Inside Evil

Chapter 13 - Part I

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Susan could feel her knees getting wet as the melted snow beneath her gradually soaked through her jeans. Her hands were numb as she leant forward and removed the browning petals on the grave, leaving only the fresher blooms in place. The snow fell about her, quite thickly now, but Susan was caught, unable to move at her daughter's graveside.

To the outside world, Susan knew she was a wretched sight. In all the weeks since Vanessa's burial, it wasn't until this early December evening that she'd finally decided to go. Ridgewood florist was already closed, and with most of the shops preparing for Christmas there was little in the way of flowers. What were flowers to her dead daughter anyway? She stared at the wreaths that were crumbling away. Vanessa could make no use of these.

The tears that had streamed over her face had dried and frozen, leaving slug like trails running over her cheeks. Her eyes were red and raw, and she'd run out of the pocket sized pack of tissues within minutes and had to use her coat sleeve. Now, having released her anguish, Susan sat in the dark alone, the church floodlights dancing above her as the snow fell through their beams of light.

As she leaned back from the grave, scattering the dropped petals across the whitening ground, she felt a weight against her leg. The stone disc, its grotesque image of her daughter engraved upon its surface, was with her at all times. It was a secret known only to her, which Martha and now the mostly informed DC Frans, knew nothing of. They both had seen the newer disc which was forming in her bookshop cellar. The pale green stone with Roberta Arlington's face upon it becoming less translucent by the hour, but neither had any idea that a previous disc of Susan's beloved daughter now travelled freely through Ridgewood, hidden deep inside a pocket.

Though she and Martha had talked freely with Karl Frans about the deaths, about the figures in the cellar, about Roberta Arlington's increasing anger against Susan accompanied by a lacklustre for life, she had made no mention of Vanessa's diary pages. Karl had asked after Barry's journal, but Martha seemed resilient in her need to keep it private and had refused all acknowledgement that she'd ever found it. Susan had not needed to make a similar refusal for her daughter's scrawls, with Martha understanding Susan's unspoken agreement to keep such personal matters secret. But, for all that the pages offered a last personal connection to Vanessa, they offered little help. R, the name of someone who Susan had so readily believed was Roberta, was nothing but a red herring. Ronald Millison had abused his place as a teacher, but there was nothing to implicate him in any of the current events. Emily's revelation that Vanessa had discovered a dead body had come too late. She, Martha and Karl Frans had all agreed that there was some kind of witchcraft travelling from person to person. For a split moment, though longer than she would ever admit, Susan had wished that it had been Emily to discover the corpse instead of Vanessa.

Nothing else in Vanessa's pages had any meaning. Carefully, Susan removed the crumpled sheets from her pocket and looked one last time at the words. She noticed the curled font, the open circles on top of the i's, and the way in which Vanessa had doodled around the edges of the paper. Taking a lighter from her pocket, Susan held the papers and lit the bottom corner, watching the tiny flame increasing in size until it engulfed one entire side. As the paper blackened and curled towards her fingers, Susan dropped it into the snow by Vanessa's grave, watching as the soft white crystals melted and sizzled as fiery heat touched icy cold.

Barry's journal was her only hope now. It was her only means of discovering the truth, and though she could hardly recall it, Susan knew that the writing and riddle held within the pages of her friend's husband's mouldy journal was the only place left that she could look.