There was a dead body on Sandie's back porch, and it was trying to get in.

She wrung the coffee out of the front of her shirt, made damn sure that all of her doors and windows were locked, and called Mike.

"Mike."

"Yeah? Sandie? That you?"

"You don't know anything about this, do you?"

"About what?"

"The zombie."

"Come again?"

"Mike, there's a zombie on my back porch. It's leaving smears on the glass door. Is it yours?"

"I... Could you repeat that?"

"Zombie, Mike. It's a dead body in a puddle of nasty, and it's leaving more nasty on my door. God, I can even smell it. This is one thorough job, man."

She edged away from the door, keeping an eye on the intruder beyond the glass. It was bloated and purple with decay, green and black fungus speckling its face. There was fluid coming out of its mouth and dripping from its nose. It had no eyes, and all indication of sex or age had rotted away.

"Robotic, maybe? One of its legs is about to fall off. You didn't sic one of your Cyber Derby friends on me, did you?"

There was a long moment of silence on the other end, then the sound of a slamming door and an engine revving.

"I don't know anything about it. But hey, are you going to be at home for a while? Can I come see it?"

"I sure as hell am not going out the back door. If it smells that bad inside... I'll put another pot of coffee on for you, okay? Come through the garage when you get here. Bring a shotgun or something just in case."

Sandie hung up and stuck her phone into the back pocket of her jeans, moving into the kitchen to refresh her cup. She went upstairs to change shirts, threw the stained one into the laundry, and washed her hands in the bathroom. The thumping and scratching from the back door was audible throughout the house, and it did not stop. She wondered whether she should be scared, but it all felt too much like a low-budget horror flick to be real.

A careful peek out of the hall revealed that the unwelcome guest was beginning to flag. The thumps were a bit further apart than they had been at first. Sandie cupped her hand over her nose and approached the door, with the reasoning that if it was going to get in, it would have gotten in already. The stink was nauseating.

"So," she said around her hand. "Are you here for my brains or what?"

The body clawed at the glass.

"You want a cup of coffee? Kudos on the makeup job, by the way, or whatever that is. It looks pro. Is that pig blood or something? You know you're going to be scrubbing my porch down later, right?"

The body hummed. It smacked a defleshed hand against the door, and the view distorted as the glass rippled with powerful bass vibrations.

Sandie fell back on her ass with a yelp, ruining another shirt with coffee.

"What the hell was that?" she demanded as the vibrations slowed and died. She picked herself up and crouched in front of the glass, staring into the creature's empty eye sockets. She received the unnerving impression that it was staring back. A dribble of black spilled from its mouth and splattered on the cement outside. There was half a grasshopper in it.

"Oh," Sandie said. "You're real, aren't you? Oh, God, you're real." That panic started to well up, along with the bagel she had eaten for breakfast. "Oh, God, oh my God."

She reached back and pulled the phone from her pocket, hit redial as fast as she could. Mike's phone began to ring. The body outside stared through the glass, its swollen tongue hanging down to its chin. It slumped sideways, pressing its shoulder against the glass.

Sandie gasped into the receiver, and there was a click.

"Sandie? You okay?"

"Right. No. Cops. Hurry."

"Wh-?"

She hung up and punched in 9-1-1.

The body hummed. It resonated, a clear, bell-like tone. Dust sifted down from the ceiling. The glass warped and undulated like a sheet of water, then burst inward with a pop. Sparkling fragments rained down amid a shockwave of sound.

The phone beeped, sparked and died, and Sandie was on her knees, feeling oddly mellow in the moments before she passed out.

I have no wish to chronicle the events of that first year. Much of it I spent sunk in a mindless and fluid dreamlike state, aware of but unable to control my actions. I passed, drifted, from town to town through the country, killing by night while by day I haunted the crossroads and squares like a vagrant. In some places, the people pitied me, and I slept warm for an hour or two before some peasant's fire until my fragmented mind again drove me into the cold, or my altered flesh again drove me to kill. Never did I cease to move across the landscape, always fleeing the grief and horror that sprung up in my wake. Never did I speak to a soul, though many times I tried to warn away some poor creature who strayed too close to my madness. I shall not describe the act of murder, the effect it had upon myself and upon my unfortunate victims, nor the atrocity with which I often compounded the crime, but think of this: in such an exchange, the demon and his host become more wholly one than any mortal husband and wife. Flesh of my flesh, so many times over. I was a monster.

