by Amy Cross
By the time I reach the door to the child's room, his screams are almost unbearable. I swear, the wood is almost vibrating with the force of his agony.
“He is eleven years old,” explains the man, one of several members of the household who have followed me up the stairs. “As a newborn, he was torn from his mother's breast. She had attracted Freeman's attention, which is always fatal, and the monster chose to make the child watch while he...”
His voice trails off, and I turn to him. “While he tortured and killed the mother?”
“She was my sister,” he continues, with tears in his eyes. “It's said her screams could be heard for miles around, even... Well some say they heard her crying out even after she'd died. Eventually Freeman rode back this way and deposited the child in my wife's arms. He told her we should be grateful, he said he'd shown the child the true nature of its mother's perversion and that as godly people we should have no trouble raising the boy properly.” He pauses, his face twitching a little as if the continued screams have induced some kind of permanent physical nervousness in his soul. “Poor Joseph hasn't stopped crying out since, not really. He barely even sleeps. Whatever he saw while Freeman was killing my sister, it has scarred him for life.”
“That's why you must kill him,” the man's wife adds, leaning past him and staring at me with wide, wild eyes. “None of us can do it, but you, a stranger...” She holds out a dagger for me to take. “Just make it quick. End his misery.”
Staring at her, I realize that she means every word that she says. She actually expects me to commit cold-blooded murder.
“It's not Joseph's fault,” the man continues, “that his mother was a witch.”
“That his -” I turn back to him, horrified by his claim. “Don't tell me you actually believe what Freeman said!”
“Say what you want about him,” he replies, “but Nykolas Freeman is a man of the Lord and a man charged with the king's authority. God rest her soul, but if he says my sister was involved with witchcraft, it must be true!”
“Your own sister?”
“I never saw any evidence myself,” he continues, “but Freeman was adamant and he couldn't be wrong, could he? He said he spent three days testing her, and he said the evidence was clear. In the circumstances...” He pauses, before looking down at the dagger in his wife's hand. “My family has been through so much,” he adds finally. “The whole town, really. Joseph cries out almost all of the day, we can't stand it any longer. You don't know how many times I have stood next to his bed, trying to find the strength to act, but I can't, I just...” There are tears in his eyes when he looks back at me, and he takes the dagger from his wife and tries to force the hilt into my hand. “Please. Just end his pain. End it for all of us.”
Pushing the dagger away, I turn and open the door. The boy's screams assail my ears, but I force myself to step into the room, resisting the urge to leave. Over by the window, the boy is tied to a narrow bed, while a woman is sitting on the edge, trying to calm him. Before I can open my mouth to ask any more, I see that the boy's eyes are gone; just the empty sockets are left, with thick scarring all around the edges as if some great and brutal wound has partially healed.
“What happened to his sight?” I ask, staring at the boy in horror.
“He scratched out his own eyes when he was nine years old,” the man replies from behind me. “One of them he ate, the other my wife managed to get from his hands first. He has also tried to remove his own tongue on several occasions and he once poured hot wax into his ears in an effort to silence the world, which is why we now keep him tied down.”
“Dear God,” I whisper, “what kind of monster could do this to a child?”
The woman at the bed reaches over to the boy, trying to put a hand on the side of his face, but he tries to bite her and she pulls back. When she turns to us, I see tears in her eyes but also compassion, and after a moment she rises, smooths down the front of her dress, and makes her way over to join us.
“You are new here, I think,” she tells me, with more forwardness than I would usually expect of a woman. “Have you come to...” She pauses, as if the words are too painful. “His name is Joseph. He's just at the end of his eleventh year, starting his twelfth. His mother was -”
“I have been told,” I reply, staring past her and watching as the boy pulls on the ropes with such force that I swear he might tear off his own limbs. “I understand the tragedy that has befallen this family.”
“He's still good,” she tells me. “Deep down in his heart, he still has a soul. Those aren't just empty words, either. I mean it.”
“No doubt,” I mutter.
“You're not going to do it, are you?” she whispers, leaning closer.
“Do what?”
“Every time a stranger passes through Offingham,” she continues, keeping her voice low, “these cowards try to get someone to end the boy's life. Believe me, you're not the first. Sometimes they even offer money, not that they have much but... Please, there has to be another way. I feel certain that his screams come not from madness but from some internal conflict, from a fight in his soul.” She turns back and looks toward the bed. “He might yet beat his demons and emerge with some of his sanity left.”
I watch for a moment as the boy continues to struggle, although after a moment he seems to become a little calmer and he tilts his eyeless head in this direction, as if he realizes that a stranger is here. He lets out a few more agonized gasps, before finally his screams falls silent.
“I pass through this town from time to time and I always come to see him,” the woman explains. “My name is Kate, I spend a lot of time on the road. Sometimes I truly believe I might be able to help poor Joseph, but nothing works, at least nothing I have tried. Just, please, don't listen to these people. They merely want to rid themselves of another mouth to feed, but they don't have the courage to act. The boy must be given a chance to get through this.” She puts a hand on my arm. “It is Nykolas Freeman who should die. Believe me, this is not the only village where something like this has happened because of Freeman's actions. Can you imagine the horrors a child must see in order for him to be driven mad before his first birthday?”
