Bone Harvest

by James Brogden

  Then the vessel was carried inside, and the door was shut, and he was safely outside in the darkness.

  * * *

  3:07

  That’s what her bedside clock says when the phone rings, jarring Dennie out of sleep. She fumbles for it and picks up, thinking that at this time in the morning it can only be one of the children. There’s been an emergency; one of her babies is hurt. With her other hand she flaps at Brian to wake him up and then remembers that Brian has been dead for just over a year, and her heart lurches.

  ‘Hello?’ she mumbles.

  For a moment there is just breathing on the line – harsh and thick, as if on the verge of sobbing or screaming. Great, she thinks, my first dirty phone call.

  Then Sarah Neary’s voice: ‘Dennie?’

  This wakes her properly, like a glass of cold water in the face. ‘Sarah? Honey, what’s wrong?’

  More breathing. Thick swallowing. ‘I think I’ve killed him.’

  For a moment Dennie couldn’t tell whether the clock display was the one from her memory or from now, in the shed. She must still be dreaming because Sarah was standing in the corner, facing away from her, except it couldn’t be a dream because Viggo had just woken up too, and was whining his concern. It had to be real because Dennie needed the little emergency LED to see that Sarah was in the process of drawing something on the wall with her finger, and she’d only just started. In her other hand she clutched Sabrina, who peeped over her shoulder at Dennie as Sarah worked.

  A line, curving out to the right and then back in again at the bottom, like a bow. Then another bow, starting and finishing at the same points but curving out further, so that the result was a crescent moon. Whatever Sarah was using for paint dripped and ran, but Dennie knew that it wasn’t paint. It was blood from the wrists that she’d slashed in her prison cell twelve years ago with a sharpened toothbrush handle, and it was fresh on the wall of Dennie’s shed.

  Then Sarah turned to her and said: ‘They’re going to bring him back. You can’t let them, Dennie.’ But it wasn’t Sarah’s voice, it was Sabrina’s.

  Then she was gone.

  Dennie woke up and found that she wasn’t lying on her camp bed at all, but standing in the corner where she’d seen Sarah. The blood-painted moon was very real, however, and right in front of her. She was holding a pruning knife in her right hand, and her left forefinger stung like a bastard. When she looked down she saw that she’d cut herself in her sleep. She was the one who’d made the drawing on the wall.

  ‘Do not tell Lizzie about this,’ she told Viggo as she switched on her battery lantern and hunted out a first aid kit. ‘She’ll have me sectioned, and I wouldn’t blame her.’ She taped up the wound and switched the lantern off to save the battery.

  Something moved in the window.

  Don’t be daft, she told herself. It’s because you moved the lantern when you turned it off and the shadows only made you think you saw something. Or it’s your eyes readjusting to the dark. There’s nothing out there.

  But there had been something out there, attracted by her light, peering in at her.

  Her shed had only one window, no more than a couple of square feet wide, and it looked out across the south-eastern corner of the allotments – she’d oriented it that way to get the most of the morning light in the winter. The night was clear, and there were a few solar-powered lawn lights dotted around like earthbound fireflies, still charged from all the good weather. With that and the ambient light from the village streetlights, she could definitely see a figure walking between the plots. From this angle she couldn’t see too many of her neighbours, but one of the few that she could see, albeit obliquely and through several others, was the top end of the Neary plot. There was the thinnest whisker of light coming from around their door, just like last time.

  Viggo made a low hruffing sound deep in his throat. She shushed him. ‘We’re not scaring anybody off this time,’ she whispered. ‘And I don’t much feel like being attacked again. I want to see what they’re up to.’

  Her window was top-hinged and only opened a few inches – to prevent burglars, ironically – and with it cracked she thought she could hear voices murmuring, though it was too far away to be sure, let alone hear what was being said.

