It’s a hot day. Forever getting hotter, and she can’t quite remember cold. For a moment Sammie thinks of staying in the shade, but maybe it’s also a finding day. Something is different about the morning. Perhaps the smell in the air is a little fresher. Time to follow her nose.
Her instinct tells her to climb to a vantage point, like that time she was taken to look out over a town just to see it had fallen silent. Sammie asked her uncle where all the people had gone, and he had pointed down into the ground. The tower of the church in the town had seemed like a celebration waiting to happen, of rising, of being reclaimed. It had been so tall and yet far below the majesty of the crown of the hill, where Vikin warriors had once been buried. That was what her uncle had told her. She had asked what Vikins were.
Proud warriors, left standing, her uncle said. Like you. Then they had started back down the hill and seen a living crow on the way, black and hunched, feathers dull, its claws curved over a dead branch with propriety. A very good sign. But of what he did not say.
Anyway, thinks Sammie. She follows the curve of the land. The remaining trees turn from willowy to stretch-out, brittle leaves dotted on lower branches. Then the trees dwindle and the land is laid bare in the sunshine and the stiff wind. The ground is hard with chunks of flint. A few patches of tough yellow grass. How could anybody rise up from that? Softer soil would be needed. The hill becomes steeper. She puts one foot in front of the other until the air changes and she senses she is near the top. Yes, there are a final few steps and then the ups and downs are laid out below her, and – a surprise – a pile of carefully placed rocks has been left at the very highest point of this hill. It is a reminder of all those who must have walked this way before, and it’s also a treasure, a finding, but only a tiny one compared to this view.
The valley ahead is alive.
She stares at the sudden, thick wash of colour. So many shades of green. They coat the slopes down to a slick wide river of dark grey. Nestled in the bend before the river disappears from view is a village, the houses squat and snug, rubbing shoulders, arranged as if a hand placed them down and fixed them firm to their spots.
All the soil is dying, her uncle said when she asked him why they always moved on. But it might be different somewhere. That’s where we’re going.
She has found somewhere.
The ground here must be fertile in a new way. Or perhaps this is a different kind of grass. It looks fatter. Riper. There is a church, too. With a point. She searches for the word. A spire.
Sammie thinks of the time she was taken inside a church. By someone. Not her uncle. Everything was dark wood and heavy carving apart from the long strips of colourful light, and there were thick beams built into a roof. But it did not soar to a point on the inside. She remembered how she expected it to taper into darkness, up so high, to contain, far above, a trapped and twinkling star. It had been a disappointment to find otherwise, and she could recall the feeling easily but also could say to herself – silly, silly baby. Why had she been expecting such a thing? Everything had seemed very large to her back then, and on the brink of transformation.
She sits and drinks it all in.
One night, in the tent, when there had still been a tent – before the moment it split down the middle in a storm and left her crying and her uncle raging and neither of them as loud as the screaming wind – she had asked her uncle when he was on the brink of sleep if she could be the one that talked next time they had a meeting. And he had laughed, and said, Yes, if you’ve got something to say. She had been so excited to talk. When the time came and they were gathered, a scrawny handful but still in good humour, she explained what churches were like and how she had once been inside one, thinking it set her apart from the others and they would want to know. They were forever telling her things, after all. How to boil the water and how to find things that still grow. It was a returning of the favour.
They had laughed. You’ve never been inside one, her uncle had said. Sammie you Silly Sausage. Where did all that come from? Nobody had any idea of where she could have picked up such thoughts. It had led to a long discussion. Could ideas or memories rise up from the dead? Could they be sliding their thoughts through the soil and entering her? She hadn’t liked the idea of it, had shaken her head violently, and they’d all laughed harder. And then came the storm that took the tent.
Being little had made her an object of comedy for the crowd, but they stopped laughing at her, or at anything, as it became impossible to feed them all. There was shouting. That spring the plants all over had come up twisted and wrong, squelchers and smellers, and then the plants all died anyway, and the shouting got louder and louder until the day she woke and found herself alone.
