The Evil Seed

by Joanne Harris

  ‘Joe?’

  He grins, pushing long hair out of his eyes.

  ‘Who d’you think it is? Are you OK now? You were having your fortune told, and you must have passed out, or something. It must be the heat. Come on out here and I’ll buy you an ice-cream.’

  Alice frowns.

  ‘Fortune?’

  ‘Yes, don’t you remember?’

  She shakes her head. ‘I …’

  ‘You’ll be all right in a moment or two,’ the gipsy woman smiles, oddly young-looking in the bright light, the neon flickering on to her red hair. Odd, that she should have red hair, thinks Alice vaguely; she thought that all gipsies were dark. A bird tattoo is etched starkly on to her left cheekbone, eerily lifelike.

  ‘OK?’ Joe’s voice is concerned. ‘Do you want to go home now?’

  Alice shakes her head, forcing her eyes back into focus, manages a smile.

  ‘No, it’s all right,’ she says, but even as she speaks she looks at Joe and wonders how, in the damp and muggy heat of this hot summer night, he can still be wearing that greatcoat.

  Tick …

  tick …

  Turner shifts uneasily under the filthy blanket, tasting the tinniness and slickness of his blood in his throat. His dreams fall away from him like snakeskin.

  In his dreams he has heard the nightwalkers come and go, for a moment he almost touched Joe’s hands as he reached out to him, but Joe is snatched away again into bright ether, and Turner smiles thinly through blood-crusted lips and drifts back.

  Tick …

  tick …

  t …

  She makes children of us all, I told you; children in the face of her, the glory of her. She revels in our fears, the scent of our childish terrors, and she feeds on them, on all of us – she is the witch in the gingerbread house, the ogress, the wicked queen, the ravening wolf, the monster in the cellar, in the heart. This is her defence, this one rapture, shrinking us into children, wracked by children’s fears, children’s certainties.

  As I face her, the Blessed Damozel, essence of every dream and fairy story and legend and fear, I am filled with a rapture I cannot analyse; I am diminished and at the same time increased. She laughs as she turns the wheel of the spinning-top but at last I know that I am ready for her. I run across the painted skyline, a perfect circle, spinning for me. All around me rise the painted trees, the houses with windows painted on their bland red façades, the painted railway track humming as I hear the sound of the train, that hungry dragon from under the painted earth. I hear it, its voice like the apotheosis of all monsters, Rosemary at the wheel, bearing down on me. And suddenly realize that we too have power, power enough to break hers. We are children; we believe. And with belief, with faith, we can destroy her. Children have the only true faith, not the stumbling faith of religions, those dim adult fairy tales, but faith in magic, belief in rapture. Join hands with me and chant the spell – Tick …

  tick …

  Alice starts; for a moment she thought she was somewhere else, feels the breath of the night on her cheek. She looks at Joe as he grins, wolflike, and draws a long black knife from the pocket of his greatcoat. Somewhere in the background, a merry-go-round the size of a spinning-top is playing; as she watches, the bird on the gipsy’s face spreads its wings and flies away.

  Tick …

  tick …

  As she is taken off-balance he strikes, the knife reaching her at a clumsy angle, slicing through the palm of her hand. She screams, the sound a clear bright lance in the air. The fairground dances around her like a carousel ride, scents assail her nostrils; blood and peanuts and the rank stink of animals. Zach claws at her, one earring swinging; she feels his fingers jab into the side of her neck, almost paralysing her. She kicks out at him sideways, taking him off-balance, her mind a cold rushing emptiness. Her hands are someone else’s hands as she finally lifts the pistol and fires.

  For a moment time is suspended.

  The shot surprises her even more than it does Zach. It seems as if the gun has gone off entirely on its own, wrenching her shoulder as it does, leaping in her grasp like an angry cat. A second before the shock even registers, Alice sees the hole appear in Zach’s chest, sees him stagger and fall back, sees him jerk again in mid-fall, and then the world is nothing but sound, sound and blackness, and Zach on the floor. There are clouds in her eyes, and in slow motion and silently Java approaches, the knife a slice of shadow in his hand.

