She hadn’t been offered the gift of children, but had never experienced an urge to protest. The reason was now clear. To love, you must first realise that whomever you love must die. But how could you love a child when . . . when there were so many nasty people around. Men, Emma knew she meant. So many nasty men who pounced on children and then did such things to them, things a child might never know were wrong . . . until it was too late.
But death was nothing much, was it? Emma stared at the mouse, at its unabused bones arranged in peaceful symmetry. It was really quite beautiful. With suffocating clarity, Emma now realised she’d been living in terror her whole life, denying herself pleasures no longer available. Or was that true? Perhaps this was just the beginning. Oh yes, maybe it wasn’t over yet. Giving in would involve submitting again to her deepest fear. But the way forward was to rage at this darkness, embracing the light. She hoped . . . no, she knew she could persuade Tom of this, too. Death? Oh, Em’ Carter née Hawes could handle it now.
She quickly replaced the tin box and refilled the hole with care and deference. Then she turned and moved for the cottage, a determined spring in her step. Inside, she was unable to hear her husband breathing, but for the first time in months that didn’t cause her concern. She knew Tom would be fine once she’d reached the bedroom. Death had indeed lost its power.
Emma crept inside the room, unsurprised to perceive the undulating movement of sheets and hear a hoarse whisper of air passing in and out of her husband’s throat. She tiptoed towards the bed, excitement a tingling sensation in the pit of her stomach. She felt like a little girl again, the lively young thing she’d been so many years earlier, before a black cloud had descended and robbed her of joy. Then she climbed under the duvet, but at first sat up straight, in direct contrast to Tom who lay flat on his back. A moment lingered, during which she looked forward to her future and almost made peace with the past. And as she clutched her homemade pillow, she knew that tonight she’d sleep well.
But first was a small matter to which her new thoughts – more sensations than words – impelled her to attend.
Without hesitation, Emma Carter pressed her pillow onto her husband’s gasping face. She didn’t let up until the duvet had ceased its erratic pulsing and there was an insidious silence on the bed beside her.
But Emma was far from afraid. She’d conquered her fear of death. Finally she was ready for life.
Gary Fry lives in Dracula’s Whitby, literally around the corner from where Bram Stoker was staying while thinking about that legendary character. Gary has a PhD in psychology, but his first love is literature. He was the first author in PS Publishing’s Showcase series, and none other than Ramsey Campbell has described him as “a master.” He is the author of more than 100 published short stories and 15 books, including novels, novellas and collections. His latest are the Lovecraftian novel Conjure House (DarkFuse, 2013); the short story collection Shades of Nothingness (PS Publishing, 2013); the original zombie novel Severed, and novellas Menace, Savage and Mutator (DarkFuse, 2014). Gary warmly welcomes all to his web presence: www.gary-fry.com
Under Occupation
Tom Johnstone
“Ever thought of a job with the Samaritans, Stan?” I asked.
It was my comment on Stan Corcoran’s story about his encounter with a suicidal council tenant at an eviction he attended in his capacity as a bailiff. The story had ended with him saying:
“Go on then, love: top yourself.”
But even he was shocked when she made good on her threat, as hard-bitten as he was, though he’s changed a bit since then.
It was just a warning visit, he told me, to give her a chance to come up with the money to pay the rent arrears she’d incurred since housing benefit no longer paid what the powers that be call “the spare room subsidy”. They call the resulting shortfall the “under-occupation penalty”. To you and me, it’s better known as the “bedroom tax”. Her husband was dead, her youngest son had moved out years ago and had children of his own now, she said, and there weren’t any smaller properties available. If she had to move out at her time of life, maybe to somewhere miles away, she might as well be dead, she said in her suicide note.
You may remember the case. It was in the local papers, even made some of the national ones. But the first Stan knew about it was when he was driving the van towards the home of the deceased. He hadn’t even twigged at that point. The conversation was all, “Did you see the match last night?” “United are like dead men walking now Fergie’s retired.” “That Moyes couldn’t find his arse with both hands and Van Gaal’s no better.” Etc.
Then he asked me the address.
When he heard, he didn’t say anything. But I think I knew even then.
The conversation turned to his other job.
“Ever thought of a job in the Council bailiffs’ department?” he asked.
“Nah,” I replied, even though I desperately needed a second job, preferably one that would replace this one, not just top up its uncertain earnings.
“You sure? It’s good money. I can get you an introduction, seeing as you’re on the firm anyway. You’ve got the build for it. Course, you might need to work out a bit to get into shape and that. The gym I use offers a ten per cent discount for Council employees. All you need to do is show your I.D.”
“We’re here,” I said, thankful that our arrival had saved me having to explain what I thought of his offer: taking it up would be to step over a threshold I was unwilling to cross. Not that I wasn’t tempted. Rather like the job we were doing now, the one he was talking about was one of the few recession-proof occupations. In fact, bailiffs are one of the few trades that actually get busier when times are hard.
Joe often used to say of it:
“It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.”
