Wintering

by Krissy Kneen

  She stepped back as he entered. She left room for him and he took it, his skinny thighs trembling. He stared at her.

  Matthew.

  They are not human anymore. They are the devil.

  But his eyes were the same. Confused; perhaps a little afraid, but the same deep brown. His lips parted—she thought he was going to speak to her, but he closed his mouth and walked to the kitchen. His back a mess of red welts, as if he had been whipped. Perhaps he’d been abducted, or…if he’d been running on all fours, his chest protected, maybe his back would have caught the twigs and branches.

  He opened the fridge, the interior light spilling on his skin. He must be freezing. How had he kept himself warm? His face. Matthew’s sweet face, only the cheeks sunken, emaciated. She felt as if she could pick him up in her arms, carry him to the couch. She needed to cover him in some way, but she couldn’t move.

  She watched him pick a cryovac packet of salmon from the fridge, tear it open with his teeth and squeeze the whole slab of fish into his mouth. He chewed noisily. Reached in for the bowl of leftover paella and scooped it into his mouth with his fingers.

  She remembered William. She felt the blood return to her face. A tightening in her stomach. She turned, walked to the bedroom, aware of each cold step, one after another. She was shivering. For him: she wasn’t cold at all. She didn’t feel anything at all. His coat was still in the cupboard where he had left it. She wrenched it free—the smell of him, similar but different. She held the coat to her face and the grief rose in her. Matthew was gone, but Matthew was here. She was walking towards him. There was food on his chin and his hands and mud in his face and something, a bug, crawling in the thick locks of his hair.

  She forced herself forward, holding up the jacket: denim, fleece-lined. He hadn’t worn it for a year, but she remembered him leaning on the rail at the dock, watching her fishing, laughing at her for coming up empty-handed: that jacket, the collar turned up against the cold.

  She wanted him back. She wanted him so much it hurt. And he was. It was not a real thing yet, it was a dream of him or a nightmare. She didn’t know if she would wake, drowning in blood, unable to breathe, killing somebody. Oh God. She had killed. He was dead and how could anything go back to what it was?

  She put the coat on his shoulders. He turned, mouth twitching.

  The bowl dropped and shattered.

  She stepped back as Matthew lunged towards her. Her eyes closed and the stink of him making her gag. His skin cold against hers, trembling, both of them, and his arms, and the crawling horror of his hair against her neck as she stood like a stone in his embrace. She felt bile rising in her throat, the burn of it all the way up to her mouth. His mouth on her throat. If he were to bite down now she would deserve it: that man in the forest, the gun; William.

  But he didn’t bite. He let her go, and she was shivering.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He was staring at her. His mouth opening, closing.

  ‘You…You just smell so bad.’

  Jessica held her hand to her mouth. The stink on her skin.

  ‘Where—’

  And then he laughed, doubled over, snorting. The laughter made his shoulders shake.

  Matthew.

  Matthew always laughed at her. Matthew would slap his knees and laugh till he could barely breathe. She loved this about him. She loved that she could make him laugh. She loved him.

  She thought she was laughing herself, but when she tried to breathe, it was all snot and tears and she found she was crying. Sobs that shook her as much as the laughing shook him. He stopped, stood, sighed and wiped his eyes with the back of a mud-crusted hand.

  Jessica continued to weep. It seemed she would never stop. Her head ached, she could feel it pounding. She forced herself to breathe.

  ‘I’ve been gone,’ he said.

  Strange. She hadn’t expected him to speak. He was an apparition, she’d assumed, or he was an animal creeping in for food. Words made him human again.

  The tears stopped. She stared at him. This was her boyfriend, Matthew. Naked, starved and bruised under his old denim jacket.

  ‘Where was I?’ he said. Almost as if she’d interrupted a story he was telling.

  She shook her head. It was the question she should have been asking.

  Later, all this could happen later. He needed a bath first. He needed to be warm. He needed hot food.

