The Queen of sinister da-2 Read online

Mary saw her to the door, but just as she was stepping out into the gale, Mary gave her a fierce hug in an unprecedented show of physical affection. 'Look after yourself,' she said. Then, 'Be careful.'

  It sounded like a warning. As Caitlin entered the foul atmosphere of the village hall, Gideon greeted her with a sad expression and nodded to one of the side rooms. Through the gap in the door, Caitlin could see Eileen sitting hunched beside her sister, holding her hand loosely. Daphne was lying on a table, already comatose and sleek with sweat. The black mottling was visible in contours on her face and forearms like some Maori tattoo. Caitlin couldn't believe the speed with which the plague attacked the body.

  Was this the end of the world? she wondered. Humanity wiped out in a matter of weeks, nature clearing the decks ready for the next phase? It seemed so unfair after all they'd endured during the last few months: they had escaped the bang, only to be done for by the whimper.

  There was nothing she could say to Eileen, so she left her to her grief. No more new patients were being brought in, so she retired to the office, grateful for a moment of privacy to try to make some sense of the illness. Frantically scrawled notes on sickeningly stained paper were scattered all over the desks, while charts and graphs were pinned to the cork board next to a yellowing announcement of some pre-Fall Best-Kept Village contest.

  Caitlin still nurtured a desperate hope that if she kept turning over all the details, sooner or later she'd hit upon some startling insight that would reveal the plague's true nature. But the mechanics of transmission escaped her; the whole epidemiological nature of the disease was a complete mystery. Were some people genetically predisposed to contracting it? Perhaps even for those like herself who appeared immune, it was just a matter of time.

  She tried to focus on the positive, but everything pointed towards the unthinkable: at best, humanity stripped back to a handful of survivors. At worst: the end. She stared at the mass of notations and scribblings and felt the waves of despair break against her. It was all chaos. All too much, with no time to make sense of it. Liam was still in his bed. Grant was fast asleep, too. Relieved, she went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of beer. She hated the taste of it, but at least it anaesthetised her. Finally, she had calmed enough to go to bed. She would wake Grant, she thought, and they would make love, and the world and all its hideous threats would be forgotten.

  Her desperation for something life-affirming made Caitlin as drunk as the alcohol. She slipped into the dark bedroom and pulled off her clothes, her awkwardness dissipating in the heat of her rapid arousal. Grant was dead to the world, but she knew how to wake him. She found his chest and moved her hand towards his groin. It took a second or two before the sensations told her something was wrong. Grant's skin felt waxy and feverish, and there was a puddle of sweat near his belly button. For the first time, she listened to his breathing: it was shallow and laboured.

  'Grant?'

  Her mind became a mad jumble of thoughts: flashes of worst-case scenarios, quickly suppressed, prayers, memories, oddly settling on the time when he had proposed to her, when everything had been perfect. Deep in her heart, she knew the truth, and she thought the rush of brutal emotion would drive her mad.

  She jumped from the bed, cursing the lack of electricity, and raced to fetch the candle from the hall. Shielding it with her hand, she closed her eyes briefly before she dared take that first look. The pain was as sharp as if she'd been physically struck. In the candlelight, Grant's skin looked hoarfrost-white, only emphasising the black mottling running in lines all over him. Pretending she was doing something worthwhile, she checked his pulse and then opened his eyelids.

  He wouldn't regain consciousness. She'd already felt his final kiss, shared her last words with him — and what had they been? The bitterness and anger of their parting brought another stab of pain. Amidst the cold depths of her despair, she felt a burst of self-loathing, but it only had a second of life before another thought struck her, just as terrible. And then she had the candle and was into the hall, hovering outside Liam's door, whispering, 'Please, God, please, God, please, God,' not daring to go in, thinking she might actually go mad there and then from the sight she was projecting.

  But the reality was much, much worse. Liam lay in his bed, the sheets tucked up, just as she had left him, just before the goodnight kiss. His skin was white. And black.

  The storm outside had broken, but the one within would rage for ever.

