Little Miss Evil (Tall Trees Book 1)

by Jim Ody

  They walked up the porch. Jenny stood back a bit letting Keith go first. She wasn’t comfortable walking into a stranger’s house.

  They saw the note, and the large cylinder sat on a ledge by the door. The cylinder had something that looked like goggles attached to it.

  Look into the can that covers your eyes,

  All will be revealed where you collect your prize!

  “You want to look into it and see what it says?” Keith asked picking it up, and offering it to her.

  “No chance. I’m not sticking my eyes in there!”

  “Are you sure?”

  Jenny pulled a face, “Uh, yeah. It’s all yours!”

  Keith suddenly looked a little nervous. He picked it up and moved closer to Jenny.

  Suddenly some spray came out of the side hitting Jenny directly in the face.

  “Uhh-huh!” she said clawing at her face.

  She gasped for air. Her head went dizzy and her legs gave away.

  And then everything went black.

  Little Miss Evil

  Chapter 54 - Will

  W ill opened his eyes and instantly was in panic. He was tied to a chair. He looked around and saw Fiona next to him, then a familiar looking woman, and a teenager, also tied to chairs but all were out cold. He hoped they were just asleep, but he couldn’t tell.

  He was sure they were in the cellar. The dark walls had paintings covered with sheets. His mind was fuzzy, and his memory hazy. He struggled to remember what they were doing here.

  Had they found him?

  Slowly he thought back. His mind grabbing at pieces and trying to put the puzzle together.

  They were away. Him and Fiona. No one else knew.

  A meal at the large house with the nice woman, Matilda. That’s who the woman was. The owner of the house.

  They’d finished their food. Matilda had poured them sherry and they’d… what? What was it they’d done then?

  Paintings! Fiona had asked to see her work, and Matilda had taken them down to the cellar.

  Will heard a movement from behind. He tried to turn his head but he could only see one-hundred and eighty degrees.

  There was a giggle. Then someone poked him.

  “Who’s there?” Will said. It sounded like a child.

  Another poke. This time something sharp.

  “Ah, stop it!” he said, getting angry and tugged at his wrists.

  Then skipping around in front of him was a child in a dirty dress. She had long blonde hair in need of a comb.

  And holding a knife in her bloody hands.

  It was the girl he’d seen running away from the cottage the day before.

  She began to sing in almost a whisper. “Si-i-lent night. Ho-o-ly night!” she giggled, and danced in front of him.

  She walked up close to him and swish the knife inches from his face. “You’re a bad man.”

  “No! No, I’m not,” he pleaded. He couldn’t believe it had come to this. Pleading with a child. He pulled at the rope. There was some give but it meant nothing if he couldn’t pull his hands through or undo the knots.

  Then he heard a lock click, and a door open.

  The little girl began to sing out. “Some-bod-y’s a-wake now!”

  The steps down the wooden stairs became more rushed.

  “Really?” And Keith came into view.

  Then Fiona made a groaning sound, and suddenly screamed in surprise when she saw the scene in front of her.

  “W-what’s going on here?” She sounded petrified. Will wished he could hold her.

  “Fiona, it’s okay,” Will said.

  Keith mimicked him, “Fi-ona, It’s o-kay!” then he laughed.

  “Keith?” Matilda said blinking her eyes. “What’s going on?”

  “Alice? What’s going on?” Keith said to the child.

  “Bad people!” she said. “Bad, bad people!”

  “Why don’t you untie us?” Matilda said. “It doesn’t have to be like this?”

  “Doesn’t it? Interesting…”

  “Where are they, Keith?” she asked. Her face looked worried.

  He pulled out the gun from behind him. “Where are they?” he mused to himself. “Where do you think they are?” his face turned from a crazy smile to anger.

  “Everybody wants to shut us down!!” he shouted.

  There was another murmur, and Jenny came around. Her eyes blinking slightly before opening up fully. The shock instantly hit her.

