by Graham Joyce
“Not yet.”
“What’s that?” Mary said, overhearing.
“Oh, well,” Tara said. “I was going to wait until Dad was here before telling you. But I’m going to move in with Richie.”
“Oh,” said Mary, stunned.
“Just for a few days. See how it works out. Right, Richie?”
“Sure.”
“What am I to tell your dad?”
“Let me tell him, will you?”
“Whatever you say. Nothing surprises me these days. Nothing at all.”
“Look, Mum, I’m not going away. I’m just going to give you and Dad a bit of space. I can see I’m crowding you here.”
Mary turned her back. “You do what you want, my girl. You always have.”
Tara had the front door open and was beckoning Richie to beat a hasty escape.
“I’ll be seeing you, then, Mrs. Martin,” Richie said.
“Yes,” Mary shouted back with a wavering voice. Then she thought better of her manners and darted back to reach up to Richie and to give him a kiss on his cheek. Richie looked back at her. Mary was trying to smile, but her eyes were black storm holes of terror and grief.
“I FEEL SORRY FOR your mum,” Richie said as they drove away.
They drove directly toward a pallid, rising sun, and Tara put on her dark glasses. “When I was fifteen I couldn’t wait to get away, and I can’t now. It’s not my mum’s fault. Nature doesn’t want two women under the same roof.”
“But it’s up to you if you want to leave.”
“Of course it’s up to me.”
“I mean, it’s not like you’re sixteen, is it?”
She turned to him. He glanced up from his driving and he could see she was scrutinizing him, trying to look to the bottom of his remark.
“I didn’t mean anything by that.” He changed the subject quickly. “Why do you need to go to Pete’s?”
“I got some garbled message from Jack. Something about a neighbor.”
PETER WAS OUT WORKING when Richie and Tara pulled up at The Old Forge. Genevieve and the kids were all there. Zoe opened the door to them. She looked strangely at her aunt Tara, who smiled sweetly back.
“Is Jack in?” Tara asked, without ceremony.
Genevieve was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, defleaing one of the hounds with a plastic comb. She didn’t look up from her task. “He’s up on his computer.”
Tara stepped round Genevieve and hurried up the stairs. Genevieve, startled from her task, turned to watch Tara go. Jack’s bedroom door was heard to open and close firmly. Genevieve gave Richie a quizzical look. Standing beside her was Zoe, and behind her, Amber, and beside her, Josie. All looking to Richie for an account of why Aunt Tara was unorthodox, inexplicable, and in Jack’s bedroom.
“Where’s that guitar o’ yours?” he asked Zoe.
She went to fetch it for him.
He stepped into the living room, sat down on the sofa, and patted the seat beside him. Zoe followed and lowered herself onto the sofa. Richie played a chord on the guitar, and then a second chord. Amber and Josie trailed into the room after their sister but remained standing, watching Richie intently, as if an act of conjuring was about to happen. Josie was wide-eyed. “Talk about fairies, Genevieve,” Richie said. “Your girls all look like they just fell out of an acorn cup.”
“They’re hobgoblins,” Genevieve shouted from the stairs.
“Our dog’s got fleas,” said Josie.
“Is that a request?” Richie said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Pouk-ledden was the Midlands term for being led astray.
KATHERINE BRIGGS, A Dictionary of Fairies
Mrs. Larwood heard an almost timid knock on the door. She drew back her bolts and chains and knew instantly who Tara was. She beckoned her in with a smile and led her through to the back of the house, offering her a seat at the table. The new computer rested proudly on the table, its monitor swirling with light and color from a screen saver.
“You’re very current,” Tara said.
“It’s that Jack. He’s got it all sorted for me. You can take off your coat.”
“He’s a nice boy.”
“He is. Tea?”
“No, thank you,” said Tara.
Mrs. Larwood filled a kettle and set it on the gas flame, almost as if she hadn’t heard. From the kitchen she said, “Do you find you need to wear those dark glasses all the time?”
“I damaged my eyes,” Tara said.
