Fiddling with her hem, she wouldn’t endure the silence much longer. Why wasn’t he saying anything? Glancing at him, then looking away, she couldn’t hold his gaze. Please put me out of my misery. Tell me what you think.
Marco, of course, didn’t know how to respond. He looked at Carys and noticed her twitching her hands from the corner of his eye. A sharp piece of the broken cup was gripped in her right hand, she didn’t seem aware of it as she fidgeted with her nightie. He knew he would have to say something.
“Why do you think that, my love?” he asked softly
“I don’t think it. I know it!”
Marco nodded slowly in compassionate understanding. “How?” was all he could think to ask.
Carys glared at him, as though she couldn’t understand how he could be so thick.
“Because I only had one encounter before you. I don’t remember it because that’s what they do. They wipe your memory. At first I thought this boy, Stephen Holmes was the father, but after I asked him, I’m sure he’s not. He sounded really adamant and really believable that nothing had happened between us. He told me about the figures walking towards the car.”
“I know who Stephen Holmes is,” Marco said. “Your mum and dad were frantic about him raping you. Why would you believe him? He abused you and got you pregnant. Of course he’s going to deny it!” His voice was becoming louder. “I can’t understand, for a second, why you’d buy anything he says!” He was shouting now. “And what have you come up with to excuse his lies? An alien pregnancy!”
Taking a deep breath, he carried on, his voice hoarse. “I know you have hormones raging through your body. And since meeting me the idea of that scum touching you probably makes your skin crawl even more, but come on. Get real!” He tried to cough away the frog in his throat. “He raped you. He’s covering for himself by taking advantage of your fragile state. That’s all. That’s all it is.” Too late, he added, “But I’m here now, and everything’s going to be okay.” He caught a glimpse of how he may have got things catastrophically wrong in Carys’s catatonic stare.
“Let us pray,” he suggested in desperation. Carys didn’t want to pray. She didn’t want anything from this man who understood her needs so little. She couldn’t even raise enough energy to tell him to fuck off.
Marco prayed ‘in the name of Jesus,’ and ‘cast out the demons that dwell within her,’ and a few other Christian platitudes. Carys wasn’t really listening. When he’d finished, he hung around for a while before muttering something about food and disappeared downstairs again.
Carys sat on the bed for a while before lying back down and staring at the ceiling. She heard Marco’s footsteps coming up the stairs. To avoid him talking to her again, she closed her eyes. Aware of him standing self-consciously at the bedroom door, his heavy breathing, the creaking floorboards as his weight moved from one foot to the other. She imagined him peering at her, trying to decide if she was actually asleep. Seemingly satisfied, he quietly crept back downstairs.
Pinging open her eyes, enraged by his mistake, she still didn’t move. Like a coiling spring in a clockwork mechanism, wound ever tighter, ready for whatever its function was to be. Carys didn’t know what her mechanism might produce when it was released, but she didn’t think it would be good.
Part of her wanted to try deep breathing or even praying on her own, but another part of her wanted the clockwork to keep winding tighter and tighter. That part of her wanted to see the explosion of kinetic motion, like a jack shooting from its box. The thrill of the surprise, and the accompanying adrenaline, surging through her veins, was irresistible.
As she lay wrestling with the angel and the devil on her shoulders, she heard the same creeping up the stairs. She closed her eyes again. Marco seemed to be pondering his options at the door. He waited for less time before turning and creeping back downstairs. He must have decided, as she hadn’t moved at all and still had her eyes closed, she must definitely be asleep.
Carys imagined his relief. Perhaps as he sat downstairs quietly watching the television, he pictured her waking from her sleep her normal loving self again. She wanted that for him. Maybe she did love him? And maybe it would work. Maybe if she could go to sleep, she might wake feeling better. Controlling her breathing, eyes closed tightly, she would try.
A breath from across the room.
Opening her eyes, she stared at the doorway.
No-one was there.