  ‘I wonder if…’ She felt around the shelves, not needing any light to know where everything was, moving tins and boxes and cartons and bottles around like a game of three-dimensional blind Tetris until she’d uncovered the thing she was searching for. Back when the allotment had been a novelty for her young family, and ten-year-old Christopher had helped with the digging, he’d been fascinated by the robins that would come to inspect his handiwork, and this fascination spread to include the other birds – chaffinches, thrushes and sparrows – and so, because it seemed that this might become a hobby that would keep him outdoors and away from the television, she and Brian had bought him the Observer’s Book of British Birds and a pair of binoculars for his eleventh birthday. Of course, the fad had lasted only a few months, and when she’d cleared out his room after he’d left home she kept the binoculars for the allotment, though she’d never used them to spy on her neighbours. Not until tonight.

  It was tricky to get them at the right angle against the glass, and they didn’t pick up any more light so focussing them was difficult too, but they did magnify what little she could already see and that was better than nothing.

  ‘Let’s see what you’re up to,’ she growled.

  A hulking silhouette approached the door. The light from underneath it went out, then the door opened and the silhouette went inside, reappearing a moment later with a large bundle slung over its shoulder. It went around the side of the shed to the front, where she couldn’t see, followed by two more silhouettes, one of whom lingered for a moment to lock the door. Then all three were gone. All the same, she stayed at the window, holding her breath as much as possible to avoid jogging the view, in case they came back.

  Then she heard soft footsteps creaking on the boards of her own makeshift decking, and the breath escaped from her in a tiny, terrified squeak. Someone was standing outside. Inches away.

  Viggo tried growling, but she shushed him again, her fingers curled tightly around his collar. She thought she’d be brave and defend her territory when it came down to it, but all she wanted to do was hide and freeze and wait for the menace outside her door to go away. This was different from confronting trespassers. There was something happening on the allotments that went far beyond a bit of vegetable theft and vandalism, and the last thing she wanted to do was see who, or what, was standing on her deck. Absurdly, what came to mind right at that moment was reading Watership Down to her children, and the way the rabbits had their own words for everything, such as the paralysing terror of an approaching predator. Tharn, she thought. I’ve gone tharn.

  The footsteps paused, as if whoever owned them was thinking. Wondering what to do about her. Then there was a soft wooden scraping sound against the door. This was too much for Viggo, who barked a single warning shot. She shook him silent and he whined reproachfully at her as if to say What am I doing wrong?

  There was a soft snigger from outside. It knew she was awake and aware of it. It would come in now and Viggo would be powerless to stop it from taking her and killing her and cutting her up and burying her under the brambles…

  The footsteps receded, and were gone. A few moments later she heard the sound of a car or van engine, and a few moments after that the glare of headlights appeared on the road outside the allotments, fading into the night.

  6

  HOT POT

  DAVID DIDN’T REALISE HOW MUCH ON EDGE HE WAS until the front doorbell rang, making him jump nearly out of his skin. He was in the kitchen chopping onions for dinner and nearly sliced his finger off.

  ‘I’ll get it!’ called Becky from the living room, where she and Alice were hard at work on the long division questions that school had sent home for her. He freely admitted he was rubbish at maths and had
been more than happy to leave them to it while he got on with the man’s business of cooking and cleaning. Plus, it gave him a chance to think about what he was going to do about the whole Farrow Farm thing, and doing things with his hands always helped him to think more clearly.

  ‘Dennie!’ said his wife. ‘This is a pleasant surprise! Why yes he is, please come in!’

  ‘There goes that plan,’ he said to himself, putting down the knife and washing his hands at the sink.

  When his wife ushered Dennie Keeling into the kitchen his first thought was of how tired she looked. He’d heard all about her sleepwalking episodes but had thought that maybe she’d been prescribed some sleeping pills or something, but it had been four days since he and Angie had tried to warn her off overnighting in her shed and it looked like she hadn’t slept in all that time. He dried off on a tea towel and shook her hand.

  ‘Dennie, hi, what can I do for you?’

  ‘Sorry to trouble you at dinner time. I did say I could come back later but Becky insisted.’

  ‘She’s good at that. Cup of tea?’

  ‘Go on, then. Twist my arm.’

  While he was busying himself with the kettle and mugs, Alice came through from the living room with her mother and gave Dennie a hug. ‘Daddy, can I play with Viggo?’ she asked.

  ‘Hey, troublemaker!’ protested Becky. ‘You already asked me that.’

