Harvest (27 page)

“
Oh my god. He lost the
plot.”

“
He was drunk. Fed up with
what he saw as nagging.” She had fled from him at that point,
scared he might slip further out of character and get violent, he
had caught up with her at the bottom of the stairs and then Ian had
taken their relationship beyond the point of no return and beyond
the comfort zone of disclosure with Craig. Despite the physical
tussles and taunting she had encountered through work, Kelly was
still jarred and shaken by the memory of Ian’s fluid but brutal
clutch at her dress that broke the stitching of its seams as he
yanked it from her shoulders in a cruel parody of her fantasies.
‘You want sex? You want to be fucked? It’s all you fucking care
about isn’t it?’ He snapped from shouting hatefully, to kissing her
roughly and spitefully pawing her naked flesh through her destroyed
dress, transferring his self-loathing for his own inadequacies and
failure in maintaining the relationship he had always longed
for.

His violence had been out of character,
he had never raised his voice before, but the decay of their
relationship had created a festering resentment within both of them
and Ian had realised he had missed his chance to change. There was
no physical intention in his attack and Kelly had easily fought him
off with a simple shove. “When I told him I couldn’t be with him
anymore he cried, but said or did nothing to persuade me
otherwise.”

“
Was he gay and depressed
or something?”

Kelly broke into a brief laugh.
“No. I think that he needed the security of someone in his life – a
companion – a safety net for his insecurities, I don’t know. The
Ian I met, and the magic I fell for was just a lure, a way to get
what he wanted. Maybe when he got someone that wanted him and
needed him he got comfortable and relaxed his efforts.”

“
And now you’re
here?”

“
Yup.
My mum died a few years before I married, I wasn’t very close to my
dad, and I lost touch with my friends before and after Ian and I
moved from Southend to Romford for his job, so I didn’t have much
left after we broke up. I felt – isolated. I needed a sense of
belonging. So here I am with my TV dinners, cheap wine, a library
of books and a very unpopular public position.”
Kelly
had emerged from her relationship disillusioned and alone. She had
been neglected, and she felt she had been betrayed, but some nights
when she was alone she regretted her decision and worried that
maybe she had had unrealistic demands and expectations from love
and life.

“
Hmmm, you beat up men
with your truncheon don’t you?”

Kelly grinned and the
serious air around her lifted. She leaned forward for the bottle of
wine and wiggled it, sloshing the last of the liquid around to
tempt Craig. He offered up his glass and she filled it. “Well, I
headed into the police, mainly because I felt a huge hole in my
life and I needed a focus.
And
I guess I have an admission to make
…
I also like the uniform,” she smirked and held up a warning finger
to shut Craig up. Enrolling in the police, living and breathing the
police for seventeen weeks at the halls of residence at the Peel
centre in Hendon, had been like being re-born. “People tend to
notice the uniform before they notice you. Actually they see the
uniform and most people avoid even looking in your direction!”
Kelly took a sip. “I know it must seem like I have hidden myself
away, but it wasn’t an easy route. I had to work hard to get where
I am with my job and…”

“
You
don’t need to convince me! I’ve just heard your back-story. You had
it rough.
It’s
sad.
”

“
It was, but it’s just a
relationship break-up story. Not as bad as some people’s stories,”
Kelly thought of the missing twins. “So, you have heard everything
about me…” she said quickly before the conversation could darken.
“No skeletons in your cupboard then? You’re lucky; must be nice
having nothing to haunt you in the small hours.”

Kelly watched the last flicker
of his twinkling blue eyes give way to a dark contemplation that
drained the last of the brightness and youth from his face.

Chapter
Twenty One

Craig swam through the blank
black void of sleep that pressed itself against his conscious self
in a cloying mire. It seemed hopeless to escape the green light. It
had grown from a diluted patch in the dark to a brilliant luminance
that threatened to overwhelm him. It was useless to resist. He was
lost in his dreams and he couldn’t surface. The colour consumed the
darkness until everything was green. He would have to endure the
tormenting visions that would come with the light. The light washed
over him and left the image of a room in his mind.

