by Gary McMahon
But no, the mere thought of such an act repulsed him. The idea of eating someone else’s grubby flesh (however much he cleaned and prepared it beforehand) failed to appeal.
Just what kind of serial killer was he, if he lacked the stomach for the more extreme end of the spectrum? It was almost funny: a squeamish killer, put off by the thought of a little recreational anthropophagy…
Looking at the tiny exposed area of the kitchen window, he wondered what was going on out there. Clouds blocked the weak sun, light rain acting as a further filter to restrain the flimsy daylight. The electricity was still out, so he had been unable to receive any news from the outside world. Since last night’s revelatory experience, he’d felt trapped inside Mother’s house, like a zoo animal shut away from the public, a beast not fit to be seen. There were killers out there now, and they were just like him – or at least very similar. He should fit in perfectly well, if only he could break the final bonds that held him to Mother and step outside these ugly walls.
The long-held illusion that kept normal people from going crazy had been stripped back to reveal the bitter truth: that society was a sham and it was good to do what the fuck you wanted; take stuff, do things, hurt or even kill people. The ones who accepted this truth quickest would reign supreme. Everyone else was just cattle.
He looked up at the ceiling, trying to see beyond the cracked plaster. A spider web caught his eye, strung delicately between the light shade and its fitting. The web contained several dead flies, all balled up to be consumed at a later date. The powerful visual metaphor was not lost in him; he knew that he had to sit down to his own feast. But the Mother spider was holding him back; poised in her web she still had influence over his behaviour.
“Bitch!” he slammed his hand down on the kitchen counter, ignoring the pain when he caught the edge of a knife left out God knew how many days before.
A dull thud came from upstairs, drawing his attention. He glanced once again upwards, narrowing his eyes, his skin tightening across his skinny muscles. A large black spider scuttled across the web, heading for an early dinner. Daryl smiled. “Bon appetit.”
The sound was repeated, louder this time, more insistent. Was Mother trying to climb out of bed again? He could not imagine where she might get the energy, or how she had summoned the strength to move even an inch across the sweaty mattress.
Anger flooded his senses, filling him up like steaming water poured into a bathtub. Everything he ever tried to do, every plan he made and each tiny step forward he took, she was there, preventing him from revealing his true self. Keeping him trapped.
He turned and left the room, heading for the stairs. Pausing at the foot of the stairs, he cocked his head and listened. It was now silent up there, as if she knew he was coming. Slowly, he placed his foot on the first stair, feeling yet again like a character in a film. All his life, at every important juncture, he’d felt exactly like a character following a script. The only time he’d felt real, less like a cipher, was when he’d murdered Sally Nutman.
The carpet was almost unbearably soft beneath his feet. He climbed, brushing his hands against the ugly wallpaper – he’d never liked Mother’s taste; she made the entire house look like a funeral parlour. There had never been anything young or vital in this house. Even as a baby, she’d dressed him in Victorian style clothing and done his nursery out like a workhouse bunkroom, stifling him before he even developed into a person; cutting off his as yet unformed identity at source.
Shadows gathered at the top of the stairs, shifting across the landing. The curtains were all closed up there, keeping Mother in the dark – just as he’d been kept in the dark regarding his father’s identity.
Up the stairs. Up, up, up we go; up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire. The silly children’s rhyme repeated in his head, playing like a stuck record or a scratched CD. He could not stop it, and even that small fact began to annoy him.
“Mother,” he whispered. “I’m coming, Mother.”
He was reminded of times during his childhood when he’d been ill – or when she’d told him so many times he was ill that he began to exhibit symptoms. Stepping out onto the landing, crossing to the stairs, slowly moving down them: afraid of everything and of nothing that he could possibly name. Calling out for Mother, but she was praying in the kitchen, her bare knees on the cold floor, face raised to the ceiling, eyes awash with bitter tears.
She’d always ignored him on these occasions. Or been completely unaware that he was there, out of bed and desperate for contact. So he’d pour himself a glass of milk and return to bed, rejected and forlorn, listening to her fervent chanting as it rose up the stairwell and crawled into every corner of his small room.
