A Terrible Beauty Read online

"Oh, no, we're going to be fine. We're almost there now."

  She peered through the windshield but she still couldn't see any signs sayingBlarney .

  "I have to kiss the Blarney Stone. That was something my dad made me promise."

  "Well, of course. Everybody who comes toCork has to kiss the Blarney Stone. It gives you the gift of a silver tongue."

  At last the rain began to die away, and the driver switched off the windshield wipers, and unexpectedly a pale golden sun came swimming out of the clouds. The driver remarked, "They say that we don't have a climate here, only weather."

  He turned a sharp left, and up a steep muddy road with a sign saying Sheehan's Nurseries. The road became narrower and narrower, and eventually Fiona said, "This isn't the way toBlarney , is it?"

  "It's a detour, that's all. We'll be there in a trice."

  "No, no. I really don't think so. I want you to stop, right now, and I want to get out."

  "Don't be ridiculous. It's only half a mile intoBlarney from here."

  "In that case, I can walk it, okay? I want to get out."

  "You're not frightened, are you?"

  "No, I'm not. But I want to get out. It's stopped raining and I can walk the rest of the way."

  "Hm," said the driver, and suddenly put his foot down, so that the Mercedes surged forward, and its rear tires slithered on the muddy road.

  "Stop, will you?" Fiona demanded. "I want to get out!"

  "Sorry, Fiona Kelly. That's not really an option."

  Fiona reached into her jeans pocket and tugged out her mobile phone. "Are you going to stop and let me out or am I going to call the police?"

  Without warning, the driver wrenched the mobile phone out of her hand and then punched her on the cheek. He hit her so hard that her head banged against the window.

  "Oh, God!" she screamed. "Stop! Let me out!Stop!"

  The driver slammed his foot on the brake. The car slewed sideways and stopped halfway up the verge. Fiona grappled with the door handle but it was centrally locked and she couldn't open it.

  "Let me out!Are you crazy?Let me out!"

  The driver punched her a second time, right in the side of the nose, snapping her cartilage. The front of the car was suddenly spattered with blood. Then he seized her shoulders and hit her head against the window again and again, while she struggled and pushed and flailed her arms.

  "You could have-saved me from-doing this," he grunted, as he thumped her head against the glass, and then against the door pillar. "You could have-sat there-and behaved yourself-like a good little-girl."

  He seized a handful of long blond hair, pulled her head toward him, and then knocked her head so hard against the window that she slumped unconscious, with blood pouring from her nose in a thin, continuous river.

  He sat where he was for two or three minutes, breathing heavily. "Shit," he said, under his breath. Then he started up the car again, backed it off the verge, and continued to drive down the lane. Fiona sat next to him, joggling limply as he drove over lumps and potholes. Every now and then he glanced across at her and shook his head in annoyance. He wasn't used to girls who twigged so quickly that he was trying to take them away. Usually they were still smiling right up to the moment when he produced the ropes-and, sometimes, even after he'd tied them up.

  He turned left up a steep, winding hill, where the nettles and the brown-seeded foxgloves crowded even closer. At the top of the hill there was a sagging five-bar gate, every bar still bejeweled with raindrops, and beyond that stood a damp-looking cottage, with one side thickly shrouded in creeper. He drove the Mercedes all the way around the cottage to the back garden, so that it couldn't be seen from the lane, and parked it beside the overgrown vegetable patch. As he climbed out of the car he saw dozens of hooded crows perched on the telephone lines above his head. He clapped his hands and shouted,"Hoi!"but they stayed where they were, all facing southwest, into the wind.

  Opening the passenger door, he dragged Fiona out of the car and across the yard, her heels bumping on the broken concrete. She was still unconscious, but her nose had stopped bleeding, and she had a congealed black moustache. He propped her up against the side of the porch as he searched in his pocket for his keys.

  "Shit," he repeated, like a litany.

  He managed to turn the key in the green-painted cottage door, and nudge it open with his shoulder. Winding Fiona's arm around his neck, he shuffled her inside, and across the hallway, and into the gloomy, damp-smelling living room. He dropped her onto the worn-out couch, with its mustard-colored throw, and then he went back to close the front door, and lock it.

  "Now," he said to himself. He crossed the living room and drew the cheap yellow cotton drapes. Then he shrugged off his coat and tossed it across the back of one of the armchairs, and rolled up his shirtsleeves. "Couldn'tbe nice, could you? Couldn't be agreeable. Had to put up a fight."

  The clock on the mantelpiece chimed four. Fiona, on the couch, started to stir, and groan. Immediately, and very quickly, he unlaced her boots, and pulled them off her feet, and let them tumble onto the floor. Then her thick red hiking socks.

  She groaned again, and tried to lift her arm. He leaned over her and said, "Shush, shush, everything's fine. You're going to be fine in a minute." He unbuckled her belt, opened up her jeans, and wrenched them halfway down her thighs. He was surprised and mildly aroused to find that she wasn't wearing any panties. Then he pulled off her denim jacket, and her red ribbed sweater. She mumbled, "Mom what's happening, Mom? Don't want to go to bed."

