by Baker Chris
It was subtle to begin with. The young woman’s skin, smooth and creamy-brown, became coarse and wrinkled. Her shiny black hair turned dull and grey. Her full lips thinned and her cheeks fell in. Instead of two large and luminous brown eyes Paki was held by two small black pits peering at him. Kevin felt the changes, felt Hoheria’s body become bony and angular instead of firm and smooth. Paki was the first to see, however.
‘Nanny Riria!’ he gasped.
She grinned, a toothless grimace. ‘You always were a snotnosed, shit-pants kid,’ she croaked, in a voice that sounded reedy with age. ‘I don’t know why I put up with you for so long.’ She pushed Kevin away and stood up. Paki was aghast, his eyes wide and his mouth open. His arms hung at his sides, his hands clenching and unclenching.
‘Careful,’ warned Kevin. ‘That’s Hoheria.’ He rolled onto his knees, stood up and took a step towards the old woman. Without even looking at Kevin she backhanded him, knocking him across the room. He tried to rise from where he lay crumpled against the wall. Halfway up he collapsed into unconsciousness and slid back to the floor.
The old woman who had been Hoheria kept her gaze fixed on Paki. ‘You, boy. I suppose you think you’re pretty neat now.’ Paki’s jaw dropped further. ‘You’re nothing, not to me anyway.’ Paki looked horrified.
‘I know you’re not really my nanny,’ he said. ‘And I know you’ll hurt me if you can. But I won’t let you do any harm to Hoheria.’ He rushed at the old woman and wrapped his arms around her, a sudden and shocking movement that took her completely by surprise. For a moment she stood still, enfolded by Paki’s embrace, then she started to struggle. Kevin, conscious by now, struggled to rise as Paki tried to hold the old woman, sweat breaking out on his face and his shirt sleeves ripping as his muscles bulged.
For a while he succeeded. Kevin could hear Paki grunting and wheezing with the strain, and over that noise an unearthly whining from the old woman. But she gave a heave and broke Paki’s grip. He rushed again at the old woman, but this time she was ready. She struck him an open-handed blow and Kevin saw the blood spurt as her nails tore open the side of Paki’s face. He reeled backwards, staggering, and she leapt at him, knocking him down with a swing of her arm. Kevin was halfway to his feet when she jumped on Paki, landing right in the middle of his chest. Kevin heard the crack! of breaking ribs. Paki’s head hit the floor with a clunk and when he tried to rise she kicked him in the jaw. She gave him a quick glance as he lay unmoving, and then turned her attention to Kevin.
She changed back. This time the process was rapid and within a few seconds the old woman was gone and Hoheria stood before him. But something was wrong. Her characteristic wry smile had become a leer. Her open gaze was now a slit-eyed, sidelong, suspicious stare.
Hoheria spoke, her voice harsh and grating. ‘What are you looking at, you creep?’ Kevin took a step backwards, Hoheria’s words striking him like blows. He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again.
‘Things are going to be different now,’ she said. ‘You’ll do whatever I tell you.’ She watched Kevin as love and fear warred in his young features. ‘Your life’ll be nothing like the way it was. I’m more than Hoheria now and you’d better believe I don’t like any of you.’
Kevin’s face crumpled. He held out his arms to Hoheria. ‘I love you, girl,’ he said. ‘You’re safe with me.’
Hoheria laughed. She stepped towards him. ‘You’re not safe with me, though!’ She punched Kevin with her closed fist, breaking his nose and splitting his lip. ‘That’s just in case you get too full of yourself.’
Kevin raised his hands to his face and she struck him again, knocking him down. Cheryl shrank back, horrified, her arms tight around Eric. She watched Paki try to stand up, his cracked ribs making him gasp with pain. Hoheria – Cheryl couldn’t think of her any differently – waited till he was almost upright then lashed out with a kick that hit him in the upper arm. Cheryl heard the bone snap and watched wide-eyed as Paki fell backwards, struck his head on the corner of the table, and sank unconscious to the floor.
The Hoheria-thing turned to Cheryl. ‘Make me a cup of tea, woman. Bring some food.’
Cheryl shook her head. Food and drink? Now?
‘Hurry it up. Don’t fuck around.’
