Unhallowed Ground

by Gillian White

  He grips her hard by the shoulders. ‘Jesus Christ! What the hell…?’

  But Georgie can’t stop laughing. Tears blind her eyes, but still she laughs, the cracked, broken witchy sound of total hysteria. She attempts to point behind her, she must show him where, she must show him, but she has no strength to hold up her arm, and anyway, what direction? She’s forgotten. She keeps attempting to speak and Oliver is shouting at her now, panic in his own eyes. ‘What is it? What the fuck is it?’

  Clutching the poker, his face tightened grimly, he shouts, ‘Where? Is it back in there?’ He nudges Georgie with his foot, unable to move his eyes from the doorway, but she keeps on laughing, desperately wanting to tell him. ‘No, he’s not here, he’s not here…’

  ‘Then what? Who? Tell me, damn you!’ and his voice is at screaming pitch.

  ‘In the shower.’ At last she finds words, clipped and precise. ‘It is there, in the shower.’

  ‘What’s in the shower, for Christ’s sake?’

  But it’s no use. She can’t remember. She can remember getting in and washing her hair, the familiar smell of shampoo and steam, but she cannot remember what she saw that brought her scurrying back here crouched by the fire with a towel around her. Oliver should not go in there. No-one should ever go in there. So when he walks towards the kitchen and the sound of running water she screams, ‘Don’t! Stop! Come back! Oh God, please don’t leave me.’

  But she is powerless to prevent him. He is determined to go. Georgie crouches and shivers, unable to look in that direction. ‘Oh don’t, oh don’t,’ she continues to sob, unaware of the presence of Dave or of Lola’s wary eyes as she stares from her place at the hearth.

  Oliver is gone for a very long time. The water is turned off. Now she hears the door closing firmly. What the hell is he doing in there? What is in there? What has he found? Terrified by her lack of memory… perhaps the man is in there, with his axe… is that it? Is that what she saw? If that was it she is going to die, they are all about to die, painfully and bloodily, and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.

  A poker is no defence against a madman wielding an axe.

  The look on Oliver’s face is harrowing. He looks like Dave, colourless and hardly alive. He comes and sits on the chair beside Georgie and he feels squeezed out and empty. He rests his head in his hands. ‘What was it?’ she asks him, panic rising. ‘Oliver? What did you see?’

  Finally Oliver raises his head. ‘When the hell did that bastard get in there?’

  She wants to help. She’s determined to help. ‘When we were out for the wood and the water?’

  But Oliver shakes his head. ‘No way. He wouldn’t have had time. To do that must have taken some time, it can’t be that simple to get up there and…’

  ‘I can’t think,’ Georgie sobs. ‘Dammit, I can’t think of anything. I hardly know my own name. And I don’t want to remember. I want to get away from here, I want you to take me away.’

  Ignoring her hysteria and fighting his own, Oliver’s words come slowly and clearly. He gazes into the fire as he speaks. ‘You left the front door open when you came to help me the night I arrived, didn’t you, Georgie? I know you left it open because the hall was full of snow when we arrived back here with Dave. There was time for the sod to get in here then, if he was around, if he was watching. And he must have been around at that time because of Dave’s foot.’

  Now Georgie remembers exactly what she saw hanging from the meat hook in the bathroom not inches from her head. She had seen it, ivory white, veins swollen and gently oozing. She had seen the elastic-stretching skin and the hole where the rusting hook had pierced it. There had been a slight swinging movement, hardly noticeable at all. They should never have left those hooks in the ceiling, Isla had even joked about their handiness for towels. And she opens her mouth and begins to scream, and Oliver leans towards her, takes her face roughly into his two large hands and says, ‘Stay with me, Georgie, you must stay with me. I’m sorry, I have to do this.’ Then he slaps her. Hard. She moans. She shivers like a beaten dog. Then he holds her.

  ‘I thought you said whisky was no good for shock.’ Her teeth chatter on the edge of the glass as she feels the fire of it burn its way down, bringing her senses back to life.

