Bone Harvest

by James Brogden

  ‘Who… what the fuck are you?’

  ‘I am…’ It paused, as if the question had never occurred to it before. ‘Unfinished. She brought me back too soon. You’re going to finish the job properly.’

  It came fully inside and slumped down to sit against the wall opposite him. It – he – looked exhausted, and no wonder if he’d travelled from Dodbury in that state. There was something porcine about the shape of his face that reminded Matt of Gar, and of the skull in the abattoir shrine.

  ‘Are you… are you Moccus?’ he whispered.

  The figure considered this. ‘I would have been, once,’ he decided. ‘Once I was also a man who was murdered just for trying to keep his wife in line. When I’ve reclaimed all that belongs to me, I’ll know. What’s your name?’

  ‘Matt. Matthew. Hewitson. Sir. My lord, I mean.’

  ‘Well, which is it?’

  ‘Er, Matt, I suppose.’

  Moccus tipped his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and sighed. ‘Matt, you are the Farrow now. Serve me and you will be rewarded.’ He cracked an eyelid and glared, and even that much was enough to make Matt squirm. ‘Betray me and I’ll take what I need from you instead. You may be the Farrow, but you could very easily become the Herd. Don’t forget that.’

  ‘I won’t. Sir.’

  ‘Good.’ The eye closed, and Matt was released. ‘And now you’re thinking, what kind of a threat is that?’ Moccus murmured. ‘Look at how sick and frail he is. He can barely stand.’

  ‘No, honestly, I’m not.’

  ‘Then you’re either an idiot or a liar, because you should be. Give me your hand.’

  Matt hesitated.

  ‘I’m not asking you to cut the damned thing off!’ Moccus snapped. ‘Give me your hand!’

  Matt complied. The unfinished man’s flesh felt cold and clammy, and his fingers gripped Matt’s hand weakly, but then Matt was running through a forest of trees the size of cathedral columns, sprinting at breakneck speed on legs that were like tree trunks themselves, his bare feet sending clods of earth and leaf mould flying, his lungs pumping like forge bellows, and his tusks were like sabres in his mouth. The small creatures of the forest fled before him, but one especially trailed a scent-ribbon of terror that maddened him with the desire to see it split open and bleeding at his feet, and he laughed at the joy of it, and his laughter was a boar’s holler that shook the earth. Then it was gone and he was just Matt again, shivering and gasping like a junkie. It was like what Everett had given him, but the difference was like the difference between Red Bull and cocaine.

  ‘Do you want that?’ asked Moccus.

  ‘Yes! Oh, fuck yes!’

  Moccus grunted with satisfaction. ‘Then you know what to do,’ he replied. ‘Protect me. Serve me.’ He looked around at the derelict pump house. ‘This is a good place,’ he said. ‘It will do for the moment, but we can’t stay here. I can’t wait weeks for the next tusk moon here. The police will find us long before that.’

  ‘I don’t know where else to go,’ Matt admitted.

  ‘I do,’ said Moccus. ‘Swinley. The Place of the Swine. Where they murdered me, over and over again. Where my children languish, hiding in the woods like vermin instead of the hunters that their blood demands they be. My blood. Matthew, take me to my children. I will place you at their head, and I will set you to eat the world.’

  PART FIVE

  HARVEST THE CROP

  1

  INTERVIEW

  TRANSCRIPT OF VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH SUSPECT

  identified as Ardwyn Hughes.

  Date: 23/06/2020

  Duration: 5:41

  Location: Rugeley Police Station, Anson St, Rugeley, Staffs.

  Conducted by Police Sergeant Praveen Kaur.

  * * *

  In the video, Ardwyn Hughes sits at a police interview table on her own, having declined the services of a barrister. She is wearing jeans and a violet blouse with a lace-up neck, from which the laces have been removed, so that it opens quite a way down her chest, a fact which does not go unremarked by the tens of thousands of male viewers who will subsequently comment on it when the video is eventually leaked. Across from her are two police officers – one male, one female. The female officer who conducts the interview has two small strips of wound tape above her left eyebrow.

