Unhallowed Ground

by Gillian White

  ‘I know there’s a chance we’d find nothing to help us, but farmers do use their own anaesthetics for small jobs, like dehorning and castrating calves. Knowing the Buckpits they’d rather do everything themselves than pay out for a vet…’

  ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ Oliver slams his fist into his hand. ‘Of course, it’s so obvious, you’re right…’

  Georgie freezes, wishing she hadn’t mentioned it, she had hoped for more of a rational discussion rather than this impulsive response. ‘He’ll be out there…’

  ‘No doubt…’

  ‘If it’s Lot, he might even be there in the parlour…’

  ‘Not at night he won’t.’

  Georgie trembles. ‘It’s pitch-black out there at night…’

  ‘Night or day, in this weather it’s all the same…’

  ‘So you think we should…?’

  ‘There’s no doubt about it.’

  ‘Oliver, I really don’t think I can stand it. What if anything happens to one of us? I just don’t think I can cope with the thought of being here alone again with all this madness going on,’ Georgie shudders, tears sprout in her eyes. Death rustles against the windows. ‘Damn Stephen, damn Dave, damn Donna, damn everything. I’ve just had enough.’

  Oliver takes her hand and presses it, his brown eyes crinkling. He is a kind man. ‘I know. I know. Well just try and forget it for now. We won’t mention it any more until nearer the time.’ Sensing Georgie’s terror Oliver moves the subject to more future matters. To her it seems a terrible horizon. ‘When it’s light it might be better to call on the others, I know they don’t sound very hopeful, but somebody has to help us out here. And we’re going to need the Buckpits’ tractor the minute the weather calms down. Somebody has to get to a phone, a helicopter will get through even if nobody else can make it. Dave has to get to hospital, if he lives, and then there’s the bastard who did this.’

  They listen to the row outside. The wind shows no sign of abating. ‘That means there’s going to be two occasions when one of us must stay here alone with Dave. Tonight as well as the morning. We said we wouldn’t split up, Oliver, and I don’t like the idea.’

  ‘I realize that. But we have to try to get the drugs, and it’s imperative we find some help.’

  ‘Huh! And to think I dreamed of a leisurely old age. I wonder if Donna’s told Chad she’s pregnant or whether that little drama was reserved uniquely for me. I’d almost forgotten, it’s strange, that seems like another world after this.’

  ‘After this we can cope with anything,’ Oliver says, looking round dismally. ‘Compared to all this your friend Donna doesn’t know what real problems are.’

  ‘It didn’t seem like that yesterday.’ Good God, was it only yesterday that they had sat in the kitchen while Donna told her tale of woe? How are they coping in that spartan house without electricity? It is most unlikely they would have candles. Nothing so organized.

  Each time the wind gusts from another direction, each time there is a creak from the stairs or a deeper, hollower sound from the chimney, the chill of horror sweeps over Georgie and Oliver’s expression, his hold on the poker, tells her he is equally afraid.

  ‘The bastard’s already been here in the cottage,’ Oliver reminds Georgie needlessly while they wait for night to fall. ‘He got inside somehow to daub that blood on your pallet. There’s no chance, is there, that he might have a key?’

  ‘The door was open that night, I remember. I never used to bother to lock it.’

  ‘And what about the woodshed? Do you bother to lock that? Is there any other possible way this fiend might enter your house?’

  Georgie does not need to think, she already knows the answer. ‘There’s no way. Both doors are locked. The stable door has a chain, too. The upstairs windows are far too small, even for a child to get through, let alone a large man, and he is large, remember, I’ve seen him.’

  ‘But only from a distance. Think, Georgie, think, what the hell did he really look like? It has to be one of your oddball neighbours. It can’t possibly be anyone else.’

  Even to conjure that dark silent figure in her mind is repellent. But Georgie tries all the same. ‘He was big, I am quite certain of that. And bulky, almost fat…’

  ‘But could his clothes give that impression?’

  She waits a moment before answering, thinking hard. ‘Yes, yes, I suppose the width of him could be his clothes. There was always something on his head, some hat, or his collar was up because I couldn’t see any neck, and he wore a dark knee-length coat, and trousers.’

