Unlovely- A Tale of Madness

by Risa Fey

  Close the door, one of the voices said.

  But Cora did not obey. “Please, come in.” She stepped aside to give him room.

  Mr. Philips hobbled automatically, head wobbling on the twig of his emaciated neck. His finger bones crackled at his sides, and his wheezing became increasingly hoarse. His joints were stiff, cheeks hollow. He brought with him the smell of decay and the imbued perfumes of a boggy forest.

  After closing the door, Cora rushed to the kitchenette and fetched him a glass of water from the tap.

  Mr. Philips blinked at the liquid that was handed to him. Cora guessed he hadn’t seen water during all that time he had been wandering.

  Before drinking, he tried to wet his arid lips. And then he downed the contents in one gulp.

  Setting the glass down, he wiped his mouth off on his sleeve. Unexpectedly, he asked, “Who’s the lad? Did you get married?”

  Cora started. Her head swiveled around the room inquiringly, but she could not see her lover in any of the mirrors.

  “Ah. That must be why you stormed off. It wasn’t a panic attack after all, was it? Had to elope with him, did you?” His grin was crooked.

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Why, the young man standing right beside you! Mr. Himmel, I presume.” He winked, but then bowed forward in a sudden fit of coughing.

  Cora was baffled. She saw no one standing beside her. She figured the old man must be delirious.

  “Quite a handsome fellow, actually.” Mr. Philips cleared his throat. “You did well for yourself, Cora—and he did, too. Lucky man, to have such a lovely wife.” His eyes widened meaningfully in their sockets, taking in the sight of the invisible man supposedly standing beside her.

  “Good Lord…” He relaxed back into his chair. “What are you swinging that heavy sickle around for? Someone’s going to get hurt, you know.”

  Cora stepped forward immediately. “Mr. Philips, there is no one else in the room but you and me.”

  The old man sighed and shut his eyes. “There’s a wild dog out there, you know.” He pursed his lips, breathing heavily through his nose. “Damned beast chased me off the road. Some irresponsible owner. I demand to know who it is. I’ll sue.”

  So that explained how he got lost.

  “How long were you out there?” Cora asked.

  Something about the conversation just wasn’t right. Nothing was adding up. Either Mr. Philips was dead and this was his revenant come back to haunt her, or he was real and Thaed had lied about killing him. If he was real, then that meant he had been lost in the woods for days—which would somewhat explain the delusional comments. But if he wasn’t real…

  Had anything been real?

  The fire had to be real, though. She had seen the ashes snowing down on the trees with her own eyes. It couldn’t have been a hallucination. Or had he maybe escaped the store without getting caught in the fire like Thaed had thought?

  Mr. Philips did not answer. He set his mouth into a grim line, and the hardness of his features only seemed to become stonier. The rust-colored moon shined in through the unshuttered window onto the dining table, dying his sallow face with a blood-tinged wash.

  Cora squatted beside him, gazing straight into the old man’s unblinking eyes.

  His chest was still. His eyes no longer wandered about unsteadily, and not a single muscle in his body so much as twitched.

  Heart pounding, Cora quailed at the realization he was dead.

  For a good ten minutes Cora paced around the room, wringing her hands, rubbing at her neck. Rounding to Mr. Philips’s side once again, she felt for his pulse but there was none.

  Cora shook involuntarily. His body was freezing, as if he’d been dead for many hours.

  “You can’t be,” she murmured softly. “You were literally… just…”

  Cora stifled her screaming in her hands.

  CHAPTER 14

  SOMEONE WOULD BLAME her. She had invited Mr. Philips into her home, and he would have last been seen after she had stormed out of the shop. The rage she had demonstrated on the day she quit would be enough to begin establishing preliminary theories about motive, and if his car was abandoned somewhere nearby, no one in their right mind would doubt that she had done it.

  But something was odd about the whole situation.

  Cora frowned. A man with a sickle? What on earth was that supposed to mean?

  She turned to one of the mirrors, and Thaed was standing there, looking in on the scene with a meditative blandness.

