The Bones of You

by Gary McMahon

  “I know,” she said, looking at me, at my face, my eyes. “I know.” She smiled. Her teeth were small and white, and for a moment they looked like those of a vampire. Her skin was so very pale. I was afraid of her but I didn’t know why…and then I did know, because what scared me was her immense strength. Telling me this had cost her a lot. She had taken such a great risk. I was glad that it had not been in vain, that I hadn’t let her down.

  Carole left soon afterward. There wasn’t much more to say, and I think we both felt that we might spoil the mood if we tried. We kissed lightly on the doorstep, just a quick peck, really; it was all we could muster after the emotional onslaught that had come before.

  I’d offered her a lift, but she wanted to take a taxi. I watched silently as it pulled away from the curb. She didn’t look back, out of the window, as the car moved slowly along the street, but it didn’t feel like an affront. She had no need to look for me. She already knew I was there.

  I went back inside and turned out the lights on the ground floor, then headed for the stairs. Just as I passed the cellar door, I heard a soft scraping sound, like a key slipping into a lock, or fingernails tickling the other side of the door.

  “Oh, fuck off,” I said, annoyed that my mind was conjuring such an image.

  I reached out and opened the cellar door without even pausing. The wooden staircase led down into darkness. I leaned into the doorway, reached around the frame, and flicked on the light. The cellar wasn’t exactly bright with the light on—all there was down there was a single bare bulb. But the light was harsh; it strained rudely toward the dark corners.

  The cellar was large and airy, quite unlike the ones in horror films. These houses were relatively modern—they were built in the 1960s—so there were very few hidden nooks and crannies, and hardly any atmosphere. The underground storage space was neat and tidy and had no walls separating it into creepy little compartments; it was just a big, clean, empty space underneath the house.

  I stepped down the first few stairs, ducked and peered around the cellar. There was nothing down there. The previous tenants had either cleared it out or never used it in the first place, and I could see almost every inch of floor space. Only the very edges of the concrete floor were not visible, because the light bled out to shadow.

  I went the rest of the way down, not feeling afraid, not feeling much of anything, if I’m honest, except confused about the situation with Carole. I didn’t know where I stood with her. One minute I wasn’t interested, and the next I wanted her. It seemed that her feelings were subject to similar swings, and none of it was conducive to a simple relationship.

  Why did I always fall for the crazy women? And, more importantly, why did they always fall for me?

  When I reached the bottom of the cellar stairs, I stopped and looked around. Now I could see into all the corners, and I noticed that the place was dirtier than I’d first thought. Cobwebs were strung like early Halloween decorations in the corners of the ceiling, the skirting boards were ragged and needed a lick of paint, the finished plaster walls had seen better days. There were various empty shelves, unused hooks, and other storage frames, but nothing much of interest down there.

  Then I caught sight of the box.

  It was a small cardboard box, like the ones used for shipping books. I walked over to the other side of the cellar where the box was standing against the wall, and squatted down to inspect it. On the side of the box there was a shipping ticket with a company name printed in black ink: CrimSlam Publications. Also printed there were details of what was inside the box.

  Twenty copies of Little Miss Moffat and the Radiant Children by Robert Shingley.

  At first I didn’t believe what I was seeing, so I reached out a hand and brushed away the light covering of dust from that part of the box. Yes, I’d read the shipping slip correctly. Inside this box were copies of Pru’s father’s book—an out-of-print book that was so rare even she didn’t have a copy.

  Well, I thought, she does now…

  I slid the box away from the wall, and when I did so, I noticed that it was light. Too light to contain twenty books, even if those books were very thin volumes. I inspected the top of the box and saw that the flaps had been opened up and then taped back down, as if someone had removed the contents and tried to hide the fact that they’d done so.

  It looked like Pru wasn’t getting a copy after all.

  But the box wasn’t completely empty. As I’d moved it, I felt something shifting inside.

  I pushed my fingertips under the thick bands of packing tape and peeled them away, then lifted the flaps and looked inside the box. There was one book inside, half-covered in strips of brown packing paper.

