The Trade

by Andrew Cull

  The corridor was black, still and hot. I edged out of the toilet trying to take in all of my surroundings at once, fearing those eyes tearing from the darkness towards me. No movement came. The sound of the TV no longer drew along the corridor. The light in the lounge had been turned out.

  The pipes rattled, making me start, as the heating fired again. The air in the corridor was thick and sticky. It clung to me as I moved along the hallway. I was unsteady on my feet. I felt sick and dizzy. I needed water. I couldn’t take much more of the heat. I felt my way through the dark hallway to the kitchen.

  The cupboard where the glasses were kept was too high for me to reach. Normally I’d climb on a chair but I felt too dizzy for that so I took a mug from the cupboard by the sink. I lifted the mug up to the tap to fill it. That was when I saw it.

  The kitchen window was open! Wide open! Mum or Dad must have opened it in the hope that some cooler air would get in. If the thing that had stalked our house had seen it! It might already be in the house! I grabbed a chair and climbed quickly up onto the bench. The pane angled away from me reaching out into the night. I had to hang over the sink to try and reach the handle. I stretched my arm out into the darkness… and stopped.

  Something moved outside. I froze with my arm reaching into the night. No, please! Then the whole world rolled over. The heat and my fever got the better of me. I almost fell into the sink. To steady myself I reached out and grabbed the window’s handle. I tore it back, slamming the window closed.

  I gripped the handle on the window, gasping, hanging over the sink waiting for the spinning to stop. I was too scared to look back up, out of the window, into the night. It had almost certainly heard the window slamming.

  I slid down from the bench back onto the chair. There I sat facing away from the window, too frightened to look behind me. As I sat there a terrible realisation overtook me. This wouldn’t have been the only window in the house that would have been opened to let cool air in!

  I stumbled off of the chair and raced from the kitchen. I ran into the dark lounge. Dad was asleep on the couch. The lounge was surrounded by windows. They were all open! I set about trying to slam them all shut as quickly as I could.

  Dad stirred on the couch. “Wha… what’s going? Andy? What are you doing?” I didn’t have time to explain. I grabbed at each of the windows, tearing them closed. Behind me Dad got to his feet. He knocked over an empty beer bottle. It collided with another and a third, glass dominos scattering across the floor. “Son?” I couldn’t let him stop me. I raced across the room, closing the windows as fast as I could.

  Before I knew what was happening Dad had grabbed me. “Son? Son! It’s OK!”

  “No!” I wrestled against him. “It’ll get in! It’s going to get in!”

  Mum shouted from the other end of the house. “Andy?”

  I struggled against Dad. There would be other windows in the house that were open!

  Mum appeared in the doorway. “What’s going on?” She was immediately angry at Dad.

  “Put him down!”

  “It’s his fever! I thought you were looking after him!”

  “Me? I fell asleep! It’s two in the morning!” Straight away they were in to a fight. I felt Dad’s grip around me tighten. It was subconscious, his anger making his whole body taut. There was no way I would be able to get away. All the noise! Surely it could hear us! Surely it could find its way into the house through one of the open windows! My panic grew till I screamed, “Stop yelling! Stop yelling at each other! You won’t be able to hear it if you’re shouting all the time!”

  Mum and Dad fell silent. Dad’s grip on me softened. After a time he spoke quietly, “Sorry son. I guess it’s the heat. Got us all worked up.” He let me go.

  “Why don’t you go with your Mum? She’ll take you back to bed.”

  Mum stepped in to take me from Dad. I’d barely heard Dad’s words. I was listening in the silence, listening for the sound of its approach.

  “You have to close the windows. You can’t let it get into the house!”

  I think Dad thought it was all a nightmare brought on by my fever. “I will son. You go back to bed.” I was too young to realise he was lying to me.

  Mum lead me back along the hallway towards the sunroom. We passed the backdoor. I turned to look, straining to hear if it was there, waiting, its foul breath hot with the spoiled meat it had left at our doorstep. I stopped, listening.

