The Slaughter Man

by Cassandra Parkin

  When I wake up I’ll be able to speak again, she thinks. Things will be better in the morning. I’m not Laurel. I’m Willow. I’m not dead. I’m alive. I’m taking my A-levels next summer. College starts tomorrow, and I’m going. Tomorrow, I’ll do better.

  The face that stares back at her looks as if it doesn’t believe her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  For a few days, she’s able to defy herself. For a few days, she actually manages to do better.

  Better sees Willow onto the bus, through morning classes and all the way to the college canteen, with her sandwiches and her apple and her drink and her bag of crisps. Some days she’s so consumed with guilt at still being alive, and at doing something to make sure she stays that way, that she can hardly swallow. Some days, she’s so furious with the world that she eats every bite and then buys half a dozen chocolate bars from the corner shop and eats and eats and eats until she’s sick and dizzy with sugar, until she thinks a single mouthful more might split her open, until she has to kneel on the floor by the toilet bowl and use every ounce of her willpower to hold onto the contents of her stomach, because some things cannot and should not be undone and she won’t allow herself the release of vomiting. But today she can eat normally, one bite after another, steady and careful, with pauses for mouthfuls of Diet Coke to wash it down.

  Perhaps what she said to herself last night was true. Perhaps from now on, she’ll do better. Maybe this is the beginning of her slow climb out of the pit, back towards normality.

  She’s sitting with her lunch and trying to focus on this thought, the idea of being normal. Maybe she’ll be able to speak in English this afternoon, join the discussion on Othello out loud and not simply in the empty places in her head. She’s aware of the arrival of a cluster of girls she knows well and used to be friendly with, but she only vaguely registers the new face in the centre of the group, her expression one of frantic effort and furious concentration, the outsider trying to find her place as quickly as possible.

  “… food’s all right, but it gets really busy and you can’t take plates or cutlery into the student lounge, so most of us bring sandwiches and eat in the lounge, and just buy snacks in here.”

  “I’ve only got money today. Sorry. Um, I can eat in here, and then meet you in the lounge afterwards if you like?”

  “Don’t be daft, we’ll sit with you. You get some food and we’ll hang around and wait for a table…”

  “Um, that one’s almost empty…?” That faintly artificial uncertain note. She already knows there’ll be a reason for the table remaining almost-empty when every other table in there is almost-full. She’s not suggesting they sit there. She only wants to know why they can’t. Willow feels envy clutch at her guts. She used to be able to do that, used to be able to express almost anything she wanted with the smallest modulations of her voice. If only she could speak, if only the hand at her throat would just let go.

  “No, that’s Willow Tomms.” Ellie-Mae’s doing her best, but it’s hard to talk quietly when there’s so much ambient noise. Willow keeps her gaze facing carefully forward, not wanting Ellie-Mae to know that she can hear. “It’s really awful what happened. She had an identical twin sister called Laurel, but she died last term, right before the holidays – she wasn’t, like, noticeably ill or anything, it was really sudden – and now Willow has really bad social anxiety and she can hardly talk.”

  “She’s really brave coming back,” adds Georgia hastily. “None of us were expecting her to make it. I don’t know what I’d do if that happened to me, I’d…”

  No, you wouldn’t, thinks Willow scornfully. You wouldn’t die. You’d keep going. Because that’s what you have to do. You have to keep going.

  “God.” The new girl’s voice falters. “God, that’s… that poor girl.”

  “I know. It’s so sad. She’s in our English class this afternoon, but she probably won’t say anything. She used to be really clever as well. I tell you what, if you’ve got money do you fancy chips from the chip shop? There’s a good one just round the corner, we’ve got time.” They drift away again, leaving Willow behind.

