by K. A. John
The house was in silence and she sensed Patrick had gone. There was a yellow Post-it note in the dent in his pillow where his head had lain. She went to the bed, picked it up and read it.
STILL LOVE YOU.
A tear fell from her eye. He still loved her – despite the loss of Alice, and her withdrawal from him and life – he STILL LOVED HER.
The three words burned into her consciousness with the force of a branding iron. If only she were still capable of feeling enough emotion to love him back.
Patrick stood at the side of the road behind a tow truck that had pulled in close to the front of his car. A mechanic was peering beneath the open bonnet of the estate, his toolbox open on the ground at his side.
‘Anything obvious?’ Patrick asked impatiently, shivering as snowflakes settled inside the collar of his jacket. They melted rapidly, trickling icy water down his neck and into his sweater and shirt.
‘From what I can see, it’s nothing that looks too bad.’ The mechanic poked around in the depths of the engine.
Patrick moved away from the car. The countryside was quiet, unusually so. It was as if the snow had deadened the small sounds such as rustlings in the undergrowth and birdsong. Even the bleating of sheep in a distant field sounded as though it had been muted.
He looked up the hill towards a copse of trees planted just below the summit. A boy was standing there, watching them from a distance. He was dressed in a denim jacket and beige trousers, summer clothes that were far too thin for winter weather. He was stock still, as though rooted to the spot like the trees around him. He saw Patrick looking back at him and waved, swinging his arm wide, from side to side, as if he were signalling or drawing an arc in the air. His movements were wild, extravagant, reminding Patrick of the wind turbines outside the town’s limits.
Patrick returned the boy’s wave. Seconds later his car engine roared into life. He turned his head to look at the mechanic. His head was still under the bonnet. When Patrick looked back at the field the boy had gone. Patrick scanned the landscape for any sign of him. There was none. It was as though he’d vanished into thin air. He looked carefully at the copse of trees. They were skeletal – surely he’d see the boy if he’d run to them and was hiding among them.
‘There you go, Mr Daley. All sorted.’ The mechanic slammed the bonnet shut.
‘What was wrong with it?’ Patrick asked.
‘Beats me. I found nothing obvious.’ The mechanic shrugged.
‘But the car was completely dead,’ Patrick insisted.
‘Well, it’s alive now and ready to go. You can drive off whenever you want.’
‘How much do I owe you?’ Patrick asked.
The mechanic picked up his toolkit. ‘You’ve moved into the green cottage, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Patrick confirmed.
‘I’ll drop the bill off the next time I’m passing.’
‘Thank you.’ Patrick couldn’t help feeling that the mechanic thought he was an idiot. No, worse than an idiot – an incompetent who didn’t even have the right to own a car because he couldn’t get it restarted once it had stalled.
*
Louise watched the snow settle over the town from her pharmacy window. It had already cloaked the road and houses, covering the grey stones and roof slates, softening the signs of dereliction in the run-down, boarded-up buildings and transforming Wake Wood into a glittering, sparkling fairy-scape. Inevitably, her thoughts turned to Alice. Her daughter had loved the snow. Not that she’d had many opportunities to see or play in it during her short life. But there had been one winter when Alice had been six years old when she, Patrick and Alice had built a snowman in their garden and thrown snowballs at one another in the yard …
A couple appeared in a doorway across the road. There was something familiar about them, yet Louise was sure she hadn’t been formally introduced to either one. Both were tall, slim, handsome, fair-haired and each was warmly dressed against the weather, her in a sheepskin jacket, him in a thick coat. They were wearing hats and gloves, with scarves wrapped around the lower part of their faces, covering their mouths.
The woman lifted her head and kissed the man’s cheek. The gesture was so tender, so loving, it reminded Louise of the strange scene she’d witnessed in Arthur’s yard. It was then that she made the connection. She recognised the tall, slim, fair-haired man as the one who’d emerged from the chrysalis covered in blood. And the woman who was with him as the blonde who’d held out the towelling robe and wrapped him in it.
