The Butcher and the Butterfly (26 page)

‘And no one knows
we have this? Am I right, Mr Cartwright?’ Mike looked to the man
stood on his right and waited a response. When it wasn’t quick in
coming Mike urged him again.

‘Doyle. We are the
only ones that know of this, yes?’

The miner
scratched his chin and had to physically remove his gaze from the
box. But he didn’t look Mike in the eyes; he just kept staring into
the darkness of the room.

‘Urmm… yeah, Mr
Thatcham. Just me, you and Miss Daisy. No one else saw it. If they
did then they will be silenced.’

Mike nodded in
acknowledgment. He liked Doyle. Much like himself, a much younger
himself, but none the less; he had the guts to get things done even
if they were a little messy. Good at finding loop holes and ways
around things, was Mr Cartwright, and all in the name of making
money.

‘And that is how
it shall stay. For the time being at least. Not until we know what
it is and what we can do with it.’ Mike leaned back over toward the
box but he was stopped getting too close by the hand of Miss
Hicks.

‘I think we should
remove ourselves from its presence for the time being. I can feel
her trying to reach out even though she’s locked in the box.’
Daisy’s’ voice was low as if she didn’t want whatever it was in the
box to overhear her words.

Mike looked over
to her, his eyes full of questions.

‘Trust me, Mike.’
Daisy continued nodding over to the man on her far right, ‘you too,
Doyle. We must be careful.’

Daisy wasn’t in
Mikes good books but she was needed in the long run. The brains of
the bunch were our young Miss Hicks. Barely twenty and already knee
deep in all types of fakery that will one day see her rich beyond
her wildest dreams. But for the time being she was Mikes little
helper. A pretty face that wows the buyers and ups the money no
matter what the situation and as Mike is always keen to tell Doyle
‘if a man thinks he can get a sniff of a pussy or the squeeze of a
titty then it drives the sale home’ Daisy sure could get the buyers
buying at high prices and the sellers selling at a low one.

Doyle stepped back
and shook his head. Daisy followed suite, followed shortly after by
Mike. The three of them turned their backs upon the wooden box and
talked amongst themselves. A conversation that’s not for our
ears.

We should be more
interested in the wooden box, don’t you think? This box that is as
old as the mountains and made of ironwood so hard it could survive
the toughest of blows. It looked the part, dark and foreboding and
as wretched as the souls that have found it. When they found the
box it had been buried deep, deep enough to keep it quiet and to
keep it safe. But not all things like to be kept quiet, not all
things want us kept safe. On the lid of the box carved deep into
the dark wood is a single letter and later on, in the deepest part
of the night, when the box is back at the home of Mr Mike Thatcham
he will etch his finger along the groves of that letter until his
skin breaks, bleeds and the blood flows around that markings.

In blood, the
letter V will glisten in the candlelight and the Fate of a few
hangs in the balance.

4

The next morning
Mike woke up with a start. He couldn’t remember what he had been
dreaming of but whatever it was it awakened him with a fright. His
eyes blinked slowly as he stared up at the ceiling. His body was
wet with sweat, the sheets thrown off him during some fit in the
night. Mikes heart was going ten to the dozen and he struggled to
calm himself.

He closed his eyes
and tried to remember what the dream had been about but could think
of nothing. His body wouldn’t relax back to sleep so he laid there
with his eyes shut, the sun blocked by heavy black curtains, the
room in darkness for some time, until he sighed heavy and opened
his eyes meaning to get up out of bed.

But he couldn’t
move. As much as he wanted to he couldn’t move. He tried to move
his legs, but nothing. His arms were as heavy as lead and his head
was like an iron encased in rock. His calmed heart pulsed
frantically and his breaths became shallow and quick.

It was then that
Mike felt the air grow stale, stinking of old mules and dung. The
curtains were moving to and fro in a breeze that was not caused by
the wind. He tried to move again, with a force that would have
sprang him from the bed but this time only served to tire him
further and cause his heart to do jumps in his chest.

His eyes darted
from left to right but he could see very little. He was alone in
his bed as always and there was no one to help him.

