Joe nodded. ‘I think so.’
He took another deep breath, and suddenly he was all right, with an abrupt surge of well-being and confidence. Energy exploded through him, and he stood up and picked Ginny right up from the floor and hugged her.
‘Hey, that was pretty quick work, doc. Good thing you were here.’ He grinned again. ‘This ought to happen more often; I feel great!’ Then his face dropped, became older somehow, his eyes narrowing. ‘It must have been that scene with Alice that set me off,’ he decided. ‘I was all right till that happened. She …’ He broke off, his fingers beginning to tap the arm of the chair again.
‘She got me so pissed off, saying all that stuff about you that I lost my rag completely. I should have …’ (finished her off) ‘… tried to reason with her but by the time I realized that she’d already made a run for it.’ He blinked and rubbed his eyes, thinking for a moment that maybe he didn’t feel quite so good after all. ‘She needs help, Gin,’ he went on, ‘because from what she said to me, your ex-friends have got a hold on her already. She’s swallowed their story, hook, line and sinker. God knows what else they’ve told her.’
Ginny nodded.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘There’s no saying what hold they’ve got on her if she’s at that house; you must get her out, by force if you have to. Reason with her later, when she’s out of there. Get her out of there, the sooner the better.’
Joe frowned, a memory chasing its tail in his mind, just out of reach of conscious recall.
– don’t remember. Did i want to hurt you Alice? –
– shh don’t worry –
– but was i did i? –
‘I don’t want to do anything to hurt Alice,’ he said pensively. ‘Perhaps we should just call the police. She—’
Ginny’s voice was suddenly sharp. ‘She’ll thank you for getting her involved in that, will she? I told you before, those people are selling drugs, they’re making money from all kinds of petty crime. Do you think that the police will believe that Alice isn’t involved? You have to get her away first, or you might as well report her for trafficking yourself.’
Joe sighed. ‘I suppose you’re right, Gin,’ he said wearily. ‘By now they’ll be asleep, and it might be easier to take her unawares; but what if she won’t come? I can’t just …’ His voice trailed off uncertainly and he looked at Ginny for reassurance. For a moment her image swam before his eyes, her bright hair a spray of sparks. His vision blurred, the after-image of her hair printed on his retinas like neon. He shook his head to clear it, hearing his voice from a distance, muted, toneless.
‘I really don’t feel too good,’ he said. ‘Maybe I should see a doctor. I don’t think I’m in good enough shape—’
‘Trust me.’
She smiled up at him. ‘We have to find Alice, remember? And it will be easy, I promise.’ From her shoulder-bag she pulled out a little pouch, unzipped it and showed what was inside to Joe. A syringe, and four little ampoules of something straw-coloured.
Ginny saw Joe’s expression and squeezed his hand reassuringly.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘The hospital gave them to me when I got out. They’re tranquillizers, that’s all. Not big doses, either. One should make her sleepy and suggestible. Two should knock her out completely.’
‘I don’t think—’ began Joe, but she interrupted him again.
‘It would only be a last resort. They won’t hurt her, I promise you that. Otherwise, you might find that she’s hostile and she won’t come with you. All she has to do is to yell once and all the rest of the crowd will come running. Unless you want to face them all …’
Joe paused. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Just as a last resort, though. If nothing else works.’
Ginny smiled up at him. Her eyes were clear and innocent. She handed him the little pouch, carefully zipping it shut again.
‘Here, Joe,’ she told him. ‘You take these.’
One
THEY WERE ALL there, in the flat: Rafe, Java, Anton, Zach, Elaine, all except Rosemary. I had told the others I wanted to hunt on my own, that they should not wait for me. They did not question my decision; they were used to my solitary habits by now, and Elaine, the only person who might have shown interest or suspicion, had ceased to talk since Rosemary had recalled her, and would only sit, dry-eyed in her corner, rocking herself like a frightened child. It was just after midnight. Since ten Turner and I had been hiding in the alley watching, making certain that everything was going according to plan. At eleven Rosemary had come, and had gone again, passing so close to me that I had caught a breath of her scent in the still air, and I had reeled with the closeness of her. But I had held fast, Turner’s arm trembling beneath my touch as he had seen her, and I had known he felt something, too.