  But Oliver’s smile is a cold one and he holds his own glass in two hands. He tips it slightly and watches as the colour rolls up the side of the glass.

  ‘Everyone in this valley is in danger.’ His voice is quiet but resolute. ‘We should all be together in one place. It’s the only way we will survive. And God only knows how long we’re going to be cut off from the rest of the world with this repulsive thing out there. Who knows what might have happened to the others by now? They could be dead for all we know. This monstrous beast will stop at nothing. This is madness beyond all control. Sick. Twisted. And if Mrs fucking Buckpit, if anyone out there knows about this and is concealing the bastard, then God help them. We’re facing a thing here, not animal, not human.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  He swallows more whisky. He muses on it. Savours the taste in his mouth before he swallows, and rolls the glass between his hands. ‘We’ve got to warn everyone for a start, in case they don’t already know. We’ve got to band together. It’s no good trying to sit this out, each in our individual cages, alone. No one man has the kind of strength it’s going to take to destroy this monster.’

  Georgie shivers again. ‘But we don’t know for sure it’s Lot Buckpit.’

  ‘It looks pretty much like it. But we’ve got to take some action now, we can’t just sit around here suspecting everyone. It has to be Lot, sod it, there’s no way it can be anyone else but Lot.’

  ‘So we’ve got to warn the Horsefields.’

  ‘And Chad and Donna. They’ll have to come back here with us because there’s no way we can move Dave.’

  ‘So who’s going? Who’s staying?’ The thought is unendurable.

  ‘I’m going. While you stay in here with the doors locked.’

  ‘Oh no. Oh no. Not after last night. And it’s me who knows them, it’s me who knows the he of the land. You nearly got lost in my orchard. You can’t see a thing out there, you’d soon lose your bearings.’

  ‘Georgie, you can’t go out there alone.’

  ‘Well then, we’ll stay here and stick it out.’

  Oliver stares at her seriously. ‘We can’t do that, Georgie. Not knowing what we know. Not knowing that others are at risk.’

  Self-righteous prat. Such heroics. Georgie doesn’t care about others, she cares about herself. And Oliver. And Dave. And Lola. She doesn’t want to go and fetch the others. She doesn’t even like them much. She attempts to argue with Oliver, she puts every obstacle in the way, but he remains determined that something must be done, that they will be safer gathered together.

  ‘But perhaps he won’t try anything else. Perhaps his madness has worn itself out on Dave. Perhaps we’d be wiser to stay indoors and wait.’ Oh God, if only they could, if only she could make Oliver see sense.

  They argue for most of the morning but still Georgie fails to convince him. ‘We’ll wait for a couple of hours to see what the weather does,’ is all he will agree to. So Georgie watches and listens and detests this snow and wind with such a burning ferocity it is all consuming. She wants to rage at it, fight it, defeat it. Peace. Dear God, she wants peace and quiet and normality. She wants Dave to be well and she wants the sight of that dangling foot out of her mind for ever.

  Where is the safety she’s craved and sought after most of her life? What the hell is happening here? And why can’t she ride out the rest of the storm safe and secure in Oliver’s strong arms with her eyes tightly closed.

  Why not?

  Why not?

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  THEY OPT FOR FOUR in the afternoon, the time of the Buckpits’ milking, a ritual so deeply ingrained that even a hurricane is unlikely to change it.

  Hopefully Lot will be out of the way.
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br />   Oliver’s plan is now inevitable. They can no longer stay here like terrified rats. Georgie’s brain races like an engine. She tries to still her heart by telling herself that nothing, no matter how evil, could be waiting out there in all this mayhem, in the loneliest spot in the world. She glances around the familiar room, probably for the last time. ‘So. This is it.’

  ‘Don’t go, Georgie. You were right. We should stay here…’

  ‘What crap. We both know that’s crap.’

  ‘But to lose you now would be…’

  She bites her lip hard. ‘Oh, come on, be fair, don’t make this any harder, Oliver.’

  ‘You know how I feel…’

  ‘Yes, I think I do.’ Abruptly, and with a shiver, Georgie says, ‘I must go.’

