The Ice Scream Man

by Salmon, J. F.

  Suzanne peered into the opening of the tank but there was no way of seeing anything, it was pitch-black inside. The noise echoed through the small opening once more with tiny variations on the sounds that came before.

  She moved her head away from the opening and turned to Alex, who looked white as a sheet. “Get that poor animal out of there. Whatever it is, get it out.”

  “Are you serious? You want me to open this thing up?” He was both alarmed and amazed at how calm she suddenly seemed. Had she already forgotten about the sorts of things that might be in there? It came from the hospital and the vet and the dentist’s, for Christ’s sake! What did she expect him to do, hop right in and start swabbing around with his hands for something that might be alive and could bite him, or worse. Seriously? No fucking way.

  Suzanne hopped off the ladder. “Come on, Bentley. I’m taking another shower, and then I’m going to take him for a walk. . . . a long one. I need time to think. Get the poor thing out.”

  He called after her, just before she rounded the hedge back to the cottage.

  “Seriously, Suzanne, are you serious? Can’t we just leave it?”

  Without turning back to face him, she said, “I’m deadly serious. The way I feel right now, our relationship depends on it. The very least you can do is save whatever that thing is you put in there.”

  Alex pondered his options, alone in the clearing. Never-shuda-done-it. Stupid, stupid, stupid man!

  Visions of creepy, slimy creatures kept the hairs on the back of his neck at attention and he thought dolefully: Earphones. Then: Drill it, cut the fucker open.

  33:

  “Little piggy, little piggy, come and see.

  “A letter has arrived, just for me.”

  Kate Dooley stood at the bottom of the stairs in stocking feet, tired and dejected after another night of wet eyes and restless sleep. She was distraught, unable to function and make clear decisions. She couldn’t eat and she couldn’t bathe. Acceptance, a word long since lost to her.

  She held an olive green bowl of empty porridge with an embossed print of Mickey Mouse on the outside. A cup sat in the bowl and in her left hand the dessert spoon used to feed Helen, the handle clenched in a full fist. It was just after nine-thirty in the morning, eight months and two weeks since that disastrous day, when the letterbox snapped shut and brought Kate back to a harsh reality and down the stairs to the hall.

  The sound of the letterbox roused her out of momentary sleep from the cushioned chair that imprinted her slender figure, and just for a second, Kate thought she had woken up from a very bad dream, the worst kind of dream. Her eyes found focus only to confront her daughter’s blank gaze, a stare that passed out into indifferent space and proved a stark reminder that the worst kind of dream was, in fact, the worst kind of reality. Helen’s head turned toward her while she napped and Kate wondered what she might have been thinking when she did it, if she was thinking anything at all.

  The stress of wonder parched Kate’s mouth, leaving it desert-dry and the cup of wet tea on the bedside locker was long since empty. She’d go downstairs and make herself another one, then come back up and sit with Helen some more, but not before feeding her daughter a drink of water from the white beaker with the straw protruding out the top.

  Kate used the support of the wicker arms to push herself out of the chair and an involuntary groan crossed her lips while her back moulded upright. She reached a slow hand out to her daughter’s forehead, careful not to touch the scars, and gently wiped the unobtrusive hair to one side. She tilted her head in line with Helen’s and a brigade of pity marched over her when she forced a smile.

  Helen never blinked when the shadow of the hand crossed her face; the same vacant expression met her mother’s simple gesture.

  The dry lump in Kate’s throat almost choked her as she took the beaker of water in her unsteady hand and positioned the tip of the straw in Helen’s mouth. Helen immediately sucked up the liquid like a child drawing on a soother. Kate pulled a couple of tissues from the cardboard box and a little dribble spilled out when Helen stopped her suckling. She wiped her daughter’s chin as the straw fell away, then put the beaker back on the bedside locker. She dabbed the tissue up against her own eyes before scrunching it in her hand and dropping it into the cup. Finally, she took the spoon out of the bowl, replaced it with the cup and turned to leave the room.

  Helen’s voice rose off the bed from behind her, sweet and simple, clear and confident, so full of promising life. “Thanks, Mum.”

  Kate stopped in the open doorway and reached out to the doorframe for balance. Her heart fluttered in her chest and a tidal wave of pinpricks left prickly skin. With her back to Helen, Kate held her composure, and replied, “That’s okay, happy birthday, my darling. It was seventeen years ago today when you gave me the best surprise of my life. Come on downstairs and you can open up your present. I’ll get the breakfast started. What would you like?”

  Kate closed her eyes tightly and hankered for a response. Helen spoke again (so clear, so young, so beautiful, so full of promising life), and Kate’s lungs filled with fresh air. “Nothing, I’ll just grab a sachet of protein and get something after I finish my run.”

  The muscles in Kate’s face tightened and she felt herself lapse into mother mode, her voice leaden, “Surely, it’s not good to run on an empty stomach.”

  “Mum, stop fussing; it’s perfectly fine. I’d get a stich if I ate now.”

