by Angela Slatter
The child was dead by the time I found her, but she suited my purposes perfectly.
Tiny delicate skin suit, meat sack, air thief.
The flesh was still warm, which is best—too hard to shrug on something in full rigor—and I crammed my bulk into the small body much as one might climb into a box or trunk to hide. A fold here, a dislocation there, a twinge of discomfort and curses when something tore, stretched just too far.
The rent was in the webbing of the right hand. Only a little rip, no matter. The sinister manus was my favoured choice of weapon anyway. I sat up, rolled my new shoulders—gently, carefully—then stood, rocking back slightly on legs too tender, too young to support my leviathan weight. I took a step, felt the world tilt, caught my balance before I fell and risked another tear; looked down at the single pink shoe, with its bows and glitter detail; took in the strange white cat face that ran around the hem of the pink and white dress; rubbed my miniature fingers against the dried brown stains that blotched the insides of my thigh.
The child had died hard.
The sliver of me that retained empathy ached, just a bit. But I could smell the scent of the one who’d done this, and I would follow that scent. The hunt was on, my blood was up. Time was of the essence—my presence will speed decay. I pitched my head up so my nostrils caught the evening breeze and breathed deeply, filling my borrowed lungs, so the memory would remain.
Again, I took a step, more, all steady.
Determined.
Forward.
Here’s the thing: evil used to be different.
It used to be black and white. It used to be more obvious. Nowadays? Everyone on this planet is tainted to some degree. Once upon a time, there were villains of a memorable—perhaps even admirable—scale. But now?
Without contrast it’s hard to see the differences.
I miss that—the delineation of great evil from banal nastiness.
I’d walked for two hours and the girl’s legs were sore. I sighed and stepped into his front garden with its fastidiously dug flowerbeds planted with purple-red and saffron blossoms. The house was neat and tidy, a thin building running the length of the block, rather than across—I didn’t need eyes to tell me that, just the child’s memories. I dug around in her fading box of remembrances and found the floor plan of the house, vague as if seen in a rush. Hallway, all the doors to the left: a living room, then two more rooms, then a kitchen at the very back where he’d taken her for a glass of water. A staircase near the front door leading up: two bedrooms at the front and a bathroom at the back. The second bedroom she remembered most.
The walls had a shimmer to them, and dancing fairies were stencilled around the baseboards and just beneath the architraves. The bed was covered in a Barbie-branded duvet and so many frilly purple cushions they seemed like an eruption of fabric mumps. Shelves ran across two of the walls, burdened with My Little Ponies in every hue and style, too high for a child to reach.
And the cupboard, painted pink so it appeared as a mouth in a white face. And inside the cupboard, all those shoes, all those single left shoes, tossed in like so much refuse, as if the fetish could never be tidy. As if the inner workings would always be messy. Somewhere in that pile, maybe balancing precariously on the top, maybe toppled down the back, was the shoe he’d taken as she sat on the bed, before he did anything.
The mind began to shut down, the memories becoming the blurred white-blue of blind eyes. I clenched a hand, heard the joints crack. Time was running short.
I didn’t need long.
A knock on the door, harder than intended, hurt my knuckles. I heard him moving around inside. I coiled inside the body, bracing myself against the slow wash of congealing blood and decaying organs, against the sea of human soup the child was becoming, and prepared to spring the moment I saw what I needed.
He opened the door.
Mr. Timmons gave me nothing. Nothing but a slow steady blink. His eyes shifted from the dark marks around the delicate throat, down past the bruised thighs, and lit on the bare foot.
No fear. No guilt. No remorse.
I felt sawn off at the knees. Robbed. At a loss.
He twitched a sort of smile in my direction and slowly closed the door once more.
And I didn’t do a thing.
I, who once commanded legions, who fell through fire and rose again, who felt the earth shudder beneath my feet, who took into me the souls of the greatest of the worst, I . . . did nothing.
The woman was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But then, aren’t they all?
