by Jack Lewis
How was it even possible? How would they know death was even an option? At that age, you’re not supposed to even know death exists. What could possibly be so terrible for a kid that she would prefer to bleed into the nothingness of death than face living for her sixth birthday? I felt sick.
“Ella, are you still with us?”
I shook myself out of my thoughts. I flicked through the book and watched the names and ages of the dead whizz by. It was like I was leafing through a clothing catalogue. I wanted to slow down and give each person the respect they deserved, but at the same time I wanted to get this horrible book away from me. I reached the year two thousand and stopped. This wasn’t right. I flicked forward a page and then back again to make sure my eyes weren’t messing with me.
“What’s up?” said Jeremiah, moving in for a closer look.
I held the book out to him. It skipped from February 18th to February 20th, and there was a jagged line from where the 19th had been torn out. I held the book up and shook it to see if any loose papers would fall out, but none came.
“Some sneaky git has been at this,” said Jeremiah.
I put the book down and stood up. The room felt cold, as if a sudden draught had started to kick around. There was a chalky smell in the air like an old school classroom, and it felt like the walls had moved forward an inch and pressed us in. There was no wonder Murray didn’t spend much time in here.
“Should we ask Murray?” I said.
Jeremiah shook his head. “Wouldn’t surprise me if it was him.”
“What do you mean?”
“This was torn out on purpose, Ella.”
The door opened. Murray walked in, red-faced as though he’d been on a run. His shirt sleeves were folded even further up his arm so that his little muscles peeked out. He glanced over at the deaths register, and a flicker of disgust registered on his face. In less than a second it was gone.
“Find what you were looking for?” he said.
“Do you ever let people take pages of the book home with them?” said Jeremiah.
Murray looked incredulous. “Why would I ever do that?”
Jeremiah turned to the table. He picked up the book and shoved it toward Murray. “Either the 19thof February didn’t happen, or someone’s been taking cuttings from your register.”
Murray flicked back and forward through the book, his eyebrows screwed up in a way that had to be exaggerated. Murray was a bad actor. If there was a local drama society and he was a member, there was not a chance in hell I’d go and see their plays.
“What are you hiding?” I said.
Murray glanced at me without turning his head, making it look like he sneered at me.
“It’s a simple mistake, nothing more.”
“This was torn out, Murray,” Said Jeremiah.
“Accidents happen.”
“What are you hiding?” I said again.
“Probably a relative who wanted the record for their family.” The words strained out of his mouth, as though he’d just thought of them and didn’t believe in them.
“Cut the shit,” said Jeremiah. “This was torn out on purpose for a good reason. I think you know who did it and why. How about you tell me before I report you? This is a public record and I’m sure your bosses would like to know that you let it be used as a scrap book.”
He looked up. The colour drained from his cheeks like oil leaking out of a barrel. The whites of his eyes seemed to spread out and threaten to wash over his pupils. His fingers curled tight around the edge of the book.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said.
“Then tell us,” I said.
He stared at me. There was something behind his eyes that made them wide and hollow. Something that sucked the blood out of his cheeks and left them white as chalk. Seeing him look like this sent icy fingertips tapping down my spine. Suddenly I didn’t want to know what had happened with the book. I felt like it was information I shouldn’t listen to, like I should put my fingers in my ears and run.
Murray slammed the book shut and dropped it to the floor. The thud echoed across the room and drifted out into the hall. A spray of dust kicked up from the carpet and then drifted back down to the ground. Murray put his hands on his hips. His cheeks started to flood red again.
“Thank you for bringing the problem to my attention,” he said.
Jeremiah breathed in and straightened his back. Standing with good posture he was six foot four inches tall and towered over most men. His large frame seemed to fill half of the room. If this intimidated Murray, he didn’t show it.
“As a matter of public record,” said Jeremiah, “I’ve got a right to know what happened to that page.”
The blood pumped back into Murray’s face at a rate that made him look like a swelling balloon. His shoulders shook, and it was only through great effort he kept his arms at his sides.
“As a matter of public record,” he said,” I suggest you get the fuck out of my office. Our doors are shut to strangers who go where they’re not wanted.”
8
The hearth of the pub hissed like a snake and spat fiery venom across the room. Usually a roaring fire would be pleasant, but this one looked angry. The flames burned with an intensity I had never seen before, as if they smouldered with a silent fury. Marsha had to throw extra logs on every twenty minutes as the flames ate through them. She stopped every so often to tell an impatient bar customer to ‘piss off’.
We sat just ten feet away from the fire. It was so hot that Jeremiah had taken off his coat and rolled his jumper sleeves up to his elbows. As much as I could see that the room was warm, I couldn’t feel it. I wore a thermal t-shirt, a jumper, a coat and a scarf but the cold still managed to sneak its way through and smother my skin. I turned my chair to face the fire so that the flames spat toward me, but it was like someone rubbed me with ice. Not just the outside of my skin, either. It was like my insides were freezing.
