Roots of Evil

by Sarah Rayne

  It had worked that afternoon all right. As Edmund pressed the hypodermic’s plunger, Deborah Fane had given a little gasp, as if of surprise, and then her head had fallen forward. Edmund stared down at her, and after a moment felt for a pulse at the base of her throat, and then beneath her ear. Nothing. But let’s be absolutely sure: this was not a time to take risks or make assumptions. He felt for a heartbeat. Nothing. She was dead, the embolism thing had happened, and presently Edmund would phone the local GP, slightly panic-stricken at coming in to find dear Aunt Deborah apparently dead in her armchair.

  The tiny pinprick on Deborah Fane’s neck had not even been noticed, because no one had thought there was anything that needed noticing. Aunt Deb’s angina, a known and existing condition, had already taken the pathologist three-quarters of the way to a verdict of heart failure caused by a severe angina attack. In reality, it had been murther – the Old English morthor – but no one had realized this. Edmund had not really expected that anyone would, but it was still gratifying to know that he had not overlooked anything, and that he had foreseen everything.

  He had not, it was true, foreseen that the house would be willed to Michael Sallis’s absurd charity, and he did find it sad that Aunt Deborah had not told him about this. Edmund had thought there had been better trust between them – it just went to show you could not rely on anyone. But losing the house was not disastrous, and it would take a few weeks for probate to be granted so there was plenty of time for Edmund to make a thorough and orderly search of the house – several thorough and orderly searches in fact – to assure himself that there was nothing incriminating anywhere.

  Still, as he moved about the empty rooms after the mourners had left, he realized that he was constantly glancing over his shoulder as if he expected to see Aunt Deborah watching him from a doorway, her head twisted a little to one side where he had jabbed the hypodermic in…

  Sheer nerves, that was all.

  The shameful ghosts from the early years in Pedlar’s Yard did not often return, but when they did they always brought back the old fear and the memories of all the nights spent shivering under bedclothes, helpless with fear and misery and despair. How did I stand it for so long?

  The fear had not always been there. To start with it had only been a question of avoiding the anger and the drunkenness – and of escaping from the belt with the hurting buckle which was sometimes used on your back and which was used on Mother more often than anyone ever knew. She had never complained, and she had never told anyone about it because there had not been anyone to tell. In those days – it had been the early 1970s – and in that environment, there had not been such things as battered wives’ refuges, or brisk, well-meaning social workers, or even telephone numbers that could provide help. In any case, the Pedlar’s Yard house did not have a telephone. And Mother had had an odd streak of stubbornness. When you married, she said, you exchanged vows, and vows ought not to be broken. Your father married me when no one else wanted me and I was grateful. (And he was very charming when he was younger…)

  But Mother had made that other promise as well – the promise that one day they would escape from Pedlar’s Yard, just the two of them.

  ‘You do mean it, don’t you? We’ll really go there one day? To the house with the lady from the stories?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, one day we really will go there.’

  But Mother had hesitated – she had quite definitely hesitated, before replying, and a new fear presented itself. ‘She is real, isn’t she, that lady? I mean…you didn’t make her up?’ Mother was good at telling stories; once she had said she might have written books if she had not got married.

  But it was all right. She was smiling, and saying, ‘No, I didn’t make her up, I promise. She’s real, and she lives exactly where I told you. Look, I’ll show you—’

  ‘What? What?’ It might be a photograph, which would be just about the most brilliant thing in the world.

  But it was not a photograph, it was a letter, just very short, just saying here was a cheque.

  ‘But there’s the address at the top. You see? The Priest’s House, Mowbray Fen. That’s a real address.’

  ‘She sent a cheque?’ Cheques represented money in some complex, barely understood grown-up way.

  ‘Yes, she does it quite often. Does that convince you that she’s real?’

  ‘I think so. Yes. Only real people can send cheques, can’t they?’

  ‘Of course.’

  So that was all right. The lady was real and the house was real, and one day they would make a proper plan and escape.

  It had been too late to escape on the night that he erupted into the house, his eyes fiery with drink. He was not an especially big man, although he was quite tall, but he seemed to fill up the house with his presence on these nights.

  There had not been a chance to make for one of the safer hiding places – the old wash-house or even the cupboard under the stairs – so there were only the sheets and the thin coverlet for protection. Sometimes, though, it was possible to force your mind away from the shabby bedroom and away from Pedlar’s Yard, and to delve down and down into the layers of memories and dreams…Like summoning a spell, a charm, that took you along a narrow unwinding ribbon of road, studded with trees and lined with hedgerows, and through the little villages with the Hobbit-like names that were strung out along the road like beads on a necklace…Far, far away, until you reached the house on the marshes, where the will o’ the wisps danced.

  But tonight the charm did not work. Tonight something was happening downstairs that made that dreamlike road unreachable. Something was happening in the little sitting-room at the back of the house that was making Mother cry out and say, ‘No – please not—’

  There was the sickening sound of a fist thudding flesh, and a gasp of pain, instantly cut off. Oh God, oh God, it was going to be one of the nights when he was hitting her: one of the nights when the neighbours would listen through the wall, and tell each other that one night that cruel monster would kill that poor woman, and someone ought to do something.

