Marie was dying. The illness that would eventually kill her had no name, for the doctors had never seen a case like her’s before. Specialists from every department of the medical sciences had failed to diagnose a known disease; they did tell her there was one surety: it was fatal.

  At fifty she was the unfortunate victim of a degenerative muscle disease that had never been seen before. It had no cure and no clear way of slowing down its progress. Her numerous doctors had tried a myriad of treatments, and had, at last, settled on combating it as a form of cancer, trying to kill it with chemotherapy. But rather than improving anything, this only increased her discomfort and shattered her already fragile body.

  Despite all of this, she beared it well, considering she could speak to no sympathetic ear about the pain that assaulted her every day. She still worked and kept a hold on the house that she had lived in for twelve years. She did it all for her ten 'children'. All of them were orphans, each with their own terrible story to tell, but their pain had been taken away by Marie's immense generosity. There had been many before the kids that she cared for now, and they had all gone on to live happy lives. The 'family' consisted of nearly twenty individuals, and they all loved her like a mother.

  Marie sat looking out at the river Brent that meandered its way along the flank of South Fairbridge, before trekking through the Marsh ahead of her. Her doctors told her not to drink, but she took a sip from her brandy. This is real medicine, she thought. They can go shove their chemo up their arses. Her feet ached, both from the disease and the strains of the day. She rubbed them vigorously.

  The water was still, mirroring the brilliant blue sky overhead. A lone duck drifted across the water like a paper boat, just idling along to wherever the currents would take it.

  They really have no idea what they’re doing, do they? she asked herself at the thought of the next course of chemotherapy she would be given the following day. She turned her face to the sky and tried to peer at the darkness that lay behind that blue shroud. 'Am I really that annoying?' she asked aloud.

  Her right leg began to twitch, she chose not to take it as an answer. Rubbing her thigh, she attempted to calm the muscles before it could become a full-blown attack. The disease affected every muscle in her body, eating them up at an alarming rate. The struggle to climb stairs, the incontinence, the ragged heartbeat, and the lolling of her tongue, she could handle, but it was the attacks that troubled her.

  When the convulsions came she was reduced to a paraplegic, powerless to control a single part of body as it bucked wildly. They happened every day now and during those moments she prayed to God that He would make them stop. Whatever He thought she had done, she must have paid the price by now... surely?

  A gust of wind chilled her smooth scalp, and the twitching subsided. With that note, she planted a beanie on her head and left the porch.

  Inside, the kids had strewn toys and scraps of paper all over the house. With the destruction complete, they sat watching Blue Peter in the living room.

  Marie glanced at the television, automatically beginning to clear the table of debris. For the millionth time, the presenter was making Tracy Island out of washing up bottles and other objects that she would have to stock up on, no doubt. She gasped as she looked at the drawing in her hands. A lump formed in her throat and her body froze.

  The page was caked in black crayon which had been smudged and swirled to form a hood. Beneath its brim two white eyes burned outward, like flames caught in a wind. She would not have been so horrified if she hadn’t seen the very same thing in a nightmare a week ago.

  'Who drew this?' she enquired in the interrogative tone that only a mother could muster. As though she had cracked a whip, all of the kids turned around to look at her, before looking at one another to see who the guilty party was. Little Kyle stuck out like a pig in a suit, staring at his feet.

  Marie's eyes locked onto him with the accuracy of a heat-seeking missile. 'Kyle, come here.'

  He stomped towards her, his eyes never leaving the floor. The rest of the kids were silent.

  'Did you draw this?' she asked.

  He mumbled something and began to squirm as if he was a fish caught in a net.

  'What?' That single word came down like a thunderclap. Kyle should have been sprawled out on the floor, but he miraculously managed to keep his footing. The rest of the kids sniggered slightly, but they quickly turned back to the TV when Marie's fiery gaze scanned them.

  'Come on, Chicken,' she said, leading the little boy out onto the porch. If evolution had not robbed him of his tail, it would have been firmly locked between his legs.

  She sat on a bench and tapped her knee for Kyle to sit on. He did so, wiping his eyes. 'So, did you draw that picture?' she asked, hugging him.

  ‘Yes,' his voice quivered, 'but I didn't mean to.' He began to sob.

  'Hey boney-bum, there's no need for that. I'm sorry I shouted at you. I was just worried. All I want you to do is tell me why you drew this picture?'

