The Evil Seed (19 page)

For the pictures of
Ginny and those of an unknown Victorian model, no doubt long since buried,
looked very like twins.

One

HOW LONG I KNELT THERE IN THE DUST, MYSELF
AND THE corpse in an embrace as intimate and unholy as ever was shared between
monster and prey, I cannot tell you. The last of the whisky had faded like mist
into the cold pre-dawn, leaving an emptiness in me where for a timeless time my
sanity flickered, assailed by monstrous shadows. Maybe I wept. I could not
move; I was at the end of all movement, all hope. I had seen what no man should
ever see, and, mockingly, scornfully, they had let me live, knowing that I
could be no danger to them; knowing that they had made a monster and a fugitive
out of me, they had let me live. Maybe it pleased them to. It would have been
very easy for me, at that moment, to crawl back into the crypt, like a snail
into its shell, into the comforting dark, and hide; my despair was more than I
could stomach, and the darkness beckoned, womblike, promising oblivion. I was
so close to accepting what it offered
…
I stood, my arms gloved in
blood almost to the shoulders, stumbled, began to turn away from the light
…

Then I remembered
Robert.

The thought was like a
shower of cold water. I gasped, clapped my hands to my mouth, felt cold blood
smear across my lips. In all my fear and self-pity, I had forgotten Robert, my
friend. Robert who was going to marry Rosemary.

Rosemary. The name alone
brought me out in a cold sweat. Everything was centred around Rosemary, my
Blessed Damozel. Even then, I did not begin fully to understand what she was;
there were no words, no thoughts in my world for that. Already, as I began to
slide out of my catatonia, I had begun to rationalize, to think in terms of
crime,
of police (I hastily put out of mind that thin trickle of blood at the side
of the fair-haired boy’s mouth), for I liked to think of myself as a rational
man; I could
believe
in murder. The rest I chose to ignore. So I closed
my eyes to the truth again and began to sift the evidence for what was
acceptable to me. She was a murderess. Her friends had probably committed the
actual deed, but the fact that the body had been in her apartment proved that
she was as guilty as they were. Maybe they were all three of them insane …
only an insane man could bring himself to drink blood … if the boy
had
been drinking blood. I chose to believe my frenzied imagination had created
that. They had been panic-stricken when I had walked in on them; they had been
afraid to kill me, and instead had dumped me in the churchyard, with the body,
hoping, perhaps, that I would be discovered unconscious and reeking of alcohol,
the next morning, and accused of the crime. It made sense.

By this time, my panic
had grown cold; my mind had begun to function again, and coolly I surveyed my
situation. It would not do to be caught. No one, on seeing me, could fail to
suspect me of the murder; I was up to my armpits in blood; there was blood on
my face, my knees where I had knelt on the bloody floor, my clothes were torn
and filthy, and I suspected there was a wild light in my eyes, born of having
seen too much.

I stepped over the body
and made my way to the gate of the crypt; I had wasted too much valuable time,
and I could see the beginnings of a pale grey dawn on the horizon. The rest of
the sky was dark; I judged it to be about four o’clock in the morning, but even
that was too late for me to pass unseen in the streets of Cambridge. It would
take only one person
…
a milkman, perhaps, on his way to work, to see
me. I ran my hands through my hair, pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose,
tried to clean the smeared lenses with a hand I had wiped on my trouser leg,
and carefully, with newfound stealth, I made my way out of the churchyard and
down towards the Grantchester road. I followed a line parallel to the road,
keeping low in the fields, dodging behind trees, occasionally crawling on my
stomach through thin vegetation to avoid being seen. Only once did I see
someone, and even then they were so far away that I could not make out whether
they were men or women, walking slowly in a group of three or four down the
road, but although I knew I had not been spotted, terror nailed me to the ground,
my tongue cleaving to the roof of my mouth, and I cowered in the ditch for a
full ten minutes before I gained enough courage to go on.

It took me almost an
hour to reach my house, and by that time a red dawn was blazing, the mullioned
windows reflecting blood as the sun came up. Spurred by panic, I ran for the
door, grasped for the keys in my pocket, fumbled the key into the lock. One
endless moment of terror as the key jammed, then the door was open, and I
hauled myself in, as a drowning man hauls himself aboard a lifeboat Two, four,
six, eight stairs, and I was in my room, gasping for breath, the air thick as
blood in my lungs, panic still tearing, mindlessly, at my throat.

