“One hour,” she said.
He nodded, as if even talking was beyond him now, and staggered from the house.
She followed.
He took her to his old apartment. They went by alleyways and empty side-streets where there were fewer people to see him – though he’d pulled a kind of wraparound scarf over his face anyway – and through service yards to a set of back stairs which led up to his door. She found herself surprised that he was still living in the same place, as if his strange affliction should have made it impossible for him to maintain a home, but realised that she’d never known anything about his domestic arrangements. For all she knew he might have owned the place outright, and not needed a job to pay for it. He couldn’t possibly be working in his current state, after all. It occurred to her then that she’d never really known anything substantial about him. Had she really only dated him because he was handsome and attentive and looked good next to her in photos that her friends and family would have liked? Had she actually been no less shallow than he?
Once inside, it became clear that he wasn’t maintaining anything. Far from the clean, elegant apartment she’d seen, it was rank with filth and stank like an abattoir.
“I couldn’t just throw it away, you see,” he explained, leading her down a hallway piled with old stacks of newspapers. Scurrying things fled from their approach, deeper into the shadows. “That would have felt like a betrayal of everything I was learning.”
“What… what were you learning?” she asked, stepping gingerly.
He stopped and looked back, his lidless eyes gleaming. “What I was,” he replied, and led her on. “A vain, superficial man obsessed with the perfection of his outer appearance, and blind to the ugliness inside. It took you to make me understand, to bring that out of me, so that I could cut it out of myself. But throwing it away? No, that would have been an even worse denial.”
They were at the doorway to the bathroom, the last place she’d seen him as a normal human being, scrubbing at his flesh in horror and staring at his reflection. A meagre light seeped through the murk-smeared window, enough to see that the chrome fittings were tarnished, the slate floor mottled with old blood, and the porcelain of the sink unit streaked ochre with it. The medicine cabinet was still there – in fact it was probably the only clean thing in the whole place, one gleaming oval wiped out of its filthy surface. Scattered around it, beside the sink and on the floor, were the rusted and bloodstained implements from inside, the ones that he’d used to cut away the ugliness that her curse had forced him to see. And, hanging on an ordinary coat hanger from the shower head, something which she at first took to be a ruined dry cleaning bag, or else the discarded husk of some monstrous insect.
“There,” he whispered. His face was averted, as if he couldn’t bear to look at it. “You see?”
She saw.
It was the curd-yellow of old skin rinds and overgrown toenails, strips and shreds of it curled and browning at the edges but laboriously sewn and glued back together into a crude approximation of where each had been cut from his body; a man-suit of his own scarred skin. Some parts were recognisable – here an eyelid, there a nipple, elsewhere a swirl of knuckle – but the rest was a harlequin motley of wartgnarled and blood-blackened flesh, utterly loathsome. She backed away, hands to her mouth in horror.
“I cut it away, but I had to put it back together, to see myself as you saw me.”
Then she looked at the muscles and tendons of his face, testament to the physical torture that he’d put himself through to atone for his vanity – and suddenly saw the beauty of his offering; what nobility his suffering had brought to light.
When he reached for her, she didn’t shrink away, but went willingly into his arms and kissed him. He gasped a little; he was raw, and it must have hurt, but he let her explore the softness of his flesh, the quivering velvet of his muscles, the smoothness of naked bone.
“I’m sorry,” she said, surprised to find tears on her cheeks. “Sorry I made you do this to yourself.”
“I’m not. It’s just…” He faltered.
“Just what?”
His whisper was so faint, a hair against her cheek. “It hurts.”
Now, with her body pressed against his, she felt the heat deep within him. Not the burning of infection – though Lord knew he should have been dead from that long ago – this felt familiar. It was the rage and hurt that she had thrown into him on the night he’d shamed her six months ago. It was still in him, keeping him alive and forcing him to commit atrocities upon himself. He hadn’t just brought her here to show her the results of that; every straining sinew in him was begging for release.
He wasn’t the monster here.
“I’m so sorry,” she repeated, weeping, and she took the fire back, drawing it out of him and into herself where it belonged, in a slow-pulsing multi-petalled bloom behind her navel. He sighed and sagged in her arms, but the fire gave her strength and she held him up, because it was time to start learning to do something better with that strength. She kissed him goodbye and carried his body into the bedroom and laid him down in the darkness, but found that she could still see him quite clearly.
Here, in this place, he shone.
FAITH & FRED
MAURA MCHUGH
They found the skulls on the third day of renovation.
Owen had just bashed in the plasterboard with the sledgehammer his contractor, Bald Jim, had handed him with a, “Let her rip, lad.”
Owen had bridled at the “lad”, since he was nearing thirty, but the heft of the scarred sledgehammer in his gloved hands gave him a tactile joy, which overrode his pride. Assaulting the wall was deeply satisfying: the hard swing, the protesting sound as the pitted metal head smashed through the cheap panelling, and the aftershock down his arms.
Dust and chip fragments flew up and obscured the view at first. Gradually, daylight from the big windows behind them lanced through the widening jagged opening that Owen had created. They knew this had been a closet of some kind before a previous owner walled it up, but it was wasted space, and Owen was determined to use every inch of Caldwere Farmhouse. From its dilapidated rooms he would create a home for someone willing to pay a good price.
