by Greg James
Then she died.
Amanda stood back, just watching the show. A slight, sad smile playing over her face.
Marie's skin lay dead and empty at her feet; wet eyeholes staring out at what she had seen. The enseamed depths where the wet thing that was wearing Amanda's skin came from; where the meat that the skins consumed was deposited, violated and endlessly torn apart by numb, gnawing mouths. The thing called Amanda went to the thing that ate Marie's meat, allowing its gross embrace, receiving its loathsome kiss; and she let it suck upon her until she too was dead, empty and dry.
The Shed
She had always wondered about the shed at the bottom at the garden. She could not remember a time when it had not been there. More significantly, she could not remember a time when Father had ever been near it. He’d certainly never entered it while she had been around. She was, of course, around a lot because there was nowhere else to go in town. It was small and plain and the people were uninteresting. Dull long faces glimpsing out through the voile hanging in the dull, long windows of their dull, long houses. That was all she had ever seen of the townsfolk; those empty, empty faces.
When she lay awake at night; imagining patterns onto the dull, long ceiling of her dull, long bedroom, she listened to her parents talking. Their conversations were dull and long; without emotion or inflection. They lulled her to sleep; allowing her to rest in a sympathetic oblivion before awakening to another dull, long day.
There was so little to wonder about, it’s no wonder that she came to wondering about the shed at the bottom of the garden. It was old and the wood was warped. On one side, it was steadily sinking into the perpetually damp earth. It never seemed to stop raining here; in this town, in this life. She was sure it’d been raining on the day she was born and had never stopped since; downpours, drizzle, cloudbursts, and torrential. Even when the air seemed to be clearing, rain would begin falling again. Moss and mould clung to the darkly-soaked wood of the shed; creating growths that resembled gristled skin. It had no windows and only one door held fast by a padlock. Despite, the padlock, when the wind got up that door rattled and banged about. At least, she thought it was the door. There was nothing else that could possibly make that much noise in the night.
She’d had some dreams where the rattling and banging were not the wind but the work of something else; a presence, a life-form growing in the shed – but that must be wrong because that’s not how babies were made. With that thought, she would sigh, turn over and go to sleep.
The single interminable grey season of life wore on; rain, mist, fog and storms came and went. The house grew colder; an unsavoury immanence settling as dust settles itself over old things locked away in abandoned places. Mother and Father were no longer talking. Conversation had been exhausted and it looked like it had exhausted them. Meals were served barely warm with a sauce rather than gravy; everything tasted of nothing. Mother no longer tended the garden. She let it grow green, wicked and wild in the rain. She watched Father, his face somehow duller, somehow longer, as he observed mother’s behaviour; doing nothing himself except watch television and read the daily newspaper.
He observes but he does not see, she thought. It was as if something had left him; gone away elsewhere, some last, vital trace. He simply sat and watched the rest of his life go by whilst shovelling watery potatoes and jellied beef into his mouth at regular intervals; smacking his lips with sloppy abandon and little dignity. He then retired to his chair in the corner and slumped there; barely looking up, never glancing at either of them until it was time to go bed. Though sometimes, Mother just left him there to sleep in the dark – if he did sleep.
Thus, she lived even more alone with Mother; separated by silence, unable to talk of what was happening, what they were seeing and feeling. The atmosphere in the house grew more and more pregnant with black awfulness. When she was awake in bed, she listened to the rattle and bang of the shed door in the midnight wind and thought on how it sounded like blows being struck against the wood from inside; desperate to break out. She wondered at the sound for long minutes and then longer hours until she could do nothing and her tired brain could do nothing but surrender to sleep.
It began happening to Mother soon enough: a dulling of the eyes, a lengthening of the face, lustre leaving her skin. She started drinking; leaving emptied bottles, rather than plates, to form a chinking choir in the sink. She no longer cooked. All the food was either dry or cold. Everyone in the house suffered from stomach aches.