Scream! Shout you
bloody fool! His mind instructed but he could not. Trapped in his
bed Mike’s nervous system frantically tried to move his body but it
could do nothing.

‘Feeling tied
down, Mike?’ A voice asked.

Mike tried to look
over to see who was speaking; the voice sounding like it came from
the foot of his bed.

The voice laughed.
‘No good in trying, Mike. You are stuck there and that is how it
shall be until I am finished.’

Mikes eyes darted
furiously as he struggled to look at whoever it was at the end of
his bed. He briefly thought of the box downstairs.

‘Do not think too
much of her, Mike. She will destroy you quicker than I ever
could.’

Mike felt a hand
reach down and touch is bare foot. Cold fingers caressed it and
they sent shivers down his spine. The thought of what those hands
might do made his belly twist and he felt sick.

‘Calm down, Mike.
No harm shall come to you today. I am here with a brief
message.’

Mike breathed in
hard, sharp breaths the hand caressing his foot tightened as it
reached his fat ankle.

‘Do not fuck with
her, Mike. Do not fuck with her. She is not meant for you she is
meant for me. Give her what she wants and nothing else. I will be
back soon to get her.’

Within a heartbeat
both of Mike’s ankles were grasped and squeezed tight. Mikes brain
filled with images of fire, dead bodies, twisted faces of pain,
screams of children and blood. He was sure that the sick would rise
up and spray the room. He swallowed hard to control it.

‘If I find that
you have not done as she has asked, if I find that you have tried
to run off with her, if I find that you have fucked with me, Mike,
like you fucked with your wife, like you fucked with everybody,
Mike, I will find you and I will…………’ in the briefest of moments
Mike saw himself hanging from a tree, crows ripping his eyeballs
out. Then the image was gone.

Mike moved his
feet away quick and jumped out of bed tripping over his slippers
and careening into his bed side chest. He stumbled for a moment his
eyes scanning the room.

Nobody was there.
The room was cool, smelling of sleep and sweat. The curtains were
not swaying and looking around again the room was as it has always
been since Mike had killed his wife some ten years previous; empty
apart from him. His heart raced and he struggled to regain balance.
Holding onto his chest he tried to tap his heart back in to
line.

5

Daisy Hicks wakes
at five every morning. She makes a coffee, dresses then walks her
dog Marley before returning home to wash the night before dishes
and to ready herself for work. If it was a Saturday or Sunday then
she would go to her garden to tend to her flowers or she would read
or visit the shops. Today was a Thursday; a working day. But at
seven thirty when she should be readying herself for work at the
library she was sat in her dining room; her body stuck fast to the
chair, the sun’s rays beaming through the window and into her eyes
causing them to water.

She was disabled
and blind.

Her breaths were
deep and slow the opposite of Mikes not ten minutes ago. She was
terrified but in a calm manner. Her mother had had fits like this
before her death. She would seize up and be unable to move, unable
to speak, unable to see and this could last for up to three or four
hours. At first it was terrifying for both of them but after months
had passed it became easier to deal with. Daisy herself had had two
of the attacks in the last year or so but today’s attack had come
with such ferocity that she was starting to get frightened.

Her eyes looked
quickly left and right but all they could see was whiteness. Her
eyes were stinging with it. The sun was strong today and the glass
in her window only made it worse. She couldn’t call anyone for
help.

‘I was
disappointed that you didn’t freak out as much as Old Man
Thatcham.’

The voice was
flat, monotone, and almost meaningless. Daisy held her breath
sharply and looked straight ahead to where the voice came from.
Whoever was there was hidden in the whiteout of the suns glare.

‘But your mother
prepared you for this, I suppose. I understand you don’t like it,
that it reminds you of her and for that I shall get straight to the
point.’

Daisy heard
shuffling. She breathed in hard; the air in her house changing from
spring flowers to the scent of horse dung.

‘You were shown
something last night. A something that you know all too well.’

Daisy thought
about the wooden box and what she knew it contained.

‘Don’t think too
much of her, Daisy. She is dangerous and you should let Mike do
what he has to do and you will do what you have to do. What she
wants you to do.’

