The Slaughter Man

by Parkin, Cassandra;

  It wasn’t a human skull. The jaw was elongated, the teeth sharp and fang-like. It was a pig. He said it was a pig. It’s all right to kill a pig, that’s what they’re for, they’re bred for eating. (Then she remembers the clots of cooked flesh falling from the skull, and wonders if she’ll ever eat pig again.) It’s all right. It’s all right. He’s not following her and she doesn’t have to go back there ever again. She doesn’t have to go back there ever again. She doesn’t have to…

  Then she reaches the end of the path and finds herself looking into a field with a clump of indeterminate farm creatures in it. Her legs are aching, and she’s glad of the chance to stop and lean on the heavy wooden fence that separates her from what she presumes must be someone’s farm.

  The fence is solid and comforting. She takes a few deep breaths, then drags her hair into a rough plait, fastening it with a hairband she finds in her pocket. If this was a film she’d look glamorous and ready for action. This isn’t a film, so she probably just looks plain and sweaty, her hair in an unflattering scrape, but there’s no one here to see her. She can relax and get her breath back and watch what’s going on.

  The creatures sound like sheep, but they’re too rangy, too leggy, and not woolly enough. It takes her longer than it probably ought to before she realises they’re goats. There’s a small open animal shed where they presumably sleep (Do animals go to bed at night like people? Willow wonders. Do they choose their own bedtime?), but as far as she can tell, there’s no one in it at the moment. Whatever’s going on at the other side of the field, the goats seem very pleased about it. They jostle and toss their heads and barge into each other, and she can hear them calling. Then, with a sudden burst of movement, the herd breaks up and scatters, and the gate swings open to let someone through.

  That’s the farmer. Maybe he’s brought them treats. She has vivid memories of long-ago walks with Laurel, of stopping by a paddock where a giant chestnut horse bent his curious head down to whiffle at their hair, then fumbled polos from their splayed palms with velvet lips. When the figure in the field turns to shut the gate, Willow sees that the farmer is a woman, with a thick bundle of hair gathered against the base of her neck. She shoos the goats away, upends the sack she’s carrying, and pours out a thin stream of pellets into a low metal trough. The goats eat as if this is their first meal in weeks. They come in an implausible range of sizes, some no bigger than spaniels, others more like small ponies.

  Will I be in trouble for standing here? Maybe leaning on the fence is the same as looking into someone’s garden. The woman’s utilitarian plainness contains its own beauty, the beauty of something shorn of all frivolity and shaped to fit perfectly into a specific kind of life. There’s something slung over her shoulder. Willow stares hard at it, trying to make it into anything other than what it looks like, which is a gun.

  What if she points it at me? Is she allowed to shoot me? It’s the second time in twenty-four hours she’s had to ask this question. She shrinks away from the fence, wondering if she should run, but the woman’s already walking off in another direction, towards the side of the field. Another minute and she’s over the fence, climbing with quick economical movements that make it look as simple as opening a door and walking through.

  Then, someone else; a boy about her own age. He’s wearing skinny jeans, Converse trainers and a beanie hat that slouches down the back of his head. His hair’s long enough to get in his eyes. He struggles with the catch of the gate, and when the goats leave their trough and swarm around him in a hopeful, jostling crowd, he looks alarmed. Are they going to attack him? She’s used to thinking of animals as something humans eat, milk, and generally exploit for their own benefit, but these goats seem to have figured out a way to level the playing field. The biggest goat, a huge hairy creature with strong horns and hair so thick it looks like a mane, chases the others away and puts itself between the boy and the rest of the herd, watching him carefully. The boy waves his arms, then yells. She can hear the uncertainty in his voice; he doesn’t expect the goat to obey. Nonetheless she envies him his freedom, to open his mouth and call out to the empty sky.

  Eventually he reaches a truce with the goats, or else they simply accept he has nothing to offer them. The boss goat turns away; the rest scatter; the boy’s been set free. He looks around and shrugs, as if to tell the universe that he wasn’t bothered at all. His gaze turns in her direction. When their eyes meet, they both feel the jolt of their connection.