Outside, the shed was sinking fast in its untended green. She tried not to look at it. Her parents sat silent, side by side, when she turned out the downstairs light. Both of them had arranged their chairs by the bay window at the front of the house. The window was covered over by dust and grime. Her stomach rumbled bitterly. Her tongue was parched. She slept and dreamt of Mother and Father dying as they sat down there doing nothing; staring out of that window in the same manner as every other man and woman in town. White long faces in deep dark rooms. Never sleeping. Never eating. Never drinking. Never resting. Never doing anything other than stare. Stare and wait and watch the rain. Waiting for something to happen. Something that never did.
At dawn, she was awoken by a banging and rattling from the shed. She curled tightly in on herself as the thought was born in her mind – it sounds like there’s more than one thing trying to get out of there now.
Mother and Father were not in the house when she went downstairs. She didn’t know why. There was a leaflet lying on the dining table; tattered and damp, the plain lettering blotchy. They’d gone to a meeting at the town hall. No details as to its purpose, just the time, the day and the place.
So, on this day, she decided it was time to do what she had to do. Wading through the thick grass, she came to the door of the shed. The door was barely a door. The crumbling matter growing over the structure had fused the door and frame; making them one.
She had no wish to touch the stuff. It no longer appeared as mould or moss but an unsightly fusion of the two; bristling clumps, bulbous and doughy, clear in places, milky and obscure in others. She wielded the hammer that she had relieved from Father’s toolbox. She swung it hard. The padlock shattered, scattering into rusty pieces on the ground. She struck at the door itself with the hammer, refusing to touch its cancerous surface. The door splintered and swung inward, hinges howling. She stepped forward; wanting, needing whatever was there. She looked and she hoped. She fumbled about in the windowless dark.
There were rags, nothing but rags; two bundles, loosely-stuffed and tied together with frayed hemp to create a pair of crude ugly dummies aping the human form only in having the correct number of limbs and a lolling, lumpy head on the shoulders. Their eyes were broken coat buttons. They were bound to the shed by an intricate cat’s cradle of ropes and knots. She pulled at one the ropes using the hammer; still refusing to touch anything.
The dummies and jerked and twisted about; clutching at one another with clumsy fingerless hands, also kicking each other. their uneven, bulging heads seeming to twist in on themselves in painful animation as ropes wound tighter and tighter around their roughly-stitched throats. Some of the stitches tore open. She dropped the hammer and the dummies slumped back into welcome stillness. She rubbed at her own throat absently with finger and thumb.
At her back, there was a rustling in the grass. She turned around. There they were.
Mother, Father, and some people from the town. Their faces staring at her. They were still, so still, she’d heard them moving but not seen them do so. They could have been there, standing there, all the time watching her. She shook her head, not understanding. Tears came; great, wracking, debilitating sobs.
These dummies, these grubby puppets, these ugly jokes – how could they?
The stuff covering the shed made a sound and, through the mist of her tears, she saw them rush forward, seize her, push her, and shut the door on her; locking her inside the shed. There was a rustling of grass outside and they were gone.
She pushed at the door. It would not give. It never would.
Tired and sore, she crawled on her hands and knees over to the dummies. She slept in between them; wrapping their arms around her as much as she could. She breathed in in their mustiness, listening to the rain fall on the shed. In the morning, she might be like them then again, she might not. She might wake staring into darkness and see it staring back into her with cracked coat button eyes.
The Bus Shelter
The bus shelter stood barely upright. Its supports were buckled and corroded. Its panes of protective glass were shattered. Rain came in through the gaps, defeating the idea that this was a shelter of any kind. The bus timetable was bleached illegible by sunlight that I could never remember shining. I could only recall the rain, the relentless rain and the interminable grey skies rolling overhead.
