Severed

by Peter Laws

  ‘You mentioned the lack of posters …’ she said.

  ‘Wow.’ He crawled forward a little. Inside were piles of magazines strewn across the slatted wooden floor. They were stacked in haphazard clumps, but what made him frown was what had been done to the covers. Somebody − Micah, he assumed − had punctured all the eyes out with a pencil.

  ‘They’re pretty much all like that. Even the porn, though he didn’t have much of that, to be fair.’

  Most of the magazines were for films and computer games, and looked like last year’s editions, but any shot of an actor, singer or celebrity had ragged holes for eyes. Underneath he saw the garish colours of a porn mag. A pig-tailed woman was sucking her middle finger like a lollipop. The entire top half of her face was torn out.

  ‘Yeah,’ Matt said, ‘… I’d certainly file this under weird.’

  ‘Get closer. I need you to look up inside the cupboard. At the ceiling.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Get on your back.’

  He paused, saw her nod, then twisted himself around.

  ‘That’s it. Right back.’

  He put his back on the carpet and Bowland slapped the torch into his open palm, ‘You’ll need to actually crawl in there.’

  ‘It’s filthy in here.’

  ‘Just hang on to your dry-cleaning receipt.’

  Before moving in he flicked the torch up a little and felt his stomach quiver as it fired onto the bedroom ceiling. The epic spider web stretched directly above him, and it looked way bigger from this angle. Now two black shapes were scuttling across it, bouncing and swaying, looking horribly too heavy for the structure they’d created. If one of them opted for a SWAT-team drop, it’d scramble right into Matt’s gawping mouth. He clamped his jaw shut and quickly shimmied through the narrow door until his head, shoulders and chest were inside the cupboard. Under his shoulders, the eyeless army from all those cold magazines pressed against him.

  ‘If one of those spiders drops on my gut, you’ll whack it, right?’ he called back. ‘Shoot it in the head if you have to.’

  He heard her now-muffled voice. ‘I’ll handcuff it. Now look straight up.’

  He flung the beam to the top of the cupboard and moaned at another spider web, with disturbingly thick cords, until the swaying shadows calmed down and he got perspective. Despite the little door, the cupboard was much taller than he expected inside. And these thick shadow lines weren’t cast by spiders. A bunch of crucifixes dangled on rough string, stapled to the ceiling.

  He blinked. Tilted his head a little. ‘Woah,’ he said. ‘They’re all upside down.’

  ‘Yeah. There’s thirty-three of them. We counted.’

  ‘Thirty-three? That’s how old Jesus was when he died.’

  ‘You think that might be significant?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he shrugged. ‘Maybe not.’ He watched them dangling. Little crosses of various sizes. Some made of wood, some of metal, others that were little more than twigs and branches tied together. And all of them inverted.

  ‘What’s all this black stuff on them?’

  ‘Were getting it checked out. Seems like soot.’

  ‘He burnt them?’

  ‘We don’t think so. Seems like he burnt something else and rubbed these crosses with the ash. We’ll find out what. See what we mean about devil worship now?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘I was thinking if this was from some sort of organised Satanist group or something, it might give us some leads in tracking him down. A coven of witches, maybe?’

  He slowly moved his gaze from cross to cross. ‘I think you can rule out a coven. Witches don’t really use symbols like this. Heck, they don’t even believe in the Devil. Satanists do use the upturned cross as a symbol for liberation, but most are law-abiding citizens, especially the Church of Satan members. Attacking people with axes is going to put them in prison, and believe me, losing personal freedom is the last thing a Satanist wants.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, sounding distracted.

  ‘I’m just doubtful this is part of some organised group …’ He realised he was talking to the crucifixes and not to her. Plus, his arms were going numb. ‘Hang on, I’m coming out.’ He shimmied back out, dreading one of the spiders dive-bombing into his face. ‘It’s more likely that he’s just done all this on his own …’ He trailed off when he noticed something. She was gone. The halogen fire was off too. The room was now only lit by the dull glow from the pointless bulb, and the circle of his torch.

