Devil Let Me Go, page 13
‘Mama gone. Dead. Birth.’
Helen and Edward listened solemnly as the old woman pleaded and repeated herself. She held out the bundle to Helen, letting the clutch of dirty blankets rest on the edge of her cold, trembling fingers. Helen remembered thinking that she was worried about her dropping the child.
‘Mama gone. Dead. Birth. You buy!’
They didn’t have a chance to even discuss it. Helen had tried for a baby since she and Edward had been married to no avail. They’d tried fertility treatments and consulted various doctors and experts on the matter, but deep down after all the frustration she’d felt, Helen knew she couldn’t bear a child. This awkward twist of fate, this strange meeting that presented opportunity to her romantic side. Here she was, offered a fast track chance to motherhood. How could she not take it up?
Rummaging in her purse, she grabbed a wad of various currencies and handed them over. Upon seeing the wad of cash, the crone dropped the baby through the window on to Helen’s lap, snatched the money with gnarly bony fingers and then vanished into the maze of trees.
That was how they got Jacob. They were his parents; it was as simple and as mysterious as that. She was sure that people other people had stranger upbringings.
Back home they registered him as their own, telling friends that Helen had been unknowingly pregnant before the trip and had delivered ‘Jacob’ in a little village during a thunderstorm to add drama. They got a birth certificate once home, stating that they’d lost Jacob’s original one during their travels. The years passed and the lie held true. Everybody believed their little made up story. Nobody questioned their make believe little world.
Life and success had continued quite uneventful until the day they moved into Quiet Pines.
***
Helen sat slumped in the streaming blaze of the afternoon sun, all her tears burnt away by grief. She didn’t feel like she could cry anymore, her grief was spent. Her marriage was over, she’d decided that much. When Edward returned she’d ask for the key to the padlocks holding her son prisoner, call a taxi and head back to the city, then to her mother’s house, taking Jacob with her. This was her plan.
Done with feeling sorry for herself, she got to her feet and checked on Jacob; he was fine, sound asleep, with a constant assurance of little snores that told her he was still breathing.
Knowing that Edward could return at any moment, she decided to be ready for him when he came back through the door.
Helen washed her face with cool water from the kitchen faucet, refreshing her tear stained skin, then went up stairs and started to pack bags for Jacob and herself.
***
Edward traipsed.
Hard footed on the forest track, kicking stones into the undergrowth.
Smashing through bracken, smacking shins into falling limbs, cracking dead wood into breathable soft splinters of dust; Edward rampaged.
Green enveloped him, stagnant air sought his lungs as he broke and stamped into swampland devoid of any footprint bar his own, staining black water soaked into his trainers, oddly cool on his toes.
He stopped and looked round, trying to place the sun where it had been before he left the track only seconds ago. The way he had come had returned to what it was before, the long grass and rushes swayed as they always had, revealing no trace of his trail, keeping that secret to themselves.
Edward cursed the maze of nature.
He was lost.
He had only meant to head out for a little walk to cool off before he did something to Helen that she’d regret. He didn’t want to hit her, but he had felt the desire of a red tide rising inside him, bubbling away as a seething pan of hateful, boiling liquid.
The tall rising pines looked down on him, judging him as he sunk further into the cool, black mud. Which way had he come? North, South? He had hoped cutting through the forest would take him back to the house, cut straight through the trail and back home.
He’d been wrong so far.
He planned to be gone an hour or so, yet the afternoon had dragged on without him, letting him saunter around mindlessly. He’d been gone nearer three hours. He could have been miles from home or just a few metres.
He looked at his feet, the stagnant, over saturated soil resembled mashed cake. In places, calm pools of oily blackness reflected the monochrome sky and forest surround.
Looking up into the bough and branches, a slight shiver befell him as he thought of hanging witches with blackening, wrung necks and purple faces, adorning the pines like rotting human fruit, their grey tongues poking out like burst pips. He shook his head, trying to shake Porter’s tale from his mind.
