An Empty Space on the Bookshelf

“Why did you kill my cat?”

Edward had indeed killed Lucy’s cat. He’d done it with a copy of Ulysses.

He hadn’t meant to. He’d come home and found his girlfriend gone. A note had explained that she wasn’t sure how she felt about him but she wanted him to leave. The note had ended with a hopeful “for now” that implied a chance of reconciliation. Edward didn’t see how that was going to work if he wasn’t there. And that had made him angry.

He’d gone to look for the things that were his. The things he would not allow her to hold on to. He marched over to the bookshelf. He was sure the good books were his; she didn’t have any good ones. She wasn’t a reader. Scanning through the paperbacks he’d seen James Joyce’s Ulysses. They had found it in an Oxfam bookshop and had pooled their change to buy it. Lucy had never read it and he had only studied it. It had seemed like a good idea but he didn’t remember either of them picking it up once it was theirs. He picked it carefully, stroking the weathered spine. The price had been scrawled in pencil in the inside cover.

He’d thrown it across the room.  She would see it, splayed open on the carpet, and see how angry he was. But he hadn’t expected the snap he heard. Their cat, Isaac, lay on the floor. Splayed. The people at Battersea were right. They should have really thought very carefully about it.

Isaac twitched and gave a painful wheeze. Claws retracted and extended. As Edward stood, stunned, the poor tabby cat shuddered and finally froze. Edward stood, frozen by the bookcase, looking at the dead animal in front of him.

What does one do with a dead animal? It was an accident, it wasn’t murder. Manslaughter, catslaughter. Edward’s mind was racing. Should he carve it into pieces, dispose of it in different sites? That was ridiculous and worse than killing it. Could he put it in a black bag with the rest of the rubbish? That seemed cruel, he had liked that cat. There were times when they hadn’t got on but Isaac had generally been good company and deserved better than a cheap bin-liner. Finally, Edward did the only thing he could do. He left the cat on the floor and a note on the table.

“Very sorry but the cat is dead. I didn’t mean to.” He paused, lifting the biro clear from the post-it note to try and think of something good before writing “Very sorry” a second time. Then he left.

The bus ride home seemed to take forever. He worried that he would bump into Lucy or one of her friends, despite going in the opposite direction. He needn’t have worried. He got safely into his flat without having to talk to anyone. As he turned on the lights he thought about how lucky he was that he had kept onto the flat despite spending most of his time at her place. Then he remembered that it was Lucy who said it was a good idea to hold onto it, just in case. Had she planned this? How long had she been planning it for?

As he let his anger build, slowly swallowing the Isaac guilt, his mobile rang. Lucy. The anger fell away and was replaced by the dead weight of guilt. He stared at his phone for a moment, at the name on the screen, and went into the kitchen where the he knew the signal wouldn’t drop. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything, but Lucy spoke first.

“Why did you kill my cat?”

Edward wanted to explain, to tell her how ridiculous the whole thing was. He desperately felt that this was something that should not have happened. It was like knocking a mug of tea over on someone’s book, it was a simple mistake. Maybe a laptop was a better comparison, more expensive, less easily replaced. But he knew how it looked. It had taken on significance now.

Not just the fact that he done something awful. There was another concern. Edward wondered if she had taken it as a message. If he said the wrong thing it could certainly be construed as a message. Dump me and I’ll kill your cat. You think we should take some time off? I’ll kill your cat. That was not something that should be put around. Edward would never do anything like that. He did not deserve that kind of a reputation. It had been an accident, he was sure of it.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Edward fidgeted with the tied end of a pack of bread, tugging at the plastic. Finally she spoke.

“What happened?”

He told her the truth. He told her about finding the note, about going to the bookshelf, and about how Joyce’s magnum opus had snapped the neck of poor Isaac. He could hear her breathing as he babbled but she didn’t interject. When he stopped he could hear her clearing her throat.

“So it was an accident?”

“Of course!” he said. It had been a terrible accident but an accident nevertheless. She needed to know that, to understand it.

“You know, it’s weird,” she said. “I saw the empty space on the bookshelf first. Then I saw the book. I thought you’d decided to trash the place and I was getting really angry. I thought about how much of a dick you could be.” He heard her sniff. Was she crying? “And then I saw Isaac, how he’d curled up and he just looked all wrong and I thought…”

She was crying now. Edward felt like he should say something. Was it appropriate to console her? He was the perpetrator after all. Perpetrators apologise, they don’t console. But she was crying and old instincts overruled common sense.

“Hey, it’s OK,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing tone. The crying stopped with a kind of choking sound.

“It’s not OK, you fucking dick. You murdered my cat!” Edward realised his mistake and tried to backpedal. As he started to apologise again, Lucy interrupted. “You murdered my fucking cat and you leave a fucking note? This is exactly the kind of thing that I should expect from you, I don’t know why it came as such as a surprise. Why should I expect an easy break-up from you, one where nothing dies?”

“Well I’m sorry I’m not perfect!” shouted Edward. He knew this was the wrong approach but honestly, how much worse could he make things for himself. This was evidently a lost cause, why not try and shift as much of the blame onto her as possible? “Maybe if you were easier to talk to I wouldn’t have had to leave a note.”

“What?” screamed Lucy. “What has that got to do with the fact that you killed my cat?” Edward had a blinding flash of inspiration, the kind that only comes to those forced into a corner and the only escape is the illogical one.

“In fact, if you hadn’t left a note, I wouldn’t have lost my temper and Isaac wouldn’t be dead.” He let that final barb sit for a moment and there was a quiet on the line as Lucy attempted to digest it. Let her take that on board. All her fault after all. Maybe he wasn’t the one who should have Isaac’s death on his conscience.

“So you murdered my cat because I broke up with you,” she said flatly. Alarm bells went off in Edward’s head. She’d played the trump card. She had more friends than he did. Their mutual friends were better friends with her than they were with him. They’d take her word for it. This would be the thing he was known for. Cat-killer. Couldn’t take being dumped so he killed a cat. Everyone would know. He’d never date again.

“I didn’t…I didn’t mean that, I’m sorry. Look, Lucy, please…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. This is all…”

“Go fuck yourself, Edward.” The line went dead and Edward stared at his phone.

Well, that was it.

He’d have to move.

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Hello, there. Thanks for reading.

Something a bit different this week, not a horror thing. The excellent title came from @andylonsdale21 so thank you very much to him. It's quite a serious title and initially this was going to be played completely seriously and the phone conversation was going to be a deep and moving discussion of how their relationship went so wrong. But, when it came down to it, I tried to be funny instead. I think that once I'd written the word "catslaughter" I couldn't take it entirely seriously anymore. Seriously.

It also occurred to me when I finished that it's quite similar to the scene in Re-Animator in which Herbert West puts Dan's cat in the fridge and doesn't leave a note. "What would a note say, Dan? Cat dead, details later?" 

Anyway, hope you enjoyed it. And I would like to reassure everyone that I have never killed a cat, intentionally or otherwise. But you should watch Re-Animator.

She Wore Stripes

She hadn’t been dead long. That’s important. And she hadn’t made a mess of herself. A bit of blood around the nose, easy enough to wipe off. Some hot water and a wad of toilet paper would take care of that. And she was dressed all in stripes, looking a bit like Beetlejuice’s teenage sister, especially now that she’d snuffed it. I’d been wearing a dress a bit like that when I went. I got hit by a lorry, though, so those white stripes turned red very quickly. Ha.