“Oh, yes, I’m coming.”
Suddenly he became aware of his erection, raising its engorged head when it was least welcome.
Where were you when I needed you?
At the top of the stairs, standing next to the huge vase packed with false flowers, he paused and took a breath. He slapped his disobedient penis, but this only served to make it harder, and sent shivers along its thickened length. The beginnings of an orgasm clutched at his lower abdomen, tightening around his balls like tiny fists.
He could no longer hear Mother. She had either given up or managed to make it out of bed. Either way, she would be exhausted. Outside, a distant siren wailed, rain began to stroke the windows, a dog barked three times before whining and falling abruptly silent. Another sound, like the roar of some injured animal, cut across all these other sounds, but he blocked it out, unwilling to even imagine its source.
Finally he walked towards the door to Mother’s room, his hand reaching out to turn the handle. He pushed open the door, stepped inside, and closed it gently behind him.
“Mother. You’ve been a bad girl, and I must punish you.” He tried to ignore the fluttering at his crotch; it felt like silken wings beating against his pubic bone.
A slow stirring; something hunched, something pained, something slouching out of the shadows at the far side of the room. It moved with a deliberation that at first kept him rooted to the spot, unable to look away.
“Mother?”
And then she was upon him, with no time for retreat and no room for error. Her hands clawed at his face, going for his eyes, and her jaws snap, snap, snapped like a mantrap. Her eyes were all white, no pupil; in death, they had turned back inside her skull. Blind, dead, hungry, she snorted like a pig in search of truffles, snuffling, sniffing for his blood, his fear, his meat.
Reflexively, Daryl threw up an arm and caught her in the face. Her grip relaxed for a moment, just enough for him to make some space for himself and ease backwards, evading her clutches. Her fingernails scraped along his upper arm, drawing white lines on the skin. He still sported an erection; it refused to dwindle, even under threat of being ravaged by a dead mouth.
He ran to the other side of the bed and faced her. She stood between him and the door, shoulders hunched, chest curved and unmoving, hands twisted into bestial talons. “Fuck, Mother.” He was breathing heavily, unable to say much more.
His dead Mother began to ease around the bed, moving closer towards him, saliva dripping in a thick ribbon from her mouth. Her nightgown was torn; her withered left breast was showing through the rent in the heavy material. Her scrawny bird-like legs were bowed, incapable of adequately supporting even her slight weight.
The tumours that had grown inside her had wormed their way to the surface. They seemed the only living part of her, and they boiled and popped across the surface of her body, a mass of undead cells creating their own rules, exercising their individual hungers. One of them slid down her arm, across the back of her hand, and slopped onto the floor. It began to inch across the carpet like a fat red worm, still attached to her by thin thread-like veins.
“Oh, Jesus.”
Mother seemed to react to the words. Always fanatically religious, the name of the Saviour triggered some kind of instinctive response in her back
brain. Her head rolled on her neck; she opened her beak-like mouth and made a strange shrill bleating sound, like a sheep or a goat.
“Jsssssssssssssssssssssssssoo,” she whined.
Daryl edged towards the foot of the bed, his foot coming down on the runaway tumour. It was hard and moist underfoot, and it popped like an egg when he brought all of his weight down upon it. Gagging, he forced himself to remain calm. In this grave new world, all the rules had changed: dead people were killers, cancers became sentient and serial killers were relegated to the bottom of the predatory pile.
“Eeeh-eeh!” said Mother, her jaws snapping on air. The sound they made – a hideous click-snap – was horrible in its intensity.
“Sweet Baby Jesus. Lord God Almighty. Hail Mary. The Holy Trinity.” Daryl chanted the words, believing in them for the first time in his life – their power, the faith they represented, the undeniable beauty they conjured in that gloomy little room on a grubby little street in Leeds.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!” Mother moved lightning-fast, click-snapping towards him just as he reached the window and halted. She hit him hard in the side, her sheer momentum carrying him and slamming him against the wall. His upraised arm smashed the window, letting in the cold, harsh night and the ice-cold rain to slap him across the face like an open palm.
