Unhallowed Ground (35 page)

‘He managed OK last night.’

Only half satisfied by their own reassurances, armed, and muffled to the teeth with sweaters and coats, they finally open the door. Lola creeps out behind with her half-tail between her legs. The woodshed is their goal. Georgie stands guard at the door while Oliver disappears in its darkened depths, she can hear him cursing and shouting as he feels his way forward. She hears him filling the basket. She watches as he staggers back to the kitchen door, dumps the first load on the step and staggers back for a second. Her eyes feel sore from staring so sightlessly. She can see no further than three or four yards, and she curses the screaming wind because it cuts out most other sound. Blind and deaf, and yet she is on guard for her life, hopping from one foot to the other, willing Oliver to hurry, hurry, hurry…

In a moment that seems like hours the second basket arrives inside, and Lola creeps in with it, happy to be out of the excruciating cold. They close the door firmly behind her, and then they are on their way to the stream, each with a bucket that has to be filled. Of Georgie’s poor hens there is no sign. The weather has either whipped them away or conducted their funerals for her. This is the most incredible journey, Oliver must have made light of last night’s endeavours. The snow is deep, and frozen to a dangerous crust on top. Down one hedge it has taken the shape of an immense tidal wave, foaming and towering above their heads, threatening to fall and wipe everything out. In places the snow is waist deep, so they have to pick their way with care, and it’s still impossible to see more than a few yards ahead. The apple trees are twisted monsters that loom in the half-light as they stumble blindly past them. Every so often, with a gasp of cold air, they swing round suddenly in case they are being approached from behind. But nothing. Nobody’s there. They try to keep an eye on the door, but the whole cottage is swallowed up into the mist of white. It’s a struggle to keep a sense of direction. Never has Georgie’s orchard felt so long, never has that stream seemed so distant.

With intense concentration—not a second can be wasted—they fill their buckets and tramp back, fighting to keep going, with no other thought than the desperate need to keep each other in sight. In the cottage they both collapse, chain the door and hurry to the sitting room to check on Dave, hearts in their mouths. No change. Their charge has not been disturbed. Nobody has been in the cottage while they’ve been gone. The floors are quite dry. Nevertheless, they search every room, upstairs and down, Oliver with his poker and Georgie with her carving knife, before they return to the kitchen, exhausted.

Georgie’s heart is still hammering. Where her face has been exposed to the wind the skin feels flayed. The stillness indoors is palpable. They stand there dripping in the kitchen, examining each other with watering eyes before falling together, clinging. Now they are almost laughing. Incredibly, laughing and crying. Either will do, either comes with such relief.

No-one could miss the irony in Georgie’s voice when she cries, ‘And you are seriously suggesting that one of us venture out there later to try to find help?’ The very idea is absurd.

‘Give us a chance to recover,’ gasps Oliver. ‘Let’s see how it goes. Let’s just wait and see.’

While the feeling returns to her body, after Oliver makes up the fire, Georgie cooks bacon and egg carefully, the frying pan balanced on an ashy log. They dare not leave Dave for too long, let him out of sight for a second and there’s a wild sense of panic, although they both know there’s little they can do. They drink too many cups of coffee. They keep lifting the phone to check. Gingerly, they raise the mutilated limb and attempt to clear up around it, laying strips of clean sheet down, and fresh towels. Oliver gives it another spray with the Tetracycline, in which he seems to have great faith. Dave’s teeth start grinding together. Should they cover the wound or not? What about a pad smeared with Germoline? But might that stick and get matted in the stump? They decide to leave it alone. They are terrified of doing the wrong thing, of causing more agony, or instant death from shock.

Georgie sees how gently Oliver wipes the boy’s face and attempts to drip more water into his mouth. His expression is all concern. There’s tenderness there, a complicated criss-cross of laughter lines, and a firm, honest mouth with a way of tweaking before smiling. She feels closer to this stranger than to anyone else in her life, no secrets. It is the bizarre situation, of course, the horror they are sharing. Only something so calamitous could draw two such strangers together so closely and so quickly. When it’s over, dear God, if this is ever over, they will each go their separate ways… forgetting the promises made?

Why does this thought pain her so?