After a short while Mrs. Larwood returned with tea and cake, all laid out neatly on a tray, with a tiny milk jug and a bowl of sugar cubes and a set of silver sugar-cube tongs. It seemed to Tara that Mrs. Larwood was a lady from another era, as was she.
“Mrs. Larwood, Jack said you wanted to see me about something.”
“Oh, yes. I’m very grateful to you for coming over to see me.”
“That’s okay.”
“I heard you had been away and I wanted to welcome you home.”
“Thank you.” Tara had the strange sense that Mrs. Larwood was circling, testing her, trying to measure her up.
The old woman brought her gaze to rest on Tara. “Jack said you went up to the Outwoods on the day you went away.”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t like the place.”
“Really? I’m quite fond of it myself.”
“After what happened to you there?”
Tara put down her teacup and looked hard at Mrs. Larwood. “But you don’t know what happened to me there.”
“Quite correct. I don’t. I was hoping that you would tell me.”
“It’s a very long story and I really can’t face the idea of telling it again. I’ve told the story to a number of people by now and I don’t know if I can repeat it all over again.”
“I can understand that.”
“Have you ever told a story over and over so many times that it gets worn smooth and some of the truth gets knocked off the edges? After a while you even start to doubt it yourself because you’ve told it too often.”
“Yes, I understand that. Will you have some cake? It’s Jack’s favorite.”
AFTER TARA HAD LEFT for Mrs. Larwood’s house Jack thought he’d better do something to move along his plan. Tara had burst into his bedroom, asking him to explain why he’d phoned his grandparents telling them that Mrs. Larwood had wanted to meet Tara. He’d unpacked all that he knew—which wasn’t much—but had blushed when he’d made mention of Mrs. Larwood’s cat and how he’d come to print out leaflets for her. Something in the way Tara had looked at him made him suspect that Tara could see right through his story. He couldn’t say how or why he thought she knew. It was just the way she had removed her dark glasses to look at him and then had crossed her legs.
A tingle, nothing else.
His aunt Tara was spooky.
There was another thing that bothered him greatly. When Tara had come into his bedroom, her proximity had given him an erection. Not that erections were new to him; in fact, they seemed to have become an almost permanent condition. But she was, after all, his aunt, and no one’s aunt was ever that hot. It was unnatural.
After she’d gone he’d been unable to prevent himself from releasing a vast sigh of relief. He turned his attention back to his computer and made another search of local cat-welfare and rescue centers. He was already scribbling an address when the door to his bedroom swung open. He immediately logged off.
It was Josie. “What are you doing?”
She hung on to his door handle, turning on a single foot, smiling at him. At least Jack assumed that she was trying to smile. Sometimes Josie’s smiles looked more like a gash in a Halloween pumpkin.
“You don’t come into my room,” Jake shouted, “without knocking. You understand that?”
“You mustn’t shout at me. I’m telling.”
Jack got up and looked out the window. He’d been in trouble with his dad for bellowing at his sisters, and by looking o
ut the window he was really only biding time as he tried to think up some other form of punishment or retribution he could inflict on his baby sister. But he spotted something at the bottom of the garden.
At first he thought it was a rag, caught in the mesh fence at the far end of the garden. It swayed slightly in the wind. It was rust-colored and too far away to properly make out. But Jack had a bad feeling about it.
“What is it?” Josie said, coming into the room to stand beside him at the window.
“Nothing.”
“What did you see? Can I see?”
He pushed her away from the window. “It’s nothing.”
“Why can’t I see?”
Jack grabbed her arm and looked her in the eye. “Do you want a Chinese burn?”
Josie’s eyes grew large. “No.”
“Well, just remember how lucky you are, having a brother who gives you NO CHINESE BURNS, Josie. None. That’s very lucky, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Yes. No Chinese burns. What a lucky sister you are, having such a great brother.”
“Yes.”
“Right. Now I’m going to let you play with my microscope kit.”
“You already gave me that.”
“Just shut up and play with it. Or else Chinese burns. And things very much like that.”
