Darkside by Belinda Bauer Read Free Book Online

the killer in her own body?
    Sometimes, when she felt mentally strong enough, Lucy would stand naked and watch herself in the mirror. That was what it felt like - watching herself, not looking .
    She had been beautiful. She knew that - although it was behind her now.
    The year of steroids was over and she had lost all the weight and more. She had hated being fat and puffed up almost more than she hated the disease - had not wanted Jonas to touch her, even when she wanted to touch him . But now even she could see that things had gone too far the other way. She was so thin and wobbly that when she stood before the mirror she almost fancied that, if she only looked hard enough, she could see the very beast that was consuming her from the inside out. Sometimes she even thought she caught a glimpse of it - a tic in the skin stretched over her hip, an odd bulge under her ribs that disappeared with the light. She would feel sick at the thought that one day she might be looking into this mirror and see a sharp claw split her belly, a scaled hand emerge, and the cold-eyed reptilian disease open her skin like curtains on the final act in the play of her life.
    Lucy shivered, even though their heating bills were ridiculously high and she had the rug snuggled up to her chin. She thought of the real-life horror that had played out less than a quarter of a mile from where she lay now on the couch. Had Margaret woken before dying? She must have. Even if itwas only when the pillow was already over her face. The terror. The helpless terror. Lucy felt compassion overwhelm her. Poor Margaret.
    Shamefully hot on the heels of compassion came the usual question: what would she do?
    She thought that she would bite an assailant to make him let go of her. Biting was weird, and taboo enough to be unexpected. So, bite him in the face like a pit bull. She imagined the taste of his unshaven cheek and the howl of pain and outrage as his grip loosened ... Then she would jerk upwards and sideways to throw him off the bed and on to the floor - like this! - then she would twist, fling the bed covers over his head, stamp on the place where she'd last seen his face and run next door to Mrs Paddon to use the phone.
    There!
    She was mentally breathless, but drew real strength from her imagined actions, reassured that if anyone ever tried anything like that with her when Jonas wasn't around, she'd done as much as she could - and more than most people - to prepare herself.
    There was a faint rumbling noise, then the sound of the garden gate squeaking and a tentative knock on the door. Lucy changed channels to The Antiques Roadshow and called, 'Come in, Steven!'
    A gangly sixteen-year-old sloped into the room with white earphones in, making only shy eye-contact.
    'I brought your paper, Mrs Holly.'
    As if he'd be doing anything else. The DayGlo sack resting on his hip with Exmoor Bugle emblazoned across it was the giveaway, just as the rumble of his skateboard wheels on the road outside the front gate was his weekly herald.
    'Thanks, Steven. How are you?'
    Steven Lamb had been delivering their paper since theymoved in, and Lucy had watched him change from a boy into a teenager in weekly increments. First he'd been a scrawny thirteen-year-old, small for his age, and so shy that he had reddened and stammered at the mere idea that he might actually come in to deliver the paper instead of push it through the letterbox. Only the five-pound tip Jonas Holly pressed into his hand every month seemed to convince him that the policeman was serious - that he should indeed enter their home and give his wife the paper in person.
    'It's what people do here,' Jonas had fibbed to Lucy at the time. 'Make sure she's all right and call me if she's not,' he'd told Steven privately - just as he'd requested of Will Bishop and Frank Tithecott and Mrs Paddon next door.
    It had taken almost a year before Steven had even engaged in conversation beyond a flushed and mumbled 'Hello,' but he took