‘Why don’t you go and have your shower?’ Oliver looks up and catches her glance before she can turn away. There’s a kind of answer in his baleful smile. ‘And then I’ll have mine. If you’ve got some gear which might fit me I wouldn’t mind a change.’ He looks down ruefully at his blood-spattered self. ‘I won’t ever wear these again. I’d rather burn them.’

She has only Mark’s overalls, which he left behind after his last visit. ‘For the next time,’ he had told her. ‘I won’t be needing them anywhere else.’ And some of her own sweaters are man-size.

Georgie fetches clean clothes from upstairs and rests them on the loo seat while she plucks up the courage to undress in the cold. She stretches through the curtain to turn on the shower, and gives it a chance to run hot first. She bundles her clothes in a tight parcel, she won’t wear hers again either.

The water hisses. Steam cloys the air and slides down the white-tiled walls. With her eyes half closed Georgie steps into the shallow square base and reaches for the shampoo. Though not as relaxing as a bath, the water is gorgeous all the same. For a while she lets it splash over her, basking in the pleasure as the jetting water warms and stimulates. When her hair is soaking wet she leans forward and soaps it, scrubs it until pieces of foam fall at her feet and down the pinkness of her wet skin, and when she has finished she flings back her head to wash the soap from her face.

She feels the smile come.

She hears the laugh and knows her teeth to be clenched.

The severed foot makes her laugh again.

It is hung on one of the meat hooks, a piece of loose skin hooks it there.

Above the shower, high on the ceiling. It appears to be quite dry, not dripping. Not bleeding.

Still laughing inanely Georgie passes through the plastic curtain, picks up the waiting towel and half crawls, half crashes through the hazy kitchen and into the sitting room. Oliver is still there beside Dave, stroking his forehead gently. Georgie crouches on the floor at his feet, dripping wet, huddled in her towel, giggling, sobbing, shouting and crying all at the same time.

He grips her hard by the shoulders. ‘Jesus Christ!
What the hell…?
’

But Georgie can’t stop laughing. Tears blind her eyes, but still she laughs, the cracked, broken witchy sound of total hysteria. She attempts to point behind her, she must show him where,
she must show him
, but she has no strength to hold up her arm, and anyway, what direction?
She’s forgotten.
She keeps attempting to speak and Oliver is shouting at her now, panic in his own eyes. ‘What is it?
What the fuck is it?
’

Clutching the poker, his face tightened grimly, he shouts, ‘Where? Is it back in there?’ He nudges Georgie with his foot, unable to move his eyes from the doorway, but she keeps on laughing, desperately wanting to tell him. ‘No, he’s not here, he’s not here…’

‘Then what? Who?
Tell me, damn you!
’ and his voice is at screaming pitch.

‘In the shower.’ At last she finds words, clipped and precise. ‘It is there, in the shower.’

‘
What’s in the shower, for Christ’s sake?
’

But it’s no use. She can’t remember. She can remember getting in and washing her hair, the familiar smell of shampoo and steam, but she cannot remember what she saw that brought her scurrying back here crouched by the fire with a towel around her. Oliver should not go in there. No-one should ever go in there. So when he walks towards the kitchen and the sound of running water she screams, ‘Don’t! Stop! Come back!
Oh God, please don’t leave me.
’

But she is powerless to prevent him. He is determined to go. Georgie crouches and shivers, unable to look in that direction. ‘Oh don’t, oh don’t,’ she continues to sob, unaware of the presence of Dave or of Lola’s wary eyes as she stares from her place at the hearth.

Oliver is gone for a very long time. The water is turned off. Now she hears the door closing firmly. What the hell is he doing in there?
What is in there?
What has he found? Terrified by her lack of memory… perhaps the man is in there, with his axe… is that it?
Is that what she saw?
If that was it she is going to die, they are all about to die, painfully and bloodily, and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.

A poker is no defence against a madman wielding an axe.

The look on Oliver’s face is harrowing. He looks like Dave, colourless and hardly alive. He comes and sits on the chair beside Georgie and he feels squeezed out and empty. He rests his head in his hands. ‘What was it?’ she asks him, panic rising. ‘Oliver? What did you see?’

Finally Oliver raises his head. ‘When the hell did that bastard get in there?’

She wants to help. She’s determined to help. ‘When we were out for the wood and the water?’

