The Evil Seed

by Joanne Harris

  Again, the soothing music, as Alice was put on hold. Tapping her fingers irritably on the side of the receiver, she waited, all the while keeping her eyes on the box in which she had filed all Daniel Holmes’s writings.

  ‘Hello. Menezies speaking.’

  ‘Good morning. It’s Alice Farrell; maybe you remember speaking to me the other day.’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  Alice hesitated. ‘I’d like to arrange for us to meet. I have a problem I’d like to discuss.’

  ‘I see. Perhaps you’d like to give me some idea of the nature of your problem before we meet?’

  ‘I’d rather make an appointment.’

  ‘I have a slot at half past twelve.’

  ‘Fine.’ Alice was relieved. ‘That’ll be fine.’

  ‘Right. Well, if that’s all …’

  ‘Wait.’ Alice took a deep breath, marshalling her energy. ‘Who did you say was the doctor who died recently? Doctor Pryce?’ A long silence from the other end of the phone.

  ‘Hello?’

  Menezies’ voice, sharp and maybe wary. ‘If you’re from the press, you’re wasting your time. I don’t give interviews.’

  ‘I’m not from the press. I just want some help,’ said Alice firmly. ‘Why? Is there any problem? Is it something to do with Doctor Pryce?’

  Another long pause. Then his voice, cool and remote. ‘I’ll see you at twelve-thirty,’ he said.

  One

  I COULD NOT remain in my lodgings any longer, for fear that Mrs Brown, who knew me too well, might comment on my changed manner, and so as soon as I arrived home I locked myself in my room and began to plan my escape. First, I bathed thoroughly and burned my bloodstained shirt; an expensive habit, no doubt, but my sense of self-preservation took over and planned, coldly, my new life with all the precision of a man born to the ways of Cain.

  By now I was beginning to feel light-headed again; remember, I had hardly slept, I had seen more in twenty-four hours than I ever imagined in all of Heaven and Hell; and the knowledge I acquired on the way was written across my face. Looking at myself in my old mirror, I saw a half-stranger, unshaven and hollow-cheeked, eyes brimming with the light of power, frightening and … yes, oddly beautiful. I smiled at myself, noting a hitherto undiscovered sensuality about my mouth, a savage carelessness which had not been there before. I remembered Rafe, and how like an angel he had appeared to me under the bridge. Did I look like him now? I thought. Now that I was chosen? I turned away from the mirror, went to the cupboard, found the bottle of whisky and a mug. I poured myself a good two inches of undiluted whisky, drank it in one draught, like medicine, and set about my packing.

  There was not very much of this; a trunk of clothes and books was everything I needed to take, but my problem was really to make good my departure without having to meet Mrs Brown. I was afraid that if my landlady confronted me with my bizarre behaviour I might weaken; fortunately for me, she was out, and I contrived easily enough to have a cab remove my belongings to another part of town in her absence. I left a note for her, as well as two five-pound notes in an envelope in thanks for everything she had done for me; and by the late afternoon I was already settled in my new apartment by the Cam, a suite of three rooms on the top floor of a three-storey house. There were three other lodgers there besides myself, as the surly landlord vouchsafed. Having set eyes on the man I guessed, rightly, that as long as my rent was on time, and I did not disturb the peace, any strange habits of mine would pass unnoticed. I settled down on my bed and slept.

  My rest was poor; I was troubled by dreams and memories worse than dreams, and though my eyelids were heavy with lack of sleep, it hurt to close my eyes, as if the memories which resided behind them had turned to broken glass beneath the flesh. In my moments of wakefulness my eyes were sore and crusted, and when, in the early evening, I rose and turned on the light, the brightness of it was more than I could bear, and I had to sit in near-darkness for almost half an hour before the discomfort abated.

  By this time, I was hungry, and knowing that there would be nothing available for me to eat at that hour, I prepared to go out.

