Inside Evil

Chapter 4 - Part I

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Chapter 4

There was a faint glimmer of hope in all of this mess for Susan, and that was to find out how her daughter died. She may have dropped dead, but there was more to her death, Susan was sure of that now. The agonising hollow feeling that now lived in every single cell of her body would not, and could not, ever go away. However, to find out and justify just how and why her daughter had died was now the focus of every element of her being. These handwritten pages, Barry’s diary, the horrifying image on the stone, these would put her on the right track.

Standing motionless in the middle of the dark and eerie cellar, Susan slipped the stone into her pocket and clutched the papers momentarily to her chest, holding a piece of her daughter close to her heart. Susan’s eyes began to well up as her mind wandered off to her beautiful daughter. Of a young girl who would grow up and go out into the world to be the best that she could be. A doctor, a lawyer, an artist. Susan had always secretly hoped Vanessa would develop her drawing; a talent which she herself had had but had never fully explored.

Remembering the papers that were clutched in her hands, Susan wiped a tear from her cheek on her soot stained jumper sleeve and started to scan through the torn diary pages. A lot of it seemed mindless. What Vanessa had had for tea, homework she had to do, the normal rantings and ravings of a hormonal teenage girl, but one page stuck out and it would be this verse of scribble that would lodge itself in Susan’s mind and haunt her forever. The text was scrawled across the page as if written by someone who’d lost their mind, and in the darkness, Susan found it difficult to decipher. Moving closer to the lit candles, she started to read:

October 11th

 

Dear Diary

She’s in my dreams again. Grey. Cold. Motionless. Until I’m peering over her and black eyes bore into me. The burning is torture, like it’s inside me, a low deep heat which comes in waves.

 I woke in sweats this morning, I think the burning is real. That when I sleep it physically happens. I’m so tired, my body aches. I can’t concentrate on anything other than her. BLOOD. So much blood.

I see things in the mirror, I’m sure my arms are older, rotting, and then I look and they’re fine. I can’t face my reflection. Dark eyes, and then his breathing behind me. He’s only saying good morning, offering me a lift to school, but it scares me. I hate him. The way he moves, the way he speaks, the way he looks at me. Mum can’t see it, but I see the hate behind his eyes, behind his smiles and affection. It’s there, with the girl. With the twisting pain and scarlet blood. He wants to hurt me, I’m sure of it. Last night I even pushed my bookcase against the door so I’d be safe. So that no one could get me whilst I slept. And then today, R pulls me aside. Says my work is meaningless, disturbing at best. Black and red is all I see, why should I offer more? But R’s there, lurking, sending me glances at every turn. I should never have got involved, but…………hissing words at night it’s all I can hear..

 

There was no more. Susan reached out and leant against the cold stone wall. Her stomach knotted as she thought about what she’d read. She’d failed her daughter. She didn’t have the slightest inkling who her daughter was. To read such conflict and horror from the mind of a 16 year old was disturbing, but to read it from her own daughter was horrifying.

Most of the page was meaningless, she had no idea who ‘R’ could be, nor the woman that seemed to have plagued her daughter’s dreams. In the back of her mind she allowed herself to briefly contemplate Vanessa’s hatred of her father, of her belief of Bernard’s mutual hate. But that simply wasn’t true. Bernard loves Vanessa. Loved Vanessa, Susan corrected herself. He may have driven her out of the house, but he’d have never hurt her, ever. She was not ready to think of the matter in more detail. She’d failed as a parent, failed as a mother. Her daughter was dead without reason. The diary showed that whilst Vanessa had been going through an unimaginable turmoil, Susan hadn’t noticed in the slightest. She’d simply drunk whisky and spent every waking hour at the book shop. She hadn’t even gone to her own daughter’s funeral.