The Bones of You

by Gary McMahon

  I looked again at the box.

  I’d never believed in ghosts or the afterlife, but this situation was starting to get weird. Was I being haunted by the victims of the killer next door? Were Katherine Moffat’s Radiant Children trying to tell me something, attempting to pass on a message?

  I thought about Jess asleep upstairs, and whether she might be in some kind of danger. But, no, the killer was dead; her victims were buried; the story was over.

  I set down my whiskey glass on the floor, reached out and opened the flaps on the box. Before, the box had been empty. I’d taken out what had been inside. This time, it was filled with photographs.

  I grabbed a few and brought them out of the box. They were photographs of children—some of them taken with a Polaroid camera, others printed from digital images. They all shared a common subject—young children—and each one depicted that subject caught in an ordinary, even banal, moment. As I leafed through more of the photographs, I saw that some of them were school portraits, with forced smiles and neat uniforms, while others were of unguarded scenes in the park, on the street, or on playing fields.

  There was nothing extraordinary about any of these shots, yet they filled me with a growing sense of dread and an odd yearning. I knew nothing about any of the children in the photographs, but something told me that I was looking at the Radiant Children, before they’d come into contact with their killer. Before they’d become Radiant…

  I went through every image in that box, fully expecting to find a picture of my own daughter. But life isn’t like a story; I found no photograph of Jess, or of anyone else I recognized. This was just a box of old snapshots. It might even be a different box from the one I’d seen before. My rational mind was constructing a plot around these disparate elements, piecing together a narrative that might not even be true.

  The human need to tell a story can be powerful, and it can be dangerous. Robert Shingley knew that perhaps better than anyone. That desire had made him neglect his family, and it probably killed him.

  I put the photographs back in the box and took it upstairs.

  THIRTEEN

  It’s Happening Again

  Sunday was difficult.

  I knew that Jess was leaving me, that I had to hand her back to her mother. I always hated this part; it hurt me to give her away. That’s how it felt, like giving her away. No matter how hard I tried to tell myself that I’d see her again in a couple of weeks, it always felt like some kind of last good-bye.

  I got up early and did some stretches, and then I punished myself with a fifteen-minute routine involving lots of crunches, push-ups, and various other core exercises. By the time I heard movement from upstairs, I was sweating and craving a large breakfast.

  Filling the kettle with water to boil for coffee, I listened to Jess clumping around on the first floor. I smiled. She was always noisy. She rarely did anything with stealth. It was part of her charm. I heard the bathroom door open and then slam shut, and after a short while the shower went on.

  I had some bacon in the fridge. I took it out and laid the strips on the grill pan. The bread was a little stale but still edible, so I decided I’d toast it. I made my coffee and sat down at the table to drink it, trying not to feel sad about Jess going home.

  “I’m hungry.” She was standing in the kitchen doorway. Despite the noise she would have made coming down the stairs, I hadn’t heard her approach me. I must have been miles away, worrying at my thoughts like a cat with a ball of yarn.

  “Okay, I’ll put on some bacon…you still like bacon, don’t you?”

  “Bacon is great!” She sat down at the table and opened the book she’d brought down with her. She was a good reader; she loved to sit and leaf through her books while the world grew crazy around her.

  “I’m going to miss you, sweetheart.” I lit the grill and slipped two slices of bread into the toaster. “This place will feel empty again without you.”

  “I’ll miss you, too,” she said. “Will Magic miss me?”

  I’d forgotten all about the cat. Next week I’d have to telephone the local RSPCA office and tell them I’d found a stray. I couldn’t just keep it. What if it belonged to some poor kid who was even now weeping over the loss of his or her pet?

  “Of course he will.”

  I’d think of some story to tell Jess the next time she came. The cat ran away, or someone came to claim it. Or maybe my luck would hold and the cat would have no owner, then we’d get to keep him. That would make Jess happy.

  “Have you missed Mummy?” The toast popped up. I could smell the bacon cooking.

  “Yeah. But I see her all the time. It’s not the same. I miss you more.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Kids, they could hurt you with a casual swipe. They had their claws out all the time, even when they loved you. They had no idea of the pain they inflicted in the name of love. I opened my eyes, grabbed the toast, and started buttering the slices.

  After breakfast it was time to go. I’d hung on long enough. The next stage would be to lock us up in the house until someone came to break the door down. I simply didn’t want her to leave. I only ever felt whole when she was with me. This had taken a while to happen, and I certainly hadn’t felt that way when she was a baby. But I felt it now. That’s what was important. She’d grown into me, like mutant cells. She was a part of me—an essential part, one that I could barely survive without.

  Jess made a big show of not crying when she said good-bye to Magic. The cat rolled over onto its back and allowed her to stroke his belly. It was as if he knew he wouldn’t see her again for a while, and wanted to leave her with a good impression. She kept picking him up and hugging him to her chest, saying his name over and over. The cat let it happen. He didn’t even blink at the excessive attention.

  Finally she put the cat down and walked away. “See you soon, Magic,” she said, glancing back at him.

  The cat stood, stretched, and padded through into the kitchen.

