Spawn by Shaun Hutson

squinting through the gloom to the doors he’d come through. No one had heard or seen him. There was no one following. Harold smiled thinly and closed his eyes. He took great gulps of cold air, trying to ignore the rancid stench which rose from the sheet and its dead occupant but that didn’t seem to matter any longer. He had completed the first and most hazardous part of his venture, the second step was merely a formality.
    The hut in which Harold lived stood about ten yards from a low barbed wire fence which marked the perimeter of the hospital beyond it lay large expanses of open fields, some of the ground was owned by the hospital but it was fenced off nevertheless. In the far distance, Harold could see the lights of Exham and, occasionally, the headlamps of a vehicle travelling along the dual-carriageway which led into the town. He headed towards the fence and cautiously stepped over it, catching his trousers on one of the vicious barbs. The material ripped slightly and Harold pulled himself free.
    The ground sloped away before him slightly, leading down towards a deep cleft in the field which looked like an open black mouth in the darkness of the night. Harold steadied himself and made his way towards the depression. Above him tall electricity pylons rose high into the sky, their metal legs straddling the field, the high voltage cables they carried invisible in the gloom. There was a smell of ozone in the air, rather like the aftermath of a thunderstorm and Harold could hear a distant crackling sound from overhead.
    He reached the foot of the small hill and stood close by the foot of a pylon. He was exhausted, both mentally and physically drained. His eye felt gritty and his throat was dry but he walked on, finally finding what he thought looked like a suitable spot. There was enough natural light for him to see what he was doing. He paused and laid the bundle of dirty sheet on the frosty grass, then he knelt and began scraping at the earth with his bare hands. He found that it was soft enough for him to achieve the necessary depth. Like a dog who’s found a good spot to hide a bone, Harold pawed the earth away until it began to form a sizeable mound behind him. By the time he’d finished he estimated that the hole must be about two feet deep and twice that in length. He was panting loudly, his hands caked in mud, his clothes already reeking from the foul smell of the soiled linen. With the hole prepared, he unrolled the sheet, exposing the foetus inside. He lifted it gently from the cover and laid it in the hole.
    For long seconds he stared down at it, tears brimming in his eye. He lowered his head, his body shaking.
    “Gordon,” he whispered. “Forgive me.”
    He felt a strange contradiction inside himself, a great sadness but also something akin to relief. Had he at last found a means of atonement? He began pushing the wet earth back into place, covering the tiny body.
    “Mother,” he said, as he continued to pile earth back into the grave. “It’s different this time. This time I won’t let it happen again. There’ll be no more burnings.”
    He looked up, as if expecting to see someone standing over him. Expecting to hear voices. There was only the far-off whistle of the wind in the pylons.
    Harold finished piling in the earth and stood up, flattening it down with his shoe. He wiped his hands on the piece of soiled sheet then balled it up and hid it beneath a nearby bush. That done, he returned to the small grave. At first, when he tried to speak, no sound would come and his lips fluttered noiselessly but he swallowed hard and clasped his dirty hands before him.
    He didn’t know anything religious. No prayers. No hymns. He lowered his head, his eyes closed.
    “Now I lay me down to sleep,” he began, falteringly. “I pray the Lord. . .” He struggled to remember. “I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” A long silence. “If . . . If I would. . . should,” he corrected himself. “If I should die