“Moth–” Daryl scrabbled on the floor, trying to fend her off, but she somehow managed to remain on top, smothering him. Always smothering, even now, when she was dead.
Daryl struggled against her. She wasn’t exactly strong, but certainly possessed more strength than when she’d been ill and bedridden, unable to even sit up without his help. Her legs kicked, offering resistance against the floor, and her hands grasped at his face, his eyes. One of her fingers slipped between his lips and into his mouth. Daryl bit down; it was an instinctive reaction over which he had no real control. He felt his teeth sink into her thin flesh, grinding through the gristle and severing the bone. The finger came off in his mouth. He spat it out, vaguely disgusted.
And all the time, during this ridiculous attack, he was able to keep a part of himself at a distance from the action. He watched closely as he fought his dead Mother, noting how her flailing limbs moved without real purpose and her hideous jaws were the only part of her body to pose a genuine threat.
Still slightly detached, he managed to roll her off him, and he slid out from beneath her. He crawled quickly away on his knees, pulling himself to his feet using the bed frame for support. Then, turning, he looked for a weapon – anything would do, just to stop her.
Mother pulled herself across the floor, not even bothering to stand. Her jaws click-snapped; her eyes saw only food. Then, like some Chinese martial artist, she somehow flipped her body up so that she was resting on her haunches. She let out a strange strangled cry, like a dying bird, and then leapt towards him.
Daryl shifted to the side, throwing out an arm to grab something, anything, with which to hit her. His hand fell upon a familiar shape, an example of something Mother had kept at her side for most of her life.
Just as she fell upon him, Daryl’s hand closed on the crucifix.
Mother’s mouth clamped onto his arm, but for some reason – possibly the timing of her lunge – she gained no purchase and her teeth merely grazed the flesh, not even breaking it. Daryl brought the big metal cross between them, as if clutching it to his chest. Then, with a single sharp motion, he twisted his wrist and used the artefact to smash her in the face. Mother’s teeth shattered, her body rocked backwards, and once again Daryl forced the crucifix into her face.
The sharp end of the vertical member went straight into her left eye, bursting the china-white eyeball and entering her brain. Mother froze instantly, as if someone had simply thrown a switch to cut off her power. Saliva dribbled from her mouth. Cloudy fluid oozed from the shattered eye socket and down her cheek.
Daryl stepped away from her corpse, fascinated as it toppled forward. Her cheek hit the wooden boards, the fragile bone breaking on impact. The crucifix remained where it was, sticking out of her face like a bad visual joke, an obscene pun he didn’t quite get.
Daryl backed up until he hit the door to Mother’s room. Then he slid down it, his legs giving way through sheer exhaustion rather than as the result of any recognisable emotion. He stared at Mother’s corpse, entranced by the sight of her ruined features. Her clothes seemed to be moving on her body, rippling, as if they were alive. Then, horrified, Daryl realised what was causing the effect.
The tumours that had been growing inside her for so long were attempting to escape their cold host. They burst to the surface of her papery flesh, ripping it and bulging out of the wounds. They looked like raw meat: fist-sized pieces of cheap steak that had gone bad.
Daryl watched as the tumours dropped to the floor, already withering and dying, rolling around as if they were small animals in search of a private place to die. They did not survive long outside of Mother’s corpse. Separated from her essence, they became pointless, their parasitic raison d’etre now gone.
Daryl, on the other hand, would thrive now that she was gone. The old Daryl did not exist: in the blink of an eye, and the flash of a crucifix, he had been replaced by someone else, a being who would rejoice in the chaos around him and make it his own.
And this brand new being had witnessed such rapturous sights, things that the old Daryl could not have imagined, even in his most intense moments of fantasy. Because the old Daryl was dead: he was dead and born again through the destruction of this woman, this monster... this twice-dead Mother.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
RICK FILLED THE hypodermic with the morphine he’d scavenged from the doctor’s apartment. He wasn’t quite sure of the correct technique involved, but was certain that it wouldn’t matter if he got it wrong. Sally was dead, so he doubted that a mistake or a slip of the wrist regarding dosage would cause her much pain.
