She took every care to slice the bread unevenly; a knack that had come to John so naturally and yet one that demanded her full attention. His eggs were trickier to replicate. Neither of them had figured out how exactly he messed them up time and time again, and after a hundred heartbreaking attempts later, Ciara still didn’t know. Sitting alone at the kitchen table, she’d shifted the food around her plate, glancing up to where her husband used to sit, picturing a smile where there was none and imagining the familiar lilt of his voice in the silence of their empty home.
She felt horrible for having lied to Mina again. But her intentions weren’t to deceive, at least not for any personal gain except to enjoy John’s favourite meal without feeling guilty for it. Besides, the truth felt less relevant and less appealing with each passing day. Mina often remarked on how brave she’d become – how her roseate take on the world was a sign of strength – but it made Ciara feel like an imposter. She hardly recognised the woman framed in all those photographs on the mantel, posing in her husband’s arms. So soft and childish, effortlessly beaming in every shot, spending a lifetime of smiles in a few short years. Her skin had been silken white back then. Curls of red bounced atop her shoulders as though she couldn’t sit still from all the excitement of just being alive and lucky and in love. It was pathetic. She was pathetic – that greedy little girl who thought she could have it all.
Ciara’s parents had kept her cocooned in a bubble her entire life, shielding her from the world’s many thorns and supplying more love and money than she’d known what to do with. Then they’d passed her – pristine bubble and all – on to John. Madeline had been right when she’d cut Ciara down with that barbed tongue of hers. She’d been too fat, too stupid, and far too naïve for a woman of her age. And with her bubble popped, there was no way to hide from the truth anymore. The old life that she’d cherished was over, and the only happiness that remained was through pretending that it wasn’t, like a child pouring imaginary tea into an empty cup and whispering aloud to a roomful of teddy bears, their glassy eyes saddened by the very sight of her.
Ciara placed her cutlery down and considered the waste left behind. She’d managed a few mouthfuls this time. Her appetite desired very little these days and yet still, somehow, she gave it even less. Grief had infected every part of her like a sickness, and her stomach was no exception. Cooking the food was far more enjoyable than the act of eating it, especially during those sought-after moments when she’d almost convince herself that she was cooking for two – that her love was sat at the table behind her, drinking his coffee, and that nothing in that perfect scenario had been lost. She used to dab the sausages and rashers with clots of kitchen towel to soak up the fatty oil. John would always joke that she was drying up the flavour. A pool of grease had bled into her egg white like an ugly bruise for that very reason. Everything had to be prepared to his liking, otherwise what was the point of cooking at all?
The kitchen alone was home to so many beautiful moments, when the daylight had been brighter and the tiles hadn’t felt so cold. But Ciara’s memories of herself were strangely absent, as if the happiest role of her life had been edited out in post-production and lost on the cutting room floor. She couldn’t recall how she’d passed her time when she was alone or what words she’d spoken to John when they were together. He did most of the talking. She’d been content to listen, and it was only his voice that she remembered. He’d been so busy all the time, doing odd jobs around the house, and prying her out from between the cushions of the couch like a stubborn barnacle whenever he got itchy feet. But what did she do? Had she ever enjoyed a thought without John at its centre?
She scraped her leftovers into the bin, full to the brim and alive with mouldy meals of days gone by. The plate was added to the pile by the sink. She’d have to wash them eventually, but not yet. She moved like a ghost haunting her own home, acting out the reflections of a past life on repeat, oblivious to the present and any pressing issue other than her own heartache.
There had once been a clock hanging in the hallway, at the foot of the stairs; now banished to a box of junk in the utility room. John was the punctual sort, as one of them had to be. Often when she’d be running late, he could be found leaning his back into the front door, shaking his head, grinning at the lost time. She still imagined him standing there whenever she descended the stairs, waiting to take her away with him.
Ciara had no recollection of hearing the clock tick or tock before. And yet, without John’s voice to fill in the silence, every second was hammered into her heart. The sounds of the house had gotten bolder without him around to keep them in check. She’d removed its batteries, clawing out its vocal cords. But the sight of its frozen hands was no better. It was as though the clock’s sole purpose was to remind her that this hell would last forever.
