Chapter 16
Fergus went on with his stories, though I didn’t remember much of what he said because at some point I finished the two pints in front of me.
I felt good—well, at least not totally and completely inhuman—so I ordered two more pints, to keep the joke going.
I was doing it! I was becoming someone better!
Someone easy-going, outgoing, warm. And then I had a few drinks more, though I couldn’t say what they were.
I vaguely remembered Rowan getting another alert on his phone, then bringing a jug of water to the table.
Around midnight, my inebriation reached its peak and my happy buzz quickly turned to dizzying nausea.
Time to leave. I hadn’t seen my neighbour since her entrance, so I snuck out of The Curtyard before she could catch me for an awkward walk back to the Sgàthan Sìth cottages.
With any luck I’d be back and asleep before she started up her nightly racket.
I’m not even sure if I said goodbye to Rowan.
I staggered home, walking alone in the dark, something I would never do sober. But the alcohol had made me bolder, braver, stupider.
This is going to be my home, I thought. I’m not going to be afraid of my own home.
How I must have looked to someone—or something—watching, unseen.
Drunk woman weaving in and out of the road, swerving into the hedgerow more than once.
No streetlights. No moon. Only the navy sky overhead, dotted with faraway stars, and the shadow of the woods beyond the quiet fields.
In the still air, my shambling footsteps echoed for miles.
I sifted through the conversations from the pub in the filter of my growing post-drink paranoia.
God, why had I claimed that second pint so quickly?
And taken a sip of both! Like I was licking it to claim it was mine.
It was Fergus’s fault. What the fuck was his problem?
Why had I let him rattle me so much? Ugh, I need to ignore arseholes.
That’s what you’re supposed to do with arseholes, ignore them.
Because they feed off… they feed off… Shit.
What did I just step in? Shit? Cow shit?
Horse shit? Sheep shit? Some kind of shit.
That’s the countryside though. Full of shit.
Just like me, har har! What was that about the old guy?
Dolly the Sheep. I saw Dolly at the museum.
Dead. Stuffed and dead. Spinning on a little turntable, round and round and round and…
I vomited, bracing myself against the hedgerow.
Only the hedge had turned hard and smooth.
The back end of a car. Oh no, I’d thrown up right under the back wheel.
That would be gross for someone in the morning.
I wiped my sleeve across my mouth and looked around.
I hoped no one saw. There was no one. Just a tree full of fluttering paper seeds.
I edged my way up the side of the car, trying not to alert the car’s owner.
Ugh. Why do my sleeves feel damp?
I wiped my hands down my jumper. I saw the car’s windscreen. Totally smashed in.
Probably abandoned. What a relief!
I shuffled away, fell up a hill twice, and found myself at my front step.
I wrestled my key out of my jeans pocket. On the third try I got it into the keyhole, but it wouldn’t turn.
“The fuck?”
I tried a few more times, rattling the door handle violently, before realising the handle felt different to before. I looked up. The door said ‘1a’. I almost fell back down the step.
“Sorry,” I said, “wrong house.”
The dark windows stared down blankly at me.
A laugh burst from my mouth.
Wrong house!
I creased over, laughing into my sleeves.
Ugh, they were sticky. I clapped a hand over my mouth to make myself quiet.
A laugh escaped around the seal of my hands, making a delicious fart noise.
Just like the one the old man had done yesterday.
I laughed harder and collapsed to my knees.
I shhh-ed myself. I got up, one finger on my lips, the other hand waving an apology to my neighbour, unseen.
I stumbled up to the right door and got the key in first time.
I flicked on the lights and flinched at their brightness. At least the electricity worked now. Still, all this light after so much darkness made me feel vulnerable somehow. My windows were a beacon. My location was lit up on the map.
I looked for curtains to pull closed over the living room window, but there were none.
Fuck’s sake.
Another thing to sort. Another thing to buy. I made a note in my phone.
CUYRTASIN
God, it was cold. Goosebumps stood to attention over my arms. It was colder inside than out.
