Beneath the Boards

by David Haynes

  “Is he dead?”

  Stokes felt a shove on his shoulder. He resisted it.

  “No, but we can’t just leave him here like this. We need to break his ankles so he can’t move. The blood poisoning will do the rest.”

  Ah yes, that was what he’d been intending to do to Willis – hobble him. Smash his legs to bits for what he’d done to Melody.

  “Melody?” He opened his eyes and shouted her name. She would come to him now. She would come and help him against...

  “How do you know our daughter’s name?” Ina looked into his eyes. Flames gathered in the corners of hers.

  “Your daughter?” Stokes shook his head. “She calls me Daddy, she’s my little girl.”

  A stinging slap jarred his head to the side, bumping it against Willis’s shoulder.

  “I’m her daddy!” Peter yelled.

  A second slap jarred his head back the other way. “I’m her daddy!”

  The candles were a horrible intrusion into the comfortable darkness his eyes had grown accustomed to and they stung far more than the slaps. He closed his eyes again

  “She’s perfect.” He smiled and licked his dry and cracked lips.

  “How does he know her name?” Peter’s voice had gone up a notch. “Tell me, dear wife, how the fuck this man knows my daughter’s name?”

  There was silence.

  “I’m all ears.”

  “I... I don’t know.”

  Ina grabbed Stokes’s cheeks and squeezed them hard. “How?” she asked calmly and then more urgently. “Are you still a police officer?”

  Stokes laughed and squinted. “Yeah, that’s it, I’m an undercover copper and I’ve come to rescue Melody. I’ve come to rescue her like I did Natalie Sutton.” He pointed to his stomach. “And look where that got me.”

  “Does he know?” He heard Peter shuffling his feet in the dirt.

  “He doesn’t know anything, you cretin.”

  “So how does he know her name, Ina? How does he know her name?” Peter was shouting now.

  Scretch, scretch, scretch.

  Stokes leaned forward, looked into Ina’s burning eyes and whispered, “She’s here.”

  One by one the candles were extinguished. Inch by inch the room grew dark and little by little Stokes began to see properly again.

  He heard Ina and Peter gasp in unison.

  “Melody?” he whispered.

  She was standing in the far reaches of the room but it mattered not at all, for whether it was pitch black or whether it was noon in mid-summer it didn’t matter, he could always see her. He knew he would always see her.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” Stokes asked.

  “What are you talking about? You’re a lunatic, just like Willis.” Peter was frightened, his voice was shaking almost to the point of being unintelligible.

  “She’s standing over there looking at you. She’s looking right at you.”

  He heard the sound of shoes being shuffled in the dirt.

  “Can’t you see her? Just there, look.” He pointed at Melody even though he knew they wouldn’t see where he was pointing.

  “They didn’t want to see me again, that’s why they locked me down here, with him.”

  “They’re not your mummy and daddy, Melody. They don’t deserve to be called that.”

  “She screamed when she saw me. The Vicar opened the hatch and she screamed when I looked up. She hates me.”

  “Then she’s...” A blow caught him on his cheek. He’d been hit enough times to know this was a punch from someone unused to throwing a punch. Nevertheless it jarred his head to the side.

  “Who are you talking to? Stop it, stop it now!”

  “Peter! You’re losing it. He’s playing with us. There’s no-one here except us three and a corpse.”

  Scretch, scretch, scretch.

  Stokes snapped his head around sharply. Melody was standing right before him. She was so pretty, it was hard to imagine why anyone would want to lock her away. He reached out to touch her hair and to smell it again. He didn’t need the moment of clarity her pure smell afforded him to know he was going to die and it was going to be sooner rather than later.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. I’m sorry.” A powerful wave of dizziness and nausea seized his body and threw him into a massive convulsion. It threw him forward and then at once, back again. He heaved and made a dry and terrible sound. If felt as if his organs were in their last throes and wanted to be free of his poisoned body.

  He screamed in agony as wave after wave of excruciating agony ripped through his body. He wanted so much to open his eyes, just to look at her before it all ended, but he was afraid to. What if she was just a dream? A beautiful and sad dream that his destroyed mind had conjured up to save him.

  He screamed again and tasted blood in his mouth.

  “I’m sorry, Melody.” He opened his eyes and smiled. She was still there, standing in front of him with her hands reaching out toward his body, reaching toward his torso. In bright red letters scrawled across her forehead was the word ‘Dead’.

  “It’s written across my face too, isn’t it?” His words didn’t feel right as they formed on his lips. They were numb and without clarity. They were bubbling through blood, lots of blood.

  Melody reached inside him and touched her teeth.

  “I’ve kept them safe for you.” He slumped forward.

  Scretch, scretch, scretch.