  Chapter Two

  Alone Again Or

  'Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell.'

  Emily Dickinson

  The night never ended.

  All thoughts and fears, grief and desperation were purged from Caitlin as she lost herself in the constant round of mundane tasks necessary during the last few days: the sheet-changing, the bed-washing, the administration of what sparse painkillers she had to hand, but most of all the talking. She would sit at their bedsides for hours at a time, letting the words come from the depths of her mind and heart, a trance state in which she had no idea what she was saying. Part of it was a simple attempt to impose order on a situation that had none, a discussion of the mundane chores as if Grant and Liam were both up and about, just out of sight, ready to respond once they had finished whatever they were doing.

  And she talked and talked so they wouldn't have the opportunity to respond; if they couldn't get a word in, there was still the possibility that they might. And at other times, she spoke of her love for them both, that deep, deep well of emotion that she hadn't visited for a long time, and which surprised her with the volume it contained.

  And there was the tragedy, for it shouldn't have surprised her at all. She didn't know if they could hear her, didn't really know if it was for their benefit or her own, but she hoped and prayed, and talked.

  And on the fourth day, they died. The first hour was one of utmost peace, a chrysalis state of numbness and nothing. Caitlin was gone; her life was over. Afterwards, she sat by Grant and thought of what had been lost, never to be regained; and then she sat by Liam and considered what might have been and now never would.

  Then she retired to the kitchen and brewed herself a pot of the infusion they laughingly used to call tea as the thin light of a cold, grey dawn gradually leaked through the windows. Hunched over her mug, she saw Grant and Liam's shoes next to the back door, muddy from their last walk together as a family. The image hit her with an inexplicable power, and then she was sucked away in an uncontrollable torrent of grief that dashed her on the rocks of her own bitter sorrow. Shortly after noon, in a light rain with the clouds shimmering like silver, Caitlin took a spade into the garden they had all tended in the days before the Fall. At the end, underneath the gnarled oak where Liam had climbed and Grant had built a tree-house, she dug. The topsoil went down for two feet and then she hit the thick, yellow-grey clay, water-sodden and dense. Her muscles burned and her joints cracked and complained, yet she forced herself on, relishing the pain. The rain plastered her hair against her head, soaked through her clothes so completely that she felt as if she were wearing water.

  Grant, holding her hand when the tiny, warm bundle of life was placed on her sweat-streaked chest, saying, 'We're in this together. You never have to stand alone again.' Holding her on New Year's Eve, watching the fireworks light the sky.

  And when she had finished one hole, she started on the next, a smaller one. Liam, three years old, at Christmas, putting out a mince pie for Santa. Waking her up on her birthday with a present he'd wrapped himself and a home-made card. Kissing her cheek when he caught her crying… Three hours later, the job was done. She returned to the house in a dream, where nothing could touch her, and was content with that state. But the moment she attempted to lift Grant from the bed, she realised it was only transitory. His skin was cold and he didn't respond when she said his name; he would never answer. It looked like Grant, but it didn't feel like him, not warm, not loving, not laughing any more; it made no sense, and that only
made things worse.

  The tears came again, this time squeezing out silently to run into the corners of her mouth, where the saltiness made her feel sick. He was too heavy for her to carry. She fell twice, smashing his head against the bedside cabinet. His arms and legs wouldn't go where she wanted. With a tremendous effort, she managed to get him half on to her back, and then she dragged him from the room, crying out every time some part of him cracked against a door jamb or piece of furniture, as if he could still feel.

  Outside, she slipped and dropped him on the wet lawn. After all her struggling, it was the last straw. She knelt down and sobbed as if it were the end of the world. But once those tears had gone, she began again, struggling to get him up, slipping and sliding in the mud of the churned-up turf, falling again, twisting her ankle. At one point his cheek rested gently against hers, and the rain running down his face made it feel as if he was crying, too. Her mind began to fracture into unconnected fragments of thoughts, so that it seemed as if time was no longer running correctly. She was on the grass with him, staring up at the clouds. She was at the end of the lawn with Grant hanging from her back. She was standing at the edge of the grave. She was looking down at Grant's jumbled body at the bottom of the hole, thinking, 'Why doesn't he get up? I'll never get the clay out of that shirt.'