  I reached inside and took out the book.

  The cover design was simple: no fancy illustration, just the title and the author’s name beneath a monochrome photograph of the house next door to mine, but as seen in better days: freshly painted, with a tended garden, and full of promise for the future.

  I stood and walked back to the cellar stairs with the book. I stopped before I reached them, puzzled by a sound that came from behind me. I listened. Nothing. Then, slowly, I heard the sound of the box moving across the concrete cellar floor. Slowly, I began to turn around…the sound stopped…I continued to turn. The empty box had changed position. Instead of being near the far wall, it was now six inches behind me, as if it had slid across the floor and followed me like a trained animal.

  “No,” I said. I didn’t want to accept this. It was weird, yes, but it was a pointless weirdness. Why would some kind of presence move a box a few feet across a cellar floor?

  I bent down and looked closer at the box. The flaps were open. I’d closed them when I removed the book. I felt like replacing the book, resealing the flaps, and walking away. I didn’t want this; it wasn’t my problem. All I wanted was to be left alone.

  Now I was getting nervous. I fell back on my old mantra and silently counted to ten in Japanese:

  Ichi, ni, san, shi, go…

  I reached again inside the box and fished around in the packing paper. It rustled as my fingers got busy, but I couldn’t find anything in there.

  …roku, shichi, hachi…

  I picked up the box—gingerly; afraid that it might start moving again—and upended it, pouring the strips of packing paper onto the cellar floor.

  …kyu, ju…

  Something else fell out. Several somethings, in fact.

  At first I was unsure what I was looking at, but then I realized that they were some kind of seed. The seeds were flat, slightly oval in shape, and a dull off-white color. Clinging to them was some kind of orangey pulp. My fingers hovered over the small pile of seeds and pith. I was afraid to touch it, but wasn’t sure that I wanted to leave it there.

  Leaning forward, I brushed my fingertips against the seeds. Nothing happened, so I picked them up. I brought a small handful up to my face and examined them.

  They were definitely seeds, and the pulpy matter that clung to them was still moist. Unless I was mistaken, I’d seen seeds exactly like this before, but not often, and only on Halloween when I’d carved a lantern for Jess.

  They were pumpkin seeds.

  SEVEN

  She’s Here

  It was Friday, at last. I got up early, dressed in my running gear, and set off for a head-clearing three-miler.

  Last night, after coming up from the cellar, I’d flicked through the book I found, but I was too tired to take much of it in. The text and the pictures had meant nothing to me. They soon became a blur. I wanted to have a proper look at the book today, but wasn’t sure if I’d have the time. Maybe tonight, when I could kick back, pour a glass of wine, and give it the attention it deserved.

  But now…now was for running.

  The sun was shining, making the sky look brittle. It was cold, but the sunlight took off the edge, made it pleasant rather than uncomfortable. I’ve always loved mornings like this one. I still do, even now. That’s somethi
ng that can never been taken from me.

  This time as I ran, I headed straight for the concrete underpass. When I reached its mouth, I stopped and pretended that I needed to stretch. As I leaned against the concrete upright forming one side of the entrance, I stared into the gloomy interior of the tunnel. It was short, grubby, and depressing. But there was nobody in there. Nor was there any indication that I should be afraid of the place. Yet still, I felt the same sensation as before. As I examined it, I understood that there was a sense of doom hovering about the underpass. I’m not usually a sensitive type, but I picked up on it as if I had some kind of doom-radar on my head that intensified such feelings.

  For a long time, I just stood there, all pretense of stretching forgotten. I didn’t want to go inside, but I knew that if I failed to do so, this would become a thing: I’d start habitually avoiding the underpass and make perfectly reasonable excuses to myself about not going there.

  Gathering myself as if I were about to fight in a karate competition—I remembered the routine from years ago—I braced my body and my mind, and stepped into the shadow of the underpass.

