Neil White - Beyond Evil

‘You need to come downstairs,’ he said.

She looked up at him, and her eyes were pure hatred, her brow heavy, lips clenched tightly. ‘You could have stopped this.’

He closed his eyes. He had no control anymore. ‘Downstairs,’ he said.

Tears started to run down her face. ‘I won’t say anything. Just let me go.’

John shook his head. ‘No, downstairs.’ He went over to her and gripped her arm. She pulled against it at first, thumped him a few times in his chest, but he ignored it, so her shoulders slumped and she went with him.

As John got to the top of the stairs, he looked down and saw everyone waiting for him. Dawn pulled against him again but he held firm. When they got to the bottom, Arni grabbed her and took her outside, everyone else following.

She shrank back at the cold. The warmth from the day was gone. Arni kept pulling and so she stumbled as she went, her cries lost in the clamour from the group. Footsteps on grass, gleeful shouts. When Arni got to the stones, he pulled her towards the flat stone, the large one that was horizontal like a table. Arni held her by the hair, so that her legs and body thrashed, but she couldn’t escape. She started to scream, but no one tried to stop her. There wasn’t anyone near enough to hear.

Henry appeared by her feet, and she looked along her body towards him, her eyes wide. Her screams turned to a whimper and her head went back in despair.

‘We need a knife,’ Henry said.

Gemma ran back into the house. No one said anything, so that the only sounds were those of Dawn’s cries as she struggled against her captors. When Gemma emerged from the house, she was holding a carving knife. The blade glinted in the moonlight.

John could feel the tension, everyone watching as the knife was passed along the line to Henry. He held it and turned it in his hand before he nodded at the two women stood closest to Dawn.

They smiled and then each grabbed a leg of her trousers and pulled, and although her hands reached down to stop it, it was no use. They kept on pulling until her trousers were off, her legs skinny and pale. Then they pulled at her shirt, ripping it, until it was just shreds of cloth on the ground. Dawn was naked apart from her knickers. She crossed her legs in a vain attempt to keep some dignity, but it was futile. Her underwear was torn off, so she lay there, naked and sobbing.

John was transfixed. Her body was skinny, so that he could see the sharp bones of her hips and ribs, her legs bony and mottled and pale. He knew that Dawn hadn’t participated as much as the others. Some of the people enjoyed the sexual aspect of the group, the lack of inhibition, but Dawn had never really taken part.

People rushed forward to grab her ankles and wrists, spread-eagling her. Her head was back and she was panting hard. She tried to pull against them, but she couldn’t, they were too strong for her. John could hear her skin scraping on the stone, could see the blood on her heels. She was looking at the sky, until her gaze blurred over from her tears.

He didn’t know what to do. What they were doing was wrong, he knew that, but he felt powerless against the group.

Henry stepped up to the stone, so that he was at her side. He looked around the group, tried to look each one in the eye.

‘If we are to take our movement forward, we cannot afford traitors,’ Henry said. ‘That’s just the way it has to be.’

People mumbled that they understood.

He smiled. ‘Apology is of the other world,’ he said to the group. ‘The one where life is about accumulation and greed. That’s how man deludes himself, because he does what his heart desires, not caring about others, but then he is racked with guilt, and so he apologises and tries to make amends. But why? It’s just a candle in a dark place, an illusion of light, because he knows it is wrong and so he tries to pass the burden by apologising.’ He looked down at Dawn. ‘No one here apologises for anything, but yet you still do.’

Dawn shook her head frantically, moaning, scared. More tears squeezed out of her eyes.

Henry held up the knife. ‘We know how it is,’ he said. ‘Who goes first?’

Dawn knew what was coming next, because her struggles became more frantic.

Gemma stepped forward. ‘Me first,’ she said, and held her hand out for the knife.

Chapter Fifty-Three

Charlie and Ted followed the road as it ran alongside the hillside, looking out for wherever the group might have taken Donia. It had been a fruitless search, just tracks and hedgerows and stone walls that hugged the valley sides. They were about to curve back towards the valley floor when Ted shouted, ‘Stop!’

The car skidded as Charlie stamped on the brake. ‘What is it?’

‘Back up.’

Charlie moved the car slowly backwards, looking up the long slopes, trying to see whatever had caught Ted’s attention.

Ted shouted for him to stop again. ‘There,’ he said, and pointed.

Charlie looked past him, followed his finger, and then he scowled. He looked round for somewhere to park and headed towards a small leafy track that ended in front of a metal gate. He turned off his engine and the night turned silent again.

Charlie tried to see along the track, but it disappeared into woods that climbed up the hill. It hadn’t been the track that had caught Ted’s attention though.

There was a small cottage a couple of hundred yards away, high up on the hill. The moonlight shone from an old slate roof and weak yellow light shone as tiny yellow squares. It had been more than the cottage though, because there were jagged stones set against the bright silver of the moon, and there was movement between them, cast into silhouette. Charlie could tell that it was a group though, and that something was happening.

‘This way,’ Charlie said, and started to climb the gate. It clanged against the post as he jumped over, Charlie wincing as the noise echoed around them. Ted followed him, and once they were both on the other side, Charlie pointed at the trees that ran up the hill. ‘We need to go through there, to stay hidden.’

The hill was steep, and as they disappeared into the shadows of the trees the loss of the moonlight made it harder to see. Stray branches and roots snagged at their feet, and unseen dips and hollows almost sent them tumbling. Charlie’s ears were keen, listening out for the sound of someone approaching, sure that the rattles of Patrick’s car must have attracted their attention, but all he got was the soft rustle of leaves and the creak of branches straining under their own weight. Ted’s breathing seemed laboured, and he shouted out as he stumbled to the floor.

‘We need to go quieter,’ Charlie whispered.

Ted didn’t respond, just scrambled himself upright and walked on ahead, his footsteps faster now, so that all Charlie could hear were the rustles of his feet as he rushed to keep up. The view ahead was just gloom and darkness, the brightness of the moon just slipping through in places, lighting up their faces as ghostly apparitions moving through the trees. Charlie’s white shirt caught the light, so he buttoned his jacket and pulled up the lapels.

Charlie was breathing hard too, his legs aching from the climb, his lungs fighting back against too many long nights bar-hopping and the escape from Donia’s flat. Neither of them was in suitable gear; Charlie’s suit was torn and ragged, his feet clad in leather-soled brogues.

Charlie stopped. He put his arm out. There was something ahead. Mumbles and murmurs, but the voices were fast and sharp, as if they were angry. They couldn’t be far away. Charlie tilted his head to the edge of the woods. They needed to get a better view.

They moved slowly to the edge of the treeline. Charlie sheltered behind a dead tree, the top gone, as if it had once been caught in a storm, so that all that was left was the trunk and two large branches sticking out to the side. He peered out over the field towards the cottage. They were more level with it now, near the top of the slope, and the cottage was framed against the glow coming from the moon. As he focused on it, Charlie saw again what had attracted his attention. There was a small cluster of standing stones, spread out into some kind of haphazard semicircle. There were people gathered in the middle of the stones, around a large rock that was flat against the ground, fifty yards from the house and in the middle of the field.