Those drifters can’t suffer anymore – but your father can, I heard Woody whisper, as if he were sitting on the floor next to me.
Hadn’t I caused my father enough shame and embarrassment while growing up? Hadn’t my mother caused him enough humiliation by running off with a guy half her age? Could I stick another thorn in his side?
When I felt as if I couldn’t cry anymore, and my head aching, I ripped off the blood-stained shirt. Standing, I went to the bathroom and turned on the light. Blood had soaked through the shirt and onto my bra. I took that off too, throwing both items to the tiled floor. I looked in the mirror above the sink. The cut to my brow wasn’t deep, but the skin around it had started to swell and turn an angry red. Taking Woody’s advice, I ran a bath, removing the rest of my uniform and leaving it where it had dropped. I couldn’t care if I never wore that uniform again. Did I deserve to? I wondered.
I lay back in the water, tendrils of stream wafting upwards, covering the mirror with condensation. I closed my eyes, desperate to unscramble my mind. I needed to try and make sense of everything that had happened; to come to terms with what I had done. There was a sudden sound – a knocking. I opened my eyes and gasped. The word Witch had been written in the watery condensation that now covered my bathroom mirror.
Chapter Six
I snapped my eyes open with a start and looked at the mirror. It was covered in condensation – there was no writing. My heart was racing in my chest. I took a towel, which hung over the side of the bath, and got out. With the towel wrapped about me, I stood in front of the mirror and wiped away the moisture with the flat of my hand. Definitely no writing. I had fallen asleep in the bath and dreamt the whole thing up. But what about the knocking? I wondered, creeping into the small lounge and heading for the front door. There was a sudden bang and I span around. The noise had come from outside. I crossed to the window and peered into the darkness. The guy who lived upstairs from me was knocking on his own front door, trying to wake the rake-thin girl who lived up there with him.
With my heart beginning to slow, I closed the curtain and went to my bedroom. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I towelled my hair dry. In my head I could hear the old man out on the road – it was like I could feel his hot, sticky breath against my face.
Witch! he whispered.
Why had he called me that? Was it because I had killed him and his family, or was it a warning? A curse?
With my skin turning taut with gooseflesh, I dropped the towel onto the floor and crawled beneath the duvet. I pulled it over my head, hoping it would muffle the sound of the old guy’s voice. With my eyes closed, I tried to think of anything other than what had happened out on the road. It was hard, as all I could see in the darkness of my mind was that little boy and his pale white face framed by his red, blood-stained hair.
I didn’t want to, but I had to look at him – go to him. My feet crunched over gravel and the tyre marks on the road. When I was within touching distance, I crouched and reached for him. With the tips of my fingers, I gently brushed the hair from his brow. His fringe was knotted together in thick congealed lumps, which felt hot and tacky against my fingertips.
I’m so sorry, I whispered.
As if hearing my voice stirred him from a light and restful slumber, the little boy opened his eyes and looked at me. I stumbled backwards onto my arse. A crow squawked from one of the adjacent fields, the sound of its giant black wings beating as it soared away. I looked towards the sound and cried out – my voice seeming muffled and broken. It wasn’t the sound of the crow’s wings that I could hear flapping, but the clothes of that dead family as they pulled themselves to their feet. With my hands clamped to either side of my face, I watched the man with the wheel buried in his chest slide out from beneath it. The iron wheel began to turn slowly, pulling out the man’s intestines in white, greasy-looking lengths of rope.
Witch, I heard the old man say again.
I looked over my shoulder to see him standing, his emaciated face covered with skin which looked like the texture of a crinkled plastic bag.
Witch, he said again, then added something he hadn’t said before. Witch did it.
I scrambled backwards on my arse as he limped towards me, looking like something from a cheaply-made zombie movie. His arms twitched uncontrollably, giving him the appearance of someone suffering in the latter stages of Parkinson’s disease. There was another sound. I snapped my head to the right. The woman with her arm wrapped around her throat pushed herself up off the road with her free hand. Her face was so pale that it looked like a headlamp in the dark. It almost seemed to glow. I watched as her eyes rolled down in their sockets and stared at me.