She remembered thinking that wouldn’t it be strange if someone lying in that cemetery would be looking back. What she didn’t know was that she was right.
The boy saw her first as he peered from the dirt in a grave. He pulled himself up, crawling from the cold dirt to the grass. He spat spiders into his hand and then let them crawl over his fingers. He blew dead breath onto them before releasing them onto the ground. They crawled through the grass past the cemetery and into the garden, to the outside wall, up the drainpipe and into the house. They watched the household and the inhabitants. They watched the oppressed young girl who held so much sadness and confusion inside. They watched her parents who were monsters disguised as humans. The spiders crawled back to the boy and into his hollow dusty body. He saw what the spiders saw and understood what they showed him. And the day she came wandering into his cemetery he watched her from the graves, beneath the dirt watching. She found the angel stone that reminded him of his mother, and that he kept clean, free from dirt and time. She found his bones, which he used to decorate the tree, by breaking into the church and she rejoiced in them. For the first time in nearly two centuries the boy felt love in his decomposed heart.
When it was over, Carrie Anne slower sat up she stopped trembling and composed herself. Her eyes returned to normal and she saw the memory beetle skitter to the shadows.
“I need to tell you something, please understand,” Carrie Anne said as she held the boy’s hands. “There are people coming to the cemetery; they will be looking for the people you saved me from. I am afraid they are going to find you and your home. They will take you away from me.”
NO.
The boy looked sincere in his belief and attempted to calm the girl, despite his crumbling face. Before Carrie Anne could talk further, she heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps on the stairs above. She froze, hardly daring to breath. The boy heard it too and growled.
“Shush, stay here. I will be right back.”
Carrie Anne held the boy back, pleaded with him. He paced and threatened as she made her way to the cellar stairs.
“Stay there,” she said and closed the door behind her.
Chapter Fifteen
She hoped to be back in her room and undiscovered as she came to the foot of the stairs. Her father was standing above on the landing. He was wearing a white T-shirt and black pyjama bottoms. He looked down at his daughter from the landing, his beard a dark shadow across his face, a scornful shadow..
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I needed a drink of water,” she stuttered. Her knees felt like jelly and suddenly her muscles didn’t wish to work; every inch of her cramped. “Really? Why are you still in your school uniform?” He threw a bundle of clothes at her. It landed at Carrie Anne’s feet. Even in the dark she knew it was her mud-covered nightclothes from the previous evening. She felt sick; she could feel bile crawling up from her stomach to freedom.
“I’ve been in your room.”
“Why?” Heart pounding, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum. As he spoke he began to step down the stairs- 1, 2, 3 and so on closer and closer.
“Why do you think? I cannot deny what I am any more. I don’t expect you to understand, but your mother, try as she may, is not enough for me.”
“I’m your daughter,” she said with no strength in her body.
“And you have your secrets and I have mine; we can keep each other’s.”
“I’ll scream for Mother; she will know.”
“Do you think she will care? Or do you think she will be happy in her denial? Besides she’s taken one too many sleeping pills.” To demonstrate his point he shouted at the top of his voice “Mother! Mother! The house is on fire.” He smiled, happy with himself. “See? Nothing.”
Carrie Anne spun out of the hallway and into the living room. In the dark she misjudged the room and hit the wooden coffee table. She fell over it, hitting the floor and jarring her chin on it. Her lip split and blood filled her mouth. She turned to see her father kneeling over her. He held his hand out and caught her chin, turning it this way and that.
“See, silly girl, you’ve hurt yourself,” he said as Carrie Anne trembled at his touch. “My way is so much less painful for everyone.”
There came a scraping sound from the kitchen.. Her father heard it too.
“Those bloody rats.” He spat and, determined, stood to investigate, much to Carrie Anne’s horror.
“Daddy, please don’t; stay here with me,” she begged.
“Don’t worry, baby,” he replied. “I’ll right back for you.”
