by Darcy Coates
Jacob cleared his throat. “Aunt Enid?” he asked, taking a step into the room. “Hi, it’s me—”
“Jacob,” she said, her aged, wrinkled mouth framing the word carefully. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”
Though her hands stayed limp in her lap, she turned her torso and head towards him, moving slowly, as though her joints were rusty.
Jacob smiled awkwardly. “Uh, yeah. It’s—it’s good to see you again.”
Her eyes were milky white. Blind. Why didn’t anyone tell me? How can she possibly be living alone like this?
Enid raised one of her hands and indicated to the seat opposite. The hand was curled like a bird’s claw, so aged and stiff with arthritis that it was clearly difficult to move.
Jacob sat in the chair, trying to ignore how dusty and stained it was. He leaned forward, cleared his throat, and tried to inject some life into his voice. “I have so many happy memories of visiting you as a child. I’m sorry we lost touch.”
“Hmm.” Enid’s head had followed his movements, even though Jacob knew she couldn’t see him. “Your family didn’t agree with… some of my choices.”
Curiosity gnawed at Jacob. No one had given a reason for the rift, but he knew it had to be dramatic. His family was generally tight-knit. To outright ignore his aging great aunt… he couldn’t believe it. “Choices?” he prompted.
She smiled, exposing a row of surprisingly straight white teeth. Dentures, surely.
“Choices you wouldn’t even consider,” she said, and turned back to stare out of the window. Jacob wondered if that was how she passed her days: staring blindly into the yard for hours on end until hunger or thirst drove her into movement. “Choices you wouldn’t even imagine could exist.” The unnatural smile again stretched her wrinkled lips until they cracked.
What could she possibly mean? What sort of choices did she have to make? Jacob was starting to feel uncomfortable, so he changed the subject to the main purpose of his visit. The sentiment was a difficult to express, so he chose his words carefully. “Enid, do you have anyone to visit you? Maybe a neighbour who can pop in every few days?”
Enid acted as though she hadn’t heard him. Her face had taken on a strange, intense expression as she stared at the window, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “It was a different time back then. When you were offered something impossible, you didn’t always question it.”
Jacob stared at his clasped hands. “If… if it’s okay with you… I was thinking I could drop by every now and then. I work at a store only about ten minutes away, so if you’d like some company, I could come by after my shifts—”
“Jacob,” she said, as though reminding herself of his name. “Do as your family did. It’s no good for you to spend time with those who have bartered with their souls.”
“It’s no trouble,” Jacob said hurriedly as his aunt tried to rise from her chair. “Really, it would be nice to see more of you… and, I mean, if anything were to happen…”
“Ha.” It was a cold, hollow laugh. Enid had gotten to her feet and moved around her chair. She was walking strangely, as though her joints had frozen while she sat. Movement on the floor caught Jacob’s eyes, and he saw fleshy, white objects had fallen from the folds of his great-aunt’s dress. They squirmed on the floor. Surely those aren’t… maggots?
Aunt Enid turned her head to stare at Jacob, and he realised, with a jolt, that she could see him despite the bleached-white eyes. “No,” she said, scraping towards him laboriously. “You’ll do better to spend your time with the living.”
7
Red Morning
The feed buckets were heavy in Allen’s hands as he crossed the yard towards the chicken coop. The sun was barely touching the ground, and the area was dull in the early-morning half-light. He’d already fed and milked the cows and could hear the chickens fussing about their cage’s door as he neared them.
Allen paused and turned towards the woods’ edge forty paces away. Crow cawing drifted across the space, and a flutter of wings just behind the tree line caught his attention. Something had died there during the night, and the birds were feasting.
A fox? Allen left the feed buckets beside the coop and crossed to the woods’ edge. Foxes had killed six of his chickens before he’d poisoned them out of the area. If they’d returned, he would need to set out new baits. The dead animal had to be large, based on the number of flapping, screeching birds, and as he drew closer, Allen’s mind shifted from fox to bear.
The figure was made of patchy browns and pinks, but the birds’ massacre had been so thorough that it wasn’t until he was nearly on top of it that Allen recognised it as human. The world seemed to fall abruptly still, and for a moment, all Allen could do was stare, tight-lipped, at the stained fur jacket, torn jeans, matted hair, and fleshy limbs reaching out. Then one of the birds fluttered up to dig at the woman’s face, and something inside Allen snapped. He grabbed a branch off the forest floor and waved it at the crows to scatter them. They hopped out of reach, their beady eyes alternately watching their meal and Allen’s weapon as they cackled and cawed at him.
“Get away!” he yelled, swinging the branch again, but he knew they wouldn’t stay back for long.
The woman’s body seemed fresh. The birds had torn out her eye and tongue and had picked holes through her face, but they hadn’t been at work long enough to disguise the blisters disfiguring her skin. The scabs looked angry and red, as though she’d fallen into boiling water. Allen realised he was staring and turned away, though he knew he would never forget the image.
He pulled his mobile out of his jacket pocket, but hesitated over the buttons. He was friendly with the local sheriff, but he didn’t know if it would be appropriate to call Matt or if he was supposed to phone the emergency helpline directly. He suspected it was the latter, but that felt too impersonal. He dialled Matt instead. Their town was large enough to see accidental deaths and even the occasional murder; Matt would know what to do.
