Blood in the Bricks, page 18
Our Lark dreams in the steady crushing of shells, juices bursting. The house moves, twisting and turning in the earth like a wisdom tooth, tired of waiting, ready.
“Something bothering you, love?” Mum asks her as they eat breakfast off the same table they cut her open on.
She glances up, lining up crusts like soldiers on her plate. She shrugs. Weird dream. Then, oh.
That’s what changed. Her voice. It’s a quiet, wispy thing now. She used to talk like everyone else. What changed that? Why change that?
“It’s only temporary,” Mum tells her.
Imagine a body. What do you do to it? She used to want wings. Less skin. Veins royal blue and closer to the surface and thick as worms. Sharper teeth when she was going through a phase, triggered by that three-quarter kidney rejecting. Her patchwork insides to be made whole again.
I don’t want –
“It’s not your choice.”
A knock at the door.
They look at each other. Mum stands, our Lark stands.
“Don’t.”
When she goes, our Lark follows, teeth clenched.
There is a man she’s never seen standing in the doorway. Mum blocks most of him, but she sees shoulders, dark hair, hint of sunburned forehead. He’s introducing himself, he’s new, Mum moves to conceal our Lark but she dips around: they make eye contact.
He smiles. At her. He has a nice face, she thinks, everything in its right place.
“That’s just our Lark,” Mum says, trying to push her back, “she’s shy.”
“Hi, Lark! It’s nice to meet you.”
She gives a little wave.
“How old is she?”
Mum says “twelve” at the same time our Lark says nineteen.
“At that age,” Mum says, “always showing off.”
He laughs. “I hear you. Anyway, so sorry to be a pain, but I was wondering if you had a drill we could borrow? My partner lost the toolbox in the move and we can’t get this fu- flipping table through the door.”
Yes, she says.
“Thank you, sweetheart.” Her voice is strained. “Why don’t you go and get it for the nice man?”
She goes up the stairs on all fours because, steep, and more fun. There’s a toolbox on top of Mum’s wardrobe, if she climbs on the bed she can get it down. A quick-scrabbling second and it’s in her hands. Easy. Mission: successful. As she goes to leave, she catches sight of herself in the mirror. This is her reflection. She doesn’t get another one. Long sleeves in the summer. Twist this way, just a bit, and she can see the very top of the gauze through the material, an unbroken line. The light catches a darker patch right in the middle. Busted stitch. You’d think it’d hurt. You’d think it could hurt. Something’s building, the way dogs growl low from their chests before snapping. She doesn’t look herself in the eye. Ungrateful. Fuck you.
From downstairs, Mum shouts for her.
On light feet she runs to her bedroom, pushes the toolbox under the bed. Downstairs, kitchen, tool drawer, bone drill. It’s the closest thing to an heirloom they have, antique-dull, long-nosed with a hand crank.
To the door, moving fast so Mum can’t stop her, she shoves the drill into the man’s hands.
“Wow!” He turns over the steel, painfully obviously medical, admiring. “Some piece of kit.”
The glare she fixes our Lark with could melt brick. “We do a lot of DIY.”
That’s definitely one way of putting it, our Lark doesn’t quite say, but likes the thrill of the thought.
“I’ll have this back soon as,” he says, smiling even as Mum shuts the door in his face.
With him away, any bravery fizzles out.
I don’t move on feet or hands, don’t slither or crawl. But I am coming closer. Growing like roots in the dark yet quick as flies. What am I?
Our Lark doesn’t always believe in God. Hard to, when Mum does what she does. Still, there’s no one else to turn to. Mum has the scars and Nan had the scars, the family tree carved up until it became tradition to reach for the knife. Our Lark sits in her dark bedroom, back against the wall, and asks why? What did she do? It normally stays tight as stitches inside herself but it… it’s unravelling – Is it this house? Is it her? Because it wasn’t always like this, was it? Cascading down: I’d take out my heart and give to her to show her I do love her, to make her understand I have one, to make it stop. She can’t cry because her tear ducts are fused shut but her body sobs all the same. She hits her head against the wall, again, again, stills, staring up at the ceiling, ears ringing. From the wall, a hand cushions the back of her head.