Many months and many deaths passed before I discovered the precision necessary to spare the lives from which I fed my own un-life; as my mind cleared slowly of its perpetual haze, it occurred to me that I might take only a little from each of many people, and in that way each of the unfortunates might live. But it was difficult. God, it was difficult to resist the thrill of that moment when the frantic heart ceased to beat. It was difficult to preserve life when some deep and unnamed part of me desired so dearly to kill. But truthfully, I have always thought that the most difficult part was in moving past the bitterness, to allow to someone else that which I had been denied: How dare this one live when I may not? How dare this one have this chance when I do not? But in the end, you see, I did not overcome. No; rather, I myself was overcome by the remnants of humanity this failed change had left behind, which gradually again coalesced into something which, superficially at least, resembled a whole man. I taught myself to play at being human, withdrawing from the hate and madness to immerse myself instead in self-loathing. It seemed easier to pity others when I had no sympathy for myself.

In this way, no longer a murderer but still an architect of deeds no less evil, I made my way to the west until, in April of eighteen-hundred seventy-nine, I stood upon the Continental shore and looked across the water to my home. The sea breeze cleared away the last of the noxious fog which had clung to my mind, woke me fully for the first time since the horrors of that dreadful November, and for a time I could do no more than sit upon the beach and enjoy this clarity of thought. I remember vividly the growing warmth of the seasonal sun on my face, an inspiration. I could go home if I chose, or so I thought. This disease could be cured. I could be with my family, or what was left of it. For a time, I knew hope.

Gradually, however, I became aware of a presence within myself, an alien voice which called to me from the east. When I stopped to think, I realised that it had been there all along, ever since I woke on the third day, growing fainter but no less insistent as I moved further and further from its source. And, alien though it was, it also was familiar, a voice which I had known all my life. Rhona. Oh, God. She could follow me if she wished, the devil who had once been my sister. She could find me if she wished, if ever I ceased to run. She wanted me back, and there was, deep within the strata of my altered mind, a bit of self that wished to go to her. Surely she could help me. She who had done this to me, wrought this awful transformation, surely she could help me to cope with the changes. It was a tempting thought. I nearly gave in. God knows I could have used a helper, a friend who could understand what had happened. I was stopped only by the unshakable fear of the price attached to her help. She had given good evidence already that there was not an ounce of compassion left in her dead heart; she could never be a friend to me.

I took myself south instead of east, toward Calais, with the understanding that from there I would be best able to make my way back to England. From Dover I could follow the coast to Brighton, there to meet with my youngest brother. Jesse would understand. Jesse would know what to do. He had always been the dreamer among us, the one to whom fairies and ghosts and angels meant the most. I had laughed at him for his faith in the invisible, the incredible, never to his face but often in my heart. I had laughed at his strange notion that Truth lies in a realm somewhere beyond Fact, that not all of reality can be measured and quantified and categorised by that cold god which man calls Science. This is the nineteenth century, Jesse; surely we have progressed beyond such childish fancies. I hoped to God that his childish fancies could save me.

At Calais I discovered another part of my new self. It was night, and I was pursued... But must I really describe the circumstances? She was a lady of the evening – as though that justified my actions – a lady of the evening with a shrill scream and many friends. I would not have killed her, however much I may have wanted to do so, but who really would believe that? Looking back, I myself am tempted to disbelieve. She screamed, and I ran, and they closed me in, driving me onto a dock with guns and lanterns. I should likely have escaped them before then, but that a well-placed shot had destroyed my left knee, preventing me from using my natural great speed; I hobbled, crawled, dragged myself away, my clawed hands scraping at the cobbles, dirt, and finally at the wooden planks of the pier. I was well and truly cornered, having no recourse but to surrender my life, or throw myself into the sea. I recall that I tried to plead with my attackers, but they spoke no English and my own French had fled in my fear. They advanced on me, no longer with guns but with knives. It was night, but my eyes easily made out their features, hard with purpose, and I instinctively raised both hands to defend my heart, my Achilles' heel. If only, I thought, as my boot found the end of the pier, the end of my safety, the end of my unlife, If only I had wings, and could fly from this place! Immediately, a great wrenching pain filled my body, as though giants' hands were twisting my bones. I cried out, but the scream that tore from my throat was no human sound; nor were they human limbs with which I tried to hold myself against the pain. An uproar began among my attackers, and they launched themselves at me in a fury. I took the final step back and plunged toward the water, but the warm sea air caught beneath my wings – my wings! – and bore me upward, a buzzard.

