by Rey S Morfin
‘I’m a monster? Have you seen yourself at the moment, Rey?’ He gestured towards me. ‘The only real monster here is you.’
I charged at him, meaning to hurt him again, but Robert was ready for me. He pulled a knife from the stand beside him, and, taking advantage of my momentum, he pierced it into my shoulder.
I roared with pain and Robert pushed me to the floor. He went to stab me again, but I mustered up the strength to knock the knife out of his hand, which clanged on the hard kitchen floor.
Robert, now weaponless, resorted to using his fists. The adrenaline lent him extra strength, and with each blow to my face and jaw, I felt myself weaken. With every punch, I saw flashes of Laura.
I saw the time we met, when a kind, pretty young woman helped me in a bookstore, and we bonded over our love of reading. She was working her way through the book I was buying. We talked for a while, until another customer arrived, and I wrote my number down for her.
I saw our first date, where I took Laura to a wine bar in which fairy lights lined the walls. Our immediate connection distracted us from the fact that the table was wobbly. We spend time together on each of the next four consecutive days.
I saw us moving into our flat together, and the excitement on her face when I revealed that I purchased the sofa she really wanted - even if it was orange.
I saw her agreeing to marry me, and her shedding the only tear I’d ever seen her shed.
And then, I saw us argue.
I saw her leave for Redbury.
I saw her body.
Rage took ahold of me. I threw Robert off of me and charged over to him, pinning him down by the neck. With my other hand, I punched him.
I hurt him for everything he’d done. To me, to Anna, to Laura.
I punched over and over, stopping only when I realised that the life had long since left his body.
The reality of my actions immediately sunk in - and the guilt took hold of me.
A voice gasped from the doorway.
12
The Body
Disclaimer: Again, the events of this scene are entirely fictional. During my beta readings, some asked me how I knew enough about the following subjects in order to provide such vivid details. Of course, this level of insight was in no way based on real-life experiences, but learned from a vast number of Google searches. If there’s an end to the seemingly-infinite supply of information on the Internet, I didn’t find it. I suggest you don’t look for it either, however - who knows what kind of government/security watchlists you will be placed on.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ Robert said, as we crossed paths at the threshold to the kitchen. I hadn’t known he would be awake. If I had, I wouldn’t have risked leaving Laura’s room; when she was around, I was safe.
The cat, Ruby, scuttled through my legs and up the stairs, visibly alarmed by my presence. As she ran, she knocked over one of my shoes, which fell to one side with a clunk. Ruby hadn’t yet warmed to me, and now simply stared at me from atop the staircase.
‘What are you after, Anna? A little midnight snack?’ he smiled at me.
‘Oh, no, just some water. I’ll be quick,’ I answered.
‘Are you sure? I can make you something.’
‘No, it’s ok. I’ll just get the water.’
‘Come on, Anna,’ he insisted, ‘It’s not like you have to worry about putting on weight. You know you have a great body.’ Robert put his hand on my waist.
I slinked around him, into the kitchen, and towards the glasses. Robert followed me.
I could feel him press himself against me.
‘Mr Kamryn, I don’t think-’
‘Come on, Anna, it’s just a bit of fun. Don’t play games with me.’
‘I think that…’
Robert placed his finger over my mouth to hush me.
I woke up in tears. I hadn’t had that dream in years. At least it had been cut short.
I laid still a while, trying to repress the tears that I felt building up beneath my eyelids. I knew that if I made a sound, Rey would hear me from the bed behind me. I didn’t want him to see this.
An anger began to well up inside of me. Robert didn’t have the right to do what he did. It was only now that I’d spoken about it that it had become truly real, and I was only just beginning to truly believe that I didn’t deserve it. I wasn’t going to hide from it any more. I was going to face it and I was going to, maybe, heal.
I sat up and found that the bed next to me was still empty. Rey hadn’t returned. I didn’t blame him for not sleeping. Maybe I shouldn’t have been either. In fact, I didn’t think I could, not any more. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw visions of memories I’d stored deep.