She stops breathing.
Mum has never touched her fear, not her capacity for it or her response, maybe she’s just intrinsically damaged, she is scared, terrified, but her trembling hand smooths out along the carpet until it lifts, turns, fingertips ghosting up the wall and her palm settling flat against it.
She shuts her eyes. Forces breath even. She’s dreaming. Wake up.
Papery fingers interlace with hers. A thumb rubbing in her hair. Despite herself, she leans into the touch. She stays there because she wants to. It almost feels like the real thing.
A hand at her elbow, wrenching the joint out –
She screams, shock without pain.
– back into place. Mum’s footsteps down the hallway, the hands back into the wall as if slipping underwater.
Our Lark experimentally stretches her arm out. The static feeling in her elbow has gone. Her hand feels loose, not bad loose, just the opposite of stiff, and doesn’t shake.
The door sweeps open. “What’s wrong?” Mum, backlit by the corridor, a stamp of light falling through.
She stares at her hands. Fixed. She’s been complaining about this for so long but Mum said there was nothing she could do. Remembered something scary.
“You’re a very bad liar.”
Everyone knows I am. Her hands, latticed by surgery scars, old and new. What would they do if I told them the truth?
Her face is hidden by darkness. The house takes a breath. “You’re more than welcome to.”
She’s right. She always is. There’s nothing stopping our Lark but herself. It’s only what comes after. Say they believe her, and they want to do something about it, what happens to Mum? Where does she go? Say they strip our Lark for parts and start again. Suppose the house shakes the dust and becomes somewhere to call home. Suppose the girl becomes a girl again, not just a vessel for the wound. Why wouldn’t she be human, and whole, and loved. And why not now?
It’s the smell that gets her. Wet like cottage cheese, fur, melted butter. They used to have a dog like this, big eyes and big energy. Border Collie mixed with something smaller. His name was Smiler. Mum said he ran away and our Lark believed it until she didn’t. Smiler’s a runaway in the same way these organs are runaways. They have to come from somewhere, and end up somewhere else. If she thought about it, she’d never sleep again.
This dog at full tilt comes in through the open front door, too excited to run without bouncing around, straight for our Lark. Huge smile on her face. She forgets to think this is a bad thing, forgets about consequences. He jumps up, licks her face, she gets a second of mussing his fur before he jumps back, tail wagging so hard his whole body wiggles back and forth. Barks. She feints forwards, he jumps back. She feints forwards, he jumps, barks again, tongue lolling. Then she runs. They run.
Straight out the door, out the open gate – what’s a gate to a racing dog if not where to start – our Lark unsteady on her feet but getting bolder, strides longer, arms pumping, keeping pace with the dog even if he is holding back for her. She’s quick, sky’s huge and blue, the ground steady beneath her feet, she’s quick and this is what it feels like, running. She might never have known.
Distantly, a shouting of names. The dog stops sharp, so does she.
Race you? The burn in her lungs feels good. When the dog doesn’t answer, she barks. He barks back. She nods.
The running feels like flying.
The dog’s name is Rudi. He belongs to the new neighbour and he says he’s so grateful our Lark brought him back.
“You must be very fast,” he says, Rudi sat panting at his side.
Yeah, she says, pride welling, I am.
Mum is tersely quiet until they get back inside, door shut, door locked.
“You’re not supposed to run after dogs. They think it’s a game.”
I was running with him.
That night, she sits on the doorstep looking up. The night sky is so full, and so far away.
The next day, the man presents her with a teddy bear. “To say thank you for all your help with Rudi.”
The bear’s an awkward size, not big enough to be ostentatious but too big to hold comfortably. Our Lark grips it by the scruff, nails digging in, Mum standing behind her like an irritated shadow.