I could not tell you how long I had been waiting at the bus shelter but I am sure it was a very long time. I could not tell you where I was intending to go once I had caught the bus and was on the move again, but I am sure that it was to somewhere of great importance. I also could not tell you what was inside the package that I held in my hands, resting gently on my knees, as I sat on one of the shelter’s cracked plastic seats, but I knew that it was also of great importance.
The package was a curious thing. It was a plain cardboard box with no markings, labels or stamps upon it, heavily-sealed with industrial tape and with a dampish texture. It was as if whatever was inside the box was sweating a substance of some kind, but the actual nature of that substance was beyond me. I was left with no clues at all, except that I had been entrusted with this package and I had to take it with urgency to its destination. I was sure that I would know when I got there. Places of great importance were most astute at communicating their significance to the layman. And I was most definitely a layman.
The bus came out of the rain, its windscreen wipers methodically thudding back and forth, back and forth. It came to a stop by the kerb and the boarding doors hissed open. A few hunched figures in long grey coats with sallow faces disembarked and shuffled off into the rain. Though I noted, as I was boarding, that one of them took my seat in the ineffectual bus shelter.
I boarded and paid for a standard pass. I could travel as far across the city as I needed to with that in my pocket. Even if the bus broke down, as they were wont to do, I could board the replacement and continue my journey onward. I took my place on the bus. A window seat where the glass was as cracked as the plastic seat in the shelter. The window threw back jagged reflections that made my sallow face seem as angry as it was sad and as beaten as it was tired. I had not shaved and rubbed at my stubbled chin ruefully. I also noticed the grey hairs creeping out of my scalp in the hollow reflection. I was sure that they had not been there the last time I caught a bus like this. Yes, I was sure. Certain. Almost.
The bus went on its way through the city and I saw the people outside go by. All of them, men, women and children, wearing the long grey coats with detachable hoods that dragged along the pavements and hung heavily with the incessant rain. Though there was light in the city, burning from windows and shop doorways, there seemed to be no way for it to alleviate the darkness that shrouded every street, alley and major road. It was not just pollution, you see, it was a poison in the air that one seemed to not only breathe in but to breathe out as well. It was something dismal and symbiotic buried deep in every one of us. I found myself gripping the package hard as this knowledge passed through my head. I found myself wondering if the package itself was something that could ease or even banish what was hanging over the city, making every person within its limits walk with a downcast head.
But I did not know this for sure and so could only go along on my journey, peering out of the cracked, rain-streaked glass, searching the buildings that rose out of the gloom for a sign of great and key importance that would tell me that I had arrived at my destination.
They embarked several stops after I had taken my seat. These were the Inspectors. Dressed in more formal and cleaner trench coats than the rest of the populace, they also wore masks with circular eyeholes of opaque glass and beak-like projections that were supposedly stuffed with sweet-smelling herbs and spices to protect them from the stench and disease that was one with the city. Each of them held a hypodermic needle in a gloved hand. The metal was rusty and the glass was dirty and cracked. Each of the passengers, myself included, knew the procedure and we began the earnest job of rolling up our coat-sleeves. To demonstrate even a moment’s reluctance would have been to brand ourselves with suspicion. Looking down at my forearms, I felt my stomach turn in a familiar way as I eyed the numerous puncture marks mottling the pale flesh, and the brown trails of dead veins running out from them.
The wrist of a woman sitting ahead of me was seized harshly, as was the norm, and the rusted needle was driven into her forearm. I saw her shoulders sag and shake a little from the sensation as her blood was slowly drawn. She gave out a gasp as the needle was removed and its dark contents held up to the eyeholes of the Inspector’s mask. I watched her blood, how it was so filthy and heavy, so slow, almost coagulating, and how it seemed to glisten in ways blood should not. We all took our government-issued medication. It was a crime not to. Though how many took other substances to ease the daily pain those drugs induced was impossible to know. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath as they waited for the Inspector’s pronouncement. It would decide whether the woman sitting ahead of me continued her journey on the bus, or whether she would be taken away for purification. The voice of the Inspector finally rang out, releasing us from our unwanted tension.