Of course, what we doing now was a dirty job, in a more literal sense, as you might expect. The hot weather had speeded up decomp, and flies greeted us as we opened the front door, along with the kinds of smells you never quite get used to. We got a lot of decomps at that time of year, not many fresh ones. She lived alone. Her son must have found her on a rare visit.
Often if someone’s hanging like that, it can make it easier: just drop the body into the bag, pull the sides up quick while the other one holds it. But she’d chosen quite a low door frame so the tips of her toes were touching the puddle of piss on the ground underneath, where her kicked-off tartan slippers lay stewing. I tried not to look at her blackened face, as I started trying to undo the cord biting into her neck.
“Here. I’ll do it. I’ve got this.”
Stan produced a knife.
“You just hold the bag open,” he said.
Want me to hold my arse cheeks open too? I almost said.
“Mind you don’t slip,” he said.
With my plastic-gloved hands I grabbed her soft, puffy ankles and maneuvered her feet towards the opening. Getting her into the bag wasn’t easy. She was surprisingly floppy once Stan had cut her down.
“Come on, get in there!” muttered Stan at her dead face.
Sweat was pouring down both of our live ones. I thought of joking that even in death she was being awkward. But I wasn’t sure if Joe was ready to acknowledge who she was. I don’t know why I was tip-toeing around his feelings when he was always happy enough to trample on others”.
Eventually, after something of a struggle, we got her in.
In the van, he seemed readier to open up, as much as he was capable.
“Didn’t expect to be going back there so soon, not as a stiff collector anyway.”
Often the nature of the conversation changed on the journey to the mortuary to deliver the stiff. Maybe it was the presence of death, the literal presence in the vehicle with us, that is.
“Didn’t expect her to do it,” he went on. “I mean actually go through with it.”
Again I thought of making a joke, something about his work as a bailiff acting as a job-creation scheme in
this other line of business. After all, the Council paid us about thirty quid per call-out. Looking at his face, I quickly thought better of it. Besides, I didn’t want to descend to his level of callousness.
After we’d dropped her off, he leaned against the van for a while, rolling a cigarette. Once he dropped it, spilling his baccy all over the floor. Were his hands shaking? I wasn’t sure. But I could imagine why, if they were. For about an hour or so, the boundaries between his two chosen careers had blurred, uncomfortably so. It might not have been the first time, but maybe it was the first time he knew it had happened. Our job’s one of the invisible ones, one of the secret jobs that keep the world turning. We’re not undertakers. We cover the limbo between life’s varied exits, whether slow, violent or peaceful and the funeral director’s solemn arts.
Here I am coming over all deep and meaningful. What I’m trying to say here is, we’re stiff collectors. In case you hadn’t realised already, what that means is, we bag up dead bodies where they’ve breathed their last, take them from there to the place where more skilled hands prepare them for disposal. Our van doesn’t have the pomp and ceremony of a hearse, but it does the same job.
It was just getting light as we dropped her off. That’s the other thing about our job: anti-social hours. There’s no knowing when you might get the call. And it’s often in the small hours, for some reason. I’m not sure why that is: maybe the border between life and death’s thinner then, or something.
Afterwards I wanted to see Jodie. I was feeling knackered and miserable, but strangely horny.
She opened the door a crack.
“You stink,” she said. “I’m getting Lisa ready for school.”
But I knew I was pushing at an open door.
“Get cleaned up while I take her to school,” she said. “I’ll be about half an hour. What is that smell?”
“I’ve just finished work,” I offered.
“I can tell. What is it you do anyway?”
“Deliveries,” I said.
That was enough for her. That was what our relationship was like. Ask no questions, tell no lies. While she was gone, I showered. Then, with only my filthy work clothes to wear, I instead put on a toweling robe hanging in the bathroom. I sat on Jodie’s bed and waited. When she got back, she asked me:
“What are you doing wearing that?”
I explained why, as she kicked her shoes off.
“Oh,” she said, taking the toweling robe off me. It lay on the floor next to her own discarded clothes.
When we’d finished, she kicked me out and I went home, thinking now I might be able to get some sleep. I did manage to, but I woke up feeling uneasy. I had just been dreaming that Stan Corcoran had been leading a team of bailiffs, digging up the hanged woman’s corpse: the Council had sold her burial plot to pay off her outstanding rent arrears.
I mentioned boundaries blurring between Stan’s jobs. Now they were beginning to blur for me, but between the job and my personal life. And I didn’t like that. I preferred to keep them separate.
This change in Stan began to show itself when he asked me to help him move a settee into his new house. He’d borrowed the work van. There were work gloves on the dash board, one pair for him and another for me. But when we got ready to unload the settee, I put mine on, but he was unable to: he realised that he had two left gloves! We laughed about it at the time. I didn’t realise then what it meant.
Then there was the issue of the settee not fitting into the room.
“But I measured the fucking thing,” he complained, as its walls stubbornly refused to make space for the big, brown leather monstrosity. “Measured the walls, then measured the settee. It can’t have fucking shrunk.”
Leaning against the up-turned settee, he wiped the sweat from his plum-coloured face, then rolled a cigarette.
“Maybe…” I began.
