The Evil Seed

by Joanne Harris

  Rosemary had money, stolen in part from earlier victims, some of it given to her by her previous benefactor, and sometimes we bought wine and cigarettes from the late-night off-licence, and drank and smoked in our borrowed lodging like dilettante students discussing art and poetry. I saw her every night; she came late, after midnight, and I often wondered to myself how she managed to come so regularly without having to explain herself to Robert. Maybe she drugged him, I thought. Even if she did not, he was enough under her spell to let her do anything she wanted.

  I kept on the fringes of events; believe me or not, I killed no one, but I did feed, ravenously. I rode the carnival-wheel all that time, in nights beyond dreaming or description. We drank whisky and wine mingled with blood. We fed from each other. We loved one another in ways which transcended the purely physical, though my appetites called for that kind of loving, too. And still, behind the curtain of that past glamour, there was the hidden canker of my hate, the culmination of my love and my hunger. At present, it seems that my descriptive powers are forsaking me; I can hardly even visualize the glory of that time, as if the memory of what happened after that has cast a darkness over the images there. I remember happiness, without knowing what form it took, remember the words, power, joy, rapture, without being able to visualize even the simplest memory.

  At times such as these, I can almost delude myself into thinking that she is really dead; it takes a great effort of will to continue my story at times such as these. My young doctor thinks that the writing itself is perpetuating my delusions; that as an academic, I have been too much involved in reading my truths from books, and seek to make my fabrication true by writing it. Others disagree, seeing my work as an effort from my subconscious to exorcize the sickness within my psyche.

  I tell this to my young friend to cheer him up; he really does seem very depressed about my case nowadays, even when I let him beat me at chess. I tell him it isn’t good for him to become emotionally involved with his patients. He smiles, sadly, knowing that my seeming rationality is no indication of any improvement in my condition; sometimes I hint to him, in the words of my namesake, that when he has eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth – that what he fears might yet be true. Sometimes, when I say these things, he looks so wretched, feeling, perhaps, that he has failed me, that I fabricate some insane remark, simply to justify his beliefs, and he rewards me with his smiles, and maybe a game or two of chess. He tries to feed my interest in psychology by telling me about some of his other cases: the girl next door is a schizophrenic, sixteen years old and wracked with personality disorders. He feels confident that she will make a full recovery, however, as she responds well to treatment. Responds well to him, more likely. I want to tell him to be careful … Rosemary was just another such young innocent. Suddenly I feel very uneasy about that girl. I want to tell him to keep away from her, but I have teased him too much today. He humours me, but does not listen.

  Time, I must try to remember how short it is; but the pills they give me stretch time, so that wasted days melt into wasted days. I was telling you about the summer before I killed her. Most of all, I have to tell you how I killed her, so that you too can do the same, when your time comes. And you must not be as weak as I.

  You must kill the thing you love, as I, in the end, was not wholly able to do.

  They can be killed. I know they can, and the action is as simple and dreadful as the taking of any life. Any hand can do the deed, any mind formulate the desire. But this is not enough. Their strange life can be taken, but not kept. It re-emerges like some deadly transparent thing of the sea, beckoned by the rays of the moon. They are not immortal, though their kind has lived almost for ever.

  Their seed is everywhere, dormant, like a poison tree under the orchard, their roots quartering the earth and spreading like maggots into the minds of men. The evil seed may lie sleeping for a hundred years, before it wakes, shaking the snow of winter from its face and looking up into the sunlight. The ancient priesthood knew how to stamp out the seed of the night; they burnt it and buried it in stone and lime, but still it lived, in memories, in tales, in song. Every child who has longed to be Cinderella or the Wolf Boy, every young man who has dreamed of raising a dead princess with his kiss has sown the night’s seed, Proserpine’s underworld seed which grows the blood-red fruit.

  Desire.

  It takes a certain kind of desire, but all it needs is one person, one soul, to call her back, and willing or not, she will return. A single soul. That’s all it takes.

