The Evil Seed (24 page)

‘Good morning. It’s
Alice Farrell; maybe you remember speaking to me the other day.’

‘Yes, I remember.’

Alice hesitated. ‘I’d
like to arrange for us to meet. I have a problem I’d like to discuss.’

‘I see. Perhaps you’d
like to give me some idea of the nature of your problem before we meet?’

‘I’d rather make an
appointment.’

‘I have a slot at half past
twelve.’

‘Fine.’ Alice was
relieved. ‘That’ll be fine.’

‘Right. Well, if that’s
all …’

‘Wait.’ Alice took a
deep breath, marshalling her energy. ‘Who did you say was the doctor who died
recently? Doctor Pryce?’ A long silence from the other end of the phone.

‘Hello?’

Menezies’ voice, sharp
and maybe wary. ‘If you’re from the press, you’re wasting your time. I don’t
give interviews.’

‘I’m not from the press.
I just want some help,’ said Alice firmly. ‘Why? Is there any problem? Is it
something to do with Doctor Pryce?’

Another long pause. Then
his voice, cool and remote. ‘I’ll see you at twelve-thirty,’ he said.

One

I COULD NOT REMAIN IN MY LODGINGS ANY
LONGER, FOR fear that Mrs Brown, who knew me too well, might comment on my
changed manner, and so as soon as I arrived home I locked myself in my room and
began to plan my escape. First, I bathed thoroughly and burned my bloodstained
shirt; an expensive habit, no doubt, but my sense of self-preservation took
over and planned, coldly, my new life with all the precision of a man born to
the ways of Cain.

By now I was beginning
to feel light-headed again; remember, I had hardly slept, I had seen more in
twenty-four hours than I ever imagined in all of Heaven and Hell; and the
knowledge I acquired on the way was written across my face. Looking at myself
in my old mirror, I saw a half-stranger, unshaven and hollow-cheeked, eyes
brimming with the light of power, frightening and … yes, oddly beautiful. I
smiled at myself, noting a hitherto undiscovered sensuality about my mouth, a
savage carelessness which had not been there before. I remembered Rafe, and how
like an angel he had appeared to me under the bridge. Did I look like him now?
I thought. Now that I was chosen? I turned away from the mirror, went to the
cupboard, found the bottle of whisky and a mug. I poured myself a good two
inches of undiluted whisky, drank it in one draught, like medicine, and set
about my packing.

There was not very much
of this; a trunk of clothes and books was everything I needed to take, but my
problem was really to make good my departure without having to meet Mrs Brown.
I was afraid that if my landlady confronted me with my bizarre behaviour I
might weaken; fortunately for me, she was out, and I contrived easily enough to
have a cab remove my belongings to another part of town in her absence. I left
a note for her, as well as two five-pound notes in an envelope in thanks for
everything she had done for me; and by the late afternoon I was already settled
in my new apartment by the Cam, a suite of three rooms on the top floor of a
three-storey house. There were three other lodgers there besides myself, as the
surly landlord vouchsafed. Having set eyes on the man I guessed, rightly, that
as long as my rent was on time, and I did not disturb the peace, any strange
habits of mine would pass unnoticed. I settled down on my bed and slept.

My rest was poor; I was
troubled by dreams and memories worse than dreams, and though my eyelids were
heavy with lack of sleep, it hurt to close my eyes, as if the memories which
resided behind them had turned to broken glass beneath the flesh. In my moments
of wakefulness my eyes were sore and crusted, and when, in the early evening, I
rose and turned on the light, the brightness of it was more than I could bear,
and I had to sit in near-darkness for almost half an hour before the discomfort
abated.

By this time, I was
hungry, and knowing that there would be nothing available for me to eat at that
hour, I prepared to go out.