Cheryl rose and stood the terrified Eric at her side. He cringed, peeking out from Cheryl’s skirts. The creature gave him an unpleasant grin.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m not interested in you, you’re just a little squirt.’ She raised her gaze to Cheryl. ‘But I do need somewhere to stay. Here’s as good as anywhere. Just make sure you look after me or you’re all in the shit.’ She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘You are anyway.’
Shadows danced in the flickering candlelight. Cheryl looked at Kevin and Paki, both sprawled unconscious beside the table.
‘The fire first,’ said Hoheria. ‘They’re not going anywhere.’ Cheryl stoked the fire and filled the kettle. She dropped a handful of dried gorse flowers into the teapot. Eric clung to her. He wouldn’t look at Hoheria. Cheryl’s hand shook as she cut slices of meat from a roast leg of mutton and made a sandwich with stoneground wholemeal bread. She held it out to Hoheria on a plate and gave an inward sigh of relief when Hoheria accepted it and took a bite.
Hoheria chewed and swallowed as if the food was broken glass. She looked disgusted, then spoke. ‘That’s foul. But I suppose this body needs it.’ She stood by the table as she ate. ‘Where’s my drink?’
Cheryl poured her a cup of tea and passed it. Hoheria wrinkled her nose at the yellowish liquid. ‘Are you trying to poison me?’ In answer Cheryl picked up the cup and took a sip. She raised her eyes to Hoheria. Something alien looked back.
‘You’d better be careful, or I’ll hurt this body.’ Hoheria glanced at Kevin and Paki. ‘I’ll hurt them too. I might even kill them.’ Her mattress on the floor caught her gaze. She bent, seized one corner, dragged it away from the fire and lay on it. ‘I’m going to rest now,’ she said. ‘And if anyone comes near me I’ll kill them.’ Cheryl watched as Hoheria closed her eyes, relaxed her muscles, and within a few minutes was snoring gently.
Hoheria stirred briefly when Cheryl moved to Paki and Kevin. But she didn’t rise, and Cheryl was able to help both men to their feet, Paki wincing with pain and Kevin’s face a swollen and bloodied mess.
‘This arm’s going to take some healing,’ Paki said through gritted teeth as Cheryl did her best to line up the broken bones, splint them with two jam spoons, bandage the break tightly with a torn sheet, and make a sling. She tore up the rest of the sheet and strapped his broken ribs, Paki hissing with pain every time he breathed.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘At least it wasn’t you guys.’ He looked nervously at Hoheria lying asleep on the mattress and spoke in a whisper. ‘What are we going to do about her?’
Kevin lifted his face from the basin of warm water he’d filled for himself. He’d been gingerly washing himself with a piece of sheet. ‘Fucked if I know,’ he said quietly. ‘She hates us, but I still can’t hurt her.’ His broken nose looked like a squashed tomato. The flesh around his eyes was swelling and turning purple. ‘I can’t imagine what would happen if we tried.’ He looked at Paki, nursing his broken arm and taking shallow, cautious breaths. ‘You game to chuck her in a lavender bath?’
Hoheria didn’t stir and eventually they all lay down, to get whatever rest they could, Kevin on a mattress by himself, and Cheryl between Eric and Paki. It was daylight when Kevin finally nodded off, Cheryl and Eric asleep and Paki last of all, the pain of his broken bones hardly touched by old and stale painkillers.
9
It Was All a Blank
When Hoheria woke in the morning she lay on her mattress trying to remember the events of the previous night. But there was a big blank. The last thing she could recall was holding Eric’s head out of the water. Had the lavender bath worked? Where was the Ponaturi? Something wasn’t right. She looked across at Cheryl and Eric, lying with Paki on t
he other side of the room. Paki’s face looked battered. And where was Kevin? Where was his warm, familiar shape, his fresh-cut hay smell? Maybe he’d already arisen and was getting breakfast, or wood for the fire. Worried, she turned her head and looked around the room. To her relief, there was Kevin. She could see his straw-coloured hair poking out from his blanket. But why wasn’t he beside her? Why didn’t he have his arms around her, his face snuggled into her neck?
