The mere sight of the neighbours’ house stretches his nerves taut as piano wire. And makes him want to vomit.
No light escapes from the Moots’ property. Tom imagines the occupants have retreated into the rear, perhaps sensing the frightful visage of white loathing that stands out front. And yet, he intuits that such petty, territorial people will also be satisfied that they have spectacularly won this round. Like some infernal power station, the dark house seems to hum with the contentment of the sadist; psychotic bullies safe in the knowledge of how impossible it would be for their crimes to be investigated by any authority.
Tom bends down. Picks up a rock from the border of a garden feature. Weighs it. Too heavy for a snap of the wrist or elbow. This will require an over-arm bowl. A toss. And without permitting another thought to interfere with what rage demands, he bowls the rock at the Moots’ front door.
The missile finds its target with a deep and woody thunk .
Tom laughs madly at the star-dotted sky, a frigid canopy holding its frozen breath.
‘I know you! I know what you are! Twisted, evil bastards! I’ll fucking end you! I’ll fucking burn you out! You hear, you shrivelled old gammon fuckers! Leave means leave, eh? That what you want? I’m not. I’ll remain! You’ll go first. I swear. You’re fucked. Fucked!’
He stumbles up the drive into a deeper silence. Once his rant ebbs, the tense quietude before the locked doors and blank windows oppresses, chills. Until an owl tests the air with a scream, claiming a darkness that only a predator can keenly peer through.
An owl. Owls and unicorns and penguins. Gracey’s favourites.
Tom falls to his knees. Now he’s sobbing. Air astir with a westerly freezes his tears. Cold caps his nose.
Wearily, he gets to his feet. Where can I go? Back to his broken home with her blood upon the threshold? To the hospital where he’s not wanted and can do nothing but further harm?
Oh God no, God no, not little Grace. He can’t escape it, the terrible maelstrom inside his mind. Wrapping his arms about his trunk and bowing his head does nothing. Shouting, crying cannot ease the pressure. He’s horror-struck and unmanned. His thoughts are frighted, bolting about their stable in a stampede. He wants to smash something sharp through his head and out the other side. Maybe that will distract him from the excruciating torment of merely existing while his baby fights for her life.
It’s on you. Stupid bastard!
He pictures her face, as it was . And his breath is sucked out of him again. His thoughts blench, wiped of everything but a memory of those lively green eyes.
Eye .
They can save her. These Witches. The cunning folk. They can undo it all. Their magic is blackmail. They can lift the very curses they lay!
He’s upon their door. Against their front door. Hands hammering. Again, again, his palms slam to muffle the noise of his grief.
‘Please! Please!’
Until his hands swipe through empty space. The door has opened.
Tom peers up and there she is, Medea, her face half-lit and transformed by an awful, triumphant sneer. From her scrawny frame a white nightgown hangs.
Tom drops to his knees and bows before the crone. ‘She’s lost so much blood. Her eye! The curse. Take it away. I beg you. Money, all of it. What we have. It’s yours. We’ll go. Leave. We’ll go. Please. Not the little one. Not my Gracey. No. No. How could you? A child?’
Tom abruptly kills his sobbed entreaties. He is shocked mute by the grin that splits Medea’s face and lights up her spite-filled eyes. A row of square, greyish teeth rim her lipless maw. ‘An eye for a tree.’
Dumbstruck and agape at the display of inhuman callousness, Tom raises his hanged head higher but can think of nothing to say.
‘Now who’s fucked ?’ Medea whispers so tightly, her words hiss.
A faint squeak sounds from a hinge before the door is slammed in Tom’s face.