In the gloom Craig could make
out that it was a bedroom, a man lay prostrate in bed, sleeping.
Craig’s heart thudded in his chest, his mind raced, desperate not
to be discovered in this stranger’s room, yet he could not turn
away from the sleeping man. The room was lit up briefly by
lightning storming beyond his window. He could see the man more
clearly; he appeared to be middle-aged, his face rough dark and
wrinkled, weathered by sun and life. Thick black stubble reached
high up his cheeks joining the close-cropped fuzz of his hair,
glittering grey and silver strands caught the flickering light.
Craig suddenly realised that the details were easier to see as he
was now suddenly closer to the man, his panic increased, unsure how
or why he would act against his instinct to get out of the room and
actually move closer to him. His movement hadn’t disturbed him, the
man did not move, he slept peacefully enough except for the
twitching ticks that played across his face. A nightmare? Craig
wondered if the man dreamt of Craig approaching him in his sleep.
The sheets, valance and top sheet, were creased and untucked so
that they barely covered his body and legs, exposing his sweat
drenched tee-shirt and shorts. The covers were clenched in the
man’s fist, it looked as if at some point he had wrestled with
something in his dreams. Craig thought he recognised him as a
random face from the flats, he could picture him in a labourers
fluorescents, his dark tan, thick limbs and stout body suggestive
of outdoors heavy manual work.

Craig was startled from his
observation by the man’s eyes flicking open. Craig’s instinct was
to run to the door he was sure was behind him, but he couldn’t
move. The man’s eyes found Craig in the dark. How would he explain
being there to the man? How would he explain watching the man
sleep? The man’s eyes fixed upon him, they sharpened, then widened
in terror. Craig was distracted by movement at his side. A hand
reached past him. A cruel twisted and decayed hand, its emaciated
fingers wrapped round the handle of a vicious looking saw.

Craig turned sharply, his
position in the room shifted unnaturally, as if he had changed
vantage points and the arm and its owner were further away from
him. He glimpsed a figure standing tall and as black as the
shadows, a relief in the dark, the creatures face was grey skeletal
and ragged. Its eyes, black holes in the shadow of its top hat,
were on Craig.

In a moment the room changed
and the figure was crouching at the bed, the man was writhing and
screaming silently, the sheets dark and glossy with blood, the saw
stained and snagged with gristly morsels of glistening flesh. The
creature snapped its head sharply towards the man, its rotting
skeletal face lurching into clarity with the white light flaring
through the window, its jaw dropped open in a silent mocking laugh.
Its other hand held up the man’s severed left leg like a
trophy.

Craig awoke to the sound of
screaming He realised it was his voice and stopped himself. His
breathing was heavy, his blood racing. Lightning flickered and lit
up his room for the briefest of seconds, he knew it should be an
irrational connection to make, but realising there was a storm
tearing up the night just like in his nightmare he knew that
somewhere in the building a man was being dismantled in his bed.
Who and where Craig couldn’t know. He couldn’t rush to his aide,
and a call to the police would only be treated as a crank call. All
Craig could do would be to spend the last few hours of the night
convincing himself it was just a nightmare.

Mary Korben reached for the
butcher’s knife. The seconds of the clock over the arch-way to the
lounge clacked towards 8am. Any moment Roger, dressed smartly in
trousers, shirt and tie, would take his seat at the dining table in
the lounge as was routine. She smiled as she heard the dining chair
scuffing the carpet as it was moved out from the table and he took
his seat to wait for his breakfast with a comforting
predictability. Twenty-two years of marriage and life followed the
same path today as it did yesterday and almost every preceding
day.

