Scott Nicholson - Head cases

The blouse was wrapped around the rusted spar and, by straining and stretching, I could just about reach it. Catching hold of the blouse, I pulled, just as my footing gave way. I fell, pulling the blouse with me, and felt the material tear before something solid and heavy hit me on the head forcing me down onto the rocks, rolling dislodged stones until I was brought up against the railings.

I heard a loud creaking and looked up to see the cross, now with a spar missing, swaying from side to side in the breeze. When I looked down I found the missing piece, lying by my side with Sandra's blouse still wrapped around it. I left it there as I hauled myself over the railings and hobbled back to the house.

That was it for the rest of the day. I was dazed, bleeding from a head wound and bruised over much of my body. Sandra wanted to fetch the doctor but I talked her out of it. I didn't want anybody to know that I had defaced the cross, not yet anyway, not until I had the chance to try to repair some of the damage.

I spent the day in bed, most of the time with Sandra beside me, nursing my wounds and wondering what the islanders' reaction would be.

As darkness filled the room, Sandra fell asleep, but I lay awake, listening to the creaking of the cross, the rasping of iron against stone as it swayed back and forth in the wind.

At some point I must have fallen asleep. I was awakened by a cold draft hitting me just on the back of the neck. I rolled over, hoping to snuggle against my wife's warm body, but I met only more empty space. It took several seconds for me to realise that she wasn't in the bed.

Moonlight was streaming in through the window, enough for me to make out her pale figure and the cross which bobbed and swayed hypnotically in front of her. I was out of the room and through onto the grass before I realised that we were both still naked.

I went back to fetch some clothes, pulling on a long jumper for myself and picking up an overcoat for her. When I got back to the door, she was gone.

In the moonlight I could just make out the footprints in the grass and I followed them up to the cairn. I called out her name, twice, but there was no response.

As I got closer I could see that the cairn had collapsed in on itself on the left-hand side. A dark passage led downwards, down into the earth, and there was a dank salty smell wafting up into the night.

I looked around again but there was no sign of her anywhere. The only assumption I could make was that she was down there somewhere-down there in the earth. She had gone walkabout at night before, sometimes getting as far as the front door in our flat in London, but this was the first time that she had actually left the house.

I was worried, of course I was, but I wasn't thinking in terms of anything other than the personal danger to her should she stumble in the dark. I wasn't thinking in terms of monsters or dwarves. Not yet, anyway.

I called her name again, louder this time, but all I heard was the echo of my voice coming back to me. I entered the passage but after only two or three yards it became as black as a pit of hell. It was no good. I needed some source of light.

Precious minutes were wasted before I located a flashlight, and clouds had covered the moon when I finally went back outside. I called out, not really expecting a response, and none came. I put the overcoat on over the top of the jumper, and with some trepidation I went down into the dark.

The walls were built of large blocks of sandstone. I had visited several Neolithic tombs, in Carnac, in Orkney, and on Salisbury Plain. This gave the same sense of age, of a time long past. What I hadn't expected, what was completely different, was the overwhelming feeling that this place was in use. The walls ran damp and there was a salt tang in the air, but there was no sign of moss or lichen on the walls, only the damp, glistening stone.

I pressed on. By shining the light downwards, I could see the barefoot prints which Sandra had made on her descent. I had no choice but to follow.

The path kept going down, deeper and deeper, and the air was getting colder and damper. I judged that I must be under the sea by now and the thought of all that water above added an extra worry line to my already furrowed brow. At least the passage hadn't diverged.

I was so busy concentrating on the way ahead that I stumbled when my foot didn't meet the expected step and the path leveled out.

I was in some sort of chamber. It was hexagonal in shape, about ten yards across, and there was an entrance in every wall. My feet were wet. That was what I was thinking. It's funny how your mind gives you something else to think about at times of stress.

The thing I was trying to ignore was lying on a slab in the centre of the room. The slab was a pale green marble of a kind I had never seen and she was lying on it with her knees raised in the air as if on an operating table.

Between her legs something moved-something grey and green and warty and hideous. It slithered and crawled, and I could see that it was inside her, was copulating with her.

I think I went slightly mad then. I remember grasping the slimy body, almost dropping it as its small wizened face turned towards me, a face lined with age and infinitely deep in its evil. Even as I looked, the life went out of the eyes and the puny head bent in death, one last smile playing on its lips.

I remember dashing the body again and again against the wall but I don't remember tearing it and mashing it. I must have done it, though, for when I moved towards my wife I had the slimy remains of it all over my free hand and its juices coated my feet and ankles.

She was alive. I thanked God for that as I cradled her in my arms. She seemed to be in a stupor, but when I stood her upright, I found that she was able to walk.

I dragged her unyielding body along, grateful that she seemed to be capable of walking. I had one last look around the chamber before we headed for the stairs. The pieces of the creature I had dismembered were bubbling and frothing in a puddle of bloody ooze.

I fled.

After only twenty or so steps, I felt her stiffen beside me and then she began to pull me back as she tried to go down once more.

I am not proud of my next action. I hit her hard across the chin and she fell into my arms. I carried her up the stairs. Quite how I managed it without dropping the torch I am not too sure, and how long it took us I will never know.

Finally we emerged into the cold night air. I laid her on the grass beyond the railings and tried to tumble the rocks over the passage. I had just covered the entrance when the screaming began.

'The baby. Oh God. It's coming. It's coming.'

I don't remember much of the next half hour, only fragments-driving like a maniac as she sobbed quietly behind me, the sudden light in the deer's eyes just before the car hit it dead on, smashing the car's headlights into a million tinkling fragments.

I remember the small twinkling lights in the black distance as I just managed to avoid the cliff edge and, finally, the iron gate on the path which I almost fell over as the doctor came towards me and I collapsed into a faint.

I have a vague memory of being put in an armchair and practically force-fed whiskey as my wife was carried upstairs and the doctor called for some help, but my legs wouldn't move and my arms were heavy and sleep called me back again.

I dreamed hot lurid fantasies of violence and fire, of rape and bloodletting, and of a cold black fury which carried all before it. I woke from screams into screams.

My legs pushed me out of the chair and towards the door long before my brain was fully awake and I was halfway up the stairs before I recognised the voice behind the screaming. I reached the door just as the screams stopped.