  PK: I am Police Sergeant Praveen Kaur of Staffordshire Police, Needwood Neighbourhood Team. I would like to ask you some questions concerning the murder of Lauren Emma Jeffries at the Briar Hill allotments two days ago. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you say may be given in evidence. Do you understand this?

  AH: I do.

  PK: You were arrested in your allotment shed, shortly after a male killed Ms Jeffries by cutting her throat. Did you know this man?

  AH: Yes. He was my lover.

  PK: Can you tell us his name?

  AH: I only knew him as Everett, though I’m quite confident that it wasn’t his real name.

  PK: Why do you say that?

  AH shrugging: Because he told me that he stole it from a dead soldier in No Man’s Land in 1915.

  This takes the interviewing officer aback somewhat, and she consults with her partner for a moment.

  PK: And you believed him?

  AH: Everett was a deserter, thief, murderer, and cannibal, but he never lied to me.

  PK: Do you know why he assaulted Ms Jeffries?

  AH: Yes. I told him to.

  PK: And why was that?

  AH: Because our god needed her blood. Although to be accurate, it wasn’t rightfully hers, not since she ate the first flesh.

  PK: Um, yes… So you admit that you incited him to murder her?

  AH: Well yes, obviously. I’m sorry, I thought that was assumed.

  PK: Several witnesses have alleged that you are also responsible for the deaths of three other residents of Dodbury. Would you like to comment on that?

  AH: Not particularly.

  PK: Why not? You’re ready enough to admit attacking Lauren Jeffries.

  AH: I see no point in denying what was demonstrably true and right in front of your eyes. I’m sure that if there are other people that you’re looking for, you’ll find them soon enough.

  PK: But you’ve been very cooperative so far.

  AH: Sergeant Kaur, please don’t mistake self-possession for cooperation. I have no intention of helping you any more than necessary to avoid wasting time. Being in a cell was, yes, one of the two ways we thought this might go, but it’s still not my preferred course of action.

  PK: And what is this course of action intended to achieve?

  AH: The resurrection of my lord Moccus and the establishment of his new covenant.

  She says this with the calm reason of someone discussing nothing more controversial than the weather, and the two police officers share a look.

  PK: Moccus…?

  AH: He Who Eats the Moon. The First Farmer. The Hunter in the Wood. He is a primordial fertility god, ancient even when the Romans arrived, and he has been worshipped on this island since before Christianity was born. We who are his followers are called the Farrow. We sacrifice him and eat his flesh, and in return he blesses us with health and longevity, but that which is taken must be given back, and so from those who eat his flesh some are chosen as vessels to return their gift and renew Moccus for the next cycle. At least, so it will be in the new church. We’re evolving.

  PK: So, you’re saying that your cult practises ritual human sacrifice.

  This is the first and only time that Ardwyn Hughes’ composure breaks, as she flashes with anger.

  AH: We are not a cult! We are a religion. We had a liturgy, prayers, we gave philanthropically to charitable organisations. We don’t commit mass suicide or pray for deliverance by aliens or any of that rubbish.

  PK: You’d think people would have heard about you by now.

  AH: We have, by
necessity, been small in number because there is only so much of the first flesh to go around. This appreciation of how much it is safe to consume is why we have survived for so long – while in contrast it is your civilisation’s wilful greed and ignorance of the same which is why the world is in such danger. This earth, our garden, is burning – literally burning, from the Amazonian rainforests to the Siberian tundra. The glaciers are retreating, and as they go they are giving up their dead. There are plastics everywhere from the top of Everest to the deepest abysses of the ocean, and have even entered the fossil record. This is happening because of your greed and apathy; you are taking too much, much more than the world can provide, but even if you stopped taking everything tomorrow it wouldn’t help because the damage is too severe. We must begin to put things back. We must replenish the world with our lives, our very blood if need be. We must give back what we have taken – that is the lesson Moccus has to teach us.

