Bone Harvest

by James Brogden

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I’m not fucking okay!’ she snapped. ‘Those dickheads! Those absolute fucking dickheads!’

  He drove in silence for a while, letting her compose herself. ‘How are you doing these days, anyway?’ he asked. ‘I mean, generally, like.’

  ‘Generally, like? When I’m not being harassed by kiddie perverts?’ She shrugged. ‘Okay, I suppose.’ She looked around properly for the first time. ‘You seem to be doing okay for yourself, car like this.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve met some helpful people. But are you well? You know – health-wise?’

  ‘Why are you asking after my health? Why are you being weird?’

  ‘You used to have asthma, didn’t you?’

  She gave him a strange look. ‘What do you mean “used to”?’

  ‘I mean that you don’t have it any more, do you?’

  That strange look had turned into a stare of outright suspicion and fear. ‘How do you know that?’ she whispered. ‘I haven’t told anybody that.’

  He shrugged again. ‘Lucky guess.’

  She was paying more attention to what was outside the car now – the countryside that they were driving through. ‘And where are we, anyway? This isn’t the way to my place. Where are we going?’

  ‘To meet my new friends. I think they’ll really like you, especially Mother.’

  ‘Like fuck we are. Let me out of the car!’ She fumbled at the door handle even though they were still moving. ‘Let me out!’

  ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ he said. The village roads had taken them onto the A38, which at this point was a dual carriageway following an old Roman Road called Rykneld Street. It ran straight as an arrow from Lichfield to Burton, a stretch infamous for joy-riding races, and he pushed the speed up to sixty.

  Lauren left the door alone and took her phone out of her handbag. ‘You take me home right now!’ she demanded. ‘Or I am calling the police. I’ve fucking had enough of this.’

  ‘Okay, sure, no problem. Taking you home now. Next intersection, I swear.’

  And he did – at the very next turning he pulled left off the dual carriageway and headed back for Dodbury along the narrow country lanes. He didn’t mind – it was the turning he had planned to take anyway, since it went by Farrow Farm. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I just want to apologise for the way I treated you earlier this year,’ he said. ‘I was a dick. And also for, you know, beating up Daz. I should have been happy for you two, I know that now.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ she muttered. ‘Me and Daz have split up, so there’s that.’

  This was an interesting turn of events. ‘Sorry to hear that,’ he replied, feeling anything but.

  ‘But you were still a dick.’

  ‘I know. Believe me when I say that I want to make it up to you.’

  She didn’t respond to this; just stared out of her window at the passing trees and hedges.

  ‘You’re not going to ask me how I know that your asthma has cleared up?’

  ‘I just want you to get me home,’ she said without looking at him. ‘This day has been weird enough already without adding to it.’

  ‘It was the pork you ate at that hog roast on the allotments back in March.’

  ‘Please. Stop talking.’

  ‘And you weren’t the only one. I’ve seen a man grow back a missing eye. I broke all these fingers and they healed in a week.’ He waved at her with his right hand to show her. ‘I was buried alive, and died, and then I dug myself out and was reborn. We’ve been blessed, Lauren. Miracles really do happen.’

  She dug for her phone again. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘I warned you.’

  He snatched the phone from her hand and threw it out of his window. ‘No. Can’t have that, sorry. Everett really will kill me.’

  She stared, open-mouthed, then launched herself at him, screaming and scratching at his face. Her attack was so sudden and vicious that he nearly lost control of the car, ploughing up the grass verge and into the hedge on the driver’s side. Its stiff branches made a screeching noise like fingernails down a blackboard as they did to his paint job what Lauren was trying to do to his eyes, but he wrestled the car back onto the road and then back-handed her – not as hard as he could have done, just enough to quieten her down. Her head flopped back against the head-rest, blood spilling from her nose. It was all right, though. She was just stunned. She’d eaten the first flesh, like him, and she’d heal quickly enough. Luckily these lanes were quiet and there was little chance that they’d pass anyone who would wonder at the sight of his passenger with blood all over her face.