For any ghost attempting possession of a corpse, it’s important that the body hasn’t been dead for very long. It’s important because being in a corpse as it goes through rigor mortis is about as much fun as dying. And once you’ve done either once you don’t really want to do it again. You’ve only got about three hours before it becomes noticeable. I can tell you that it’s difficult to explain to the dead person’s friend why your arm isn’t bending any more. Best to know your limits. And if you do hang around for rigor mortis, the livor mortis has already begun. Blood pooling in places. Not good. So yeah, unless you want to tell a barman why you can’t move as you feel yourself becoming a soggy sausage skin full of…keep an eye on the time.

My name’s Elsie and if you’re wondering if I just hang around waiting to people to die so I can walk around in their bodies, you’re not far off the truth. I mean, yes, you can possess the living but that takes weeks, sometimes months, of preparation and frankly it’s very rarely worth the hassle. The dead don’t fight you; the only thing working against you is the clock.

I come to The Worker’s Hearth quite often. It’s open late and you quite often find people stopping off for a last drink at three in the morning on their stumble home. Every now and then one of them dies and I walk them home instead. But I’d come along early tonight and I was glad I did. This girl, the one in stripes, had popped in with her friends for a round of cheap shots on the way into town and had gone, alone, to the loos for a pee and a snort. After thirty years as a ghost you start notice when people’s bodies are struggling to cope and this girl had all the warning signs. So I floated off after her.

Sure enough, as soon as she’d got it up her nose the bleeding started and her little heart fluttered and gave out. Her face hit the tiles and I got to work.

There’s not really an art to this. It’s pretty simple. The person dies. Their spirit leaves the body like a reflex. And in you pop. The best way to describe it is like climbing into a wetsuit. You’ve got to wiggle your way all the way down the arms and legs, make sure your fingers and toes are in properly. If you do it right you’ve got total control of the body in terms of movement, vocal chords and so forth. You can walk, talk, smile. Sadly, you don’t have any say over the body’s decomposition. You’ve got about an hour, maybe two before people start to notice that you look and smell terrible.

A word of advice. Always take the time to clean yourself up. People tend to notice if there’s a dreadful stink of shit coming from you, or worse, there might be a wound that you haven’t noticed. Claiming to be drunk will only get you so far if you haven’t spotted that the back of your head is open and dripping.

So, I cleaned the blood from her nose and got the arms and legs moving. No stiffness yet, everything seemed to be working as normal. And she hadn’t shat herself, which was a relief. Obviously, sometimes you have to clean up but when you don’t have a lot of time you don’t want to waste it in the stalls. I gave her face a bit of a touch-up with the make-up kit in her bag. Her being a bit of a druggie was a relief; her friends would be used to seeing her pale. The outfit wasn’t too bad. A damp patch from the floor but I could always blame that on busted taps; in a place like this the girls downstairs would believe it.

I went back downstairs, going carefully to get the hang of her pins. The people at the table looked happy to see me. I was accused of taking my sweet time, to which I answered that I’d had too much to drink. They called me Tania, which I made a note of. Then I downed my pint, left the pub, and got into a taxi with them. On the way there I didn’t say a lot. I tried to focus on the little things. Feeling fabric against Tania’s skin. The air from the open window on Tania’s face, rushing through Tania’s hair. The after-taste of watered-down lager on Tania’s tongue. These things make Elsie happy. Before I knew it we’d arrived at the club.

I don’t really know the best way to describe trying to dance with limbs that don’t have blood pumping through them anymore. You know the Thriller video? It’s fuck all like that. There’s much less coordination. You just try to move your limbs as much as possible, really. I think maybe it helps postpone the stiffness but I have no idea. It’s just nice to have the feeling that the body you’re in is responding to instructions. I’ve tried haunting an aerobics class but anyone who’s going to snuff it at the gym tends to so fairly publicly, everyone hovering around them. You want people to go privately.

I noticed a couple of guys checking me out and quickly discouraged them, sticking to the group of friends this girl had found for herself. I’m not stupid enough to attempt intercourse while inhabiting a corpse. That would be horrible and incredibly ill-advised. Well, I tried it once. Once. After six years of being dead I finally had to give it a try. It was as disastrous and disgusting as you’d assume, and we’ll say no more about it. There were…fluids. Jesus, I’m shuddering just thinking about it.

I’d kept an eye on the time and it was approaching midnight. Time to get going, but I still had a couple of minutes to think about it. How did I want people to find Tania? She had friends with her, most of them seemed nice. A girl called Sarah seemed to be closest to her, a slightly chubby freckly red-head who had asked if I was alright and had tried to make me laugh. She’d stayed on the dance floor with me and shown a similar disregard for people trying to dance with her. I wondered if they were together. However, I wasn’t going to find out. I could feel the changes starting to happen and I didn’t want to freak her out unnecessarily.

Now, when it comes to getting rid of your body you can go for the alley-drop but that always struck me as a bit cruel on the survivors. I didn’t really want Sarah feeling guilty because she’d let her drunk best friend wander off to expire alone in a dirty alley. So I considered the “I just died in your arms tonight” approach. She’d always remember that. She could call an ambulance. That would make her feel better, if she’d been proactive. She could tell herself that she’d tried to help. I went for it.

I stuck around in the body long enough to give the illusion that Tania was dying in Sarah’s panicking arms, a bit of light convulsing, eyelids fluttering, some shallow breathing . Once people starting yelling I left. You don’t want to hang around all that. That’s none of your business; it’s nothing to do with you. Best left alone. So off I went.

You probably think all of this is wrong. Maybe you think it’s immoral, that I’ll burn in hell for it. Well I’m not there yet. And when you’ve been stranded in spectral form for thirty years you can talk to me about it.

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Hello there. I hope you enjoyed this one. I was worried at first that the voice was a little to similar to Eliza in Witch's Bile but I think Elsie's more disaffected than malicious. Anyway, she was a lot of fun to write and I have a plan for a second story with her where something actually happens, as opposed to this, which I think is just her normal Friday night.

Not sure which story will be next but it will be another week or two. The title from this story came from @merazad and I'm very grateful!

The Lesser Evil

“Light the candles, Freddie.”

Freddie took the blue plastic lighter from Caroline and went around the candles, taking care not to burn his thumb. They’d spent nearly an hour ensuring that the pentagram was laid out correctly according the book that Caroline had bought online, which reeked of damp and something else that made Freddie keen to avoid touching it. Caroline coughed, a lengthy hacking that sounded painful. Freddie wondered how long her cold was going to hang around for. Still, if her dad wouldn't turn the heating on in January, he supposed that was what happened.

They were in Caroline’s father’s barn, by the woods at the edge of his property. Freddie worried even though Caroline told him that her father had passed out in front of A Touch of Frost at about seven and wouldn’t stir till morning. Freddie couldn’t help but feel like someone might happen by and wonder what they were doing. Someone might see.

The barn hadn’t been used for years. At least, not for the purposes for which it was originally built. It was mostly used for storage now. As Freddie lit the candles he illuminated a series of trunks and old boxes. He’d never been told but he was pretty sure it was mostly Caroline’s mum’s stuff that was in here. The candles also cast an appropriately sinister light on their pentagram. Caroline had read that they could use any kind of blood and so Freddie had bought a fresh cupful belonging to an unfortunate pig, trying all the time not to make eye contact with Mr Redmond who sold his mother her weekly order of pork chops and beef mince.

