9.

THEN

January 4, 2013

Bobbie Hopkins and his wife Abigail were the last to leave on the frosty winter night that had been the day Greg Zane had never knew he’d have to face until it fell into his lap. The day of the funeral service for his only child, Jack Zane.

A hollow cavern where his heart used to beat kept him motionless in his armchair by the picture window. He watched dully as Bobbie reversed his Ford pick-up down the drive and carefully backed onto the road and then driving out of his peripheral vision.

Greg had not cried during the service. Instead he sat stone-still staring at the small oak coffin on a pedestal reflecting the flickering light from candelabrum perched on the altar communion table. His young son was lying in that box, eyes closed, face pallid, tailored in a black suit and tie similar to the one Greg wore.

When the rest of the congregation of mourners got up to sing the hymens Greg remained seated. He didn’t want to sing. He didn’t want to be sat on a cold, hard pew listening to the reverend that never even met Jack let alone know him speaking about a boy who was with Jesus now. Greg didn’t believe Jack was with Jesus. Greg believed Jack was lying stone dead in a box waiting to be lowered into the earth later on.

Jack didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t lose his life playing with a shotgun or drinking an excessive amount of alcohol or taking drugs. He’d had a glass of water from the tap and Greg had found him thrashing about on the floor convulsing and frothing at the mouth, inadvertently chomping down on his tongue and dying before getting to the hospital.

Outside the ground was solid. Languid and sporadic snowflakes dropped out of the grey sky. Greg took a sip of his Jack Daniels. The pain and anguish of his son’s sudden, excruciating death festered inside him like a malignant cancer. The short glass felt as heavy as a concrete block. Keeping his head upright had become a task. More snowflakes drifted in a downward spiral until the snowflakes multiplied and in their tens and thousands in a heavenly cascade.

Greg watched it, tears brimming in his red-rimmed eyes. Jack would have loved to have seen the snowfall. He’d get dressed and go outside and tilt his head up and meet the snowflakes as they brushed his face with the lightest of touches. The snow made Jack smile. The snow made Jack happy. This knowledge made Greg remorse, still.

Probably due to the profound melancholy gnawing away inside him, Greg’s mind reminded him of the incident when he and Bobbie and ventured into Tony and Amy’s house and fled at the macabre sight of dissected body parts and innards in the white porcelain bathtub.

They’d gone to police station in Neath and told the uniformed officer behind the desk what had happened. Greg had needed to sit down and calm himself, doing his utmost to get rid of the horrific images cruelly replaying themselves on a never-ending film reel in mind. The officer disappeared into the room behind him, and when he emerged the superintendent listened intently to what Bobbie had said minutes ago, word for word.

‘And why did you trespass in the first place?’ the superintendent had asked.

Bobbie had glanced over his shoulder at Greg then, incredulous. ‘We were concerned. Last time I’d seen his wife she looked like she was coming down with something really serious and no one had seen Tony for months.’

‘So you just broke into their home uninvited?’

Bobbie shook his head at the taller man. ‘No,’ he’d said through gritted teeth. ‘The door was already open. We though it didn’t look great. We called out to them and there was no answer so we went in and made sure they were all right. What’s the problem?’

The superintendent opened his hands out to say he didn’t mean offence. ‘I’m just trying to get the facts, gentlemen. I can, however, see that you two are both shaken up by what you saw - or thought you saw - and we shall go to their house and investigate. But in future I suggest you phone your friend in the first instance instead of wandering into someone else’s home. Friend or no friend, if I knew that someone had been into my house when no one was home I’d be more suspect of them than anything else. But, like I said, we’ll take a look.’

Forked lightening and stars floated in Greg’s vision. He sat bent over with his head between his knees, inhaling and exhaling.

A police by the name of Parker approached the men five minutes later jangling the keys to the patrol car outside. ‘You guys come with me and let’s try and sort this out,’ he said in an unwavering voice.

Greg remembered following Bobbie and Parker outside, wincing at the sudden bright light, temporarily blinding him. Then he’d got into the back of the patrol car with Bobbie and watched the world pass by as they drove to Amy and Tony’s plush residence.