Old stone buildings. No cloud cover above.
I touched the iron radiator. Cold. I hadn’t added more wood to the boiler today.
With a sigh, I snatched my axe from the sheepskin rug and headed into the basement.
The stairs down swayed around me as I descended. I groped about for the railing, clinging on once I’d found it. I tripped and flung my arm out with the axe to steady myself. The blade sank into the stair next to my foot. I froze, then I laughed and yanked it back out of the wood.
It took me a moment to realise why it was so dark.
I’d forgotten to turn on the light. I groaned and looked back up the stairs.
Well, I was down here now. And I could see—sort of—from the light coming in from the stairs.
Besides, I’d just walked home in the dark and nothing happened.
It couldn’t possibly be worse inside my own home.
I swung open the door of the boiler, banging it against the metal body of the water tank.
I scooped the old ash out onto the floor with my hands, then mashed in a handful of tinder.
At some point the tinder was alight, though I couldn’t remember reaching for a match.
I stared at it for a while. The flame dancing in its little cradle of paper and chipped wood.
It was bright. I was still cold. I needed more wood.
I reached inside the bag of firewood for a log.
I jammed it a few times against the too small opening before remembering I had to cut it.
That’s okay. I had the right tool for this job.
If I was sober, I would have known what a terrible idea this was. But I wasn’t sober. I was deliciously uninhibited. I was a ‘Woman Who Could Take Care Of Herself.’ I was a ‘Woman Who Could Chop Wood.’
Are you chopping or splitting? Rowan had said.
Splitting, please.
I balanced the log on the concrete floor and raised my axe. I split the log in two on the first try. I whooped. Why wasn’t I able to show this side of me to the people I met? I set another log on the floor. It was hard to be my best self when people like Fergus were smirking at me.
Or when people like my neighbour were hovering close by.
I split the log.
What did she have to hover for? What the fuck was with that creepy smile?
I set up another log.
Maybe she was just a bit odd. I’m a bit odd. I’d still want someone to be kind and include me.
I split the log.
But still, it was her that had made me act weird. I’d been fine until she showed up.
I set up another log.
What if she did that at every community event? I regretted introducing myself. A hot feeling rose into my cheeks.
I split the log.
The room turned slowly around my woozy head.
I was starting to feel sick again from swinging the axe.
But I kept splitting logs. More than I needed.
That high tone rose in my ears. I split the logs more and more violently.
I thought about how my neighbour had dressed.
How she’d looked. How she’d behaved. I thought of all the times I’d hovered at people’s desks.
I thought of all the parties I’d found out about after the fact.
I thought of a yellow kite above a cliff.
I thought of slender fingers, nails painted hot pink.
The light in the boiler had burnt out. I thrust the axe over and over into the already chopped wood, smashing it to splinters.
“Fuck you fuck you fuck you!”
Then, amidst the noise and violence, I was filled with the sudden awareness of something behind me.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention. My brain flooded my body with adrenaline. My sobriety returned to me suddenly. Everything became very sharp and clear. Something was here. Something was behind me. Any other time I would have startled or frozen or screamed or ran.
This time, I turned on my heel and swung the axe.
My body moved, quick and lithe, my arms so suddenly taut, so suddenly animal. Muscle swept the axe head through the air, an elegant silver arrow, a shooting star.
A wet shunk-crack!
My axe found its home wedged into the left-hand curve of my neighbour’s forehead.
I stopped still. Her wide, watery eyes stared at me, white, so white, in the gloom of the basement. Her lank hair was plastered to her face. Her hand was still reaching out toward me, fingers scant millimetres from my back.
Behind her, the door in the wall was open.
I froze, breath caught.
It was so dark, the blood pouring down her cheek didn’t look like blood. She stumbled back. The axe, still gripped in my hands, slid out of her face with a sucking sound. The black blood glistened along the blade like a lumpy oil slick.
She fell back through the open door in the basement, disappearing into the darkness of 1a Sgàthan Sìth beyond. Then the door swung shut.