Soon they were all lit. Freddie didn’t know what came next. Caroline hadn’t told him what the ritual would actually involve. She said that she didn’t want him to know more than he had to, which was a step up from her initial decision to keep him out of the thing entirely. It was like she was trying to protect him. He’d never get anywhere with her if he let her keep that attitude. He’d tried to let her know he could be useful but he hadn’t been able to glean a single piece of useful information. All he could do was stand there and try to be helpful. Freddie knew he’d be doing better if he wasn’t so scared. What did he have to be scared about? It wasn’t like this was actually going to work. He hadn't even asked what she was wishing for he was so sure of it.

While Freddie fretted, Caroline had started to speak. He was going to ask her to repeat herself before he realised that she wasn’t talking to him. He saw the candles flutter and shadows flittered across the barn that made him wish he was at home in bed. He squeezed his eyes shut.  Then he opened them.

In the middle of the room a man stood in the centre of the pentagram. Short black hair, a light grey suit. He reminded Freddie of the lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird. The man looked at them, smiled, and nodded a greeting.

“Hello there.”

The man’s voice was clearly not from around here. Not English, not American, somewhere in between. It was somehow neutral. The man looked down at his feet and slowly lifted his polished right shoe. When he looked back up again he seemed genuinely excited.

“A pentagram! How nice of you to make the effort. No, honestly, you know, so much is done online these days it’s nice to be called by someone who really knows what they’re doing. I had a bloody print-out last night, if you can believe that. Well done. Both of you.”

Caroline took a step forward. Before Freddie could think of whether or not he should too, she addressed the new arrival.

“Are you him?”

Freddie thought that was a bit vague but the man seemed to know what she was talking about. He shrugged and turned his smile upside down with theatrical ease.

“Me? No, sorry. I’m not the one you’re waiting for. He’s very busy, as I’m sure you can imagine. No no I’m the on hold music, if you like. I’m the annoying Abba song that gets stuck in your head. But the big guy will be along in a minute.”

“What’s your name?” asked Caroline.

“Ah, I’m afraid you wouldn’t be able to pronounce it, and I don’t have the time to teach you.” He cocked his head to one side, taking the measure of them both. Freddie felt like he was in P.E. waiting to be chosen for a team. This was not a situation in which he’d ever done very well. But the man’s smile returned, slowly spreading across his face.

“It’s very nice to meet you. Caroline and Freddie. Very nice to meet you indeed.”

“How do you know our names?” asked Caroline, before Freddie got the chance to. The man sniffed.

“Sorry, that’s one of the benefits of this; we know who’s summoning us just as you know who you’re summoning. At least I hope you do.” The man’s expression became graver and Freddie realised he was starting to move behind Caroline. He willed himself to stop. He was here to help. He was here to be strong.

The man continued with a hint of force in his voice telling them just how serious he was. “You did read the instructions, didn’t you? Because this is not somebody you want to be fooling around with. Not that you want to be fooling around with any of us, miss, but this one is particularly quick to anger. Let me tell you, if you have any uncertainties about what you’re doing, any questions, concerns, best to get them out in the open now before he shows up.”

“We know what we’re doing” hissed Caroline. The man held his hands up, pressing his palms together in penitence.

“Of course you do. With this very fine pentagram here it was foolish of me to even suggest you were…amateurs. Forgive me.” His eyes flickered between the two of them, back and forth between Freddie and Caroline. Freddie felt the same unease as he did whenever someone looked at the two of them. What would a girl like her (tall, lean, blonde and with the kind of face that would drive the poetry weirdos as well as the sports team idiots to a frenzy) be doing with him (twitchy, odd, and with a face nothing short of drastic surgery could rescue).

“May I ask what it is you’re after?” asked the stranger. “Just what you’re hoping to get out of this little transaction? I mean, I can’t actually grant anything, not while I’m waiting here, holding the line. This limits my powers somewhat. But think of me as…a lesser evil in these moments before a great big arch-demon comes flaming into this…sorry, what is this? Is this a barn?”

Caroline stared back at him. She didn’t flinch. Their guest nodded.

“Never mind. You don’t have to tell me. I understand, these things are delicate. Personal.  You know, I admire you two. I do. You’ve got it figured out; you know what you’re doing. You’re not messing around, it’s good. And he’ll respect that too. You’ve done well. And don’t worry about the flaming by the way. I mean, he will be on fire but he’s not going to burn this place down. Unless you ask him very nicely. ”

Then he turned back to Freddie and for the first time he felt the full weight of his attention directly on him.

“Freddie, you can look at me, you know. There’s no need to be shy.”

“Don’t you fucking talk to him. You talk to me!” Caroline took a step forward, shielding Freddie from the stranger. Freddie felt his failings twist around his stomach like a snake. The man’s face flipped once more from friendly to apologetic.

“No, of course not, Caroline. I will address only you if you so desire. I didn’t mean to cause any friction. I was just being friendly.”

Caroline turned her head slightly towards Freddie. Not all the way. She didn’t take her eyes off the man in the pentagram.

“Wait outside, Freddie.”

This cut him to the core. This was the final humiliation. In the face of a man who appeared from nowhere, she would rather he wait outside to let her face it alone.

“Caroline, I…I can help.”

He didn’t even convince himself. She shook her head.

“Wait outside. Please.”

That was it. He turned and walked out of the barn, shoulders slumped. In a long list of personal failures this was might be the worst. He heard the man talking as he left.  

“Oh, don’t send him away. You don’t have to…Bye, Freddie!”

He closed the barn door and leaned against it. Reaching into his coat he found the half-empty bottle of corner-shop vodka he’d stolen from his brother’s room. He was planning to use it to console Caroline when the pentagram idea hadn’t worked, which had seemed like the only outcome at the time. Faced with the reality of a demon talking to the girl he loved and being sent outside like a leper, Freddie put the bottle to his lips and drank.

It wasn’t long before everything got a bit hazy. Freddie had never been able to handle his booze and the excitement of the evening seemed to further quicken its effects. He put his head against the door and listened in the hope that they were talking about him. And, as chance would have it, they were. Or at least the man was.

“It’s nice the way you look after him. You’re like a big sister to him, aren’t you? It’s nice, I mean it. Does he know?”

Freddie slumped. The words ‘big sister’ were the kiss of death. That made him the little brother and that made the efforts of last few years of his life spectacularly pointless. He zoned out, began to luxuriate in self-pity, when he became aware of someone standing next to him.

The man stood, watching him with a smile on his lips.

“Hi there, Freddie.”

Freddie struggled to stand up straight. How had he got out of the pentagram? What had happened to Caroline? As if reading his mind, the man held his hands up.

“Not to worry, Freddie, Caroline’s fine. The big guy’s finally arrived; they’re in there now, hashing out the details. And I’m not going to hurt you either, in case that’s what’s troubling you. I just want to talk. You know, Freddie, you impress me. You know why?”

Freddie didn’t, and shook his head to let him know.

“You’re brave. It takes courage to come out to a place like this and be there for your friend while she does something this dangerous, this insane. I mean, you appreciate how dangerous what she’s doing is, don’t you? Of course you do. I mean, she’s literally playing with fire. Hellfire, anyway. And you’re out here, helping her. It’s courageous.”

Freddie decided to let the stranger salve his pride a little bit. He nodded. Why not? He was courageous. He’d come here at least. Even if Caroline had decided that his services weren’t required.