  Rapture. The word is alien, like someone else’s thought beamed by accident into Joe’s mind. For a second he isn’t even certain what it means, but as he hears its psychic echo the world snaps back into place with a sound like a breaking bone. The figure in front of him is nebulous, giant one moment and small the next, the knife a blade of shadow slicing the air before him. His eyes drop to the needle in his hand; he has kept it all this time without even knowing that he had it, and a certainty invades him. For a startling moment he is Joe again, flying, riding the storm on a wave of chords, a sorcerer’s apprentice conducting an orchestra of howling, screaming fantasies. He leaps forwards into the wave with the syringe held high above his head.

  The world comes back into sharp focus, but too late; Java is on her, crushing her windpipe. She swings her fist at him, still weighted with the pistol it strikes him on the side of the head, a messy blow which nevertheless loosens his grasp from her throat. The knife has fallen to the floor, and Alice is almost sure she can feel the hilt of it under her ribs, digging into her back, but she cannot reach it. She feels Java’s hand come back to her throat and twists to bite him, feeling her teeth against his wrist. Almost gagging, she struggles to raise the pistol, but her hand is numb from loss of blood, her arm gloved in blood to the elbow. Slick with blood and sweat, the pistol slides from her hand and falls by her side where she cannot reach it. She guesses Java’s grin as he closes both hands around her throat and begins to tighten his grip.

  With a cry of (rapture) elation I (he) fall upon her, fragments of her illusory glamour showering me (him) like glass. I (we) have broken out of the spinning-top at last, like a dragon eating himself up tail first. She can have no more power over me (us), I tell myself; I am free. We are free. I reach out to them over the years, to you, to him, to my figure reflected back over time like faces in a hall of mirrors. We are Daniel, you are Daniel, Daniel, young and old, legions marching across the years, marching across the painted blue sky. In this moment I can see you. I know you. I reach for your hand, here where all possibilities are true; I take your hand and give you the power I know we have, the power of light, the light of all things which die and suffer, all things which love and yearn for the unattainable. God help me, in this endless, sacred moment I feel redeemed, I feel blessed with all the brave certainty for which I will grieve in vain in later, darker years. Maybe it is the gas, the hunger, shock, or maybe, as I choose to believe, the divine reasserting itself in my soul, but for a brief longed-for instant, I feel that despite Rosemary I have at last glimpsed God. As I struggle with the nightwalker, my glasses fall to the floor, my heel grinds the glass to dust. I feel (the needle in my hand) her bones beneath my hands, the hollow of her throat give way under the pressure (the syringe empties, I can feel its response). Her flesh yields reluctantly; for a moment all illusions are stripped away, and we see her face as it really is, the childish features cut away to reveal the nightwalker unmasked. In that instant she speaks to me, promises worlds and lifetimes. But she is weakened, ebbing like a bloodtide, waning, shrinking. The face of the demon becomes a burning rose, the cup passes over.

  The pressure is unbearable, a single degree away from death. Alice’s nose is bleeding and her vision is darkening fast. Her right arm is almost completely paralysed now, and both she and Java are struggling in a growing puddle of sludge made of blood and dust. Her thoughts are terrifying, simple patterns, unaware even that they are thoughts. Suddenly she feels him flinch, his thoughts assailing her with a blast of unexplained panic, his hands going from her thr
oat. For a second she fears that she will not be able to move, but she finds that she can. She grabs his knife, and hits him cleanly once, just below the ribs …

  *

  Joe’s mind circles in a broken loop as he stares in shock at the red-haired girl. In the faint glow from the broken window she is a jumble of light and shade, hair the faintest nimbus of rose in a stark and violent monochrome. The syringe is planted in her neck, just below the jugular, and as he reaches to draw it out, the girl twists round to bite him, hissing, her eyes rabid crescents of white. She thrashes, snakelike, in his arms, she rakes his face with her fingernails, hissing in a deep, choked voice. He falls to his knees with his hands shielding his face.

  God the light!!

  Something is happening to Ginny; her face twists and shifts, her image like breaking crystal in the sunlight.

