Half-Sick of Shadows (34 page)

‘One of us is going to die,’ said Sophia. She turned away, ‘I’ve dishes to wash,’ and went downstairs.

I followed shortly afterwards.

At the foot of the stairs, I paused to look through the open door at Sophia in the kitchen. She had changed her mind about washing dishes. Framed in the rectangle of electric light, she looked like Cinderella. Alf, a dreamer, was as good a Prince Charming as any. My sister picked eyes out of potatoes and didn’t see me. Nor did she see me as I passed behind her and looked through the window in the door. Gregory, black and shining with oil, entertained his beloved in an outhouse. When I left the kitchen, closing the door was like tucking Sophia in bed, cosy and warm at night.

I wanted to switch on the light in the living room to read, and went to the window there to close the curtains. To my horror, there was indeed someone on Hollow Heath; someone still some distance from the garden gate, but – unless I was mistaken – moving towards it.

I hurried to the door and opened it – fool that I was! What was I thinking? I should have run in the opposite direction. If I’d had time to think, I would have armed myself, then run in the opposite direction. There might be time, later, to analyse why I opened the door. There again, there might not be.

That unusual gait! She was running. He was running. Leslie, Laura, Lola, in jeans and a denim jacket, blond hair molested and wild. She’d been searching for something on Hollow Heath – or someone – and
I
thought I knew whom. But why would Alf be on Hollow Heath? It didn’t make sense.

Leslie hurtled through the gateway, into the garden, up the weedy path, and – breathing heavily – ground to an untidy halt before me. No need to bang on the door, Lola. I’m here, and I have confronted scarier entities than you.

She was big and I was small, but when I extended my neck and stood on my toes, and when she hunched over, we were almost the same size. Her face was a rage. It met mine, almost nose to nose. She snarled. Her eyebrows lowered and met in the middle. I tried to do the same with mine, but I don’t think I pulled it off. Lola contorted her upper lip like a bad Elvis impersonator. I did likewise.

Breath like maggot-infested beef, she roared so hard my cheeks flapped, ‘WHERE’S MY BODY?’

I roared less ferociously, ‘Under your head.’

She was on a roll, still hot from steaming across the heath.

‘WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY BODY?’

‘I didn’t touch your body!’

‘LIAR!’

‘I wouldn’t touch your body with a barge pole!’

‘YOU STOLE IT! ADMIT IT!’

Hang on a bit … A body that I stole?

She was clearly nuttier than a fruitcake. ‘Calm down. Take it easy. This body of yours; it obviously means a lot to you. I might be able to help. Would you like that?’

‘YES,’ she roared with an oral pong.

‘Then I’ll see what I can do.’

‘THANK YOU!’

‘Who was she … your body?’

‘WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO KNOW!’

‘Why did you kill her?’

‘I DIDN’T KILL HER. HOW DARE YOU!’

‘Then …’

‘SHE WAS … my best friend.’ Tears burst from Leslie’s eyes. She howled. ‘I loved her, and she died on me. I loved her so much.’

‘This body … this friend of yours; did you, by any chance, roll her up inside a carpet and leave it on the heath?’ I could tell, from the width of her grin, that I had accomplished some nail-on-the-head-hitting.

‘But why did you dump her body on the heath?’

‘I don’t know. Whaahhh!’

‘It’s all right. Shush. I know where she is.’

Lost for words, her big mouth flapped twice as she gasped air into her lungs. Then … she had me. She had me by the head. Her big hands were a vice and my head was in it. She planted her mouth on mine. Teeth clashed. She sucked my tongue into her mouth. I flapped. I threshed. I stumbled backwards, but she held me erect and dangled me by the head, my kisser stuck to hers, tongues like umbilical cords uncut. For a moment, I found myself embracing her, but thought of Father, my real father, raping Mother, and I struggled again: punched, slapped, kicked, all to no effect. She had a massive mouth; half my head was in it.

Thunk!

My head shuddered.

… but my head was free of the vice-like hands and vacuum-cleaner mouth. I looked up – for I had fallen on my back – and when my vision came right I saw Gregory standing over me with a shovel.

Wetness touched my right hand: Lola’s blood.

Gregory spoke down to me. I thought he asked if I was all right. That was my expectation, and I replied, ‘Do I look all right to you?’

‘I said, is she a friend of yours?’