  She wonders about going after them, trying to find her feet in the group once more, but what would be the point? Of course they left her behind. This is where she belongs now. This is who she is. This is who she’ll always be. She’ll never again be Willow the identical twin, no-that’s-not-Laurel-that’s-her-twin-sister-Willow, yes Willow, what did you want to say? Now she’s only ever going to be Willow whose twin sister died, Willow who doesn’t speak any more, Willow who we all know we have to be nice to but we don’t really know how to do that so we sort of leave her alone and hope that’s enough, Willow who used to be part of the gang but really, how can we keep including her when she doesn’t speak?

  The new girl is the first, but there will be many others. And the more people who know her in her silent, twinless form, the more impossible it will become for her to make her way back to her old self, until one day there’ll be no one who knew her when she was whole and had a voice, and she’ll never be that girl ever again. This silent girl, who sits alone in the canteen and who frightens others by her very existence, is who she is now.

  She thinks, I will not be scared of this. I won’t. I’m going to get better. I’m going to get better. I’ll be able to talk this afternoon in class. I will. She thinks, oh God, oh no, I’m going to wet myself. She stares hard at the table and clenches her fists and forces herself to hold on. After a minute, the feeling passes.

  She stands and pushes her chair beneath the empty table. She tries not to notice that everyone around her tenses up, just a little. She puts her lunchbox back in her bag. She takes her coat off the back of the chair and puts it on. Then she walks out of the canteen, pushing against the flow of traffic even though that’s against the rules. She walks the wrong way down the one-way corridor, waiting for someone to step in and send her back with a stern warning, perhaps even a sanction. But nobody does.

  She walks out of the canteen building and across to the admin block, and waits for someone to stop her as she passes through Reception. The staff behind the desk fall silent for a moment as she passes, but still nobody stops her. I’m the invisible girl, she thinks, and for a moment Laurel’s there beside her, her companion in the few acts of mischief they undertook on the days when they rebelled against their good-girl labels, and she thinks, Hey, Laurel, how about that? You turned me invisible. She can almost hear her sister’s laughter.

  Stop me, she thinks, and pushes through the doors and into the pick-up area outside, half-filled with cars even though it’s the heart of the school day. Stop me. She passes two teachers, who look at her apprehensively, but do not speak to her. Stop me. Say something to me. Try to stop me. They let her pass without a word. She crosses the car park. Stop me.

  One more step and she’ll be outside the bounds of the college. Stop me. This is the last moment before she can change her mind. Once she leaves the premises, she’ll never find the courage to come back again. The staff aren’t stupid; plenty of them have watched her as she leaves. They must know what she’s about to do. They can tell the difference between students leaving to go to the shops, and students leaving to do something they shouldn’t. The one time she and Laurel had tried skiving off from classes, sneaking out of separate entrances to avoid drawing attention with their doubled nature, they’d been casually intercepted before they’d even reached the street. It had been both scary and comforting to discover how closely watched they really were.

  Stop me, she thinks, and takes the step off the car park and onto the pavement. For a moment she shivers, and wonders what she’s done. Then she feels a curious sensation, a physical relief, as if a real and tangible weight has been lifted from her shoulders. Perhaps what has left her is the last shred of her reality. Perhaps now she’s truly invisible.

  She turns and heads towards home. The world feels strange and slowed-down. Normally she would be on the bus. It’s going to be a long walk,
but on the plus side, she’ll only have to walk it once.

  Just try to stop me.

  Time-wipe. She’s blinked and missed a chunk of time, but it’s all right, if she concentrates hard enough, she’ll be able to fill in the blanks. She’s in her room. (A moment of panic: is it her room? Yes, definitely her room, the room with Willow written on the door.) That means she must have made it home. She’s put on her pyjamas, leaving her jeans and t-shirt in a crumpled heap on the floor at the end of her bed. When she reaches out a hand, her t-shirt feels cool to the touch, so she must have been home for a while. Is she hungry? Not really. Is she tired? She’s not sure. How long does she have until someone finds her here? Perhaps they never will. She stretches out on her bed and closes her eyes.

