by Amy Cross
“Not me,” I say firmly. “Him.”
Stepping closer, she snarls at me.
“Not me!” I shout again. “Never me! Him!”
She hesitates, before we both hear a bump from one of the other rooms. The police officer is evidently trying to find another way out of the house, and the creature quickly turns and limps through to the kitchen. More maggots are wriggling through the flesh and meat around her spine.
I hesitate a moment, not wanting to get too close to her, and then I start to follow. I can hear the officer attempting to force one of the windows open in the drawing room, but he won't have much luck.
“Stay back!” he yells suddenly, which I assume means that the creature has reached him again. “Dear Lord, what are you?”
Suddenly I hear the creature let out a horrific snarl, followed by several loud bumps from the drawing room and the sound of glass breaking. Evidently she has attacked him, and I step back against the wall with the letter-opener still in my hands, waiting for the inevitable sound of her finishing the man off. I'm already trying to work out how I shall deal with all the damage, and how I shall lure the creature back down into the basement once her work is done, but for now I simply have to wait and hope that this is over quickly.
And then, to my horror, I hear an agonized scream ringing out through the house.
Her scream.
Before I can react, the creature stumbles back into view and drops to her knees. Blood is spraying from the side of her neck and she's clutching desperately at the wound as if she hopes to somehow seal the flesh that appears to have been ripped open. I wait for her to get back up and go after the officer again, but instead she slumps down onto her hands and knees and starts crawling this way, as if she's trying to get back to the basement.
“What are you doing?” I sneer as she gets closer. “He's still in there!”
Grabbing an umbrella, I use the end to push her back. She lets out a pained snarl, but more and more blood is rushing from her wound and she seems to be weakening. I think I can even see fear in her eyes, and a moment later I spot movement in the next room.
Turning, I see to my horror that the police officer has staggered into view, holding a bloodied piece of glass in his right hand.
“What did you do?” I shout, filled with a sudden sense of outrage. “What did you do to her?”
He doesn't answer. Instead, he simply stares in horror at the creature as she crawls past me and tries to reach the basement's open door.
“No!” I hiss, stepping over her and pushing the door shut.
As I turn back to the creature, she lets out an agonized cry before rolling onto her side, leaving a thick, smeared trail of blood on the floorboards. Realizing that she's lost too much blood, I rush over and kneel next to her, but now I'm able to see that the cut in her throat has torn all the way through to the bone. Thick, dark blood is gushing out, no longer spraying against the walls but still emerging in a torrent. I want to help her, to find some way to make sure that she survives, but she's starting to shudder now and her whimpering sobs are becoming louder.
“For the love of God,” the officer gasps, stumbling past us and hurrying out through the front door, “the stories about this place were true!”
I should go after him, but I cannot bring myself to leave the creature. Reaching down, I touch the side of her bloodied face as she lets out a series of pained, throaty gurgles. Her eyes, swollen and bloodied, have partially squeezed from their sockets, protruding more than halfway. Some of the hair on her head has been torn away, exposing patches where she appears to have dug her fingernails into her scalp, almost to the bone. When she opens her mouth and lets out another cry, I see that her tongue is twice the normal size and thick with protruding boils.
I shall think of a way to save her, and of a way to put all of this right. I know I shall. I just need a moment to come up with a new plan.
***
Several hours later, as the evening sky begins to darken, a dozen police officers reach the front door and shout at me to move away from the bloody corpse. I can't move away from her, though. How could I leave her alone and naked and dead like this, with no-one to hold her?
After all, I am her mother.
Eve
Six months later
“You must speak freely to me, my child,” the priest says calmly, keeping his voice low as we sit facing one another in the cold stone jail cell. “Anything you tell me will be between us and the Lord.”
“I do not need to speak to the Lord,” I whisper, staring down at my trembling hands, trying to find some way to keep them from shaking. “He hears my thoughts, does he not? He knows what I believe in my heart, that I did nothing wrong. He will judge me accordingly.”
“Were you offered the chance to visit Mary's grave?”
“Grave?”
I glance at him, and I can see the horror in his eyes. I am quite sure that nobody wanted to come and speak to me today, but I suppose all condemned souls must be offered counsel in their final moments. Still, this priest is doing a bad job of hiding his disgust, and I do not know whether to hate him or pity him. Before I can say anything, however, I hear a faint whisper in my ear. I turn and look across the cell, but there is no sign of anyone.
“Mary was buried in an unmarked plot in the churchyard,” the priest explains. “No stone was erected. There was nobody to pay for one, either for her or for your husband. But if you had wanted to visit and -”
“No, I didn't need to visit,” I reply, interrupting him. “What point would there be? I shall be seeing her again soon.”
“The Lord will judge you, Eve,” he continues. “You must know that.”
“I do.”
“And the things you did...”
His voice trails off for a moment.
