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vision the shadows flickered as her stalker gained on her. If she could make it through that narrow gap surely the shadow man would not pursue her, because on that side assistance was waiting. There was blackness between the boulders, yet weirdly she could see through it, all the way to the beckoning figure at the far end. She did not know who her saviour was, couldn’t make out his face, but his beckoning arm was enough to tell her he was her lifeline. A ragged cry tore from her throat and she ran on, her feet slipping and sliding now in mud that had no place in this terrain.
    She tripped and fell.
    To save the baby she twisted, and went down on one side, sliding in the deepening quagmire. She floundered to get up and in her haste the swaddled child flew from her grasp. Kirstie bit down on her bottom lip, straining to reach the child. Unable to grab the trailing blanket, she went to her hands and knees and scrambled forward, the mud now baked-hard clay as she toiled up an incline towards the sanctuary of the boulders. Almost as if the baby was attached to a line and the distant figure between the boulders reeled it in, the blanket continued to slide away from her grasp. She lunged and grabbed it, pulling the bundle tight to her chest.
    Distantly a voice called to her.
    The figure continued to urge her forward. In the swirling shadows she could make out eyes, at once blue, green and brown as though the colours shifted like the desert sand. She recognised those eyes, and she felt the burgeoning of hope.
    She stumbled on, and now the rocks rose up on both sides. Yet the gap between them was too narrow, and so black she feared she’d been struck blind by fear.
    But that didn’t last.
    Eyelids flickered open in the dark wedge where light failed to exist. The irises were the same pale grey as her own and those of the baby in her arms, a family trait. Kirstie stepped backwards; more afraid of this than anything that had gone before. The blanket was moving now against her body, and she looked down, hoping to find her baby boy squirming in her grasp. The baby was as inert as the desert around her. Naked, it was cold and hard to the touch. She stared at a porcelain face, the painted features cracked and crumbling to dust.
    No, no, no . . .
    The eyes in the darkness moved towards her, and the shadows formed and solidified around the knife it held. She opened her arms and the porcelain doll fell and shattered at her feet, as she invited in the blade that plunged towards her. Her cry of terror was not that she was about to die, but that she had failed her boy.
    She continued to scream as her son, Benjamin, grown to manhood under his father’s tutelage, rammed the blade deep into her throat, again and again.

Chapter 10
     
    Reaction made me reach for the gun in my waistband, but after a few seconds of mild panic I pushed back the fog of sleep and realised that Kirstie had merely cried out in her dreams. I noted the sweat pasting her auburn hair to her face, the rapid flicker of her eyelids as she continued to endure some horrendous nightmare. It was a second or so before I realised she was slumped across my lap, my left arm draped protectively over her.
    ‘I didn’t want to disturb you,’ Rink said from the driving position, ‘seeing as you were both so comfortable.’
    ‘Jesus, Rink . . .’ I slowly extricated my arm.
    ‘Both of you sleeping like babies. Well, you were until something seemed to upset the lady.’
    Whether it was our subdued conversation or some final dramatic act in her dream, Kirstie snapped awake. She was looking at my knees, and it was as if she wondered where the hell her nightmare had taken her now. She shot bolt upright and stared at me from the opposite corner of the car.
    ‘Oh my God! I’m so sorry!’
    ‘Hey, no problem,’ I reassured her. ‘If it’s any consolation, I didn’t even know you’d fallen asleep on me until a few seconds ago.’
    Kirstie glanced accusingly at Rink, but my buddy