  And then she went back for Liam, and he was easier to carry. But at the grave, she couldn't bear to drop him in. She hugged him to her breast, kissing him repeatedly, and she would have stayed there for ever if the universe hadn't told her what needed to be done.

  The edge of the grave crumbled and they tumbled into the hole together, crashing into the pool of muddy water at the bottom with a great splash that filled her mouth and nostrils. The clay covered her from head to foot so that she resembled some wild prehistoric woman. And still she held Liam, his body so small, his clothes soaked, and she prayed that she would feel some warmth, that the world would turn back, that everything would fall apart and drift away.

  She stayed there, while water puddled in the bottom and slowly worked its way up her legs, as the barely light day faded and darkness crept in from the east. Her thoughts continued to shred. Nothing was worse than what she had endured. The rest of the human race could all die, scythed down by the plague; she didn't care. Nothing was important any more. It should all come to a stop. Fragments… At some point, when the night was riven by lightning, she crawled out and found the spade. Every time she thought she'd endured the worst, something even more terrible would rise up. Seeing the first shovelful fall on them broke her into even smaller pieces. It was her husband and son and she was sealing them beneath the earth. The soil landed with a hollow thud on an unmoving chest. She waited for a complaint — 'Mummy, what are you doing?' — but none came. Lying on the wet, packed mud, the rain splattering over her, taking everything away. Another crack of lightning, dragging her from the nothing. A strange sensation: weight on her chest. Opening her eyes so that the rain sloughed off from where it had settled in the hollows. A large hooded crow, oddly familiar, sat on her breastbone, its beady black eyes glimmering only inches from her face. Talons dug into her skin. The blue- black beak was long and cruel. Did it think she was dead? Was it searching for carrion? It only had to lean forward to peck out her eyes.

  But instead of attacking, it only watched. Was she dreaming?

  It shuffled back and pecked her chest, not so hard that it hurt, or perhaps she was just too numb to feel. Only it didn't stop; the pecks continued rhythmically, as if it were trying to crack her open. It was so large, that the weight of it was making it difficult for her to breathe. She should wave it away, only there was no point.

  She closed her eyes, drifting into the rainfall once again. Mary had a bad feeling. For three days, the cards had hinted at something dark: an ending, or a new beginning — both the same as far as the universe was concerned. She wished she could get whatever powers she was tapping into to see things from the low-down human perspective once or twice: they might look the same, but they certainly didn't feel the same.

  She'd tried scrying, but had found it difficult to reach the trance state, and for some reason her thoughts kept coming back to Caitlin. On edge and unable to settle, Mary swigged back the whiskey with blatant disregard for its rarity in the new world, but she knew she wouldn't be able to rest until she'd been to see her friend. She threw another log on the fire to keep it going until she returned, and then put on her anorak. She was sick of the damp weather; it felt as if it had been raining for months.

  The weather affected her mood badly. She had always been prone to depression, Churchill's black dog following her wherever she went, but in the dark, dismal days it was worse. She couldn't stop her mind turning to the past, what was and what might have been. Would things have been different if she'd settled down with someone? Or would she still have disliked herself so much, and in doing so made her partner's life a misery too? She'd always thought she was best on her own — save wrecking another life — but she missed a touch, a word on awakening, the warmth of another mind, little comforts as much as the big ones.

  She still marvelled at how life can pivot on one simple event. How arrogance could turn to guilt, youthful optimism to self-loathing, all in the blink of an eye. Sometimes she liked to blame her childhood religion for programming her to carry her suffering with her, but her inability to get over who she had been didn't have one source; it was an accretion of tiny failures. A life, to all intents and purposes, wasted. Her first religion had told her everyone had a reason for being. She was the example that gave the lie to that little fantasy.

