Hunger and the Howling of Killian Lone

by Will Storr

  It was out here that I had, for the first and only time, seen dread in Aunt Dorothy. She had been having some sort of baking crisis in the kitchen. Time had escaped her, and she’d forgotten to monitor my whereabouts. When she emerged out of the back door, drying her hands on a tea towel, I was scaling the brick garden wall, trying to see what was behind it. I had an odd memory of there being some strange statue over there – some stone monster or bird of prey bawling in a violent, retching pose.

  “Get down!” she had shouted.

  Seeing such terror on Dorothy’s face had made me freeze. She ordered me down, then pulled me over her lap and proceeded to spank me with the full might of her strength.

  “Never, never, never, never do that,” she said. “Never, never, never go near this wall again.”

  She hit me so hard that she rocked back and forth, using the momentum of her body to give her strikes extra force. There was her face and the blue summer sky behind it and a rim of wet gathering in her left eye and then her right and then it spilled from the left, a tear that ran a faltering course, down past the creases and wrinkles in her skin.

  I stood, remembering all this, with my hands on my hips and my feet square. I was about to go inside when I noticed something I’d never seen before. There was a small, dark window in the roof, peering out towards the clouds like a single, hooded eye. My arms collapsed by my sides. What was up there? An attic? How could I have never noticed it before? It didn’t seem possible. Perhaps, because it was mine now, I was seeing the property with a kind of fresh proprietorial view. Whatever it was, I was certain I had always been completely unaware that… or had I? Although I had no recollection of the physical sight of this thing, the fact of its existence seemed somehow familiar in my memory’s undercurrents. It was like recalling a childhood event, and being unsure whether it was something that had happened to me, or a scene from a television programme or perhaps even a dream. The attic in the cottage. Yes, of course there was an attic in the cottage.

  I quickly gave up trying to understand it all. Besides, if it really was an attic, there was only one place the entrance could be. I strode up the path, flattening the weeds that were sprouting beneath the flagstones, and pushed open the back door. Just as I entered the kitchen, a cloud must have covered the sun as there was a sudden dip in the light. I ran up the stairs noisily and turned into the corridor, my neck craning upwards, waving away a couple of flies that were turning in circles at the end, just outside the sunny bedroom and – yes, my God, there it was – a recessed wooden square. A door in the ceiling like a sucked-back laugh. I wondered how long it had been since Dorothy had been able to get up there. Had she ever been up there?

  I heaved the creaking apple crates filled with Dorothy’s things up the stairs and left them in a pile on the floor beneath the entrance, ready to carry upwards. Then, wiping the hairlets of blond wood from my hands, I rushed to the shed to fetch a foldaway ladder.

  The ladder’s steps meowed irritably as I climbed towards the attic entrance. Once at the top, I gave each corner a firm thud with my fist and it opened surprisingly easily. I was so startled by what came out that I almost fell backwards onto the floor. The light! It was that time of day when the sun roared into the front bedroom, and as perfect as the windows in there were for capturing its rays, the attic was obviously even better placed. The light fell from the hole, as if a great store of it had been trapped up in the roof, building in weight for decades. It was a torrent of white and pale gold that broke apart as I squinted back at it, bursting into stars of red, blue and green.

  Protecting my eyes with the back of my arm, I climbed up. As I sat myself down, I realised that the ground was covered with small, brittle balls that were crunching beneath my weight. When I looked at my palms, there was nothing left of the things but dust, with the odd fine little rod or thread amongst the grey smudge on my skin. Brushing it off, I waited, with my legs dangling towards the corridor below, until I became used to the brightness.

  At first, it was impossible to make out anything at all. The attic seemed to be filled with large misshapen black forms that were lined up in a sulky parade. I realised that these were thick cloths that had probably been draped over whatever was underneath them in an effort to defend them against the sun’s daily assault. Pushing myself to my feet, I saw there were more of the crispy balls on the ground. The place was blanketed in them. I leaned down to see what they were.

  Flies. Fly carcasses. Thousands of them. So old that when any pressure was put on them they’d burst into a small puff of powder. Covering my nose with my sleeve, I crunched across them gingerly. In the eves, I could just make out the dried body of a bird and a couple of spiderwebs so thick they looked like nests. I sniffed uncomfortably, my nostrils suddenly blocked, and pulled back the cloth that was directly in front of me, and a clatter of ancient insects hit the floor.

  Recipe books. Some with glossy spines and titles such as Sauces of Italy, Ancient and Modern. But many more old enough that their leather bindings had taken on deeply marinated shades of brown and red – the colours, suitably enough, of earth and blood. On each of the wooden shelves were handwritten labels saying “Italy”. I tried to make out some titles in the earlier volumes: De Re Coquinaria; Liber de Coquina; De Honesta Voluptate et Valitudine. I pulled a book towards me and it struggled for a moment before finally giving way with sticky “tk”. It was heavy and embossed with a golden spoon whose handle was the head of a serpent. It opened with a sound that was midway between a crack and a tut and its rough pages weren’t laid out like any recipe book I’d seen before – no ingredients list or step-by-step method. Just dense paragraphs of arcane script in a language I couldn’t understand.

