The air in the abandoned swimming baths was clammy and close, and there was a sickly, almost opulant scent which was far from pleasant. As Garvey's torch speared the darkness his skin prickled with the smothering heat the permeated the crumbling building.
Then he saw the girl.
She was young and naked, but his eye was drawn irresistibly towards the child she nursed at her breast, its suckered limb clasped around her body, its sac-like body squirming in the dimly-lit chamber...
The Madonna
The Forbidden[]
A University student named Helen Buchanan is doing a thesis on graffiti, and selects run-down Spector Street estate to focus her study. She notices disturbing graffiti in an abandoned building that makes references to some sort of mythical figure, known locally as the Candyman. Further enquiries lead her to believe this is connected with recent murders and mutilations in the neighbourhood, although the locals are seemingly reluctant to discuss the incidents. She eventually encounters the Candyman himself, gaining notoriety by becoming his latest victim. This book was later adapted and made into the movie Candyman.
The Madonna[]
A man named Jerry is trying to talk a local shady businessman Ezra Garvey into financing the redevelopment of an old swimming pool complex. However, the swimming pool has some mysterious inhabitants in the form of nude teenage girls who flee should Jerry or his would-be financial backer encounter them. Ezra discovers a swimming pool in the centre is, unlike the other pools in the building, full, and glows with a strange light and appears to be inhabited by some misshapen life-form. Ezra leaves and finds himself changing under his skin, he is remade as a woman before his eyes. He mutilates his new body and collapses dead into the river Thames. Days later Jerry finds himself back at the abandoned pool and encounters The Virgin Mother, a creature producing offspring which the young girls are nursing. He is drawn to one of the girls and makes love with her, as the door closes behind him. The next morning he awakes to find his body also now has the wrong sex - he has been remade as a woman overnight. He heads back to the pool looking for answers, but finds no girls, no Madonna, only the central pool emptying itself into a glowing opening. He leaves the rest of his life behind and throws himself in.
Babel's Children[]
After breaking down in the middle of nowhere, a young woman happens across a secluded compound in which the world's greatest minds, a group of elderly scientists and scholars, are responsible for determining the outcome of major world events. They have lived in the complex for many years and by this point their decisions have degenerated to being made solely via games of chance. Chaos ensues when the woman and the men seek to flee the compound. They end up getting in a car accident and all the elders are killed with the exception of the single one who refused to go along. The woman is forced to participate in the games of chance with him until replacements can be found.
In The Flesh[]
A career criminal named Cleve has a new cellmate, a mysterious young man called Tait who admits that he committed a crime with the sole intention of coming to this particular prison. Tait believes he has been summoned there by his grandfather, a supposedly powerful sorcerer, who is buried in the jail having been executed for murder years before. Cleve is later haunted by dreams in which he is in a form of purgatory for murderers, where killers are obliged to spend some portion of their after life in a replica of the scene of their crime. In the end, Tait vanishes from his cell. His grandfather's coffin is exhumed and found to contain Tait curled up next to his dead grandfather. Once released, Cleve finds that he can now hear thoughts, as long as they revolve around killing people. He becomes disillusioned with humanity and later commits a murder himself. He is shot dead by the police and soon finds himself in the murderer's purgatory he previously saw in his dreams.