Edward trudged on, stopping when the swamp abruptly sloped down into a pit. The sides gave way where the earth itself swallowed the ground. Even the nearby pines leant inwards like spiny teeth towards the collapsed pit. One was leant across the expanse of the pit as if gravity sucked down hungrily on the roots, clinging on to the soil before the pit swallowed it whole.
Black water trickled from the land and flowed towards the boggy pit, filling the air with a tinkling as the land drained into the sinkhole.
Slightly in awe of this strange sight he estimated that the hole was at least fifty feet in diameter; he had no idea of the depth. He had the urge to get closer and take a look inside, but the boggy ground filled him with the fear of getting stuck. He waited a moment for something to happen. If something was to happen, it would be jumping out from this freaky, ominous pit in the middle of the woods and tearing him to shreds.
Edward admitted to himself that he was lost in this strange back yard. He did some calculations in his head. Three/four miles an hour for three hours. He could be at most twelve miles from home, but he knew he couldn’t be that far. He’d been heading in circles for the past ninety minutes, unwilling to admit to himself that he was lost.
He wanted to punch something, a tree, the soggy ground, anything.
Without asking himself why, Edward slapped himself once on each cheek, hard. Then with a sucking sound that stole his left trainer from his dampened foot, he carried on his trudge through the mud, this time keeping the sun on his back, away from his eyes. He turned round twice as he left the edge of the swamp hole, the fearful thought emerging that it might suddenly open up wider and swallow him as he trudged his feet back through the mud.
The sinkhole didn’t gape wider after him. Even though the pit was deep, it was empty.
***
Whilst her husband trudged and trudged, Helen packed her clothes into a suitcase and Jacob’s into a sports bag, she carried both of these to the front door, leaving them to wait beneath where they would have hung their winter coats. It was never to be.
The afternoon drew on; the sun sinking a steady glide into the western sky. She wondered once where Edward had gotten to, but tried not to concern herself too much. He’d gone to blow off steam; that was all. The worry had gotten too much and he needed some air. That was all. He’d made her choose between her son and him. Why not just get rid of the gun, it was simple. It’s not like he’d used it to rob a bank or anything. He couldn’t make her choose.
She had considered walking into town and finding the doctors that way, but the thought of leaving Jacob alone upset her even more. He needed her, but she had to do something.
With a sigh, Helen shuffled to the cellar to check on Jacob, as she had routinely being doing since his incarceration in chains. She flicked the cellar light on and instantly something struck her as different about the scene.
She stopped halfway down the stairs and ventured no further through fear and suspicion.
The food had been moved. The glass of milk had spilt, spreading and taking on its own desire lines in an alabaster Rorschach puddle. The bag of crisps had been torn open, crushed fragments of potato shrapnel littered the floor around Jacob. The two slices of buttered bread that made up the sandwich had been pulled apart and cast aside, grains of dirt and fluff stuck to the ruined buttered slivers. As Helen tentatively approached, she noticed that the slice of ham was gone.
Although she didn’t jump, it did take her by surprise and she gasped a little. Jacob was slumped on the floor, his head resting on his arms half hiding his face. He’d wrapped the covers around himself and lay as a chrysalis on the concrete floor. From a gap in the covers, Helen could see that he had one eye open, peeking out upon the scene. It watched her as she descended the stairs, dark and brooding. Helen warned herself to check her distance, although Jacob was her son, he had already proved himself dangerous, so whatever infection, disease or syndrome that failed his being and possessed him, turning him into this monster, distance was the key. Even if she did love him, she had to stay safe.
‘I see you ate the ham, but not the sandwich?’
The cover remained motionless, that dark eye concentrated on her like a sniper sight; unmoving, unblinking, but deadly all the same.
‘How about the milk? Usually you love a glass of milk with your sandwich. Not today?’
A small grunt escaped Jacob’s mouth. Not a response; it might have even been involuntary. But it was progress.
