On the Third Day

by Rhys Thomas

  She suddenly felt as if somebody was watching her from the corner of the room. She looked around quickly but there was nobody there. Nobody she could see. But she still felt the eyes, like a ghost behind the veil.

  The night was closing in. She looked back to the window. The photograph album was held loosely in her hands and it fell to the floor with a heavy thud. Her breath was gone and the metal taste of fear was in her mouth. Joseph was staring back at her, his face close to the window, his open palm resting against the glass.

  He tapped it once and everything became still. The click of his fingernails on glass. Miriam was brought through what felt like a series of jolts as the realization of what she was looking at crashed through her.

  Joseph ran to the door. His body was too fast for itself. It was not natural. He disappeared from sight. Miriam jumped up. She got to the hallway but he was already inside. There was a white aura around his dark silhouette. She could see his body pulse up and down with each breath.

  She ran. She pulled open the door to the cellar and slammed it shut behind her. The cellar was the only option; upstairs would lead him right to the children. She went for the lock but felt the handle being pushed down from the other side of the door. He was trying to get in. She couldn’t hold the handle up and slide the lock across at the same time. Both hands were needed just to stop him getting in.

  ‘Let me in,’ she heard him say.

  The voice came through the wood and sounded like it was submerged in water.

  Miriam closed her eyes. The metal of the handle was cutting into her palm. It eased slowly downwards under his strength. But she held on.

  ‘Let me in,’ came his voice again. ‘I’m going to do something awful to you.’

  She let go of a low sob. Her head felt light and her eyes started to sting. She used her body against the handle for leverage.

  ‘If you don’t let me in I’ll kill your mother and your children.’

  His voice was utterly without emotion.

  ‘Oh God,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’ Her voice was high. ‘Just leave us alone.’

  There was a pause. The door handle stopped moving. Miriam held her breath. Quickly, she slid the lock across. His footsteps walked away up the hall. She lifted her face to the ceiling. This could not be happening. She pulled the lock back across and opened the door. Joseph’s hand was on the newel post at the bottom of the banister. When he saw Miriam come out of the cellar he stopped. Against the white light in the garden his body was a dark mass of gravity. It swirled about him.

  Slowly, he walked towards her. Miriam receded back into the cellar, down the stairs, facing the door, which she left open. Joseph followed her down. He closed the door behind him and locked it.

  ‘We can help you, Joseph,’ she pleaded.

  The cellar was dark, the only illumination a thin silver beam of light from the tiny window at the apex of the wall and ceiling that was too small for a person to climb through.

  ‘Nobody can help me now,’ he said, calmly. His voice came from somewhere in the darkness near the base of the steps. She could not see him.

  ‘When I was on the beach I saw the dunes rise up all around me until I was surrounded by them in a basin of sand.’

  The slow, steady timbre made her cry. She knew what it was and what it meant. The chrysalis of withdrawal that the infected victims entered at the start of the illness had cracked open and the end result was peering out at her from within the gloom. Whatever it was that Joseph had feared was in the cellar with her.

  ‘The sky above the hills of sand was the dark blue of a clear night and the dunes were as black as pitch. Horsemen appeared at their heads – three hundred and thirty-three of them – and they looked down to me. I could see their outline against the sky as their riders watched me.’

  Miriam sat down on the little sofa. Her mouth was hot. She bit her lower lip and lifted her knees up to make herself small.

  ‘I knew what had happened. I had gone back in time and the horsemen were the ticking days. The eyes of the horses came alive. They glowed in the dark, a different colour for each of them: two red eyes, two green, two blue, two orange. All the way along, all the way around. I could see them breathing, I could hear their snorts.’

  ‘What are you going to do to us?’

  ‘And then the horsemen started to walk away. One by one the laser eyes disappeared until I was in the present again. And here I am now, in the dark, with you.’

  The voice was Joseph’s, but also not. It was heavier. There was extra substance in it. There was a movement in the dark. He was moving.

  ‘Where is God, Miriam?’ said the voice, quietly.

  The silence when there was no speaking made the air heavy.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The voice said, ‘How is he going to save you from what I am about to do? Why didn’t he save me?’ A pause. ‘Am I going to hell for this? I can’t stop myself. I have no choice – but does that mean I have to go to hell? Because I am who I am?’

  Her whole body trembled. She thought of the children asleep upstairs. She must not scream.

  ‘God is weak,’ said the voice. It had moved again. It seemed to come from the back of the cellar. ‘He’s killing himself, do you know that? I can feel Him. I’m sure of it. Why does He make us hurt each other like this?’

  Her muscles tightened. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘No, you never do.’ Movement. Across the floor. ‘Think,’ it said. It was closer now. He was closer. ‘Maybe it wasn’t God at all; maybe it was just the devil all along.’

  There was a disturbance in the air. Miriam jumped backwards in the seat. Her skull burst with pain and she screamed, unable to stop herself. Her scalp burned and she was drawn to her feet. He was pulling her up by her hair. I won’t scream again, she told herself inside her head.

