by David Haynes
Stokes tipped the glass back and swallowed. “It’s good, Peter, very good.” A cold sweat had broken out on his forehead and he wiped it with the back of his hand.
“I knew you’d like it! Come on, drink up, there’s plenty more where that came from.”
Stokes looked at the empty seats behind him. “I think I’ll just go and sit down for a minute.”
“Of course, just come and get another pint when you’re ready.”
He walked over to the side of the room and sat down. A middle-aged couple smiled at him and he smiled back, holding up his glass to them. What were their names? Bill and Lois? He wiped his head again. It didn’t matter anyway.
“Cheers.” He raised his glass for the second time.
He knew why he’d come tonight. He needed to know he wasn’t dead. He needed to see other humans and engage with them. He needed to feel the warmth of their breath on his face and to hear their voices. But even now he couldn’t be sure.
He could remember everything except how he got back to his bed. For three days he had lain there, staring out of the roof window. Time had passed, was passing, while he lay there but it was abstract and meaningless. It was pointless.
“Oh, Peter was right, you look terrible, Jim.”
Stokes looked up. “I’m fine honestly, Ina. It’s just a bout of man-flu, that’s all.”
“Hmm well you look like you need an early night to me. Where is she?”
He swallowed hard and tried to look calm. How did Ina know about Natalie? His mind hadn’t created the Natalie illusion since he’d slashed her to bits in the pit but how did she know?
“She?”
“Yes, this girl who’s been keeping you up all night. You call it man-flu, I call it love’s young dream. You haven’t slept for days by the looks of you.” She winked at him.
He would’ve laughed but he knew it would sound like a cackle. He smiled and shook his head instead. “Just the man-flu, Ina, just the man-flu.”
“I’m keeping my eye on you, Mr Stokes.” She marched off.
That felt a bit better now. Just that little exchange had brought him back from the brink of whatever new abyss he now found himself teetering on.
He turned to the couple beside him. “I’m really sorry, I don’t remember your names.” Genial conversation with a couple of pensioners was what he needed right now and these two fit the bill perfectly.
“I’m Bill and this is my wife Louise.”
Stokes nodded. So close.
*
He pulled the collar up on his jacket but it did little to protect his neck. He’d have to dust off the old duffel coat soon, if he could find it. He felt a little better than he had when he first arrived at the gathering, more alive anyway. Whether that was Peter’s brew or the normality of the event was up for debate, but it was a welcome feeling. How would he feel when he got back to the cottage? There was only one way to find out.
“New start, Stokesy, new start.” He’d repeated that mantra almost every day during the last six months and how many times had he believed it? He shivered and started walking back up the hill. Was that snow in the air? He stuck out his tongue and tilted his head back. The estate agent had told him the roads were more or less impassable once the snow started but surely this was too early? He shivered again. The seasons were all messed up nowadays anyway. If it was cold enough to snow, it was cold enough, whether it was late autumn or mid-summer.
He ambled along the road, keeping his neck tucked down into his ineffective collar. What would he find when he got back? Would Natalie be waiting for him again? He licked his lips. Less than two minutes away from the gathering and already he was starting to feel ill again.
He stopped and looked up. The cottage was less than five minutes away and he could just about see the chimney above the brow of the hill. He should sell it. He should just get rid of it and never step foot inside it again. Already it held too many memories and most of them bad. How long could he keep running though? He’d faced her and destroyed her over and over again with the knife, yet she’d won. Somehow she’d won because he was standing here thinking about selling the house, selling his new start after it had barely begun. He resumed walking. He didn’t have the energy to move house again, not yet at least.
His stomach turned in a nauseating whirl. Someone was standing on the brow of the hill. Again, it was just a silhouette but whoever it was appeared to be staring down at him.
“Hello?” Stokes shouted and quickened his pace.
The figure made no move until he shouted for the second time, then they dropped down the other side of the rise and disappeared. Stokes broke into a jog. His days of being able to sprint were gone but he knew he could last at a steady pace until he reached the cottage.
He reached the top of the hill and paused. He might as well have been staring down into the pit beneath the floorboards. He’d left the lights on inside and they threw down small squares of illumination onto the land directly beside the cottage. Other than that, there was no sign of life at all.
“Hello?” he shouted again and waited.
When no reply came, he started walking. Everything felt very close to the edge and if he stopped and waited for too long he was liable to fall off.
He put the key into the lock and turned it. The door clicked open and he waited. He waited for Natalie to come rushing and gouge his eyeballs out with her fingernails. But something felt different. Was it the smell? No, there were still the traces of ammonia and single man in the air, so what was it?
