HOPE . . . because that's all there ever is.

by James Crow

  Nearly there, Rose.

  Where? I need sleep, please let me sleep.

  They were passing near the old ruin, but moving away from it. Now Rose saw where there was.

  The yellow digger.

  ‘You can drive this thing?’

  Beth helped Rose up into the cab, ran around the other side and jumped behind the wheel. She turned the key and the digger fired up. ‘It practically drives itself.’ Beth swung the digger around. The image of a tattooed woman wearing butterfly wings vanished in a puff of mist as the digger’s bucket sliced through it. Beth set the digger forward to cross the field. Soon they hit tarmac and turned onto the road that would take them north to safety.

  The cab was cold and uncomfortable, and Rose’s chest had gone numb. They were dry, at least, and the digger’s tracks moved easily over the soaked earth and flooded roadway.

  ‘That was a fun do,’ Beth said.

  ‘No it was not,’ Rose managed. She looked back to the loch and the storm ravaging it. The oil-black water seemed to be moving, wavering. Rose told Beth to wait, to stop and look at the water.

  Beth pulled the digger to a stop and they both turned to look at the loch through the cab’s rear window.

  The wavering black surface of the loch suddenly stilled. The road beneath the digger seemed to dip a little and then rise and the air around them was sucked away in the direction of the loch, enough to make the digger sway and their hair fly. The black water shimmered, slopped, then dropped away into a deep hole of nothingness. Seconds later the water returned, belching out skywards, a towering fountain of mud and slime that seemed to hold its form for a moment or two before it fell back again to blackness. The earth and trees around the loch gave way with a deafening crash and a gust of wind that rocked the digger, and the whole lot vanished in a blink, until all that was left of Loch Rowe and its cabins was a huge mud-filled hole in the ground.

  ‘Did you see that, Bethy?’

  ‘I saw. It was pretty cool.’

  ‘Cooly-dooly?’

  ‘Yeah that.’ Beth smiled at her.

  The rain had stopped, and the clouds had parted enough to show a little blue, and the yellow digger rumbled on.

  In the News

  Giant sinkhole appears after worst storm in memory.

  The world’s biggest sinkhole opened up yesterday in the Scottish Borders. After 48 hours of torrential rain and the worst storm since records began, popular beauty spot Loch Rowe and its surrounding cabins were swallowed up by a sinkhole the size of twenty football pitches.

  Feed company delivery driver Chris Johnstone was out making deliveries when he came upon the new loch. ‘The road just stopped. I thought I’d made a mistake at first, thought I’d driven down the wrong valley. Everything was gone, the cabins, the trees. Just a big expanse of mud.’

  It is not known how many guests were staying in the holiday cabins at the time, although it’s certain that owner Peter Harding, who worked and lived on site, perished.

  One week later

  Two bodies found near giant sinkhole.

  Workers from the Forestry Commission made a gruesome discovery while clearing the area around the Loch Rowe sinkhole. Woodland Officer Nancy Grant said, ‘We were clearing the surrounding drainage ditches. Most had emptied of water by now and removing dead animals to stop the spread of disease was the priority. Sheep, deer, that kind of thing. You get used to removing dead animals, but I threw up when I saw the bodies.’

  The yet to be identified men seemed to have undergone some form of torture. One of the men’s legs had been stretched to twice their normal size. His body split in two. The other man’s genitals had been ripped away. ‘We thought it was more than two at first. Both bodies were entangled together in bramble and mud, and there were a lot of eels slopping about, feeding off the decomposing flesh.’

  Mrs Grant went on to say, ‘It’s the worms I’ll never forget. The bodies were seething with them.’

  Somewhere and sometime later

  It was unusually warm for the time of year. Perfect for sitting in the garden. The leaves were late in turning and the mushroom yield healthier than ever; foraging with Beth had turned out to be a favourite pursuit.

  On the table in front of Rose was the figure she’d created: ‘the flagging witch’ she’d named it; a scrawny old woman in a crooked hat with grapes on it. The grinning woman was giving the finger. Rose had decided to apply fifteen shades of blue to the witch’s apparel and was about to paint the finishing touches.

  Beth, standing next to her in a new yellow dress she’d made herself, was hunched over a lucky cup, focusing on the task in hand. Her paintbrush was a cocktail stick. Nicked into one end of the stick were three of Rose’s hairs, twisted together and held with a nip. The middle hair had been dipped in duck-egg blue paint and Beth was applying minuscule touches to the eye inside the cup, the fifteenth layer.