Even her uncle was gone.
She had laughed and laughed, long, at them, as loud as she could in the hope they would hear.
This is a finding day, and there is a church.
Sammie stands, and unpacks the remains of her dried mushrooms from her rucksack. There are many mushrooms in the darker areas, popping out free from the soil. What makes a building push out if not a trapped star trying to get home to the sky? Things need to grow out, get home. And there’s nobody to stop her, hasn’t been for an age. The path she takes and the legs that take it are all her own.
She nibbles at a mushroom, then starts down the hill. The grass is so thick that it catches at her toes. A wonderful sensation, to have it push against her, alive and strong.
She looks up, and sees it. Him. A man.
A man in a lower field, standing tall.
Sammie opens her mouth, tries to make a loud sound that comes out as a croak. She hasn’t spoken in so long she’s nearly forgotten the knack. She sets off to him at a run, feeling the flint catch at her toes, and she nearly trips, twice, but finds her footing somehow and surges on while the figure waits for her – is he waiting? Has he seen her? There’s no movement, no movement, until she gets close enough to realise he will never move. He’s not real.
What did her uncle call them? She saw one, tall in a field of dried white weeds, and she was scared and excited by it, its shape, its outstretched arms.
It’s only a scar-crow.
She slows, tries to calm her breathing as she draws close enough to see it properly. She feels fear again at the sight. Idiot, she tells herself. But there’s something to this particular scar-crow that unnerves her. It’s in the way the arms don’t reach out. They’re not raised in the cross but held forward at a low angle. Could they have fallen into that position? Nothing about the scar-crow looks aged, or forlorn. The arms point strongly, with vigour. They point down to the church.
Sammie must find courage to take the final few steps to stand beside it. The head is a leathery ball. The body is a long grey coat buttoned up tight, and the legs are lumpy trousers. There’s a strange smell to the figure. Not straw, not soil. Sammie touches the coat.
It’s filled with something soft. She pokes it, and it gives under her finger.
She unbuttons it. Just one button. Her spine is hot, prickly. As if someone else is standing nearby, out of sight, watching her. Nobody, she reminds herself. Inside the coat is thick whitish wool, tangled clumps; the scar-crow is packed tight with it. A full, animal smell is instantly strong in the air and she gags, then controls herself and breathes shallow. This is the smell of a bah-bah. A… sheep. She had almost forgotten the word, but it comes back to her now, and more besides. Her uncle had kept a few thin and ragged sheep for as long as he could, until they went the way of all the other animals. And there had been a bedtime book, for a little while, hadn’t there? Not in a tent but in a dark blue room, with a large presence – a woman with a warm chest – reading about a sheep that couldn’t sleep.
Sammie undoes another button. The wool starts to spill out. She takes handfuls of it and tugs. Inside it’s no longer white, but pink. The more she pulls, the more it deepens its colour, and then there’s a sudden shade of red and a new smell to match, and then a cold, slippery c
oil spills out and pools in her hands.
Alive, she thinks, and stuffs it back into the body where it belongs but no, no, it’s cold and dead. But fresh dead. Not rot. Couldn’t be more than a few hours of dead.
She looks around again, eyes roaming over the lush fields: down to the village, back up to the skyline. She’s so afraid of this living being that is the land around her, with creatures living in it, through it, on it. She wants to call out again but her voice will surely fail now there’s fear in her as well.
Her hands are wet and stained.
She thinks about wiping them on her coat but the thought of the smell sticking to her makes her change her mind. And besides, she’s not done with it yet. She needs to look again. She reaches in and moves the wool, very gently, until a coil of matter is visible. It looks wet. Will it writhe or squirm? Dead, she tells herself, and touches it again, grasps it, feels her confidence returning. She pulls it out and tugs out more. It starts to loop on the ground, by her feet. There’s so much of it. Something catches on the waistband of the trousers and up comes a large brown lump, bigger than her two hands put together. It falls onto the pile of coils, loud and sodden. The sound horrifies her. She skitters back to a safe distance and watches the lump. It does not move.
