Blood Fugue (26 page)

Randall’s second shot shattered the toes of Gina’s left foot. The middle toe broke off cleanly and was forced deep into the dirt. The two on either side were pulped by the impact but no blood or fluid escaped. Gina let out a scream that emanated from her entire body like pressurised steam. She walked towards Randall dragging Flowers through the needle-strewn dirt. He’d recovered himself enough to clasp both hands around the tongue that was both asphyxiating him and draining his carotid artery. He squeezed it in attempt to block the flow of blood away from his body. When that didn’t work, his hands lost their grip on the tongue and his movements began to weaken.

Randall fired a third shot, this time aiming to kill. He succeeded in blowing one of the pointed tubular horns from Gina’s shoulder. Again there was no blood. She seemed able to prevent any liquid from leaving her body. He aimed again, correcting his mistake and trying to compensate for the shaking of his hands. Before he could squeeze another shot off, his firing hand and the hand attempting to steady it were bound up by one of Gina’s tongues. It wrapped around and tightened until he felt his bones pressing through his skin. All sensation went from his fingers and though he tried to pull the trigger again all he managed to do was drop the gun.

Gina embraced him, piercing him against her armoured body and Randall managed the full-throated scream that Flowers had not. It was cut short by her mouth over his as she took not only his fluids but even the damp, muted exhalations from his lungs and consumed them all.

Chapter 29

When the sallow man saw the girl asleep with her head lolling against the trunk of a young pine tree he felt a ripple of tension beneath his flesh. The aches receded from his ageing limbs and the strength of forgotten youth swelled his muscles and quickened his thoughts. What began as a moment of appreciation, recognising the perfection of a young woman, became a visual devouring. The sallow man was rigid with lust.

Before he could stoop to his desires the tree’s words coursed through him, asserting its authority.

she is the one. she is mine. she is strong. do you not feel it?

‘Yes. I feel it.’

she will withstand the process. she is the future. do you understand?

‘I do.’

The voice of the tree faded and vanished but the sallow man felt its presence within him, ready to take charge if he attempted to satisfy his own hungers. He sat down without making a sound and stretched his mind into hers to wake her.

When he sensed that she was about to open her eyes he closed his own and feigned sleep. He listened to her stretch herself and recognised the moment when her movements stopped as she noticed him. There was a barely audible intake of breath. It was a crucial moment; he waited for her to run but she didn’t. Instead she stood up.

From the length of time it took her, he could tell she was trying to slip away without waking him. He stirred himself, as if coming round after a deep sleep and allowed himself the theatre of a loud yawn and stretch. She turned and their eyes met.

‘I was dreaming of a strange city in which every light was purple,’ he said, smiling.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I saw you sleeping and decided I ought to stay with you. This forest is not safe, you know.’

‘I can look after myself better than a sleepy old man can.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But the elderly feel a natural inclination to protect the young. One day you will feel the same, I’m sure.’

‘Thank you, but I don’t need any help.’

She turned to walk away into the trees.

‘Your family needs you.’ He watched her body tense up a little at hearing his words, but she didn’t stop walking. The leaves and branches closed behind her and in a moment she was out of sight.

She called back her reply:

‘I don’t need them.’

‘Your brother is hurt. He touched the tree. Your father has gone for help while your mother attends to Luis. But they all need you now. They are scared that you are lost and possibly hurt.’

He heard the rustle and crunch of her movements cease.

‘You saw this? What happened to Luis?’ she called back.

He didn’t answer.

‘Do you hear me, old man?’

‘I hear you, yes. But I see that you have already made up your mind. I’m sure they will manage as well without you as you will without them.’

She staggered back through the branches, screwing her eyes up to protect them from stray twigs and thorns. He saw the seeds of doubt weakening her resolve.

‘Just tell me what happened to Luis. How badly hurt is he?’

The sallow man stroked his beard and looked upward as if struggling to remember the details.

‘All I know is that he touched the tree and it damaged him in some way. He lost a hand, I think.’

‘His hand?’ Carla’s own hand covered her mouth.

‘Well, perhaps it was just a couple of fingers. I suppose he’ll live. What message would you like me to give him? I’ll be going straight back to the arbour now that I’ve done what they asked.’

‘They sent you to find me?’

‘Of course.’

Carla was crying by then.

‘You have to take me back to them.’

‘What?’

‘Take me back to my family. Now.’

‘But, child, I thought you had made up your mind to go your own way. Let me pass a message to them for you. I’m sure they’ll understand your feelings.’

‘Please,’ she sobbed. ‘Please take me.’

It made the sallow man’s penis stiffen again to see her cry and to hear her beg, but the tree’s influence was too strong for him to ignore. Though he wanted nothing more than to gorge himself on the sweet milk within her flesh as he deflowered her, he had no choice but to walk in the direction of the arbour. He was pleased to be facing away from her so she couldn’t see his agitation. Perhaps, after the tree had used her for its own purposes, it might permit him to make use of her in his own way.

Isobel and Nicholas Priestly thought they’d discovered something but they weren’t sure what. Through the trees Isobel could make out what looked like a timber wall, so old it was grey.

‘Let’s get a closer look and find out,’ she said.

The broken down shack was covered with vine.

‘A hunting shelter,’ said Nicholas. ‘Wonder if there’s anyone living there.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Isobel.

