The Evil Seed (23 page)

Do you ask cattle
whether they want to be eaten? In the Bible it says that God gave us dominion
over all the other beasts of the field; and Danny,
they
are the beasts
of the field. When you get used to this idea, you’ll realize what a chance we’ve
given you, no, not to live for ever, but to live more, and experience more,
learn more than any other man you know. I’ve given you life.’

‘You’ve made me a
monster,’ I said.

Rosemary looked angry. ‘There
are no monsters. I have given you power, and with power comes new appetite. I
have not changed you into a vampire; your appetites come from
you,
not
me. Your subconscious knows what you need a lot better than you do. And it
compensates, allowing you to transfer feelings of guilt on to me.’

She smiled. ‘You’ll
adjust soon enough. Soon you will wonder why on earth you had to make such a
fuss about it all. But it’s only natural, after all. Later, I will begin to
teach you.’

I suppose you have seen
her pictures. You know how lovely she was, and maybe you can understand how
easily I was subjugated. To me, bloodstained and half-drunk and crushed beneath
the dictates of religion and morality, she looked like a thing out of legend,
and the cup she offered me was
freedom,
no less, freedom from everything,
from my lonely life, from the law, from my God and my conscience and the
consequences of my actions. From then onwards, I would be free to take whatever
I wanted from life, and there would be no one to stop me. Suddenly I wanted
that freedom so badly that I was overwhelmed with panic that she might withdraw
her offer, and I reached out for her like a beggar.

‘Teach me now,’ I said.

What Rosemary taught me that day, on a pile
of old sacks and blankets in a dusty, disused warehouse with the sunlight strung
out like skeins of silk across the broken rafters, I try not to remember.
Enough to say that she was sweet and soft, her hair smelt of lavender and I
loved her with a frenzy of which I would never have imagined myself capable. It
was true then, that my altered state brought new appetites, and I sated them
fully in the endlessness of Rosemary until there was nothing of me left. They
had all loved her, that I knew instinctively: Zach and Rafe and Java and Elaine
and Anton (seven years old, going on fifty), and that somehow made it all the
more liberating and marvellous. Rosemary was the vial of eternal life; we had
all drunk deep, and she had given us grace.

Maybe you find me
ridiculous, maybe even blasphemous. Try to understand. I am not writing this
for my own glory, or even to salvage my conscience, but to warn you. I am
inventing nothing; I write only what I felt. This is Rosemary; this she can be
again.

It is proof of the
enchantment she laid on me that it was only as I was ready to leave that I
remembered Robert. I froze, the sensation of epiphany falling from me in an
instant of shock.

‘My God!’

Rosemary turned to look
at me; she was sitting on a pile of rubbish in the doorway, all fire and ivory
in the sunlight.

‘Where does Robert fit
into this?’ The coldness grew; I began to recognize it as guilt. ‘Does he know,
is he?’

Rosemary arched her back
and stretched.

‘No, he isn’t chosen.’
Her voice was faintly contemptuous.

‘You mean he doesn’t
know?’ I said. ‘But he’s going to marry you.

She laughed. ‘I know it’s
hard for you, because you still haven’t outgrown your quaint notions of
loyalty, but you must, you know. Someone who is chosen must put aside all
loyalties to the cattle; they are misplaced loyalties, unworthy of you. I have
my own uses for Robert, but he has no part in our plans.’

‘But—’ I said.

‘When you are truly one
of us, I will tell you why I need Robert,’ said Rosemary, with her serene
smile. ‘Until then, Danny, know your true loyalties, and be satisfied with
them.’ I wanted to say more, but dared not. I had displeased her, I knew, by
mentioning my friend, and by then, I was too much hers to risk doing so again.
I took my leave of her, without arranging another time to meet. (‘You’ll know
when I need you, she had told me, and I had to be satisfied with that.) And
with my hat pulled hard over my eyes and my coat buttoned to the neck, I began
the long walk home over the fields.

Two

JOE WAS WEARING THE SAME CLOTHES HE HAD
WORN for the concert the previous night, and he looked crumpled and tired, his mouth
drawn down and his eyes swollen. As Alice opened the door he was lighting a
cigarette, hands cupped round the lighter flame.

‘How’s Ginny?’ Alice
felt a sting of irritation that he should make his indifference to her so
obvious.

