And there were the dreams. Every now and then Paul would dream of a small hand, facing him, apparently not moving, but gradually growing larger and larger, and coming closer and closer to him, until it hovered over him like an enormous cloud, coming closer and closer, reaching him and pushing down on him, squashing him into the earth, making pain throb through his mind.
Paul could see that his wife was weakening in health, physical and mental. Sometimes she didn't seem to know what she was doing; she would start a household chore and forget to finish it. Then she would walk about the house with a frightened expression on her pale face.
Then one night there was a murder. A teenage boy was reported to have been strangled in his bed. Murder was unusual enough in the small English village where they lived, but it was not until the coroner's report came out that the really strange aspects of the case were known. The hands that killed the boy were those of a woman, and, furthermore, according to the marks found on the neck, the hands had not actually squeezed tightly enough to strangle him. Then the autopsy revealed the horrible truth. The boy literally had no brains. There was an empty space inside his skull where his brain should have been, and there was no possible way it could have been removed.
About this time, Veronica's hands seemed to become even more independent of the rest of her body. They seemed to possess an intelligence of their own. Paul was reluctant to see any connection between them and the strange murder, until it happened again. They were sitting in the living room reading, when suddenly Veronica sat up, closed her eyes and appeared to go into a trance. Paul watched, hardly daring to move, as her hands, little by little, lost their rosy pinkness, leaving a pale white hue. It was as if the actual hand had gone away, leaving its dead flesh dangling limply on the end of a living arm. The whole performance lasted less than a minute. Soon the blood rushed back into the hands, and Veronica came out of her trance, only to fall on her knees and cry helplessly, until Paul lifted her up and carried her to her bed, where she slept until the morning.
The murder happened at the same time as the act Paul had witnessed. Another person was found, apparently strangled and then discovered to be brainless. Paul could only conclude that his wife's hands, which now seemed to possess an intelligence of their own, had something to do with these two horrible deeds.
It happened three more times in the next week. By this time the village was becoming quite alarmed, and many were moving away into the big city or other villages, in the hope of escaping a weird and horrible death. The change in Veronica was quite noticeable. She was very pale and weak, and her hands now seemed to lead her about wherever they wanted her to go. After a long struggle with himself, Paul made up his mind that it was up to him to put an end to it. Maybe it would be called murder. Perhaps he would lose his life. How could he explain in court the reason for killing an apparently innocent woman. How could he prove that she had anything to do with the strange deaths?
Eight people had already died by the time he made his decision. She was just going into her trance for the ninth time when Paul took a large knife and stabbed her in the back, killing her almost immediately. He lifted her body and carried it to the couch where he sat staring at it, dazed at the thought of what he had done. Then he began to stare more intensely. Something was happening. All the colour was coming back into her cheeks and she seemed to be more alive than she had been before he had killed her. But her hands, her beautiful hands, were shrinking, shrivelling up and turning a dark brown colour. There they hung like ghastly claws, completely alien to the body they were attached to, like the hands of a monstrous demon, twitching and writhing horribly in front of Paul's gaze. Then, one after the other, first the left, then the right, they dropped off and fell to the floor, leaving the end of each arm perfectly covered with a layer of skin, as if that was the place where the limb actually ended. Paul's eyes moved to the five-legged monsters wriggling about on the floor, and watched them jump up and run out of the room, one after the other.
Paul was so shocked that he drank a whole bottle of whisky before he could erase these amazing events from his consciousness and was able to sleep.
It was about four o'clock in the morning when he had the dream. Or was it a dream? It was so vivid, so clear. He could see a small hand facing him, apparently not moving, but gradually growing larger and larger, and coming closer and closer to him, until it hovered over him like an enormous cloud, coming closer and closer, reaching him and pushing down on him, squashing him into the earth, making pain throb through his mind. Then he felt a sharp jerk inside his head, opened his mouth to scream - and died.
Paul and Veronica were found dead the next morning. Like the other victims, Paul was found to have no brain. But this time there was something else. His wife was found to be not brainless but handless, and with a large knife stuck in her back.
For a week after this new incident a large number of the villagers left, scared by the strange events. But then the exodus stopped suddenly and no news at all was heard from the village. Quite soon it was found that no one who went to the village ever returned. Officers were sent to investigate, but they also were never seen again. Planes flying over the area saw no signs of life at all.
Six months later the brain-disappearances started again, this time much more frequently, starting in little villages, then spreading right across England. Occasionally there were also reports of ugly little hands seen scuttling about, but nobody took these reports very seriously. The strange epidemic spread so quickly that many people left England as soon as they could. It was just like the migration from the little village where Paul had lived, but on a much wider scale. It stopped suddenly as before, and all communication with Britain ceased. No human would ever walk again on English soil. It was the first land to go in the four horrible years which followed, the four years in which the world of humans died.
* * *
Panic grew throughout the planet as the word was spread.
"Earth has attacked! Earth has attacked!"
The inhabitants began to flee from the area in which the fleet from Earth had landed. Armies were called out to fight the Earth creatures. But what could be done to stop these ugly monsters, little monsters with five legs, which attacked sleepers at night, stealing their brains, to increase their own intelligence and knowledge until the intelligence took the place of their flesh, so that they could use the extra matter to make more of their species? Nothing could be done against the things which were spreading throughout the universe to conquer all inhabited planets, to increase their number, and the intelligence of the one mind which governed them all. All life was doomed to a cruel fate, extermination at the hands of the Earth creatures, the five-legged monsters, the hand-people.