  Now what happens? She ought to say something, because she’s the one who doesn’t belong here. She gives him a small wave, so he knows she’s not laughing at him.

  She’s a girl and he’s a boy, so of course he’s not going to come over straight away, any more than she’s going to leap the fence and walk up to him like an over-eager lunatic. They have to approach gradually, guided by the million interesting distractions in the space between them. He wanders diagonally left and picks up a long stick, then meanders around a series of molehills. She climbs the fence and sits on the top rail, balancing fiercely and praying she doesn’t fall off. As he gets closer, she slips her feet onto the ground, and he leans against the fence a few yards down from her.

  “All right?” He’s trying to sound casual, but she can hear the tension in his voice. It cost him a lot to come over here. Now what? She smiles, hoping this will be enough.

  “You live near here?” His accent makes her think of London, a rich Estuary sound. It would make a great contrast to her own flat Northern vowels, if only she could speak.

  She nods.

  “I’m staying for a bit.” He waves his hand vaguely towards the other side of the field. “Been here a few months. It’s all right. Bit boring sometimes.”

  This is when she’s supposed to speak, but she can’t, and this is why she doesn’t have any friends any more. There’s only so much you can do with body language, and even the kindest (or most self-absorbed) listener eventually gets freaked out by her lack of words. In a minute he’ll realise there’s something wrong with her and walk away. She risks another smile and a slight shrug, trying to draw out this moment of belonging, of feeling normal. It’s her turn to speak, but she can’t. What’s going to happen next?

  Struggling against her own body, battling her own will, she’s suddenly saved; a shattering bang that tears through the air and sends up a flock of clattering wingbeats into the sky. The shock of the gunshot takes her breath away. A second shot, and then something small and black and folded-in tumbles from the cloud of wings.

  “It’s all right.” The boy is watching her. “That’s Katherine. She’s clearing the crows out. Says they make a mess of everything. Peck holes in tarpaulins and that. She knows what she’s doing. She won’t shoot you by mistake.”

  Willow thinks about the woman’s plain clean face, the bundle of hair at the base of the neck, the confident strides measured out in green wellingtons. A woman with a gun, who shoots crows. She might just be Willow’s personal heroine.

  “She puts out food in the field and then picks them off when they come down for it,” the boys adds. Willow can’t tell if he’s saying this with disgust or admiration. The shotgun rings out again, one round and a pause as the birds circle and soar, then the second round and a second black clump tumbles like a falling star. She wonders how it would feel to hold the bird’s body, feel the heat dissipate and the flesh stiffen between her fingers.

  “You don’t say much, do you?” The boy’s glance makes her feel guilty. He’s worried that he’s making a fool of himself, that she’s laughing at him, that he’s made himself open and vulnerable, and now she’s going to dive in and tear out his guts.

  “There summat wrong with you?”

  No, there bloody isn’t. Her tenderness dissipates. Why should I have to talk just so you’ll feel comfortable?

  He’s waiting for her to speak and prove him wrong. What happens now? Will he walk away, or turn on her? She wonders if he can tell what she’s feeling, if she’s as open to him as
he is to her.

  “You got, like, no tongue or something?” He looms closer, not touching her exactly, but right in her personal space so she feels as if he is. She can smell the hair wax that keeps his elaborate quiff from tumbling into his eyes, and the body spray he’s doused himself in. His eyes are large and blue. She lifts her chin and tries not to look intimidated.

  “Or are you, like, special?”

  How fucking dare he? Of course she’s not special. She needs time, that’s all, time and for everyone to leave her alone.

  “How about if I, like, flick your nose? Will you talk to me then?” She can see the endless possibilities of minor torture flaring in his mind. He raises his hand and she flinches. “God, you daft cow, I’m not actually going to do it.” He laughs. “But if I did, would you tell anyone? Or would you let me do it?”

