T H E    C Y C L E
by John Connolly
The Cycle is included in the new edition of NOCTURNES, published by Hachette in the UK.

The pain began almost as soon as she had boarded the train. Usually, she planned these things so well. She knew her cycle intimately. How could she not, after all these years? Today, though, had just been one of those awful bloody days, when nothing went according to plan. She had planned to get the five o'clock train, which would have seen her safely tucked up at home with the doors closed and a whole weekend of privacy and quiet to get over it. Instead, a crisis in the office meant that Dominic, her boss, had been forced to call an emergency meeting. Two days before a deadline, and a week before Christmas, one of the agency's most important clients had decided that elements of the new ad campaign were "inappropriate" and needed to be re-examined. That meant a brainstorming session which lasted until after six, the cold, clear winter day lost to shadows by the time she left.

She could already feel it approaching, even as she left the building and headed for the station: a sense of unease, of dislocation, and a tenderness to her belly and her breasts. Her already short temper contracted even further, so that she almost bit off the head of the lazy clerk behind the ticket counter, the idiot apparently more concerned with picking his lottery numbers than ensuring that she made her train, the closing of doors already signalling its imminent departure. She had been forced to run to make it, side-stepping shoppers loaded down with bags of overpriced gifts, and that had not helped matters at all. Running, fretting and snapping at morons seemed only to accelerate it as her body responded both to the stresses of its environment and the demands that nature was placing upon it.

She took a seat in the next-to-last carriage. The toilet was in the carriage behind, right at the end, but its lights were malfunctioning, flickering off and on with an angry buzzing sound as though masses of bees were trapped within the fluorescent bulbs, so she had been forced to sit a little further forward than she would have liked. Still, perhaps it would be all right. It hadn't started yet, although it was close.

The train crawled slowly from the station. Her fellow passengers read books and newspapers, or talked nonsense at high volume on their mobile phones, their lack of consideration annoying her still further but providing a momentary distraction, an outlet for her frustration. She had a phone herself, of course, but she kept it switched off on trains and buses unless it was absolutely essential to leave it active, and even then she left it on vibrate and would step out of the carriage to answer it. She was very conscious of her privacy and it constantly amazed her that people were prepared to discuss the most intimate details of their lives among strangers. Her father and mother would sooner have died than engage in a conversation upon which others might eavesdrop. In fact, her parents had rarely discussed anything of consequence on the telephone. They were resolutely old-fashioned in that sense. If something was important, then it was worth talking about face-to-face. Their telephone conversations, except in exceptional cases like bereavement or illness, rarely lasted for longer than a minute or two. Their daughter had learned from them the importance of discretion.

The raised voices were nagging at her hearing. Her senses always seemed to be more acute at this time of the month, so that even moderately loud noises became difficult to tolerate, and she was more aware than usual of particular smells and tastes. She wondered if others experienced it the same way she did. She could only assume that she was not unique in these sensations, although she was not the kind of person who would discuss such matters with another, even if she were not so solitary by nature.

Towns flashed by. They were making good time. She allowed herself a little sigh of relief, and breathed in deeply. As she did so, something rippled inside her. She grimaced and shifted on her seat. Hell. The train slowed, disgorging passengers at another station. Others rarely got on to replace them at these provincial towns, and she was used to spending most of her journeys in empty carriages, especially as she her destination was the last stop on the line, her house a mere stone's throw from the station. It allowed her to sleep a little later than most in the mornings, and made the trip home a little easier to bear as she did not, unlike many others, have to step from the train to a car and continue further into the countryside.

She closed her eyes. Sometimes she felt lonely, living in the little village where every face was familiar to her, where every name was echoed dozens of times in the form of cousins, brothers, uncles, grandparents. Her parents had always kept themselves slightly aloof from the life of the community on the principle that good fences made good neighbours, and she was grateful to them for that. The round of meetings, charity drives, garden parties and festivals was not for her, but her desire to remain at one remove from them had given her a reputation around the village, particularly since she also chose to politely deflect the attentions of its menfolk. She had no intention of ever dating a man from the village, of permitting him access to the little secrets of her life. She knew these men too well, and was not anxious to become one of their conquests. She had enjoyed some relationships in the city, but none that had lasted. She liked men who were prepared to permit her to keep her distance from them when she chose, who wanted their own space as much as she wanted hers, but such men were harder to find than one might think. The demands that she made led her to attract those who were merely seeking casual one-night flings, or those who claimed that they were quite happy to allow her the required degree of independence but then, as time went on, grew more and more uncomfortable with it and demanded that she adhere to the rules they chose to set for her and for the relationship. She had quickly learned that when a man said he valued a woman's independence, what it really meant was that he valued it only when it suited him.

