Itch!, page 14
‘It looks a lot like the straw queen,’ she said, feeling exhausted.
‘It does that. I used to make the straw queen every year, you know.’
Josie shook her head. She didn’t know that.
‘Oh, yes. I took great pride in it. I have nothing but the greatest respect for our customs. Our traditions. It’s human nature to form habits and idiosyncrasies specific to where you lay your head. It’s how you root yourself to the land, to your home. It’s what home is, for a lot of people.’
‘I never really felt at home anywhere, after Mum died.’
‘Home is not just who you live with. It’s a way of life, a sequence of habits. Ah, I talk too much. You’ve got me rambling. What was I saying?’
‘You used to make the queen.’
‘My hands gave out.’ He sounded bitter about it. ‘They gave the job to someone else.’ Old Jacob shot Josie a strange look. ‘Of course he doesn’t care about it like I did. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.’
‘Who?’
But Jacob refused to elaborate. He leaned over a desk drawer, searching for something.
Josie looked at the other items piled on his desk amongst the books and papers. A divination mirror, several porcelain statues of a lady with a hare’s head atop a graceful, long neck, breasts bared and covered in vines, leaves and fern motifs. A statuette of Baphomet, a scattering of clay models that were phallic symbols. Mandrake roots in labelled jars. More poppets, these seemingly made of wax. One of the dolls caught her eye. Josie picked it up.
Although it was faceless, she could see who it was meant to represent. The miniature biker helmet in the poppet’s hand, the black jacket, the tiny carpenter’s chisel in the other. Two small coils of wood shavings, glued to his front.
That’s my dad, she realised, shocked.
The poppet was bound tightly with layers of black sheep’s wool, wrapped round and around the doll as if it were a spindle.
Why did Old Jacob have this?
Was it to help, or hinder? The two men had never gotten along, their dislike of each other the stuff of local lore.
Josie held the poppet up to Old Jacob for an explanation.
‘What did you argue with my father about?’ she asked, as casually as she could, as if the answer didn’t matter much to her either way. ‘I never could get it out of Dad.’
Jacob continued to rummage, avoiding her gaze.
‘Hang on,’ he said, distracted. ‘One thing at a time, would you? I’ve got something here you’ll find useful, I just need to . . .’
Josie put the poppet down. She was growing tired of all the mysteries piling on top of each other. Her skin was so agitated that she felt faint. The dust Old Jacob was stirring up during his search swirled visibly in the air, attacking the back of Josie’s throat.
‘Can I use your bathroom?’ she asked politely.
Old Jacob chuckled. ‘I can’t promise it’s very clean. Upstairs and on the left.’
Josie left him to search, desperate to be alone for a moment so she could recalibrate.
Tiptoeing over and around yet more teetering piles of newspapers, journals and pamphlets – papery death traps waiting to wrong-foot intruders – she mounted the stairs. The first door on the landing was open and she glanced in. The bed inside was a big old four-poster with twisted mahogany columns holding aloft an ornate wooden tester panel, from which desiccated velvet drapes hung, moth-eaten and ragged. The mattress and coverlet were lost beneath mountains of junk, like most parts of Jacob’s house. Josie wondered where the old man slept. She doubted it was in anything as conventional as a bed.
Then something beyond the bed caught her attention.
Although she knew she shouldn’t snoop, the ants made her bold. They nudged her into the bedroom and over to the far wall, where she found a large wooden cabinet standing on spindly legs. It struck her as ominous, yet important. Josie felt her body calm momentarily as she stood before it. It looked like an old apothecary cabinet. Victorian, or perhaps older. Two beautiful panelled oak doors opened wide to reveal dozens of tiny drawers inside, each one meticulously labelled with ivory plaques, the names of each substance, herb, chemical and solution singed into the yellowing bone with enormous care and precision. Above the drawers were filigree alcoves. Rows of old glass bottles were lined up within, contents visible inside through the clear glass, tops sealed with wax cloth and string, others plugged with glass or cut crystal stoppers. The labels were easy enough to read, for they’d been written in a neat, old-fashioned hand.