“I have an answer for any charge,” I tell him. “Just because a court of men could not understand what I did, that does not mean God will be so blind. He will see that every decision I made, every choice, was made out of love. Love for my family, love for -”
“You cannot be serious!” the priest splutters, his eyes filled with shock.
“I am very serious,” I reply calmly.
“The things you did to that poor girl!” he continues. “At least your husband died quickly, but that girl...”
He hesitates, and I cannot help but notice that his fingers are continually picking at the cover of the bible he's holding. Evidently I am not the only one whose hands will not stay still on this cold and merciless morning.
“You tortured her,” he adds.
“I disciplined her.”
“They say you turned her into a savage.”
“And how could I have done such a thing,” I reply, “if there had been no savagery in her to begin with? Answer me that. Anything that I drew from her soul must surely have been put there by God, so -”
“Do not say that name!” he hisses, getting to his feet. “I am sorry, Mrs. Carmichael, but I fear I cannot do my duty here today. I am supposed to offer you solace, and to help you come to terms with your actions as you near God's judgment, but I simply cannot sit here and listen as you attempt to justify what you did to that girl.”
“My daughter -”
“She wasn't even your daughter!”
“She most certainly was.”
“Not according to the court records. You had her torn from the womb of her real mother and...”
He hesitates, before turning and heading over to the door, where the guard is already preparing to let him out. After pausing for a moment longer, however, the priest finally turns back to me, just as I hear the whisper in my ear. This time, having grown accustomed to this strange whisper, I do not even bother to turn and look.
I know I shall see no-one at my side.
“I was merely disciplining the child,” I say finally. “That is all. Eventually she would have been ready to come back up into the main part of the house. I just needed more time and -”
Paus
ing suddenly, I think back to all the pleasant hours I spent talking to Mary, even though she was down in the basement. At the time, I supposed that somehow her soul was rising up between the floorboards and coming to join me, but now I am starting to wonder whether something else was with me in the house, something with its own mind. The thought chills me to the bone, so I quickly put it from my mind and think instead of the beautiful piano music I heard every night. That cannot possibly have been a figment of my imagination.
“I can offer you no solace,” the priest explains. “I do not believe there is anything that can redeem your soul, Mrs. Carmichael. You kept that girl naked and cold in your basement for several years. The only thing I don't understand is why you would go to all the trouble of stealing somebody else's child, only to then mistreat her in such a monstrous manner. The court transcripts state that you wanted a perfect daughter of your own. In the name of all that's holy, then, why did you turn the girl into such an abomination?”
“I wasn't done with her,” I point out. “I needed more time.”
“Time?”
“She would have come around eventually. She would have become what I wanted.”
He makes the sign of the cross against his chest.
“You cannot possibly understand,” I continue. “I had the strength of the Lord in my heart. I knew that everything I did, I did in his full view. He could have stopped me, could he not, if I had been doing anything wrong? Therefore, I was in the right.”
“Do you truly believe that?”
“With all my heart.”
His lips tremble, as if he's on the verge of asking another inane question, but then finally he steps out of the cell just as two other guards arrive. I know that the time has come, so I get to my feet before they have to ask me, and I make my way across the cell. Their cold, ignorant eyes are fixed on me, but I have become accustomed lately to expressions of scorn on the faces of those around me. I do not expect any of those idiots to understand my actions but, as I am led away from the cell and along the dark stone corridor, I know full well in my heart that the Lord will understand completely. And as I see the noose awaiting me in the room at the end, I feel my resolve strengthen. The whisper continues in my ear, and I am certain now that it is the voice of God, telling me that I have no reason to fear my moment of judgment.
I did nothing wrong.
Once I am up on the platform, a silent, solemn man places the noose around my neck. The priest says a few words, before taking a step back and bowing his head.
I wait.
Any moment now, the trap door will open beneath my feet and I shall hang.
“The curse will not die with you,” a voice whispers in my ear suddenly. A foul, rasping female voice. “I wanted her. I'm still owed a child, to use as my own body.”
Before I can open my mouth to reply, the trap door opens and I fall. The noose tightens, and my neck is snapped.
I did nothing wrong!
Part Five
1996
Hannah
He turns to me and rests his face on the pillow and blinks a couple of times, and I can instantly see that something has changed. His eyes, white and bloodshot still, stare at me with some kind of fresh intensity, and it takes so much effort to remind myself that hope is gone.
He's not going to get better.
This is just another brief, cruel tease, like...
Like last Wednesday, when his mind seemed to clear before he began to slip away again.
“Hannah,” he whispers, through cracked and broken lips turned bloody by the cancer. “Listen to me.”
“It's okay, Daddy,” I reply, somehow managing not to cry and instead reaching over to wipe his forehead, the way I've been doing for hours now all through the night. “You don't have to speak. Just try to rest.”
“Listen to me,” he gasps.
“You need to save your energy.”