The man shuffled
again. Daisy tried to keep calm but it was getting harder now. She
was completely defenceless, open to anything and she had no chance
to stop her thoughts going back to that summer’s night by the river
when the two men had…

‘Don’t you worry
about that, Daisy. You need to forget about that and worry about
the next few days.’

Daisy began to cry
and her breathing was getting out of control. There was silence in
the room as her breathing got shallower, faster and faster until
she was sure her very heart would explode. She was hoping that the
man had left, that he wasn’t going to hurt her, that she could try
and get out of this when what felt like a finger touched her
between her legs. It was no good looking at what was doing it as
her eyes were shut tight.

‘If I find that
you haven’t listened to Mike. If I find that you haven’t listened
to her. If I find that you haven’t listened to me, Daisy, I will
hurt you…’

As the finger
moved away the young girl slipped from the chair and screamed until
her breath was gone.

Marley sat in the
doorway too scared to go to his master.

6

The mines of
Christian Sands ran deep. Men toiled in them twenty four hours a
day, seven days a week with the only rest bite coming at End Year
and Reap Day. Smoke billowed from lofty chimneys and the clanging
of machinery rang out across the city and fields. Christian Sands
is in the heartland of the Lower Lands, a place where commerce and
industrial powers still rule and a far cry from the dead holes that
are the outlying desert towns such as Little Pond, Princeton,
Juniper, and Rockfall. Those places were rotten to the core and
soon would be desolate waste grounds awaiting the deserts clawing
hand to tear them apart.

And it was in one
of these towns, Rockfall judging by the name of the tavern which he
had once frequented, that Doyle Cartwright found himself in. Or
should I say; that it was Doyle’s dream that put him there.

He was stood out
front of the tavern, its sign swaying in the hot wind. Doyle gazed
at it through half closed eyes trying to mask out the suns intense
glare. His eyes were drawn to a figure stood at one of the windows
on the top floor but he couldn’t make out what he was doing only
that a faint wisp of smoke was coming from something sat upon the
windowsill. Somehow Doyle knew that that man was being watched. He
was being watched.

The next thing he
knew he was stood in the centre of town next to the water well and
all around him were bodies of men and women and children; all of
them were dead; blown apart by some monstrous weapon of
destruction. His eyes scanned them like spoil from his own mine and
his dream let him care little for them.

A shadow befell
him now, releasing Doyle briefly from the suns radiance. He looked
up and saw a man dressed in blue denim and a brown shirt. In a bag
slung across his shoulder a black shawl peeped out. His face was
hard, eyes as wide as a moon and God like. The man was smiling and
Doyle found himself smiling back.

‘Good morning,
Doyle.’ The man said without moving his lips and Doyle nodded
back.

‘Welcome to
Rockfall. Welcome to the future.’ Waving his right hand, the man in
the brown shirt pointed behind him, there was a man scurrying from
the town, blood dripping from his shoes, a gun in his hand that
seemed too large to be real. Following the man with the large gun’s
path back he saw a woman holding her large protruding belly and
heard her sobs and felt her sorrow.

‘Which one.’ Doyle
asked.

The man in the
brown shirt put his hand in his jean pocket. ‘Neither. Both. All
three. I don’t know. For you there is only the knowledge that one
day these will become your future.’

Doyle nodded. The
smiles remained on each other’s faces.

‘Who are they?’
Doyle looked over to the man running from Rockfall and to the woman
then back to the man in the brown shirt. ‘Who are you?’

‘He is Stephen.
The girl is Susie and the lump is yet to be named.’

The hot wind
rushed between them blowing dreambush between their legs. The
clothes on the dead bodies rustled life back into the corpses if
only for a moment.

‘I am known by
many names and will be known soon by only one. Know now that I am
only here to warn you, Doyle.’

Doyle’s eyes
widened but he kept on smiling.

The man in the
brown shirt went on. ‘You have found something that should not be
trifled with, Doyle. Do as she wants, do as Mike wants and all will
be alright. Don’t do as they want and fuck with me Mike, all won’t
be alright. I have no idea how quick I will come for it, it may be
Tomorrow, it may be next week.’