by Helen Fields
‘I’ll give you anything you want,’ she panted. ‘Two minutes. You count the seconds, then I’m all yours.’
He gave her a wary look.
‘On my life,’ Connie said.
He sat back, letting her be, saying nothing.
Connie took a deep preparatory breath, ready to force air into Elspeth’s lungs again, all sense of reality evaporating, fighting the sense that she had just made a deal with the devil.
Leaning forward, supporting the back of Elspeth’s neck with her left hand as she pinched the unmoving woman’s nose closed with her right, Connie tensed her diaphragm and transferred every atom of oxygen from her own body and into its recipient. Another breath, same again. Meggy was crying behind her. Fergus/Harris – even Connie was confused about his real name now, not that it mattered – was counting steadily in front of them.
Chest compressions, and every pump cost her a second of her life.
‘Don’t do what he says,’ Meggy was muttering. ‘Don’t leave me.’
Fergus/Harris was on his hands and knees crawling towards the coffin. Connie put her fingertips on Elspeth’s wrist. The tiny, weak skittering insect of a pulse made Connie’s own heart stop a moment. She risked a glance in their captor’s direction, but he was staring into the watery grave.
Connie whipped her head round to Meggy.
‘She’s alive,’ she mouthed silently.
Meggy’s mouth fell open, and the girl shifted to throw herself at Elspeth’s side. Connie stopped her, raising a finger in warning.
No more than thirty seconds left before he insisted on being paid the debt Connie owed him. The competing emotions of joy and terror fought for dominance, and she pressed fresh air into Elspeth’s lungs. She could stop compressions now Elspeth’s heart was beating, but her lungs weren’t rising and falling yet, and she needed Fergus/Harris to believe Elspeth was beyond saving.
Twenty seconds left, and he was staring at her now, cheeks red, his few remaining teeth gleaming in carnivorous contrast with the earth around his mouth. His transition from living being to the walking dead was complete.
Connie bent over again, taking gulps of air and blasting it into Elspeth’s lungs, keeping her grip on the woman’s thready pulse, pleading internally for her to fight, to keep going, to know that there was hope.
Ten seconds – another breath. Six seconds – the world was not just grey but fading in Connie’s peripheral vision – another breath. One second left. Breathe, Elspeth. Breathe without me, she thought. Give me a reason to stay strong. A final breath.
‘Me now,’ Fergus/Harris said.
‘No!’ Meggy howled, her fingers digging painfully into Connie’s shoulders as she held tight.
‘Honey, you have to let me go. I’m going to be fine.’ She peeled the girl’s arms away and sat her back on the ground.
‘Don’t go,’ Meggy sobbed. ‘I can’t look after her …’
‘She’s dead,’ Fergus/Harris said. ‘But we need you now.’
Connie slapped a hand over her own mouth as Elspeth’s dress shifted across her chest. She stared. It wasn’t an illusion. She was breathing.
‘Just do what he asks you, Meggy,’ she said, shifting his attention away from Elspeth.
There was no knowing what he might do if he realised her resuscitation attempt had actually been successful.
‘I won’t.’ Meggy shook her head.
Fergus was up on his feet again, and he stepped towards the girl, his face a contortion of fury.
‘She’ll help,’ Connie said. ‘Let me.’ She pushed past him and went to hug Meggy, pushing her lips as close to the girl’s ear as she could, beyond his hearing in the still-pouring rain.
‘Elspeth’s breathing. Do whatever he says then go for help,’ she told her.
Meggy looked up at her with huge terrified eyes.
‘I’m tired,’ the girl said.
‘That’s okay. Not much longer now,’ Connie told her, stroking her hair. ‘Be brave. I’m going to be just fine.’
Fergus/Harris held out a hand like a groom at a wedding inviting his wife to the floor for their first dance as a married couple.
‘Let’s do this,’ she said, placing her hand in his.
‘You first,’ he said, motioning towards the coffin.
Meggy sobbed.
