by Lucy Cameron
She really starts to try and fight as he strings her up above the bath. He has to hit her a lot to make her still.
The cut he makes across her throat opens up in slow motion. It takes his breath away. It is warm and wet as he sticks his finger in. Poor gnarled finger. Even after all these years the nail has never properly grown back.
‘That will teach you for chewing it.’ The shrill voice had spat. Or was it the fault of Strong Hands for pulling it off every time it grew back?
Strong Hands’s time will come. Those strong hands not so strong now. The hammer has seen to that. No, not so strong now, Strong Hands.
Oh! She’s wake. She opens her mouth and tries to speak. All that comes out is a bubble of crimson saliva. Her face says she is full of fury. He smiles. There she is. The old bitch he is so used to. Cursing him right up to the end.
‘Shhhhhh.’ He soothes, pursing her lips back together. He cocks his head and holds her gaze. ‘What more do you expect from such a vile and naughty boy?’ He giggles then, in spite of himself.
The blood is flowing from her exactly as he anticipated. Pumping but not spurting. It mesmerises him. Within seconds the blood flows like a silky sheet, or a veil, covering her contorting face. She should be grateful. The moonlight floods through the window and catches her body. He has listened hard within his cupboard and knows she is as afraid of the dark as he used to be.
Her blood runs the same track down the bathtub as the water always did. Invisible grooves forming a pattern to be followed in the dirty white porcelain. He lowers his finger into one of the branching flows then raises it to his lips. Sweet copper and calm. Comfort and known. Him. Her. And the blood provided by her. As always.
He looks into his mother’s bleary eyes and for the first time feels she loves him. Crouching, he leans towards her and licks the side of her face. The flow is warm and fresh. He tastes her truly for the first time. Tastes her love.
Downstairs, the moonlight streams inside. It casts long shadows across the hallway, across the cupboard under the stairs. The young man passes the cupboard, kicks the door hard. Something inside groans and gurgles. No hurry. He will keep. Keep there in the dark. Let him think about what he has done for a while.
The taste of blood is strong in his mouth. He runs his tongue along his lips. Inhales the lingering aroma. It appears shrieking Mother has finally had some use. Nourishing him as never before. He giggles.
Leaving shrieking Mother to finish draining in the bath and Strong Hands to tremble in the dark, the vile young man pulls his cap down low and steps out into the beautiful new night.
13.
The dream starts the same as always but this time he knows the serpent will come. Treacle thick, the invisible force prevents him from running. Strain as he might, he cannot escape. Nor can he awake. Behind him the serpent begins its journey once more.
He can see the male and female in their paradise within paradise. They run to the white fence and call out to him. They reach out their arms, stretch towards him. Could it be her? As she should have been? She shouts. Her face is blurred. Her dimples. Her ringlet hair. Her face twists with concern and anguish. She shouts harder now but he cannot hear the words.
The serpent is a black line on the landscape that wiggles towards him. Electric lightning illuminates the sky. Its fingers fork out and bleach the colour from everything. Vision after a camera flash. He turns again and tries to run.
There is something ahead of him now. It pulsates. Black, white, black, white then colour. It is a rip in the landscape. A massive tear in the beauty. It’s rolling towards him, swallowing up everything in its wake. He turns back in panic but there is nowhere to run.
Screeching, the serpent passes and disappears into the tear. It emanates an icy coldness that raises goosebumps on every pore on his body.
Then the ground beneath his feet is gone and he too is falling. The darkness swallows him up. It’s as black as anything he has ever known. He tries to scream but there’s no sound.
Then here, in the darkness, is the creature. His golden hair glows like fire. His blue eyes stare, penetrating the dark.
The eyes of the serpent.
The man knows he will die when he impacts the ground. The creature with the fire blond hair catches him in its arms. Now they are both falling but the man is no longer afraid. His heart beats so fast he fears it may tear free and be lost in the dark. He looks up at the creature who parts its blood-red lips and smiles.
‘Ask,’ the creature whispers, but the man has no idea what to ask for. ‘Ask.’ Its brow furrows. ‘Or be prepared to die.’