  ‘Whatever your mother said goes,’ he replied. ‘Which I’m assuming is a no. Sorry, honey.’

  ‘I’ve tied the boy up outside,’ said Dennie, and took Alice’s face in her hands. ‘And how are you doing, Looking-Glass Girl?’

  Becky stroked the fine fuzz that passed for Alice’s hair. ‘We’re taking it day by day. Over the worst of it, we hope. Probably still another six months of maintenance to go. Just so long as she doesn’t pick up another infection.’

  Alice was staring out of the kitchen window at where the dog was sniffing around in the back garden. ‘Mummy, if Viggo has puppies can we have one? And can we call it Kirk?’

  That threw her mother. ‘Well, I, uh, assume that if Viggo, becomes a, well, a daddy…’ It also assumed that Alice would be well enough to be around animals, but David kept that to himself.

  ‘Of course, you can,’ said Dennie. ‘And you can call it whatever you want.’

  The tea had brewed and David passed mugs to Dennie and Becky. His wife took hers in one hand and her daughter’s hand in the other and said: ‘Come on, you, back to school.’

  ‘Bye, Dennie!’ Alice waved as she left.

  ‘Bye, Alice.’

  ‘We used to have a cat called Kirk,’ explained David when they’d gone. ‘He was a rescue cat, spent the first month of his life with us hiding behind the TV. Then, when Alice got sick we had to get rid of him because of the danger of germs. Granted, we were probably overreacting, but it was back to the rescue centre. I swear that cat knew what we were doing. The look of betrayal on his face…’ He sipped his tea. ‘Anyway, I would have thought I’d be one of the last people you’d want to talk to. You know, after last time.’

  ‘Yes, it’s about that.’

  ‘Ah.’ He steeled himself for an argument.

  Dennie must have realised how he’d taken it because she was quick to clarify. ‘Oh no, I don’t mean like that. I know it was all Angie’s idea. You at least had the decency to look embarrassed. No, this is about something different. Do you remember Marcus Overton?’

  ‘What, the chap that went missing?’

  ‘Yes. When was that? Have you got a record of it on that app?’

  ‘There should be. Why? Have you heard something?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m just trying to join some dots and I don’t even know if they are dots.’

  ‘All very enigmatic.’ He took out his phone and scrolled through the OWL notifications. ‘Here we are. Twelfth of April. We checked his shed and found nothing. Police broke into his house the same day and found evidence to suggest that he’d been missing for maybe a fortnight. Missing persons report filed. Nothing since, no credit card activity, no phone calls. I did actually ask at the station if there had been any word about a month ago. One of the officers there told me that phone and ISP records indicate his last use of the internet was dated the end of March, so if he has run away he’s gone off-grid.’

  ‘Can you remember the exact date?’

  ‘The twenty-fifth, I think. Oh shit!’ He glanced guiltily at the doorway to the living room in case either his wife or his daughter had heard that.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Ben Torelli!’

  ‘What, Dopehead Ben? Plays dominoes with Big Ed down the Pavilion and always loses?’

  ‘Yes! He’s not been seen either! Ed asked me to remind him that he owed some money next time I saw him but I never did, and it all completely slipped my mind because, well, things have been a bit busy around here recently.’

  Dennie sipped her tea. ‘You’re telling me,’ she said drily. ‘When was this?’

  David racked his brains. ‘Literally the same day that me and Angie came to see you. But he wasn’t at the VE Bank Holiday commemoration, I remember, because Hugh Preston was there and I thought at the time, the two of them are both ex-servicemen and it was a surprise that Ben wasn’t there to share in it.’

  ‘Back at the start of May. So, nobody’s seen him for, what, three weeks?’

  ‘I’m sure he had a perfectly good reason, though I admit I didn’t really know him very well to talk to. He was a bit of a loner.’

  ‘Just like Marcus Overton,’ she commented. ‘Both solitary men, not many social connections, both easy to miss.’

  ‘What are you suggesting – that they’re linked? That they ran off together?’

  ‘How would that work, a month apart? No. But I do think there’s something very odd happening on our allotments. All right, thank you for that, that’s useful. I have another question to ask and it’s going to sound strange.’ She was fidgeting with her mug, and he noticed that one of her fingers was bandaged.

