Entangled (8 page)

Leoni felt physically sick at the prospect. In the days leading up to her overdose she’d been in turmoil over what to do about her father. The big question was … had he really raped her – repeatedly – when she was eight, and again, inexplicably, when she was twelve? It had always happened in the dead of night, and on each occasion he had snatched her without warning out of deep sleep. Before her thirteenth birthday the attacks had stopped as suddenly and mysteriously as they had started, but she had been tortured ever afterwards by night terrors and dreamlike memories of these ordeals.

The last time she’d plucked up the courage to accuse him was a couple of years ago. But, as always, he had denied everything, told her she was an evil liar, and claimed the rapes had only happened in her overactive imagination.

He made her question her own sanity.

He made her wonder whether the blood she recalled trying to scrub off her sheets after each attack could, after all, have come from some sort of self-harm.

For a long time he had kept her quiet with such brainwashing. But, in recent months, the horrible and disgusting memories had come flooding back – no longer as dreamlike sequences but shatteringly graphic, specific and real – and Leoni had regained some certainty that it was not she but her father who was the evil liar in the family.

That had been her state of mind when she’d quarrelled with her parents yesterday afternoon, and she could see with new insight how her incredible rashness and stupidity with the OxyContin tablets had been directly connected to the rage and hate she felt towards her dad.

So far, so bad … But now, after her brush with death, there were other, even more agonising and confusing matters to ponder. Although she didn’t understand the mechanism, she had somehow witnessed Mom admitting, in a very horrible way, that she’d known about the rapes all along. And there had been the strange talk about someone called Jack, and clearing up the dead wood – whatever that meant.

This was all new and worrying, but what made it more problematic was the peculiar way Leoni had come by it. Was her out-of-body eavesdropping just a hallucination cooked up in her druggie mind, or had her mother really known about the rapes when they were happening? If she had known, and encouraged them, then what kind of set-up was that?

And who was ‘Jack’?

Leoni had asked for a sketch pad and half a dozen Magic Markers when she’d been moved into the convalescent suite, and now she was sitting up in bed, her back propped against a pile of pillows, working on a drawing of the Blue Angel. She was struggling to get the likeness of that perfect face, the high cheekbones, the almond eyes, the indigo skin, when her parents appeared in the doorway. For some reason she felt guilty and closed the pad, sliding it beneath her covers as they advanced.

To her irritation, they had brought Adam the miracle child sulking in tow. The obnoxious ten-year-old scowled a reluctant greeting, made a beeline for the sofa by the window, switched on his Nintendo and was soon slaughtering aliens in
Metroid Prime.

Mom and Dad settled in the armchairs on either side of Leoni’s bed.
No one spoke for some minutes, and the tension in the room began to rise.

Finally Mom leaned forward and hissed: ‘Adam knows you overdosed. He couldn’t miss it. It’s been all over the TV news. I need you to apologise to him.’

Leoni’s blood boiled: ‘Apologise? To Adam? What for?’

‘For the distress and embarrassment you’ve caused him at school.’

‘Well, maybe he’d be even more distressed and embarrassed if I told him where I got the OxyContin tablets I overdosed on …’

Dad cut her off: ‘Let’s not talk about your drug habits today.’ He flashed a warning look at Mom. ‘This is just meant to be a nice family visit.’

‘Nice for who?’ Leoni retorted. ‘Nice in what way?’ She lowered her voice to a whisper: ‘Would it be so nice if Adam knew what you used to do to me?’

Adam had ears like a bat and was curious about ugly, disturbing and contentious matters. ‘Dad,’ he asked. ‘What was it you used to do to Leoni?’

‘Nothing, Adam,’ Dad snapped. ‘Leoni’s suffering from an illness. It’s called false memory syndrome …’

‘Fuck OFF!’ Leoni screamed, ‘I’m up to HERE with your bullshit. My memories aren’t false. It really happened …’

‘But WHAT happened, Dad?’ wheedled Adam. ‘I wanna know.’

