Kingdom

by Andy Tilley

  Dr Hill explains how when he had finally made it into the bedroom that day there was indeed bedlam. True, mind bending madness of a much higher degree than my mum’s account had hinted at. Christine wasn’t lying dead on her mother’s belly. Her injuries were truly awful but nowhere near fatal. Only her sight died that day and she was already in the arms of her father when Dr Jeremy Hill entered the room. Dawn was sat calm in bed, satisfied with what she had done. Only the child and her father were screaming. The nurse was still in the room too, frozen to the spot and unable to help. She hadn’t left and met Hill on the stairs at all. It was her eyes that changed first apparently, signaled the onset of a rage of such intensity that the young doctor could barely manage to pull her grip away from the throat of the Chevalier woman. According to the doctor, the very instant that he managed to prise her hands away from Dawn’s jugular those same eyes emptied of both rage and colour. Not all the way to black exactly, not like Pete’s. Each iris had blackened though and where a healthy eye might have tiny red blood vessels the nurse’s had black streaks. This was soon to change again though, because according to Tom, who’d been a young traffic cop back then, when he pulled the nurse’s body from the wreckage of her car (less than two hundred yards from Hartford) his initial impression had been that she had no eyes. She did of course; black shiny ones.

  I’ve had enough of this. This stuff is straight out of the horror movies, something I can barely watch never mind star in. The image of dead bodies with coal black eyes is burning itself on to the back of my retinas and I doubt if I will ever sleep again. I need a cushion to clutch and hide behind, a cushion stuffed with reality and something scientific that will help me rationalize all this weirdness back toward my understanding of what is and what can’t be so I ask the doctor to help, to tell me what he thinks the black stuff in the nurse’s eyes was.

  ‘Carbon. Just like Pete’s, just like Dawn’s after they hung themselves. Something made these people do what they did Rose. Something that, when they had done what it asked them to, burnt their eyes black. And I know that this sounds completely ridiculous but Thomas Chevalier knew what it was. As I stood in that room, watched his life wrecked by it, I watched his eyes change too. Only momentarily, seconds even, but that was long enough for him to be given understanding of what had begun and how it would end. Stood there with his bleeding baby girl clutched to his chest Thomas Chevalier did a deal. With what I don’t know but he needed my help, and ultimately Tom’s too if he was to save his daughter. And yes there was money involved, of course there was but that wasn’t the reason I agreed to help him Rose, honestly it wasn’t. It came down to nothing more than the pathetic pleas of a once strong man, a powerful man who I trusted and respected and yes, feared a little too. I guess I didn’t have the guts to deny him or his money and neither did I have the means to do it alone so I convinced Tom to help. I falsified death certificates, buried a pretend baby and Tom signed the police reports that would close the case. That was over ten years ago Rose, and that’s where the answers run out I‘m afraid. We did our bit. We put the smoke screens up for Thomas and Christine and what ever it was that was with them to disappear. Tom and I tied up every loose end, covered everybody’s tracks to make sure that there would be no trail or come back. At least we thought we had but finding Peter Statham swinging like that this morning has changed everything and we have no idea why.’

  Exhausted by my efforts to keep it together, not to succumb to the terror that is building inside as these sinister revelations seep into me, I slump on to the bench. I just want to un-know all this. Not forget, because I don’t think that there is a life long enough for me to be able to rub it all out. I need to un-know it and I curse my decision to take a peek at Pete’s eyes. Blaming Pete makes me wonder too why doing that had brought me to this place and then I remember. It wasn’t just Pete, it was Aunt May and the squirrel. They’re the real culprits here. Her implication that there was something unusual about my Cristian is what had opened my mind and allowed this macabre mess to be rammed into my head. My Cristian, my beloved Cristian. I just thank god that I haven’t heard his name mentioned once. I wonder how much of this he is aware of? Poor thing.

  ‘Now, tell us where you saw these eyes and whose they were.’

  It’s Tom asking. I’d completely forgotten about the ace up my sleeve, the one that had convinced the doctor that should be invited in to the trust of these tow men. Uh oh. I get a feeling that they’re not going to like this. Rather sheepishly I offer a response but Tom doesn’t hear all of my mumblings.

  ‘Hartford Manor, I got that but who was it you saw again? I missed the last bit. It was a man called Cyril did you say?’

  ‘No Tom, I said squirrel. The eyes belonged to a squirrel.’

  ‘Oh for fu…..’

  ‘Hey now come on guys! I never said they belonged to a person did I? I just said that I had seen eyes like Pete’s before, all black and shiny.’

  ‘Yeah, like an itsy bitsy cutesy little squirrel’s eyes Rose. And do you think that might have been because you were looking at a squirrel perhaps?’

