Menace
Page 7
“I…I bet you couldn’t believe your luck when you learned that another seventh son was available.” She shook her head, lending her impromptu conclusion even more clarity. “Neil Lindsey and I were seeing each other at the time, and you’d have known that from newspaper reports. That was why you selected me for the job in Whitby—just on the off-chance that I’d be pregnant. Maybe that’s how desperate your family’s long-term ambition had become. Sixty years since the last attempt, eh? No wonder your email was so effusive in its congratulations about me having a baby!”
At that moment, Luke intervened, his voice sounding glib and defensive, as if Jane had offended him in some way.
“Just on the off-chance, you say?” He laughed with malignant self-satisfaction. “I’m afraid you underestimate me and my dedicated colleagues, my dear. You don’t really think we’d have left the issue of your impending motherhood to luck, do you?”
Jane thought for a moment, hardly able to believe the implications of the man’s latest comments. But she’d accepted so much outrageous material lately that she had no choice.
“You mean…you accessed my medical records?” she asked, her voice shrill and shocked. “You got the doctor in charge of my case to disclose private information.”
Luke nodded with unflustered authority. “We’re professionals, Jane. Not a bunch of bungling amateurs.”
Feeling violated and angry, her mind reeled with so many sudden realizations. But then, her thoughts falling upon another troubling issue, she quickly continued.
“I guess even Neil’s filming trip to Southend—the home of your father, and almost certainly the place he’s buried—was manufactured by you and yours. It would have been a small favor to ask some complicit TV executive.” She paused a moment, a further concern occurring to her. And despite the craziness of the whole situation, she soon found herself speaking again. “But if the seventh son simply had to come from one of seven brothers, why did Neil have to change recently, after the baby was conceived? Why the hell did he have to develop a bad back and blue eyes and an older man’s posture?”
“You’re missing a crucial point,” Luke replied, his expression slightly impatient, like an adult addressing a particularly slow child. “If you and Neil Lindsey had had a child together, it would simply be a first son of a seventh brother. And it had to be the seventh. So for the magic to work correctly, Neil had to become—temporarily, at least—a lot like my father, who’d already fathered six boys. Just as you, after conception, had to be like my mother, with all her idiosyncrasies.”
Jane understood this, even though she was still trying to get so much incomplete knowledge and nebulous impressions organized in her mind. Then, picturing her previous lover healed from his back problem in the same way that her own ailments had now vanished, she pressed on.
“Okay, I see all that. I actually feel foolish to have doubted you.” Hesitating again to catch her breath, she prepared to make another inquiry. Luckily—or perhaps otherwise—the medication she’d been forcibly administered took the rough edges off this one’s frightening import. “But if it was always the child you wanted, why have you let me live? I’m only a vessel, aren’t I? So why am I still needed? Why are you even talking to me?”
“Oh, Jane,” said Luke, his shockingly light blue eyes flashing in the light he’d revealed at the window, after drawing back the curtains on a murky autumn day. Then he turned to gaze at her, his lips curling gently. “You really haven’t understood at all, have you? We’re not in the business of killing. My parents, ill-conceived though their intentions became, were trying to achieve quite the opposite. My father was sick for years and grew gradually more indisposed. But it was later, when my mother became so ill, that the whole enterprise became—shall we say?—more urgent. They needed a special kind of healing…a healing only magic could provide. Do you see what I’m saying now? Do you get it?”
“A seventh son of a seventh son. Legend has it that such a child would have special powers, particularly those of a curative nature.” Jane paused and scoffed aloud. She ran one hand through her hair, which she was certain no longer possessed a premature streak of grey. And then, with not a single involuntary blink, she added, “Yes, I read your book, Luke. Or as much of it as I need to…as much as I could stomach. I guess you’ve upheld the family traditions. Spells and rituals. And I suppose your popular novels are just a marketable sideline.”
When the author didn’t reply, simply stared her way with a malevolent gleam in his eyes, Jane went rapidly on.
“But one final thing I don’t understand is this: your parents are long dead. They can no longer be healed. And so what’s your purpose here? You’re not sick yourself…are you?”
“I couldn’t be healthier.”
She reflected again on all his dark fiction, its taboo subject matter and near-the-knuckle themes. With an unnatural, disarming zealousness, he’d dealt with serial murder, dark rituals, sinister folklore, the occult and the supernatural… And so in what way could any positive outcome to all the events he’d set in motion after employing Jane appeal to him?
She looked again into his twinkling blue eyes. He smiled anew, once such a benevolent expression but now appearing like anything but. Then he clicked his fingers, as if summoning someone within earshot, even though the room was empty except for the two of them.
But that was when the door swung open again, and a young nurse paced inside, carrying a bundle in a shawl. The woman stepped directly across to Jane, tangible respect in her taut bearing, as if also in collusion with Luke Catcher and whatever dark overlords had helped him bring about this complex sequence of events: journalists, TV executives, senior surgeons, and more. After handing over the silent baby, the nurse withdrew immediately, closing the three of them inside, as if to create conditions for a final revelation.
Jane realized that such information was due, but couldn’t help embracing her newborn infant. His physical presence, his indelicate weight, bound them together at a stroke. And there were tears in her eyes as Luke Catcher broke the silence.
“Let me tell you about what I left out of my book,” he explained, pacing slowly across to Jane and her visibly normal infant. Then, with pride palpable in his deep voice, he said, “In certain regions of England, particularly the wilds of Yorkshire, a seventh son of a seventh son has a direct link to…”
Just before the nefarious author with his unpalatable needs and questionable connections could finish, the baby opened his eyes. They were oval slits, the irises bright yellow, and full of inalienable love; their dilated pupils were as black as sin.
“…Satan,” Luke Catcher finished, just as the child began mewling.
Jane’s son wanted feeding. And despite lingering misgivings and a scream building in her throat, it took her only seconds to oblige. The bond was complete, regardless of her adult companion’s ultimate intentions. Then she sat on the bed, her mind reeling, and began tending to the child.
She didn’t need her cross on its chain anymore. She had something else to cling to now.
About the Author
Gary Fry lives in Dracula’s Whitby, literally around the corner from where Bram Stoker was staying when he was thinking about that character. Gary has a PhD is psychology, but his first love is literature. He is the author of many short story collections, several novellas, including DarkFuse titles Lurker and Emergence, and four novels, among them The House of Canted Steps (PS Publishing) and Conjure House (DarkFuse). He was the first author in PS Publishing’s Showcase series, and none other than Ramsey Campbell has described him as “a master.” His latest book is the short story collection Shades of Nothingness (PS Publishing). Gary warmly welcomes folk to his Web presence: www.gary-fry.com.
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