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By Root 619 0

past pools of dark water, grasping saplings and low branches for balance. The swamp smelled sweet and warm, fecund. Though he had left his coat in the car, he felt a light sweat form on his brow and back. He hoped he didn't run into an alligator.

Approaching the house from the side, he stopped just inside the edge of the trees and remained there for several minutes. No sound came from inside. The air was suddenly still, as if, out of sight and earshot, a storm was gathering. He crossed softly to the bedroom window and looked inside.

Flood's wife was seated on the bed, massaging the back of her neck with one hand. One of the lenses of her dark glasses was cracked and her lower lip was swelling.

He whispered, 'Mrs Flood.' She turned towards him instantly, her hand still on her neck but no longer moving. 'It's me, the man from -'

'I know who it is.'

'Do you want me to help you get away from here?'

'I can't leave.'

'Yes you can, I -'

'I can't leave,' she repeated, and, though she was still whispering, her tone was final. 'You don't understand. Go away.'

'I'm not leaving unless you come with me.'

'Well, you're going to have to, 'cause I can't.'

'Please,' he said, 'let me help you.'

Her expression focused sharply, for all the world as if she could see him.

For a second or two she didn't move. Then her concentration broke. Get out of here before Vern finds you.'

'Too late,' said Flood, and slammed the Doctor in the side of the head with an old refrigerator door handle. He then kicked him in the ribs, stomped on his stomach, kicked him in the chin and was about to stamp hard on his neck when his wife screamed, 'Don't kill him! Jesus, Vern, that detective's coming back, you know it!' which made him shift his aim and smash the Doctor again in the stomach.

As Flood dragged him by his collar around to the back of the house, the Doctor had a confused glimpse of Mrs Flood leaning out of the window, dark glasses askew, yelling something. Then he became preoccupied with not letting his collar strangle him. Flood bumped him up the steps and across the sticky kitchen floor, and the next minute he landed on his face in the cement-brick cellar. Flood kicked his legs after him and dropped the trap door shut. Though the Doctor wasn't really interested in moving, he made a game effort to get into a sitting position and push open the trap, and actually managed to shift his head a good four inches before he lost consciousness.

There was a strong, sour odour of mildew. That was the first thing the Doctor was aware of. The second was that he was now on his side, jammed at one end of the small space, and that most of his body ached terribly. The third was that he wasn't alone.

'Mrs Flood?' he said hoarsely.

'Who'd you think?' she said. 'Maybe Julia Roberts? She your type? Or do you just like skinny blind girls?'

The Doctor tried to answer but only succeeded in coughing.

'Just in case you're a perv,' she said, 'I ain't as young as I look.'

'You know, I suspected that. Where's your husband?'

'Passed out drunk on the trap door.'

'What happens when he wakes up?'

'Oh, he'll be real sorry. It'll be all hugs and kisses. I can probably sweet-talk him into letting you go.'

Probably?'

'If you got anything on him, I don't think it'd be real wise to let on.'

'I don't have anything on him.'

What about that cop?'

'I don't know.' The Doctor moved cautiously, straightening his cramped legs.

'What's he done, anyway?'

"Theft. Murder.'

'Oh,' she said dismissively. 'Same old stuff.'

The Doctor had nothing to say to that. He concentrated on seeing how the various stamped-on parts of him were doing. Nothing broken. A lot of blood on his face from where the refrigerator handle had hit him, but the wound itself was hardly more than a cut. Funny how scalp wounds bled so much -

one of the anatomical details he shared with humans.

A little light from the kitchen seeped past Flood's prostrate body and through the gaps between the boards of the trap door. The Doctor could make