by Andy Cox
She took an accidental breath with her gasp of pain and regretted it. The hutch stank. She hadn’t cleaned it for a while even before the rabbit died, and that was a week ago. There was a ring around the inside of the water bottle where the level had dropped slightly. It was one of those that only released water if you touched the end of it so she wondered how the level had dropped at all. Could it evaporate inside a plastic bottle? There was a chunk of turnip in there that was just a wedge of blackness and probably soft if you pressed it. She thought the rabbit was probably in the same condition by now.
“First time you’ve smiled in a while.”
It was Mr Levis. He was standing in the kitchen doorway because that was where he smoked when Mum was home. He didn’t like to smoke inside “because of the kids” but he did anyway when Mum wasn’t around.
“The hutch stinks,” Jess said.
“Maybe you should clean it then.”
“Why? I don’t have a rabbit anymore.”
He stepped aside so she couldn’t barge past, but she came right back and managed to barge past him that time. She had the cleaning stuff because he would tell Mum otherwise. She glared at him as she wheeled her bike out of the way. She couldn’t move it far because she’d locked its front wheel to the frame, but she moved it enough.
Mr Levis dropped his cigarette and pressed his heel over it before heading back inside.
The hutch was about as long as Jess’s arms if she reached them out fully to the sides. One section was a box where the rabbit could sleep. The rest of it had wire mesh in front so you could look inside. Jess hadn’t looked inside much. There was a small block of wood you could turn so the wire mesh part lifted up. Sometimes it would fall back down while you were cleaning it so Jess had come to tying it back to the fence. There was a length of string there specially for the job. Mr Levis had put it there and she would never say so but it worked really well.
With the hutch open, the smell seemed worse, which was silly because there was only mesh there before and that couldn’t stop the smell so now that it was open how could it be worse? She held an old carrier bag underneath and scraped out the straw and droppings with a small trowel.
She didn’t want to scrape out the boxed area. You couldn’t see in there properly. It was where the rabbit went when Jess cleaned and sometimes it would bite her hand when she reached in. She was supposed to wear a special glove to do it, one that Mum used when she did the gardening, but she didn’t like how stiff and uncomfortable it was, all scratchy inside.
“Why does it bite me when I’m being nice?” she’d asked once.
“It doesn’t know you’re being nice,” said Mum. “It’s scared.”
It used to let her pick it up all the time at first, twitching its nose and being cute. It didn’t even poo much when she held it back then. Even in the hutch it could be adorable, rubbing its white fur at the wire mesh or scratching behind its head with a quick thump-thump-thump of its back leg. After about a week, though, it spent less time being adorable. It scratched more, scratched and scratched, and sometimes it would bite at itself as well. At night it would make a lot of noise in the hutch, running around and knocking against the sides. Eventually its fur got dirty and they would have to wash it, or Jess would have to wash it because “it was her responsibility”. She didn’t understand how it could get so dirty when she cleaned the hutch all the time. It hated being washed. By then it didn’t like to be held anymore and it would struggle to get away, pooing in her hands or biting her, which really—
“Fuck!”
She pulled her hand back quick and checked for blood. Even in pain, part of her was happy she’d used a grown-up word without thinking about it, though she had just been thinking about it a minute ago so maybe that was why. Her finger was throbbing but there was no sign of blood or broken skin.
“Don’t bite!” she told the shadows inside the box. She couldn’t see it but she knew it was waiting to bite her again.
“What did you say?”
Mr Levis was back.
“Nothing.”
“Yes you did.”
She wondered why he asked if he already knew and wondered if she was in trouble, though she thought he’d be angrier if he’d heard her say the f-word.
“You said ‘Don’t bite’.”
He hadn’t heard her swear. That was good. She didn’t care if she was grounded or sent to her room but she didn’t want a TV ban because X-Factor was on tonight. She was going to win X-Factor one day.
“It bit me.” She couldn’t show him because there was no mark. Just the pain.
“What bit you?”
She remembered the rabbit was gone and stopped checking her hand. “Nothing,” she said. “I was talking to the hutch.”
“Did you scratch yourself?”
She ignored him but he didn’t go away until she’d finished.
•••
Jess was still awake when everyone else was asleep. She was standing at her window and looking outside. She could hear music from some of the houses nearby, the repetitive thump-thump-thump of different songs that sounded the same. Someone always had a baby that was crying, too, or a child that was shouting or screaming. Everybody here had so many kids. Jess tried to block it all out the same way she did when she heard sounds from Mum’s room. You could hear everything in this house, every bump and creak and muffled cry, but if she hummed to herself she could hide it in her head. So she hummed.
There was no such thing as ghosts, she knew that, and even if there was she didn’t think there’d be rabbit ones. What would be the point? A ghost was only a ghost because something bad had happened to it or it had unfinished business or it wanted revenge. Nothing bad had happened to the rabbit, it had just died. The only unfinished business it had was a chunk of turnip. There was no need for revenge.