He was eager that night, infused with an excitement I knew was born not only of the wine we had both drunk to give us courage. For the first and last time, we were not alone. That night, I was happy.
At midnight, we crept up the stairs to the flat. I was calm, Turner was twitching with anticipation. I went to the door, opened it with my key and went in. I found them, as I had thought, in the bedroom, drinking wine. They had hunted, and they were drowsy, glutted and unsuspecting. Elaine was lying on the bed, her hair spread out on to the pillow like a mermaid’s.
Tick … tick … tick …
I forced myself to sound normal, though my mouth was dry as salt, and my nerves like wires.
‘Sorry I was so long,’ I said. ‘Is there any of that wine left for me?’
Zach held out the bottle by the neck, grinning sleepily. He looked very young to me then, very alien. His beauty was almost more than I could bear, sublimated, too, by the fact that I knew I was going to kill him.
‘I’ll get a glass,’ I said then, and went into the kitchen.
In the kitchen, I found the glass, and put it by the side of the sink. Then I disconnected the stove from the pipe in the wall and turned the mains on full, jamming the gas-tap on. From my pocket I took a little wrench and removed the tap, so that it could not be turned off again. Then, I left the tap in the sink on full so that it would sound as if there were still someone in the kitchen. I can’t even say it was very hard to carry out; we had rehearsed it all every day that week. There was a jangling coldness in my mind as I forced myself to check that the window was shut. Very quietly, I left the flat, and with my key I locked it from the outside, plugging the keyhole so that the door could not be opened. With bated breath we listened at the door, but heard only the muted sound of voices from the bedroom, where I knew the others were waiting, drinking wine and wondering vaguely why I did not come. Then, I took from my pocket a large roll of masking tape, of the kind you use for lagging pipes, and I taped all round the door. I cut the lengths of tape carefully, with a craft knife, trimming it neatly at the edges. I went round the doorframe twice, making sure no air could get in. Then we waited.
This was the critical point: the five minutes or so before the gas began to permeate every part of the flat. If someone had followed me into the kitchen and heard the gas hissing … We listened, Turner shaking silently, his eyes round as an owl’s. No one came. The voices in the background sounded lethargic, casual; a meeting of nineteenth-century British poets discussing art.
I held my breath and waited.
I could hear the ticking of my watch in my pocket, amplified as if under water, every second a step nearer to my salvation.
Tick … tick … tick …
One/Two
ALICE STIRRED, THEN opened her eyes as the torchlight touched her face. Cold and the cramped posture in which she had eventually dropped off to sleep had almost paralysed her, and she twisted round, trying to shake the cold from her limbs.
Joe caught himself thinking, irrelevantly, cloudily – cat’s eyes you’ve got cat’s eyes – of the fairground, of walking hand-in-hand with a younger Alice, neon stars in her eyes.
She stiffened as she saw Joe, sitting up abruptly.
‘What’re you doing here?’ Her voice, still blurred by sleep, was wary; Joe thought he knew why. His gaze travelled to the corners of the room, taking in the bloodstained blankets, the filth, the silver paper and used syringes on the mouldy floorboards. Yes, he thought he understood.
‘Don’t worry, Alice,’ he said, forcing his voice to retain its gentleness.
Alice gave a sharp, dry bark of laughter. Her own quick glance around the room had taken in the silhouette of Ginny, standing still and passive at the door; she spoke to Joe, but without taking her eyes off the girl.
‘It’s happened before, Joe,’ she told him. ‘The hard-luck stories, the little girl lost. She uses it as a cover, so that even if she’s found out, some other poor sap will pay in her place. She’s been doing it just about for ever. Feeding on people, taking their love and their life, making victims of some, monsters of the rest. Can’t you see, Joe? Just look at her. It’s in her face. There’s destruction in her face. If you don’t believe me, there are two dead bodies in the alley out there, and an old man next door who might be dead.’ Cautiously she was beginning to shift her weight on to her feet, ready to spring. Her hand was trembling on the butt of the pistol.
