For Rye

by Gavin Gardiner

Choo-choo.

  She takes a deep breath and steps over the threshold, walking hurriedly to the far end where the flask sits. She looks back. In the entrance stands Noah.

  The short, flimsy specimen stares at her. His dirty red hair falls around his face; dirty, like the mud he spends his days digging up. In his hands are that stupid bucket and spade. Unknown to the girl, this spade will come to serve another purpose in weeks to come.

  An unthinkable purpose.

  The siblings stare at one another for a moment, frozen in silence. The boy’s mouth twitches. She tries to speak but cannot. Her eyes beg him to reconsider what she knows is inevitable. Not again. Please, please, please not again not again not—

  The door slams.

  Like father like son.

  The larder light is left on, unlike last time, but this only means she’s able to watch the shelf-lined walls close in around her closing in closing in like the back of those bin lorries she sometimes sees gobbling up all the rubbish except she’s the rubbish and she can’t believe this is happening again and I need to get out closing in I can’t take this not again closing in closing in please someone anyone I can’t—

  Rage and terror and panic bubble up inside her like a shaken Cola bottle, before melting into the searing realisation that her precious papers are not in the pantry. They must be elsewhere in the house, sitting in wait of prying eyes. Father’s eyes.

  She spots four drill holes in the floor, drilled six years ago exactly wide enough for a chair.

  She screams.

  Time folds in on itself and dissolves to nothing as her hellborn wails fill the larder and, for however long they go on for, become her universe. The chattering of the guests would have masked her cries had the thick door not soundproofed her cell. Her screaming finally ceases, if only from exhaustion. Tears soak her cheeks. She stumbles back from the locked entrance, edging fearfully around the four drill holes, and falls into a corner where she wraps her body into a tight ball on the floor. She imagines Noah giggling outside, that machine gun snigger he saves for such occasions.

  ‘Ee-ee-eeee!’

  Her crypt is cold and unforgiving, but she is not alone. One of those stupid moths sits on the floor under a shelf. Is it dead? Hopefully. She hates those damned things, always eating through her clothes and flapping in her face just when she’s about to fall sleep. She hates them. She hates her brother, too. She hates this house and everything in it.

  Is it dead? Maybe she wishes it was.

  She reaches.

  The door opens.

  ‘Rennie, what are you doing in here?’ her mother asks, tired eyes scanning the shelves for a platter of party food. ‘Come on, out you come.’

  ‘Why Lenata do that, Mummy?’ says the boy. His vacuous eyes lock on the girl. ‘Silly Lenata.’

  The girl scrambles to her feet and follows her mother out of the larder, glancing back at the moth. The sound of a motor approaches from outside, accompanied by cheering.

  ‘It’s time, children!’ says their mother, smile locked in position. ‘Come, hurry! It’s time!’ She picks up Noah – way too big to be picked up – and, balancing the platter in her other hand, struggles through the house.

  Wiping her eyes, the girl steps into the empty living room and looks through the window. She sees the guests ushering Thomas Wakefield to the dark blue Ford Cortina awaiting him, a giant red ribbon tied around the width and length of the vehicle. Its bow ripples in the breeze.

  ‘It’s from us all!’ cries Mrs Moncrieff. ‘For all you’ve done for the town!’

  ‘Thank you, Vicar!’ calls Mr Cooper.

  ‘God bless you!’

  ‘You deserve it, Mr Wakefield!’

  Thomas turns to the crowd, his red hair glistening in the afternoon sun. ‘It’s my son, Noah, you should be thanking. He’s made me what I am.’ The boy grins through a mud-streaked face. ‘And where, may I ask, is his car? It’s his birthday, after all.’

  The girl watches from the window as frenzied laughter erupts. She returns to the kitchen, where her eyes fall on Samson’s food bowl. The dog’s canned breakfast still lies within, brown stripes crosshatching the syrupy mush. Her mother’s orange fabric scissors sit on the floor by the bowl’s side, their blades lined with Samson’s breakfast. She looks back to the bowl.

  The brown stripes are her papers, cut into ribbons and prodded into the rancid swill.

