by Gary McMahon
Magic was lying on the floor outside Jess’s room. The cat’s abdomen was torn open from throat to groin. He was on his back, legs kicking, eyes wide open. The animal did not make a sound but his mouth opened and closed, as if he were trying to scream. Using his front paws, Magic started to scratch at himself, tearing open the wound even farther, rending layers of yellow fat. Rather than intestines, what oozed out of the rent in his torso was the same matter that I’d followed up the stairs: pumpkin flesh, pumpkin seeds.
I watched in shock as the cat slowly disembowelled himself, spilling more of those ugly seeds onto the carpet outside Jess’s room. After a while, he stopped moving. But his eyes remained open. They stared at me, as if in accusation. Not for the things I was doing now, but for the things I’d already done. I stared at them, wondering if they’d change into my father’s eyes. They didn’t.
It’s your fault, said those eyes. This is all your fucking fault.
I knelt down and stroked the cat’s head. He didn’t move.
“Oh, Jesus…what is this?”
But the cat wasn’t telling.
It was my turn to tell.
* * *
It happened nine years ago, before Jess was born.
Holly and I had always shared a tumultuous relationship. Our marriage was an emotional war zone; the only casualties were us. We tore at each other, stripping off layers with verbal assaults. We usually stopped short of violence, but I’d always known that she had it somewhere within her to physically hurt another person.
Holly had always meddled with drink and drugs. I took steroids and growth hormones, but not often. I had control. I never let things go too far. But Holly had an addictive nature; she never knew when to say no, or if she did, she ignored that cutoff point and sailed beyond it, laughing. She was always pushing the boundaries, testing herself and those around her. It was what she did, how she lived.
I’d been working late at the club. A couple of the guys had called in sick, so the club security was stretched thin. We had a man stationed on each of the main doors and two men walking the joint. Not enough numbers. We had a lot on; too much to cope with. There were several fights that night, one of them ending in a glassing incident that left a man blind in one eye.
Back then, I loved the action. It made me feel good; made me feel like a man. I was a borderline sociopath and too dumb to know it. Fighting, or simply being around that kind of violence, filled a void in me that I didn’t even know existed.
One night, after the club shut, I had a few drinks with the other doormen and fended off the attentions of a barmaid. She always seemed to engineer the situation so that she was sitting next to me and we were separated from the rest by a table or a couple of empty stools. I called a staff taxi, waited at the front door. There were a few stragglers walking through the streets, weaving like the undead along the rain-slicked footpath. I lifted my face to the sky and closed my eyes, letting the drizzle cool me down. It was hot inside the club; the fresh air was a welcome change.
The taxi pulled up at the curb. I climbed in and sat back with my head against the seatback. The taxi cruised through the night, as smooth and natural as a predator. When we stopped at a red traffic light, I was only vaguely aware of someone throwing an empty wrapper at the side window. The taxi pulled away, the driver muttering under his breath.
I got out at the flat where we were living. It was a small place, two bedrooms, and part of a tiny block at the end of a street that was rapidly turning into a dump. Our neighbors on both sides had moved out, and the flats remained empty. This was the bad side of town: rows of dirty streets that bordered a rough council estate.
I failed to notice the car parked at the curb a little way along the street. I was tired; I’d had one too many pints after the club shut its doors to the public. If I’d looked up, spotted the car, I’m sure I would have recognized who it belonged to. I wonder now, all these years later, if that would have made any difference to what happened. Would I have walked away, gone to stay at a friend’s place—or perhaps gone back to that barmaid who was always chasing me? Or would I have gone charging in there anyway, simply more prepared for what I was about to see?
I opened the main door. It was locked, and I had to fumble around for a while to locate my keys. I didn’t turn on the lights. I just walked up the stairs on autopilot, knowing exactly where to place my feet in the dark. There was enough light bleeding through the windows on the first floor for me to see, so I left the lights off there, too.
I unlocked the door to the flat and walked inside.
I knew there was something wrong immediately. There were clothes on the floor in the hallway, most of them outside our bedroom. The bedroom door was ajar, and TV light seeped through the gap. I couldn’t hear the television; it must have been set to mute. But I could hear the sound of people having sex.
I walked quickly and quietly to the bedroom door, pushed it open, and looked inside.
Holly was lying on her back on the bed. The skinny pusher she regularly bought her drugs from was lying on top of her, his head resting against her naked belly and turned away from me. He was naked, too, and he had his cock jammed into my wife’s mouth, down her throat. He lifted his head slightly off her tight little belly. His eyes were closed. He moaned softly. There was white powder around his nose and mouth; the same white powder stained Holly’s abdomen.
I stood there and watched while she fellated him. I felt detached, apart from what was going on. I should have felt angry, but I didn’t. All I felt was an intense disappointment.
Finally the pusher saw me. He slid partially off Holly, his cock popping out from inside her cheek.
“Hello, Virgil.” My voice was cold. It was ice.
He tried to smile but it looked more like a silent scream. He blinked madly. Holly started to struggle underneath him, realizing that they’d been caught in the act.
“Adam…oh, shit. What time is it?”
“Is that all you can say?”