While she lay there wondering, Kevin woke. She watched as he twitched back the blanket and turned towards her. She gasped. Someone had given him a terrible beating. His nose and eyes were swollen, leaking blood. He tried to stretch and winced instead. Who had done that to him? Why was he looking away? Why wouldn’t he meet her gaze? What was going on?
‘What happened to your poor face?’ she called.
Kevin looked disbelieving at her. ‘Don’t you know?’
‘No, I don’t,’ she said. ‘And what’s up with Paki?’ Kevin sat up carefully. He pulled his blanket around his shoulders.
The movement made dust motes dance in a beam of sunlight shining through the still-shattered kitchen window.
‘It’s you,’ he said. ‘The monster’s in you. It made you beat us up.’
Hoheria’s jaw dropped. ‘You’re kidding!’
‘I’m not. And you’re too strong for us. Even Paki couldn’t hold you.’ Hoheria was shocked into silence. She continued to gaze at Kevin as the questions flooded, but in the end he answered the question burning in the front of her mind. ‘Don’t worry. We won’t give up on you.’
The conversation woke Cheryl. Immediately, she looked across at Hoheria and recoiled, her arms tight around Eric. Paki snored on. ‘Are you okay?’ Hoheria called. Cheryl didn’t reply. Her mouth tightened. She pulled the blanket snug around her family.
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Hoheria. ‘I hurt Paki.’
Kevin answered her. ‘You sure did. He tried to stop you. You broke his arm and some of his ribs. You knocked him out.’ Silence followed. Cheryl glared, a mixture of fear and hatred.
Hoheria looked horrified. ‘What can I say? I’m so sorry…’ She wanted to move to Paki, but she didn’t want to alarm anyone further.
Cheryl spoke, for the first time. ‘We know it wasn’t you. We know that thing’s inside you now. But we can’t let it happen again. No way. You might kill somebody.’
Hoheria burst into tears. ‘I knew Eric felt bad, but not this bad,’ she sobbed. ‘I love you all. How could I do this to you?’ Awake now, Paki struggled to sit up. Hoheria looked in horror at his strapped chest, his arm in a sling.
‘It’s nothing,’ Paki said. Cheryl’s expression said she disagreed entirely. ‘I’ll heal. But we’d better get that thing out of you before somebody gets really hurt.’
Kevin heaved himself to his feet. He stepped across the room to Hoheria and embraced her. Silently they clung to each other.
‘The blue fire!’ Paki said suddenly.
Hoheria turned her head. Her sobs had stopped, but her face was streaked with tears. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You must be able to use it to stop that thing. We just have to figure out how.’
They spent the next two hours discussing what might be possible, and in the end they were no further ahead.
‘It’s too risky driving it out,’ said Paki. ‘What if it gets in me? I’m a big, strong bugger to begin with. I hate to think what’d happen.’
‘I agree,’ said Hoheria. ‘Best it stays in me. We just have to keep us all safe.’ She looked quizzically at Paki. ‘What’s it doing now?’
Paki unfocussed his everyday vision and looked hard at Hoheria. After a while he raised his head. ‘It’s in there, but it doesn’t look happy. I think it wants out.’
Hoheria thought for a moment. ‘I remember this old man from somewhere way up north, a friend of my grandfather’s.’ She looked far away. ‘I didn’t like him. He scared me. But he said something once that stuck in my mind. He said you had to gobble up bad things and make them part of yourself.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘I suppose I’m halfway there.’
‘I’ve got it,’ said Cheryl. ‘Eric changed at night, and it looks like you’re the same. So we just have to find a safe place and lock you up before it gets dark.’
‘Got to keep the herd safe,’ muttered Paki.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. It’s an old Stephen King story with a good-guy werewolf in it.’
‘I remember that story!’ said Kevin excitedly. ‘The werewolf was a shepherd and once a month, on the full moon, he’d lock the sheep in a barn so he couldn’t get at them!’ He looked around the room at everyone. ‘Maybe we should get used to sleeping locked in a jail cell. We’d probably be safe there.’
Paki shook his head.
‘We might be safe but nobody else would be.’
‘We can try it,’ Hoheria said. ‘We can lock me in the police cells for the night.’ She giggled. Kevin heard a note of hysteria. ‘There’s a first time for everything.’