  The shaken Cola bottle of rage bubbles up once again.

  At the sight of her work degraded and vulgarised, something closes within her. The girl will write again – she will make a living as an author – but her facility for true inspiration shall remain in that bowl of festering meat until the diary reawakens, until the nightmares cease forever, until the spade fulfils its final purpose.

  An unthinkable purpose.

  She stares at the bowl in disbelief. From behind her, sniggering. She turns to see the boy standing in the doorway, unable to contain himself.

  ‘Ee-ee-eeee!’

  She thinks of the moth in the larder. How easy it would have been to—

  ‘Noah, my little munchkin! There you are!’

  ‘Ee-ee-eeee!’

  It would have taken only two fingers.

  ‘There’s more presents! The guests are waiting!’

  ‘Ee-ee-eeee!’

  Easy, so very easy.

  ‘Up we go!’ The woman once again heaves the boy into her arms and returns to the chattering guests. The girl watches the back of her mother’s damned immaculate hair as she walks away. For a moment, she wishes the bruises would return. When there were bruises, there were words. Now that the worm is here, now that the late-night shouting has ended, ever since rosy pink replaced black and blue, her mother is just another distant presence, another pair of eyes to forget the girl’s existence.

  The boy looks back over his mummy’s shoulder, his glare locking onto the girl. His eyes cut through her.

  Like knives.

  He smiles.

  She grabs her rucksack and runs for the back door. She must get out. She must get to the only place she knows is safe.

  No one notices.

  No one follows.

  No one cares.

  ‘Ee-ee-eeee!’

  She runs.

  14

  The flames fell from above, an ocean of fire whose defiance of gravity finally tired. Black oil gushed from her hands. The road beneath the car ripped then exploded.

  The dreams were getting worse.

  Their details used to fall away from her upon waking like sand in an hourglass, but you can’t dream the same dream for nearly thirty years without eventually piecing it together. By now she could remember the jigsaw of her dreams vividly; the red spade, the speeding car, the country roads, and her oily hands were all clear to her. What was unclear was whether the jumbled puzzle related to her accident or the cover of that damned book. Or neither. Or both.

  Then there were the stabbing pains, the same pains she was so intimately accustomed to from her waking world. Yet in the dreams, thirteen stabs. Always thirteen stabs.

  Only one jet-black hand, dripping with tar, gripped the wheel this time. The other reached for the sole occupant of the passenger seat: the red spade. Noah’s red spade.

  Burning fields sailed past the car, her father’s Ford Cortina. She felt its chassis tremble then fall away. Despite its crumbling, the car somehow raged on. And all the while: One… Five… Nine… The stabbing pains continued with their usual, terrible regularity.

  That vague yellow shape rose before her in the mist, remaining in place irrespective of her speed, beckoning her into its fold.

  Ten

  The wheel broke from the dashboard and flew from her oily hands into a fireball behind her. The spade remained in her black grasp.

  Eleven

  The last remaining remnant of the car went spinning into the sky, a Catherine wheel of flames. Somehow her body’s trajectory continued. She flew towards the spectre. It raised its face, but not enoug
h. Never enough.

  Twelve

  Her fist tightened around the handle of the spade.

  Thirteen

  She awoke.

  The flames transposed into the warmth of Quentin’s sleeping body. She slipped out of bed and rubbed the sides of her head, massaging out the car, the spade, her black dream-hands, and the stabbing pains. She’d told no one of the dreams, only having mentioned to Quentin in passing that she had recurring nightmares. Maybe she’d be able to share the details with him. Maybe the dreams could go away.

  She checked his discarded watch. Nearly 6 a.m. The mist outside had the faint glow of dawn. Birdsong dotted the morning silence. The echoes of the stabbing in her head still resonated. She reached for her satchel, her fingers begging for the comforting feel of coiled hemp, until she remembered: she’d left it at home, and with it the noose. She’d found a new comfort.

  She looked at Quentin’s sleeping face.

