Dread giving her grit, she tore down the tapestry, ready to fight her way past the horrid creature, but found merely a tarnished, cracked, fly-spotted, and warped mirror in a nook. She had a fit of giggles, then, controlling herself, looked about her again. There must be some other way out of the chamber. Where were her boys else? Then she saw, on the far side of the room, in the deepest shadows, a ladder. She crossed to it, climbed up, groping for the rungs, and found there was a trapdoor in the ceiling. Pushing it open, she clambered through.
The upper chamber was lit by sputtering rush torches in wall sconces, was bodged up into a grisly sham of the dining room in her house. The chairs and table were rickety, with rusty nails jutting, and covered in tallowy fungal growths. Peter and Jeremy sat, on the chairs, at the table, eating squirming filth by the forkful. And behind them stood a ghoul, yellowed bone, swagged with shreds of grey muscle and scraps of leathery hide, clad in rags and a blood-spattered apron. Dried-up eyes sunk into a shrunken skull; mouth a raw rent, twisted into a grisly smile.
Jane moaned, retched.
‘Are you alright?’ the thing Roderick had become asked, tenderly.
Struggling to compose herself, sore afraid of what the horror might do if it realized she was no longer cozened, Jane breathed slow.
‘Sorry. I’m fine, really. Just feeling on edge.’
The thing looked leery at her. Strained smile without, turmoil within, she clubbed her brains, but all seemed hopeless.
Then Jeremy, looking up at the thing, seemed to see something of its true, its loathsome, aspect, blenched. She tried to catch his eye, but was too late.
‘What’s that!’ he wailed, pointing.
The thing made to move toward him, and he jumped out of his chair, ran, weeping, to Jane. She squatted, took him in her arms.
‘Don’t cry, Jeremy,’ she said. ‘I’ll not let any harm come to you.’
Then, feigning mettle, she called out, ‘Peter! Come here. We’re leaving.’
Peter thumped the table, stood, took one of the thing’s withered hands in his.
‘Only if Dad comes with us,’ he said.
‘Peter, my love,’ wheedling, ‘that’s not your dad. Your father is dead.’
‘Of course I’m not dead!’ the thing barked. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Jeremy,’ said Jane, desperate, ‘tell Peter.’
Jeremy looked out from behind her legs, where he quailed.
‘Peter, it’s true. That’s some kind of a monster. It’s not Dad.’
‘Why are you being so hateful?’ the thing said, doleful look on its ravaged face.
‘Peter, please,’ Jane begged.
Scowling, he shook his head.
Frantic, Jane, started toward him. The thing sneered, reached into the pocket of its apron, took out the kitchen knife he’d fallen on years before, now tarnished, but kept keen-honed, brandished it behind Peter’s back. Jane stopped. Sweat pooled in the hollows of her collar bones, despite the chill. The thing grinned at her.
Then she rallied her routed wits. She needed to get Peter outside somehow; the sight of the desert waste might shiver the illusion for him, as it had with her. Taking Jeremy’s hand, she led him over to the ladder.
‘Climb down,’ she whispered. ‘Wait for me at the bottom. Don’t be scared. And don’t budge from the foot of the ladder.’
‘Okay,’ Jeremy said, through tears. ‘We’re not leaving Peter, though, are we?’
‘No, of course not. Now, be brave for me.’
He nodded, then placed his foot gingerly on the first rung, started down. Glancing over her shoulder, Jane saw the thing make to approach, then stall, stand grimacing. She followed Jeremy down, slow, grabbling for each rung. The door was shut again, and it was very dark. The dread chitinous scratching still rose from the pit beneath.
After Jane had stepped down off the last rung onto the floorboards, she groped about in the dark, found Jeremy. He flinched away, whimpered.
‘It’s me! It’s me. Don’t fret.’
‘Mum. That noise…It’s horrible.’
‘Jeremy, stay here, against the wall. Don’t move. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘Okay. I’m going to go up there again now. When I come back down Peter’ll be with me. And we’ll leave.’
Then she reached into her bag, took out her hipflask, raised it to her lips to swig, put some of the fire in her she was bluffing, but, as the vodka swilled into her mouth, she felt disgusted, cast the flask from her, to clatter to the floor, spat.
‘What’s that?’ Jeremy yowled.