  ‘Dennie, trust me, it couldn’t be as strange as some of the other things I’ve heard recently.’

  ‘Oh? Want to share?’

  He almost did. The secret of what he’d seen and heard at Farrow Farm had been stuck like a ball in the bottom of his throat for weeks now, choking him, and the thought of there being someone he could tell it to who wouldn’t think him completely crazy or, worse, look at him with blame, was very tempting. Maybe he would, but not until he’d told Becky first, however badly she took it. ‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘Go ahead.’

  She was doodling in the condensation from underneath her mug, drawing it out into crescent shapes. ‘Do you have a thing on your phone that tells you about moon phases?’

  ‘Moon phases? I don’t think so, but it shouldn’t be too hard to download one. Why?’

  ‘I’d like to know what phase the moon was in at the end of March and April, around about the same time we think Marcus and Ben disappeared.’

  ‘See? That doesn’t sound strange at all.’ He tapped and swiped until he found an app called LunarLore which looked promising, downloaded it, and opened it. He entered approximate dates for the time she was requesting, and came up with the same result for both. His heart froze, and he was back in the barn at Farrow Farm, kneeling before the skull of a creature that should not exist mounted on the wall, and surrounded by crude paintings of the same exact shape as the one on his phone screen.

  ‘David?’ said Dennie. She touched his hand, and he recoiled. ‘David, are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  He swallowed thickly. ‘Waxing crescent,’ he read. ‘The growing portion just after the dark of the new moon but before it is half full. Sometimes known as a regeneration moon, or a rebirth moon.’ He shook himself back together a bit more. ‘Does this help?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Like I say, it might not even be a dot to join. Are you sure you’re all right? You look very pale.’
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  ‘I’m fine,’ he replied, gathering their mugs and taking them over to the sink to hide the fact that he was very far from being fine.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you somehow,’ she said. ‘I think I’d better go. Whenever you want to tell me what’s on your mind, you know where to find me. Thanks for your help.’

  ‘Honestly, it’s fine,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing to do with you. I’d invite you to stay for dinner, but we’re not eating veggie tonight, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Bless you anyway for the thought. If I don’t see you on your plot I might have a weed of those runner beans for you.’

  ‘Dennie, you’re a legend.’ He watched her go into the living room and heard Becky seeing her to the door, after which Becky popped her head into the kitchen.

  ‘ETA on dinner?’ she asked.

  He looked at the parcel wrapped in its white butcher’s paper. He’d thawed it out and taken it to Partridge’s to be minced, and it sat surrounded by chopped potato, carrots, onions, and all the ingredients necessary for a home-made ‘lamb’ hot pot to make his little girl healthy and strong.

  * * *

  The next waxing crescent moon was on the 22nd of June, which gave Dennie a little over three weeks to prepare. She made a rare foray into online shopping and ordered a rape alarm and a video camera with night mode, and while she was waiting for those to arrive she beefed up the security of her shed, installing heavy bolts top and bottom of the door. She packed two changes of clothes, a ten-litre plastic jerrycan of water, spare gas canisters for her stove, extra batteries for her lantern and enough tins and packets of food to last for several days.

  Luckily, her opportunity to have a look inside the newcomers’ shed came sooner. It would have been the simplest thing in the world to borrow a pair of bolt-cutters and just have at it, but then they’d know, and even if they couldn’t point the finger at her to the extent of having her reported for criminal damage, they’d still know, and creeping around outside her shed in the wee small hours might not be the least of it. The problem was that the only times when it was unlocked was when one or other of them was working the plot, or at least pretending to. They’d got Matt Hewitson doing the occasional shift, though all he did was poke a rake around for a few minutes and then sit out with his headphones on, smoking and prodding at his phone. It was a case of waiting until he was there at the same time as his mother Shirley was home from her job behind the cash register at Homebase, and that was like waiting for the stars to align. But align they did towards the middle of June, and as soon as Dennie saw Shirley’s car pull into her driveway she strolled with all the nonchalance she could muster up to the Pavilion and its ancient payphone, and dialled 999.