  17

  She watched from across the room as they dragged the nice daddy across the dirt. He was sick, really sick and she’d seen people like that before. She’d seen the colour of the writing in their skin and it wasn’t a good colour. His mind had gone bad long before she’d shown herself to him, before she’d been allowed to show herself to him. There had been someone else in there, a really nasty someone who wouldn’t leave him alone. Her name was Natalie. She didn’t know who she was but her name was printed in capital letters across his entire body. Big, black capital letters and they dripped with an oozing oil that was poisonous.

  Natalie, whoever she was, had been pushed deep, deep down inside him on the night he’d come to the cellar with a knife. He could never get rid of her completely, she was as much a part of him as the hole in his stomach and the little shiny jewels in the hole.

  He wasn’t well then and he’d only got worse and worse. She was sad about that because he wasn’t a nasty man like the Vicar and he certainly wasn’t like Daddy, the real daddy. Mummy was cruel too – she’d screamed when the Vicar opened the hatch and nearly blinded her. That was a horrible thing to do. It was mean.

  “Melody?”

  They were hitting him now and Daddy was screaming. She could see in the dark better than they could, even better than the nice man.

  “I’m here, Daddy.” She called over to him. She couldn’t go any closer yet. What if they saw her again and screamed? She couldn’t bear to go through that again.

  The nice daddy pointed at her. He wanted her to come over. He wanted her help.

  “They didn’t want to see me again, that’s why they locked me down here, with him.”

  “They’re not your mummy and daddy, Melody. They don’t deserve to be called that.”

  “She screamed when she saw me. The Vicar opened the hatch and she screamed when I looked up. She hates me.”

  She felt a terrible sense of losing something creep through her body again. She didn’t want to feel like this anymore. She didn’t want to. She wouldn’t.

  She pulled two of her teeth out, rubbed them together and moved toward them all.

  Scretch, scretch, scretch.

  He was close to the edge. What the edge truly was she didn’t quite know, but she was standing on it all the time and she knew if she allowed herself to fall off it, that would be it. That would be the end and she’d have to leave the cellar for ever. She didn’t want that, she didn’t want to leave. Ever.

  He looked in lots of pain and the blood which ran from his mouth was the sam
e colour as the dirt inside the rat’s nest.

  He kept saying sorry. He kept saying he was sorry to her and that he couldn’t protect her. He shouldn’t be sorry. No, he was giving her exactly what she’d always wanted from him. She reached out and felt her fingers slip inside the hole in his tummy. That was where the jewels were, that was where her treasure was kept and it was where she was going.

  The nice daddy slumped over. Immediately his body was covered in a thousand words. It was the same word over and over and over again and it was in bright white writing.

  Dead.

  She touched the teeth buried deep inside his dead body and felt a tingle pass along her fingertips. She wriggled deeper and deeper into him until she couldn’t see herself anymore, until his body yielded to her completely. His death had given her new life. It was exactly what she wanted and now she had a real body again, she intended to make up for lost time.

  “You look much older now.” They were her words but it wasn’t her voice, it was his. It didn’t matter as long as they listened.

  “What?” Mummy was looking at her with a strange look on her face.

  “I said you look much older now, than the last time I saw you that is. I think that was when you took me out of my bed and put me in his car.” She raised an arm that also didn’t belong to her and pointed at the Vicar.

  “He brought me here and you let him keep me locked away.”

  Mummy looked a little bit scared. That was good, that was how it was supposed to be.

  “You shut your mouth.” Daddy came toward her with his hand raised to hit her, but in the darkness his aim was bad and his punch glanced across the nice daddy’s cheek.

  “Hello Daddy.” She raised an arm and swept it into Daddy’s face. She heard him gasp and fall to the ground. “I can see you’re afraid. It’s easy to see.”

  “Peter, can’t you see he’s playing with us. It’s just Stokes...”

  She shuffled forward. Changes were happening inside the nice daddy’s body, they were just like the ones she’d felt after the Vicar had put his hands around her neck and squeezed.

  “You would only look at me at bed-time when the lights were out and it was dark. When you thought I was asleep and I couldn’t see you when I couldn’t see what was written on your face. Can you remember that, Daddy?”

  She stamped on his fingers as he grovelled in the dirt.

  “I can see quite well in the dark now. I can see how afraid you are. You’ve always been afraid of me, haven’t you?”

  Daddy was very afraid now. He turned his head to look at her but there was no recognition in his eyes, there was nothing in his eyes but there was plenty going on in his head.

  “It’s me, Daddy. It’s your little girl.” She raised a boot and brought it down on his face. There was a terrible yet wonderful sound of cracking teeth as the boot connected. She reached down and scooped the fragments up. She had the perfect place set aside for them, right next to her own. She would remove all of his teeth after she’d had a little chat with Mummy.