  She felt him following her to the bathroom. Smelled him there behind her and it was unsettling, but she put the plug in the tub and let the water run hot, as hot as she thought he could take. She poured bubble bath in, although it would take more than bubbles to shift the filth. The curtains were open just a little. Anyone outside would be able to see him standing naked. They would see it was him, Matthew. Returned.

  She shut them firmly. ‘Get in.’

  Then all the curtains, checking them, pulling them tight, locking the doors. Locking the windows. Suddenly terrified that someone might see him—see him and take him from her.

  Jessica sidestepped the broken crockery and opened the fridge. There was fish. She could make fish chowder, then, something hot and hearty. And scotch. Is that what they gave people for shock? She didn’t have any brandy. Scotch or vodka or cooking sherry.

  She put stock on the stove to heat and poured a nip of scotch; made it a double. Poured one for herself and drank it quickly in one hit before filling the glass up again.

  He was in the bath. He had turned the tap off. The jacket was abandoned on the tiles, fleece up, like the pelt of a dead sheep. She dragged the stool up and perched by the tub. He took the scotch from her and gulped it; she sipped hers slowly, watching him, the bubbles obscuring his body. What she could see was all skin hanging loosely on bones.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  He looked past her. His eyes unfocused. ‘…Outside?’

  ‘You can’t have been outside for the whole time. You’d have died; it’s winter.’

  ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘There’s scratches on your back. Have you been hit?’

  He sat up suddenly, the water slopped over the edge of the bath. She picked up the jacket, but it already stank and she let it drop back down in the wet.

  ‘Did someone take you?’

  Matthew held his palms to his eyes. It was obvious that he couldn’t remember but she pushed on anyway. ‘You were in the car. You were coming home. There was an animal, something dead in the road, you stopped the car. You took your phone? You filmed it? An animal. Something unusual?’

  He pulled his hands slowly away from his face and opened his eyes. He stared at her and there was something, some menace in his eyes. Flat dark brown.

  Something moved in his hair. She shuddered, drank the rest of her scotch quickly, wished she had brought the bottle in. Then he blinked, and it had been nothing. This was Matthew.

  ‘You’ve got to put your head under. There’s…Fuck. Where have you been?’

  He held his nose and slipped down under the surface of the water. He opened his eyes, staring up at her through an uneven landscape of bubbles and dark water.

  If she reached down now she could hold him under. He was so thin. She could put her weight on his chest and he would not be able to fight her.

  Jessica was horrified by the thought, this scrap of nightmare chasing her out into her waking hours. This was the woman who had put a bullet in the chamber and squeezed the trigger: some other self.

  A dark shape floated out of Matthew’s hair and scrambled at the surface of the water. She scooped it out onto the floor, paused, wondering what would be best, and finally brought the base of her shot glass down on it. Hard enough to hear the crack of its carapace; not hard enough to shatter the glass.

  His face broke the surface, slopping more water onto the tiles.

  ‘We’re going to have to cut your hair.’

  ‘Jessica.’

  She loved the way he said her name, using the whole of it, making it some sweet, flow
ery thing, making more of her.

  ‘I don’t remember anything. I remember driving. I don’t remember anything after that. But…’

  ‘Matthew?’

  He shook his head. Drops of muddy water flew off his hair and splashed the wall.

  ‘I think…’ He squinted. ‘There’s someone chasing me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Men?’ Then: ‘Women?’

  ‘You have to hide me.’

  The fear was back, his fear. Hers too.

  ‘I can’t go outside. You have to protect me.’

  Those big dark eyes. She felt all her care sucked into them. She gritted her teeth, reached out and placed her hand on the horror of his hair. She stroked it. Matthew. Her Matthew. She hadn’t even hugged him back yet. She had to stop before she was overwhelmed by the memory of her love for him and all the sadness, all the emptiness, a pit that she would not let herself collapse into.

  ‘We have to let your family know you’re home. The police. Your mother. She’s so upset…’

  ‘Please don’t.’

  She heard the lid of the pot rattling. She stood.

  ‘I’m going to make you something to eat.’

