Bone Harvest

by James Brogden

  ‘I think you’re overreacting.’

  ‘I think you’re going to give yourself food poisoning one of these days.’

  She gave her daughter a hug. ‘I love you, darling.’

  ‘I love you too.’

  They had tea. Lizzie took Viggo for a walk while Dennie made a pizza from a frozen base (use by: Mar 2017). As it cooked she had a quick look in Lizzie’s room and discovered that she’d packed for a longer stay this time – a week, probably.

  ‘How are you feeling, Mum?’

  ‘If I were any fitter I’d be dangerous. Why? What have you heard?’

  ‘What makes you think I’ve heard anything?’

  ‘Oh, come on, darling. I wasn’t born yesterday. From the size of that bag in your room you look like you’re moving back in.’

  Lizzie chewed. ‘Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing?’

  ‘Someone told you about the sleepwalking thing, didn’t they?’

  ‘Mum—’

  Dennie banged her glass down hard on the table. ‘Why can’t people just mind their own bloody business?’

  The gentleness in Lizzie’s voice was more maddening than her anger would have been. ‘You are my business, Mum. And when you turn up outside someone’s home at four in the morning in your nightdress, it becomes their business too.’

  Dennie could feel her face burning red with mortification. ‘She said she wouldn’t say anything, that two-faced bitch. With her walnut cake and her bloody sketches from the bloody… thing, you know. Place.’

  ‘What place?’ Lizzie was looking at her in concern, and that only made it worse because Dennie knew that she was right to be concerned.

  ‘You know! The place with the pictures! Paris! The Mona Lisa!’

  ‘Do you mean the Louvre? Mum, why are you talking about the Louvre?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter! The point is that she and that boyfriend of hers are squatting. They’ve got no right to be there.’

  ‘She’s as concerned about you as all of us.’ Lizzie took a deep breath. ‘Mum, I’ve made an appointment for you to see Dr Fielding.’

  ‘Have you, now?’

  ‘Yes. It’s for next Tuesday, which is why I’m staying for longer.’

  ‘To make sure I actually go, is that it?’

  Lizzie put down her half-eaten pizza crust and fixed her with a look that had the granite stubbornness she’d inherited from her father. ‘As a matter of fact, yes. I’ll physically drag you if necessary. I’ll leash Viggo like a husky and have him pull you there on a sled if that’s what it takes.’

  ‘You think I’m losing my mind, don’t you?’ There had been no more visits from Sarah, and the echoes had been silent enough for her to have been able to sleep comfortably in her own bed since the sleepwalking.

  ‘No, actually, I don’t. I’ll admit that I was worried, so I did a bit of reading up on it, but you’re not confused or getting lost in your own home, you’re not exhibiting obsessive and repetitive behaviour—’

  ‘Other than hoarding butter…’

  ‘—and you definitely don’t have trouble communicating. Disturbed sleep patterns, sleepwalking, things like that, they could all just be the symptoms of stress or anxiety.’

  ‘Well, I’m more bloody stressed now than I was before you turned up, I’ll give you that. Darling, I’m not suffering from anxiety. What have I got to be anxious about? I’m retired, my husband’s in the ground and my kids have left home. The only thing I’ve got to be anxious about is this great idiot and his farting.’ She scratched Viggo between the ears; he was looking between the two women, concerned by the tension that had settled over the table.

  ‘I don’t know, but there’s something. Going to that cemetery doesn’t seem to have helped. I want you to see Dr Fielding. She might be able to suggest someone that you can talk to, or give you something to help you sleep, if nothing else. Remember when I had those beta blockers to get me through exams?’

  Knowing when she was beaten, Dennie relented. ‘Darling, if it will set your mind at rest, and stop you interfering with my fridge, of course I will.’

  Lizzie heaved a huge sigh of relief. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  Her meeting with Dr Fielding was predictably inconclusive, the only concrete benefit being that it had put Lizzie’s mind enough at rest that she was happy to go home. Fielding was a thin, harassed-looking woman who had made brusque and efficient use of the ten-minute appointment slot. She asked Dennie about her diet (vegetarian, avoiding sugar where possible but not averse to the occasional Bounty bar), alcohol intake (Malbec ideally, Shiraz if she had to really slum it, no smile there), smoker? (non) and exercise (walking to and from the allotment most days was a Good Thing). She took Dennie’s blood pressure, which was a bit high but nothing to worry about too much, and said that she could prescribe a mild sedative if Dennie thought that would help. No thanks. In that case here was a leaflet listing various local support groups and national helplines for people coping with stress and anxiety. If the disturbed sleep persisted or she had any further sleepwalking episodes she should make a follow-up appointment immediately. Thank you and good afternoon.