Taking a few steps closer to the bed, I can't help noticing that Joseph seems to be looking at me, even though his eyes are gone. On his lips, there is the faintest curl of a smile.
“Who are you?” he whispers, his voice sounding impossibly harsh and damaged, most likely from all the screaming.
“Just a passerby,” I tell him, stopping at the foot of the bed.
“Can you untie me?” he asks, tugging on the ropes around his ankles, where thick, bloody wounds have been worn through his skin thanks to his constant struggles. “These people keep me here, they confine me when all I need is to be released and to feel the warmth of the sun again. That way, I shall be cured.”
“We tried once,” the man says, still in the doorway. “We let him go outside when he was seven years old. He immediately stabbed two of the other local children with a broken piece of wood.”
“I would not do that again,” Joseph tells me, trying to sit up but held down by more ropes around his chest and neck. “I'm just a child. Should a child be confined in this way? Where is your godliness? Where is your faith?”
Now that I'm closer, I can see the true extent of the boy's injuries. The ropes, or rather his struggles against them, have worn his ankles and wrists down to the bone. Indeed, the flesh of his left ankle appears to have partially regrown over the rope, absorbing it into his body, while the rest of his skin is a sickly pale color, a mix of white and yellow pocked with bloodied scars. He's painfully thin, too, and the entire room stinks of the bodily fluids that have been left to collect under his body. The most striking aspect of his appearance, however, is the series of small crosses that have been carved into his chest, some of them old and scarred but some much fresher, as if they were cut just a few hours ago.
“How have these cuts manifested?” I ask, turning to the m
an in the doorway. “The marks of the cross... How has he done those, if his arms are restrained?”
“We know no other way to try to force evil from him,” the man replies. “We thought, well... We thought it was worth a try.”
I turn to Kate and see that there are tears in her eyes. “These people are fearful,” she tells me. “I've tried to explain to them that cutting the boy's flesh will do nothing but cause him pain, but they don't listen. If you were to turn him over, you would see that his back is the same.”
I look back down at the boy and see that he's still grinning at me, exposing a set of rotten teeth, some of which have become little more than thin black stubs. After a moment, I realize that I can just about make out some kind of mass at the back of his left eye-socket; sniffing the air, I can't help wondering whether, amid all the other stenches, there is also some form of infection here. The boy is becoming putrid.
“I remember it all, you know,” Joseph continues. “I remember the screams of my mother, even though I was but an infant when she was tortured and killed by that man. The people here, they think I scream because of my own pain, or because I'm mad, but that's not true at all. I scream because it makes me happy, because...” He pauses for a moment, his bottom lip trembling as if in childish fear. “I scream because that is all I remember of my mother now, and because I want to hear her voice again, and I only remember her screaming. Now that my eyes are gone, the more I scream, the more I can pretend that she is here with me, that the scream comes not from my lips but from hers. I want to feel her presence.” He laughs. “It comforts me.”
“Excuse me,” Kate says, with tears in her eyes as she turns and pushes past the others, heading out of the room and down the stairs.
“You said you're a passerby,” Joseph continues after a moment, “but you won't just pass me by, will you? You'll release me, and let me out of this room. Surely no Christian man could leave a child in this state?”
“I -” Taking a deep breath, I feel as if there is nothing I can do here. I cannot kill the child, but letting him go would also be a mistake. Until this moment, I always assumed that I could see the right thing to do in any situation. As I stare at Joseph, however, I feel as if Nykolas Freeman has left an impossible task in his wake. Perhaps some forms of evil are so great, they leave no chance of redemption, and nothing for good men to do except stare in horror.
Chapter Nine
Laura
Opening my eyes, I look across my dark bedroom and watch for a moment as the shadows of nearby trees dance in patches of moonlight. I wait, listening for some sign or hint that everything is right with the world, maybe the sound of a passing plane or a car in the distance to let me know that the modern world is still out there, but all I hear is the rustle of trees in a strong midnight breeze.
I swear there was no wind a few hours ago, when I came to bed.
Determined to stay calm and to not go wandering through the house again in the middle of the night, I keep my gaze fixed on the window. For all the tranquility of this place, I'd dearly love to hear a train in the distance, just to remind me of ordinary things. I even took extra precautions before coming to bed, such as not drinking anything for the final hour in an attempt to avoid having to pee during the night, although I've managed to convince myself that everything that happened last night really was just a dream. As for the fact that I got so many details right about the Baxendales, I figure I must have zoned out in the car when Mum was telling me about the house, but some of the information still sunk into my subconscious mind.
So really, one day, I'll laugh about all of this.
A few minutes later, I hear the faintest creak outside my door, as if someone is on the landing. I immediately tense, determined to keep from letting my imagination run wild, but after a moment I hear another creak, closer this time, as if the person is toward my room. I keep my eyes fixed on the window until the third creak, at which point I look over at the door just as someone starts turning the handle. It's most likely Mum, coming to make sure that I'm sleeping okay, but still I hold my breath as a small silhouette steps into the room. It's not Mum, that's for sure, and for a moment I'm worried that little Jessica Baxendale is here.
