Twisted Little Things and Other Stories (10 page)

Two

“Constance, wait,” Doctor Tim Richards said, following her across the town square. “Constance! For the love of God, will you just stop for a moment?”

“I'm a little busy,” she replied, turning to him and raising a hand to shield her eyes from the bright morning sunlight. “How can I help you?”

He stared at her for a moment, open-mouthed and in shock.

She waited.

He continued to stare.

“Did you want something?” she asked. “After all,
you're
the one who came running after
me...
”

“I just...” He paused. “Constance, what are you doing?”

She looked down at the bags she was carrying. “What does it look like I'm doing? The grocery shopping.”

He continued to stare at her for a moment. “Constance, Julie -”

“I know,” she replied, “and it's awfully sad. My poor girl's final moments must have been absolute agony, and I'm sure she was terrified. To think, that brute dragged her into the forest and did such awful things to her...”

She waited for the doctor to reply.

“Did you want something?” she asked finally.

“Why don't you come to my office?” he replied, placing a hand on her arm and trying to guide her back across the square. “We can sit down and talk.”

“About what?”

He stared at her for a few seconds. “Constance, Julie is dead.”

“I know!”

“Your daughter, Julie, is dead, Constance,” he continued. “She died yesterday. She was... Well, they've got that awful man in custody. He did terrible things to Julie before he killed her.”

“I know,” she said again. “The police officers told me all about it.”

Doctor Richards paused, as if he genuinely had no idea what to say next.

“And you think I should be wailing and moaning?” Julie asked after a moment. “Sobbing at home? Weeping at the breakfast table?”

“I think you should be mourning,” he replied, “and I think the fact that you're not...” He paused again, eyeing her with a hint of suspicion. “Constance, for God's sake, your daughter was kidnapped, raped and murdered less than forty-eight hours ago. There's a process, there's a certain... I mean, if something like that had happened to me, I...”

His voice trailed off.

“Do you
want
me to be moping about like a sad-sack?” she asked. “If that was what I was doing, wouldn't you and all the others be telling me how life goes on, how I have to look to the future?”

“Well, yes, but -”

“And I'm
doing
that,” she added. “Quite successfully, I might add. There's so much to get done, and I simply don't have the time to sit around mourning Julie. She's gone, and that's very sad, and it's even sadder to think about
how
she died. But sobbing and moaning won't bring her back, will it?”

“No, but -”

“So what's the point, really?” she asked, checking her watch. “Now if you'll excuse me, I must get going. The library closes at twelve, and I need to change my books. Give my love to Kathleen. Tell her we should take a coffee some day next week.”

With that, she patted him on the shoulder and headed off toward the library on the far side of the square.

Left standing alone, Doctor Richards frowned as he watched her walking away. He seemed poised to follow her, as if he thought he might still persuade her to visit his surgery, before finally he turned and started wandering back the other way, lost in thought.

***

“Good morning, everyone!” Constance said brightly as she made her way past the library's main desk. “A little nippy today, isn't it?”

“Constance?” Alison, the head librarian, said with a hint of shock, almost knocking her cup of tea off the counter. “We all heard about Julie!”

“I know,” Constance replied, not even slowing her pace as she headed along the nearest aisle. “Terribly sad!”

Humming to herself, Constance quickly reached the fiction section and started looking for a couple of books she'd read about online. Finding one of them but not the other, she bit her lip as she tried to think of something else she could check out, before deciding to go with an author she already knew. As she began to search for a title, however, she stopped as she became aware of a faint sobbing sound from nearby.

Leaning around the next corner, she saw a figure slumped in a chair, weeping steadily.

“Meredith?” she asked cautiously, stepping closer to the woman. “Meredith, whatever is the matter?”

Looking up at her, Meredith's eyes were red and filled with horror, with tears streaming down her face, while her whole body was shivering. She tried to say something, but her bottom lip was trembling too much.

“Meredith, you poor thing,” Constance said, setting her bags aside and kneeling next to the chair. Taking a packet of tissues from her pocket, she reached out and slipped one into Meredith's shaking hand. “What are you doing, sitting here in the library and weeping like this? What happened?”

“I...” Meredith stared at her for a moment, as fresh tears rolled down her face. “I don't know, I... I just...”

Before she could finish, she broke down in another wave of deep, rolling sobs that left her in a fit of convulsions. Crying so much that she could barely draw breath, she let out a faint groaning sound, followed by a brief hiccup.