  She’s begun to slip into the welcome darkness of sleep when she hears the front door bang open, then slam shut. Then, her mother calls her name up the stairs. She can hear the panic in it, the semi-rational terror of a woman who’s already seen into the abyss and now knows for certain that there’s no bottom, it goes down and down, a place you can fall into and never climb out again. A woman who knows there’s no end to the amount of bad luck the universe can contain, and that having one dose of it does nothing to inoculate you from receiving another. “Willow? Willow, are you there?”

  Her mother’s voice has been made desperate with love. Willow feels her own heart swell with love in return. This is the moment. This is what she needed. This is why she came home. It’s not a backwards move, it’s a step towards recovery. She has to call back, she has to put her mum out of her misery and let her know she’s all right. She can do this. She will open her mouth and she’ll be able to call back.

  She opens her mouth. Her lungs fill with air, the words are there in her mouth, every muscle of her body is willing and eager. Mum, I’m here, I’m fine. What’s wrong with her that she can’t even let her mother know she’s safe? She could do the second best thing and go to the door of her room, fling it open so that her mother will hear the sound, stand wordless but visible at the top of the stairs. She’s all right, she can do this, she only needs a minute to get herself together.

  “Willow? Willow? Are you in here?” Her mother is rushing up the stairs now. “Willow! Sweetie, please, I’m not angry, I just need to know you’re okay.” On the landing. “Willow, please…” The door opens, and there she is, fear aging her, so Willow can see what her mother’s going to look like when she’s an old woman. Or is it simply the change that came over her the day Laurel died?

  This is what she’s been waiting for. This moment when her mother will come to her and find her sitting in her room. She knows Willow’s run out of college and come home; she knows Willow’s ignored the frantic messages on her phone; she knows she sat still and silent as her mother called her name. Now, in this moment, her mother – who studied for years to understand how the human brain works, who spends her days fixing people who have to live with the almost-unbearable – will find the way to fix her.

  What will it be? Perhaps her mother will be angry. You heartless little monster, how could you do this? How could you leave college and not tell me where you were going? How could you sit there and listen while I called your name? Right, that’s enough. I’ve been holding off, letting that other doctor do her best, but it’s time I took over. This is what you’re going to do, and you’d better bloody do it, Willow, or else… Or perhaps she’ll be softer, more tender. My poor girl, I’m so sorry, I thought you’d do better with treatment from someone external but now I understand… and I promise I can fix you. This will work, I promise it works. I only waited because it’s hard and you’ve been through so much already…

  Either of them, she thinks to herself, either of those is fine. Just tell me what to do. I’ll do the work, I promise. I don’t want to be like this for ever. You’re our mum, you grew us. You’re a grief counsellor, for God’s sake. You’re supposed to have the answers.

  But what she sees in her mother’s face is what she always sees these days: fierce unending love mixed with hopeless confusion. Because her mother does not have the answers, and does not know how to fix her surviving daughter, and they are both lost.

  “Oh, sweetie,” she says helplessly, and presses her hand against her mouth. “Oh, sweetie. It’s all right. It’s all right. We’ll be okay. It doesn’t matter. It’s okay.” She sits down on the bed beside Willow, puts her arms out and draws her into a fierce tight hug. “It’s all right, my little one, I promise I’m not mad. We’ll sort it out with college. We will. I’ll talk to them. Tell me what you need and—” She stops herself, and Willow hears the echo of the advice she’s overheard the psychiatrist give both her parents at the end of every appointment: Don’t put any pressure on her to speak, try not to make her feel guilty. “We’ll get all of this sorted.”

  But how? Willow wants to ask. How can we get all of this sorted? You don’t know and I don’t know, and Dad’s got no idea at all, and who else is there in the universe who can help? And for a minute, before she pushes the thought away, she thinks of the Death Bird that waits for her in the place where she goes to when she sleeps, of the congregation with their hungry beaks. That would fix it. If I died, it would all be sorted then, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t have to look after me any more. You wouldn’t have to look at me walking around wearing Laurel’s face. You could just… wallow in your grief.