For a nightmare instant
I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror and I almost screamed. Then,
coming closer, I recognized myself behind the deathmask of blood, my hair on
end, blood smearing the lenses of my glasses, a long scratch across my
forehead, broken bruises on my neck. Only my eyes were sane, very bright behind
my thick lenses. Looking into my own eyes in the dark, lead-marked mirror, I
knew I was no monster.

Methodically, I stripped
off all my clothes and put them in the fireplace. With paper and wood, I lit
the fire, and as I burned every scrap of evidence that I had ever been in that
crypt, I washed very carefully, using Mrs Brown’s antiquated bathtub, a pitcher
and cold water, washing my glasses
too,
so that not a smear or speck of
blood remained. Then I washed the tub and the pitcher, stirred the ashes of the
fire with the poker, dressed in fresh clothes, and with a damp cloth
painstakingly wiped the door-knob, the banisters, the inside and outside
door-handles and the keys, before deciding that I had done all I could, and
that none of Rosemary’s grim work could be traced back to me.

A glance at the hall
clock told me that it was now a quarter to six in the morning; I could hear
sounds from the kitchen, where Mrs Brown was making breakfast for herself (she
always was an early riser, although I never tended to get up much before nine),
and I crept upstairs again before she could come out and speak to me. After
everything I had been through, I felt drained and exhausted, and all I wanted
to do was lie down, sleep, and try to forget. I locked my door, undressed,
fastened my curtains so that no light could enter and trouble my sleep, then,
with a long sigh of total exhaustion, I crawled between the cool
lavender-scented sheets into oblivion.

A tapping on my door
awoke me, and I sat up in bed, my eyes crusted and sore, my head aching. The
tapping continued.

‘Are you all right?’ It
was Mrs Brown. ‘Don’t you want any breakfast?’

‘What time is it?’ I
asked, both hands on my head as if to still its ache. My eyes felt gravelly and
hot.

‘Near ten. Would you
like a cup of tea?’

I shook my head.

‘No. I
…
I don’t
feel very well. I need some sleep. Let me sleep, Mrs Brown. Don’t wake me up.’

Clucking noises from
behind the door. ‘Come back too late last night, did we? Well, if you do want a
bite to eat later, just give me a call, won’t you?’

‘Thanks.’

I heard her footsteps
recede, and I crawled under the covers again, thankful of the darkness. The
sheets were no longer cool and fresh, but clung saltily to my sweating body. I
rolled over, trying to find a cool spot, instinctively shielding my face from
the glow of the window. I wished the curtains were darker, for their deep
crimson allowed the sunlight to cast a coloured nimbus of light around the
window which hurt my tired and sensitive eyes. My throat, too, felt swollen and
sore, my face puffy. I pulled the covers over my face as far as they would go,
and in the crypt-like, uneasy darkness, I slept again. And this time, as I
slept, I dreamed.

I was in the crypt
again; damp, clinging darkness all around me, the smell of grave-earth in my
nostrils and grave-sweat at my fingertips, and I was hungry. My hunger was a
coiling sickness at the pit of my cavernous stomach, a spinning delirium in the
echoing chambers of my brain, worse than panic, more demanding than the sexual
urge, more overwhelming than drug withdrawal. My eardrums boomed with it, my
tongue was dry with it; I was weak. I turned towards the light at the end of
the chamber and winced away, though the thin filaments of daylight which showed
they were weak indeed. Hunger drove me on. I left the cool, comforting
darkness, put one hand on the gate, stopped. Beside one of the graves knelt a
figure, a young girl, her back turned to me, a shawl wrapped round her thin
shoulders. Tendrils of light hair had escaped the confines of the headscarf to
flutter around her face.

The hunger hit me like a
sledgehammer; I staggered. My lips were dry; despite myself, I licked them. The
palms of my hands were slick; I rubbed them on my trousers and came a little
closer. The girl was praying; she did not turn as I came to stand behind her,
did not move as I reached out my hand, almost close enough to touch her face.
Her warmth was palpable; the thin ribbon of the exposed nape of her neck
between the shawl and the headscarf was pale, almost translucent. I could see
the delicate tracery of her veins beneath the skin, living deltas in an alien
landscape. I reached for her; spun her round, imagined her head thrown back,
eyes wide, mouth open ready to scream … and saw none of those things.

She was smiling, arms
open to receive me, lavender eyes huge in a pale, delicate face, beautiful eyes
in which I read a hunger akin to my own. It was Rosemary.

I hesitated, knowing in
my dream no fear, only hunger. I had caught her by the wrist; I allowed my gaze
to travel down her bare arm, down the sensual river of her veins.