I perched myself on an elbow and rubbed my head. Rubbing my head did no good, but the rubbing of one’s head is the done thing on such occasions. The image in my mind of Lola hospitalized became an image of a police car coming down the Lane. I would tell the officers that Gregory whacked her with the spade, not me. Why did
he
whack her with the spade? Because she attacked me. Did she attack me with a weapon? Yes. What was the weapon? Her mouth. Why did she attack you? I don’t know. Did you know her? Not very well.

The police would get to the bottom of it in the end; they always did. It would come down to this: she would not have crossed Hollow Heath to attack me without a reason. You might as well spit it out, the officer would say. Refusing to tell us why she attacked you is tantamount to withholding information, and doing that will only make it worse for yourself. I’ll ask you again: why did she attack you? I don’t know. Did she speak to you prior to the attack? Yes. What did she say? She said, what have you done with my body? And, what did you do with her body? I put it in the toilet.

No! No! No!

Gregory remained standing over me and Lola.

‘She doesn’t look good,’ he said.

‘It’s not a she. It’s a he.’

‘What sort of people do you hang out with?’

We took a closer look at Lola. Neither he nor I was a doctor, but we agreed that she was as dead as she was ever likely to be.

‘Now you’ve done it,’ said Gregory.

‘Me? You’re the one that hit her with the spade.’

‘And I saw everything.’

‘Sophia!’ said Gregory and I simultaneously.

‘I couldn’t very well not see, with all the noise you lot were making.’

‘When they swab her mouth it’s your DNA they’ll find,’ said Gregory. ‘You were all over her. It’s your DNA they’ll find on her coat.’

‘Not if they can’t find her coat.’ On the tail of that thought came another. If I could dispose of the coat, I could dispose of its owner – admittedly, with less ease, but I was hardly a beginner when it came to disposing of – or, at least, concealing – bodies.

‘We can’t afford to let the police get involved,’ I told my only surviving brother, and impressed upon him a convincing reason why. ‘You know what they’re like. They’ll pry. They’ll want to know how Father died and why no one informed the authorities.’

‘You can lie to them.’

‘Sophia was there when you dispatched him. She’s not much good at lying.’

‘That’s true,’ said our sister.

Gregory had the solution. ‘The cellar!’

‘I’m not putting this hermaphrodite with Father and Edgar. I’d put it with Father, but not Edgar.’

‘What’s a hermaphrodite?’ asked Gregory.

Sophia didn’t know either. ‘Is it like a hermit or a termite?’

‘Never mind that now. Gregory and me have to bury her. Not a word to anyone, Sophia. Could you be a star and mop up the blood?’

‘Why bury her?’ asked my clever twin. ‘Why not just put her in the toilet with the other one?’

‘The other one?’ asked Gregory.

‘Come on. Take her legs.’

We lifted Lola with great difficulty – unfortunately, we both pushed, Gregory towards the front door and me towards the back.

‘Out the back,’ I said. ‘She’ll drip all over the flag stones if you go out the front.’

‘She’ll drip all over the floor if you go out the back.’

‘The floor’s easier to clean,’ I told him. It didn’t matter which way we went; Lola would drip all over the courtyard anyhow.

We carried her through the kitchen to the back door where, unable to carry her any further, I hurried to an outhouse and brought back a wheelbarrow with a flat wheel. Gregory waited, spade in hand. I told him we wouldn’t need it. Together, we broke our backs again hoisting Lola into her ride. Pushing her weight with a flat wheel was as arduous as carrying her.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Gregory as he pushed one arm of the
wheelbarrow
and I pushed the other. Sophia had already answered that question. We reached the toilet breathless and sweaty.

I removed the latch and opened the door.

‘Give us a hand, Gregory,’ I said to a face that had looked Medusa in the eyes, a face I had to lightly slap. ‘What’s up? Have you never seen a body in a bog before?’

Later that evening, in an outhouse, in his heavy coat, woollen hat and gloves because it was cold enough for snow, Gregory polished the rust on his moped. I smelled petrol and saw a canister with the lid off.

‘I need that,’ I said. He stepped away from his pride, such was my insistence, complaining that I hadn’t paid him for the last time – which was a lie. I threw a leg over the seat. ‘Give me the key.’

‘Piss off. Get off my bike!’

‘Give me the key or I swear to God I’ll kick your head until you’re toothless.’