Bald Jim tapped him on the shoulder to indicate it was time to relinquish the weapon, and Owen reluctantly handed it back to the brawny older man. Brute force had done its job, now was the time for the finesse of experts.
Bald Jim propped the tool against the wall, and selected a smaller hammer. He pried at the opening, splintering it open further until he suddenly hopped back, alarmed.
“Flippin’ ’eck,” he said.
“What is it?” Owen stepped into the miasma, squinting. Something gleamed white in between metal bars. He fished his phone out of the thigh pocket in his combat trousers and swiped on the torch app. He was aware of Bald Jim’s solid presence behind him.
Two human skulls stared at him from inside an old metal cage fashioned from flattened iron strips. The cage sat on a simple wooden table.
“Holy shit!” Owen said, his voice hushed, as he directed the light around the space. He leaned forward, inhaling a mouldy reek, and immediately regretted not wearing a dust mask.
Sitting in front of the cage was a white card inscribed with fluid copperplate writing, obscured by a layer of dust.
He reached in warily and retrieved the card.
Here be Faith & Fred.
Keep them homestead,
Lest they wail.
“That’s us buggered,” said Bald Jim after he scanned the text.
He walked to the double windows, dipping into the May sunlight, and pulled out an old-school battered mobile phone from one of his many pockets.
“I’ll call the cops.”
“What?”
“Do you think this is the first frightener I’ve found in one of these old gaffs?” He shook his head. “Occupational hazard.”
“What’ll they do?”
Bald Jim tipped back his ha
rdhat and stared through the glass, across the flat green fields, to the blue line indicating the distant shore.
“They’ll take your new friends for tests. Ask questions. Bring in boffins. There’ll be paperwork for sure. It’ll be a right pain in the arse.”
The words stirred a panic in Owen. He imagined the room being shut down, and the disruption to their schedule. The news would get out in the area, and maybe become a viral story online.
He noticed that Bald Jim kept well away from the hole punched in the wall, and cast unhappy glances in that direction. If this bloke was nervous because of a spooky find, how would the other workers react? Or potential buyers?
Owen had little margin for mistakes. His new leaf had been turned over too recently, and there were plenty of people longing to see him screw up again.
“Does anyone else have to know?”
Bald Jim turned away from the calm vista, levelled a hard stare at Owen, but said nothing. Leaving a gap into which Owen rushed.
“It’s probably a nineteenth-century parlour entertainment. We know from the plans that it’s been shut up for at least a hundred years. It’s not some CSI Holderness situation…”
Bald Jim nodded and let Owen continue.
“If I wrap these up and dispose of them, then no one need be any the wiser.” He reached for his wallet. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”
He counted off six fifty-pound notes and held them out.
Bald Jim considered the money for a drawn-out moment. Owen oozed a fresh sheen of sweat.
“Aye,” he said, “the missus would love a fancy meal out.” He pointed at the hole. “I want no sign of those when I’m back, mind.” He slipped the notes into his back pocket, and walked to the door, his boots thumping across the bare boards.
At the entrance he paused and added, “Thaddy – Thadeus – Ogram runs The Adder’s Knot. His family’s been hereabouts since the Ark. He might know something about…” And he jerked his head at the problem.
From where Owen stood, mote-suffused rays slanted into the recess and illuminated the empty eye sockets of the dead couple, lending them shining new orbs. Gooseflesh erupted across his arms. The black gaps between their aged teeth grinned at him.
“I’ll take care of it,” he promised.
Bald Jim left, and Owen heard him calling to Roger and Tall Jim. A mumble of voices ensued, followed by doors slamming, and cars driving down the long lane to the main road.
Owen strode to where Bald Jim had left the hammer, grabbed it and laid into the edges of the gap, cursing as he did, venting his frustration.
He was panting by the time it was wide enough to pull out the cage.
It was awkward, arcing his body into the hidden space and latching his hooked fingers into the sharp metal grid. His legs pressed against the remaining plasterboard as he strained to lift and negotiate the cage through the uneven rent.
A shattering crack: the rest of the wall collapsed and he pitched into the closet, slamming down into the cage, knocking it off the table.
He fell completely inside the cavity, his face and chest landing on the cruel edge of the cage. Fireworks exploded across his vision. Beneath him, the skulls knocked around like snooker balls. Perhaps rolling with mirth.
He yelped, in fear and in pain, breathing in the dank smell of a previous century and old pacts.
A fury erupted and he rose in a flurry of thrashing arms and yelled curses.
“Fucking typical!” he screamed and hauled the cage out of the broken wall, dumping it on the ground, and kicking it several times until it was on the far side of the room. The skulls had moved about, but he noticed something else on their ivory surfaces: splatters of red dots.
The stream of damp on his forehead alerted him to the cut. He reached up to touch it and his fingers returned to his view dripping with vivid scarlet blood. His old phobia surged alive at the sight of it. His chest constricted while his legs softened like loops of overcooked noodles.
He needed to get away, desperately.