He disappeared through the dark house into the kitchen. By the time Carrie Anne had stood and gone after her father, he had already disappeared through the cellar door. She stood at the doorway and Father looked up.
“Stay there—” he pointed “—I’ve not finished with you yet.”
As he stepped on the stone-tiled floor, Carrie Anne closed the door and locked the latch. She heard her father begin to scream and she held her hands over ears and slid to the floor, sobbing. But this was not enough to stop the sound of terror and pain and cracking and splashing. He screamed so shrilly that it pierced her ears, until finally after the noise was etched into her future nightmares the sounds suddenly stopped.
Carrie Anne lay by the cellar door until the night evaporated as the sun began to rise. A scratching sounded against the door; Carrie Anne held her hand against the wood. The boy’s teeth clicked together. Click, click, click, his jaws snapped.
“It’s OK, boy. It’s OK. He was no father. My tears are only for misguided childhood memories. I feel nothing at his loss. You did the right thing,” she whispered. “We have to go see Mother.” And Carrie Anne unlocked the latch and the door opened and the boy crawled out.
Chapter Sixteen
When her mother opened her eyes the room was dark except for the morning creeping through the curtains.
“Hello Mother. Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, dear, what are you doing here? Where is your father?” The light half illuminated Carrie Anne with a yellow beam. Her face was shrouded in shadow.
“I wanted to see you. Father is in the cellar.”
“The cellar? What is he doing there?”
“He is with the rats.”
There was a smell in the air of rotting vegetation and compost. And something else metallic, not unlike a rare steak.
“I need to tell you something, Mother. But I also need to ask you a question.”
“You can tell me.” Was there nervousness to her voice? “Where is your father?”
“Mum. When you found out what Dad was, why didn’t you do anything?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you found out what he had been doing to me, why didn’t you do anything?”
“I did. I asked him to stop; he stopped.” There was unsteadiness to her voice. It was undeniable now. It gave Carrie Anne satisfaction her mother was uncomfortable.
“So why did you stay with him? Why?”
“We’ve been through this; it was best for the family, for us.”
“How is that best for me?” Carrie Anne asked without pity. “So I could see him every day? So I could be made to feel dirty and abnormal? So we could run and hide when there was a danger of the truth coming out?” She moved from the bed and towards the curtains. Her mother’s eyes followed her in the gloom. She completely failed to notice the other shape sitting at the end of the bed.
“How dare you speak to me like that; how dare you. I am your mother,” she screeched, but there was no conviction there.
“And yet, you never knew how to act like one,” Carrie Anne said calmly as she drew the blinds to one side and allowed light to pour in.
The boy sat at the end of the bed in all his glorious horridness. Carrie Anne’s mother’s eyes bulged and her jaws locked to let out a cry. Before she could, however, the boy scrambled in a broken movement to pin the sheets down with only her head free. What happened next moved in s
low motion from Carrie Anne’s point of view. She saw her mother silently wailing, every wrinkle on her face shaking, every thin hair standing on end. The boy looking down from above her and opened his mouth wide, dislocating his jaw and his skin stretching almost to breaking point. From the gaping maw, pouring with the ferocity of a landslide, came graveside dirt and soil. It spilled over Carrie Anne’s mother’s face and she spluttered and choked. It covered her and turned the sheets filthy and she fought but the dirt kept cascading from the boy until finally her mother stopped shaking and lay still under the pile. The boy pulled himself from the fresh grave and looked at Carrie Anne.
“Thank you,” she said.
Chapter Seventeen
They remained in shadow as all the windows were drawn, keeping the sunlight at bay. Carrie Anne sat in the living room on the sofa and stared at the wall. The brown wallpaper swirled in front of her as her mind wandered to nowhere in particular. Her thoughts were trying to knit together to something coherent but like a wound that insisted on bleeding, couldn’t quite stitch with reality.
You just killed our parents.
They will never be coming back.