  Oliver kisses Georgie goodbye, a gesture so normal, so infinitely tender, so alien in this hellish chaos that, for the seconds it takes, it brings with it all the warmth in the world, and all the safety. And she, noting his grey, drawn face, brings her hand gently down it as if to keep the memory there.

  The storm outside enfolds her in a swirling haze of white sound. Her feet alone are commanding her movements in this infinite waste. Only once, in a blinding flash, does Georgie allow herself to think of the terrible nature of her unknown adversary, the fear of his watching eyes, his face pressed on glass, distorted, hideous, but she instantly cuts it off. She thinks instead about Dave and his anguish, his needs.

  All the muscles of her face tauten with the pain of the cold, and her head is a wooden block that aches. Grimly Georgie trudges on, dimly aware that the Horsefield’s warm living room will mark the end of this riot and disorder. The cottage lights have long disappeared, along with the smell of woodsmoke. Over her stream she goes and up to the field that leads round the back of the Horsefields’ house.

  Dimly and palely Georgie sees that there has been a violent alteration in the pattern of her life, and if she can change to meet this pattern she might find harmony again. Could she start to love again? But this time as someone better, stronger? The day before yesterday she had been a poor and desolate thing, only wanting to fly from the world, but look at her now, alone and going out to face the demon against all the fears of a lifetime.

  Hell, how long will this take? Has she lost all sense of direction? She used to be able to see old Nancy pottering about in her garden from the edge of her own fence. It’s no good, she can’t see, her eyes are blinded by the absolute whiteness all around her.

  Although the carving knife rests in her pocket, stuck through the lining, she begins to wonder, what does it matter? What does she care for the world and its wiles? How lovely to reverse her tracks and stumble back into Oliver’s waiting arms…

  A sob like a child’s storms up in in her and then sinks, perishes and gives place to a sigh.

  Dear God. He is here.

  He has always been here in Georgie’s head.

  It is over. He is covered with snow, like the abominable snowman, and vast, he could be a gorilla with his small unlaughing eyes. Strangely, he is welcome. Wait long enough for the blow and you will want it to come, and when it comes relief will mingle with the pain.

  Georgie remains quite still. There is nothing else to do. Somewhere in her terror the thought emerges that this is all very different from what she has imagined. She’d imagined he would attack from behind.

  The indrawing of breath is an agony, the cold makes it painful to gasp. Weakly, she stares at her nightmare. His clothes form the bulk of him, but the height she’d imagined is correct. He wears a balaclava helmet so only his eyes show, but she’s seen one of them before, close up, closer than this, and she knows what his pudgy face looks like. The collar of his donkey jacket is pulled up so there is no discernible neck. His trousers, a thick brown corduroy, are tucked into fur-lined, zipped-up boots, and the axe hangs loose in his right hand, the metal edge resting in the snow. The leather biker’s gloves make his hands seem huge, inhuman.

  But then everything about him is huge, and he has been standing here, watching her coming, and whistling. Horrible. Horrible. She cannot hear the whistle, but the bulge of his lips under the wool makes the shape of a mouth blowing air.

  Slowly she starts to back down the slope. If she doesn’t take care she is likely to toboggan down and end up in her stream at the bottom. After the first mind-blowing shock it’s extraordinary how little fear there is, nothing so bad as the foot in the shower, but Georgie’s brain has gone numb, frozen, just like her hands and her feet.

  In a voice incredibly normal she asks very carefully, ‘What are you doing?’

  At this he inclines his furry head like a bear, pretending to listen. Her words do not reach him, of course, the wind just whips them over her shoulder. She fights for balance. He is higher up the slope than she, in the stronger position, towering above her, and his thick legs are set apart.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Jesus. Is he about to come nearer? Can he reach her from there if he swings his axe full circle?

  ‘Tell me what you want me to do. I’ll go back if that’s what you want.’ She must not panic or fall, she wants to prepare him for her flight. This fiendish savage is mad, a psychopath on the rampage, quite lethal, and any sudden movement will be likely to trigger him off.