Every window was either smashed or cracked and the grass that grew around the place was hip high. Tangled briars tore at their jeans as they approached. The tin roof had rusted right through in many places and the footings had given way at one corner, the frame drooping down. It looked ready to collapse. A thin swathe of trodden-down grass led, not to the front door, but around the back. It looked recently visited.

‘Someone’s been here,’ said Nicholas. ‘How old does this trampling look to you?’

‘I can’t say. It doesn’t look too old though.’ Isobel looked up at the windows of the house. Nothing moved in the shadowed interior. ‘Gina? Gina, it’s only us, honey. We just want to talk to you.’

‘Hey, Geen? You in there? You know the whole town is looking for you —’

Isobel took his forearm, and shook her head.

‘Don’t freak her out any more than she already must be, Nick,’ she whispered. And then towards the shack: ‘Honey, you can talk to us and then we’ll leave you alone. We won’t tell them you’re out here. You can come home whenever you’re ready. Whatever it is you want to do, we can work it out. Okay?’

There was no sound from inside. The whole valley was silent. Nicholas followed the tracks and found the back door. It was half broken from its hinges and didn’t look like it would survive being opened.

‘You think we should let Sheriff Powell know what we’ve found?’ He whispered.

‘No way. What if Gina’s in there and she’s not ready to come out? You think she’ll ever trust us again if we tell Sheriff Powell where she is before she has a chance to tell us what she’s doing out here?’

‘I guess not.’

‘I say we go in. If she’s here, we talk to her, try to persuade her to come back with us.’ Isobel took a step towards the back door. ‘If she’s not, we’ll tell Sheriff Powell we found an empty shack and some tracks. If he wants to come and check it out, he can.’

Nicholas took a deep breath and sighed as quietly as he could.

‘What if she’s in there and she doesn’t want to come back?’

‘I don’t know, Nick. We’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.’

He hesitated for a few moments and then stepped towards the door.

‘Let me go in first,’ he said.

Sheriff Powell had been close enough to hear the gunshots and he knew the Eastern path was hiding a different story to the one it told. To the inexperienced eye the trail might have looked deserted and undisturbed, but there was evidence of people walking where the dark soil showed through the dead pine needles and even in the centre of the path where no needles fell.

Powell noticed the scuff marks in the path — it looked as though someone had resisted being dragged. He saw the imprints of knees and bodies that had struggled against each other. He found the places where bullets had lodged or disappeared into the ground. There was no trace of blood.

Using a fallen branch, he did his best to erase the tracks and smooth the signs of confrontation from the earth. As he stood back to check the results, his deputy came through on the walkie-talkie.

‘You find anything out there, sir?’

‘Nope. Not a thing.’

‘What about Moore and Flowers? Did they say who opened fire?’

‘There’s no sign of them where they say they were. All I can figure is that some hunters are out here. Or maybe Randall Moore took my comments a little too personally and decided to waste our time to make his point.’

‘You going to look for him?’

‘Hell no. We’ve got better things to do. I’m heading back.’

Powell scanned the scene one last time and saw nothing out of place. There was a bullet stuck in a tree off to the left of the path but he couldn’t remove it without it becoming more obvious. Instead he broke a branch down to hide the entry point. Given enough time the tree would heal its wound.

He set a stiff pace back to the Clearing.

‘Why did you set off alone?’

The sallow man’s words hung in the air and Carla felt she’d walked through them and left them far behind before replying.

‘My mother doesn’t treat me like she should. I respect her, but it should go both ways.’

‘That’s all?’

‘That and what happened with the tree. I didn’t want to hang around any longer.’

She couldn’t read the back of the sallow man’s head nor could she detect any change in him except silence.

‘The tree, the tree,’ he said after a while. ‘It is beautiful, no?’

‘No, it is not beautiful. It scares me.’

She saw him nod to himself.

‘The tree ought to be feared. It is powerful.’

‘Did you see what happened to my brother?’

‘No. I only saw that he was unconscious and that his arm was bandaged.’

Carla frowned.

‘I don’t know why he would try to touch the tree,’ she said. ‘He saw what happened to me.’

‘What did your parents think when you told them the tree knocked you down?’

‘They didn’t believe us. They thought I’d fainted from lack of food.’

The sallow man laughed. He stopped and turned towards her. His face was sympathetic and his eyes gentle.

‘If it’s any consolation, I had exactly the same kinds of problems with my parents when I was a similar age to you. It was over different matters, of course, but at the time they made me so angry I sometimes fantasised about killing them in their sleep.’

He laughed again before turning away and walking on. Carla took in the bare places at his elbows where his scrawny wrinkled skin showed through and the threadbare seat of his trousers. His clothes hung like torn sails from a spindly mast, as though the slightest breeze might destroy the entire construction.

‘Was there a mist last night?’ he asked.

‘Yes, there was. It seemed to make everyone sleepy except me.’

The sallow man was full of questions. Some were relevant to their brief acquaintance but others made no sense. It was as if the man knew nothing of life outside the forest

‘Where are you from?’ she asked.

‘I have always lived here.’

‘In the forest? That can’t be.’

‘In Hobson’s Valley. I was born here. But the forest has become a better home for me than any town could ever be.’

Carla thought about that. Here was a man who might be old enough to know her great grandfather.

‘Why did your family come out here?’ The sallow man asked.

‘We were looking for the final resting place of a relative.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Raul Jimenez. He was my papa’s grandfather.’