The Slaughter Man

by Cassandra Parkin

  “And this is your room.”

  Her room is deep-walled and low-ceilinged, enclosing her as tenderly as a nest holds an egg. The floor is varnished wood, slightly uneven, and covered with bright woollen rugs to shut out the faint draught of air from below. The bed’s weighed down with blankets and topped with a patchwork quilt so intricate she thinks at first it must be a printed duvet cover, but when she touches it she can feel the tiny seams, the intricate lines of quilting. The windows are too small to sit in, but there’s another full-length curtain, drawn closed even though it’s daytime, and behind it she finds the wooden door that leads to the stone staircase, and outside.

  “The curtain’s to stop the draughts,” Joe says. “When we did the room up…” He pauses, and glances shyly at her. “Well, we were thinking more of weekend visitors, and they tend to come in the summer when the cold’s not as much of a problem. But if you keep the curtain shut you should be okay.”

  She has her own front door. Her own private entrance and exit. When the dreams get bad, she could creep out and spend all night walking around, and no one would know. She grabs the thick iron ring of the handle.

  “You need to unlock it first.” Joe reaches over her shoulder and turns the key. It’s smooth and brown, fat and heavy-looking, the kind of key that belongs in a child’s book. “But you know, if you want to sneak out and meet a boyfriend or something… right, turn the handle again, and…”

  The door opens outwards, smooth and easy, and there are the steps leading down into the yard. The air is clean and sharp, laden with a scent that makes her think of fairy tales and witches and old, dusty places long forgotten. She supposes it must be the scent of the forest.

  “I’ll bring your suitcase in.” Joe is across the room in three big strides. She can hear his feet clattering on the staircase.

  Well, that’s silly, she thinks. She hops down the stone steps instead, and is waiting for Joe when he comes out through the kitchen.

  “Oh.” His smile is definitely one of the nicest things about him, warm and endearing and transformative. “Why didn’t I think of that? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know how exactly big an idiot I am.”

  She’s spent so long with everyone waiting breathlessly for her to speak that she’s forgotten what it’s like to be told to keep quiet. She wants to tell him what this means to her, but has to settle for taking the suitcase from his hands and dragging it up the staircase by herself, enjoying the scrape-bump rhythm of it, and the warmth that comes with the movement.

  “Well, okay, then,” says Joe with a shrug, and lifts his own suitcase from the boot. She wonders if he’ll follow her up the steps, but he goes to the kitchen door, and she’s left alone to explore her room.

  She ought to unpack her things into the chest of drawers that sits under the window, to choose where to put her underwear, her t-shirts, her hoodies, her leggings, her jeans. She ought to line up her boots and shoes in a neat row along the wall. This is clearly a home where housekeeping standards are high. But she’s grown used to being pampered as some kind of holy freak, freed from the chores and expectations of everyday life. So instead she closes the door to the outside, takes the key from the lock, pushes her shoes off so they fall with two muddy thumps onto the blue-and-beige-squared rug, wraps the beautiful patchwork quilt around her shoulders and sits on the bed to let the atmosphere of the room settle into her, turning the key over and over between her fingers, feeling it grow warmer with the stolen heat of her skin. She can hear the faint sounds of someone moving around in the room below. Joe must be lighting the stove. How long will it take this place to warm up? The quilt is surprisingly cosy. She draws it closer around her shoulders.

  She’s looking around the room once more – feeling proprietorial already and planning where she will put her books, her phone, her hair brush – when she realises what makes this room so welcoming; there’s no mirror. And as if this realisation has somehow unlocked another, it occurs to her that in the same way that Joe had both told, and not told, her mother the truth about what happened at the service station, he also carefully edited his conversation with her mother. If she’d only listened to what he told her, she’d think her mother only phoned to say hello. Her uncle seems honest, maybe even childish, but he’s rather good at keeping secrets.

  Or did he know she was listening all along?