‘You wanna know?’ mimicked Leoni. ‘OK, spoilt brat, I’ll tell you. Dad used to get into bed wi—’ THWACK! Stunned, she realised that Mom had just slapped her face – hard – and now stood over her, panting and flushed. Leoni’s right ear was hot and ringing where the blow had struck. At once her anger brimmed over and she bellowed: ‘You KNEW about it, Mom. You even ALLOWED it.’ She saw that this accusation had hit the mark. Mom’s face fell and, just for an instant, before she got herself under control, she had a hunted, almost frightened look in her eyes.

Leoni pressed home her advantage: ‘You BITCH. You DID know about it. You KNEW!’ She lunged forward and tried to claw her mother’s face but her father got between them, shouting: ‘This is madness, Leoni. Stop it! Stop making things up.’

Leoni wasn’t about to stop anything: ‘Oh yeah?’ she shrieked. ‘If I’m making things up then how come I know about JACK?’

The startled expression on both her parents’ faces told her once again she’d scored some sort of point. That was when the good-looking doctor who’d saved her life in the emergency room walked in.

Dad and Mom jumped back and the doctor strode across the floor to stand at the foot of the bed. ‘What’s going on here?’ he demanded.

Mom gave him her constipated-gorilla look: ‘Who’s asking?’

‘Dr Bannerman. I attended Leoni in ER.’

‘Well, Dr Bannerman, we’re Mr and Mrs Watts, Leoni’s parents, and we’re having a private family discussion that’s none of your business. OK?’

‘No, Mrs Watts. It’s not OK. I heard the shouting halfway down the corridor, and I also think I heard somebody getting hit.’ He paused, seemed to reconsider something he was about to say, and added: ‘But let’s not go there right now. Your daughter is my patient. My responsibility is to ensure she makes a proper recovery and she isn’t going to do that if she has to deal with this kind of … “discussion”. Please just leave at once and let her get some sleep …’

‘You’re telling us to leave?’ screeched Mom. ‘You don’t have the right. We’re her parents. We’re paying her bills here.’

‘As it happens,’ said Dr Bannerman, ‘I do have the right, and I don’t care who you are or what you’re paying. The patient comes first and this patient needs peace and quiet.’

Mom turned to Dad: ‘Herman! Didn’t we give a big capital gift to this hospital last year?’

‘You bet we did. Five million dollars for the building programme.’

‘There!’ yelled Mom. ‘And it’s not the first time. Check it out, doctor! How do you think Chancellor Edelman will feel if we withdraw future support because of your behaviour? WE’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE.’

‘I’ve had enough,’ said Bannerman. ‘I’m calling security.’

Mom glared at him as he moved to the bedside to pick up the telephone. He had already started dialling when Dad capitulated. He marched over to the sofa and grabbed his son’s hand: ‘Come on, Adam, time to go home. Come on, Madeleine. Let’s get out of here.’

For a moment Mom was speechless. She had been defeated! Something she could not abide. As the three of them headed in disarray towards the door she looked over her shoulder and flashed the doctor her
poisonous-lizard look: ‘There’s going to be consequences’ she said. ‘You’ll be hearing from our attorney.’

In the last second she turned her eyes on Leoni and beamed rays of hatred at her. Then they were out of the room and marching down the hallway under a barrage of shrill questions from Adam.

‘MOVE, YOU IDIOTS!’ Ria screamed, startling the Uglies out of their inertia and sending them running in all directions as the second spear came whistling in. It shot past her and buried itself in the face of an old hunched female in the seventh rank, dropping her in a heap.

Still nobody seemed to know what to do. Ria sought around, found that Brindle had stuck close to her, and pointed to the men on the ridge line three hundred paces above. ‘WE’VE GOT TO CHARGE THEM,’ she yelled in out-loud speech – there was no time to risk thought-talk not working – ‘CROWD THEM. GET THEM OFF THE HIGH GROUND OR THEY’LL SKEWER US ONE BY ONE.’

She’d already snatched a jagged stone out of the sodden earth and was sprinting up the steep side of the glen. She could see one of the attackers aiming a shot at her, waited until he let fly and threw herself to the ground. The whistling spear missed her by a hand’s breadth and as she sprang to her feet twenty Ugly braves pounded past her, their heavy footsteps shaking the earth, roaring incoherent defiance at their attackers.

