From Dark Places (10 page)

THE LETTER

Dear Michael,

The dog is in the oven. Don’t open it, it’s too late. I’m sorry

God that sounds so rubbish, but it’s true, really. Between accidentally cooking the dog and finding those letters, it’s been the most awful day. But the two are entirely unrelated, I promise. I wouldn’t kill Bertie just because I found out you’re a cheating piece of pond scum.

You probably won’t believe me, seeing as he chewed my favourite shoes only last week, but I forgave him. He
hasn’t
didn’t have any higher cognitive functions to help him control his base urges. He saw the shoe, wanted to chew the shoe and chewed it.

You on the other hand, as a functioning, intelligent human being, do have higher cognitive functions perfectly capable of over-riding your base drives. You just choose not to use them that way. You see a tart, want to shag the tart and shag her. That’s why you should be in the oven and not Bertie. But life is unfair, justice only happens in (modern) fairytales and gits like you get to keep on going whilst poor little doggies accidentally get cooked.

I suppose I should explain how I baked the dog, but I’m tempted not to. I like the thought of you reading this and wanting to find out, then reaching the end without discovering how it happened. Then there’ll be nothing for you to do but go and get the poor little sod out of there and wonder—for the rest of your sad life—how on earth it happened.

Can I be that cruel?

I think I can, seeing as I know you’ll devote more of those higher cognitive functions to solving that puzzle than the one of how I found the guts to finally leave you. It might cross your mind briefly one day as you zip up your fly and flush the toilet. “She’ll be back tomorrow,” you’ll think, not seeing any metaphorical significance in watching the water swirl away. But I won’t.

You may also be curious about the location of your latest manuscript. There’s a clue in the previous paragraph. It’s not the Times cryptic crossword I know, but I’m in a rush and can’t spend all morning in a kitchen that smells of roasted pet, writing to the likes of you. Don’t bother with the computer, I dropped coffee on it. That was deliberate, I’ll admit that. Not like the dog. When you calm down, you’ll realise how well I taught you to keep multiple back ups of your work.

You know the funniest thing about all of this? Over the years when people found out you were my husband, they always thought you based those raunchy scenes in your pulp novels on our liaisons in the bedroom. I never once said you were more imaginative in front of your computer than you ever were in front of my body, and your fingers were only good for typing. It seems that was misplaced loyalty.

So now I’m off to see my solicitor. I’m taking everything that’s mine, and I’ll get half of everything that’s left.

You might want to get a new oven.

No love whatsoever and no longer yours,

Madeline

P.S. I’ve taken the letters too, but don’t worry, you’ll see them printed in the newspaper soon.

P.P.S. I faked all of them.

THE UNWOVEN HEART

The rain drove needle-like into her cheeks, but she pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders and watched her love’s fishing boat until it was nothing but a charcoal smudge on the horizon. Without it to guide her eyes, she couldn’t tell where the grey sky ended and the grey sea began.

The ice chilling the wind was sent by the Devil himself and she knew he would follow it. Hurrying home, she passed the vegetable patch and couldn’t help but look, her eyes still hopeful, not hearing the truth spoken by her hollow belly.

The cottage was still warm, the fire struggling in the hearth. She shut and bolted the door against the gloaming, unwrapped herself and headed to the sink to wash the bowls from their final meal. His remained on the table till last, comforting in its place, until she looked beyond to his empty chair. She saw a table only laid for one, a reflection from the dark mirror inside; her love at the bottom of the sea, flesh white and bloated. His cheeks, the same she had kissed goodbye, tugged at by the nibbling fish, his eyes cold and staring, silently admonishing her for driving him out into the storm.

She banged his bowl into the sink, driving the foul fantasy away, replacing it with a thought of him woven in summertime, striding through the door with a basket of fish. Laughter on his lips, stinking of the catch, and desperate to torment her clean linen with his playful touch.

The wind moaned down the chimney, thwarted by the thick granite walls and lead glass windows. It blew warnings under the door until she tossed a blanket down and stuffed it into the crack. She would keep the Devil at bay as long as she could.