  ‘Er … hello?’ he shouted to the room and what came back was a scuffle of noise from the cupboard behind him. He craned his head back and saw a fat rat scamper across the magazines. He yelped, sprang to his feet and quickly brushed the dust from his shoulders. He went to call her again and heard footsteps on the landing. ‘Bowland? Are you there?’

  She appeared in the doorway, a phone clamped to her head.

  ‘Where’d you go? There’s a killer rat in—’

  ‘Let’s move.’ She spun away. ‘Now.’

  ‘Wait …’ He raced after her and watched her hammer down the rickety stairs, one hand pinning the phone to her head, the other yanking car keys from her belt. He quickly realised what was happening and took the stairs two at a time to keep up.

  ‘Where exactly?’ she said into her phone as she threw the front door open; her black coat swung out in the gust of wind. ‘On our way.’

  As they hurried through the front garden, Matt heard the throb of a helicopter overhead. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘A barman just found him hiding in their beer cellar. Couple of miles away. Maybe you can talk with him.’

  ‘So, they have him?’

  ‘Not yet, but we’ve got a visual on him.’ She zapped her key fob in the air and her car, positioned and ready to roll, blinked awake. Behind her, the Crooked Church looked even darker and more forbidding than before. Down the road the other police cars – and some of the news crews – were already surging off. She shouted at the remaining news cars to get out of the way and her volume sounded like pure thunder. Then she called to him, over the roof of the car. Her tone back to friendly. But still urgent. Very urgent. ‘You better ride with me, Professor.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The squirrel stood completely still, staring right at him through a mist of falling snow. Even when the flakes landed on its hilarious, bushy eyebrows the animal never twitched, never blinked. There were no little sneezes to break the mood.

  Do the same, Ever thought. Be super still, so the little fella doesn’t run off.

  He held his breath. Made himself as stiff as he could. He mentally toured his own body, freezing each muscle in turn. Eyes locked, heart paused.

  Funny. If the others wandered past they’d think they’d stumbled into a photograph. Like the ones Milton had in his room. He kept old books with pictures of beaches and mountains and other things Ever hadn’t seen. Standing here, he became his own picture. The little boy in a bright-red Puffa jacket, with a springy squirrel ready to leap on his shoulder.

  But of course, nobody would see this moment because the others hardly ever came to this part of the stream. There were higher, more interesting patches to play in, where the stream was wider, the trees more climbable and the view of Comfort Hill more pleasing and big. But Ever avoided those higher spots because they were a little too distant from the farmhouse for his liking. He felt much safer having his home in sight. If a Hollow ever came creeping up here, at least he’d be in running (and screaming) distance.

  Not that he’d ever actually seen an unexpected Hollow up here, but he knew they were out there, watching. Especially at night, when the shadows came and it got so dark that even the poor little moon had to hide behind a cloud. Whenever the moon hid, it meant the Hollows weren’t far away. He’d hear the distant drone of their machines. He’d watch the glow of their lights poisoning the horizon.

  Of course, he’d seen a few up here, through the years. But at least they were expected. Every now and then they had to let one or tw
o Hollows come to the house. Prosper said it was a strange game the demons liked to play, and that it was best to just go along with it. They’d never come as themselves. They wore their human suits instead, looking kind and well dressed. They’d wander through the farmhouse asking him questions like, did he have plenty of bedding, did he like eating food, and they’d check if he could add and spell. Prosper told him to just answer their questions and keep his head down. Those visits were, without a doubt, the most terrifying experiences of his life, but then they’d leave and he’d not see another for a whole year. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew they still came back unannounced, creeping up here, after dark. When the game was over and the skin was peeled away. When they came as their true selves, just to watch.

  Milton said he saw one of these watchers one night. It was after he got up in the middle of the night for a wee. Milton was old, so he weed a lot, and he got up one hot spring night and opened the bathroom window as he let himself go. He saw a Hollow near their shed, sitting on their fence. He said he was so shocked that he dribbled all over his slippers. It was three in the morning, and after switching off the bathroom light, he sat at the window and watched it for two hours. Two whole hours! He said it just sat there, perched near the gate, watching them sleep as it nibbled its claws. Then it was gone. Next morning, a slipperless Milton told them all about it over the most intense breakfast ever. Since then, Ever decided he’d only ever play near the house.

