The jangling of the telephone in his study below saved him from the ultimate terror as the winged creatures began to close in on him. He struggled out of bed. His limbs seemed reluctant to respond and it needed a conscious physical effort to move one foot in front of the other. There was a red haze before his eyes and he was dizzy. The stairs presented a problem, but he solved it by clinging to the banister with both hands. He had once caned a boy for sliding down the rail in the Palace. He regretted that action. It had been unjust. The boy, he couldn't remember his name, had been right. It was by far the best method of descending a staircase.

The phone was still ringing as he entered the study, flopped down gratefully in his mahogany swivel chair and lifted the receiver.

'Headmaster.' His speech was slurred. The formation of that single word had been an effort. Somebody might think he'd been drinking.

'Matron here, headmaster.' The voice at the other end gave no indication that she had noted anything strange about him. 'I've had six boys brought into the sanatorium during the night. I'm going to ask the doctor to make an early call, but I think... well, I'd like you to have a look at them first.'

A sudden sense of foreboding seemed to assist the Reverend Francis Jackson with his speech, and the words came more easily.

'What's... what's the matter with them?'

'They're . . . well, I thought it was the beginning of a summer flu epidemic, but three of them appear to be paralysed, and ... oh, I'd be glad if you'd come across, headmaster!'

'I'll be with you as soon as I can.' Jackson sensed a constriction of his vocal cords, a tightening in his throat. He replaced the receiver, but in so doing misjudged the cradle and the instrument fell on to the desk with a clatter, slid over the edge and hung suspended by the coil. There was a pain in his back, travelling upwards to the base of his neck. That part of his anatomy had ached throughout the night, but now, suddenly, it was bordering on agony. He could not move his head. He tried to lift himself up out of the chair but it was impossible. The muscles would not respond to the urgent calls from his brain.

The Reverend Francis Jackson was very frightened indeed. What on earth had happened to him? The curtains were still drawn, and he had not bothered to switch on the light as he stumbled through the doorway. Now he sat in the gloom. The dawn was coming fast, its grey light filtering into the study through the chinks in the curtains, but everything was obscured by a red film, a haze that hovered in front of his eyes.

He tried to flop back in the chair, but even relaxation was denied him. His eyelids were heavy, but they would not close. It was as though they had been fixed in position by some kind of quick-drying glue. They were smarting, burning. Agony.

He could sense spittle in his mouth, welling out of the saliva glands, slipping back down his throat and threatening to choke him. Some of it trickled out between his lips and down his chin, falling in sticky strings down the front of his pyjama jacket and on to his lap.

The room was becoming darker. Not black, but filled with a claret mistiness. He could still see, but his vision was restricted to that area immediately in front of him. And the bats were back. The tiny ones first, crawling all over the walls like thunder-bugs at harvest time, millions of them. They were on his face and neck, inside his pyjamas causing him to itch from head to foot, a sensation that was driving him insane. He wanted to scratch himself but couldn't.

Then came the big ones, appearing silently from nowhere on slow, flapping wings that folded as they landed. They jostled for position on the desk, a mass of horrible faces, unblinking eyes. Gloating. He couldn't shut them out. He tried to pray, but the cohesion of thought was slipping from him. He was the living dead. A zombie. His body was dead, and only a tiny spark of life remained somewhere in his brain, just enough to kindle the terror.

Now he wanted to die, just so that he could shut out these ghoulish creatures. After that they could do what they liked with his body. Feed on it. Drink his blood. He didn't care. His mind burned with a craving for death that wouldn't come.

It took the Reverend Jackson almost an hour to die. And when his release finally came there was no outward sign of change. He sat rigid, eyes wide and staring sightlessly. Not a single muscle had relaxed; even his bowels remained taut against all the laws of Nature.

The Sanatorium consisted of a separate block at the rear of the Palace which housed the school. There were two wards for segregating different ailments, and small, self-contained flat in which Miss Boston, the plump, kindly matron, lived.

Miss Boston had returned to her quarters to make herself a cup of tea and prepare for an early call from only of the local doctors. She was concerned about the six boys who had been admitted at intervals since midnight, but there was nothing she could do until the doctor arrived. She wondered how much longer the headmaster was going to be. It was an hour since she had telephoned him. He had sounded strange, she recalled. His speech had been slurred. Perhaps he was a secret drinker? She smiled at the thought. He was constantly preaching teetotalism. He even refused to have a glass of sherry at the Old Boys' Reunion. She sighed, shook her head in bewilderment, yawned, and poured herself a cup of tea.

The small ward stank of vomit and diarrhoea. The curtains were still closed, and the six boys aged from nine to fourteen, lay in various postures on the beds, their pyjamas undone, their bodies glistening with sweat.

Montgomery, the youngest, was crying softly to himself.' He didn't like boarding schools anyway, and they were a thousand times worse when one was ill. This last half-hour his body had been stiffening from the base of the spine upwards, a creeping numbness that alleviated his earlier agony. He stared up at the ceiling, mentally tracing the cracks in the plaster, going all round them and back again, just for something to do. He hoped that the doctor might send him home. That would have made the suffering worthwhile.

Ursin-Davies sweated profusely. He always sweated anyway, on account of his size. Rolls of fat were visible to the others through his open pyjama jacket. He hated this school, but most of all he loathed sport. What use were football and cricket to a fellow with brains? Yet they did not seem to appreciate his academic qualities. The fact that he came top of 5B in almost every subject did not appear to compensate for his failure at everything physical. Master, prefects and fellow pupils ridiculed him, went out of their way to make his life a misery. He hated every one of them, and particularly Bryce-Janson.

Ursin-Davies turned his head and looked across at the head boy. BJ was groaning in agony, grinding his teeth.

Good! If his own pain was anything to go by, Ursin-Davies decided, then BJ was going through hell. It was almost worth putting up with to watch the swine suffer.

Ursin-Davies draped an arm over the side of the bed. His fingers brushed against something metallic, and with some difficulty he managed to grasp it and slowly draw it upwards. It was a knife, an ordinary item of cutlery, the blade matted with congealed gravy. It smelled bad, and he wrinkled his nose. Some earlier patient had obviously dropped it, and it had never been recovered. He grinned to himself. That just went to prove that old 'Bossy' wasn't as thorough as she made out. She kidded 'em all, the idle old bitch. Even Jackson, Christ, how he hated Jackson. But not as much as he despised Bryce-Janson. The head-boy was a legal bully. He could take it out of you, and justify his actions. He could think up all sorts of sadistic punishments and get away with them. His word always counted with the Head against anybody else's.