The Evil Seed (37 page)

She was still fumbling
when the door swung open, and the nightwalkers came in.

Alice was able to look
at them coldly, and was conscious of a savage glee as she remembered why Rafe
and Elaine were missing.

‘Joe,’ she said. ‘Be
careful.’

Java gave her a single
glance and turned to Ginny. ‘The other two are dead,’ he told her. ‘Shot by the
old man.’ He aimed another glance at Alice. ‘I slit the old fool’s throat,’ he
said. ‘He won’t bother us again.’

Alice felt rather than
saw Joe flinch by her side in the darkness as she backed away. She was aware of
the three figures blocking her exit, and the slight form of Ginny standing at
the door behind her. She moved towards the inner door, easing her steps over
the broken glass, cans and rubbish scattered everywhere. To get to the back of
the room Alice had to pass Joe, so close that she almost touched him; and
remembering his attack on her in the house, and the fact that he still had a
syringe which certainly didn’t contain Lucozade, she edged past him with wary
caution. But Joe was uncertain; she could feel his confusion as she brushed by
him in the semi-darkness. He had dropped the torch, which now shone in a narrow
arc against the doorway, lighting Java’s boots and making giant shadowplay of
the nightwalkers on the ceiling.

‘Alice?’ His voice rose
waveringly. ‘What old man? Alice!’ For an instant he reverted to the old Joe as
he took a step forwards and half-fell on some slippery debris. ‘Shit! What the
hell is all this?’

But no one was paying
any attention to him. As he spoke, Alice made a dash for the inner door,
pushing past Ginny to disappear into the passage. Java and Zach followed her,
but not too quickly, their boots crunching the debris underfoot.

‘She won’t get very far,’
said Java. ‘Anton, watch the door. Zach, with me.’

Joe’s voice, faint and
thin, ‘Alice?’

A tunnel of blackness, a
fathom deep, as Alice crashed her way through darkness to the stairs. Panic
surged through her, as she fled up them. For a moment she could almost have
believed herself to be flying against that wind, a wild witch with her hair in
her eyes and a magic at her fingertips which could at one gesture harness the
wind.

‘Dammit, what the
hell was that?’

Alice slipped back into
the jerky motion of panic with a conscious jolt. What had she been thinking?
She seemed to remember, with an elusive visionary quality, a sensation of …

— destiny

— rapture

— space, speed.

It was a feeling of
being so much more than Alice, that for an instant she had been beyond fear.
She turned a corner of the staircase, the palms of her hands slick around the
butt of the pistol, pushed open a door at her back and stepped backwards into
the dark. She had no power; all she had was her intelligence and the gun. Those
feelings were just illusions to confuse her. Suddenly the room seemed much
bigger than she had expected; in the gloom Alice found that she could make out
an unbroken window, the curtains drawn back to reveal a lighted square of
window, moonlight reflections on a table, a candlestick, a pack of cards
spilled across a patch of light as she pulled the door closed behind her. There
were footsteps on the stairs by now; she could hear the sound of boots on the
hollow wood, of voices remote, tinny, like the soundtrack of an old film. A
snatch of music, half imagined on the rushing of the black wind, the wild
jangle of a merry-go-round. A wheel turn — against the sky; a wheel turn — the
sky under the façade of blue.

Footsteps on the
landing; Alice levels the pistol. A slash of light underneath the door,
bisected by the shadows of someone’s feet.

Tick …

tick
…

‘Gas leak! Gas
leak!’

Turner’s voice had
sufficient authority, even after what had happened, to rouse the few other
residents from their beds; the smell of gas was enough to do the rest, and in a
few minutes we had cleared the building, Turner making certain that no would-be
heroes joined us in the house as I took the petrol-can and sprayed the third
floor with its contents. I was taking no risks; there would be no recalling
those charred bodies. No sound from the room, only a rushing emptiness, like a
black wind, from behind the door, like the sea heard through a shell. I mopped
my handkerchief in the petrol, took out my lighter and turned to go down the
stairs, my heart ticking away my frozen thoughts like a razor against stone.