  So what if Merit laughed at him for not playing higher upstream? What did she know? She wasn’t brave because five-year-olds aren’t capable of bravery. Any courage they had was more to do with ignorance than strength. But he was ten, and at that age the heart starts learning sense. He wasn’t a coward, he was wise, which was why he was so excited that it would end soon. Yep. After today, all the Hollows were going to fall up into the sky. Every single one of them. Right up into the clouds, then pop! they’d be gone.

  Trying not to blink he stared at the squirrel, at this mass of grey fuzz, and the fuzz stared back. Two statues, collecting time. The only thing moving was the snow.

  This weather was so weird.

  Raining one day, sweaty-hot the next, and this afternoon, a random, but totally wonderful blast of snow that sadly didn’t settle. It just seemed to dissolve against whatever it touched. All this nutty weather was a sign, of course. Prosper said it was ‘the last pang of a confused, dying world’. He said it showed a universe in panic. Like any dying thing panics. Yeah, the weather was a sign, without a doubt. And Ever certainly knew how important signs and symbols were. They didn’t just point to things; symbols could change the world.

  Uh-oh.

  A big flake of snow dumped itself right on his hooter. It started to melt almost instantly, trickling into his nostril. Imagine that, he thought. Fluff, literally from clouds, falling for miles, just to make him sneeze and scare the squirrel away. He rolled his eyes up and fired an angry thought, right at heaven. You want to ruin everything, don’t you?

  The clouds responded, and heaven sent a batch of new, wet splats, to threaten the moment even more. How spiteful. How immature. How—

  A gunshot rang out.

  He flicked his eyes to Comfort Hill and then there was silence.

  He saw familiar shapes come up over the curve. Prosper and Milton stood up near the chapel, laughing and firing into the sky. He actually preferred the sound of gunshots to what he normally heard up on the hill. The grown-ups made funny old sounds in that chapel. Especially on big days like today. Sobs and groans. Wails and screams.

  When Ever looked back, the squirrel had already sprung off the stones. Their frozen moment now thawed and over. The tuft of tail bounded upstream, off into the cold.

  He sighed and soon the sigh became a prayer. Sighs often did that, he noticed. ‘Make everything work today. Make all the Hollows fall up and die. Amen.’

  He clambered back up the little ridge towards home and saw Prosper and Milton were heading there too, leaving the high chapel and coming down the long dirt path. They shot one more bullet into the sky while Milton cupped his hands around his mouth to shout his name.

  ‘Hey, Big Man!’ The old man’s voice bounced through their valley. ‘End’s comin’!

  Ever hollered a jolly message back, ‘And it’s comin’ soon. Wohooo!’ They cheered while Ever ran across the field, arms wide open, making curves and circles in the falling snow, all the way to the farmhouse.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Wren had this physics rule of thumb that she was trying to enshrine into Hunter family law. If they were out in the car, and it was raining, the driver had to minus at least ten miles per hour from whatever the speed limit was. That way, should a kid, dog or herd of Bigfoot run out into the road, there’d be a decent amount of stoppage space. Clearly, this rule hadn’t reached the Bowland household, because when it was raining, she liked to take the speed limit and add thirty on top.

  Now, on the soaked country roads of 40 mph, they were whipping past hedges at a thoroughly ungodly 70, and on the longer stretches with a 60 limit she was well over 90, sometimes at 100. Matt felt his body slide and press hard into the passenger door and he gripped the handle that hung from the ceiling. She’d instructed him to grab that, back at the vicarage. As soon as she’d turned the ignition, in fact. As she swung around the bends, he could hear the beads of her homemade bracelet tapping against each other, and he saw a couple of loose CDs sliding around in the footwell. Dolly Parton’s Here You Come Again was one of them. Dolly’s happy clown face beamed up at them both, kicking her jeans out in a winky, homespun grin. A leopard-skin coffee cup rattled in the holder. On the side it said, ‘Best Grandma Ever’.

