Black Cathedral - By L. H. Maynard & M. P. N. Sims Page 0,3

walnut, and it was moving slowly across the wall at eye level. As it moved it formed a hump in the paper, but behind it the wallpaper was smooth, flattened down as if the hump had never been there.

What ever was beneath the wallpaper was picking up speed. The paper made a soft hissing sound as it lifted away from the wall. Carter jerked his head round as he heard the same sound coming from behind him. There were three humps, moving parallel to each other diagonally across the wall, and more of the things were creeping up from the skirting board.

‘We’d better get out of here,’ he said, but Sian wasn’t listening. She’d moved across the room and was staring at the first hump as it zigzagged back and forth, her face inches away from it.

Carter felt a spear of apprehension skewer him. ‘Sian, get back!’ he shouted, but as the words left his lips the wallpaper split and a large beetle emerged, black and glistening, with a hard iridescent carapace. The creature scuttled across the wall, and then the carapace opened and it took flight, launching itself at Sian and attaching itself to the soft skin of her neck. She turned to Carter, too shocked to cry out, a look of absolute terror on her face, her fingers fluttering at her throat, anxious to pull the thing off but far too terrified to actually touch it.

Underneath the wallpaper the rest of the creatures were moving in frenzy, sensing the attack. As the paper lifted and fell in their path it whispered and hissed, filling the room with a soft susurration. Carter was across the room in two strides. ‘Keep still,’ he said as he grabbed the hard shell and squeezed, but the beetle’s head was burrowing into her flesh, its legs forming sharp hooks, anchoring it to her skin. Sian was silent, but huge tears were forming in her beseeching eyes and rolling down her cheeks.

The grip of the creature was fierce and the effort of making it loosen its hold made the sweat bead on Carter’s brow; then suddenly, with a sound like a sigh of resignation the creature released its hold on Sian’s flesh. It writhed in Carter’s grip, the scurrying movement of tiny legs making him shudder. The thing was squirming in his grasp and twisting its head in an effort to bite him.

As if acting on a signal from the first creature, the other bulges in the wall burst open, like paper eggs hatching, and the air was filled with the sound of twenty or more of the beetles testing their wings.

Carter threw the beetle to the floor, stomped on it, and grabbed Sian’s arm again and hauled her towards the French doors, batting the things away as they flew at them. He grasped the door handle but another beetle landed on his hand, clicking mandibles biting down hard, puncturing skin. He swore loudly and brushed it off before its head could start burrowing. The door swung open but, as he forced Sian out into the garden, a dozen or more of the beetles landed on his back. He could feel the legs scrabbling up his jacket as they tried to reach his throat and he threw himself backwards against the wall, grunting with satisfaction as he heard the carapaces crack on impact. As the creatures dropped to the floor he threw himself through the open door, slamming it shut behind him, listening to the glass rattle as the beetles launched themselves at it in pursuit.

He stood on the patio, panting, trying to get his breath back. Sian was watching him with tear-smudged eyes. ‘What were those things?’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen beetles like them before.’

‘Well, I don’t think you’ll find them in any reference works on coleopterans,’ Carter said, drawing the warm afternoon air into his lungs. ‘At a guess I would say they were elementals, some kind of physical embodiment of the power, or powers, in that house. How’s your neck?’

Her fingers went to the soft skin at the side of her throat and came away bloody. Carter pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket, folded it into a pad and handed it to her. ‘We’d better get you to the hospital. You’re going to need a tetanus shot for that.’

Sian was shaking. ‘But they were real,’ she said, shock reducing her voice to no more than a whisper. ‘At first I didn’t think they had any substance…like the cat…but it