The World's Last Breaths: Final Winter, Animal Kingdom, and The Peeling

by Iain Rob Wright

  Andy made it better by slipping in beside her.

  “What do you think you’re doing, mister?”

  “Just checking on you.”

  “What do you think needs checking down there?”

  “Think I left my car keys somewhere.”

  She laughed, almost slipping in the shower. Andy caught her and they kissed. But they never got to finish.

  The shower clunked and rattled, so violently that it risked coming loose from the wall. Andy turned off the water urgently, and they both stood there looking at one another, wet and wide-eyed.

  “Money pit!” said Andy.

  She shook her head, but didn’t smile. “It’s all just character. We knew what we were getting into.”

  “My list is getting really long, honey.”

  “Like another part of you, I see. Let’s not waste it.”

  They finished making love in the shower, with the water turned off.

  Chapter 5

  After breakfast, Andy got to work fixing the hole above the staircase. Tammy brought him a cup of tea. “How’s it going?”

  Andy took a sip, despite the brew being hot. He always did that. “I found some filler in a box of our stuff so I should be able to sort it out. Will need painting afterwards though.”

  Tammy peered into the hole again, but this time felt no bizarre pull. It was just a hole. “How deep does it go?”

  “It’s not a rabbit hole. It’s just a hole in the plasterboard.” He put his tea down on the step and mimed pulling a rubber glove onto his hand.

  Tammy giggled. “Are you about to give our house a prostrate exam?”

  “Take a deep breath and hold it,” Andy whispered to the wall, then delved his hand into the hole and rooted around. “Hmm, I seem to see the problem here, Mr House. You seem to have developed a—Fuck it!”

  Andy yanked his hand back and grasped it against his chest. The tea on the step went flying, but the carpet was so old it barely mattered. Tammy saw blood and grabbed Andy’s arm. “What happened? Yikes, that’s a nasty cut, honey!”

  Andy growled, like the house had bitten him on purpose. “There's something sharp in there.”

  “What?”

  Andy put his hand back inside the hole.

  “What are you doing? Don't hurt yourself worse.”

  “It’s okay, probably just a nail, but I thought I felt something else.”

  Tammy’s guts stiffened while she watched her husband root around in the hole again. She waited for him to cry out in more pain again as the nail scratched him a second time, but he was careful this time, knew what to expect.

  “I feel it again.”

  Tammy bent down to pick up the fallen tea mug, but she kept her eyes on her husband. “What do you feel?”

  Andy shook his head, then pressed it flat against the wall so he could get his arm deeper into the hole. “Something plastic. I think, maybe…”

  Slowly, he removed his arm from the wall. His hand clutched a dusty old sandwich bag, and inside were several items. A scrap of paper, an old watch, a knife.

  Tammy squinted and tried to make sense of it. “What is all that?”

  Andy scrunched up his face. “Dunno. Let’s take a look.”

  He took the baggie into the kitchen and Tammy followed. They sat at the widow’s dining table and put their elbows up on its thick surface. Andy upended the baggie and released a cloud of dust and insulation fibres, making them both cover their mouths and cough.

  Andy slid out the contents. The knife had pierced the baggie and must be what cut his hand. The wound on his middle knuckle still bled, but he didn’t seem to notice. The first thing he examined was the watch. It looked expensive.

  “It’s a Cartier,” said Andy.

  “Is that good?”

  He shrugged. “Dunno. There’s an inscription on the back. Says, For the Newcrombie Master of the Hunt. James Gibbs. 21.12.1989.”

  Tammy shuddered. “That horrible oil painting must have been a self-portrait.”

  “Why do you hate him so much?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He unravelled the scrap of paper, yellowing and crisp. Old.Tammy waited while he read it silently himself.

  “Well, what is it?”

  Andy spun the paper on the table so she could read it. It was a newspaper clipping.

  SADISTIC HUNTSMAN ON THE RUN/POSSIBLE SUICIDE.

  “Jesus! What the hell!” She read on.

  Local Master of the Hunt, James Gibbs (54), has fled his wife and home after evidence was discovered linking him to an international pedophile ring involving several members of the British gentry. His wife, Edith Gibbs (52), denies all knowledge of her husband’s activities and claims to have found a suicide note in her husband's belongings. The couple were childless.

  “This article is fifteen years old. What was it doing in the wall?”

  Andy chewed at his lip and gave no answer.

  Tammy felt a lump in her throat, and for a moment she had to breathe through a bout of nausea. Eventually, she spoke. “Do you think his wife knew he was a pedophile?”

  Andy laced his hands together in front of him and looked a little ill. “Don’t they always? I mean, if I was out gathering up children and taking them to my secret lair, you would know something was up, right?”

  “I don’t know. Do you see, though? I knew her husband was a bad man. Who has a painting of themselves like that?”

  “Covering a hole...” said Andy. “Hiding a knife... And the newspaper clipping was from after the guy disappeared, so Edith must have been the one who put it there.”

  “Doesn't mean she did anything wrong.”

  “Come on, Tam. Why would she hide a knife and her husband’s watch?”