  “Keith? What’s going on?”

  “Alice, you tell them,” he said and stepped back. He drummed the gun on his arm.

  “You bad pe-ople!” she sang out.

  “What have we done?” Fiona said. “We’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Look at this child,” Keith said. “She was fine until his drugs hit her!”

  “What?” Will said, his stomach hit the floor. This was not good.

  “You wanted to test on people. Real live people! Without explaining the consequences!” Keith shouted.

  Will was shaking his head. “No, that’s a lie! Every person who agreed to test the drugs was told there was a chance that things might go wrong! We explained the side-effects. And we never tested on children! We…have to―”

  “Have to what?”

  “To cure mental issues, we have to test on humans. It’s inevitable that there will be casualties. The mind is a very sensitive thing.”

  “And that’s okay?” Keith pushed.

  “To find a cure that saves lives? Of course!”

  Keith almost chuckled at that, but it was a crazy laugh.

  Will looked back and forth between them, then in desperation said, “But we never tested on children! Why would we?”

  Matilda spoke up. “We were desperate. We needed a cure.”

  “So what then?” Will said, struggling to keep up. “You signed up and gave her the pills?”

  Matilda nodded. “I was the subject but I never took any of the pills.”

  Will couldn’t believe it. “Then how is it my fault?” He looked at Keith. “It’s not me you should be threatening, but her! I was looking for a cure!”

  Keith looked at Alice and nodded.

  “Cure this!” she said and stabbed him in the thigh.

  “Agh!” The hot sharp pain was quick and intense. Alice laughed.

  “Pain, pain go away,” she sang. “Come back a-nother day!”

  “Sorry about that,” Keith grinned. “It was an unforeseen side effect!”

  “Enough, Keith!” Matilda said. “You’ve made your point!”

  But of course, Keith was only warming up.

  Little Miss Evil

  Chapter 55 - Jenny

  I t was a nightmare. A complete and utter nightmare. She should’ve listened to herself when she first felt strange back at the cabin. It wasn’t right.

  “Why am I here?” she asked in a small voice. She began to sob. Was she just a victim of circumstance?

  “Ahh, little miss princess!” Keith said with sarcasm. “Why are you here? You want to tell this lady next to you why you came here on holiday?”

  Jenny was confused. She didn’t like where this was going. “To get away with my friends.”

  Keith pulled a face. “Hmmm, not strictly true, is it?”

  “It is!” she said feeling defeated but the words were barely audible.

  “You came here expecting to sleep with her man, correct? The man she shares her bed with, not you!”

  Jenny thought she was going to throw up. She turned to Matilda. “I didn’t know who he was, in fact it―”

  “It wasn’t him you were speaking to, was it?” Keith laughed. “It was her son, instead!” Keith turned to the others, like they had now turned into the studio audience to some low-brow exposé reality chat-show. “Talk about keeping it in the family!”

  “I didn’t know,” she said, her voice small.

  “No, I’m sure you didn’t. Like you didn’t know your father worked at the same place as him.” He
pointed to Will. “Will here is the guy who helped make the drug, but your father was the guy who sold it to people like us. He was the sales guy; the liar, if you will. No, there are no risks! He said. What a liar! He also didn’t check to see whether Matilda was the subject, or whether she wasn’t taking the pills and feeding them to her daughter!”

  “I was sick,” Alice said in a mock sad voice.

  “She was on a life-support! Everyone gave up on her!” he walked over to Matilda. “Everyone!”

  “I didn’t!” she said defiantly.

  “You told her father she was dead!”

  Matilda shook her head with rage. “That is not the case. He didn’t want to know! I thought it was for the best!”

  Keith shook his head. “For the best? She had severe brain damage! Look at her, she looks and acts like a six-year-old! She’s thirteen!”

  “I know, and I’ve been there for her!”