But there was this sudden motivation inside of me, too. I felt, at last, for the first time in many years, like I had the power to face my own personal demons. Like Rey, I could no longer sit idle, and I followed suit, leaving the bedroom unoccupied for the night.
With an unbridled determination building inside of me, I made for Robert Kamryn’s house, suddenly ready to face the man.
I wasn’t sure if I really and truly intended to go inside and confront him. Maybe I was just riding a wave of unprecedented emotion which would rapidly fade when I saw him. It turned out that it didn’t matter; when I arrived, the decision was made for me.
A loud crash came from inside the house, followed by muffled shouts.
I timidly opened the front door, and peered through the house into the kitchen. When I saw the scene in front of me, I gasped.
It wasn’t quite the Rey I’d come to know. I’d seen those eyes before, the glowing red eyes. They were the same as I’d seen in the old photograph of the fox. They were the same as I’d seen when we buried Max. The crawling grey skin, however, was new to me.
He stared back over one shoulder, alarmed. In one swift, depraved action, Rey had changed everything; my healing was going to have to wait.
‘Anna,’ Rey whispered, alarmed. ‘Anna, you need to listen to me, I had to. It was him! He was the one who hurt Laura! He killed her!’
Rey broke down, sank to his knees and cried. It was a sight I knew I would never forget: a smouldering man with the eyes of the devil… whimpering, sobbing.
I walked over to him and reached out gently to hold his back in reassurance. The smoke emanating from him darted out to touch me, and I recoiled. I expected to be burned but the smoke felt light like a soft fabric billowing in the wind. Feeling more confident now, I placed my hand on his back.
‘Rey. It’s ok. We’re going to sort this.’ I didn’t know if it was ok, but I was, at least, eerily comfortable with the situation.
‘How?’ Rey cried.
‘You’re going to do exactly as I say, ok? We’re going to fix this.’
I surveyed the mess in front of us.
‘What did you touch, Rey? Since you got here. Tell me everything you touched.’
Rey was looking more like his usual self now. No longer did he resemble some monstrous thing, his skin and his eyes having returned to their natural shades.
I pulled my coat sleeves over my hands and opened the cupboard under the sink (the most obvious place to check for cleaning materials). Despite Robert’s house being a mess, he was at least stocked up on sprays and cloths. Perhaps he was only stocked up because he never used them.
‘I, err….’ he began, pondering, ‘I touched the door- the back door. And, erm…’
He trailed off, watching me thoroughly wipe down the door, the frame, and the handle.
‘And, erm… some of that blood over there…,’ he pointed to a far corner of the room, ‘That’s mine.’
‘Yours?’
Rey pulled back his jacket, revealing a wound in his shoulder.
‘Christ, Rey. How bad is it?’
‘It hurts. A lot.’
‘Ok, ok. We’ll deal with that first. But, quickly, we have a hard deadline. We need to be cleared out of here before the sun comes up, ok?’
‘Ok.’
‘That means I’m going to need your help. Ok?’
‘Ok.’
I pulled open the cupboard, thinking back to the Law & Order days of my teenage years. If there was anything that Robert hadn’t been in short supply of, it was alcohol. I pulled a cheap vodka from the cupboard, and poured it on to a clean cloth.
‘No!’ said Rey, when he saw what I was doing, ‘That’ll just slow the healing.’
‘Alright, well do you want to sort it then?’
He shook his head.
‘Fine, then, Rey, as you’re the expert, what do we do about it?’
‘Can you- can you take a look in there?’
‘In where? The wound? Fucking hell, Rey.’
I stepped in close, looking into the hole in his shoulder.
‘What am I looking for?’ I asked.
‘Is there anything in there? Any… any debris?’
I pulled the wound around some more, and told Rey to be quiet when he groaned in pain.
‘I can’t see anything, no.’
He took a deep breath and clutched his shoulder.
‘Ok, what’s next?’ I asked, ‘Do we sew it up?’