“You are clean.”
I heard the woman choke on a relieved sob as the Inspector approached me. My fingers tightened around the box in my lap. The Inspectors did not always board the buses and, when they did, it was because there was suspicion surrounding someone on board. It had to be me. It could be no-one else. This box, unmarked, with its strange, cloying dampness marked me out as guilty though I had done nothing, and did not know what was contained within it.
“Your arm, sir.”
The voice made me hurriedly thrust out my arm for inspection. I felt the fingers bite into my soft skin so hard I wanted to weep there and then. It took out the same needle it had used on the woman sitting ahead of me. The Inspector jabbed at my arm with it. The Inspector took some time to find a vein that was neither dead, nor broken, and I was gnawing hard on my lip the whole time, trying not to cry out. My free hand clutched at the box, fingertips stroking over it in fitful trembles. The Inspectors had not asked about it, not yet, but soon they would and then this charade of checking my blood would end. They would take me away, ask me questions, hurt my mind and my body, and I would never see the grey skies again.
The needle went in and drew blood. I waited and waited. The needle was withdrawn and the blood inside held up to the dull light. Watching my blood mix with that of the woman, I waited some more. This was it. The moment had come. It could wait no longer. I closed my eyes and prepared myself for what was to come.
The Inspector spoke.
“You are clean.”
He moved on to the next passenger, and I slumped down into my seat, sobbing hard.
Later, I realised that, much to my distress, I had fallen asleep on the journey. My fear and then relief at not being taken away by the Inspectors had exhausted me. Looking around, I could see that there were only a few souls remaining on the bus and that the lights outside had grown less and less. Surely, there should have been more light as we came towards the heart of the city, not less. Grasping the package in desperate, sweating hands, I sprang from my seat and ran to the back of the bus. I pressed my face against the long horizontal sliver of glass that formed a rear window. I could see faces turning to look at me in my periphery but I paid them no heed. There was no threat in their eyes, just a dull, somnambulant interest that would soon evaporate along with their next breath.
But surely ... surely this
was where I had been meant to go to. A place of great importance would be in the heart of the city and, doubtless, someone was there now, waiting for this package to be handed to them. Over a desk, perhaps. Passed across a table in one of the less salubrious cafeterias. Left for them to collect from a pigeon-hole box in one of the train stations. But it was so dark outside. I could just about discern the shapes of buildings and the many shuffling forms of people but that was all. Nothing was clear. All looked to be one and the same. So many, had darkness and disease undone so many?
The bus went on its way and I returned to my seat where I slumped in a dejected state. The package with its strange, damp texture and lack of identifying marks rested on my knees. I stared at it, wondered at it and wished I knew more about it. And about myself. Flicking a lock of greying hair out of my eyes, I returned my gaze to the passing tower blocks, hoping to catch a glimpse of some sign to indicate what I should do next. Though I felt a tight clutching sensation inside that told me I had already failed at what I was supposed to do and that there was no good fate awaiting me.
What a wretch!
How could I have fallen asleep?
But as I looked around, a thought occurred to me. The few people who were left aboard. Their eyes staring off to here and there, never meeting, always avoiding contact as one does in the city.
What is not seen, nor heard, nor felt, cannot send your soul to Hell.
The words of the Worship-Men sounded in my ears as I got to my feet. These few, these unhappy few people could be the key. With the box in my hands, my breath catching in my mouth, I went up to the nearest person and asked the question.
“Have you seen this box before?”
He was an overweight man with a bullish, raw face that sweated an oily sheen. The squinting eyes of a pig stared back at me as his hands closed tightly around the small burlap sack balanced on his bulging knees. The sack seemed to writhe as I spoke and I thought that I heard a child’s cry from within. The overweight man smacked a fat hand down on the sack and it became still and quiet again.