Parker had the window down on the passenger side and the gust of wind was refreshing. Greg had fought off both nausea and dizziness. Now he sat with his head leaning against the glass no longer resisting the leaden eyelids closing.

The police car rolled to a halt right outside the shaded two-storey house. Parker killed the engine and opened the back door. Bobbie and Greg got out. Then Greg asked if he could stay outside. Parker regarded him closely then. Greg knew Parker was deciding whether or not to acquiesce to Greg’s request in case Greg was considering taking off. But the pallid, weary expression told Parker that Greg would be barely able to stride let alone run away.

‘Okay. Stay by the vehicle at all times.’ He turned to Bobbie and could see the front door was ajar. ‘You stay behind me.’

Bobbie nodded.

‘Where was the body, did you say?’

‘Body parts,’ Bobbie had corrected him. ‘In the bathtub. The room upstairs right at the top of the stairs.’

Greg didn’t know what exactly had happened when Parker and Bobbie had gone inside. However, when they emerged he heard Bobbie protesting, insisting that both he and Greg had seen dissected body parts and innards.

‘Bathtub was sparkling clean,’ Parker had said.

‘Someone cleaned once they’d heard Greg scream his head off then,’ Bobbie said, going scarlet.

‘It’s not a crime to clean your bathtub,’ Parker had pointed out.

Bobbie turned towards Greg. ‘Tell him! He thinks we’re lying.’

‘I saw body parts and major organs and long, dripping intestines that had been chewed and cut up,’ Greg had said. Then his gorge rushed up into his scalding oesophagus and spilled out onto the pavement.

‘Oh, gross,’ Parker had exclaimed.

If it hadn’t been for the patrol car Greg had no doubt he’d have fallen flat on his face.

‘Suppose you think he puked cause he saw a clean bathtub, huh?’ Greg had heard Bobbie ask Parker.

‘There’s no evidence. Not a drop of blood in the kitchen or bathroom or anywhere else in the house.’

‘Then why’d Amy and Tony both leave without locking the front door? Bobbie almost shouted.

‘You calm yourself, sir. I appreciate you what you said and it is a cause for concern, regarding the front door. But that’s not a crime, either. Negligent on their part, yes. Not a crime. I’ll write a short report on that but as far as the other thing goes unless you have actual evidence there’s not a thing we can do about it. Maybe you should’ve taken a picture or something...’

‘So that’s it?’

‘I’ll put their names down as potentially missing. But they’re not kids. If adults go missing all of a sudden, nine times out of ten, it’s because they want to be missing. No body - or body parts - is no evidence. No evidence means there’s not a whole lot I can do.’

‘Unbelievable,’ Bobbie said, shaking his head in disbelief.

‘I told you,’ Greg had said, spitting more bits of digested food out of his mouth.

‘Wanna lift back to the station? Your pick-up is there,’ Parker said.

‘Yeah, whatever,’ Bobbie had said. ‘Greg, you comin’?’

Greg had shaken his head. ‘Gonna walk and get some fresh air.

‘You okay?’ Bobbie asked.

‘Just bit sick after what we saw, that’s all.’

Bobbie nodded. ‘I know the feeling. I’m startin’ to feel sick ‘bout the fact that nobody is doing anything ‘bout it, but what do I know?’

Bobbie got in on the passenger side of the patrol car. Greg had stood on the pavement outside Amy and Tony’s house and waved Bobbie goodbye. Then he pivoted, stepped over the puddle of digested food and yellowish liquid and gazed up at the triangle-shaped window of the attic and froze...

A face barely recognisable met his gaze for a split second and then disappeared without trace. The ashen face of a ravaged, infected, man who distantly resembled the same features of a friend and town mechanic he once knew - but not any more.

As Greg sat in his armchair staring impassively out the picture window a deliberating dread coursed through his veins turning his blood to ice. The world had ended for him today. But soon the world for everyone in Rhos Meadow would end too.

***

On the other side of the rolling hilltops opposite the meadow that had become a drilling operation stood an old church and graveyard. The grass had overgrown into a wild mass of green. The church and the graveyard were situated between two hills and would go unnoticed to those whom weren’t aware of its existence.