I’d lain quiet for ages in the alley, just the bare foot sticking out to get attention. About four in the morning, she staggered along in her high heels, saw the pale flash of flesh and stumbled over to kneel beside me. The woman leaned in and I grabbed her. I wrapped my arms around her neck and covered her mouth with one hand, pinching her nostrils shut with the fingers of the other. I held her that way until the life drained out and she released her last breath, emptying herself in a final humiliating gesture of humanity. It’s easier when they’re dead, they no longer have the will to fight; if you have to expend energy battling for a body, you’re not in best shape for the contest to come. I stood over her and let the child’s form go, unpicked myself from the rapidly putrefying corpse, then watched as it hit the asphalt heavily. It made a wet noise as the side of the face gave way on impact and the belly burst like an overripe melon.
I stayed outside for a few moments, stretching, feeling the night on what passes for my skin, just for a few moments, then did my contortionist’s act and plunged into the woman. Roomier, to be sure, broad across the hips, fleshy thighs, the strange weight of breasts hanging at the chest—I cupped them, jiggled them about, found nothing to justify the fascination with them. Then I felt the fizz and buzz of alcohol in the veins, the unsteadiness of the legs, the jelly of the knees and that ache in the lower back from being pushed at the wrong angle by the height of the shoes.
I’m sorry, I said to no one in particular. I don’t even know if I was. It’d been a long time since I’d expressed sentiment to anyone—anything beyond disgust and a sort of righteous boredom. I said it again, just to hear my voice, I’m sorry. I need . . .
But I didn’t continue. Didn’t finish. Had neither necessity nor desire to offer explanations to the dead.
I sat next to him on the park bench.
He was feeding the birds, watching all the little girls on the jungle gym, nodding, friendly, to their mothers and nannies. He didn’t notice me. At least, not until his nose began to twitch. An unwashed body will garner attention sooner rather than later. His head swivelled and his eyes took me in—not that I would have been of any interest to him. He smiled and pointed towards the children as they played.
‘Which one’s yours?’ he asked, although he must have known, couldn’t have thought for a moment that my shell, still in its nightclub finery with smudged makeup and bird’s-nest hair, had care of any child. He grinned slyly, as if we were in cahoots.
I turned towards him, shifted my torso, the body beginning to lose its flexibility. My clumsiness made it look as though I was showing him the woman’s breasts, presenting them.
Disdain. Contempt. Amusement. All of these were in his face.
I raised my stolen hand and clicked its fingers. Sparks flew but didn’t take. I did it again and there were flames—at first just at the tips, then they crept to engulf the hand, scorching the arm, catching quickly on the synthetic fabrics of the woman’s outfit. It sped across the shoulders, split its forces and half-leapt downward, while the other continued upwards to set the bleach-blonde coif ablaze. I smiled at him from lips that curled and blackened and shrivelled back against teeth furred from no brushing.
I watched him long and hard, waiting, poised for that look, that hint, that signal.
For the light in his eyes that said he was afraid—because they’re all afraid, in the end, and that’s why I can take them—for the whimpering as he begged for his life.
His eyes remained dead, but for a lazy curiosity.
He stood and walked away as my body burned to a symphony of children’s screams.
I followed him all the next day, incorporeal.
Vengeance has been my path for so many years. Centuries. Aeons. It’s all I’ve known, or all I remember. I have taken what was just, from men great and ordinary, their only commonality being they had stolen lives that did not belong to them. One life or thousands unjustly snuffed out will bring my kind like a hunting hound. I have seen them all learn fear, all tremble when faced with their crimes and beg for forgiveness, more time, another chance. But this man . . .
There was nothing great about this man. There was nothing special but his refusal to fear.
I ventured into his house, picked through his things while he went about his daily chores. Sat on the sad mountain of shoes in the closet and wracked my brain. I heard the phone ring, and he let the answering machine get it. An official voice, tired, disinterested, left him a message, obviously used to no response, but duty-bound to follow through. I listened, then watched intently as he quite deliberately erased the recording, not bothering to take down the number or name the caller had left.
I thought I had my answer.
The smell of antiseptic was sharp enough to sting.
Soft-soled shoes squeaking on waxed floors, clangs of metal trays and bedpans, trolleys banging through swinging doors, alarmed squeals from heart rate monitors as people died, the constant blip of the lesser machines, the swoosh of uniforms as staff hurried by.