Louise watched them cross the road and walk away along the pavement. They continued to gaze lovingly, almost hungrily at one another. They had no time or attention to spare for anyone else. It was as though they’d just been reunited after a long separation; if they were even aware of their surroundings they ignored them. They were totally and completely engrossed in one another.
Were they the same couple? Or had she dreamed the entire bizarre episode? Now, in cold clear daylight, she simply couldn’t be certain. Any more than she could be sure that the peculiar exchange early that morning between Arthur and Patrick had actually taken place in the cottage.
The bell rang on the shop door. Reluctantly she turned from the window to her shop and her customers. An elderly man was browsing the shelves of patent cough medicines. Two teenage girls were trying the lipstick and eyeshadow testers on the sides of their hands, and a middle-aged woman was examining bath products. The woman saw Louise looking at her, smiled and approached, holding a box.
‘This shower attachment …’ she thrust it at Louise, ‘will it work on any bath tap?’
Louise checked the box. ‘Only if your bath has twin taps. Does your bath have one tap or two?’
‘I think it’s one big one,’ the woman answered doubtfully. ‘Do you know, it’s really odd, I use the bath every day and now I can’t remember. Perhaps I’d better check before I buy.’
‘It might be as well to save you from making a mistake.’ The bell on the door rang again. Louise glanced up and saw Deirdre walk in. She smiled at the young girl but Deirdre was so engrossed in looking around and examining the goods on the shelves she didn’t even see Louise. As Louise watched, Deirdre wandered over to the rack that held sunglasses. She lifted down a pair and tried them on, studying her reflection in the mirror on the stand. She leaned back, eyeing herself from first one angle then another.
Louise couldn’t help imagining an older Alice behaving in the same way as Deirdre and the other two girls in the shop. Trying on fashionable accessories, experimenting with clothes and make-up.
As she watched, Deirdre began to shake uncontrollably. The trembling escalated, becoming a full-scale convulsion.
Louise ran to her, but just before she reached the girl Mary Brogan rushed in and pushed her aside.
‘There you are, my pet.’ Mary hugged her niece, enveloping her tightly in her arms.
‘Should I telephone the doctor?’ Louise asked anxiously.
‘No. There’s no need. She’ll be fine.’ Flustered, Mary guided Deirdre, who was still shaking, around the back of the sunglasses display and into a quiet area between two sets of shelves. ‘Look at me, Deirdre.’ Mary held Deirdre close, until the girl focused on her. ‘You all right, my pet?’ Mary murmured.
Calmer, although still trembling, Deirdre smiled. ‘I’m going back today. I’m looking forward to it.’
‘I know you are, my pet,’ Mary replied soothingly.
‘I can’t wait.’
‘This time that we’ve had together has gone so quickly.’ There was an infinite sadness in Mary’s voice that struck a chord with Louise. She recognised the same depth of sorrow that beset her whenever she thought of Alice.
Mary opened her bag and lifted out a strange contraption. Roughly woven from rope and twigs, it resembled a sort of necklace with attached bracelets – or neck and hand shackles. It reminded Louise of the enormous but similar wooden structure at the back of Arthur’s house that had been constructed to hold the
cage that contained the cocoon-type object. Both were rough, rustic and reminiscent of pagan tribal artefacts.
‘Here you go, my pet.’ The moment Mary placed the rope-and-twig contraption around Deirdre’s neck and hooked her niece’s hands into the ‘bracelets’ the girl stopped shaking.
Stunned, Louise shivered as the hairs on the back of her neck rose.
Mary saw Louise watching her and Deirdre and read fear in her eyes. Embarrassed, she took her purse from her bag, removed a banknote and thrust it at Louise. ‘For the sunglasses.’
Louise pulled herself together and checked it. ‘I’ll get your change.’
‘Keep it.’
‘I couldn’t possibly,’ Louise demurred. ‘Wait, Mary …’
‘I’ll pick it up later.’ Desperate to leave, Mary pushed past Louise and shepherded Deirdre out of the door and down the street.
