see, Kerry closes her eyes. Muscles twitch in her face and then crease. Panic surges through her body and she wants to beg, plead, and then scream, to bring the world to her door.
But maybe if she doesn't struggle and stays quiet it won't find her.
A lump gathers in her throat. A swollen clot of fear, because she can sense it emerging from around the corner to turn its face toward her. She holds her breath, her stiff body shivers and a deep silence engulfs space and time. There is no sound or movement for a moment, just the dark room and the waiting she must endure inside it.
And then the touch. It has reached out.
Something dry and sharp presses into her cheek. A spider web of icy tingles spreads up from her shoulders and sparks inside her neck. Hair follicles prickle on her scalp and her blonde hair stiffens against the pillow. It's freezing now and the sheets feel like tissue paper. Stillness roars. She gasps. Keeping her eyes shut tight, she tries to scream but everything swirls inside, voiceless and adrift. A sudden thought demands annihilation to end the delay. The sharp thing then scratches down and across her face and pushes at her lips. A bitter taste seeps into her mouth