Madness

Chapter 9

My natural reaction was to scream. To shout for my father to leave Mrs Curtis alone. To tell him it was me he wanted. But ten years of abuse from him told me otherwise. "Hunters are silent" my Aunt Alice had once told me.

"Where's Nessa?" He demanded of her.

"I don't know," she choked. She was crying. I would kill him if he dared hurt her.

"Liar!"

His knife moved to her throat. A drop of blood appeared.

"Where is she!?!" he demanded again.

I landed so stealthily I surprised myself.

"I'm right here."

It worked. He whipped around to look at me.

"Hi dad."

Mrs Curtis stared at me in astonishment.

"Nessa, what are you doing? Go! Run!"

Dad whipped back around to look at her, his knife rising once again. I could think of nothing else. So I snuck up behind him, and grabbed a huge tuft of hair from his overgrown head.

He screeched and spun, and his knife spun with him. I dodged it and he started to move toward me with anger in his eyes. I snarled, a low, guttural sound that I had had no idea I could make, and my voice held the snarl as I spoke.

"Leave her. LEAVE HER! You can have me, I'll let you have me, if you just LEAVE MRS CURTIS ALONE!"

He turned to me and walk slowly forward, gently brushing a strand of my hair to one side. I took a deep breath and shot daggers at him. He smiled.

"You have to want it baby cakes. Or Mrs what's-her-name may end up with a knife in her heart. And we all know how much of a shame that would be."

Mrs Curtis, recovered from that last fright, seemed to have watched and learned from me. She snuck behind him as I watched, and she grabbed another fistful of his hair.

As he swung, however, she hadn't moved away enough. And the deep gash that his ragged dirty knife left in her leg, mixed with her scream of pain, set me over the tipping point.

I pounced. And as I pounced I yelled. A horrible sound of anger and fury. My hands reached out to grab him and shove him, and I landed in front of the injured teacher who was one of the four people left in the world who truly cared. Snarling again, I scratched at dad's face, kicked him, punched him, hit him, until he got past my guard to Mrs Curtis.

His knife raised high above her, and she curled up, in a weak attempt of self defence, and I realised, as she watched me with wide eyes, that though she was seriously injured, she was scared for me. That did it.

I jumped onto his back, digging my nails into his wrists until he dropped the knife. I dropped too, grabbed the knife and threw it high into a tree, where, to my utter astonishment, it stuck. He howled and broke the bottle that he had been drinking from. I saw what could be my only chance. And I charged.

Our collision was painful, but it knocked him off balance, making him drop another bottle of what looked like whisky. And while he struggled to regain his balance, I kicked him as hard as I could. And he fell.

Right into the pile of broken glass.

Without stopping to think, I ran straight to Mrs Curtis and helped her to her feet. We wouldn't have long, but he wouldn't leave his knife.

Then something occurred to me. Alcohol cleans wounds. I retrieved the second, smaller whisky bottle and put an arm round Mrs Curtis, helping her to run.

We didn't get far. But we didn't have to. I had no idea how to get Mrs Curtis up a tree, but it was the safest option for us both. And so I picked a good, sturdy-looking oak, and climbed into it's lowest branch. I hung upside down, hand out, and I grabbed Mrs Curtis's arm.

I don't know how I got her up that tree, but somehow, as I reached the top of it, dragging Mrs Nulford behind me, I felt a sad and sorry kind of victory. Memories that I never thought of, blocked out, came flooding back as I remembered my last year with my aunt Alice. The night after my mother died, the day she showed me how to tell what was safe, the way she used to interact with nature, the way she would hug me in tight every night and keep me in the safe vice that was her arms.

This was too similar. So similar it was painful.

"Nessa, why are you crying? What's wrong?"

Typical. She was bleeding to death and still Mrs Curtis cared about me enough to notice a few tears. Like Aunt Alice, I thought. And so I decided to tell her the whole story. My story. My life before the stupid building that the people around here called a school.