Blackened (10 page)

My ankle twinges but the pain is not devastating. I manage to maintain speed, but my lungs are weakening. My right side flares up, urging me to stop, bend over, rest, but I cannot. I battle the stitch.

Jean-Bernard curses. I glance back. He has tripped, landed on all fours.

This spurs me on. I up my pace a fraction. My muscles roar in response, but I keep going.

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie...

Jean-Bernard is chasing again, but his footfalls are louder, heavier, slower. His breathing is erratic, frantic.

Pleasure at his pain gives me extra zest and my legs move more fluidly. My body suddenly feels lighter, almost as if my senses have adjusted, adapted to the harsh demands being asked of it. After almost giving up, it has changed its mind.

EDDIE, EDDIE, EDDIE...

My chant is more powerful, assertive, sure. I pick up speed, hands balling, arms propelling me along, body working like a tuned piano.

EDDIE, EDDIE, EDDIE...

Jean-Bernard's footsteps grow yet heavier, slower, quieter, more distant, less threatening. He drops away, fades away until I can only hear my own pounding footfalls.

I keep up my pace, continually glancing back, just in case.

After a while I slow to a fast walk, allowing my heart to recover and my trembling limbs to calm.

Looking through the icy wood, I know I am lost. Where I am I know not. But I am not far from Blackened Cottage. Not far from Father's rage.

An hour seems very little so I continue to stride onward at a good speed. 

A force remains in my blood giving me the energy to keep going, but the cold chills my perspiration and my muscles begin to stiffen.

I am not too tired yet, which is good. I fear what the cold will do to me when I inevitably succumb to exhaustion.

I think of my little Villette – will I ever touch her again? I think of poor Bethan. Poor, reckless, sweet, brave Bethan. They have her. I close my mind to thoughts of what they may to do her. If I dwell upon it, I am worried I will turn back and surrender rather than journeying on to find Eddie.

London. Such a distance. And in such foul weather. The journey will be full of hardship, but it is a journey I am willing to make.

My teeth start to chatter. My skin grows more numb by the second. I scan the darkness for some sort of shelter; if I do not find refuge soon I will freeze. Father and Jean-Bernard will soon think me dead, and I hope they do for they are far less likely to search for me that way. Of course, I will be dead shortly if I do not find shelter.

All I see are trees tall and white, leaves shining silver, frost-crisped ground, the odd statued roe deer. The scene reminds me of a Christmas card, but it is a mirthless scene. This could be the setting for my death.

Panic grows as I force my feet forward. Each step is tougher than the last. My body trembles with the effort and the cold scrubs my nerve endings like wire scouring a pan. I imagine what I would look like if I were to die here, now, like this.

I see a form that is not my own. It is Mama's: frost-hardened hair framing her pallid face, her parted lips blue, icicles dripping down like fangs. Her eyes are open but unseeing; glass eyeballs with ice for eyelashes.

A hairy black centipede wiggles out of her dead mouth.

I scream. Begin to run, run away from this terrible vision. I know not why my mind would conjure up such an image, but at least it has burned movement into my limbs.

I limp forward, body convulsing – I must keep going, I must not give up.

A light in the darkness. Am I imagining it? My legs quake as I drag myself through the trees. Up ahead a clearing. A building. Small, dark, lit by a lantern attached to the wall. A figure. I reach out to the figure. My heart is so slow. My legs so heavy. I fall to the ground hard but feel nothing.

*

Someone with dry fingers tucks a horsehair blanket under my chin.

“There there Morna me dear, ye is goin' to be al-right. Ya mama will see to that,” she rasps. Her breath reeks of fish.

She pronounces her 'th' like a 't' but I cannot name her accent. Welsh? Irish perhaps?

Cow dung and log fire smoke cling to the muggy air. I hear crackling flames, feel delicious heat soothing cold, brittle nerves. Salt on cracked lips.

Flash back to Father – Jean-Bernard - the deadly cold - terrible pain, gnawing fear. Villette – Bethan - Eddie. Mama. Eddie. Mama dead with a black centipede crawling out of her mouth.

