Her eyes wandered towards next-door’s garden. She wanted to invite Ruth to lunch, and although the thought of having to meet Mike Byrne filled her with distaste, she would brave it for Ruth’s sake. There was something swinging from a tree at the bottom of the garden. She leaned across the sink and pressed her forehead against the window, trying to get a better look. It was some sort of upside-down scarecrow. That horrible man couldn’t even leave the birds alone.
Sheila was glad she had worn a jacket, even though she was only going next door. The wind was cutting and she dug her hands deeper into her pockets as the doorbell chimes echoed inside. There was no answer, and she frowned. The car was still in the driveway and usually the dog would kick up a racket. She peered through the letterbox. Not a sound, no movement, nothing.
She rang the bell again. Perhaps they had gone out into the back garden. She walked around the side of the house; there was no sign of either of them, so she rapped hard on the patio door. This was strange, the two of them missing at the same time. She had only ever seen Ruth going out in her husband’s company on a Friday for the weekly shopping. She turned to walk away. Then, remembering the scarecrow, she went towards it. It would give Tom a good laugh when she told him about it this evening. The breeze had swung it around so its back was towards her. It was very lifelike, even if the head was pulpy and misshapen. She leaned over and touched its legs, swinging it round to face her.
Her screams brought the neighbours running. A couple of women led her home. Her throat filled with bile and her stomach heaved at the horror. She didn’t make it inside in time, and had to stand over her freshly planted flowerbeds as the coffee she had so recently drunk spewed from her. To her immense embarrassment, the force with which she vomited, made her wet herself. She could smell the warm urine as it coursed down her legs, forming a pool at her feet. The women fussed and reassured her, helping her to slip off her sodden shoes. She felt she would never get over the mortification as they led her, childlike, upstairs to the bathroom. The shocked man, who rediscovered Mike’s body, was running around in panic, screaming for someone, anyone, to call the police, an ambulance.
Sheila was trying to wash the dirt from her body under the spray. The urine was easily soaped away, but her hand, the hand that touched him, she scrubbed repeatedly, as she sobbed her distress. Blue lights were flashing around her bedroom when she emerged from the shower. In the street below uniformed police moved swiftly, taping off next door’s garden. Her sedatives were on the bedside table and she quickly, without the aid of water, swallowed two of them, almost choking on their dry chalkiness. She dressed, mechanically, tugging at the clothes that stuck to the still, damp patches on her body.
‘Are you all right, my dear?’
She turned and nodded. ‘Yes, I’m fine now, thank you.’
The woman’s eyes strayed towards the open pill bottle.
‘Such a terrible shock for you. Would you like me to call your husband?’
‘No, I’ll be fine, thanks, and he’s very busy.’ She could do this. She could face this demon alone. What had happened next door was real. There were witnesses to that effect.
‘Well, if you’re sure.’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘I’m Betty Regan, by the way,’ she held out a hand to Sheila, who stared at it blankly. ‘It’s a terrible way to meet, but I live at number 17, and I’ll be there until lunchtime, if you need me.’
Sheila, who desperately needed to be left alone with her shame, managed to nod. The woman was just turning to go when a crash from next-door made them jump.
Betty leaned out of the bedroom window.
‘The police are breaking down the door.’
The thought of her kind neighbour spurred Sheila into action. She raced down the stairs after the woman. She tried to run past a police officer standing by the splintered front door, only to be grabbed from behind and steered away.
‘Come on now, miss,’ a plain-clothes detective led her aside, holding firm despite her struggles.
‘You don’t understand. I’m her friend.’
‘Yes, yes, I understand. But I just want to ask you a few questions.’
The mutterings of the assembled crowd came to a sudden stop. The silence hummed as she watched the small procession emerging from the side of the house. Two figures in white overalls, stretcher-bearers struggling under the weight of Mike’s body. Gasps and shudders came from the crowd, as the stretcher passed by them, and the black body bag was loaded into the waiting ambulance.
‘Is Ruth all right?’ she asked the detective. ‘Is Ruth all right?’ she repeated. ‘Tell me.’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Oh God, no, what happened?’
‘We don’t know for sure yet. The coroner will fill us in later, but it looks as though she attacked her husband, and then committed suicide.’
‘No, that’s not possible,’ she whispered, watching a technician carrying the blood-stained hurley, encased in plastic.
‘We’ll be in touch,’ the detective informed her.
‘It’s just not possible,’ she whispered, thinking of the small, frail woman who had befriended her. Mike must have weighed at least a hundred kilos more than his wife … how could she possibly have strung him up like that?
A van marked with the lettering of the ISPCA drew up and its driver, leash in hand, hurried down the side of the house. He re-emerged with Brutus in tow. There were more gasps from the crowd when they saw the dog. His coat was matted with blood and he had to be helped up into the cage that sat behind the van. Sheila moved closer to it, gripping the wire mesh.
‘What happened to you, boy?’ she whispered. What was happening in this place?
‘Move aside, please miss.’ A police officer ushered her back from the van, and she watched until it disappeared from sight.