Around it is a long green tendril that does not break. A healthy plant. The tendril stretches, connecting the lump to the body still.
She shakes her head at it. Is it a finding? No, no, she has done something wrong by taking it from the body, something terrible, but she can’t bring herself to try to put it all back. She could push it and force it and still so much matter would not stay in, not now. It can’t be undone. The buttons of the coat would no longer hold it. The plant grasps at it; it will not give up its lumps and coils.
Go.
She wipes her hands on the ground, the thick grass, then moves slowly, still facing the scar-crow, feeling the way with her feet. There comes a point where the sense of danger lessens just enough for her to turn, to move faster, to put distance between them.
She sees the next scar-crow.
It’s lower in the valley, and it wears a long orange dress. There’s hair, yellow hair, down to its shoulders, spilling from the leathery ball of a head. Its arms are pointing downwards to the church.
Sammie has to know. She goes to it, crosses the field and then pushes through the longer grasses that are threaded with such delicate wild flowers that she holds her breath. The dress flaps free at the bottom, revealing a chunky pole – no, a trunk. The scar-crow is formed from a tree. It’s a kind she hasn’t seen before, short, with regular and smooth branches that end in splayed twigs. There’s a thick belt of blue rope around the waist, and whatever has been used as stuffing creates the bulbous effect of large breasts.
Sammie says, “Woman.” The word must be forced, and even then, it emerges as little more than a whisper. She reaches for the collar of the dress and pulls it apart. Her fingers touch something so soft that she can’t believe anything of its kind could exist. She wants to bury herself in it, and she strokes it for a little while before daring to pull the collar further to see what she’s touching.
The collar gives, rips, and something familiar is revealed. Rabbits, she thinks. The word comes to her easily. She is remembering more of the old life. Two rabbits, curled and tied tight to form the breasts. The heads have been tucked between their front paws and their back legs are folded up to their ears. Their tails are bloodied and their mouths are open, their teeth showing. From inside both mouths erupt dark green growth, prickly with long black thorns.
Look, her uncle said. Look, a rabbit. Pointing across a different field, on a day’s walking to a new place to camp. This is a good sign, if there are still rabbits. He had her hand in a tight grip; she felt his excitement through his grasp. She was scared but he said, Rabbits never hurt anyone, and they tiptoed together to where it waited, and trembled, and it did not run. She was so pleased to meet it until she was close enough to see the bloody mucus on its eyes and nose, and its teeth working, working, as its head weaved from side to side.
She pulls the collar back up, as best as she can, to cover the rabbits and the thorns.
The village is below. She has a good view of it now; the scar-crows have drawn her closer. They are so newly dead, so nearly alive. She wants to reach a scar-crow at speed, quickly enough to find a breathing, beating thing inside. She scans the valley and sees a third figure, this one in a white shirt and blue trousers, wearing a curved hat with a neat brim. It’s further down, nearer to the village again.
She sprints there, falling once, picking herself up without thought of the stinging pain in her knees.
Inside the chest: teeth, large and flat, set in a jawbone with the flesh of the gum still pink and shiny, hidden within a nest of wet, pulpy grass.
From there to the fourth scar-crow, set back on a discernible path through tall wild flowers. It’s shorter than the others and it wears a hooded, baggy top and jeans, with a thin cap on the head, brim turned back to the neck. The top holds in red fleshy petals, veined. And coarse fur, black and white, with four paws that have been severed from limbs, long and curving claws thick with dirt. A grumbler, she thinks. A grumbler only just dead. Or perhaps, she can dare to hope, that it is not newly dead but almost brought back to life.
The fifth scar-crow, by a bushy hedgerow, has a white coat with a silver tag over the pocket bearing letters. Sammie wishes she could remember any of her reading. She never did have the knack for it, and her uncle gave up trying to teach her. Inside the coat she finds a sack formed of grey fur that is fringed with long black hairs. In the bag, a large lump of matter with rubbery tubes emerging from the marbled surface. Inside the tubes are many fruits, packed tight: little balls of black that smell sweet within the meat.