The black wind
intensifies, a whisper of ice-cold music in a deserted gallery, a long-dead
minstrel with a lute of hair and bone sings songs of hate under a black moon. I
knew she was there before I even saw her, felt her breath in my ears as I spun
to her measure and saw her face.

God, her face!

Rapture.

Tick
…

tick …

Joe staggers and puts
his hand to the wall to steady himself, his night-vision slowly reasserting
itself above the glimmer of his mind’s eye. For a moment he is still, allowing
the world to stabilize, trying to think rationally. Java’s words keep
returning.

I
slit the old
fool’s throat.

The silhouette of a
beggar-child against the door, like a thin goblin sentinel, pale refracted
light shining on his white face. Ginny, her hair incandescent in the dimness,
staring into the dark with eyes like tunnels.

To Joe she seems without
substance, a statue of glass and smoke. He brushes her hand in the dark, but
she does not respond. He understands dimly that wherever she is, she is not
there.

‘Ginny?’ His cry is
almost inaudible. Ginny remains motionless, intent. With a terrible effort he
forces his frozen body into motion again, the dark pressing on him like stone.
A spike of panic drives through the soles of his feet as he passes the
threshold and feels the cold breath of the beggar-child on his neck; but it has
been left to guard the door, and though its hunger grins and gibbers at him it
stays, obedient. The kitchen is cauldron-black, and he strains his eyes against
the dark as he feels his way between obstacles towards the huddle of blankets
underneath the window. There is a fetid smell of old dust and mould and
sickness, horrible sickness, sickness like the smell of the hospital where his
grandpa died, like the smell of the old balloon-lady at the fair. An old
terror, half-buried from childhood, takes him by the throat; he gags with the
fear of it, begins to feel his throat tighten. A dream, or the memory of a
dream, comes back to him so clearly that for a moment he forgets who he is and
where he is.

Tick
…

tick
…

t—

The door opens and Alice
lifts the pistol, pausing only because she thinks it might be Joe. Light floods
the room, a carnival light in a dozen bright colours, pink, blue, yellow,
green. A sharp hot scent in the air like peanuts and roasting apples and the
slick sugary scent of candy-floss. For a second she forgets where she is,
almost who she is; looks down at herself and sees (dirty jeans torn at the
knees, blood in the creases in her palms, sweatshirt grimed with soot, the gun
held uneasily in a shaking hand) her clean Indian skirt, the ends of her
flowing dark hair brushing her shoulders. The disorientation intensifies for a
moment; Alice frowns, trying to remember — a hand falls on her shoulder, a
kindly voice speaks.

‘Come on now, Alice. It’s
all right, you just freaked out for a minute.’

‘Joe?’

He grins, pushing long
hair out of his eyes.

‘Who d’you think it is?
Are you OK now? You were having your fortune told, and you must have passed
out, or something. It must be the heat. Come on out here and I’ll buy you an
ice-cream.’

Alice frowns.

‘Fortune?’

‘Yes, don’t you
remember?’

She shakes her head. ‘I …’

‘You’ll be all right in
a moment or two,’ the gipsy woman smiles, oddly young-looking in the bright
light, the neon flickering on to her red hair. Odd, that she should have red
hair, thinks Alice vaguely; she thought that all gipsies were dark. A bird
tattoo is etched starkly on to her left cheekbone, eerily lifelike.

‘OK?’ Joe’s voice is
concerned. ‘Do you want to go home now?’

Alice shakes her head,
forcing her eyes back into focus, manages a smile.

‘No, it’s all right,’
she says, but even as she speaks she looks at Joe and wonders how, in the damp
and muggy heat of this hot summer night, he can still be wearing that
greatcoat.

Tick
…

tick
…

Turner shifts uneasily
under the filthy blanket, tasting the tinniness and slickness of his blood in
his throat. His dreams fall away from him like snakeskin.

In his dreams he has
heard the nightwalkers come and go, for a moment he almost touched Joe’s hands
as he reached out to him, but Joe is snatched away again into bright ether, and
Turner smiles thinly through blood-crusted lips and drifts back.