  Jenny tugged at her bounded wrists. She was desperate to pull them free. This was going from bad to worse, and she really couldn’t see a good way out of it.

  “She’s been sent from here in the basement to living in the house in the woods. Do I look like I can look after her?”

  “You said you’d help!”

  “Because she’s my half-sister! For fucks-sake! You live up here in your large fancy house, and I’m down there trying to make ends meet! Do you think that’s fair? I have a small house at the back of the campsite.”

  “And the other house. That house is worth a lot too,” she added but weakly.

  “It’s an old house in the woods, so fuckin’ what! It’s run down, and it’s just falling to pieces. Look at this place!” He threw out his hands! “It’s huge, and worth millions!”

  “You have the campsite,” she said.

  “And a mother who won’t let me take control of it!” he turned and kicked a box in anger.

  “We look after you, and you know it!”

  He turned and raised the gun at her. Everything happened quickly. He ran forward with the gun. Tears streaming down his face, he shouted, “But who’s got the gun!”

  Jenny felt her fingers pull on a piece of the rope. It wasn’t free, but it was beginning to come loose.

  And then it was as if it all happened in slow motion.

  Matilda had pulled her hands free, and just as Keith swung the gun at her. She hit it.

  The trigger went off.

  The last thing Jenny thought about was how nice the painting was on the wall beside Matilda. A hole appeared in her head, and Fiona was covered in blood.

  “Now look what you made me do!” Keith shouted, and fell to his knees. He reached out and hugged Jenny’s legs.

  Little Miss Evil

  Chapter 56 - Will

  H is leg still throbbed, but he tried to put that to the back of his mind as he pulled at the rope.

  And then Keith went off on one. He was on some crazy agenda that only he knew; pointing the finger at everyone and saying how hard done by he was.

  He got it. People acted like this towards him. This was one of the reasons he was here, to get away from it all. There was a court case pending. His company had been accused of not taking enough due diligence, reports of pills going to non-subjects―the child Alice being a case in point and a name he was all too familiar with. There were a handful of charges, but his legal team were more than happy that it was just relatives wanting to blame someone.

  It was the nature of the beast. You had to look at the bigger picture. In order to help the majority, then the minority would have to suffer.

  Although, at that moment, tied to a chair with a crazy guy brandishing a gun, he was now beginning to think things were even more serious than he first thought.

  Then Keith dropped the bombshell that the teenager’s father was one of the sales guys. He didn’t know that, but she was even less culpable. And she looked so scared.

  His fingers were working hard on freeing himself. They were picking, pulling and pushing the rope.

  Suddenly he felt them come free.

  That was when Keith lunged forward with the gun at Matilda.

  It all happened so quickly. Matilda hit the gun, and it exploded. Or rather it went bang and then blood was splattering from Jenny’s head.

  He was in shock. They all were. Even Keith, who dropped the gun to the floor like it was on fire.

  It stunned everyone.

  Fiona screamed, and Will realised she had blood and brains all over her. She was shaking her head and spitting out anything that had ended up in her mouth.

  Will pulled his wrists, and twisted his hands, and as Keith dropped to his knees, Will was able to finally pull his hands free.

  He jumped up and grabbed the gun. Keith turned and swiped at him, and Will pulled the trigger a couple of times, just pointing the gun in Keith’s general direction.

  Keith looked shocked and grabbed his chest. A hole appeared that increased in size with blood.

  “Oh my god!” Fiona said and sounded like she was hyperventilating.

  Matilda stood up and raised her hands. “Okay, let’s all take a minute and calm down.”

  Then suddenly there was a growl and a feral screech as the small blonde child ran over and jumped at Will. He dropped the gun as her added weight increased the pain in his leg from where he’d been stabbed. He flipped her over and she landed hard on the ground.

  Matilda was quick to get the gun. “Okay, no more!”

  Will looked up, “What’s going on?” he said, and moved behind Fiona to undo the rope.