She forced her thoughts away from Him and back to her love, seeing his black hair tangled by the squall, his lips cracked by the salt. Her fingers traced the individual straws of the corn dolly at the door, the one with the lock of his hair wrapped at its heart, and sent her love out to him, out there on the sea.

 By the failing light she mended fishing nets, fingers busied with knots, and when the fire grew too dim she lit a candle. All the time she kept her back to the door, thinking of the granite in the walls and the granite beneath her. Thick. Impenetrable. Cold.

Her thirst drove her to the kitchen. When she saw the moon through the thin curtains she wished she’d stayed by the embers. Just beyond the window, outlined by the moon’s silver ink, the Devil watched the cottage. She turned away.

The wind had blown itself out, leaving the guttering fire to speak of the last log it had consumed. She knew the woodshed was as empty as the basket by the fire and He would come when the last ember died. It was inevitable. People struggled and people died and when her love went to sea the Devil came. That was the way of the world.

She fell asleep by the fire, not wishing to leave the warmth she’d pressed into her chair for a cold and empty bed. When she woke, the Devil stood on the rug, watching her with his beautiful eyes, his lips ripe-cherry red and hair the colour of the dawn sky in winter.

He caught her wrist when she got up and tried to walk past him, as if he wasn’t there. The Devil pulled her close, smiling all the while. She twisted away, trying to fix her eyes on the corn dolly, but his hand cupped her cheek, guiding her lips to his. The kiss burnt like ice, her desire to protect herself made brittle by its frost.

He pulled back long enough to look into her eyes, her sunken cheeks and dull grey eyes reflected in his. Then he kissed her again, devouring her with vile, unwanted passion. When the Devil released her lips, he grinned at her, a pale thread caught between his teeth. With thumb and forefinger he plucked the end from his mouth and stepped away from her. The thread slid up her throat and skimmed across her tongue.

Mute with despair, she was held rigid by his delighted smile as he pulled it from her. He left the cottage, tiptoeing down the path, teasing the yarn out of her until he was out of sight over the headland.

She felt the thread burn her throat with each of his steps; a lump made her choke. The thread pulled taut and then went slack, the repulsive lump wrenched from her mouth and landed in her hands. The thread snapped, leaving her holding what was left of her heart, a papery husk weighing so little it was hard to believe it existed at all.

The door slammed shut and the storm rose again, the wind howling a lament down the chimney just for her. Silently, she went to the bedroom and slipped a wooden box out from under the bed. Barely noticing the delicate marquetry on the top, she lifted the lid and placed her heart in the box, faded and cracked, a terrible ache left in her breast.

She closed the box, abandoned it to crumple the eiderdown and returned to the chair, her eyes drifting to the ash in the grate. The cottage was cold, her stomach empty. She saw her love at the bottom of the sea, but this time, she felt nothing.

A touch on her cheek woke her, the smell of fish filling the cottage. Her love moved from her side to the dead fire, leaving a scented trail of sea mist. She watched his broad back as he shovelled out the ash, setting the kindling for a new fire before he’d even had a moment to rest.

The early morning sunlight stretched in through a crack in the curtains, picking out a strand stretched between them like the first of a spider’s web.

Instinctively she caught it, once the tension broke it floated on the air, anchored to her fore finger. She got up from the chair, her bones complaining, to hurry to her box and the husk within, deftly winding the gossamer thread around it as her husband began to sing in the fire.

The ache in her chest lessened and she closed the box on her unwoven heart, walked to the kitchen to prepare the catch.

The sunlight glinted from a bowl on the shelf, the mixing bowl her mother had left her. “Here Gwenny,” she could hear her mother’s voice, see the wooden spoon covered in batter. “You can lick the spoon if you like, but quick, before your Da sees it.”

The memory tugged a smile from her lips. She saw another strand hanging from the bowl and quickly snagged it on her fingertip. Her love slipped a hand around her waist, the fire spitting and coughing back to life and planted a kiss on her forehead with his rough lips.

Another strand.

Outside, the morning sunlight burnt away all traces of the Devil, the birds sang hope back into the house. Slowly and patiently, strand by strand, she would weave her heart together again.