In that form I sheltered for the night beneath a ship's mast, and when the sun rose used its light as guide to take me across the water to my home.

It was with such intense hope that I perceived the towering white cliffs glimmering in the farthest distance of my keen sight. I increased my speed, draining my strength with foolish thoughtless eagerness, never thinking that this small and feathered body of mine could just as easily collapse of exhaustion as could my native form. I would sooner have fallen from the sky than delay by even a moment. The sooner I reached Britannia, the sooner I could find help, be healed. More than that, though, I was becoming aware of an inexorable pull to the West as I neared my home; there was a wholeness waiting for me there that had been absent on the Continent, so thoroughly absent that I had not even been conscious of the lack within myself.

I did not anticipate the turning of the tide. The earth and the moon conspired against me, exerting their mysterious influence upon the roiling grey waters beneath me. The Channel bucked and heaved, its waters surging upward in the grip of Luna's thrall. The same force wound itself about me with all the vehemence of a garrotte, stilling my wings and frantic lungs. Paralysed and helpless, I plunged toward the sea, more in vaguely curious exasperation than in real fear.

I struck the surface of the water with sufficient force that I was rendered insensible, my final thought before unconsciousness being that perhaps death would be an improvement over my current circumstances. Of course I did not die – this I discovered perhaps minutes or hours later when I recovered my senses to find myself washed against the cliffs I had seen from afar, the pounding surf tossing me repeatedly against the stone. I was first aware of lungs filled with water, and was overcome with the desire for air, but the same paralysis was still upon me. For a while, I knew only panic, and rational thought was slow in returning, but it gradually came to me that I should have died quickly, if indeed asphyxiation could have killed me. Of course I could not drown; I should have understood from the start that a corpse hardly can die twice, at least by any ordinary means, and that the inundation of my lungs was more discomfort than danger.

If only I could have changed my form, used human hands to pull myself from the water. But for hours longer, it was impossible; the fading daylight constrained me to remain a buzzard and the tide kept me powerless until well into the night. Finally, finally I was able to shift and drag myself to the top of the desolate cliffs, where I collapsed, my energies spent. Such a lonely place! The nearest human life could have been miles away, and with the slightest error in direction, I might miss it entirely. I knew I had not the strength to run, and there was no chance that I could find for myself a village, fountain of warm blood, before the sun rose. I could feel the flush of my earlier madness seeking to return to me, kept at bay only by the power of that sweet, sacred island soil.

The earth sang to me. I can still hear it sometimes, Britannia's song, eternal and so full of memory and strength that I could not help but be still and listen. It entranced me, silenced my thoughts and stilled my mind, filled me with an ache that overpowered even the burning thirst, the longing to return to that earth. I lay back upon the damp velvet-soft grass and looked up at the sky - a single flickering star was visible between the low clouds – and I allowed myself to be taken, watching the one star until blackness obscured it from my view. The earth rose up around me, or perhaps I descended into it, my limbs grown impossibly heavy with irresistible fatigue. Sleep overcame me, blessedly free of nightmares for the first time since that November. There were no dreams in that strange sleep, but there was remembrance. The history of the soil flowed through me, and for a time I ceased to be myself. What matters the strife of a few short years when compared to aeons? I forgot myself and became lost in the land, pure memory free of emotion. I have since lost much of what I learned there; no one mind can contain it all, but the darkest moments and the brightest have remained with me: the formative fire of creation, blankets of ice, blood and steel and so many lives, shining and brief as meteors, each punctuated by a glorious death. The land remembers each of us forever after we have passed. It preserves something of each of us in its inaudible symphony of time. This I know.

In Britannia's womb, I slept.