  ‘Did you close the curtains?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’re going to kill me.’

  She nodded. She remembered the weight of the gun in her hands. Saw Crystal felled by her grief, holding, sobbing, screaming into the dead man’s chest.

  ‘We’ll have to cut that hair off,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll make some chowder.’

  Her hands were against his back, holding him at arm’s length. His flesh clean now against her palms. They dragged the pillows off the lounge back into the bedroom, lay them down on the empty frame.

  ‘The dog…’ she said, beginning to explain, and then gave up. The dog would lead to a conversation about William, the smell of a feral animal on the mattress, the smell of jasmine on his shirt. They were both exhausted. ‘Tomorrow. We’ll have to talk tomorrow.’ She stretched out her hands to touch him. He was here with her and she was almost content.

  He curled himself up into a foetal position with his wounded back facing her and in a minute his breathing had deepened.

  Jessica checked her watch: 3 a.m. She sighed. Breath was hard to find, as if there was something pressing down on her chest. She turned away from him, shifted to the edge of the cushions and closed her eyes.

  A knock at the door.

  She gasped. She was alone. Panic rising. Maybe she had dreamed him. She was still dressed. She always seemed to go to sleep with her clothes on, she wasn’t even sure where she had left her nightdress, a pile of abandoned clothes desperate for washing in the corner of the room.

  He was gone. The sliding door was open.

  He had been here.

  He had left her.

  Another knock, and Jessica opened the door.

  Marijam.

  ‘Oh. I didn’t hear a car.’

  The old woman looked frail. She had a beanie pulled down low over her forehead, her jacket zipped up high against the cold.

  ‘I brought the boat.’ She nodded down towards the beach. It was a long way from Cockle Creek to Southport. Jessica had never tried the trip herself, but it would take over an hour. You would have to carry extra petrol with a small motor like the one Marijam had on her little dinghy.

  Tough old bird, thought Jessica. ‘From Cockle Creek? That’s a good way.’

  ‘Gone further.’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  She should invite the old woman in. That would be the polite thing to do. Jessica glanced over her shoulder, wondering what evidence of Matthew there was. Matted hair shaved and fallen onto the bathroom floor, the bowl of paella still smashed on the floor in front of the fridge. Clothes, perhaps. His jacket, the smell of him still strong on the couch.

  ‘I’m sorry I missed the meeting,’ she said instead.

  ‘You were missed. That’s for sure. That’s why I’m here. Checking up. I’m the delegate.’

  ‘I haven’t told anyone.’

  ‘We know. We would hear. Eyes and ears everywhere. Maude would have warned you about that.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where’s your dog gone?’

  ‘I don’t know. You tell me where my dog has gone, if you have all those eyes and ears.’

  ‘I hear he was taken by a tiger. Your tiger, I suspect. That one that’s stalking you like my husband stalked me.’

  ‘Look, I just want to be left alone.’

  ‘By us? Or by him? That thing.’

  ‘Everyone. I just want to get on with it, okay?’

  ‘No. Probably not okay. You know about us. We know about you. Best to stick close, right?’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone about the hunt.’

  ‘Good to know. Because they found a shirt.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Man’s shirt. Some blood around the collar.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No one knows whose shirt it is but if they get to ask Crystal she’ll tell them she recognises it.’

  ‘But he didn’t have a shirt on. Didn’t have clothes at all.’

  ‘Who? You see something, did you?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘No body. No gun. But if they find a gun I wonder if there’ll be prints on it. I wonder if the weapon’s traceable?’

  ‘Marijam—’

  ‘But they haven’t found a gun yet. Just a shirt. Nameless man’s shirt. Maybe they’ll be asking if it is your husband’s shirt. Last man down and all that.’

  ‘Marijam, please.’

  ‘I’m just the messenger, young lady. Don’t shoot the messenger. Well, you can’t, can you? You don’t have a gun. Did you? Did you ever have a gun?’

  ‘Get off my property now.’