‘Don’t worry, sweetheart. Just wait for me here.’
She climbed back up the ladder, clambered through the trapdoor. In the sham dining room, Peter and the thing stood much as she’d left them.
‘Do you think you can both forgive me?’
The thing narrowed its eyes.
‘It’s the strain of this book,’ she went on. ‘Writing’s so difficult just now, has made me bad tempered. But I promise I’ll make it up to you. In fact, I’ve just bought Jeremy an ice cream. Peter, would you like one? The van’s waiting outside.’
The boy bit his lip.
‘Jeremy’s had one?’
‘Yes.’
He squinted down at his feet.
Louring at Jane, the thing again waved the blade.
‘Can I have a flake and hundreds-and-thousands?’ Peter asked.
‘Of course you can.’
He started for Jane, but the thing held fast his hand.
‘Peter, can’t you see she’s trying to trick you? There’s no ice-cream van. It’s too late for that.’
Peter turned, looked up at the thing, frowned.
Then came a faint cracked air. An ice-cream van’s carillon. Jane’s mouth dropped open. The thing flinched as if struck.
A scurry. Peter darted forwards, the thing tried to hold him back. Sinews snapped, gristle grated, the thing’s pale and mottled hand was wrested from its wrist. It howled, wept. Peter screamed, struck at the hand. It loosed its grip, fell to the floor, but, as he ran wailing to Jane, scuttled across the boards after. Peter hid behind Jane, and she stepped forward, kicked the hand. It flipped, then lay on its back, waggling its fingers, unable to right itself.
The thing, tears running down its tattered cheeks, said, ‘I just wanted for us to be a family again. Why take my sons from me?’
Jane turned to Peter.
‘Climb down the ladder. Quick. I’ll be right behind.’
Peter, then Jane, began scrambling down the ladder. Bellowing, the thing lurched at them, hacking with the knife. When they reached the bottom, Jane cast her eyes upward, saw it, haloed by the light spilling through the hatch, clambering down.
She started herding her sons towards the chinks of moonlight seeping round the edges of the door, keeping them to the wall. Then the thing missed its footing, dropped, thudded to the boards. Rot spores drifted up, gyred in the light from the trapdoor. After lying prone a moment, the thing struggled to its feet. One of its eyesockets was shattered, the shrivelled ball dangled by a purple and nacre chord, and its jawbone hung askew, its black tongue, a slug in brine, lolled. Then, staggering towards Jane and the boys, the thing that had once been Roderick blundered into the pit. There was a splintering and a crunch, then a chittering, scrabbling, rending, shrieking.
Jane, reaching the door, threw it wide, and she and her sons flung themselves through…
…and stumbled, gasping, into a wood-panelled lift, one of the foot tunnel’s. The operator, an elderly woman, glanced up at them, smiled, nodded, pressed the button. Perhaps she thought they’d been playing at ‘it’.
When they were out in the open air again, in the waning light of late afternoon, on the south bank of the Thames, they walked to the river’s edge, looked out across it. Then Jeremy shuddered, put his hand to his mouth, pointed down at the shingle beach. A dead swan lay on the pebbles, wings spread, plumage muddied, long neck crooked. A
thin smear of blood on its beak.
VII
I write this in a cramped compartment in the hold of the Ark, far from sunlight and moonlight and rain and wind…I fear I’ll never know these things again (I shudder, am wretched to think how, when I first saw, in dark red, stark against the drab steel of its hull, this hulk’s name, I thought it a sign the vessel was to be a refuge). This room was, I’m sure, an office once; it’s furnished with a desk, a chair, and a filing cabinet, empty, save some scraps of paper with meaningless squiggles on and, in the bottom drawer, a pentacle made of five paper clips, bent and twisted together. The tribeswoman and I are confined here, unable to leave, to return to the companion hatch, even if we did feel it worth, to feel the warmth of the sun on our skins again and to gulp our lungs full of fresh air, giving ourselves up to those waiting without.
With no sight of the sky, it’s hard to gauge the passing of time, but I’d hazard we’ve been down here at least a fortnight. Our supply of food has dwindled, and I fear will all soon be eaten up, and that the tribeswoman will starve, even though we’ve been sparing, and I’ve often gone without, knowing hunger can only cause me pain, not kill.
