“No, nothing as dull as that,” she laughed, turning back towards the sea, as though she had forgotten something. “I was just thinking about what Mr Buchanan said yesterday—about the old forts; about Dundream.”
“Oh, he was only playing with you,” Robert said, pulling her round into his arms.
She looked up at him seriously, “I know that, Robert. I’m not a little girl.”
“Well, what is it about Dundream?” he said, unsure why she was suddenly so stern with him.
“It’s the name,” she said, sadly. “Don’t you think it sounds like everything’s over—Dun Dream. The dream is done—finished!”
Robert didn’t know what to say. He’d never heard Margaret say anything like this before, anything so sad and poignant. He felt rather empty and disoriented.
“Anyway, I’d better get us something for lunch,” she said, snapping merrily back into her usual manner. She took his hand in hers and led him back to the cottage.
“Do you know why they call it a honeymoon,” she said, swishing at the tall grass with her other hand.
“I thought it was because the wedding guests spent all their time drinking the bride and groom’s mead,” he joked.
“No,” she said, the serious tone returning. “It’s because this time is the best and sweetest of times. It doesn’t get any better. We are in the full moon of our love, from now on that moon wanes and gives way to all the everyday things—to homes and washing, to babies and cooking, to cleaning and earning money. These are our honey days.”
They walked on slowly in silence.
“Oh, right,” Richard said, as they got back to the cottage. “Well, we’d best make the most of them then.”
Margaret nodded and opened the door for him.
She made some sandwiches with the rest of the spam and put in a thick layer of piccalilli. Robert didn’t much like the mustardy, vinegary spread but didn’t want to say anything, uncertain whether she was in some kind of mood with him. She didn’t seem to be angry though, just a little distant. They ate their sandwiches in silence as she peered out of the open back door at the fields and the sea.
They spent the afternoon reading and dozing on the bed. The night came, almost instantly, and the house was surrounded by its black, curtain less windows—odd lights from what must have been a ferry were visible on Loch Ryan and the arc of the lighthouse illuminated the clouds off to the west.
Supper was a lovely vegetable casserole enlivened by a tin of braised beef. Margaret claimed it wasn’t much, and that she’d need more supplies soon. Robert loved it though, the meat tenderly falling off his fork in lovely strips. He mushed up some of his potatoes, swede and carrot, and mopped up the gravy. He knew Margaret didn’t like him doing it, thinking it rather childish, but she wasn’t paying much attention at the moment—staring out of the dark window in the back door.
“Glass of champagne?” Robert asked, dropping his plate and cutlery into the sink.
“Yes, that would be nice,” she said.
Robert had been given the bottle of champagne by his boss, Alan Barnett, as a gift. Alan had told him it was “top notch” and would be sure to “make any evening go with a bang”. Robert had never tried champagne and wasn’t certain how to open it. After a few minutes struggling with the cork it popped and a trickle of fizzy wine oozed down the side of the bottle.
“There we go,” he said. “Here’s to us.”
“I tell you what, darling,” Margaret said. “Why don’t we take the bottle outside and look at the stars.”
“Ok, then,” Robert said. “That sounds like fun.”
She was already outside, and Robert gathered the glasses and the bottle and hurried after her. She crossed the small patch of lawn at the back of the cottage and headed out into the longer grasses of the field behind. After a few feet she collapsed, laughing.
Robert stood over her, awkwardly trying to balance the glasses in his hand by their stems and then pour the champagne into them.
“Oh, don’t bother with that, we’ll just swig from the bottle,” she said, giggling. “We’re on our honeymoon, after all.”
“Yes, great idea,” Robert said, lying down beside her.
They lay there in the grass, hand in hand, for over an hour, looking up at the patches of darkness, speckled with dots of stars emerging from behind tumbling folds of cloud, passing the bottle of champagne between them.
“Do you know, I don’t know anything about them,” Margaret said in a low voice, almost to herself.
“About what?” Robert said dreamily.
“About the stars, silly,” she said, nuzzling into his side and kissing him on the cheek.
“No, neither do I, I’m sorry to say,” Robert replied, drawing her closer. “Tom knows all the names of them and he’d take me and Steve out on Winter’s evenings and point them all out. I was too busy trying to catch creepy crawlies and never really listened. I can’t remember anything much about them now—I remember The Plough, that’s easy enough to spot.”
“Yes, everyone knows that one,” Margaret said, tickling him. “There it is.” She pointed over at the mainland to the familiar formation.
“Oh, everyone knows that one, do they?” Robert said, tickling her back and rolling on top of her, smothering her neck with kisses.
She wriggled and squirmed and they began to pull at each other’s clothes with increasing passion.
After they had made love they lay there in the darkness. Robert was surprised, given her rather prudish attitude the night before, that she was happy to have done it outside and was still there now, naked, swishing her legs and arms through the grass.
“Could you feel it Robert—the grass,” Margaret whispered.
“Yes, it was a bit itchy, wasn’t it,” he chuckled.
There was a long silence. “No, Robert,” she said, with that heavily meaningful tone again. “The grass was… it was caressing us. The grass was cradling us as we made love.”