She’d clearly heard Marco go downstairs, so who did she just hear breathing? She forced her eyes shut again. The breathing stayed silent and she wondered if she imagined it.
Swoosh! The noise of breath rushed past her right ear. A jolt of alertness left her cold, made her jump out of her skin. This time she daren’t open her eyes.
She lay motionless, eyes moving rapidly under their lids whilst she shivered in fright.
“That there is a eebomeenashon.”
She heard the familiar voice of the Amish man clearly in the room. What could she do? She wouldn’t open her eyes. He wasn’t real, was he? So if she ignored him, surely he’d disappear back to where he came from.
“You look at me when I’m talkin to you,” he drawled menacingly.
He’s not real, Carys told herself over again. There’s nothing he can do. She soon decided otherwise and opened her eyes abruptly when something brushed against her leg.
“That’s better!” he said. “You can’t keep that eebomeenashon,” he almost spat as he prodded her tummy. She felt pain as he jabbed her hard.
Fight or flight response rapidly injected her body with a surge of adrenaline as she reached out to grab his arm. At the first touch of his slight, wiry limb, he vanished and she was alone in the room again.
Scrambling from the bed, she tripped over the entangling duvet. She had to get out of here. Reaching the stairs, foot poised to go down, Marco rushed to the lounge door and poked his head out.
“Want some food?” he offered bounding, puppy-like, to the kitchen to prepare or re-heat something.
No, thought Carys I don’t want any of your sodding food. She followed him into the kitchen and watched his bemused face as she side-stepped him in his effort to get to the microwave with the plate containing her dinner from earlier.
She opened the cereal cupboard and took out the large unopened box of cornflakes.
Marco didn’t know quite what to do with the dinner in his hand. It was obvious she wasn’t planning to eat it, but he didn’t want to antagonise her by discarding it. Standing with the plate in his hand, he gawked as Carys slid her finger under the cardboard flap on the box and peeled open the plastic bag.
She didn’t continue to prepare the cornflakes as Marco had expected. Instead, she poured the entire contents of the box onto the kitchen floor, sprinkling liberally, ensuring the whole surface was covered.
Enjoying Marco’s stupefied expression, she walked to the fridge. The cornflakes crunched underfoot as she stepped. Removing six pints of full cream milk from the door, and opening it, Marco knew what was coming, but felt powerless to stop it. His mouth fell open in astonished silence as she predictably splashed the bottle of milk over the cornflakes on the floor.
When she’d finished, she turned to Marco. Before he realised what she was doing, she had grabbed the plate of sausage and chips from his hand and thrown it to the floor, showering food debris to mix with the cornflakes and milk and smashing the plate. Marco roused quickly from his daze and shouted out in objection.
Carys was already out of the kitchen and heading for the front door. Marco, not wanting her to leave, rushed after her.
“Where are you going?” he called out. Panicking At her rapid pace, he watched, powerless as the front door closed with Carys on the other side of it. Bounding to the door, he grabbed the handle, desperately aware of the final turn of the key the other side of the lock as he tried to turn the lever in vain.
Dashing to the kitchen to get to the back door, he skidded on the milk and cornflakes, just makin
g it across the room without falling. Fumbling the door open he stumbled into the garden. He struggled with the temperamental catch of the back gate, then burst, breathless, onto the street.
There was no sign of Carys. Searching both ways to decide which direction to go. One way led to ‘The Drang’ (Pembrokeshire slang for an alleyway) and out to the town centre. The other way lead through the communal garden of a warden controlled complex of flats for elderly residents. The only other way was straight ahead and clearly in view. She couldn’t have gone that way.
The gates to the residents’ flats creaking was usually a source of irritation. Marco was sure he hadn’t heard it. That left the Drang, apart from a gap through the fence to the fire station, but at five months pregnant, that was unlikely.
Hurtling down The Drang, and into the main street, he could see a long way up and down the road. She wasn’t there. He raced back up through the alleyway and up the road past the old people’s complex onto the street the other side of the town. There were a lot more hiding places there and he couldn’t see far up the street.
