Spawn of Man by Terry Farricker Read Free Book Online

back towards where she had entered the building. She felt her face protection dissolve, felt her jacket and trousers bursting into flame and sensed the stripping of her flesh as it scorched and melted, liquefying and running from her bone. Then she was falling, coughing blood and plastic, her throat being welded shut.
    ***
    Alex opened her eyes back in the present, and as she did so she saw movement; a shape existing within the flames.
    She tried to push herself up. ‘Anthony?’
    The shape began to emerge from the fire, walking slowly, purposefully but unhurriedly and it was not Anthony. It was a giant of a man, dressed in black and carrying a suitcase. He was incredibly thin, almost skeletal, and his face was old and wicked, lit by splashes of orange and red that fell across it, as the fire raged on all sides. He was nearer now and bending to look into her face. His breath was foul and his eyes dead. He smiled and it was as if Death were regarding Alex and tasting her agony. Then he inhaled deeply, filling his being with the smoke and heat emanating from Alex’s body.
    He spoke and it was the sound of despair, edged with hunger, taunting, ‘Alexandra.’
    He reached down in one fluid movement and grasped her round the waist. He lifted her easily and carried her like a second suitcase, entering the room that Alex had escaped from. Alex was laid back on her bed, searching the room in panic, looking for the flames or at least evidence of their passing. She found nothing. For a second she imagined them hiding beneath the bed or behind the curtains like mischievous children, ready to spring out on her at any moment, but they had gone and everything was intact and undamaged.
    Alex tried to rise and gasped, ‘Anthony! We need to get Anthony out!’
    But the Tall Man leaned close again and his skin looked worn and thin as he spoke.
    ‘Too late for that, Alex. No use weeping for the dead, they don’t weep for you, child. Time now to fulfill your destiny. Looking back will only end in tripping over the future. Look up child, always up,’ he said prophetically, brushing two bony, talon fingers over her eyelids.
    And although sleep was the last refuge Alex wanted to hide in, she did sleep and did not wake again until October.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Five
    2036. October, Saturday. Dawn
     
    Robert Douglas walked to his car, the morning was grey, and a few icy drops of rain had already begun dusting the valley. As he approached, the car’s sensors clicked in recognition and the door unlocked. He got into the car and grasped the steering wheel, waiting the few seconds it took for the engine to drone into life.
    Robert bent forward and peered at the sky, at the low, laden clouds, and he directed, ‘Auto drive.’
    The car’s computer confirmed his name and the command and the accelerator, brake, and clutch pedals retracted into the floor of the vehicle. The computer then began mapping surroundings, factoring in road and weather conditions, and Robert steered the car out of the small town of Babel. He then joined the main road that led through the Cambrian Mountains. Five minutes later he glanced in his wing mirror and saw the signpost for Babel retreating. He left the cozy, picturesque village behind and made his way to the asylum.   Babel was the closest that civilization crept to the asylum and Robert had purchased the cottage there as a base for himself, his wife and child.
    Babel was a small, sleepy town, famous for its spas in the nineteenth century when it became a fashionable destination for Victorian society. Now it enjoyed its old age snuggled in a valley, forgotten by the world. The only frequent and dependable visitor now was the bitter wind that hurried across the gorges and ravines on the high ground and over the desolate moorland. Robert steered his car round the serpentine road and watched the mountains begin to paint silhouettes against the sky as dusk approached lazily. Each new turn in the road