Gary Williams stood to his six foot three height on the concrete step at the rear of the dilapidated stone building and sighed inwardly at the sight of the weed-infested terrain before him. The job would take more than one day’s hard graft, he thought. The job would take a week maybe two. And although he’d brought with him his electric trimmer to shred the long blades he’d have to find the ground first. It was too dangerous to go blindly using the apparatus and break it on a slab of earthed concrete.

Reverend Rhodri Jenkins had mentioned that he could use the small town’s local handyman’s services to do some trimming but this was a bit more than trimming. He needed the shears just so he could cut through the tangled jungle to be able to make a path and see where he was going. The only patch of ground was around the side of the premises where old man Gillespie and the poor Jack Zane had been buried.

As he began chopping away, he remembered enquiring to Bobbie as to Tony Little’s whereabouts. Gary hadn’t seen him since New Year’s Eve six months ago. Come to think of it he hadn’t seen Amy, either. Also, when he’d last seen Keith Gillespie to see if he had some fresh meat or eggs and asked after Ted, Keith told him he’d “come down with a bad case of the shits.” Gary had guffawed. The abruptly stopped when he saw Keith’s stone-faced expression.

‘What? It’s really serious or somethin’? Gary had asked.

Keith had nodded, solemn. ‘He said he thought it was just a bit of diarrhoea. When I asked him how many days he’d been having the shits he looked at me as if I’d whipped my old boy out and asked him to suck me off. “Days?” he said. “This is the second week”. Then I nearly shit myself. He went to the quack and they gave him some pills. It stopped for a coupla weeks. Jus’ thought to myself, shit happens, ya know? Then I wake up one Sunday morning hearing running footsteps passing my bedroom, the bathroom door slamming shut, the toilet seat been lifted and the biggest almightiest blow out I’ve ever heard. No fartin’ or nothin’, just a fountain of shit gushing outta him and splashing into the bowl. He came out cryin’, blubbering, sayin’ shit like his arse was like a blood orange.’

Silently, Gary had congratulated himself on not laughing again. He shouldn’t because what Keith was telling him wasn’t very humorous. Nevertheless, the way he spun the yarn was. ‘Has he been back to the quack?’ Gary then asked.

‘Fuck aye,’ Keith had said. ‘He was down there like fuckin’ Roadrunner. He said it felt like his arse was a gully. Quack gave him some more pills and it stopped for awhile. He seems all right for now. But every now an’ then he complains of a bad stomach, and I keep thinkin’ he’s gonna wake up one mornin’ and tell me he’s shit the bed.’

Gary apologised for laughing while laughing. ‘It’s just the way you said it, that’s all,’ he’d said.

‘Yeah. Laugh your cock off while you can, matey. Lemme tell you somethin’ though, I’m startin’ to think that our little town is turning into a shit hole. Call me a paranoid twat if you want, but a lotta fucked up things have happened since they started their hydro-bollocks on what used to be my land. And, yeah I know we got a shit load of dough, but I’m startin’ to wonder why they were so keen to pay us such an amount as quickly as they did. Know what I mean?’

The furthest thing from Gary’s mind then was laughing or even smiling. What Keith had said resonated and struck a chord of undeniable truth.

He was fully aware that Bobbie Hopkins and Greg Zane had claimed to have found the dismembered parts of a human in Tony and Amy’s bathtub. And had Tony or Amy been seen around town lately - not to mention the local constabulary finding no trace of anything macabre - Gary would have dismissed it and given both Bobbie and Greg a scolding for trespassing and making up such lies. Instead, Tony and Amy were as good as vanished. He’d phoned and called at the house a couple of times to no avail. However, if the rumours of what Bobbie and Greg had done were floating about their small town there was no wonder.

The Meadow Garage had sent a letter through the door informing Tony that if he did not make any contact in the near future he’d be dismissed.

Tony had not replied.

Two brothers from out of town had been taken on and were servicing the residents’ cars. They were meticulous but they didn’t shave a couple of quid off like Tony used to if he knew you were struggling financially.