‘So you like meat do you? Just meat? If that’s what you want…’
Helen forced herself to smile as she opened the kitchen fridge and took out the plastic package. They were supposed to be for a barbeque Edward had planned for yesterday. They were still in date so it was okay. She returned to the cellar, punctured a finger into the taut skin of plastic and tossed one of the cool slabs of prime steak onto the cellar floor. Just to see if she was right.
Slow and with the cautious patience of a striking cobra, Jacob’s hand stretched out from his fabric cave and across the floor over to the piece of beef. His fingers locked onto it, dragging it through the milk puddle, making little scratching noises as the twenty pound a kilo of raw flesh rolled over granules of grit and dead dust. Jacob pulled the fistful of meat to his mouth and began to eat as quickly as his jaw could chew.
The evening brought with it a clinging heat. Even in the cellar the warmth of the day offered its embers.
Despite this, Helen shivered.
***
Circles, Edward Chapel was convinced of twisted circles. In his head, in his mind and in reality, he must be walking in warped circles. He hadn’t noticed the sunlight bleed away behind him. He’d been trudging through the undergrowth in such a fugue state that he didn’t realise he’d lost daylight until he saw the moon wink at him from behind a cloud. The sun had gone for the day, abandoned him to this side of the world alone and careless. Rain heavy clouds soon robbed the moon from him, stealing the skies from the bright day, billowing and spreading like ink in water, filling the purple coloured sky with all their unwanted grey murk.
Edward stopped, listened and waited.
He felt like he was being followed. He had no evidence of this, hadn’t heard twigs cracking or heavy breathing from behind the trees. Just a presence bearing down on him, or maybe it was the change in air pressure from the coming storm. Maybe it was nothing.
He was bursting for a piss, but daren’t reveal himself for the fear whatever now stalked him suddenly pounced and ripped his skin from his skeleton.
The wind whispered wordless verse past his ears. The cool breeze made him shiver, he felt a spot of rain dash against his cheek, a low ominous rumble of thunder rolled over far fields, getting close, vibrating the primeval caverns of his soul.
A whisper again, more familiar this time, not from the air around him but from the hiding fern fronds at his feet and beyond. Eerie and hard to pinpoint, Edward formed words in his mind’s ear.
…tenbra moseleta cursa colie sambi scret vel vey nah tel…
The wind couldn’t speak. The dead don’t lie and there was no such thing as bad luck, only the superstitious got bad luck. He wasn’t inclined to the supernatural, but this was freaking him out. The devil’s poetry.
…denom massaput sela luff. Bata mata shuboe kala…
Edward tensed, expecting the bogeyman to jump out and snatch him and suck his eyeballs out, he expected kids to jump out and say BOO! Then laugh, it was all a joke mister…
It’s wasn’t the forest that was talking to him… talking about him… hell he didn’t know. He wanted to burn the trees, take out whatever ancient and evil lurked in wait. He tensed his fists into tight balls, digging his nails into palm. A pinch, wake me from this nightmare. His knees melted into jellied hinges, knocking back and forth threatening to be toppled by the wind.
More whispers, words he couldn’t understand or even begin to pronounce. He so wanted something to happen, just to stop the torture. End it now.
Either tear me apart or let me go!
It was a good thing he had stopped; for this moment, the wind helpfully breezed up against a branch carrying it skyward in a bend and revealed the twinkling porch light of Quiet Pines Farm. Edward smiled and started to run with a straining bladder, losing the other trainer in the process. He hit a wire fence and fell over it into a field of fragrant rapeseed. The threat of wetting himself became too much and he pulled himself free of his shorts and began to piss while walking backwards; facing the forest he’d escaped. The whispers left him with the wind and the forceful sloshing of his wastewater amongst the summer baked mud and rapeseed stems. A sigh escaped him, he was out of the woods and almost home. He hadn’t wet himself since he’d been a child. The voices that spoke from the woods reminded him of being young and scared, of fearing the closet monsters and the shark behind the grill at the swimming baths. His parents warned him of sweet giving strangers; this was a similar feeling, the terror before the unknown. It was just the sheer imagination of a world gone wrong, where evil escaped its normal domain and dips a gnarled toe into the real world; a caustic smile creasing its lips.