“I didn’t realize…I thought we had hours until you came home…”
I laughed, but it sounded odd, strained. The noise scared me. It didn’t sound like me.
“Listen, man. I’m sorry, okay…I mean, really fuckin’ sorry. This shouldn’t’ve happened…” Virgil struggled to his feet, putting the bed between us. I don’t think that was by design—he just wanted to get the hell off my wife before I went ballistic. “Seriously, man. It’s the drugs, innit? I’m off my head.” He raised his hands, palms out. They were covered in the same white powder that was on his face, the same stuff he’d been snorting off my wife’s belly.
I opened my mouth but realized that there was nothing I wanted to say. They were both talking enough for all three of us. I could see their mouths moving, their eyes growing wide and bright. I could smell the fear.
The time for talking was done.
I moved quickly across the room, around the bed, and took him by surprise. His reactions were slow because of the drugs and the sex. I grabbed him by the face, my large fist almost engulfing his features, and pushed him as hard as I could into the wall. The back of his head made contact with the plaster; his head bounced. I didn’t hear a thing. My ears were filled with white noise. I think I might have been laughing.
Then I started hitting him. Body blows at first, and then, as I found my rhythm, I started to smack him in the face. I saw the blood. It was bright red, nearly orange, like horror movie blood. His nose broke. I think I fractured one of his cheekbones. He kept sliding down the wall, going to ground, but each time he did I hauled him back up on his feet. I wasn’t finished with him yet. He had to pay for what he had done.
I’m not quite sure where he got the knife from. He was naked. It couldn’t have been hidden anywhere. Perhaps it was on the floor, and he’d grabbed it during one of those abortive attempts at going down. Maybe he’d been holding it all along. I don’t know. It isn’t important. What is important is that he tried to stab me. Honestly. He slashed at me with the
knife. He even drew blood: a thin cut along my forearm. It didn’t even leave a scar.
I grabbed the knife and it cut my hands, flaying open my fingers as I closed them around the blade.
Holly told me later that she thought I’d been mortally wounded. She thought he’d got me good with the blade. That’s why she grabbed the lamp and ran at us, swinging it wildly, hitting him across the side of the face, catching him on the part of the skull behind the ear. It was a heavy lamp. I like to think it killed him on impact. Despite what he did, I hope his suffering wasn’t too bad.
Noise came rushing back into my ears. Holly was wailing. It wasn’t loud, but it was annoying. I turned to face her. She was standing naked next to the bed, a white powdery patch on her abdomen, her thin legs shaking. She was still holding on to the lamp. It was covered in blood.
I turned back to look at Virgil. He’d slumped to the floor. The white noise was threatening to return, but the weird sound Holly was making kept it at bay. I bent down and felt for a pulse. I’d had some basic first-aid training because of my job on the door, so I knew what to do, what to look for. I could already tell Virgil wasn’t breathing. When I couldn’t find a pulse, it was simply a confirmation of what I already knew.
He was dead. She had killed him.
That was the only time I ever admitted to myself that it was just a case of her getting to him first. He would have ended up dead that night, anyway; it didn’t matter who did it.
We were both guilty of his murder.
The rest happened quickly. Holly got dressed in silence. There was no need to speak. We both knew what we were doing without having to say it. We wrapped the body up in an old sleeping bag and got him out to the car. It was early in the morning; there was nobody around to see. We got lucky. What few neighbors we still had must have been asleep: no insomniacs, no late-night toilet trips. We stuck him in the trunk of the car. I got inside and started the engine. Holly ran back upstairs for the lamp and the knife.
We drove to the coast. It wasn’t too far away, and we felt blessed anyway. We were certain that we wouldn’t be caught. I’m not quite sure what made us believe this, but we did. We had no fear. I turned on the radio. Holly even took a short nap. We didn’t even discuss what I’d walked in on. There was no need. It was one of the few times in our lives that we felt totally connected, almost like a psychic bond.
The sun was coming up when we reached the spot, but it was isolated. There weren’t any houses for miles. We filled the sleeping bag with rocks, tied it up with some wire I had in the car—twisting it over and over around the corpse’s feet. Then we dragged the body to the edge of the cliff and threw it in.
We watched it go under, and then we held hands and walked back to the car. We stopped before getting back in. Holly moved closer to me and kissed me on the mouth. I responded. Our tongues wrestled; we shared a passionate moment. Then, as she pulled away, I slapped her hard across the face. Tears sprang out of her eyes but still she made no sound. She nodded once, and then got in the car.
I remember turning around to look out to sea. The sky was gray; the water was only slightly less gray. There was barely any demarcation between the two. That felt important somehow, like it was something I ought to remember.
We drove back to the flat and tidied up. We moved his car to a quiet spot a few streets away. Nobody was looking for him, so we supposed it would just be towed away after a week or so and stored in a police compound to gather dust. Our arrogance was spectacular, but it turned out to be well placed. The car was gone after six or seven days.
Later that morning, we finally spoke about what we’d done. We made a promise—a dark promise—to each other, one that we were still counting on, even now.
“Whatever happens between us, we’ll never tell anyone of this. We’ll protect each other. We did this together. We killed him together. That’s all. It is what it is.”