Robert lay, staring up at the dark sky, wondering what on earth that meant.
###
Robert woke to a gorgeous smell of bacon and came through in his dressing gown.
“Sorry, I seem to have slept very late,” he yawned.
“Oh, don’t worry, darling,” Margaret said, serving three thick rashers of bacon onto some fried bread and putting the plate on the table next to a bottle of ketchup. “You need to get some good rest.”
He tucked into his breakfast, taking cup after cup of tea from the pot. He noticed she hadn’t sat with him but continued to wash and tidy at the sink.
“Have you already had something?” he asked, through a mouthful of bacon.
“No,” she said, looking out to sea.
“Don’t you want anything then?” he said, slurping down some more tea. He felt ravenous.
“No,” she said, still staring outside.
He carried on, and could have finished off a few more rashers if there had been any more.
“Do you think I’m any good at it?” Margaret asked, still staring out, absent-mindedly drying up a mug.
“Any good at what?” he said.
“You know—it,” she said, turning to him quickly and sitting at the table. “Am I as good as your others.”
Robert laughed nervously, uncertain where this was going, “You say others as though there were a great long list of them. You’re my wife.”
“I know,” she said, stroking his fingers. “But I want to be better than anyone else you’ve been with.”
“And you are,” Robert said, stroking her cheek and trying not to think of the woman in Soho.
“Good,” she said, jumping up and falling onto his lap. “Shall we do ‘it’ again then?”
“Why not…” he said, whisking her up and taking her through to the bedroom.
###
Robert awoke sometime in the afternoon, feeling sticky with sweat and a little dopey. He wandered through the cottage with a sheet wrapped around him, calling out for Ma
rgaret. He looked out the back door and saw her kneeling out in the field bent over something.
He pulled on his clothes and wandered out to her.
“What have you found there?” he said, seeing some large stone amidst the grass.
She looked up at him with a strange expression as though he were a stranger.
“Oh, Robert, it’s you,” she said, her eyes seeming to focus and recognise him. “It’s ever so odd, it’s some old carved stone.”
He knelt down and watched her trace her fingers over the rounded surface of the thing, which was about the size of an inverted wheelbarrow, and a similar shape.
“There’s a face, with thick brows and long horns, like a cow,” she said. “And all around it there are these dancing figures, thin and tall.”
Robert couldn’t see anything, just the crumbling yellows and greens of lichen and moss.
“They’re female—the dancers. You can feel their… their breasts,” she laughed.
“Can you now,” he said, a little concerned.
A sudden flurry of noise erupted a few feet from them and two hares darted up from the grass boxing away frantically at each other.
Margaret jumped up with a strange delight, “Oh, look, Robert. They’re fighting. They’re fighting over a mate.”
“Why don’t we go back inside and have some lunch?” Robert said, as the hares darted off towards the sea on hearing their voices.
“Ok then,” Margaret said playfully, taking his hand and heading back to the cottage, occasionally looking back at the stone and giggling.
Once they were inside Robert started to make some sandwiches but couldn’t find anything better than cheese to put in them. Margaret was hampering his efforts, constantly cuddling him and grabbing at him as he was trying to make them.
“Shall we do it again,” she said, as he put the sandwiches out on the table.
“What, now?” he said, taking a bite of the sandwich.
“Yes, now!” she said, petulantly. “Why not?”
Robert felt a bit pressed by her, and didn’t really feel like it.
“Oh, God,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I’d better race down to Kirkcolm and ring that garage in Stranraer if we’re to get that damned car fixed before we’re meant to go home.”
“Ok then,” Margaret said, seeming to instantly forget her demands. “I’ll see you later.” And with that she ran off outside like a little girl going out to play.
Robert shrugged and grabbed his coat, despite it being warm he felt as though there was a storm brewing. He headed off down the track thinking that Margaret was behaving very strangely indeed.
About halfway there the rain began and he pressed on with increased pace. Only one car came by during the hour-long walk and that didn’t stop to offer him a lift. At the hotel, dripping and bedraggled, he managed to arrange for the car to be picked up the following day—they knew exactly where the cottage was, having had to repair the vehicle twice before when uncle Tom had been staying there.
Robert sat in the hotel bar and had a couple of beers, thinking over Margaret’s sudden sexual appetite and whether he’d be up for the challenge should such continue over the next few days.
On his way back he cooked up a plan to fill their days with long walks around the area that might use up some of her newly found energy.
The last few hundred yards of the walk were marred by torrential rain and vast bursts of sheet lightning that seemed to illuminate the whole sky above the Firth of Clyde.
Robert stamped the water off his boots in the hallway and wrung out his jacket as best he could before coming into the main room and squelching across the tiles to the range, where he spread his jacket out to dry. Margaret was standing at the back door, looking out across the dark waves, the rain tracing little rivulets down the glass. She had a tartan picnic rug wrapped around her, hunched over, her shoulders heaving occasionally.
“Are you alright?” Robert asked, wringing his socks out and draping them over the wooden clothes stand.
There was no answer.
“Margaret, is everything ok?” he said, more concerned.
She let out a great sob and took a gulp from a glass of whisky she was cradling in both hands.