“Does she know, Freddie?”

Freddie looked up, about to ask the man what he meant, but knew instantly from the sly grin on his face what he was talking about. He started to stammer out a question but the man held up his finger.

“No point denying it, it’s as plain as anything. You love her, and you haven’t told her have you? It’s obvious. Maybe you haven’t told her because you think she knows anyway. Let me tell you something, that girl isn’t guessing anything. Did you see her in there? A girl like that in a situation like this, Freddie, it’s all about focus. She’s got one goal in mind. She’s getting it done in there. She’s got a mission.

But maybe you haven’t told her because you’re afraid she’ll laugh. People have laughed at you before, haven’t they? You don’t have to answer me, it’s fine. People can be very cruel. And maybe she’ll laugh too. But do you know what will be worse, Freddie? If she tells you that she doesn’t see you that way.

Oh she sees you as a friend, for sure. You’re out here with her, aren’t you? You’re helping her. But you need to make her see you as more than just her little brother. You need to show her what I can see to be true. That you are a strong, courageous person. That you have so much more to offer her. You need to let her see the strength of your feelings.”

With that, the man from the flames paused and turned away. Freddie leaned back against the door, thrown by the flurry of words. He wasn’t being told anything he hadn’t already thought to himself. But it was something to hear someone else expressing his feelings. It somehow made it all feel more possible. The man turned back.

“Do you know what she’s asking for in there?”

Freddie shook his head.

“Have you ever met Caroline’s father?”

Freddie’s heart beat a little faster as he started to realise what Caroline was doing.

Caroline’s father was a bastard. There was no other way to describe him. He knew that her father beat her on a regular basis. Freddie was used to lending her sweatshirts to help hide the bruises on her arms from their schoolmates. After the head teacher had finally noticed and paid a home visit it looked like he might have been easing up on his daughter but over the last few weeks it had been getting worse again. Yesterday she’d shown up to school with a black eye.

So that was it. Caroline was finally doing something about her father.

“Is she just going to ask him to help her stop him or…”

The man sneered, and for the first time Freddie caught a glimpse of something that wasn’t quite benign.

“Do you think she just wants him to stop, Freddie? She wants him gone. Now listen to me, because I have some experience in this. If it were me, I’d just do the thing myself. If I were the one with the power to grant these wishes, I’d just grant the bloody thing. Click my fingers and stop the bastard’s heart. But him in there, you have to understand, he’s in his position for a reason. He’s going to twist it so that there’s no easy option for Caroline. The only way he’ll let her do it is by making sure she doesn’t get caught.”

“Get caught doing what?” asked Freddie, understanding his own stupidity.

“Why, murdering her father. He’s not going to just do it for her, she’s going to have to take the life and live with the guilt, just not the prison sentence. But here’s where you come in, Freddie.

I know something about guilt. It’s hard to live with. And she will live it with, to be sure, but she won’t be the same Caroline you know now. You say you’re looking for a way to show your love for her, well what could be nobler than taking on her burden? If you tell me right now that you authorise a switch, that you decide to carry that weight, I can make it happen.”

Freddie reeled. “I thought you said you couldn’t grant anything!” The man nodded. “But you can…swap? I don’t know, I’m not…”

“But you are, Freddie!” interjected the stranger. “I know that you have this within you, the power to do this. And she will never forget it.

But I need your decision now, Freddie. She’s in there right now, it’s been at least five minutes already, and they’ll be closing the deal. If you want to do this, we have to do it now.”

Freddie turned away, but the man grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. He looked into the man’s eyes and saw them glow.

“Let me show you,” he said, and Freddie felt his feet give way from under him. He was back inside the barn, watching Caroline reach out and take the hand of a tall, sneering man with long black hair. The man laughed, and he could see a tear trickle its way down Caroline’s cheek. There was a bright flash and the room changed again, and now he was in Caroline’s sitting room at home. He saw her father asleep in an armchair, and saw Caroline drop a match into the sleeping man’s lap. He felt the heat on his face, smelt the stink of flesh cooking and burning hair. He cried out as the flash came again and saw a woman, older but unmistakeably Caroline, alone in a room he didn’t recognise and understood that it was a place he didn’t belong. With a final flash the heat returned, and the fire, and a legion of screams. Freddie knew where he was, this place both horrifyingly dark and terribly illuminated, before he saw Caroline being bundled, howling over a ledge by a mob of grotesque figures.

“Enough!” he cried. He opened his eyes and found himself outside the barn, with the stranger now standing about a foot away from him. “I’ll do it. Tell him I’ll do the swap.”

“You accept the gift and the price?” asked the stranger. Freddie nodded.

The stranger smiled at him. “You’re a good man, Frederick. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise. Why don’t you go on in and give Caroline the good news? Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

Freddie took a deep breath and opened the door to the barn. He didn’t fully understand what he had taken on but he knew that he done what he had to. To protect her.

Caroline was kneeling on the edge of the pentagram, shaking. When Freddie put his hand on her shoulder she turned sharply.

“Where did he go?” she asked. “He was right here, we’d agreed…”

“Don’t worry,” said Freddie, “I’ve taken care of it. You don’t have to do anything.”

“What do you mean? What have you done?” She didn’t sound relieved. She looked furious. She got to her feet and started towards Freddie. “What did you do?”

“He’s taken your deal,” said the stranger, slinking back into the room. “I let him think you were finally doing something about your daddy issues and he agreed to take the burden for you. Look on the bright side, Caroline. You still have your soul.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Freddie. “If it wasn’t her father, what I have I…what have taken from her?”

“Well, Frederick,” said the stranger, stepping back into the pentagram, “Caroline’s still got a few months left before her time is up. And you’ve got…so much longer. Freddie, you should have told Caroline that you love her. Caroline, you should have told Freddie that you’re dying. Communication is so very important.”

The candles fluttered and went out. “I told you I was the lesser evil. Tell yourself that it could have been worse if you think it’ll help.”

---------------------

Hi there.

So, there's been a delay of at least a month since I last posted anything here. Which is bad. Sorry about that. In my defence, things got quite hectic. At the time when I started writing this story I got an interview for a job, and then I had a second interview, and then I was told that I got the job. Which means that I have now relocated to Bournemouth to start as a Staff Writer at SciFiNow, which is hugely exciting and I can't wait to start. Tomorrow!

But fiction-wise, I'm hoping I can get back to some kind of schedule once I've settled in. I wanted to get this story done. The title comes from @SFXPennyD, and the first thing that came to mind was some kind of basement, torture-type scenario but I didn't really fancy writing that after the last story. So I wrote this instead. I started writing it as a monologue by the demon but I felt like I'd done something similar a little too recently. So there's this, which is possibly a little monologue-y, but if anyone's going to be overly verbose, it's going to be a demon trying to sell you something you shouldn't buy.

I'll be trying to update the blog more regularly over the next few weeks and months. I know I've said that a lot but I really mean it this time. Definitely.

Slide Left

“Slide left.”

His father’s voice. It didn’t belong here and it didn’t hang around.

The door to the basement slammed and Michael opened his eyes. Whatever was down there with him shifted its weight and sighed. Michael pushed himself across the wet dirt floor back towards the cellar steps. The door would be locked. He knew it. He'd heard the metal screech of a dead-bolt. He was trapped down here. In the dark, with this rotten smell and with whatever this thing was.