  It was only then that I grasped the proportions of the room I was standing in. It was a low space – my neck wasn’t quite able to straighten at the ceiling’s highest point – but the corridor of shelves had a surprising depth. I pushed the Italian book back into its space and removed more of the heavy cloths to reveal shelves labelled “France”, “Spain”, “Prussia & Scandinavia”, “The Orient”, “England”, “The Americas”. I peered into the “England” section and selected something entitled The Forme of Cury.

  “For to make a formenty on a fichssday, tak the mylk of the hasel notis, boyl the wete wyth the aftermelk, til it be dryyd and take and colour yt wyth safron and the ferst mylk cast ther’to and boyle wel and serve yt forth.”

  “Serve yt forth,” I muttered with a small shake of the head.

  I gave The Forme of Cury back to its slot and removed the shroud from the neighbouring unit. On the wood, where previously there had been written the names of various culinary continents, was the word “Dor”. The volumes on this shelf seemed to be homemade: some hard-bound notebooks that looked perhaps a hundred years old, some stapled and relatively modern, but others merely dishevelled piles of ancient rough-edged paper tied together with brittle yarn.

  At the dark end of the corridor of books was a pile of boxes. The largest was a wooden trunk – oak, it looked like, with brass hinges that had dulled to the colour of moss. I bent down, brushed off a layer of petrified insects and pushed up on the lid, which yielded with an indignant groan. There was hay, and amongst that some heavy glass bottles – some brown, some greenish-clear, most with a moustache of dried earth around the thread at the top. They’d been labelled, each in a different hand, in fading watery ink, “Witch Bottle, discovered Aug 12th 1876, two ft beneath rosemary patch”; “Witch Bottle, March 31st 1845, 18” in earth beneath entrance gate, Dor Cottage”; “Witch Bottle, excavated March 10th 1869, 'neath thyme”. I carefully lifted one from its bristly bed but it must have been already cracked because the top came away, soundlessly from its base. I let the pale, powdery soil empty on the floorboard. The was a knock, and then another – hard objects falling from the dirt. I picked one of them up and, in a horrible reflexive movement, threw it across the room with a “fuck!” that almost made me jump again, its sudden volume in the swaddl
ing silence reminding me quite how alone I was. It was hair. Human, by the looks of it. Auburn curls tied in the middle and attached to something waxy.

  The area where I’d thrown the thing was black and indistinct, and I stared into it, rubbing my fingertips on the denim of my jeans until they became reassuringly sore.

  “Time for lunch,” I muttered. But by now my eyes had warmed to the darkness and I could see an incongruously modern shoebox that had been stowed in the corner. Creeping over to it, and pulling it towards me, I opened the lid. It was full of… pictures… letters… newspaper clippings. On the top was a wedding portrait in a creamy card frame – black and white with the photographer’s name embossed in partially flaked-off gold in the corner. I didn’t recognise the groom, although he looked both kind and actually thrilled to be getting married, which is something, when I came to think about it, which you usually don’t see in these sorts of photos. And next to him, humble bouquet in hand, beneath the Norman arch of an English country church…

  Dorothy?

  26

  I decided that the best thing would be to leave Aunt Dorothy’s secrets where they were; to keep forgotten what was quite obviously intended to be forgotten. And yet I couldn’t help noticing that I’d brought the shoebox down into the kitchen. I eyed it as I drank my tea, before announcing my surrender with those two words that precede untold millions of regrettable acts every day.

  “Fuck it.”

  Lifting the wedding photograph out, I found a carefully folded newspaper cutting: an article from the Sussex Messenger. The headline read, “Popular Local Baker Announces Early Retirement”. They’d pulled out a quote in bold in the middle of the text: “ ‘A terrible shame,’ Rosemary Pope, Castle Bakers.”

  “Popular local baker Dorothy Drake of Dor Cottage, Herstmonceux, announced last week that she will no longer supply the village bakery with her popular homemade cakes that are affectionately known to locals as ‘Dotty Cakes’. Rosemary Pope, proprietor of Castle Bakers who sold the iced fancies, told a reporter from the Sussex Messenger that the news was, “A terrible shame”.

  “ ‘We sell 300 Dotties every week and could easily do double that if only Mrs Drake had the time to bake them,’ said Mrs Pope. ‘We always find a little queue for them at 7 a.m. on Friday mornings when she makes her deliveries. We’ve no idea what she puts in them, but they’re no ordinary fancies, I can tell you that. They’re quite addictive. I’ve always told Mrs Drake she’d be a millionaire if she decided to sell the recipe to Mr Kipling.’ When contacted by the Sussex Messenger, Mrs Drake declined to comment.”

  Beneath the article was a certificate of marriage to a Bryan Stanley Drake dated July 5th 1956. Next to that, divorce papers, filed eight and a bit years later. And then, in an immaculately opened envelope, a letter.

  25th Nov, 1964

  My Darling Dorothy,

  I don’t need to tell you again how deeply sorry I am for the way I have behaved. I have brought great shame upon you and I know you will find it impossible to ever forgive me. I cannot blame you for this, Dorothy, and find myself unable to say much in my defence. You know now that I did use that blasted herb for my own ends, reprehensible as they were.

