Itch!, page 24
The cluster headaches on the front and back of Josie’s head did not go away. Her braid pulled at her scalp, worsening the discomfort. Josie decided to shave her head. She asked Angela to help.
‘Where do you keep the scissors?’ she asked, without preamble, sticking her head into the bar where Angela was doing a crossword puzzle and throwing biscuits absent-mindedly at Finn. It was another one of those scenes that looked like an oil painting: Tavern Wench and Hound in Sunbeam. The sun lingered on Angela’s curly black hair, glinting as it picked up the crystal pendants she wore in a cluster around her neck. She was a very lovely-looking woman, Josie appreciated, not for the first time. Statuesque. There was something eminently peaceful about Angela, something she emitted, like she was her own light source.
The landlord looked up. Smiled. ‘I wondered when you’d get round to asking me that.’
Josie yanked on her braid, sharply. ‘It’s long overdue, I think,’ she said.
‘I agree.’
They used the en suite next to Josie’s room. Angela found a pair of dressmaking scissors, large-bladed, lethally sharp, to snip the braid off at the root.
Instantly, Josie felt lighter. Freer. She rolled her head around, feeling the muscles in her neck click and loosen.
Angela handed her the braid.
Josie stared at it like it was a live snake in the palm of her hand.
Hang it from its hook, her father’s voice suddenly muttered in her memory.
Josie frowned. ‘He always told me to keep my hair like this because Mum liked it that way,’ she said, slowly. ‘Maybe she did, I don’t know.’
‘She had short hair herself, the whole time I knew her.’
‘Then he said it was the easiest way of keeping me tidy, after she died. He said he didn’t know how to style a girl’s hair and didn’t have time to learn. I always believed him. Even when he was being . . . vile.’
Angela went away, came back with a pair of clippers she sometimes used to trim Finn’s coat down to manageable levels when it got particularly straggly, or he rolled in a patch of burrs or stickyweed that needed cutting out.
‘Star treatment,’ she said, plugging the device into the shaver socket above the en-suite sink.
‘Always,’ Josie smiled, and the two women looked at each other in the mirror hanging over the sink.
Angela’s face drooped.
‘The thing I can’t get my head around . . .’ She trailed off, shaking her head. ‘He did all those things to all those women while you were tucked up in your bed not twenty feet away. A child. Innocent. Just sleeping while he did God knows what. That’s what I can’t fathom. You were there, close by, the entire time.’
Josie took the plait, wrapped it around her fist until it formed a hairy knuckle-wrap. Inside, the ants were boiling. Josie was so full, she knew they would spew out if she let them. She fought for control. The eruption wouldn’t serve, not yet.
Head bent over the sink, Josie held still while Angela dutifully ran the pair of electric clippers over her scalp. Her remaining hair came off in chunks, tickling her nose so she found it hard not to sneeze.
When Angela got to the back of Josie’s head, specifically the occipital lump that stuck out at the base of her skull, the landlord murmured out loud, shutting off the clippers.
‘What did you do here?’ she asked, running her finger delicately over a patch of ridged skin, barely discernible to Josie’s fingertips. Hidden in the thick mass of her hair for all this time, it was only detectable now as a tiny difference in texture and depth, like a crease, a shallow ridge, not the large and messy scar on her forehead.
‘I don’t know,’ Josie said, into the sink bowl. ‘I didn’t even know I had that.’
‘You must have fallen off something, cracked your head maybe.’
‘Maybe,’ Josie said, but she knew that wasn’t it.
Sometimes, when she replayed the mind-movie of Lena throwing the brick, Lena’s face flickered, replaced with the face of her father. Sometimes he was wearing Emmet’s mask, sometimes he was not. The brick was sometimes a brick, other times it was a large rock. Josie had secrets still buried inside her, secrets that the colony were unearthing slowly, one by one. She might not get to the bottom of them all, as some of the memories had been placed in a box and sealed shut. But the colony demanded retribution for every last one.
