Vengeance Child

Wilkes ran. The only time he paused was to unlock the door in the castle wall. Then he raced pell-mell through the forest. By now a deep gloom had been cast over the island. Nightfall was drawing down fast. As winds roared through the branches so memories of what he’d just witnessed in the vault whirled through his mind. The pathetic, grey body lying on the steel table. The coroner intoning the weight of the heart. On the corpse had been his face. How was that possible? Then he remembered how Jay, repeating the name of the teenager, Max, had reduced the youth to panic. He’d leapt into the river in sheer terror. Moments ago, Jay had repeated Wilkes’ name. Now Wilkes, too, ran in blind terror. A pain above his right eye nagged where Victor had punched him. The corpse had displayed an identical wound just above the right eye. Other injuries, too, had covered the naked body. Puncture wounds. And there had been a visible graze on the right elbow.

Wilkes panted, ‘Get home . . . and stay there . . . I won’t get those other injuries. Then it won’t come true . . . I’ll have won.’ So far, the only wound he’d suffered was the cut above his eye. All he need do was avoid being hurt again.

Soon Wilkes joined the path that would take him back to the village. The Severn had the blackness of a river flowing right out of hell. Angry waves rose in jagged peaks. Turbulence ripped up the surface as if hungry beasts swam from the depths in search of fresh meat. Even though exhaustion made every limb ache Wilkes pushed homeward. Cloud broke on the horizon. The sun had almost sunk behind the hills but a splinter of it still burned brightly. Clouds racing across its face made it flash like a beacon. The light it pulsed out across Siluria was blood red. For all the world it looked as if a beating heart of gigantic proportions had been perched on the distant hilltop. Wilkes found himself distracted by the uncanny sight.

Shapes rushed him. He tried to stop, but his feet slithered on the wet path. When he hit the ground the pain flashing up his arm told him he’d taken the force of the fall to his right arm. He remembered the corpse on the cutting table. As well as the wound above the eye there’d been the graze on the elbow. Grunting, he pulled himself to his feet. So intense was the sting in his elbow he felt sick. Two down, one to go. He had to avoid those puncture wounds.

Then he saw what had caused him to fall. A dozen Saban Deer, after bursting from the bushes to startle him, now trotted along nearby. He searched the ground for what he needed. When he found a thick branch that would serve as a club he pursued the animals, screaming abuse. They were the cause of his woes, too. If it hadn’t been for them he could have torn down the stinking forest and built houses there. The money he’d have made would have been phenomenal.

Cursing the animals, he chased them. However, they seemed strangely unperturbed. Without any fuss they cantered down the beach toward the water’s edge. Wilkes followed. ‘I’ll kill you. I’m going to break your bloody heads!’

Shingle gave way to soft mud as he reached the water’s edge. More than once he slithered on it, lost his balance and fell forward on to all fours. Sometimes it was so slippery he had to scramble on his hands and knees. Then, when he could get to his feet to run like a man, the yielding, sucking mud pulled off one of his shoes.

Right then, it seemed as if the beach was full of Saban. They trotted through the surf, or weaved round uprooted trees. In the light of the dying sun Wilkes saw the big root clusters still dripping with water; the branches were covered with seaweed, making them appear shaggy, like they’d sprouted green pelts. As he ran after the deer he aimed blows at them with the branch. Each time he missed. Fear and rage made his heart race madly. Exertion caused phantom bursts of purple light to flash along his retina. At times he was sure he saw the witch child. At every turn Jay stared at him. Those huge almond-shaped eyes. The uncanny gleam of his face. Wilkes yelled torrents of abuse. This time it was more fear than anger. Wildly, he ran toward the boy. An uprooted tree lay in his path. Being so eager to reach his victim, Wilkes scrambled through the branches rather than waste time by going round.

He found something snagged at his leg. Carelessly, he jerked his leg to free it. Instantly, a sharp pain flared up above his knee. Glancing down, he saw something in the blood red light that made him howl. A fish hook, still attached to a line, had embedded itself in his shin. Without thinking, he simply tried to drag his leg from it. But the line, entangled round a branch, pulled taut and the barbed hook slipped deeper into his skin. Desperately, he tried again. This time he lost his balance.

The instant he fell it seemed as if dozens of bees stung him all at once. From where he lay, face down on sopping branches, he saw fishing lines on which maybe a hundred fish hooks had been strung. Each hook was more than an inch long. And they were armed with wickedly sharp barbs of steel.

The pain made Wilkes thrash about wildly. This made each hook that embedded itself into his flesh sink deeper. The barbs held tight under his skin. Quickly, he explored his face with his fingertips. A hook had embedded into the soft flesh at the side of his nose. One had gone through his chin; two had speared his left cheek; at least half a dozen had gone through the skin on his throat. To his horror he realized that the full length of his body harboured more of the sharp hooks. None pierced deeply enough to be lethal. But they held him there. Held him securely. Irrevocably. Into his head flashed a childhood memory of a picture of Gulliver lashed to the ground by the little people of Lilliput. Only this time Wilkes lay face down. Instead of lines criss-crossing the body, he was secured to the fallen tree by hooks that were in turn fastened to strong fishing lines that were hopelessly knotted and tangled around the branches. Each fish hook was agony. In turn, the agony made him thrash, when he writhed the hooks worked ever deeper into his body.

