“Dianne, stop it!” I gripped her fists in my hands, held them hard. “Don’t hurt yourself—please.”
“Okay, Stephen.” She looked up at me, meek as a scolded child. “I’m sorry, but I just wanted so much that you believe me.”
I looked into her brown eyes. They seemed so calm now. As if she’d accepted a terrible calamity would soon overtake her.
“Look,” I said gently. “Will you be all right here by yourself?”
“You’re going to phone the police, aren’t you?”
“Yes… not because I think you’re mad. But we need to find Ashley. He’ll die of exposure out there on a night like this.”
She sighed sadly. “I don’t think he’ll feel the cold now.”
“Stay in here with the door locked and the lights on.” I looked at the wall clock. “It’s three ‘O clock now. I can be back by four.”
“Okay.” She spoke in a small voice. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be all right.”
“Good girl.”
“Stephen?”
“Yes?”
She looked up into my eyes. Lightly she rubbed her bare stomach with one hand. “Will you do something for me?”
“Whatever I can, yes.”
“I’m frightened, so please… well… will you kiss me?”
* * *
I ran along the track. The torchlight flashed against the tractor ruts, then against the steep banking at either side, illuminating bushes and grass. The wind blew hard, sending out brambles to whip horizontally across the track. Sometimes they lashed against my wax jacket with a crack. By this time I was panting hard; the thump of my boots hitting the ground transmitted juddering shocks up into my neck.
Briefly I stopped to zip up the jacket. The gales repeatedly caught it, causing it to balloon around my body. Then I ran on. Above me the trees creaked and groaned in the wind. The skin on my back, rubbed by the heavy winter jacket, began to chafe. I wore nothing but pyjamas beneath it.
What a night, I thought in astonishment. Just think of the letter you can write to big Jim back at the office. Maybe in a few days I’d look back on all this in amusement. But I couldn’t now. Although those two strangers had only walked into my life just hours ago, I was worried about them.
I hadn’t wanted to leave the girl alone in the cottage. But what options had I got? If I had waited until morning Ashley would surely have died of hypothermia out here in this gale. But would Dianne be all right? Perhaps I should have hidden the knives? I would have to have hidden the screwdrivers and aspirin, too. But I didn’t have time to do everything. Maybe the girl was only delusional, not suicidal.
Her manner had changed, too. She seemed somehow elated after I left her.
Perhaps that was the kiss.
She’d asked me to kiss her. Poor kid, at the moment that was all I could give her. Anyway, I’d left her listening to the CD player; she seemed calm enough.
Ahead I saw the outline of the farmhouse through the darkness. The early-to-rise farmer was already up. I could see him moving about in the kitchen. At least I wouldn’t have to stand hammering at the door. I crossed the yard to the door and knocked.
* * *
I arranged to meet the police back at my cottage. In twenty minutes I had ran back up the lane home. The sweat streamed down my chest. All I wanted was to get out of the sweat-soaked pyjamas and ease my body into a steaming hot bath.
I took the short cut over the wall, ran through the orchard; the branches of the trees rattled in the wind; then I pushed open the gate into the cottage garden.
I stopped dead.
Damn.
I don’t believe it, I thought, heart sinking; I don’t damn well believe it. It’s only gone and done it again!
The cottage lights were out. The fuse had blown.
I ran across the lawn. The torch light illuminated the grass being ripped this way and that by the gale blasting down the valley. The cottage door slammed open-shut-open-shut.
I ran inside. Then stood there, hauling in great lungfuls of cold air. Just a second of shining the torch round the room told me it was deserted. And within a few moments I’d checked every room in the cottage. All deserted.
I went back downstairs. I played the torch over the furniture, the table with the bottle of gin and two empty glasses. The wind blew the branches of a tree to tap against the room’s window pane. In here, the only thing to be disturbed was a single chair, tipped onto its back as if someone had pushed by it in a frantic rash to escape the house.
She’d gone.
The emotion took me by surprise, but I felt a sudden aching loss. I’d really liked her. I remembered the way she’d asked me to kiss her. Her brown eyes, gentle and trusting. Her blonde hair, the way the wind had mussed it into a light froth that poured down around her shoulders.
She’d kissed me so passionately. Her hands had gripped my head as she held my mouth to hers.
That kiss. Suddenly I shivered. Quickly I rubbed the back of my hand across my mouth, as if to clean dirt from my lips. But it was too late.
Far, far too late.
I shivered again; points of ice crawled across my stomach. When she’d kissed me it felt as if she’d transferred something from her mouth to mine. I must have imagined it, surely.
But no. It had felt as small as a seed. When she stopped kissing me and moved her head back I’d felt for it with my tongue. There was nothing there. I couldn’t have swallowed it, could I? That small seed-like particle that I’d felt slide between my cheek and gum.
The perspiration irritated my skin. I unzipped my wax jacket and rubbed my stomach. God, I needed a bath. A red hot bath.
The kiss began to trouble me. I shouldn’t have let her kiss me. Suddenly I wished I could turn the clock back; then when she asked, I’d firmly say, “No, I won’t kiss you.” As simple as that. But it was too late. Much too late.