  “Come on you. Back to bed. You’ll feel better in the morning.” Slowly Mum edged me away from the backdoor.

  The lights were off in the sunroom. Mum had run from the room when she’d heard me shouting. She hadn’t stopped to switch on the light. The room was thick with shadows, a hundred hiding places for a seven year old’s nightmares.

  Mum tucked me in. She sat by my bed waiting for me to fall asleep. I closed my eyes, pretending to doze off. Once she was happy I had gone back to sleep Mum climbed back onto the couch and, within a few minutes, I could tell from her gentle breathing that she had fallen asleep once more.

  I climbed off of the folding bed and headed to the sunroom door. I leant against the door listening. I pressed my ear to the painted wood, closing my eyes, concentrating, listening to every vibration, every whisper the house made. I didn’t know at the time that after he’d seen me and Mum head to bed Dad had gone through the lounge reopening all the windows I had closed.

  *

  My eyes started open. I had dozed off leaning against the door! It was 7am. The sun was already up and the temperature was rising for the fourth day in a row. As soon as I moved I could feel my clothes clinging to me. I didn’t care about the heat. I was only thinking about the backdoor.

  I left the sunroom and made my way along the hallway. I stood in front of the door, small. I reached for the handle and pulled it open.

  *

  Now the dog had been torn in half. Its entrails dragged after it as if the headless dead thing had hauled itself along the path to our door, its stomach and intestines pouring from it as it crawled. Flies swarmed the rotting meat that had spilled a wet trail behind the corpse. Back then I didn’t realise what it meant. What had been an offering at first was now a demand.

  *

  I heard them talking about the dog. Mum had found me at the backdoor. I’d been quickly ushered away, back to the sunroom, where Dad had shut me in. I sat in the windows watching the woods, standing guard. My eyes were wide, flicking across the trees, trying to watch everywhere at once. I knew it would be back. It was just a matter of when.

  Dad had found its collar. It had fallen out of the remains when he had moved them. It hadn’t been around the dog’s neck. It no longer had a neck to speak of. It had been inside the corpse. As if something had crammed the collar in to the open cavity where the dog had been torn in half.

  It was Digger. Digger had been our neighbour’s dog. Finn and Sal’s from the Wilson farm. They lived about a mile from our house, the closest thing we had to a main road running along the front of their property. Digger was always running off from the farm. He’d hare across the fields, chasing a fox, a rabbit, something he might have stood a chance of catching when he was younger. Then, when he’d finally given up on the chase, he’d get confused and often wander out of the woods into our yard.

  When he’d disappeared the Wilson’s had pinned posters to the trees that lined the road, in the hope that someone would see Digger wandering in the woods as they drove past. I’d heard Finn tell Dad that he thought he’d heard Digger howling in the woods one night but Digger never found his way home. Months of sun bleached the posters. One had blown into our yard on the hot wind. The photocopy had faded until it was only a memory, the ghost of the Wilson’s hope that Digger would one day come home.

  I cried as I watched the woods. The carcass that had been left outside our back door bore no resemblance to the affe
ctionate blur that had loped from the woods in search of water and friendship. I was terrified, terrified of the thing that had murdered Digger but I was angry too, furious that anything could do the terrible things that it had done to Finn and Sal’s dog.Outside the conversation had turned into an argument. The sun that scorched us drove Mum and Dad to anger even quicker than usual. As they fought I watched the woods, their shouting growing louder and louder.

  I heard Mum run back into the house. She ran towards the sunroom door. I could hear she was crying. She stopped outside the door, and after a long moment, turned and headed back along the corridor. She was trying to protect me.

  High above the woods a plane crept across the perfect blue sky. I wished we were all on it, I wished we could escape. I knew that, with the night, something terrible was coming.

  *

  The day burned away until all that was left of it was the red haze that bled between the tops of the trees. I had watched the woods all day.