“Laura?” Suzie whispers suddenly in the darkness.
Letting out a sigh of relief, I prop myself up on my elbow.
“What are you doing up?” I hiss. “Go back to bed!”
“I can't.”
“Yes you can. If Mum finds out you're poking about -”
“There's someone in the wall,” she replies, interrupting me.
“Suzie...” I pause for a moment. “Wait, what did you say?”
“There's someone in the wall,” she continues, and for the first time I realize that there's genuine fear in her voice. “I heard him talking.”
***
“Keep quiet,” I whisper a few minutes later as she leads me by the hand into her room. “Mum'll flip if she catches us.”
“Over there,” she replies, stopping and pointing at the far wall.
I swallow hard, listening for a moment but hearing nothing. “Tell me exactly what you heard,” I say finally.
“He was whispering in there.”
“Inside the wall?”
She nods.
“It was probably the wind.”
“It wasn't the wind,” she replies. “It was a man's voice.”
I want to tell her to stop worrying, of course, but as I stare at the long white wall, I can't help wondering if there's another space hidden back there, another gap that someone could have hidden in many years ago. It's clear by now that the house is riddled with such passages, and even though Mum and the carpenter showed that there was no skeletal hand behind the wall in the kitchen, I know what I saw last night. Still, it's one thing for there to be a set of bones trapped in the wall, but it's another for them to move around.
“He was praying,” Suzie says after a moment.
I look down at her.
“I could hear him praying,” she continues. “Really quiet, like he didn't want to be heard, like he was just barely moving his lips.”
“Well...” Seeing the fear in her eyes, I turn back to look at the wall. “Okay,” I say finally, “just wait here and I'll go listen, okay?”
She squeezes my hand tight, as if to keep me back.
“I have to listen,” I point out. “You're the one who came and got me, remember?”
Letting go of her hand, I make my way around her bed and over to the wall. I don't hear anything so far, so I lean closer and set my ear against the plaster and then I wait. To my relief, I hear nothing but the sound of leaves rustling outside the window, and I'm starting to think that Suzie just got confused. In fact, this whole situation with the house is probably just a series of unfortunate coincidences that just happen to seem like something else.
“Not there,” Suzie whispers suddenly. “To the left.”
Sighing, I take a couple of steps to the left and listen again, but still the only sound comes from the rustling trees outside. It's not hard to understand how a scared little girl, alone in her bed at night, might hear that sound and somehow mistake it for a voice.
“Keep going,” she hisses.
“Suzie -”
“He's close to the corner.”
I look along the wall toward the corner, next to the bed, and then I make my way along and set my ear once again to the wall. I wait, hearing the reassuring sound of the leaves outside the window, but I figure I need to stay silent for a moment longer so that Suzie understands I've listened properly.
“Do you hear him?” she whispers.
“Not yet.”
“You will.”
I force a smile, while waiting in position. A moment later, the rustling leaves swell outside and become louder, before another gust of wind passes and the sound fades.
And that's when, just for a second, I hear the voice.
The leaves are already rustling again, but a cold shiver passes through m
y body as I realize that I definitely heard the faintest whisper coming from the other side of the wall. It was so quick, I didn't even make out any individual words, but it was definitely a man's voice. I wait, but the rustling continues, making it impossible to hear anything else.
“Laura?” Suzie whispers, stepping closer. “You heard him, didn't you?”
“I -” Pausing, I realize that if I tell her the truth, I'll end up giving her nightmares for the rest of her life. “No,” I reply, with my ear still pressed against the wall, “I didn't hear any -”
Suddenly the whisper returns, as the rustling leaves are briefly calmed. Again, it's only for a fraction of a second, but this time I swear I picked out a few words.
“Watch over this family.”
Then something muffled, and then:
“Protect them, Lord, from -”
And that was it, all I heard, but still... It was definitely there.
“Laura?” Suzie whispers as she reaches me. “You did hear it, I can tell from the look in your eyes.”
“No,” I reply, not altogether convincingly, “I didn't hear anything, I just -”
Suddenly there's a distinct scratching sound from the other side of the wall, as if someone is running fingernails against the wood.
“He's coming,” a male voice says firmly.
I step back.
“You heard that!” Suzie hisses, grabbing my hand and squeezing it tight as the scratching sound continues, moving along the wall until it reaches the corner, at which point it seems to go down further into the house.
“Suzie,” I whisper, turning to her, “it was just the wind.”
“Who's coming?” she asks, staring up at me. “I want to go and wake Mum up!”
“You can't do that,” I reply, crouching in front of her and putting my hands on her shoulders. “Mum's not in a good place right now, her mind... You understand, don't you? She's being brave, but she's fragile. We can't go to her and start telling her all this stuff, it's just nonsense anyway. We're letting our fears get the better of us, that's all.”