Next, he grabbed one of the many pieces of furniture from the bedroom. A collection of wood he’d looted from around the neighbourhood. He took one of the fine dining chairs, broke it down, and placed it on the hearth. He sat in front of the fire and rubbed his hands together.
The whole time Carter busied himself with his chores, Juniper never said a word.
Perhaps she was still angry with him.
Perhaps the depression was taking its toll.
Or maybe it was because she hadn’t said a word since their visitor had arrived all that time ago…
Before the daylight was fully gone, Carter checked himself in the bathroom mirror. He wiped a layer of dust and grime from its surface to reveal the stranger before him. The wiry beard. The gaunt face, almost skeletal. His front teeth now rotten and blackened. Greying eyes with lightning strikes of red against the once perfect whites.
He sighed.
Where did the time go?
Where did his youth go?
When the sun finally sunk, he laid down on the tattered rug on the hardwood floor. Juniper watched him from her chair. As he drifted off, he felt her staring at the back of his head.
He wondered if she would she even sleep at all that night.
*
Carter lifted his face from the carpet, peeling his lips where the saliva had dried. It didn’t seem longer than twenty seconds since he drifted asleep, and judging by the light outside it was already early afternoon.
Juniper was snoozing away in the chair. The poor girl. His eyes lingered on her sleeping face. So perfect. A smile crept up on him as he bathed in his love for her, but faded quickly when he saw the dark patch on her dress. It hadn’t been her fault. None of it had. This wasn’t the house she’d dreamed of when she’d begged Carter to move. This wasn’t the life she’d asked for, living day by day in fear that some scavvie scum or a rotter would suddenly appear and have you fleeing for your life. And this city… this wasn’t the London she’d wanted to move to. This place… this place was something else. This was hell. No doubt about it.
He climbed to his feet and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He tiptoed into the kitchen (doing his best not to wake Juniper), grabbed a bottle of water from the side and drank greedily. He rinsed his mouth and spat into the sink. Strings of red accompanied his spit, clinging to the porcelain surface. His eyes lingered on the blood. His stomach turned.
A noise from the living room.
“Juniper?” he called, wandering back into the living room. He checked around, saw no movement, then crossed to Juniper and stroked her head. “I know, I know, darling. Times is rough and we can’t stay here forever.” She snuggled into his hand. Clumps of hair fell into his palm and floated to the floor, shedding from the lack of real nutrition in their diet. “I’ve had an idea, and I think it could help us now. I think it’s time we leave. Make our way out of here and look for some place safer, eh? How does that sound? We can’t stay in this cesspit any longer, June. It’s killing me. You. It’s killing us.” Tears streamed from his eyes now. “I can’t bear to lose you, Juniper. I love you.”
He left before she could reply. He hated crying in front of her.
The fog was worse today. The sun did its best to burst through, but the mist was thick and close. He could barely see further than twenty feet ahead.
This thick, throat-closing fog was once known as the London Particular, Carter remembered reading one day on Wikipedia before work. Way back in the Victorian days, they used to fear it. They said that in the fog hid demons, who used it to obscure their presence, so they could sneak up on some poor unsuspecting chap and drag them away and into their domain. As he followed his own footprints back to the water, he felt them all staring at him. Watching from just beyond the reaches of his vision. Mocking. Laughing. Waiting for him to trip so they could pounce as one and devour him in a single sitting.
He heard the river before he saw it. It even took him a few minutes to find his pallet and deck chair. His daily fishing stoop. He dropped the tarp to the floor and picked up the pole, mentally preparing himself for another day of sitting and waiting. He was about to tie a palomar knot in the line when he noticed that bucket number two was missing.
Carter looked as far as the fog would allow, seeing no sign of where the bucket may have gone. In his head came a vision of the thin white strands, growing and tangling inside each other beneath the steel lid of the bucket. Filling all the available space until the pressure was great enough to pop the lid off, and climb out into the air, seeking new hosts. He could see the bucket falling to its side, the strands acting like paddles to roll back into the water, where the fish could latch to the bottom of the riverbed and wait for unsuspecting prey to infect.
The idea of it made him shudder. He scolded himself for letting himself get spooked and losing a good bucket. He sat himself back in his chair, cast his line, and stared at the Thames.
The water was particularly choppy today, the London skyline obscured from view by the Particular. This is a bad day to be fishing, Carter thought. He could still feel the demons about him. A thousand eyes watching him, waiting for him to lower his guard. But what was a man to do? He only had two good trout back at the house and that wasn’t nearly enough to sustain himself and Juniper. He could already feel the pang of hunger echoing through his body.
Carter patted his stomach and waited for the fish to bite.
It was some time later that Carter rolled his neck, pinched at his tender muscles, and saw something that made him sit up and squint through the fog. Not too far to his right. The circular base of the missing bucket, caught in the water in an overgrown patch of weeds.
He scratched at his beard and lips, peeling at the already dry skin.