“His name’s Willoughby.” Over our Lark’s head, the man says, “we’ve had him kicking around for a while and my partner said, why not give him to next door? She was great yesterday, Rudi’s been going a bit crazy with the move.”
“That’s working dogs for you. Say thank you, Lark.”
She does. Teddy bear. Like she’s a child.
Mum struggles to shut the door, little fingers from the carpet pinching at it, wanting him to look closer. Our Lark sees, nobody else does.
Later, Willoughby sits big and doughy and out of place on her bed, her stood at the foot of it like a doctor with bad news. He won’t look her in the eye. Things like this lose their meaning. It all happens so often it wears down into dust. Maybe our Lark is worn out. The body will never change in any meaningful way. Won’t grow up, won’t ever shake this free, stuck from the first time Mum cut her open. Look: you can’t even see it any more, the scars so built-up they don’t mean anything. The first no different from the most recent, and you can’t even say last because this will never end. When freedom is running but still coming back when called, what do you do? Where is she meant to put all this rage, this flat black energy?
A cross-section: under her feet, the kitchen, Mum listening to the radio, maybe reading. Between them a thick line of dark. It moves, anxious as rabbits.
Our Lark takes two steps forwards and crouches down. From under the bed, she reaches for the toolbox. As she starts pulling it towards her, fingertips come up from the carpet and brush her wrist.
ss SsTO P
A thought but not hers. It just appears in her head. Layered, echoing. Different voices, all girls. She shakes it off. Hard to care. Feels like a natural progression, ants marching in a line ever forward. Everything opens and closes and nothing ever ends.
She pulls the toolbox out. The carpet grabs her wrist proper but she twists free. She takes the sharpest-looking screwdriver bit and sits in front of Willoughby, pushes him onto his back, trails a finger down the seam on his front.
We match, she softly tells him.
Again, with a fingernail. Every other stitch snags. Again, with the screwdriver bit, pushing harder. A stitch snaps. A rush, something breaking its borders. The house holds its breath.
Steadily she saws a two-inch opening into Willoughby’s chest, his fibres loose and frayed. She slips two fingers inside, moves them around.
Does that feel good, do you like it?
Willoughby stares at the ceiling, eyes glassy. He is nothing but himself.
Our Lark’s bottom lip quivers, pressure building around her eyes. I said, I said do you… like it? You’re meant to. Say yes. She hits him. Sorry, I didn’t… She hits him again. You don’t know how good you’ve got it. You don’t – and she rips his chest open. Breathes shaky and shallow at his white pure fuzzy insides. She snatches him up, takes a bite of his filling, fibres getting up her nose, chews itchy and dry and choking and has to spit it all out. Hands throw Willoughby across the room. Body crying without tears. He hits the wall and the wall catches him. Our Lark screams at it. Should’ve ripped his stupid little head off his shoulders. She wants to go home but she’s never lived anywhere else.
sS oRRy
She thinks, the fuck are you sorry for?
INS iiDEsS
Like a firework went off in the dog pound: cacophony. Organs baying, blood baying to be let out. They jolt around inside her, furious, knocking her to her feet. Acid rises in her throat as her stomach squeezes and she vomits blood, spraying across the carpet.
The house has roots like teeth have roots, held in place like teeth are held in place. Little fibres clutching. When they break, the tooth comes out.
I didn’t take them. Blood coating the inside of her mouth, rich and metallic.
From the carpet, a thumb runs along the long, ugly scar down her arm and the skin splits apart cleanly, down to the bone. No blood, no anything.
A voice from her throat, not hers, theirs, “We Know.”
She sees them behind her eyes: the girls, the bodies, their organs, hot and pulsing in gloved hands. Their lives were so big. Too big, to end here, for her.
Their Lark says, “This Isn’t Your Fault.”
Their Lark says, “Just Go.”
If she leaves, she can stop this. Stop everything. She wants to. She wants to be good. They make her crawl then walk then run, movements broken-bone jagged, toss her down the last half of the stairs. She lands in a heap but they pick her up. Hundreds of hands in hers when she reaches for the door handle, urging her on.