She could see the ice-lolly cross because next door always kept their back light on. The soil around the cross was still all pressed flat. Not a zombie rabbit then, either. She smiled. A zombie rabbit would be even sillier than a ghost one because they only ate muesli and bits of vegetable.
She put her head against the window and tried to look down to where the hutch was. If she pressed the side of her head to the glass she could just about see it. The wood was dark because it took a long time to dry out from the rain. Even though there was a bit of a roof over that section at the side of the garden, and even though the top of the hutch had special felt on it, the wood still got wet somehow when it rained, as if it soaked it up from the ground. She couldn’t see anything inside the hutch because it was too dark and the angle was too steep.
The thump-thump-thump of music paused, then resumed. She hated it. It wasn’t proper music.
She went back to bed to dream of winning X-Factor. The mean judge didn’t like her but the nice woman one did. Nobody listened to the other one.
•••
“But I want to go out too.”
“Where? Do you have a new friend, sweetheart?”
“No, I want to go to Debbie’s or Becca’s. I don’t want to be stuck here.”
Her mum had make-up on and looked pretty but Jess didn’t want to tell her that. She tried to frown instead.
“Debbie and Rebecca live too far away for a week night, honey, you know this. I said we could take you on weekends sometimes.”
“You’re going out on a week day.”
“We’re grown-ups,” said Mr Levis.
She glared at him.
“We’ll only be a couple of hours, sweety. Roger and I are going for a special dinner.”
“Then take me too.”
“We can’t, not tonight. But we’ll have a special dinner too, I promise.”
“Then take Harvey instead and leave me here on my own.”
Mr Levis tried to say something but Jess covered her ears and started humming.
Mum grabbed her arms and pulled so that her hands didn’t cover her ears anymore. “You’re supposed to be a big girl now and a
big girl looks after her brother. A big girl doesn’t behave like this.”
Jess was a big girl and Harvey was only her step brother but she didn’t say any of this.
“Please just do this for me tonight.”
“You don’t do anything for me!”
“Now listen—” started Mr Levis, but Mum held up her hand and he stopped, which was good. But then Mum said, “No TV for two weeks.”
“Mum!”
“I’m serious.”
Jess could tell that she was. Her eyes were big and her nose was twitching the way it did when she was proper angry. So she agreed.
“What was that?”
“Okay, fine.”
“Alright. And when we get home maybe you’ll say you’re sorry.”
Then they left. Even though she was still angry, Jess wished she’d told her mum she looked pretty.
Harvey started crying as soon as the car pulled away so Jess took him outside and shut him in the rabbit hutch.
•••
She woke up because Mum had turned the TV off. “How can you sleep with it on so loud?” she asked, but it was one of those questions that didn’t need an answer.
“You look pretty,” said Jess. She was still half asleep.
“Thank you, sweetheart. Where’s Harvey?”
Jess didn’t know at first, and then she did know and her alarm went right past the f-word. There wasn’t a word for how she felt. She was supposed to have let him out long before they came home.
She leapt up from the sofa but couldn’t move fast enough. She couldn’t breathe.
“He’s okay,” said Mr Levis, coming down the stairs. “All tucked up in bed.”
Jess didn’t believe him but she didn’t know why he’d lie about it. “Bed?”
“Yeah. Fast asleep.”
“What?”
“I’m surprised too,” said Mum, “what, with the TV so loud.” But she smiled, and what Jess hadn’t achieved with her looking pretty compliment she’d managed by looking after Harvey. “You did good.”
She hadn’t.
“And now it’s time for your bed, too. Big girl or not, it’s late. Where are you going?”
Jess went to the back door. “I just want to check I locked my bike.”
The bike was locked, she didn’t even check. She went to the hutch.
She’d definitely put him inside. He’d stopped crying long enough to say “Rabbit,” but she knew there was more crying behind it and put him in anyway. And she was right because he started crying again. She’d tied the mesh door closed. It was still tied closed now.
Jess peered inside. She squatted and looked but she didn’t get too close. Maybe Harvey wasn’t in there, but it wasn’t empty either. Not quite.
“Honey? You okay?”
Mum was in the doorway, hugging herself.
“Come on, it’s cold,” she said, and went inside.
Jess was alone with the hutch. She didn’t like that, so she went inside as well.
•••
In bed, she could hear Mum and Mr Levis talking. She couldn’t hear their words, just the soft sounds of their voices rising and falling in conversation. Occasionally her mum laughed quietly.
She got out of bed and went to the window. After putting Harvey in the hutch she’d pulled the ice-lolly sticks from the grave and tossed them over the fence. They were still missing, just as they should be. She looked at the hutch. It was still tied shut.
She went to Harvey’s room. He was still there. He was sleeping, one leg kick-kick-kicking in a dream.
“I hate you,” she said.
•••
Jess woke up in the middle of the night and someone was in her room.
“Harvey?”
She rubbed the sleep from her eyes.
“Harvey?”
