Defiled Earth and other tales Read online

  She hit the cueball hard. It ricocheted off the cushion, hitting two reds at the same time. They shot into a pocket, one corner each. This was greeted with tumultuous applause from my lecherous friends as she positioned herself for the next shot.

  What followed next was unbelievable. Oscar had to prompt her with the sequence of colours, but she proceeded to clear the table, potting red then colour in a high-scoring break. Her style was awkward, bridging the cue with her thumb extended in the air, but her accuracy was impeccable. Geoffrey’s mouth dropped open as we all watched, dumbfounded.

  When the black finally sank in its earmarked pocket, the room erupted with cheers and clapping hands again.

  “Bravo, my little nymph,” said Oscar, who was swaying with intoxication. “Who’s for another match?”

  “I’m famished,” piped up Devonshire. “Have you got any scran in your larder, Charles?”

  “I prepared some food while thou wast asleep, my Lord,” said Cyprian. “Shall I lay it out in the dining room?”

  I smarted at her second act of impudence. First her failure to wake me, and now this. “No, we’ll take food in the library,” I said, rather too bluntly. “Me and the boys will finish the evening on our own. I think you’ve had enough excitement. Once you’ve laid out the dinner you’re free to retire early.”

  She hesitated for a second, then bowed and left without another word.

  “A bit touchy tonight, aren’t we, Charles?” said Devonshire.

  “It’s nothing,” I said, “let’s go through, I’m rather peckish myself.”

  A quarter of an hour later, my friends were tucking into vol-au-vents and prawn sandwiches while I chewed on a chicken leg with little enthusiasm.

  “Charles.” Oscar said as he staggered over to me. “Devonshire tells me you’ve sent Cyprian to bed early. Just as we were all getting to know her.” The eggy remains of a quiche were plastered down his cravat, and his brandy glass was tilted, causing it to spill its contents onto my fine Axminster carpet.

  “Steady on, you prick, that stuff doesn’t wash out easily.”

  Oscar either hadn’t heard my insult or it failed to pierce his thick skin. “Sorry, old bean. I may have had one too many glasses of the falling down juice. Say ... “ He leaned closer, breathing enough brandy fumes over me to light an afterburner. “Your little pet has demonstrated her housekeeping skills, her social repartee and her extraordinary talents at the snooker table. Does she also provide—how shall I put it—personal services too?”

  I boiled inside. “What the fuck do you mean?”

  Oscar continued digging the hole deeper. “Why, she’s your servant—lock, stock and barrel. You can’t tell me you haven’t dropped your tank a few times since you bought her?”

  “Now see here –”

  “What say you let us have a share in her womanly hospitality?”

  What happened next was inexcusable, but a viking-red mist clouded my reason. I took Oscar by the lapels and pushed him backwards into the table. His momentum was enough to knock a plate of crisps onto the floor and land him in a cream trifle.

  “Why you moody bastard,” he said and launched himself at me. He was about as coordinated as a newborn foal and ran straight into my haymaker. I was about to throw myself on top of him when Geoffrey intervened, holding me back with one arm locked around my neck. I struggled uselessly. Geoffrey was a cruiserweight boxer and his hold was unyielding.

  “Steady on, Charles,” he said. “What’s got into you?”

  “Get him out of here,” I said. “Just go—all of you.”

  When I showed no more sign of resistance, he released his grip.

  “Very well, if that’s the way you want it.”

  My longstanding friends exchanged bewildered stares.

  Oscar wiped blood from his nose. “Bloody stress-head.”

  “Shut it,” said Geoffrey. “Come on, we’ll get our coats and leave Charles to sleep it off.”

  After the front door closed, I heard their taxi crunching gravel as it took them away. I refilled my balloon with brandy. It tasted uncharacteristically bitter.

  I sat in a rocking chair and stared at the dying fire. If Cyprian had heard the commotion, she’d obviously chosen not to investigate. I tried to put her from my mind, but it was impossible, so I sought consolation in a bottle of Rémy Martin instead. If I couldn’t will her out of my head, then I’d drink her out.