  “He loves you, too,” I said. She took my hand. Her grip was tight, fierce.

  We walked out to the car. The sky was clear, with no sign of the rain that kept returning to this part of the world. The air was cold but dry, the sun nothing but a distant shimmering coin; it was a cautiously beautiful day.

  “Are you sure you have everything?”

  She nodded. “I have my books, my dolly, and my clothes. That’s everything.” Her face was so serious. “Everything except Magic.”

  I opened the car door and repositioned her booster seat. “He’ll be here next time. Don’t worry about him. I have a feeling that cat is going to hang around.” I knew right then that I had no intention of calling the RSPCA. If Jess wanted the cat to live here, with me, then so be it. That’s what would happen. It was her cat now…even the cat itself seemed to realize that.

  The service station was quiet. There were a few long-distance trucks parked outside the café, their drivers having a smoke and sharing road gossip. The petrol forecourt was busiest, with several cars being filled up at the pumps and a caravan trying to maneuver into position by the air pumps.

  I pulled into a space and turned off the engine. We sat there for a while, father and daughter, in silence, and then I decided that we’d better move before I changed my mind and abducted Jess. “You ready?”

  She nodded, sad and tired and a little bit angry that she had to split her time between the two of us. “I suppose so. You will look after Magic, won’t you?” What she really meant was, “Promise me you’ll look after yourself, and that you won’t disappear from my life. Promise that you won’t stop loving me.”

  “Of course. You have my word.”

  We shook hands. It was a cute moment, but it was also incredibly painful. My little girl was getting older, becoming more aware of the shadows in the world. It’s moments like these that any parent dreads. These are the times when you’re reminded that you are not in control, that the world can reach out and snatch your child without you
being able to do anything to stop it. The world eats people. It eats them and spits out their corpses.

  We got out of the car and walked, hand in hand, over to the café. I couldn’t see Holly’s car. We were early, so I didn’t expect it to be there yet, anyway.

  I led Jess into the café and sat her down. I scanned the place. It didn’t look like they had a waitress working today: self-service only. “Would you like some juice?”

  She nodded. “Yes, please. Can I have a straw?”

  “Of course you can, sweetheart. Now stay here. I’ll be right over there.” I tilted my head toward the chiller cabinets. “I won’t be a minute.” I scanned the interior. There was nobody sitting close to where we were—I’d picked that table deliberately because it was in a window and in plain view; it meant that I’d see Holly coming and she’d see me as she approached. “Don’t move,” I repeated.

  I walked briskly over to the chiller cabinets, grabbed a fresh orange juice for Jess and a Coke for myself. I paid at the counter, snagging a couple of plastic cups. An overweight, disinterested young girl with acne scars on one cheek took my money without speaking. She dropped the change into my waiting hand and then went back to being bored.

  “Thank you so much,” I said.

  She barely registered that I’d spoken.

  When I got back to the table, Jess was reading one of the books that she’d brought in from the car. I opened her juice, poured it into one of the plastic cups. I decided against using the other one and drank mine directly from the can.

  “Mummy’s here,” she said.

  I glanced out of the window. She’d parked in a space right outside. She was staring at me through the windshield, ignoring that idiot Pace in the passenger seat, who was talking animatedly. For a moment I was thrown back in time. Things were yet to go wrong; the badness had not entered our life. We were young, relatively happy, and having an exciting time just being together. The sex was great, the drinking was legendary, the relationship was moving so fast that neither of us could see the cracks that were there from the start.

  I snapped out of it when Holly got out of the car. She looked thin, her hair needed washing. She was wearing a short denim skirt. Her legs were bare and bruised; they looked like they might snap in a strong breeze.

  I ignored the prick in the car and watched her walk along the front of the building toward the entrance. She pushed open the door, walked in, and came straight over. She sat down next to Jess.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She smiled, but it was small and meaningless. “Hi.” She looked at Jess, reached out and rubbed at her upper arm as if she were trying to remove a stain. “Did you have a good time, honey?”

  “Ye-eah,” said Jess, stringing out the word. “We had a great time, didn’t we, Daddy?” I started to respond, but she cut me off: “Daddy has a cat now. He’s called Magic.”

  “Really?” Holly looked at me. This time the smile was warm, almost tender. “I thought you hated cats.”

  “So did I.” I smiled back at her.

  The rage I’d felt a couple of days before, when I’d discovered Jess’s bruises, had faded. I no longer wanted some kind of confrontation. All I wanted was answers.

  “Can we talk?”

  Holly narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, of course. We can always talk, you know that.”

  She turned to Jess and smiled. “Jess, baby, could you go and get Mummy a nice sandwich while Daddy and I have a little talk?” She opened her purse, took out a ten-pound note, and gave it to Jess. “Pick me something tasty…and get a drink to go with it. And you can have a cake, too.” She smiled, touched Jess’s cheek with her fingertips.

  “Okay, Mummy.” Jess put down her book and walked over to the chiller cabinets. I kept my eye on her. You can never be too careful.

  As soon as Jess was out of earshot, Holly leaned across the table, eyebrows raised. Up close, I could see the lines on her face, the dry skin around her eyes.