‘I can’t remember my first time in a cell,’ said Paki. ‘It’s too far back.’
Late in the day they walked to the police station, carrying food and drink and a bundle of bedding.
‘You might get cold,’ Paki said. ‘Keep wrapped up warm.’ They found a set of keys hanging on the wall near what must have been the sergeant’s desk. It was scrupulously tidy, with two files sitting on a pristine desk blotter and a photo in a gilt frame of a woman and two children. Everything was covered in dust.
‘The cleaners haven’t been for a while,’ commented Cheryl wryly.
Out the back they found two cells, equipped with stainless steel basins and toilet bowls. A single cot in each had a hard and thin plastic-covered mattress with a single blanket folded neatly on the end.
Paki stepped forward to one of the open doors. ‘If you need anything just ring for room service,’ he joked.
‘I wouldn’t choose to stay here,’ said Hoheria. ‘This colour scheme is definitely not for me.’ The walls were a sort of institutional green. They could see graffiti showing through the paint. Underfoot were grey lino tiles.
‘I’m going to spend the night outside the cell,’ announced Kevin.
Paki gave him a sad look. ‘You’d better not, bro,’ he said. ‘No telling what she might talk you into.’
‘He’s right,’ said Hoheria. She marched into the cell and checked her bedding and food on the mattress. ‘Please let me out first thing, though. I hate being shut in.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Paki. ‘We’ll be here.’ He turned to Kevin. ‘You’d better say your goodnights.’ He looked around the cell. Light came dimly through a small barred window high in one wall.
Kevin stepped forward and embraced Hoheria, kissing her and stroking her hair. ‘I love you, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I hope this goes well for you. And please don’t hurt yourself trying to get out of here.’
‘I don’t think I will,’ she said. ‘You’d better go, it’s starting to get dark.’ She went to caress Kevin’s face, but was stopped by the sight of his swellings, now turned green and purple. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ She turned her back on Kevin, and he had no choice but to step away, out of the cell and into the corridor. Paki shut the heavy steel door and turned the key in the lock.
‘I hope she’s okay,’ Cheryl said during their sombre walk home, each of them, even Eric, infected by the faint air of despair and hopelessness that still clung to the cell.
‘I hope so too,’ said Kevin. ‘It’s horrible locking her up.’
Paki nursed his broken arm and tried not to breathe too heavily. ‘Don’t walk so fast, you guys,’ he said. ‘It hurts if I have to puff and pant. I shouldn’t be walking around at all. I should be lying down.’ They stepped out onto the road to avoid a hedge that had grown untrimmed over the footpath. Paki was grey with the strain of walking with his broken ribs, hissing with pain when he stumbled.
‘We’d better have you flat on your ba
ck soon,’ Cheryl said. ‘Not far now.’ She turned to Eric, who was walking beside her, holding her hand. He looked up at her, and she nearly melted at the love and trust in his eyes. He held her hand tightly and smiled.
‘What d’you reckon about that blue fire?’ Kevin asked Paki when they were back home, Hoheria locked in her cell. Full of rabbit stew and chunks of bread, they lay on mattresses around the stove, watching the candlelight dance in occasional breaths of wind through the broken window.
‘It’s probably the answer,’ said Paki. ‘But buggered if I know how it works. Love’s the key to it. That’s all I can say for sure.’ He lay on his back looking at the ceiling, his cracked and broken ribs twingeing with his breathing. ‘Whatever it is, she has to do it when she’s still herself. It’s too late after she’s changed. We found that out the hard way.’
Two streets away, the family was gathered around a woodstove, mattresses close together on the floor, the only illumination moonlight through lace curtains. A man and a woman slept in each other’s arms, beneath a duvet and a crocheted rug. Snoring lightly was a teenaged youth, his beard downy and his face hardening into adulthood. Two young children shared a mattress, snuffling and snorting as they dreamed.
The thing that peered in the window at them looked barely human. Pointed shark teeth stretched its mouth and fish eyes bulged. But still, it was familiar. Anyone who knew her would have recognised Hoheria. And they would have wondered where the nightmare came from, strange and terrifying, someone they knew, yet horribly twisted, turned into something ghastly.