Tick …

tick
…

t…

She makes children of us
all, I told you; children in the face of her, the glory of her. She revels in
our fears, the scent of our childish terrors, and she feeds on them, on all of
us — she is the witch in the gingerbread house, the ogress, the wicked queen,
the ravening wolf, the monster in the cellar, in the heart. This is her
defence, this one rapture, shrinking us into children, wracked by children’s
fears, children’s certainties.

As I face her, the
Blessed Damozel, essence of every dream and fairy story and legend and fear, I
am filled with a rapture I cannot analyse; I am diminished and at the same time
increased. She laughs as she turns the wheel of the spinning-top but at last I
know that I am ready for her. I run across the painted skyline, a perfect
circle, spinning for me. All around me rise the painted trees, the houses with
windows painted on their bland red façades, the painted railway track humming
as I hear the sound of the train, that hungry dragon from under the painted
earth. I hear
it,
its voice like the apotheosis of all monsters,
Rosemary at the wheel, bearing down on me. And suddenly realize that we too
have
power,
power enough to break hers. We are children; we believe. And
with belief, with faith, we can destroy her. Children have the only true faith,
not the stumbling faith of religions, those dim adult fairy tales, but faith in
magic, belief in rapture. Join hands with me and chant the spell —

Tick
…

tick
…

Alice starts; for a
moment she thought she was somewhere else, feels the breath of the night on
her cheek. She looks at Joe as he grins, wolf-like, and draws a long black .
knife from the pocket of his greatcoat. Somewhere in the background, a
merry-go-round the size of a spinning-top is playing; as she watches, the bird
on the gipsy’s face spreads its wings and flies away.

Tick
…

tick …

As she is taken
off-balance he strikes, the knife reaching her at a clumsy angle, slicing
through the palm of her hand. She screams, the sound a clear bright lance in
the air. The fairground dances around her like a carousel ride, scents assail
her nostrils; blood and peanuts and the rank stink of animals. Zach claws at
her, one earring swinging; she feels his fingers jab into the side of her neck,
almost paralysing her. She kicks out at him sideways, taking him off-balance,
her mind a cold rushing emptiness. Her hands are someone else’s hands as she
finally lifts the pistol and fires.

For a moment time is
suspended.

The shot surprises her
even more than it does Zach. It seems as if the gun has gone off entirely on
its own, wrenching her shoulder as it does, leaping in her grasp like an angry
cat. A second before the shock even registers, Alice sees the hole appear in
Zach’s chest, sees him stagger and fall back, sees him jerk again in mid-fall,
and then the world is nothing but sound, sound and blackness, and Zach on the
floor. There are clouds in her eyes, and in slow motion and silently Java
approaches, the knife a slice of shadow in his hand.

Rapture.
The word is alien, like
someone else’s thought beamed by accident into Joe’s mind. For a second he isn’t
even certain what it means, but as he hears its psychic echo the world snaps
back into place with a sound like a breaking bone. The figure in front of him
is nebulous, giant one moment and small the next, the knife a blade of shadow
slicing the air before him. His eyes drop to the needle in his hand; he has
kept it all this time without even knowing that he had it, and a certainty
invades him. For a startling moment he is Joe again, flying, riding the storm
on a wave of chords, a sorcerer’s apprentice conducting an orchestra of howling,
screaming fantasies. He leaps forwards into the wave with the syringe held high
above his head.

The world comes back into sharp focus, but
too late; Java is on her, crushing her windpipe. She swings her fist at him,
still weighted with the pistol it strikes him on the side of the head, a messy
blow which nevertheless loosens his grasp from her throat. The knife has
fallen to the floor, and Alice is almost sure she can feel the hilt of it under
her ribs, digging into her back, but she cannot reach it. She feels Java’s hand
come back to her throat and twists to bite him, feeling her teeth against his
wrist. Almost gagging, she struggles to raise the pistol, but her hand is numb
from loss of blood, her arm gloved in blood to the elbow. Slick with blood and
sweat, the pistol slides from her hand and falls by her side where she cannot
reach it. She guesses Java’s grin as he closes both hands around her throat and
begins to tighten his grip.