The Slaughter Man

by Parkin, Cassandra;

  “Take them down this afternoon. It’s fun seeing the little ones out for the first time.” Luca and Willow exchange a secret guilty glance. “Willow, if you’ve got time you can give him a hand if you like.”

  Time. Has she got time? And what time is it anyway? She’s been out for ages, she left without saying where she was going, and Joe has no idea where she is. What if he’s looking for her? She fumbles frantically in her pocket for her phone.

  “It’s a bit after one,” Katherine says. “It’s all right. I was on the phone to him earlier. He knows you’re here. Have you both got room for cake?” She’s already on her way out of the room, as if wanting cake is a foregone conclusion. Willow thinks about Katherine calling Joe to tell him Willow’s all right, and cringes.

  “It wasn’t because of you,” Luca says while Katherine is out of earshot. “They call each other every morning. Like he’s her teenage kid or something. I thought he was her kid for a while. It’s fucking weird. I don’t know why she does it. I mean, if she was a bit younger I’d think maybe he was like her toy boy or something.”

  Well, that’s definitely not it, Willow thinks, with some smugness. She puts her phone back in her pocket. Luca watches her curiously.

  “So can you make phone calls?”

  She tears a careful mouthful from the crust of her bread.

  “How about text messages? Can you send text messages and that? I mean, I could give you my number and you can send texts instead of talking.”

  He’s trying to find a way to talk to her. Why can’t she do something to meet him halfway? She can feel the blood rising in her cheeks again. Luca’s fingers scrabble over the tablecloth and fold around the elaborate bone-handled pickle-fork that lies beside the jar of pickled onions, ancient and fiddly looking. He jabs it experimentally into the tablecloth, and smiles.

  “How does it work, then?” Without warning, his free hand grabs her around the wrist, pulling her arm across the table towards him. He touches the tines of the fork gently to her skin, and she tries not to shiver. “If I jabbed this into the back of your hand, would you scream?”

  Would she? She truly doesn’t know. She didn’t scream earlier, when the thick rope of her vein yielded to the edge of the razor. Was that because she knew what was coming? Luca is staring into her face now, intent and predatory. Is he genuinely going to stab her with the fork? Is she quick enough to stop him?

  You don’t frighten me, she thinks. She takes the fork from his hand and reaches for the pickled onions.

  “Mate.” Luca looks disgusted. “You are not going to eat one of those things.”

  Without pausing, she unscrews the lid. A blast of spicy vinegar claws at the back of her throat.

  “Seriously. Don’t do it.” Luca is watching in fascination. “They’re not, like, normal ones. She makes them herself. She says they’re enough to wake the dead.”

  For a moment, she imagines the onions as eyeballs, and the end of the fork becomes the stabbing beak of a bird.

  “Hey, don’t make yourself sick to impress me,” says Luca. “I can’t fucking stand puke, it makes me puke too.”

  It’s not the onions, she thinks, it’s you joking about waking the… But no, it’s better that he doesn’t know. She’s sick of people watching what they say around her. She stabs at the biggest onion in the jar, lifts it dripping into the air, and shoves it into her mouth.

  The crunch echoes through her skull. Vinegar floods out and burns her tongue. Her eyes water and she feel as if she might choke. She chews and swallows, chews and swallows, wondering if she’ll die from the burn, if she’ll ever reach the end of her mouthful, if she’ll be able to keep it down once she’s swallowed, and what she was thinking in the first place. Then, blessedly, her mouth’s empty and her stomach resigns itself to what she’s done, and she wipes the tears from her cheeks and finds Luca is staring at her in awe.

  “I literally cannot believe you did that,” he says.

  “Did what?” Katherine reappears with a cake slick with buttercream and topped with walnuts.

  “She ate an onion,” said Luca, and Katherine smiles.

  “Really? And I always thought they were uneatable. Good work there.” She puts the cake down and hands Willow a napkin. “Mop yourself up and have some cake.”

  Luca is watching Willow as if he’s not quite sure what she might do next. She dabs at her eyes, and thinks how peaceful it is to be with someone who doesn’t ask why she felt compelled to eat the pickled onion in the first place. Katherine is transferring a large wedge of cake into a small tin with roses on the lid.

