Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew) (26 page)

             
“That was my dream, too!” I reassured her; my hands were shaking with excitement. “Eleven men in a circle, the twelfth one killing her with a knife?”

             
“Exactly, exactly!” the elderly lady exhaled with relief. “So I’m not going mad!”

             
“It seems that neither am I,” I relaxed a bit more. “Can you now tell me the facts you know about her death?”

             
“It happened three years ago, she was only sixteen then,” Amanda began quickly. “They found her dead in a forest nearby in a white dress, a knife in her chest –”

             
The pace of my breathing was gradually speeding up as I was discovering how everything I was hearing was matching into the appalling puzzle I had started to solve...

             
“Several boys were accused for the murder, but nothing was proven,” the woman went on. “In the end, everyone decided she had killed herself because the boy she loved pushed her away – he didn’t want to marry her and she was pregnant –”

             
Oh gods!

             
Was that the reason why I had heard a child crying in my nightmare!?...

             
Odda had been pregnant? What if that had been Cardew’s child?!?...

             
Everything in my head was spinning so quickly that all the horrifying details of the overall brutal dread devastating me on the inside were blurring in one another, perceptible only as a whole...

             
Had Cardew created a child together with Odda?!

             
And had he killed it with his own hands after that!?!...

             
‘NO!’ my mind refused to take this thought in – the latter was too cruel even to be considered at all!...

             
NO!!!...

             
Even murdering Odda seemed rather forgivable a crime compared to killing her unborn child...

             
His own unborn child...

             
Gods, was that possible!?!...

             
“Who was accused of killing Odda?” my voice shivered uneasily as I asked the question to distract myself from the hypothesis about the inexistent young creature whose cries had woken me up the night before.

             
Did I instinctively know the answer?

             
“Two brothers,” the granny delicately looked away from my face before pronouncing their names. “Drust and Cardew –”

             
My breath turned into a moan of pain as my heart tossed sharply aside as though it wanted to tear itself out of my chest.

             
Cardew?!? Could the name be a coincidence?!...

             
Of course it could – just that then all the dreams and facts about Odda’s grave, the years of her birth and death, the graveyard, and the state in which she was found after her demise all had to be randomly matching, too...

             
And I didn’t believe in coincidences.

             
Not at all.

             
Cardew...

             
My mind couldn’t accept it, my heart didn’t even want to try, but it was so apparent, and I was so smoothly aware of each detail as though I had seen it all...

             
Cardew had killed Odda!

             
He was a murderer!...

             
I was in love with an evil merciless creature that had answered to a girl’s affection with fierce, destructive hatred... And I simply couldn’t let myself wonder what had happened to the baby – if it had existed at all – the thought itself was suffocating me, so my subconscious was comfortably tucking it somewhere in its immeasurable soft depths while concentrating on the familiar horror which the nightmares had warned me against.

             
Cardew had killed Odda...

             
How could I be sure that I wouldn’t be the next to fall a victim to his manias?...

             
“And –” I heard my voice say as if it wasn’t me speaking but my rationality. “Why weren’t they found guilty?”

             
“Because they saved each other,” Amanda shook her shoulders as if to throw a burden away from herself. “It was proven that the man who had committed the crime had been by himself, and the boys swore they had been together that night.”

             
“Were they close?” I wondered, hoping that the old lady knew Cardew better than I had thought – better than I myself did. “Would they lie to save each other?”

             
“The strange thing is that they both claimed to be hating one another, and still do,” she picked her empty cup and thoughtfully stared at its bottom as though it could reveal to her all secrets of the future and past at a single glance. “Everybody was talking of that when they were accused – and their friends were constantly repeating that the two brothers were never truly close, and had even stopped speaking to each other for some weeks before Odda’s death –”

             
My brows knitted, “Did they say why?”

             
“No,” the woman shrugged. “Nobody knew... something strange must have happened between them. Otherwise, they belonged to the same circle of friends –”

             
Circle? The word instinctively made me shiver.

             
“Friends? Do you know them?” I informed myself, too afraid to make any hypotheses.

             
Her smile made me answer in the same way. “They were the kind of boys that made me regret I wasn’t young –” Amanda chuckled quietly. “Cardew – the younger brother – was their leader, and Drust was in the group, too; they were all –”

             
“What?” I asked as she made a pause while wondering how exactly to explain it to me.

             
“Well, very attractive –” she gave me a wink and I hardly repressed a guilty smile. “At least from aside, they seemed to be really good friends, and were all so handsome and so strong... as if they were the gods of some contemporary mythology, not mortals –”

             
I bit my lips not to give myself away that I knew perfectly well what she meant – I was always having such immortality associations about Cardew as well.