He took a step inside and locked the door. It wasn’t a smell and it wasn’t even something he could see, it was a feeling, that was all. He looked over at the hatch. It wasn’t pushed down properly and one corner was raised above the other floorboards. He walked over and kicked at it, knocking it into place like an errant piece of jigsaw puzzle.
He’d lost his mind down there, there was no arguing about that. If it wasn’t for his pain threshold, he might have gutted himself too. He wriggled out of his jacket and lifted his shirt. Earlier on he’d taped a tea-towel to his skin in the absence of anything closely resembling a first aid kit. It was crude but at least it covered the wound. He peeled it back and winced. Jagged bits of flesh on the edge of the wound tried desperately to cling to the fibres of the towel. A faint sour whiff drifted up to his nose. He should probably go to the doctors and have it checked out. He’d just tell them he caught it when he was doing repairs to the house. He pushed the towel back over the wound and walked upstairs. He removed his clothing as he went and left it where it fell. All that walking had made him hot, very very hot and tired.
He flopped into the bed and started to drift off to sleep. He felt surprisingly relaxed now he was back. Natalie could come and disembowel him for all he cared.
Scretch, scretch, scretch.
Stokes stirred and climbed under the duvet. He was cold but too tired to do anything except find a comfortable sleeping position.
He was too tired to open his eyes and see the figure standing at the bottom of his bed, watching him sleep. He didn’t even stir when the little girl opened her mouth and allowed a starving and filthy rat to scurry from between her teeth. If he had awoken and seen her, or the rat, he would have assumed he was having a very bad dream. He murmured in his sleep. The little girl smiled and ground the stumps of her blackened teeth together. Scretch scretch scretch.
*
Stokes clung to the rim of the toilet and vomited. Each shuddering heave made him cry out in pain as his wound opened and closed. There was little more than a bright yellow bile coming up now but that wasn’t surprising since he couldn’t remember eating anything for several days. This was the worse bout of man-flu he’d ever had.
He wiped his mouth and stood up. His face looked drawn and grey in the mirror, just like a heroin addict. He turned the cold tap on and filled his mouth with icy water. One day he’d look back on this and laugh, like a lunatic perhaps, but he’d laugh all the same.
He’
d slept like a log last night and by his reckoning had nearly twelve hours of solid, unbroken rest. So why did he feel so dog-tired? He spat the water into the sink and filled his mouth a second time. He swallowed it and immediately brought it back up again.
He should just go downstairs and sit in the recliner for a while. Looking out at the lake had to be better than staring at his own ugly reflection. He grabbed his duvet and took the stairs at the only pace he could manage – snail’s. When he reached the last step, he paused as another wave of nausea gripped him. He took several deep breaths and padded across the room, feeling each and every freezing inch of floorboard beneath his feet. If he ever got round to it, he’d have to hoover up all the dust he’d made.
He stopped beside the hatch and felt the room rotate around him like some sickening fairground ride. He was glued to the spot.
“She is gone,” he whispered.
The letters were crude and child-like but they were there, scratched into the layers of dust which covered the hatch.
“She is gone?” he repeated and dropped to his knees. What was this? He looked about the room for signs that someone was inside.
“Who did this?” he shouted.
He looked down at the words and traced his finger along the letters. The wood was cold beneath his fingers. “She... is... gone,” he said each word as he finished it.
Had he written it himself? A bead of sweat dripped off his forehead and made a splash mark in the dust. It smudged some of the letters, rendering it unreadable. He stared at it for a moment before wiping his hands over the whole lot.
“Now you’re gone.” He got to his feet and groaned. His body ached all over, including his head. What he really needed was a good measure of whisky and a dozen painkillers to knock him out. He looked over at the kitchen and turned away. There was no use looking over there for help. There wasn’t much in there besides a few packets of dried noodles and some tins of beans. He slumped into the chair and pulled the duvet tightly around him. Strange writing in the dust was pretty low down on the scale of weirdness at the moment. He’d just have to put it on the shelf for now, right below the photograph of dear Natalie.
He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh Natalie, Natalie! Wherefore art thou, Natalie?”
He retched and dribbled yellow bile onto the duvet.
Without a doubt, this was the worst man-flu ever.
And why wouldn’t the rats stop scratching? It was daylight and they were at it again.
Scretch, scretch, scretch.
It sounded like they were in the room with him now. They probably were but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
Scretch, scretch, scretch.
Not only in the room but in his head too.
8
Darkness. Complete and utter darkness. So dark that she could barely see her hands until they touched her nose.
She screamed. And then she screamed again and she didn’t stop until her throat felt as if it was full of thistles. Then she retched, a terrible and dry heave which left her gasping for breath.
Where was she?