  The blue line of hope, Rose thought. To think of it made her cross-shaped scar prickle, but in a nice way, a healing way. Rose had lost a lot of weight and her hair had turned white overnight, but she felt good. I am so fortunate, she thought, and a little laugh escaped her.

  Rose!

  What?

  Must you? I’m trying to concentrate.

  Sorry.

  Rose placed her brush on the saucer. Watching Beth at work, no – watching Beth do anything – was absorbing and compelling. She always found new, better ways; she always came up with fresh paths, usually quicker and more efficient, sometimes slower because quality demanded it. She really was a perfect child.

  She’d told Rose every detail of what she’d experienced when under the wood spirit’s influence, the atrocities committed, and history repeating itself, lessons rarely learned. They’re all at it, Beth had said. People, most of them are out to con, and those that aren’t are too attached to their own egos to prevent themselves from being conned. If they weren’t conning others, they were certainly conning themselves. Rose couldn’t argue with Beth’s deductions. In a nutshell, when you thought about it, she was right.

  ‘Done,’ Beth said. She put the brush down and showed Rose inside the cup. Bright with glaring depth, the protuberant eye looked alive.

  ‘Perfection, Bethy. I’m so proud of you.’

  ‘Thank you. And I you.’

  ‘That’s six you’ve made now. Are you expecting an apocalypse? You would tell me, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Thinking ahead, Rose writer, that’s all.’

  I wish you wouldn’t call me that.

  I like it. It suits you.

  Writing, now there was a thing. Since . . . since the sinkhole, the writing came easy. Poems, short stories, novels, it was as easy as breathing. Her muse – a faceless man surrounded by crows – was ever-present, a bountiful soul. Rose now knew that denying one’s ego brought the real world to life, a world where monsters that had previously roamed unseen now carried signs declaring their evil intent, a world where hope is a physicality, a lifeline that can be touched and held and nurtured. A world where opinion is meaningless, and where silence is golden. A world where . . .

  A sudden breeze brought leaves falling all around the garden. Goosebumps marched up Rose’s arms. Beth gasped, gripped the table. In the sky to the east, a black quilt of cloud was rolling across the blue.

  ‘The figures, Beth! They’re outside, aren’t they? They’re in the right places?’

  You know they are, Rose. Ready and waiting. Stay calm.

  Okay. Of course. Calm, yes.

  Wind gusted through the hawthorns and the doves took refuge in the dovecote. Rose and Beth found each other’s hand at the same time. The heavy cloud was closing in, its rain a sheet of grey beyond the cottage roof.

  The sound of a car, approaching too fast. Hands squeezed, then came the bang and crunch of metal.

  Beth’s smooth hand changed to a downy warmth and slipped away from Rose’s grasp. The girl smiled with her eyebrows up, up, up. Her skin darkened and furred. Her eyes turned chocola
te brown, and her nose and mouth stretched into a grinning snout as her body shrank away beneath the table.

  ‘I think I owe you some compensation,’ said the woman as she stepped onto the lawn.

  Rose patted the big black dog at her side.

  Good dog.

  THE END

  … to my eagle-eyed and brutal-minded beta readers for spotting the typos and for suggesting some great story additions: Michelle, Kirsty, Tilly, Nico, Dawn, Nancy, Jocelyn and Lindsay – excellent job, girls!

  To the Juicy Ladies my dogged street team of prolific pimpers, thank you for relentlessly pimping my ass. Michelle, Lesley, Tilly, Marie, Lisa, Kirsty, Jocelyn, Esther, Rhiannon, Nik, Helena, Fran, Lindsay, Dawn, Jo and Joanne, Denise, Darlene, Daverba, Kathy, Nico, Susan, Tiffany, Gaynor, Nancy, Candy, Katrina, Karen, Frances, Tarah, Margarita and Jessica – your persistence thrills me every day. Extra special thanks to Kirsty Adams and Tilly Broad, who keep the team trim and fresh and push it all the way. Thank you all so much!

  Thank you also to the crazily talented Jocelyn Quirindongo for the amazing cover work and so many teasers. Jocelyn, you are an absolute star. Thank you!

  Thanks also to Leigh Stone for those lovely deft little touches when formatting for e-book and paperback. Your attention to detail makes all the difference! https://www.facebook.com/msleighstone

  Finally, a very special thank you – as always – to my boss lady and amazing PA, Michelle McGinty. Michelle, you really are simply the best!

  Thank you.

  James Crow lives in the UK in a redbrick mansion, where the walls are tall, the basements deep, and where secrets aplenty are just waiting to be told. Watch this space.

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