  She doesn’t want to think about this. It’s much more comfortable to believe Joe is as simple and goodhearted as she wants him to be. She lies back on the bed, closes her eyes, and hears the faint clink of the key as it falls from her fingers and lands on the wooden boards below. She’s waiting for something, but she’s not sure what. She has the feeling that the house is waiting too.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Hey, Willow. We miss you already.”

  On the phone, her mother’s voice sounds both oddly unlike her, and oddly familiar. She sounds like Willow’s grandmother, who used to phone every Thursday night to talk to her granddaughters. Each week without fail, the phone had rung at six forty-five precisely – never earlier, never later – until the day the phone rang on a Monday at five fifteen, to disclose a stranger calling from her grandmother’s number with news of a trip to the hospital. Now, that faint old-lady hoarseness has taken root in someone else’s throat. Do the dead ever truly leave this world? Or are they continually resurrected in these unexpected hauntings? This is a glimpse into how it feels for her mother, constantly confronted with her lost daughter’s mirror image.

  “How was the journey? Joe said it rained most of the way.”

  Her mother’s voice is a warm lick of comfort, flowing over the top of Willow’s head and down the length of her back. She would like to crawl inside it.

  “D’you know, I hate driving in the rain.” Her mother sounds unsure, as if she’s feeling her way into this one-sided conversation. Willow wants her to talk and talk and talk, so she can lose herself in her mother’s voice. There are too many gaps between her words. “I don’t mind snow, I don’t mind ice, but I can’t stand driving when it’s raining. I mean, I know it was perfectly safe, Joe’s a good driver or I wouldn’t have let him take you.”

  Uncle Joe’s a terrible driver. She knows something that her mother doesn’t know, about her own brother. If Laurel was here, they would have shared the pleasure of this secret, successfully kept from the adults in their lives.

  “This is so weird. I don’t really know what to say.” Her mother’s voice wobbles. “I want to talk to you, I want to keep you on the phone, but I don’t know what to say. Are you still there?”

  Talk to her. Talk to her. Tell her you miss her. Tell her you love her. Bereft of words, Willow makes her breathing as slow and as loud as she can, so that on the other end of the line, her mother will hear her and keep talking. On the other end of the line, as if they’re connected physically. As if Willow’s a fish her mother has caught.

  “I can hear you breathing. It’s nice to hear you breathing.” Willow’s mother laughs. “Okay, that makes me sound like a—” She stops suddenly.

  Finish her sentence for her. Say ‘dirty phone caller’. Say ‘serial killer’. Make a joke about dick pics. In the last months before, their parents had begun to open up new sides of themselves, making jokes that were funny and dark and rude and cynical, jokes they wouldn’t have dreamed making even half a year ago. It felt as if they were trying on the possibility that their daughters were becoming adults. She and Laurel had first been appalled – I never knew they’d seen that film! Can you believe Mum said that? I didn’t know Dad even knew what that meant – and then been hungry for more, keen to find their way into this new aspect of their family lives. But Laurel’s death closed the door again, and now Willow’s stuck in the room labelled troubled daughter, while her parents, frantic to find a solution, debate on the other side. Say it. Say serial killer. Dirty phone caller. Sex line worker. If she could force the words out of her throat…

  “Oh, sweetie.” Her mother sighs. “I wish I
could give you a hug.” She takes a deep breath of her own, making herself strong and resilient. “Right. So, college work. Obviously don’t worry about it tonight. And don’t worry about it tomorrow either, I know how tiring travelling is. You wouldn’t think it would be, would you? Sitting in the car and watching the world go by. But it is. So have a day off tomorrow.”

  She has a new email address, and tutors who’ll send her modules of work to complete, and are available to talk to her by email if she needs any guidance. There’s a box in her suitcase containing a glossy stack of textbooks and revision guides. These things took time and ingenuity to organise, and have cost money. Can she honestly picture herself sitting down on her bed with her back against the wall and her laptop open? Or perhaps she’ll work at the kitchen table by the stove? None of this seems remotely likely.

