The Bones of You
Authors: Gary McMahon
THE BONES OF YOU
Gary McMahon
First Digital Edition
The Bones of You
© 2015, 2013 by Gary McMahon
All Rights Reserved.
A DarkFuse Release
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copy Editor: Dave Thomas
CONNECT WITH US
Find out why DarkFuse is the premier publisher of dark fiction.
Join our newsletter and get free eBooks:
Follow us on Twitter:
Like us on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/darkfuse/
++++====++++
Join the DarkFuse Readers Book Club:
http://www.darkfuse.com/book_club/
++++====++++
OTHER BOOKS BY AUTHOR
Check out the author’s official page at DarkFuse for a complete list:
http://www.darkfuseshop.com/Gary-McMahon/
For my family:
I love you. I love the bones of you.
Acknowledgments
Thanks, as always, to my wife and son, who help keep me stay grounded in the real world rather than the one inside my head. Thanks also to Shane Staley of DarkFuse, who was so keen to publish this edition of the book. Apologies to Adam Nevill and Mark Morris for stealing and conflating their names, but I’m sure they appreciate the joke. Finally, thanks to the people who keep reading my work: without you, none of this would matter.
“Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.”
—Sir Francis Bacon, “Of Death”
Essays
(1625)
IT IS TIME
Last night I had the dream again.
It comes and goes, along with other, darker dreams, but I’m always aware of it running in the background as I sleep. Sometimes I’m unable to distinguish the difference between what is dream and what is memory—the lines blur, the events in my head take on the precision of acts that have already been committed. Even when I’m awake, I feel like I have one foot in another world.
But I know for certain this specific dream isn’t real, because I see it through the eyes of someone else.
I realize that he can no longer harm me or my family, but I often imagine that he’s still out there somewhere, watching me from the shadows, waiting for the right time to return.
Perhaps when I have this one dream, I am actually experiencing his memories, or the strange combination of fantasy and reality that fuelled his terrible deeds. Or perhaps this is in fact where he is now, trapped in some netherworld where it’s always Halloween and he’s forever carving a pumpkin in the image of someone he loved and wanted so desperately to bring back into the world.
I don’t know. I’m way past caring about such details.
I just wish this particular dream would come to an end:
The pumpkin, faceless and eyeless yet nonetheless intimidating, glares up at him as he sits down opposite it with the knife.
He cleared a space on the kitchen table earlier in the day, putting away the old photographs, train tickets, and receipts from restaurants they had dined at over the years. She had kept these items in a large cigar box under their bed, and he had always mocked her for the unlikely sentimentality of the act. But now that she is dead, he silently thanks her for having such forethought. At least he now has physical mementos of their time together.
He fingers the creased, leathery surface of the big pumpkin, imagining how it might look when he is done.
Every Halloween she insisted upon the ritual, something begun in her family when she was a little girl. A carved pumpkin, the task undertaken by the man of the house; the seeds and pithy insides scooped out into a bowl and used for soup the next day. She had always loved Halloween, but not in a pathetic goth-girl kind of way. She always said it was the only time of the year when she felt part of something, and rather than ghosts and goblins, she felt the presence of human wrongdoing near at hand.
He places the knife on the table and feels empty tears welling behind his eyes.
Rain spits at the windows; thunder rumbles overhead. The weather has taken a turn for the worse, as if gearing up for a night of spooks. Outside, someone screams. Laughter. The sound of light footsteps running past his garden gate but not stopping, never stopping here…
The festivities have already started. If he is not careful, he will miss out on all the fun.
The first cut is always the deepest, shearing off the top of the pumpkin to reveal the substantial material at its core. He slices around the inner perimeter, levering loose the bulk of the meat. With great care and dedication, he manages to transfer it to the glass bowl. Juices spill onto the tablecloth, and he is careful not to think about the image of fresh blood dripping onto creased school uniforms.
Fifteen minutes later he has the hollowed-out pumpkin before him, waiting for a face. He recalls her features perfectly, his memory having never failed to retain the finer details of her scrunched-up nose, the freckles across her forehead, the way her mouth tilted to one side when she smiled. Such a pretty face, one that had fooled everyone; and hiding behind it there were such unconventional desires.