Connie took a long look at Fergus’ face. His eyes had taken on an evangelical glow, the sweat on his brow greasily distinguishable from the rain splashing there. He was on fire. His chest was puffed out, chin up. The pitiable broken figure – as dangerous as he had been when Connie had first laid eyes on him – had vanished. In his place was a maniac, glowing with the prize that lay within his perceived reach. She swallowed her fear. No time for that now.
Before stepping into the wooden box, already pooled with muddy water, she kicked off her trainers, emptied the pockets of her jeans and finally shed her coat. Two adults in the space meant no room for any additional bulk.
Meggy was huddled on the ground, rocking, crying.
‘Please don’t get in,’ she whined.
‘Do what you’re told. Every word,’ Connie snapped at her. ‘Quickly.’
Meggy flashed a look at her that was venomous, her pain inflamed by Connie’s cruelty, but the girl seemed to wake up.
Keeping her eyes on Elspeth as she climbed in, Connie saw the fractional rise and fall of her chest and knew she was doing the right thing to keep the woman and girl safe. She allowed Fergus/Harris to climb in next to her, his body pressed tight against hers, his rotten breath infiltrating her air space. She lay on her right-hand side, he on his left, their hair swirling in the half-inch of water, their faces awash with rain, their clothes – had she been able to note their colour – shades of brown, the earth already in the process of claiming them.
‘Put the lid back on the coffin. I want to hear you jump on it, then kick the mud on top of it again. It has to be sealed tight, do you hear?’ Fergus instructed.
Meggy remained where she was, glaring.
‘If you don’t, I’m coming back out to get you. It’ll be you in here, drowning, suffocating. You’ll die like she died. You want me to put you back in this coffin?’ he growled.
Meggy glanced at Elspeth, looked to Connie, who gave a small silent nod. The girl crawled towards the open grave, hauling the coffin lid towards them, biting her trembling lip as she went.
Connie took a long last look at the furious sky, already crying for her. It was dark, but not as dark as things were about to get. She became aware of everything. The chill of the water beneath her, the grit of the earth seeping into her clothes, the closeness of Fergus’ hands to her body, the small sounds of Meggy’s exhausted breaths as she pulled the coffin lid in place. The disappearing light, pale grey, mid grey, dark grey, as wood scraped across wood.
And the world disappeared.
Chapter Forty-One
Connie’s fists were curled at her sides. Panic had crawled into the box with her, and she had to fight that before she could even contemplate battling with Fergus. Feet landed heavily on the lid on the coffin. Connie felt a moment of joyous hope when she thought the girl might just come crashing through, splintering the lid beyond use and destroying Fergus’ plans.
How much oxygen did they have? Not much for two adults, and Fergus wasn’t just breathing heavily, he was panting hard.
‘What’s that word? When you’re passing from one world to the next, like a holy experience … I can’t think,’ he said, his voice booming in the wooden walls.
The first thud of earth landing on the coffin lid came from above, and Connie’s heart hammered in her chest with the volume and persistence of an MRI machine.
‘Rapture,’ Connie said. ‘Is that how you feel?’
‘It is,’ he sighed, and his breath was maggoty meat in her mouth and nose. ‘Is that how you feel, too?’
‘I do,’ she said. ‘We don’t have much time to talk, but I have a theory about why you and I seem so perfectly matched for
one another. Would you like to hear it?’
‘Yes, my love,’ he said dreamily.
Earth thumped down, and Connie prayed the girl would do as she’d been told and keep up the noise and disturbance while Connie told her tale.
‘I was in a hospital once, too. For a long time. I didn’t belong there, either. No one could understand me, and so they decided I needed treatment. I was strapped into a bed. There was no privacy, no kindness. They made me take my clothes off when they decided I should wash, watched me as if I were nothing more than an animal, decided what I would eat and when. Told me when I should sleep and when I should wake up. Gave me pills without telling me what I was swallowing, and checked my mouth as if I were a disobedient child.’