  “But the day after tomorrow, you probably need to make a start. I know it’ll be strange doing it all by yourself, but give it a go, all right? Just give it a go and see how you get on.”

  Before The Day, her parents had been bright and hopeful for both of their futures. She and Laurel had compared notes on the bus, discussed scores and differences, argued over who was doing better (or sometimes, when they were feeling nihilistic and wanted to wallow, who was doing worse). Before The Day, they’d grumbled about the pressure they were under, how their parents had no idea what it was like to be the guinea pigs for an endlessly changing curriculum, how it wasn’t fair that they’d been born into a time when you were expected to start your career with a fifty grand debt hanging around your neck, and if Mum would stop asking, if Dad would chill out…

  “You’re breathing really loudly again.” Her mother’s voice is tender. “Is that so I know you’re still there? If you’ve had enough you can blow me a kiss and hang up. I won’t be offended.”

  Has she had enough? She checks the clock. They’ve been talking for six minutes and already she’s exhausted.

  “Oh, do you want to talk to your dad for a bit?”

  This is a question she’s not expected to answer. If it was completely up to her, she’d keep her mother on the line for a while longer. But perhaps her mother’s tired too.

  “Stephen?” She can hear the slight distance as her mother turns the phone away from her. “Do you want to talk to Willow?”

  He hates talking on the phone. Don’t make him. Another thing she couldn’t possibly say out loud even if she could speak, any more than her father could say No thanks, I love Willow but I’d rather eat my own head than talk on the phone… Does he know that she knows how he feels? Is this another thing Willow knows that her mother doesn’t? She hears the phone being passed from one to the other.

  “Hello.” Her father sounds upbeat and cheerful. “How was the drive? I had a look on Google, the traffic looked rough.”

  You’re saying you stalked me? The words are there in her mind but she can’t bring them out. And even if she said it, would it sound like a joke or would he think she was being serious? If it goes wrong, she might not be able to explain. She settles for a deep, noisy breath, so he’ll know he’s not jabbering into empty space.

  “I had a look at the house on Google Maps as well. It looks nice.”

  Her father’s right. The house is nice, even nicer now that Joe has lit the stove and the wood burner by now, and the house is beginning to warm through. Soon, even the bathroom might feel warm and welcoming. Is it just the slowly vanishing cold that makes her feel as if they’re still waiting for something so they can begin? Is it only the relentless tidiness that makes it feel like a house on pause?

  “So, your mum’s spoken to you about a schedule for your college work, but obviously don’t worry about that tonight. There’s no pressure. No pressure at all. Do what you can, that’s enough for us.”

  She won’t cry. These are the words they both used to declare they’d love their parents to say, while also secretly enjoying the knowledge that their parents were proud, and paid attention. But she won’t cry. She won’t. It’s not going to happen.

  “Willow? Are you still there?” Her father sighs. “Sorry, I know you’re still there, I don’t mean to… Look, I love you, all right? I’m going to give you back to your mother now. Unless there’s anything else you, um, no, sorry, ignore me, I’m talking rubbish.”

  Unless there’s anything else you want to say. Willow can fill in the pauses in her father’s conversation as easily as her mother’s. She takes a deep breath

  (Dad I love you I love you both I miss you I miss you so much I’m so sorry)

  and lets it go again, realising too late that this sounds like a sigh of dissatisfaction.

  “I know. Dad-speak nonsense. Love you.”

  I didn’t mean that. I like hearing you talk. I miss you.

  “Hey, Willow, it’s me again… so, um. Was the journey okay?”

  You already asked that. How can she ever end this conversation when she has no voice to do it with?

  “Hey.” Her Uncle Joe appears from the kitchen. He’s wearing a stripy blue and white apron, worn-looking but spotless, and he’s holding his hand out for the phone. “Do you mind if I have a quick chat? I’ll give it back to you afterwards.”