‘It’s in it.’

‘Oh.’

I made the machine roar and took off across the courtyard and up the Lane like a … like a child on a two-wheeler with stabilizers.

Damn those potholes.

‘Come in,’ said Alf. ‘We don’t have long.’

‘Before what?’

He closed the door behind me. ‘The finale.’

‘And about what dost thou speak, pray tell?’

‘Did you come by taxi?’

‘Gregory’s moped.’

‘And Lola?’

‘What about her?’ I asked, all innocence, but deep down suspecting that Alf, somehow, knew.

He winked at me knowingly. ‘You must return to the Manse, but not directly.’ He looked at his watch, rather a fancy watch with lots
of
knobs. He looked at it for longer than he needed to tell the time. ‘An hour should do it. Don’t arrive back at the Manse until one hour has passed.’

‘Might one ask why?’

‘You’ll find out. Trust me. You’ve time for a slow pint of beer in the bar. Leave in good time to get back to the Manse in one hour from now. How many hours from now?’

‘Six.’

‘One hour. Off you go.’ He opened the door and shooed me out.

‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘Are you joining me?’

‘I’ve things to do. You won’t see me again. Not here, anyway. One hour.’ He shut the door in my face.

Fine! ‘Time travellers will be time travellers,’ I muttered, descending to the bar. Maybe he’d arranged some kind of surprise party. Or something. I didn’t know!

True to my word, with help from the clock on the bar wall and a pint of stout in my belly, I arrived at the Lane at exactly, give or take ten minutes, one hour after Alf ejected me from his room. Halfway down the Lane, navigating potholes, I decided it would be easier to get off the moped and push it the rest of the way. I paused at Mrs Wipple’s hole and looked in. No sign of her under the thin ice. I paused at the outside toilet. And …

Frizzle.

I turned my face towards Hollow Heath.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Something was on the heath, near the Manse, something that had never been there before. It looked like a haystack as broad as it was tall. Walking on, wary of potholes, I kept my eyes on it. In daylight, I would have been able to identify the shape. It seemed to be moving, and the only way I could know was to stand still. So that’s what I did. The shape must have turned side on to me, because now I made out the shape of – unless the beer in town was stronger than I thought – a man – a person, anyway – on a horse.

Alf sat not far from the garden gate. On a horse. Not much of a
horse
. On the small side. Lumpy, as if stuffed with old clothing. A horse in need of a haircut, that had seen better days. On its saddle, the rider wore a washboard for armour on his chest. His lance, a mop the wrong way round – working end where the point should have been – looked unlikely to pierce anything. Despite the tin bucket on his head, the sort you catch rain in, masking a third of it, Alf, magnificently and unmistakably: it was he!

I smelled danger.

Sophia!

Farmer Barry’s lorry in the courtyard. Why?

To the Manse! I didn’t run, but walked swiftly like a fleet-footed zombie. In the Manse, happenings had happened and were happening still. Happenings that would, when complete, tie the string round the bag that contained the tale within. Soon after the string tied it shut, the universe of the tale in the bag, a universe not unlike a numberless number of other universes, could fizzle out of existence, contaminated, yes, but with its job done.

I experienced a further change.

Whether physical, in the environment, or psychological in my mind, or whether the change came in some part from both, I couldn’t say. But change came. It came like rapidly working medicine, a powerful drug. And after it had happened?

… after change happened there existed inside me a progression, a rolling – slowly at first, like the flow of thick lava. Gradually, the lava rolled to a stop. As it thinned and cooled. I experienced this change as though my thinking, as though thought itself, began to decrease, dry up, run out and harden like lava. And instead of thought, action began to take over. The thinning of substance.

Fleeing from the living room in tears – I had my own agenda and did not wonder why – grotesque-faced, Sophia almost collided with me in the kitchen. Failing to recognize me, or seeing something different in me, she skidded to a halt, then backed off.

‘Get Mother,’ I said, ‘and get out of the Manse.’

She ran for the stairs and Mother.

As I approached the living room-door, which lay wide open, I saw feet – large, horrible feet, the toes pointing Heavenward – and halted on the spot. No one who lived here had feet so awesome as the pair I saw through the doorway – not since Granny Hazel. These feet were attached to legs that ceased at the door frame. Toes with high, yellow nails behind which grew potatoes in Guinness-coloured soil. Who possessed such feet?