Josie read through the ingredients. Powdered rhubarb. Camphorated spirit. Oil of almonds. Opodeldoc. Cinnamon. Willow bark. Nettle herb. She felt like she was back in the King’s Arms, sorting through Angela’s bottles on the windowsill. Why were people in the countryside so obsessed with herbal remedies? The potions in this cabinet must have been bottled hundreds of years ago, given the age of the labels, the staining of the glass. Josie wondered how much the antique collection was worth. Thousands, probably. Jacob had stuff like this lying all over his house, valuables he could make a fortune off, if he sent them to auction. He could easily make enough to fix his roof, just by selling this cabinet.
Josie kept reading, fascinated by the contents. Medicine in the old days was as dangerous as the malady, by sounds of it. Liquorice. Turpentine. Cream of tartar. Bicarbonate of soda. Epsom salts. Linseed oil. Tartaric acid. Laudanum. Stomachic powder. Paregoric elixir. Juniper berries. Saltpetre. Carbolic oil. Borax. How anyone survived getting sick back then was beyond her. Magnesium sulphate. Enemas. Senna. Arrowroot.
Pufferfish toxin.
Hemlock.
Curare.
Josie went ice-cold, from head to toe.
She gazed at the three small bottles, the glass of which was a deep blue, different to the rest. Blue, for poison. Unsure, she reached out, expecting the itch to start up again as she brushed one of the bottles lightly with her fingers. Nothing. They looked empty, on closer inspection.
She shook her head, unused to the silence in her skull. The quiet was unnerving, after the constant activity she’d been incubating since finding Laurel’s body.
Should she take the bottles? Give them to Wilkes?
No. It would only cause more trouble. Jacob was a good man, everyone knew that.
Josie remembered Mrs Howell, sobbing into a sodden tissue.
Unsure of herself, she turned to survey the rest of the room.
And saw a terrarium.
On the opposite side of the bedroom to where she stood, the giant glass case stretched wall to wall, floor to ceiling, built around the doorframe. Josie could see, in cross-section, layers of dirt, tunnels, cavities and pits, and, scrambling about within: a massive ant colony, encased.
A tiny snickering ripple ran through her guts. At the same time, the thin, buzzing whine returned to her ears, the sibilant noise akin to a movement of tiny bows scraping across wire strings.
There you are, she thought.
She took a step towards the terrarium. There were thousands of tiny, amber-coloured insects behind the glass. Millions, maybe. A huge colony, a demented mass, all of them working in kinetic, manic unison, trying to match her movements, she saw. They were desperate to get to her.
‘What the fuck,’ she breathed, aghast.
She took a step to the left. The ants surged together, following her. She took a step to the right, feeling hysteria tickle at the edges of her headache. The ants swerved, rushing in the opposite direction, again, to copy her motion.
She jumped up and down, once, on the spot.
The ants leapt with her, in a frenetic, bizarre imitation, landing in a pooled mess, whereupon they dispersed, reorganised, and threw themselves at the glass again.
Josie felt herself take a step towards them. They called to her.
Inside, the whine intensified as her own private colony began screaming. She found herself in agony, being pulled from both outside and in, dragged towards a communion she didn’t want.
And then she was suddenly sprawled against the terrarium, arms stretched wide, cheek pressed against the casing, and her fist was pounding the glass, over and over, as a million tiny, twitching, screeching, uncontrollable urges collided inside of her to form a great outpouring of fear, and anger, and frustration. Josie pounded and pounded until the glass of the terrarium cracked. She kept beating at the splintering case until she punched through the glass entirely, with a great, wild roar, and the contents of it burst outwards, showering her in an explosion of red ants, gravel, larvae, sand, and soil that knocked her to the floor.
Panting, gagging, she thrashed and flipped herself over. On her knees, now, coated in well-tilled earth, cramming handfuls of ants into her mouth, fist after fist after fist, feeling their tiny, biting bodies smash under her teeth, feeling their juices squirt into her mouth, swallowing them down, even though it burned, Josie ate like a starving woman, and kept eating, because there was room inside of her still, despite everything. There was room for more. Intrusive thoughts rose, wild, frightening, tightly knitted together like living ant structures themselves, insectile pincers stabbing directly at her brain, so she began to wish she’d never questioned the silence, because what followed in its wake was so, so much worse.
