Wamphyri

After a moment's pause: 'The child?'

'Well what else, you old fool! So they opened 'er up. 'Orrible it were - but there's none but a handful knows of it, so this stops right 'ere. Well, doctor took one look at it an' put a needle in it. He just finished it there and then. An' into a plastic bag it went an' down to the hospital furnace. An' that was that.'

'Deformed,' the thin one nodded. 'I've heard o' such.'

'Well, this one weren't so much deformed as ... as not much formed at all!' the florid one informed. 'It were -'ow'd my Mary put it? - like some kind of massive tumour in 'er. A terrible sort of fleshy lump, and fibrous. But it were s'posed to 'ave been a child, for there was afterbirth and all. But for sure it were better off dead! My Mary said as 'ow there was eyes where there shouldn't be, an' things like teeth, an' 'ow it mewled suthin' terrible when the light fell on it!'

George had finished his lager, the last of it with a gulp.

The door of the pub was flung open and a party of young people came in. Another moment and one of them had found a juke-box in some hidden alcove; rock music washed over everything. The barman came back, pulled pints for all he was worth.

George left, headed back down the road. Half-way back, his car pulled up and A

She wore a straw hat with a wide black band, contrasting perfectly with her summer dress. Helen, sitting beside her, wore one with a red band. 'How's that?' A

'Around here,' George answered darkly, 'village girls need to watch what they're doing.' But he didn't explain his meaning, and in any case he wouldn't have mentioned Harkley in the same breath as the story he'd overheard in the pub. He took it that he'd simply misinterpreted the first few words. However that may be, the unpleasantness of the thing stayed with him for the rest of the day.

The next morning, Tuesday, George was up late. A

Darling -

Yulian and Helen are out walking Vlad. I think I'll drive Georgina into town and buy her something. We'll be back for lunch -

A

George sighed his frustration, chewed his bottom lip angrily. This morning he'd meant to have a quick look at the cellars, just out of curiosity. Yulian could have perhaps shown him around down there. As for the rest of the day: he'd pla

Ah, well - maybe there'd still be time for the beach this afternoon. But what to do with himself this morning? A walk into Old Paignton, to the harbour, perhaps? It would be a fair bit of a walk, but he could always drop in somewhere for a pint along the way. And later, if he was tired or pushed for time, he'd simply come back by taxi.

George did exactly that. He took his binoculars with him and spent a little time gazing at near-distant Brixham across the bay, returned to Harkley by taxi at about 12.30 and paid the driver off at the gate. He'd enjoyed both the long walk and his glass of cold beer enormously, and it seemed he'd timed the entire expedition just perfectly for lunch.

Then, wandering up the drive where the curving gravel path came closest to the copse - a densely grown stand of beech, birch and alder, with one mighty cedar towering slightly apart - there he came across his car, its front doors standing open and the keys still in the ignition. George stared at the car in mild surprise, turned in a slow circle and glanced all about.

The copse had an overgrown crazy-paving path winding through its heart, and a once-elegant white three-bar fence ru

maybe something big and black moving furtively in the undergrowth? Vlad?

It could well be that A

Suddenly it came to George that he feared one as much as the other. Yes, feared them. Yulian wasn't like any other person he knew, and Vlad wasn't like any other dog. There was something wrong with both of them. And in the middle of a quiet, hot summer day George shivered.

Then he got a grip of himself. Frightened? Of a queer, freakish youth and a three-quarters grown dog? Ridiculous!

He gave a loud 'Hallooo!' - and got no answer.

Irritated now, his previously pleasant mood rapidly waning, he hurried to the house. Inside ... no one! He went through the old place slamming doors, finally climbed the stairs to his and A

From his bedroom window he could see most of the grounds at the front of the house right to the gate. The barn and huddled stables interfered with the view of the copse, but -

George's attention was suddenly riveted by a splash of colour showing in the tall grass this side of the fence where it circled the copse. It caught his attention and held it. He moved a fraction, tried to see beyond the projecting gables of the old barn. It wouldn't come into focus. Then he remembered his binoculars, still hanging round his neck. He quickly put them to his eyes, adjusted them.

Still the gables intervened, and he'd got the range

wrong. The splash of colour was still there - a dress? -but a flesh-pink tone was moving against it. Moving insistently. With viciously impatient hands, George finally got the range right, brought the picture close. The splash of summer colours was a dress, yes. And the flesh-coloured tone was - flesh! Naked flesh.

George sca

And there she was, face down in the grass, naked as a baby - George's baby girl - with her straw hat and her dress tossed aside and her pink flesh open to this... this slime! George no longer feared Yulian, if he ever had, but hated him. The weird-looking bastard would look a sight weirder when he was finished with him.

He snatched his binoculars from his neck, tossed them down on the bed, turned towards the door - and his muscles locked rigid. George's jaw fell open. Something he had seen, some monstrous thing burned on his mind's eye. With hands numb to the bone he took up the binoculars, fixed them again on the couple in the long grass. Yulian had finished, lay sprawled alongside his partner. But George let the glasses slide right over them to the hat and disarrayed dress.

The straw hat had a wide black band. It was A

The binoculars slipped from George's fingers. He staggered, almost fell, flopped down heavily on his bed. On their bed, his and A