  Another police car surged in front while another one bit and chomped from behind. They must have been brilliantly trained in driving, because they all kept top speed. For seventy per cent of the ride it didn’t feel like they were going to slam into one another. Every now and then he’d check on the helicopter by leaning forward and looking up through the windscreen. Through the rain it looked like a giant mechanical dragonfly, swooping and diving. From time to time, the huge insect even spoke from above. Buzzing through the dash radio it said, ‘We’ve seen him’, ‘He’s heading west.’ Then a very certain, ‘He’s heading for the wind turbines.’

  The entire body of the car tipped to the left as Bowland swung a hard curve, and then Matt finally saw what the helicopter could. About half a mile down, across the field, three white towers were spinning their blades against a cement-coloured sky, and just beyond them, a train was whizzing past, cutting a track between two fields.

  ‘We’ve lost him,’ the radio buzzed.

  Bowland slammed her palm off the steering wheel and groaned.

  The radio again. ‘We’ll check the trees by the line. Stand by at the turbines.’

  It didn’t take long to reach the turbines, though it was bumpy as all hell getting there. A long stretch of frozen mud ridges made his bones shake, and his voice became a rapid, mad vibrato: ‘Thanks for the massage.’

  ‘Okay, we’re stopping.’ She didn’t say this as much as yodel it. Her earrings were having a fit. ‘Hold tight.’

  She locked her brakes hard, and they both sprang forward in their seat, seat belts locking, shoulders stinging. Tyres dragged deep canyons in the ground and as he grabbed the dash with open hands his little finger slid and knocked the CD player on. Dolly Parton filled the car, the opening pulse of ‘9 to 5’. She reached over and knocked it off, immediately. Which was kind of a shame. Then she killed the engine, and they watched the helicopter fly off ahead of them at a tipped angle. It swung by the train line, then seemed to hurry back as if it had seen something. It hovered in one spot, right above the turbines. The air was filled with spinning blades. The trees and hedges nearby swayed and bowed wildly.

  ‘They’ve stopped,’ Matt said. ‘They must have him.’

  The radio buzzed in response. ‘We think we see him again, hiding inside the furthest tower. Proceed with
caution.’

  She flicked her belt loose, and so did he.

  ‘No way,’ she glared at him. ‘You stay here.’

  ‘You said I should talk to him.’

  ‘Yeah, but after he’s secure.’ She opened her door and the helicopter throbbed louder than ever. ‘Can’t have him chopping your head off, can I?’

  ‘I’ll—’

  ‘Stay.’ She slammed the door shut and ran off, the tail of her long jacket flapping. Amazing really, he thought, watching this glam granny bound around the countryside like a superhero, barking out instructions. When Matt’s granny was this age, her special skills were making farm scenes out of dried pasta and smelling of onions. Funny how genetics work out. He watched her fling her arm back towards the car, then he heard a click. All the doors locked. Hey! he thought. Professors die in hot cars! Then he relaxed. She only did that to lock Micah East out, not to lock him in. They’d pop open if he pulled the handle, probably. Possibly. He didn’t try the handle to test it.

  He cupped his hands against the window and watched what he could of the action, but the rain-soaked glass threw the entire world underwater. He saw them checking the hedges and trees as they moved towards the turbines. With no way of lowering the windows or starting the wipers, he might as well have been in a submarine. He shrugged and sat back into his heated seat. Maybe he should have brought a book.

  Another train thundered past, and as he watched the blur of it, he thought he heard the police shouting over by the turbines. Which is when he saw the black smudge run from one hedge to another, barely twenty feet away.

  He sprang up in his seat.

  The black figure moved again.

  Oh, shit.

  From the hedge to a crop of trees.

  He looked back towards the turbines, and saw the police spreading out, pointing signals to each other, only none were in his direction. The helicopter still hovered there.

  Dammit. He had to tell them.

  He stared at the dashboard at what he assumed was the police radio. ‘On switch?’ he asked, as if a voice would answer back saying, ‘Right here, Matt.’ He jabbed at the buttons instead and a display cropped up saying, ‘Enter code’.