My skin felt acutely sensitive. I rubbed my stomach and my chest. The wind blew the branches to tap against the glass again. Those damn branches… tapping, tapping, tapping.
I felt uneasy.
No, I didn’t.
I felt frightened.
Because I knew no tree grew so close to the cottage that its branches could touch the glass.
Holding the torch in front of me, I walked outside. I swung the light to my left.
Tap, tap, tap…
There was the tree.
Its slender trunk rooted deeply into the edge of the lawn; its branches, swaying to and fro like the limbs of a graceful dancer.
And the branches kept tap, tap tapping at the glass.
As if it strived to attract my attention.
There had been no tree there yesterday. I was certain of that. Fear prickled through me. I looked back at the house. No, I wasn’t going back there. I couldn’t bear to hear those branches at the glass. Tap, tap, tapping…
The wind blew; it caught the chimney pots and the pan pipe notes boomed loud and madly discordant.
With a shiver I zipped up my wax jacket. There was no alternative. I would…
No—
This couldn’t be happening…
At that moment the torch died on me. The bulb went from glowing an incandescent white, to yellow, to orange…
—to red
—to dull red
—then to nothing. I slapped the torch into the palm of my hand.
My skin itched. All I could hear was the damned wind, the mad pan pipe music, and the rattle of branches against the window pane.
The torch is dead, I told myself as calmly as I could, even though the shiver running through my body had become a deep tremble that would not stop; a tremble that intensified until my teeth clacked together like dry bones being shaken hard in a sack. I threw the torch savagely into the grass—the bloody thing had betrayed me.
“It doesn’t matter, Stephen,” I panted. “It doesn’t matter. It’s going to be light in an hour.”
Better still, the police would be here soon. I’d
wait for them in the lane.
I found my way to the wall in the darkness. Then by sense of touch I reached the gate to the orchard.
Cross the orchard, Stephen; then wait in the lane.
Soon you’ll see the lights of the police car as it brings a couple of down-to-earth Welsh coppers up to the cottage.
The orchard seemed too full of trees. I groped my way through. The branches snagged my jacket, pricked my face, caught my hair.
The wind whipped through the trees with a howl, as if it was a wild animal, ferociously savaging the branches of a pear tree there, clawing at the grass here, before pawing hungrily at my coat.
God, I wished I could see.
The darkness was total.
I was growing tired now. I could hardly move. My skin itched. I thought of that kiss. Now I was convinced Dianne had transferred something into my mouth. I couldn’t stop myself imagining the picture: Dianne opening her mouth. It is packed with seeds. Like when you slice open a melon. Hundreds of seeds all neatly packed, all so tightly packed, there inside the fruit.
Shut out the picture, Stephen. My head spun dizzily. Shut the damn thing out!
I thought: The seed… I’ve swallowed it; I’m sure I’ve swallowed the damned seed.
I must be nearly at the lane. The fruit trees tugged at me. They were everywhere, blocking my path, scratching my face, pulling my hair.
Then I was free of them. Along the lane I could see the lights of the police car coming up the track. I tried to run toward the wall that separated the orchard from the lane. I made it to within five paces.
Then I stopped.
I was too exhausted to move another step. The police car approached. I held up my hands to flag it down.
They drove past, not seeing me.
I tried to lower my arms. I couldn’t. For some reason I’d frozen in that position. My face, too, had seized into some kind of frozen mask as I’d shouted. I couldn’t move my feet. I couldn’t move them at all.
I was rooted to the spot.
POSTSCRIPT
“Mum!”
“What’s is it, what’s wrong?”
“Mum, come and look at this!”
“Joel, I thought we were making a snowman up on the lawn.”
“I wanted to look in the orchard.”
“Keep your coat fastened up, it’s cold. And be a good boy or we won’t go to the cafe for lunch.”
“But I wanted to show you this.”
“Oh, go on then, Joel. What is it?”
“That apple tree near the wall. There s a coat stuck in the tree.”
“Ugh, probably belonged to a tramp.”
“Its a wax jacket like Dad’s, and someone’s pushed the branches through the sleeves like arms.”
“Leave it, it’s dirty. Now come back and finish the snowman with me.”
“But Mum?”
“But Mum what?”
“There ‘s still apples on the tree. Can I eat one?”
“Certainly not. They’ll give you stomach ache. Now, come with me.”
The two walked back hand in hand through the snow to where the snowman stood. Next to it grew the slender tree at the edge of the lawn. The breeze blew. Gently, it tapped a branch against the window pane.
As if it were cold and lonely.
And wanted to come inside.
A Note on the Author
Simon Clark is a prolific horror and speculative fiction writer. His short stories have appeared in several magazines and anthologies and he has been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel and World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. In 2002 he was awarded the British Fantasy Award for The Night of the Triffids.
Simon Clark lives with his wife and children in Doncaster, South Yorkshire.
Discover books by Simon Clark published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/SimonClark
Blood Crazy
Darker
Nailed by the Heart
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Silver Salamander Press
Copyright © 1998 Simon Clark
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The moral right of the author is asserted.
eISBN: 9781448214730
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Simon Clark, Salt Snake and Other Bloody Cuts
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