Whilst Ella watched as Marianna slept, she drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair at a slow, but steady pace. What she’d done to Martins barely concerned her. What might happen in the next hour was what troubled her more. She reached out to brush aside loose flecks of hair from Marianna’s face, just as her eyes began to open.
Marianna sat bolt upright, clutching the bed sheets to her chest. ‘What the hell are you doing to me?’ she demanded to know
‘I’m letting you go.’
Marianna glared, incredulous. ‘What?’
‘It’s simple, you get dressed, and you leave.’
‘But, why am I not dressed? And what the hell did you do to me?’
‘I needed to remove your clothing to extract stem cells from you. That’s all!’
‘Stem cells?’
Ella knew then, Marianna was oblivious to her mother’s actions in trying to kill them off. She stood from the chair, passing Marianna her clothes and wandered over to the window. Once there, and without turning to look at Marianna, she began to put in plain words, the entire truth about her mother.
‘About seventy years ago, when Alice, or Celia, which ever you prefer,’ she said, with a dismissive wave. ‘Was only sixteen, I helped-’
‘My mother has already told me about what you did. How you organised her escape, how you forced her brother to kill those two-’
‘Let me stop you right there,’ said Ella, finally turning from the window. ‘I did arrange her escape, you are right about that. I gave Hal the keys and told him no-one would be around to stop him from getting her out of there. But let me assure you of one thing, lady, her brother didn’t kill anyone that night. Alice was the one who put the dead girl in her room, Alice was the one who killed the other two girls, and Alice was the one who placed lit candles under their beds, not Hal. My only instructions to him were to get her to the kennels and to make sure she left, which he would’ve done, had he not been almost killed by her in the tunnels before she returned to do those things.’
‘What are you talking about? She loved her brother; she would never do anything to harm him.’
‘Again, Marianna, you are right, but only half right, and believe me, I certainly had no intention of telling you what I’m about to, but as you seem to insist on your mother’s innocence so dutifully …’ she paused, adding weight to her forthcoming revelation. ‘May I suggest you brace yourself,’ she finally added. ‘Alice did love her brother, and both hated him at the same time. She hated him because she loved him, and because he wouldn’t love her back, at least not in the way she wanted.’
Marianna pulled her blue top over her head, and in a hurry, pushed her arms into the sleeves. ‘Are you saying my mother was actually in love with him?’
‘Infatuated would be the nearer of truths, Marianna.’
Marianna rose from the bed picking her shoes up and started across the floor. ‘I’m not listening to any more of your pitiful lies,’ she said, trying the locked door. ‘You said I could leave.’
‘You can, but first, and whether you believe me or not, you’re going to listen to what I have to say to you. Now sit back down!’ Ella demanded.
Obviously unhappy with her situation, but unable to do anything about it, Marianna came back to sit on the bed. Ella moved from the window and returned to the armchair to sit before her.
‘You gave them up when they were babies,’ injected Marianna, in an attempt to stamp some of her own knowledge onto the conversation. ‘So how could you know this?’
‘I may have given them up, Marianna, but I followed them, and I watched them grow. Then something in Alice’s attitude made me suspect there was a problem between them; I just didn’t know what the problem was. And just before I was ready to get them out of Martinsville, they disappeared. They took it on their own backs to escape.’
‘Are you trying to tell me the note pushed under my mother’s door wasn’t your doing?’
‘Of course it wasn’t, your mother was no fool, Marianna. She knew if she could convince Hal their time had come, he’d do his best to protect her. He may not have loved her in the way she wanted, but he loved her nonetheless. That note was written by Alice.’
‘So if their time, as you put it, hadn’t come, why were they chased, and why was Hal injected?’
Ella sighed, slightly readjusting her posture. ‘That note wasn’t the only one your mother wrote. Unbeknown to me at the time, another note was found. One that Alice hid in her adopted mother’s pocket as she was about to leave for the town hall, just before the rain fell on the day they tried to escape. On arriving there, Jeannine gave the note to Thomas Martins, and he organised for a hunt to begin as soon as the rain stopped. It was within that following week they were due their injection, and I would have gotten them out had they waited. Thomas had Hal injected and left out there as a punishment for trying to escape. He brought your mother back for other reasons.’
‘I don’t understand … if my mother was no fool, as you say, then why would she jeopardise her chances of escape? That makes no sense at all.’
‘I didn’t know why at the time, but when I spoke with Hal, after we found him in the tunnel, he confessed to me all of Alice’s feelings towards him. The reason for the second note then became perfectly clear. Alice wanted to get away from Martinsville, but she needed Hal’s help to do it. So she wrote the first note. And because her love for him went unreciprocated, she wrote the second. Then, whilst they were out there, she turned on him; he told me he fell from that hillside only once. The second time it happened he reached out to her, she took his hand only to release it again, causing him to fall. He said, when he hit the bottom he heard laughter, Alice’s laughter. If I’d have known all of this before I helped her later escape, I’m not sure I would have.’
‘As you said, all of this was seventy years ago, so what does it have to do with me, and more to the point … my stem cells?’
Ella rose to her feet once more, but this time she walked over to an old cabinet standing alone in one corner of the room. She pulled open the top drawer and produced a manila envelope with the courier company’s label “U.P.S.” adhered to it.
‘Inside this envelope is a letter from your mother, the contents of it outlining a proposition that in her words, I’d be foolish not to accept. But don’t let the informality of the letter fool you like they did me,’ she said, passing her the envelope.
Before extracting the letter from within, Marianna studied the envelope, and in particular, the peculiar way it was addressed.
Miss Ella Adams,
C/o Martinsville police station,
Latitude: 36° 41' 29" N
Longitude: 79° 52' 22" W
Marianna pulled the letter from inside to find it sealed in clear cellophane in order to preserve it; she then began to read to herself.
