Mother of Demons

by Maynard Sims

  “Did you know, when she was a child, she used to bend spoons for the amusement of other kids? Not just bending them, but twisting them into knots. That suggests she has the power of telekinesis: being able to change the nature of things, or move objects with just the power of her mind. And I think as she was growing up, she was, either consciously or subconsciously, able to control it. Her brother said that her spoon bending was a novelty at first, a party trick to show off to their friends. But over time, the local children became scared of her, and Alice suppressed the abilities and rarely used them, just so she could fit in with her peers.

  “When Anton Markos started giving her drugs, he didn’t realize he was unleashing a side of her that had been buried for years. Methamphetamine removed her inhibitions and encouraged the fantasy she’d had since childhood. That she was Artemis the goddess.”

  He paused. “Are you still with me?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Good. So now you have a girl, her state of mind altered by a steady intake of crystal meth, believing she’s Artemis, goddess of the hunt. Images of Artemis have depicted her as the huntress, with a bow and arrow. We know that Alice used to play with toy bows when she was a child, honing her ability until she was quite proficient with it. So we have Alice now, believing she’s Artemis, but instead of using a bow, she’s using her mind to fire psychic arrows at her targets. That’s why McBride can find no evidence to support his arrow theory. The arrows don’t exist in the corporeal world, but their effects are as deadly as the real thing.”

  “Okay, Harry. I think I might be able to buy into that, although it’s a bit of a stretch for someone who deals in cold, hard facts. Supposing you’re right, it doesn’t begin to explain the bear attacks. What the hell are those about?”

  “Artemis again. In legend she is linked with bear cults and bear worship, and some images throughout history have depicted her as a bear. Alice embraces the Artemis myth wholeheartedly. Among other things, she is the goddess of wild animals. Perhaps she has an empathy with the beast.”

  “Stop!” Susan said. “I’m afraid that’s a leap too far. This is where I part company with your theories. I can’t accept that there’s a bear wandering around loose in London and surrounding areas, controlled by Alice. Why has no one seen it, Harry? Why aren’t calls of sightings lighting up the switchboard of every police station from Acton to Uxbridge? No, I don’t buy it.”

  “Why not? Stranger things happen,” Harry said flatly.

  “In your world maybe. Not in mine.”

  “Sue, I know it’s a lot to take on board, but we can’t afford to ignore the possibility. Alice Logan, through no fault of her own, has become the most dangerous adversary I’ve ever come up against. The way she’s using her powers at the moment is pretty devastating. Potentially, things could get a whole lot worse. We have to find her and find her soon, or I think many more people will die.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. “Are you still there?” Harry said.

  “Yes, still here. I’m just trying to digest it all. I’m wondering how we’re going to find her. We’ve got people all over the country keeping an eye out for her, but she’s managing to elude us and carry on killing, and I don’t know how.”

  “She’s hiding in plain sight. There’s nothing supernatural about that. It’s smoke and mirrors, the power of redirection. The Australian aborigines learned that trick generations ago, and stage illusionists are using it today. We’ll find her, Sue. She can’t keep this up forever.”

  “Did you bring everything I need?” Violet Bulmer lay propped up on pillows in her hospital bed.

  Jason dropped the carrier bag onto the bed. “Do you feel up to this, Vi, considering what happened last time?”

  “You’re speaking, Jason, as if I have a choice. I have no choice. I have to do what I can to stop Alice. This, today, is a start.”

  “Will the staff here let you get away with it?”

  “They don’t have a choice either. Nobody’s going to come in here and disturb me. I’ve seen to that.”

  Jason didn’t ask how. Sometimes with Vi Bulmer you didn’t want to know. He opened the bag and started planting candles on every spare flat surface of the room. He stuck two incense sticks into their brass holders, lit them and placed them on the windowsill. Then he went around the room, lighting candles.

  “Do you want me to stay?” he said.

  “Yes. Just sit in the chair and write down everything I might say. And I mean everything. Something you might find inane and boring may have a much deeper significance linked to something else. Shall we begin?”

  Jason nodded, pulled out a notebook and pulled his chair up to the side of the bed.

  Violet relaxed back against the pillow and closed her eyes. As her breathing deepened, she felt herself growing lighter. She let her mind drift and gradually felt it leave her body and rise up to the ceiling. It hung there for a moment, watching the room, noting how the candles burned without spluttering and how the fragrant smoke from the incense sticks swirled up towards her, filling her senses with a rich sandalwood scent, making her feel light-headed and slightly giddy. And then she allowed herself to float higher still, drifting up through the floors above, out through the roof of the hospital and away.

  Jason sat there, pen poised above the pad, waiting for her to speak. After what seemed like several hours, but was perhaps only minutes, Violet’s lips started moving and words issued from her mouth. “I see trees, woodland. Tim, I can feel you.”

  Jason looked to the bed. Violet lay there, her chest rising and falling as she breathed deeply. He started scribbling the words down on the pad.

  “A path through the trees. A house, old, broken. A sign. Faded. Can’t read it. The letters A, C, O, S. There’s Alice. Cold, so cold. She can’t see me. Alice, can you hear me?”