“You mustn't let things get you down,” Constance told her, patting her on the shoulder. “No matter how bad things seem, you must focus on the positives.”

Unable to reply, Meredith leaned forward and began to moan. If anything, her sobs were getting louder and her body was shaking more than ever.

“Whatever dreadful thing has happened,” Constance continued, “you must put it out of your mind. Do you hear me, Meredith? There's no use sitting here in the library, weeping about it all. What does that achieve, eh? Nothing. Nothing at all. Instead, you need to get on your feet and go out there, and face the world. Mark my words, nothing good will come of undue sorrow and misery.”

She waited for a reply, but Meredith was starting to rock back and forth now in the chair.

“Well,” Constance added, patting her shoulder one more time before getting to her feet, “I'm sure I've given you something to think about, haven't I? Now you must excuse me, but I have to get going. Such a busy morning.”

With that, she picked up her bags and hurried away. Meredith, still sobbing the chair, began to slow curl up into a tighter and tighter ball.

Three

As soon as she'd pushed the front door shut, Constance turned and listened to the silence of the house.

Taking a deep breath, she still had a faint smile on her lips, although the smile began to fade a little before she quickly remembered to force it back.

She began humming to herself as she made her way through to the kitchen, where she set her bags down and started taking out her groceries, ready to put them away and -

“Meredith Cooper is dead,” a voice said suddenly.

Constance froze. She recognized the voice, of course, and she knew she wouldn't see anyone if she looked over her shoulder. She couldn't help herself, though, and she quickly glanced back toward the empty chairs at the kitchen table.

“Meredith Cooper is dead,” the voice said again. “She cut her wrists about... Oh, five minutes after you left the library. Right there in the chair at the end of the fiction section. At this exact moment, the librarian is being comforted as paramedics get ready to move the body.”

“Well,” Constance replied, struggling to maintain her smile. “That's absolutely dreadful, isn't it?”

“Next.”

“Can't you just -”

“Next.”

Constance paused, still looking around the kitchen, still trying to work out where, exactly, the voice was coming from.

“Next.”

“Alright,” she stammered, momentarily allowing herself to feel a little ruffled. Leaning back against the counter, she thought of all the people she'd met in town during the morning. A sea of faces filled her mind, but none of them really stood out.

“Having trouble choosing?” the voice asked.

“Give me a minute, won't you?”

“Maybe you want it back,” the voice continue. “Maybe -”

“No!” she said firmly. “No, I don't want that!”

“Then pick someone.”

“Well...” She took a deep breath. “I thought I'd have a little more time,” she said after a moment. “I thought maybe it wouldn't be until tomorrow, or even the next day...”

“Meredith Cooper collapsed under the strain,” the voice replied. “I've got to admit, even
I
was surprised how quickly she buckled. If you want a longer gap between each pick, I'd suggest you try to think of someone who's a little stronger. Someone with the necessary mental fortitude.”

“I will,” Constance said, trying to focus. “Just give me a moment, won't you?”

“Or do you just want to back out of the deal and -”

“No!”

“And get it back yourself?”

“No, I -”

Suddenly she gasped, feeling a rush of pain and sorrow. Her knees immediately buckled, dropping her to the floor as she stared straight ahead. All she could think about was Julie, and in her mind's eye she saw her daughter's naked body being dragged through the mud, bloodied and bruised.

“Stop,” she stammered, as tears flowed down her face.

“Pick a name, Constance.”

“Stop, I can't -”

“Pick a name!”

“Kathleen Richards!” she gasped, falling forward onto her hands and knees. Her body was trembling now, but still she couldn't keep from thinking of Julie screaming. Even with her eyes squeezed tight shut, she could see her daughter's body getting sliced from crotch to chest.

And then, as suddenly as it had burst through her body, the sorrow vanished. And the image faded.

After taking a deep breath, Constance sat up straight and wiped the tears from her cheeks.

“Kathleen Richards?” the voice asked. “The doctor's wife? Well, that's certainly not what I expected. What have you got against
her
?”

“Nothing,” she replied, “I just...” For a moment, she felt just the faintest flicker of sorrow in her chest, but the sensation faded quickly. “Nothing at all,” she said again, getting to her feet. “I don't know, she was just the first name that popped into my head. I'm sure she'll be fine, though. She's a decent, strong woman, and she's already been through some bad times, so she should know how to cope.”

“She'd better,” the voice continued. “When she eventually breaks, I'll be back. Maybe you should think of the next name in advance. Try to get ahead of things.”