Kill, the thoughts screeched, insistently.
Kill.
Kill.
‘Who?’ Josie sobbed, as she continued mashing handfuls of ants into her mouth. Her headache was so intense she could no longer see. There was only blackness, punctuated with the indelible white outlines of tiny wriggling worms, as if she’d not scraped them away on her walk to Laurel’s house.
Kill, the thoughts replied, unhelpfully.
Kill him.
Chapter 27
When she returned to some semblance of reality, Josie was still on her knees in Old Jacob’s bedroom. The terrarium was whole again, the glass unbroken, the contents firmly layered behind the casing. The red ants in the terrarium bumbled along busily, just ants in a colony, going about their business. Utterly disinterested in her.
Josie looked at her hands. They were empty.
But I can still taste them, she thought, confused, lost.
‘I found it,’ a voice said, from the doorway. ‘What are you doing down there?’
Desolate, Josie blinked the last of the worm shadows from her vision, spat the last of the phantom ants out from behind her teeth.
‘I think there’s something wrong with me,’ she whispered miserably.
‘Oh, no doubt,’ Old Jacob said, limping into the room and holding out a hand to help Josie up. ‘But then, there’s something wrong with most of us, don’t you think?’
He handed her a rolled-up cylinder of paper, held in place with a piece of straw binding. ‘Take this,’ he said, hauling on Josie’s arm until she was on her feet, wobbly, but able to stand again. Her headache had subsided to a dull thudding sensation that circled around her scar.
‘What is it?’
‘You’ll see,’ the old man said, steering her out of the bedroom and back towards the staircase. ‘Take it home with you. Time is getting along. It’ll be dark, soon enough. Best be off.’
Josie nodded. Her dad was making dinner. Being late for such a rare event was not an option, no matter how shaken she was.
Josie paused before stumbling back down the stairs. It seemed impossible that Jacob managed to get himself up and down them every day without breaking his neck. She found herself suddenly concerned for the old man, living alone in a house that could have easily been a museum. If he fell, nobody would notice, not for days.
‘I used to be afraid of you, when I was a kid,’ she said, unsure why she felt the need to share this piece of information.
‘You wouldn’t be the first.’
‘I’m seeing things, Jacob.’ Josie felt the acute pain of repressed tears adding to the soreness around Lena’s scar. ‘I see things that shouldn’t be there.’
Old Jacob tapped the side of his nose thoughtfully.
‘Or perhaps,’ he said, cryptic as ever, ‘you’re finally seeing what is actually there.’
When Josie made her way outside, leaving Jacob behind in his house of curiosities, gazing at her through a gap in his lopsided French blinds to make sure she was really on her way, she found it was snowing.
Chapter 28
Josie knew something was wrong the second she reached her front door, cold, weary, and sore all over. On the step outside, a pair of trainers rested on pegs, upside down to keep the rain off.
They were not her dad’s size. They also looked expensive. The treads were hardly worn down at all.
Josie’s heart sank like a stone.
She pushed open the door as quietly as she could, feeling her pulse pound loudly in her ears. The pain around her scar gathered and resettled in the space between her eyes, a tight, horrible tension, a preamble to more tears. Josie was sick of crying, or feeling as if she needed to.
The ants stirred angrily, a call and response to the sudden sense that she was under threat. Was that perfume she could smell?
Yes. She knew it well.
Voices travelled softly down the small staircase leading from the apartment entry door up to the kitchen. Two people, deep in amicable conversation.
Cutlery scraped on plates, glasses chinked.
Josie climbed up towards the unseen pair as if in a dream, still clutching the rolled cylinder Old Jacob had given her, snowflakes melting on her shoulders and sleeves. Hard to tell if she was floating or walking; she only felt herself rising up towards danger, while everything inside her screamed, No! Not safe! She doesn’t love you, remember?