Having dressed with care,
and shaved, I made my way to a small restaurant I knew on King’s Parade. I
chose it particularly because my friends rarely frequented it. I ordered
drinks, followed by a rare steak, and sat back in a comfortable chair and
looked around. Despite the bland normality of the place, I had an odd sensation
of unreality, as if the little restaurant were simply a theatrical set, with
sinister engineers working behind the scenes; I imagined wheels turning behind
closed doors, the familiar sounds and smells and sights of the Cambridge
evening outside a cover for the machinery of another, darker world. I sipped my
drink quietly, waited for the world to return to focus, but the sensation
intensified … not an altogether unpleasant sensation, and yet it disturbed me.
Two people passed the window — a young man and a girl, faces pallid in the
greenish light of the street-lamps. I saw them for a moment only, but their
image remained fixed in my mind for several moments after they had passed; the
young man turned towards the girl, she fixing her gaze demurely on the ground.
For an instant, I seemed to see, with this newly acquired vision, the bone and
muscle beneath their skin, the movement of the machinery of their bodies,
occult and silent capsules of sinew and blood.

The thought chilled me;
suddenly I was appalled at myself. I told you I had never been fanciful; these
thoughts seemed not to be my own, but those of someone else, some incubus with
a sense of humour. I turned my thoughts to the arrival of my steak, red and
steaming in a pool of rich juices; the waiter set the plate down in front of
me, smiled in the absent way waiters do, and left me to my meal. I set to
eating with a hearty appetite, inhaling the rich subtleties of the meat as I
cut and swallowed without even chewing, feeling the power return to my weakened
body and my traumatized mind. That was all I needed, I thought to myself in
satisfaction, just a good meal to set me to rights again. Rosemary and the
others seemed very far away now, very unreal. Inconceivable that I had seen so
much, suffered and experienced more than a normal man may in a whole life. I
even began to doubt the happenings of that night; suspecting that the powerful
hallucinogen administered to me by Rafe might have been responsible for those
bloody, joyful visions.

The world side-slipped
again with a lurch. I looked down at my plate, at the meat, the blood, and
suddenly the sight of that blood sickened me. I remembered that other blood, so
fragrant and lavish, how it had pulsed, how it had sprayed wantonly, generously
— the acidic, metallic taste of the open wound. Human flesh was whiter than
beef, I thought inconsequentially, but still there was a kindred among cattle.

Strange, that my horror
should not be of the crimes I had committed; maybe they were too much for my
scrambled mind to understand. The fact that I had fed on the murdered body of a
woman before she was cold seemed unreal, distant; I felt only the vague
dislocated guilt I might have felt on remembering a perversely sexual dream.
No, what frightened me more than I can say, what still frightens me, was the
fact that such things exist, behind the still façade of humdrum life. There was
a whole world of scurrying life behind the scenes, once glimpsed, never
forgotten, and I was a part of it now, inescapably caught in its busy
machinery. I felt as if, in the middle of a ride on the big wheel of a
fairground, I had happened to look downwards, and had seen the exposed organs
of the mechanism which bore me, or as if I had seen the painted sky peeled back
to reveal God, like a giant puppet-master, surrounded by the wheels and pulleys
which keep the stars in place, grinning down at the Earth and holding the sun
in place like a sleeping yo-yo.

I pushed my plate away,
unable to eat any more. My heightened awareness taunted me with new and horrific
sensations; I felt the warmth of the meat on my plate calling to the warmth of
my belly where, even now, the unseen machinery was converting what I had eaten
into faeces. I felt, for a loathsome instant, the boiling of bacteria in my
intestines, the death of millions of cells in my brain even as I thought. And I
saw myself, as if through a grotesquely magnifying lens: one moment infinitely
large, the atoms of my body rushing away through space at the speed of light to
the vast dark forges at entropy’s end, the next, infinitely tiny, endlessly
dying, a mote on a mote in darkness, helpless and lost, infinitely far from
God.

I reeled, disorientated,
and in that moment everything returned to normal once more: the restaurant,
the dim light of the candle in front of me, the fragrance of the meat, the red
wine in the glass. A moment of limbo, and I could hardly even remember my
previous unease, as I cut into my steak once more and ate with satisfyingly primitive
joy. I was chosen.