“I will,” she replied, “and... Thank you. For everything you're doing.”

“No,” the voice said, sounding a little amused, “thank
you
,Constance.”

She waited, but now the kitchen was silent again.

“Are you still here?” she asked finally.

No answer.

Taking another deep breath, Constance brushed the front of her dress to get rid of any creases, and then she turned to get on with the task of putting all her groceries away. Already smiling again, she started humming an old show-tune.

Four

“I don't know what happened,” Doctor Tim Richards said a few weeks later, as he and his sister Rose walked away from the grave. “It was so sudden, and so quick.”

“Kathleen always seemed strong,” Rose replied, glancing over her shoulder and watching as the other mourners headed to their cars. Turning back to her brother, she seemed lost for words. “No, she
was
strong. In those final days, did she say anything at all about what was troubling her?”

“Nothing.”

“But she must have, Tim. A woman doesn't just turn on a dime and become a weeping, sobbing mess without a reason. Something must have triggered the whole thing.”

“I've tried and tried to figure it out,” he continued. “It started just a couple of days after that horrible business with Julie Martin. At first, I thought maybe Kathleen was just in shock about Julie, and then maybe about poor Meredith as well. Two deaths in such a short period of time... I thought maybe it destabilized Kathleen a little. At least I could have understood that, but she got worse and worse.”

“It has to have been more than that,” Rose pointed out. “Over the course of two weeks, Kathleen went from being a busy, happy woman to a...”

“To a suicide,” Doctor Richards replied, stopping at the edge of the cemetery and turning to look at her. “It's okay, you can say the word. My wife killed herself with a bottle of pills and a rope. There's no point pussy-footing around the truth.” He glanced past her, looking toward the grave as two men got to work. “I just wish she'd been able to tell me what was wrong. She said she couldn't describe it, she said there wasn't anything specific, that it was just a general feeling of sorrow. But... I mean, she must have been holding something back, maybe something she felt she couldn't share with me. And now I'll never know.”

“She loved you,” Rose said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You know
that
, Tim.”

“I should have done more,” he muttered, with tears in his eyes as he watched a small digger tipping soil into the grave. “I should have figured it out. If I could've found her diary, maybe that would've helped.”

“That tree is dying,” Rose pointed out.

Turning, Doctor Richards saw that she was right. Nearby, several trees lining the road had started to blacken slightly, their trunks looking almost burned as the branches seemed to dip slightly. Around their bases, the grass was also darkening, as if the land was dying.

“Must be the cold weather,” the doctor said finally, feeling a shiver as a gust of cold wind blew across the cemetery. “I swear, the last two weeks, this whole town has barely seen the sun once. I don't know what's going on, but it's almost as if the world has turned against us all.”

***

“Stop!” Constance gasped, clutching the sides of her head as she rolled onto her back. “I'm trying!”

“Give me a name,” the voice said calmly. “You've had plenty of time to think.”

“But -”

“A name, Constance.”

“Please...”

“A name!”

Letting out a gasp, Constance was unable to keep the image of Julie out of her mind. She saw her daughter being beaten, and the poor girl's ribs cracking as she was pummeled by a snarling, laughing madman. She heard screams, too, and for a moment she could barely even think, before finally – as if from the depths of her mind – a single name reached her lips. She tried to hold back, knowing it would be unfair, but the name bubbled to the front of her mouth as if it was determined to slip out.

“Amanda Clarke,” she stammered.

“What did you say?”

“Amanda Clarke...”

“I'm sorry, Constance, you're mumbling. What did you -”

“Amanda Clarke!” she screamed.

“Amanda Clarke?”

“Amanda Clarke!”

Immediately, the images of Julie's death faded from her mind. Breathless and startled, Constance sat up on the bathroom floor and pulled herself over to the side of the bath. After a moment, she began to wipe thick, slimy saliva from the side of her mouth.

“Amanda Clarke,” the voice said again. “The primary school teacher? Fine.”

“Is it real?” Constance asked.

“Is what real?”

“What I see.” She paused, thinking back to the horrific image of Julie on the forest floor. “Am I imagining it, or are you somehow showing me what really happened?”

“Do you honestly want to know?”

She paused. “No,” she said finally, forcing a smile. “No, I suppose I don't, really.”

She waited, before realizing that she was once again alone.

“Who are you?” she asked.

The answer was silence.

“Who are you?” she shouted, her voice trembling with shock, but again there was no reply.