  “Take this back for Joe,” she says.

  She’s not sure how Luca ends up walking her home.

  He gives her a casual half-wave when she leaves, the kind that tells her he’s not really interested in her going and certainly isn’t bothered about her coming back, and disappears upstairs before she’s even out of the door. Then, as she lingers by the vegetable beds, stealing a long dangling brown pod so she can break it open and examine the row of half-dried beans nestled inside, he’s suddenly there again, carrying an empty bucket that bounces irritatingly between them on the way down to the goat field. In the field, he wanders into the straw stack enclosure where the goats seem to be having a meeting, and she hovers for a moment, not sure if she’s supposed to wait for him. When he doesn’t come back, she sets off alone, hoping he hasn’t seen her hanging around. Then somehow he’s ahead of her at the fence – without his bucket this time – offering his hand for balance as she climbs over, letting go again as soon as they’re in the woods.

  Then they’re wandering side by side along the path, scuffling at the leaves to hide their shyness. Even if she could speak, Willow can’t think of a thing she’d want to say.

  “I saw a deer in here once,” Luca offers suddenly. “I thought it was one of the goats got out into the woods. It was massive. Not hidden away or anything. Just crashing around in the bushes like an idiot.”

  She glances around the woods. Is this likely? Could an animal the size of a deer really be hiding in these widely spaced trees?

  “It was sort of spotty,” he goes on. “Fur spots, I mean, not diseased spots. Big eyes. Legs like sticks. You all right, mate?”

  In the summer before their last summer, she and Laurel had leaned from the window of their car and fed deer at a safari park, murmuring in amazement at the touch of their nibbling lips, the wetness of their noses, their strong gamey scent. Afterwards Laurel had found a tick burrowing against her wrist, and her mother had pulled it off with tweezers and thrown it away. Will she ever get to the end of these memories that lurch out of the darkness? Will there ever be a day when she can remember without feeling like she’s being stabbed in the chest?

  “It wasn’t dangerous or nothing. Only had these little stumpy antlers, crappy little things they were. Wouldn’t be able to take out a mouse with them. And it was on its own as well. Maybe it was lonely. It didn’t run when it saw me looking.”

  She keeps her focus on the placement of her feet on the uneven ground, breathes slowly and carefully. Her grief is for her and no one else. She will not show it to Luca, a boy she barely knows.

  “They kick the young males out of the herd so they don’t shag their mothers and sisters and that. Shame I didn’t have a gun with me.” He grabs at a long twig and pulls it off from the tree, leaving a greenish-white wound in the bark, and takes aim. “One shot. Straight to the heart. Drop it on the spot.”

  Shut up, she thinks. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

  “Then after that, it’s just butchery.” Luca flings his stick away, cracks his knuckles with elaborate casualness. “Cut its throat and bleed it out… open up its stomach… take its guts out so they don’t, like, taint the meat on the way home… leave them for the foxes and that… what? You ate that ham at lunchtime. Where d’you think meat comes from, you pleb?”

  She swallows hard and forces herself to look at him.

  “Oh my God, mate. You are so fu
cking easy to upset! I didn’t actually do it, you know. Just stared it down until it got scared and legged it off into the woods. Left it for that survivalist nutter that lives out here. He’d take it down in a minute. No fucking question. Someone did warn you about him, yeah?”

  She nods, but she can tell Luca is going to tell her anyway.

  “What it is, he’s this local legend, right. Lives in this, like, log cabin job he built himself. They don’t normally let people build stuff in the woods but he’s got some sort of agreement with the authorities and that. He used all local materials, like logs and twigs and stuff he found lying around the place.”

  If Luca had seen the house, there’s no way he could believe it was built from logs and twigs and stuff he found lying around the place. For all his talk of stabbing goats and shooting deer, Luca has never been up the path to spy on the Slaughter Man. He’s not as tough as she is. She keeps her face carefully neutral.