Breathless, he examined the area as far as he could see before deciding he’d be more help going back to the house and calling 999. He went to the front door automatically before remembering it was locked. Carys had left the key sticking out of the barrel, so he let himself back inside.
After the police, he tried to phone Geraint, but given the lateness, he was either asleep or working a night shift somewhere. He phoned his own dad too, hoping to mobilise a posse of Fellowship members to search for her. Embarrassing her was the last thing he wanted to do, but he had to try everything he could to help her, and their baby.
There was no answer from his parents either. A glance at the kitchen clock revealed it was late.
Still wondering what else he could be doing; who else he could call, a squad car with flashing lights appeared at the front of the house. Marco answered the door before it was knocked and invited the police officers, a PC and WPC, into the lounge.
They took a statement of Carys’s mental health. They were particularly concerned that she was heavily pregnant, but assured Marco that colleagues were already out looking for her and were sure to find her. They took a recent photograph and left him to man the house. That way he could let them know if Carys returned, whilst they joined the other police in the search.
If he had been able to speak to his father-in-law, Marco would have known how similar Carys’s behaviour was to her mother’s mental episodes. It wouldn’t have helped. Geraint felt as ill-prepared now as ever he had, despite Diane’s latest cocktail of medication proving the most effective yet.
Marco had no choice but to wait at home, wringing his hands. He’d be exhausted for work tomorrow, but he could call in sick. He just wanted his wife back. And he wanted the baby. He wanted his own children with her one day, but looking after the victim of the awful rape Carys had suffered was a calling he truly wanted to answer.
As he sat on the sofa with no television on or any distraction, he started to drift away into a fitful half sleep. The front door was knocked lightly and he leapt to his feet within half a second. Would it be news of Carys? It was. They hadn’t found her. The police officer at the door announced himself as the dog handler.
“Could you bring something of your wife’s for Rufus to smell while I get him ready?” Marco nodded and raced upstairs.
He decided that the pillow case was the most recent thing that Carys had touched and brought that down.
“Go on Rufus. Get that scent in your nostrils.”
Rufus was an enormous German Shepherd Dog, and clearly excited to do his job. He soon picked up the scent of Carys from the pillowcase and dashed off with his handler past the old people’s complex and up to the main road.
Marco raised his eyes to heaven as he realised how she had fooled him with her route. She could have walked fairly far in the short time before the police had responded to his call, but without her purse (It was still in her coat pocket) she should surely be easily caught by several police officers in cars and a police dog.
He went back inside to wait for news.
Hour passed after hour, after hour, until, as the light of dawn broke the blackness, he drifted off into shallow slumber.
Chapter Twenty-six
A peculiar dawn
Carys ran from the house. Locking the front door had given her a minute’s head start. She hadn’t expected it to be enough, but it had proved to be. From her hiding place in-between some large communal bins in a covered archway next to the launderette, she could see Marco. She was quite surprised he couldn’t see her as he ran back and forth.
When she noticed the police arrive she decided to move on. She walked along the road and turned right at the end onto the street that joined The Drang. When she reached the long alleyway that lead back to the house, she headed up it. She debated going back home, but she couldn’t. Not with the police there.
She reached the top and rocked on her heels indecisively. Someone stepped out of the darkness and pointed into the large garden of one of the neighbours.
“They won’t find you in there,” the Amish man of earlier was stood in the street light. “The smell of Guinea pigs and chickens will put the dog off its scent.” Carys didn’t know about any dog, but believed the man’s logic. Why he’d help her after his aggressive treatment of her previously was another matter. But then, he wasn’t real. He couldn’t be expected to behave consistently, could he?
As she stepped cautiously into the garden, she became aware of a second figure, a woman. She wasn’t sure if she was Amish as well; in fact, she thought she may have been wearing traditional Welsh costume, but authentic, period clothes.