  One night he would kill her. What if this was the night? What if Mother died, down there on the sitting-room floor? The horror of this very real possibility rose up chokingly. Someone ought to do something…

  I can’t. I can’t. He’d kill me.

  But what if he kills her?

  There were ten stairs down to the sitting-room and they creaked a bit, but it was possible to jump over the third and then the seventh stair so that they did not creak at all. It was important to jump over those stairs tonight, and it was important to go stealthily down the little passage from the front of the house to the back, not noticing how cold the floor was against bare feet. It was important to open the door very quietly and peer inside without being heard. Because someone ought to do something, and there was no one else…

  The room was filled with the tinny firelight from the electric fire, and shadows moved in an incomprehensible rhythm across the walls. They were huge shadows and it took a moment to sort them out because at first it seemed as if there was one monstrous creature, sprawling across the little gateleg table under the window…There was harsh rasping breathing in the room as well, like someone running very fast, or like someone sobbing and struggling…

  The shadows moved again, and it was not one person, but two: two people fastened together, the larger shadow almost swallowing the thin frail one.

  Mother was half-lying on the small sofa, her hair tumbled about her face – she had nice hair, dark and smooth – and her skirt pushed up to her waist. Her legs were bare and he was standing right up against her, pushing his body into her – pushing it in and then out and then in and then out, over and over, the muscles of his thighs and buttocks clenching and unclenching, his face twisted with concentration and with savage pleasure.

  You did not grow up in Pedlar’s Yard and not know what men did to women in bed – or what they did in the backs of cars and vans, or up against the walls of the
alleyways. This, then, was what the playground sniggers were about: it was what some of the older children at school whispered and giggled over, and boasted of having done, or having nearly done.

  Neither of them had heard the door pushed open, so it would be possible to creep back upstairs unheard. But Mother was gasping with pain, and her mouth was swollen and bruised, and bleeding from a cut on one side, and what if this really was the night he killed her? The firelight was showing up angry red marks across her face from where she had been hit – they would turn blue tomorrow, those marks, and she would not go out of the house until they faded so that no one would know. (But what if she was no longer alive tomorrow to go anywhere?)

  He had moved back now, swearing at Mother, calling her useless, and shouting that she could not even give a man a hard-on these days. He was not shouting; he was speaking in a cold hating voice, and his eyes were cold and hating as well, the way they always were on these nights, and he was nearly, but not quite, ridiculous, with his trousers discarded and the shirt flapping around his thighs.

  ‘That’s because you’re too pissed to fuck anything tonight!’ Mother’s voice was thick with crying and anger, but it was stronger and shriller than it had ever been before, and there was a stab of shock at hearing her use words like fuck and pissed, even though they were words people did use in Pedlar’s Yard. For a truly dreadful moment, Mother was no longer the quiet familiar person who spun stories and talked about one day escaping. She was a screaming red-eyed animal – a rat, no, a shrew, like in the play at school! – and she was clawing and yelling at Father for all she was worth, and she was ugly – ugly! – and as well as that she was also suddenly and confusingly frightening…

  ‘Get off me, you useless bastard,’ she screamed. ‘Get off me and let me get out of this place for good and all!’

  She pushed him away so that he stumbled back and that was when he saw the half-open door. Before there was time to dodge into the little hall, he had already crossed the room and he was reaching out. His hands were rough and there were callouses on them because he worked all day shifting loads on to lorries in the yards. He hated his work – in some incomprehensible way he was bitter about having to work at all.

  He was saying that snooping children had to be taught lessons – they had to be taught not to snoop – and then there was the feeling of his hands – hard and strong – and he was reaching for the leather belt with the buckle…

  That was when Mother moved across the room, one hand raised above her head, the light turning her eyes to red like a rat’s. But she’s not a rat, she’s not…Yes, she is, because I can see her claws…

  They were not really claws but they were glittering points of something hard and cruel, turned to red by the fire…

  Scissors from the sewing basket by the hearth.

  The points flashed down and he threw up his hands to protect himself, but it was too late, because Mother was too quick.

  The scissors came glinting down and where his eyes had been were the steel circles of the scissors’ handles.

  The points of the scissors had punctured both his eyes.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Incredibly, it did not kill him. He stumbled backwards with a bellow of pain, the handles of the scissors still sticking out of his face. Blood ran down his cheeks, a thick dark dribble, mingling with a watery fluid where his eyes had burst and were leaking all down his face. The sickness came rushing back at the sight of it.

  He was trying to pluck the scissors out – one hand was already feeling for them – and then he found them and with a terrible animal grunt he pulled them out. There was a wet sucking sound – dreadful! – and then another of the cries of pain, but the blades came out, and more blood welled up and spilled over.

  Mother had backed away to the wall. There was blood on her knuckles from where she had driven the scissors home, but she was watching the blind, blood-smeared face and it was impossible to know if she was horrified or frightened, or what she was feeling at all.