  And then silence, just the steady resonance of Violet’s breathing.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “Sue, it’s Harry again. Can you tell me where they lost sight of Tim Logan?”

  “Somewhere between Stevenage and Hitchin,” Susan said. “He’s riding a trail bike, and there’s a lot of woodland around there. So he could be anywhere in the area. What are you thinking?”

  “Nothing specific. Just trying to picture it in my mind.”

  “Well, if you come up with anything, call me.”

  Harry went up to Martin Impey’s office. Martin was sitting at his desk, staring at the screen in front of him. He spun around in his seat as Harry tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Can you do me a favor, Martin? I need you to call up a Hertfordshire Ordinance Survey map.”

  “Any particular area of Hertfordshire, Harry? It’s a big county.”

  “Let’s say from Stevenage to Letchworth and all points in between.”

  Martin frowned. “That’s going to be at least three separate maps.” He went back to his computer and started tapping keys. “Give me a minute. They’ll come up on screens four, five and six.”

  Harry walked across to the bank of screens and waited.

  “Anything specific you’re looking for?”

  “I’ll know when I see it,” Harry said, and tried to focus as the maps appeared in front of him.

  Jason sat watching her, waiting for Violet Bulmer to speak again. After a few more moments her eyelids blinked open. “Damn it!” she said. “I’ve lost him.”

  “What happened?” Jason said.

  “I don’t know. I made a connection with him really easily. He was in this large house. An old place, derelict. I was walking through it with him, picking my way over dead leaves and debris. The floors were rotten, junk everywhere. And then we were climbing the stairs to the bedrooms. We entered one and Alice was there. She was crouching in one corner, wrapped in what looked like an old sleeping bag. She was shivering—Christ, it was cold in there. Tim sp
oke. ‘Hello, Ally,’ I think he said, and she looked up smiling, but then her eyes widened and she said, ‘Aunt Vi!’ And I was shunted out of Tim’s mind.”

  “Do you think she saw you?” Jason said.

  “Saw me or sensed me, or something. Jason, she’s grown so powerful. It radiates out of her, a force so strong. It scared me, Jason, really scared me.”

  “So we’re no nearer to finding Alice,” Jason said.

  “Oh, no. I know where she is. It’s what we’re going do when we find her, that’s what bothers me. Can you get me Harry on the phone? I think I need to talk to him.”

  Harry stared at the screens, looking at trails and pathways, waiting for something to jump out at him. He started when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out. “Hello, Jason. What can I do for you?”

  “It’s Vi, Harry—”

  “How is she?” Harry said, cutting across him.

  “She’s been roaming again.”

  “How could you let her? It nearly killed her the last time.”

  “I couldn’t stop her, Harry. You know how she gets.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Anyway, she wants to talk to you.”

  The line went dead for a second and then Harry heard her voice.

  “Vi, what the hell do you think you’re playing at?”

  “No lectures, Harry. I think I’ve found them. I went searching and managed to connect with Tim. I linked with Alice briefly the other day, when I had my coronary, but she’s shut off from me now. I think she might be back on the drugs. But Tim was open. They’re in a large, derelict house, somewhere close to Hitchin. I saw it, Harry. The place needs pulling down. It’s standing in the middle of some woodland. Is that any help?”

  “I’m standing in front of a map of that part of Hertfordshire now. It’s a fairly wide search area. Do you have any more clues to guide me?”

  “When Tim was approaching the house, I saw a sign for the place. It was very faded and I could barely read it, but I made out the letters A, C, O, S. Will that help?”

  “It might, Vi. Stay on the line.” He turned to Martin. “I’m looking for a house in this area.” He sketched a circle on the screen. “Roughly this area. It’s a big place and, from what Vi said, it’s nearly falling down. It has the letters A, C, O, S in the name.”

  Martin returned his attention to the screen and started hitting keys again. “Jackman House,” he said after a few moments. “It used to be an old folks’ home ages ago. It’s been empty for about twenty years—some kind of dispute as to who owns it and who’s responsible for it. It’s about a mile and a half south of Hitchin, in the middle of Burwell Wood.”

  Harry’s eyes scanned the map. “Got it. Can I get a printout of this?”

  “Done,” Martin said, and with two keystrokes a color map chugged out of the printer.

  Harry grabbed the map and took the elevator up to the next floor and McKinley’s office. “Can you spare me an hour or three, John?”

  “Do you want me to go on a jaunt with you again?”

  “Something like that. Hertfordshire this time, leafy Hertfordshire.”

  “Better than an Essex industrial estate,” McKinley said. “I’m in.”

  While McKinley was fetching his coat, Harry phoned Jason.

  “Tell Vi, thanks to her, I think I’ve identified where they are. It’s a place called Jackman House, in Burwell Wood, just outside Hitchin. John McKinley and I are going there now.”

  “Do you need me along? I think Vi’s finished with me here.”

  “No, Jason. Do me a favor and stay there with Vi. John and I can handle it from here. I’ll be in touch when it’s over. She might need you then.”

  “I understand,” Jason said. “You really care about her, don’t you, Harry?”

  “Vi and I go back a long way. She’s bailed me out of some very sticky situations in the past. One time, on a particularly nasty case we were working on, she saved my life. So, yes, you could say I care about her.”