  Having dressed with care, and shaved, I made my way to a small restaurant I knew on King’s Parade. I chose it particularly because my friends rarely frequented it. I ordered drinks, followed by a rare steak, and sat back in a comfortable chair and looked around. Despite the bland normality of the place, I had an odd sensation of unreality, as if the little restaurant were simply a theatrical set, with sinister engineers working behind the scenes; I imagined wheels turning behind closed doors, the familiar sounds and smells and sights of the Cambridge evening outside a cover for the machinery of another, darker world. I sipped my drink quietly, waited for the world to return to focus, but the sensation intensified … not an altogether unpleasant sensation, and yet it disturbed me. Two people passed the window – a young man and a girl, faces pallid in the greenish light of the street-lamps. I saw them for a moment only, but their image remained fixed in my mind for several moments after they had passed; the young man turned towards the girl, she fixing her gaze demurely on the ground. For an instant, I seemed to see, with this newly acquired vision, the bone and muscle beneath their skin, the movement of the machinery of their bodies, occult and silent capsules of sinew and blood.

  The thought chilled me; suddenly I was appalled at myself. I told you I had never been fanciful; these thoughts seemed not to be my own, but those of someone else, some incubus with a sense of humour. I turned my thoughts to the arrival of my steak, red and steaming in a pool of rich juices; the waiter set the plate down in front of me, smiled in the absent way waiters do, and left me to my meal. I set to eating with a hearty appetite, inhaling the rich subtleties of the meat as I cut and swallowed without even chewing, feeling the power return to my weakened body and my traumatized mind. That was all I needed, I thought to myself in satisfaction, just a good meal to set me to rights again. Rosemary and the others seemed very far away now, very unreal. Inconceivable that I had seen so much, suffered and experienced more than a normal man may in a whole life. I even began to doubt the happenings of that night; suspecting that the powerful hallucinogen administered to me by Rafe might have been responsible for those bloody, joyful visions.

  The world sideslipped again with a lurch. I looked down at my plate, at the meat, the blood, and suddenly the sight of that blood sickened me. I remembered that other blood, so fragrant and lavish, how it had pulsed, how it had sprayed wantonly, generously – the acidic, metallic taste of the open wound. Human flesh was whiter than beef, I thought inconsequentially, but still there was a kindred among cattle.

  Strange, that my horror should not be of the crimes I had committed; maybe they were too much for my scrambled mind to understand. The fact that I had fed on the murdered body of a woman before she was cold seemed unreal, distant; I felt only the vague dislocated guilt I might have felt on remembering a perversely sexual dream. No, what frightened me more than I can say, what still frightens me, was the fact that such things exist, behind the still façade of humdrum life. There was a whole world of scurrying life behind the scenes, once glimpsed, never forgotten, and I was a part of it now, inescapably caught in its busy machinery. I felt as if, in the middle of a ride on the big wheel of a fairground, I had happened to look downwards, and had seen the exposed organs of the mechanism which bore me, or as if I had seen the painted sky peeled back to reveal God, like a giant puppet-master, surrounded by the wheels and pulleys which keep the stars in place, grinning down at the Earth and holding the sun in place like a sleeping yo-yo.

  I pushed my plate away, unable to eat any more. My heightened awareness taunted me with new and horrific sensations; I felt the warmth of the meat on my plate calling to the warmth of my belly where, even now, the unseen machinery was converting what I had eaten into faeces. I felt, for a loathsome instant, the boiling of bacteria in my intestines, the death of millions of cells in my brain even as I thought. And I saw myself, as if
through a grotesquely magnifying lens: one moment infinitely large, the atoms of my body rushing away through space at the speed of light to the vast dark forges at entropy’s end, the next, infinitely tiny, endlessly dying, a mote on a mote in darkness, helpless and lost, infinitely far from God.

  I reeled, disorientated, and in that moment everything returned to normal once more: the restaurant, the dim light of the candle in front of me, the fragrance of the meat, the red wine in the glass. A moment of limbo, and I could hardly even remember my previous unease, as I cut into my steak once more and ate with satisfyingly primitive joy. I was chosen.

