Marianne Dreams

by Catherine Storr

But as she concentrated on one of the humped squat figures with all her attention, she saw suddenly a movement. A dark oval patch, which she had taken to be a hole, disappeared, as a pale eyelid dropped slowly for a moment and then was raised again. And in the dark oval, the ball of an eye swivelled slowly towards the house and remained there, staring with a fixed unwinking gaze straight, it appeared, at Marianne herself.

She put out a hand and touched stones and earth; then the long harsh stalks of the grass: then her fingers met something cold, damp, unyielding, and yet in some indescribable way alive. She felt the withdrawal, the shrinking of the stone and had snatched back her hand before the Thing cried out. For, as if her touching it had set off some alarm, suddenly the air all around her was filled with a vibration, a savage horrifying roar of fear and hate, which Marianne could feel beating against her eardrums and temples, but yet could not hear as she could hear the savage hiss of the grass rising to a shrill whistle, and the boom from the radio in the house behind her.