Touched - By Malcolm Havard Page 0,2

cover her whole back. Her skin seemed to be shrinking away from her clothes. She tried to ignore it, she told herself that she was just being silly. She gave herself a good talking to in her head. She was safely locked inside her flat, up on the 7 floor. She absolutely would not give into her instincts and go and look around. Monsters under the bed indeed! She was a grown women for God's sake.

She took another sip of wine and adjusted her position on the sofa, kidding herself that she was just getting comfortable but now, out of the corner of her eye, she could now see the door into the hall, which was open. The hall was dark, the only lights on in the flat were the uplighter by the window and what the TV gave off, so she could not see far into the gloom. What she could see though was the spot of light from the spyhole showing the well-lit corridor outside her front door. Everything else was just dark shapes.

Harmless dark shapes, Tess, she told herself silently, harmless.

‘Pull yourself together,’ she muttered out loud and turned to the TV, deliberately turning her back on the open door, and the hall, and its gloomy corners.

The tickling, prickly feeling was back. She couldn’t get rid of it, couldn’t get the thoughts out of her head. Every sense told her to turn back and look, look. Look. Look behind you! She fought it, tried to rationalise. To be a grown up but then a thought nag, nag, nagged at her.

The spyhole.

Could she see the light of the spyhole when she first looked? Or had it appeared as her eyes adjusted to the gloom? If it had appeared then it meant something was in the way. No, no, no, she was just being stupid, letting her imagination run away with her.

She forced herself to watch the TV.

But the urge to turn around was so strong. And so was the fear, the fear of seeing something dark, something malevolent, something or someone that shouldn't be there. She found herself hardly able to breathe and this made her very angry with herself.

‘Stupid cow,’ she muttered getting to her feet, annoyed that she was giving in to what had to be her childish fears.

She found herself looking straight into the eyes of a masked man.

She felt a blow to her midriff.

A brief, dull pain, then an icy numbness.

Tess looked down. There was blood everywhere; over the carpet, on the sofa, soaking her t-shirt, dark as the wine in the glass that she still held. Even at that moment it struck her how odd it was that she was still being careful not to spill a drop.

Blood? It was on the knife held in the hand of the man, the blade big and evil and silver, no, silver and red; his hands in leather gloves, black but darkened further by her blood.

Her blood.

She looked back up into the eyes of the man, a question framed on her lips, but suddenly the eyes shot upwards, away from her, whilst the carpet rushed up to meet her.

She sighed.

*

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Chapter Two

One year ago, the next morning

Dan’s personal space was being squeezed. Someone was stood on his foot, he was being elbowed in the ribs yet still more people pushed into the carriage, forcing the reluctant standers further away from the doors. Five years he had done this and he hated it more each day. He asked himself the same question he always asked himself at this time, in the middle of the morning rush hour; was it really worth all this hassle travelling in on the Underground? Were the benefits of London life worth all the downsides; the crowds, the cost, the squalor, the heat, the bad manners and the bad personal hygiene?

He tilted his head away from the man next to him who was pressed intimately close. Garlic clearly played a big part in this man’s diet. Dan wondered what he had eaten for breakfast that had that much in it. Garlic muesli? Or did he just have an insane fear of vampires?

The carriage jerked and jolted as it passed over some points. It was badly