‘The dog must have witnessed it all’, the whisper ran through the crowd, until a movement in the doorway caught their attention. The stretcher-bearers appeared once again. This time the black bag was too big for the body inside. It could have been a child. Many of the women in the crowd started to cry. The sight of such a tiny figure encased in its black plastic shroud was too much to bear, even for the most morbid among them. Sheila cringed as the ambulance doors slammed shut. It moved slowly away from the kerb, followed by the police and coroner. The blue lights had been switched off. The couple inside the ambulance were beyond help. Sheila went back indoors and lay on the couch in the sitting-room. She had forgotten to switch off the gas fire, and the room felt hot and stuffy, but she didn’t turn it off. Still in her coat, she closed her eyes, huddled into a ball, and waited for Tom to come home.
****
‘Jenny, will you please come away from the window?’
This was the third time he’d asked and Joe Mahoney was losing patience with his stepdaughter. He was rushing about trying to get the house ready for Helen and the new baby’s homecoming. The events of next door, though chilling, were not the most important thing on his mind. He had already missed two days from work. An absence that was unplanned for with the baby arriving so early, and at one of the busiest times too.
‘Jenny, I won’t tell you again.’
Jenny climbed down from her perch on the window seat, scratching her head. The people next door must be very sick. There was an ambulance and police cars and everything. She felt quite sick herself, and was still feeling too hot and her throat hurt. She wanted to tell Joe, but he was so busy.
‘I’ll go up and clean my room.’
‘Good girl,’ he smiled at her, as he struggled with the vacuum cleaner.
Jenny could hear him muttering and grumbling as he tried to steer the machine across the carpet. Her bed was easily made. She just pulled the quilt into place and ran her hands along it. She would tidy her books next. Sitting cross-legged in front of the bookcase, she was soon lost in pictures and words.
‘Are any of those books on the afterlife?’ She turned to find her alien friend
sitting on her bed. He really did smell very bad.
‘What’s an afterlife?’
‘It’s the life after death. Do you have any books on that?’
‘How can you be alive after you’re dead?’ Jenny knew all about death. Her goldfish, Jerry, had died and her mother flushed him down the toilet. Her mother said when you’re dead, you’re dead, and that was that.
‘Never mind. Just find me some books that deal with that subject.’
‘Where will I get them from?’
‘Where do you normally get books from?’
‘From the shop or the library.’
‘Then get them from there.’
‘Okay, but I can’t go today, because my new baby brother is coming home from the hospital.’
The whore had a son after all. Black Jack paced around the room, angry at having to wait.
‘Then go tomorrow. Go to your library and get me the books I ask for.’
‘Yes, I will.’
‘Jenny!’ She jumped as her name was called. ‘Jenny, get ready. We have to go and collect your mother and the baby.’
‘Okay, I’ll be down in a minute.’ She quickly tidied the remaining books. Her mother would be angry if her room wasn’t neat. She almost forgot about her alien friend in her hurry.
‘Don’t forget what I asked of you,’ he said.
‘I won’t. I promise.’
Black Jack was left to wander the house once the front door had slammed shut. He pulled the books that Jenny had so carefully tidied, from the shelves and threw them around the room. The clothes from the airing cupboard were scattered along the landing and down the stairs. He wanted the books and he wanted them now. There had to be some way to escape this place, this limbo. He had seen the pictures on the talking box, heard others speak of an afterlife. Going into the main bedroom, he pulled the covers from the bed, tore open drawers and tipped their contents into a pile. The whore’s clothes smelt sickly-sweet. Like Elizabeth she had elevated her status by marriage to a rich man, but this one was not finding the transition easy and he would make sure that her new-found lifestyle would not last. Downstairs, he made just as much mess. In the sitting-room he yanked cushions from their covers, ripping the material in half, allowing foam to spill along the seats and across the carpet.
The kitchen was next. He flung food from the larder, fridge and freezer; cutlery drawers were upended onto the pile. When he was finished the house was a shambles and Black Jack, for now, was satisfied.
****
The journey home from the hospital had been an uneasy one. Helen was suffering withdrawal symptoms from the cocaine. The few grams she had taken with her had soon gone and she had been prevented from stocking up by the sudden onset of labour. Jenny knew her mother was angry the minute she saw her. Joe made her wait in the car while he went inside the hospital. He returned carrying a case and bags. Her mother marched grim-faced behind him, with a nurse by her side carrying the wrapped bundle. The fighting started the minute Helen entered the car. She sat in the front passenger seat, and waited for the nurse to place the baby in her lap.
‘Don’t you think it wiser, dear, if you sat in the back?’ the nurse suggested.
‘Mind your own business,’ Helen grabbed the baby from her and slammed the car door.
‘She is only thinking of your own good and that of the baby, dear,’ her husband said, patting her arm.
‘And who asked you?’ she turned in her seat and deposited the baby into the car seat.
‘Do up the harness,’ she ordered Jenny, who could hear her mother’s nails drumming on the dashboard, as she strapped the baby in.
The baby made small sounds as they drove and Jenny kissed his face and whispered to him. In the front her mother and Joe were arguing. Her mother was saying nasty things, and Joe’s eyes looked bright and shiny when he looked back to check on Jenny and the baby. She wished that her mother would go away and be dead like the goldfish.
