‘Bernie?’ she called hopefully, as she reached the bottom. ‘Bernie?’
She could hear no sound. No breathing, gasping, rustling...nothing at all.
She peered round the corner, gaze glued to the small circle of light from the torch. He wasn’t there. She let out the breath she’d been holding.
For just a second, she felt relieved and frightened all at once. Then, from above, something crashed, shattered, like glass, but lots of it, rather than just a drinking glass knocked from a table. Another crash, something big.
Shit. Her mind reeled, too much panic and fear hammering into her senses. Calm down...it's a big sound, like they just broke the windows...like they're breaking in.
She didn't doubt for a minute that it was them.
The shotgun was still under the bed. The sound of breaking glass came from downstairs. They were in the house.
She had to get past them to get the shotgun.
She broke into a run, aiming to take the stairs and dash as fast as she could to the bedroom and the gun. The first five steps held just fine. The sixth snapped clean through with a terrifying sound louder even than the breaking glass and she thudded back against the sodden dirt and brick below.
*
‘Enough,’ said Rob, ruffling his son’s hair.
‘Aw, Da’.’
Rob shook his head. 'We're done, boy. Come on.'
The boy sniffed, but he didn't argue or complain further. He dropped the stones he’d been holding back onto the farmer's drive, then followed his dad back to the battered old van he drove. Neither of them looked for the scarecrow. The night was pitch. They wouldn’t have seen it, and anyway, that job was done. The man had been taught.
The woman, too.
Vengeance, cold and brutal, had blown itself out. Rob and his boy drove back to Davis’ field, where they would pack up. By first light, they would be gone. A whirlwind, spent.
The van bounced and rattled down the Rochette's long, potholed drive, headlights swaying up and down and then gone.
In the darkness left behind, the scarecrow moved ever closer to the house. Sometimes it paused, or seemed to stagger. But always, it got closer.
A cold rain started to fall. The wind picked at the straw that jutted from the scarecrow's sleeves and the simple sheet covering it fluttered and flapped, stuck, then picked up again. The sackcloth thing over the scarecrow's head remained tight, and muffled sounds came from somewhere within, but nothing that could be understood. Grunts. Cries. No words. Just pain, determination, and something that made the blood run cold.
That muttering, ranting voice mostly came from the throat and nose, yet even without true words, you could tell; the scarecrow was arguing with itself.
Somewhere beneath the sheet and straw, the wire and the wood, beneath the tight mask that covered the scarecrow's head, sanity and insanity were at war.
*
Margaret sat up and rubbed her aching, thumping head. She’d knocked herself a good one on the way down. With her right hand pushed herself to her feet, tottering as she rose. She used her right hand because her left hand wouldn’t work properly. It hurt like hell.
Some meagre light from the kitchen still reached the cellar, and in that light she held up her left hand. It seemed that's what a broken wrist looked like.
'That’s a bastard,’ she said, with very little passion. She flapped her hand around to make sure. It moved like a wet tea towel. There wasn’t much pain. Perhaps the nerves were torn. She just couldn’t seem to care.
Blood ran into her eye from a cut somewhere on her head. She wiped it away with her free hand. She tried to raise some emotion. She was sure there was some reason she was at the bottom of the old cellar, but for the life of her she couldn’t think of it.
But either way, she wasn’t banged up enough to think sitting around at the bottom of a cold and damp and stinky cellar was a good idea.
She eyed the steps warily. There was something about those steps...
Three of them seemed to be missing, along with a few moments from her memory.
'I came down. I can't get back up,' she said, a hint of wonder in her voice. 'Stupid way to go.'
Then, she staggered again, holding onto the rotted wood with her useless hand. She slipped, fell down to her knees.
'Woo...'
She felt almost drunk. It had been a long, long time since she'd been drunk. She remembered it well enough. Bernie and her...somewhere foreign...Dusseldorf?
Bernie.
