Roxy's Baby (16 page)

She would get away from here, some way. She would escape. She would tell the world. Tell them of the evil that was being committed here in Dragon House.

In her mind suddenly, as clear as the sharpest photograph, she saw the gate lying open. The gate she had found that day long ago. The gate that led to freedom. She had once walked through that gate unchecked. She would do it again. Today. There was no time to waste.

She was still wobbly when she stood up. One of the new girls came into the room just then, and ran to steady her. A smile is worth a thousand words. So Roxy smiled at her. The girl was Asian, maybe Turkish, she couldn't tell, but she smiled back at Roxy and Roxy had a sudden urge to grab the girl, run with her, save her and her baby. But that would be stupid. The girl would panic, not understand what she was trying to do. She would alert the Dyces … and what would happen to Roxy then?

A stab wound through the heart.

She pushed the nightmare vision of herself, lying dead, right out of her mind.

She still smiled at the girl. Her legs felt steadier now. They would have to be. This was no time to be weak. Roxy would save this girl, save them all. She had never felt more determined in all her life.

She could take nothing with her. Not a scrap of clothing. Nothing. She would have to walk out of Dragon House, calmly, exactly as she was. She smiled once more at the girl to reassure her she was all right now, and then she walked out of the room, and down the stairs. If anyone asked, she was going for an afternoon stroll. She passed the kitchen where Mrs Dyce
was showing one of the new girls how the cooker worked. She didn't even look up. Mr Dyce was nowhere to be seen, probably shut up in the office working out just how ‘economically viable' the new batch of girls would be.

Roxy tried to seem calm and nonchalant as she strolled out into the garden. She tried to stop her legs from shaking, wishing the sweat would stop pouring from her. It wasn't just the oppressive heat. It was fear. Fear they would catch her and stop her.

Only once did she look back. She turned as casually as she could, as if she wanted to see the house from a distance, shading her eyes with her hand. Dragon House shimmered in the late afternoon sun, almost as if it was alive, another player in this nightmare story.

Then she turned back and kept on walking, walking towards the gate, hoping that she would find it again, praying it wouldn't now be locked and chained and welded shut.

And if it was? Then she would climb, she decided. Nothing would stop her getting out of here. She'd always been a good climber. A tomboy, her dad would tell everyone. She wouldn't let her bump stop her now. No. Not her bump … her baby. She whispered to him
gently, ‘You'll be a good climber too. I'll show you how.'

At least she wasn't alone. That was what kept her going. Her baby was with her, safe inside her, relying on her.

She wouldn't let him down.

She stopped for a moment, leaning against a tree to get her breath back. Had it ever been so hot? This had to be the hottest, driest summer she could ever remember.

But she didn't dare stop for long. Soon, they would realise she'd gone and they would begin searching for her. She had to be far away by then, through the gate, out into the countryside. Freedom.

The gate couldn't be so far now. She would surely have remembered walking this far. Had she come the wrong way? She pushed the long grass aside to make sure she was still following the worn path.

Suddenly, she saw it, and she began to walk faster.

But something was different, and her heart fell when she saw what it was. The gate was locked!

She ran the last few yards crying, and gripped the iron bars with both hands. She almost expected those dragon tails to curl around her fingers, hold her trapped there.

‘NO!' she yelled, shaking the bars in frustration. If
she only had the strength to bend them, pull them apart, pull the gate off its hinges, break the iron chains.

She laid her head against the gate and cried softly, ‘No.'

‘Trying to get out, are you?'

This time she screamed and turned, flattening herself against the railings.

It was Stevens, looking dirtier and darker than ever, looming towards her. His black hair was wild and his eyes were hooded and menacing.

She drew in her breath, tried to think of a lie. ‘No. Honest.' Her voice cracked with fear. ‘I only came out for a stroll.'

‘I told them you were too curious.' He was shaking his head, scratching his chin with his maggoty fat fingers.