Gary shook his head, ridding himself of morose thoughts. Then he continued chopping the overgrown weeds and brambles and grass away. His hands started sweating in the thick gardening gloves and he’d barely made a mark. He focused and cut at a ferocious pace, feeling the sweat pour from his brow and his back.

When he stopped to catch his breath, Gary could hear the steady flow of a nearby stream. It was that pleasant, nature sound that reminded him how he’d forgotten to bring a bottle of water or pop with him.

He cussed. The meandering, narrow country road sheltered by hedgerow and long, curving stone walls was too long and arduous a journey just to go to the convenience store and get himself something now. His cheese and ham sandwiches would be sticky and dry in his parched mouth come lunch. The pillow shaped clouds had parted and dispersed permitting glorious sunshine to shine its talent down on him.

Gary consulted his Addidas sports watch - 10:56am.

He’d only just started. It was too early for lunch. And he was at the foot of two towering hills sweating like a fat man going to the gym for the first time.

He turned to face the sound of the flowing stream, trickling over the rocks and used the shears to chop down the tangled foliage, grass and brambles and weeds until he could see the running water sparkling crystal-like. He hurried over and dropped to his knees, bent down, cupped his hands and splashed handfuls of water to his reddening face. Then he started drinking greedily from his cupped hands, draining every last drop.

After half a dozen handfuls of cold water running down his throat, cooling and refreshing him, Gary got up and went back to work.

Thirteen minutes before midday a sneezing fit assailed Gary. He couldn’t remember a time in his whole life he’d sneezed more than six times consecutively. Nor he could he remember ever suffering with hay fever until that day. He assumed it was one of the things his body was no longer able to defend against the older he got. Maybe from now on he’d suffer with hay fever unless he took precaution.

Gary Williams wasn’t suffering from hay fever or any other summertime allergy. However, he had inadvertently exposed himself to something poisonous.

***

September 2013

Imogen Jewett had left home at the age of nineteen to pursue a modelling career in London. The arguments, which had rapidly turned into shouting matches, with her parents (especially her dad) reached a crescendo where threats were made by her dad in the heat of the moment. Yet Imogen feared ever seeing let alone going back home after her father had called her a “dirty rotten whore”. He’d told her how his friends down the pub would ridicule him and laugh behind his back, talking in hushed whispers what they’d like to do to her.

Darren Jewett yelled, ‘You encourage them with your promiscuous demeanour and your constant flirting. And when they grope your arse you like it. That’s why you never kept a boyfriend. You let them buy you lots of clothes and shit, fuck their brains out and then dump them. It’s a miracle you’re not pregnant; serves you right if you ever catch a sexually transmitted disease. Now you wanna go and do this on a public stage. You just don’t wanna work. You wanna flirt, fuck and be the spoilt little brat you always were.’

‘That’s enough!’ her brother Peter had barked.

‘Yeah, that’s it,’ her father had said, nodding. ‘You hang along for the ride and be her pimp. One good argument over money and she’ll kick you out; accuse you of not getting paid the same amount as she does for taking her clothes off for blokes and flashing her boobs for all the lads’ mags.’

Imogen had done her utmost to convince her parents that a lot of the glamour modelling was very artistic - not like porn. But they wouldn’t hear a word she had to say. They accused her of being naïve, and in hindsight she might have been. Nevertheless, Imogen had tried it for two whole years, bringing in a substantial wage before growing tired of the industry. The glamour magazines had permitted her to keep her bikini on for a short while then started needling her and nagger her that she should lose the bra. She complied. Then shortly after, they did the same thing regarding her knickers. There was no frontal shots. However, some of the flimsy underwear revealed the shape of her genitals. Then, later on, were the nude shots from different angles, which didn’t reveal her pubic hair or her vulva but everything else. It turned out it was as close to porn without it being actual porn.

It meant more money. However, it also meant that she’d gained a few admirers who would follow her and spot her in nightclubs and grope her and offer to pay her for sex. Her father’s hurtful words resonated in her head, louder than the din of dance music booming from the speakers.

It wasn’t long before Imogen and Peter returned to Rhos Meadow and bought a red-bricked semi-detached house in the new cul-de-sac at the brow of the hill on the outskirts of the small farming town.