‘Bernie?’ she called, but more weakly than she would have liked. He’d help her. All she needed was a ladder. Maybe an ambulance. She’d call them when she got to the kitchen. The coffee was on. The smell made her mouth water.
‘Bernie?’
Then another memory, followed by another, like a torrent. She remembered why she came down those spiteful stairs in the first place.
Bernie...oh...Bernie...where are you? What did they do to you...?
'Bernie!'
Her voice, this time, was stronger, louder, and far more urgent.
She had a thought, then, in that hazy way people think when their head's pounding them down hard enough to hunch their shoulders.
What if they put him in the field? Tied up, low down...or in the woods...she never would have seen him.
But it's not just Bernie in the shit, is it?
No. No it wasn't. Because now she was stuck at the bottom of the cellar...someone smashed her windows a moment ago...
I was rushing to get the shotgun...
Because someone was in the house.
Them. And if they're in the house, and I'm stuck down here, and Bernie's stuck in the fields...
Then I'm screwed, she thought. If he was in the field, she might be stuck all day. Or...longer. Much, much longer.
A knock, knock, knock...somewhere above. Somewhere distant. Upstairs?
Dun Dun Dun…
What was that?
‘Bernie!’ This time she shouted louder. As loud as she could manage. If it was them, not Bernie? It didn't make any difference now.
Haven't got a choice, Margaret. Only chance you've got. Because you're not getting out of here alone.
She stared up at the square of light above her, her blood cold, her limbs frozen.
She waited for a face to leer at her, from above. Waited to plead. Hoped they wouldn't just close the trapdoor and leave her to rot, forgotten and lost in the dark.
Or, I could stop being bloody helpless and do something about it.
Fear froze her, and she understood that, finally.
What she needed was some way to break her fear, to get herself moving again.
So, not letting herself think any further beyond the present, she rammed her broken wrist into the side of the stairs. She had to bite back the scream but it did the trick. She was moving again.
She wasn’t stuck, and it was never hopeless. She wasn’t some stupid girl.
Margaret sniffed away tears of pain and fear, then looked at the bastard stairs that were between her and safety, between her and the shotgun, and probably gypsy psychopaths who'd taken her husband somewhere to...what? Teach him a lesson? Get revenge?
Who the hell took a man away for smacking a kid who needed smacking anyway?
Thinking again, about a mad family that had ruined their quiet, peaceful life, Margaret's anger pushed aside her fear.
She gritted her teeth against the pain and took the bottom three stairs carefully, as far as she could go without using her hands to pull. Then, at the break in the staircase, she reached up as high as she could and grabbed the next unbroken riser with her good hand. Waves of pain roared through her wrist, her hand, and her head thumped hard enough to make her faint and out of breath. Her whole arm throbbed, but she needed it. Not the hand. The pain.
She placed one foot on the side runner, still wood, and perhaps rotted, but now her weight was along the narrow part, with the whole width of the wood supporting her weight, rather than her weight b
eing on the width with only the narrowness of the plank to support her. Using her right hand to guide her, she shuffled her feet along the edges of the stairs, then, her hand, alternating feet and her one working hand until finally she clasped the floor above.
Come on you old cow, she told herself when her energy sapped and she could not pull herself those final few feet. Angry again, teeth clamped hard, she pulled hard as she could, got her chest, then her waist, over the edge, until she was out, flopped, panting and crying on the cold hard grey kitchen floor.
Her breath came in great, ragged gasps. She could have happily lain there for a week, but the banging from upstairs was suddenly joined by another, more insistent banging, and this time, not from the top floor...this time it was closer.
They're at the back door. The French windows...
And if they're up there, and down here...it means...it means that there is more than one...there are two, maybe three...might be all of them.
The whole of the Mulrone clan, come to finish their insane vendetta...
Well, fuck them.
She pushed herself up, put her head down, and ran for her bedroom and for the shotgun under the bed.
Fuck them.
*
Bernie!