She’d become restless since his return, as if something had disturbed her. Hungry, he thought. She’s probably hungry. He tried not to think of the human remains he’d seen earlier, pretending that Sally wanted a burger, or a pizza from the local takeaway. He recalled the way she’d refused the frozen steaks…
It had taken him quite some time to remove the dirty dressings, clean up the congealing crimson mess of her skinned face, and then apply a layer of kitchen cellophane before putting on the new bandages. But he didn’t mind. It was his job; the job of a husband and lover; the job of a true friend.
“This won’t hurt,” he told her, smiling. “Not really. Just a bit of discomfort, then you’ll feel a bit sleepy.” He hoped that was true. During his time in the Paras, and then again in police training, he’d seen the effects of morphine and other painkillers on human beings. But those subjects had been alive; this one was dead. What would the morphine do to dead tissue? Would it even work?
Sleepy? Can we make spoons?
“No. No, we can’t.” He flicked the syringe, looking for air bubbles. Not that it mattered. He jammed the plastic hypodermic between his teeth, nervous of accidentally pricking himself in the face. Then, slowly but firmly, he braced Sally’s arm and rolled up her sleeve. The flesh was already turning pale blue, the tell-tale hue of oxygen starvation. Haematomas had erupted along the length of her arm, discolouring it even further. Under her clothing, she was cold to the touch; her veins stood proud, the blood frozen in her system because the heart had ceased to beat.
Rick took the syringe between finger and thumb, lined up a particularly large vein... and then stopped. If the blood was not being pumped around her circulatory system, then how was the morphine meant to do its job? He knew enough to be aware that it worked by affecting certain receptors, a few of which were distributed in parts of the spinal cord. Most of them, however, were located in the brain.
The brain. It was the only part of these dead things’ anatomy that seemed to work, however weirdly. He stared hard at Sally’s freshly bandaged head, at the shallow pits where her eyes
would be.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice dropping an octave.
It's okay, baby. I know you’re just trying to protect me.
It was incredible how quickly he’d adjusted to her speaking to him in this way. He knew it wasn’t real, that Sally could not really communicate and he was imagining her voice, but all the same... it helped, and made it easier to carry out the extreme acts necessary for survival.
I know you would never hurt me.
Without thinking, he diverted the needle to her right eye socket, slamming it in and depressing the plunger. With any luck, the massive dose of opiate would bypass the usual route and go straight to the brain, doing its job and sedating her while also shutting down whatever remained of her central nervous system.
For the first time he wondered why the young doctor across the way had kept morphine in his apartment, especially when he had kids on the premises. He was probably an addict; perhaps he got hooked on the stuff during his training, working impossible hours and surviving on hardly any sleep at all. Rick knew a lot of medics in the army who’d used drugs to get by, particularly when they were posted in high pressure locations – often it was a necessary evil, a way of being able to do your job in impossible situations.
Rick’s drug of choice had always been alcohol. He craved a drink now, but forced himself to wait until this unpleasant task was done. Glancing over at the drinks cabinet, he fixated on the whisky bottle. Fifteen year-old Glenmorangie: a nice drop, bought for him as a gift by Sally.
The morphine seemed to be working. Sally was slumped sideways on the sofa, her body loose, and the tension had gone from her limbs.
Sleepy... so sleeeeeepy... time for beddy-bye.
She was docile, easily manoeuvred. Rick put away the drug kit and transferred it to his rucksack, which he’d taken out of the wardrobe earlier. Inside the bag were also the neighbour’s medical kit (including the rest of the fresh bandages), toiletries, some ammo for the Glock, a map and compass, some Kendal mint cake and a few essential items from the cutlery drawer – a can opener, a spoon and a cork bottle-stopper he’d grabbed purely because it reminded him of their holiday in Greece the year before.