Jesus Christ.
Rhys shoots bolt upright in bed, slams on the light. He’s trapped in the bedclothes. The creature’s arms. The bedclothes. He’s drenched in sweat and fear, still drowning in the dream. He uses panic to fight free. His gasps are loud in the cool reality. The bed is reassuringly solid beneath him. His stomach rejoins him from somewhere far above. Hands clamp to his chest to hold his heart in place.
Breathe.
Just breathe.
Until two months ago, Rhys had never had a dream. No one believes him, but it’s true. He’s asleep the minute his head hits the pillow and remains that way until dawn. The only things that come to him in his sleep are phone calls. Markers signifying someone else had too much and walked away. Or worse.
Then the dreams start. Novel at first. He becomes the boring person describing the indescribable over breakfast. At work. Over dinner.
At first, the garden is wondrous. Larger than life. Secure. A fun place to while away the time as his brain flicks through the files of the day. Storing the relevant. Destroying the used. That is what dreams are, right? A place to sort out the day’s events? Nothing more. The garden is magic. Seen through the eyes of a child. His birth into dreaming and it takes his breath away.
Initially he is an observer of the garden. Then he is in it. Touching the lush flowers, smelling the pollens with a smile on his lips. Night after night, he awakes fresh and calm. Then it starts to change.
To rot.
Anna tells him it is because of his job. The things he sees. It’s his brain’s way of dealing with it. If he’s struggling, there are people who can help. His response is hard, more than needed. He asks what she’s insinuating by ‘people who can help’. She doesn’t answer. He can’t tell if her face is pink through anger or shame.
Rhys rubs hard at his eyes. He rubs hard at his arms. The goosebumps have travelled with him from the garden, no not the garden but what came after.
‘Get a grip.’ His voice seems loud. The temperature in the bedroom must have dropped, that’s all.
Next to him Anna murmurs, rolls tighter into her side of the duvet. He knows she’s awake; she’s fooling no one. After all this time together does she really think he believes she could sleep through the light coming on, the movement on the bed? Rhys is happy for her to pretend, no, not happy, indifferent. It will save him having to listen to her sympathies, her suggestions, having to try and explain what he doesn’t really understand.
The carpet is thick and comforting beneath his toes as he goes to fetch a blanket. He has to look in several places. Why is Anna always moving things? Rearranging, changing, hinting. Hints that she wouldn’t need to keep doing this if they moved. She no longer says the words. Actions speak far louder. She fails to understand, they will never move. Rhys will never leave this house.
The curtains billow slightly although the window is not open.
The blanket, when he finds it, is rough. Sandpaper on skin that’s extra sensitive in the still of the night. Rhys wraps it round his shoulders, sits on the edge of the bed. The dream clings onto the edges of his mind. A shiver runs through his body. He rubs his finger and thumb together, not able to shift the solid feeling of the creature from his fingertips.
’Rhys?’ Anna murmurs.
His fingers dig into the blanket.
‘It’s nothing.’
Rhys rises, turns off the ligh
t and leaves her alone in the dark.
14.
A thin layer of dust on the bookshelf catches in the early morning light. Teenage paperbacks next to children’s classics. Rhys opens his eyes. The room pulls into focus. Polaroid photographs around the mirror smile down at him, tacked up in haste, to be completed later. In one of the photos she smiles, the biggest smile Rhys has ever seen, sandwiched between boys at a local gig. Rhys remembers that night, her happiness. Then again, it is possible he doesn’t remember the night at all. The photograph is the memory. In the other photos she is with various girlfriends. A new tribe, association with family became ‘totally uncool’.
Next to the bed are a variety of soft toys. Some sentimental, some part of a collection. A big pink teddy bear takes pride of place, centre stage. This one is from Rhys. He won it in the arcades on a family holiday. Then they ate fish and chips, laughed in the sunshine.
There was a family holiday, but it didn’t end like that.
Suspended in a glass clip frame next to the bed is a black and white poster of a man with his shirt off, holding a baby. It is juxtaposed with a cartoon-style poster of The Hobbit. The walls are an inoffensive white. Polystyrene alcove. Off-white skirting. Has the skirting always been off-white or has time yellowed it like human skin?