  Get the fuck away from me. The words are there, she can feel the shape of them, but the pressure won’t yield. Get the fuck away from me. If she told him to back off, would he obey? From across the field, he’d looked vulnerable. Now he’s someone else, excited by the thought of hurting a stranger and getting away with it. She can hear his breathing, faster and deeper than she’d like. Get the fuck away. If she thinks it hard enough, perhaps he’ll be able to read it in her eyes.

  “Bloody hell, Willow.” A voice from behind her; her Uncle Joe, out of breath. She turns towards him thankfully, even though she knows she’s probably about to be told off for disappearing without telling him where she was going, because although it will be humiliating, at least it will get her away from this boy.

  “It’s okay,” he says as soon as he sees her face. “I got back and you weren’t there, but you left me some clues to follow so I found you. Shoes gone, back door open, footprints in the grass. I didn’t think you’d get so far, though. A mile and a half through a strange forest.” He takes a deep breath, and then, to her surprise, laughs. “I keep forgetting you’re seventeen and not ten. Sorry about that. Oh, hi, you must be Luca. Nice to meet you.”

  “How do you know who I am?” The boy sounds about ten himself. To compensate, he shuffles down inside his hoodie and glowers out from underneath his beanie hat.

  “Don’t worry, mate, I’m not the police. Katherine mentioned she’d got a young lad called Luca staying with her.”

  “So who are you then?” Luca is trying to sound tough and cocky, but it’s coming off as uncouth.

  “I’m Joe, I live over the other side of the woods. Is Kath around?”

  “She’s shooting crows.” Luca is still refusing to make eye contact with Joe, but Joe doesn’t seem to mind.

  “Okay, I’ll catch up with her later. Willow, d’you want to come home for lunch?”

  Willow nods, glad for a reason to turn her back on Luca. But before they can leave, they’re going to have to say hello to the woman with the gun – Katherine – who’s appeared over the fence and is now striding towards them, sturdy and sure, belonging to the land in a way Willow knows she could never achieve if she lived here from now until she turned ninety.

  “Joe! Nice to see you.” Katherine aims a friendly smile in Joe’s direction, keeping her gun pointed carefully downwards. “How are you?”

  “You know me. Doing great. As always.”

  “Not too lonely by yourself?”

  Joe laughs. “It’s only for a few weeks. Do us both good to get some space, I expect. And anyway, I’m not on my own, my sister lent me my niece for a while. Willow, this is Katherine, she has a farm.”

  “Smallholding,” Katherine corrects him.

  “Smallholding, but I’m too thick to know the difference, so I keep saying farm. Kath, this is Willow.”

  “Hello, Willow.” Katherine has a way of looking that Willow finds comforting, as if she’s been evaluated not for her looks or her stylishness but simply as a specimen of human animal, catalogued without judgement and then left to continue being herself. “Come over here whenever you like. There’s always plenty to do. Just come through this field and there’s a path through the garden.” She lays the shotgun across her knee and breaks it open, takes out the two spent cartridges and replaces them with two more from her pocket.

  Willow watches Luca from the corner of her eye. He’s watching her, too, the pair of them carrying on a silent dialogue as Joe and Katherine discuss a gate on a footpath, and a meeting of the parish council.

  “Right.” Katherine shoves hard at a goat that has crept up on her and stuck its nose in her pocket. “Get off, there’s nothing for you in there. Joe, are you and Willow staying for some lunch? About an hour from now. You can hang around the house and play with the cats while you’re waiting.”

  “That’s really nice of you, but we’d better get back.”

  “You’re sure? It’s no trouble.”

  “Honestly. But thanks.”

  “Is he looking after you properly?” Katherine’s sudden shrewd gaze sweeps on Willow like a searchlight. Willow nods, and tries to look like someone who didn’t leave the house without permission in the middle of the night and almost get herself killed by a strange man whose land she was trespassing on.

  “Well, make sure you keep an eye on him,” Katherine says. “He’s a nice man, your uncle, but he’s as daft as a brush. He’s not fit to be left on his own.”

  “It’s true.” Joe doesn’t sound at all insulted. “That’s why I have Willow staying with me. Otherwise I might forget to get dressed or leave the house ever again. But she’ll see me right.”