Bernie!
The voice sounded familiar. So familiar. But he couldn’t think straight. The voices were drowning out all sounds, all thoughts. The pain, too, was gone…away. His arms, his legs…
They were like Spain. The pain had emigrated.
Probably frightened of the gypsies. People were frightened of them. He knew that. Frightened of the Polish, the Portuguese, the Croatians, the Indians, the French, goddamn it. People were afraid of the French.
Bernie wasn’t afraid of any of them. He had a gypsy friend. He was a good friend. Best friend he ever had. The man made sense. He’d got him moving. He knew Bernie couldn’t do the front door. Of course he couldn’t. His arms were in Spain. You can’t do complicated doors when your limbs have emigrated.
‘Aye, now swing, like t’at, t’at’s it, swing,’ the voice, the gypsy, said.
Another voice said, Bernie, you know you’re going insane, don’t you? Don’t you? Bernie?
But Bernie didn’t like that voice so much. That voice kept telling him off. He wasn’t a little boy. He was a man.
'T’at’s rite. Ya’s a man.’
Damn right, thought Bernard and swung his hand through the glass back door, the French window. With his weight, and the weight of the cross-post that his hands were nailed to, his arms bound to, the glass gave easily enough. He twisted again, from the waist, like his gypsy friend told him. Then, tottering and shaking, he took the weight on his right leg. That leg was soaked thigh to foot, but he didn't care anymore, and he didn't feel it. Shuffled…like so…slid his hand and the post, too, through the smashed glass and reached for the latch. But his bastard hand wouldn't work, couldn't...
Just hit it...hit it below. It'll pop up. Trust me, said someone's voice, but at this point Bernard didn't know whose voice, or if there even was a voice. But it didn't lie. He nudged the latch up, and it fell aside, and he pushed.
Remember why you’re here? Remember Madge.
That voice. That thrice-buggered voice. The sensible one, the one he hated...it was a liar, wasn't it? What did it think? Did it think Bernie was stupid?
Of course not. I'm trying to help you, Bernie...remember?
'Ah, but ya do, ay? Think my man Bernie here's an idyit, don't ya?'
'Get out. Both of you bastards, get out of my head! I’ll do it. I’ll get her. I’ll get Madge. I know why I’m here. She’s my wife, so you both fuck off. Don’t patronize me.'
His lips, torn ragged and bloody, were now free. Talking hurt him, each word brought fresh blood, but the blood soothed his dry throat.
He could see very little through the narrow slits in the sack-thing they'd forced over his head, but he remembered his own house well enough, thank you. He shuffled, round the kitchen table, the sheared post at his back dragging behind his legs, scraping across the hard floor. His feet, slick with blood, were unsure on the smooth surface, but he went slow and careful.
In a good world, perhaps Bernie would have gone round the side with the trapdoor open and waiting.
In a good world.
Instead, hardly able to see anything, feel anything, even think straight or speak, he reached the foot of the stairs.
Then there was thunder, and he screamed.
He swallowed the blood and cried out for his wife.
‘Madge! Madge! I’ve come to get you!’
*
Margaret ran straight into the bedroom, snatched the gun from where it hid under the bed.
She took some shells and put them into her pockets, then, after less than a second, took them all and stuffed them down until her pockets bulged. If they were all here she wouldn’t die because she did something as stupid as running out of shells. And she knew how many Mulrones there might be, didn't she?
Enough.
Another, heavier crash came from the kitchen and she knew they’d broken the French doors in. But she was upstairs, and that noise was downstairs. Upstairs, the more immediate threat was the banging down the hall, coming from the spare bedroom.
She checked the load in the long gun, not so easy one handed, then snapped the gun closed with a hard flick. There were no hammers on the Beretta, just a switch to choose which barrel to fire.
And she could still pull a trigger just fine.
Margaret pushed the spare room door aside, stepped into the darkness and fired at the first thing that moved. Her mother's old rocking chair exploded, splinters flying everywhere.