Mary had woken and been
strangely distracted by thoughts of her environment. Community
spirit had dissolved. Friendly conversation had fallen into
suspicious and fearful whispers, while casual nods and smiles of
recognition had become wary glances and false gestures of friendly
acknowledgement. The older generation no longer lingered on the
hall in the hope of conversation, and the sounds of children
playing or the bravado of teenagers in the grounds or the
stairwells no longer rode the breeze or lashed at the quiet summer
air. However, she found comfort in the rituals and routines of
their marriage as she always did when something outside of their
relationship troubled her.

For her and Roger the honeymoon
elation and mutual promises to each other had never faded and they
lived to share, nurture and enhance each other’s lives. Even down
to the little things, like chores, they shared them equally. They
spoiled each other with gifts and attention, but equally they had
made it through some financially limited times when Roger had been
off work. They enjoyed mutual friends as well as their own. They
were close but didn’t live in each other’s pockets, both free to go
out when they wanted without any pettiness or jealousy. Even old
flames and temptations hadn’t caused them tension. There was trust
and with that: Security. Mary knew it was pride, but she couldn’t
escape comparing their marriage to her friend’s relationships where
she just hadn’t seen such openness and co-operation.

Even when the storm had awoken
her in the night from a nightmare she couldn’t remember, and she
had felt as scared of the dark and of storms as she had as a child,
thinking about Roger and their relationship had helped her slip
back to sleep. Mary cleaved a grapefruit in two and the sound of
the slicing blade rang out in the quiet of the flat with an
abruptness and noise that startled her even though it had been
caused through her action. The juice glistened in the bright
morning light that angled through the window and she found her gaze
lingering curiously, as if the fruit in her firm grip was the
intense focus for some art house short film. She was brought back
to real time by Roger’s paper rustling.

Mary took the two halves
of fruit and served them to Roger and he smiled back at her and
pushed his paper to one side. She returned to the kitchen and
reached for her own grapefruit from the bowl. Sliding the knife
from the work-top, the metal sang in her ears in a protracted note
that resonated with an unnatural lingering of detail. She glanced
at the clock: 8.04 am. On time –
as
always
, except for those mornings where passion
delayed them. She heard the rattle of his spoon and plate as he
worked at the fruit.

The only things they kept from
each other were their own thoughts.

A cold film of sweat
formed on her forehead, under her arms and breasts.
Was that her thought?
Why did it
matter that they had separate unreadable thoughts? You could never
know someone completely – she had no reason to doubt him.
She did know him completely!
Why was
she thinking like this? She cleaved the Grapefruit sharply,
frustrated with herself and her sour turn of thoughts. No one could
ever know what makes a person tick –
Did
that mean she didn’t truly understand him? That her comfortable
security could be on the verge of destruction and she would be
completely unaware?
She chastised herself, almost in
disbelief of her paranoid line of thought. It was uncharacteristic
of her. She bit her lip in guilty punishment for her negative
thoughts.
It was possessive nonsense!
There was no way to get inside someone, to see how a person
worked.

Mary’s hands suddenly burned.
The grapefruit juice found the cracks in her dry skin with wasp
stinging fire. She would have to moisturise. Her thoughts collapsed
in upon herself, her mind a ruin as she found her hands were gloved
in crimson blood. Tiny nicks and cuts to her knuckles and fingers
announced their presence beneath the blood with flaring pain.

Too much blood. More than to be
expected for her sudden small flesh wounds. The knife was gripped
in her hand with a firmness that crushed all sensation of its
presence, as if it was a part of her, an illusion supported by her
hand and knife being a solid colour of red.

She dropped the knife, its
clatter dulled as the knife fell into a slick of blood on the
worktop. Mary jumped back from the alien grotesque before her, and
her feet kicked out from underneath her as she failed to grip the
tiled surface. She clutched at the sink to steady herself and her
awareness expanded, discovering her feet were planted in puddles of
red with her slips tracked into them from her averted slide. Mary
gingerly transferred her weight back to her feet and heaved dryly,
gagging for a moment but not being sick, she watched thick blood
ooze from her soaked fleecy slippers as if squeezed from a sponge.
She tried to understand her situation, to understand what would
cause the nightmare, unable to offer herself any sense or
action.