Free Flesh and Blood by Nick Gifford Page A

closed against those who would open it and let the powers of Alternity loose. Long ago, we were drawn to this Way and now we are bound to it. We are its protectors. This has been our role for generations, and, please, God, I hope it always will be.
    My dear Matt, I hope you will be able to forgive me: both for my cowardly exit from this place, and for those gifts you have inherited from my line. Be strong, Matt. You have to be.
    I am tired now. So very tired.
    With love,
    Gramps.
    Matt lay back, his head spinning. He could see why Gramps had chosen to write all this down. Spoken aloud, the words would have appeared little more than the ramblings of a demented old man. Spoken aloud, they would have been distorted, misheard, remembered incorrectly.
    He stared at the neat writing. It was either totally mad, or totally sane. It went against all he had ever understood of the world. He felt as if he was being smothered: everything piling in on top of him, until it was hard to breathe.
    He recalled the strange enclosure in the Crooked Elms churchyard: six families, slaughtered in what the vicar had called “a night of quite horrific violence”. Matt looked at the letter again: “such a tragedy nearly happened a century ago...”
    Nearly? If over twenty deaths in a single night was “nearly”, what would happen if this Alternity was ever let loose for real, he wondered?
    He thought of the few times he had visited Crooked Elms. As a child he had never been comfortable there: haunted by vivid, frightening dreams, calmed by Gramps’ old stories and poems. He remembered going into the basement – only yesterday! it seemed so long ago – for Gramps’ box of books. He remembered the feeling that his feet were stuck in concrete, that he couldn’t move.
    The letter explained it all.
    But as he thought about it, and read the letter again and again, he started to question that. How could such a strange phenomenon be explained by a mere letter? It raised so many questions, so many doubts... So many fears.
    He struggled to stay awake, suddenly scared of his recurring nightmare. Was he dreaming of Alternity? Was the dream a sign of his ‘mental bridge’?
    But eventually there was no resisting it, eventually he slept. And dreamt.

9 Kirsty
    He’s out running, getting fit for the start of the new football season. Running along Bay Road, heading towards the war memorial and the sea. The sky is a heavy grey, clouds bulging downwards as if they are about to burst at any second.
    There’s a metallic grey Volvo up ahead, slowing down, pulling up.
    He can see the driver: tall, dark-haired, stooped over the wheel. Leaning over to one side, then straightening with a mobile phone held to his ear.
    Matt raises a hand, tries to call, “Dad!” but he can’t, because suddenly his throat is too tight, too dry. As he approaches the car, the driver replaces the phone and glances into his mirror. His look meets Matt’s, then moves on. The car pulls out into the road again, and starts to accelerate.
    Matt tries to run harder, but his feet are getting heavier, heavier. The pavement has turned to wet concrete and his feet are sticking, collecting concrete with every step. Getting heavier.
    Eventually, he reaches the top of the cliff and stares down the grassy slope to the bay in amazement. The sea is red: blood red. And there are things floating in the waves, washed up onto the beach. Arms, feet, heads – all ripped from their bodies by some unimaginably vile force.
    He starts to run again, following the road until he comes to Bagshaw Terrace. He turns left, heading for town. Faces crowd every window. Ghoulish faces with bulging eyes and insane smiles. Every window ... watching him, smiling. As if they are waiting for something.
    This isn’t Bathside, he realises. Although, in a peculiar sense, it is Bathside. Where is he, then?
    His feet are heavy again, and all he wants to do is stop. But he can’t... he knows for certain he can’t stop