Outside the pub the darkness peered in through the window, so heavy that it was like a presence watching us. There was something about the village that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I always got the feeling that someone was watching me. It didn’t matter if we were at the graveyard, the town hall, the pub or even my own room, it always seemed like an unseen pair of eyes stared from the shadows.
I crossed my arms and rubbed my hand up and down my sides to shock some warmth into my body, but the friction didn’t do a thing.
“You look like shit,” said Jeremiah.
Every other man in the pub had a pint of larger, bitter or cider. Jeremiah had a ginger beer. People spoke in murmurs around us, as if they guarded their words so that they didn’t leave the confines of their tables. Every so often I was sure a man or woman shot a glance at me. A dog sat under a table to our right. Its fur was black like crow feathers, but it had fallen out in places. It lifted a weak paw and scratched its ear, then lowered its chin to the ground.
“Thanks,” I told Jeremiah. “You’re a charmer.”
“Seriously, Ella. You should get some kip. I can’t be dragging your arse around all day tomorrow. I don’t want you getting in my way.”
“Again, charming.”
My head banged with the throb of a tribal drum. My skin felt sensitive and shivery, as if someone with an icy hand was touching me. I wanted to shake the hand off, but no matter how many layers I put on it stayed there. My throat burned like I had swallowed nettles and my nose gushed.
I stood up and pushed my chair out.
“I’ll be a minute,” I said, and walked toward the loos.
When I came back I had stemmed the flow of snot from my nose, but my throat still felt like I had drank acid. Jeremiah looked at me, raised his glass and tipped the ginger beer into his mouth.
“I ordered for you,” he said.
“You couldn’t have waited?”
“Marsha asked. And I was hungry.”
A shiver ran through me. I pulled my coat closer. Every inch of
me wanted to crawl upstairs and flop into bed. I couldn’t do that, though. There would be time for rest at some point but for now I had work to do. This was a rare moment where we weren’t visiting graves or looked through death registers, and I had an assignment to finish. I thought I would try a different tactic.
“Bruges is lovely this time of year,” I said.
Jeremiah put his glass down on the table with enough force to be on the wrong side of slamming it.
“Professor Higson loves playing with his puppets, doesn’t he?”
“I’m here because I want to be.”
“You’re here because he’s tugging at your strings. And you’re not the first.”
I felt my forehead screw up and a steam of anger rose in my chest. It was true that Higson had helped persuade me to come on the investigation, but in the end I made the choice myself. There was no way I would let myself be manipulated.
“Believe what you want,” I said. “I’m here because I thought this would be interesting. Turns out you’re as full of shit as the fields around this dump.”
Jeremiah leaned forward and grimaced. “Did you ever hear about a student at your university called Billy Wilkins?”
I thought about it but I couldn’t place the name. “Nope.”
“You won’t have. Because he dropped out from his course and checked into a mental health facility.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because your friend Professor Higson convinced me to take Billy out with me to an investigation years ago. Billy wasn’t ready for the things we saw there.”
Ice spread across my back and slid across my skin. I reached for the zip of my coat but found that it was already pushed up as far as it could go. I felt someone stare at me from across the pub. It was a shape in the corner of my eyes, too fuzzy to make out who it was. I felt their glare on my face and my skin started to itch. I tried to focus on Jeremiah but I couldn’t ignore it.
My heart drummed in my chest. I turned my head but nobody even looked at me. A man at the table across from us dropped a stack of cards face up on the wood and smiled. He leapt out of his chair and pointed at his friend.
“You owe me a pint you bloody bastard!” he said.
I looked at Jeremiah. “Isn’t it your fault for taking Billy with you?”
Jeremiah shook his head. “He was an adult, just like you. My point is, don’t let yourself be manipulated. Not by Higson and not by me. If something happens to you when you’re with me, that’s on you.”
My throat felt cracked, like burnt cake hardened on a baking tray. I tried to swallow but it felt like the skin inside my neck was stuck together. A crushing weight pressed down on my shoulders.
“What does Higson want to know about Bruges,” I said. “And why won’t you tell him?”
“You’re not letting this go, are you?”
“You promised to let me interview you.”
Jeremiah put his hand to his chin and breathed in. He stared at me, weighing up the decision of whether to answer my questions as if he were Caesar deciding the fate of a gladiator. As he opened his mouth to speak Marsha appeared at our table. She had two bowls in her hands and a scowl on her face.
She set one in front of Jeremiah and the other in front of me. It was a bowl of stew. The broth was thick and brown, and potatoes and carrots rested at the top like barrels floating in the sea. Steam rose off and twisted up my nose. The smell of it was enough to make my mouth water, and my stomach cried out for the nutrients the stew would give. Jeremiah had done something nice for once. Was the world about to end?