  The heating groaned behind me. Dad had called a plumber. A few minutes later he had been shouting at the plumber. They couldn’t come out until the next week. The call had ended with Dad slamming down the phone.

  The sun had risen to its highest point, looking down at us like we were ants under a magnifying glass. Still I had watched the woods. I watched for any movement. I watched for the eyes that had fixed on me. Nothing moved. I was sure it was biding its time, waiting until the sun had set.

  The day had been punctuated with arguments. The hotter the it became the more frequently they started. I had never heard Mum and Dad arguing like that. They screamed at each other until I sat holding my hands over my ears, watching the light draining from the day.

  Soon the red sky melted to deep grey and the shadows of the trees once more spilled across the dry yard. Soon the distance I could see would shrink, until the night drew right up to the large windows of the sunroom. I leant nearer the glass, focussing, straining to see if anything moved.

  *

  Mum had packed a bag. She’d sat it by the side of the couch, thrown a coat over it. She didn’t want me to see it. I didn’t find it until almost a week after that night.

  *

  I sat in the sunroom in the dark. Now the night had swallowed us whole. Even in the heat I felt cold, I could feel the hairs on my arms standing up, the electricity of fear running down my spine. I leant against the glass, squinting to see. I knew it would be coming and I had to be able to hear its approach. I took my hands away from my ears.

  Outside the stagnant air had begun to move, a wind, growing stronger swept through the trees, they cracked and strained in its wake. Still I could not hear or see the thing that stalked us.

  I had to be somewhere I could hear its approach and the only place I could think of was the toilet where I had listened to its breathing the night before. Gently I opened the door to the sunroom and stepped out into the corridor.

  I made my way along the dark corridor. A light was on in the lounge but tonight I couldn’t hear the TV. I had no idea where Mum and Dad were but for now their arguing had ceased. I held my breath as I approached the backdoor. I slowed but did not stop as I passed it. I arrived at the toilet and I shut myself in.

  I locked the door and turned on the light. I could smell the summer air, the flowers on the vine that curled along the wall on the other side of the vent. I could hear the wind outside, it rushed against the house. Finally the weather was changing. And with it the thing crawled out of the woods.

  *

  I heard its laboured breathing, the wet wheezing drawing along the side of the house. Immediately I was terrified. Even though I’d been sure that it would come back, that its leaving the gutted dog outside our house meant that it hadn’t finished with us, I had hoped I would be wrong, that the night might be still and quiet, that the devil that haunted us might have found other prey to hunt.

  I didn’t know what to do. Could it tell that I was in here, on the other side of the vent? Panicking, I slammed my hand on the light switch, plunging the room into darkness. I hoped that the darkness might hide me.

  Still the breathing grew louder, closer. Now I could smell its foul stench, the terrible smell of rotten meat, the same smell that had poured from the dead things it had left at our backdoor. I tried to be quiet although I knew I was whimpering, more afraid than I had ever been before. I hoped that it would move off, the way it had the night before. It didn’t. It stopped on the other side of the vent.

  I crouched down, curled myself up into a corner by the door. I watched the vent, the foul smell of the thing making me want to wretch. I listened to it sucking in the night air on the other side of the vent. Was it watching me? Could it see me through the thin slats that hatched the vent?

  The wind had grown stronger. In the distance I heard a roll of thunder. The heat wave was going to end with a storm. Behind me, in the house, Mum shouted. The noise made me start, a small scream burst from my lips. Oh no! I’d given myself away. Now it would know where I was hiding! Dad shouted back. Their fighting starting in earnest. I struggled to hear the breathing. Was it still on the other side of the vent?

  I couldn’t hear it! I climbed up and stood on the toilet seat, straining to hear, close to the vent, trying to tell where it was. The thunder was getting closer, the storm was gaining on us fast. Mum and Dad’s shouting drowned out any chance I had of telling where the thing was.