  'Well, I don't know, Mummy, I just drew it that’s all. I didn't mean to draw anything bad. It just came out of my head.'

  Marie studied the little boy before asking: 'Did you dream about this, Chicken?'

  'No. I just drew him.'

  She smiled. 'OK, little one. Hey,' she said, giving him a little jiggle with her leg, 'are we still friends?'

  'Yeah,' he returned, burying his head in her chest.

  She kissed his forehead and let him scoot back into the house. Marie looked at the face on the page again. The eyes pierced into her heart like the chemo, intoxicating her body till it could take no more.

  She crumpled the paper up and threw it into a waste bin beside the chair.

  Over the marshland, a single seagull cried and dove, racing away on the wind.

  ...

  Kyle was playing in the back garden. The drawing he had made some days ago lay rotting with the rest of their rubbish in the bin. Marie had spared no time in disposing of the picture, a chill had prickled her spine every time she looked at it. While Kyle was playing, she busied herself inside, making dinner for the many children who would be arriving any time now from school.

  A plastic bucket and spade along with several other toys lay half buried about Kyle’s sand pit. He was skimming the sand with the back of a spade, forming long, snaking roads. Each time that he completed a junction or some new feet of engineering, like a bridge or a tunnel, he would run a toy car along the road to test it.

  Once he had finished, the sand pit had been transformed into a miniature town complete with hills, shops and buildings. Everything had been painstakingly carved from the sand with absolute devotion. Kyle was able to play like this for hours, becoming lost in the stories that he made up and the adventures that he could devise, with epic dialogue and sound effects. Sometimes the city would have to deal with some sort of natural disaster like a storm, a flood, or there would be a car chase and some kind of explosion would usually destroy some part of the sand town.

  One of his green cars rounded the bend of a hill, came down a long straight toward a store. Kyle was going to drop off the children from the car to let them go inside and choose some sweets for later. At the back of his mind, a monster would come and storm around the town and cause some havoc, but not yet - his train of thought was suddenly broken. By what? He didn’t really know.

  He stood up, leaving the car before it could reach the store. He stared out at the Marsh; his eyes fixing upon a single point about fifty metres out into the muddy collection of small grassy islands. The idyllic scene stretched in every direction, endless miles of preserved land full of life and greenery. For Kyle, it was not the scene that he was admiring, for admiring was the wrong way to describe his fascination. It was a kind of calling, something inside was pulling him toward that point of land.

  Powerless to refuse the impulse, Kyle strolled slowly from the sandpit, across the lawn and stopped at the fence separating him from the Marsh.

  I can get there, Kyle thought with surety.

  He ducked his head under the fence and began to climb through the gap between the top and bottom rungs. Marie called him in for dinner just as he had one leg on the Marsh side, and the other still in his garden.

  Kyle started and banged his head on the top rung and let out an involuntary: ‘ow!’ He put a hand to his head and checked that he wasn’t bleeding. He felt guilty and ran into the house, but not before giving that spot of land one last look.

  ...

  The dinner table was strewn with food, salad, burgers, sausages, chicken wings and fish cakes. A large bowl of fries sat in the middle of the table and the children helped themselves to everything like a Roman feast. Behind a vale of sauce bottles and soft drinks was Kyle.

  ‘So,’ asked Marie, ‘what have you all been doing at school?’

  Greg, who was nine, piped up: ‘I was making a castle at school!’

  ‘Were you?’ Marie asked, while cutting up everything on Kyle’s plate into manageable chunks. ‘What were you making it out of?’

  ‘Umm, clay. And when I finished it, I had to put it in the kiln. Tomorrow, I’m going to paint it.’ He stuffed a sausage into his mouth.

  ‘Oh that’s lovely. What colour are you going to paint it?’ Marie was now putting a bib around Kyle’s neck and passing him a plastic knife and fork.

  ‘Umm, green I think.’

  ‘That’s going to be a very pretty castle.’ Marie sat down and realised that her own plate was empty. Hell, these kids sure keep me busy.

  Kyle watched as his foster mother filled her plate. He had been too young to really remember the suffering that he had gone through as a young child, but the scrapes, bruises and nightmares that pained him were all quickly soothed by his new mummy.