I ordered fruit and cake
and more wine, then coffee and brandy to finish. I asked the waiter for a
paper, and read the
Evening Post
for a quarter of an hour or so,
noticing with some satisfaction that the body in the crypt had not yet been
discovered. Even the ‘Body in the Weir’ case had been relegated to third-page
status, with no new developments except that Scotland Yard were still at work
investigating the cause of death. I scanned the rest of the paper for news of
the previous night’s activities in the tavern, and eventually located the
report, half a dozen lines on the fourth page entitled BLAZE KILLS TWO.
Obviously the fire the others had lit to cover their traces had fooled the
police, at least temporarily. Feeling very much more master of myself, I paid
my bill, took my coat and hat, and began to walk back to my new rooms, taking
the path along the river, enjoying the carelessness of the moment, the quiet
sounds of the Cam and the darkness of the path. I was not at all tired, though
by now it was late, and I was not usually given to late nights, and I think
that as I opened the door of my room I might have been planning to do some of
my research while I waited for sleep, but as soon as I stepped through the
doorway, all thoughts of books fled my mind. Even as I reached for the light,
the voice stopped me, a voice shockingly feeble and hoarse, but still uncannily
familiar.

‘Danny. Don’t put the
light on … it’s me.’

I squinted in the
darkness, took off my glasses to see more clearly, made out a pale, unformed
shape to my left.

‘Robert?’

No answer, but a kind of
creaking, choking sigh.

‘Robert, are you all
right?’

That ghastly sound
again, accompanied by a scraping, shuffling sound from the direction of the
bed. I was unused to the room, in addition, I had drunk far more than I was
accustomed to; I struck a table in the gloom as I tried to move towards my
friend, lost my balance and almost fell over a fold in the carpet.

‘How did you find me?
Are you in trouble?’

Something like a sob in
the dark.

I reached him at last;
from what I could feel, he was half lying on the bed, fully clothed. He reached
for my hand. He was very cold. A faint medicinal smell clung to his clothes,
mingled with a much stronger reek of whisky. I put my arms around him and held
him like a child; all the while wondering desperately what Rosemary had told
him. That this was somehow her doing, I did not doubt; only she could have
reduced him to this state. Robert was a light-hearted, practical man with a firm
hold on reality and on himself; but I had long since realized that he was not
strong. One glimpse of what I had been allowed to see in those past twenty-four
hours would have been enough to annihilate him; somehow, I had adapted, and for
the first time in all our acquaintance, our roles were reversed. He clung to
me, his breath jerking painfully, and I rocked him like a child, trying to
think of some way to calm and reassure him. Whatever happened, I told myself,
he must not suspect the truth; he must not learn about Rosemary, though whether
I wished to protect him or her, I did not yet know.

I rocked him until the
rigidity left his body, whispered inanities while all the time I planned and
calculated my approach.

‘Had a bit to drink, eh?
That’s better. Hold on. I’ll make us a pot of coffee.’ I stood up without
difficulty (my eyes had by now acclimatized to the darkness), went to the sink,
lit a small lamp there. I ran some water into the kettle, opened the door again
to go to the kitchenette.

‘Don’t go!’ Robert’s
voice was trembling.

‘It’s all right, old
chap, I’ll be back in a tick,’ I said. ‘I’ll bring us a pot of coffee, you’ll
see, that’ll make you feel better.’

When I returned I found
him slightly more under control. He was sitting in one of my armchairs, his
back to the light. His hat was lying on the floor beside him. He looked as if
he had been crying; even in that dim light his face was blotchy, and his hands,
clasped on his lap, were restless.

‘Thanks, old chap,’ he
said, with an effort. ‘Good of you to salvage the wreck. I’m all right now.’ I
turned to light the fire, which had gone out in my absence. In the piling of
coal and paper, the striking of matches, the fanning of the flames with the
bellows, and the final deft poker-work which set the flames crackling merrily,
Robert had time to collect himself still more, and when I turned to him again
he was sitting upright in his chair, and his face, though drawn and rather
pale, was almost back to normal again. I poured coffee for both of us, knowing
that this sequence of normal, everyday gestures — lighting the fire, spooning
out sugar and passing milk — was reassuring my friend better than any words I
could have spoken.

‘Now then,’ I said, when
I had judged that the coffee and the warm fire had begun to take effect, ‘why
don’t you tell me what’s wrong?’ I smiled, and passed a tin of biscuits. ‘Help
yourself.’