  “He’s completely off-grid. Harvests rainwater, has a generator for electricity that runs off, I don’t know, diesel or solar or hamsters in wheels or something. And he’s got loads of guns and that, and he absolutely hates anyone disturbing him, so nobody ever does. I mean, he probably belongs behind fucking bars to be honest, but for now he’s, like, out there.” Luca pauses dramatically, then plays his best card. “See that path there? You follow that path for about half a mile and it comes out right by his house. Only, don’t. Seriously. Don’t ever go there. Cos what he’s known for, right, is that he kills his own meat.” Luca’s eyes gleam as he looks Willow up and down. “And you’d be, like, prey.”

  In her ears is a ringing, a sound like the ringing of a bone-saw, which she’s never heard in life, but that haunts her dreams. She can see it glinting beneath harsh blue lights, feel the chill in the air that keeps the meat fresh, as the saw descends and takes its first greedy bite out of the ribcage. She can hear the rustle and squeak of the blue plastic gloves as the hands slither in, reaching for the red-black glossy slickness of the heart…

  “Fuck.” She’s leaning against something warm and yielding, something that staggers a little under her weight. “Willow, I swear I was messing with you, all right? We’re having a laugh, I’m not serious. Come on, sit down here for a minute. I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

  She’s all right. She’s all right. She’s just out of breath. It’s been weeks since she did this much exercise. She’s going to be fine. She’s very conscious of Luca’s arm, the shy pressure of it against her waist, the warmth of his splayed fingers. She sits down on the log. Her legs are trembling with exertion, not with fear. She’s absolutely fine. Luca hovers and stares like a visitor in a zoo.

  “You want to stop taking everything so literally. I don’t mean nothing by all that stuff.” He sits down beside her on the log. “I mean, if you’re not going to speak then it’s all on me, right? You can’t complain if I don’t pick something you want to talk about.”

  I didn’t even ask you to come with me, she thinks. You invited yourself along.

  “I didn’t mean to make you pass out, though,” he says. “I mean, it was kind of funny seeing you go that colour, but I’m not trying to… I mean… You need to be a bit tougher, you know? And start fucking talking! Or you’re going to be stuck with me going on about serial killers and that.”

  One of her trainers is coming unfastened. She reties her lace, making a careful double bow, and wonders what he would think if he knew.

  “I mean, I know you’ve got your reasons for not talking. Katherine hasn’t said nothing. I know she knows why, but she won’t tell me. She never explains nothing about anyone.” He raises his finger to his mouth and bites at a shred of loose skin by the nail. “It’s the best thing about living here to be honest. No one explaining stuff. I bet you don’t even… I mean, you know Katherine’s not my mum, yeah?”

  She nods.

  “Well, she’s not like my auntie or nothing. We’re not related at all. She’s my foster mum.” He’s trying to look at her as he says this, but he can’t quite meet her gaze. Instead he’s looking intently at a point past her left ear. “I mean, I’m in care.” He says this very loudly and aggressively, as if daring her to be sorry for him.

  He’s trying to trade secrets, fishing for the explanation that will make sense of her silence. If she could tell him what happened to make her like this, would she want to?

  “She doesn’t do it for free or nothing,” Luca continues. “She gets paid and that. It’s like a job really. I’ve been here about six months now.”

  It’s costing him something to tell her this. What can she give him in return when she can’t speak? Their eyes flick over each other’s faces, then away.

  “Anyway. So what, right? Not like it matters or nothing.” She’s not sure what to make of his expression. Is he disappointed that she hasn’t shared something in return? Even if she could speak, how on earth could she say it? I was an identical twin. I am an identical twin. I’m not an identical twin any more. She reaches into her pocket and takes out her phone.

  “What?” Luca takes the phone from her. “You want my number or something? So you can text me? Only the signal’s a bit crap around here so don’t be all funny with me if I don’t text back.” He turns it over, presses with his thumb, holds it out to her.

  “You need to unlock it.”

  No, she thinks. For God’s sake, can you shut up for a minute and look at what I’m showing you? Look at the lock-screen photograph.

  “Hello? Anyone in there?” He waves his hand in front of her face. “I can’t unlock your phone.” He presses again. “Look. Locked. My thumb won’t work.”