  Oliver looks at her closely. ‘Never any different?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘And he didn’t move at all?’

  ‘Well, he must have moved to get there. And he managed to move very fast when he did his disappearing act. But no, when I was watching he just stood there. Still’

  ‘He must be quite an agile sod to climb onto your woodshed roof.’

  ‘You think that was definitely him? You think he is behind it all?’

  ‘Don’t you, Georgie?’

  ‘I wish I didn’t.’

  Oliver shakes his head. ‘But where does the burning doll come in, and that unlikely make-up bag?’

  ‘They could be unconnected.’

  ‘If we’re going to take this at face value then your lunatic has to be Horace Horsefield or Lot Buckpit, doesn’t it? Neither Cramer or Silas fit the bill. Which is the most likely contender? Think, Georgie, for God’s sake think!’

  And she knows that their lives might depend upon it.

  ‘Horace wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He is a gentle, kindly man, slow and ponderous and worn out with responsibilities. All his time is taken up looking after Nancy. He never leaves his wife, never.’

  Oliver says unpleasantly, ‘Or that’s the impression he’s given to you. And you’ve swallowed it like you swallowed Donna’s unlikely story.’

  ‘Yes, I swallowed it. I can only tell you what I believe. Lot Buckpit seems the most likely. He’s dim-witted, ruled by his mother, but he’s fit and strong and I’ve seen the way he wields an axe.’

  ‘It has to be him. And it is possible that his mother knows and is protecting her mutant offspring, that’s why she doesn’t want you near. That’s why she’s so aggressive towards you.’

  ‘But why would Lot Buckpit want to do all those odd things?’

  ‘When it comes to madness you don’t need a motive. There’s a lot of in-breeding goes on in these obscure places. It could be that the man’s driven mad by the arrival of a strange woman. You say the brothers go nowhere, see no-one. They’ve never lived anywhere else and their mother is obviously some kind of religious fanatic. You can understand their fascination for anyone different, and if one of them is unhinged to the point…’

  ‘Of murder? To the point of murder?’

  ‘My money’s on Lot Buckpit, Georgie.’

  And that makes this coming nocturnal sortie all the more frightening. Is it Lot? Is it? So she puts the farmer’s head on the shoulders of the figure she can never make out and yes, it fits. It suits him. She shudders and moves closer to Oliver.

  On the sofa the boy twists convulsively. Then comes a bout of dreadful shaking, but for now, thank God, Dave’s eyes stay closed. Oliver is right. Whatever the dangers, for Dave’s sake, they have to try to find something to relieve his pain.

  And Georgie agrees with Oliver when he says, ‘Sod this fucking bastard phone.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  WHAT A KNIGHT. HIS armour is a three-quarter Barbour, his breastplate a long-sleeved thermal vest, and the poker serves as his trusty sword and shield combined. With his blood-encrusted face and his hair scruffy with dried sweat, he looks as if he is back from the fray already well beaten.

  ‘Shit. Shit. I do not want to do this. I do not want to go out there.’ He takes in Georgie’s ashen face and grimaces again. ‘Show me one more time on the plan.’

  She spreads the vital piece of paper. Oliver is dete
rmined to go and she has come to accept it. ‘This is us, and this is them. It’s out of the front door, over the stream, turn left on the road. Follow it for a hundred yards and Wooton Farm is right opposite. If you reach the ford you’ve gone too far. You might be able to make out some lights. At least they have a generator.’

  ‘I doubt they’ll be wasting that at five o’clock in the morning.’ He bends over her shoulder to peruse her basic drawing. She can feel the tension coming off him, it meets with hers and creates an aura almost electric. ‘Then I go through the cowshed, which presumably will be full, and through a corrugated door to the parlour.’

  ‘And you try not to use your torch at all until you get right there. You’ve got the string bag. You either fill it and get the hell out of there and we have to hope you’ve hit the jackpot, or you try to read some of the labels, be a little selective, but I don’t think you’ll feel much like doing that.’

  ‘One day,’ says Oliver, ‘we will look back and laugh.’