He found a wall and pressed himself against it. Some impulse told him to set about looking for a weapon but what would be down here? Where would he find something to protect him from whatever had made his captors cackle as they pushed him down the steps? He tried desperately to make sense of what had happened.

His car had broken down in the rain. That was it. That was how it had started. The battery had died and he was looking for a phone so he could get some help because his bloody phone battery was as dead as the one in his car. He was only looking for help. He should have known. He should have guessed by the smiles on these people’s faces that they weren’t quite right. The house had looked normal from the outside. The man and the woman, both tall, she had lots of blonde hair and he had hardly any. They invited him in. Said they knew the number for the services. It all looked…normal. He could smell their dinner cooking in the oven. Heard some crooner on the radio. It had all been fine.

Then he had seen through to the living room. There was a girl lying on the floor, not moving, a pool of blood circling her head. He’d rushed over to help. He’d been trying to help. He’d had a hand on her shoulder and was shouting and then he'd heard laughter. And a scream. And everything had gone black.

“Hello,” said a woman’s voice. “You shouldn’t be down here.”

Michael looked up with a start, his heart pounding deafening blood, peering into the darkness. Whoever had spoken was hidden but the voice didn’t sound unkind. It sounded apologetic.

“I know,” he said stupidly, “I don’t know what happened…I think...something hit me on the head and I fell down. There was a girl. What…who are these people?”

The sigh again. It was less sinister now, sadder. Michael leaned forward.

“Don’t you know? They’re killers. They take people like you and me and they put us down here and then they wait.”

“Wait for what?” asked Michael. He knew he didn’t want an answer but he couldn’t help himself. He didn't have to wait long for it.

“They wait for us to stop. They wait for us to stop fighting, to stop trying, to stop hoping. Then we stop breathing.”

A hammering sound from upstairs. Fists on the door, a mocking wailing, and finally laughter. Michael closed his eyes.

“How long have you been down here?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I was seventeen when I first woke up. How old do I sound?”

Michael thought the voice coming from the darkness was that of a young woman. He inched along the wall towards her. If only he could see who he was talking to. If they could work together, they could find a way out, and he told her so.

“You can’t get out of here. There’s not an out.” The girl was resigned.

Michael was not going to listen to this. There was a way out. There had to be. There was a way in so there was a way out. The two freaks upstairs couldn’t keep him locked down here for ever. And this girl, the one down here, she needed his help. No matter how scared he was, he had responsibilities. So he took a deep breath. And he told her about what his father used to tell him about bad situations.

“He used to tell me that when the worst thing in the world is coming towards you like a fucking lorry, just slide left. That’s all you need to do. No matter how hopeless, how inevitable it seems, there’s always another way out, another way around. You don’t need the perfect solution, it doesn’t have to be a work of genius, but that’s all you need sometimes. To just…slide left. To get out of the way.”

“It’s not always as simple as that,” the voice came back. There was less sorrow, more determination. How long had she been down here? Maybe she really believed there was no way out.

“It can be. There’s always a way.”

Then a thought made him stop cold.

“Wait…you said ‘us’. Have there been others?”

“Of course,” returned the voice. “Some have gone. One or two are still here.”

Michael stopped cold. If there was a group, why had they not mounted an escape? Even teenagers like this girl should surely be capable of taking on the two upstairs. He blinked again and was relieved that his vision was starting to improve.

“Who else is here? Why aren’t they talking?”

“Patrick can’t. Millie’s shy.”

He looked around the room, willing his eyes to adjust to the darkness even faster. Why couldn’t he see further than a few inches?

“Tell them not to worry. I’m going to get us out of here.” He needed to believe it. Because he could do this. He could get out. He could get them all out, whoever the hell was down here. They’d all get out together.

The sigh again.

“We’re not worried. Millie says thank you for trying to help. She appreciated the gesture but you should never have come. The rest of us feel the same. We don't like you coming down here and talking about a way out. Like it was easy. Like it was something we hadn't thought of. Patrick can’t talk to you because they took his tongue. There’s a boy called Dominic around here somewhere but he doesn’t like anyone to see him since they took his skin.”

Michael couldn’t breathe. He could barely speak. But he had to.

“What did they take from you?”

“Everything. They took everything from me, Michael. And then they took my heart.”

A face thrust in front of him, skin a torn mass of white and red, blood running down from her mouth over shattered teeth, sickly eyes rolled up towards the ceiling and a guttural voice coming from a bottomless well of agony.

“Do you want to see my way out, Michael? Are you ready to escape, you arrogant piece of shit?”

Michael opened his mouth to scream.

“If only I'd tried sliding left, you stupid fucking moron.”

---------------------

Hi there.

First of all, sorry about the delay in getting new fiction up. I've ended up being very busy with non-fictional things, some of which have been good, some of which have been bad, all of which have taken time. Anyway. Here's a short story. Kind of a companion piece to This Bitter Family Tree, except I couldn't do it in 500 words so I had to settle for 1000. The title comes from @Daanando and it's not quite what I had in mind for it originally, but I couldn't quite figure out what to do with that story. It was also going to be a lot more mournful but suddenly she was angry and I liked that a lot more.

The Widow and the Tree House

Eddie had one more signature still to get. One more, then he could go back to the office and tell Grace to shut her stupid anorexic face because he’d got fifty signatures pledging to vote to keep Clive Adamson MP in his seat. Grace had got forty yesterday and had come back to the office at seven minutes to five to gales of applause from the idiots who thought she was brilliant because she tall, blonde, and his superiors struggled to look her in the eye. But he knew that it wasn’t about looks. They’d get you so far, yeah, but it was about character. Image, appearance wasn’t everything. He could turn on the smile if he had to, but it wasn’t about that. It was about convincing the voters that their man was the right man for the job. Because he had something that Grace didn’t have. He believed in what he was doing. You don’t just believe in the party, you believe in yourself. Now he just had to get one more.

He pulled over to the side of the road and looked at the house opposite. Looked OK from the outside. No obvious commitment to any party. Which meant that they were fair game. He straightened his tie (party colours, obviously), checked his hair in the rear view mirror, and spat his half-finished polo mint into the ashtray. Couldn’t be seen to be eating in front of the voters. He checked his jacket pockets and his clipboard to be sure he had all the correct literature with him and walked briskly (but not hurriedly) across the road and up to the front door.

He pressed the doorbell once, holding it for as close to a second as he could make it. You didn’t want to seem insistent but you didn’t want it to seem like you were just going to go away either. Which is why he waited for thirty seconds and then pressed it for a further second. He heard footsteps approaching and readied his best smile.

What were they bothering her with this time? She never had anything to give these people, these people who came to the door and gave her grief about God or Jesus or bloody make-up. She supposed she should just let them ring the bell until they got sick of it and went away but Terence would never have stood for it. Terence would fling wide the door and tell them to stop bloody bothering them, to leave them alone and never come back. She didn’t have the nerve to do that. She could tell them that she wasn’t interested though. Tommy would be wanting his dinner soon and she hadn’t got anything ready.

She pulled the net curtain open just a little, which was a mistake as the chap saw her. He knew she was in. Gave a grin that Terence would have called shit-eating, though she wouldn’t have used such language, not in front of strangers anyway. Then again, she hadn’t talked to anyone at all really, not for a few years now. Oh well. Might as well see what this grinning loon wants. The sooner she did the sooner she’d be rid of him.