  Chapter 5

  I woke abruptly to the sound of a crash, followed by screams and a chilling roar. I was dimly aware that I was still in the rocking chair and I’d spilled the last brandy into my lap. The wetness in my crotch wasn’t as disconcerting as what I thought I’d just heard, however. I staggered to my feet and stumbled to the library door.

  Then I heard it again.

  A low-pitched snarl that raised my hairs and threatened to loosen my bladder. It was coming from the study.

  I crossed the hallway, fighting the urge to bolt through the front door and run as far away from the house as I could. Anything but confront whatever lurked in that room. I looked around for anything I could use as a weapon and snatched a poker from the hallway’s fireplace alcove.

  Warily, I edged towards the study door. It was ajar. From within I heard grunts and a sickly, wet chewing noise. I extended a quivering hand to the doorknob, raised the poker above my head—and froze. I tried to picture what could produce the sounds I heard from just a few feet away. Memories of a fox hunt flashed through my mind; that moment when the pack of hounds ran the reynard to ground and ripped it apart in a frenzied attack.

  I summoned whatever reserves of strength I had left and flung the door wide.

  I saw two blood-soaked, lifeless bodies. One thrown over an armchair, the other spread-eagled on the floor. Crouching over the one on the floor was something that looked like Cyprian and yet was not. It turned its head, almost lazily and looked at me with black eyes. From its upper jaw protruded two over-sized canines, sharp as scimitars. Blood and gobbets of flesh were smeared across its face and chest.

  The room that had been my sanctuary for ten years or more was a scene of chaos. It smelt like an abattoir. I could almost taste the iron-tainted air.

  “My Lord,” it said in a guttural tone.

  “Holy Mother of Christ. Cyprian ... is that you?”

  It looked at its hands and then the bodies, as if discovering them for the first time.

  “I heard them break in.” Her voice had transformed back to that of my angel, albeit an angel of death. “They came through the conservatory window. They meant thee great harm, my Lord.”

  I watched the fangs recede and her orbs blink white again.

  The blood remained.

  Looking round the room, I saw my safe under the bookcase, its door wide open. My personal documents, jewellery and cash were littered about the floor. I saw that the throats of both intruders had been torn out, and I pondered in a drunkenly detached way how the windpipe of the one on the floor was severed, and lay like a washing machine hose across his neck. The man draped over the back of the armchair had not fared much better. His eyes stared up at the ceiling, transfixed in a permanent gaze of terror.

  I dropped the poker onto the floor. “Oh Cyprian, what have you done?”

  She stood up and I recoiled involuntarily. “My Lord, I had to protect thee.”

  “No. Not this way.” I backed towards the door. “You ... you’re a monster.”

  I thought I saw a look of sadness billow across her face. “But, isn’t that why thou purchased me?”

  “I thought ... Oh God, I don’t know what I thought.” I slid down the wall onto the floor, trying to think what to do. But the pounding headache and after-effects of brandy weren’t making it easy. Looking at the corpses made my stomach churn. We Renshaws have a sturdy constitution, but a man has his limits.

  “I ought to ring the police,” I said. The absurdity of the statement mocked me as soon as I utte
red it. If I told them the true manner of the burglar’s deaths, then I would have to tell them everything—about Cyprian, Mandrake, the whole sorry affair. I would also have broken the terms of Mandrake’s contract. Secrecy, bound by every customer’s blood-written signature was the basis of his continued business.

  I wondered if there might be consequences beyond those stipulated in the contract.

  If calling the authorities was out of the question then there was no other choice.

  “I have to get rid of the bodies.” I looked at Cyprian. “Can I trust you to go and get cleaned up?”

  She bowed her head. Was it shame? Her hideous transformation, and re-emergence as the Cyprian I knew, made me realise I could no longer have any confidence in her outward demeanour.

  “Thou knowest thou can.” She made to leave, then stopped. “Have I displeased thee?”

  She seemed contrite, like a rebuked child.