  PK: And we’re supposed to learn it by killing our own kids? I don’t think so. I’m afraid you’re not going to be in a position to teach much of anything for long time.

  AH: That is because you think like a product of your dying culture, which knows nothing but to invade and proselytise, to send crusaders and missionaries to conquer with the sword and enslave with the word. I will be content to remain in my cell and let those who yearn for a better way to come to me as Mother.

  PK: I don’t think a prison will allow quite that many visitors.

  AH: No, but they always allow phones, if only by their own negligence. My church won’t be a building, and my message won’t be by word of mouth. It will be online, everywhere and eternal. I told you, we have evolved; technology makes it inevitable. It’s started already. You’re helping me even as you sit there, mocking. (At this point, AH looks at the camera and begins to address it directly.) This video will be leaked – if not today then tomorrow, or in a year, or ten, but it will. And in any case, how long will they hold me for? Twenty years? I will preach to my new church from the darkness and when the term of my imprisonment has been served I will return to the world as young as the day I went in, and my church and my lord will be waiting for me. I have no fear of time or age or decay because I have been blessed with the first flesh, and this is my witness.

  What happens next becomes the subject of furious online controversy when the video is inevitably leaked. Some claim that it’s a hoax, nothing more than video and prosthetic effects, but many more are convinced of its truth.

  AH stands up too quickly for the two police officers to stop her – she is preternaturally fast – whips the biro out of PK’s fingers and then, to the horror of both, slaps her own left hand palm down on the table, raises the biro in her right, and slams the point of it through the back of her hand so hard that it goes straight through and impales the table underneath. The table can be seen to actually move as she then tugs her left hand free. She appears to be in no pain and is quite calm, unlike the police officers who are yelling for assistance. AH holds her wounded hand up to the camera in extreme close-up so that the biro’s point can be seen protruding from her palm, and then pulls it back out. For a moment the hole is obvious – light can be seen through it – though it quickly fills up with blood, but then her right hand comes up to grasp her wrist and her thumb smears away the blood, and the hole is gone. She turns her hand over to show the back, and there is no entry wound either, no mark whatsoever except for a small dot of blue ink.

  The video goes viral, of course, clocking up over two million views in the first twenty-four hours, while the hashtags #motherardwyn, #hewhoeatsthemoon, and #replenishtheworld trend for three days.

  2

  HOMECOMING

  THERE WERE NO SIGNS FOR SWINLEY, AND NOT EVEN much of a road.

  Matt had to abandon his car by the side of a narrow lane that was closely crowded by trees, parked as close as he could to their trunks but still afraid that it didn’t leave enough room for anything else to get by and that he was going to return and find the side doors gouged open like a tin can by some dick of a farmer. It was night, and there were no road markings.

  The locals had been worse than useless in response to his requests for directions. They either claimed to have never heard of a place called Swinley or just walked away from him as soon as they heard the name. Moccus’ own instructions had turned out to be hopelessly vague, too, and he’d slept most of the way here, leaving Matt to work it out on his own. On the road between Church Stoke and Minsterley will be a gate hidden in the trees, he’d said. Well there were three roads between that shitsplat village and the other, and he’d driven them all and he’d seen no gates. It wasn’t made any easier by the darkness, night vision or no night vision. They’d stayed at the old pump house until the day had faded before sneaking back to where Matt had parked his car. The yellow Astra had been bought for cash, wasn’t taxed, insured, or registered in his name so he didn’t think it likely that the police would be looking for it. Dodbury was only sixty miles away as the crow flies, but he’d driven here along a maze of minor roads to avoid the ANPR cameras on the M54 and the A-roads, and that had added a good hour to the trip.

  He’d been retracing his route along a steeply hollowed lane almost entirely enclosed by trees, trying to hold back the panic that was rising in his throat like vomit because the last thing he wanted to do was wake the figure in the passenger seat, when he’d felt a strange tugging at his guts. It was like the intake before a sneeze, or the pause before coming, and it rose to a peak and then just as suddenly tailed off. He stopped the car and reversed, and the tugging grew stronger again, and when he looked more closely into the dense undergrowth at the side of the road he saw the headlights gleaming on a metal gate that he’d missed the first time.