There was a silence, cold and blank as outer space.
Then Joe took a step forwards.
His face was unreadable, his hands, somehow threateningly, in his pockets. ‘Alice,’ he said. ‘You’re ill. I don’t know what bullshit these people have been giving you, or what you’ve been taking, but you’re ill and it shows. I want you to come back home with me. I want you to see a doctor. Get some therapy.’
He took another step, and suddenly he was holding something in his hand – a needle? thought Alice, pulling away.
‘What’s in there?’ she said sharply. ‘Who gave you that syringe?’
‘It’s just something to make you feel better,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t hurt you, would I?’
His voice was infuriatingly calm, like someone talking to a wild animal.
Alice kept her eye on him. She jerked her chin towards Ginny.
‘Did she give you that?’
‘I’m not having you accuse her—’
‘And you believe her,’ said Alice, backing towards the door, and at the same time gently lifting out the old service pistol. ‘Yes, it’s real,’ she said, and stifled a ridiculous urge to laugh. Alice, still not taking her eyes from Joe and the girl, began to turn the door-handle. The laughter was barely restrained now, shaking her at the seams. It was so comic, her with her antique gun, and Joe with that expression on his face, staring … despite herself, she grinned, but even the hysteria felt good.
Suddenly she froze. The laughter died. There were footsteps in the alley.
Alice backed away from the door, fumbling now with the pistol, trying to work out how to fire it. Surely, there must be a safety-catch somewhere … hell, she didn’t even know if there were any bullets in it.
She was still fumbling when the door swung open, and the nightwalkers came in.
Alice was able to look at them coldly, and was conscious of a savage glee as she remembered why Rafe and Elaine were missing.
‘Joe,’ she said. ‘Be careful.’
Java gave her a single glance and turned to Ginny. ‘The other two are dead,’ he told her. ‘Shot by the old man.’ He aimed another glance at Alice. ‘I slit the old fool’s throat,’ he said. ‘He won’t bother us again.’
Alice felt rather than saw Joe flinch by her side in the darkness as she backed away. She was aware of the three figures blocking her exit, and the slight form of Ginny standing at the door behind her. She moved towards the inner door, easing her steps over the broken glass, cans and rubbish scattered everywhere. To get to the back of the room Alice had to pass Joe, so close that she almost touched him; and remembering his attack on her in the house, and the fact that he still had a syringe which certainly didn’t contain Lucozade, she edged past him with wary caution. But Joe was uncertain; she could feel his confusion as she brushed by him in the semi-darkness. He had dropped the torch, which now shone in a narrow arc against the doorway, lighting Java’s boots and making giant shadowplay of the nightwalkers on the ceiling.
‘Alice?’ His voice rose waveringly. ‘What old man? Alice!’ For an instant he reverted to the old Joe as he took a step forwards and half-fell on some slippery debris. ‘Shit! What the hell is all this?’
But no one was paying any attention to him. As he spoke, Alice made a dash for the inner door, pushing past Ginny to disappear into the passage. Java and Zach followed her, but not too quickly, their boots crunching the debris underfoot.
‘She won’t get very far,’ said Java. ‘Anton, watch the door. Zach, with me.’
Joe’s voice, faint and thin, ‘Alice?’
A tunnel of blackness, a fathom deep, as Alice crashed her way through darkness to the stairs. Panic surged through her, as she fled up them. For a moment she could almost have believed herself to be flying against that wind, a wild witch with her hair in her eyes and a magic at her fingertips which could at one gesture harness the wind.
‘Dammit, what the hell was that?’
Alice slipped back into the jerky motion of panic with a conscious jolt. What had she been thinking? She seemed to remember, with an elusive visionary quality, a sensation of …
– destiny
– rapture
– space, speed.