  “This isn’t about approval, Cyprian,” I said. “It’s just that we’re from separate worlds.”

  “Doest thou mean to send me back to Mandrake?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”

  I was desperate to change the subject. “Forget about that for now. I’ll get some sheets and wrap these two up. While I’m gone, you’ll need to put things back in order here. Clean the place from top to bottom and throw that rug in the incinerator, the one at the back of the house.”

  “Where will you take them?” She looked at the corpses and I saw a flicker of black cross her eyes.

  “It’s best you don’t know.”

  With Cyprian gone, I set to work with the grisly business. I’m not the squeamish type, having killed, gutted and dressed dozens of deer, partridge and pheasant over the years. But dealing with human corpses was another matter. The drama of the night’s events kicked in, and I noticed my hands shaking as I retrieved a couple of thick bedsheets from an airing cupboard.

  I put on a head torch and scoured the back terrace for one of the gardner’s wheelbarrows. Everything was taking far too long, like the gods of circumstance were confounding my every move. I eventually found one and loaded the first corpse into it. The legs hung over the front making it look like I was toting a Guy Fawkes around. Penny for the Guy?

  I would have paid anyone any amount just to take it off my hands.

  The comical thought gave me something to counterbalance the rising dread within. Was this the selfish anxiety that every accomplice to murder felt? Not the self-loathing of having broken a moral code, but the dead weight in the stomach accompanying the fear of capture? I certainly didn’t feel much for these hapless bastards. Who knows what crimes they had committed in their felonious history? But the justice meted out to them was disproportionate in the extreme.

  I wheeled the first body across a field into a copse of trees that the groundsmen thinned recently. The ground was soft in places and I had to turn the barrow round and pull it through several boggy patches. Mud squelched beneath my Wellingtons and brambles tore at my flesh. It took me a full half hour to find the pile of brushwood, but when I did, a sense of relief flooded through me. The feeling was transitory.

  The next body took even longer. I was beginning to flag as the first fingers of dawn crawled across a judgemental sky, and the task of arranging the corpses at the heart of the woodpile nearly brought me to exhaustion. I doused the woodpile with lighter fluid and threw a match into the dry grass kindling. It took a matter of seconds for the wood to start crackling and flames to lick at the feet of the corpses. I moved round the fire as the light breeze took a sudden change of direction. I wanted to stay upwind of the smoke, but it followed me like the Grim Reaper’s grasp on a dying man. Inevitably, I caught a whiff of burning flesh and my stomach gave up the fight with its contents. I hurled vomit onto the ground in great torrents, as if trying to rid myself of poison. The poison of guilt and responsibility.

  I withdrew from the fire and sat on a tree stump. The smell of wet moss and bracken was infinitely preferable to the smoking barbecue yonder. Guilt, responsibility; they were both mine. It was I who had wheedled away at Mandrake, convincing him to part with Cyprian. Blinded by avarice and impetuosity I had brought calamity on myself, and now the repercussions were spreading to those around me, like dark ripples on a mill pond. I had damaged life-long friendships and squandered my family’s fortune. I was an accomplice to manslaughter at the very least. But the greatest sin of all was the mistreatment and disrespect shown to Cyprian herself.

  Mandrake was right. She wasn’t human. Her misguided protection of me, her master convinced me of this. She was just being true to her nature and deserved better. My course of action was painful, but clear.

  I raked over the brash pile to feed the fire. The remains had been reduced to little more than scorched bones, but I knew it would take a furnace to completely obliterate them. I resolved to return later in the day and bury them, but for now I had to deal with Cyprian.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Dead? Are you sure?” My voice must have sounded pathetic to Frammery over the phone.

  “An aneurism, they said, sir. Came completely out of the blue. Mr Mandrake was as fit as a fiddle, you know. It’s been a dreadful shock to the household.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” I said. “You must all be devastated.”

  “Thank you for your concern,” he said, matter of factly. In reality, Frammery didn’t sound particularly upset. It was as if Mandrake’s passing was simply an unfortunate end to a business deal. “Was there anything in particular you wanted from Mr Mandrake, Sir?”