  (So clear, so young, so beautiful, so full of promising life)

  “Well, you be careful out there, I don’t like you running in the dark on your own. . . .”

  (there is a stink in that darkness beckoning to play)

  “You promise me, Helen, you won’t go anywhere near Brushy Park.”

  “Mum, we’ve had this conversation. I’ve been running the same route every morning before school for almost three months now and n—”

  “Promise me, Helen. I want you to promise me you won’t go anywhere near Brushy Park, ever again.”

  A pulse beat in the centre of her forehead, a cold certainty began to form, and that certainty was panic. She began to lose the run of herself. “Promise me, promise me now, I want to hear you say it, I WILL NOT GO ANYWHERE NEAR BRUSHY PARK EVER AGAIN.” Tears bled from the corners of her pressed lids and her chest drew in a convulsive gasp that expelled in a huge, tormenting sob, “Promise meeee-hee, Helen.”

  “Okay, okay, Mum. I prom—”

  The words abruptly broke to shattering silence when Kate opened her flooded eyes and turned to face Helen lying in her bed. Her placid mouth had not moved, never uttered a word.

  Kate covered her lips with the arm of her dressing gown. The stutter of her breath exhaled from her nostrils into the soft fabric as her stomach tightened in short bursts with the rhythm of her shakes. Rattled and confused, she left the quiet room, the handle of the spoon clenched in a white-knuckled fist.

  Indifferent eyes remained cemented to the space where her Mum no longer sat.

  The letterbox cage caught the post each morning and prevented the envelopes from scattering into the hall. Since the attack (the word hardly adequate to describe what had happened to her beloved Helen and what she had become), so much mail came through the door that both she and Fran had begun to get backaches just picking them up each morning. The cage became a necessity. Generally, Kate picked out the post but if Fran was downstairs before her, he left it on the kitchen table for her to open. Eight months on and the flow had steadied to one or two a day, and at least four on a Monday. It took her considerable courage to take them into her hands each morning, tear the envelopes open and read them, but she made a point of reading every single one because each person had taken the trouble to write. The majority were sympathy cards from home and abroad and from people she never met but knew her story.

  The one that reso
nated with her the most had come from a close friend that simply read: “One day the tears will dry and a smile will rise. The ache and the empty space in your heart will always be there but the pain will somehow ease up through the years.”

  Many of the cards received were Mass cards that addressed Helen in the past tense, insinuating that she no longer existed. In many respects, they were right. The Helen Kate knew no longer existed and she often thought that it would have been easier if she had died. Then time might have been an ally and the same card might have read: “One day you will cease to remember her with tears and instead remember her with smiles. The ache and the empty space in your heart will always be there but the pain will somehow ease up through the years.”

  That would have been better than this. Every letter and card made Kate rueful because it fortified what had happened. Just like anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays, each one guaranteed to trigger a deluge of pain and tears, a constant reminder that her hopes, dreams, and aspirations for Helen were gone and lost forever.

  Still, the words and best wishes provided a level of small comfort, although she doubted any of them really knew what she was going through. How could they? Helen was not their daughter. They didn’t know.

  The ones who referenced werewolves and honour and privilege and promises to slay the beast with silver bullets, stakes, and garlic infuriated her but somehow she’d learnt to dismiss those and quickly consigned them to the bin. If Fran read any of the letters (and she suspected he did), then he did so in private, so she did her best to cipher out the claptrap. People could be so mindless.

  Today, one letter sat alone in the cage. Kate posted it into the downy pocket of her dressing gown with little thought. She ambled to the kitchen, the conversation with Helen—with herself—still tumbled about her mind, soaking up the moisture in her head. She did not remember ridding herself of the bowl, cup, and spoon, or making the pot of tea that she took over to the table. The mist of her perplexity only left her when she noticed the two letters Fran had neatly placed there. He must have left the house when she dozed, and she remembered he’d made a fleeting comment about playing golf (playing golf! playing anything!), on Saturday (on any day!), but at the time, like most times before, her mind was elsewhere. She was too busy suffering the associated feelings of losing a child to consider whether her husband should be going out to play a game of golf. Helpless confusion followed anger, depression, pain, and guilt. And now fear took up far too much of her time to care what Fran was doing, each subsequent emotion more intense than the last.

  Now, sitting at the kitchen table, Kate unwittingly confronted the latest and cruellest of emotions. It stealthily crept upon her in Helen’s room when she turned around and quickly realised the conversation with her daughter never happened. It slipped inside when she thought she might be losing her mind and then shredded all other emotion into itsy bits and pieces. Hate found a new home.

  “Playing golf!” The very thought was hard to stomach and she surprised herself at how bitter she suddenly felt. Might he actually be enjoying himself, having a laugh and a joke with his mates on the first tee, while her daughter, Helen, suffered in the bed, not moving, certainly not playing golf, waiting to be watered and fed like a house plant?

  She wrapped her hands around the hot cup of tea, allowing the heat of the ceramic to scorch her palms so that the pain would detract from what was happening in her head. Those sort of thoughts were a frequent occurrence and it became an ever-increasing battle just to keep them at bay.