Robert rushed over and turned her around. She looked down at the floor ashamedly and buried her head in his chest, tears flowing, her whole body shuddering as she drew in gasps of stifled breath.
“Oh, Robert… I don’t know… What’s happening to me?…” she cried, gulping at the whisky with every pause. “I feel so… so strange. I see things out there… out there in the darkness. I hear things… I hear music and voices… and then… there are these terrible thoughts… I thought you’d gone… forever. I thought you’d been killed. I could see your body—like a vision—all mangled and broken in a field. I just felt this terrible, aching loss inside me… I just wanted you back… I wanted you near me again.”
She downed the last of her tumbler and hugged him tightly to her. He hadn’t realised she was so strong. He looked over at the bottle of whisky by the sink and saw that another good quarter of it had gone.
“There, there,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “Let’s get you sat down and have a nice cup of coffee and talk it all over. I called the garage and they’re sending someone out in the morning and they reckon they’ll have the car fixed in a couple of days. It was an awfully damp walk back though, and that night just seemed to drop out of the sky like a tarpaulin.”
She’d been nuzzling into him and squeezing him tighter as he spoke. Her breathing was still heavy, but less random. She kissed his neck and held his back with her bony hands, the nails beginning to dig into his skin.
“Now, now, love,” he chuckled, trying to pull away a little. “Ease up. I might break.”
“No, you won’t break, and you’re not going anywhere now I’ve got you back,” she said, playfully, and a little sternly, he thought. “You come here!”
She pulled him back towards her with her right arm and began kissing his face frantically. With her other hand she unlocked the door, which rocked open with a blast of rain and wind. The storm was really coming in ferociously, rolling off the sea and surging up across the fields to batter the little cottage.
She led him out in the pouring rain, kissing and stroking his face. Suddenly, off to the East side of the garden Robert caught sight of a strangely squatting figure that seemed to have a large bovine head and tall horns or antlers. He jumped in surprise, Margaret still pawing and kissing at him.
“My God, Margaret, what is that,” he spluttered, a terror rising inside him.
A flash of lightning burst across the clouds illuminating the fields around them. It was a line of three small conifer trees in a row that had somehow, in the shadows, formed a strange animalistic shape.
“Oh, crikey, I’m getting as bad as you,” he said, shaking with relief.
“Oh, you’ll never be as bad as me,” Margaret said, coquettishly. She dragged him down into the muddy grasses.
As they thrust and scratched at each other in the increasing storm Robert heard eerie sounds all around them; like the wind whistling through a broken pane of glass; beats of wings beside his face, a chorus of abnormal female voices. His eyes flashed with images of havoc and ruination; the sky appeared to glow red and the field seemed to be alight with weird blue and green flames, silhouetted against which were shapes of naked women cavorting about a muscular figure who strode towards them on spindly, tall legs, wearing some kind of shaggy animal fur; two great horns sprouted from his enormous head that rocked back and forth as he let out a neighing, braying, mooing laughter that filled the air about them with such sound that it could almost be felt.
Margaret was screaming wildly and the bizarre sounds got louder as the mad figures approached them.
Robert shrieked and ran, terrified, into the cottage. Margaret was fast upon his heels.
She leapt upon him from behind, biting at his neck and clawing at his chest with her
fingernails. His mind reeled again with images of bloodied animals—deer, cattle, sheep, rabbits, foxes, boars—rutting and fighting in a dark forest; of ruined cathedrals overgrown with moss and ivy, filled with naked, undulating human and reptilian bodies; of orgies with reclining masters drinking wine from cups of gold and silver as they were attended to and pleasured by slaves; sun-baked shorelines alive with great thrashing fish-like forms that rolled and bit at each other as the surf around them crackled and foamed with sperm and eggs.
Robert turned on Margaret and returned her violent passion with his own, forcing her to the floor as sounds of pipes and drums and screaming banshee voices flared in the field outside.
As they lay there savagely kissing and biting at each other a great crash came from the range. The rusted bottom of the stove gave way and a pile of burning logs tumbled across the floor. Some rolled against the heap of papers and kindling and even more against a tatty broom propped behind the door, beside which their packing boxes were stacked.
They watched—eyes red with ferocious lust, panting their desperate animal breath against each other’s cheeks—as flickers of flame began to spread around the fireplace and up the door towards the wooden beams and ceiling.
Margaret held Robert to her tightly, gazing into his eyes with a feral, insane delight.
“Leave it. Just leave it,” she gasped. “Just lay here and fuck. I don’t care for anything else anymore. I don’t want to become a waning moon, I want to be a star—to set the universe ablaze.”
He stared back at her as the smoke whirled around them, and animal faces leered at them through the windows. A monstrous unfathomable urge grew within him—a yearning for dissolution. He was frantic, more consumed by desire than ever before. He could see their charred bodies smoking in the rubble, a heap of ashes, scorched tissue and blackened bones, fused forever.
The flames that consumed their flesh were nothing to the inferno that annihilated their spirit—an ecstasy of unified, eternal oblivion.
Kristi DeMeester
THE MARKING
Year's Best Weird Fiction, Volume Three Page 13