‘No, that’ll just… increase the chance of infection. Just need to- to cover it. Is there anything we can use as a bandage anywhere?’
‘Don’t we need to disinfect it somehow?’
‘I thought you said there wasn’t time.’ Rey seemed to remember that there was a corpse in the room with us, and his eyes widened as he stared at it.
‘Ok. We’ll do that later. Ok?’
Rey didn’t say anything, and I could see him going into shock. I shook him back to reality.
‘Ok, Rey?’
‘Yeah… yeah. Ok.’
I wrapped up his wound as best I could with the cloths available. It wasn’t my best work, but for now it was going to have to do.
‘Ok, Rey, I’m going to need you to give me a hand now, ok?’
‘Ok.’
‘Can you go upstairs - don’t touch anything - and grab a couple of bed sheets? As many as you can take while still leaving enough for each bedroom. Ok?’
He nodded rapidly, looking as though he was psyching himself up. ‘Ok.’
‘Don’t touch anything, ok Rey?’
‘Ok.’
Rey slinked out the room and up the stairs. While he was out of the room, I surveyed the situation.
One corpse.
Two pools of blood.
One shelf off the wall, and kitchen equipment everywhere.
With the state of the house being as it was, someone might almost believe that Robert would leave pots and pans around the room, and maybe even not get around to fixing a shelf. We had to be smart with our time; we needed to decide which elements to clean up and which to leave.
‘He killed her!’ Rey’s wail went through my mind once again. He must have been mistaken. Laura couldn’t be gone.
I pushed it out of my mind, telling myself to focus on the issue at hand.
Rey returned with the bed sheets, and gave me a look that said, “now what?”
I cleaned a patch of the floor for the bed sheets. Here, we laid them long and wide enough that we would be able to wrap around the body, but folded thick enough that no liquids would seep through (hopefully).
‘Ok, Rey, this is going to be the worst part. We’re going to need to move him onto the sheets, ok?’
‘Ok.’
‘Can you take his top end, I’ll take his bottom end, ok?’
Rey was silent for a moment, horrified. ‘Can I take his bottom end?’
‘I’m sorry Rey, but who did this? You or me?’
Rey went quiet once again. He took a deep breath and reached for the body’s arms. I did the same with the feet, and together we managed to move him to the sheets. Rey breathed a sigh of relief.
‘We’re not done yet, Rey.’ I handed him the remainder of the bed sheets. ‘Use these, best as you can, soak up the blood. Be careful not to get any on yourself. We’re going to put these sheets in with… him.’
Rey nodded and did as he was commanded. We were left with two drying red patches of blood, both Robert’s and Rey’s, as well as some blood-soaked pans strewn throughout the room.
‘Take these.’ I handed Rey new cloths and a cleaning spray. ‘Get the rest of that blood out. There can’t be a single trace left, ok?’
‘Ok. What are you going to do?’
‘I’ll handle the pans.’
I had always found cleaning dishes to be therapeutic. I wondered at the time if that was going to change now that I had washed my best friend’s father’s blood out of some. Blood was surprisingly easy to get out of pans. Or at least, it was much easier to get out of pans than Josh’s burnt risotto. It occurred to me that I hadn’t thought about Josh since I arrived, but there wasn’t time for introspection right now. I dried the pans and put them on the drying rack, happy to leave them there as there was no remaining storage space in the kitchen cupboards.
When Rey was finished, we wrapped the body up with the blood-soaked sheets.
‘What now?’ Rey asked, ‘Where are we going with… Robert… Where are we going with the body?’
‘We probably have a couple of hours before the sun begins to rise. There’s a hiker’s trail, out in the woods. We can get there from Robert’s garden, but it’ll mean pushing through branches and the like for a while.’
‘Ok, and then what?’
‘Then…,’ I paused, not quite sure what the plan was myself, ‘Then we can find a place deep in the trees to hide it. Him. Somewhere off the beaten track.’