  A large part of her blamed him for what happened. Fran probably blamed himself too, but she couldn’t be sure because he was playing golf. He should have been up the day of her birthday, cycled with her. If he had taken her premonitions seriously and got up when she first alerted him about her fears, they might have been able to save her. They might have found her in time and put a stop to the sodomized-raping-butchery of their only daughter. If he’d just gotten up when she asked, (she’ll be back soon. Give her another half-hour. If she’s not back by then wake me up) it still might have been too late but at least they now might have been able to lean on each other. Discuss and find answers to the numerous questions, quiet their respective fears and, above all, discover that, yes, there was still life after the loss of a child you once knew. There was still a game of golf to be played.

  But not for her.

  Kate’s friends did their best to cheer her up. They brought her out to lunch and sat with her while she spoke of her pain, but she knew they weren’t comfortable listening. She could tell they felt sad for her, that they were also sad, but they could not comprehend her pain. Her experience went against the grain, distorting the normal order of the universe. Friends could only say and do so much. For them, it was like walking on eggshells, afraid to add more pain to her visible grief. Calls and visits became less frequent and Kate felt very much alone, caring for a daughter she no longer recognised.

  The letters on the kitchen table prompted Kate to take the one out of her gown pocket and place it on top of the other two. She decided to leave them be, save them for a time when she felt one degree better about herself, when she could cope.

  She took a sip of the tea and her eyes drifted back to the letters. Something about the envelope struck her as odd. The only words typed on the front read “Mrs. Dooley,” no address, no stamp and nothing to insinuate it may be a marketing campaign. Other than the name, there were no other markings on the envelope.

  The longer Kate looked at the envelope the more compelled she felt to take it into her hands and open it. A quantity of unease punched a blow into her already depleted, defenceless body. With another piece of sanity knocked to the ground, Kate watched in disbelief as single vowels and letters branded themselves onto the surface of the envelope in charred shades of brown and red. Some showed the right way up, others upside down. They scattered in random pattern, producing words that quickly faded below the surface for others to appear. She recognised some of the words, the ones that faced her, meaningless on their own but still disturbing while out of context.

  “Slicing. Apology. Scream. Lollypop. Eat. Soaked. Funny. Haunts. Alive. Mother.”

  The font was crimson. The word “Helen” appeared. It convinced Kate to open the envelope and spy its contents. She felt nauseous as her hand reached out. She expected the envelope to be hot to the touch, even burn, but the branded array of letters and words instantly disappeared when she made contact. She opened up the envelope and took out a single sheet of A4 paper folded in on itself. It shook in her hands as she unfolded the page and she had to pin it down on the table just to read it.

  Dear Mrs. Dooley,

  First of all, let me start with an apology. Regrettably, I would have saved some of her red stuff in a pill bottle and used that to correspond with you, but my time with Helen was cut short (do excuse the pun) so red ink is fit enough I suppose, less personal, I know. Helen never squealed, you know. I don’t even think she saw me as the Wolf (well, someone else did and she died of fright, so that’s okay). I knocked her out on the path, not intentionally, just hit her a little harder than I would have liked. Let the excitement of the moment get the better of me.

  I think she left behind a few teeth, if I remember correctly. How ironic, then, that her own dentist would find her. Has he fixed them for her yet? The papers never said and I’m curious to know if he billed you. Did he feel sorry for her, for you, and did he make her look any better?

  So I carried her off and fucked her behind the wall; my little man demanded I do that; a promise is a promise. You understand, I’m sure you do, Kate. Then I strung her up over the branch. She did moan a bit, though, when I started slicing her, about as much as when I fucked her. That’s funny, isn’t it? Fucked can mean so many things. How are her hands, by the way? Healing nicely, I expect, along with the rest of the wounds I inflicted.

  From what I understand, she’
s not doing too well, mentally, I mean. It is understandable if you think about it, because the best of her is with me now. After all, you are what you eat. She tasted good in my mouth and made me feel so much better when I swallowed her, like a healthy vitamin pill, she was. You don’t need to eat much you know, but it would have been nicer if she had died, then I would have soaked up all her natural goodness. It cannot be easy on you, left with all the pips and peel. I tried to avoid that, another regret of mine.

  It’s not all bad news, though, and without sounding funny cos I’m deadly serious, you should come to terms that Helen is here with me while writing this letter, the best part of her, I mean. Can’t you see her personality in the words! Just a moment she wants to say something…

  “Hello, Mother, how are you today?”

  It still haunts me all these months later that I couldn’t finish her straight off as I would have liked (I won’t make that mistake again), and take all of her with me; part of her is still missing. Well, I suppose you know how that feels, too. I am sorry that you have to care for the spastic shell you sat beside in the hospital and who now drools in a bed in a home she no longer recognises. However, I do want to put your mind at some ease by assuring you that your daughter, Helen, the best part of her, lives on safe and well, and alive within me. So don’t go worrying about it any longer…