  Liberated, she passes the phone over and goes to inspect the kitchen. The Aga sends out waves of soporific heat, and now the sofa makes perfect sense as a place to sit. She circles the cupboards, wondering if she can find some biscuits to hide away for emergencies. The drive for order continues even here: the tins and jars have their labels turned out towards the front, the mugs are lined up in rows with their handles turned to identical angles, and the plates are perfectly stacked. Instead of biscuits, her guilty investigation leads her to an unlikely treasure: a pack of long thin wafery cylinders stuffed with nutty chocolate paste, that make her think of Paris. She crams her mouth and lets the sugar soak into her stomach.

  She can hear Joe, at this moment her saviour, telling his sister his carefully edited version of their journey. Traffic wasn’t too bad. We made really good time. Much better than the Sat Nav said. No mention of the times he nearly crashed, the mad pounces between lanes, the glares and honks of the other drivers. Or maybe Joe’s such a dreadful driver that he didn’t even notice. Maybe he thinks that’s what driving is supposed to be like.

  Back in the kitchen, something bubbles gently on the black stovetop. She lifts the lid and sniffs at the fragrant steam.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  She’s aware, as she always is, that she’s dreaming, because Laurel’s here with her, and these days, she never forgets that Laurel is dead. When it first happened, falling asleep was terrifying because she knew that when she woke, she’d have to live through that moment of forgetful ignorance before memory crashed back into her like a tidal wave. These days, it’s sleep itself she fears. Not just the frightening dreams, but the ones like this, that brim with treacherous sweetness.

  She’s in her room at Joe’s house. Her belly’s full, not aching with famine, not gorged with stolen junk, but comfortably full. The delicious scent in the pot translated to a chicken curry, served with rice and naan bread and poppadoms and sweet chutney. The room’s cool, but no longer cold. Her bed is warm and the covers are comfortingly heavy. All of this she knows.

  She also knows that somewhere in the darkness, the Congregation are waiting, beaks clattering, eyes bright and eager, and at the end, the Death Bird, his face white beneath the white skull. But tonight, she’s not going to church. She’s not going anywhere. She’s going to stay here in her bed. There’s no mirror for her to glance into and see Laurel looking back at her. She’s completely safe.

  The door opens, and Laurel comes in, walking softly.

  “I was in the bathroom,” she explains, as if she made the same journey Willow did, and has taken a little longer getting ready for bed. Her feet and hands are bluish, but that could be from the cold that haunts the bathroom like a wraith. Her crow-black hair is brushed. Her face is clean. She’s smiling.

  You’re dead
, Willow thinks, and – another reminder that she’s dreaming – she knows that Laurel can hear her thoughts. Sorry, she adds, seeing the look on Laurel’s face. But you are.

  “We’ve got an extra door,” Laurel says, and pulls back the curtain.

  It’s locked.

  Laurel’s eyes are bright and mischievous.

  “But we’ve got the key.”

  She thought she’d left the key in the lock. But when she reaches beneath her pillow, her fingers close on sturdy iron.

  “See?” Laurel’s sitting on the end of the bed now. The mattress shifts beneath her weight. “Now we can go outside.”

  She’s still asleep, still warm beneath the covers. Her breathing’s deep and steady. Her eyelids flutter as she dreams. She knows this because she can see it all happening; she’s watching herself from the end of her bed. She wonders if this is what it felt like for Laurel after she died.

  “I’m not allowed to tell you about that,” says Laurel, and plucks the key from Willow’s fingers. “Let’s go.”

  The key turns, the door swings open, the night rushes in. The moon’s high and fat. Standing on the top step, Willow feels the whole world underneath her feet.

  We can’t do this, Willow thinks.

  “Of course we can,” Laurel says. “We can do anything. Well, I can. You’ve still got shit to deal with. But no one’s watching. And if you come with me, I’ll take you to someone who can help you.”

  Willow’s body is calling her back, a magnetic tug that she has to fight to resist. Does she want to go with Laurel?

  “Come on.” Laurel’s tugging at her arm now. “I’ll be with you, it’ll be fine. And you won’t feel the cold once we get moving. You’re not cold now, are you?”