22

Knives

SOMETHING SLIDES THROUGH the dark until it stands over the bed Kat shares with Amelie. It hovers, a dreadful monster made of metal and wheels and gears, like clockworks, a monster that buzzes and clicks and reflects the moonlight that streams in through the unshuttered window. Instead of proper arms and legs it has limbs that are thin and shiny like knives.

It stands over the bed, eyes bright in a half-eaten skull, and strokes Amelie’s cheek with a thin metal finger that sticks out from its hand like a crooked claw.

The finger runs down Amelie’s cheek, down to her throat, and then to Amelie’s heart. Kat tries to scream, but it’s as if she’s under water, as the claw digs into Amelie’s chest and pulls out her heart and holds it up in the moonlight.

Kat keeps trying to scream, trying to fight her way up from sleep, keeps fighting to stop this monster, wanting to save little Ame, but she is helpless, helpless and rigid in the grip of some dark magic, until the nightmare fades.

After that she sleeps like the very dead.