  “Hallucinations,” he explained. “He was already gone, lost in the corridors of Hell. His body was only catching up to being dead.” Then he addressed her obvious skepticism: “The dying often hallucinate as they pass over from this world. They see Death, or their buried kin—sometimes even an angel or deity familiar to their culture.”

  “They’ll think that I did it.”

  They’ll figure you poisoned the water, cackled an invisible bystander.

  Thaed fixed her with a penetrating glare. “Then bury him. Dig a hole out back—no one will know.”

  “What about his car?” Panic was slowly taking form, boring its roots into the periphery of her subconscious. She wasn’t even aware yet that the voices were talking to her again.

  “He should have his keys on him,” Thaed said.

  “The car’s broken down. Didn’t you hear him?”

  Thaed rolled his eyes. “Get rid of him first. Then we can figure out what to do about the car.”

  Cora blew out her nose and then pressed a hand over her forehead. It was her only option, she supposed. Anyone else in the same situation would do the same.

  She started searching Mr. Philips’s pockets for the keys, but couldn’t find them.

  Throw him down the well, spoke a tenuous, soft voice.

  Cora stiffened at the sound of the unsolicited suggestion. It hit her then that the voices must be coming back.

  They’ll never think to look inside the well. Hide him there. The voice was insistent and harsh—and almost gleeful.

  She could see the well from the living room window. Its gray-white rocks glittered faintly from the minerals refracting in the moonlight. The wooden frame that supported the well bucket looked like it could crumble at any moment, and the bucket was tied to the wooden supports with a rotted rope. The wood was blotchy with lichen and moss. The well’s mouth was a few feet wide—large enough to drop a dead man’s body into it. And if she weighted Mr. Philips’s body down with rocks, then this method of disposing of him would be nearly foolproof.

  But Thaed burned Mr. Philips in the fire, she reminded herself in a brief moment of mental clarity. Mr. Philips had mentioned nothing to her about the fire in his shop.

  Oh, but he did! chimed in a voice. Didn’t you hear him? After all, Mr. Philips was a zombie, still confused and catching up to his own death. So even if he didn’t mention it, that doesn’t mean anything.

  Drop him down the well and that will put him out for good. Even if it doesn’t, he won’t ever be able to climb out!

  Smart of you to poison him. It’s a good way to get rid of a body without all the bloody mess. I think he got what he deserved.

  Dead and gone. Good riddance.

  But I didn’t poison him, Cora insisted. He was already dead—or so You all said.

  All she’d done was help Mr. Philips, but it hadn’t done him any good. The water had been clean, and certainly not laced with poison. Still, her innocence would be disputed.

  Cora struggled to support the chilly corpse in her thin arms. With what little strength she had, she dragged Mr. Philips out of the warm cottage and into the foggy night. The eerie blankets of ash from Thaed’s pyromancy were back, descending in gentle flurries like plump snow. Everything was covered in a cindery fleece of silver and gray, and the dead man’s flaccid legs left a trail in their wake, leading towards the well.

  Cora had to pause a few times to recollect her strength, but she still managed. Over the years, the we
ll had fallen into disuse. Dark-green weeds and empurpled creepers webbed over the top and sides of the decaying stone.

  Cora slumped the dead body against the wall of the well and tried to remove its covering, but she could barely fit her scrawny fingers into the jagged chink between the lid and lip. She didn’t have the strength to lift the covering, but she tried to leverage her own weight to at least raise the edge of the lid against the elevated rim; that way, all she had to do from there was push on the lid from the opposite side until it slid off.

  This took Cora nearly half an hour to achieve. Her hands were sore, fingers cramping, and her whole body ached by the time the lid was propped up on the rim. Her face was ruddy from exertion, pale skin glistening with sweat and moisture accumulated by the fog.

  Cora wiped her forehead with the back of a shaky hand. Pivoting on her heel, she dropped to the ashy ground next to Mr. Philips, and he looked at her with his eyes wide open and a lively smile wrinkling up his features. “Next time, just ask for help and I will help you.”

