Read The Fetch for Free Online Page B

down, without success.
    He jerked awake at the sound of movement in the kitchen. Alert in an instant he eased himself out of the office chair and tiptoed to the hall, drawing the cord of his dressing-gown tight around his waist. He glanced upstairs but there was silence. There was someone in the kitchen, though, moving about in the darkness.
    When he switched on the light Susan’s scream nearly gave him a heart attack. He lunged forward and caught the bottle of milk that had slipped from her fingers.
    The reliefwas intense and he laughed, hugging his wife. ‘You gave me quite a fright.’
    ‘I thought you were sleeping,’ she murmured. She rubbed tiredness from her eyes, then took the bottle from him, raising it to her lips and gulping.
    ‘I’ve been down for a little while. I was too restless.’
    ‘I didn’t notice you’d gone. I must have been dreaming …’
    ‘Dreaming what?’
    She leaned back against the table and closed her eyes. ‘That you were still there, next to me … You were holding a large, silent, cuddly dog, which was nuzzling me …’
    ‘I
never
go to bed with dogs. Especially not cuddly ones.’
    ‘It felt so real … you felt – the dog felt – so solid …’
    Something in her words …
    She opened her eyes and frowned. The words hung between them, meaningless in one way, yet sinister, suggestive.
    ‘Rick?’
    ‘Oh my God …’
    In the moment of silence that followed their eyes met in blank terror.
    The image of a body in bed with Susan
.
    It felt so real …
    For the second time the milk bottle slipped from Susan’s shaking fingers, though again Richard caught it.
    ‘It was just a dream—’
    She shuddered. ‘The dog. It was so huge—’
    ‘Just a dream.’
    Susan started to cry. The kitchen was suddenly icy cold. Richard looked up at the ceiling. His heart threatened to burst.
    It felt so real …
    And then,from upstairs, came the unmistakable sound of Michael wailing, a sudden, sharp sound, that was immediately followed by a crack of thunder.
    The whole house shook.
    Richard dropped the bottle, which shattered noisily.
    ‘Jesus Christ!’
    Susan screamed and pushed past her husband.
    ‘Oh God! Oh God!’
    They reached the bottom of the stairs together. Richard switched on the light to the landing. The stench of wet earth and vegetation was overpowering. It poured through the house, foetid, sharp. It was the smell of a dug grave, the smell of damp farmland.
    The house still shuddered. There was no sound from the boy.
    ‘Michael!’
    Creaking … as of wood giving way. Creaking and screaming, wood being torn … slowly, giving way, beneath a weight …
    ‘
Michael!
’
    They slipped on the landing, skidding in the great slick spill of wet mud that poured from the bedroom. Susan crawled her way across the mound of rank sludge to the bedside light, scrabbling and kicking as the water-laden earth sucked and dragged at her. Richard followed her, his voice a shrill shriek of terror and despair. He started to chop at the mud, elbowing the earth away, cutting himself, feeling the sharpness of stones and fragments of wood, but digging down, digging down. He was only vaguely aware of Susan scratching and screaming at the black filth …
    With a groan of breaking timber, the ceiling sagged then gave way.
    They plunged in chaos into the sitting room. Richard found himself waist-deep in the soil. Susan’s legs kicked as she struggled to surface, sobbing, spitting mud from her mouth.
    Richard saw a limb, a small, clenchedfist. ‘He’s here!’
    He carefully parted the earth around the arm, then reached strong fingers down and pulled Michael from the grave. The boy’s eyes were open, his mouth gaping, but he wasn’t breathing. Richard reached into the infant’s mouth and extracted the bolus of clay. Then he blew breath down the child’s throat, again and again, sobbing as he tried to restore his son’s life.
    Susan stood by him, a bedraggled mud-blackened shape, her hands spread