His first instinct was to get up and grab it. In a world where good, sturdy resources don’t come along too easily, it was worth holding on to the things that you knew did their job. The bucket had done just that. A sturdy thing that had not only been a great place to store his rot-infested fish (cleaning London’s river, one fish at a time), but he had used it as a suitcase, a bonfire guard, and plenty more things since Juniper had spotted it one late evening on their way home.
On the other hand… what if the fish were still inside?
Carter shook his head, turned his attention back to the spot where the fishing line disappeared into the fog. The thin wire looking as though it was suspended in the air. Its counterparts lost in the fog.
It’s just a bucket, Carter tried to convince himself. Plenty more buckets out there.
And yet still the temptation was there. Just wade out and grab it. It was solid. A good tool. It’d take seconds.
No, no, no.
Too risky to go in the murky water where the dead things lay. His boots were full of holes, his thick trousers would grow heavy. If any rotter-fish caught his bare skin it would be game over, he’d seen it for himself. Had lost close friends to the serpentine strands of the rot. A fleeting image of several strands winding around his legs. Gripping. Burrowing.
What good would a dead Carter be for Juniper?
June…
But as Carter turned himself away from the weeds, he found he couldn’t just let it go. The idea had germinated well and truly in his head. He could see himself running to the bucket, yanking it out the water, and sitting down. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. And, besides, any day now he and Juniper would finally settle on leaving this dump and looking for less-brown pastures. They’d been in this place, in this life for too long. Perhaps moving away would raise her spirits, pull her out of this dark well she’d found herself in.
For a journey like that, Carter’s inner voice whispered, you’ll need some kind of storage device, some kind of…
His feet were already moving. One foot hovered over the water. He pulled it back and looked down at the rippling browns of the marshland leading deep into the water.
Step. The mud squished into the holes in his boots and clumped between his toes. Whether he it was his imagination or not, he
could already feel things clawing at him. Binding around his feet. Sowing themselves between his toes. Another careful step, sliding further into the marsh. The mud was soft, sinking beneath him. All things pulling Carter into the water. His heart pounded. His breathing heavy. He grunted, pushed the reeds out of his way and felt his foot disappear under five inches of mud.
Still too far away.
“Dammit,” he said to himself, “in for a penny…” He took another step, then another, the water up to his waist. The cold water seeped through his trousers and chilled his skin. Another step…
And it was enough.
His fingertips grasped the handle of the bucket. He tugged. It came free.
“Yes!” he celebrated through chattering teeth, turning with speed to get out of the water. “You son-of-a-bitch. Yes!-”
Something moved through his toes. He squealed and jumped.
A worm, he told himself. Or an eel or some such. But that’s not what he could really see in his mind. The thought that it was one of the spores of a rot-fish had him crawling and spasming up the bank, splashing wildly as his hands tried to paddle the water and increase his speed. For a step or two it worked, until one foot slipped and Carter fell face-first into the water. The thing wriggled in his boot, sliding and playing inside the moist leather. He kicked hard at the floor, burst forward a couple feet, then gripped the muddy surface of the bank. His fingers gouged lines into the mud as he pulled himself along, trying to crawl up the bank on his belly.
Almost there…
Something grabbed hold of his ankle and yanked him back down and into the mud. His face submerged and he cried out for breath, lifting his face over the dirty water just enough to gasp at the air before being pulled again further into the water.
This was no worm.
His hand waved for anything to grab ahold of, finding the rough edge of the wooden pallet he’d sat on so many times prior. He pulled himself back, kicking with his free foot against the hand that held him. Out the corner of his eye, the bucket floated lazily away towards the centre of the current. With a final effort, Carter filled his lungs with air, roared, and booted the hand away. He felt the thing release him, and scrambled to shore, holding himself back from kissing the mud when he finally exited the water.
For a moment, all Carter could do was lie there and gasp, until he heard the disturbance of water behind him. He pushed himself to his feet and let out a breathless cry.
There was a face beneath the water, staring at Carter with curiosity. White tendrils, much thicker than those from the fish, crept from its flesh and were now above the water. Reaching into the air as though they were sniffing for Carter. There was a clicking, a horrid rattle click that had become the soundtrack to their infestation. There were no pupils. No irises. Just white marbles in the centre of a face draped in loose-hanging flesh. The head breached the surface of the water to join its tendrils, and it became obvious just how loose the flesh had become as it slicked off bone like wet wallpaper.
“Please, no, please leave me be,” was all that could escape Carter’s lips. The rotter showed no desire to communicate.
Carter crept backwards up the bank, as the thing started to pick up its speed, walking through the marshland and towards him, the tendrils snaking out of the corners of its eyes and mouth. The flesh falling away as if the only thing holding it together was the water itself.
The thing clicked and hissed as it moved.
“No. I have a wife… she needs me… she needs me, please.”
It leapt towards him, unnaturally crawling over the marshland with ease. All four limbs working to help the thing navigate along the floor as a clumsy spider might move. Carter slipped once more but felt something beneath his trouser leg — the pole he used so often to beat the fish. He quickly pulled it out, just as the rotter’s tendrils reached for him, and slammed it across its face. Its jaw instantly hung loose.
And then the thing convulsed.