  Heart clenching in her chest, Cora whipped her head up at him and blinked.

  Mr. Philips was drooped over, chin buried in his chest. Both eyes were shut, and his mouth hung slack.

  Better get rid of him before the old zombie comes alive, warned a monosyllabic voice.

  Before the dark spirits take possession and operate him with their puppet strings.

  As if prompted by that caution, Cora left Mr. Philips by the well while she foraged around for stones and fetched some nylon cords from back inside the cottage. Returning to his side, Cora fumbled with the knots, not really knowing what she was doing. The stones refused to stay tied down, and they kept rolling out of the snug loops she was attempting to create. But just when she was about to give up in frustration, Mr. Philips reached over, plucked the cords from her fists, and tied the stones so they stayed fastened.

  Cora stared in numb shock as he proceeded to tie the loose ends to his ankles. He winked when he was done, and offered the remaining rope back into her hand. “It’ll be hard tying my own wrists. You better be the one to do it.”

  Reluctantly, she took the rope from his arthritic fingers. His skin was hard and icy. Simply grazing it on accident sent a shiver of revulsion down her spine. She endured tying the rope to his bony wrists, shuddering every time he moved, and suppressing a retch as he patted her hand when she was done. “Good job,” he said.

  Cora winced and hung her head for a moment to recompose herself.

  When she looked at him again, he was a lifeless corpse, and looked as if he had not moved at all.

  Her lower lip quivered a bit, confused.

  She checked the cords, and they seemed secure. The stones were heavy enough that she was certain they would hold his full weight below the surface of the water.

  Hurry, hurry, hissed a spying voice from behind an alder tree. Before the authorities arrive.

  “You’re fine,” her lover intervened, apparently standing somewhere nearby. “All you need to do now is throw him over, and that’s it. Cover the well, and no one will ever discover the body till you’re dead.”

  “Are you sure this is okay?” A tremor of uncertainty infused her voice.

  “The alternative would make you look like a murderess. Innocent as you are, you have no alibi. And the last thing I could ever dream of is seeing you put away in prison. It’s a horrible place, a place that a sweet and lovely girl like you would never survive in.”

  You’re right about one thing, one of Them sniffed. She would never survive it. The girl is so damn mentally defunct that she’d kill herself before a week was up!

  She belongs in a mental ward, said another, tied to a bed, lobotomized or drugged to a drooling stupor.

  “Shut up!” Cora snatched her head up in her hands. She trembled at Their ridicule, hiking her knees up in the fetal position to her chest. “Make Them go away,” she begged.

  “First, finish what you were doing,” was all Thaed said, and Cora obeyed, figuring that the man who loved her would know best.

  Cora placed the stones on the rim of the well; she had made sure the cords were just long enough to do so. Lifting Mr. Philips off the ground, she leaned him forward over the rim so that his limp head lolled over the damp shaft’s opening.

  Mr. Philips gasped for air and blinked widely into the impenetrable dark. “Don’t reckon anyone’ll find me down there.” His voice echoed off the mucid stones. “Don’t think even the spiders or worms’ll pick me out down there.” He turned to Cora then with a grisly grin, and his skin appeared translucent and puffy, like he was already drowned and waterlogged. The veins were a greenish hue, and a milky cloud formed over both his eyes.

  Cora shoved the stones off of the rim, and she flipped him over the top in the same move. The impetus of the rocks jerked Mr. Philips forward, and he laughed and howled on the way down. He waved a hand at her in the split-second before he disappeared into the blackness. A column of rainbow-colored bubbles spiraled up out of the well, and the echoes of unintelligible words ricocheted into the woods. The stones struck and grated off the surrounding well walls, and the dead body skidded likewise, plunging down into the pit.

  The last thing Cora heard was a remote splash, then no more sound. She listened intently for a while, squinting at the cindery surroundings. She relaxed only after several minutes of hearing nothing but the chorus of cicadas.

  Cora hove the well’s lid back into place, laying her whole weight against the stony disc until it sank into the rim’s depression.