Owen wobbled a couple of steps towards the doorway before he fainted.
* * *
He woke to twilight and pain.
Moving cautiously, he tested his arms and wrists, which must have broken his fall: sore, bruised, but not sprained or broken, thankfully. He sat up. His legs and feet checked out, but his forehead thumped an agonising beat, and his right collarbone radiated trouble. Gingerly, he touched his temple and felt the crusted scab. He whooshed out a few breaths, feeling the horror rise in him again, which was rapidly pursued by his disgust at his weakness. It prompted a maelstrom of memories replaying his worst moments: his younger sister Poppy defending him in school because the bullies learned they could make Owen faint if they cut him; avoiding any chance of conflict by playing sick and hiding; warping into a cynical little prick who mastered mimicking others and performing idiotic stunts to make his “friends” laugh; picking on Poppy relentlessly as a teen, trying to wear down her strength so they could be equally frail.
He clutched his hands to his head and moaned a little, because that sin hurt him more than anything else. He banished the past to deal with the present.
The room was deeply shadowed as the world dimmed into a rose-violet hush. The birds were not singing their farewells to the sun.
Owen looked over at the crevasse in the wall, a slash of black that seemed to bleed darkness into the room. He did not know what constituted concussion, but he wondered if he had it. It never sounded good when the concerned doctors talked about it as they shone a flashlight into the eyes of their patients on the telly.
He got onto one knee and levered himself off the floor at a sedate pace. The room tilted and distorted for a moment and he heaved in a breath to steady himself. The cage lay in crooked darkness, only visible due to a patch of white lattice.
A skull doily, Owen thought, and a fizz of weird laughter tickled his mouth, but he kept it contained rather than break the suffocating silence.
A city boy, Owen had trouble with the pervasive quiet at the farmhouse, especially at night. Worse still were the erratic unfamiliar noises that startled him out of the oppressive lull at odd moments: a fox yipping; the squeaking of hunting bats; owls hooting to each other. Whenever he went outside for a smoke break, and was engulfed in a soothing cigarette pall, dark shapes could suddenly flit about in the sky or zip low to the ground. The countryside was too full of unruly, strange life for him. He had set up a monastic existence in the bedroom upstairs, but he kept his wireless headphones on most of the time, listening to music and podcasts, or watching films. Anything to avoid confronting his jittery solitude.
He approached the cage and dragged it from its concealment and into the starlight squares cast by the windows. There was a latch at the front, and it lifted easily. Owen opened the door and considered what to do next. The idea of touching the skulls made his fingers draw back towards his palms involuntarily.
“Man up,” Owen whispered, and immediately hated that the phrase had passed his lips. It was a spiteful invective that had been thrown at him by his old man on many occasions.
He reached in and pulled out one of the skulls: it was cool to the touch and surprisingly solid. The bottom jawbone was attached to the skull by twists of copper wire. For some reason he thought this one was Faith. He left her on the wide window seat and retrieved her brother.
He sat Fred beside her and wondered why he thought of them as siblings.
Owen stood in front of them, looking at their dark sockets, brimming with secrets.
“What’s your story, then?”
They stared at him, smiling, steadfastly mute.
Behind them, through the window, two shadows flapped by.
Turn on a light, you idiot!
He darted to the switch, but the yellow light of the lone bulb dangling from the ceiling made it worse. A jaundice afflicted the space.
But it showed him the hammer lying on the ground where he’d dropped it earlier. He pic
ked it up and its weight gave him confidence. Owen approached the skulls and made a practice swipe in front of them. As if to threaten them.
They were unimpressed.
He hesitated, wondering if there was a better way to deal with this problem, and considered that these long-dead people probably deserved better treatment. But plenty of people die alone, forgotten, and unburied. His own great-Uncle Spencer had died in this house and had not been discovered for a month. Which was how he came to inherit the place.
They’d had their life. Now he wanted his, the one where he became an older brother Poppy could respect.
He raised the hammer and brought it down on Faith’s crown. She burst apart into skittering shards.
He laughed, and pulverised Fred.
He fetched a dustpan, swept up their pieces, and dumped them into a black bin bag. Afterwards he moved the cage into his bedroom, covered it with a dust cloth, and sat his second-hand lamp on it. Then he went outside, under the pitiless vault of stars, and walked to the skip. Owen pushed the bag of bone bits deep under the assorted rubble, and strolled back to the house, whistling.
* * *
In his dream Faith and Fred were teenaged twins with black curls, dark eyes, and deeply tanned skin that bore the marks of torture and beating. They stood upon a makeshift gallows, the noose around their necks. Hatred burned in Faith’s bruised eyes as she glared at the Magistrate standing in the throng of baying townspeople.
“Obadiah Creaser: none of your line shall prosper. You, who swore to care for and shelter us, will never be quit of us now. We shall call out your sins to the Almighty forever.”
Then the terrible sound of two snapping necks followed by howls of jubilation from the crowd.
The shrieks continued as the faces of the watching people twisted and morphed into distended caricatures. It was a cacophony of righteous wrath.
Owen bolted upright in his bed, sweating, the sound ringing in his ears, and his heart thudding quickly.
Cursed Page 10
