For Those Who Dream Monsters Read Online Free Page A

colleague.
    “He’s
alive,” said Trevayne, “but he needs to get to a hospital ASAP.”
    “I’ll
go outside and flag down the ambulance.”
    But
as Jones moved towards the front door, he felt a sharp pain in his temple. He
winced and put his hand up to his head, but the pain was gone, replaced by a
slight feeling of nausea and bewilderment. This in turned passed, and a voice
spoke in the policeman’s ear.
    “Take
me with you,” it said. “I’ll show you things you’ve never seen.”
    Officer
Jones looked round and saw the black cat eyeing him dispassionately.
     



LITTLE
PIG
    Adam waited nervously in the International Arrivals hall of Heathrow Airport’s
Terminal 1. Born and bred in London, Adam had never thought of himself as the
type of guy who would import a wife from Poland. His parents had made sure that
he’d learnt Polish from an early age; while his English friends had played
football or watched Swap Shop on Saturday mornings, Adam had been
dragged kicking and screaming to Polish classes in Ealing. But it had all paid
off in the end when he went to Poland one summer and met Krystyna. Since that
time, the smart, pretty brunette had relocated to London and moved in with
Adam. They were engaged to be married, and it seemed to Adam that all the
members of his fiancé’s family had already visited London and stayed with them
– all, that is, except Krystyna’s grandmother, and that was who Adam was now
waiting for. Krystyna had not been able to get the day off work, and Adam was
now anxiously eyeing every elderly woman who came through the arrival gate, in
the hope that one of them would match the tattered photograph that Krystyna had
given him.
    Eventually
a little old lady came out alone. Adam recognised her immediately and started
to walk towards her, stopping abruptly as he saw the woman slip, drop her
glasses and, in a desperate effort to right herself, step on them, crushing
them completely. Upset for the woman, Adam began to rush forward, only to halt
as she started to laugh hysterically. She muttered something under her breath
and, had he not known any better, Adam could have sworn that what she said was
“little pig!”
    The sleigh sped through the dark forest, the scant moonlight reflected by the
snow lighting up the whites of the horse’s eyes as it galloped along the narrow
path, nostrils flaring and velvet mouth spitting foam and blood into the night.
The woman cried out as the reins cut into her hands, and screamed to her
children to hang on.
    The
three little girls clung to each other and to the sides of the sleigh, their
tears freezing onto their faces as soon as they formed. The corner of the large
blanket in which their mother had wrapped them for the perilous journey to
their grandparents’ house had come loose and was flapping violently in the icy
air.
    “Hold
on to Vitek!” the woman screamed over her shoulder at her eldest child, her
voice barely audible over the howling wind. But the girl did not need to be
told; only two days away from her seventh birthday, she clung onto her baby
brother, fear for her tiny sibling stronger than her own terror. The other two
girls, aged two and four, huddled together, lost in an incomprehensible world
of snow and fear and darkness.
    The
woman whipped the reins against the horse’s heaving flanks, but the animal was
already running on a primal fear stronger than pain. The excited yelps audible
over the snowstorm left little doubt in the woman’s mind: the pack was gaining
on the sleigh – the hungry wolves were getting closer.
    That
winter had been particularly hard on the wolf pack. The invading Russian army
had taken the peasants’ livestock and, with no farm animals to snatch, the
wolves had been limited to seeking out those rabbits and wild fowl that the
desperate peasants and fleeing refugees had not killed and eaten. Driven
half-mad with starvation, the wolves had already invested an irrevocable amount
of energy in chasing the horse,