  With immense care and courage, weakened by cold and terror, Georgie takes one step backwards, feels her foot slide, and fights for balance. He comes one step towards her and she stays stock-still. He doesn’t like that. ‘OK. OK.’ She moves her hand towards her pocket, nearer the handle of the knife, she can feel the point of the cardboard sheath where it rests against her leg.

  ‘It’s so cold,’ she might be chatting at a bus stop. ‘I’ve seen you standing out here before.’ Well, they advise you to talk to them, don’t they? Keep calm, engage them in conversation, make them see you as a person, cauterize a leg when the foot has gone, hang on to your pride, honour your father and mother, do your best, work hard, say your prayers. They say they say they say. She knows the maniac cannot hear her, he can only watch her moving lips, and they are probably contorted by fear and cold. If she screams from here Oliver won’t hear her. Perhaps she can somehow lure this living abomination nearer to the cottage—if he’ll give her time, if he’ll stay the axe.

  He didn’t give Dave much time. He didn’t give Dave five minutes. He chopped off Dave’s foot and he slaughtered Georgie’s pretty brown hens.

  Her horrified eyes stare straight into those of the demon. There is nothing human about them, nothing with which to answer her pleas, nothing with which to recognize her fear. Her own bleary eyes, rimmed with snow and exhaustion, meet his implacable gaze, the mindless gaze of a shark, set deep in his head, quick and restless and cruel. Staring through the slits in the black balaclava. But some sense drives him. What sense? Is he mute? Is he insensitive to the cold? It would seem so. But, dear God, even a mammoth would suffer from cold if it stayed motionless much longer. Georgie herself will freeze to death.

  Time. Be gentle and slow, take your time. He won’t allow her to step backwards, so what if she tries stepping forwards? But time holds no reality, it could be seconds, it could be hours that go by while she makes her rapid calculations, exploring every option minutely for this, the most dangerous, the most complicated manoeuvre she has ever undertaken in her life. What if she attempts to go forwards, what if she makes it clear she’s not interested remotely in him, that she merely wants to complete her journey? But oh, it is hard to take a step further away from home when she yearns to run back like a fox to its layer in this most murderous hunt.

  Sweat soaks her body and freezes it as she holds her breath for this fatal step. My God. It is done. But no response. Just watching.

  Georgie doesn’t think any more, or hesitate before making a second brave move, then another. Right. So this direction’s OK by him? But then the ogre sways slightly before raising one boot to the side, leaving a dark-black hole in the snow. The axe slices the snow as he goes, draggi
ng a trail behind its own weight like the thin, meandering tracks of a bird. Sweet Jesus, will he allow her to pass? Helpless as Georgie is, the hope that she feels now is cruel, it’s this hope that brings tears to her eyes so that she almost flounders. What she needs is despair, no hope whatsoever, the fear of this is what drives her.

  Oh God oh God oh God help me.

  With the same bursting lungs and dreamlike sensation of moving underwater, she continues along this passage of hell, aware of his impossible strength and her own abysmal weakness. She will soon be beside him, with him several paces to her right, eight paces to be precise because now he has moved eight times, there are eight deep holes in the snow just to the right of her pathway.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m going past you. I swear to God I won’t look at you, only please let me get past.’

  He lunges. With no warning he raises the axe and lunges at Georgie. The wind and the snow whip together in one concentrated fury as she goes down beneath him, buried alive. Struggling for air, for light. Clawing for breath. Her lungs searing with pain, she gasps for breath in this dark underworld of snow and inhuman pressure. She is facing upwards, but she cannot tell because his awful weight and the overflowing mattress of white is in her mouth and nose and eyes, and is suffocating. He must have slipped because where is the axe, her fingernails scrape at the all engulfing vileness of his coat. He will have to get up to use the axe, unless he decides to stay here like this, lying on top of her, squeezing the life from her this way.

  And the rank smell that comes off him can only be the stench of the grave, dark old soil, a crumbly coffin-brown and the wet stems of churchyard flowers, scummy green water and mildewed urns, tarnished, rotten. The decay of the soul into madness.