‘You too?’ Fergus asked breathily. He pushed his forehead forward to press against hers as if their very brains could meld into one another.
‘Me too,’ she said.
More mud thumped onto the box, muffled now, the upper layers going on. Muddy water was seeping in through the sides of the box. Connie wondered what would get them first, the lack of oxygen or drowning.
‘But that wasn’t the worst of it,’ Connie continued. ‘The human suffering was … beyond anything I could have imagined. We were just kids, and we were locked up, competing for any little kindnesses we could get. Desperate for love. Willing to do almost anything to be treated kindly – the sane ones among us, anyway.’
‘Doesn’t matter now,’ he said. ‘No one can hurt us any more. We’ll have each other forever.’
‘What about the others? The ones before me?’ Connie asked. ‘The body beneath your floorboards. The bones. Their families.’
There was silence.
‘That wasn’t really me,’ he said eventually.
She shifted her body the inch needed to release the buckle of her belt, making it easier to breathe.
‘I understand that,’ Connie said.
There was no noise from above them now. Either Meggy had stopped following instructions, or the mud was so compact above them that no more noise could get through. Either way, death was a calculable number of heartbeats away. The air was thinner, the water higher.
‘When I was locked up, there were people like you. People who did bad things because they heard voices, because they felt compelled to act. Those people scared me the most. They can’t be reasoned with.’
‘I bet you were kind, though,’ he said.
‘I learned how to deal with them,’ Connie said. ‘It took me a long time, but I figured out what they really needed.’
‘I felt it when I saw you on the video,’ he said. ‘I knew you understood me.’
‘Those people, the ones who act compulsively, they can’t be stopped. Can’t be treated. Even hospitalisation isn’t enough. They still hurt people.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If we’re going to die here together,’ Connie said, ‘let me put my arms around you. It’s hard to breathe.’
There wasn’t enough oxygen for them both.
‘I’d like that,’ he said.
Connie slid her right hand beneath his neck, bringing her left up to meet it above his body, then reversing course, praying he couldn’t feel what she was doing, releasing her left hand again to reach down and take his right hand in hers, intertwining their fingers. She paused in the darkness. It didn’t scare her. When you lived your life in black and white, you got used to darkness. Other things still did. Lack of privacy. Lack of control. Unwanted physical contact, prying eyes.
Above them, no more than a distant impact, was a rhythmic vibration.
Footsteps. More than one pair. Rapid. Her other senses had sharpened long ago to make up for her lack of colour vision. Whoever was coming was not above them yet, but they soon would be. Connie smiled in the darkness.
‘What I learned was that truly dangerous people can never be released into the world, not into any environment. Not a prison, or a hospital, or even a psychiatric ward. Because sooner or later, someone screws up. Some well-intentioned doctor or probation officer decides they can be released into the community, or onto a general ward. And then they hurt other people.’ Connie began pulling her right hand away from the back of his neck. ‘They’ll hurt anyone they can find. That’s what mental illness does inside the wrong brain. It creates monsters.’
‘What are you—’
She pulled sharply down, tensing for the inevitable smack against her own head, gripping his hand as tightly as she could bear. The belt she’d slipped off her waist and fed loosely around his neck whip-cracked against its buckle, the noose pulling tight only when his neck provided enough resistance. Pain exploded in her skull and she embraced him, pushing her body forward into his to ensure his left arm remained useless beneath him.
The struggle to free his right hand from her left began, but she was ready for that one. He screamed at her, and the noise was beyond human. Outrage, fury, defiance, hatred.
Above them now, voices reached through the mud and wood. The sound of shifting earth. Connie was out of time. She pulled harder on the belt loop, and the sound of his breath was the scrape of nails on a blackboard. He was fighting hard, still stronger than her. Still dangerous. Untreatable.
In the darkness, Connie saw a different face. A young man convinced there were aliens giving him instructions through some special psychic link. Connie beneath him, fighting for her life.