  “All of my hair and all of my teeth fell out. Is that why you screamed when you saw me?” She looked at Mummy who looked like she was still in control. She had always been in control.

  “Melody?” Her voice didn’t break but it caught on the way out, just a little, just enough to be heard by the rats.

  “Yes, it’s me. Why, Mummy? Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Why did you stop loving me?” That’s all that mattered. Why had they stopped loving her?

  “We never stopped loving you. This was never meant to happen but...” Her voice trailed off.

  Melody forced her feet to move forward. “I cried. I cried all the time. I cried until there were no more tears in my body. I was so sad I wanted to die but you never came to see me, neither of you.”

  “I heard you, I felt every single tear but I couldn’t come.” Mummy was still in control.

  Melody took another step forward until their feet were touching. She was getting angry. “Why?” she demanded.

  “Do you know what the girls in school used to call me, Melody?”

  Melody shook her head.

  “They said I was a witch.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re the same, Melody. I can see people’s feelings and what their soul says, just like you. I see the same way you do.”

  She could see the same way? She could see what people thought, what they were feeling, just the same.

  “You are a liar.” She clenched her fist and struck Mummy across the face. It felt good.

  “I know what you want. I can see it clearly. It’s written through your core, Melody.”

  “And what’s that, Mummy?”

  “You want love, you want Daddy and me to wrap our arms around you and hold you like we did when you were tiny. That’s what you want, Melody.”

  Is that what she wanted? Is that all she’d ever wanted?

  She leaned in close. There was someone inside Jim’s head that needed to get out. Someone who’d been waiting for only a short time but who had a lifetime of pain to inflict on someone, on anyone.

  “Mummy, I’d like you to meet a friend of Jim’s, she’s called Natalie.”

  Melody gripped her mother’s head and peered into her eyes. She’d seen Natalie pecking at Jim’s brain for the last week and now she could feel her in there, scratching and nibbling. She wasn’t real, not like her anyway, she was just something his poorly brain had created. She was one of those monsters that only came out at night. They were the worst kind but they weren’t real and Natalie only existed inside Jim’s mind. She wasn’t anywhere else, not like her.

  Jim wasn’t in charge of his mind now, she was, and she could send Natalie to her mummy, wrapped up just like a gift. Natalie was ready to belong to someone else now.

  Mummy didn’t like what she could see in there, in Jim’s eyes, and she tried to back away but he was strong, too strong and she couldn’t go anywhere.

  “She’s nasty, really nasty.” She felt the object of Jim’s imagination creep forward. Her wild hair swept behind her like a filthy cloud and her wild eyes spoke of only one thing – madness. She lived only inside Jim’s head but that was enough.

  “What do you see, Mummy? What do you see in me now?”

  The room was ablaze for less than a second but in that brief moment Melody felt the strength in Jim’s legs give way. Mummy fell back against the wall.

  The words came thick and fast as they were tattooed into her skull, her brain and her skeleton. There were words she couldn’t understand, words she had seen before and ones which she had never wanted to see. They were the words of a vicious lunatic created in a mind so damaged that it had destroyed itself. Jim’s mind had created the perfect monster, and it had been crafted with one purpose – to push someone over the edge and into an abyss from which there can be no escape.

  “Can you see them, Mummy? Can you feel them? Now you can really see just like me.” She laughed and picked up a handful of dirt. She hadn’t felt the soil on her fingers for a very long time. It was cool and damp, just like it had always been. The sharp pebbles and stones which ran through it had caused terrible injuries to her toes at first.

  Her hand closed around a rock the size of her own skull. As a little girl she had barely been able to pick rocks of this size up. Jim was much stronger and even though he was fading fast, it felt as light as a feather.

  She looked at Mummy, the woman who’d called herself Mummy for a few years anyway. She lay there, staring into the darkness, twitching and licking her lips.

  “We’ve not quite finished yet, Mummy.” She got to her feet slowly, clutching the large rock in one hand and reaching inside what was left of Jim Stokes with the other.

  She pulled out the jagged shards of her teeth and turned to Daddy.

  “The same goes to you too, Daddy. I’ve got something left to say.”

  Scretch, scretch, scretch.

  *

  She stumbled across
the dirt toward the hatch. There wasn’t much time left now. She could feel him seeping away bit by bit, drifting out and away, just like she’d done. It was just like she’d tried to do but something had been tied around her ankles, which tethered her to the cellar like a balloon. She’d got those things now, she’d put all her teeth right back where they were supposed to be – inside the little box of treasures.

  She pulled Jim’s body up into the house. The light was blinding but it felt good on his skin. It soothed him inside. He’d died in the cellar with that horrible Natalie still floating around in his skull but she’d taken her out and given her to Mummy. And now that Mummy was dead, she’d have to keep Natalie with her for the rest of time.