  Joe reels before the force of the vision, cringing back against the wall. Half-obscured by the shiftings of the light against his retinas, he is still aware of the figure of Ginny kneeling on the floor, hissing and raking at the air with her fingernails, and though he can hardly see her real body, he seems to see behind the veils of flesh a formless thing, tearing at its own face to reveal something lightless and pitiless, reaching out its fingers to touch despair into his heart. He retreats to a foetal position, eyes closed like the door to his mind. Black flowers bloom behind his eyes, all sensation receding mercifully at the end of a tunnel of light. Going back to a soundless world, world beyond memory.

  (Bye bye.)

  (Wait.)

  (No no no.)

  (I said wait.)

  The voice has authority, and automatically he obeys, turning in confusion as the accents coalesce into a figure, a face he does not recognize; a young man about his age with thin, academic features and old-fashioned half-moon glasses.

  (Who are you?)

  (Don’t worry about that, you’ve got to listen to me. I haven’t very much time.) (What do you want?)

  (You have to set fire to the house, make sure it’s completely destroyed, then you have to burn the bodies.) (Ginny, oh Gin—)

  (Don’t say her name, don’t mention her. You have to forget her, no grave no funeral, nothing. Do you understand?) (I—)

  (It’s terribly important. You have to forget her. If you don’t do as I say you’ll call her back.) (… I)

  Alice stumbled and almost fell and in the strange flickering light she thought she saw a figure standing in the room, a young man in an overcoat, grey eyes obscured by thick glasses, thinning hair hidden by a brown felt hat, but when she regained her balance he had gone, and there was only Joe, lying on the floor beside Ginny’s body. The broken syringe lay beside her, but she could see the mark it had made, the bruise and the single drop of blood on the white throat. She took Ginny’s wrist in trembling fingers, searched for the pulse, but found nothing. Just the rushing nothingness of the sea in an empty shell.

  Beside her, something moved slightly, and she heard a sound, half-sigh, half groan.

  ‘Ginnyyyy …’

  In an instant she was on her knees beside him, pulling him up. ‘Joe? Are you OK?’

  ‘Al?’ He sat up abruptly, and Alice thought she could feel the fever in his body through his clothes. She guessed that he might be in shock.

  ‘Where’s Gin?’ He stood up, still with that false briskness, and Alice wondered at how strangely normal his voice seemed. She supposed that she too was in shock, but for now the sensation was almost pleasant. Even the blood, which was still trickling sluggishly down her arm and the whole of her left side, seemed to belong to someone else.

  ‘Ginny’s dead.’ Her voice felt remote, as if she had just come out of anaesthetic.

  ‘What?’ He was hardly paying attention. He patted the dead girl’s face gently. ‘Gin. Wake up. Come on, Gin. She’s fainted. There was something in the air. Drugged incense or something. I passed out, too. Ginny!’

  ‘She’s dead,’ said Alice quietly.

  ‘Gin? Wake up, Gin.’

  ‘Joe. I said she’s dead. You injected her with the syringe she gave you for me. She meant you to kill me all along.’

  ‘No!’ He shook her, more violently this time. ‘Ginny!’ He turned to Alice. ‘She’s not breathing. We need an ambulance. Ginny!’ He began to try to pump air into the girl’s lifeless body by force, almost sobbing with the effort.

  ‘Ginny! Wake up!’

  ‘It’s no good. Whatever was in that syringe wasn’t a tranquillizer. She wanted me out of the way.’

  ‘No!’ He was crying now, still pumping at the girl’s body. ‘Wait! Ginny! I love you!’

  And it wasn’t the blood, or the shock, or even the relief of thinking it was all over. It was hearing him say that to Ginny, to Rosemary, even after everything that had happened, that made her lose control. Everything strong in her collapsed, and with that last ‘I love you’ in her memory’s ear (so much sharper than reality), Alice began to throw up.

  Some time later she found Turner’s petrol and guessed its use. For all its damp, the house burned fairly well.

  One

  THE RADIO’S ON somewhere in the building; I can hear it playing weird dream-notes through the walls, some kind of modern music, I suppose. I don’t much like the modern scene; I expect it’s because I’m too much of a purist. I never even liked jazz. But somehow, these notes, odd, semi-discordant resonances rarefied into almost nothing through the thickness of the walls … they compel me, somehow, I can hear the voice of the singer, low, almost atonal, a kind of lament; I can even hear the words: Remember me, for I am not gone away.