  ‘I’m going.’ She held on to the rail and stepped down a little stiffly, turned back and grinned. ‘Oh, that wouldn’t be your net down around by Blubber Point, would it? Hope it isn’t. Someone’s gone and cut a hole clear through it. Vandals, most likely. Damn kids.’

  She was more sprightly on the sand. She almost skipped down to her boat and pushed it out; jumped in, the waves washing up over her gumboots and onto her tracksuit pants. Small engine. Several cans of two-stroke resting in the back.

  Jessica didn’t wait to see her putter away. She closed the door and leaned her back against it. Her phone was in her pocket. She fished it out. No calls. She dialled and waited but William still wasn’t answering. She wanted him here. She wanted his huge arms around her, protecting her. The ring tone stopped.

  She opened the back door, stood on the balcony. Her net was somewhere out there, slashed, hours of work. And her dog lost, somewhere; she had only had him for a handful of days. And then her boyfriend.

  ‘I’m leaving the door open,’ she said to the rising tide.

  Food on the floor. The house leaning in on itself. Jessica took some more fish out of the freezer. She would need to go fishing again. She would have to find her nets, if Marijam really had slashed them on her way past. There might be fish in them even now, dead in the nets. She needed to put the boat out soon.

  She defrosted a chicken breast in the microwave.

  She felt the shake of the floor as someone came up the stairs.

  Oh.

  She closed her eyes, heard the door slide open, closed. The curtain drawn.

  Matthew stood behind her. She smelled him. Wild musk. She felt the weight of his hands warm on her shoulders. Just weeks ago she would have turned and put her arms around him. Now she breathed in the smell of him. Strangely altered, strong, like sweat and earth and leaf mould. Maybe this was the way he had smelled before the salmon farm turned his skin to acrid salt and brine.

  She turned the stove on, pressing the clicker till the flame leapt up under the pan.

  Matthew. Back. He was back and he was hungry. She dropped the chicken breast into the spitting butter and pressed it down flat.


  He couldn’t settle. He had paced, staring out through the curtains of first one room, then the next. He had eaten almost constantly, still hungry regardless of what food she gave him. He let her feed him, run another bath for him. There was still a whiff of the wild trapped in his hair.

  She sat in the lounge room listening to the slap of water as he moved, restless even in the tub. She looked at the piles of paper arranged carelessly on the table, the clothing strewn over the floor. It had been his job to nag her to pick up her things. He was the one who preferred a clean table.

  A bag for the used clothes. She folded the ones that smelled all right. She had left them bundled in the washing basket after taking them out of the dryer. Now it was almost impossible to tell the used clothes from the fresh ones. Still, it felt good to find some kind of order in the chaos of the last few weeks.

  Here were the clothes she had been wearing the night William was over. She held the shirt to her face. She remembered sex. She remembered those scant hours as a sweet relief from the continuing nightmare. She dropped them into the garbage bag. When she washed them those hours would disappear. Not a word from William since.

  She heard the rush of water, Matthew stepping out of the tub, as she emptied the bag of clothes into the machine, then he was behind her. His face at the nape of her neck, sniffing: for a moment she was afraid he could smell William on her. But that was days ago. She had showered three times since then.

  He lifted her skirt. His mouth still on her neck, open now, hungry. She tried to turn towards him but he was on her, leaning against her, the weight of him forcing her head to the clear plastic. She could see a red striped sock turning in the front loader. She shut her eyes.

  Smaller than William. His hips at the same height as hers, the hands grabbing at her breasts through her shirt so much smaller; everything smaller. She closed her eyes, but all she felt was the comparisons. The memory of being lifted and held safe. She had relaxed; now she was struggling.

  When she opened her eyes there was the red striped sock turning round and round, caught up with a pair of jeans. Her skin prickled.

  This was Matthew, returned to her. His thighs, thinner now, the bones sharp against her rump. She prised his hand off her breast and he pressed his fingers between her legs. She felt the rise and sudden fall as she clamped his hand against her. She struggled to push away from him, and turned.