Hesitantly, he begins to cut out the face.
The eyeholes come first, allowing her to see as he carries out the rest of the work. Then there is the mouth, a long, graceful gouge at the base of the skull. She smiles. He blinks, taken by surprise. In his dreams, it has never been this easy.
Hands working like those of an Italian Master, he finishes the sculpture. The rain intensifies, threatening to break the glass of the large kitchen window. More children caper by in the night. Their catcalls and yells of “Trick or treat!” are like music to his ears.
The pumpkin does not speak. Of course it doesn’t. It is simply a vegetable with wounds for a face. But it smiles, and it waits, with a noble and intimidating presence inhabiting its bloated carcass.
“I love you,” he says, standing and leaning toward the pumpkin. “I love you so much.” He caresses the pumpkin with steady hands, his fingers finding the furrows and crinkles that feel nothing at all like her smooth, smooth face. But it will do for now, this copy, this effigy. It will serve a purpose far greater than him.
Picking up the pumpkin, he carries it to the door. He undoes the locks, opens the door to let in the night. Voices carry on the busy air, promising a night of carnival, and the sky lowers to meet him as he walks outside and places the pumpkin on the porch handrail, the low flat roof protecting it from the rain.
He returns to the kitchen for the candle. When he places it inside the carved head, his hands at last began to shake. Lighting the wick in such wet weather is difficult, but he perseveres. He has no choice. Her hold on him, even now, is much too strong to deny.
The candle flame flickers, teased by the wind, but the rain cannot reach it. He watches in awe as it flares, licking out of the eyeholes to lightly singe the side of the face. The pumpkin smiles again, and then its mouth twists into a parody of laughter.
Still, there are no sounds, but he is almost glad of that. To hear her voice emerging from the pumpkin might be too much for him to bear. Reality has warped enough for now; anything more might push him over the edge into the waiting abyss.
The pumpkin swivels on its base to stare at him, the combination of lambent candlelight and darkness lending it an obscene expression, as if it were filled with hatred. Or lust.
He turns away and goes back inside. He leaves the door unlocked and sits back down at the kitchen table, resting his head in his hands.
He sips his tea and thinks of better days, bloody nights.
There is a sound from out on the porch, a wild thrumming, as if the pumpkin is vibrating, energy building inside, the bloodlust rising, rising, ready to burst in a display of savagery like nothing he has ever seen before. It is as if the pumpkin is absorbing the power of this special night, drinking in the desires of small children, the thrill of proud parents, the very idea of spectres abroad in the darkness.
It is time.
PART ONE
“She’s in us. She’s in all of us, if we look deep enough and are prepared to face the truth.”
—Robert Shingley,
Little Miss Moffatt and the Radiant Children
ONE
Moving Day
Later, I found it difficult to remember how I felt when I first saw the house, but I was pretty sure it was nothing out of the ordinary. Nor could I remember how I’d come to hear about the place. Maybe I’d seen an advert in a newspaper, or placed in a dusty shop window.
What I do recall is that nothing about the place stuck in my mind. It was just a convenient rental property—something I could afford, and close enough to my job that I didn’t have to spend a fortune on petrol to get there.
That first viewing was actually a week before I moved in. I was in something of a rush; the need for adequate accommodation outweighed any sense of trepidation I might otherwise have experienced. The house ticked all the boxes, of course: it was cheap, with two bedrooms, a small garden, and all the modern conveniences necessary for a small family home. It wasn’t located in the best of areas, but that didn’t matter to me. I was used to rough neighborhoods. I was born on the wrong side of the tracks and had stayed there pretty much all through my adult life, in spirit if not in body.
What really mattered above everything else was that I had a home: a base for me and a bedroom for Jess when she came to stay every other weekend.
The place suited my needs. And that was the best I could hope for at the time. Perhaps it’s the best that anyone can ever hope to achieve, no matter what their circumstances.