  ‘No chance,’ says Georgie. ‘And it’s all got to be done so fast that anyone waiting out there will be caught off guard. You’ll be back here before they know where you’ve gone.’

  Oliver takes her hand. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For trying to be positive.’

  ‘If you only knew what I feel like inside.’

  ‘Ditto,’ says Oliver. ‘I’m no bloody hero.’

  ‘I am so glad,’ says Georgie. ‘I never could stand heroes.’

  ‘Lock up behind me for Christ’s sake.’

  He is gone, into a blast of whiteness, into a howling frenzy of cold. Georgie locks the door behind him, it’s no good trying to follow his progress, you can’t see a foot in front of your face, and she retreats back into the sick room where Dave’s prone and mutilated body lies in awful state on the sofa. After checking him over—he seems to be dreaming tonight, under his eyelids there’s rapid movement, and every so often he emits a chilling groan—Georgie paces backwards and forwards in front of the fire. Selfishly she wills him not to wake up while she’s here on her own. She doesn’t know how she could cope with such agony, a screaming, thrashing chaos of pain, so yes, Oliver’s expedition really is imperative. Dave can’t stay unconscious for ever.

  It’s funny how some people inspire confidence, her friend Helen Mace for one, and Oliver is a natural. In his public school way Toby would have strutted out there like a boy playing some Deathwatch computer game, in the same way that his predecessors must have strutted off into their various wars, programmed to show no fear, for God, country and the womenfolk back home. When Georgie married Toby she preferred it like that, she craved to be looked after, to be championed by somebody stronger. Pathetically, she quite understands Donna’s need to be mastered.

  Mark, on the other hand, although from the same kind of background as Toby, is more the intellectual, more into peace, he would be more likely to insist on discussing all this with the Buckpits man to man. He would no more dream of dashing off into the void to purloin some imaginary medicine than sell his beloved old MG to some common collector.

  But neither Toby nor Mark would inspire the same sort of confidence that Oliver, with all his misgivings, inspires in Georgie. So far he has shown himself capable of the most incredible bravery, strong and gentle, funny and sad. She has sworn not to look at her watch, but now she looks at it. The hand has hardly moved since he left, she must give him time.

  Now she leaves the muttering Dave and, by the light of a candle, she goes upstairs to search for the dictionary of drugs that she knows is around somewhere. She shields the candle with her hand, remembering the spooky melodramas she’s seen, those dark Victorian houses where the wind gusts round every corner. Well, in Furze Pen Cottage it gusts through the cracks in all the tiny-paned windows. Many of her books are still boxed, there’s a scarcity of shelf space in the cottage, but surely she saw this one recently in the blanket box at the end of her bed.

  Georgie puts down the candle and kneels at the foot of her bed like Christopher Robin, only her hands are not together. Her prayers for Oliver’s safety are all in her head. She heaves up the lid of the box and peers inside. She is prepared to empty the whole thing out, sod’s law, the book she wants is bound to be right at the bottom, but no, it’s only three layers down. She retrieves it triumphantly and turns to pick up the candle when she sees the light approaching through the darkness of the cottage window.

  Oliver! Oh, thank God. Thank God. And it didn’t take too long after all. She should have had more faith in Oliver, she shouldn’t have been quite so frightened. Any would-be attacker eyeing up Oliver’s stocky size and strength would think twice before picking on him. No, the monster they face is a coward, preferring women and wounded boys on which to vent his fury.

  Georgie stands up and moves to the window, a smile of relief all over her face. One small success at last, perhaps now fortune will change and they will overcome. But why is Oliver moving so slowly? My God, has he been hurt? And now the light is perfectly still, directed on the cottage, three steps forward, three steps back, now it shines on the sky and now it is a pool of light illuminating the snowy ground.

  Georgie blows out the candle quickly. Teeth already chattering she stands behind the curtain and peeps out. Slowly the beam of light approaches, she can make out nothing at all behind it, it’s as if it moves of its own accord, at its own pace, in its own carefully chosen direction. Does it know where she is? Did it notice the candle flame?

