He hopped out and opened the doors at the back so that Everett and Gar could unload.
‘Do you want any help with that?’ he whispered. He couldn’t take his eyes off the woman that Gar was carrying over his shoulder. Her head and torso hung down his back, covered in a large sack, but her pale legs and buttocks were naked to the air where he grasped them in front, and her ankles were tied with brown parcel tape. She was making a faint, muffled whimpering noise.
Vessel. She was the vessel. He had to remember that.
‘No,’ Everett replied. ‘Stay outside and keep an eye on things. If anybody comes by, act like a burglar, chase them off or something. If the old woman over that way wakes up and makes a fuss, or that dog of hers starts barking, for God’s sake make sure neither of them gets out until we’re done here.’
‘What if she does get out? That dog of hers is massive.’
Everett patted the jacket pocket where his Webley lay snug. ‘You let me take care of that fucking dog. Honestly, I’m fed up with all of this pussy-footing around. I might just take care of her too. Can you handle this?’ It was one of the very few times Matt had heard Everett drop the f-bomb. He must have been pretty nervous.
‘I can.’
Gar carried the vessel around to the other side of the shed where the door stood open and he caught a glimpse of the floor having been folded back to reveal the black earth underneath. Mother was already there, and she had painted lines curving upward from the corners of her mouth – probably to resemble the tusks of the god, but as far as Matt was concerned she looked more like the Joker, and all of a sudden he was very glad that he’d been told to keep out. Both she and Everett scared the shit out of him sometimes, but at least he kind of understood Everett, whereas with Mother it was like trying to understand the moon.
Then the vessel was carried inside, and the door was shut, and he was safely outside in the darkness.
* * *
3:07
That’s what her bedside clock says when the phone rings, jarring Dennie out of sleep. She fumbles for it and picks up, thinking that at this time in the morning it can only be one of the children. There’s been an emergency; one of her babies is hurt. With her other hand she flaps at Brian to wake him up and then remembers that Brian has been dead for just over a year, and her heart lurches.
‘Hello?’ she mumbles.
For a moment there is just breathing on the line – harsh and thick, as if on the verge of sobbing or screaming. Great, she thinks, my first dirty phone call.
Then Sarah Neary’s voice: ‘Dennie?’
This wakes her properly, like a glass of cold water in the face. ‘Sarah? Honey, what’s wrong?’
More breathing. Thick swallowing. ‘I think I’ve killed him.’
For a moment Dennie couldn’t tell whether the clock display was the one from her memory or from now, in the shed. She must still be dreaming because Sarah was standing in the corner, facing away from her, except it couldn’t be a dream because Viggo had just woken up too, and was whining his concern. It had to be real because Dennie needed the little emergency LED to see that Sarah was in the process of drawing something on the wall with her finger, and she’d only just started. In her other hand she clutched Sabrina, who peeped over her shoulder at Dennie as Sarah worked.
A line, curving out to the right and then back in again at the bottom, like a bow. Then another bow, starting and finishing at the same points but curving out further, so that the result was a crescent moon. Whatever Sarah was using for paint dripped and ran, but Dennie knew that it wasn’t paint. It was blood from the wrists that she’d slashed in her prison cell twelve years ago with a sharpened toothbrush handle, and it was fresh on the wall of Dennie’s shed.
Then Sarah turned to her and said: ‘They’re going to bring him back. You can’t let them, Dennie.’ But it wasn’t Sarah’s voice, it was Sabrina’s.
Then she was gone.
Dennie woke up and found that she wasn’t lying on her camp bed at all, but standing in the corner where she’d seen Sarah. The blood-painted moon was very real, however, and right in front of her. She was holding a pruning knife in her right hand, and her left forefinger stung like a bastard. When she looked down she saw that she’d cut herself in her sleep. She was the one who’d made the drawing on the wall.
‘Do not tell Lizzie about this,’ she told Viggo as she switched on her battery lantern and hunted out a first aid kit. ‘She’ll have me sectioned, and I wouldn’t blame her.’ She taped up the wound and switched the lantern off to save the battery.
Something moved in the window.
Don’t be daft, she told herself. It’s because you moved the lantern when you turned it off and the shadows only made you think you saw something. Or it’s your eyes readjusting to the dark. There’s nothing out there.
But there had been something out there, attracted by her light, peering in at her.
Her shed had only one window, no more than a couple of square feet wide, and it looked out across the south-eastern corner of the allotments – she’d oriented it that way to get the most of the morning light in the winter. The night was clear, and there were a few solar-powered lawn lights dotted around like earthbound fireflies, still charged from all the good weather. With that and the ambient light