Tonight, Edward Chapel was sure he’d tasted evil. And evil had tasted him.
***
Helen sat at the table; she’d removed her wedding ring and placed it in front of her. With the emerging moon, Jacob had fully awoken and now gave out little sighs and whines, his mournful tune reminiscent of a lonely puppy that wanted to explore the big wide world. The gourmet steak she’d given had lasted about twenty seconds, the second one even less, the third likewise. Next she fed him some uncooked pork and leek sausages, he even spat out the tiny green flecks of leek. Then a pack of apple wood smoked bacon; still half frozen, his teeth crunched through the rashers as if they were chunks of tough fudge. She’d thrown the meat down from her seat on the stairs and Jacob’s thin arm would reach out from beneath the cover and retrieve the offered lump.
Her son; correction, her adopted son, was now a dedicated carnivore, to the point where he preferred his meat as raw as possible.
Helen watched as halfway through the pack of apple wood smoked bacon, which he stuffed into his mouth three rashers at once, a mouse scurried from a crack beneath the skirting board enticed by the abandoned bread. Jacob spied this little creature and pounced out from the duvet with the bacon still grasped in his hands, the length of chain rattling and scraping on the hard concrete floor. Leaping from above, he pounded the mouse with his bacon clenched fist, stuffing the twitching, broken sack of furry remains into his mouth. With a stringy tail sucked into the corner of his mouth, Jacob returned to his comforting safety beneath the cover to carry on with the bacon feast.
He just kept eating.
It wasn’t this that disturbed her the most.
It was his eyes. All the while he ate; he looked at her hungrily from his sheltered abode, almost a perverted, twisted lust. His bulging eyes stared at her, ever unblinking, ever hungry. She knew the first chance he got he would tear his teeth into her. The fact that she had fed and clothed him all these years, raised him as if he were her own didn’t matter anymore. He would tear into her like a pack of wolves would a broken legged lamb.
His greying skin was smeared with squirts of dark mouse blood that he licked off with vile glee. He attempted to smile as he tongued between his fingers. When he was finished he looked at her for more, the look told her to even offer herself to him if that’s what it took to satisfy his animal hunger.
No, no more. After watching him kill and eat the mouse, she left. That was when she took off her wedding ring.
Helen Chapel wanted out.
***
Edward burst through the patio door, breathless and filthy. Helen had expected something like this. She had to check herself when the dutiful housewife within her piped up to chide Edward for muddying the floor. It didn’t matter, she was leaving. With or without Jacob. She decided this after that look he gave her. It wearied her.
‘I’m leaving Edward. I can’t do any more for Jacob. He’s beyond help now. He needs a doctor…’
Edward wore black trousers of stagnant dirt. His shirt was ripped; the cuts carrying on the bramble tears up and along each arm, sweat dampened his brow, urine the front of his shorts.
‘…you look like shit,’ Helen pointed out.
‘I feel like shit. I’ve had time to think, you’re right. We should get him to the doctors. It’ll be for the best. I’m willing to face the consequences. No matter what.’
‘It’s too late darling,’ Helen gloated sarcastically, ‘Jacob’s gone away with the evil fairies. He’s not in anymore, please leave a message after the beep.’
‘What you trying to say?’
‘It’s not Jacob down there,’ Helen pointed with a furious finger down at the cellar and got up from the table, seething. ‘It’s something else. At this point I would love to see you try and get him up and dressed for a trip to the doctors. I would love it!’ This time the sarcasm unnerved Edward a little.
‘What happened?’ Edward looked around at the mess from lunch. She hadn’t bothered to clear it up, he didn’t blame her. He’d been a dick. He realised this now.
‘He’s a monster; he only eats meat, nothing more. That’s it, that’s all he wants!’