  “He’s a funny one, though, isn’t he,” Joe says suddenly, as if he and Willow have been talking the whole way back through the woods, rather than tramping along in rhythmic and companionable silence.

  Willow looks at him blankly.

  “Luca, I mean. Nice enough kid, until he remembers he’s decided not to be. I had a boyfriend like that at uni. He was lovely, but only long as no one was watching.”

  His voice is light and casual, but she can’t miss the slight overemphasis on the word boyfriend, the sideways glance to make sure she’s listening. She’s always thought of coming out as a singular act, a grand declaration instantly disseminated, because that’s what it’s been like for the two or three students who’ve done it. Her college is a closed system; all news is shared with everyone. It hasn’t occurred to her before that the real world requires an endless repetition of this same small act of courage. She hooks her arm through Joe’s, and hopes he’ll understand this as the gesture of solidarity it’s meant to be.

  “By the way,” Joe adds, “there’s something I need to tell you.”

  She can see the turning coming up that would take her to where the Slaughter Man waits with his pot full of bones. She already knows what Joe is going to say.

  “If you want to go and visit Katherine, that’s absolutely fine, she’s lovely. But you see that path there? Don’t go down that way. It’s not safe.”

  Willow nods.

  “Seriously though, I really mean it. Willow, are you listening to me?”

  He’s stopped walking, and now he takes hold of her shoulders and turns her towards him

  “There’s someone who lives at the end of it and it’s best not to disturb him. He’s… well, he’s a strange man. It’s best to leave him alone.”

  Willow nods again.

  “He won’t bother you unless you bother him. But if you do bother him… well, just don’t, all right? Promise? Good girl. Okay, lecture over. Let’s go home and get lunch.”

  Willow hooks her arm back through Joe’s. In her head, she can still hear the click of the Slaughter Man’s tongue, still feel that strange sensation in her chest, as if the bullet he fired was not imaginary, but only invisible, and had torn its way through her flesh and burrowed its way into her heart.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The phone pressed to her ear, Willow curls herself into the corner crease of the chair that sits by the living room fireplace. When she scoots herself down like this, folding her legs into her belly and tucking her neck agai
nst her chest, her mother talking quietly nearby, she feels a sense of safety that is somehow, faintly, known and familiar.

  “I was thinking the other day about when you were little,” her mother says. “About reading to you both at bedtime. Do you remember the chairs in your rooms?”

  It’s as if her mother can see through the space that separates them. Of course this is what she’s thinking of, of course this is why it feels so good to fold herself into this tiny space. She can almost smell the warm milk they used to slurp from their Sippy cups, long past the age where they actually needed them, can almost feel the twirl and twine of her mother’s hair between her fingers.

  “Your dad and I used to take it in turns to read to you,” her mother continues. “Both of you together but one story each, and alternating rooms each night.”

  Yes. Yes. She remembers all of this, the strange doubleness of their lives as children, the way their parents fought so tirelessly to keep everything equal, everything balanced. Their bedrooms, the same size but with different decoration, her own painted in shades of yellow and Laurel’s in shades of green. Neutral colours. And in the corner of each room, a chair big enough to just about hold one squashed parent and two squashed toddlers. As long as the two squashed toddlers sat still and didn’t fidget too much. The nightly litany, We’re in Laurel’s room so Willow chooses the first story, and then the next night the other room and the other twin choosing first, two nights with their father and two nights with their mother, a rota they all came to know deep in their bones. The times when the beautiful order would break down in a fierce pointless squabble – but I wanted to choose The Cat In The Hat, that’s not fair – both of them ignoring their harassed parent, explaining they’d both get to hear the story whoever chose it, so what did it matter?

  “That was always the best part of the day. Even when we’d been stressed and shouty, we loved reading to you. We used to wonder if we should try doing it differently, so you got some alone time with us both. Only when we suggested it, you were both so horrified, you’d think we’d tried to change your names or something. But we never wanted you to feel like you were a sort of matching set. We wanted you to know we’d have been just as thrilled if we’d got you one at a time, instead of together.”