  At first I thought it felt like the temperature had dropped, but then, as I advanced, I realized that the change was much more subtle than that. The air was different; the way it displaced around my body, the texture of the atmosphere, the ambience inside the underpass was completely different to that outside. It was like entering a new environment, one that made me uneasy—no, it was more than that. I felt threatened, actually physically threatened, in a way that was alien to me. I was afraid of no one, but I was scared of this.

  “Hello…” I felt stupid for calling out like that, but something made me do it all the same. I wanted to announce myself; this had nothing to do with greeting someone who might be hidden. It was more about trying to break the spell, messing with the atmosphere of dread.

  “Fucking hell…this is absurd.”

  I counted to ten in Japanese. It didn’t help. I couldn’t focus on the pronunciation.

  “Fuck it.”

  I walked forward, going deeper into the underpass, heading toward the large rectangle of light that was the other side. I could hear the dull, thudding percussion of traffic across the top; the thick walls absorbed the shock, turning the sound into something unnatural.

  I read the graffiti as I walked, finding little humor in badly spelled obscenities, statements about the local female populace, and announcements of who had done what and to whom inside this weird concrete chamber.

  When I stepped out into the hazy sunlight at the other end, it felt as if I’d completed a monumental task, succeeded in a challenge, or fought a personal demon. I ran on for a while, and then turned back and retraced my steps through the underpass. This time it didn’t seem as intimidating, as if by walking through it once, I’d broken whatever hold it might have had over me. I hoped that I could carry this feeling into the rest of my life.

  I went home, showered, and put on some decent clothes—a pair of jeans that actually fit me, a T-shirt that wasn’t torn or stained, and a pair of boots I’d forgotten I had. I topped off the ensemble with a brown bomber jacket with a gray hood. It looked like it might be fashionable, and my eight-year-old daughter might just allow herself to be seen with me if I had it on.

  I drove away from town, out of the suburbs and toward the motorway. All the streets looked the same; each one was just like mine, and the thought made me feel bleak and hopeless, as if I’d joined some kind of club that would assimilate me and remove whatever it meant to be Adam Morris.

  The sun kept shining, and I pretended that it was because of where I was going, because I was seeing Jess today. That was how the world showed itself to her, by putting on its best face and smiling. Generally it reserved its worst face—the one with smeared makeup, bruised cheeks, and ragged lips—for me.

  My daughter meant everything to me. It had taken me quite some time to realize this was the case, but once I did, it began to seem like I’d come upon some great and eternal truth. She’d poured herself into my life, filling it like a broken container, cleaning it from the inside. There was still a lot of dirt on the external surfaces, but that would scrub off if I tried hard enough and used the right tools.

  What mattered was that my heart was now fresh and squeaky-clean, like new leather. She’d changed everything; she had saved me. And the best thing about this was that she didn’t even know what she’d done. She was an unintentional angel, a savior of the finest kind. I knew I’d spend the rest of my life thanking her, in as many ways as I could think up…because this was my self-appointed penance for being such a selfish, neglectful bastard in her early days.

  Holly didn’t want me going to the house, so we had an ongoing arrangement that I’d meet them in a little service station off the A1. She hadn’t gone as far as to seek out a restraining order, but my solicitor had suggested that it might be politic to abide by her wishes. The last time I’d gone there, it had ended badly. There were punches thrown; her junkie boyfriend, a man called William Pace, had to take a trip to the hospital, and Jess had witnessed a side of me that I wasn’t comfortable showing. Not to her.

  When I pulled into the car park, the place was busy but not overrun. The grass along the west side of the plot, behind which the embankment rose toward the motorway, was lined with trees that were in the process of shedding their leaves. The ground beneath them was covered in a layer of brown and yellow mulch.

  I sat in my car and stared at those near-denuded trees, and was overcome by a sensation of bleakness. How the hell had it come to this, with me driving out to a crappy service station to pick up my daughter every other weekend? Didn’t I deserve a normal life, one like other people enjoyed? Wasn’t I good enough for that?

  I rested my forehead on my knuckles, which were gripping the steering wheel so tight that they hurt, and tried to push away the self-pity. Life was hard, people were often harsh, and everybody had their own problems. These problems were mine—I had created them. Nobody had forced me to take up with an addict and have a child with her. I had made my own decisions, followed the paths I had chosen, and whining about the results would help no one.