I open my eyes and stare at the oldest woman on earth. Her kind blue eyes are wrapped in the sallow skin of a sun-dried leaf, her scaly scalp visible through wispy patches of feathery white hair. She smiles and her teeth are black.

“Ah Morna! Me precious little lamb, ye're awake! So long has it been! I am so, so glad to see ya! I thought ya'd ne'er return, so I did!”

I try to sit up but she pushes me back down with surprising force.

“No no, Morna me dear darlin'. Ye're not goin' anywhere, no Sir-ree. Not this time! No indeed. I ha' made sure o' that, so I ha'!”

I know not who this Morna person is, but it appears that this old woman believes me to be her. What I do know is that I need to persuade her of my true identity and continue on my way.           

“Thank you. You have been most kind, but I need to go and find my brother,” I say.

I start to get up again.

Again she forces me back down.

“Ye're not goin' anywhere,” she snaps. Her eyes are no longer kind. Darkness lurks there.

My chest jumps. I jerk to my feet and move around her. My limbs are weak and I struggle to move with my usual grace.

“I truly am grateful Ma'am, but I have to go.”

I stride towards the makeshift door of her wooden hut and my foot connects with something soft and wet. I hesitate, glance down.

A rat, gutted, its bowels oozing out. A bloody knife lying next to the rat.

I gasp and instinctively step back.

I hear the swoosh of the pan before she cracks it down on my skull.

C
HAPTER 11
R
ATS

I wake up and look around, wincing at the broiling pain in my head.

The old woman stands in front of the fire humming a chirpy tune and turning a spit. Speared above the flames is a huge rat, an iron stake sticking out of its mouth. She shuffles over to a cooking pot and scoops some of the contents out with a wooden spoon. She blows her fish breath onto the spoon and shuffles over to me, dirty skirts swishing across the dung-pressed floor.

“Eat,” she rasps, “it will help ya get ye memory back.”

“Thank you, but I am not hungry. And I do not need anything to help me, because I have not lost my memory,” I say.

She smiles darkly, “This is what ya always say in the first and then ya come around.”

I say nothing more. There is no point belabouring a point that she will never grasp. I try to sit up but I cannot move my arms or legs.

The old lady stretches out a gnarled finger and plucks up the blanket. I gasp. My hands and feet are tied to the bed by ribbons of velvet that she has torn off the bottom of my dress.

“Ya see, there is no point in tryin' to move Morna. Now eat.”

“Why are you doing this?” I say, trying to maintain a steady voice.

Instead of answering she shoves the spoon into my mouth. I choke on the most revolting thing I have ever tasted; putrid, near-raw offal. I try to spit it out, but she seizes the top of my head and my chin, clamps my jaw shut and forces my head back.

“Swallow it,” she barks.

For a moment I fear the slimy entrails will not go down and I shall choke, but the moment passes and I am left with an after-taste of sour blood.

“There's a good girl,” she smiles blackly.

“Please,” I try, but she stuffs another spoonful into my mouth. Again she forces me to eat it. Tears river down my cheeks and I wretch and heave.

“Now now, Morna. Ya must be a big brave girl like I showed ya when ya was little. No-one gets better withoot a bit of pain first do they now?”

She releases my head and shuffles over to turn the spit, “Rat for supper. A special treat for my special girl. There were a few maggots down the bottom end but I plucked those out and set them aside for later...”

As she rasps on I fight to loosen the binds on my wrists and ankles.

The velvet ribbons are tied securely. My skin begins to burn, but I carry on regardless. The urgency to escape goes beyond my need to find Eddie; if I do not get away from this deluded old woman I shall be poisoned to death - or worse.

She shuffles over, a plate in her hand, “Morna ya are goin' to truly love this, ya really are!” On the plate: the roasted rat, tail and all.

I hesitate, about to challenge her, ask her why she insists on calling me Morna, but change my mind, “Thank you so much. I am eager to try it.”

She smiles her decaying teeth grin, “Now ye're bein' a right little darlin' to be sure!”

She perches on the bed beside me and tears the rat's head off, “Open up. Rat’s brains are sure to sort out that funny old brain ‘o yers.”

“But first, what shall I call you? I do not know your name.”

Her hand freezes, the fork suspended in the air two inches from my mouth. Her blue eyes narrow.