‘Daniel.’ Her voice was
breathy, erotic. My own caught in mid-breath as I looked at her. Never, never,
had I seen anyone as beautiful. She smiled again, lifted a small hand to press
it against my cheek.

‘What’s happening to me?’
I spoke almost to myself, but my eyes were lost deep in hers.

‘Love me,’ she
whispered. Her hand was warm on my mouth. I caught a sudden, exhilarating scent
from her skin; lavender, sweetness, and warm, quick blood.

‘My God!’ I cried out
incoherently, her wrist against my mouth. My arms were around her, her hair in
my face, her thin bones so light against my embrace, the pounding of her blood
against my lips …

‘Love me.’ With a sudden
wrench, I twisted her hand towards my mouth; her skin was smooth, salty beneath
my tongue. I bit deeply into the flesh; it was yielding, like the skin of a
fruit, then the blood came, clean and salt. I gagged on it in my eagerness,
fumbled against the wound, licked abjectly. Blood trickled down the side of my
mouth, awakening a memory
…
though of what, I could not quite
remember. The sides of the incision had a faintly metallic taste, were slightly
uneven, and I pushed my tongue between them to feel the pulse of the rushing
blood, my breath ragged and laboured in an excess of delight and greed. I
remember the taste of her. The pattern of every line and vein on that wrist.
Could I have dreamed it? Am I insane? The blood was power, was life
…
I
lapped it deliriously, fearfully, aware that at any moment she might choose to
withdraw her favours and leave me to hunger and hopelessness again.

And as I fed, I looked
up into her pure, fathomless eyes.

And the stars in her
hair were seven.

Restlessly I dreamed and whimpered for
hours between my damp and fevered sheets, and she walked my dreams in glory.
It seems strange, now that I live my life in the midst of such dreams, to
remember how new and how terrifying it was to me then, to enter the crypt of my
subconscious. I was racked with lust and horror; my limbs were water, my head
pulsed with migraine. I don’t remember Mrs Brown knocking on my door again,
though I expect she must have heard me cry out in my sleep, and twice I was
just able to drag myself to the sink in time to retch a darkish slime into the
porcelain basin
…
at that time, I took it for bile. The scratches on
my face hurt wretchedly; touching them with the numbed tips of my fingers, I
realized that they had become great raised welts, reaching from my forehead,
across one cheek and right down my neck though I had been protected to some
extent by my shirt. There were marks like needle-tracks on the inner part of my
wrists, half explaining my disorientation and my nightmares. They must have
drugged me. My throat was swollen, and I wondered whether one of Rosemary’s
cronies had tried to strangle me, but I was too weak and too feverish to
examine the damage any further.

It was near dark when I
awoke completely; I looked at my watch, and was astounded to see that it was
half past seven. Never in my life, even after all-night parties, had I slept
away a whole day, and I flung back the sheets and stood up, feeling more
refreshed, but still rather sick and light-headed. I put on my dressing-gown
and went to the bathroom, where I switched on the light, washed my face, took
two aspirin, and looked at myself in the mirror.

I could not have said
that I looked well; I was pale, and my eyes were bloodshot and bright with
fever. I am not the kind of man who looks at all attractive when he is
unshaven; I simply looked dirty, and the scratch down my face was an ugly weal,
beaded with pus. The bruises on my throat were visible now as fingerprints: four
roundish points, each with a crescent of broken skin where the nail had
penetrated the flesh, and on the other side of the throat, below the jugular
vein, a broader, less defined bruise where the thumb had been. A little way
above that was an incision I had not previously noticed, a crescent-shaped
wound, some three inches long, slightly raised. I frowned at myself in the
mirror. That was not the mark of fingernails, nor had it been accidental. It
had been deliberately placed. But why? And how? By the size and shape of the
mark, the slight irregularity of the incision, it almost looked like the mark
of — I shook my aching head irritably. I had had too many nightmares. What
possible reason would anyone have? And yet, they did look very like the marks
of teeth. Angry with myself and my fancies, I deliberately turned away. Those
scratches would have to be disinfected, otherwise I would have more than bad
dreams to worry about. I found a bottle of iodine, and, standing in front of
the mirror, dabbed at my face and neck until all the cuts and scratches were
covered. That was better. Now for something to eat, for I still felt weak and
dizzy, and I realized that I had eaten nothing since the previous morning. I
went to my room to change, and stopped as I noticed a screw of paper tacked to
my door. I had been in such a hurry that I had not seen it before, and I took
it (correctly, as it happened) to be a note from Mrs Brown.