  No, she tells herself fiercely. I don’t want to die.

  But then, Laurel hadn’t wanted to die either.

  And besides…

  She’s losing time again. A blink, and a night and a morning have passed and she’s at her desk that looks out of the bedroom window and over the garden, staring blankly at the work her teachers have sent home. Another blink and she’s lying on her bed, exhausted even though she hasn’t left the house, hasn’t even showered or dressed, and has spent an hour at most on her school work. Another blink, and it’s long past dinner time and she’s hungry. Did her parents call to her to tell her it’s time to eat? She searches back in the archives, trying to find a clue.

  Her father’s been at home every day since Willow left college. He doesn’t trust Willow to keep herself alive. Willow would give anything to make her parents understand that they doesn’t need to hover and twitter and peck, dropping scraps of food into Willow’s mouth whenever they get the chance. They don’t need to worry. She’s going to be all right. She only needs to be left alone for a while, to be left in silence so she can finally understand, finally hear what’s going on in her own head.

  Has she slept through dinner? She’s done this before and they’ve let her, but they’ve also saved her some on a plate to go in the microwave. Her stomach growls. When she tries to stand, she feels weak and shaky. It’s like this now: she’s not hungry and not hungry and not hungry, for hours and hours and hours, until suddenly a switch flips in her head and she’s starving. She ought to go downstairs and find whatever meal her parents have ready for her, but the hidden packet of biscuits is closer and easier, and she crams six chocolate digestives into her mouth, one after another without pausing. She could eat more – could happily eat the whole packet, and then sink back into sleep with her teeth coated in brown mulch and her breath sweet with sugar – but she forces herself to stop at six. She has enough energy to leave her room now. She’ll do the right thing.

  She can hear voices downstairs. There are always voices downstairs these days, but this isn’t the smooth bland drone that pours tirelessly out from the living room television, endless documentary programmes about lives they don’t live – in swamps, or the Arctic, or houses full of people all competing for the same job – interspersed with upbeat explanations of how random consumer goods are made. Tonight, she can hear actual human voices coming from the kitchen, voices that have the pauses and imperfect rhythms and moments when everyone speaks at once. Her parents, having a conversation. No, more than a conversation; an argument.

  Her parents, who have not argued or even raised their voices
to each other since the day it happened, are almost yelling at each other. How comforting. But what are they yelling about? And is she imagining it, or is there someone else in there too? She pads down the stairs and stops outside the kitchen door.

  “Of course I came to the bloody funeral!” There’s definitely someone else in the room. Another man. The sound of little movements; someone clattering in the cupboards, someone else pushing back a chair. “I didn’t want to make a scene, that’s all. So I parked outside and watched until after the cortege arrived – just me, mind, I didn’t bring anyone else with me – and then I came in separately and sat at the back.”

  “You came in separately and sat at the back.” Her mother’s voice drips with contempt. Willow feels a curl of satisfaction lick around her heart. She hasn’t sounded this alive since The Day. “Like a Victorian melodrama! Only you could find a way to make that day about yourself. Only you.”

  “Oh come on, Rose, be fair.” The strange man again. “If I’d come in like a normal person and sat where you could see me, you’d have said I was showing up and showing off and making a fuss and looking for a fight. Or am I wrong?”

  “Thank you for coming.” Her father, using that special tone of voice adults only produce when what they really mean is to tell another adult, This is what you’re supposed to be saying. It’s strange to hear her father using it on her mother, who always knows the right thing to do. “It means a lot.”

  “It means absolutely fuck all,” says her mother, with gloomy satisfaction. Willow clenches her fists to stop herself from gasping. She’s never heard her mother swear. Before she can stop herself, she turns to where Laurel should be standing, so they can share the moment, and finds only empty space. Will she ever get used to knowing that from now on, everything new that happens will happen to her alone?

  “Rose, come on.” Her father again, sounding exasperated but also a little amused. Perhaps he likes hearing his wife swear too.