He sighed and left Josie in his room looking baffled, shut the door on her, and hurried down the stairs.
“Where you going?” Genevieve said.
“Outside.”
This question and answer was a ball mother and son tossed at each other so many times no one actually heard the words anymore, but the exercise seemed to satisfy both parties. Jack slipped on his shoes and, trying not to look like a teenager in a hurry, marched up the garden path, shooting nervous glances over his shoulder.
The ginger flag swayed on the fence at the top of the garden.
As he approached, his worst fears were confirmed.
“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.”
The rustred flag on the garden fence was not a cloth at all; it was the desiccated, mangled corpse of a ginger cat and it was somehow lodged in the mesh of the fence itself. It had been dragged halfway through the fence but no further. The wire mesh had been torn away at the top. Some of the bones of the cat poked through its ragged and frayed fur.
Jack knew exactly what had happened. A fox—the very fox at which he’d thought to take a potshot right at the beginning of all his troubles—had dug up the corpse of the cat and had tried to drag it away as a prize of carrion. The fox had succeeded in getting the corpse as far as the broken fence but had somehow impaled it on the twisted and broken wires. After failing to drag it through it had abandoned the thing to nature. And for everyone to see.
“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck,” went Jack, his teeth chattering.
He moved in closer to free the corpse but was repelled by the condition of the thing. It stank and its skull was visible through the dried fur. Jack gagged.
He ran back down to the shed in the outbuildings and found a pair of his father’s gardening gloves. Returning to the impaled corpse he attempted, at arm’s length and protected by the gloves, to free it. He didn’t even want to look at the thing and tried to keep his eyes averted as he grabbed the dead cat by the scruff of the neck. A tuft of ginger hair came away in the fingers of his gardening gloves. He opened his hand and the tuft of fur was carried away on a breeze.
Teeth gritted, trying to stop his gorge from rising, Jack steeled himself and grabbed the corpse with both hands. It didn’t want to come free. He tugged again. At last he tore it off the fence. There was a ripping sound and he was left with a generous portion of the dead cat in his hands. A small piece was still lodged in the fence. He went back in and freed the remaining scraps of cat.
He was sweating. He wanted to vomit. He left the portions of cat on the ground and went back to the shed, returning with a Sainsbury’s supermarket plastic carrier bag. He put the bits in the bag, gathered up any loose or strayed tufts of fur, and tied the handles of the bag together to seal everything inside. Too much air had been trapped inside the bag along with the corpse and it had inflated like a balloon.
“What are you doing?”
It was Josie. She had followed him outside. He had no idea how long she’d been watching him.
“Nothing.”
“What’s in that bag?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, why isn’t it empty?”
“What?”
“If there was nothing in it, it would be an empty bag. But that’s a full bag.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
“It’s a rat that I shot with my air gun.”
“No, it’s not. Can I see it?”
Jack brushed her aside and marched down the path with his inflated bag, determined to smuggle it past the kitchen window. He heard the obligatory little piglet’s squeal of protest, I’m telling! but he blanked it.
His mother was in the kitchen and he saw her glance up as he hurried past, holding the bag low and averting his eyes. He made it past the kitchen window and beyond the door. The tall back gate was bolted, but he felt he’d got by unchallenged.
“Jack!”
It was his mother calling him back.
He stopped in his tracks. “What?”
“Where are you off to, Jack?”
“Just out.”
Genevieve popped her head out of the back door and smiled at him. “Hold your horses. I’ve got a letter I want you to post for me.”
Jack said nothing.
Genevieve looked at him, then she looked hard at the inflated bag he was carrying. “I’ll just go and get it. One second.”
His mother disappeared back indoors and Jack took the opportunity to sling the bag over the tall gate. He heard it land with a dull thud on the other side.
Genevieve came back with her letter and gave it to him. “You okay, Jack?”
“I’m fine.”
“Hmmmmmm,” said Genevieve.
“I’ve got to go.”
“Right.”