  And, oh – to be Rosemary. To burn bright as Rosemary … to wield that power for myself. What would I give for that? What have I already given?

  August … die she must. September, I remember. If only I did. But my mind wanders so. She had control over my mind that summer, as surely as she possessed my body. It was a sweet possession, feeding me, feeding from me. I didn’t think about Robert at all; Rosemary was ours, mine.

  How long it might have gone on, I do not know. I was comfortable in the warehouse; Elaine washed my clothes and brought me food. She even gave comfort to my other appetites when Rosemary was not available. Her only wish was to die, and there were many things in those days that I did not understand, one of those being how Rosemary could keep Elaine alive against her will. I had come to accept that all my companions, except, perhaps, Rafe, had died once before; Elaine had (or at least, believed she had) been dead for about fifty years, Java more than that. Zach had died in France during the First World War, but remembered little about it. That, or he was unwilling to speak of it. Anton had been killed by Elaine; from what I could understand, his presence gave Rosemary some kind of a hold on her. Perhaps he was her brother; I could never make her tell me. Perhaps – who knows? – he was her son.

  All Elaine could tell me was that Rosemary had called them all back, though she knew nothing of how. I supposed (wrongly, I see now) that she had used some kind of necromancy; I had already steeped myself in dubious magic and ritual, and fancied I knew something about the subject; perhaps I even had some notion of trying it for myself some day. I never had the chance to try, but it happened that I did see it in action, quite unexpectedly, late that August. The day Elaine finally achieved her heart’s desire.

  One

  DO NOT THINK that inspector turner had given up the search for the Cambridge murderer so easily. He had not. I was not accused, but one tentacle of the search had begun to move once again in my direction; or so Rosemary told me.

  Maybe in our hunting we had become complacent; maybe Turner had been observing us for some time, and we had not been aware of it. Maybe he had had Robert watched, and Rosemary had led him to us unawares. Whatever the reason, we were in the warehouse, all of us, one night, drinking and playing cards, when I was suddenly conscious of an unaccountable sense of unease. Maybe there was a stronger psychic link between Turner and myself than I knew at the time.

  It was perhaps two o’clock in the morning; we had had to wait longer than usual for Rosemary, and we had hunted among the destitutes of Cambridge for our prey, wary of the late-night bars and the occasional lights in the windows of the colleges. Passers-by were infrequent after the police scare; people were wary of going out late, and we were all the more noticeable for the lack of other folk in the town, but it was always possible to find a tramp or vagrant lurking around the river or passed out in the doorway of a shop. We had even acquired a taste for such victims, as the alcohol in their veins gave the blood an extra piquancy.

  We were all of us glutted and somnolent, drinking wine brought by Java and Zach, and smoking, and the room in which I slept was already littered with the empty bottles. I often drank on those nights; I think it helped me to distance myself, to taste the thrill of the hunt without the pangs of mind or conscience. The light was dim, coming as it did from a couple of candles stuck into empty wine bottles; the windows were covered with sacking. No one could have stumbled upon us by accident.

  At fir
st, I attributed the sensation of being watched to paranoia; I drank another glass of wine to still my nerves, but that did not allay my fears. In fact, the wine only seemed to attune my new sensitivity even more.

  At last, I could not bear it. I turned to Rosemary.

  ‘Are you sure no one followed us here?’ I asked.

  She looked at me. ‘Poor Daniel,’ she said. ‘Do you think I care? There are plenty of us to deal with them if they did.’

  In some ways, she was very innocent.

  ‘I think there’s someone outside,’ I said. ‘Watching the warehouse.’

  Zach made a gesture of dismissal; he had been out at about midnight, and had seen nothing.

  No one seemed to want to take my suspicions seriously, except Elaine, who looked up, her eyes huge in her shadowy face.

  ‘I think Daniel is right,’ she said. ‘I’ve been feeling uneasy, too. I think the police have been watching us. I’ve heard odd sounds. I’ve seen people in the street.’

  Zach shrugged.

  ‘Send the kid out to see. No one will suspect a kid.’