Not the host body itself but whatever spores lay within it. Each of its tendrils shuddered and withdrew. One even dropped away and scurried back into the water. The rotter dropped to its front, clutching at its throat as if suffocating, and slowly made its way back to the Thames. Its dead face watching Carter with each convulsing shift of its body.
Carter wasted no time in climbing out of the water and running home. The mud made each step harder, adding almost a stone in weight as he ran through the docklands, through the estates, and back to his house on Tudor Close.
He burst back inside, clicked the lock on the door, and dropped to the floor by the fireplace, feverishly shedding his heavy wet rags like they were extra layers of skin he no longer needed. He vomited on the floor. Then again. Lumps of bloodied flesh flecked amongst the unsavoury mess but then as he pulled off his old boot did he see it.
He rolled onto his back and took several deep breaths. Juniper sat in her chair watching Carter with a blank face. He sat up and drew his knees to his chest. “Oh, Juniper. Don’t look at me like that. If you only knew the day I’ve had-”
Something in Carter’s boot. Only small. Barely thicker than dental floss, the white, undulating, trail of a rot spore. Sucking on his toes like a leech.
Not a leech. Leeches don’t bury into your skin, multiply in your body… Take over… But… When?
It must’ve been something in the mud. In one of the fishes. Or maybe when the thing had touched him it had shed a piece of itself into Carter, and the rest, the chase up the bank, the clicking, it had all been some cruel pantomime. It knew what it had done. It had won before Carter was out of the water.
For a while, he sobbed there on the floor, looking up at Juniper, thinking that maybe, after all they’d been through, at least she was lucky enough to have never experienced the change the rot would bring. The knife still gleamed in her gut.
“I’m sorry Juniper,” he cried. “I messed up. I’m so sorry.”
A searing pain shot through his nerves. Even as he cried he felt the change already taking him. His fingers pulsing and clenching into fists against his will.
“I’ll fix it,” he said. “Don’t worry, dear, I’ll fix it.”
He jumped to his feet and walked to the kitchen and to the back door. Struggling to breathe, he wheezed and coughed up more of the blood as he found the deadbolt in the door.
“I’ll fix it,” he said, hot tears burning his eyes. Firework flashes of black, red, and white pulsing in his vision. “No one will come now.”
The pain was almost too much as he felt the rot take his legs, forcing him to the floor.
“Talk to me!” he roared. “I need to hear your voice again, just once… before…”
“Keep me, dear,” Juniper’s said, the flesh restoring itself on the mouldy frame of her skeleton. The lustre returning to her cheeks as time wound backwards and brought her life with it.
“Yes, dear… Keep going.” The room around faded to darkness, leaving only Juniper behind. She tilted her head and smiled.
“Keep me, dear. When I’m tired and grumpy…”
“…old and fat, bald and angry.” Carter grinned goofily. White threads burst from his stomach, his ear, thigh… but he didn’t care anymore. His love was home. All traces of the tattooed visitor that had snuck in whilst Carter was fishing in the river, vanished.
“Just promise me that you’ll keep me, and I’ll keep you.”
Oh, that smile… that voice…
“Yes…” his voice grew weak. “Go on…”
“Our bodies, our love, our bones, forever together.”
Carter had thought about burying her. Removing her and leaving London. She hadn’t made it through the night. But how could he take her away from this place, this utopia she’d dreamt of living in for so long. The big city. How could he move her from that? He had been foolish to even consider it. And now with the door locked, them both inside, this is where they will stay. This house — their final resting place.
“Yes, gooahaaah!” It was coming thro
ugh his throat now, but he continued as best he could. Juniper peeled herself off the chair, knelt beside Carter, stroked his hair. “Please, Juniper. Pleaasshh!”
“Just please, please, dear,” she said, her voice a remedy to his pain, bringing with it memories of better days, of kisses, smiles, hopes. “No matter what happens, keep my bones.”
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~ PROLOGUE ~
Overgrown greenery lashed at their legs as she held tightly to the boy’s arms, dragging him along as fast as his legs would allow. All around was nothing but yellow as they fled across another acre of farmland.
“Come on, come on, come on…”
The engines roared. They were getting closer now.
“I can’t…” the boy protested. “I can’t…” His breaths were shallow and his eyes were wide. Those terrifying green eyes of his that could see the things that she couldn’t. The eyes that had gotten them into this mess in the first place.
“They went this way!” called a voice from across the field. An engine revved as a vehicle stomped down the neglected crops, left years ago by farmers to grow wild and reach for the sky.
She pulled him sharply left, hoping the change in direction might throw them off their scent. Who knows? Maybe they’d be able to escape this one. Maybe God, in all his infinite wisdom, might cut them some slack and leave them to their devices.
The roaring of the vehicle reached fever pitch as she dove to the ground, dragging the poor boy with her and waited. The vehicle now only several feet away. The tops of the yellow plants disappeared under its weight, then, a moment later, the sounds began to quiet.
Just hold on, Joanna thought. Just wait your time, and we’ll be fine. We’ll make it through this.
Keep My Bones Page 2