Door open. Nothing but blue skies, thrumming like the biggest swarm. One step out. They keep pushing her forwards, she keeps going forwards, she can do this, she can end everything. It will stop with her. Their hold on her steadily lessens the further she gets from the house, and she finds the strength to run.
Slowing to catch her breath, she looks over her shoulder. No shouts, no one coming running after her. Good. To get blood out, you have to shock it. Enough water will clean anything. Just keep going. She thinks about other things: shoes at the door, clean clothes, shoes they never wore again –
Hot food, white flowers, something clean, something’s changed. She could get the bus, change her name, change her hair, sell bricks in Jesus’ name. There’s a whole world out there and no one else has to die. Just keep going.
She looks over her shoulder one last time.
The girls try to push her back out but they’re dead and nothing will change that now. They said this isn’t your fault but it is. Mum tried dead intestines, huge coils of them, and she coughed up grave dirt for weeks. So she knows. So she has always known. But rather them than her: despite everything she wants to be alive. The cost of her living is too high for any good person to accept, but she does because she is a selfish, stupid incomplete patchwork who can’t cry can’t hurt can’t grow change or be anything but what she is now. She is a haunted house.
Mum stands in the kitchen, unsurprised.
Our Lark grabs a coaster from the table and hurls it at her mum. Mum ducks just in time and it hits the window without either thing breaking.
Fix me! FIX ME!
“How? I’ve tried!”
A different brain, just take it out I don’t want to think any more I don’t want to be me or, or change my heart I’m so sick of mine –
She says, “it’s Smiler’s heart.”
She says, “I love you.”
She says, “I didn’t want you to leave.”
The house could fall, the ghosts could go with it, swallowed up by the dirt. Our Lark would still be standing here, doghearted and never safe.
The Rope Swing
Penny Jones
Jess lay on her bed and tried to ignore the choking feeling of claustrophobia that clawed at her throat. Her mum had told her that work was putting them up in a swanky apartment, but instead the flat was a tiny grotty hole stuck up at the top of a crappy tower block. Her bed might as well have been in the cupboard in her mum’s room for the space she had. And even here, in this tiny space, her mum was always coming in and telling her to turn down her music, or to put her headphones in – as if the local druggies would be over to have a go at them about the noise. But her mum seemed scared of everything these days.
It wasn’t even as if Jess could go and watch telly if she wanted to. Her mum had turned the living room into her office. The dining table covered with files and her laptop. Jess wanted to ask why, if her mum was going to work from home, had they had to move down here for the new job anyway? But knew her mum would be full of excuses about having to go in for meetings, or being in the office more once she was fully trained. Jess thought that was a load of shit. If they didn’t need her in before she was trained, it was unlikely that they were going to insist on it once she actually knew what she was doing.
Pulling out her phone Jess tapped once more at the photo of Emily smiling on the rope swing as Seth, Jess’s ex, stood moodily behind. Jess wondered how long it had taken him to persuade Emily to go down to the rope swing, or if it had even been his idea. Maybe Emily had instigated it. To be fair there wasn’t anything else to do in her old village. The parents thought everyone congregated on the green, pissing about around the Maypole, but that was only a front. As the hour got later, the younger kids knew when to leave. The groups dwindling down, replaced by couples, all with only one thing on their minds. They took turns covering for each other sneaking down to the rope swing, the trees hiding them from the prying eyes of the village.
Whereas the rope swing was big enough to sit in, Jess never had. She’d stepped straight in, balancing on one foot as Seth had pulled her back then released her to swing out across the drop. The treetops falling away below her as she arched up, soaring over the cliff face. The catch as the rope reached its pinnacle and twisted, ever so slightly beneath her, threatening to release her foot from its grip, and drop her down into the trees and brambles beneath. Then swinging back, making Seth hop out of its way before grabbing the rope and twisting Jess into his embrace.