  Sarcastic sod, but I suppose he has a point. Most small woodland creatures do have little black eyes now I come to think of it, especially at night. I feel awful, like I have tricked my way into some secret society. Actually so what? I don’t care about these two. I don’t care what they have done or why they did it or what they believe is lurking in the woods. It’s not my business and it never should have been! What I do care about is Cristian and putting as much space between us and them and their ghost stories. The game is up for me and Dr Hill is more than ready to take me back to my car, speaking only once during the journey when he asks that I don’t say anything to anyone about what I know. I give him my word but I’m lying.

  One day Cristian will want to talk about all this and when he does I’ll be ready to understand and fill in any gaps he might have about his father’s disappearance and the role that Dr Hill and PC Tom had in it. And if I know anything about the man that Cristian has become, then god help them.

  When I eventually arrive home mum still isn’t there. I have a text from her letting me know that she’ll be eating out with her friend but hopes to be back before I leave for the dinner party. This gives me roughly two hours to kill and I decide to spend it googling around to see if I can get even more information about what Laurel and Hardy had said earlier, mainly in an effort to expose any flaws in their tale. At here in the lounge, miles away from the misty woods and their story, I already feel less threatened and, well safe again I guess and as I reflect I begin to develop a more rational attitude. I mean, those two were starting to sound like a right couple of gossiping conspiracy theorists. And not very good ones either. When this boils down, all they have is a crazy lady of the manor and a suicidal junkie with coal dust in his eyes. I think it’s time I started to challenge them a little harder. After all, there are huge holes in this particular X-file, big enough for me not to throw my love for Cristian away. What was I thinking! That Aunt May has a lot to bloody answer for. It was her who started all this, seeded my readiness to doubt Cristian stings my heart.

  What sort of girlfriend am I? One that doesn’t deserve him, that’s what sort. Quick Rose, run away! Aunt May’s seen a dead mouse! That woman is definitely over protective. She’s probably jealous of me too. You know, I just bet she fancies him! Quick Rose, runaway again! There’s a couple of under achieving blokes here who’ve noticed that when somebody hangs themselves their eyes go a funny colour. Run-a-away Rose, that’s who I’ve become. Damn it girl, have some faith in your man, in your heart for Christ’s sake! Stop running away Rose!

  I vow never to run again and tap the word ‘silky’ into the search field. Not surprisingly my screen fills with links and adverts for lingerie, some of which is very sexy indeed. I spend the next half hour buying things. Well, I’m sure that Cristian will appreciate this as much, if not more, than my noble attempt to clear his family name. But once my allowance limi
t is reached I have no option but to try again, this time with different spelling. Silcy doesn’t get any hits of interest, and neither does silci. But silkie does and Wikipedia tells me that;

  ‘Selkies (also known as silkies or selchies) are mythological creatures that are found in Faroese,Icelandic, Irish and Scottishe folklore.’

  Hmmm. This is a a little worrying but then again, I’m sure it wouldn’t have taken Dr Hill much time to get to this reference either, sitting listening to some poor old lady who belives he is accessing her records when in reality he’s surfing. In fact, given the closeness of the words and, by his own deeds, Hill’s rather dubious character, I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t stumbled across this handy piece of folk lore when googling for something to excite him during a quiet spell in the surgery. I read on.

  ‘They can shed their skin from seals to become humans. The legend apparently originated on the Orkney and Shetland Islands, where selch or selk(ie) is the Scots word for seal (from Old English seolh).Selkies are able to become human by taking off their seal skins, and can return to seal form by putting it back on. Stories concerning selkies are generally romantic tragedies. Sometimes the human will not know that their lover is a selkie, and wakes to find them gone.’

  Now this I don’t like one little bit!. Sometimes the human will not know that their lover is a selkie, and wakes to find them gone. Jesus that would be freaky! Mind you, it’s more likley that Cristian thinks I’m the silkie round here after I abandonned his bed to get to work this morning. And anyway, all we have is mice and squirrels, not a dead seal in sight.

  ‘Other times the human will hide the selkie's skin, thus preventing them from returning to seal form. A selkie can only make contact with one particular human for a short amount of time before they must return to the sea. Examples of such stories are the ballad, The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry and the movie The Secret of Roan Inish’

  And there’s the truth of it. It was a film! A film that I just bet that Dawn Chevalier had come across during a pregnancy that was depressing her so badly that she wanted it finished and was prepared to convince anybody of anything to achieve it! Thank you Mister Ronan Irish, whoever you are.