   I am currently staying with Mother in Portsmouth. As you can imagine, she was terribly sad to learn that our marriage has come to an end. When I confessed that it was down to my own adultery she was crushed.

   My darling Dorothy, I am writing to you to make an appeal. I promise this will be the last you shall hear from me. I beg of you to remember the man I was before all this. I hope you remember that I was upstanding, moral and am still churchgoing.

   We’ve had much fun (and made much profit) turning out Dotty Cakes for the past six years or so. I beg you to stop now. In fact, I go further. I propose that you allow me to build a wall that will extend the length of the garden and block out the Physic Garden completely. I know you could never bring yourself to destroy the garden itself. I ask only that you grant permission for me to build a high wall that is completely inaccessible to anyone.

   I must furthermore confront a subject that we always failed to speak about properly. You might consider my addressing it now to be a fair measure of my desperation. Dorothy, you told me yourself that your relative was burned as a witch. I know that you noticed the change that seemed to come over the house when we started to harvest that herb. After long reflection, I have come to accept that, entirely by accident, we might have set off something evil in the place. Please understand that I am entirely sober-minded when I tell you that, in using those plants, I believe we invited into our home, in some form or guise, the Devil. I can only recommend the services of a local priest. Perhaps Father Demick could be trusted to act with the necessary discretion.

   Please consider what I ask seriously. I await your reply.

   Yours with all my love and tenderness,

  Bryan.

  27

  It was the mortar that gave it away. It looked lumpy and unfinished; you could see thumb-smears and casual licks that had petrified in the shapes they had been in on the day it had been built, presumably by this newly discovered uncle. The bricks weren’t quite straight, the edges sticking out uncomfortably here and there. It was tall, though – the ladder was just about able to lift me to a clear view. Even though I was high up, I felt cowed by the elm forest whose blind distances stretched on towards the castle. I squinted into the velvet murk beneath. Oh my God. There were walls down there, almost as tall as this one, enclosing what appeared to be an abandoned garden about the size of the cottage again. They’d been built with the same ochre bricks as Dor, yet these were glum with damp and sickly with moss and lichen. Directly in front of me was an entrance – a wooden gate between stone pillars that were crowned by the screaming stone gargoyles that I remembered. The garden itself was strangely breathtaking; an ocean, moving slowly but with extreme violence. Silent crowds of nettles in the corners looked out onto a torment of weeds, thorns and tangles; vast clumps of dead-looking vegetation with dried stalks like ribcages a few leafy stems poking bravely through here and there. They looked like herbs, although not a variety I could remember seeing before.

  “What the bloody hell are you up to?”

  I turned towards the voice and, when I saw who it was, I climbed down the ladder so quickly I nearly twisted an ankle.

  “Christ!” I said.

  Kathryn seemed nervous, standing there at the garden gate, not sure whether to open it or not.

  “Sorry,” I said, brushing the dirt and brick crumbs from my hands. “I was just having a look – there seems to be an old garden back there.”

  “A garden? What sort of garden?”

  “An overgrown one,” I said, opening the gate. “Herbs, it looks like. What are you doing here?”

  She shrugged in a way that suggested she was giving herself a little hug.

  “I don’t know. I was bored. Sitting around in that crap-hole of a flat with Andy in his pants, stinking of Babycham and Marlboro. Jenny brought some bloke back last night and he was in his pants too. I couldn’t move for hairy thighs and ball bags. I thought, ‘Sod this, I’ll get in the car and go to the country’.”

  She managed to look me in the eye for the first time. I didn’t know what to say. She glanced over her shoulder, towards Wartling Road.

  “I just wanted to see the castle, really,” she said. “I love castles. I think it’s the military. It’s in my blood.” She turned back towards me. “I can piss off if you like.”

  “No!” I said. “Come in.”

  I led her through the gate. She paused to take in the house. “God, it’s gorgeous, Killian.”

  “We can walk to the castle, if you like,” I said. “It’s ten minutes that way.”

  “What, right now?” she said, with an excited grin. “Cool. Go on then.”

  Wartling Road crept through the ancient fields of Sussex under a dim tunnel of trees, the sun just managing to sprinkle itself through the leaves ab
ove, attacking the shade with tiny arrows of pale light. We hadn’t been walking down its crumbling tarmac edges for long before Kathryn gave me an uncertain look.

  “I’m sorry if I was awful to you yesterday,” she said.

  “You weren’t.”

  “I shouldn’t have been so cross with you. I should’ve realised – men are kind of automatic, aren’t they? Like moths, except it’s not light bulbs, it’s tits. You’re all the same, really.”

  I smelled the smell of menthol cigarettes, back when I was young. I saw red fingernails pressing into the white filter and ash bunching up on my skin, then softly falling, like snowflakes, towards the carpet.

  Kathryn looked at me: at my silence and colour.

  “It’s just – I have had bad experiences with men,” she said. “To be frank about it, I’ve probably got a chip on my shoulder. So it’s me that should be saying sorry, not you.” She breathed out. “So I’m sorry. I’m trying really hard, Killian.”

  We continued in silence for what felt like too long.