  "Everything's fine. Don't worry about it."

  "Mom, my head hurts."

  "It's okay I'll bring you some aspirin. Just lie still."

  He took off her jeans and threw them into the corner of the room. He lifted her up, so that she was sitting, and then he knelt in front of her and tilted her over his shoulder. Panting with effort, he stood up, and carried her into the hallway, her arms dangling down his back, and into the bedroom next door. She was a big girl, well-nourished, and by the time he managed to lower her onto the bed he was trembling with the strain.

  "Shit," he said.

  The bed had a green cast-iron frame and no mattress or blankets, but several thicknesses of newspaper had been spread on the floor underneath it. Its springs creaked and complained as he tied her wrists with cords, and then her ankles. She opened her eyes for a moment and said, "What what's happening?" but then she closed them again and started to breathe thickly through her open mouth.

  He stood up and looked at her. His expression was completely impassive, although he was gripping his genitals through his black corduroy pants, and systematically squeezing them. After a while he went through to the kitchen and came back with a pair of orange-handled scissors. He cut through the front of her bra, and then the straps, and took the pieces away.

  "Mom?" she said.

  He reached out and stroked her forehead, and the crusted blood on her upper lip. He didn't know why victimhood made girls so appealing, but it always did. It made them so much more feminine and vulnerable, no matter how strong and self-confident they had acted when he first met them.Stop the car and let me out!It was such a futile, arrogant demand that it made him smile to think about it.

  Eventually he went back into the kitchen and came back with the coil of thin nylon cord. He looped it around the top of her left thigh, and knotted it, and pulled it as tight as he could, one foot braced against the bed frame. It cut deep into her suntanned flesh, so deep that it almost disappeared. She suddenly blinked her eyes and started to struggle.

  "Oh God, that hurts! What are you doing to me? What are you doing?"

  He leaned over her and touched his finger against her lips. "Don't shout, nobody can hear you. You're miles and miles from anywhere."

  "God, you're hurting my leg, you're hurting my leg!"

  "That's necessary, I'm afraid. You wouldn't want to bleed to death, would you?"

  Her eyes flicked wildly from side to side. "What do you mean? What are you
talking about? Where am I?"

  "You're alone with me, that's all you need to know. You're alone with me and Morgan."

  "Listen, you creep, you'd better let me go. My father's president of CalForce Electronics."

  "Oh, CalForce Electronics? Never heard of them, I'm sorry to say."

  "You're really, really hurting my leg."

  "I know, my sweet. I'm sorry. But, as I say, it's necessary for your survival."

  "What do you want? What are you going to do to me? My father can pay you money."

  "I expect he can. But I'm not interested in money. Not in the slightest."

  "Then what? What do you want? Are you going to rape me, or what?"

  "Rape you? Of course not. You don't think I look like arapist, do you?"

  "I don't know. But please take this cord off my leg. It's so tight."

  "I know. It's supposed to be."

  "For whatreason?What are you going to do? Look at my leg, it's turning blue."

  "That's a very good sign. Shows that I've restricted your circulation."

  "Please," begged Fiona. "If anything happens to me, my parents are going to be devastated."

  "Well, that's very selfless of you. But I'm afraid that you have a destiny which far supercedes any consideration for your parents."

  "What do you mean? Please if you let me go, I won't tell anybody what happened here. I'll go right back home and I won't mention any of this to anybody."

  He nodded, almost ruefully. "Of course you won't, because you'll be dead."

  "You're going to kill me?"

  "It's a regrettable but inevitable part of the ritual."

  "Please. I'm twenty-two years old."

  "Yes?"

  Tears suddenly started to drip down her cheeks. "I'm twenty-two years old and I haven't lived any kind of life yet. I've seen Ireland, and that's about all. I want to do so much more. I want to be a teacher, and teach little kids."

  "Do you have a boyfriend?"

  Fiona nodded, still snuffling. "His name's Richard. I've known him since I was fourteen."

  "Um. He's going to miss you, then."

  "Please don't kill me. Please don't kill me. I'll do anything."

  "Now, then. Don't be too hasty in what you wish for. By the time tomorrow morning comes, you'll be pleading with me to have it done with, believe me."

  "Please."

  He looked at his watch and gave a little negative shake of his head. "I'm going to have to leave you for a while. Only about half an hour but you took me by surprise, you see. I wasn't expecting to come across somebody so suitable so soon. I have to make a few purchases, to see us through the next few days."

  "I'll do anything you want. I can call my father and ask him to send you money."

  "Money?"

  "I don't know anything you want. Anything."

  "I'll see you later," he said. "And, really, don't bother to scream."

  9

  The afternoon went past like a strange grainy dream. Fiona heard his car scrunching out of the driveway in front of the cottage, and then the only sounds were the cawing of the crows and the whispering of the ivy against the window.