  “I don’t want to make a big thing of this, but when I was bathing Jess, I found some…well, there were some bruises on her body. Do you know about them?”

  Holly’s eyes flashed with anger. “Of course I know about them…she’s my daughter. Why the hell wouldn’t I know about them?”

  “Wait a minute. I’m not trying to be a dick about this. I’m just concerned. My daughter is covered in bruises and I want to know why.”

  “She’s hardly covered, Adam. She has a few bruises.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Holly…”

  “I’m not hitting her, if that’s what you think.” She almost spat out the words, as if they were food she hated the taste of.

  “No, that isn’t what I think. I’m not accusing anybody of anything.” I took a breath. The last thing I wanted was for this to get out of control. She was losing her temper, so I had to keep mine in check. “Listen, Jess told me she got into a fight.” I kept my voice calm, quiet.

  Holly seemed to relax a little. “Okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fly off the handle like that. I’m a little stressed…”

  “That’s okay. I understand. But why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I thought you might accuse me of hitting her… I expected you to start shouting and screaming and threatening people.”

  I felt the muscles in my jaw tense. I waited until they were relaxed before continuing. “No, not these days. I’m too old and too tired to be that angry. I just want to know what’s going on, that’s all.”

  “So she told you she was in a fight? At school?”

  “Yes. She said that some other girl had said something nasty about us, our splitting up…something like that.”

  Holly shook her head. She closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them again, they were glassy from holding back tears. “That isn’t exactly the truth.”

  “She lied to me?”

  “No…not exactly. Not a lie as such…but not the whole truth, either. Shit, this is difficult.” She paused, collected her thoughts, and then continued. “It seems that our beloved little girl has been bullying other kids. Younger, weaker kids. She beat one of them up, but the kid fought back and they both ended up battered and bruised.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I kept quiet.

  “I was called into the school. Jess denied everything at first, of course, but then, finally, she owned up. It’s been going on for some time now. She’s been pushing other kids around, taking their lunch money, threatening them with violence. This time it went too far, and she’s been suspended from school.”

  “What? They kicked her out?”

  “Suspended, not expelled. She can go back, but only after a cooling-off period, and with certain conditions. One of them being that she apologizes to this other girl in front of both sets of parents. They know she’s basically a good kid… I had to tell them about us: the divorce, the messy way we split up. The fights and arguments before that. Just so they’d know she’s been through a hard time.” To her credit, Holly didn’t seem to enjoy saying any of this. She didn’t let those tears go, but I could see that it was a genuine struggle to hold them back.

  For my part, I felt culpable. This was all our fault—both of us. We had to do what we could to put it right.

  “Thank you. Thank you for telling me. I know this is all down to us, and the bad way we’ve handled things. It was obvious she was going to suffer…”

  “We just didn’t know how that suffering would manifest itself.”

  “Yes.” I stared at her. The blue eyes, the dark blonde hair, the severe, knife-like cheekbones. I’d loved this woman once; loved her with every fucking ounce of me. But that love had mutated into something else, something toxic. And now that toxicity had tainted our daughter, who was the very best of us.

  “Please keep me in the loop. We both need to help solve this. Whatever I need to do, I’ll do. Just know that. Be aware of it. I love her so much…” I couldn’t find the words; despite my education, my vocabulary was far too limited to enable me
to express the depth and breadth of my feelings.

  “I know,” said Holly, and she did; she always did. For a moment I thought she might reach out and take my hand, or at least lean across the tabletop and touch it. I saw her fingers twitch; the back of her hand began to tremble. But then the moment passed; she rode it out, holding back from the vast potential that lurked behind any such contact.

  I could tell that she was buckling under the strain. Initially, I’d thought she was using again, but now I wasn’t so sure. The effects of stress can look like those of drug abuse: the starved body, the thinning hair, the self-neglect, that constant look of being on the edge, of being hunted.

  I didn’t know, and that was the truth of it. I just didn’t know, and I was in no position to ask—certainly not now, at this minute, when we seemed to be struggling toward some common ground in the battlefield of our lives.

  So I left it there, a question not asked; it sat on the table between us, leering, mocking me, and knowing that it was safe for now.

  I waited until they left, watching them as they got in the car. Then I watched the car drive away, feeling an acute sense of loss. Like a blade slicing me inside, so deep that only the heart could pinpoint its location.

  I got up and went out to my own car. The temperature wasn’t that low, but I felt cold. I was freezing. Sometimes, when I feel like this, it seems like I’ll never get warm again.

  FOURTEEN

  Underneath

  That night I had another bad dream. This time it started in a banal fashion. I was walking around the house in my shorts. The lights were out; moonlight washed through the windows, providing enough light for me to see. I went into the kitchen, filled a glass with tap water, and took a drink. Then I threw the glass down into the sink, breaking it.

  I picked up a sliver of broken glass and drew the sharp edge across my forearm, digging in deep and drawing blood. The blood was brilliantly red, like cartoon blood. I watched it pump out of the wound, staining my shorts and spattering on the floor. There was no pain. I felt nothing.