Getting to her feet, she turned and looked at herself in the small mirror above the sink. Her smile seemed a little more strained, she realized, so she took a moment to practice it before, finally, she realized that it was genuine again.

***

“Is this it?” Rose asked, hurrying through to the office with a tattered book in her hand. “Tim, I think I found Kathleen's diary! It was behind the bookcase!”

Taking the diary from her, Tim opened it and started looking through the pages.

“What the hell...” he muttered, finding that the whole thing seemed to be full of illegible, scrawled text that made no sense at all. On a couple of pages, he even saw crude drawings that appeared to show a figure that had been cut open, with a face watching from the distance. Despite the frenzied insanity that filled each and every page, however, he was just about able to recognize his wife's handwriting, and he felt a shiver as he realized that
this
was how she'd filled her final days. He'd caught her writing several times, but she'd always clutched the book to her chest, refusing to let him see.

“You said the diary might help,” Rose pointed out tentatively.

“My wife had the neatest handwriting I ever saw,” he replied, still flicking through the diary. “Even her shopping lists were perfect, but this...”

He stopped and stared at one particular page, where a drawing showed a naked woman with blood on either side of her body, almost like angel wings. Although he wanted to look away, something about the horrific image held his gaze.

“He cracked Julie's ribs,” Tim read from the page, squinting as he struggled to decipher the spidery handwriting. He had to turn the book around, so as to follow the line of letters that twisted around toward the spine. “She...” Sighing, he glanced at Rose. “It looks like she was obsessed with what happened to Julie Martin.”

“Did Rose even
know
Julie?”

“Barely. Maybe to recognize in the street, but no more than that.”

He turned to another page.

“None of this -”

Stopping suddenly, he realized that another drawing showed a close-up of the damage between Julie's legs, with what appeared to be sticks and twigs forced into the poor girl's body. Sickened by the image, he still couldn't stop staring for a moment as he saw how much detail his wife had included. Finally, feeling nauseous, he closed the diary.

“I never knew Kathleen was into art,” Rose said cautiously.

“She wasn't,” he replied, staring at the front of the battered book. “She always said she couldn't even draw a goddamn circle, and she was right. It was the only thing I ever saw that woman fail at. We used to joke about it.”

“She sure seemed to be drawing a lot in the weeks before...”

Rose's voice trailed off.

“Before her suicide,” Tim muttered, setting the book down. “I remember hearing her talking in her sleep, just a few nights before she killed herself. She was going on about someone trying to scream. It didn't make much sense at the time, but I guess she was talking about Julie Martin.”

“Do you think the girl's murder somehow triggered something?”

“It was a great shock to the whole town,” he admitted. “Everyone was horrified, but...” He paused. “Two suicides since it happened. First Meredith Cooper, and then Kathleen. It's going to be -”

Before he could finish, his phone started to ring. Grabbing it from the desk, he looked at the screen.

“Huh,” he muttered. “It's Gary from the police station.”

***

“Okay, settle down!” Amanda called out, holding up a pair of scissors in one hand and some colored paper in the other. “Everybody? Settle down and pay attention!”

Gradually, and reluctantly, the children began to get back into their seats. Recess had ended several minutes earlier, but the classroom was filled with boisterous voices and it had already taken Amanda long enough to even attract their attention. Now, as she continued to call for them to sit, she couldn't help feeling that once again she was struggling to exert her authority. Sometimes, she felt she wasn't cut out for teaching at all.

“Okay,” she said finally, forcing a smile, as the last of the children sat and turned to her. “This afternoon, we're going to be cutting shapes from the sticky paper. Does that sound like fun?”

She waited for an enthusiastic reply, but all she heard was a faint murmur.

“Well, I think it's going to be fun,” she continues, grabbing a pile of colored paper and handing it to the nearest girl- “Pass these around. Everybody take three, choose your favorite colors, and then we can begin.”

She watched as the children began to pass the sheets to one another. Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that she'd only been teaching for eight months, and that it was only natural for her methods to still be a little rough. What mattered, she figured, was that she helped the children to learn, and that she made sure her classroom was always a fun and engaging environment.

“Alright,” she said with a smile, “are you all ready? Now, what I want you to do is -”

Suddenly she froze. The smile remained plastered on her face, but somehow it seemed less genuine. Her eyes were still smiling too, although even the children were starting to wonder whether something was wrong. Finally, after holding this position for several seconds, Amanda plunged the scissors into her chest, piercing her heart and letting out a gasp before falling forward and letting a torrent of blood erupt from her mouth.

The children began to scream.