  His real mother, the one who had been a silly young girl too busy playing with boys to ‘be careful’, had cared so little for his safety that he had almost drowned in a bath no more than a few inches deep. Before Marie received him into her home, Kyle had been abused by his real mother. Three of his ribs had been broken and he had internal bleeding that the doctors were unsure if they could stop. For a time, it had been very close for Kyle. While his real mother thought less of him than a dog, he had found a woman, in Marie, who was devoted to him.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  That tug, that need returned to him now. Kyle looked out of the window and was able to see that piece of land with ease. His fork, which had speared a piece of sausage moments earlier, was frozen in his hand.

  I can get there, it’s not far. I can do it, I can, I can, I can make it.

  ‘Kyle,’ Marie said. ‘Eat your dinner like a good boy.’

  ‘Yes, Mummy’ the revere was broken, and he finished all of his food and even managed ice cream at the end.

  ...

  It was night, and the house brooded before the Marsh, creaking as the day’s warmth lifted off into the night. On the top floor was Kyle’s room. Toys littered the floor, and a Thomas the Tank Engine night light illuminated his room in a dim glow. The boy was snugly tucked in under the covers and was fast asleep.

  While the rest of the house was sleeping, with every other bed full, Marie’s was the only one that remained empty. Outside, the porch was empty, but the door was slowly closing on its hinges.

  Marie ducked under the fence and struggled her way through the mud of the Marsh, her pyjamas were quickly soaked up to her knees and huge clumps of mud collected around her feet. She took no notice of the state of her clothes, for her mind was fixed on one thing.

  I can get there, it’s not far, almost there. What is it, I need to know!

  The further she ventured, the harder the terrain became. The mud under her feet became looser, much more like the bank of a river heavy with silt; with each footstep her feet would sink up to her ankles and eventually she was wading up to her knees, using the long grasses around her to haul herself out and onward.

  A full moon, much like a giant spotlight, shone over the Marsh, highlighting every detail in a silver glow. The soaking mud glistened in the moonlight with the glimmer of a million crystals. Marie and her pyjamas seemed like a ghoul hovering and skipping over the ground, with the sound of her efforts passing crisply through the air around her.

  With a final, weakened pull she yanked her body free of the thick mud and onto a raised island of grass. She allowed herself to take in two deep breaths, her chest heaving up to the starry sky. But she did not rest long, she had arrived at the spot which had called to her all day long, interrupted her train of thought, and made her stare out at the marshland while she had cleaned the dishes. Her hands had been submerged so long that when they came out, deep furrows had wrinkled the skin on her fingers.

  Marie began to search the small island, which was no more than six feet in diameter, for whatever had been so important. Her fingers hunted through the grass, which was rough and unforgiving against her skin. It took her almost five minutes, and with every passing second, she became more and more agitated. It was only at the point when she had become frenzied, frantically stabbing her hands into the grass and mud, did she find the object.

  It was cold, the size of her palm, yet heavy as lead. In the moon’s glow, it was an almost obsidian pebble. She rolled it from one hand to the other, noticing how the surface lacked any imperfection, except for a single rune on its reverse. Marie squinted and held the pebble higher so she could inspect it. The rune was a twist of lines which overlapped and circled a central line. As she brushed a finger down that line, the rune began to glow in a sweet, golden light.

  With surprise, Marie flicked her hand, instinctively trying to drop the object. Instead, the pebble only pulled at the skin of her hand and remained where it was. She tried to pull it, but it felt as though the pebble had taken root in her flesh, and her bones. The glow was growing with intensity, losing its sweet tones, and becoming sickening. Feelings of intrigue had now given way to panic.

  She tried to dig her nails under the pebble, but she could only claw at her skin. Blood coursed from her wounds beneath the object, black in the light of the moon. ‘Help me,’ she screamed into the hostile darkness around her, but no one could answer. No one could hear her.

  A vibration shook the island, jarring Marie’s limbs and causing her brain to thrum inside her skull. Thick, black cracks appeared in the mud as the grass was spread aside. At first, one of her hands slipped into a crack and she had to pull herself up, but then a leg was swallowed up; the shift in weight caused her body to twist and a sharp pain shot into her back.

  With both her legs now deep in cracks, straddling a mound of grass, and her left arm deep in another crack before her, she was ill prepared for what happened next.

  There was a sudden golden flash, and the mud island exploded, throwing Marie clear into the air. She was surrounded by huge chunks of stinking mud, grass, and beads of water. Crystals glinting in the moonlight.