But Oliver shakes his head. ‘No way. He wouldn’t have had time. To do that must have taken some time, it can’t be that simple to get up there and…’

‘I can’t think,’ Georgie sobs. ‘Dammit, I can’t think of anything. I hardly know my own name. And I don’t want to remember. I want to get away from here, I want you to take me away.’

Ignoring her hysteria and fighting his own, Oliver’s words come slowly and clearly. He gazes into the fire as he speaks. ‘You left the front door open when you came to help me the night I arrived, didn’t you, Georgie? I know you left it open because the hall was full of snow when we arrived back here with Dave. There was time for the sod to get in here then, if he was around, if he was watching. And he must have been around at that time because of Dave’s foot.’

Now Georgie remembers exactly what she saw hanging from the meat hook in the bathroom not inches from her head. She had seen it, ivory white, veins swollen and gently oozing. She had seen the elastic-stretching skin and the hole where the rusting hook had pierced it. There had been a slight swinging movement, hardly noticeable at all. They should never have left those hooks in the ceiling, Isla had even joked about their handiness for towels. And she opens her mouth and begins to scream, and Oliver leans towards her, takes her face roughly into his two large hands and says, ‘Stay with me, Georgie, you must stay with me. I’m sorry, I have to do this.’ Then he slaps her. Hard. She moans. She shivers like a beaten dog. Then he holds her.

‘I thought you said whisky was no good for shock.’ Her teeth chatter on the edge of the glass as she feels the fire of it burn its way down, bringing her senses back to life.

But Oliver’s smile is a cold one and he holds his own glass in two hands. He tips it slightly and watches as the colour rolls up the side of the glass.

‘Everyone in this valley is in danger.’ His voice is quiet but resolute. ‘We should all be together in one place. It’s the only way we will survive. And God only knows how long we’re going to be cut off from the rest of the world with this repulsive thing out there. Who knows what might have happened to the others by now? They could be dead for all we know. This monstrous beast will stop at nothing. This is madness beyond all control. Sick. Twisted. And if Mrs fucking Buckpit, if anyone out there knows about this and is concealing the bastard, then God help them. We’re facing a thing here, not animal, not human.’

‘So what do we do?’

He swallows more whisky. He muses on it. Savours the taste in his mouth before he swallows, and rolls the glass between his hands. ‘We’ve got to warn everyone for a start, in case they don’t already know. We’ve got to band together. It’s no good trying to sit this out, each in our individual cages, alone. No one man has the kind of strength it’s going to take to destroy this monster.’

Georgie shivers again. ‘But we don’t know for sure it’s Lot Buckpit.’

‘It looks pretty much like it. But we’ve got to take some action now, we can’t just sit around here suspecting everyone. It has to be Lot, sod it, there’s no way it can be anyone else but Lot.’

‘So we’ve got to warn the Horsefields.’

‘And Chad and Donna. They’ll have to come back here with us because there’s no way we can move Dave.’

‘So who’s going? Who’s staying?’ The thought is unendurable.

‘I’m going. While you stay in here with the doors locked.’

‘Oh no. Oh no. Not after last night. And it’s me who knows them, it’s me who knows the he of the land. You nearly got lost in my orchard. You can’t see a thing out there, you’d soon lose your bearings.’

‘Georgie, you can’t go out there alone.’

‘Well then, we’ll stay here and stick it out.’

Oliver stares at her seriously. ‘We can’t do that, Georgie. Not knowing what we know. Not knowing that others are at risk.’

Self-righteous prat. Such heroics. Georgie doesn’t care about others, she cares about herself. And Oliver. And Dave. And Lola. She doesn’t want to go and fetch the others. She doesn’t even like them much. She attempts to argue with Oliver, she puts every obstacle in the way, but he remains determined that something must be done, that they will be safer gathered together.

‘But perhaps he won’t try anything else. Perhaps his madness has worn itself out on Dave. Perhaps we’d be wiser to stay indoors and wait.’ Oh God, if only they could, if only she could make Oliver see sense.

They argue for most of the morning but still Georgie fails to convince him. ‘We’ll wait for a couple of hours to see what the weather does,’ is all he will agree to. So Georgie watches and listens and detests this snow and wind with such a burning ferocity it is all consuming. She wants to rage at it, fight it, defeat it. Peace. Dear God, she wants peace and quiet and normality. She wants Dave to be well and she wants the sight of that dangling foot out of her mind for ever.