AND THEN THERE WERE NONE

“I think he was the last one.”

“Oh God, I hope so,” he said, slipping his trigger finger out and flexing the cramp from it. “I don’t know how much more I could’ve taken.”

She looked at him, frowning at his chattering teeth. “Don’t crap out on me.”

“I’m fine.” He puffed out his chest, soothing his male pride. “No harm in being truthful. You’re just hanging on too, admit it.”

She rolled her eyes and peered out from behind the post box. “I’m cool and the gang, granddad,” she couldn’t resist the dig. “I’ve been training for this day for two and a half years. The world finally makes sense.”

His jaw dropped as he scanned the suburban street. “Makes sense?” He looked at the headless bodies, the smattering of small fires, the police car on its roof, siren broken and wailing like a deranged walrus. “Jesus, where did you grow up?”

“Online,” she whispered back. “I was doing important things like learning how to kill them. You were busy making money and screwing everyone over.”

“Shut up!” He put two new cartridges in and snapped the gun closed. “Bumming off the state to sit at home and play Left 4 Dead is not a worthy pursuit, don’t dress it up.”

“Saved your ass though, didn’t it?” She winked at him, grinning at his grimy, ripped suit.

“Now listen here young lady –” A mournful groaning interrupted his lecture. The bickering stopped.

She pointed at a garden towards the end of the street and began to pick her way through the debris. He sighed, hefted the shotgun up and followed her.

For once, he got there before her, having chosen a better route. He peered through the fence. The zombie, who looked like he was once a fireman, dashed a poor woman’s skull against the garden path. He would have vomited, but there was nothing left inside him. The fading blush on the woman’s cheeks suggested a recent kill.

He could hear the girl, whose name he still didn’t know, swearing at a piece of car wreckage snagging her jeans. The zombie didn’t notice, too busy digging into the crack he’d made and parting the woman’s skull like it was nothing more than a stubborn walnut shell.

Shotgun across his knees, he knelt there, fixated on the horror playing out before him. The zombie scooped out the brain, then contrary to everything he and his annoying fellow survivor had seen that day, didn’t just shove it straight into his mouth. He swayed back up onto his feet and lurched towards the house, holding the brain in outstretched hands ahead of him.

“What the hell are you doing?” she hissed, almost crashing into him as she arrived. “Drop him!”

“Wait!” He pushed the barrel of her shotgun to one side as she levelled it at the zombie. “He’s different; he’s taking the brain somewhere.”

“So he’s a zombie and a weirdo with it? Big deal—still gotta die.”

“For God’s sake,” he said, pushing the barrel again. “It might be important. I’m going to see where he takes it.”

“Fine, it’s your funeral granddad,” she shrugged. “But when he turns on you, I’ll drop you like all the rest.”

“You’re all charm,” he muttered and vaulted the fence.

He followed the zombie up the path, noting it hadn’t turned towards them, even as their whispers got louder. It had a focus like no other zombie they’d crossed paths with that day.

It went up the steps and into the house. He followed it inside, gun pointed at the back of its head like she had taught him. It moaned a little as it entered the living room. He jolted when he heard a second moan, as if in response.

Edging up to the doorway and peeping inside, he saw the male zombie offer the brain, still dripping, to a female zombie reclining in one of the armchairs. Even though her eyes were glassy and unfocused, she tilted her head towards him and, he must be imagining it, smiled in a series of spasms at the corner of her mouth.

He ducked back into the hallway as she devoured it, wiping the sweat from his forehead. Shooting the ones desperate to eat him had been easy. Well, easier once he’d met the teenager and she’d shown him the best way to do it. But could he kill them if they still retained emotions and the capacity to care?

Then he remembered what the zombie did to the woman in the garden.

He raised the barrel again and stepped into the living room. The zombies were locked in an embrace, with no chewing involved. Both made soft noises like his rumbling stomach. Neither saw him.

A thunder crack from a gun broke his voyeurism, the shot hitting the man in the back of his head, dropping his body just like all of his fellow victims. The female zombie roared in distress, the second shot finishing her before she moved.