It started, innocently enough, with a 1st birthday party. Vicky was one today and her parents, Maud and Edwin, had bought her toys, toys and more toys. She was vaguely aware of the parcels but was more interested in the cake with it's delicate pink icing and solitary candle. The sugar seemed to hypnotise her from across the room.

Once the cake had been eaten and the last cola drunk, they pulled the great heap of parcels towards her. Their faces were already glowing in the reflected glory of being such kind parents.

"Look Vicky what's this ?" Idiot grins on both their mouths "It Dog". And true it was dog, a purple dog, with a row of felt teeth. Present after present was unwrapped and put on the pile, saving what they thought was best till last. It was white, vaguely ball shaped studded with coloured buttons. They flicked a switch and a light ran through each button. Encouraged by the flicker, Vicky reached out and pressed the yellow button "Hello" said an accentless woman's voice.

Vicky jumped as some terror of a person trapped in there ran through her. She reacted in a reasonable manner, opening her mouth and howling. Later when things were calmer and she did not have sixteen different artificial colourants in her body, they reacquainted her with the ball. This time she laughed and clapped her hands, delighted. The parents looked at each other, "What good parents we are" they thought "To help our child learn"

The ball remained her favourite toy, long after the dog had been consigned to the back of the toy cupboard. She seemed to enjoy watching the colours and listening to the sounds above all else. But one day something both scary and strange happened to make them wonder if perhaps she too attached. They heard a scream followed by sobbing that they now recognised marked the beginning of a extreme tantrum. She made no attempt to explain, no half words or muttering, just that ear-splitting screaming and bashing her fist against the green button. Eventually they understood the cause of the distress and the father ran out to get new batteries. As soon as they were fitted and the lights and sounds grew, Vicky clapped delightedly and stopped crying.

Later when they put her to bed they realised that she had hit the toy hard enough to break her skin. She was now 18 months old and all the books that they had read told them that she should be making some attempt at language, even if it was a pidgin English that only parents could understand. But there was nothing. No words, no sounds like words, no attempt to communicate. She still had the ball, grubby as it was, and seemed to understand it but wouldn't attempt to copy as they'd hoped.

They had taken her to the doctor, who in his high handed way had waved away their concerns, no she wasn't deaf and these things could take longer than expected. They had vaguely considered taking the ball away, to kick start her speaking. Having seen the tantrum that she had even now when the batteries ran out they decided against it. It was Maud that noticed, while cleaning the windows on a bright spring morning and Vicky was stood behind her.

"Look Vicky" she said in a too bright voice "What's that ?" She was pointing at the Sun.

"Yellow, Dog" Answered the robotic voice from the ball.

"No, it's the Sun"

"Yellow, Dog"

"Sun"

This time through gritted teeth "Yellow, Dog"

There was a definite stab on the buttons this time and Vicky's lip was beginning to pooch out in a way that spelled trouble. So her mother left it. During that day though she discovered several other phrases. "Blue, Cow" was 'Goodbye' and "2, Green" was either 'Hungry' or 'Food' she wasn't quite sure. She waited for her husband to come home, breathless to tell him that their daughter could speak, albeit in an unorthodox way.

When Edwin came home, he didn't greet the news with happiness but seemed to either think she was making it up or trying to trick him. She lost all patience with him "Well you try then, I tell you it means something"

He looked at Vicky, who was caught halfway between a grin and a frown

"Vicky, what's my name ?"

"Yellow, Car"

"I do drive a car, but it's not yellow. What's my name ?"

"Yellow, Car" More emphatic button pressing.

"Ok then who's this ?" He pointed to his wife

"Red, Red, Cat"

His wife laughed "Well I have been called worse"

But still he didn't smile and she had a feeling that this evening was going to end in an argument. "I'm taking that toy away from her"

"Oh don't, I'm sure it won't last" She partly believed and partly knew the tantrum that would follow.

"No it's the only way, I want your support in this. Have you ever heard her make a sound that wasn't laughter or crying. Ever heard her try to make a word. No ? Neither have I and it stops now." She knew she couldn't win, so she shrugged.

"I'm not being the bad guy, you take it away" As soon as it was out of her hands Vicky began to scream. This continued for the next four days. When she wasn't asleep, exhausted from crying, she screamed and their nerves got more frayed and still she screamed. Finally her mother noticed a thin trickle of blood at the edge of her mouth and knew that she was crying herself raw. She marched into their bedroom, took the toy from the back of the top shelf in their wardrobe.

Edwin opened his mouth to protest, she looked him in the eye and at the top of her voice shouted "Enough'.

Vicky stopped crying as soon as she was given the toy back "Green, Fish, Red, Red, Cat" Somehow Maud knew she meant thank you.

"You're welcome, let's not do that again"

So the years went by and Vicky never did speak. Her button pressing became ever more complex and abstract. Great long sentences of "Cat, Cat, Dog, Fish, Green, Green, Blue" Her mother always seemed to understand exactly what she was trying to say and had elected to tutor her at home, finishing her education qualification that she had abandoned when marriage beckoned.