  For the first five or ten minutes she struggled furiously to get herself free, but he had tied her with such complicated knots that all she managed to do was tug them even tighter. In spite of what he had said, she tried shouting for help, but it was obvious that he had been telling her the truth. The cottage was far too isolated for anybody to be able to hear her.

  She shivered with cold and wept with self-pity. Her right leg had turned a pale turquoise color and she couldn't feel it at all. She tried talking to her mother, in the hope that her mother would somehow sense that she was in danger, like people did in Stephen King stories.

  But then there was nothing but the crows, and the surreptitious sniggering of the ivy, and the throb, throb, throb of her circulation in her ears.

  He came back in less than an hour. He didn't go straight in to see her. Instead, he went directly to the kitchen and heaped his bags of groceries onto the Formica-topped table. "How are we feeling?" he called, but she didn't reply. He filled the kettle and put it onto the old-fashioned gas stove, lighting the hob with a newspaper spill. Then he put away his cans of baked beans and his packets of biscuits, slamming the cupboard doors. He hadn't bought much in the way of frozen food: there was a refrigerator in the corner which rattled and coughed like a wardful of emphysema victims but only managed to keep food somewhere just below tepid.

  He made himself a mug of instant coffee, and stirred it with an irritating tinkle. He could hear Fiona weeping quietly in the bedroom. On the wall beside the stove hung a yellowed calendar for 1991, with a picture of Jesus on it, entering Jerusalem in triumph. As he sipped his coffee, he leafed through the months. On June 11, somebody called Pat had died. On June 14, Pat had been buried.Requiescat in pace, Pat, he thought.

  Eventually, he rinsed his mug and left it upside down on the draining board. Then he went back into the bedroom, and switched on a dazzling Anglepoise lamp beside the bed. Fiona flinched and turned her face away from it.

  "Well, then! Sorry it's so bright, but I have to see what I'm doing."

  "Please," she sobbed. "I can hardly feel my leg at all."

  "Well, that's good. That'sverygood. From your point of view, anyhow."

  "You're not going to hurt me, are you?"

  He looked down at her with a thoughtful expression on his face. "Yes," he said. "I probably am."

  "Can't you give me something to deaden the pain? Aspirins, anything."

  "Of course. I'm not a sadist."

  "Thenwhy?"she said, her voice rising in hysteria. "Why are you doing this? If you're not a sadist,why?"

  "There are things I need to know, that's all."

  "What things? I don't understand."

  "There are other worlds, apart from this. Other existences. Darker places, inhabited by dark monstrosities. I need to know if they can be summoned. I need to know if any of the rituals really work."

  "Oh dear God, why do you have to do it tome?"

  "No special reason, Fiona. You were there, that's all, standing by the side of the road. Fate.Kismet. Or just plain shitty luck."

  "But you don't know me. You don't know anything about me. How can you kill me?"

  "If it wasn't you, it would have to be somebody else."

  "Then let it be somebody else. Please. Not me. I don't want to die."

  This time he said nothing, but left the room again, and came back a minute later with a mug of water and a brown glass bottle of aspirin tablets. He held the tablets out in front of her in the palm of his hand, as if he were feeding an animal, and she bent her head forward and choked them down, three and four at a time, crunching some of them between her teeth and swallowing some of them whole. All the time she was mewling and sobbing and the tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  "Imagine that you're going on a journey," he said, and his voice became curiously monotonous, as if he were trying to hypnotize her. "Imagine that you're going to be traveling, not through some undiscovered country, but through the landscape of your own suffering. Instead of forests you will walk through the thorns and brambles of tearing nerves, and instead of snowy mountaintops, you will see the white peaks of utter agony."

  He held the mug against her lips and she drank as much water as she could, even though most of it ran down her chin.

  "I'll do anything," she said. "Just let me go, please. I'll do anything at all."

  "You don't understand, Fiona. I simply want you to lie back and experience what's coming to you."

  Maybe it was the effect of the aspirins, or maybe it was shock, but Fiona suddenly stopped sobbing and lowered her head, and stared at the end of the bed with oddly unfocused eyes. Maybe it was despair-the realization that no matter how much she begged, he was going to kill her anyway.

  There was a brown leather briefcase standing on the floor next to the cheap walnut-veneered wardrobe. He picked it up, and sat
down on the side of the bed frame, and opened it. Fiona didn't take her eyes away from the end of the bed, even when he produced a case of surgical instruments, a length of hairy twine, and a small white doll fashioned out of torn linen, pierced all over with fishhooks and screws and tin tacks.

  "This is a very ancient ritual," he said. "Nobody knows exactly how far back it goes. But throughout the ages, its purpose has always been the same. To open the door to the other world, and coax some of its monstrosities to come through. Interesting, isn't it, how men and women have always wanted to play with fire to risk their lives and their sanity by calling up their worst nightmares? They could let their demons sleep in peace, but they insist on prodding them into wakefulness, like naughty children taunting a mad dog."