You’re nothing without me. Are you a good girl, Josie?
Josie entered the split-level apartment and came face to face with her father, who was pouring wine into a couple of tumblers with an affability afforded to very few individuals, including Josie herself.
‘Hello, sweetheart,’ he said, pouring Beaujolais.
A place, Josie saw, had been laid at the tiny dining table for her, next to two placemats that Josie didn’t even know they had. No television lap dinners tonight. Her father had gone all out, for the first time in . . . well, ever.
‘We’ve got company.’
Standing next to her father – as comfortably as if nothing bad had ever happened and there was not, in fact, a restraining order requiring her to keep a minimum of fifty metres away at all times – looking more gorgeous than ever and wearing a wide, predatory smile on her face, was Lena.
‘Hello, Josie,’ she said softly.
Josie couldn’t reply. She stood, dumb, unresponsive, her entire body rigid with fear.
The past year had been kinder to Lena than it had to Josie, that much was obvious. She was startlingly beautiful – devastatingly so. Her large eyes seemed to hold all the light in the apartment, her skin glowed, her hair was thick and smooth. Josie could smell her perfume, stronger now. She’d always loved that smell, until they broke up. It had lingered on her possessions for months, long after she’d moved out, no matter how many times she ran her clothes through the wash. Lena was clever like that; she’d probably sprayed Josie’s belongings deliberately, soaking them in Dior, knowing it would haunt her when her physical presence no longer could.
She looked more robust than the last time they’d met, as if she’d been hitting the gym a lot. It suited her. There was a hint of sadness in her smile, sadness that Josie could immediately tell was of the manufactured variety. Of course, Lena could weaponise any emotion, always had been able to. For a split second, memories of all the good times came flooding back to her in a hot, perfumed wave: all the sex and the intimacy and the exploration, all the nights spent rolling around in bed and on the couch and on the floor and sometimes on the kitchen counters; the intoxication of having Lena, the thrill of having been had by her; the late nights in the city, the walks along the Thames, holding hands in the back of taxi cabs, the long looks at each other over the tops of steaming coffee cups; the private jokes, the weekends away, the mundane shit like folding laundry together, cleaning the apartment, ordering takeaways, the TV shows they’d loved, the books they’d discussed . . .
Josie shook her head, deliberately breaking the thought spiral.
‘No,’ she said, quietly and firmly, more firmly than she felt.
The ants rattled in her throat, lending her voice strength, so she repeated herself.
‘No.’
‘But your dad invited me,’ Lena said, in an imitation of a wounded voice.
‘You can’t be here.’ Josie took a step back.
Josie’s father set the wine bottle on the table.
‘I thought you two should talk,’ he said, and Josie could not believe the words coming out of his mouth. ‘I was never happy with how it all played out. I always assumed there had been a big mix-up.’
Josie stared at him, feeling as if the floor were falling away beneath her feet. How could he think that, when he’d seen her in the hospital? When he’d waited for her to wake up from a coma? When he’d supported her through the restraining order process, giving her statement to the police, helping her move out of London and back to the Forest?
What had he done?
Lena opened her arms. ‘Come here,’ she said, and a terrified Josie almost did, but she caught herself at the last moment, or maybe the colony caught her, reminding her that her body belonged to them, not Lena, even with the memory of her lover’s tongue slipping between her legs.
‘I’ve missed you so much,’ Lena said. ‘I know how it ended between us. I know I shouldn’t be here. There’s so much I want to say, so many misunderstandings to clear up . . .’
‘Lena’s been telling me all about it,’ Josie’s father added, leaning back against the wall and sipping on his wine. He seemed oblivious to the pain he was putting his daughter through. He seemed, if anything, proud of himself. Like he was making a difference, intervening between the children, sorting out a minor disagreement. ‘How it was all a big mistake, how everything got misinterpreted. She’s really sorry, Josie. When she showed up earlier, begging to be let in so she could tell her side of the story . . . I didn’t know how to say no. And there’s lots you never told me.’
