3. Something Dead Still Ticks
SOMETHING DEAD STILL TICKS
FRANCESCA
T he room is dark save for the glow of the TV, where footage of last year’s Red Reaping plays out.
I’m on my back, wrapped up in a heavy duvet, staring at the screen in faint annoyance at how bright it is.
There are women in rented velvet with their hair done in updos I’ve only ever seen in our family portraits, and they grin with blood-red lips whenever an interviewer stops them to ask about outfit details.
Every one of them looks absolutely stunning in their borrowed history, mispronouncing half the words as they chant the name of a woman they would’ve burnt in a heartbeat.
If this isn’t the most declawed ritual I’ve ever witnessed.
They burn straw men, who I suppose are Godwyn and his allies, spray pig’s blood at one another and read bad poetry from coffee-stained parchment.
My cottage walls creak in protest, as I’ve only recently finished warding the place again.
The wood still aches against the maiden nails I’ve hammered into the doorway; three floorboards are now loose because the soil beneath now cradles glass vials of urine for protection.
And these people on screen are yelling Edgar Allan Poe at each other.
It’s almost insulting.
Each year, I watch history blur into something palatable.
They’ve forgotten witches are real and have turned them into an aesthetic that can be ordered from a fast fashion company.
Men spin their partners around on the dancefloor, lifting them to the lantern light.
Eyes are drawn to phone screens, to the photobooth and to the orchestra they’ve hired.
None look up. None see the shadows that watch; huskins feeding on the revelry of the night. They don’t see the remnants of her— our undeserving saint —keeping watch. Oh, they chant her name, yes, but they don’t understand her. Understand their history.
To them, Godwyn is an old story we can use to insult men, a gothic villain for their gothic podcasts. The huskins are nothing but ghost stories, with a few ‘influencers’ attributing them to being ‘protectors of the land’.
The duchy they claim to love so much was built on the bones of a heretic, who slit open her soul to keep the darkness at bay. And they’ve made her into a fairytale mascot. Turned us into one, because every daughter since has been slit open too.
I rewind to the little girl they’ve crowned duchess-for-the-night, how she smiles all too like a younger version of me.
Both are brave; only one bleeds for real.
And yet, if I walked onto that stage and told them what I am and what I had to do to pass my test, they’d light the stake.
Call me a heretic. A witch. All whilst forgetting the ashes they scatter were their salvation, and still the cycle will turn.
And that’s why I’m doing it, why I wade back into the rot of this family, so that no Sheffolk girl will have to fill her lungs with lavender ashes again. No daughter of Redford will have to bleed to live, to protect a land that never did the same for her.
I fall asleep to that mantra.
When I wake up, it’s to the sound of that cursed cuckoo clock gifted by Aunt Edith. She claimed the cottage needed to feel more alive, needed some of the whimsy it possessed back when my mother still roamed these halls. It continues to screech as I blindly search for the remote to turn the TV off.
Livening up the place , my ass.
That bird wants me dead.
I drag my reanimated corpse of a body from the bed and dive through the pile of clothes on the settee.
Aunty Lydia was here just yesterday, tsking about how untidy my room looked.
“This isn’t how a lady presents herself,” she scolded, toeing some shoes out of the way.
“You never know who might pop in.” I could’ve argued back, telling her nobody was seeing my room but me.
Not unless they were breaking into this museum of melancholy to rob me blind.
But I held my tongue, because by the time she calls me morsig , I’m already half-laughing.
The joggers I grab are old, something I’m pretty sure belonged to Edmund back when he still played rugby at Valridge, and the jumper that follows is one I hijacked from my grandfather’s cupboard whilst he was down south last winter.
I forgo a hairbrush and anything else as the cuckoo screams louder.
My feet slap against cold hardwood, but at the last second I take a right into the kitchen to get some water boiling.
Tea will always hold precedence over everything else.
The cuckoo screeches whilst my hand trembles on the stove’s knob.
I’ve tried removing the batteries. Gran replaces them. Every bloody time.
So today, I go for the throat. I drag the old velvet armchair towards the wall, legs screeching against wood and leaving marks Lydia will have my head for.
Yet, at this moment, I care for little else but the bird that’s declared war upon me and this house.
Completely undignified, I clamber onto the back of the armchair and reach up.
The door opens, and the bird screams, its idiot eyes rolling back.
I snatch it mid-song, grunting when there’s resistance.
“ Shut up. Just shut up ,” I mutter, pulling as hard as I can.
Wood cracks and the mechanism gasps, but at last I emerge victorious.
I leap down with a cry and toss its mangled remains onto the coffee table before sinking back into the couch.
Gran will have it replaced, no doubt about that, but for now I’ll bask in the quiet I’ve earned.
It’s been too noisy as of late, so many voices speaking on my behalf. The castle has been buzzing for weeks, maids whispering, emails pinging into existence and names dropped around me like bait.
Four months.
That’s all the grace a dead fiancé buys here in Sheffolk.
You’d think losing someone the public believes you loved would grant you a year of peace, at the very least. Some mornings I think I dreamed it all, but then I see the emails pouring in from wealthy men whose sons are conveniently unmarried.
I see this ring— his ring —on my finger because people still expect to see the heartbroken bride-never-to-be.
Because that’s the current act of my performance, a story that needs to hold until Gran can pluck someone new from the suitors lining up like perfect gentlemen. I’ve always wondered about it, whether they get off just thinking about my surname, about my bloodline dripping into their inheritance.
Bet whoever gets chosen will brag to all who’ll listen about how they fucked their way into history.
It begins slowly here on the estate too, with extra seats left at the table for lunch and a different name card every two weeks.
Suppose I should be grateful, nonetheless.
There’s a certain mercy to be found in the way my grandmother handles scandal.
Sylvaine Sheffolk gulps the blood of rumour as though it were water, wipes the stain from her mouth and moves on.
There’s something one must understand about her though.
Sylvaine doesn’t need a confession to know when you’re guilty.
She just knows. I see it in the way she watches me, a farmer eyeing the fox lurking close by, waiting for it to admit to its hunger.
The killing blow never comes, though I suppose the understanding she flings my way should be a weapon of its own.
A blade poised at my neck, demanding I acknowledge one simple truth to rid myself of the guilt once and for all.
We are women of House Sheffolk, and we don’t have the luxury of innocence.
That’s why I barely argue when she hands me dossiers of eligible bachelors across the duchy. If she won’t speak of Gabriel, neither will I. But I know she knows; his absence should’ve been answer enough. It’s the only confession either of us will give.
The kettle screams from its perch on the stove, jolting me from my thoughts.
I let myself rot for a moment longer before pushing up, eyes landing on my laptop.
It’s placed just a few centimetres from where I tossed the bird, still powered on and plugged into the charger that runs from the socket against the wall.
The screen glows pink, paused at exactly 00:09:27 into Barbie and the Twelve Dancing Princesses .
That pulls a frown from me; morning usually means being greeted by end credits.
“Tommy?” I call out into the hush of the cottage, with nothing but the creaking of the ceiling as my response. I repeat her name, half worried and half in reprimand. My dreams’ pessimistic ramblings pierce the bubble into reality, and unease courses through me. “Thomasin, are you in here?”
A clock ticks loudly from within my chest, another timer setting my nerves alight.
Something is wrong. Tommy’s too anal about little things like this; she’ll watch until the screen goes blank as though Mattel could be mistaken for Marvel and she’d miss out on an end credit scene if she clicked pause too soon.
It’s only then, when my own dilemmas are shoved aside, that I detect the lack of mildew in the air.
The brittle and papery scent is nowhere to be found, and momentarily, I turn my nose upwards, sniffing like a cautious rat.
But nothing. Minutes pass by; it could even be an hour; I’m not counting because a piece has been taken from my puzzle, and I can’t find it.
Can’t settle until I’m certain everything is alright.
“Thomasin,” I call again, padding into the kitchen. “If you’re hiding from me, you won’t be getting any tea.”
I flick the burner off and then grab the kettle, pouring hot water into the chipped mug that my grandfather once got me.
There’s another, a bright pink, tutu-shaped mug I got Tommy because she hates feeling left out.
The scent of rooibos soon fills the air; my DIY catnip for little-girl ghosts.
Now I just have to wait for her to take the bait.