  In the weeks since they’d met, he’d had given Renata a gift completely unfamiliar to her: something to lose. Could there really be the hope of a normal life for her? She’d spent years writing of an emotion forever foreign. Now, it seemed, love had finally risen off the page to meet her. An image flashed before her of a house like this where they could live out their remaining years. Love and sharing and trust and romance still seemed disconnected and alien, but a part of her believed these things could be as real as she allowed them to be.

  She slipped into Quentin’s dressing gown. Her duffle coat lay over a chair. Although she couldn’t match his gift to her, there was a modest something for him in its pocket. This, their second night together, had been as magical as their first. ‘Magical’: that’s the word in all her books, right?

  ‘Quentin, I don’t want to be alone anymore,’ she’d told him from within his embrace.

  His fingers had melted into hers. ‘Ren, I want you to tell me something. I need you to tell me something.’

  ‘Anything.’

  His eyes had poured into hers. ‘Do you love me?’ She’d felt his hands squeeze around her own before she allowed her eyes to dart away.

  ‘Quentin, I…’ He pulled her closer. ‘Yes, I do.’

  She’d been relieved when he’d smiled. He hadn’t backed off, he hadn’t panicked, he hadn’t laughed at her misinterpretation of events. Maybe there hadn’t been a mistake after all. Maybe he felt the same.

  He’d pulled her into the house and wrapped her in a woollen blanket. They’d gone upstairs. He’d sat her on the bed, then, pulling the notepad from a drawer, sat scribbling opposite her.

  She’d watched, bewildered at his timing.

  Just as her curled toes started to hurt, the scribbling had stopped. He’d turned an apologetic expression to her and stepped to the bed, a smile spread over his face as he’d lay her down on the cool sheets. She’d never seen this smile, never seen him this happy. Finally, he’d breathed in her ear, ‘I love you too, Ren.’

  Their first time, just a few nights prior, they’d been like two threads intertwining. The second, more desperate expressions of yearning had reigned. Renata had clung to those broad shoulders as he’d taken her with such urgency, such hunger. In his touch she’d felt that unbelievable truth they’d shared on the doorstep: they were in love.

  Renata pulled the dressing gown tight and walked to her coat, stepping over his crumped brown corduroys. In its pocket lay the Zippo lighter she’d had the locksmith engrave:

  One truth: ours.

  Thank you, Quentin.

  The gift said what she couldn’t. She believed she’d finally come to understand his obsessional pursuit, this truth for which his work strived. Maybe, whether they knew it or not, everyone was in search of some truth – even her. Maybe Quentin was just more aware of it than others. And maybe, just maybe, he’d been looking in the wrong place. Maybe both their searches were over. Maybe their love was the only truth they needed. One truth: ours.

  Whatever. All she knew was that she had to thank him for making her feel like a real person. She stepped towards the coat, then stopped. The chair over which it was draped sat against a walnut chest of drawers. In one of those drawers, she knew, was Quentin’s notebook.

  There was no deliberation. It was immediately clear she was going to look inside. The stiff leather notebook’s confidentiality had been obvious. He’d stashed it in the drawer with such secrecy, not even realising she’d spied him in the dresser mirror. The more stealth with which he operated, the more endearing and intriguing the notebook became to Renata. What insight may its fabled pages offer into her love’s mind? Her interest was piqued past the point of no return.

  Besides, it couldn’t hurt. Quentin’s passion was fascinating. She’d witnessed his intensity during their writing sessions, as well as between the bed sheets. Just a few weeks ago he’d been nothing more than the face on a book display, but the events of those few weeks had done nothing but arouse her curiosity. She wanted to see what he saw. She wanted to see the thoughts of an untameably creative mind.

  She looked at Quentin through the morning glow. He lay facing away from her, snoring lightly. As she eased open the drawer, she was suddenly reminded of her night-time navigations down that creaky staircase. Luckily, this wood didn’t creak. She peered inside.

  It was empty except for some bulk wrapped in a dirty rag. Not notebook shaped, that was for sure. Upon reassessing the drawer’s depth, she found there was space behind the object. She reached deeper. Her hand fell on an envelope.