  There was no putting it off any longer. He leaned across and gently shook Moccus. ‘Sir,’ he whispered. ‘I think we’re here.’

  ‘I know,’ he grunted, and Matt thought that maybe he hadn’t been asleep after all. ‘I can feel them. My Recklings. Take me to them.’

  Matt helped him out of the car and to the gate. It was unlocked, and swung open on well-greased hinges more easily than its condition would have suggested, but opened only a very little way until it fetched up against a huge pile of logs and branches on the other side. It was far more substantial than to have all fallen by accident, but that made no sense because if this track was used regularly enough for the gate to be in working condition why barricade it off? Why not just lock it? The barricade was head-high and extended left and right into thick woods, with the sharp prongs of broken branches set very deliberately pointing forward so that it was like approaching a medieval fortification. Whoever built this was seriously uninterested in visitors.

  And the second little pig built his house out of sticks, thought Matt. ‘Little pigs, little pigs,’ he muttered, ‘I’ve come to nick your video.’

  ‘I can’t climb that,’ said Moccus. ‘You’ll have to go and talk to them. Get them to dismantle this and let me in.’

  Matt squeezed through the gap and picked a careful way over the barricade, snagging his clothing a couple of times, and dropped down on the other side. Just like the gate, the track was in a lot better condition than he would have expected from the crowded and overarching trees. It was solid tarmac, without potholes, but there was a light littering of leaves and twigs on its surface which suggested that maybe it had once been used regularly, but not for quite a few months.

  With no other option, he began walking along the track in the direction of what he assumed to be the village of Swinley.

  He soon became aware that faces were watching him from the woods on either side. Just the flash of an eye or the gleam of a tusk, gone when he turned to look without even the rustling of a leaf. Moccus had told him to expect that his children might be wary or even violent, but drawn to the presence of the first flesh within him all the same. It must have been that which he had felt tugging on him as he’d driven past – their flesh calling to him, and
his to them, bound and linked by the blood that they shared. They might have been born with it, whereas he had ingested it, but it still made them one in Moccus. Instead of feeling afraid of them as he walked, he felt instead a sort of kinship, as if meeting long-lost family for the first time.

  ‘I’m not afraid of you,’ he called out. ‘So you might as well show yourselves. I’ve come with our father.’

  Into the road ahead of him stepped a woman. She was barefoot and wearing only a floral summer dress against the night, but her elongated jawline and the tawny fur on her arms and legs told him she was not entirely human. She looked like she might have been Gar’s younger sister.

  ‘I am Sus,’ she said. ‘You smell like Farrow, but they’re all dead now. Who are you?’

  ‘Matt,’ he replied, looking her up and down. ‘Wow.’

  ‘Save your mockery,’ she sneered. ‘Who is Matt and what does he mean by saying that he has come with our father? Answer before we gut you.’

  ‘I wasn’t mocking, honest! I’m just… I actually think you’re pretty.’ It was hard to tell who was more surprised at this statement – Sus or himself. She came forward, her bent-backward legs giving her a swaying, balletic movement.

  ‘And will you still think I’m pretty when I’m eating your entrails before your eyes?’ she asked.

  Probably, he thought. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve fucked this up. Let me try again. I’ve come with our father, Moccus. He’s in the car, just down the road.’

  Other figures crept out of the undergrowth to stand on the road around her. No two were alike – some were squat and muscular while others were slender, some went on all fours while others walked on two – but all of them shared the same porcine qualities that made them children of Moccus: tusks jutting from elongated faces, split hooves where fingers should have been, and bristling fur.

  ‘Take us,’ said Sus.

  He led them in an eager, loping mob to the car, but when Moccus stepped out they fell back, dumbfounded at the sight of him. Instead of the giant figure they had expected, here was something that looked like a tattered coat on a stick.