  ‘I’m going to take you to meet the people who gave us this miracle. They’re a great couple, really. You’ll like them. They’ve been together for a really long time, much longer than you’d think. Just like you and me can be together.’

  She was quiet the rest of the way to Farrow Farm. At the gate he was a bit worried that she’d try to run away when he had to get out and open it, but she seemed to be very calm, like she was thinking over everything he’d said. He drove into the farmyard and parked. ‘First, though, I want to show you what it’s all about. So you’ll understand when you meet them.’

  She let him lead her to the door of the shrine, which he unlocked and opened so that she could see. He watched her expression change as her gaze travelled over the wall with its paintings of the tusk moon, the god’s gleaming skull and the carnyx. Her eyes and her mouth were open in wonder, and he knew that this had been the right thing to do.

  Then she was running off across the farmyard, screaming.

  ‘Help me!’ she shrieked as she ran. ‘Somebody please help me!’

  ‘Oh shit.’

  He gave chase, thinking, ironically, that now would be a really good time for her to have an asthma attack.

  Somebody did appear around a corner of one of the outbuildings, and she ran faster towards him, sobbing with relief and joy. Gar scooped her up very neatly and clamped his other hand across her mouth to stifle the noise. As he approached Matt he nodded at the squirming, kicking girl under his arm. ‘Yours?’ he said.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ Matt sighed.

  * * *

  The deserter listened to him explain what had happened, thinking that it wasn’t the end of the world as far as he was concerned, but Ardwyn was furious. He knew better than to interfere. She sat in her high-backed wooden chair at the large kitchen table, exactly copying the way Mother had in Swinley, either consciously or not, while Matt knelt before her in penitence. The girl had been secured in the half-finished dormitory conversion, which had meant that the volunteers who had been working on it at the time were hurriedly sent home because Mother still wasn’t prepared to risk their reactions to the use of human vessels. They had heard the girl’s screams and they would be asking questions. This dressing down was necessary.

  ‘This is not how we do things,’ she said when Matt had finished, enunciating each word like spitting splinters of glass. She was trembling with a rage that the deserter had rarely seen.

  ‘Well, I’m getting told pretty much fuck-all about how you do do things so you can’t blame me if I make it up as I go,’ he replied, sulky and angry.

  The deserter clipped him around the back of the head. ‘Oi!’ he warned. ‘Respect your Mother.’

  ‘Sorry, Mother,’ he mumbled. ‘I know I fucked up.’

  ‘I don’t think you have the faintest clue about how monumentally you have fucked up, you stupid child,’ she snarled. ‘We’re probably going to have to leave this place now.’ She waved her arms, encompassing the farmhouse and everything around it. ‘All of this, everything we’ve spent months building. Our home. And all because you couldn’t keep it in your pants for some silly little village slut.’

  ‘She’s not—’

  ‘She’s whatever I fucking well tell you she is!’ Ardwyn yelled, leaning forward in her chair and spraying the spittle of her rage on the boy kneeling befo
re her. The deserter stepped back a pace in shock. He’d never heard her like this. ‘Each member of the blessed that we bring into the Farrow is chosen for a reason! Do you understand that? Angie Robotham because she controls access to the allotments. David Pimblett because he can keep the police away from us. Speaking of which,’ her glare snapped onto Everett, and he flinched. ‘I rather think now might be a good time for us to know where our pet PC Plod is. Have we seen him recently?’

  ‘I’ll chase that up, Mother.’

  ‘Do so. Quickly. I want no more fuck-ups.’ The look on her face told Everett that she was holding him to blame for this as much as Matt. He’d brought the boy in, and convinced her that Matt could be one of the Farrow. This was his fuck-up too.

  ‘And me?’ asked Matt. ‘What about me? Why was I chosen?’

  ‘Honestly, I’m beginning to wonder that myself.’