Louise wanted to follow them but the middle-aged woman who’d been examining the bath attachments accosted her again. ‘I think I will take this shower attachment, if you don’t mind. If it doesn’t fit, I can bring it back, can’t I?’
‘If you haven’t used it and the box is intact, yes, of course.’ Louise took the box from her and went to the till.
When she was free to look through the window again, the street was devoid of people. There was no sign of Deirdre, Mary Brogan, or the young couple, only the snow, pristine and glistening in the thin watery sunlight.
The rush of customers was short-lived. By lunchtime the shop was empty. There was no doctor’s surgery that day, so Louise decided to take advantage of the lull to tidy the shop. While she was restocking the shelves she was startled by a peculiar noise, accompanied by the steady tramping of feet.
She opened the door.
A procession of townsfolk was heading down the main street towards her. A few people in the front row were rattling sticks in hollow bamboo tubes, those behind simply banging sticks together. There was no musical rhythm to the din they were making and the sound that filled the air was discordant, weird, almost primitive in its intensity.
Wondering what the procession was in aid of, Louise walked towards them. No one in the column of people met her eye or appeared to notice her existence. They looked straight through her as though she was invisible.
Every one of them kept their sights fixed straight ahead as they continued on their way past Louise, the open door of the pharmacy and the shuttered shops that lined the street. She noticed that all the people, men as well as women, wore black feathers in their lapels or affixed to their clothes or hats.
Mary Brogan was the last but one to pass her. Her niece Deirdre brought up the rear.
Mary alone turned to look at Louise as she passed. She gave Louise a wan smile before walking on.
Deirdre slowed her pace. She was wearing the rope-and-stick contraption Mary had strung around her neck and wrists, and the new sunglasses concealed her eyes. She lifted her hands and lowered the glasses as she drew alongside Louise. For the first time Louise noticed the colour of Deirdre’s eyes, a startlingly clear brown.
Louise stared back, noting the braces cemented on to Deirdre’s teeth and her childish, undeveloped figure. The girl she had placed in her mid to late teens was clearly younger than she’d first thought. No more than twelve or thirteen years old.
Deirdre smiled, displaying the metalwork on her teeth. Her voice was quiet but it cut through Louise like a knife.
‘Alice has a lovely voice.’
Devastated, Louise reeled back into the pharmacy window.
‘What did you say?’
Deirdre didn’t answer. Simply carried on smiling as she followed the rest of the residents of Wake Wood down the street.
Louise closed her eyes. Images whirled through her mind’s eye at breakneck speed.
Alice as she had last seen her in her coffin. Her skin a deathly pale grey – the exact same shade as Deirdre’s. Her hair unnaturally black in comparison to her face.
The prescription Mary had handed her for Deirdre’s Ventolin. A prescription that bore Mary Brogan’s Wake Wood address and was more than a year out of date.
The ceremony in Arthur’s yard, culminating in the emergence of a fully grown, fully developed man from a womb-like chrysalis. The umbilical cord Arthur had cut with a blade. The man, naked, covered in blood, just like a newborn baby.
The black feathers attached to the clothes of the people marching in the procession. The strange object Mary had fastened around her niece’s neck.
Alice has a lovely voice.
Alice had been dead and buried for over a year. How would Deirdre know that Alice had a lovely voice unless she were dead too?
How did Deirdre know Alice’s name?
The man walking about Wake Wood with the woman he loved, who so obviously loved him too.
Had he returned from the dead? Had Deirdre?
That simply wasn’t possible. The dead were dead. Gone for ever from the living. Never to be seen again.
They didn’t walk the streets arm in arm. Gaze lovingly … longingly at one another. Was she going insane? Had the loss of Alice finally tipped her into madness?
Seven
LOUISE RETURNED TO her shop after the procession had disappeared from view. It was empty. She looked at the boxes of stock waiting to be put out on the shelves and returned them to the stockroom. The last thing she was capable of was working.
Not wanting to dwell on the question of whether or not she was going mad, exhausted by speculating as to what had prompted Deirdre’s comment about Alice’s ‘lovely voice’, Louise decided to pay Mary Brogan a visit. She knew where Mary lived because her town-centre address had been on the prescription Mary had given her.