‘No. I'm going home soon. The Dyces are getting me home.' She said it quickly, breathlessly. ‘I just wanted a last look round.'

He stared at her for an age. ‘You're going home?'

Roxy nodded. ‘Yes, I've asked Mrs Dyce and she said that would be fine. She's organising it now.'

It was as if a pained expression came over his face. He drawled, ‘Is that what she told you, you're going home?'

He was shaking his head, and if Roxy had had any doubts they disappeared right then. He knew she couldn't go home, ever. They would never let her.

‘You know what's happening here, don't you? You know they're not going to let you go home.'

Please, please, please, she was thinking, don't let me faint. Though the spots were there in front of her eyes and her heart was thumping. Fainting was what she wanted to do. She blinked to try to make those spots disappear.

‘Yes, I am. I'm going home.' Because if he thought she believed it, then he might just let her go.

Stevens stepped closer and she shrank back from him.

‘I'm not going to be a part of it any more,' he said.

For a moment she thought she hadn't heard him properly. ‘What?'

‘You're just a kid. Too young. I told them that from the beginning. I won't be a part of what they're going to do to you.'

‘What they're going to do to you.' His words brought to Roxy's mind the picture of herself, knife through the heart, and almost made her pass out.

‘I'm going to help you.'

Was this really happening? Was the one she had
been the most afraid of going to be the one who would be her saviour?

‘You're going to help me … get away?'

Now he looked afraid. ‘I'm a dead man if they find out I helped you.'

That makes two of us, she almost said, but she stopped herself.

‘Please, please, please, help me.' She touched his sleeve, still couldn't bear to reach out to those fingers. ‘I don't want them to take my baby. I don't want him adopted, sold. I want to keep him.'

He looked so puzzled she was taken aback. ‘Is that what you think they're doing here? Is that what you think this set-up is all about? Adoption?'

She couldn't think what he meant. ‘They're taking our babies and selling them … to the highest bidder. And then they're telling the mothers that the babies have died.'

What could possibly be worse than that?

He shook his head, and his eyes grew black and heavy. ‘I thought you knew it all, but you don't, do you? No, girl. What they're doing here is much worse than that. What they're doing here is pure evil.'

Pure evil.

Worse than selling the babies? But what could be worse than that? Roxy grabbed at Stevens' sleeve.

‘What are they doing here?'

He looked at her, as if he was considering an answer. His eyes were a cold watery blue. ‘It never bothered me till you came. Why should I care about all them others? But you're too young. I told them that right from the beginning. Too young.'

She tugged at his coat. ‘Too young for what?'

But he was already shaking his head, his decision made. ‘Better you don't know. Then you really would know too much.' He was suddenly alert, as if he'd heard a noise in the distance, a crackle in the long, dry grass. ‘Come on, I'm getting you out of here.' He produced a heavy set of keys from his jacket pocket and he began fumbling with the chains round the gate, loosening
them, unlatching them.

Still Roxy had to know what he meant. The words ‘pure evil' chanted in her mind.

‘You have to tell me what they're doing here.' She tried to make it sound like an order.

He pulled his arm free of her. ‘No,' he said firmly. ‘It would scare you too much. It's better you don't know. Safer.'

The gate at last creaked open. It opened so wide Roxy was almost sure it was about to topple over, but Stevens held it fast with one thick hand.

‘You get away, follow the old worn path. It leads to an old dirt track, but I can drive along there.' She remembered it, she almost told him. ‘Wait for me when you get to the road. I'll go for the jeep, come for you. Drop you somewhere. What you do then is your business. I'm not coming back here either. I'm out of this place, for ever.'

He pushed her roughly through the gateway, anxious for her to be gone. ‘You've not got much time. When they realise you've gone they'll be after you. You've been nothing but trouble to them since you came here. They both hate you, do you know that?' She could have sworn his voice softened at this point, as if he was
pleased she'd been that much trouble to them.