  * * *

  Dennie still didn’t know what the new couple’s game was, but she had to give them credit: the top half of the Neary plot that they were cultivating was coming along well. One might even say it was burgeoning. She eyed their rows of perfect and apparently pest-free crops enviously, wondering whether they used any special kind of fertiliser. One or other of them worked it most days, though there’d been no sign of their huge friend for over a month. Maybe he’d run off.

  On the days when it was left unattended she risked a closer examination, and on a bright Tuesday morning in the middle of May she was passing by on her way to the Pavilion when she caught a glimpse of glossy red peeping out from the nettles and brambles. It seemed that even the overgrown tangle of the other half was showing signs of regenerating. There shouldn’t be strawberries growing wild in that trash, she told herself. It was too early in the year for them to fruit without being forced under cover, and they would never grow naturally in soil so abused as this. She mentally ran through the various cultivars that she knew of, and drew a blank, unless this was some kind of hybrid variety, but even so, what was it doing here?

  Every inch of her skin crawled at the thought of setting foot on that plot again, but those berries were only a few feet beyond her reach – it would take just one step for her to be able to pluck the nearest one, and then she could find out what kind it was. Colin had been buried right up at the other end, where Ardwyn and Everett had built their shed – there was nothing that could hurt her here.

  Before she could frighten herself out of it, Dennie made one large stride deep into the overgrowth, planted her foot, reached out with her right hand, grabbed the nearest strawberry off its stem, and reversed her step.

  And lost her balance.

  She wobbled, pinwheeling her arms desperately. She saw herself collapsing sideways into nettles that were already as high as her head, every hair on every leaf full of poison, or else into the whiplike embrace of brambles. If not them, then there was bound to be broken glass and rusted metal hiding amongst the stems. She would be stabbed and impaled, and her blood would soak into the soil to be sucked up by the hungry roots of plants which had no business growing in God’s earth. Ah, but which god? said a dry voice in her head, and in her terror she was sure that it was the voice of the Neary plot itself.

  Then gravity reasserted itself, she reeled back to the safety of the path, and the Neary plot relinquished its nightmare grip on her body and mind. She ran back to her shed and fell onto her camp cot, sobbing.

  Viggo came in and licked her until she felt better. She’d tied him up outside to stop him from getting into mischief but had left him enough lead so that he could get in if he wanted. When she felt more like herself she examined the treasure that she had won from her ordeal. For a wild strawberry it was large, unbothered by worm or beetle, and the col
our of fresh blood. Tentatively she bit into it, and found that the flesh was very firm for a strawb, almost meaty in fact, and with a peculiar salty aftertaste. All told it was one of the most unpleasant things she’d ever put in her mouth. She spat it out.

  ‘It’s playing us for fools, my boy,’ she said, scratching Viggo between the ears. There was too much going on that didn’t make sense, and she’d had enough of it. There was still no word about Marcus Overton, Ben Torelli hadn’t been seen for weeks, and plants which had no right to grow were fruiting out of season. Not to mention the unwelcome visitations from Sarah Neary. Dennie had been spending too many nights in her house and had let her watch slip.

  ‘No more, my boy,’ she said. ‘No more.’ She got up and went to check how much bottled gas she had for her camping stove and to air out her sleeping bag.

  4

  A PREMATURE INTERMENT

  TOWARDS THE MIDDLE OF MAY, EVERETT ASKED MATT to use the tractor to dig another hole, just like the other two that had since been filled, in the field behind the long stone barn.

  ‘I know what these are for, you know,’ he said, as he flicked the levers that operated the back-hoe attachment, and the huge metal jaw with its square teeth scooped another chunk out of the stony soil. He’d carved out the first few feet and was working on deepening the hole.