  The force with which he dragged her across the floor was not human. It was like something of the wild world – a wolf, or a wave. She could smell the dirt in the air as she was dragged through it. The children, she thought, nebulously.

  And then she was in the air. Her sense of balance was gone and she was weightless with an utter loss of control. She hit the wall.

  Pain shot up her left arm. They were at the far end of the cellar, away from the stairs, in the corner. There was no getting out of there now. She felt the control sweep away from her, and with it went something else. That thing she had felt guide and anchor her withdrew from her body and into the air. It was all going to end in that cellar.

  Outside of their sphere of movement the cellar was silent. Neither Joseph nor Miriam said anything. They grunted when they had to but the only real sounds were of their kicking bodies on the floor. She was on her back. Her knees were so that he couldn’t get a clear line of attack at her. She turned her face to one side and tried to push him away but he was too heavy.

  He pressed her down with his weight and she suddenly felt his hands on her bare hips. When his flesh touched hers she kicked harder. His hands moved down and formed claws that hooked over her trousers. She opened her eyes wide. Her heartbeat doubled.

  He prised the material down with both hands. She felt the air against her thighs and shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes.’

  Her knees were still up and he couldn’t get her trousers off without straightening her legs. He pinned her body and somehow managed to lever her straight with his thighs. She was lying flat on the floor now. He said nothing as he worked her trousers and underwear down.

  And then her mind left the cellar by the window. It floated up into the sky and backwards through time. She was on the beach again. She saw the blank face of the boy who had offered to shoot Joseph. The boy she had turned away. Up and backwards her mind flew, to the bedroom, to Joseph telling her to let him go if he became ill. Suddenly everything reversed, time tumbled. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind she felt pain through her body. She was on the beach again, with the boy, screaming at him t
o get away from her, and then she was dragging Joseph out of the sea, inch by inch, up the sand. Forward again, to the dark cellar, control gone, guiding sense gone.

  She scrabbled with her hands, tried to wriggle away. There was no purchase. Nothing to hold on to. He grabbed her arms and pushed her down. Her eyes were closed.

  ‘Don’t you care about Henry?’ she said, quickly and urgently. She had to make a connection.

  His head was directly over her. A line of saliva dropped from his mouth to her face. Humiliation flooded up her. She was naked from the waist down. Oh my God, she thought. The clear, calm voice in her mind’s kernel spoke to her: this is going to happen.

  She could feel his breath.

  ‘Joseph Joseph Joseph,’ she whispered quickly. She just wanted him to acknowledge her.

  She felt him against her thighs.

  ‘Oh no,’ she cried. ‘Please no.’

  Her arms were pinned. So was her neck. He was forcing her legs open.

  ‘No, no.’ She struggled. Every muscle was taut. Her bones tried to lock up and protect her. He was just so strong. He prised her thighs apart like he was a machine. The deliberate way he moved, like everything was planned, terrified her. There was no way to fight this tide.

  She felt him against her and all of her breath deserted her lungs. And then time skipped. There were heavy shudders in her body. A portal seemed to draw two disparate pieces of time together. One state had changed to another with no transition. Her heart pounded so fast that she struggled to breathe. He was obliterating everything. There was pain in her centre. Her mind fell back in the cave of her skull and waited, its eyes closed, trembling. It listened to the noises he made as he fucked her and tried to think of other things but all that came was the image of a spring, right in the centre of her, running dry of that golden honey-like fluid until it stopped.

  And then it was over and they both lay still, her face turned towards the wall; she cried in silent gulps. She could fight him now, but what was the point?

  A minute passed and Joseph stood up. She did not look at him and he said nothing to her. He moved back and away into the darkness again. She already felt it trickling out of her and she closed her eyes as tight as she could.

  She remembered a day when she was a child, lying on her back like she was now. She was in a cornfield in France during the summer holidays. The tall plants swayed drunkenly overhead and beyond them was the sky as blue as a sapphire. How could time draw together along that same line? How could two such different things happen along one line?

  Her body hurt. Her mind jolted down and down. And she fell asleep on the floor.

  In the morning she awoke and sunlight shone in through the tiny solitary window in the cellar. Particles of dust drifted down through the air. She sat up and clothed herself. Already she was crying. The cellar was silent. Inside her head the melody played of an old music box she had owned as a child. She remembered the ballerina figurine that turned around as the music chimed.

  Joseph’s body was at the bottom of the stairs. He had died sitting there at some unknown moment in the night.

  She stood in front of him, over him, and looked down. His head was slumped over, his dead eyes staring at her feet. She felt she should do something, say something, take some action to release the knotted bundle of emotion in her chest. But as she stood there she could think of nothing. He was gone. Only his husk remained.

  She passed the body and climbed the steps. The hallway was empty and the house was quiet. She wondered what time it was – early or late.

  As she moved along the corridor her memory brought her the events of the night. She felt like her heart was a magnet and what had happened was its opposite. Whenever she went close to it, ready to accept, it slid away. She wanted the poles to reverse and the magnets to fly together, to allow the healing to begin, but that was not how magnets worked. They were always so close but never quite there.