‘She’s fine,’ she said.

‘Where is she?’

‘In the living-room.
Look, Joe.’ She caught hold of his arm as he began to open the living-room
door.

‘Stop here a minute. We
need to talk.’

‘Can’t it wait?’ he
said, an edge to his voice. ‘I’ve not slept, and I’m not up to talking much
yet. You know what I’m like in the mornings.’

‘I’m worried about
Ginny.’

‘Why? I thought you said
she was OK.’

‘It depends what you
mean,’ said Alice. ‘Do you know she takes drugs? I found some syringes in her
cupboard.’

Joe stiffened slightly,
then shrugged. ‘She went through a phase,’ he said. ‘So what?’

‘I think it’s more than
a phase,’ said Alice. ‘Last night she didn’t come back till five. The night
before she—’

‘Don’t try to get me
worked up. Just tell me what you’re getting at.’ He took a drag from his
cigarette. She forced herself to sound calm.

‘I think Ginny’s in with
the wrong crowd. Two friends of hers came by here last night, asking for her,
and they were …’ She paused. ‘They frightened me. I went out and followed
them to an old house near Grantchester, a kind of squat. They were at the
concert, too, and Ginny was with them all the time.’

Joe frowned. ‘You’ve
been very active on Ginny’s behalf. I’d better talk to her, hadn’t I?’ He
pushed past Alice into the front room. She followed.

Ginny was standing by
the window looking out into the street, but she turned when she heard Joe come
in. Her face lit up like a child’s, and she ran up to him and threw her arms
around his neck.

‘Hey Gin. You’re not too
tired?’ His voice had softened for Ginny, Alice noticed, but there was still a
hard line between his eyes, as if the sunlight hurt him.

Ginny shook her head. ‘Did
they keep you long last night?’

Joe shrugged. ‘Too long.
The thing is that the bloke they picked up and took off in the ambulance
decided to snuff it on the way to the hospital. They don’t know who he was yet,
and no one seems to have seen what happened to him. There was too much
confusion, people fighting and trying to get through the door, people thinking
there was a fire and freaking out. By the time the police got there most of the
people who could have witnessed something were gone, and the guy bled to death
before anyone got organized. So what they did was to grab the nearest bass
guitarist and say, “Hey man, you were there, you must have seen something.” You
didn’t get close enough to spot what happened, did you?’

Once more Ginny shook
her head.

Alice, remembering the
group of Ginny’s friends at the door, frowned, and in spite of herself, spoke
up. ‘Maybe your friends saw something,’ she said.

Ginny looked blank. ‘What
friends?’

‘Rafe and Java, and the
others who were there last night. You were standing with them at the back of
the room.’

Ginny shook her head, a
puzzled expression on her face. ‘There was only you and Joe,’ she said. ‘I don’t
have any other friends.’

‘But they were with you
last night,’ said Alice. ‘Come off it, Ginny. don’t be silly. You have to tell
us about it sometime. You went to a house by the river. You can’t have come
back before five, at least, because—’

‘I didn’t go anywhere
last night,’ said Ginny to Joe. ‘I went to bed.’

‘You didn’t come back
from the concert! I waited for you, but you never came. Then your friends
turned up looking for you; the same ones I saw you with at the concert. They
said they were called Rafe and Java. Don’t lie to us, there isn’t any point. We
just want to know …’

But Joe had stepped
forward, all the softness gone from his face.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘Leave
off, will you? I can do without all this right now. What does it matter who she
was with?’

Alice tried to keep
calm. The last thing she wanted was a row with Joe. ‘It matters that for some
reason Ginny won’t tell us where she’s been going at night.’

‘Don’t start that. We’ll
talk about it later.’ Joe was wearing his stubborn look. A look that Alice knew
of old. For a moment he looked very like Ginny.

‘Later?’ she said.

‘Just
leave
it,
Alice!’

The Northern accent had
intensified as he raised his voice.

Alice found she was
trembling. ‘Don’t you see you’re being made a fool of?’ she said. ‘Don’t let
her lie to you! I tell you, I can prove it. I can take you to the house.’ She
turned to Ginny. ‘Tell him the truth!’

Tears had come to Ginny’s
eyes, and she turned away, hiding her face. Alice grabbed her by the arm.