  ‘Do you, now,’ replied Everett, barely interested. He had a shovel and was clearing out the loose rubble that kept sliding back in. Gar was collecting the larger rocks and carrying them over to the dry-stone wall to be used as material for repairs.

  ‘I know what’s in them.’

  Everett squinted up at him. ‘Is there a point to this or are you going for some kind of suspense?’

  ‘They’re graves, aren’t they?’

  ‘No,’ Everett said, and bent to his task again. ‘Graves are for dead people. These are refuse pits for empty vessels.’

  ‘You can call them what you like, but I’ve seen them. The bodies, that is.’

  Everett stopped again, leaned on the shovel handle, and looked at him properly. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. He showed me.’ Matt pointed at Gar, who had dropped his rock and was ambling back over.

  Everett stared at Gar, incredulous. ‘You showed him?’

  Gar shrugged. ‘Ee ask.’

  ‘He asked and you just showed him? Just like that?’

  ‘Ee okay. Rust im.’

  ‘I want you to know that I’m completely cool with it,’ Matt went on hurriedly, before Everett’s displeasure turned to him. ‘I’m not going to tell. I mean, I figure that it’s for their money, or because they pissed you off or something.’

  ‘It’s for neither of those reasons and you’d better keep your damned nose out of things that don’t concern you.’

  ‘But it does concern me, because of this.’ Matt gestured to the tractor, the back-hoe, and the excavation. ‘You’ve made it concern me. I’m an accessory now.’

  ‘You weren’t. If anybody had asked, you could truthfully have said that you were just following orders and that you had no idea what the holes were for, but you’ve buggered that up now, haven’t you? You’ve made yourself an accessory.’ Everett tossed the shovel up onto the grass and climbed out after it. He dusted his hands off and came over to the tractor cab, looking at Matt closely as if seeing him properly for the first time and considering what manner of creature he was. ‘The only question is, what do we do about it?’

  Matt was suddenly and uncomfortably aware that Gar had approached on the other side of the cab and that there was now no escape if he tried to make run for it. He began to suspect that this might have been a very bad idea. ‘You let me help.’

  ‘You were already helping, before you opened your big yap.’

  ‘More! You let me help more! I can do more than just dig holes. I can do other things. You know… the rest of it.’

  Everett’s scepticism twisted his face into a sneer. ‘And yet you can’t even say it. What makes you think I’d trust you to do that? Killing rabbits and lambs is one thing. Killing a human being who knows they’re going to die and seeing the knowledge of that in their face before you do it – that’s another thing entirely, boy.’

  ‘So tell me what I have to do for you to trust me!’ he pleaded. ‘Anything! I’ll do anything!’

  ‘What, like Oliver Twist?’

  ‘Who?’

  Everett shook his head, disgusted. ‘Young people today.’ He stared at Matt for an even longer time – considering, weighing, judging. ‘No,’ he decided. ‘Gar, chuck him in the hole.’

  ‘Wait!’

  Gar’s fist bunched itself in the front of his overalls and he was dragged from the tractor’s seat. He kicked and thrashed but Gar held his feet a good six inches off the ground, and all he succeeded in doing was to twist himself from side to side like a worm on a hook, the overalls bunched up cutting into his armpits painfully. ‘Gar!’ he yelled. ‘No! You said I was okay!’ But Gar’s craggy jaw was set, and he uttered not a word as he dangled Matt over the hole and let him drop. It was only about four feet deep by that stage, but it still jarred his ankles. ‘Everett, please!’ he wept, and tried to pull himself out of the hole. Gar stomped on his fingers and he felt several of them break, the cracking sound and flaring pain like fireworks jammed into his knuckles. He fell back, howling.

  In the meantime, Everett had climbed up into the tractor and had scooped up a bucket-load of rubble from the spoil pile that Matt had only just excavated. Matt watched in paralysed disbelief as the pneumatically powered arm of the back-hoe swung towards him, directly over his face, and he raised his hands in a futile attempt to ward off the full capacity of soil and stones which was unloaded right onto his head.