He saw the net curtain flicker and he flashed his teeth at her. Sure enough, the front door opened, just like he knew it would. The woman standing before him couldn’t have had many years past forty but she seemed much older somehow. She was hunched to the point where her eyes seemed to be nearly level with her shoulders. Her hand shook on the door. Her greying dark hair was decidedly unkempt. Eddie suddenly registered all the closed curtains, matched by the musty smell that wafted out of the house like it was trying to escape. This woman was clearly a shut-in. Someone who wouldn’t leave the house if it was on fire. Someone like this wouldn’t get out of the house to vote. There was a moment of self-doubt, but only a moment. What a story this would make, if he could get this agoraphobic lunatic to vote. Anyway, even she didn’t get out, he thought, that’s what the postal ballot is for.

“Hello, Madam,” he began before she could ask what he wanted, “my name is Edward Clackett and I’m out here today on behalf of Clive Adamson, your local MP. Can I ask, have you decided how you’re going to vote in the election next week?”

As he suspected, the woman looked utterly confused. He knew she was going to say no before her mouth started trying to form a word.

“Could I possibly come in? I have some literature here that might help you decide one way or the other.”

And with a gentle but forceful push, he was inside. You don’t want to seem threatening when you’re making your way into someone’s house but you want them to know that you are going to get into their living room so they might as well put the kettle on.

What was he doing? What was he talking about? She hadn’t voted in years, not since Terence died. After he passed there didn’t seem to be any point to it. So what was the oily, grinning man-child doing forcing his way into her home? She didn’t like this. She didn’t like this at all.

She looked skittish, which worried Eddie. It had been easy enough to get inside but if she started panicking it was game over. And then the story wouldn’t be about how he convinced a mad shut-in that voting for Clive Adamson MP was the right thing to do, it would be how he terrified a helpless old (but she wasn’t that old, not that they’d care) woman who probably wasn’t in full possession of her faculties. And that would be very bad indeed. So he needed to smooth things over. He needed to correct the atmosphere, get her sitting down and get her calm.

“Is it alright if I take a seat?” he asked. He didn’t want to presume to do anything now; he needed permission with someone this jumpy. There was an awkward pause but finally she gave a tiny tremulous nod and he smiled and took a seat in a white armchair which gave a quiet moan as he put his weight on it. There was a further awkward pause during which it looked like she might not sit down and just stand there staring at him, but finally she sat on the faded green sofa opposite and stared at him from there. He needed an ice breaker. He looked around the room for something banal and comforting to comment on. There it was. A family photo. Her, apparently a hundred years ago, a man slightly older than she was, and a young boy, about five years old.

“Is that your family?” he asked. Stupid question, but stupid was often the best way to start with these ones. She shifted in her seat, her top lip started to wobble. Bollocks, he thought, maybe this wasn’t the best way to start.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s me and my husband Terence, and our son Thomas. Terence…passed. Some years back.”

A grieving shut-in. He assumed his most contrite expression and leant forward. Just far enough to make it clear that he wanted to comfort her but not far enough to make her worried that he was actually going to touch her. She looked like she didn’t want to be touched. A hand on the knee might draw screams.

“I’m so sorry,” he told her. “It’s truly tragic to suffer a loss like that.” Truly tragic. He couldn’t tell if that was good or bad but there was no room for backtracking. He needed to be confident. Sincere. He paused a moment before asking what he knew was a risky bloody question. “And your son?” He held his breath and prayed that Tommy hadn’t been killed in some terrible fire with his father.

What did he want? What was he asking about her husband for, about Tommy? Slimy little shit. She needed to get rid of him before Tommy came in for his dinner. She still had to get it ready, he wouldn’t be at all happy if he came in to find nothing to eat and this salesman on the sofa. Asking about voting, indeed. She’d just have to give him what he wanted and get him out of here.

“Tommy’s living at home now,” she told him. He gave what he hoped was a comforting grin.

“That’s partly what I’m talking about, Mrs…” he left a pause for her to fill in her last name but she didn’t say a word. That didn’t matter; she could put it on the form when she signed the bloody thing. For now he would just carry on with his patter. “The youth of today need to be sent the right message. They need to know that there is someone who is looking out for them. In these uncertain economic times a young man’s future can seem awfully desperate, awfully unclear. Too many young people are simply drifting into a depressing void at the moment, moving home and wondering what they can possibly do with themselves. What Mr Adamson stands for is providing our young people with a strong work ethic and the opportunity to put it to good use.”

He inched a little closer to the edge of his seat, warming to his theme now.

“Because we know, our party that is, we know that things haven’t been easy over the last few years. But we’re determined that we can create a brighter future for the all of us here in the UK. And that’s what’s really important, isn’t it? A brighter future for kids like your Thomas. Our party is committed to your children and giving them the lives they deserve. Tell me, madam. Who did you vote for in the last election?”

He could certainly jabber on, this strange little man. He’d even started sweating when he really got going. She’d seen little flecks of spit flying from between his too-white teeth as he’d hit the word ‘people’ and the ‘s’ in ‘Adamson’. But she didn’t have time for his rambling. She had things to do, things to get ready. She didn’t have time for this man at all.

“What is it you want from me?” she asked, hoping that this would cut right to the point. But he just shook his head and leaned back in Terence’s armchair.

“It’s not what we want from you, Madam. It’s what we can give you. Not just a brighter future for your children but a brighter present for yourself too. Clive Adamson is working tirelessly to help put an end to this terrible state of affairs we’re in at the moment and if you would just sign our…” She nearly leapt to her feet here, hoping for the opportunity to something, anything to get rid of him, but instead he reached into his jacket and took out some leaflets.

“I have some literature here, if you’d care to read it. Just some information and some testimonials about Mr Adamson if you’d like to…”

“Give them here,” she told him. He was surprised to see her so anxious to read them but he didn’t question it. He handed them over and leaned back in his chair. He thought about carrying on talking but thought maybe a bit of quiet would be good, to let the importance of what she was reading really sink in. He turned his head to his left and looked out of the window. He was too committed now. A signature wasn’t going to be enough. He wasn’t going to be fobbed off with some ink on a piece of paper. He wanted this woman convinced. He wanted her to be a real party member. He wanted a fucking sticker in her window for when the papers came so everyone could see just what he’d accomplished.

Not that a sticker would be much use on this back window. The garden was much nicer than he’d expected given the state of the house. A good-sized patch of grass, bordered on all sides with well-kept flowerbeds, a small greenhouse, and what he would have guessed was an oak tree standing tall near the end of the garden. And there, up in the oak tree, was a good-sized tree house. Eddie had longed for a tree house growing up and hadn’t seen one in years. He had assumed the tradition had been lost when pre-teens had started getting iPhones for their birthdays. But here was one, in the heart of his community, in the home of this brave widowed woman who was preparing to commit herself to the right honourable candidate. His candidate. It was perfect. Except…

There was a glow coming from the oak tree that had nothing to do with the sunset. He could see a small but definite flow of black smoke coming from the window of the tree house. He got to his feet and hurried to the window. Yes, there was definitely smoke. The tree house was on fire. He turned to the woman who was flicking quickly through the descriptions of where you could find the party on social media. She hadn’t noticed the fire. If he sorted this out the widow would have no choice but to give them her vote, on account of his heroics. Perhaps even a story in the paper.