  Everyone agreed, except, strangely, Elaine.

  ‘I’ll go with him,’ she said. ‘It isn’t fair he should be sent out on his own.’

  ‘Afraid the bogeyman’ll get him?’ said Zach. ‘What is he, scared of the dark?’ But Elaine, in some ways, was as untouchable as Rosemary herself. A soft movement of material from the shapeless coat she was wearing, a scuffling of feet, and she and Anton were already gone. I followed them, at a distance, feeling unsteady because of all the wine I had drunk. I heard the sounds of their footsteps on the cement floor. I was just beginning to believe that I had imagined everything when I suddenly heard a cry.

  Elaine screamed, and I heard her footsteps and Anton’s, suddenly much louder, running through the building. Instinctively, I hid. A light flashed on close by me, and three figures ran past. I heard a voice, shouting: ‘Stop! Police! Stop!’

  The three men rushed past me, dwarfing me, monstrous against the white wall. Sounds behind me, from the room I had just left; I guessed it to be the others, finding their own way out of the building, scuffling, shoving, pushing away from the light. I knew that Zach and Java had a considerable armoury of weapons (stolen or otherwise acquired) hidden in the building. I was inclined to believe that the police might be in for a nasty surprise.

  There was a large window in the passage, which was loosely boarded up. Thinking quickly in my panic, I yanked the boarding away and looked out. The drop was not high; I measured it in my mind, then pulled myself through the uneven gap, looking around for more police. I saw no one; the moonlight was veiled, shadowy. I ran out across the yard and into the bushes and long grass at the back. I lay on my stomach in the undergrowth, the smell of growing grass and cool earth in my nostrils. Across the flat ground, I could hear raised voices. Two shots were fired in rapid succession. I pressed my face against the ground.

  When I happened to look up a few seconds later, I saw three shadows; I guessed them to be Rafe, Java and Rosemary, moving at speed across the yard. In a moment, they were out of the gate and out of sight down the road. I dared to raise myself higher, and as I did Elaine came running silently round the angle of the building, the tail of her greatcoat flapping stiffly out behind her. I could hear her breath, sharp in the quiet night air. She was crying, repeating something to herself which I could not hear. As she reached the path to the gate, I saw her clearly, in the faint moonlight, and realized that all was not well. She was limping, holding her dark coat around her as if for protection. In her hand I could see that she carried a knife, a long straight blade which flicked the light back at me like a mirror. I think she saw me, as I crouched in the shadows, but she did not betray me by as much as a glance. Instead, she turned to face the men who were following her, with a cry of challenge or despair.

  One of the officers called to her: ‘Here! You! Stay where you are! Drop the knife!’

  Elaine drew back a little, holding the weapon in front of her. She knew how to use it; had done so often enough already. The officer began to move towards her, while the other two fanned out to take her from either side.

  ‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘Put down the knife.’

  Elaine took a step back, away from me. For some reason, I felt that she was trying to lure the men away from me, and I shrank back into the dark.

  The man was not more than a dozen feet away from her now; as he spoke, he had been edging gradually closer, one hand in his pocket. Now, he lunged at Elaine. One hand brushed her coat, but Elaine was too quick for him. The light arced from the knife she was carrying, then the man was on his knees. His expression was one of stupid surprise as his belly released its contents, then he began to scream, and I cheered Elaine inwardly from where I was hiding. But almost as soon as it happened, the second officer fired his gun, and she fell.

  Now it was my turn to stare; I kept expecting her to get up.

  The two other officers approached – I was not surprised to see Turner there. The other man went to his fallen companion, who was still very noisily alive. Turner went to Elaine, touched her with the toe of his shoe, knelt down to feel her heart. I saw her face for a moment, still and very white, lips parted to show bared teeth. Then I heard his voice, quiet and with a quaver in it which belied his apparent calm.

  ‘It’s a woman,’ he said. ‘She’s dead.’ Then, with sudden viciousness: ‘Shit!’

