Following the nightmare encounters with Grace in my home town (corrupting my memories of B and invading my parent's home like a monstrous orphan cuckoo) I was keen to hurry back to the southern city. I could not face my parents after fucking my father in the ass and drinking my mother's impossible twenty years too late milk, and the vision of Grace, bloated and leaking, was more than I could handle. So I made my way south by bus and road - I didn't want to find myself on the fifty year old train either, even though the night attendant had been beautiful and gentle and that time with her at least was good. But the man on the run, and it had to be me - I just didn't want to know.
So I was now back in the residential hall, wondering what the hell I was going to do about this nightmare. For I knew beyond a doubt that she would come for me again, in some new manifestation. I also had a bad bad feeling deep in my guts that time was going to twist in on me again, without warning, and I was going to discover more than I wanted about me on the run. So I figured that I needed to arm myself with information. If I could get ahead of Grace in terms of knowledge, I might be able to escape this nightmare. But shit, I would miss the perverse, dark sex....
Old Mack would be no good - the old fart was too addled in his brains to be reliable, and I had gone through the papers in the university library, but there were no further clues there. I had to find another, richer source of information. The city central library on the south side of the lake should hold the answers. On this late winter day, the sun was bright and the air still, so it should be a pleasant enough walk.
I made my way down to the concrete arching road bridge which crossed the lake, its opposite end delivering traffic and pedestrians to the big library, like some great temple. As I crossed the bridge, I heard a weird pulsating song from the waters below. At first, I could not work out what it was, and then I realised that it was the song of starlings nesting on the ledge under the bridge, their song bouncing off the water, the wind blown ripples setting up the strange acoustic. Damn, did the little fuckers, never mind how sweet their song was, did the little feathered fuckers know it was me? Or were these birds untainted by Grace? I could only hope - but Mack's words came back to me, "more fuckin' birds in this town than I've ever seen before." Damn birds, worse than the bloody Hitchcock film.
Still, it was broad daylight, so maybe the sun would keep me safe. Grace seemed to prefer the gloaming and the dark. But I had to get to the archives, I had to find out about Grace, her family and her life. Maybe if I knew something about her life, there would be some clues about her death. Birth records, that should do it.
After a couple of hours, including chatting up the old librarian there, I discovered that Grace and her sister (for the two girls in those old papers were indeed sisters) were born late to the family. Grace's mother had been about 38 when Grace was born, 40 when her sister Emily was born. Bit old, for a first born, I would have thought. Maybe that is what shit loads of money bought you, back in those days. I sat looking out the high windows making a few notes. On the lake a group of elegant black swans swam past, S necks gracefully bent. Oh fuck, that is probably not good, not good at all. But my betraying prick pulsed, knowing that whatever manifestation was about to happen (of course it was about to happen) would be hugely powerful. Fucking big birds, swans.
But as always, I had no idea how she would manifest herself, just that she would. It was still daylight, and the swans were distant on the lake, so it was difficult to see where she would come from, or even if it would be immediate. Maybe if I stayed here for a while, grabbed myself a bite to eat, and a coffee, and wait until I could not see the birds? I did not think, not now, that I would be able to avoid her, but maybe I could delay her. Somehow. At that moment, I heard the squeak of a trolley wheel and the lurch in my guts that had happened before, and I knew that something was upon me. The Library was deathly quiet, time and place shifting, slowing, and re-starting.
The cold steel key in my pocket, oh fuck that was not there before, the cold steel key - so I was once more thrown back in time and was the watched man, once more. And I was now in a different place - because the central library wouldn't be built for several decades - but I had no idea of the geography of this town in its early days, so the place was strange.
"Come with me, dear boy." A husky voice, deep and sensual, beckoned me from the shadows. And from a dark corridor, a tall dark woman with spectacular tits, raven black hair (or should I say, swan black hair, because of course this was Grace), long to her waist. Her waist, impossibly small, as if clinched in by a corset. Her magnificent hips swung as she strode towards me, and her thighs were long and firm, in a flowing skirt. She was statuesque, Amazonian, her rich chocolate dark skin almost lost in the shadows. She was tall, splendid, radiating power. Jesus, had her feeding brought her to this? Did her magnificent, terrifying strength have the ability to cross time and to chase me down through time?
I did not have much of a choice here - the power in her voice was commanding, and I knew that if I looked into her eyes I would be commanded. So I tried to keep as much of my self as I could - I looked past her, focusing on the wall behind her head. "Where are we, where are we going?"
"In the time when I died, but not in the place." Her voice was now harsh and guttural, so I knew once more she was some horrific mix of swan and woman, and not all Grace. Some part of the animal possessed the woman, just as some part of the woman possessed the bird. "I need to know, boy, who you are."