The Bones of You

by Gary McMahon

  THE BONES OF YOU

  Gary McMahon

  First Digital Edition

  The Bones of You © 2015, 2013 by Gary McMahon

  All Rights Reserved.

  A DarkFuse Release

  www.darkfuse.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copy Editor: Dave Thomas

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  OTHER BOOKS BY AUTHOR

  Nightsiders

  Reaping the Dark

  Check out the author’s official page at DarkFuse for a complete list:

  http://www.darkfuseshop.com/Gary-McMahon/

  For my family:

  I love you. I love the bones of you.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks, as always, to my wife and son, who help keep me stay grounded in the real world rather than the one inside my head. Thanks also to Shane Staley of DarkFuse, who was so keen to publish this edition of the book. Apologies to Adam Nevill and Mark Morris for stealing and conflating their names, but I’m sure they appreciate the joke. Finally, thanks to the people who keep reading my work: without you, none of this would matter.

  “Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.”

  —Sir Francis Bacon, “Of Death”

  Essays (1625)

  IT IS TIME

  Last night I had the dream again.

  It comes and goes, along with other, darker dreams, but I’m always aware of it running in the background as I sleep. Sometimes I’m unable to distinguish the difference between what is dream and what is memory—the lines blur, the events in my head take on the precision of acts that have already been committed. Even when I’m awake, I feel like I have one foot in another world.

  But I know for certain this specific dream isn’t real, because I see it through the eyes of someone else.

  I realize that he can no longer harm me or my family, but I often imagine that he’s still out there somewhere, watching me from the shadows, waiting for the right time to return.

  Perhaps when I have this one dream, I am actually experiencing his memories, or the strange combination of fantasy and reality that fuelled his terrible deeds. Or perhaps this is in fact where he is now, trapped in some netherworld where it’s always Halloween and he’s forever carving a pumpkin in the image of someone he loved and wanted so desperately to bring back into the world.

  I don’t know. I’m way past caring about such details.

  I just wish this particular dream would come to an end:

  The pumpkin, faceless and eyeless yet nonetheless intimidating, glares up at him as he sits down opposite it with the knife.

  He cleared a space on the kitchen table earlier in the day, putting away the old photographs, train tickets, and receipts from restaurants they had dined at over the years. She had kept these items in a large cigar box under their bed, and he had always mocked her for the unlikely sentimentality of the act. But now that she is dead, he silently thanks her for having such forethought. At least he now has physical mementos of their time together.

  He fingers the creased, leathery surface of the big pumpkin, imagining how it might look when he is done.

  Every Halloween she insisted upon the ritual, something begun in her family when she was a little girl. A carved pumpkin, the task undertaken by the man of the house; the seeds and pithy insides scooped out into a bowl and used for soup the next day. She had always loved Halloween, but not in a pathetic goth-girl kind of way. She always said it was the only time of the year when she felt part of something, and rather than ghosts and goblins, she felt the presence of human wrongdoing near at hand.

  He places the knife on the table and feels empty tears welling behind his eyes.

  Rain spits at the windows; thunder rumbles overhead. The weather has taken a turn for the worse, as if gearing up for a night of spooks. Outside, someone screams. Laughter. The sound of light footsteps running past his garden gate but not stopping, never stopping here…

  The festivities have already started. If he is not careful, he will miss out on all the fun.

  The first cut is always the deepest, shearing off the top of the pumpkin to reveal the substantial material at its core. He slices around the inner perimeter, levering loose the bulk of the meat. With great care and dedication, he manages to transfer it to the glass bowl. Juices spill onto the tablecloth, and he is careful not to think about the image of fresh blood dripping onto creased school uniforms.

  Fifteen minutes later he has the hollowed-out pumpkin before him, waiting for a face. He recalls her features perfectly, his memory having never failed to retain the finer details of her scrunched-up nose, the freckles across her forehead, the way her mouth tilted to one side when she smiled. Such a pretty face, one that had fooled everyone; and hiding behind it there were such unconventional desires.

  Hesitantly, he begins to cut out the face.

  The eyeholes come first, allowing her to see as he carries out the rest of the work. Then there is the mouth, a long, graceful gouge at the base of the skull. She smiles. He blinks, taken by surprise. In his dreams, it has never been this easy.

  Hands working like those of an Italian Master, he finishes the sculpture. The rain intensifies, threatening to break the glass of the large kitchen window. More children caper by in the night. Their catcalls and yells of “Trick or treat!” are like music to his ears.

  The pumpkin does not speak. Of course it doesn’t. It is simply a vegetable with wounds for a face. But it smiles, and it waits, with a noble and intimidating presence inhabiting its bloated carcass.