Another station passed, bringing her another mile nearer to home. The pain was stronger now, and she thought that she could almost taste something coppery in her mouth. She hated it. It really was a curse, but, as her mother had said to her in those first months of adolescence, bringing with them the strange, unfamiliar changes to her body, "what cannot be cured must be endured." Looking back now, it was the shock that she remembered, her amazement that her own body could do this to her, wounding her from deep within, bringing her discomfort, pain and embarrassment, even as her mother had instructed her on what to do and how to prepare for it so that she was not taken by surprise. It was always easier to put up with in your own home, her mother had said, surrounded by familiar things, but you could not let it dictate how you lived your life. Yet, for the first few months, that was precisely what had happened: she was grateful and relieved once it had passed, but the relief only lasted for a week or two until it commenced, once again, its inevitable approach. It was different for the other girls: they seemed to take the changes to their bodies in their stride, and she envied them that. It was simply beyond her own capacities to do the same.

The train arrived at Shillingford, the last stop before home. Soon she would be able to lock the door and remain within the walls of her house for the entire weekend. By Monday it would all be over, and normal life would resume.

The door at the head of the carriage opened as the train moved off, and two young men entered. They were probably still in their late teens, although one wore a ragged line of scruffy facial hair on his upper lip, a nasty little excuse for a moustache that made him look shifty and untrustworthy. His companion, taller and bulkier, had acne pimples on his chin, bloodied where he had picked at them. They wore cheap leather jackets and jeans that were baggy and flared. Who would ever have believed that flares would return to fashion, she wondered. They were horrible the first time around and decades in the sartorial hall of shame had not made them any more acceptable now.

"Alright, love?" one of the boys said. She did not look at him, but she could see him reflected in the glass. It was the one with the moustache. Neither of them had taken their seats. They stood, craning their necks to catch sight of her face and body. She drew her coat a little more tightly around her.

"Aw, don't do that," said the spotty one. "Give us a look."

She bit her lip. Something contracted inside her and she jerked slightly in her seat.

"Go on, smile," said the one with the moustache. "It can't be that that bad. I've got something that will make you smile."

He sniggered.

"Dyke," said the other. He smirked at his wit.

"Nah," said his mate. "She's not a dyke. They're ugly. She's not that bad."

He pointed his chin at her.

"You're not a dyke, are you?"

"Get lost," she said, despite herself. She didn't want to be drawn into an argument with them but they had picked the wrong evening on which to confront her. It was only after she had spoken that she realised how dangerous it might be to antagonise them, to draw them upon her.

"Touchy," said Moustache to his friend. "Must be her time of the month. They all get a bit like that."

He returned his attention to her.

"Is that it, darlin'? Time of the month? The old curse?"

His smile slowly faded, to be replaced by something infinitely more unpleasant.

"Don't bother me," he said, so softly that she thought she might have misheard, until he repeated himself. "Don't bother me one little bit . . ."

Suddenly, the train ground to a halt. For a moment, there was only silence, and then a voice came over the public address system.

"We would like to apologise to all passengers for the slight delay. This is due to a temporary signal failure on the line ahead of us, which means that we have to wait for the southbound train to pass before we can continue. Again, we would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused, and assure you that we will be on our way very shortly."

She couldn't believe it. She pressed her face to the window and thought that she could almost see the lights of the station in the distance. If she got out now she could nearly walk to her house along the line, but the rail companies didn't approve of impatient passengers shambling along the tracks because they had grown tired of waiting. She felt nauseous, and the coppery taste in her mouth was growing more pronounced. It was very dark outside. She looked at the night sky. There were no stars visible, although a telltale edge of brightness had begun to show in the north as the clouds began to thin. She could hear the boys whispering, and she risked a glance at them. The one with the pimples was looking over at her, and she could see the lust in his eyes.