Chapter 45
Old Jacob finally found his way out of hospital care and back to Ellwood, the forest, and, of course, the King’s Arms. The staff, he told everyone, proudly, all thought he was a medical miracle. Old Jacob had fought off the pneumonia, the sepsis. It took a long time to stabilise, but his lung healed, out of pure spite, the nurses said, amazed. His broken bones took much longer to set, and gave him a great deal of discomfort, but he forced himself up and out of his bed whenever he could, slowly rebuilding his strength to a point where he could shuffle up and down the ward again until someone found him and, scolding, herded him back to bed. His mobility improved, as did his stamina. Before long, he was uncontainable. The staff let him wander at will, clattering along the hallways doggedly with his walking frame, until they finally admitted he could be let go.
When he was discharged, Angela brought him back to the pub. It was the end of October, and she lit the first fires in his honour.
Old Jacob’s face when he came into the warm, spice-scented space and saw his seat waiting for him, in the nook by the burner, was a thing to behold.
‘Ah,’ he smiled, as Finn came to greet him, tail wagging happily. ‘I missed this old place. And you.’
He took his throne as if he’d never left it, propping one foot up on a stool Angela found so he could keep his leg out straight before him.
‘So,’ he said then, as the landlord went to pour him a half-pint of bitter shandy. ‘What did I miss?’
Chapter 46
Angela, Josie and Old Jacob huddled around the log burner in the King’s Arms while Finn lay stretched out on the floor, basking in the heat. Flames burnished the pub’s interior, casting a deep, flickering orange glow across every surface. Angela had turned all the other lights off and locked the door so nobody would bother them, but several disgruntled locals bashed on it anyway, until she lost her temper.
‘Sod off!’ she shouted, loudly enough to make Finn jump. ‘We’re fucking closed!’ The hound woofed, annoyed at the interruption to his sleep, then flopped his head back on the cushion, tucking his snout under one paw for comfort.
Jacob and Josie chuckled.
Half an hour later, there was another knock on the door. More polite, no less insistent.
‘I said, fuck off!’ Angela yelled. ‘Honestly, what’s so hard to understand about the word “closed”?’
‘It’s me,’ came the muffled reply.
Angela sighed.
‘Josie, go let Sherlock in, would you?’
And three became four, plus a dog. Gathering of local yokels around a fire, Josie thought, amused. Oil on canvas. Wilkes counted as a local, now. She’d rented out the converted chapel on Ellwood’s main street.
Before long, talk turned to the case of the dead girls, just like it did most nights. To Josie’s father. To Emmet. These conversations were useful, to Josie. She found the more she talked, the more parts of her childhood started to make sense. Things that had never quite added up, now, knowing everything else she knew, did.
‘Like the music,’ she said to the room, staring into the fire.
‘Music?’ Wilkes was on her second glass of Chablis. She was softer when she drank, less bullish.
‘Dad used to play this music all the time, sometimes so loud I would hear it when I was asleep. It would come into my dreams, only . . . only the music was horrible. There was something about it that scared me. It would wake me up.’ Josie dug around in her pocket and pulled out her severed braid. She’d taken to using it as a worry tool, but she was not sure how healthy that was. ‘I think they were screams. The other sounds. I think he played the music so loud he would cover the screaming. While I slept. Upstairs.’
Finn woofed gently in his sleep, tail slapping against the floor, paws twitching as he dreamed of chasing rabbits or foxes or rats.
Wilkes broke the silence.
‘All I keep thinking is, how does a man like that move a body around without being noticed? Not just one, but three, eight, however many it is. There’s probably more we haven’t found.’
‘Undoubtedly.’ Old Jacob wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘I could never stand that man, not since he first came to Ellwood. I knew he was running around behind your mother’s back,’ he said, looking at Josie. ‘I had firm words with him about it, several times. He told me to mind my own fucking business. Never did know how to speak to his elders.’
Wilkes drained her glass.
‘I gave him a job here once, behind the bar.’ Angela shuddered, thinking about it. ‘He lasted a week. Couldn’t stand being told what to do.’