I dipped my spoon into the stew and then brought it to the surface, making sure to get a good mix of liquid and vegetables. As I swallowed the broth and chewed the potatoes, I felt something gristly between my teeth. I twisted it on my tongue trying to work out what it was. When I did, acid rose up my throat. I put my fingers in my mouth and pulled out a sinewy piece of beef. My stomach wobbled and my throat tightened.
“What the hell is this?” I said, my voice weak.
“Beef stew,” said Jeremiah, and brought his spoon to his lips and sucked the juice off it.
“I told you I was vegetarian.”
“And now I believe you.”
I felt my cheeks burn as if imaginary fingers pinched them. My stomach screamed at me and begged for some of the stew. At the same time I felt my chest grow tight with anger at the man sat across from me. His complete lack of respect for anyone but himself was shocking.
“No wonder you’re alone,” I said, my words dripping with venom.
“I wanted to see if you really were vegetarian, or if you just like the idea. If you can turn down a stew when you feel like shit, then you’re true to your ideals. Not many people are these days, Ella. I respect that.”
“Shove your respect up your arse.”
“What made you be vegetarian?”
I wasn’t going to tell him. If he was going to avoid my questions and play games, then he wasn’t going to learn a damn thing from me either. Despite deciding I wouldn’t tell him about it, thoughts of an old foster family rose in my head like worms crawling out of the dirt.
It was my third foster family. The bad one. I was six years old, too small to sit properly in my seat. The dining table was so polished it glinted under the light of the chandelier above. Expensive watercolours were spread across the walls of the dining room, and the red velvet curtains were drawn. The watercolours were of family members who had died over the years, and the further back the line went, the uglier the faces became.
Foster dad sat at the end of the dining table, so far away that when he spoke it was like he whispered. Foster mum was in the middle, keeping as far a distance as she could from both me and her husband. The light was dim enough so that we could still see each other as we ate, but the faces of my foster parents were covered in shadow. The atmosphere was drenched in ice. By this point I had given up asking them to turn the heating on. I stopped begging for a coat or a jumper. I stopped expecting them to put me to bed or to even talk to me.
They sat and shovelled morsels of food into their mouths. Their stares were blank, as though their brains had been emptied. Sometimes I caught foster dad looking at me with a sneer on his face, but when I stared at him the expression dropped. Foster mum was a husk, an empty sack of skin that moved around the house like a ghost.
I looked down at the plate in front of me. I was so hungry that my stomach felt like it was twisted into a knot. My last meal had been two nights before, and my tiny body cried out for more food. I felt like I was wasting away.
The steak on the plate was cold, and I picked up my fork and poked it. The sides of it moved, and I saw that maggots twisted and turned along the meat. I let my knife and fork clatter onto the table. I pushed my chair back. My stomach felt like it had liquefied.
“Sit down,” said foster dad.
I gulped. The maggots crawled along the beef.
“Sit down,” he said, his voice firmer. “Get in your seat and eat your meat.”
My stomach sent an anguished tremor through my body, and I nearly doubled over in pain. I knew I had to eat it. I picked up my knife and fork and flicked away the twisting maggots. I cut a piece of the meat and brought it to my lips, the smell getting worse the closer it got. I closed my eyes and wished I were dead.
“Earth to Ella.”
Jeremiah leaned in close to me. He snapped his fingers, and the clicking sound punctured my thoughts and brought me back to the pub, back to the flickering hearth and hushed conversations. He folded his arms and breathed out a sigh.
“I’m going to the library,” he said.
“It’s pitch black and it’s eight in the evening. It’ll be shut.”
He shook his head. “I made a deal with the librarian. A bottle of whiskey goes a long way around here.”
I stood up out of my seat. As I moved away from the stew, my stomach beat against my skin as though it were trying to break through and dive into the bowl
.
“I’ll come with you.”
“Not a chance in hell,” he said. “You look like the crypt keeper. Go upstairs and get some sleep. I’m hoping I’ll have a lead for us tomorrow.”
9
When I shut my bedroom door behind me I felt alone. The timber floorboards creaked when the slightest weight was applied to them, and walking barefoot across my room made them sound like someone was opening a coffin. Dusty wooden beams ran across the roof, the wood thick enough to slip a noose around and high enough to finish the job.
Paintings hung on the wall of woodland areas that I assumed were somewhere nearby, because the art work reeked of being from the paintbrush of a local artist. Their technique wasn’t the best, but they’d managed to capture darkness in the trees that looked heavy enough to trap anyone walking underneath them. It looked like the kind of place no person should ever go, and the feeling seemed to spread out of the confines of the painting and seep into the room.