Rhys knows every detail of this room. The angles of the furniture. The wear on the carpet. The way a magazine has been left open next to the bed. The cushion he hugs to his chest is as good as new, but dated. The Coca-Cola emblem as white against the red as the day he gave it to her.
To Jenny.
His breathing slows. He moves a fraction, the blanket still rough against his skin.
‘Rhys?’ Her voice is light and playful. A voice as real to him as he drifts off as it was all those years ago.
‘Oh go on, Rhys. Surely you don’t need two?’ Rhys peers up at her through his thick eyebrows. Alert. On edge. Since she has turned fourteen, Jenny is, what he can only describe as odd. Odd and mean. She doesn’t want to play what she refers to as ‘childish games’, games she loved and begged to play the summer before. In general she ignores him, laughs and points at him and his friends with her newfound ones. She doesn’t speak to Mum or Dad anymore either. Apparently they didn’t understand. Rhys thinks they understand loads. That’s what being a grown up is all about: understanding and knowing loads. Oh, and not having to go to school.
One of Dad’s friends from work has come to visit. Work is where you go when you finish school. He is a massive man with a huge moustache and loud American accent. The American gives them both presents, special things wrapped in brown paper and string. Special things all the way from America.
Jenny’s present is a bright pink tracksuit with a sequined image of New York skyscrapers on it. Rhys can tell she hates it but she smiles politely. It’s odd, Rhys is sure she loves pink and glitter. Mind you, that was probably yesterday not today. Rhys is pleased she pretends to like her gift as the American man is so excited to give it to her, and Dad would have been so mad if she’d cried.
Then it’s Rhys’s turn. He doesn’t want to open the package. It’s so exciting to look at and feel, and try and guess what it is. Plus he’s frightened. He doesn’t know how well he’ll be able to pretend to like a pink tracksuit with sequins on the front. String pulled and paper strewn aside, he finds two amazing, bright, shiny Coca-Cola emblem cushions. They’re exactly the ones everyone at school wants and dreams of one day having. If he had known at the time what a Fabergé egg was, this would have been as good. No. Better.
Everyone exclaims that the American man shouldn’t have, apart from Rhys who thinks he really should, and Jenny who accidently agrees too wholeheartedly. The American man replies it’s no bother and gets all teary about some kids he’s never had, which is odd. He squeezes Jenny and Rhys as tight as a bear then dismisses them to play. Darting upstairs, Rhys is in the middle of deciding where to display his new gifts in his red, white and black room when Jenny appears.
‘Rhys.’ Her voice is light and playful. ‘Oh go on, Rhys. Surely you don’t need two?’ The dimples in her cheeks show more when she smiles.
‘What’s it worth?’ Rhys responds, knowing instantly she meant his new prize.
‘Hmmm… Let me see.’ Jenny pouts and thinks. Rhys is always impressed by how quickly Jenny can think, even if sometimes it’s how to be mean. ‘How about I eat all your greens at tea time?’ That’s a really good one.
‘For a week?’ asks Rhys, happy at his own fast thinking.
‘A whole week?’ She places her hands on her hips. ‘Deal.’
‘Shake on it.’ Rhys stretches out his hand. Jenny goes to take it but instead grabs him and blows a big raspberry kiss on his forehead. She pushes him lightly onto the bed and picks up one of the cushions. Rhys laughs and for what seems like the longest time, Jenny laughs too. Her dark ringlets bounce as she jumps up and down with joy. For a moment, she forgets her new adult persona, and is the child he knows so well. She is back, if only for that moment. She is his big sister and he beams with joy.
15.
Anna stands with her nose inches from the closed door; she doesn’t need to open it to know he’s inside. So much for pretending to be asleep, hoping he’d snuggle back beside her, cuddle up and allow her to make everything okay. She stares hard at the glossed wood, stares until her vision goes blurry and her eyes start to water. What is she hoping? That somehow he will know she’s here? Why should this time be any different to all the others? She inhales slowly, closes her eyes, leans her forehead against the cool wood. Silly cow. Perhaps some people never learn?