“Burn the house.”
“Daddy...”
I pause, seeing the intelligence and clarity in his eyes, but telling myself that the patterns of his delusion have just shifted a little. How many times has the doctor told me that Daddy's mind is long gone? Enough times that I know I have to steel myself against hope, that's for sure. He has moments, of course, when he seems to be his old self, but those moments never last long and he always drifts back into delirium.
Outside the tower block, sirens race through the London night.
“Burn the house,” he whispers again.
“Well, I don't think we're going to burn it, Daddy,” I tell him finally, as I dab at his forehead again. “We all love this apartment. Katie and Johnny and me. You know we do, and anyway, I think your neighbors in the building would be a little unhappy if we tried to burn it down.”
“Not this place!” he hisses, suddenly turning in the bed and reaching over, grabbing my arm with surprising strength. I can feel his bony fingers holding me tight, and he seems to be pulling me closer. “The other house! The house that has been in our family all these years!”
In the next room, Katie's still unloading the dishwasher and making a terrible racket, as I lean toward Daddy.
“Burn Wetherley House!” he gasps, and now I can smell his chemical breath, filled with the stench of all the drugs that have been pumped into his cancer-stricken body. “Promise me!”
“Wetherley House?” I reply, surprised that he should mention that place now. “Daddy -”
“Burn it!”
“I thought you sold it years ago.”
“It's still in our family!” he gasps. “I could never bring myself to sell it on, in case someone else might inherit the curse! I thought it should just be left locked and abandoned, but now I realize I was wrong! You must burn that house!”
“Why, Daddy?” I ask.
He stares at me for a moment, as his bottom lip trembles, and then slowly he turns and looks toward the bedroom window. His eyes open wider than ever, even though I know he can't possibly see much anymore. Outside, the midnight air is calm. Somehow, impossibly, the whole rest of the world seems to be going about its business, even as my father is eaten away by this cancer.
“She'll still there,” he whispers.
“What are you talking about, Daddy?”
“She's waiting.”
“Who is?”
“I saw her once,” he continues. “I went to the gate, shortly after I inherited the place. I was going to go into the house, but then I saw Evil Mary at one of the windows and I didn't dare. I stared at her, and she stared back at me, and I walked away.”
“From Wetherley House?” I reply, struggling to work out how much of this story might be real, and how much is his dementia. “Why would there have been anyone at Wetherley House, Daddy? The place has been abandoned for years, hasn't it?”
“Mary!” he hisses, turning back to me. “Mary's still there!”
“What -”
“The only hope is to burn it down! Burn it and salt the land!”
“You need to rest,” I tell him. “Daddy, there's nothing to worry about, you just -”
Suddenly he reaches up, grabbing my arm and trying to haul himself out of the bed.
“No, don't do that!” I say firmly, slipping free of his grip and placing my hands on his shoulders, trying to hold him down as he lets out a chesty groan. “Daddy, you're not well enough to be on your feet, so just stay down, okay? Daddy, the doctor told you not to try getting up!”
“I have to go!” he gasps. “I have to burn that house down!”
“Daddy, you're not thinking straight!”
He lets out a gasp of pain, and I help ease his shuddering body back down against the bed.
“You have to do it!” he groans. “Promise me, Hannah! Don't go inside! Don't ever go inside! Just make sure that house burns!”
“I've never even been to Wetherley House,” I remind him. “You never let any of us go, remember? In fact, you told us it'd been sold. Daddy, you've never believed in stupid stories before, so w
hy are you suddenly getting so agitated about the place? We can sell it if -”
“No!” he hisses. “Burn it!”
“It's just a house.”
“That house has been in this family for generations,” he continues, “but no-one has lived there in more than eighty years, not since the tragedy!”
“But -”
“She's been waiting! She's patient, Hannah. That house is cursed! Evil Mary is still there, waiting for someone to make a mistake and unlock the front door! I saw her! I swear to you, I saw her once from the road! You can't let anyone go there! I should have -”
Suddenly he breaks into a coughing fit, and I grab a bowl and hold it under his mouth. Thick slime runs from his lips, and he suffers convulsions for a few minutes before sighing as he leans back. Taking a wad of tissue paper from the nightstand, I wipe his chin.
“Where am I?” he asks suddenly.
“You're in bed.”
“Where?”
“London, Daddy. You're in your flat in London. Remember?”
He turns to me, and I can see that his mind is getting clouded again. He stares at me for a moment longer, before letting out a faint sigh as he tilts his head back slightly.
“I want to fix that fence tomorrow,” he continues. “Rip it out and start again.”
I feel tears in my eyes as I realize that he's drifting off, back to a time when he was still big and strong, when he could do jobs around the place. Sometimes I think it's better for him when he's like this, because he doesn't have to face the fact that his body is wasting away. I wish he could be strong again, although I've come to accept over the past few months that those days are long gone.