Her mother convinced her father to let Imogen work at the pub, and Peter got a job in the slaughterhouse on the other side of what used to be a cornfield on the fringes of the woods, which were now the grounds of a drilling operation. He hated his job. It made him feel guilty being part of an infrastructure that involved the mass killing of cows and pigs. Not only that when he went outside for meal relief there was no peace and quiet like there used to be. Instead he could hear the constant droning of trucks travelling to and fro.

The money Peter had made London working for Asda and later on as a security guard at a multi-storey car park and Imogen’s part-time job as a receptionist for Chelsea football club and the glamour modelling got them by. Now they were back home they had already put down nearly ten thousand on their home.

Imogen had finished another shift in the Hope & Anchor. She didn’t wait for her dad’s permission to go. Instead she waited until exactly seven o’clock, grabbed her coat and bag and took her leave.

‘Bye, sweetheart,’ Darren said in a melodic voice.

Imogen didn’t respond. She shook her head in disdain at her father’s condescending tone. He always put on the “Oh, never mind. Your dreams were squashed like a rotten tomato, just like I said they would, didn’t I?” voice and smiled knowingly. He relished every moment of her melancholy.

‘Fuck off, you sad twat,’ Imogen muttered.

‘What’s that?’ Darren asked, only hearing the word fuck.

‘I said grow-up.’

‘Just because you’re silly little aspirations turned to cinders, sweetheart, there’s no need to take it out on me. I was simply looking out for your best interests.’

Imogen strode down the short hallway, opened the back door and stepped outside onto the asphalt car park.

Her mum was upstairs, refusing to see her because of the pictures she’d seen on the most popular magazines and newspapers splashed across every newsstand and shelf in every store which sold newspapers and magazines. Her precious grown-up girl was famous for her gravity-defining boobs and her small yet curvaceous bum.

Imogen did feel bad, however, when Peter mentioned that the reason behind their mother not wanting to see her was due to the fact that while cleaning the toilets in Neath College where she worked, she’d discovered a magazine in the boys toilets of one of the magazines where Imogen posed pouring cream down the front of her over her mountainous bosom, legs wide open with nothing but a black G-string covering her privates.

As she walked on the pavement alongside the main road, the air she breathed was heavy. Worse than being humid. She only noticed because of her asthma. She only used her inhaler before going to the gym. But she could go days without using it and be fine. She only took when she had to because when the respiratory clinic contact her to arrange an appointment every six months they wanted to know why she hadn’t ordered any more.

The air didn’t seem to exist. She could actually feel her lungs working extra hard to draw oxygen into her. To her right she could see all the pipes and drilling apparatus that now consumed what used to be a cornfield and beautiful yellow and green meadows. Beyond that the green corrugated steel structure of the slaughterhouse where Peter worked.

Every other time she’d walked past the fenced off countryside she’d savoured the fresh, natural scent of grass and the corn swaying rhythmically, whispering in the gentle breeze.

Now it was vague memory.

Imogen could actually feel her airway closing making breathing arduous.

Her forehead prickled.

She focused on inhaling slowly and exhaling deeply, counting the seconds.

She knew the airways were like branches, which gave out carbon dioxide and breathed in oxygen. But when the branches grew taut as though invisible hands squeezed them shut, she started wheezing. Her mouth opened wide in the shape of an O. Imogen willed herself to draw breath in, to open her airways and fill her lungs. But there was no oxygen in the starved air.

Panicking, Imogen pivoted and stared up and down the main road for an approaching car to flag down.

Nothing.

A high-pitched keening came out of her. Her airway was shrivelling, choking her.

The colour drained from her face. Sparks and dark spots blotted her vision. An ice cold wave flooded her head, freezing her. Then the world from her perspective started to tremble, then waver before blinking in and out of focus and then blinking on and off.

Imogen’s trembling legs had no feeling, and therefore she had no say in their inability to keep her vertical. She barely felt her body crumpling against the timber fence or her form folding in half as she hit the grass.

The last thing she saw was the mauve colour of the sunset sky.