“I do hope I find you well, mother. Although, that can hardly be said for Mr Ward, whom I admit, does deserve to be where he is, but you know just as well as I do, only on two accounts. The reason for my contacting you out of the blue like this, is both simple, and yet complex at the same time. Allow me to elaborate … I have a proposition to put to you, one I’m sure will interest both you and the rest of your Collective. I take it you still call them that?
So, to that proposition, first the simple part. I own a business whose primary undertaking is the distillation of donor blood, it comes in, we clean it, and it goes out again. Simple, just like I said. Now then, can I take it I have your full attention? Good! And here’s the complex part of that little proposition. I want you to stop taking and killing young girls, and stop for good.
In return for your promise of that, I will personally see to it that all of those living in Martinsville will receive a regular supply of blood from my company. And as I will be the only one outside Martinsville who will be aware of our little deal, I will personally deliver the consignment to you, each and every month. The details of which, we can arrange when we meet. So, can I take it you agree that this is an opportunity you would be foolish not to accept?
On the back of this letter I have included my contact details, so if I haven’t heard from you within the next seven days; I will take it you do not wish to take up my offer.
Your daughter,
Celia Brontrose
P.S. Please destroy this letter after you have read it, as it could very easily incriminate both of us, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want that to happen.”
Marianna turned the letter over to see the contact details on the reverse; they were indeed those of her mother. And the signature looked authentic enough, but certainly not beyond forgery. She slipped it back into the envelope.
‘I still don’t understand the significance of me being here.’ she said.
Ella again sat in the armchair before continuing. ‘I accepted Alice’s proposition purely on the basis that it would save lives. I’ve never liked what we have to do to survive, Marianna, but it’s a necessity we have no choice but to live with.’
‘You have the choice of animal blood. Mother has it delivered to her company on the pretext of using it for tests.’
‘No we don’t, once we get a taste for human blood, there’s no going back. We can take animal blood, but our bodies reject it and make us to vomit it out. Alice has been lying to you about that, too!’
Ella watched as Marianna’s eyes moved towards the floor, obviously realising how deep her mother’s deceit actually went.
Marianna lifted her head. ‘You said it was you who accepted the deal?’
‘Yes, I accepted it. Thomas would never have agreed to any outsider knowing what goes on here. He was totally unaware the whole time.’
‘But surely he’d find out sooner or later?’
‘He did, but sadly by then it was too late.’
‘Why was it too late?’
Ella paused. ‘Over the past year Thomas had become a recluse; he always had blood taken to him. We’d drain it from one particular girl over the period of about a month, and store it in refrigerated flasks. So … when he was given the blood Alice supplied to us, he suspected nothing.’
‘Well what did you mean by, but sadly?’
Another pause. ‘Alice somehow contaminated the blood she delivered to us, and last month alone over fifty have perished, all of them, infected with leukaemia. And now Thomas has it, and that’s the reason you’re here.’
‘So that’s what all this is about, you kidnapped me as revenge for what my mother did to you?’
‘No, Marianna, you were only taken to help Thomas recover, and with a small but important modification to your stem cells, he was to save the rest of us, by stopping our need to intake blood.’ She made a motion to touch Marianna but her reach was evaded. ‘He said we were going to be just like you,’ she said, softly.
Marianna stood, handing back the envelope. ‘I want to get out of here, right now!
‘Fine, but I want you to keep hold of that letter.’
‘Why?’
‘Because now you have a decision to make, a big decision, and only you can make it,’ Ella said, walking towards the door. ‘I have a feeling the authorities are going to be here soon, and I intend to surrender what’s left of the Collective to them. When you see her, you can tell your mother she has her wish, Martinsville is finished.’ Ella unlocked and opened the door. ‘Put your shoes on and then join me downstairs,’ she said, leaving the room.
Marianna folded the manila envelope and pushed it into one of the pockets of her shorts. She was about to walk from the room when something halted her, a noise, a distant noise. Standing still and holding her breath for complete silence, she heard it again. It seemed to come from behind the wall left of the door.
Marianna pressed her ear against the wall and the sound became clearer. Someone in the adjacent room was crying, and it sounded like the voice of a child. With her ear still pressed hard against the wall, she knocked, the crying carried on, but her knock was returned.
‘Hello, can you hear me?’ she said.
‘Yes I can,’ came the reply, the little voice was faint, but audible.
‘Do you live here?’
‘No,’
Marianna still heard the crying as the other person spoke to her. ‘How many of you are there?’
‘Just two of us, I’m Jenny Walsh, but I don’t know who this is with me, and she won’t stop crying, and I’m scared!’
‘Okay, Jenny, I’m Marianna, please listen to me. You’re not crying, which tells me you’re a very brave girl. How old are you?’
‘Thirteen.’
‘And are you or the other girl hurt in any way?’
‘I’m not, but I don’t know about her. I don’t think she is.’
‘Right, I’m going to get you out of there very soon; I won’t leave without taking both of you with me, okay?’
Marianna didn’t hear a reply.
In the front hall, Ella removed a thick wooden beam from across the front doors, she was about to push the key into the lock when another dull thud followed by more rumbling stopped her. After walking into the kitchen she descended the steps to the basement, and again there was dust. She wondered what the hell was the stupid man was playing at?
Climbing back up, she walked through the hall opening a door to her right, there she checked once more on the Collective. None of which had been disturbed by the sound of what could only have been another explosion. Looking from the window she saw no sign of a bomb going off. No smoke. No fire. She moved across to the other side of the hall to check on the Collective gathered at that side, they too seemed undisturbed by the explosion.