  “I love you,” he says, standing and leaning toward the pumpkin. “I love you so much.” He caresses the pumpkin with steady hands, his fingers finding the furrows and crinkles that feel nothing at all like her smooth, smooth face. But it will do for now, this copy, this effigy. It will serve a purpose far greater than him.

  Picking up the pumpkin, he carries it to the door. He undoes the locks, opens the door to let in the night. Voices carry on the busy air, promising a night of carnival, and the sky lowers to meet him as he walks outside and places the pumpkin on the porch handrail, the low flat roof protecting it from the rain.

  He returns to the kitchen for the candle. When he places it inside the carved head, his hands at last began to shake. Lighting the wick in such wet weather is difficult, but he perseveres. He has no choice. Her hold on him, even now, is much too strong to deny.

  The candle flame flickers, teased by the wind, but the rain cannot reach it. He watches in awe as it flares, licking out of the eyeholes to lightly singe the side of the face. The pumpkin smiles again, and then its mouth twists into a parody of laughter.

  Still, there are no sounds, but he is almost glad of that. To hear her voice emerging from the pumpkin might be too much for him to bear. Reality has warped enough for now; anything more might push him over the edge into the waiting abyss.

  The pumpkin swivels on its base to stare at him, the combination of lambent candlelight and darkness lending it an obscene expression, as if
it were filled with hatred. Or lust.

  He turns away and goes back inside. He leaves the door unlocked and sits back down at the kitchen table, resting his head in his hands.

  He sips his tea and thinks of better days, bloody nights.

  There is a sound from out on the porch, a wild thrumming, as if the pumpkin is vibrating, energy building inside, the bloodlust rising, rising, ready to burst in a display of savagery like nothing he has ever seen before. It is as if the pumpkin is absorbing the power of this special night, drinking in the desires of small children, the thrill of proud parents, the very idea of spectres abroad in the darkness.

  It is time.

  PART ONE

  “She’s in us. She’s in all of us, if we look deep enough and are prepared to face the truth.”

  —Robert Shingley, Little Miss Moffatt and the Radiant Children

  ONE

  Moving Day

  Later, I found it difficult to remember how I felt when I first saw the house, but I was pretty sure it was nothing out of the ordinary. Nor could I remember how I’d come to hear about the place. Maybe I’d seen an advert in a newspaper, or placed in a dusty shop window.

  What I do recall is that nothing about the place stuck in my mind. It was just a convenient rental property—something I could afford, and close enough to my job that I didn’t have to spend a fortune on petrol to get there.

  That first viewing was actually a week before I moved in. I was in something of a rush; the need for adequate accommodation outweighed any sense of trepidation I might otherwise have experienced. The house ticked all the boxes, of course: it was cheap, with two bedrooms, a small garden, and all the modern conveniences necessary for a small family home. It wasn’t located in the best of areas, but that didn’t matter to me. I was used to rough neighborhoods. I was born on the wrong side of the tracks and had stayed there pretty much all through my adult life, in spirit if not in body.

  What really mattered above everything else was that I had a home: a base for me and a bedroom for Jess when she came to stay every other weekend.

  The place suited my needs. And that was the best I could hope for at the time. Perhaps it’s the best that anyone can ever hope to achieve, no matter what their circumstances.

  I thought about this as I stood beside my car, waiting to unload the boxes filled with my meager belongings. I’d brought everything I owned from the old flat, and the fact that it filled so few containers was depressing in a way that took me by surprise.

  I bent into the back of the car and took out the largest box, setting it down on the footpath outside the house. Glancing back inside the car, I noted again how few boxes there were. I could have carried these on the passenger seat of one of those tiny Smart cars, or maybe on a little trailer hitched to the back of a bicycle.

  Smiling, I started to take out the rest of the boxes and stack them beside the first one.

  It didn’t take long.

  I looked up and down the wide street. There was nobody around. Those neighbors who worked for a living would be out doing whatever they did—mostly blue-collar stuff in an area like this—and those who didn’t have jobs were probably still in bed, sleeping off hangovers or late-night sessions on game consoles. A few of them might be up for breakfast, but recalling my own time spent out of work, I knew that the majority of them would be nocturnal creatures, prowling the rooms of their nighttime homes unable to sleep and lying in late to recover every morning.

  I turned and stared at the house next to mine. The narrow two-story structure stood in an overgrown garden. The house itself was boarded up, with thick timber panels across the door and windows. Graffiti had been daubed across these, most of it obscene. I didn’t bother to read what was written there. There was no point. It was all just so much smeared hatred.

  The place looked like the last time anyone lived there had been when VHS was the dominant format in home entertainment. The garden was more than overgrown; it was a miniature jungle. There was a lot of rubbish littering the plot of land: rusted beer cans, empty wine bottles, crumpled packing paper and torn cardboard, and the obligatory rusty shopping trolley half-buried in the long grass.