  Rocks hammered his skull, cracking his cheekbones and breaking his nose in lava-squirts of agony. He was smothered instantly, choking on earth rammed into his eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth. He couldn’t breathe, let alone scream. Another load hit him in the hips and stomach, burying the bottom half of his body, twisting his right ankle outwards until it snapped and then he did scream, muffled by dirt. A rock mashed his guts, making him shit himself. Then another load, and another, weight upon weight as his lungs began to burn for oxygen and his chest tried to heave but the weight on his ribcage was too much to allow even that, until it felt like he should be squashed flat. He should be dead by now, or at least unconscious. Any form of oblivion would be a blessing. He tried to rage Youfucker youcocksuckerI’llfuckingkillyou and he tried to plead I’msorryohGodI’msorrywhatdidIdo and neither did any good. All he could do was squirm. His arms were still uppermost, from when he tried to defend himself from the falling debris, one above his head and the other across his throat, and if he pushed with that one the dirt seemed to shift a little, so he wiggled his broken fingers despite the pain and flexed his wrist and felt the dirt slide around and under them, giving him another half a centimetre to wiggle and flex upward some more.

  The lava in his lungs and injuries was spreading outwards to engulf the rest of his body, bringing with it the promise of a swift burning and then eternal darkness, but he didn’t want that now. He wanted to live. So he flexed and wiggled, flexed and wiggled…

  * * *

  The deserter stood over the pile of earth and wondered if he hadn’t overestimated the boy. It had been several minutes now.

  Next to him, Gar shuffled. ‘Ded?’

  ‘Maybe. I thought he was stronger than that.’

  Gar sniffed. ‘Shame. Ee good boy.’

  A little soil trickled down the pile, but that wasn’t unusual since it was still settling. Then the trickle became bigger, a gentle heaving in the dirt, and the deserter’s heart leapt when he saw three fingers emerge like pale grubs, squirming weakly.

  Gar uttered a deep squeal of joy and slapped the ground with both palms.

  ‘Come on, let’s get him out.’

  Together they scooped away the soil and tossed aside the stones, pulled Matt clear of the hole and laid him on the gras
s. Everett rolled him on his side and cleared his mouth of as much dirt as he could. Matt was pallid and bleeding from a bad cut to his head, and had several breaks by the look of things. The boy retched for breath.

  ‘You with me?’ he said, slapping Matt’s cheeks. ‘You there, Matt?’

  Matt groaned and spat mud at him.

  ‘There we go.’ Everett grinned. He and Gar slung Matt’s arms over their shoulders and carried him back to the farmhouse, Matt moaning all the way and yelling when his injuries were jarred. Ardwyn met them at the door, looking surprised and concerned.

  ‘What have you boys been doing?’ she asked. ‘Not playing too roughly?’

  ‘Just a little rebirth initiation rite, nothing to worry about,’ Everett replied as they manhandled Matt upstairs, screaming as his ankle slapped against each step. It wasn’t easy with the three of them on the staircase; ordinarily Gar would have filled the space on his own.

  ‘Is this a thing that we discussed?’ She disapproved, as if it had anything to do with her.

  ‘You said to test him. Can we talk about it afterwards?’ he called back down the stairs as they climbed. ‘Bit busy right now.’

  Once they’d cleaned Matt up a bit and got him onto his bed, he’d recovered enough of his wits to glare at Everett and utter one hoarse question: ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re a worm, Matt,’ he replied, not ungently. ‘I’m a worm too, and so is Gar here, and Ardwyn, and everyone else on this mudball of a planet. We’re all just worms, squirming around over and under each other, trying to keep out of the mud for as long as we can. There is nothing else. Did you think you were going to die?’

  Matt nodded.

  ‘Did you know you were going to die?’

  Matt nodded again. He was starting to cry now, tears mixing with the dirt on his face to form brown trails that actually did look a bit like worms crawling down his cheeks.

  ‘Because it’s one thing to know it here,’ the deserter pointed to his head, ‘and quite another to know it here,’ and he pointed to his heart. ‘If you’re going to take the life of another human being, that’s where you need to know it. You need to understand that it’s them or you, that their death is necessary to keep you out of the mud for a little bit longer. You’ve got a chance here, with us, to keep yourself out of the mud for longer than most, but pity, empathy, all of those things – they just make the hole deeper, and I will not let you drag me down into it with you. This hand,’ he continued, holding up his own, ‘that pulled you out, will bury you again rather than let that happen. Do you understand this?’