  “Leave her!” Matilda shouted.

  “What?” Will said, and was able to work it loose slightly.

  “I said, leave her! Get up and come around here!”

  Fiona was beside herself. Her breathing was still quick and short, but her fingers were now working hard behind her back in desperation.

  “Matilda, just let us go. We’re not part of this…” Will began.

  Matilda’s face changed. “You are part of this, don’t you see? The cottage you’re staying in is mine. You’re renting off me. You think it was a coincidence you found it?”

  “You knew about Keith, didn’t you?” Will said, the pieces were slowly clicking into place. They were a whole host of individuals that suddenly were all connected.

  “You think I could’ve done all this by myself? I needed Keith. He was the excited little puppy. He would do anything I asked. His dad was the same. He started seeing me on the side, and before I knew he’d moved in, but he never got a divorce, despite me begging him to. He made out he was working, he thought I was stupid―” she looked up at the pictures. She pulled at one along the line. It was of Carl in a compromising position with someone clearly not Matilda. If you put the horror aside, it was very well painted.

  She continued, “But I knew. Alice was a sweet little girl. We loved her to bits, then suddenly one day she became ill. She was sick. We thought it was just a temperature. You know, the normal things kids get. But she got worse. Black outs, and speech-slurring. It turned out she had something wrong. The doctor shrugged, then recommended the test program.” She shook her head at that. She looked over and swung her gun so that Will was reminded who was in control and walked over to the first painting and pulled off the sheet.

  Alice was pictured looking sweet and angelic. She pulled off the sheet of the next one. Now the child’s eyes looked wonky.

  “The tablets didn’t help. In fact, they made her worse! They were meant to cure her!” she spat.

  Will held up an arm. “It doesn’t always work. We never said it was a hundred percent. And children weren’t who it was aimed at. The doses were much too great for them!.”

  “You lied!” Matilda looked at the broken corpse of Jenny held up only by her arms. “Her father lied!”

  “He was only doing his job!” Will tried.

  “My little girl was damaged!”

  Will thought on his feet. The only way to calm her was to talk about what she’d done.
He was trying hard to remain calm himself, but he had to remain strong for himself and Fiona.

  “And the Treasure Hunt? Was that you?”

  She smiled and visibly calmed. “Of course.”

  “But why go to the trouble? You invited us here?”

  “But I needed her here too.”

  Will looked around. “There was never any treasure?”

  “On the contrary! This was it. This was the treasure!”

  “You mean we were the prize?”

  She gave an evil grin and looked so different from the woman who had served them such a wonderful meal earlier.

  “You know, you and her friends, were the only people invited to the Treasure Hunt. It was set up perfectly. Each person had to register their interest at playing. Keith found out who they were. Each got a different clue. They are all over the place.”

  “Others are still playing?”

  She laughed at that. “No, I can tell you now, no one is still playing!”

  “You don’t mean…” Will couldn’t believe with the help from Keith they would’ve harmed others too. But then he thought about the two bodies, and how Matilda didn’t seem moved at all. Even with her daughter now slowly coming around on the floor.

  “What about Carl?” Will looked at Keith. “His dad?”

  Matilda’s face screwed up again. “That cheating scum got what was coming to him. He was too lazy to end his marriage, always keeping the door open to her. He’s dead along with that whore he was meeting in one of the cabins.”

  “And your son?”

  Matilda stood up strong. She took a deep breath. This one wasn’t as easy to explain. “He’s in a better place now. He wasn’t happy. He wanted to be so much like his father, but his father loved only Alice. When she got sick, and you fucked her up even more, I was so angry. I couldn’t sleep with worry, and what did dear Carl do? He went and fucked one of the barmaids. So I smuggled Alice from here to the cottage and told him she was dead.” She bowed her head, and looked around the room. Her eyes rested on her daughter. The poor sad girl. When Will looked too, he could see she was older than first appeared, but her growth had been stunted.