  She went upstairs and into her children’s bedroom. They were both asleep when she entered the room but Edward sensed her presence and woke up. He lifted his head above the sheets and looked at his mother.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ she whispered.

  He laid his head back down on the pillow.

  Her mother was the first of the family to come downstairs. She found her daughter in the back garden, at the wall, peering over to the grave on the other side.

  ‘Miri?’

  Miriam puffed out her cheeks and expelled the warm air, emptying her lungs as far as they would go. Her eyes were red from crying.

  ‘Joseph’s in the cellar.’

  She couldn’t look at her mother.

  ‘Is he all right?’

  She shook her head. It was difficult to see the lines in the grass where Dora’s grave had been dug. Only the very top of the pebble they had found on the beach was visible over the grass.

  ‘What’s happened?’ her mother asked.

  Miriam took a deep breath. The early morning sun shone brightly and it was warm enough to be unpleasant.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  There was a long silence. The music box music played in her head again. She forced herself to look at her mother. Her face was so thin. And then she saw it in her mother’s eyes. It was right there, the thing that Henry had lost, the thing that the monster stole from everybody it touched, the thing that had swept away from her last night in the cellar. Her mother looked so alive with it all of a sudden. She couldn’t tell her.

  Miriam turned away, the still air hot on her face, and she looked at Dora’s grave again. She sensed an alien hollowness in her chest. Her body hurt, her mind was exhausted, and something closed inside her and she felt shut off from something, as if she was on the other side of a locked door.

  PART THREE

  OF HOPE

  ‘We’re not going to make it! We’re not going to make it!’ Charlie screamed.

  Emily laughed and hit him. ‘It’s not funny.’

  The campervan rolled decrepitly on to the grass at the side of the road and stopped. If it wasn’t so frustrating, having come all that way and having to stop so close to their destination, it would have been funny. After several seconds of silence he looked across to Emily and scrunched his face up.

  ‘Can you actually believe it?’

  Emily laughed in that sudden, off-guard way of hers.

  ‘There’s a house over there,’ she said, pointing.

  Charlie followed the line of her finger until it came to a rest on a cold-looking, fortress-like house on the other side of the road. Grey tangles of barbed wire wrapped itself unwelcomingly around the garden walls and thick metal shutters were closed over the windows.

  ‘Looks friendly enough,’ he said.

  Emily smacked his chest with the back of her hand again. ‘Get your cute little ass up there.’

  Charlie raised an eyebrow. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Go and see if they have a jack.’

  ‘And you just stay here, nice and safe?’

  She laughed again. ‘Yup.’

  Charlie deliberated on this and shrugged his skinny shoulders. ‘OK.’

  He threw open the door to the campervan and jumped down. Just before he pushed the door closed he turned back to her and smiled.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ he said. ‘If something bad happens to me remember that I loved you to the ends of the world and beyond.’

  Emily watched him skip along the road and open the garden gate.

  Saturnine clouds hung heavily in the early morning sky and the house underneath them looked damp and forbidding. Charlie didn’t care though. He went up the garden path with the same spring in his step that he always had. He didn’t want her to see that he was nervous.

  He knocked on the door and looked back to the campervan. When he saw Emily smile at him he raised his thumb and turned back to the door and knocked again, listening for movements inside.

  ‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Is anybody in there?’

 
; He looked back to the van and shrugged.

  There was a thin concrete path leading around the side of the house, still splattered in damp patches after last night’s rain. Charlie looked at it and sighed.

  ‘Here we go,’ he said.

  The path was dark with shadow. Past the far end he could see the edge of a vegetable garden. It didn’t look wild – there must be somebody living here. There were more of the metal shutters on the windows. Behind, he could see fields of farmland and beyond that, up a gentle slope, a line of trees.

  ‘Hello?’ he called again, moving up the path.

  The garden was bigger than he expected. The vegetable patch stretched all the way to the stone wall at the back. The plants grew in neat lines and columns, in quadrants between gravel paths, some tied to beanpoles, others growing in thick green clumps near the ground. A tree stood in the far left corner and the first breaths of autumn had blown some of the leaves from its branches. They had drifted far enough to reach the small patio in front of the conservatory. The blinds were drawn.

  Charlie wondered why somebody had gone to the effort of fixing shutters to the windows when the conservatory was so completely exposed. The glass doors were closed. He peered inside through a crack in the blinds but there was nobody there. The room was neat and clean. Behind it, a wide doorway led to an empty kitchen. He knocked on the glass, leaning his head in to get a clearer view. Something moved at the back of the kitchen; a dark form, hiding behind the wall of the doorway. He could make out an arm.

  ‘Hello?’ he called again. ‘It’s all right, I’m not dangerous. My van has broken down, that’s all.’

  He kept his eyes on the form. Cautiously, it stepped out into the open and came towards him. It was an old woman. She moved slowly into the conservatory and squinted to see the person in the garden staring back at her. Her gait was hunched and her skin looked grey; ghost-like, unnatural.