  ‘Because you’re a born killer,’ said Everett, trying to claw something back from this. ‘A church needs its priests, its vergers, and its sextons, that’s true, but it also needs its crusaders.’

  ‘Those that become the vessels of Moccus’ replenishment are chosen very carefully because they will not be missed,’ Ardwyn continued, slightly calmer now, but with a steely patience. ‘This month’s vessel was selected long ago. We don’t know who this girl is, what her connections are, how soon people will begin to notice that she’s missing. We can’t possibly let her go now that she’s seen the shrine, and we have to assume that soon people will be looking for her, which is why we might have to abandon our home within weeks – weeks – of His rebirth.’

  ‘All the more reason to convince her to join us!’ Matt protested.

  The deserter shook his head. ‘I rather think kidnapping her, smacking her in the face and then tying her up is hardly going to win her trust.’

  ‘No,’ Ardwyn agreed. ‘I think that boat has sailed. The best use she can be now is as a vessel.’

  ‘But if we tell her that’s the alternative, to be sacrificed, then she’ll have no choice!’

  ‘When you threaten someone’s life they’ll tell you whatever you want,’ Everett said. Sometimes it was hard to believe that the boy could be so naïve. ‘It’s not exactly conducive to long-term loyalty either.’

  Ardwyn got up from her chair and stared down at Matt. He tried to meet her eyes, but quickly surrendered. ‘I understand why you wanted this girl,’ she said, and he flinched as she began to stroke his hair. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that. But you’ll have a long, long time as one of the Farrow to meet someone who will have already come into the church with open eyes and embraced the first flesh, and there’ll be no need for all of these silly games. The word “sacrifice” that you use means to give up something precious to prove your devotion to the gods; if you really want this girl then you could have made no better choice.’

  ‘In the old days,’ said Everett, ‘a man would raise a piglet as his own for years and then sacrifice it to Moccus in order to join the Farrow.’

  ‘She’s not a pig.’

  ‘No, she’s not,’ said Ardwyn. ‘She is a vessel for the replenishment of the first flesh, and as such she is sanctified above all animals. If you think about it, you’re actually doing her an honour. But it’s three days until the tusk moon – she needs to be watched, guarded and tended. Fed, watered, and cleaned. By you. That’s your penance. Do you understand?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he mumbled.

  ‘That’s my boy.’ She folded her arms around him and pressed his face to her belly in an embrace that grew tighter, and then tighter still. ‘But if you ever do anything like this again,’ she murmured, ‘you will be the next to have that honour, and I will use the knife myself. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  * * *

  Ardwyn gave it twenty-four hours before she went out to the half-converted dormitory to see the vessel – partially to make sure that Matt was fulfilling his duties, but also because she was curious. He seemed to be taking it seriously; the girl was tied securely, she had a bucket on one side and a bottle of water on the other. There was a plate of biscuits, but she didn’t seem to have touched those. She watched Ardwyn enter, keeping absolutely still, her eyes huge.

  ‘I wanted to say thank you.’

  ‘Get fucked,’ the vessel spat. Her voice was hoarse from hours of useless screaming.

  ‘I know, I’m not so naïve as to believe that anything I say is going to make a difference to you. I’m not trying to comfort you or persuade you that this is a good thing or a necessary thing, because all you can see is that you’re tied up in a horrible place by evil people, and I can’t blame you for that.

  ‘For thousands of years it was only the most perfect swine of the village that were chosen to be the vessels of the first flesh,’ she said. ‘We’d have a wonderful feast afterwards and give thanks to the beast for giving life back to our god, but of course the beast never knew what its role was because, well, it was still a pig at the end of the day. So the thanksgiving was really just for us, to remind us to be humble and not to take things for granted. But now…’ Ardwyn knelt down before the vessel and stroked a stray hair back from the girl’s eyes. She flinched, but that was understandable. ‘Now you. Not just you personally, I mean, the ones that have come before and the ones after, and not even just this time around. You are all aware of what is happening. You are the legacy of our faith. You give rise to an entirely new form of worship for us. Can’t you see how exciting that is? In time, members of the church of Moccus will volunteer happily for this honour!’