‘Your father didn’t work well with others.’
Old Jacob made to spit. Angela skewered him with a dirty look. He swallowed it.
‘I think he used a distraction of some sort,’ Wilkes went on, holding her now empty glass up to the firelight. Her fingerprints glowed yellow on the bowl. ‘Conceal, divert. Discard.’
The colony suddenly awoke, racing around Josie’s body. She sneezed, more out of shock than anything else, and a messy deposit of snot-covered insects flew across the room, landing on the flagstones where they struggled to extricate themselves from Josie’s mucus.
Old Jacob leaned forward ever so slightly in his chair, peering at the floor.
Josie felt the excitement of the queen inside, stirring up the rest of the colony.
‘Josie? You all right?’ Angela got up to refill everyone’s glasses.
‘She’s got a funny look on her face,’ Wilkes remarked.
‘Josie?’
‘Leave her,’ Old Jacob cautioned. ‘She’s remembering something. Can’t you tell? Let her sit with it.’
‘Remembering what?’
‘Let the bread rise, Angela. Don’t interfere.’
Josie’s limbs felt strange, like her muscles were contracting. She was moments away, she knew, from stiffening up entirely, and then her body would whip about in odd, contorted motions as the colony tried to puppet her into some action she didn’t know she needed to perform yet.
She stood up abruptly, started pacing the pub, trying to walk off the encroaching takeover. She stamped her feet as she went, and ants flew out of the bottoms of her jeans, scattering as soon as they hit the floor.
Conceal, divert. Discard.
‘It wasn’t just sawdust you found with the bodies, was it?’ she asked Wilkes, thinking hard.
‘What do you mean?’
Josie stopped pacing.
‘When the bodies were analysed. There was soil. Sawdust, we know about. Dirt, from all over the forest. But there was straw, too.’
Wilkes nodded. Angela handed Josie a fresh alcohol-free beer.
‘Laurel was found the morning after the Devil’s March,’ she reminded her, softly. ‘The Knoll had straw all over it, from the queen. You know how it is, that damn thing sheds all over the village.’
Josie stared at her.
‘There was straw in the sack with bones, too,’ she said, right on the cusp of something. ‘The neck of it was tied with a long, straw bind. I remember.’
Wilkes licked her lips, sitting up straighter. ‘She’s right.’
‘What about on the Puzzlewood body?’
Josie shook her head. ‘I can’t remember. It was too dark, too close in there.’
Jacob sucked on his false teeth noisily.
‘When did you stop making the queens, Jacob?’ Josie asked.
‘Fifteen year back. Maybe more. You were a kid, I remember that. Or perhaps a teenager. I thought I was doing him a favour.’
‘Doing who a favour?’
But Josie knew the answer already. So did Angela, who looked at her, white-faced.
‘Your dad,’ she said, finally fitting it altogether.
‘Your dad,’ Old Jacob confirmed. ‘Your father took over making the queens. I thought you knew that?’
‘No,’ Josie said dreamily. ‘No, I didn’t.’
Chapter 47
‘It wasn’t really my decision,’ Old Jacob continued bitterly. ‘My hands started to go, and he seemed to be so keen for it. He said he wanted to contribute more to the community.’
Josie was still trying to figure out the practicalities of this new information.
‘Where would he have made them? It wasn’t at our place, his shed there. He certainly never did it in the house. Not that I saw. He made pies, but that was it.’
‘Of course he didn’t make them in his shed, lazy pig. He wouldn’t have wanted the bother of hauling the straw out to yours. I sold him mine.’
‘Your what?’
‘My shed! My workshop, out on the edge of Darkhill Ironworks. It’s all Forestry England land now, I suppose they pulled it down. The straw for the queen came from land close by. Hardly any distance at all. Those bales are heavy, see.’
Josie’s mouth was very, very dry.
‘A tiled shed in the woods? With a porch out to one side and a tin chimney sticking out the top?’ The back of her head throbbed. The other women leaned in, gripped.
Old Jacob sounded exasperated, as if the things he was telling Josie were common knowledge.