More spears smashed into their ranks, bringing down four more Uglies with horrific injuries. Blood spurted, bones broke, there were cries of pain and shock, but still the tough uphill charge didn’t falter. The big yellow-toothed leader was ten paces ahead of everyone else, waving a massive war axe, but before he reached the ridge line Ria hoped to kill one of the spearmen herself. Her grip tightened on the stone she’d picked up. It wasn’t of ideal size and weight. But it would do. She was less than fifty paces away and already drawing her arm back to throw when the spearmen turned and were gone. By the time she reached the ridge line they were nowhere to be seen, as though some sorcery had concealed them.

Ria didn’t believe in sorcery.

The men were there, slithering on their bellies like snakes through
the bracken, gorse and tall tussocky grasses packing the downslope below.

‘Put your guys out in a long line,’ Ria yelled to Brindle, still using out-loud speech. ‘Beat the bush. We’ll find them.’

There was some confusion but soon almost the whole Ugly column, still more than fifty able-bodied males and females, plunged into the thick undergrowth in a ragged line, each separated by only an arm’s length from the next. They beat the bracken with spears and clubs, stabbing and probing, but the two attackers could not be found.

Finally Brindle called off the search. ‘Not good waste more time here,’ he said. ‘Better get to Secret Place fast.’

Ria considered her position.

She’d been about to head back to the Clan camp but now it wasn’t so simple. The moment she left the protection of the Uglies she would be vulnerable to the two killers lurking out there. They’d be watching and if they saw her alone they’d hunt her down.

On the other hand, if she stayed with the Uglies then the important intelligence she bore – that armed strangers with devastating new weapons had infiltrated Clan lands – would be delayed. She wasn’t clear yet on the fate of Grigo, Duma and Vik. Were they working for the strangers, as she suspected? Or had they been murdered by them? Both alternatives were possible but, whatever the answer, something bad was happening and she had to warn her brothers.

‘Won’t be able to warn them if you dead, Ria,’ Brindle’s thought-voice reminded her. ‘You must stay alive. Come with Uglies to Secret Place. Will figure out how to get you home safely tomorrow.’

What Brindle was saying made sense. Earlier, Ria had been horrified when he’d asked her to spend the night at the Ugly hideout. But everything had changed since then, and she had to adapt. ‘OK,’ she said after only a brief hesitation, ‘I’ll come with you. Just don’t kill me and eat me when we get there!’

Brindle’s brow ridges puckered, his deep-set eyes clouded over, and a look of horror crossed his face.

‘Well, I don’t mean it, of course! It’s a joke!’

However, it wasn’t exactly a joke, and Brindle’s ability to peer inside her mind meant he must know that. The truth was Ria couldn’t quite rid herself of a nagging fear that the Uglies could still turn out to be cannibals.

* * *

Three males and a female had been killed by the strangers’ spears. There was nothing more to be done for them. Three more were injured. Now separate circles of Uglies, eight or ten to a group, gathered arm in arm around each of their wounded comrades where they lay and began a rhythmic, hooting chant much like the one they had sung for Brindle earlier.

Inside the first circle an old female crouched down beside an injured brave. Blood was spurting from his mouth – a spear had struck him in the cheekbone below his right eye, smashed his teeth and half-severed his tongue. Doubting that anything could be done about such a horrible injury, Ria watched in growing astonishment as the aged female held out her hands and a mysterious blue light began to pour from her open palms into the bloody wound. More of the same light streamed forth from all the Uglies standing in the circle, converging on the fallen brave and enveloping him in an eldritch radiance. The hooting became much louder and vibrated uncomfortably in Ria’s ears. She gasped as the brave’s body rose a handspan into the air and floated without any supports. The blood flow from his mouth reduced from a torrent to a trickle and Ria could almost believe the wound in his face had begun to close when the Uglies’ song reached a peak, and stopped, and his body sank back to the ground.