  The sudden acceleration threw her limbs forward, she formed an arch as she shot into the air. But then a force punched her down towards the earth. The change in direction forced her limbs out behind her, cracking joints and pulling muscles to the point of snapping. She now plummeted toward the ground, joined by the water and mud. As she hit the marshy earth, everything seemed to implode, and with a whump and a sudden flash of golden light, she disappeared.

  ...

  There was an explosion of sound that echoed into the night like distant thunder. Water and mud rained down in every direction, and Marie smacked onto a cold stone platform. She must have fallen five feet, appearing from complete thin air.

  Around her she could hear chanting, wailing and the whooping call of some huge bird. She was dazzled by a sickening golden light that pulsed with the rhythm of the chanting. Through the brightness she could see hooded figures undulating and making huge gestures with their emaciated arms. The light came from a series of large monoliths that encircled her. Gigantic runes throbbed with that horrible glow which had at first warmed her, but it now sent an horrific shiver deep into her core.

  She whirled onto her back, flicking her head about her to scan the surroundings. Where the fuck am I? she screamed into her head. This is… impossible.

  But it was possible, everything was quite real. The air was polluted, it had a terrible taste, like burnt oil and wood. It was difficult to breath, irritating the back of her throat. The sky was impossible to see through the glow of those huge slabs of rock and their beaming runes. The figures beyond the encircling monoliths chanted louder, more violently, and that hooting call of the bird peaked with hoarse tones.

  Everything stopped. The chanting, and the golden light shut down with such suddenness that Marie was now blinded by the darkness around her.

  She held out her arms, and her eyes were wide open with fright and the effort to see in such darkness. In the gloom, the figures slowly began to stalk forward, seeming to hover up the steps of the stone platform. A chill ran over Marie’s body and she knew in that moment that she was in trouble, real bad trouble.

  From behind her came a loud thunderous growl, like a tiger fed on pure growth hormone. She heard the creature pad from behind her and then trot about the circle of stone pillars. Her eyes were wide with terror.

  ‘Fuck this,’ she whispered to herself, to the hooded figures advancing toward her, to that predatory creature beyond the darkness of the stone platform. Instinct now drove her. Adrenaline had ignited a fire in her heart like nitrous to a car engine, deep parts of her brain, evolved for this, were switched into gear. With lightning fast agility, she whipped from sitting to sprinting in the opposite direction.

  She collided into one of the figures, it gave out a terrible scream, like a strangled cat and snapped some sort of beak at her. Its hands gripped her arms, but its skin was leathery, dry and its fingers felt more like talons. Without thinking she punched her fist under its chin and screamed. ‘No!’

  The figure was knocked back, more with surprise than the force Marie had been able to muster. It collapsed into another of the bird-like creatures. Its companion gave out a squawk of frustration and was then itself hurled out of the way.

  Marie slipped on the stone step, the mud on her trainers had translated into this world just as easily as she had. She dived down the seven or eight steps, smacking her right knee into the ground. She did not linger long and was again sprinting. Adrenaline numbed her pain, allowed her to race into the darkness.

  As she raced from the confines of the monoliths’ circle, she ran into the outside world and toward a line of trees. Behind a her, one of the bird creatures screamed a command. ‘Thane, galag na votonor!’

  There was a roar, like nothing Marie had heard before. The ground trembled and her heart buzzed in her chest. When it finished, she could hardly hear the thudding paws of the beast that thundered toward her over the ringing in her ears. But it was those regressed instincts which were finely tuned to those sounds. RUN! is all that sprang to her mind and her body responded.

  A twig scratched her face and flicked her eye. She let out a scream but raced onward. She deftly sprung over roots, hurdled low branches, and dived under more.

  Behind her, the beast crashed into the tree line. Branches were ripped clean off their trunks, splinters of wood shot through the darkness like the shrapnel from a bomb. It roared again before it broke into another sprint, merely yanking at the branches around it and tearing its way through.

  Marie had very little lead over this gigantic carnivore. Each bound gained it eight feet, but on a straight run it surely must have been able to make fifty miles an hour. With a quick glance Marie judged unconsciously that it must have been taller than a horse, and longer than a car. Thick muscles rolled beneath its dark fur.