"Unnnhhh."

The groan of pain caused the boys to stop their conversation. She winced. This delay was just unbearable. What a bloody nuisance. She almost howled in frustration. There was no other choice: she rose, grasped her briefcase, and headed for the last carriage. If she could get to the toilet, then she could do whatever was necessary and wait things out until the train got into the station. After that, she could slip on to the tracks through the back door, avoiding the young men and the stink of their desire. She stepped into the space between the carriages, opened the door, and entered the empty compartment, the buzzing unbearably loud, the flickering of the lights paining her eyes.

Behind her, the two teenagers exchanged a look, then stood and followed her into the carriage.

* * *

Their names were Davey and Billy. Davey was the older one, the smarter one, and he was proud of his carefully cultivated facial hair. The moustache was sometimes the difference between being served in a bar or being refused, and he was very proud of it. Billy was bigger than his friend, but dumber and more brutal. They often saw women on the trains late at night, some of them a bit the worse for wear and unlikely to put up much of a fight, but somehow the opportunity they sought had never presented itself until now. The woman was alone, the train was almost empty, and they were now stopped in the darkness between stations: even if she cried out, no one would hear her. It was perfect.

They entered the carriage. The fluorescents flickered and buzzed then, finally, gave up the ghost, artificial light yielding to the moon's luminescence as a great disc of white cleared the cover of the clouds and shone down upon the woods, the fields, and the silver body of the unmoving train. The toilet was ahead of them, at the far end. It wouldn't have much of a lock on it. On trains, they never did.

They were halfway down the carriage when the noise came from behind them. Something moved in the space between two seats, previously hidden from the young men by the shadows, the moonlight not yet penetrating its reaches. They turned as it unfolded itself, slowly rising up before them. There was a bad, animal smell, and a sound like a dog might make if someone threatened to remove the bone from between its paws. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, Davey saw clawed feet, longer than a human's and covered with fine dark hair that shone in the moonlight, and muscular legs that bent sharply at the knee, rising up to a flat crotch, and a taut stomach and small white breasts. Even as he watched, more fine hairs erupted from the pores of the skin, colonising the fleshy places and turning them all to black. The tattered remains of a dress hung from the figure's arms and back, and as its fingernails curled in on themselves Davey thought he saw traces of dark varnish upon them. The hair on its upper body was thicker than upon its legs and belly. It was denser, and tinged with white and grey, as though a great cape had been placed across its shoulders.

Then it emerged from the darkness, slowly advancing upon them, and the moonlight shone upon the woman's face. It was still changing, the features transforming themselves before his eyes, so that she remained clearly recognisable to Davey, like a figure glimpsed in a fun house mirror, distorted yet still familiar. Her face was lengthening, the tips of her ears extending and tufting with hair, her nose and chin stretching to form a lupine jaw, the teeth within growing sharper and shining whitely, thick strands of saliva and blood dripping from the tips. Her hands, the fingers elongated and taloned, gripped the edges of the seat before her as her body shuddered, the change nearly complete as Davey heard four words emerge from deep in her throat, their meaning almost lost to him as she the animal overcame the woman.

Almost.

"Time of the month," she said, and Davey thought that the words were followed by something that might have been laughter before that too was transformed, becoming a growl filled with hunger and the promise of death. Her eyes turned to yellow, and the full moon was reflected in their depths. She raised her head and howled just as, too late, the boys tried to run. Davey pushed Billy out of the way, using his size to squeeze past him before Billy even realised what he was doing. A splash of warmth struck Davey's hair and back as Billy's life ended with the rending of claws, but he kept moving, never looking behind him, his gaze focused on the rectangle of glass ahead of him and the silver handle of the door. He was almost close enough to touch it when a great weight landed on on his back, forcing him to the ground. The train jerked into motion as Davey felt hot breath upon his skin, and sharp teeth upon his neck. In his final moment he was struck, oddly, by the realisation that he had always been afraid of women. Now, at last, he thought that he understood why.

And then Davey screamed as he took his place in the great cycle of living and dying, and the world was filled with redness.

© John Connolly