When they reached home, Helen jumped from the car almost before it came to a stop. Joe took the baby from the car seat and opened the door. Helen stormed inside and screamed. Joe hurried after her, and Jenny, not sure what was wrong, peeped into the hall. Towels hung from the lamps and banisters. Bits of coloured foam were sprinkled like fairy dust across the carpet. Joe stood looking around him in a daze. Jenny could hear her mother fumbling around upstairs. She looked into the kitchen. It was as bad there. Food had started to defrost, and small puddles dotted the tiles.
‘Nothing has been taken as far as I can see,’ her mother’s voice came from the hallway. She stood with numerous gold chains and rings draped across her fingers.
‘There’s no point in calling the police out then,’ Joe said.
He had placed the baby seat on the couch, and was looking around the room, running his fingers through his hair in disbelief. He went throughout the house checking the windows and doors for some sign of entry. There was none. No broken glass or a door kicked in. Jenny had started to clean up the mess. She was on her hands and knees picking up the bits of foam and dropping them into a waste bin.
‘Leave that for the vacuum,’ her mother said, stepping over her and going outside to the car. She returned with her case and bags.
Jenny could hear her talking to Joe, who was also on his hands and knees in the kitchen.
‘But why do you have to go out?’ he asked. ‘It’s ridiculous. You’ve just come out of hospital. What’s so important? I don’t understand.’
Jenny was still there, when her mother emerged from the kitchen with a bottle of baby formula.
‘He’ll need feeding in about an hour,’ she thrust the bottle at Jenny.
‘Oh, okay.’
Joe came from the kitchen and grabbed his wife by the arm.
‘Stay here.’
‘Let go,’ she pulled away, ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
They stood mute in the hallway, as the car roared to life and she drove away.
‘Well, Jen,’ Joe tried to sound cheerful, ‘looks like we’re on our own.’
Jenny nodded and shrugged her shoulders. She was used to her mother’s strange mood swings, and, apart from the baby, everything was normal to her.
Helen drove away from the house cursing under her breath. When she was clear of the estate, she stopped and fumbled in her purse for money. Straightening the bundle of notes she had tucked in there. The money she had taken from Joe’s dresser drawer. She pulled down the sun visor and checked her lipstick in the mirror. Soon she would feel better. Her dealer had magic to stop the shaking and lift her mood.
Black Jack stood a few yards away watching her. He would have come closer, got in beside her, but he was tied to this place. He had tried to leave in the past hidden in the back seat of numerous cars as they left, but was always tugged back as though an invisible cord held him.
Helen was at the end of her tether. Her dream of a happy life was rapidly falling apart. She had just given birth to a child she did not want, and by a man she did not love. She had a right to be happy, to feel young and free again. Still, there was the rush of the drug to look forward to. Helen would not have looked so pleased with herself had she seen the look on Black Jack’s face. There was more to fear than an angry husband.
TWENTY-SIX
Tom climbed from his car and looked in amazement at the tape around the house next door. He walked over to the policeman that stood guard and asked what had happened. The news sent him running for home. Sheila lay huddled on the sofa. The room was stifling from the heat of the fire and he turned the switch down a notch.
‘Sheila, are you all right?’
‘I can’t seem to get warm.’
He took her hands in his and was surprised at how cold they were.
‘I just spoke with the policeman on duty. He told me what happened.’
‘Poor Ruth,’ she started to sob.
He held her, kissing her hair and promising that it would be all right. Though it was still only a little after two
, the light was already beginning to fade and the room was deep in shadow.
‘We have to leave,’ Sheila murmured, stirring in his arms, ‘we have to get away, before this place destroys us too.’
‘It’s not this place,’ he assured her, ‘it was just a terrible tragedy.’
‘No!’ She bolted upright. ‘It’s this place. Ruth knew it as well. It’s cursed or the land is tainted. I want to leave, now.’
‘Okay.’ He wasn’t sure if it was her nervousness that caused his sudden feeling of unease. ‘We’ll go and stay with my parents for a while. Stay there and I’ll pack what we need.’
****
Elizabeth and Timmy hugged each other. They watched in silence as the man loaded suitcases into the machine. He went back into the house and came out with his wife. The woman could hardly stand and he was forced to hold her upright. Once the car doors slammed shut, Sheila closed her eyes and breathed a sight of relief. Tom turned the heater up as high as it would go.
‘It’ll soon warm up,’ he said as he patted her hand.
‘Thanks,’ she replied, turning away so he could not see the tears that threatened.
As he steered the car out of the drive she looked back for the last time at what should have been their dream home. Elizabeth recognised the look of fear in her eyes. She too had been Black Jack’s victim and her heart ached for the woman and for what she had suffered … what she would continue to suffer for evermore.
Angry now, she looked down at Timmy.
‘Where did he go?’ He shook his head.
‘We have to search for him, find some way of stopping him before he hurts others.’
****
Jenny grumbled, and tried to brush away the hand that shook her. She had been sound asleep and was too ill, too worn out, to want to wake up.
Paupers Graveyard Page 23