  As she searched for the old miner's Davy lamp that had belonged to her father, she heard a noise outside. It could have been the wind gusting at the shed door or the broom falling over at the back of the house, but her spine tingled nonetheless. Any visitors — and she had many, wanting advice and help at all hours of the day — would come straight to the front door. The sound had come from the side of the house.

  Her nerves went on edge. With the breakdown in law and order, there were plenty of threats that wouldn't think twice about attacking a woman on her own. The village had its own Neighbourhood Watch patrolling during the night, but it had been devastated by the plague, might even have gone completely.

  From next to the door, she grabbed the brush handle with the carving knife strapped to the end. One she could probably see off; any more and she would have to run. Cautiously, she approached the side window.

  The night was too dark, the storm bending the trees and hedges towards the cottage, the fields beyond impenetrable. She waited patiently for any hint of movement. Nothing came.

  Just as she had convinced herself that she had been mistaken, a lightning flash exploded everything into white. A large figure was standing beneath the old hawthorn tree just outside. It had been watching her looking out.

  She swore in shock, backed away, almost fell over the armchair. The darkness concealed the figure once again.

  Mary moved to the centre of the room, turning back and forth in case the watcher came through the front or the back. A heavy knock sounded at the door.

  Who's there?' she shouted defiantly.

  'I was sent to see you.' The voice was loud, confident, educated with a hint of arrogance.

  'Why are you skulking around outside?'

  'I wanted to be sure I had the right place.' Exasperation, a hint of annoyance; Mary eased a little. He didn't sound like a threat, but then who did? 'Will you open this door?' he snapped. 'I've been walking for hours and I'm cold and I'm wet.'

  Holding the home-made spear ahead of her, she leaned forward and turned the key. Standing on the step was a tall, big-boned man in a sodden overcoat and a wide- brimmed felt hat that had almost lost its shape in the rain; he was carrying a knapsack and a staff. He was in his late fifties, with long, wiry, once-black hair and beard, now turning grey and white. The skin of his cheeks had the leathery, broken-veined appearance of someone who enjoyed a drink, but his eyes were
beady, black and unfriendly.

  Mary prodded the spear towards his chest. He looked down at it contemptuously.

  'Are you the witch?' he said curtly.

  'What-?' Mary was taken aback.

  He pushed the spear to one side and forced his way past her. 'A tree told me,' he added gruffly.

  Mary readied herself to herd the visitor out, but he was already stripping off his overcoat and shaking the rain across her living room. He gave up, threw it to one side and marched to the fire to warm his hands. Mary advanced with the spear.

  'You can put that pigsticker down for a start,' he said, watching her from the corner of his eye.

  'If I put it anywhere, it'll be right up your arse.' She considered giving him a prod just to hear him squeal. 'Who are you?'

  He drew himself upright, shaking his head wearily as he flung his hat on top of his coat. 'The name's Crowther. Frank, if you want to be chummy.' His eyes narrowed. 'Though you probably don't.'

  'And-' she prompted, shaking the spear.

  'And I am here to see you,' he interjected with exasperation. 'I presume.'

  Mary chewed her lip for a second, then used the spear to motion him towards the chair. 'Just don't go making everything wet while you tell me about it.'

  He flopped into the chair, weariness etching deep lines into his face as his head lolled on to the chair-back. With his eyes closed, he began, 'I would hope I don't have to begin from first principles. We can accept that there is an element of what used to be called the supernatural in the world, can we not?'

  'Go on.'

  'I have been known, from time to time, to communicate with those other powers. Recently, they've been getting in a bit of a state. Something's up, apparently. A rather big and extremely troubling something, though as usual, trying to get any useful detail from them is like trying to carry water in a sieve. It seems, however, that it's linked to this damned plague.' He flapped a hand. 'Anyway, that's by the by, for now. The important thing is that something can be done about it. Apparently. And it seems I have a part to play, and you, because I was guided here. Frankly, I can think of better things to do, but I presume the survival of the human race is a pressing matter.'