  It was an eyesore. Why hadn’t someone cleaned it up? No doubt the people who did this had never come across the phrase “Never piss in your own backyard.”

  I turned my attention back to the boxes, picked one up, and carried it to the front door. I’d unlocked the door before unloading the car, but it had shut again while I was busy. Probably a loose hinge; or perhaps it was set at an angle in the frame. I reached out, balancing the box against my chest with my free arm, and turned the handle, then pushed open the door. A wave of neglect hit me immediately. Although the house had been cleaned—or so the landlord had said—it had also been empty for a long time, almost a year. The previous tenants had moved out in a rush, skipping the last month’s rent. Sometimes that’s how it goes in the rental sector, especially when the agreement is done without any kind of letting agent and the rent gets paid every month in cash.

  I walked inside and left the door. It would probably close behind me of its own accord, as it had done before.

  I walked along the short hallway and turned left into the kitchen. The box I was carrying was marked “kitchen.” It contained my pathetic few plates and cutlery. I put it down on a work surface and surveyed the room. It was more depressing than I remembered.

  I’d done a deal with the landlord, and all the furniture and white goods had been included with the rental agreement. None of this stuff was new—some of it was older than me—but it was all in working order. The whole place needed a damn good clean. The kitchen was grubbier than a glamour model’s wedding night, and God knew who had used it before, or what they had used it all for.

  I realized with a note of despondency that the landlord had lied about the cleaning.

  I went back outside and brought in the rest of the boxes, lining them up along the wall in the hallway. Taking another glance along the street, which was starting to look busier now because one limping old man dressed in a housecoat and slippers was walking a dog, I shut the door and tried to get used to my new home.

  I carried a box into the living room. The curtains were only half-open, so the room was dim. I put the box on the floor and opened the curtains, staring out at the street. A woman in a blue tracksuit jogged past, earphone cables trailing from each side of her head. A gray car drove slowly by, its windows open. I could hear the loud music the driver had playing on the stereo from where I stood, behind the cheap double glazing.

  I inspected the room. The two-seater sofa was worn, threadbare in places. There was a small coffee table tucked into one corner, and a scratched bureau diagonally opposite. The carpet was only lightly stained; if I used a couple of rugs, I could easily hide the marks. The wallpaper was out of date but still in good condition. There was no shade on the main ceiling light, but the two wall lamps looked okay.

  I tried to be positive. This was my new pad, no matter what it looked like. I’d spent the past six months sleeping on a friend’s sofa in a cramped city-center flat. Surely this was an improvement?

  I sat down on the sofa and grabbed the television remote control from where it was balanced on the arm. It worked: the television screen flared into life when I pressed the “on” button. It was a good set: modern, flat screen, a reasonable size. The furniture might be shit, but the TV was great. It was probably stolen.

  No. I mustn’t think like that. Just because this was a bad area didn’t mean that everyone who lived here was a criminal. I lived here, and I was a solid citizen.

  I tried to imagine Jess’s reaction when she saw the house. She was only eight years old, so she’d probably be excited because she got to have her own room. The courts had only agreed to her staying with me for an entire weekend at a time if I managed to acquire and then maintain a proper address, a house where she could be safe.

  How the hell had it come to this?

  My ex-wife was the
one who was unfit to be a parent, and yet I was the one made to suffer, the one who only got to spend time with my daughter every two weeks, and under strict conditions regarding my lifestyle. Holly was the damaged one, but I was the one under suspicion. How did that make sense? All I’d done was get into a couple of fights, put some random drunk in the hospital when I’d hit him too hard, too fast, and in exactly the right place to put him down like a sack of bricks. Yeah, it meant I had a criminal record, but I hadn’t done any prison time.

  I tried to suppress my rage, but it came anyway. I could taste it on my tongue, thick and metallic, like blood in my throat. I clenched my fists, squeezed them tighter, and then remembered that anger was one of the things that had got me into trouble in the first place. I needed to control it, to master it instead of letting it be the master of me.

  I counted to ten in Japanese:

  Ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, kyu, ju.

  I have no idea why this helps, but it usually does. The rhythm and cadence of the numbers takes me back in time, to peaceful hours spent practicing kata in a dojo, going through kihon in a line with other novices, working through countless karate drills to strengthen my muscles and improve my speed and power, five-step kumite on a sprung wooden floor…

  I felt calmer. I was relaxed. I opened my eyes and stared at the television. Daytime TV: a crock of shit. I switched it off and threw the remote down on the sofa next to me. I tried to remember which box contained my old karate gi. I’d already found a new dojo where I could train—somewhere that was only a couple of miles away. I would check it out this week, before I changed my mind.