  A joyless smirk found its way to Tammy’s face, and she slunk back in her chair away from the table. Folding her arms, she said, “Maybe she killed him after finding out what he was. Maybe this is evidence of his murder. Good for her.”

  Andy cleared his throat and hissed through his teeth. “Jeez, Tam, that's pretty cold. If it is evidence, we should hand it in to the police.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I mean no!”

  Andy frowned.

  She explained what she was thinking. “We hand this stuff over to the police and this house becomes a crime scene. You want to get kicked out the day after we move in?”

  “What are you talking about? They won't do that.”

  She reached across and took the knife off the table, then held it up to examine the tip. Either blood or rust covered it, ancient now, part of the steel. “Edith hid this in the wall. Who knows what else she might have hidden. The police will dig the ground out from under us and keep us from moving in for months. Then we'll be left with the repair bill. Our life will be ruined.”

  “But we can’t cover it up. We could get in real trouble.”

  “Cover what up, Andy? Like you said, we know nothing for sure. Maybe the watch and the knife were just her husband’s belongings, and she wanted to hold on to them.”

  Andy nodded. “And then hid them in the wall. Right, yeah, normal behaviour. Look, I see your point, Tam. Just let me think about it.”

  She put the knife back down and sighed. “I was happier when this place was just a money pit.”

  “What is it now?” Andy asked.

  “A murder house.”

  Chapter 6

  Andy came out of the bathroom and saw Tammy sitting on the bed with her laptop open. He rubbed the back of his neck with a towel, todger swinging freely, and then rolled his eyes. “Will you give it a rest?”

  She shifted against the headboard, lumpy mattress digging into her. “Just five more minutes. Just listen to this first. I found an article that says Edith Gibbs donated her entire fortune to child abuse charity—almost three million—and admitted that her husband was always a violent and spiteful man. She hoped that by emptying their accounts, she would force her husband out of hiding. This is from a magazine article.”

&n
bsp; “She sounds like a good woman,” said Andy, pulling on a pair of briefs. His brown hair was still wet, and would dampen his pillow.

  “Or maybe it was all just a story to make her look innocent. I think she did it.” She closed the lid on her laptop. “After he went on the run, nobody ever saw or heard from James Gibbs again. He had no money and no help. Edith even sold the mansion they lived at.”

  “Maybe his pedophile ring buddies helped him.”

  “I doubt it. They were all rounded up and arrested in a sting operation. They would have taken James, too, but he caught wind of it and fled.”

  “How did he know?”

  Tammy put her head back against the headboard. “The police tried to take James at a country club he was staying at, but he left the scene before they found him. A friend admitted to warning him that the police had arrived and were asking for him. He felt sick after finding out what he'd done.”

  James sat on the bed and put his hand on Tammy's knee. He stroked her shin up and down. “And that was the last time he was seen?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If the police came for me, I know where I would run.”

  Tammy looked at him. “Where?”

  “Home.”

  “That’s stupid. That’s the first place the police would look.”

  Andy nodded. “I know. But I would want to see you before they got me. Maybe James ran home and confessed all to his wife. Then she killed him.”

  Tammy felt her guts roll over. “I can’t imagine what I would do if you came home and told me something like that. That you were a child abuser. That our entire marriage was a lie. It would just…”

  “Make you want to kill me?”

  She turned to him with tears in her eyes. Through imagination alone, she felt the betrayal Edith must have felt. Andy was her whole world because she loved him with her whole heart. When you trusted a person fully, you gave them the power to end you. Your fates became entwined. “I could never kill you, Andy. I think I’d kill myself first.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “No, I mean it. I was so miserable when I met you. You saved me. I never thought I could be happy like this. I didn’t know people like you existed. You make me feel safe with a simple look. When I’ve had a bad day, it doesn’t matter because I know it ends with you on my side against the world. How can I ever feel alone knowing that?”

  Andy scooted up on the bed beside her. He reached out and took one of her hands. “You’re pretty great too, you know? You talk like everything you have is down to me, but the reason I fell in love with you in the first place is because you're amazing. On our first date you made us watch Grease and eat ice cream. You didn’t want to do anything fancy or play the usual fucked up dating game. You just wanted to relax and be yourself from the get go. I’ve always known where I stand with you, and that’s rare, Tam. It’s rare to find someone who isn’t trying to be somebody else all the time. That… that Jay ever hurt you, I just can’t understand it. If I thought I had caused you one ounce of pain, I would… shit, it would kill me.”

  She kissed his cheek and put her head on his shoulder. “I know. I love you, Andy. You would never hurt me. You’re not a monster like Jay or James Gibbs. If Edith killed her husband, I don’t care. I know what she went through. She found a way out for herself. I want you to put the knife and everything else back inside the wall before you seal it up. Let James Gibbs remain missing. She bought this home for herself and put the stuff in the wall to remind herself never to be a victim again. She took back her life with that knife, I know it.”

  Andy sighed. “Maybe James really did go on the run. What could she have done with the body if she killed him? She was just a little old lady, right?”

  Tammy huffed. “She was in her fifties, and women are stronger than you think.”

  “Sounds like you really hope she did it.”