And finally, a private room, a quiet space, oddly enough in shades of pink, a room meant for two patients but in which only one was in evidence. The bed was a striking piece of machinery, up-down-sideways buttons, the not-quite-white linen from too many washings, a curtain around it all, ostensibly for privacy, but really so no one is forced to watch someone dying.
The woman was younger than she appeared, but still older than I imagined. She looked, no matter her real age, like a crone. She was shrivelled, cannulas in both hands, tied to a battery of technology. A slit marred her throat with a tube poking through it, and a machine breathed for her. Her hair was wiry iron-grey, her face etched with lines, her eyelashes absent. Her mouth, which I imagine to have been often pursed with disapproval in life, hung slack. Saliva gathered in the deep furrows at the corner, some dried and flaking beneath the new layers of damp spittle.
I doubted she had much spirit left, no will to fight.
I touched fingers to her thin, thin chest and looked for a way in. Through the skin, through the very pores and I felt . . . I felt almost as if I was being pulled down as much as I was entering in. She didn’t fight me as her life limped away, rather she swam around like the dregs swirled in a coffee cup and I sensed myself . . . contaminated.
But still, I sat the wizened carcass up, and carefully turned the machines off before I tore out probes and the sticky pads of plastic that connected us. No use causing a stir, sending a signal. It was going to be hard enough to walk the old bat out of the hospital.
I swung my blue-veined legs off the edge of the bed and gauged the distance to the door. One chunk at a time would suffice: bed to door, door to fire stairs, fire stairs to parking lot, parking lot to the end of the first block, first block to the second block, then his house halfway down that very street, not so far away.
The linoleum was cold beneath my feet.
The house was dark, but not as dark as inside the woman’s head. Insistent thoughts of her son papered the walls of her memory. He was small, so small in there. So tender, so sweet, so vulnerable.
Ill. I felt ill.
I stood at the door to the main bedroom, watching the moonlight sheer through the curtains. I traced its trajectory to the bed. It was empty, the coverlet undisturbed. I backed away. The brittle bones in the feet seemed friable, liable to snap at any moment. The steps down the hallway, the thin tightly woven carpet, gave no comfort. The door to the princess room was ajar. I pushed it open. It did not creak as I slipped inside.
He lay flat, head thrown back, mouth open. Snores issued forth. The mountain of cushions had suffered an avalanche, and I couldn’t help but trip against them as I approached. Light streamed in, hitting the sequins and glitter on the scattered squares of overstuffed fabric, throwing beams around the walls.
I drew in my own weight until the body was as light as a bird’s bones, and I crawled onto the bed. My movements caused no ripple. I knelt on his chest and began to gradually let the weight loose.
His breathing became irregular; he started to struggle and soon enough he opened his eyes. Blinked to try and make out the face that hovered above his in the moonlit dark. His lids peeled back, widened in astonishment. I leaned forward, hungering for that look, that hint . . .
His right hand wrapped around the old woman’s ankle. I glanced down as his fingers caressed the cool, corrugated flesh, tracing the ridges of ancient veins, moving upwards.
I fled. I shot out of every aperture I could find and pressed myself against the ceiling as the barely alive body slumped onto Mr. Timmons. His hand did not stop moving.
I did not cling there long. I flew through the window and fell, tumbling, to the garden beds, pressed the dirt rough against my skin, breathed deeply the fertiliser’s acrid perfume. All of this felt clean compared to the contagion that seemed to still coat to me.
I stood, shaking, and slid into the clean black of night.
Angela Slatter is the author of the Verity Fassbinder supernatural crime series (Vigil, Corpselight, Restoration) and nine short story collections, including The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings. Her gothic fantasy novels, All These Murmuring Bones and Morwood, will be out from Titan in 2021 and 2022 respectively. She’s won a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, an Australian Shadows Award, and six Aurealis Awards. Her work’s been translated into French, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, Bulgarian and Russian. You can find her at www.angelaslatter.com, @AngelaSlatter on Twitter, and as @angelalslatter on Instagram for photos of food and dogs that belong to someone else.