Rey nodded. ‘Ok. Ok.’
As we lifted the wrapped body and made for the door, a cat mewled softly. Ruby stared at Rey, trotted casually up to him, and brushed her head on his leg.
Rey gulped.
‘Let’s go, Rey.’
We continued under the cover of darkness, navigating the thick trees and bushes of the woods to the east of Redbury. With Robert not being the slightest man who had ever lived, it felt like hours had already passed before we reached the Hiker’s Trail. A cursory look at the time on my phone’s bright screen told us that it had not been hours, but barely half of one. This was good news; it meant we had more time.
‘What do we do if we run into someone?’ Rey asked.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think we will, this time of night.’
‘It’s a walking route, though, someone might be out.’
‘At this time? Who? Doggers?’
I immediately felt guilty for throw-away comment, even before Rey shot me a look.
We continued up the path, and my thoughts wandered once again.
‘He killed her!’ Rey’s scream shot through my mind again, and I could focus no more.
‘Rey… When I came in, back there, you said something.’
‘I said he killed her.’ Rey blinked back tears.
‘What made you say that? Is she… do you know she’s gone?’
There was silence for a few moments, and I knew not to make Rey say the answer out loud. I took a deep breath, held back the emotional response, and buried it deep, deep down with the rest.
‘I’m sorry, Rey, but I have to know: how do you know she’s gone?’
Rey was having trouble saying the words. Eventually, he spoke through hyperventilated breaths.
‘I… I found her.’
I couldn’t let myself feel the emotions right now. There was too much at stake. I needed to keep it together. One of us had to, and it wasn’t going to be Rey.
‘Where? How?’
‘The… the trees showed me… they pointed me to her.’
‘The… trees showed you, Rey? What do you mean, sorry?’ I started to wonder if Rey was no longer completely there anymore.
‘They just… they pointed me. They twisted… and they pointed… and they took me to the campsite.’
I stopped in my tracks. I knew the campsite. I knew Sam and Laura’s old campsite. Even if Rey was
deluded about the trees, there was no way he would know about the campsite without actually coming across it. I hadn’t mentioned it. Surely Laura hadn’t either.
I turned to Rey. ‘What campsite?’
‘In the woods…’
‘By the river?’
Rey looked perplexed. ‘Yes… by the river. How did- how did you know?’
‘It was…’ I trailed off. Rey wasn’t in the right state to hear the truth.
‘It was what, Anna?’
‘It was… our old campsite,’ I lied, ‘Me and Laura’s. Robert wouldn’t have known about it.’
‘But he must have done… she told me he did it… he must have known.’
‘Who told you this, Rey? Who is “she”?’
‘Elizabeth. Elizabeth told me.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Elizabeth? The Wi- The woman who lives in the woods? She’s an old woman, Rey. She’s senile.’
‘No!’ he shouted, dropping the body. ‘She’s not! She’s… not that. She’s not senile. She’s strong. She’s stronger than me.’
‘Rey, you’re starting to scare me a little. What do you mean?’
‘She’s strong. She has… she can do things.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘I… I don’t know, exactly. But I’m… I’m getting them too. She told me. She told me it’s taking a hold of me.’
‘What’s taking a hold of you, Rey?’
He roared, clasping his head with his hands.
‘You saw it! You saw it, Anna! You saw the Shadow! You saw the monster. Don’t pretend you didn’t!’
I thought back to the image I’d seen when I walked in through Robert’s door: a man made of smoke, eyes glowing as if possessed by a demon. It was an image that I’d tried to clear from my mind. Rey was right: I had seen it, I just hadn’t necessarily believed it.
‘Yes, Rey. I saw it. I don’t know what it was, but I saw it.’
Rey roared again, and his skin billowed. His eyes began to glow - softly at first, but then it was just as I’d seen earlier.
‘It was the Shadow, Anna! The Shadow! The Root!’ Rey was working himself up into a frenzy. The smoke billowed from his skin, aggressively flickering back and forth.