  Collapsing to the ground, she wiped at her forehead, threw back her head, and sucked in an arid gasp of air. The light breeze cooled her skin. Her limbs were shaking with weakness from the exertion, since she had just worked beyond the limits of her capacity. Her palms ached, but the deed was done.

  Mr. Philips rests with the fishes, she thought in a bleak moment of dark humor. And that thought inspired another ghastly idea.

  In case Mr. Philips wasn’t dead, if he was an immortal zombie, she planned to buy him some companions on her next trip into town: a bag full of aquarium fish from the local pet shop, and maybe even a handful of deadpan frogs.

  Right now, she had to figure out what to do about Mr. Philips’s stranded car.

  “He didn’t have the keys on him,” she said to Thaed.

  “Then they must still be in the car.”

  Cora wobbled onto her feet and brushed the gritty ash from her arms and gown.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE WOODS WERE dripping with paint. Streaks of brown and hazel poured from the tree bark, stretching like warped waterfalls frozen in mid-motion. The leaves dripped their greens and burgundy-blues like rain, creating viscous puddles that stained Cora’s feet up to the ankles. The dark clouds overhead churned with psychedelic colors, flashing electric neon and vivid ultraviolet. The stars streaked across the sky, trailing luminous tails of orange glitter in their wake.

  After a couple hours of searching, during which the voices continued to harass her, Cora found the broken-down car off Rendling Road.

  Her gown got snagged on the blood-tipped thorns of the looming bushes, and the neat white pleats were spattered in rogue droplets of leaf-paint. The bottoms of her slippers were gummy from the puddles, and a lavish smudge of blue acrylic paint covered her lips and cheek. The ashes muted the bright colors of the vegetation, and the rust of the moon continued to overlay everything in a reddish bronze.

  The car, hid from the main roadway of the intersection by some wild bushes, was some sort of classic from the 1970s. Its chassis was matte maroon, rusted to a minty green in some areas, and its left back tire was flatter than a pancake. Black rubber poured over the ground from the deflated wheel, melting outward over the soil into a pond of inky slop.

  Something in the atmosphere had changed. The shadows under the leaves and in the crevices felt like they were alive. They exuded strong gravitational pulls like miniature black holes, and she thought that if she stepped too close to an
y of them, she would be sucked into a vortex and spat into the Outer World.

  These traps emitted a vibration that grew stronger the closer that she got, and it disappeared the more she moved out of proximity.

  The ashes were falling like thick snow now, piling heavier on the car than anywhere else.

  Cora peered in through one of the car’s windows. The key was still in the ignition, the door evidently unlocked since she could see the pin-knobs sticking up on all the doors.

  Cora got in on the driver’s side, sinking into the leather seat. Her view from the windshield was obscured by not only the blanket of gray cinders, but also—to her shock—the windshield was heavily spider-veined, cracked, and pitted with dents.

  Cora took the key in her hands and turned the ignition. The engine cranked but wouldn’t start.

  After several more false starts, Cora gave up. She didn’t know what to do with the car, since she wasn’t strong enough to push it anywhere. But then, the answer finally came to her from one of the voices that was watching.

  He burned the shop down, didn’t he? It said. Why not also burn the car?

  For only a split second, Cora felt hopeful. But then she realized why that wasn’t a good idea. “It would blow up,” she said, rubbing a palm against her forehead. “Also, someone would probably see the smoke, even if the surrounding trees didn’t catch fire.”

  Not to mention, there would still be the remains, and the car would still be suspiciously close enough to her house.

  The voice grudgingly conceded these points, and then withdrew into one of the malevolent black holes where it waited like a recluse spider.

  Cora pressed her forehead over the wheel and groaned. A feeling of defeat came over her, and she wondered what life was going to be like behind a wall of prison bars.

  Would it really be so bad? She was already cordoned off from society in some sense… Perhaps she might even prefer living in prison. She might take pleasure in the isolation of solitary confinement, with nothing to distract her from her love-occupied thoughts.