  She sprung over another root and then shot left, changing direction with such speed that she had to use a branch to sling shot her round. Her grip loosened slightly, and the branch ripped into her skin. The pain didn’t last long, the adrenaline took care of that.

  Behind her, the beast that chased her down turned, careered into a crop of trees, ripping each of them out of the ground with the sound of straining wood and tearing roots. It dug its claws into the ground and launched into a renewed sprint.

  Marie charged into a clearing, which turned hostile as she noticed the vine she almost ran into had huge thorns on it that were curved like the teeth of a shark and were almost six inches long. She dove to the ground at the last minute and felt a clump of her hair ripping away. A long series of these vines draped down from above and went on for another twenty feet.

  Scrabbling on all fours, she shuffled quickly to the end of the clearing until she was safely within the trees again and free of the vines. She leapt over a root and carried on running.

  …

  Thane had not been born, it had been created in the breeding pools to the north of the Guyren. It lived for one purpose alone, to hunt and kill. Thane felt no pain, for there was no purpose, it would only be a weakness. The scent of the female prey was thick in its nostrils, as was the acrid scent of the black trees around it. But the prey’s scent was warm, fresh. The beast could practically taste her flesh.

  When Thane exploded into the clearing it launched into a deep bound, building more speed. Vines rapped around each of its limbs, around its thick muzzle and strangled its throat. The thorns stabbed into the beast’s flesh, cracking ribs, and locking easily into joints. Thane was held nine feet clear of the ground, wrapped in the thick vines. It thrashed its legs helplessly in the air.

  With a furious roar that was full of hatred, Thane rolled violently and with such force that the thorns that had stabbed so far inside its body now tore themselves free. Vines snapped and those that failed to give way merely sliced into Thane’s flesh.

  Hunks of meat thudded to the ground, blood gushed and painted the trees around it. Thane’s intestines spilled from its belly and huge patches of fur had been pulled back in massive flaps, revealing torn muscles and thick veins that pumped dark blood into the night. With a frustrated growl, Thane pulled away the intestines that it had spilled, leaving them behind as it bound into the woods again, paying no attention to the blood that gushed from numerous wounds.

  …

  Marie had cleared the woods and ran along the bank of a putrid, rotting river. The gravel made it hard to run, but the beast seemed to have been caught up back in the clearing. She pounded on for as long as she could take, but soon her legs simply ran out of steam, and she was powerless to stop herself as she came careering down to the ground. Her hands smashed into the gravel, yet more skin was torn away. She gulped air and then vomited.

  A hundred metres back, the trees burst, their limbs shooting in all directions. The hell-hound shot from the treeline and landed in the river, sending a huge halo of water around it like a white mane. As the water returned to the ground, the beast roared vibrating the gravel so much that they danced visibly.

  ‘Shit,’ Marie grunted and hauled herself up and struggled to run further.

  The creature thundered toward her, water frothing into the air around it. The distance between them diminished in a matter of heartbeats. As it leapt into the air in its final move to capture its prey - neither Marie nor the beast were prepared for what happened next.

  Marie fell, the ground beneath her disappeared. She had run out of riverbank and had launched herself over the face of a deep crevice. Her body rolled over and as she came upright her hand managed to catch a vine and her fingers wrapped around it. The vine burned through her hand. She felt the skin ripping away from the friction. She came to a stop. Her other hand reached and grabbed the vine.

  The beast had not been so lucky. The force of its leap sent it flying fifteen feet out into the void of the crevice. Its claws reached out to her in a last ditch attempt to capture her, to devour her. Marie saw the whites of its eyes flash with fury as it realised the truth - the chase was over, and it had lost.

  As the hell-hound disappeared into the darkness, falling with the speed of a diving plane, it let out a final deafening roar.

  The sound stretched and diminished as the creature fell into the darkness.

  ...

  Marie hung on for another few minutes, but the chase had brought on an attack. She lacked any strength to haul herself up to the surface, which was tantalisingly close, nor could she do anything to stop her disease taking away her control of her body.

  At first, cramp took hold of her calves, then her thighs twitched violently. Her body was shutting down, losing control. She felt isolated. Trapped. A prisoner within her own body.

  No, she could only whisper in her mind, for the ability to talk had left her. She felt as her hands began to twitch. She lost the sensation of the wooden vine. And then she felt as it slipped in her grip.

  Her stomach lurched as she fell. Air gushed passed her.

  The darkness consumed her.