The Devil`s Feather Read Online Free PDF Page B

by reaffirming what I knew to be true— I was no longer in danger because I’d done what I was told —but there’s no reasoning with anxiety. It’s an intense internal emotion that isn’t susceptible to logic. All you can do is experience the terror that your brain has told your body to feel.
    I drove in eventually because I had nowhere else to go. The house was pretty enough—a low rectangular eighteenth-century construction—but, close up, its tattiness showed. The sun and salt winds had taken their toll of the doors and window frames, and so many of the tiles had slipped that I wondered if the roof was even waterproof, despite the agent’s assurances on his website that the property was sound. It didn’t worry me—I’d seen far worse, most recently in Baghdad, where bomb damage left whole buildings in ruins—but I began to understand why Barton House compared favourably with three-bedroomed cottages.
    Does any of us know our breaking point? Mine was when the large iron key to the front door jammed in the lock and five mastiffs appeared out of nowhere as I tried to find a signal on my mobile. I was pointing it towards the horizon and only realized the dogs were there when one of them started growling. They took up guard around me with their muzzles inches from my skirt, and I felt the familiar adrenaline rush as my autonomic fear response kicked into action.
    Half a second’s thought would have told me there was an owner around, but I was so petrified I couldn’t think at all. It didn’t even register when I dropped my phone. You can reinforce your confidence as many times as you like, but it’s a futile exercise when your fear is so real that a single growl can reawaken nightmares. I’d never seen the dogs in the Baghdad cellar but I could still hear and feel them, and they inhabited my dreams.
    I didn’t notice the owner until she was standing in front of me, and I mistook her gender until she spoke. I certainly didn’t take her for an adult. She was wearing denims and a man’s shirt that was too big for her slight body, and her curiously flat features and slicked-back dark hair made me think she was an adolescent boy who was still growing. If she weighed a hundred pounds I’d have been surprised. Any one of the mastiffs could have crushed the life out of her just by lying on her.
    “Keep your hands still,” she said curtly. “Birdlike movements excite them.”
    She gave a flick of her fingers and the dogs ranged themselves in front of her, heads lowered.
    “You look like Madeleine,” she said. “Are you related?”
    I had no idea what she was talking about, and didn’t care anyway because I couldn’t breathe. I dropped into a squat, head back, sucking for oxygen, but all I achieved was to set her dogs growling again. At that point I gave up and scrabbled on all fours towards the open door of the Mini. I dived in and pulled it to, clicking the lock behind me, before leaning back in a desperate attempt to get some air into my lungs. I think one of the dogs must have charged the car because I felt it lurch, followed by a sharp command from the girl, but I’d closed my eyes and wasn’t watching.
    I knew what was happening. I knew it wouldn’t last and that all I had to do was stop the rapid, shallow breathing, but this time the pains in my chest were so bad that I wondered if I was having a heart attack. I groped for my stash of paper bags in the door pocket and clamped one over my nose and mouth, trying to ease the symptoms. I’ve no idea how long it took. Time didn’t exist. But when I opened my eyes, the girl and her dogs had gone.

 

    Extracts from notes, filed as “CB16–19/05/04”

    …I used to be afraid of the dark, but now I sit for hours with the lights off. It felt as if red-hot pokers were burning through my lids when Dan ripped the duct tape away. He was upset when I refused to open my eyes and look at him but I didn’t know who it was. He could have been anyone. The voice