TWENTY-THREE
Sergeant Shipobottom’s skin was contracting. He could feel it tightening all over his body. It was as if his entire epidermis was shrinking, like over-boiled cotton.
He managed to roll over onto his side and look around the transfusion ward. There was one other patient, a driver, they had said, but he was busy talking gobbledegook in his sleep. There was no nurse.
His skin was itching now, little islands of intense irritation, popping up over his neck and torso. He began to scratch and as he did so his fingers started to burn. He could feel something within them constricting, causing the fingers to bend. He held them up in front of his one good eye. His hands were becoming claws, like that old woman in Cairo who had told him . . .
A scream tried to escape his throat, a cry for help, but it wouldn’t form. His throat was tightening too. It sounded more like a gargle than a shout. It was coming true, her prophecy was coming true.
A wave of sweaty panic broke over him and he tried to swing out of the bed. But the itching started again, so intense it was as if he were being branded with a thousand tiny irons.
He slumped back on the bed and the pain subsided for a moment. He breathed as deeply as he could. You might feel warm, they had said after his infusion. Warm? Friggin’ agony this were.
Then he heard it. A low whistle, picking out an old folk tune, the sort they played on fair days. He managed to pull himself up in the bed, but he couldn’t see clearly thanks to the moisture filling his eye. He could just make out that there was a third person on the ward, cloaked in shadow, standing by the central tent pole.
Then, some words to match the tune came.
This the story of two sisters, sisters
good and true,
They worked the reels in Lancashire
and only wanted their due.
More whistling.
‘Who’s tha?’ Shipobottom managed to croak. ‘Who’s tha’?’
There came a low, soft laugh. The only answer was another verse.
They asked for men and women to be treated the same,
to be treated all alike,
And if that was not to be, they promised a bitter strike.
Well, you won’t strike, you cannot strike, you will not strike, said the boss,
For the Lord will hear of it, it’ll surely be your loss.
Oh, we can strike, we will strike,
we are ready to fight.
And you can tell the Lord,
his mill will close tonight.
‘Think on that,’ the shadowy figure said.
‘On wha’?’ Shipobottom pleaded in a voice that wasn’t his own. ‘Wha’ y’on about?’
‘Think on Trolley Wood.’
Shipobottom slumped back. He sensed the singer of the song was leaving. Trolley Wood?
A small copse, close to Blackstone Mill, a ring of oak, hornbeam and birch encircling a lovely glade, rich with bluebells in spring, a prime picnic spot and . . .
The implication of that place name had just hit home when his agony moved to a new phase. Like steel cables being wound by a winch, the tendons and ligaments in his face and neck began to shorten. He felt muscles bulging and his features being distorted. Trolley Wood? Is that what this is all about?
Again Shipobottom tried to cry out, but to no avail. The mechanics of his face had been hijacked. The lips were being pulled back and up, the jaw down and, slowly but surely, his dying body was producing a terrible, unnaturally hideous grin.