  Chapter 13

  Mum’s home. I can tell by her face that I’ve got a lot of explaining to do about where I’ve been today when I should have been working. In situations like this (having already lied) I always find that the truth doesn’t really have much to offer and it’s best to stick with the first, far less complicated lie. The stomach cramp story serves me well, as does my new relationship with Dr Hill. One text and he’ll write me a dummy prescription and confirm my attendance at his afternoon clinic, no questions asked. Up until this moment, when the lie leaves my lips, I hadn’t considered this angle. The fact that this morning I was an inconsequential nobody around these parts; this afternoon I have two pillars of society, a doctor and a policeman, tucked away deep inside my pocket. The power that these two have endowed me with makes me tingle inside. I feel like some kind of mafia don and corrupt as this may be, don’t they say that ultimately all power corrupts? I’ve just taken a short cut to the end game, that’s all. Come to think about it, here’s another possibility that I’d missed completely. Whilst I was with Tom and the doctor, (being accosted by them with fearful tales in plain sight of a mist shrouded Hartford Manor) I’d been too wrapped up in all their supernatural intrigue to be able to step back and consider them from another perspective. This new view from the living room reveals a different picture, one in which these two ambitious men aren’t the good guys at all but nothing more than low lives, a bent copper and junky GP that have hatched some deviously complicated scheme to extract money or favor from one of the richest families in the country. Okay, I haven’t got time now to unbundle all the things that they’ve said but I bet that if I did, if I took it all apart, sorted the wheat from the crap and then stuck it all back together (glued with common sense this time) then I would smell blackmail and conspiracy veiled in demonic folk lore to keep those meddling kids away. This whole thing is turning into an episode of Scooby Doo! Yeah, I bet that in my alternate jigsaw it’s the Chevaliers that are the real victims!

  I finish getting ready. When I’m done, when the dress is hung and the face made, I set off running (nearly knocking mum over in my dash for the door) but this time I’m running to Cristian; the man I love and who is having a dinner party in less than fifteen minutes. I am late but thankfully the gates are open and I don’t have to stop or even slow down too much, rattling my car over the cattle grid that keeps the animals of Hartford Manor inside its woods and meadows. These woods, so scary only days ago, aren’t in the slightest bit spooky tonight. I can’t explain what has changed in my attitude toward them. My only guess is that I’d been led so far down that fairy tale woodland path by the Brother’s Grim earlier today that returning to the real world, back to a world of nature filled with actual trees and the benign shadows they cast has made me realize how childish I have been. In fact…

  ‘Sod it.’

  The car screeches and almost skids I‘ve pressed the brakes that hard. A quick check outside tells me that I’ve gone too far so I back up a little until the drivers window draws level with a particularly large elm. This is it. Confidently I step out of the car (leaving the door wide open) and in the soft glow of the interior light I begin my search through the crispy leaves that fill the ditch at the roadside. Amazingly I only need to grab and throw three handfuls of mulch away before my hand raises the cardboard stiff corpse of my squirrel.

  ‘Gotcha! Now then let’s take a look at those peepers shall we.’

  The best place to do this is on the flat bonnet so I place the squirrel there and maneuver myself around until finding the optimum position to inspect him properly. He looks a lot less evil and demonic than I remember and I feel guilty about how disrespectful my story has been to him. Ah well, he’s only a squirrel, and a dead one at that. Without thinking any more about it (because thinking will only lead to hesitation and hesitation to doubt and doubt to running and I don’t run anymore) I use my nail file to lever his tiny, frozen left eye from its socket. I almost have it in my fingers too when there’s a voice behind me, a voice from a car that I’ve been far too engrossed to hear approach.

  ‘Rose? Is that you?’

  The voice belongs to David and as I turn around slowly, desperately trying to hide what I am doing I watch his face contort into something between disgust and absolute confusion. He says nothing more, just stares, and I have no choice but to glance behind me as the squirrel completes its slow slide down the bonnet and into plain view, left eye trailing behind its head.

  ‘Oh don’t worry David, I haven’t killed another one. It’s the same squirrel.’

  Oh well that’s fine then. Phew! I bet he thought you were a serial squirrel killer when it turns out that you’re nothing more than a dead squirrel eye thief.

  ‘Ah, I see. Well, erm listen, I’m glad we caught you. June and I are can’t stop for dinner unfortunately. We’ve managed to get an early appointment with a specialist tomorrow morning and need to get back tonight. June’s not feeling too good you see. Anyway, it was…well it was nice to meet you Rose and hopefully next time yes?’

  Now June leans forward, waves and nods. I wave and smile back and instantly regret using the hand that is clutching the nail file, bits of squirrel gooh stuck to the tip. I swear that I can hear David call me weird just the instant before the window has fully slid back into place. I just hope that they are either too preoccupied or polite to ever mention this again. Well there’s no point crying over spilt milk so back to business and once their car has turned on to the main road I pick up the eye ball between my thumb and forefinger. It feels very hard, not squidgy at all and it isn’t easy to jab the nail file into it. Eventually though it pops inside and when I pull it back out there is something on it, something dark and dry. I wouldn’t say it was black or fine though, no where near the jet black powder of Pete’s eye. Then aga
in, it isn’t blood red either. Then again, black pudding is made from blood so maybe that’s what colour blood goes when it’s been left to rot. No doubt about it, this definitely does look more like black pudding than the stuff that had puffed out over Pete’s cheek. It’s a relief to finally put all this to rest, to be happy with this conclusion and so disconnect the undoubtedly strange death of my best friend’s lover from the notion that my Cristian somehow killed the squirrel. Good job well done, I wipe my hands on a tissue and set off to the manor.