  She realised she was becoming intense, because the young woman had started to cry again, so she gently thumbed the tears away and stood up. There was no need to distress her any more than necessary. ‘So, when I kneel before you and thank you, it makes a difference that this time you actually understand. Even though I know you’d like to strangle me with that rope and run far away from here.’

  She paused on the way out, looking at the biscuits. ‘And try to eat something. You can’t starve yourself and it might be some small comfort.’

  3

  HELL WEEKEND

  THE KITCHEN CALENDAR IN THE PIMBLETT HOUSEHOLD had three columns: one for Daddy, one for Mummy and one for Alice. Alice’s column was mostly filled with hospital appointments, and Mummy’s had a lot of crossover with that, but for Daddy the three days from the 19th to the 21st of June simply had ‘Hell Weekend’ written through them in red sharpie. Hell Weekends were not common, but they cropped up whenever his shifts at the printers coincided too closely with his volunteering rota, and this was one of them. On the Saturday he was down for a night patrol with the regulars, and being Midsummer’s Day meant that the night would be shorter and rowdier for it in the pubs and clubs of Burton-on-Trent. He was very tempted to call in sick, but he stood a better chance of finding out more about what was going on behind the wheel of a police car than by fretting at home. So on the way back from the print works he steeled himself for grabbing a shower, a change, a quick bite to eat, and then an evening of picking drunks up off the pavement as the token ‘hobby bobby’.

  As he got through the front door and hung his jacket up he was met in quick succession by Alice throwing a flying tackle at his waist and Becky shouting from the kitchen, ‘We’ve got guests, so behave!’ Alice ran back through and he followed her to find his wife enjoying tea and cake at the breakfast counter with Everett Clifton.

  ‘David, what a pleasant surprise!’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘I was finishing up on the allotment and I thought I’d just pop around and say hello because we haven’t seen you all for so long. Becky was just telling me all about your wonderful news. You must be so relieved.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, rearranging the pieces of his face into a smile. ‘It’s quite the miracle.’

  ‘Alice has an amazing future ahead of her, I can tell.’

  Alice was posting fragments of cake into her mouth. ‘Daddy,’ she said around her fingers, ‘Everett sa
ys that we can go to his farm to see their new chickens. Please can we?’

  ‘Assuming that you’ve already asked your mother,’ he replied, ‘what has she said?’

  Becky handed him a mug of tea. ‘Her mother has said that she’s not sure because it’s still early days, the doctors still have lots of tests to do, and it might be best for Alice to avoid germs for a little while yet just to be on the safe side.’

  David offered a silent prayer of thanks to his wife.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Everett, ‘but I simply cannot accept no for an answer. The fresh air will be good for her, you don’t have to touch anything, and I can guarantee that there will be no contact with chicken poop.’

  Alice giggled and said, ‘Chicken poop.’

  ‘Or indeed poop of any kind.’

  ‘Poop!’

  Becky took Alice’s plate away before she could start licking it. ‘Stop saying poop, honey. David, what do you think?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘What I can guarantee is more of Ardwyn’s famous walnut cake. I’m not a doctor but I do know the countryside and I can tell you that a visit to Farrow Farm would be one of the best things she could possibly do for her health right now.’ He ruffled Alice’s hair and smiled straight at David, but there was ice in his eyes. ‘Your daughter is such a lamb.’

  Images of Turner’s lambs hanging on the fence – eviscerated, their intestines puddled and flyblown in the dirt beneath their mutilated bodies – sprang vivid in his memory. The threat couldn’t have been clearer if Everett had taken the knife out of that cake and held it to Alice’s throat.

  ‘I can hardly refuse, can I?’

  ‘Wonderful! We’ll expect to see you very soon, then. Let’s say next weekend?’