“I’m so sorry,” she repeated, weeping, and she took the fire back, drawing it out of him and into herself where it belonged, in a slow-pulsing multi-petalled bloom behind her navel. He sighed and sagged in her arms, but the fire gave her strength and she held him up, because it was time to start learning to do something better with that strength. She kissed him goodbye and carried his body into the bedroom and laid him down in the darkness, but found that she could still see him quite clearly.
Here, in this place, he shone.
FAITH & FRED
MAURA MCHUGH
They found the skulls on the third day of renovation.
Owen had just bashed in the plasterboard with the sledgehammer his contractor, Bald Jim, had handed him with a, “Let her rip, lad.”
Owen had bridled at the “lad”, since he was nearing thirty, but the heft of the scarred sledgehammer in his gloved hands gave him a tactile joy, which overrode his pride. Assaulting the wall was deeply satisfying: the hard swing, the protesting sound as the pitted metal head smashed through the cheap panelling, and the aftershock down his arms.
Dust and chip fragments flew up and obscured the view at first. Gradually, daylight from the big windows behind them lanced through the widening jagged opening that Owen had created. They knew this had been a closet of some kind before a previous owner walled it up, but it was wasted space, and Owen was determined to use every inch of Caldwere Farmhouse. From its dilapidated rooms he would create a home for someone willing to pay a good price.
Bald Jim tapped him on the shoulder to indicate it was time to relinquish the weapon, and Owen reluctantly handed it back to the brawny older man. Brute force had done its job, now was the time for the finesse of experts.
Bald Jim propped the tool against the wall, and selected a smaller hammer. He pried at the opening, splintering it open further until he suddenly hopped back, alarmed.
“Flippin’ ’eck,” he said.
“What is it?” Owen stepped into the miasma, squinting. Something gleamed white in between metal bars. He fished his phone out of the thigh pocket in his combat trousers and swiped on the torch app. He was aware of Bald Jim’s solid presence behind him.
Two human skulls stared at him from inside an old metal cage fashioned from flattened iron strips. The cage sat on a simple wooden table.
“Holy shit!” Owen said, his voice hushed, as he directed the light around the space. He leaned forward, inhaling a mouldy reek, and immediately regretted not wearing a dust mask.
Sitting in front of the cage was a white card inscribed with fluid copperplate writing, obscured by a layer of dust.
He reached in warily and retrieved the card.
Here be Faith & Fred.
Keep them homestead,
Lest they wail.
“That’s us buggered,” said Bald Jim after he scanned the text.
He walked to the double windows, dipping into the May sunlight, and pulled out an old-school battered mobile phone from one of his many pockets.
“I’ll call the cops.”
“What?”
“Do you think this is the first frightener I’ve found in one of these old gaffs?” He shook his head. “Occupational hazard.”
“What’ll they do?”
Bald Jim tipped back his hardhat and stared through the glass, across the flat green fields, to the blue line indicating the distant shore.
“They’ll take your new friends for tests. Ask questions. Bring in boffins. There’ll be paperwork for sure. It’ll be a right pain in the arse.”
The words stirred a panic in Owen. He imagined the room being shut down, and the disruption to their schedule. The news would get out in the area, and maybe become a viral story online.
He noticed that Bald Jim kept well away from the hole punched in the wall, and cast unhappy glances in that direction. If this bloke was nervous because of a spooky find, how would the other workers react? Or potential buyers?
Owen had little margin for mistakes. His new leaf had been turned over too recently, and there were plenty of people longing to see him screw up again.
“Does anyone else have to know?”
Bald Jim turned away from the calm vista, levelled a hard stare at Owen, but said nothing. Leaving a gap into which Owen rushed.
“It’s probably a nineteenth-century parlour entertainment. We know from the plans that it’s been shut up for at least a hundred years. It’s not some CSI Holderness situation…”
Bald Jim nodded and let Owen continue.
“If I wrap these up and dispose of them, then no one need be any the wiser.” He reached for his wallet. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”
He counted off six fifty-pound notes and held them out.
Bald Jim considered the money for a drawn-out moment. Owen oozed a fresh sheen of sweat.
“Aye,” he said, “the missus would love a fancy meal out.” He pointed at the hole. “I want no sign of those when I’m back, mind.” He slipped the notes into his back pocket, and walked to the door, his boots thumping across the bare boards.
At the entrance he paused and added, “Thaddy – Thadeus – Ogram runs The Adder’s Knot. His family’s been hereabouts since the Ark. He might know something about…” And he jerked his head at the problem.
From where Owen stood, mote-suffused rays slanted into the recess and illuminated the empty eye sockets of the dead couple, lending them shining new orbs. Gooseflesh erupted across his arms. The black gaps between their aged teeth grinned at him.
“I’ll take care of it,” he promised.
Bald Jim left, and Owen heard him calling to Roger and Tall Jim. A mumble of voices ensued, followed by doors slamming, and cars driving down the long lane to the main road.
Owen strode to where Bald Jim had left the hammer, grabbed it and laid into the edges of the gap, cursing as he did, venting his frustration.
He was panting by the time it was wide enough to pull out the cage.
It was awkward, arcing his body into the hidden space and latching his hooked fingers into the sharp metal grid. His legs pressed against the remaining plasterboard as he strained to lift and negotiate the cage through the uneven rent.
A shattering crack: the rest of the wall collapsed and he pitched into the closet, slamming down into the cage, knocking it off the table.
He fell completely inside the cavity, his face and chest landing on the cruel edge of the cage. Fireworks exploded across his vision. Beneath him, the skulls knocked around like snooker balls. Perhaps rolling with mirth.
He yelped, in fear and in pain, breathing in the dank smell of a previous century and old pacts.
A fury erupted and he rose in a flurry of thrashing arms and yelled curses.
“Fucking typical!” he screamed and hauled the cage out of the broken wall, dumping it on the ground, and kicking it several times until it was on the far side of the room. The skulls had moved about, but he noticed something else on their ivory surfaces: splatters of red dots.
The stream of damp on his forehead alerted him to the cut. He reached up to touch it and his fingers returned to his view dripping with vivid scarlet blood. His old phobia surged alive at the sight of it. His chest constricted while his legs softened like loops of overcooked noodles.
He needed to get away, desperately.
Owen wobbled a couple of steps towards the doorway before he fainted.