Thankfully, we’d more water, and I’ve not had to go without. That cannot kill me either, but I know, of old, the searing of a parched throat is worse than an empty stomach’s pangs. I’m glad, too, not to have to watch the tribeswoman die of thirst, it’s a bad end, worse than wasting away, belly empty.
I blame myself for our dire pass; we were safe, but I wanted to return for my typescript and typewriter, would not be deterred, was frantic to finish my tale. As it is, I doubt I’ll now be able to; I reckon my age-old adversary behind the attack that led to our being trapped, and await his bursting in, soon, to torture and make an end of me (and, and this wrings me, throw the tribeswoman, if she’s not by then succumbed to hunger, to her former tribe, as a hunter might throw scraps to his hounds). I must press on, with all haste, if I’m to have any chance of setting down all I wish to tell.
Having just looked over the corrected proofs of my account of Jane’s tale and the conversation and events that preceded it, which the tribeswoman finished typing up earlier this morning, it occurs to me that, for you, no matter whether you barely read, merely skimmed, pored over, or struggled with those pages, only a short time has passed since the afternoon my forehead was laid open and I put the posse from the tribe to rout by killing their chieftain; for even the most painstaking or sluggardly, it can’t have been more than an hour’s reading. But it’s not so for me; it’s actually been many weeks since then; my wound has long healed, and things have happened to the tribeswoman and me to entirely overshadow that afternoon’s violence.
My work has been halting, hampered by turmoil.
Forgive this digression, but, now death looms, time, which once hung so heavy, again seems rare, and I feel compelled to hold it in my hands, examine its facets, as a jeweller, loupe screwed into one eye, would a gemstone.
But, with these musings on time, I’m squandering the handful of it remaining to me; I must return to my tale. But I felt the need to make clear that, though for you, my reader, a short time will have passed since the skirmish, really, in my reckoning, it’s been over two months. Wanting to avoid diminishing the dread atmosphere Jane’s tale builds, and to give you, my reader, a tolerably straight way, I’ve resisted breaking it up. But I have, while setting it down, been battered by squally fate.
While I was working on the melancholy epilogue to William’s tale, the tribeswoman and I were granted a lull of a week and a half or so. I was writing the large part of that time, and she, having taken on the burden of meeting most of our wants, spent her days collecting firewood, hunting, fishing, and foraging. She was adept at these things, far more skilled than I, and seemed to pleasure in them. I did, though, take responsibility for the daily chores, such as cleaning, cooking, washing, and so forth, but these tasks were done fairly quickly, didn’t take me away from my tale for long. On a couple of occasions, though, as I wished to learn some of the tribeswoman’s wilderness lore, I did go with her on an excursion. She imparted to me a few of her skills; showed me how bulrush stems, dampened and pulped between stones, yielded long fibres that, once dry, could be stranded into strong, flexible twine for snares; taught me that mushrooms, roots, berries, and nuts could be found by watching the wildlife, that birds flocking to a particular tree told it was in fruit, that boars digging in the earth was a sign of tubers that were good to eat beneath the sod; demonstrated how to drowse bees’ nests with smoke, shake out the stupored bees, plunder the honeycomb.
She and I communicate solely through gestures. Not since our first encounter has she addressed me in her own tongue, and she doesn’t try to convey anything by means of expressive noises, which I find strange, as it’s something that it’s natural to do; I’d think she’d been struck mute by her beating at the hands of the natives, but that I’ve heard her cry out in her sleep, and that she sometimes lilts quietly to herself.
Those peaceful days were marred only by the pricks of my conscience, by my remorse over the tribal leader slain. I won’t claim it was the first death at my hand; in a life as long as mine has been, well…But I don’t believe I’d ever snuffed a simple, innocent life before; till then, my killings had been, more or less, just. I cursed myself for not being shrewd enough to hit on some way of putting her and her minions to flight without bloodshed. I often dreamt of her final throes, was wakened.
But, otherwise, that period was calm, happy. The tribeswoman and I grew close.