  I am in the air you breathe— I am in every part of you.

  No, I never heard that. I must be making that up.

  Remember me when shines the sun; I am glass— The sun shines through me.

  How strange, that my subconscious should speak to me through rock music.

  Remember me when comes the night; I’ll haunt your dreams.

  Two

  IT IS RAINING, and the tiny sounds of the rain against the window tick against the glass like time going by. Alice remembers the cup of tea by her elbow and tastes it; it is cold. Moggy is sitting on her knee, paws tucked neatly under her body. Alice forces her eyes back into focus and re-reads the letter, crumpled by the weight of the cat. There are cat hairs clinging to the smooth paper. The hairs are brindled, like the cat. For a minute or two, the hairs are more clear than the writing.

  A phrase catches her eye, holds it almost magically;

  ‘Something inside me still remembers …’

  ‘and I’ll never forget her’.

  ‘Never.’

  She brushes the paper, absently, begins to read again; she knows the words almost by heart, but still she re-reads them, as if to discover some undisclosed secret in the close-written lines.

  Dear Alice,

  I have arranged the funeral in Grantchester for the 21 May. Nothing elaborate, but I wanted to make sure that she wasn’t just forgotten.

  I’d like you to come. First, I think it would do you good, and would get you to see things in a proper perspective. Second, I need to talk to you. I can’t believe what you told me last time; I can’t and won’t believe it of her. I love Ginny and she loved me. I think she was disturbed; I’m willing to believe she was an addict, and after the result of the inquest I believe you are right in thinking that she intended to give you a drug overdose. Perhaps she even knew it was an overdose. At least none of that had to come out in court; they all assumed that she’d done it herself. In as much as I can feel gratitude in any of this rotten business, I’m grateful for that; because I know she was innocent. As for the rest, I’m convinced that what I thought I saw in the house was an hallucination caused by drugs; it’s the only explanation I can accept. It would be better for you if you’d accept it, too.

  I don’t know what I’ll do without her; I’m writing this to you and wondering when I’ll start feeling the pain – in a way, the most terrible grief would be better than this
. I’ve left the band; I found I couldn’t take any interest in what was going on any more, and I didn’t think it was fair on the others to drag them down just when they were beginning to get somewhere. Maybe I’ll get going again some day; I don’t know, but every time I pick up my guitar I just keep remembering Ginny.

  I need you, Alice. You’re the only person who knew her that I can talk to. I need to know all about her, to make her live again for me. Don’t try to make me forget her; I can’t. Something inside me still remembers and I’ll never forget her. Never. She can live again, in me, in my thoughts and dreams. God, sometimes I feel her so close that I can almost touch her. Please come to the funeral; no one else will. I’ve ordered white flowers.

  Alice stops reading.

  In her mind’s eye she sees a carnival wheel, still and black against the white sky. She walks across the deserted fairground towards it, as it looms dragon like above her. For a moment she glimpses the intricacies of its inner workings, red with rust and black with oil, hears the voices of birds calling in the still pale air. Then a sound, faint and whispery at first, then beginning to gather momentum … the sound of the beast’s intestines at work. A grating, creaking sound, a grinding of metal on rust, metal on metal. A sound like the machinery that turns the world on its axis like a roundabout, keeps the blue sky’s circle in place. Slowly, but with the inevitability of Fate, or Faith, the wheels begin to turn.

  Epilogue

  I HELD OUT for as long as I could; it took me this long to realize that after all, this was where I needed to be. It’s quiet here, tranquil; every day a new kind of serenity. I sit at the window and comb my hair into the sunlight, like Mariana, and I wonder whether death will come today. It comes to me in the mornings, almost gently, with the sun, and somehow with its coming I begin to understand Daniel better than ever before. We remember, Daniel and I: we remember and we know that it’s only a question of waiting. A wheel turns, a clock ticks, a girl rides a roundabout through a carousel of dreams to come full circle again under the same sky which turned for Daniel’s little train in his spinning-top all those years ago.