  Why is she trying to show him something so personal? This is a mistake. She’s about to take her phone back, let him put in his number so he can wait for the text she’ll never be able to send, when she sees him suddenly get it, sees him realise what he’s looking at, and her stomach sinks because now there’s no going back.

  “Hey,” he says. “Is that you with your sister? Shit. She looks just like you.” His face is radiant with delighted astonishment. “Oh my God. Are you an identical twin? Have I met both of you and you’ve been, I don’t know, running some fucking number on me?”

  She shakes her head and wills her eyes not to fill with tears. He’s not looking, he’s not listening, he’s lost in the sound of his own voice.

  “This is so fucking cool. I’ve never met identical twins before. Where is she? Which one are you? Was it you both times? I mean, I’d like to think I’d know, but—”

  She takes her phone back from him. He doesn’t even notice.

  “Is that why you don’t speak? Because I might guess which one I’m talking to? Do you both sound different or something? How would that even work, though? I mean, aren’t you supposed to be, like, exactly the same?”

  Yes. Yes. We are. But now we’re not. I’m alive and Laurel’s… She presses her hand hard against the throb of her heart. Her perfect, treacherous heart.

  “Are you going to fill me in, or have I got to guess?” He looks exasperated now, as if she’s doing this solely to get on his nerves. Maybe he’ll get bored and walk away. “Is she here with you? Yes? No? No. Okay. So did you have, I don’t know, a big fight with her or something? And you had to be separated, like, for your own good?” She shakes her head. “Did one of you commit a murder? And now they don’t know which one of you to put on trial? Well, Jesus, I don’t know, do I? Or is one of you—”

  He stops as abruptly as if he’s been shot. The weight of his guess hangs in the air between them.

  “Fuck,” he whispers. “Sorry. I don’t mean to… Oh, shit. Is that it? Is your sister… is she… is she ill? Is she going to… Or has she, is she already… Oh my God, is your sister…”

  Say it, Willow thinks furiously. Say that word. Say ‘Dead’. I dare you. Go on.

  His face turns white with shock, then crimson with shame. Behind his eyes, she can see their conversations spooling out across his memory, a grinning parade
of all the things he should never have said. Hurting. Stabbing. Killing. Butchery. The Slaughter Man who lives at the end of the path. Pickled onions that could wake the dead.

  “I mean, how was I supposed to know?” She can’t tell if he’s talking to her or to himself. “How the fuck was I supposed to—”

  Maybe I didn’t want you to know, she thinks. Maybe I liked you not knowing.

  “Well, fuck this for a laugh,” he says. “See you around, mate.”

  And then he’s gone, not running, not hurrying, simply swaggering off the way he came, leaving her alone in the woods.

  Fuck you too, she thinks, and strides away in the opposite direction.

  She’s half-expecting to meet Joe coming through the woods to meet her, and then half-expecting he’ll be hovering by the back door, frowny-faced and anxious, ready to pounce the moment she arrives back. Instead, when she pushes the kitchen door open, she sees Joe sitting slumped at the kitchen table, his back to the door, the phone pressed to his ear.

  “I know you’re busy.” Joe’s voice is low and hesitant. “Or are you? I don’t really know what you do when you’re not with me. Not in detail, anyway. Are you at work?”

  A pause. She can hear the tinny alien chitter that tells her the other person is replying.

  “I know, I know, I know what we said. I’m sorry. It’s just you’ve been gone so long. I miss you. So, so much. It’s so lonely without you.”

  Another pause. He must be talking to his partner. Is he pleased to hear from Joe, or annoyed that his working day’s been broken into? Or is it night-time, in the place where he is now?

  “You know I do.” Joe’s voice is low and urgent. “I miss everything about you. I miss your smile. I miss your smell. I miss kissing you. I miss holding you. I miss your mouth. I miss your hands.”

  She knows she shouldn’t be listening. She should go back outside and then come in more noisily so he’ll know she’s there. But it’s so strange to hear someone in real life, someone she knows, sounding so tender, so open. It’s like something out of a romantic movie.