  He hesitated for a moment, then regained some of his momentum. Addressing the other officer, who was trying to move his injured companion into the car, he snapped: ‘Don’t waste time. Call an ambulance. Hurry!’ He was obviously shaken; even though gun regulations in those days were rather more lax than now, perhaps it was the first time he had ever shot someone in the line of duty, and the man’s coat Elaine had been wearing had probably deceived the officers as to her size and the danger she might present. I almost sympathized with him, although the shock of Elaine’s death had hit me hard. You see, I had really thought that we were immortal.

  For maybe ten minutes, as I watched the ambulance arrive, the sound of its bell shockingly strident in the quiet night, I waited for Elaine to come back to life. For that time I was half-convinced that she would. It was only when she was loaded on to the stretcher on a polythene sheet that I began to think that there would be no resurrection. Even as the ambulance set off at full speed, its bell ringing, I felt an absurd stab of hope: surely there would be no need for the bell to be rung unless she were still alive? Cursing my stupidity, I realized that I was forgetting the injured officer.

  ‘I really thought he was here this time,’ said Turner in his quiet, intense way. ‘I smelt him, damn it. We should have brought more men. Damn the Yard, I warned them there was something going on here. What’s the good of bringing in three hundred men to investigate if they’re going to waste their time fooling about the river? They don’t know this town.’ For a moment, he brooded. ‘Who the hell was she?’ he said. ‘Was she with him?’ The other shrugged.

  ‘Maybe we’re on the wrong track altogether,’ he suggested. ‘Maybe Holmes isn’t our man.’

  Turner shook his head. ‘He’s our man. And he was here. I know he was.’

  The second man seemed less certain. ‘What about those others?’ he said. ‘I’m sure I saw at least two more, but they must have got clean away. Where do they fit in?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Turner paused. ‘But if we find who the dead woman is, then we’ll find Holmes. I’m sure of it.’

  Their voices drifted, and remotely, I considered my situation, still anaesthetised by wine, blood and shock. For a moment, I wondered how they would react if I just stepped out of hiding and said hello. Then the humour of the thought shifted, became something poignant; suddenly I wanted to be able to step out, into their light, like a child ending a game. I wanted to see their faces, to touch them, to run to them to be comforted. It was more than just a desire to confess. I choose to see what I felt then as the essential
humanity in me in revolt, the thing which, through everything I have undergone, has never quite abandoned me. I stood up.

  ‘Inspector.’ His expression was almost hilarious. I found myself smiling, an absurdly wide, boyish grin. Turner brought out his pistol and pointed it at me.

  ‘Put your hands up, Holmes,’ he said. ‘I want you to put your hands on your head and turn round. On the count of three. One. Two. Three.’

  I shrugged and did as he asked.

  ‘There isn’t any need to be so careful,’ I said. ‘I haven’t got a gun.’

  He ignored that, and I sensed rather than saw him bring out his card from his breast pocket. He read my rights quickly, without expression, like a little boy reciting grace before his birthday dinner.

  ‘Take off your coat.’

  I did so, watching as he searched the pockets by feel, still looking at me from the eye of his gun. He threw the coat back to me, keeping out of range of my hands.

  ‘Put it on.’

  ‘You needn’t have worried,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t going to hurt you.’ That was true enough; what I had felt as I hid in the yard of the warehouse, that kind of love, invaded me again. I wanted to touch him, to make him real in my mind. I wanted to talk to him, to hear his voice. I wanted his wife, his children, his memories, his secrets, his bad habits. I wanted the cigarettes he smoked, the food he ate, the dreams he dreamed.

  ‘You can turn round now,’ he told me as his companion moved towards me to fasten the handcuffs around my wrists. To my mind, the situation was unreal, and I an observer, watching with a kind of detached interest, like a man who knows himself to be dreaming.

  ‘Thank you.’ As I turned I saw his face with great clarity. Thin light sketched his features in graveyard grey, highlighting the outline of the gun in his hand. I know nothing about guns; I couldn’t even guess if it was loaded.