‘What are you helping me now for?' Roxy couldn't understand that. Here was this man, the one she had never trusted, with his dark, sleazy looks and his frightening fingers, now the one who was helping her to escape.

‘Because …' He seemed to search for an answer. Then he said, ‘Maybe I'm just sick of what they're doing here. Sick of myself for ever being a part of it.'

She tried to ask him more, but he only pushed her away. He wouldn't talk any more. He had said enough. She knew as much as she should want to know, he said. ‘Go,' he kept saying. ‘There isn't time for talk.'

She heard him locking the gate behind her as she hurried through the long grass, heard him wrapping the chains round the iron railings once again. All the time, as she stumbled along the path, two words kept repeating in her mind.

Pure evil.

What could he mean? What could they be doing here that was worse than selling the babies?

The girls had their babies and they disappeared. If they weren't having them adopted, what could they be
doing with them? What else would anyone want babies for?

One thought kept trying to sneak into her brain but it was too horrifying to contemplate, too incredible to believe. Yet, as she ran, dismissing every other alternative, it seemed to be all she had left.

They were killing the babies.

But who would want dead babies?

Her imagination came up with what seemed the only one answer to that question.

Witches.

Witches would need babies.

Babies to sacrifice. Babies' blood was pure.

The Dyces were witches.

That's why they took the babies. Under the cover of looking after distressed girls in trouble, girls with no families to worry about them, girls with no homes, no country to care what happened to them. They took their babies.

Took their babies' blood.

The Dyces were witches. Probably the leaders of a vast coven of witches. All of them needing babies.

That would be pure evil.

Roxy had to stop. The thought was too terrifying to
face. Too unbelievable. But what other answer could there be? She was shaking again. She clutched at her belly. ‘Not you, my angel,' she whispered. ‘No one will ever harm you. I'll kill them first.'

And she would. As if they were already there, coming at her, she lifted a stone, held it in her hand like a weapon. She looked all around her, as if she was expecting the Dyces to come leaping out of the tall grass, chanting, holding the cross upside down, dressed in black gowns. If anyone came near her … anyone.

She would kill them before she would let them hurt her baby.

Oh, she had to get away from them.

Pure evil, every one of them.

She began to cry at the thought of Anne Marie and her baby.

I've let her down, Roxy thought bitterly. And Aidan too. I can't save him now.

She felt a stab of pain when she thought of little Aidan. Dead already. She couldn't save him. It was too late for Aidan.

Well, she wouldn't let her own baby down. She was out of that place now, and she was never going back. She was going straight to the police.

Could she trust Stevens? He was part of it, yet he was sick of it, he said. He was helping her, wasn't he? She had to trust him. She didn't even know where she was. Where was this Dragon House situated? If only she'd stayed awake that first day when the Dyces drove her here, watched for signposts, roadsigns, directions.

Then it struck her. Of course, she didn't stay awake. She couldn't. The Dyces had drugged her. The heavy sleepiness that had overcome her hadn't been natural.

She remembered in the cafe Mrs Dyce had appeared to be so kind, insisting on fetching her tea from the counter. Perfect time to slip a couple of sleeping pills into her cup.

Pure evil. She could see it all now. Planned from that very first day.

Nurturing her, feeding her, ensuring she would have a healthy, plump baby so they could take it and …

No! She stopped again, covered her ears with her palms to blot out the thought of what they would do, what they had done.

She would never let them have her baby.

‘Do you hear me? You're safe with me. You'll always be safe with me.'

If only she could find a phone and talk to her mother.
How she longed for the sound of her mother's voice. Her mother would know what to do. She had always known what to do. When her father was ill, dying, it was her mother who had kept them all sane and calm. Always there for Roxy and for Jennifer.

She leaned against a tree and cried. Great sobs she couldn't control. Her mother had never let her down, or Jennifer, or her dad. She saw that now. Beside them all till the end. Holding his hand, clutching theirs.