Jack inched open the gate so that his mother might not see the corpse bag on the other side. He squeezed through the gate, closing it carefully behind him. There, on the other side of the gate, and looking at the bag on the driveway, were Tara and Mrs. Larwood.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
It is Christmas Day, the werewolves birthday, the door of the solstice still wide enough open to let them all slink through.
ANGELA CARTER
Tell me what happened,” Vivian Underwood asked Tara. “Tell me what happened when you came back.”
They sat in the favored chairs drawn up by the window. It was late afternoon, and though the diffuse winter sunlight was dipping behind the ancient spreading cedars of a neighboring property, it touched Tara’s delicate features, illuminating otherwise invisible tiny blond hairs on her cheek. She squinted to summon the memory, and even behind the dark glasses Underwood could see the crinkled traces of laughter lines around her eyes.
“Hiero was desperately upset at my leaving. He seemed to be so insulted. He demanded to know what I had at home that he couldn’t give me. He said I should make a list. He couldn’t understand why anyone would want to trade a space of light and beauty and knowledge for what he called a grubby site of shadows. Meaning here. I admit, sometimes when I look around I don’t know, either.
“When I pointed out that I had a family, he said that his entire community was a family; when I said I looked forward to an education, he challenged me to say what I might study that had more value than the things I had learned in the short time I’d been with him; when I told him I had a boyfriend waiting for me, he darkened.
“He wanted to know my boyfriend’s name. I told him about Richie. I told him that I’d treated Richie badly and that I regretted it, and that I missed him. He asked if I loved Richie and I said I thought I did. He said, I will blast this Richie. I will blast him.
I will blast his brain with cobweb and fog, with vapors from stagnant pools and from the filthy fens, with thorns of ice and leeches of fire, with darts of rank air and black dreams of scorpions, with soot from chimneys and lime from the kilns. All these words were like creatures pouring from his mouth. I was shocked. I made him stop speaking like that.
“But his manner toward me had changed. He became sullen, surly, barely talking to me. He was chained to his promise to return me here but now he hated me for it. We rode together on the white mare, him seated behind me, but this time I didn’t feel his arm around me.
“We cantered a little way, and I knew we had made it over the crossing because the light changed. I had slowly become used to the brilliance of the light where I had been, but now everything had a jagged, smudged quality. And where the light had grazed my eyes, now it seemed to rake and sting. And it was cold! The wind hacked at me like a knife. But the landscape became familiar, and I knew I was in Charnwood again, dear Charnwood, close to where the three rivers meet, and rising in the distance I could see the Outwoods.
“The season had changed. Winter had come. I asked him to let me get down but he insisted that he would set me down where he found me, and even though I didn’t want to be in the Outwoods and wanted to be at home, he wouldn’t listen to me. He barely spoke. I was shivering, and as we trotted on, small flakes of snow began to fall.
“It was up in the Outwoods that he delivered me, at that very rock where the bluebells had been growing in such thick, perfumed colonies. But now there were no bluebells and no songbirds. The bracken was dead, the trees were bare, and the track was muddy. I got down from the horse and turned to speak to him, but he steered the mare away from me.
“Why? I said to him. You have to answer one thing! Why did you choose me?
“He shook his head as if he didn’t believe that I didn’t know the answer to my question. Tara, because you were the Queen of the May. And with that he kicked at the mare’s flanks to canter her away. I was left alone, exactly as I was found.
“My first instinct was to run, and I did, I ran. I pelted down to the road, stumbling, slithering in the black leaf mold, running to get home.
“In the short time I’d been away someone had built a parking lot, with public toilets and bulletin boards offering information about the place. I resented these things. They gave me a bad feeling in my stomach. There were two cars parked there, and I didn’t like the shape of them. They didn’t seem to be quite right. Sculptured wooden figures near the entrance made me feel queasy. All the time I was squinting into the jagged light, and my senses were tingling and I knew things had changed, but it was too soon for me to see how much. I mean, even the cars were different. The designs of the cars. I knew something had happened.