  I ordered fruit and cake and more wine, then coffee and brandy to finish. I asked the waiter for a paper, and read the Evening Post for a quarter of an hour or so, noticing with some satisfaction that the body in the crypt had not yet been discovered. Even the ‘Body in the Weir’ case had been relegated to third-page status, with no new developments except that Scotland Yard were still at work investigating the cause of death. I scanned the rest of the paper for news of the previous night’s activities in the tavern, and eventually located the report, half a dozen lines on the fourth page entitled BLAZE KILLS TWO. Obviously the fire the others had lit to cover their traces had fooled the police, at least temporarily. Feeling very much more master of myself, I paid my bill, took my coat and hat, and began to walk back to my new rooms, taking the path along the river, enjoying the carelessness of the moment, the quiet sounds of the Cam and the darkness of the path. I was not at all tired, though by now it was late, and I was not usually given to late nights, and I think that as I opened the door of my room I might have been planning to do some of my research while I waited for sleep, but as soon as I stepped through the doorway, all thoughts of books fled my mind. Even as I reached for the light, the voice stopped me, a voice shockingly feeble and hoarse, but still uncannily familiar.

  ‘Danny. Don’t put the light on … it’s me.’

  I squinted in the darkness, took off my glasses to see more clearly, made out a pale, unformed shape to my left.

  ‘Robert?’

  No answer, but a kind of creaking, choking sigh.

  ‘Robert, are you all right?’

  That ghastly sound again, accompanied by a scraping, shuffling sound from the direction of the bed. I was unused to the room, in addition, I had drunk far more than I was accustomed to; I struck a table in the gloom as I tried to move towards my friend, lost my balance and almost fell over a fold in the carpet.

  ‘How did you find me? Are you in trouble?’

  Something like a sob in the dark.

  I reached him at last; from what I could feel, he was half lying on the bed, fully clothed. He reached for my hand. He was very cold. A faint medicinal smell clung to his clothes, mingled with a much stronger reek of whisky. I put my arms around him and held him like a child; all the while wondering desperately what Rosemary had told him. That this was somehow her doing, I did not doubt; only she could have reduced him to this state. Robert was a light-hearted, practical man with a firm hold on reality and on himself; but I had long since realized that he was not strong. One glimpse of what I had been allowed to see in those past twenty-four hours would have been enough to annihilate him; somehow, I had adapted, and for the first time in all our acquaintance, our roles were reversed. He clung to me, his breath jerking painfully, and I rocked him like a child, trying to think of some way to calm and reassure him. Whatever happened, I told myself, he must not suspect the truth; he must not learn about Rosemary, though whether I wished to protect him or her, I did not yet know.

  I rocked him until the rigidity left his body, whispered inanities while all the time I planned and calculated my approach.

  ‘Had a bit to drink, eh? That’s better. Hold on. I’ll make us a pot of coffee.’ I stood up without difficulty (my eyes had by now acclimatized to the darkness), went to the sink, lit a small lamp there. I ran some water into the kettle, opened the door again to go to the kitchenette.

  ‘Don’t go!’ Robert’s voice was trembling.

  ‘It’s all right, old chap, I’ll be back in a tick,’ I said. ‘I’ll bring us a pot of coffee, you’ll see, that’ll make you feel better.’

  When I returned I found him slightly more under control. He was sitting in one of my armchairs, his back to the light. His hat was lying on the floor beside him. He looked as if he had been crying; even in that dim light his face was blotchy, and his hands, clasped on his lap, were restless.

  ‘Thanks, old chap,’ he said, with an effort. ‘Good of you to salvage the wreck. I’m all right now.’ I turned to light the fire, which had gone out in my absence. In the piling of coal and paper, the striking of matches, the fanning of the flames with the bellows, and the final deft poker-work which set the flames crackling merrily, Robert had time to collect himself still more, and when I turned to him again he was sitting upright in his chair, and his face, though drawn and rather pale, was almost back to normal again. I poured coffee for both of us, knowing that this sequence of normal, everyday gestures – lighting the fire, spooning out sugar and passing milk – was reassuring my friend better than any words I could have spoken.

  ‘Now then,’ I said, when I had judged that the coffee and the warm fire had begun to take effect, ‘why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?’ I smiled, and passed a tin of biscuits. ‘Help yourself.’