  I got out of the car, locked it, and strode across the car park toward the little café that was attached to the side of the main services building. Inside the building, there were a few shop units, a Burger King, and an M&S that sold fancy sandwiches, but we preferred the unassuming little café. It didn’t even have a name, just a stencilled sign saying “Food & Drinks” above the main window.

  I went inside and sat down, waiting for the waitress to approach me. I scanned the menu, but I wasn’t hungry. Nothing appealed. Everything looked the same.

  “Hi.” The waitress was small and thin, and looked about nineteen years old.

  “Hi. Could I just have a black coffee, please? I’m meeting someone. We’ll order something more substantial then.”

  “No problem.” She walked away, glancing around the small café, checking that everyone was satisfied.

  Below the hem of her short skirt, her legs were pale and veined. I noticed a bruise above her left ankle. It looked bad, was turning dark through age. I wondered how she’d sustained the injury. She didn’t look particularly sporty, but perhaps she’d stumbled off a curb or fallen off a bike…why the hell was I bothered by this? More and more lately, I was finding it hard to focus. My mind kept shooting off on tangents, latching onto things that didn’t really matter.

  I had my paperback in my jacket pocket. I’d read half a page when the waitress returned with my coffee.

  “Thanks,” I said, putting down the book on the table.

  “Good book,” said the waitress. “I read it at Uni.”

  “I’m enjoying it,” I said.

  She smiled, walked away.

  I watched her as she headed toward a table in the corner. The sunlight came through the window and caught in her hair, turning the tips of her brown locks gold. She looked beautiful for a moment—like an ext
raordinary being trapped inside an ordinary moment—and then everything returned to normal. She moved out of the sunlight. Her hair was all brown again. She was human after all, just another plodding being making her way in the world.

  I took a sachet of brown sugar from the small white bowl at the center of the table, tore off the end, and added the sugar to my coffee. Perhaps if I concentrated on these small, everyday rituals, I’d regain some of my focus. Like Zen: a universe of peace and beauty found in the banal choreography of an ordinary life.

  I was just about to open my book and resume reading when I heard the door open. I looked up, and they were standing there, in the doorway, looking for me.

  Jess saw me first. Her face seemed to open up, like a hand showing the world that it is empty of weapons. My heart curled and clenched, a small fist inside my chest. Her hair—white-blonde, like her mother’s—was done up in bunches and she was wearing faded jeans with a padded red jacket. On her hands she had a pair of wool mittens. They were red, too, to match the jacket. I noticed her little running shoes. They looked so small; their size made me feel like crying, but I wasn’t quite sure why.

  This was the effect she always had on me: I could never be in control of my emotions when she was around. Like a hurricane, she entered my life and caused chaos, leaving behind a world of emotional debris.

  Jess ran across the café toward me. I stood, smiling, and Holly finally noticed me. Her face was hard. She looked pale, brittle, as if she was on the ragged edge of a whiskey bender. She probably was; she never seemed to be able to get her drinking under control.

  “Hey, baby.” I scooped up my daughter in my arms and held her tight, being careful not too squeeze her so hard that it hurt.

  “Daddy!” Her voice screamed right in my ear, threatening to damage the membrane. I felt her wet lips as they plastered kisses across my cheek. For a moment they felt like my own tears.

  I watched over my little girl’s shoulder as her mother, my ex-wife, walked slowly into the café and across the room. She’d lost a lot of weight. She was wearing a short skirt, and her legs—always on the thin side—looked like they might snap in a strong breeze. Her waist, above the knee-length skirt, was narrower than I’d ever seen it. Thankfully, her upper body was wreathed in a baggy overcoat, so I didn’t get a chance to see how her breasts had probably shrunk, and her ribs might be visible through her shirt. I could tell at a glance that she wasn’t eating. I’d seen this kind of behavior before, and it had broken my heart to watch her whittling away her own body on drink and drugs.