"Father! NO! No! Don't....don't bury me! I'm not dead...not dead! Father!" she screamed. Thrashing her arms in desperate protest. Pounding hard at her coffin lid. Feeling out the tight confines of the satin lining."Please, NO!"

Bloody bile rose in her throat. Only in that instant upon waking, as she gasped violently for air, did it become obvious to Martha that she was cold and on the floor of her Haven beside her bath.

Goodness...goodness me...that...was awful...

...Will they call?...

That voice...who is here? Will who call?

Martha looked about for any ghost...any intruder. There appeared to be none obvious, but her sheets and bed linen were strewn about her bathroom refuge. Martha looked to find her nightgown in immodest disarray. Her hair in disorder. Skin pale from shock and lack of any effort to simulate life. Shaken by the nightmare her eyes were wide. Martha tried to focus her mind as she struggled to stand. She instantly fell over. A hard thump against the toilet water cistern. She moaned as she tried to make sense of her surroundings; gripped what remained of her leg and rubbed at her head where she had struck it against the cistern.

Fangs emerged in that moment of pain and surprise.

...coming up next after the break...

This was the fourth nightmare this week. The nightmares were interesting on Tuseday; bizarre on Wednesday and disturbing by Thursday. Tonight's had left her feeling hollow, uncertain and shaken. On Wednesday, worried about sleepwalking, she had taken the precaution of sleeping in the bath.

...what you got under your shirt,
will make them pay for the things that they did...

Though awake the unfamiliar sounds outside...the Voices were everywhere...everywhere...her intense headache...and the heat in the room suggested, through the fog of confusion, that it was still daylight outside.

...el balón se fue por el camino...

Ball? What ball? Who's ball?

...someone'll bleed...

For a moment – just for a moment – she wasn't even sure if she was a vampire. Or was that merely an echo of Friday's nightmare?

Martha lay there and closed her eyes. The cacophony of Voices was everywhere. Not just outside. Inside. Inside: deep and amplified. Louder than jet aeroplanes...louder than the large transport vehicles she hated so much...louder than the occassional poolside party at appartment 7...

Trying to understand the Voices and their origin, Martha ransacked her memory and gave some thought to an old topography manual on measuring local disturbances to a magnetic compass: A simple way to detect, not measure, such disturbances is to take frequent back azimuths. If the position of the needle is normal at both stations, the azimuth and back azimuth will differ by 180. If there is local attraction on the course, it will usually be stronger or cause a greater deflection at one station than at the other, and the azimuth and back azimuth will not differ by 180.

This surely qualifies as a disturbance! Setting a half empty bottle of purple bubble bath in the middle of the bathroom floor, Martha crawled around it. Her long cotton nightgown trailing, her knee and hands keeping her off the floor as she drowsily traced a careful clockwise circular path.

Turning herself into a compass...or an antenna? She stopped often along her narrow diameter and imaginary circumference, she tried to vector her thoughts towards the nearby First Baptist Church...testing for the Voices.

Another way is, when taking the bearing to a station, to select a well-defined point beyond and on the same course. On arriving at the new station take a bearing from there to the selected point ahead. If it is the same as the first bearing to that point, there probably is no local disturbance. If the two bearings to the same point differ, there probably is local disturbance.

She followed the instructions. Testing for any external sources...searching for bearings and azimuth...grasping to understand.

...truck of the year...It's obvious...Get the upgrade...Put that down!...the Holy Spirit Moves...and starring Robert De Niro...

The Voices became an endless babble. A constant re-tuning of a radio dial. Impossible to isolate.

Fighting the sleep Daytime induced. Her science faltered as her thoughts turned to father...home...the grand family tombs...her fangs...

Eyes closed against the heat; the noise and pain. Confused and disorientated, Martha eased up her nightgown.

What on earth is happening?

She lay back down on the floor of the bathroom. Her tiny hands rubbed harder at her maimed leg and timidly examined her sharp white fangs.

Neither action helped give her mind any peace.