Property of Blood Read Online Free PDF

Then he whispered, “Believe me, you’re safer like this. Look, hold these squares of gauze over your eyes.” He placed them in position and I held them while he cut the plasters. One piece over each eye, covering the gauze, then long, broad strips from temple to temple, centred on my eyes, then above, then below, centred again. He pressed them hard to model them round my nose and with each successive layer I felt blinder and blinder, for no logical reason since I’d been blind after the first.
    “‘I’m warning you—don’t touch them! Don’t ever touch them!”
    ‘I hadn’t moved a muscle. Why was he yelling at me? “I promise, I…”
    ‘He put a finger over my lips and whispered, “If you ever feel them coming off, tell me. If they see you trying to peer over or under them there’ll be trouble. Now I have to do your ears.”
    ‘I was dismayed. To be deaf as well as blind might be more than I could bear. I was afraid of going mad but not afraid of what he was going to do. I suppose I thought he’d put cotton wool in my ears and more plasters on top. I felt him change position.
    “‘You have to lie with your head on my knees.” He pulled me forward and I lay on my side, curled up and with my head in his lap. I heard the zip go up.
    “‘Here.” Butcher. I felt safe because Woodcutter was between us with his back to the opening. “You’ve to use these.”
    “‘We can’t use them. She’ll never stand the pain, you can take it from me. She’ll go off her head and we’ll never cope with her. There’s no need.”
    “‘Boss’s orders.”
    “‘All right. Give them here.” The zip went down.
    ‘Woodcutter bent his face close to mine and I could feel his skin. He had taken his mask off. He whispered, “Feel these,” and placed my hand on what was in his. I understood.
    “‘D’you know what they are?”
    “‘Yes.” They were the hard rubber earplugs that divers use.
    “‘I’m not going to use them because the pain would kill you but you pretend I have, understand? You don’t hear anything, anything. Now lie still.”
    I lay still. He stuffed a bit of cotton wool into my right ear and poked it deeper and deeper with his finger until the pain was so terrible I tore my head away.
    “‘Keep still. That’s cotton wool. You want me to use those hard plugs instead?” I kept still. He went on pressing until he seemed to have screwed into my brain and my outer ear was full. I heard him fish for other things in the bag and the sound of a cigarette lighter. Then a pause.
    “‘Keep still. I’m going to drop hot wax from this candle onto the cotton. If you move an inch I’ll burn you. I shan’t be able to help it.”
    ‘The wax fell. Plaff… plaff… plaff. The soft noise moved through my head in waves, stones thrown in a pond. Plaff… Then more layers of cotton wool, its soft rustie as loud as the sea. Plaff… plaff… plaff… and more cotton and wax and more …
    “‘Turn over.”
    “‘Oh, please …” I was no longer tense. I felt as weak and helpless as a baby and I began to cry like one.
    “‘Don’t cry! Not with the plasters on!”
    ‘I had forgotten, and now the skin under my eyes, my cheeks, and temples burned under the sticking plaster as though I were crying acid.
    “‘Turn over. Breathe deeply and you’ll stop crying.” And again he poked deep into my ear, holding me by the neck this time so that I couldn’t jerk away from the pain. Plaff! The wax came again, and when both ears were covered I was in another world. I had to learn to live in the dark with two big seashells clamped permanently to my ears, with the constant, insistent roar of the sea in the black night. Out of the night an invisible hand came to get hold of mine, and Woodcutter’s voice murmured, lower than the noise of the waves.
    “‘Give me your hand. I’ll have to take this ring off.” Patrick’s ring! My most precious possession! “Please don’t. Oh, please not this