  The mutilated head was turning from side to side – after what had been done to him, was it possible he could still see? No, of course he could not. He was going by sound, by smell, by instinct. He knew Mother was still in the room, and he was going to smell her out like dogs did. Could humans do that? Oh God, yes, he’s starting to move across the room, and he’s holding the scissors over his head, and I must do something, I must do something…

  But it was like being inside a nightmare. It was impossible to move, and it was impossible to call out a warning because the words would not come out, just as words would sometimes not come out in a nightmare, no matter how hard you tried.

  And now he had reached Mother and he was grabbing her arm, lifting the dripping scissors over his head with his other hand. Curses streamed from his mouth – you could almost see the words coming out, wet with the blood and the eye-fluid…Kill you, kill you, bitch, murdering bitch-cunt, and then kill the child as well, kill both of you…

  She was fighting him off, clawing at his face – yes, her hands were like claws! – but he had too strong a grip. The two of them fought and struggled, and just when it seemed that Mother was about to push him away, he brought the scissors flashing down, stabbing them deep into her neck. The blood spurted out at once, like a tap turned full on, splashing the floor and the walls, and Mother was crumpling to the floor, a look of surprise on her face.

  Time seemed to run down and stop completely, so that it might have been hours or only minutes before there was a wet rattling sound in Mother’s throat, and she fell forward. Dead? Yes, of course she was dead, it did not need a second look to know it. Like a light going out. Like something collapsing deep inside.

  The man standing over her remained absolutely still: it was impossible to know if he was recovering his strength or fighting his own pain. Then the terrible listening movement came back. He turned his head from side to side, and the dreadful face with the two wet, bloodied sockets seemed to search the room. He’s still holding the scissors! He pulled them out of her neck, and he’s still holding them! And now that he’s killed her, he’s searching for me!

  The realization brought a fresh wash of terror. He’s mad with pain, but he’s still as cunning and as brutal as ever. And he’s searching for me because I saw what he did. If he can get me, he’ll kill me so that I can’t tell people he’s a murderer.

  There was surely nothing easier than escaping from the murderous hands of a man whose eyes had been destroyed. It was the kind of thing people made jokes about: a blind man on a galloping horse would never see that, they said. Or they said that something was about as much use as a blind man in a coal-hole on a dark night.

  But when you are eight years old, and when the two outside doors of your house are locked, the escape tips over into a macabre cat-and-mouse game. It begins with the need to move silently across the room, trying not to make any sound at all – quenching a shudder when you step in a slippery patch of blood – and then slipping out into the dark little hall beyond. Had he heard that? Had he sensed the movement – perhaps felt the cold breath of air from the opening of the door? Yes, he was following – there he was, horridly silhouetted against the red glow from the electric fire, already starting to feel his way along the passage to the stairs. He knows the hiding places, of course. He knows about the cupboard under the stairs, and he knows about the little space between the kitchen and the old washhouse…

  But he can’t see them any longer. And he must be in agony – surely he won’t be able to search for very long? So where would be safest to hide? The stairs – yes, the cramped cupboard under the stairs with the smothering smell of old raincoats…I can close the door tightly and fold up into a tiny creature, as if I’m not really there at all…He’ll go past the door because he won’t know exactly where it is, so I’ll be perfectly safe. He’ll grope his way into the kitchen and once he’s done that I can be down the hall and I can unlock the front door and be outside…

  The front door. It
would be locked and the keys would be upstairs, on the chest of drawers in the front bedroom, where they were always kept. Then I’ve got to get upstairs and get them, and come back down and unlock the door. Panic rose up, because it surely could not be done without being caught.

  The door of the stair-cupboard was jerked back, and the blinded face appeared in the opening. The blood was still wet on the cheeks, but a crust had started to form over both eyes, and it was still a nightmare thing, that head, it was still something to shrink from and scream, only a scream must not happen because it would give the hiding place away. I’m-not-here, I’m-not-here…

  A hand came reaching out, groping in the little space, so that it was necessary to shrink right back against the wall and to stop breathing so that he would not hear…Please don’t let him find me. Please don’t let him know I’m here…

  The raincoats swished around and the world shrank to the tiny damp-smelling cupboard, and to the nightmare face. And then – oh, thank you God, thank you! – the head moved back and the cupboard door swung in again, and the shuffling footsteps went stumbling down the two stone steps into the kitchen. I ought to feel sorry for him, but I don’t, I don’t! And if I can get upstairs and snatch up the keys, I can be out of the door and away. Yes, but where to? Where is ‘away’?

  Again there was the rush of panic, and then, like the unfolding of a secret, like the soft, silken drawing back of a curtain, the answer came, and with it a deep delight.

  ‘She lives in a place called Mowbray Fen,’ Mother had said. ‘It’s a tiny village on the edge of Lincolnshire. You have to go through Rockingham Forest, and along by Thorney and Witchford until you come within sight of Wicken Fen…’.