  Robert shook his head. ‘Thanks.’ He took another sip of the strong coffee (he drank it black, with a lot of sugar), then set the cup down. ‘I’m sorry, Dan,’ he said, in a more normal tone. ‘I’ve been a fool. I’ve behaved very badly to you over all this, and I hope you’ll accept my apology.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘There’s no need. Now why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?’

  He nodded, began to speak, paused. ‘I don’t know where to begin,’ he said, ‘or whether you’ll believe me when I’ve told you. It all sounds completely mad.’

  ‘You’d be surprised at what I can believe,’ I said.

  ‘All right,’ said Robert, and as the fire died down, I heard his tale in snatches, incoherently but only too familiar. I listened in silence, only prompting occasionally and it was then, listening to that tragic little story, that I reached a decision which was to influence all my later actions, and may still cost me my life. Chosen or not, I had a loyalty to my friend, and I would keep faith with him. I would protect him, even from her. Even from Rosemary. Though at that moment, I still had no idea of where that decision would lead me, and into what fateful realms I would have to travel before I could call my soul my own again.

  From the very first moment, Robert said, Rosemary had bewitched him. Robert was very much a ‘man’s man’; with his public-school, army and university background he had had little contact with women, and revealed himself to be surprisingly innocent, an ideally susceptible candidate for Rosemary’s special kind of seduction. He had never been in love before, nor had he ever thought he was the type, but he realized immediately that Rosemary was the woman he would love for ever, and though he was torn at the thought of stealing her from me (for he knew how much I had been dazzled by her), he hoped that I would not bear him a grudge. In her taunting way, she had led him to believe that she could love him, and there had followed a few weeks of idyllic happiness. He had forgotten everything but Rosemary, working at the university with growing reluctance, ceasing to write, neglecting his friends. I guessed how cleverly she had contrived to isolate him from the world, to make him wholly dependent on her; that was how she worked, eliminating everything which might interfere with her domination of his life, setting herself up as his witch and his icon. Her mystery tantalized him; sometimes she failed to arrive at their meetings, and when he demanded an explanation for this, she would simply look at him from her bruise-coloured eyes and say, ‘There are things in my life that you will never imagine or know.’

  Sometimes, as their intimacy deepened, he began to glimpse new facets of her. On certain days she would not leave her rooms, ref
using to see even him, and occasionally, when he came to see her regardless and would not go away until he had seen her, her face was unaccountably pale and drawn, as if she had not slept, and her movements were sluggish, almost drunken. She never gave any reason for her strange behaviour or her mysterious illnesses, but looked at him with those sad, steady eyes, and told him that he would never understand.

  He grew jealous – then angry. He made promises and broke them immediately, was tormented by jealousy and the fear of losing her. When he glimpsed her one evening in the company of two men, his jealousy knew no bounds: he challenged her to deny that she had a lover. She ordered him out of her house. For a whole week, he was racked by guilt and shame at what he had told her; he tried to find her, but was told by her landlady that she had moved away.

  Robert began to feel afraid; he became convinced that Rosemary had committed suicide in her despair at his rejection. He began to haunt the river, he drank far more than he ought, both in public houses and at home, advertised in the papers for information concerning her – all without success. Six weeks had passed already, and Robert was in a state of near-breakdown. He was afraid to come and see me in case I blamed him for his treatment of Rosemary; such was his sense of guilt that when he saw me on the bridge, and later, when I found him in the tavern, he was unable to tell me anything. He slept little, ate less, and was willing to do anything to ensure her return.

  She knew it, of course.

  He found her late one night in a cheap drinking house, looking ill and dazed. Her glorious hair was loose and tangled, her face thinner and paler than ever. Her dress was grey, enhancing her frailty and her wraithlike appearance, her head thrown back against the greasy wall and her eyes closed. Robert felt his heart turn to water, and for a moment he was paralysed, scarcely able to believe that he had found her at last. His next reaction was panic; she looked so ill, so wretched. He took her back to his rooms; she was unresponsive, as if she had suffered a shock, or taken an overdose of some hallucinogen. She was barely able even to walk, and he half-carried her up the stairs, laid her on the bed, and forced hot coffee between her white lips until she seemed to recover a little.