  Panicking I jumped down from the toilet and unlocked the bathroom door. I leant out into the dark corridor, up towards the backdoor. The hallway was surprisingly quiet. A lull in the fight while either Dad or Mum thought of what to say or do next.

  I could hear rain drumming on the roof above me, the droplets growing heavier as the storm closed in around us. Suddenly there was a huge crack of lightening and the whole house lit up. In the instant before we were plunged back into darkness I looked to the back door.

  It was still closed. The deep bass of the thunder that followed shook the house. I heard Mum gasp in surprise. That seemed to be the cue for their fighting to start again. As I stood in the doorway and listened their shouting seemed to be getting louder. I’d never heard them arguing like that before. It was ferocious, as if all their fighting had been building up to this.

  I didn’t know what to do. I ran to the place where I felt safest. I ran to my room and slammed the door.

  The hot air took my breath away. The window was closed, the stifling air had been baking, left to stagnate ever since I’d slammed the window on the thing two nights before. I looked up to the window, the pane was black; I could see myself, small and lost, reflected on its surface. Rain, hurled by the wind, beat against the glass, looking for a way in. Suddenly I knew what I needed to do.

  I climbed up onto my bed and slowly, gently unlatched the window. Immediately the sound of the storm was in the room with me. It barged in, loud, rain slamming on the path outside my room. I leant close to the small gap that I’d created between the pane and the frame and listened. Was it circling our house as it had the night before, looking for a way in?

  A gust of wind tried to pull the window from my grip. I held on tight, struggling to keep it from blowing fully open. Cool air poured over my hand and into my room. The frame was slippery with the rain. Suddenly another lightning strike exploded in the sky. For a moment the whole world was blinding white. That was long enough to see it.

  Along the path, no more than a few feet from where I held the ajar window was the figure. It stood on two legs, although it was hunched forward. It looked at first glance like an old man. It had what resembled an old coat wrapped around it but it was torn and hung loosely on the thing’s gaunt form. Patches of marbled flesh protruded through gaps in the torn material. Something moved beneath the coat and it looked as if it might be carrying something smaller, huddled close against its body. Its arms were wasted, bones loose inside its sagging skin.


  But, it was the face of the thing that made me scream out. It watched me with milky eyes, bulging fluid filled orbs that sagged from their sockets. The centre of its face was a large raw wound stretching from its temple down to its teeth. It looked as if its nose had been ripped from its face. The skin of its face was bloated and formless, it looked like a mask, like the thing was wearing someone else’s skin. Its teeth were bared and its jaw constantly cycled, chewing on the air, sucking in my scent, imagining how I might taste.

  I fell backward away from the window. In an instant the flash from the lightning was gone and the room was pitch once more. The deafening sound of thunder almost drowned out my cries. The wind tore the window open. I didn’t stop to try and close it.

  I burst into the hallway and ran shouting for Mum and Dad. I expected someone to race from the lounge to see what was happening but no one came. As I ran I realised that I could no longer hear their arguing either.

  I threw open the lounge door and what I saw stopped made me stop dead in my tracks.

  A lamp had knocked from the table by the couch, its broken shade spread an angular, awkward shadow over the room. Dad stood in the middle of the lounge, still and silent, looking down at the floor. Mum lay on the floor beside the couch.

  The shame was written deep into Dad’s face. He couldn’t even look at me as I stood taking in the terrible scene. Mum edged backwards towards the door. She wiped the blood from her nose and struggled to pull herself to her feet. All the time her eyes were fixed on Dad, wide, scared. Without saying a word she backed out of the room.

  I don’t know what I expected Dad to do, to say, but I stood watching him. Maybe I was hoping for an answer, something, that might make sense of what I’d seen, but he just stood in the middle of the lounge looking at the floor.

  When I heard the backdoor opening I spun to see what was happening. I saw Mum walk out of the house and disappear into the thick darkness beyond.