On the afternoon of the tenth or eleventh day, while trying to recall the exact words of the bewigged drunk’s weird curse, I heard the tribeswoman scream. Dashing to the gunwale, I looked downriver, to the swathe of estuary mud laid bare by the low tide, where she’d gone seeking razor clams for our supper. She was stood atop a rock jutting from the flats, fending off, with the stick she’d taken with her to help her walk in the quag silt, a pair of swine, boar and sow. They’d yellowed teeth, wild rolling eyes, the boar larger and with a ruff of coarse bristles and reddish tufts ridging its spine. The beasts grunted, snorted, shook their heads, circled the outcrop, churned up mud. As I watched, the boar backed off a little way, then rushed at the tribeswoman and up the steep sides of the rock. Its hooves clattered, scrabbled, and it fell back, but, as it flailed, it thrust forward its head, gored her thigh with a tusk. She yowled, staggered, almost fell. I ran down the gangplank, ran towards her.
But she’d no need of a shining knight; as I made for her, feet sinking with each stride, she feinted at the sow with her stick, then lunged at the boar, put out one of its eyes. Squealing, it turned, fled. The sow stood its ground a moment, snarling, but then the tribeswoman whacked it on the snout, and it too bolted.
After clambering down from the rock, the tribeswoman hobbled towards me, grimacing. Nearing, she stopped, hiked up the hem of her shift, showed me where the boar had gashed her. It was high on her thigh, and I felt a tremble of longing, such as I’d not had in a long, long time, and I looked away, shamed.
The wound was fairly deep, and we went back to the Ark to swab and bandage it.
Much of the rest of the afternoon we spent together, collecting our evening meal, wandering the flats, eyes open for tell-tale dints, delving gingerly in the mud if we sighted one, hoping to grab the clam, without disturbing it, before it could dig deeper, and haul it out. Then we’d heft our catch, and either place it in the sack we toted, or chuck it back if it seemed scanty of flesh. When we’d gathered plenty, we returned to the Ark, and I continued marking up draft pages, while the tribeswoman went off again. Just after sunset, she came back with a bundle of samphire to go with the clams. I put down my pen, and we cooked up the shellfish in the raked ashes of a fire. Then feasted till juices ran down our chins.
That evening, after eating, we were both strangely elated; I wonder if it was the rich clamflesh made us so. We sat together in the prow of the Ark and I taught the tribeswoman to pick o
ut some simple tunes on the banjo. Afterwards, I played and sang for her. At first, she sat quiet, just listening, then she began singing wordlessly along, harmonizing with my melody lines. Once I’d tired, the pads of my fingers were sore, we lay back on the deck, looked up at the sky. It was cloudless, dark, dark blue, daubed with a bright, full moon, spattered with stars. I thought to point out to the tribeswoman the constellations I’d learnt as a child, but found I couldn’t recall any, if indeed they could still be seen in the sky, if the stellar clutter hadn’t shifted too much over the long ages. I’d not picked up any of the intervening epoch’s sidereal ragtags, either. So, I made up fit-seeming names for shapes I saw instead. There was the courtesan, shielding her face with her fan; her suitor, the beggar boy, cap in hand; the snail; the sail-fin shark; the death’s head hawkmoth; and the spider monkey. I was hushed, not afraid of my voice betraying us, but awed by the beauty in the welkin, sleepy, and content. Finally, we retired, the tribeswoman to the pallet in the cabin, me to blankets spread out under my lean-to. I felt really happy. However, something happened that night to dispel my good mood. I wrote an account of it the following morning, perhaps it’s best I give you that version, composed when it was still raw.
Last night, the tribeswoman came to me in my shelter as I slumbered, woke me, traced, with her finger, the healing scar slashing across my brow. Opening my eyes, I saw her, by the moon’s light, crouched on haunches beside me. Naked. She gazed at me hard, with her soft brown eyes, her dark hair, hanging straight down, framing her face. I felt lust for the first time in many ages, sat up, throwing off my blanket, lapped at her breasts, thrust my hand between her thighs, groping in the warm dark cleft. Closing her eyes, biting her lower lip, she seized me by the nape, pulled me to her, then straddled me, took hold my cock, sought to stick herself with it. But I was limp, have been chaste too long. Grimacing, shamed, I pushed the woman aside. She looked at me, bewildered, hurt. I noticed she’d removed the bandage from her wound, that it was healing very well. I was about to mention it, to cover my embarrassment, but she padded away. For some time, I lay awake, staring up at the thatched roof of the lean-to.
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