Shit. I'm losing it.
Her ears rang, everything smoke and gun-stench and deafness, and she'd definitely killed the chair. Glass covered the floor. The wind and rain outside blew in, and the heavy curtain that rested against the chair had moved it, back and forth. Nothing more.
Don't...don't stop. You're not a rabbit, woman.
She moved, turned and headed for the next sound she heard. Footsteps, heavy and dragging on the stone below, and then, as she stalked along the upstairs landing, she heard a foot thud down hard on the first of the steps that led up to her.
That's not a bloody rocking chair climbing the stairs, is it?
They're really coming this time.
She took a deep breath, broke the gun, spat out the spent shell and slid two more home. Then she walked along the hall, toward the stairs. She’d hold them here. The house was built to last. So was she. She wouldn’t let them beat her.
They’d taken her Bernie. She’d take them.
Margaret turned at the top of the stairs, her mouth set in a tight line like she was angry. She wasn't. She was fucking furious, and when she saw the thing at the foot of the stairs her fear was all gone, nothing left but rage. Some terrible thing, some sick, sad joke, stood at the foot of the stairs.
‘Ay’ve come ta get ya!’ it cried.
‘Like fuck you have,’ she said, and gave the pikey bastard both barrels.
The scarecrow slumped to the floor and reality sank back in.
The words were wrong...but the voice...you know that voice...
'God...God...no...'
On weak, shaking legs, she staggered down the stairs, her hand sliding along the banister, holding her up, stopping her bouncing and tumbling down the stairs like the shotgun she dropped. The gun bounced, then slid flat and bumped into the mangled shape at the base of the stairs.
'Bernie...God...what? How...?'
She remembered the old woman's words, a distant memory, back on Davis' field.
‘He be on t’a farm. Ya find him, ya keep him.’
An old woman with steel in her eyes. That old gypsy cunt.
She remembered the scarecrow, standing in the field again.
Bernie must have stood the scarecrow up again...
Bernie never did a thing without her nagging him, did he?
The gu
n came to rest on her husband’s ruined chest, the stock nudging the wound as it slid to a stop. She fell the last few steps, then crumpled on top of him with her head against his bloody corpse.
*
5.
Monday
Margaret slept there, in her husband's drying blood, for nearly twenty hours. But she woke, eventually. Bernie didn’t.
She broke her face away from his chest, where the blood had crusted.
One glance at him, and then she picked up the gun with her one good hand, cradled it in her elbow while she loaded it with two of the many shells in her pockets. Some of those red shells littered the stairs, and the stone around her dead husband. But this time she would only need two.
It’s never easy, loading a shotgun with one hand, but she did it again. Margaret was never surprised by the things she could do. She just did them. Like what she was going to do now. She didn’t wonder about it, she just set out to do it. Kill the gypsy woman. Both barrels, and she didn't give a shit where the old woman took it. Head, chest, legs...as long as she died bloody in the end.
She glanced in the rearview mirror when she got behind the wheel of their old Volvo, and she liked what she saw. Her tight, red face, hair matted with dry blood. She looked like vengeance.
But they denied her even that.
The Mulrones were gone. The field where they'd been was all but empty. Muddy ruts crisscrossed the field. Shit and rubbish littered the mud. But there were no vans. No people.
All that remained in the field was a horse. A lone horse, heavy with a good strong back, just grazing idly.
As she walked through the mud, stepping around ruts and over filthy puddles, around anything in her path, she saw that something flapped in the wind there against the saddle the horse wore. It looked to be a fine saddle. Thick polished leather, ornate metalwork.
Margaret walked up to the horse. Her blood was quick with rage. But calm, too, outside. Cold, solid, calm.
‘Fair’s fair,’ said the note. The script was sprawling, shaky. An old woman’s hand.
A Scarecrow to Watch over Her (A Horror Novella) Page 6