We made love and the pact was sealed. It felt strange, like something that was happening in a dream. Perhaps that’s how we survived it, by pretending we’d dreamed the whole thing: the fight, the knife, the heavy lamp, the smashed skull; the blood, the sea, the dark, oily waters washing it all away…
It didn’t take long for our confidence to fade. The next few weeks we spent in stark terror, especially when his car was removed. We knew the body would be found, that we’d been stupid to just throw it into the sea. It was only a question of when.
The weeks after that, it got easier. Nobody missed Virgil. He was just another scumbag who’d dropped off the edge of the world. Every new day was another one when no news reached us. After three months, we started to relax. After six, we began to regain the belief that we would get away with what we’d done. After a year, we started to forget.
The cracks in our relationship had opened wide that night. It was a miracle we were still together. We decided to have a Band-Aid baby, something that would help to seal up those cracks.
The plan didn’t work. It just prolonged the inevitable.
We didn’t split up until Jess was five years old, and by that time we’d convinced ourselves and each other that we’d never murdered a man called Virgil, and that his body wasn’t resting somewhere on the bottom of the sea.
We were safe. We were golden. Our marriage had failed for banal reasons, just like all the other broken marriages around us. Drink, drugs, infidelity, selfishness…all the usual reasons.
It would be a long time until I could once again face the truth.
* * *
Right then, standing over the dead cat my daughter had loved, I recognized that night, that stupid pact, for what it was: the beginning of the end.
The killing of the drug dealer was just another dark fulcrum, about which had turned a separate dark movement. And it was still turning now, spinning slowly, like the sails of a vast black windmill, in the background of our lives.
EIGHTEEN
Gone, Gone, Gone…
I double-bagged the dead cat, and put it in the wheelie bin outside. Getting rid of it like this—surreptitiously—made me travel mentally back in time, and I found myself reliving once again that early morning drive to the coast with a dead drug dealer in the trunk of my car.
I stood outside, trying not to look at the house next door. All this darkness, past and present, it was just too much. Virgil, the dead dealer; Katherine Moffat and her heinous deeds; and now Holly stuck in a coma from which she might never wake. Was she trapped somewhere, paying for the sins of the past? Was Virgil there with her, tormenting her? Was Katherine Moffat watching from the shadows, nibbling on the severed body parts of murdered children? I closed my eyes and imagined the scene: Holly giving head to a water-bloated corpse, watched over by a tall, skeletal figure juggling the heads of small children.
I opened my eyes and wished away the image.
I’d checked on Jess before dealing with Magic’s corpse, and she’d been sleeping peacefully. For some reason, I felt the need to look in on her again, to double-check that she was okay.
At the front of the house, headlights shone in the road, the illumination creeping along the side of the house. I heard a car pulling up at the curb. I waited. The engine kept running for a few moments, and then it was turned off. A car door opened and then slammed shut. Footsteps—high heels; it was a woman—sounded hard and fast against the pavement. The car—it was a taxi—drove away.
“Adam…”
I turned to face Carole. She was standing, breathing heavily, at the edge of the patch of ground that ran along the side of my house. It looked like she’d been running, but I knew she’d been in a car. Her hair was in disarray. Her face was flushed—I could see it by the streetlights.
“Are you okay?” I took a step forward; she took two steps back.
“I’m…I don’t know.” She glanced at the ground, then back up again, at me. That was when I noticed the marks on her face. Dark patches on her cheek and forehead.
“When I didn’t hear from you…couldn’t contact you…
shit, I didn’t know what to think. You haven’t been to work. People have been worried.”
“Evans?”
I nodded.
“He’s a nice man. He’s always been good to me.” Her smile was pained.
“Come in. It’s dark. I’ll make some tea.”
She shook her head, walked forward into the light that was coming through my side window. Her face was battered. Someone had given her a good going-over, and it didn’t take a genius to guess who. That guy I’d seen at her place, the one with the brutal tattoos.
“What’s he done to you?”
She inhaled deeply, clutched her hands in front of her stomach. “He gets busy with his hands. That’s what he calls it: getting busy. He doesn’t do it all the time, just when he loses control. He’s always sorry afterward…”
“Oh, Carole…”
“I know, I know. Don’t you think I know? I’m stupid. I should kick him to the curb, get rid of him. I tried that, but he came back. He came back and he got busy again, just like before.” She was fighting tears, but the tears were winning. Her bottom lip quivered. She opened her mouth and bared her teeth, like a silent snarl.
“Let me talk to him. I’ll make sure he goes away and never bothers you again. I can do that. I promise you. Stuff like that, it’s nothing to me.” I moved closer to her but didn’t reach out; I was afraid that if I tried to touch her, she might run away.
“No, that isn’t why I came here.”
“Then why are you here?” I made no further moves toward her.
“I have to tell you something. I need to be honest with you. I owe you that, at least.”
Dark motion behind me: the slow turning of windmill sails.
“What’s this all about, Carole? I’m starting to get worried. Very worried.” I clenched my fists. I could feel the violence boiling up inside me, ready to explode.