  “There was, actually. I’ve been having ... erm ... problems with Cyprian.”

  “Ah, the Lamia. Yes. They’re a difficult species to look after. I was surprised when Mr Mandrake sold her to you. Don’t tell me she’s attracted attention from the outside world?”

  “No, not as such. It’s possibly more serious than that.” I drummed my fingers on the desk as I tried to find words to describe my predicament.

  “Has she harmed anyone?” Frammery’s voice was reproving but I couldn’t think of any way to extricate myself from the conversation with any dignity, so I opted for the truth. It took me a few minutes to recount the night’s events, but I didn’t say anything about our congress. I hoped to hide that from his scrutiny. After I finished, there was a brief silence at Frammery’s end of the line.

  “I see,” he said finally. “Have you told the police?”

  “No.”

  “That may be the soundest decision you’ve made so far.”

  “I was wondering,” I said, speculation apparent in my tone. “I don’t suppose you could take her back?”

  Frammery’s reply was abrupt. “Completely out of the question. I’m going to have a hard enough job finding homes for all of the other specimens as it is.”

  “But what about the contract? Surely I’ve failed in my responsibilities, and Mr Mandrake would have been obliged to bring her back under his care?”

  “In the normal course of events, that would be so. However, his passing means that your ownership becomes permanent. It’s all in the small print at the bottom of the contract.”

  “So, there’s no other recourse?”

  Frammery cleared his throat. “You have one or two options. You could keep her, but contain her in the same way Mr Mandrake did. Even he wouldn’t have dared let her wander as you have.”

  I turned over this notion in my mind for only a second. I couldn’t consign her to imprisonment for the rest of her life. “What’s the other option?”

  “If you’re balking at the first, then you’ll like the second even less.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Very well. I take it you own a gun?”

  “You’re not suggesting ...”

  “I’m only telling you what any owner of a rabid dog would do.”

  Mandrake’s words—Frammery’s voice.

  “That’s unspeakable.”


  “I didn’t say your choice would be easy. It’s a lesser of evils situation. Anyway, I must go. There are many pressing matters to attend to here.

  “Yes, of course,” I said disconsolately.

  “One more thing, Mr Renshaw.”

  “Yes?”

  “Whatever you decide, don’t take long about it.”

  I put the receiver back in its cradle and sensed, rather than saw, Cyprian standing at the door.

  We looked at each other, both searching for words, but she was the first to proffer an olive branch.

  “What doest thou ... “ She ran her fingers lightly along the bookshelf next to her. “What doest thou intend to do with me?”

  I massaged my temples, unsure of how to respond. I had become her lover, but I was also her keeper. Keeper of a rabid dog. There in that moment she looked like anything but a cur. Forlorn and wretched perhaps—but resplendent beyond measure.

  I rose from the desk and approached her tentatively. She looked down with almost a regal bearing, her eyes upon mine. Not for the first time I saw beyond those ghostly white orbs and imagined, no, saw the soul of the Lamia. Part of me knew this was her conjuring. The rest of me reached out like a dry tree seeking water.

  Her face moved closer and she opened her orchid mouth. I responded as only I could, and alighted on her delicate petals; a bee bringing pollen to the centre of her sacred flower.

  Chapter 6

  We made love countlessly in the aftermath of that dreadful night. Sometimes we were urgent, sometimes seeking solace, always needing to preserve the fragility of our desperate union. A union that was threatened by the collision of two colossal planets: one, the creeping apprehension that the intruder’s associates would come looking for them; two, the knowledge that Cyprian could not help reverting to her nature.

  Regarding the former, I was astounded when, after several days had passed, we heard nothing. I avidly watched every local news bulletin, constantly attuning my ears to the announcement of missing persons. None were forthcoming. Could it be that they were independent operatives? Opportunists acting on a whim, not telling any other soul of their intent? I dared not hope for such a reprieve, but with every uneventful day passing, my confidence grew, albeit in tiny increments.