Jenny Morgan, Rhys’s big sister, was only fourteen when she disappeared, decades ago, now frozen in time.
One day Jenny was there, happy, smiling, if a little irritable. The next she was gone, vanished off the face of the planet, tearing in her wake a giant rip in the fabric of the world as the Morgans knew it. Had she run away? If she had, she hadn’t taken one solitary item with her. Had she been abducted? If she had, not one speck of evidence was left to call for help. Rhys has silently covered every angle over the past twenty-two years.
Rhys refuses to leave this house. He stayed long after his parents abandoned all hope. He doesn’t voice the thought, but Anna knows he needs to be here in case she comes back. In case she sends a sign.
To be with him, Anna moved in. Amongst the shards of Rhys’s family home they slowly constructed their own.
At first Jenny’s room was the beating heart of the house. Anna wondered if she could bear it, the oddness of it all, if she could live within the memory of someone she’d never known. Why couldn’t the room be tucked away in a box somewhere? Moved out of sight? Rhys would heal faster if there wasn’t a constant reminder of his loss staring at him daily.
It was, is, not up for discussion. The room will not be packed away. It will not be touched.
The door to the room is rarely open. It’s a secret place Rhys wants to protect from the world’s eye, even if the eye belongs to those who love him most. The door is shut tight and over time, Anna has come to all but ignore it. Like a pattern, no, stain on the wallpaper you become so accustomed to, you almost forget it’s there.
Almost.
Over the years, Rhys gradually stopped talking about her, his big sister, but her shadow is always cast. Like a piece of fruit left in the bowl for too long, her memory is rotten.
Rhys couldn’t stay in this room forever with his sister. He couldn’t keep her safe. Now it has become his safe place. An irony that makes Anna feel physically sick.
Rhys has transferred to Murder. Something they discussed, then argued about for hours, realising through tears, they were both arguing the same point. Anna can’t understand why he’s doing it if he doesn’t want to. Rhys says what she fails to understand is that he cannot say no. They both know his implication. She’s not worked for too many years, is too out of touch to know ‘how these things work’. She shouldn’t comment on what she doesn’t understand. It h
angs in the air between them for days. Niggles like a splinter too far under the skin.
This case isn’t going to be about someone who’s missing, someone Rhys can save and bring home. It’s about someone who’s dead.
Dead.
Something inside Anna starts to sink. She has been treading water for weeks now and is tired. She doesn’t want to drown, but like a kitten tied in a sack, is unsure how to prevent it.
Anna exhales slowly through her nose. In through her mouth, out through her nose. Her breath condenses on the wood of the door. She stands and watches it for a very long time.
16.
The car horn blares in the morning air. On the front step Rhys jumps, drops his house keys. It’s early. Quinn can clearly see him. The rest of the cul-de-sac will have no desire to be disturbed at this hour. What the hell is he playing at? Rhys turns towards the car, through the window he sees Quinn light a cigarette.
‘Hope I didn’t wake you there.’ Quinn takes a long swig of a fizzy energy drink then burps almost as loudly as his horn. Rhys closes the car door softly, slides the window all the way down. Quinn pulls away from the curb. Quinn’s right hand is strapped. He sees Rhys looking.
‘Bastard’s only gone and broken it.’ Quinn waves the hand in case there is any confusion. Rhys nods. Turns to look out of the window. Dawn is trying, and failing, to break.
Rhys stretches his neck, runs his hands over his face. He feels the creature from the dream’s solid body ghost against his fingertips. Sees the eyes that pierce deep inside him.
Rhys stretches his eyes wide, blinks. He must know this being, this man, from somewhere. That’s how it works isn’t it, that’s how he’s ended up in the dreams. Part of the filing away process.
Night after night after night.
Rhys yawns. Things always seem better in the morning, more rational, right? But his heartbeat quickens as he thinks of the dream, everything about it so real, as if it happened, as if he is recalling actual events, events that keep on happening.
Night after night after night.