You will never ever be able to see them again.
Your father is in the basement.
Mother is in bed buried under six-foot worth of dirt.
There is a two-hundred-year-old dead boy in the house.
This is certainly not a normal day.
There was a crash in the kitchen and more pots and pans were overturned, no doubt. The boy was in there and he was exploring his new home. He went from to room to room, ripping at every nook and corner, noisily overturning anything of interest.
Carrie Anne, however, was lost to the thoughts that had come to torture her. She remembered happier times. Those memories that until now had been locked away by misery. She remembered eating ice cream with her parents on a beach… The sun was high in the sky, burning away clouds and creating a glorious clear blue. They all sat on the warm sand and watched the sea roll and lap at the shoreline. She remembered the white cream melting and running over her hand and cone. Carrie Anne, the observer of the memory, could hear a young child laughing. She realised it was her own five- or six-year-old self. She hadn’t laughed in such a long time; she almost forgot how to do it at all.
“You are a mucky pup,” Mother said.
“Quick before the seagulls have a feast.” Her father laughed.
She remembered when she had fallen and cut her knee. It was her father who placed a plaster on the end of the world and kissed it better. There were other memories, birthdays and Christmases, holidays and simple things, bedtime stories and cuddles on the sofa. But that was then and by now her parents were decomposing in the house. Carrie Anne did not ask for any of this. Was it too much to ask for a normal childhood? Not to have it ruined by becoming a plaything for someone’s desires? And what of her mother? Was she worse for not protecting her through ignorance or not protecting her through knowledge? If there was no chance of that before, there was no chance of it at all now. There was a part of Carrie Anne that was terrified at the events and she would love nothing more than to hide and grieve and never see daylight again. Then there was a new slyer, dark part that was happy that her parents were dead and revelled in the terror their last moments brought.. Carrie Anne stood, shook off her negative thoughts as best she could and went looking for the boy. The house had been devastated. The kitchen was a mess of broken cupboard doors, crockery and cutlery strewn over the wooden floor. Food of various types for breakfast, lunch and dinner was dripping from worktops and spilling over onto the floor. Dented cans of foodstuffs were crushed or bitten and discarded. Carrie Anne followed the devastation up the stairs where there were footprints and dirty handprints. The landing was in a similar state to the kitchen, debris creating a trip hazard of clothes, brushes, toilet rolls, a hairdryer. Carrie Anne followed it into her room, which was surprisingly untouched. The dead boy was sitting on the floor, facing the large mirror on Carrie Anne’s wardrobe. He was intently studying himself. His brow was worried and confused as he ran his grey cold finger over his rotting and decomposed flesh. He touched his gaping eye socket and torn skin, exposing the bone underneath. He pulled at a piece of his scalp, which came away like dry bark from a dead tree. Underneath a family of beetle lice scurried deeper into his skull. The boy examined his ribs, exposed from torn shirt and meat alike. He looked at his hands where the skin stopped at the wrist and exposed bone began, giving the impression of a skeleton wearing hand gloves. And the strangest thing was, as he regarded his reflection, the low sorrowful moans that came from his ripped throat, making Carrie Anne’s heart sink.
Carrie Anne sat next to him. “Are you OK, boy?” But she looked in the mirror and knew the answer even though he could not speak it. Perhaps this was the first time he had seen his own reflection in two hundred years.
“It is a terrible thing,” she said, “the sadness that is put upon children.”
Carrie Anne left the room and went into her mother’s tomb. The dirt mound covered the bed and tumbled onto the carpet. Carrie Anne didn’t dwell on this and went to her mother’s dressing table. She searched it for a moment before finding and taking a plastic white make-up bag, covered in a yellow flower pattern, back to her own room.
“Now then,” she said the boy as she sat next to him and opened the make-up bag, “let’s see if I can make you feel more human.”
