Free The Garden of Darkness by Gillian Murray Kendall Page A

that had followed her. He took the baseball bat and a gym bag. Sometimes rhymes got stuck in his head as he went on the hunt, and now he muttered to himself as he walked:
    He left it dead, and with its head, he went galumphing back .
    The soft hooting sound was much closer now, and he listened carefully to gauge the direction it was coming from as he ducked under the trees; twigs and leaves crackled under his feet as he went, and, shortly, the hooting stopped.
    It went against instinct, but once he had gained a clearing he called out to the Cured.
    “I’m waiting for you. Maybe I can help you.” He put down the bat, hiding it in the long grass. “I mean you no harm.” He had no way of knowing if his words would mean anything to the Cured, but he had seen cases in which some higher brain function remained. All of the Cured were, of course, insane. An unfortunate side-effect of the treatment. And the Cure had had so much potential.
    He heard the soft sounds again, very near this time.
    And then the sounds changed. The gentle hooting was gone.
    He was almost taken by surprise when the Cured entered the clearing.
    “Help,” it said. Its hair was matted, and its face was disfigured by the thick scars and lesions of Pest. This one must have been in the intermediate stages when the Cure was administered.
    “You don’t need to live like this,” the Master said.
    “I need to eat,” it said. “I hate everything.” Then it took a breath and made the strange hooting noise again.
    “I can take the hate away,” the Master said. The Cured moved closer.
    And the Master picked up the bat and started swinging.
     
     
    T HE MOON WAS high when he got back to the mansion.
    He left it dead
    He wiped the bat clean on the grass. He had already cleaned the hunting knife before sheathing it—scalpels, in his early experiments, had proved too small to be useful.
    And with its head
    He buried the full gym bag and then patted down the disturbed ground.
    He went galumphing back .
    Once in the house, he washed his hands and arms and face and cleaned under his fingernails. Then he went up to Britta’s room.
    She slept. Sound. Safe.
     
     
    H E AND B RITTA worked hard the next day so that the mansion would be inviting when the other children came. They then spent the evening in his collection room in the basement. He thought that Britta looked a little like the girl wearing a pinafore standing in the background of the Sargent painting. Britta sat, looking tiny, in an overlarge armchair opposite him. She looked very alone.
    “Britta?”
    “Yes?”
    “We’re going to build a new world here. You’ll lead it for me. You’ll help me teach the other children, when they come.”
    “You’re Master,” she whispered, giving him, finally, the name.
    He smiled at Britta, as if they now shared a secret.
    “I’ll keep you safe,” he said.
    Then the Master looked up at the painting of the four little girls. He tried to read the future in their faces, but the shadows around the glowing children only seemed to mock him.

CHAPTER NINE
    THE FARMHOUSE
     
     
    T HEY MOVED SLOWLY , and Jem and Clare took turns helping Sarai, who, after some painkillers that Jem had found in the pharmacy, was both still in some pain and woozy from the drugs. When they reached the farmhouse that Jem, Mirri and Sarai had claimed as their own, it was full dark.
    Once they had settled Sarai in bed, Clare collapsed on a sofa, Bear at her feet. She was too tired to worry about the Cured or the master-of-the-situation’s cure or what was going to happen next. She noticed vaguely that the others slept in the same room, but before she could really take in the arrangements at the farmhouse, she was in a dreamless sleep.
    In the morning, Mirri and Jem showed her around while Sarai slept; Sarai had a low fever, but there was no redness around the stitches, and she slept soundly.
    “The penicillin should kick in and get rid of that low-grade fever,” said