“Maybe what?” he cut me off, a warning look glinting in his eyes. “Maybe I measured it wrong. Is that it?”
“Well, it happens to the best of us,” I said.
For a second, he’d looked like he was going to start laying into me. But the moment passed, and he sighed and his face creased into a weary grin.
“Yeah. ‘Spose.”
“D’you want to have another try at jamming it in there?” I asked, when he’d nearly finished his smoke.
“Nah. It’s alright. Let’s have a brew. Put the kettle on, Mary!” he shouted through to the kitchen.
As his wife silently made the tea, I glanced out of the kitchen window, and saw the house opposite. It was the one where we’d been to cut down and collect the hanged woman’s corpse.
The hanged woman.
That’s how I thought of her now. I didn’t even know her name, even though it had been in the papers. But that’s how it is when you do what we do. After a while, they’re just bodies. In the struggle to get the settee inside, I hadn’t even noticed that he’d moved right over the road from her. There were steel shutters on the windows and a sheet of steel on the front door. Stan saw me looking and gave me a look. I think it meant, don’t say anything in front of the wife: she doesn’t know. All I said was:
“D’you think all the rooms on that side like… mirror this one.”
I get like that when I’m nervous of someone. I say or do exactly the wrong thing.
“What the fuck d’you mean by that?” he demanded.
“Well… The front door’s right opposite this one’s front door, not across from it. So maybe--”
“Shut up, Kev.”
“That’s not very nice, Stan,” said Mary, “when he’s put himself out to help you move that blasted settee. Here’s your cuppa, love,” she said, handing me the steaming mug. She was right though. In fact, I was starting to feel like one: a mug that is. I was grateful for the tea though, and thanked her. Then she said to Stan: “You should invite him round to dinner, you know, to thank him.”
He glowered at her, and said nothing.
“Well, what d’you say, Kev?” she persisted. “You could bring someone round if you want.”
I thought of Jodie, and smiled in a non-committal way.
But when I mentioned the invitation to Jodie, she surprised me by agreeing, saying it didn’t mean we were a “couple”, it was just a free meal. I went back home with a spring in my step.
The dinner was a little awkward. Nothing to do with the food, which was fine: barbecue chicken and rice. I hadn’t expected much from Stan. After all, it hadn’t been his idea anyway. He did do the cooking though. And he kept our drinks topped up. But Mary seemed preoccupied. She kept drawing little breaths, as though starting at some sound only she could hear. And whenever this happened, she’d go out of the room.
“Just checking on the little ones?” asked Jodie.
“Yeah,” said Stan.
“Reminds me, I should text the baby-sitter: check how she’s getting on.”
She began tapping her touch-screen, then Mary reappeared, looking harassed.
“They not settling?” asked Jodie.
“Yeah, they’re both in together,” Mary said, returning Jodie’s smile. “Still not quite used to having their own rooms yet!”
Stan topped up our glasses and made a toast. His close-together eyes flashed in the candlelight that showed off Jodie’s pale skin.
“To a new start!”
The next time Mary went out, the San Miguel had made him a little chattier.
“Finally, a decent house with a garden and bedrooms for both kids. And what happens? Neither them wants the room at the front.”
He gave a little laugh, refilled the pint glass he’d just drained. Jodie’s laugh was a nervous echo of his.
“Is anyone moving into the place opposite?” I asked.
“Not that I know of, Kev. Fucking eyesore, the steel door’s still up. I just hope it goes to someone that deserves it.”
“Be good if someone moves in,” put in Jodie. “Terrible having a house standing empty like that.”
/> She gave a little jump, as he slammed his nearly empty glass down. Slowly his face turned towards hers, drunkenly hooded eyes regarding her.
“We deserve this. She’s not going to spoil it. I won’t let her spoil it.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant Mary or the daughter refusing to sleep in the front bedroom. Or someone else.
“She’s trying to,” he went on. “Look, Kev, I found this lying around this morning.” He stood up unsteadily and wandered out into the hall. Jodie and I were exchanging worried, embarrassed glances by this point. He came back in, cradling a small bundle of wet newspaper, containing something. He looked closely at my reaction as he slowly unwrapped the soggy parcel. Jodie looked puzzled, but I recognised the sodden tartan slipper.
“Not at the dinner table, Stan,” I joked, waving my hand in front of my nose as if to ward off the acrid ammonia smell.
Mary came back in.
“They’re asleep,” she said. “Stan, what are you doing?” she asked. “Oh. That.” She wrinkled her nose. “I thought you’d thrown that away. Where did it come from anyway?”
Clearly she didn’t have any more idea of its origin than Jodie did.
What was running through my head was the thought that he could have picked it up somehow, without realising it and accidentally left it lying around in the house. It was a possibility, though why you’d keep a slipper soaked in old woman’s piss wasn’t so clear.
What happened next I couldn’t explain away quite so conveniently.
He went into the kitchen to get rid of the bundle, whether to throw it away like Mary was saying he should, or put it away somewhere. I wasn’t sure. Then I heard a stifled sob. I realised it was Stan.
Darkest Minds Page 8