  “Stay safe, Harry,” Jason said.

  “I’m going to give it a damned good try.”

  “Aren’t you getting your DI involved this time?” McKinley said.

  Harry stared out at the London streets flashing by. “No, not this time, John. I don’t think she realizes the danger Alice Logan poses. Susan knows that Alice is a threat, so if she’s aware that we’re going to apprehend her, Susan will call out the cavalry, and that could have disastrous consequences, especially if she enlists the help of an Armed Response team. Alice has the power to make them turn their weapons on each other, and if that doesn’t work, remember the nurse at the Mayberry Clinic. Her brain was reduced to mush.”

  “And you think now that Alice was responsible for that?”

  “I have very little doubt that it was her.”

  McKinley unwrapped a stick of chewing gum and popped it into his mouth. “And us? Do you think we can handle her?”

  “At least we can protect ourselves against any psychic attack,” Harry said. “Whether we can call a halt to her reign of terror is yet to be seen. But we’re going to have a bloody good try.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  As they left the London streets behind, the landscape changed around them. Rows of shops and terraced houses gave way to deep golden swathes of harvested wheat fields and lush green expanses of grazing land.

  McKinley drove, chewing his gum and tapping the wheel in time to a tune playing in his head. Harry could feel the anticipation emanating from him. He was tense, as Harry was himself, at the prospect of what was to come. The likelihood of failure was very real. If he were being honest with himself, he’d put their chance of success at about fifty-fifty. So he was under no illusions about the difficulty of the task ahead of them.

  They crossed the border into Hertfordshire, and Harry felt his instincts sharpening, his mind clearing of pretty much everything apart from the task in hand. “Take the next turnoff,” he said.

  McKinley nodded and indicated they were leaving the motorway. Soon they were driving along narrow lanes with high hedges of beech and hawthorn, and blind bends where McKinley had to reduce their speed to a cautious crawl.

  Eventually Harry pointed to a lay-by in the road ahead. “Pull in there,” he said. “We’ll walk through the wood from here.” McKinley looked around at the dense growths of alder, ash and beech, some of them dwarfed by massive oaks and horse chestnut trees.

  They got out of the car and picked their way up the bank, their feet slipping on the mud left after the overnight rain. Once they reached the top of the bank, they headed north, finally locating a path overgrown by thorn-rich brambles and thick clumps of gorse. As McKinley struggled with the thorns tearing at his trouser legs, he turned back to Harry. “Why do I feel I should have dressed for the occasion? Do you know how much I paid for these shoes, for these pants? Look at them now, ruined.”

  “Charge them to expenses,” Harry said grimly. “Not far now.”

  Up ahead of them, they could see where the tree growth thinned. There was a barbed-wire fence with rotting posts and rusting wire. There was a gap in the fence, a gatepost standing sentinel each side of it, what was left of the gate lying on the ground, half-covered by bindweed and thick couch grass. Affixed to one of the gateposts was a rectangular sign made from distressed plywood, the corners of the plies curled and browning. The fading black letters read Jackman House. In the distance they could see the house itself.

  Built during the mid-Victorian Gothic period, the house had once been grand, with high, mullioned windows and a turreted roof. A few ornamental waterspouts remained, but others had fallen to the ground and lay there cracked and broken, the cast-iron gutters long rusted through and hanging from the roof.

  Most of the windows had been boarded up and the doorways covered by sheets of green-painted corrugated iron.

&
nbsp; They approached along what once had been a gravel drive, but dandelion, plantains and thistle had superseded the gravel, and there were shallow potholes in the drive, filled with brackish rainwater.

  “What a dump,” McKinley said as they stopped on the drive fifteen yards from the front door. “Do we go inside?”

  Harry held up his hand. “Not just yet. Let’s get our bearings first.”

  He looked to his left and right. The woodland had encroached so that it had taken over the drive. “If it was left long enough, nature would reclaim this place for itself.” He looked up at the roof. Where the gutters still clung to it, buddleia had taken root, and long, arched branches of the stuff had curled down to touch the walls.

  “Alice!” he called out suddenly, making McKinley start. “Alice? We know you’re in there.”

  A few seconds passed and then Tim Logan called out. “Go away! Go away and leave us alone.”

  “We’re here to help her, Tim. Let us help your sister. Let us help Alice.”

  There was no response, and they glanced up at one of the windows where the boards had been torn away. Something white flitted into and out of their view.

  “Alice? Is that you? You must be cold in there. Let us take you home. You don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “Go away,” Tim yelled again. “She doesn’t want to hurt you, but she will if she has to.”

  “Pull back to the trees,” Harry said. “He means it.”

  The two men turned and jogged back to the cover of the trees. “So. What’s plan B?” McKinley said. Harry said nothing, but stood in the shadow of a large chestnut, rubbing his chin and staring back at the house.

  As they watched and tried to figure out what their next move should be, the corrugated iron sheet was pulled away from the doorway and Alice Logan stepped out into the light.

  Dressed in a short white tunic, her blonde hair dirty and matted with cobwebs and twigs, the girl looked feral.