The phone rang and rang. That wasn’t too unusual. It was early in the morning, and the sheriff could be in the shower or even still sleeping. Allen waited for the answering machine and said, “It’s Allen. Call me back. It’s important.” Than he reluctantly hung up and dialled the emergency helpline.
The crows cackled as they hopped nearer to the body. Allen swiped his branch at them again then frowned as an engaged tone beeped in his ear. He lowered his mobile and looked at it. The emergency helpline was non-responsive.
He blinked, scanned the area, and tried redialling. The result was the same. Allen swore under his breath and tucked the phone into his pocket. He’d need to go to town.
Allen didn’t want to touch or move the unnamed woman, but he couldn’t stomach leaving her for the crows, either, so he spent some time finding fallen branches and piling them over her form. He stacked them deep enough that a bird would have trouble getting through, then sent the ring of waiting crows a glower before turning towards his road.
His farm was on the outskirts of town, but along a main highway. Allen made for the road, thinking it would save some time if he could hitchhike in, but the highway was empty at that early hour. He jogged along the asphalt, his heartbeat throbbing in his ears and his lungs starved for oxygen. He was still a kilometre from town when he came across the car.
It was an old blue model that had run off the road. Its nose was wedged into the ditch, leaving its back wheels hanging in the air. Allen slowed as he neared it then circled around until he was certain there was no fire that could make the fuel tank explode. He peered through the windows, but the car was empty, save for a few empty chip packets and a discarded beanie. He made note of the paddock it had crashed in front of and calculated it would take a disoriented woman less than an hour to stumble across the field and through the woods before collapsing on Allen’s property. It would explain how she’d gotten there, but not where the blisters had come from. He kept running.
Allen’s mind was so occupied by his own prob
lem that he was inside the town boundary before he realised how eerily silent it was. Shops that should have been open were empty and dark. The road was devoid of cars and people—even the few determined joggers who rose earlier than the farmers. Allen slowed to a walk and stared, open-mouthed, at the spectacle. It was almost as if he’d walked into some bizarre alternate world.
It took him several minutes to find another person. The barkeeper, a plump balding man who typically didn’t go home until three in the morning, lay half in the gutter and half in the road. Allen approached but didn’t touch him. The way the barkeep was sprawled would have made it look like he’d imbibed too much of his own drink… if not for the angry red blisters puckering his skin.
Nausea rose and coated Allen’s tongue. He began backing away, moving back towards the town’s border, then he froze as a distant siren pierced the quiet morning air. It sounded like it was coming from the next town.
Allen began running again, fear powering already-tired legs. He was just outside the town’s border when he heard the jets overhead. He didn’t slow his pace but lifted his eyes to see the crafts shoot over the town, spreading plumes of odd purple-tinted contrails in their wakes.
He pulled his scarf out of his jacket and wrapped it around his face, praying he could make it to the relative safety of his rural farm before the gas reached the ground.
8
Footsteps in the Night
Denise woke from her dream, feeling as though she were clawing her way out of a deep, dark lake. Her brain felt sluggish, and she couldn’t immediately understand what had disturbed her. Then sounds filtered through: footsteps shuffling on the cold tile floors of her kitchen.
Bernard mustn’t be able to sleep. Again.
Denise stretched a hand behind herself and felt the familiar indent in the mattress. It was cold; her husband must have been up for a while. She wished he would come back to bed. After thirty years of marriage, she found it hard to fall asleep without company.
What time is it? Denise rolled forward to reach the lamp. Her fingers brushed a bottle, knocking it off the edge of the bedside table. The bottle’s contents rattled as it hit the floor. What’s that?
She already knew what it was, though. Sleeping pills. Her mind, still filled with that deep-water sensation, couldn’t remember why she had sleeping pills on her bedside table. She’d never suffered from insomnia. That was Bernard’s quarter.
The footsteps moved from the kitchen to the loungeroom in a path Denise was intimately familiar with. Every night, he stalked through their home, searching, perhaps for relief from his own mind. He always took the same route: from the hallway to the kitchen to the loungeroom to the hallway to the spare room, then back again. Denise was so used to it that it almost never disturbed her anymore.
It’s different tonight, though. He wasn’t taking his usual care to move quietly, and his feet scraped over the carpet to produce harsh shhh, shhh, shhh sounds.
Denise’s fingers found the lamp’s button. The shadows scattered to the deepest corners of the room as illumination fell upon the familiar shapes. Her bureau, the beautiful wooden table that normally held her trinkets and a vase of fake flowers, was a mess. Someone had scattered the contents to the ground. Denise frowned. Who? And why did I go to bed without tidying it?
A faint blurred memory rose in her mind. She saw herself sweeping her forearm across the table, knocking off the makeup and silver brushes Bernard had given her, even the cherished necklace he’d bought her on their thirtieth anniversary.