She still fixated on that night in the coop, when Madeline had stood between her and the door, abandoning John to the dark after he’d returned to her. Mina and Daniel liked to pretend that they’d each done Ciara a favour – saving her from certain death and their own lives too, conveniently enough. But what if that was meant to be the end? If she’d died with John there and then, she’d have been pardoned all this pain.
Ciara was haunted by his screams. The man she’d loved had called out for her and she did no more than listen. But knowing what she did now about the watchers’ mimicry and savageness – and having seen how they swarmed around Daniel – could they have possessed the patience and cerebral cruelty to keep John alive just to torment her? What if the voice forever ringing through the caverns of her hollow heart was not her husband at all, but a hundred foul things impersonating him?
There was so much she didn’t understand and too many reasons to be angry. Had Madeline known that John’s attempt at escape was doomed from his first step? She alone was privy to each of her pets’ weaknesses and all of the watchers’ strengths. Then why did she let him leave? Why did she let everything that Ciara had loved walk out that door?
She couldn’t be trusted. She wasn’t even human.
Ciara’s last memory of Madeline was of those branchlike fingers tightening around her throat, pinning her against the wall. By the faintest candlelight this woman – who she’d once obeyed like she would some overbearing headmistress – had transformed into something else entirely. Bones cracked and reformed, baring the powers she’d always wielded and yet chose to keep secret. Ciara had been strangled to within an inch of her life, awakening bruised on the floor, only to then be told that Madeline was, to quote Mina, one of them.
She refused to accept it. Wherever Madeline was, Ciara didn’t care. All of this was her fault – the fact that John and Daniel were dead, the even sadder fact that she was still alive. Cracking her neck that night would have been to do her a favour.
By the sitting room door she stopped, unsure where she’d been walking. She looked back to where the clock used to be, utterly lost as to the time, aware only that night had fallen. There was never anything to do; no meaningful act to occupy that same cyclical purgatory of lonely self-pity. Dust had gathered across the floor and atop every flat piece of furniture, glinting like a thin silver carpet whenever the sun shone. The putrid smell from the kitchen had now spread to the hallway, tainting the air rancid. Ciara looked to where she and John used to sit; where she still did occasionally, on her side, leaving his free, flicking through the channels, picking out those programmes that he used to watch. If only she could remember which ones she liked. Not that it seemed to matter anymore. It had never been about watching television, it was always for the company – for the feel of him beside her.
A crack of white glowed between the closed curtains. Ciara eyed it in a daze, aware but unaffected. The outdoor security light had clicked on again. She’d noticed it the past few nights but had yet to catch what was responsible for triggering it, most likely a fox or a badger, or a stray cat seeking out a new home; this was the countryside after all. With nothing else to do, Ciara padded over to the window, the bones in her feet cracking in the stillness, disturbing the dust that stained her socks black. She peeled aside the curtain, just enough for an eye to peep through. A fat moth flitted around the bulb. But the gravel driveway leading to the gate hadn’t felt the press of the lightest step. This came as no surprise. Even Ciara’s parents visited her less and less. A faint frost was clouding the pane. But no night could ever be as cold – or as painful to inhabit – as this tomb that her beloved had built for her.
Ciara tried to remember him as he was before the woodland, before its cold shadows sank into his skin and drained the colour from his eyes. He’d changed so much in that time, when the nights passed so slowly and the days were all too short. His beard grew fat and wiry. Fingers shrank to bone, their nails black and broken. What little nourishment they could forage was never enough, fistfuls of filthy nuts and berries so tart they made her tummy ache. John always gave most of his ration to her. And she’d taken it each time. She had eaten more than anyone else while her husband starved. There were days when she wouldn’t even leave the coop; too scared, too tired, too useless to carry her own weight. Every morning, John would brace himself to face the cold and the damp, breaking his body and torturing his mind for her. It was always for her – for the wife who’d awaited his return, wrapped in their warmest blankets, counting the days until her husband made everything better.
He was the only one who ever could.