The sixth scar-crow is in the village itself.
Sammie enters the garden of the first house through a painted gate, aware of the empty gaze of the windows upon her. Plants she’s never seen before, could not have dreamed of, have grown so tall, so free. They have sprouted into strange shapes that block the way. The figure is made of two small red trees this time, growing in parallel. The arms are budding, outstretched branches. It has only a blanket thrown over it, draping loosely to the ground. But the balled head is the same, balanced in the crook of one tree. No, not quite the same – the leather has split on one side, just a little, and through the gap Sammie can see— can see—
She takes out her penknife from her rucksack. She widens the split and pulls back the fleshy leather.
Skin.
Skin like her own and the corner of an open mouth, and inside that mouth small white teeth. In the darkness within, the curve of a tongue.
She stumbles out of the garden, feeling the plants catching, grabbing at her skirts. She finds herself on the path that leads to the church.
She walks past houses, past post boxes and slatted benches, past signs fixed to walls and fences. The letters are thick and large and there’s nobody left to read them. They never make sense to her, no matter how hard to she tries to remember them, remember how everything was. There had been so many living things and they all left her behind. How could she, alone, hold the old world in her head? But this is not a return to the old, after all. This is something new made of the pieces left behind – the flesh and growth and all that once shrank back and was buried, rising up anew.
The church.
She walks under the shadow of the spire, not daring to look up. She reaches the double doors and tries one of the ringed handles, pulling, pushing. Then turning. Something gives, the door swings back, and she enters.
It is just as she remembers. She must have been here before. An aisle, with the dark wooden lines of benches on either side and beautiful light through long coloured windows. There are so many scar-crows.
They are sitting, wrapped in their branches, in their silence.
“Hello,” she says. “Hello.”
Her voice, clear. Getting stronge
r.
The stones of the floor have cracked and overturned. Tendrils, veins, crawl out, twisting and thickening to become legs, legs for scar-crows. They fill the benches and their ball-heads are all in place, but now she sees their heads are fruits, fruits ripening, and their arms are growing up up up to the spire.
There has always been so much life beneath her, all this time, under the ground. She was trapped in the tip of a spire. She was the very last star, way up high, on top of the world, and the new people have grown up through the dark to meet her.
“You found me,” she says, as loud as she has ever spoken, not a grumble or a whine, not a shout at all, but a voice never heard before. Her grown-up voice. The fruits are ripe and ready as they turn to face her, and the vines gentle as they wrap around her feet.
FROM THE NECK UP
“Decapitated,” said Megan.
“Mmm,” said her mother. “Did you put your CV on that new site?”
“Didn’t you just hear? A helicopter took the head clean off a veteran. Look.” She held out her tablet. It showed a black-and-white picture of a young man in uniform, handsome apart from the ears, and below it a photograph of a big pile of wreckage in what seemed to be a residential street not very different from the one in which Megan and her mother lived. “He fought for our country, you know. He deserved better. It’s a tragedy.”
“Was that nearby?”
“Yorkshire. It crashed right into his house. A malfunction of something, it says.”
Her mother returned to looking at Facebook on her phone. Yorkshire was, in her mind, both geographically and figuratively miles away.
“There should be some kind of campaign,” said Megan. “To stop helicopters from flying low in built-up areas. Wasn’t there an accident like this just a few years ago?”
Her mother stood up and left the living room.
“Somebody has to say something,” said Megan. She signed into her online account as MizMeg60060002 and left a long comment under the article about how rich and powerful people were manipulating flight plans so that they got to their illuminati meetings in time. It made her feel slightly better. Then she went upstairs to her room with the intention of perusing job websites and coming up with good reasons why she couldn’t do any of the jobs they advertised.
From the Neck Up and Other Stories Page 18