Denise bent over the edge of the bed to pick up the bottle she’d knocked to the floor. It was unexpectedly light. She shook it and found it was only half-full. I’ve been taking them for a few days, then. They must be the reason my head’s so foggy. I can’t remember…
The shuffling footsteps moved through the loungeroom. Denise imagined her husband, his sagging face cold and distant as he gazed out of the full-length window towards the swaying black trees that lined their driveway. He always looked grim when the insomnia had him in its grip. Once, not long after their marriage, she’d asked him why he looked that way. He’d stared at her for a long time without answering.
Shhh, shhh, shhh. Bare feet dragged over the carpet as Bernard’s well-worn path took him past their bedroom. His silhouette appeared in the doorway, too far from her lamp for his features to find any relief, and finally, his pacing stopped.
Denise thought he might be ready to come back to bed, but he didn’t enter the room. Though shadows obscured his face, she could make out the shock of thin, messy hair and the outline of his crumpled clothes.
“Bern?”
A strange odour accompanied him. She’d smelt it before, she knew, and recently, but she couldn’t place where.
She still cradled the bottle of sleeping pills in her hand, and she squeezed it as images flashed across her sluggish mind: the flowers, anachronistically bright, lying across the dark polished wood. That’s what the smell is, she realised. He smells like those flowers.
She saw herself sitting at the bureau and watching the tears run down her face, ruining the makeup, bleeding the black eyeliner and the rouge that had been intended to hide her paleness. She’d been surrounded by the gifts her husband had lavished on her, and it was intolerable, so she’d swept them off the table and watched them clatter to the ground.
Then she remembered standing on a grassy swell, staring into a black hole as the polished wood was lowered into it, and she realised why she’d needed the sleeping tablets. They were the only thing that had been able to bring her rest after the funeral.
After Bernard’s funeral.
Denise turned towards the bedroom doorway, where the silhouetted man watched her.
9
Surf
Marina let the fire burn patterns into her vision as her long, thin hair created curtains to hide her face. Her five friends, spaced around the seaside firepit, had all become chattier as the alcohol hit them—but drink only ever made Marina quieter and more self-conscious. She was happy to let the conversation flow over her as she tuned out the individual words.
Todd pushed away from the sand, where he’d been lying on his belly. His curly hair flopped around his face, reminding Marina of a shaggy dog, and she dipped her head a little farther to hide her smile.
“I’m gonna catch a couple more waves.” His voice was faintly slurred, but if the beer had affected his coordination, it was impossible to tell it apart from his regular ungainliness. He stumbled towards the row of surfboards propped in the sand. “Who’s coming?”
“Stay by the fire,” said Elena, the self-appointed mother of the group. “Don’t drink and drive a surfboard, boy.”
He cackled a laugh and turned to Marina. “You wanna come? I’ll teach you.”
She mutely shook her head, so he shrugged and began jogging towards the ocean.
A second later, his best friend, James, also leapt out of the sand and grabbed his own surfboard. “Oy, wait up!”
Elena snorted and nudged Marina with an elbow. “Todd likes you, you know. That’s the fourth time he’s asked you to join him today.”
“I don’t like the ocean,” Marina mumbled, hoping that would be enough to shut down the discussion.
Elena looked as if she wanted to talk more, but at that moment, Lari dropped her beer can into the fire, and the cries and laughter served as a distraction. Marina sat for a moment more, watching the flickering flames, then excused herself and rose.
She hadn’t been drunk in a long time, and the alcohol was affecting her more than she’d expected. She went as far as the ocean’s edge then began walking parallel to the surf, hoping the cool wind and exercise would sober her. To her right, Todd and James were paddling out towards a swell in the waves.
The shore was far enough from town that the tourists didn’t often go there, and its pristine sand was littered with colourful shells. Marina bent to pick some up, a half-formed idea of turning them into a necklace hovering in the back of
her mind. She’d only collected a handful when she saw something that didn’t belong on the beach.
Her first thought was that it was a piece of coral. It was thin and only a few inches long, but the colour didn’t match anything that she would have expected to find in the sand. The waves lapped at it, and as it rolled, she saw its fingernail.
Marina opened her mouth to scream, but only a thin whine came out. She dropped the shells, glanced towards the fire, towards the ocean, then back down at the severed human finger drifting in the surf.
The alcohol was clogging her ability to reason, so she did the only thing she could think of. She reached forward, hesitated, then picked up the digit between two of her own fingers, holding it away from herself as she hurried back to the fire.
The three who had remained there were all laughing at something Lari had said, but Elena’s smile vanished as Marina held the finger towards her. “Mar, what the hell!”
“I found it,” Marina said helplessly, dropping it on the sand beside the fire. “In the water.”
Lari gaped at her. “And you picked it up?”
“I didn’t know what else to do!”
“Hang on.” Elena had her palms pressed to her temple, her earlier intoxicated glow gone. “Calm down. We need to figure out what to do. Did you… uh… did you see any other body parts?”
Marina’s horrified stare was all the answer Elena needed. She squeezed her eyes closed and scratched at her scalp. “Okay, so, maybe this happened in an accident. Or… or maybe it’s from something worse.”
“It’s fresh.” Peta pointed towards the severed edge. “Look, it’s still red, and it hasn’t started to decay yet. So it’s probably from today. Maybe only a few hours old.”