“Mrs… your tree house, it’s on fire!” he shouted, and ran to the back door, taking off his jacket and flinging the door open in one fluid movement. He could hear her shouting, probably telling him not to risk himself, or maybe asking him to hurry, it didn’t matter. He was going to put this fire out and win her allegiance.

She told him to stop. He didn’t listen. Going running off to the tree house Terence had built when they’d first been expecting. She didn’t go up there anymore.

Eddie scaled the oak tree with an ease that surprised him, given how little he’d been able to get to the gym recently. He was soon at the tree house door and ducked inside. Sure enough, a small pile of paper had been set alight. Probably some neighbourhood kids messing about, using the tree house without permission, kids that should have been in school. He stamped out the fire; his shoe could take the hit for the story. When he felt a sharp pain he assumed it was the heat, and lifted his foot clear. As he did so, he looked down and saw that his heel had been slashed. His foot stayed where it was, for the most part. Blood gushed from a savage tear in his navy sock. He screamed and fell backwards.

Eddie fell through the opening to the tree house and down to the ground, about twelve feet, landing on his back. As he looked up he saw a dark shape emerge from the tree house, jump, and land on its feet beside him. He wanted to scream but the air had been knocked out of him by the fall. As it knelt down and brought its face closer to Eddie’s, he saw who it was. The boy from the photo. A few years older, yes, and his face blackened by smoke, but definitely him. He grinned. The teeth had been sharpened into yellow points. Eddie now managed a scream, and the boy grabbed his hair and dragged him over the grass back towards the house.

The back door was still open. As Eddie was pulled inside his heel caught on the doorstep, twisting and tearing, sending another jet of pain up his leg. The boy pulled harder and got him inside, slamming the door behind him.

There was Tommy now. And he’d got the stupid man. She didn’t enjoy what Tommy did and she’d tried explaining that he shouldn’t do it. But if she was being honest, she wasn’t sorry to hear that man scream.

He was starting to lose awareness of what was happening to him. He was in the kitchen; his head had bounced off a hob and was now resting on a linoleum floor. He heard the slam of a drawer being yanked open and a clattering of silverware. He heard the boy laughing. Then he wasn’t aware of anything except the pain in his stomach.

So that was what he was doing for dinner then. She needn’t have worried.

It took some effort but Eddie managed to lift his head off the floor too look at what exactly this boy was doing to him. All he could see was a mess of hair above a widening patch of red around his belly. As his mouth dropped open, the boy lifted his head to look back at Eddie. His face was glistening with dark red goo. He flashed those sharpened teeth again. And between those teeth lay a rope of his intestines, skewered on the boy’s fangs, which he was working furiously back and forth. The boy’s grin widened as their eyes met, before he plunged his head back into the messy soup of Eddie’s stomach. Eddie felt his reason depart as the slurping started and let his head drop backwards.

Such a mess. Getting it everywhere. What a mess, what a terrible mess.

Eddie’s head fell to the right. Everything was becoming terribly blurry. But he could still make out the slippered feet of the widow hurrying over, and see Clive Adamson’s campaign literature used to move his blood and a few chunks of what he assumed were his viscera into one neat puddle on the lino by his nose, before he felt a hand reach up and under his ribcage and everything stopped.

--------------------------

Hello there. I hope you enjoyed this story. I hoped to have it up a bit sooner but things have been pretty hectic with the London Film Festival, which I'm covering for Cinetalk (find our coverage there).

This short story title comes from @scottywrotem and I really like it, I was buzzing with ideas as soon as he suggested it, so thank you very much to him for that.

So, I don't really have a lot to say about this story beyond the fact that I didn't want to do another ghost story (at least, not yet), and I wanted to write something that ended messily. I wanted to write something that wasn't subtle at all. So the humour's about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but I enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoyed reading it. Oh and I promise I will stop ripping off Jack Ketchum soon. Other stories are under-way but please give me your titles! Thanks for reading.

Witch's Bile Part Nine: Open Flames

Hello and welcome to the ninth and penultimate instalment of Witch's Bile. Just a quick reminder that parts 1-8 are here if you haven't read them yet and you want to understand what's going on. Otherwise, the monster is on his way. Please enjoy

------------------------------

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. Well, actually, scared’s a bit of an exaggeration. Concerned. I was concerned that arranging for a murderous monster to be directed towards my house might be a bit reckless. I mean, he might kill Jo, who I was supposed to be looking after, and more importantly, he might kill me. And Jo wouldn’t have been my problem if you hadn’t sent her to me, Émilie, so technically anything bad that happens to her while in this country is your fault. She could have been safe in Paris, or London. Anywhere, really. But instead she’s in a small town in Illinois, USA, with me. Because you sent her. And because you sent her, he came too.

I was aware that my plan had problems. These beasts that have one single, unalterable goal can seem easy to direct but there are annoying little variables. Monsters in a trap will always react violently, lashing out in any bloody direction. Bloodily. And no matter how stupid you think they are there’s never any guarantee that they won’t suddenly figure out what’s going on. So yes, I had my concerns. I thought it would work, don’t get me wrong. But it’s a very stupid idiot who thinks that their plan will go off without a hitch.

Jo wasn’t stupid enough to make this mistake but she went along with it. She took some convincing and grumbled enough, but she went along with it.

“If this goes wrong, we’ll die,” she told me after I’d told her that there was no other way. It was stating the obvious but I can only assume stating it made her feel better. I nodded and told her that I was sure that it wouldn’t go wrong. If it went right, we would be free from this un-killable psychopath within an hour or so.

I got the call twenty minutes after Sheriff Larch and his terrified deputy left. Apparently once I’d told him that there was a fair chance that the man he’d captured could decide to kill his entire police force, he was keen to get the monster out of his custody and into mine. I assumed that the monster couldn’t drive, so assuming Larch had called as soon as he’d freed him, we’d have our visitor knocking on our door in about forty minutes.

I got things ready as best I could. You know as well as I do that you can check and double check that you’ve prepared spells properly but there’s no guarantee that they’ll go off without a hitch. I got Jo to help me with the magic. As we sat mixing up the necessaries the books said were required, she looked up at me with this weird sort of smile.

“This is the first time you’ve taught me anything,” she said.

Cheeky little bitch.

So forty minutes later we stood in the front hall, staring at the front door, waiting. Jo looked nervously at me. I looked back at her, only slightly less nervously. We could both sense that he was close. When forty five minutes had passed I got worried. Then I heard the back door open.

I span around and saw the man standing in my kitchen. Larch hadn’t been lying. A cracked rib stuck through his black shirt and odd lumps down his right side hinted at more than that. When he opened his mouth to speak I saw he’d lost several of his teeth, which will happen if I run you over with my car.

“I heard she had someone here,” he said, speech slightly slurred. “Where is she?”

I wasn’t thrown by the question. Jo had done exactly as I’d asked and slipped out of sight. I shook my head and he stepped towards me. I took a step to my right, towards the basement.

“Don’t lie to me,” he told me. “I know she’s here. I know she’s here with someone. Where is she? I need to talk to her.”

As he moved closer I saw his scruffy beard was caked with blood. I assumed it was his own but there was no way to be sure. He reached down towards his belt and took out a long kitchen knife, which I recognised as one of mine. He must have taken it when he had been here before leaving presents for us. His stumbling stopped and he stared at me for a moment as if trying to tell whether I was lying or not. Obviously he convinced himself that I was as he moved forward with alarming speed and grabbed me by the throat.

“Where is she, bitch?” he growled. Clearly the last part of that sentence was really supposed to put the fear of god into me and I thought I had probably given Jo enough time.