It was Harvey, but it wasn’t. His pyjamas were almost black with grime and his skin was dirty and his hair looked wet. She could smell him. She could smell the damp furry smell of the hutch and the sharp wee smell as well. When he reached for her she saw he was wearing the gardening glove and it made his hand look really big. When he stepped into the light that came through her thin curtains she could see little red welts like freckles all over his face, as if he’d been bitten lots of times. His eyes were red in the middle.
“Rabbit,” he said.
But he wasn’t reaching for her. He was pointing.
•••
When she came home from school the next day the hutch was gone. Mr Levis was standing where it used to be. He took her bike when she tried to wheel it past him and leant it against the fence.
“You can lock it here now, so it won’t get wet.”
“Where’s the hutch?”
Her mum came out from the kitchen saying, “Is she home?”
“Here she is.”
“Where’s the hutch?”
“It’s gone,” said Mr Levis.
“What about the other people?”
“Glad to be rid of it. Sounded quite relieved, actually. Saved them doing it, I suppose.”
Jess said nothing.
“So anyway, now there’s room for your bike.”
She locked her bike where the hutch used to be and saw the pieces of it stacked in the garden.
“I made you some Nesquik,” said Mum.
That was good and it was bad. It was good because Nesquik was delicious and normally she wasn’t allowed it but it was bad because it meant something.
Jess tried to take the milk up to her room.
“Hang on, sweetheart. Sit down.”
Jess didn’t sit down but she compromised by staying in the kitchen to drink her milk.
“Your mother and I have some news,” said Mr Levis.
At first she just thought it meant Dad wasn’t coming again this weekend, but the way Mum and Mr Levis stood close to each other, and smiled at each other, and the way Mum put her hand on her stomach, and the way her smile faltered a little when she looked at Jess, told her something else. Told her everything before they could say it.
“No.”
“Sweetheart—”
“No, no, no-no-no.”
She dropped the glass of milk and covered her ears and went running through the kitchen and up the stairs. The glass probably smashed but she was humming and couldn’t hear anything else. She ran to her room which wasn’t as good as her old room but it was still her room. She barged the door open without taking her hands from her ears.
The hutch was waiting for her. It was sitting in the middle of the room, in the spot where she danced in front of the mirror sometimes. The mesh door yawned open.
Jess dropped to her knees sobbing. She began to crawl.
“Sweetheart,” came her mother’s voice on the stairs. “Baby.”
No.
“Jessica,” said Mr Levis.
She tucked herself inside the hutch. She had to curl up, her head squashed against the box section that held all the darkness and teeth. The hutch was tight around her and it smelled awful but she made it fit. She kicked, and kicked, and the mesh door fell down shut.
She could see herself in the mirror opposite and she was getting dirty all over like she was becoming her own shadow. She couldn’t see what was in the hutch with her, though. She could only feel it biting and scratching. She tried to cover her head.
“Sweetheart, baby, what’s wrong?” Her mum went to her knees in front of her, “What’s wrong?” but Jess covered her ears.
Harvey came in next and Mum told him to stay back, so he lingered in the doorway. He pointed at her the same way he had in the middle of the night. He was eating an ice-lolly but he took it out of his mouth to say something she didn’t hear. When Mr Levis appeared behind him he was holding an ice-lolly too, a Magnum, still in its wrapper. In his other hand he held a shoebox.
“For you,” he said to Jess.
“Sweetheart—” said Mum.
But Jess kicked her, thump-thump-thump, right in the stomach, humming to b
lock out her screams and biting the hands that tried to stop her as if the hutch wasn’t even there.
•••••
One of Ray’s several Black Static stories, ‘Shark! Shark!’, won the British Fantasy Award, while a couple of others were selected for Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year series. ‘Water For Drowning’ is a new chapbook available now from This is Horror, and ‘Within the Wind, Beneath the Snow’, a hardback novelette, will appear later this year from Spectral Press. His collection, Probably Monsters, is due soon from ChiZine Press. You can find out more at probablymonsters.wordpress.com.
THE SPIDER SWEEPER
THERSA MATSUURA
ILLUSTRATED BY RICHARD WAGNER
Kumo-harai balanced a green and yellow harlot spider on the end of an old, twiggy broom. He was hurrying to reach the persimmon tree before the creature leapt to the ground and scrambled away. Morning spiders were always taken to the same tree and carefully placed in its craggy branches. Everyone knew that they were good luck and should never be harmed. Kumo-harai could boast – if he were the type of man to do such a thing – that in his three years of working at the temple he had never killed or injured a single morning spider.
His kindheartedness, though, embraced even the night spiders, creatures that ought to be crushed beneath a tightly woven sandal. These he feared. Placing his palms together as he saw the monks do every day, he would bow, recite some pieces of the heart sutra he’d managed to memorise, and leave the night spiders entirely alone. It had never occurred to the young man that they could be the exact same creature.
As he was depositing the morning spider on a low branch he heard the voice for the first time.