‘Stop it!’ Joe’s intervention
was as rapid as her own. ‘Let her alone! I said, get your fucking hands off
her! ‘His hand was lifted, as if to strike; the high frequency of his emotion
palpable. He was shaking, his eyes almost closed, then he gave a cry and hit
the wall with all his strength, knocking plaster from a patch the size of a
beer-mat.

With a sick feeling,
Alice realized that only a tremendous effort of will had prevented him from
actually hitting
her.
The thought was so ugly, so uncharacteristic,
that she stepped back from Ginny, tears of reaction in her eyes.

‘Oh, that’s very mature,’
she said. ‘I hope you’re feeling better now.

Joe was cradling his
hurt hand. ‘I think I’ve cracked my knuckles.’

‘Good.’

Now his voice was quiet
again, the shuttered look back behind his eyes. ‘I thought you might have
changed,’ he said. ‘But you’re still the same spiteful bitch. Going on and on,
never letting up about anything. I was well rid of you.’ And he took Ginny’s
hand and turned towards the door.

‘Joe …’ Alice tried to
put her hand on his arm to calm him; he shook it away with a violent gesture.

‘Get the fuck off me!’

Then Ginny stepped in. ‘Please,’
she said, tugging at his sleeve so that he turned back to face her. ‘Please don’t
make a fuss,’ she went on. ‘I’m sure all this was a mistake. Maybe someone did
call by, from the past that I’m trying to forget. Maybe that’s who Alice saw.

Please don’t quarrel
over me.

Now Joe looked
shamefaced, the anger submerging once again.

‘Look, Alice …’ He
tried to smile. ‘I think we’re all a bit freaked out today. I haven’t slept at
all, and we’ve all been through quite a lot, and we both overreacted, right?
Perhaps you did see someone last night. Perhaps it was even some friend of
Ginny’s. She used to have some pretty weird friends.’

‘Don’t be afraid to say
it,’ said Ginny looking into Joe’s eyes. ‘I want Alice to know everything. She
has to know all about me before she can trust me .and be my friend.’

Her eyes flicked to
Alice’s face for an instant; Alice caught the neon flash of a carnival wheel
turning.

‘I used to know all
kinds of people,’ she said. ‘Pimps, addicts, prostitutes, most of them
half-crazy.’ She smiled. ‘Joe changed all that. Joe was my white knight,’ she
said.

He tried to speak but
she stilled him with a gesture, something which Alice, in all those years, had
never managed to do.

‘I’ve really tried to
forget those times,’ said Ginny, looking at Alice now. ‘But sometimes I still
remember—’

And she looked straight
into Alice’s eyes and the word ‘remember’ echoed in the spaces between them,
and Alice was seized by the peculiar feeling that she was being given a
message, a very important message which she could not understand, and the
understanding of which might change the world.

Alice waited for a long time after Ginny
and Joe left the house, then she went into her workroom where she had left
Daniel Holmes’s manuscript. She put the papers carefully back into the box, hid
the box in a cupboard in her workroom, and went back into her living-room to
think.

Daniel Holmes was mad,
of course.

And yet, some part of
her wanted to believe his tale. Maybe the scene with Joe had finally decided
her; or maybe the feelings which had assailed her since that first evening with
Ginny, the dizziness, the odd scents she had associated with her; sugar,
peanuts, candyfloss, the low, hot reek of the animal-house … Daniel had
mentioned those too. The suspicion, the hatred Alice had felt for Ginny, the
alien sense of dread. Rafe and Java, perfectly described. Ginny’s face on
paintings over a hundred years old. Ginny’s face in the Corn Exchange hall. The
Reverend Holmes, Daniel’s nephew, in the church. Doctor Pryce, Daniel’s doctor,
Ginny’s doctor, dead in Fulbourn. Ginny’s denials in front of Joe. Crazy Daniel
might be, she thought, but she was almost beginning to believe him.

‘Hello? Fulbourn Hospital. Can I help you?’

‘I’d like to speak to
Doctor Menezies, please.’

‘Just hang on a moment,
I’ll see if he’s here. ‘Again, the soothing music, as Alice was put on hold.
Tapping her fingers irritably on the side of the receiver, she waited, all the
while keeping her eyes on the box in which she had filed all Daniel Holmes’s
writings.

‘Hello. Menezies
speaking.’