  It had an international postage stamp on it, was adorned with hand-drawn love hearts, and was unsealed. Should she? As with the question of whether she should peek inside Quentin’s notebook, these considerations didn’t enter into her mind. She slipped the letter out of the envelope and quietly unfolded the paper.

  Sandie. Always Sandie. The more Renata learnt about Quentin’s adoration of his daughter, the more enamoured she became with him. Was it the contrast between a mind capable of such horrors, yet such love? Yes, the curly words written in pink ink were Sandie’s, but words such as these could only be written to the most loving of fathers.

  Frantic retellings of the most menial news from back home; proposed plans for days out together upon their reunion; demands for him to recall that time you got custard all over your face at dinner and we ended up having that food fight and Mom just watched on, like, literally freaking out: the love bubbling out of the letter warmed the damaged heart inside Renata that, not so long ago, she believed could only remain forever cold.

  Every passing day with Quentin was convincing her further that, after a life without love, this was her time.

  She replaced the letter back in the envelope, peering over her shoulder to make sure the slumbering form of Quentin was still asleep, then replaced it at the back of the drawer.

  Her hand brushed against cold leather.

  The notebook.

  Couldn’t hurt.

  She lifted it out of the drawer, feeling the weight in her hands. In the wrinkles of its heavy leather cover she could feel the hours invested within. She removed its elastic closure then stood marvelling at the closed notebook, this hub of a creative mind ready to be opened. He’d told her it was the heart of his new novel’s development; that in these pages were the pilings of all his thoughts and ideas for the project. In the notebook was the core of this grand, truth-infused horror opus on which he was working.

  She cracked open the cover and skimmed through its heavyweight pages.

  It was filled with notes on her.

  Step by step accounts of their interactions, from their meeting at the airport right through to the previous night; observations and precise detailing of her reactions to the truck explosion, the surprise dinner in the clock tower, their time spent working on the scripts; an exacting narration of her confession of love. Even her awkward waiting on the edge of the bed as he’d finished writing the previous evening. Everything. It was all there. Every nuance of her character, every nervous little habit, spel
t out on paper amongst a network of arrows and highlighter ink, underlined sentences and circled sections.

  The notebook was her.

  She jumped as Quentin awoke with a yawn. For a second she thought she was going to drop the thing, its hardbound thump on the floor surely enough to alert him, but somehow she managed to replace the elastic ribbon and slip it back into the drawer.

  The shape under the covers shifted. ‘What you doing up?’

  ‘Just, uh…’ She reached for a glass of water on the chest. ‘…sorry, just getting a drink.’

  ‘Mine’s a scotch on the rocks,’ he chimed with that New England cadence. He swung his legs out of the bed then walked towards her, naked, his bare feet padding across the panelled floor. He took the glass from her and downed its contents, before reaching for her hands. ‘Ren, you don’t know this yet, but today’s a big day for you.’

  The notebook’s pull on her was stronger than ever. What did it mean? Was this a romantic gesture? A novel about her? But everything was in there. What could he possibly do with such obsessive detailing, with this character study? She stared at him.

  ‘Real big day,’ he continued. ‘Bigger than you know. I got something to show you, something wonderful.’ He pulled her into his nude frame. ‘But I need you to tell me again. I need to know it’s true, Ren.’

  Her lips were dry, locked shut. She ripped them open. ‘I…love you, Quentin.’

  He grinned. After dressing, he fastened his watch, checking the time as he did so, and stepped over to the chest of drawers. He pulled out the notebook and the wrapped rag sitting next to it. ‘Good enough for me! Let’s go.’

  The morning was still and silent as they walked through empty streets towards the airfield. They said little. Renata struggled to keep up, feeling like a dog on a leash as she trailed behind Quentin’s hurried strides.

  He wrote as they walked.

  No one was stationed at the entrance. He lifted the barrier and stood to one side, nodding for Renata to go first as he fidgeted with the pen between his fingers. She looked out at the abandoned marquees, trailers, and rigging that dotted the tarmac expanse. Then, in the centre of the airfield, the aircraft hangar. A smile widened on Quentin’s face. He pointed a finger to the enormous structure. Was he trembling? ‘Lead the way, Ren.’