Her mother liked nice coloured lipsticks and nail polishes, but as she got older she wore less to none. Father didn’t approve of it. This also meant that Carrie Anne had never used make-up at all. The boy watched as Carrie Anne took thick globs of flesh-coloured make-up on a circular sponge.
“This won’t hurt.” She smiled while plastering the make-up on the boy, covering his grey and green skin with the foundation. He didn’t move but clicked his teeth as Carrie Anne happily applied the make-up. She took a brush to his hair but as she attempted to tidy it, the brush pulled his scalp away.
“Oh God, I’m sorry.” She panicked, dropping the scalp on the floor.
The boy laughed his dry laugh and Carrie Anne snorted and joined in. She laughed so hard her stomach hurt. Was it funnier that she tore what was left of the boy’s hair off or that she had made the boy look like an undead clown? Either way they distracted each other from their sorrow.
“ Im hungry,” Carrie Anne decided, “ Let’s get something to eat.”. The pair went to the kitchen and Carrie Anne did the best she could considering the mess. She placed a cheese sandwich directly on the table in front of the boy (most of the plates were now shard pieces). He eyed it suspiciously.
“Mmmm yummy,” Carrie Anne exaggerated while taking a bite out of her sandwich. The boy shrugged and picked his up in one hand, crushing the bread and cheese.
“Go on.” She nodded.
The boy stuffed the sandwich into his mouth. Most of the contents ran over his chin and through his ravaged throat. The rest he simply spat on the floor in disgust.
“Too much rat I suppose,” Carrie Anne contested.
In answer to this the boy forced his hand into his stomach through a wet opening. He pulled out the half remains of a previously chewed brown rat. He held the headless torso of the thing for Carrie Anne to try.
“No thank you,” she said kindly. The boy shrugged and carried on tearing into his rat.
After food Carrie Anne fell asleep on the sofa while the boy curled up next to her. Exhaustion and that unshakeable, intangible feeling of dread controlled her. He sleep was not pleasant or refreshing but an oppressive darkness. Like a black ink sea, it drowned her sleeping self. She floated with no direction because there was none. No up, no down, no north, east, south or west. There was only the black. Although her presence didn’t go unnoticed, for the dead swam in these waters. Carrie Anne floated when she saw them. A thousand million and more spirits, the same colour and texture of dead moth wings, rising up towards her, snapping and wailing. Carrie Anne tried to close
her eyes as the dead washed over her like a tsunami of terror. As she lost herself, the first faces that bore down upon her with horrible grimaces were her parents, almost unrecognisable as dead wisp things.
Chapter Eighteen
Carrie Anne woke up to the heat and gloom. Her school uniform was soaking wet and stuck to her skin. But it wasn’t just sweat. She had wet herself and her skirt and legs reeked of urine. At one time this would have horrified her, but now she couldn’t bring herself to have any feelings about it. It was as if she was regressing, become less than human, less than an animal. An emotionless husk with only unease for company. An unease that all the dead must surely feel. For Carrie Anne now knew, the dead regard the living through hollow and envious eyes. Despite learning this in her dream, she knew it to be true.
She sat up and put her bare feet on the floor. Immediately she was shocked. Between her toes were sharp blades of wet grass. She looked to see the carpet had disappeared under a growth of blackened grass and tangle weed. The walls were also affected by the strange foliage. A fur coating of fungus crept over the wallpaper and up to the ceiling in thick dark spots. Weeds and ivy choked the sideboards and lamps. The doors sprouted toadstools from the painted wood. She wandered the house and each room was being taken over similarly. As she walked up the stairs the banister crumbled in her hand, turning to a soft wood dust and softly crumbling to the floor. Likewise chunks of wallpaper and plaster fell from the walls and ceiling like dead birds falling from the sky. In the bathroom the pipes had burst free of the faucet taps and the black grass choked the gap. The plugholes in the sink and bathtub were similarly clogged. The toilet porcelain was cracking under the pressure of the dead weed growing from it.
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