  As if in answer the light approaches, slowly, methodically, wavering as it traverses the uneven hillocks of snow, and then it comes forward again. It flickers against the fantastic patterns of frost on the window and gives it a strange perfection, like the stained-glass window of a church, deliberately positioned to catch the brightest light. This can’t be Oliver. Oliver would know how nervous this sort of approach would make her—unless he really is badly injured and is signalling for help, the psychopath close behind him. Lola might know, but Lola is shut in the kitchen in case she should feel like sharing the sofa with Dave, or, God forbid, licking his stump, thinking it charcoaled meat. Should she go down and open the door? Should she open the window and call from here? She releases the catch and pushes. The frame is badly iced up under the heavy folds of snow. She pushes again, with both hands this time, the hammering of her own heart overtaking the buffeting roar of the wind as, in her urgency, she calls upon God or whoever else might be up there, ‘Help me, please help me, please.’

  She thumps. She curses. She calls out wildly in her terror.

  If the light didn’t know before, it has her whereabouts pinpointed now. All of a sudden the approach quickens, concentrates on one direction, the beam directed straight at the window so that Georgie is forced to narrow her eyes against the aching brightness. And still it comes, nearer, nearer. This is the window through which the postman used to post parcels in the autumn to save her having to open her door, so low-built is the cottage, and now there’s an extra layer of snow to bring it within easier reach.

  The sinister light floods the little square bedroom, but Georgie doesn’t wait any longer. This is not a friendly light, somebody come to see to their welfare at five o’clock in the morning. This is not Oliver. She stampedes down the stairs, slamming the door at the bottom and pushing the table in front of it, she dashes into the kitchen and grabs the cauterizing knife, wrenching the kitchen door closed behind her, and then she takes up her position as defender of the helpless, rigidly at attention beside the slumbering form of Dave. Georgie hardly breathes. She is a tablet of stone.

  And if the creature is on the prowl, what has happened to Oliver?

  She wishes she had closed the curtains as Oliver had advised her to do. She had foolishly said, ‘If I keep them open at least the windows give you some little glow of light to direct you.’

  ‘Oh, Dave, Dave,’ Georgie’s voice quivers. She licks her lips which are as dry as his. ‘What the hell do I do?’

&
nbsp; Dave’s bloodshot eyes only flicker.

  Lola barks loudly, hackles raised, staring intently at the window.

  Gradually, with palpitating heart, Georgie makes out the unutterable horror of the face at the window, the face which presses against the window forming it into some ghoulish mask, some diabolical carnival mask evoking some unspeakable hell, spread nose, flattened lips in a grotesque grin, eyes stretched into slits of hatred. Aghast, she can only stare as the creature’s breath accumulates on the pane and melts the ice patterns there, so that they slide in an awful watery glaze down the features of the demon, giving them another dimension, a pulpy, rubbery sheen.

  Lola jumps up uselessly, her lip curled, a bloodcurdling growl issuing from somewhere deep in her throat. But Lola is a softie at heart. Plenty of bark but no bite.

  So this is it. This is the end. At least Dave is well out of it. No-one in their worst nightmares could imagine a death as terrible as this…

  It’s a crashing against the door, the hammering of a man at the end of his tether, it hardly reaches Georgie as she stands, awed by the horrible nature of her own imminent demise.

  ‘Shit! Where the hell are you? Open this sodding door…’

  Like a bird hypnotized by a snake, still she stares at the idiot face.

  Lola, excited, yelps behind her. The battering on the door attains the decibels of heavy metal. ‘Georgie, GEORGIE COME ON…’

  She jumps to life at the sound of her name but it sounds as if somebody is calling from some half forgotten other world. She turns from the face at the window towards the echoing sound, by the time she turns back the face has gone, and along with it the light that preceded it. There is nothing there now, just snow-swept darkness, and the hammering on the door is increasing.

  ‘Oliver!’ She must reach him before the face…

  ‘Hell, what are you trying to do…’ he says as he falls in, a figure entirely encased in white.

  But Georgie is on the floor, collapsed in a trembling heap at his feet, under attack from Lola who thinks this is a game.