“Ye call me Mama of course. My my Morna, ya are a foolhardy girl at times!”

I nod. My body shakes beneath the covers. She lifts my head roughly and I cannot help eying the rat's head. Its eye is missing. Moving towards my lips. Nausea threatens. I push it back down and force a coughing fit. Coughing, coughing, coughing, wrenching my chest and throat and lungs, generating the most believable, horrific cough I can.

Her eyes widen, “Morna? Morna dear? Whatever is the matter with ya?”

So quietly so that she cannot quite make out my words, I whisper, “Please bring water.”

She bends closer, leans in.

Again I whisper with the breath of a mosquito's wings, “Please, water.”

She leans closer, so close that I can see the black pores on her nose, the layers of grime clogging her wrinkled skin. So close that I inhale the dirty grease from her hair. Bracing myself, I push my head back then whip it forward fast and hard as I dare, smashing my own forehead into hers. The crack is great, the pain terrific, but it does the trick; she gasps and falls backwards – thwack! Out cold.

I work at loosening the bindings on my wrists. Chaffing, burning. I twist, tug, pull, scream, cry, bite my lip against the burn. Soon my wrists are bloody, the bonds barely loosened at all.

I glimpse movement on the floor by the bed and fear spikes in my blood, but it is not the old woman waking up. It is a large black rat.

I watch as it scampers over to the old woman's prone body. Her chest rises and falls, her breathing low, rasping, but that is not enough to deter this rat.

I already know what it is going to do before it does it. I do not want to see but cannot tear my eyes away.

The rat stops at the old women's bare feet. Her toenails are rife with fungus, pus and crusted blood. It sniffs the air, head twitching, eyes darting. Lowering its head to her big toe, it sniffs, tests with a tentative lick.       

I pull and twist against my binds but my eyes will not stray from the terror before me.

The rat licks and licks and then it opens it jaws wider than I thought possible and displays its teeth. So white, so fiendishly sharp.

It snaps its teeth down on the pad of her toe. Clamps its teeth onto her skin. Pushes its teeth deep through the hardened dead skin into the soft sensitive tissue.

Blood seeps. The old woman groans but does not wake. Blood gushes out of her skin and the rat becomes frenzied, chomping and tearing her flesh like a starved man eating his first meal in a month.

*

The black rat feasts upon the old woman's toe with clear relish. A wet, squelching sound accompanies the horrific sight. My stomach roils. I struggle against the velvet binds. My wrists bleed profusely now but somehow the gruesome picture before me desensitises me to the pain.

I catch movement: another rat scampering towards the old woman's unconscious form. More movement – more rats. Five more. All scampering over, whiskers twitching, shining eyes eager. 

I cannot bear it. I hiss as loudly and threateningly as I can, but this elicits no response from them. Such is their focus – their mutual intent to gorge themselves upon the old woman's flesh as she sleeps.

“Shoo! Get back!” I scream. But I am ignored. They are deaf to my commands.

I glance around, desperately seeking some way of making enough noise to scare them away, but there is nothing within reach and I cannot break free. I am sealed to the bed.

The first rat moves onto her second toe. Opens its jaw.

The old women's eyes snap open! She screams, kicks out, sends the rat careering across the room. She shrieks, tries to get up, move backward, but her frail old body will not obey.

The rat recovers and scuttles back over along with his comrades. I watch as she drags her feet up to her chest and struggles to sit up, ghost pale from the pain, new lines etched into her wrinkled face around her shrivelled mouth.

She glances up at me, “Morna! My toe! I cannot stand! Help me!”

“Free me and I shall help you!” I cry.

She does not even hesitate. Dragging herself along the ground by her hands, she picks up the metal knife from the plate of decapitated rat and whips the blanket away exposing my bloodied right wrist.

“Hurry!” I cry.

The rats keep coming. Nothing will sway them from their target. They sense weakness and know she can do nothing to stop them. They have probably been waiting all their lives for this revenge. Their friend lies beheaded on a plate. The old woman who smells of rotten fish is a torturer who will taste as good as she smells.

She moans as she saws through the velvet tie.

“Hurry,” I urge.