             
“And besides –” Amanda went on more seriously and glanced at me, quickly looking away, “There were twelve of them in this group – a bit creepy, isn’t it?”

             
“Twelve?” I moaned helplessly, ready to collapse on the table and burst into tears. “That makes... Cardew plus eleven others?”

             
The granny’s eyes were widened when she nodded. “Just like in the dream, right?”

             
“Yes!” my tears were already running down my face in large salt drops dripping from my chin onto the tenderly white surface of the table-cloth; I was feeling as if my whole world had just turned into a heap of ruins, a wreck from what had used to be a proud and mighty ship, and I was to drown into the hopelessness crashing around me, into these unrestricted powerful waves of despair that had dragged me downwards.

             
Down...

             
And I didn’t even know why I had broken down.

             
What had I expected to hear? That Cardew was innocent? That he was an angel? That everything from my visions had been unreal?

             
He had killed – calmly, coldly, with no regrets – he had hammered a long sharp knife right into the chest of a defenceless victim who simply couldn’t have done anything to deserve such a fate...

             
Oh dear, what would follow for me?...

             
“Do you think that –” I uttered, grateful that my weak voice was audible at all in the utter silence. “That Cardew killed Odda?”

             
The granny sighed lightly and laid her warm palm onto mine so as to console me.

             
“Look, my dear, I see that this boy does mean something for you –” she was speaking quietly and melodiously, and my tears were falling with the gentle rhythm of her words. “And I don’t know what advice to give you as things may be more serious than you and I have thought. I will tell you just that –” she coughed mildly to clear her voice and I raised my eyes to glimpse at her face, “Cardew’s friends were known to take interest in occult sciences and ancient religions –”

             
That was it!

             
That was the end!

             
My personal end, the tiny detail that would ruin my whole reality.

             
Together with my fantasies...

             
I exhaled heavily and let my forehead hit the table and lay on its edge; the elderly woman didn’t do anything, just waited for several minutes for me to regain my strength and come to a decision.

             
But that couldn’t happen – I couldn’t figure out what to do with my entire life in just a single second, I couldn’t decide whether to give up my love or put my life at risk, I just...

             
I just wished that I had never had any nightmares about Cardew, that I knew absolutely nothing about his past!

             
I would have been so much happier if I had been free to see him in the way in which I was craving to – to let him be my wanton almighty god, my cruel but loving hero, my implacable foe I trusted more than myself – to be able to relax in his presence without considering this as a straightforward suicide attempt, to believe he was as human as me despite being so strikingly exceptional in everything he did, and – even if some day I ended up like Odda had – at least I would have sensed true limitless bliss before that.

             
And after the visions...

             
Doubts were eating me alive from within my sorrowful heart.

             
“You need to have a rest, young one,” Amanda’s quiet voice flew to me through the haze of wandering thoughts wrapping me into their chains of nothingness. “Midnight has already passed so long ago I don’t want to imagine how tired you must be. There are several free rooms upstairs –”

             
“Thank you, but I’d rather go already,” I made an attempt to smile and only my drama skills blocked my expression from turning into a frighteningly grievous grimace. “The dawn is about to break and I want to look for Cardew’s family –”

             
“He doesn’t have a family,” the granny shook her head sadly. “His parents have died a long ago –”

             
So he hadn’t lied to me about that.

             
Strange...

             
I was so used to not believing his words that the existence of one truth among his flawlessly beautiful lies confused me.

             
“And his brother?” I asked with increasing fear; had Cardew’s hatred killed more than one person?

             
Had he murdered his whole family?...

             
Or was my utter fear making my hypotheses too extreme?

             
“Drust still lives here but –” Amanda wondered how to say it more mildly and I fixed my eyes on her with expectation. “Don’t go to look for him, my dear. He can only hurt you and I’m afraid he is unscrupulous enough to do it – I am serious, don’t go.”

             
“Why would he hurt me?” I shrugged – vainly, as I was not fighting, my thoughts still unable to focus on anything in particular.

             
But the woman shook her head again, her expression earnest.

             
“He’s just this kind of person,” she explained quietly, as though she was afraid that he possessed some kind of supernatural powers and could hear our whisper despite the – hopefully – great distance. “Don’t look for him. I guess it’s Cardew you know – well, he is a thousand times more merciful than Drust.”

             
Cardew – merciful?

             
‘Wow, what’s wrong with their whole family?’ I thought without any enthusiasm; that was going to be dead difficult...

             
Or rather: deadening-difficult.

             
“But if you want to speak to someone, I can give you the address of another boy,” Amanda nodded with an encouraging smile. “Preston – he’s the only boy from the twelve who still lives in this town – if you don’t count Cardew’s brother, of course. Maybe he will help you.”