  “Better than a pedophile escaping into the unknown, isn’t it?”

  “I guess. Don’t think I really want to think much more about it. I agree we should just put the stuff back where we found it and move on. Can we be done with this now and live our lives?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. I know I’ve taken up the whole day with this. Just got to me is all.”

  He kissed her mouth and scooted beneath the covers. “I know honey. Edith brought back a lot of hard stuff for you, but she lived a long time and filled this house with the things she loved. We have no reason to believe she wasn’t happy by the end.”

  Tammy turned off the bedside light and moved under the covers, tried to get comfortable on the wretched mattress. “I’d like to think so.”

  “Sweet dreams, honey.”

  “Yeah, you too, although I don’t think that’s possible on this mattress. How did Edith sleep on it?”

  Andy pulled her close and spooned her. The heat of his tummy against her back was soothing. “It’s probably taken Edith's shape. Won’t fit anybody else but its original master. I ordered a new one.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, it should be here soon.”

  “Great. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Chapter 7

  “The hole is all filled,” Andy shouted from the hallway. Tammy headed out of the kitchen, eating cereal from a bowl. The hole above the stairs was now pure white against the yellowing wallpaper. Soon, they would tear the old paper down and paint it all to match.

  “You did a great job, honey. Thank you!”

  “At least now this place is a little less of a money pit.”

  “You put the… you know… the stuff inside?”

  Andy nodded. “Let the past remain buried and the future run free.”

  “That’s beautiful. You make that up yourself?”

  “No, I think it was a line in a porno movie.”

  Tammy shook her head and then slurped more cereal. She was about to speak when the doorbell rang.

  “Huh,” said Andy. “I didn’t even know we had a doorbell.”

  “I’ll get it.” Tammy hurried down the hallway and placed her cereal on the old mahogany side table she knew would end up being home for her car keys. When she opened the door, she faced a man dressed all in blue.

  “Delivery.”

  Tammy frowned. “Delivery of what?”

  “A new mattress, sweetheart.”

  Andy hopped from the bottom steps and joined Tammy at the door. “Wow, that was quick.”

  The man in the uniform was blank-faced. “Where you want it, mate?”

  “Upstairs, please. I paid for the old one to be taken away, too.”

  The delivery man frowned. “I’ll have to check that with the boss.”

  “Whatever you need to do, mate.”

  Tammy turned to hi and grinned. “Thank God you got it delivered so fast. I had another awful night on that old mattress again. It’s nice we got a lot of things included with the house, but second hand mattresses are not something I’m a fan of, I've realised.”

  “I had another surprise for you, too,” he said. “Come look.”

  She followed Andy back over to the stairs where he bent down to pick something up of the step. He raised it up and positioned it over the patch of wall filler. When he stepped back, he revealed it to be a large print taken from their wedding photos. In it, they were side by side, cheek to cheek, and smiling at the camera. It was her favourite picture from the album.

  “I was going to put it in our bedroom, but I think it looks good here.”

  Tammy nodded. “Me too. It makes this our home now.”

  They stood there enjoying a cuddle for almost a full minute, letting the two delivery men struggle by with the mattress. It was a scream from the bedroom that eventually broke them out of their perfect little moment.

  Tammy bolted upstairs with Andy behind her. She found both delivery men cowering up against the wall like they had seen a mouse.

  “What is it?” she demanded. “What is it?”

  One of the two bur
ly men pointed a trembling finger at the bed. Tammy turned slowly to see what had frightened him, and at first didn’t know what she was looking at. Andy understood straight away, because he covered his mouth in horror. She had to take another two steps before she could work it out.

  “No! Are they... are they bones?”

  Amongst a length of fading red cloth, buried in the recesses of the box springs was a collection of grey and yellow mottled bones. It looked like the carcass of a corn-fed chicken, but the pieces were too large—and in the shape of a human.

  “It’s James,” said Andy. “The bones are wrapped in a huntsman coat.”

  Tammy nodded. Even without the coat, she would know for sure that this was James. These were the bones of a child abuser. “Edith spent every night sleeping on top of his corpse.”

  Andy swallowed, covering his mouth still. “She was a monster.”

  Tammy shook her head. “Only the monster he made her be.”

  “I’m calling the police,” said one of the delivery men. “There’s a goddamn corpse in your bed.”

  Andy looked like he was about to throw up. “We’ve been sleeping with a body all week. Oh God!”

  As Tammy stared at the bones of James Gibbs, she couldn’t help but imagine the anger that must have exploded from his wife. Part of her was glad Edith got her revenge. The other part of her joined Andy in revulsion and vomited on the floor. Once she was done, though, she tried to make light of it. “Don’t people usually leave their skeletons in their closets?”

  James looked at her, speechless.

  4. THE EAGLE & THE WOLF

  Chapter 1

  Manius Furia placed down his sword and scabbard, placing it with his scutum. He propped the entire bundle against the thick bark of an elderly oak tree. Dawn crawled towards them, a few hours distant, and his scouts needed rest. The thick forests of Northern Gaul had fought Manius's men every step of the way since leaving their brothers of Legio IV Gallica back at the main camp outside Vesontio.