Panting, he looked up. On the beach Saban Deer placidly regarded him. For a moment, he imagined Jay was there, too. Just standing. Watching. Knowing what would happen next to the man who’d once lorded his power over the island. When the strain of holding his head up grew too much he let it drop. In the last rays of the sun he saw that the pebble beach had vanished. Instead, water crept up the shore. The tide had turned.

Wilkes howled. Writhed. More hooks embedded themselves in his top lip, in his eyelid, in his fingers, and the soft flesh of his belly. When he imagined the intolerable pain could not possibly get any worse that’s when it became even more excruciating. The waters of the River Severn rose inch by inch, wave by wave. For a while, he could keep his head above its surface by pulling back against the cruel barbs that worked so hard to hold him down. Eventually, as night at last fell, drowning the scene in absolute darkness, the tide covered his face. As he screamed a lungful of bubbles out underwater, he recalled images of the autopsy conducted on the grey-skinned corpse. The one with the cut above the eye, the grazed elbow, the dozens of puncture wounds. He wanted to scream again in absolute terror as he finally understood that those injuries now perfectly matched those on his own body, only by this time his lungs had filled with a water so cold it seemed to flow through his veins to freeze his heart.

Victor carried Archer in his arms, as Laura, bearing a lantern, led them out into the courtyard. Jay walked with them. Once more the boy appeared lost inside himself. His face lacked any expression whatsoever. Exhausted, they made their way toward the castle door that swung to and fro in the breeze.

Victor said, ‘A man came all the way from Africa to tell us that the only way to stop you hurting people was to put you in danger. I’ve come to understand he was wrong. I reject his suggestion – reject it absolutely. Because I learned that you’ve changed, Jay, since you arrived on the island.

‘When you were younger you didn’t understand the power you have; you couldn’t stop yourself using it to cause hurt. You thought you were getting revenge for the way your family and their neighbours suffered. Now, I truly believe you can reject that urge, just as I rejected the advice to make you suffer in order to kill this power you have. You are growing up, Jay. Just as children learn to control their temper, so you’re learning how to control this destructive force inside of you. You tried to do good things for the islanders by making their dreams come true. Only it went wrong because you’re not mature enough to know that when we wish for something to happen it isn’t always a good thing if it does. We must be careful what we wish for. Even miracles can turn bad.’

He paused there with Archer sleeping in his arms. Laura had nodded her approval as Victor spoke, so taking a breath he pushed on. ‘Probably one of the biggest challenges we face as we grow up is learning how to handle our emotions, and knowing how to take control of our actions, and accepting responsibility for the things that we do. Right now, your power is stronger than it ever has been before. It’s time for you to be strong enough, and mature enough, to take control of that power. And then decide how you use it. Do you understand?’

Jay nodded. ‘I thought everyone was evil, and they must suffer.’ He sighed. ‘But Victor isn’t evil. Neither are you, Laura. Both of you risked your lives to help Archer and me.’ The breeze whispered across the battlements.

With that final screamed ‘get out!’ the boy sagged back against the door frame. His facial muscles went slack, his mouth hung open, while his eyes seemed to stretch impossibly wide. In the unsteady light it appeared to Victor that he beheld the features of an old African man, then they changed into those of a young woman, then morphed into youth, then a girl – all African. For maybe as long as a minute Jay’s face strobed furiously as the faces of strangers raced from his head. Old men, old women, middle-aged, youthful – Jay disgorged images by the dozen.

The doomed refugees from the N’Taal? Victor didn’t doubt it for a moment. Their ghostly residue was being ejected from Jay’s frail body. As he used all his willpower to exorcize them from his soul they screamed out in dismay, frustration and rage. They knew that Jay, the vessel of their wrath, their vengeance weapon, had defeated the curse.

The last to leave was an old woman. Her face overlay Jay’s like an ancient mask. Her bloodshot eyes glared at Victor. Her nostrils flared as her mouth yawned wide to reveal teeth so rotten they’d become yellow splinters embedded into crimson gums. That last scream, which erupted from her lips, was the sound of the stricken ship tearing in two, the howl of the soon-to-die passengers, the anger and the despair of the loss of innocent lives everywhere. The sound shook the huge walls of the castle until stones were shattered by its violence.

There was nothing beyond that. For a moment Victor half expected to see shrieking phantoms stream away into the sky; however, the clouds had slowed until they moved above them in a way that could only be described as serene. When he examined Jay’s face again, he wondered why he’d ever used the world ‘elfin’ to describe him. Jay was just a little boy. An eleven-year-old child who was so tired all he needed was to go to bed.

Victor’s eyes met Laura’s. He knew an understanding had passed between them. What the next few hours would bring he didn’t know. Only it was time to get the children home. But as he carried Archer back through the forest in the direction of White Cross Farm he felt something leave him, too. For Jay what had left him had been the Vengeance Child – the demonic force that had possessed him from infancy. For Victor, what slipped from his mind now was the obstacle that had prevented him from grieving over Ghorlan. Tears came, but they weren’t bitter. This was the release that he’d been waiting ten long years for. Despite everything, he could look into himself and see that an old wound had, at long last, begun to heal.