The more she considered it, the more she thought it strange that Deirdre’s prescription should carry Mary Brogan’s address. Surely any mother would ensure that her asthmatic daughter would pack more medication than she needed before visiting a relative.
She closed the pharmacy, locked the door and walked to Mary’s home. It was a neat terraced house in a street peppered with dilapidated buildings. Most of the doors were boarded up. Mary’s was freshly varnished with a polished lion’s-head brass door knocker.
There was no answer to her knock. She checked her surroundings. The street was empty, which wasn’t surprising. The procession had been a large one. She hadn’t counted heads but she began to wonder if everyone in the town had joined it and, if so, why.
The more she thought about the noise they’d been making and the almost trance-like state of the participants, the less it made any sense. Was it a religious occasion? An anniversary of some kind? Had something traumatic happened in the history of Wake Wood; if so, why was it being celebrated? Was it somehow connected to the offerings tied to the circle of standing stones she and Patrick had stumbled across on their night trek after the car had broken down the night before? Or the strange happenings she’d witnessed in Arthur’s yard?
The more Louise mulled over events, the more unanswerable questions she came up with. She left Mary’s door and took refuge from the rain that was now melting the snow, sheltering in the porch of a derelict house a few doors down.
Half a damp, bone-chilling hour later she saw Mary Brogan approaching. She was wheeling a bicycle. Given Mary’s long flowing skirts and scarves, the bicycle appeared somewhat incongruous. Two bags of shopping filled with the staples of bread, milk and coffee hung from the handlebars. Louise wondered if Mary was wheeling the bike because she was afraid of her clothes getting caught up in the wheels. If so, why even take the bike to the shops?
It was then that Louise realised she was beginning to look for odd and sinister aspects in all her neighbours’ movements. Why shouldn’t her neighbours march in an unmusical procession down the main street of Wake Wood if they wanted to? Why shouldn’t Mary Brogan take a bicycle with her when she shopped? And why shouldn’t Arthur visit them at the cottage early in the morning, especially if he was concerned about them? After all
, he was Patrick’s business partner. And Patrick’s ability to do his job was one of Arthur’s legitimate concerns.
Louise waited until Mary unlocked her door. When Mary picked up the bags of shopping Louise rushed down the street, in through the open door and into the tiny hall after her. Mary dropped the bags, spun round and tried to close the door against her. But not to be thwarted, Louise forced her way through. Mary retreated. Grabbing Louise’s clothes in a futile attempt to steady herself, she fell backwards on to the stairs.
Louise’s phone started to ring as she kicked the door shut behind her. She ignored it and loomed over Mary, pinning her down.
‘Tell me my daughter’s name!’ she demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ Mary protested.
Louise grabbed Mary’s arms and held her wrists above her head, fast against the tread of one of the stair risers. ‘Tell me my daughter’s name,’ she repeated earnestly.
‘I don’t know. Truly,’ Mary insisted.
‘Tell me!’ Louise stared into Mary’s eyes.
‘I don’t know.’
There was an honest sincerity in Mary’s voice that Louise found difficult to ignore. ‘Her name was Alice,’ she informed her coldly. ‘Now tell me. How did your niece know that?’
‘Your phone is ringing,’ Mary said, as though Louise couldn’t hear it.
‘It’s not urgent.’
The phone stopped and Louise stepped back. Seeing Mary cower as if she were about to hit her, Louise felt ashamed. Ashamed of breaking into Mary’s house the way she had, but more than that, ashamed of threatening Mary in her own home. What was she doing? What had she become? She leaned back weakly against the front door.
When Mary realised she was free to move, she pushed herself off the stairs, rose to her feet and walked into the living room. To Louise’s amazement, Mary beckoned her forward.
After a moment’s hesitation, Louise followed Mary into her warm, cosy, old-fashioned living room. The carpet and three-piece suite were worn and shabby but spotlessly clean. A fire blazed behind a brass guard in the hearth and the fire irons shone, highly polished, in the light from the flames.