It was more difficult for her father and he would lose patience after the third "Cat". They bought some stickers and made him a pictogram dictionary of phrases made up of adhesive cats, dogs and colours. They began to realise that they were not alone when the news stories started to appear. First in the more leftfield 'mystery' press and then when Vicky was 7 there was an item on a science programme about a child who was dependent on a toy to speak.

They watched hypnotised as the boy (slightly older then Vicky) tapped out a huge conversation on the very grubby ball he was holding. The item ended too soon and frustratingly they could find nothing else in any of the news archives at the library. They initially wondered if they were the only two families it had happened to. After all the ball had been a fairly new toy when they had bought it and had only been on the market for a couple of years before the company folded leaving no trace. They had previously tried to contact the manufacturer with no success.

Then like a snowball, the news stories gathered speed and six months later they couldn't move for articles about 'Speech Dependency Syndrome' as it had now been named. They waited with excitement for an entire programme on a scientist (Thomas Edel) who claimed to be able to cure the problem. It opened with a now familiar shot of a girl about Vicky's age talking through the ball. A quick voice over established Professor Edel's credentials and panned to him. He began to talk about his idea as to why the dependency was caused and what he did to cure it.

Vicky's parents were feeling hopeful at the point until he opened his mouth again "At the moment though, we only experience a cure in 20% of cases"

Off camera, the interviewer spoke "Can we meet a cured child ?"

"I'm afraid that will not be possible, I must protect their confidence"

"And what of those you cannot cure ?"

"Mostly there is no problem" The camera zoomed in on a catatonic child behind him "However with John, his ball was broken during the treatment. He will not accept another and is unresponsive." The programme closed with a shot of another child and asked where these toys had come from and why they affected such a narrow age range.

"Perhaps" concluded the reporter "we will never know" Vicky's parents then had the biggest fight of their marriage.

"I want to take her to see him"

"He's not coming anywhere near my daughter, she may be strange but I'd rather have that than a vegetable"

The shouting went on for hours until finally in a hoarse voice she said "You insist on this and we'll be gone before you wake up tomorrow" Edwin knew Maud was serious and resentfully he subsided. The next six and a half years passed uneventfully. Vicky grew longer hair and an interest in horses. The ball occasionally broke but there were parent support groups now and you always knew where to get new parts. With the exception of speech, it was a typical childhood.

Then came the first disappearance. At first just a rumour then confirmed through whatever jungle drums were beating. One of the children had gone, taking their entire family with them. No trace could be found of any of them. Vicky's parents hadn't known the child and so didn't worry too much, after all people do disappear. But then there was another empty house, the boy from the first programme, more high profile and still not trace could be found of either family. Like a cork from a bottle, that second missing family released something. There was another disappearance then two then a rash. Children they knew and children they didn't vanishing in a confusion, parents no longer being seen.

They were surrounded by the tight lips and white knuckles of fear. 3 months later a family in the next town had gone, one minute there, the next not. That was just too close. They took a case that they already had packed from under the bed and fled to a cottage owned by Maud's aunt. It was cold when they arrived but they lit the fire and watching the flames the adrenalin of the journey caught up with them. They all made their way to bed and slept better then they had for months.

The next two days were more relaxed, they jumped occasionally when the house creaked but they could hear or see anyone's approach for miles. On the third night they turned in early, the country air making them sleepy not long after sunset. Maud awoke just before 3am. She couldn't explain why but suddenly her heart was in her mouth and she could feel the first flutter of panic. She could hear a low throbbing noise, like the cycle of a huge engine. The noise was coming from Vicky's room.

"Wake up, wake up" Frantically shaking her husband.

"What ?" In a sleep thick voice.

"It's Vicky" She just knew.

Edwin was on his feet in a second and they ran into the adjacent bedroom. There was a dark blue luminescence bathing everything in a rippling undersea light. Maud felt an unpleasant heaviness and pressure and was aware of every hair on her body standing out straight in a huge static charge. Like a thunderstorm on the sea floor. Edwin realised something was hovering in the room.

"Look" he grabbed Maud's arm making them both jump. Vicky floated in the centre of the room, four feet from the floor. She still looked asleep, her head lolling to one side. The light was stronger round her, waves of it licking out to stroke the walls and the floor. In the dim light, Maud could see that Vicky was holding the ball in her hands. It was deflated and folded in on itself. It reminded her somehow of an empty mermaid's purse she had found on the beach.

Then Vicky jerked and her eyes flashed the same blue as the ball, her mouth opened slightly and a huge voice more pressure than sound, like one hundred trumpets all at once, filled the room "Green, Fish, Blue Cow". Maud translated in her head "Thank you, Goodbye"

She felt something wet on her top lip and absently felt with her tongue, blood. She looked towards Edwin, his nose was bleeding too. The sash window in the bedroom flew up and Vicky began to drift towards it. Then like water down the drain, she slipped through. Both her parents ran to the opening and they could see her soaring upwards. High in the sky, more visible by the stars they blocked than any light, they could see many shapes, looping and twisting around each other. The other children.

Still caught in their daughter's swirling current, they stared out of the window at the retreating shape. They could feel the mixture of awe and sadness starting to melt their shock. They now understood the disappearances of the families, parents hiding what had happened. Protecting their children and themselves.