Ramsey Campbell - The Claw

He hurried to the nearest exit and down the metal staircase on the outer wall. The tanker was still manoeuvring in the fog, quite close now. Gravel crunched under his feet as he made for the building that housed the compressors. What with the fog and the noise of the tanker, he couldn't be sure if anyone had followed him out of the office building, couldn't tell if they were snuffling.

As soon as he stepped over the threshold, all he could hear was the constant shriek of the compressors. He climbed the steps and hurried along the catwalk, past the shrieking barrels fat as railway engines. When he mouthed 'Rothwell' at a man wearing a hard hat and ear protectors, the man pointed him toward the building where the turbines were.

The fog was closer now. It felt like concrete walls, massive and chill. Had it been a tail-light that reddened the fog just as he emerged? It had gone now. He wanted very much to find Rothwell.

The turbine building was smaller, the noise level even higher. All the machines looked grey with fog. He walked through quickly, wishing he could stop his ears. Nothing moved but the machines. Perhaps Rothwell was at the tanks, where the tanker must be loading.

Alan hurried toward the tanks. The shriek of the turbines had just faded into the crunch of gravel, and he was straining his ears to make out whether another sound was moving with him in the fog, when he faltered, clapping his hand over his mouth. He shouldn't look for Rothwell or for anyone, since the only way for the power of the claw to survive was for it to be passed to someone else.

He mustn't involve Rothwell. He'd remembered that the site manager had children. The only safe course now would be to involve nobody. He made for the tanks, as quickly and quietly as he could.

When a rounded shape loomed out of the fog he ran to it, for in the muffled silence he was sure he could hear snuffling. By the time he was close enough to make out that the shape was a tanker filling up with liquid nitrogen, the driver had seen him. 'Looking for someone?' he said.

'Mr Rothwell.'

'He'll be along in a minute.' The driver, a burly humourless man, looked suspicious. As Alan took a step back toward the other tanks he said, 'What've you got there?'

'Nothing.'

It was the worst answer he could have given. He cursed it and himself as soon as it left his mouth. 'Nothing, is it?' the driver said. 'Let's have a look.'

'If anyone does that it'll be Mr Rothwell, not you.' Alan was saying the first thing that came into his head – anything to avoid handing over the claw. He had no chance now of getting to a tank unnoticed and turning liquid nitrogen on the claw. If he tried to sneak away the driver would be after him. He stood trying frantically to think of some way to deal with the claw before Rothwell came, as ice gathered on the pipe that was filling the tanker, melting ice rained down from the tank. He was still trying when he heard the crunch of gravel beyond the cab of the tanker.

It wasn't Rothwell. He knew that when he glimpsed red, moving just inside the fog. It was the follower of the claw, the man who had had it made and been possessed by it, waiting to be fed – waiting for Alan to be forced to pass on the claw. It knew he would have to. Alan felt despair, colder than the fog that was forming a crust on the pipe, and then he had a last desperate idea. 'What's that?' he said, pointing toward the snuffling. 'A dog, is it? Chewing your tyres.'

The driver listened to the snuffling, then he went grimly toward the front of the tanker. 'Don't go away,' he warned Alan.

Nothing was further from Alan's mind. As soon as the driver was out of sight he grabbed the pipe to unscrew the connection. It was more difficult than he'd hoped; ice had sealed it to the tanker. He wrenched desperately at it and heard the ice crack. He spun the heavy ring, spun it again when the pipe didn't budge, wrenched again at the pipe. This time it came free, and he leapt back barely in time as it spilled liquid nitrogen over the gravel.

He had no time to waste. He pulled out the claw and slipped it into the belly of the tanker, into a bath of liquid nitrogen that must already be several feet deep. He hefted the pipe, which felt capable of gluing his hands to itself with ice, and shoved the end into the aperture in the side of the tanker, had to adjust it before he could spin the ring and seal the connection. Then he stepped back and turned to face what he'd heard.

He'd heard the driver cry out and fall. Now he heard a scrabbling of gravel. It wasn't until the driver called 'Mr Rothwell, are you there? Can you come here for a minute?' in a strange pale voice that Alan realized he was struggling to his feet. It must have been shock that had made him lose his balance. Alan could guess what he'd seen even before it came out of the fog, toward him.

It looked starved and desperate. Its scrawny naked body glittered with dried blood and ice. Its face looked hardly human now, if indeed it ever had. As it clawed at the tanker and the pipe it looked feeble but determined. Perhaps it couldn't deal with the connection because it was nearly all animal now. It tried a last time to reach the claw its nails screeching on the side of the tanker, then it turned on Alan.

Its bare feet had stuck to the spilled nitrogen. It lurched at him, tearing itself loose, leaving skin and flesh behind on the gravel. If it could do that in its desperation, what might it do to him in an attempt to make him retrieve the claw? All the same, he stood his ground. Whatever the follower might do to him, the claw was safely out of reach.

He wouldn't have been able to hear the intense cold inside the tanker break the claw, but he saw when it happened. He saw the naked figure jerk to a halt a few feet away from him, jerk and contort like metal under intolerable stress. All at once the crust of blood broke open in a multitude of places, and then the scrawny flesh did as its own thin blood boiled out. The figure collapsed as if age and death and its aftermath had seized it all at once, yet for an instant Alan thought he saw a kind of relief, almost gratitude, in its eyes.

He moved away from the stain on the gravel as Roth well and the driver ran up. 'What was it?' they demanded. 'Did you see?'

'Whatever it was, it's gone now,' Alan said, and didn't care that they stared at his audible relief. They glared about then, not quite believing him. 'I'll come back another time,' he told Rothwell, who was hardly listening.

He knew he never would come back. The fog felt clean on his skin as he headed for Reception to call a taxi to take him to the hospital. He was himself now, and he knew Liz must be herself again. The influence was destroyed for ever. The sooner he was at the hospital, the sooner they could guide Anna back to trusting them. Sunlight began to break through the fog, and it felt like a blaze of hope.