Necroscope V Deadspawn - By Brian Lumley Page 0,126

how I hate you!'

She stood up, stumbled and regained her balance, flew at him clutching the jagged half of a brick. Johnny finally saw her and his red-blotched face rapidly turned pale. He snatched up his penknife - not to use on her but with an entirely different, perhaps even worse purpose in mind -and went to slice through a length of tough kite-string which held down Moggit's branch. Strands parted but the string didn't; in a sudden rage Johnny jerked the string this way and that, and Moggit was lifted and whirled like a rag, his hoarse cat cries cut off as the wire bit into his rubbed-raw throat.

Then Johnny gave a gasp of triumph as his knife cut through the string, and Moggit was jerked aloft, choking and spitting for a second or two as the noose tightened to finish the job. But Johnny was so intent on the murder of the cat that Carol was on him. Blindly, whirling her arms, she came at him with the sharp nails of one hand and the half-brick grasped tight in the other. He avoided her raking nails, but a sharp, broken corner of the brick struck him on the forehead and knocked him down. In a moment he was sitting up, shaking his head, looking around for his knife. And his eyes blazed as he glared at his sister and threatened, 'First Moggit, and now you!'

He got unsteadily to his feet, his forehead grazed and bleeding, then spotted his penknife and pounced on it. And in that same moment Carol knew she was in deadly danger. Johnny couldn't let her tell her parents what she had seen, what he had done. And there was only one way he could be sure to stop her.

With a backward glance that took in the whole scene one last time - poor Moggit hanged and bobbing with the motion of the elder branch, the hedgehog finally exhausted, gasping its life out where it lay, and the dead, mutilated birds strung up in a row - she turned away and fled for home. And bursting through the tunnel of undergrowth out of the ruins, she knew that Johnny was right behind her.

And he would have been; except he knew that if she got home first, she would bring someone to see. And he mustn't let anyone see.

Quickly he cut down Moggit and the birds, and yanked the hedgehog's stake from the ground. Panting from the furious pace of his exertions, and from his fury in general, he tossed the lot into a deep, stagnant well which he'd discovered on the site, whose battened cover had long since rotted away in one corner. He hated to see his dead and dying things go down into the dark like that, making splashes in the deep, black, unseen water below. Wasted, all of them, and so much 'life' still left in them! It was all Carol's fault. Yes, and there'd be a lot more to blame her for if she got home first.

He set out after her, following her wailing and the wild, zig-zag, trail she left through the long grass.

A half-mile across rough, open countryside is a long way when you're a heartbroken child with your eyes full of tears. Carol's heart hammered in her breast and her breath was ragged and panting; but to drive her on there was always that picture burning on her mind's eye, of Moggit dangling and jerking in the wire noose, with his guts hanging out like a small bag of crushed fruits when her mother made jam in the kitchen. And to drive her even faster was Johnny's voice crying after her: 'Caaarol! Carol - wait for me!'

She did no such thing; the garden wall was just ahead, at the end of the hedgerow; behind her, panting - and yet growling too, like some savage dog - Johnny was catching up. His groping hand missed her ankle by inches as she half-climbed, half-fell over the wall. But on the garden side she just lay there, too terrified, tearful, too exhausted to go on.

And Johnny jumping down after her, his eyes mad and glaring, small fists tightening and slackening where he held them to his sides. She looked toward the house but it was hidden behind fruit trees and the misted dome of the pool. Would her parents be up yet? She didn't even have the wind for yelling.

Johnny snarled as he bunched her hair in a strong fist and