“The basement,” I gasped, “she’s in the basement. With him.”

He grunted and transferred his grip to the back of my neck, pushing me towards the basement door.

“Open it,” he said. “No tricks.”

Clever boy. I opened the door for him and what he saw made him release his grip on me. It also made him go charging down the basement steps.

An illusion is simple enough to create but it’s pretty fucking useless once the person you’re trying to fool tries to get his hands on it. The monster saw a handsome young man who was moving towards Jo in suggestive fashion. To put it bluntly, he was naked. But when the fruitcake with the knife tried to cut him, it would go straight through, which is why Jo was running up the stairs as soon he finished going down them.

Had there been time and a third witch, we could easily have come with an imaginary Jo as well but as it was we had to make to with the real one. She wasn’t happy about it but I told her that there was nothing else we could do.

The other person who wasn’t happy was the monster in the basement. As Jo cleared the top step he turned and looked up at us. He’d swung for the phantom’s gullet and had hit the brick wall in front of him instead. He was furious. I could feel Jo trembling beside me.

“You tricked me,” he spat.

“Burn,” I answered. He laughed and held his arms wide.

“That won’t work on this body.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” I told him and pointed at the unfortunate nest of spiders in the corner that were just catching light on top of the cans of gasoline. Not all animals are receptive to spoken magic but when I'd moved them earlier I'd managed to get on their wavelength. I felt sorry for them but there was no time to dwell on it as we slammed the door shut.

We had cast a spell on the door which took effect as soon as both of us were on the same side. I thought that this was rather selfless of me given that I could have simply locked him, her, and the imaginary nude Adonis down there to burn. Not that I told her that. We went through the living room and grabbed the bags we’d packed while waiting for the Sheriff to call as the screams began.

You never really get used to the smell of human flesh cooking but this wasn’t exactly that. There was a whiff of formaldehyde and, as the smoke poured out from under the door, another scent that I recognised but couldn’t quite place. Whoever had done this had left their mark on his body. It was familiar but I didn’t have time to really savour it. We left before the fire got out of hand, and then watched from the street as it did.

I hadn’t lived in that house for long but I had liked it. I wasn’t entirely emotionless watching it all go up in smoke. But Jo was safe for now. And so was I.

I’m sorry if this seems a bit underwhelming but it’s something that I don’t understand when witches tell each other that something can’t be killed. This thing bled. Its ribs broke. It must have been able to heal itself over time, given what Jo said about it being run over by a London bus, but very few things can survive prolonged exposure to fucking fire. There's an argument to be made for lack of subtlety or finesse but, given the noises it was making, it wasn’t surviving down there. And if it comes back, then we’ll burn the fucker again.

Anyway, I have to make a statement to Sheriff Larch. Well, I don’t have to. But I want to see the look on his face when I try to explain what happened. I’ll record another message from the road.

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Hope you enjoyed this. The final part will be up very shortly and then the blog will focus on other things for a while. There's a general blog housekeeping update in the offing but for now, please enjoy Jarvis singing Leonard Cohen. As always, thank you for reading.

Story: Mermaid Skin

Gunnar sat in the middle of the boat, staring at the woman. She stared right back at him from under the matted mess of her hair. Her face was caked in blood. Her clothes had been torn to rags. She had not been allowed to clean herself for days.

The boat rocked gently. There had been no wind for two weeks.

It was just the two of them left now. There had been twenty.

She was grinning at him through a mouthful of broken teeth.

They hadn’t known she was a woman when they had let her on board. The old man who had paid for their passage had told them that she was his son. She had kept her face hidden under a hood. The old man said that his son was deformed. The captain had said that they would be allowed on board provided it was not contagious and had taken their money.

There had been nothing unusual about their departure. The wind had come as soon as they reached open water. They had gone about their business.

But it was Gunnar who had gone below decks and found the woman cleaning herself. And it was obvious that she was not who she claimed to be. He had told the others. It was not long before they had cornered her. She had screamed for help. The old man had come running and was held back by the youngest member of the crew who was eager to prove himself. The priest, a recent and unpopular addition to the crew, had discovered them and gone running to the captain. The captain had joined in.

In a rare display of generosity, the captain had patted Gunnar on the shoulder and told the assembled men that “Gunnar will go first.” Gunnar had been absurdly touched, and then had gone about his business. When he had finished, he went above to get some fresh air. It was dark by the time he heard the old man wailing, and saw him carry the girl on his back to their cabin.

The men had drunk hard that night. There was some laughter early but it quickly gave way to silence. No one wanted to speak to anyone else.

Gunnar had woken to the bell ringing the next day. Ulrich and Bjarne were missing. They searched the boat from top to bottom before realising that they couldn’t possibly be on board. When they had called off the search, Thomas had pointed out that the wind had dropped.

The wind did not return. And men did not stop disappearing. When they were fifteen they had decided to stay in the same room and take turns keeping watch. After two nights of the men being left on watch disappearing, they had decided that the blame must lie with the old man. They had tied the woman up and left her on deck. They had gutted the old man and threw him, still flailing, overboard, attached to a rope. Bait. The food was going rotten. They had caught nothing.

When they were ten, fog descended. They could barely see the hands in front of the faces.

Ulrich had told them they had upset the gods. Quickly convinced, they had crucified the priest on the main sail to placate whatever it was they had provoked.

When five were left they had debated killing the woman. Ulrich had advised against it. So they had stayed awake, sat in a circle on deck. The fog had grown thicker, colder. The only noise had been the water gently lapping against the hull. Gunnar had started making small cuts on his arm to stay awake. Then Thomas was gone. Then Bjarne.

He had thought he heard Ulrich scream and ran towards the sound. He had tripped and fallen over the woman, who sat calmly in the middle of the deck. He had asked her where Ulrich had gone. She had nodded her head towards the side of the boat and smiled. Gunnar had sat down heavily in front of her and stared.

“What are you?” he asked. She did not answer. The water lapped against the hull and the boat rocked gently. She laughed, her voice cracked and harsh.

Gunnar felt ice shoot down his spine. He gasped and tipped forwards, his head hitting the damp wood with a thud. Darkness.

Gunnar opens his eyes. He’s still on the boat. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong. He does not feel right, something has changed. He can hear laughter. He blinks and things become clearer. Ulrich is staring at him. Ulrich, and Bjarne, and the captain. Everyone is here. And he is there too. Somehow Gunnar is standing in front of him, grinning. He knows the grin. It is not his.

“Gunnar will go first.”

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Hello there.

So, this is the new short story. The title comes from my colleague, collaborator, and survivor of our second year student house Martin Parsons (find him on Twitter @martang66). I hope he likes it.

I toyed with different time periods. I thought about setting it in a circus but then I realised that I was ripping off Geek Love, which I have just started reading and have instantly fallen in love with. So I went with a more literal mermaid thing.

I haven't written anything unpleasant in a while. If it hadn't been from Gunnar's perspective it would have been more graphic. Gunnar's situation and his nature kind of inform the way the story's written. I wanted to keep it clipped. There are bits that aren't, of course. Also, I'd be amiss if I didn't mention the influence of Lucky McKee and Jack Ketchum's excellent film The Woman. Not a direct influence on the story, but certainly indirect (can you be certain about an indirect influence?)

It's generally nastier than the last couple of stories but I hope you enjoyed this horror short story. Here's a song: