The Doves #3
Raven is standing at the mouth of the garage, staring at her. She is closer than she has ever been before. Her eyes are huge and dark in her shrivelled grey face. She points at the woman with bloody, broken fingers. Her mouth opens wide. It is a pit of bloody bile and broken teeth.
The woman backs away.
“You can’t come in,” she says.
***
The woman descends. The smell is awful, but old.
It is the echo of a smell that would once have emptied the woman’s guts.
The woman understands the smell. It is long-ago putrefied flesh, mixed with long-ago dried piss and shit and vomit and blood.
More than that. It is grief. It is terror. It is despair.
Here, says Daya.
Yes here, says Paloma.
There is devotion in Paloma’s voice as she echoes Daya.
The woman reaches the bottom of the stone steps. There is a steel guard rail, cold under her palm.
“Raven is outside,” says the woman.
You didn’t let her in? asks Daya.
“No,” says the woman.
Good, says Daya.
The woman finds a light switch. White strip lights flicker on.
The woman is in a large room. The walls are bare breeze blocks.
There is a structure on the far wall. It is tall and wide. It is wooden and painted white. It is a triangular facade. There are six windows set into it. Three at the bottom, two in the middle, one at the top. Each window opens into a little black chamber.
The woman approaches it.
It is like she has become small, small as a dove, and is looking at the dovecote in the courtyard.
She gets nearer. She half looks through the windows into the dark chambers. She sees, out of the corner of her eye, a hand lying near the entrance to one of them. The hand is thin and grey and dry and withered. The splintered fingernails are broken and brown with long-dried blood.
In here, says Daya.
The woman crouches down and looks into the bottom middle chamber.
The chamber is long. A thin mattress covers the floor. It is soaked in dried filth.
Daya is in there. She is an indistinct shape at the back. A dim outline of white cloth and grey limbs.
Come in, says Daya.
The woman hesitates.
Come and cuddle, says Daya.
The woman climbs in.
A steel grille falls behind her with an echoing thump. She pulls on it but it has locked itself shut.
I can’t stay, says Daya. This isn’t my window. Mine’s the one at the top. But we can be together again soon.
The woman is alone in the chamber.
You can come in now Raven, say Daya and Paloma.
You make mess, says Paloma. Tidy up after yourself.
Raven pulls the slab back into place. Raven comes down the steps. Raven comes to the bars of the woman’s window.
“Let me out,” says the woman.
I’m sorry, says Raven. I can’t. Not anymore. I tried to stop you. But they wouldn’t let me in. You wouldn’t let me in.
Daya and Paloma and Jemima and Robin and Raven are there, in the light, all in fouled white nightdresses, all thin and grey and wasted, their eyes huge and dark in their withered skeletal faces, their hair matted, their lips and chins drizzled with filth, their fingernails broken and bloody. Jemima is carrying a little box.
“I didn’t do it,” says the woman. “It was him. He did it to me too.”
This is not revenge, says Paloma. This is company. We are to be sisters, as we always should have been. The last window is yours. It is filled. We are complete. We are together.
I’m sorry, says Raven, I tried to stop them.
I’m sorry, says Robin.
Jemima says nothing. She just cradles her box.
I love you, says Daya. And you love me, don’t you?
“Yes,” says the woman.
And this way we can be together, says Daya.
“Yes,” says the woman.
Just a few days of pain, says Paloma.
The girls exchange looks. In unison, they climb up onto the facade. The woman can no longer see them but she feels them climbing into their windows and closing the barred doors behind them.
***
Days pass.
“I’m hungry,” says the woman.
I know, says Daya.
“I’m hungry.”
I know.
“I’m hungry.”
We all are, says Paloma. He left us. They took him in the ambulance. There was nobody to feed us. Nobody knew we were here.
“I’m hungry.”
I know, says Daya.
I know, says Robin.
I know, says Paloma.
I know, says Raven.
Jemima croons a lullaby.
***
The woman is eventually missed. The house is searched. They do not find the room under the detached garage. Raven put the rug back.
The story reminds people of the years when girls disappeared from the area.
The woman’s husband inherits the house. He sells it.
Men come to take away all the junk left behind. They take away all the junk left in the detached garage. They take away the rug. Nobody notices the slab that does not quite match the others.
The new people move in. Their daughter hates the wallpaper in the living room so much she refuses to go in. Her parents soon have it all torn down, the walls painted. Nice bright colours. Even so, to the girl, there is a corner of the living room that always seems dark and cold and dirty.
She does not know it, but her new bedroom is the same room where the previous occupant slept.
***
It is the new family’s sixth night. The woman and Daya are sitting on the end of the girl’s bed.
“Who are you?” asks the girl.
The woman says nothing.
I’m Daya, says Daya.
“How old are you?” asks the girl.
I’m 9, says Daya.
“So am I,” says the girl.
The girl peers into the darkness.
“It is just you?”
No, says Daya.
I’m here too, says the woman. I look after Daya.
“Are you Daya’s mummy?” asks the girl.
Silly, says Daya. A child’s scorn. But she is pleased.
“What’s your name?” asks the girl, addressing the woman.
I’m Dove, says Dove.
The End