Beyond Evil

Chapter Fifty-Two

John turned round when he heard footsteps on the stairs.

It was Henry, pulling on his shirt, his trouser belt still undone. He was dishevelled, his hair sticking up, two scratch marks down his cheek.

‘How’s Dawn?’ John said.

Henry took a breath and then scowled. ‘Against us.’

‘So what now?’

As Henry passed John, he glanced outside to where the hole had been dug. ‘Our mission is the important thing. We can’t be distracted. Dawn was going to betray us. If we let her go, we’re finished, all of us.’

John turned to follow Henry into the living room. When he got there, Lucy looked up.

‘We need to deal with the problem,’ Henry said. ‘She needs to join her sisters.’

The mood in the room improved. Jennifer smiled. Gemma jumped to her feet, and Lucy grinned. She held out her hand, and Henry grabbed it and helped her to her feet.

Arni banged his stick on the floor. When everyone turned to him, he said, ‘Let’s do it. John, go get her.’

John ran upstairs. As he got higher, he heard soft cries coming from Henry’s room. When he opened the door, Dawn was curled up in a corner. She had put her clothes back on, but her top was ripped, so that she had to hold it over her chest. Her trousers weren’t fastened properly. As John got closer, he saw swelling around her eye and a trickle of blood from her nose.

‘You need to come downstairs,’ he said.

She looked up at him, and her eyes were pure hatred, her brow heavy, lips clenched tightly. ‘You could have stopped this.’

He closed his eyes. He had no control anymore. ‘Downstairs,’ he said.

Tears started to run down her face. ‘I won’t say anything. Just let me go.’

John shook his head. ‘No, downstairs.’ He went over to her and gripped her arm. She pulled against it at first, thumped him a few times in his chest, but he ignored it, so her shoulders slumped and she went with him.

As John got to the top of the stairs, he looked down and saw everyone waiting for him. Dawn pulled against him again but he held firm. When they got to the bottom, Arni grabbed her and took her outside, everyone else following.

She shrank back at the cold. The warmth from the day was gone. Arni kept pulling and so she stumbled as she went, her cries lost in the clamour from the group. Footsteps on grass, gleeful shouts. When Arni got to the stones, he pulled her towards the flat stone, the large one that was horizontal like a table. Arni held her by the hair, so that her legs and body thrashed, but she couldn’t escape. She started to scream, but no one tried to stop her. There wasn’t anyone near enough to hear.

Henry appeared by her feet, and she looked along her body towards him, her eyes wide. Her screams turned to a whimper and her head went back in despair.

‘We need a knife,’ Henry said.

Gemma ran back into the house. No one said anything, so that the only sounds were those of Dawn’s cries as she struggled against her captors. When Gemma emerged from the house, she was holding a carving knife. The blade glinted in the moonlight.

John could feel the tension, everyone watching as the knife was passed along the line to Henry. He held it and turned it in his hand before he nodded at the two women stood closest to Dawn.

They smiled and then each grabbed a leg of her trousers and pulled, and although her hands reached down to stop it, it was no use. They kept on pulling until her trousers were off, her legs skinny and pale. Then they pulled at her shirt, ripping it, until it was just shreds of cloth on the ground. Dawn was naked apart from her knickers. She crossed her legs in a vain attempt to keep some dignity, but it was futile. Her underwear was torn off, so she lay there, naked and sobbing.

John was transfixed. Her body was skinny, so that he could see the sharp bones of her hips and ribs, her legs bony and mottled and pale. He knew that Dawn hadn’t participated as much as the others. Some of the people enjoyed the sexual aspect of the group, the lack of inhibition, but Dawn had never really taken part.

People rushed forward to grab her ankles and wrists, spread-eagling her. Her head was back and she was panting hard. She tried to pull against them, but she couldn’t, they were too strong for her. John could hear her skin scraping on the stone, could see the blood on her heels. She was looking at the sky, until her gaze blurred over from her tears.

He didn’t know what to do. What they were doing was wrong, he knew that, but he felt powerless against the group.

Henry stepped up to the stone, so that he was at her side. He looked around the group, tried to look each one in the eye.

‘If we are to take our movement forward, we cannot afford traitors,’ Henry said. ‘That’s just the way it has to be.’

People mumbled that they understood.

He smiled. ‘Apology is of the other world,’ he said to the group. ‘The one where life is about accumulation and greed. That’s how man deludes himself, because he does what his heart desires, not caring about others, but then he is racked with guilt, and so he apologises and tries to make amends. But why? It’s just a candle in a dark place, an illusion of light, because he knows it is wrong and so he tries to pass the burden by apologising.’ He looked down at Dawn. ‘No one here apologises for anything, but yet you still do.’

Dawn shook her head frantically, moaning, scared. More tears squeezed out of her eyes.

Henry held up the knife. ‘We know how it is,’ he said. ‘Who goes first?’

Dawn knew what was coming next, because her struggles became more frantic.

Gemma stepped forward. ‘Me first,’ she said, and held her hand out for the knife.