‘Yes, that was my shed, where I used to make all sorts. Belonged to my father before me, he built it for poaching. Trapped a few hares and pheasants out there myself, I’m not shy to admit. The shed was where I’d skin them, kept all my fishing gear, as well as my tools. Buried deep in the trees, it was. Only a rabbit track leading to it. I kept the path overgrown on purpose. The things I made in there, Josie, when I had the hands to. Not just the Queen of the March. Your dad wasn’t the only carpenter and handyman around these parts, back then. I used to be nimble enough, before my . . .’
He held up his hands. The joints of his fingers looked more swollen than ever.
Josie felt a sinking sensation pull her downwards.
‘Another shed.’
Old Jacob scowled. ‘Aren’t you listening? I told you, I sold it to him twelve, thirteen year back, when he took over the making of the queens. Threw in all my tools, too. My lathe, my chisels. My vice. I couldn’t use them anymore. I thought I was giving them to a good cause. He said he’d follow the Old Ways, just like I had. Your father was always a liar, but I was the only one who ever thought so, in those days. I gave him the benefit of the doubt anyway, because of your mother. She said I should try to see the good in people. And all the while he was fumbling around behind her back.’
Angela’s head came up.
‘Is that why you two fell out?’
Old Jacob stared into the fire.
‘Because of the way he made the queens. It wasn’t proper. It wasn’t tradition. He broke his promise.’
Silence.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He lacked respect for Ellwood’s customs. The March and everything that goes into it . . . he never had regard for any of it. Think of all the bad things that have happened here since he started his “duties”. The deaths, the sickness, the accidents. The damn plague. The elections. The bodies. Ellwood gets smaller every year. There’s hardly any of us left now. The Devil doesn’t like false gifts.’
Angela sighed. ‘That’s just how it is in small towns, Jacob. The Devil has nothing to do with it. Luck comes and goes, things happen. It wasn’t just us, it was the world entire. You can’t blame one man for that, not even him. He has enough to feel ashamed about. Those poor women are the real crimes. The real shame.’
Jacob would not be moved.
‘He never cared,’ the old man insisted. ‘The queen should have been made by someone who cared. My queens were delicately crafted, from balsa wood, from hay, from barley, from wheat. I used the techniques my father taught me, and his father before him. If I had a son, I would have taught him the same, but I didn’t. It would take me weeks to fashion the body, make it lightweight, weave all the straw and grass, make her hair, make her beautiful . . . they were worthy offerings! The Devil is only appeased with worthy offerings. I thought I could trust him, but the queens your father made . . . pah.’
Josie felt the floor softening beneath her. She fell through the quicksand of millions of collapsing ants, hastened by her fresh comprehension of what her father did, and how.
Old Jacob carried on his rant. ‘The ones he made . . . they were these huge, ugly things. Heavy, too. Messy. Straw bundled all over with no real skill or design. He had no respect for the Old Ways, and I told him that . . .’
Josie sank further into memory, the feel of it warm and thick like mud, thrashing through subcutaneous parts of her history she had buried, deep down, deep, deep, down, but buried things, like bones, don’t stay buried forever. Sooner or later, evil rises to the surface, weeds push back through the soil, and unless they are dealt with properly, via poison, or force, it would ever be thus.
And Josie didn’t have patience for an eternity of bad feeling.
There was another shed, she thought. Then, out loud:
‘Dad used your shed to make living queens,’ before the pub floor sealed over the top of her head, entombing her completely.
Chapter 48
Midnight came. Old Jacob had dropped off in his throne. His snores mingled with Finn’s.
‘Explain it to me like I’m an idiot, one more time,’ Wilkes slurred.
‘Me too,’ Angela pleaded from her bar stool. ‘Help me understand.’
Josie heard herself speak but could not connect the voice to her own self.
‘He abducts them,’ she said, matter of fact. ‘He drugs them, does unspeakable things to them, then he puts them inside the straw queen. Still paralysed. Still alive, you understand?’