Their hands slick with sweat, Fergus freed himself from her grasp, reaching up to Connie’s face, searching for one of her eyes with his thumb. She scrunched her eyes shut tight, moving her head left and right in the confinement, his nail pushing its way through her eyelid and forcing its way to her eyeball. She grabbed his little finger, snapping it to the side, cracking the bone in half, then reached for the next finger in and repeated the exercise. Still his grip was iron on her face as she kept the pressure on the belt buckle, strangling him.
He couldn’t face trial.
He couldn’t live his life in a hospital.
Fergus/Harris couldn’t be treated. He was far too damaged and dangerous for that.
This was the truth that Connie knew. It was the lesson she’d learned that no university course, no FBI training, no hands-on experience could teach her. This, you had to have seen from the inside.
Taking the deepest breath she could manage, sucking what tiny amounts of oxygen remained in the thin, stinking air, she released his hand. Let him try for her eyes.
With one last monumental effort, she slammed her left hand into the base of his throat, forcing it back against the side of the coffin and giving her the extra inches of space to pull the belt tighter. His thumb pressed into her left eye, and now she could hear the watery squelch of her eyeball, the pressure a pinless grenade inside her skull.
Shovelling above them. Shouts close by.
Seconds left to finish the job. To make sure the legal system didn’t fuck up and release a demon back into the world. Keeping safe those people who might end up on a psychiatric ward with a man capable of using other human beings for his own ends regardless of the cost to them. A man too sick ever to be responsible for his own actions.
Too sick to be helped.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to him. ‘There’s really no other way.’
She dropped the end of the belt, pushing both of her fists into his already partially collapsed windpipe, the belt having worked its preliminary magic.
Roaring, Connie thrust every last newton of force from her body into his.
Legs juddering, his body trembling against hers, he succumbed.
Connie imagined his expression as one of gratitude. Hadn’t this been what he’d longed for? It wasn’t vengeance. The protection of future potential victims was the worthiest cause there was. She took no joy from it.
As the light re-entered the box and fresh rain hit her face, Fergus/Harris surrendered to his first and last true death.
Connie gulped the blissful air of freedom. Her left eye throbbed, swolle
n shut, her arms burning with the acid of strain, body bruised.
They lifted her out to a waiting stretcher; Meggy, Elspeth and Baarda already gone.
‘Might as well leave him where he is,’ she muttered as police began the process of removing Fergus/Harris’ corpse from the coffin.
‘Dr Woolwine.’ Ailsa Lambert appeared alongside the stretcher. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I am now,’ Connie said.
The chief pathologist turned her glance to the body being lifted from the ground.
‘Have you been practising more of that corpse whispering I witnessed previously?’
‘It didn’t start out that way,’ Connie said. The world was greyer than usual, and the pathologist’s face was veering in and out of focus. She lifted her hand, a length of leather still clutched in her fist. ‘You’ll be needing this as evidence.’
Chapter Forty-Two
Connie perched on the edge of Baarda’s bed, reading a newspaper. She’d been allowing him to rest intermittently then reading him an article she found particularly amusing or outrageous. Mainly politics, some entertainment. No true crime stories. Enough of that. It had been three days. Visitors had come and gone – a steady stream of them – many travelling from London just to spend thirty minutes talking quietly to an unresponsive man. Baarda had no idea how popular he really was. Connie made a mental note to remind him of the fact when he was up to more lectures from her.
Even his wife had made a brief appearance. She’d managed to sit at his bedside for all of fifteen minutes before deciding the charade was too ridiculous to pull off.
‘He’s a good man,’ Connie had told her. ‘For reasons best known to himself, he still loves you.’
‘I’m sorry, when did my marriage become your business?’ his wife had hissed.
‘When he and I put our lives in each other’s hands. It’s amazing how much you begin to care about someone in those circumstances,’ Connie said. ‘Listen, it’s really not that difficult. Just decide if you want him or not. If not, then do the decent thing and set him free.’
‘How dare you comment on my personal life.’