The sharpened needle in his other hand was poised to strike.
And that was when yet another shock made me wail in despair.
In all the panic and confusion I’d almost forgotten about her, and now here she was, her little face white with terror.
Primrose stood there by the sofa in her pretty yellow ankle-length nightie, bare toes sunk into the thick carpet, her wide eyes bewildered and afraid. Her lungs pumped against her chest as she struggled to breathe (it’s just as hard for an asthmatic to expel air as it is for them to draw air in), the first signs of an all-out asthma attack. In one tiny and delicate hand she held Snowy by its paw, its white feet dragging on the carpet.
Her words were broken into separate parts because of her breathlessness.
“Leave… Mummy… alone!” she cried out.
Andrea painfully managed to squeeze out a warning, her back still arched, her head restrained by the hand under her chin. “Run, darling, run away!”
That coarse guttural snuffling came from the hole in Moker’s face as he held Andrea there on the floor.
He became still as he stared at the daughter I had believed was mine.
I rushed past the monster and foolishly tried to gather up Primrose in my arms. It was like clutching at empty air and in my desperate confusion it was as if she were the immaterial one, not me. I groaned in frustration and yelled at her to get out of the house, run next door, wake the neighbours, anything but stay here at the mercy of the lunatic who threatened her mother.
A partly stifled sob came from Prim, an abrupt sound caught in her struggle to draw breath. I glanced at the free hand by her side, hoping to see she had brought her inhaler with her. She hadn’t, but right now, that wasn’t the priority.
“Run, Prim, run away!” Andrea screeched more forcefully this time, but our little girl was frozen with fright.
Tears welled in her tawny-brown eyes (even in that predicament I realized they were more like Guinane’s than mine or her mother’s) and her chest rose and fell in judders. She wouldn’t move, she couldn’t move.
I turned to face Moker, putting myself between him and Primrose as though I could protect her. The killer was still staring at her—looking through me!—a curious cast in those black eyes of his. I think it was the glint of anticipation.
Andrea, whose eyes were bulging as they were forced to look down her cheeks at Prim because of the angle of her head, gave out a piercing scream, one so high-pitched and shrill that it must have passed far beyond the walls of the house.
Moker was distracted only for a second. His merciless eyes flicked down at Andrea and he pulled her head back a little further out of pure sadism I’m sure and I feared her neck would snap. In the blink of an eye he had changed his grip and sank his fingers into her hair, then he pushed down fast and hard, smashing her face against the floor. Even though the floor was thickly carpeted, the smacking sound was explosive, and blood instantly burst outwards, spattering the beige carpet around her head with bright red blots. Andrea made no sound, but lay there motionless, perhaps even dead.
“Oh dear God, don’t let this happen,” I prayed.
And when Moker slid the needle into a pocket, then shambled to his feet and started towards Prim, I said it again, this time aloud even if only I could hear the words.
“Oh dear God, please don’t let this happen!”
Moker came closer, Andrea’s unmoving body recumbent behind him, her arms and legs splayed.
“Don’t you touch her!” I yelled into Moker’s absent face. “I’ll kill you if you touch her!”
All to no avail, of course, even as it would have been if he could hear my threat.
I whirled and dropped to my knees in front of Prim. “Primrose, you must get out of the house. You must run away right now.”
I spoke fiercely but firmly, and hoped the sheer power behind my words and very concentrated thoughts would somehow get through to her. Her round eyes were looking upwards at the approaching monster, her lower lip trembling as a strained wheezing came from between her lips.
My own eyes, blurred with tears of frustration, desperation—sheer hopelessness—must have been as wide and terrified as hers. I threw my arms around her small thin body as if to shield her, but big hands reached through me and wrapped themselves around her narrow shoulders. Snowy dropped to the floor.
“Mummy,” Primrose whimpered quietly, and two large teardrops spilled over and began their irregular descent of her cheeks. “Daddy…”
The killer’s hands moved over her shoulders and their fingers curled around her throat.
38
Moker had picked up Primrose by the neck, his arms outstretched at shoulder level. But as she dangled there, her tiny feet kicking empty air, the face that had been pallid before beginning to turn red, the carpet started to undulate.
I was raining impotent blows on Moker, having tried to enter him again, but horrifically I began to experience part of his own sick pleasure, and that was too much for me to bear. Now I continued to beat at him because there was nothing left that I could do—I just couldn’t stand by and watch him kill my Primrose!
It was Moker, himself, who first became aware of the thick beige carpet rippling from one end of the room to the other as if a wind was caught beneath it. Pressure on Prim’s throat must have eased momentarily because she drew in a strangulated breath as he looked down and around him. Following his gaze, I also glanced down and was astounded at what I saw.
The carpet appeared to be flowing as each and every individual woollen fibre of its pile stood erect. We seemed to be at its centre and the movement, which could be seen as a growing shadow, had a rippling effect like the gently spreading wave circle when a stone is dropped into a still pond.
It was an expensive carpet, plush and wall-to-wall. It wasn’t shag-pile by any means, but it was deep-pile, so that feet would sink into it almost as if into fine sand, a luxury Andrea and I had treated ourselves to after a year of walking on exposed but stained and highly varnished floorboards.
But now there was something wrong with it. Now it seemed to have come alive. Now the carpet had turned nasty.
Although preoccupied right then, Moker had nevertheless become distracted by the phenomenon, because the radiating carpet strands had nearly unbalanced him and, still astonished, I realized the fibres must be as hard as nails. Andrea’s unconscious body, which lay in the other half of the room close to the fireplace, suddenly stirred as a thousand or so stiffened fibres straightened under her body, lifting her slightly. She tried to raise her head, blood from her busted nose spoiling the carpet, but the effort was too much and she slumped down again, a short muffled cry escaping as fibres pricked her cheek.
Moker was still fascinated by the carpet’s movement, a kind of shiny wildness in those black eyes of his, his victim held aloft but forgotten for the moment. The distraction had also briefly diverted me.
The closed curtains began to wave as if caught in a breeze, even though the windows behind them were shut. A delicate figurine that sat near the centre of the long sideboard suddenly streaked across the room to smash against the white-brick fire surround. Moker stared at the myriad pieces as if expecting the little statue to put itself together again. There were hefty, tall, white-marble candlestick holders on each end of the sideboard and one began to wobble on the flat surface. The agitation caused a rumbling sound before the ornament slowly rose into the air, the candle it held tilting, then falling back onto the sideboard. The marble holder hovered at about head height as we watched and then, without warning, it shot down the room towards us.