It was a feeling of being so much more than Alice, that for an instant she had been beyond fear. She turned a corner of the staircase, the palms of her hands slick around the butt of the pistol, pushed open a door at her back and stepped backwards into the dark. She had no power; all she had was her intelligence and the gun. Those feelings were just illusions to confuse her. Suddenly the room seemed much bigger than she had expected; in the gloom Alice found that she could make out an unbroken window, the curtains drawn back to reveal a lighted square of window, moonlight reflections on a table, a candlestick, a pack of cards spilled across a patch of light as she pulled the door closed behind her. There were footsteps on the stairs by now; she could hear the sound of boots on the hollow wood, of voices remote, tinny, like the soundtrack of an old film. A snatch of music, half imagined on the rushing of the black wind, the wild jangle of a merry-go-round. A wheel turn – against the sky; a wheel turn – the sky under the façade of blue.
Footsteps on the landing; Alice levels the pistol. A slash of light underneath the door, bisected by the shadows of someone’s feet.
Tick …
tick …
‘Gas leak! Gas leak!’
Turner’s voice had sufficient authority, even after what had happened, to rouse the few other residents from their beds; the smell of gas was enough to do the rest, and in a few minutes we had cleared the building, Turner making certain that no would-be heroes joined us in the house as I took the petrol-can and sprayed the third floor with its contents. I was taking no risks; there would be no recalling those charred bodies. No sound from the room, only a rushing emptiness, like a black wind, from behind the door, like the sea heard through a shell. I mopped my handkerchief in the petrol, took out my lighter and turned to go down the stairs, my heart ticking away my frozen thoughts like a razor against stone.
The black wind intensifies, a whisper of ice-cold music in a deserted gallery, a long-dead minstrel with a lute of hair and bone sings songs of hate under a black moon. I knew she was there before I even saw her, felt her breath in my ears as I spun to her measure and saw her face.
God, her face!
Rapture.
Tick …
tick …
Joe staggers and puts his hand to the wall to steady himself, his night-vision slowly reasserting itself above the glimmer of his mind’s eye. For a moment he is still, allowing the world to stabilize, trying to think rationally. Java’s words keep returning.
I slit the old fool’s throat.
The silhouette of a beggar-child against the door, like a thin go
blin sentinel, pale refracted light shining on his white face. Ginny, her hair incandescent in the dimness, staring into the dark with eyes like tunnels. To Joe she seems without substance, a statue of glass and smoke. He brushes her hand in the dark, but she does not respond. He understands dimly that wherever she is, she is not there.
‘Ginny?’ His cry is almost inaudible. Ginny remains motionless, intent. With a terrible effort he forces his frozen body into motion again, the dark pressing on him like stone. A spike of panic drives through the soles of his feet as he passes the threshold and feels the cold breath of the beggar-child on his neck; but it has been left to guard the door, and though its hunger grins and gibbers at him it stays, obedient. The kitchen is cauldron-black, and he strains his eyes against the dark as he feels his way between obstacles towards the huddle of blankets underneath the window. There is a fetid smell of old dust and mould and sickness, horrible sickness, sickness like the smell of the hospital where his grandpa died, like the smell of the old balloon-lady at the fair. An old terror, half-buried from childhood, takes him by the throat; he gags with the fear of it, begins to feel his throat tighten. A dream, or the memory of a dream, comes back to him so clearly that for a moment he forgets who he is and where he is.
Tick …
tick …
t—
The door opens and Alice lifts the pistol, pausing only because she thinks it might be Joe. Light floods the room, a carnival light in a dozen bright colours, pink, blue, yellow, green. A sharp hot scent in the air like peanuts and roasting apples and the slick sugary scent of candy-floss. For a second she forgets where she is, almost who she is; looks down at herself and sees (dirty jeans torn at the knees, blood in the creases in her palms, sweatshirt grimed with soot, the gun held uneasily in a shaking hand) her clean Indian skirt, the ends of her flowing dark hair brushing her shoulders. The disorientation intensifies for a moment; Alice frowns, trying to remember – a hand falls on her shoulder, a kindly voice speaks.
‘Come on now, Alice. It’s all right, you just freaked out for a minute.’
The Evil Seed Page 27