She shivered and pulled her knees up to her chest. The mattress was thin and she could feel the cold, damp earth creeping through its fibres. She shouldn’t have just her nightie on, not when it was this cold.
Was there a blanket on the mattress? She fumbled around until she felt the itchy, scratchy rug they used to lay out on the grass for picnics.
Where was she?
It smelled funny here too. It smelled a bit like the house after Mummy had done a spring clean. Except it wasn’t a clean smell, it was dirty and it hurt her nose to breathe.
Was it a dream?
It must be because... well... because it was so dark and nowhere was as dark as this except in a dream.
In a nightmare.
She screamed again but her throat felt like it did when she had to see the doctor that time. That was the time the doctor with the funny eye had given her some horrible medicine that tasted like bananas. She hated bananas too but she’d taken it because he’d said it would make her feel better. Mummy and Daddy said he was a nice man and a good doctor but he wasn’t. He wasn’t nice at all. He’d looked at her funny. He’d given her a bad feeling.
“Mummy? Daddy?” she called out.
She’d read somewhere that pinching yourself when you were dreaming made you wake up right away. She pinched the skin on her wrist and closed her eyes.
“One... two... three,” she whispered and opened her eyes.
How could she still be dreaming? She obviously wasn’t doing it right.
She pinched the skin on her cheek hard enough to make tears come. “One... two... three...”
What if it wasn’t a dream? What if one of those nasty men that Mummy sometimes talked about had come and taken her?
“Mummy?”
No, that couldn’t have happened. Daddy would have bashed them with his hammer if one of those sort of men had come to the house. Mummy and Daddy loved her. They wouldn’t let anything happen to her. They’d be looking for her by now too, so would the policemen.
She started to cry. What if the policemen couldn’t find her? What if Mummy and Daddy couldn’t find her either and the nasty man did something nasty to her?
What exactly was something nasty anyway? Nobody ever said exactly what that was. How did you know who the nasty men were? And how many of them were there? There could be hundreds for all she knew.
Some men, like Doctor Wilde, gave her a bad feeling but that didn’t make them nasty men. She knew that because sometimes Daddy gave her a bad feeling too. Only a little one though and it was only when he didn’t know she was watching and he was alone with Mummy. She didn’t like it though, it made her tummy feel funny.
Sometimes though there were pictures too. Like the time she walked to the park holding Mummy’s hand and a group of boys bumped into them. One of the boys had horrible, frightening pictures in his brain. She’d screamed then, she couldn’t help herself. And then she’d pointed at him and tried to explain to Mummy what she’d seen. But the words wouldn’t come out properly. Or had she been too little to know enough of the right words?
It had frightened Mummy though and she’d told her off. And then when they were back home again, Mummy had hugged her and said she was sorry for shouting. That was before she did the really bad things.
“Mummy?”
She wished Mummy was here right now to give her a cuddle. It seemed that right now nearly everyone gave her a bad feeling.
“Daddy!”
She curled up in a ball and closed her eyes. If she went back to sleep then everything would be better when she woke up again. She might have toast for breakfast in the morning, toast and raspberry jam.
*
When she woke up she was cold, very, very cold and the lights were still off. Maybe she hadn’t slept that long and it wasn’t quite morning yet? It was always dark when she woke up on Christmas morning, but that was always very early.
What was that scratching noise? It sounded a bit like when Daddy ran his fingers across his beard. Never mind, it was probably just a crow in the garden. The smell was still the same as it was when she’d gone to sleep and it wasn’t nice at all.
“Melody.” A voice came from somewhere in the darkness but she couldn’t see who it belonged to. It belonged to a grown-up though, she could tell that much because of how deep it was.
“Melody? Are you frightened?”
She nodded. “A little bit, yes. Are you a nasty man?”
There was some laughing then but it echoed a bit and made her feel even more afraid.
“You don’t need to be frightened of me. I’m here to help you.”
“Help me go home? I’d like to go home, my mummy and daddy will be worried.”
“Oh they are worried, Melody. That’s why they sent me to try and help you.”
“They know I’m here? I want to go home now, I’m cold.” She still couldn’t see the owner of the voice and s
he didn’t quite know if he gave her a bad feeling yet or not.
“Not yet, we need to have a chat for a while.”
The man said something and came toward her a little. She didn’t recognise his voice and she didn’t understand what he was saying, it was just too fast.
Her tummy rumbled. “I’m hungry, can I go home?”
Somewhere above was the sound of crying. “Mummy?”
“Shh, Melody. It’s important you listen to me without interrupting.” The man stepped forward and for the first time she saw just a little bit of his face. It wasn’t enough to see him properly but he looked like a kind man. “I’m here to help you, all of you.”