She didn’t speak, but pointed to an opening in the tarpaulin covering the cages. It could barely be seen in the dull night light, but she fumbled her way through, finding a dry area of discarded hay to sleep on.
She heard the police striding up and down the alleyway, the excitement of the chase, electric in the air. Then she heard the dog. Just as her Amish ally had suggested, it didn’t pick up her scent into the garden. Instead, it seemed confused by her earlier trail.
Making no allowance for the silence required for effective hiding, the Amish man yelled at her. One of the advantages of not being at all real, Carys supposed.
“When the powleese go, you gotta get rid o that alien insider ya,” he said in a ‘confident he would be obeyed’ voice. Carys’s mind flooded with images of her extra-terrestrial child on her lap, suckling at her breast, looking up at her with vast black almond shaped eyes, clutching her with white twig fingers.
The Amish man was right. She couldn’t have this baby, could she? But how could she get rid of it now? A termination was only a possibility if there were exceptional circumstances. What would the consultant say? If the measurements the sonographers took did point to a hideously deformed foetus, might they offer a termination?
Carys couldn’t be sure. She also couldn’t be sure if an abortion was suggested, that she might not fight tooth and nail against it. The bond she had with the little life inside her was strong. If it was from out of this world, then surely the aliens must have a plan. And if its true identity was kept hidden, did it really matter? Was an alien very much worse than carrying the child of her rapist?
The nausea swimming in her head indicated that it was. But the baby was a consolation, whoever the father was.
“If you don’t get ridda that there baybee…” the drawling voice of her Amish tormenter filled her ears and her brain again, “then I reckon we’ll just have ta do it for ya,” he said indicating himself and the olden day Welsh lady.
“No!” she shouted. “You leave me and my baby alone.”
The Welsh costumed woman moved towards her with her dirty pale fingers clenched in a strong looking fist. Carys jumped out of the way as the fist flew at speed towards Carys’s stomach, only narrowly missing.
Carys threw back the tarpaulin and ran out into the gard
en. She was surprised that it was daylight. She didn’t know she had slept, but nothing else accounted for the passing time. She kept on running down the Drang, and out the other end to the town centre.
For a woman five months pregnant, she had a tremendous turn of speed. The slight downhill gradient aided her rapidity. Her pursuers’ footsteps echoed through the long alleyway as she hurtled down the road. She knew she was at the limits of her stability and her stamina, she’d have no choice but to rest soon.
If she was near people, they wouldn’t be able to hurt her. They’d only ever showed up when she was alone in the dark. Her brain couldn’t decide if that was because they wanted to avoid witnesses of their violence, or because they couldn’t exist in front of other people. The boundaries were becoming perilously blurred.
She rushed down the hill and past the war memorial overlooking the dramatic ruins of Narberth Castle.
A collection of benches was arranged in a small public garden next to the cell of Rebecca, the famous holding place for leaders of the Rebecca riots of 1839-43. Sat on the bench with the Dragon public house, and tourist information centre and the other shops and cafes close by, she’d be safe, she was sure.
Cramp clawed her calves and thighs. The cold start to fast running was taking its toll on her stiff muscles. Stumbling, exhausted, across the road and into the small garden with its benches and promise of safety-affording observers, Carys allowed herself to stop and gulp life-affirming oxygen into her lungs.
Breathing heavily on the bench facing the way she’d come so she could see if her attackers made it down the hill, she pondered if she wasn’t better off hiding, but where? They had found her easily last night. Should she stick it out where she was?
“You can’t run away from us, Carys,” the drawling voice was right there. She hadn’t seen where they’d come from but they were both there.
Being close to Rebecca’s cell, she knew who the Welsh woman reminded her of. She looked like the picture of Rebecca on the cell door. Not a woman at all, but a man dressed in women’s clothes, as was the disguise used by Rebecca and her children a hundred and sixty years ago.
The HUM: The complete novel Page 20