Ben Cheetham - The Society of Dirty Hearts

He opened the door a crack, squinting through. In the gloomy candlelight he saw first a man and a woman sat with their backs to him, hands resting palm down on the oak table. The man’s head was stooped as if he had a heavy weight on the back of it. The woman was staring towards the head of the table. Her eyes were wet, her lips trembled. Then he saw his grandma. Only it wasn’t his grandma. Her mouth, the corners of which were drawn up into a sneering grin, opened and closed mechanically. And from it, like some kind of ventriloquist’s trick, came the voice. Saliva stretched from her lips to the tabletop. Her nostrils flared like a mad bull’s. Her eyes were unrecognisable, the pupils dilated and bulging. They seemed to spit hate at everything they saw. They shrivelled Julian’s insides with fear. He wanted to look away, but couldn’t. He stood transfixed, like someone trapped in a bad dream. Then, suddenly, the eyes turned their glare on him, and he fell backward as if he’d been punched in the chest. Scrambling to his feet, he ran upstairs, no longer caring how much noise he made. He dived under the duvet and hugged his mum tightly, eyes squeezed shut, breath coming in short gasps. Without waking, she put out an arm to hug him back.

Gradually, Julian’s breathing slowed and he drifted into troubled dreams. He was staring up into a face as ugly as a Halloween mask, his body heavy and immobile. The monster bent close, sniffing and licking his face. Its breath stunk like something rotten. Hands seemed to be on Julian’s throat, squeezing. Tears welled in his eyes. He tried to scream, but all that came out was a pathetic little squeal. His head felt swollen, like it would burst. The monster’s face began to blur and melt into darkness. He felt himself stop breathing. He felt himself die. Then he awoke screaming, screaming and screaming.

Christine’s eyes snapped open. “What’s going on?” she gasped. “What’s the matter? Julian, calm down and tell me what’s the-” She broke off as the door swung open and Alice staggered into view.

Alice was pale and sweaty. Her make-up had run in streaks, giving her a ghoulish look. Her eyes were her own again, but clouded and distant, as if seeing through a veil of pain and fear. “It knows you’re here,” she cried, clinging to the door-handle for support.

“What are you talking-” Christine started to say, then a frown of realisation hardened her features. “What’ve you done, Mum? Tell me.”

“There’s no time. You must leave right away. Go. Get out!”

Putting her arm around Julian and pressing his face into her shoulder, Christine shepherded him from the room. She paused by her mum, staring at her with something close to detestation. “I don’t know what’s gone on here. But I do know one thing, if you’ve messed Julian up like you messed me up, I’ll never forgive you. I’ll cut you out of our life forever. Do you hear? Am I coming through the ether loud and clear, you selfish old witch?” Without waiting for a response, she hurried Julian downstairs and out the house.

A fifteen-year old girl was missing in Julian’s hometown. He saw it on the news in the student union bar. Her name was Joanne Butcher. They showed a picture of her. Eyes rimmed with heavy black mascara, straightened reddish-purple bangs hanging into them, an anaemic emo kid pout. She’d gone out to meet some friends nearly a week earlier and never come home. Her mother made a tearful plea for information. She looked gaunt and glazed, like a heroin addict. She probably is some sort of addict, thought Julian. He didn’t know the Butchers, but he recognised their name. They had a bad reputation in the town as petty crims.

The dream came that night for the first time in months. Only this time it was different. This time Julian was the monster and the person beneath him was a girl. Not the girl who’d been missing for days, but another girl who’d been missing for years. Her name was Susan Carter, and she was fifteen too. She had a cute, girl-next-door face, sandy blonde-hair in a ponytail and baby-blue eyes — eyes that were swollen and wet with fear. He bent to inhale her scent. She smelt of perfume and soap, and underneath them something else, something far sweeter. His blood quickened through his veins, pulsing in his temples and groin. Horrified at what he was doing, but unable to stop himself, he ran his tongue over her face, tasting her make-up, her skin. She shuddered and struggled, but his hands were on her like steel claws, tearing at her clothes, prising her legs apart. With a loud animal grunt, he penetrated her and felt something give. Then she was screaming, and his fingers were around her throat, squeezing and twisting as if he was wringing out a dishcloth. Suddenly, he was wracked by an orgasm stronger than any he’d ever known. Bucking like he’d been shot, he laughed with triumph and pleasure until the last of his semen had pulsed into her.

When Julian woke up, his boxer-shorts were wet and sticky. A crawling sick feeling rose in him. “What’s the matter with me?” he murmured to himself. “I must be losing it.”

He switched on the bedside lamp, got out of bed and washed his groin at the sink in the corner of the room. Staring at himself in the mirror, he was vaguely surprised to see the same face as always staring back. Shaking his head with shame, he returned to bed. He couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes, though. The thought of the dream made him tremble with little shudders of revulsion. Finally, when he couldn’t stand lying there any longer, he rose, showered and dressed. He didn’t go to his lectures. He stayed in his room all day, ignoring knocks on his door from hall mates, flicking through the TV and radio channels, searching for news of Joanne Butcher. There wasn’t much to find. A missing teenage girl from a bad family didn’t generate much air time.

Julian went to bed that night determined not to dream. Closing his eyes, he meditated until his mind was a blank white space, like his therapist had taught him. But the dream came anyway. He awoke with his head reeling and his pulse pounding. He made it to the sink just in time to empty the contents of his stomach into the porcelain bowl. Overwhelmed by dread and disgust, he couldn’t even bring himself to lie down. Instead he stood at the window, staring at nothing, his forehead tensed into deep lines, like he was debating with himself. Suddenly, as if he’d come to some decision, he turned and began pulling clothes out of a chest of drawers. He packed them and a few other bits and pieces into a rucksack, dressed and hurried from his room to the carpark. He flung his rucksack onto the backseat of his car, got in and drove off the campus.

The greyish light of dawn was gathering as Julian passed beyond the suburbs of the city. He headed north along roads flanked at first by out of town shopping-centres, and light industrial estates, then by fields of tall wheat, bright yellow rapeseed and grass grazed by cattle. As he neared home, the fields gave way to a mixed forest of light, airy deciduous trees and dark, claustrophobic pine plantations. His heart lifted as he passed into the forest’s dappled sunlight. He loved the forest. He loved its sounds, its scents. But most of all he loved its secrecy. As young boys, he and his friends had spent days and weeks at a time hacking their way through its thick undergrowth of bracken and bramble, exploring its darkest recesses. They’d pretended to be outlaws in hiding, building dens, starting fires, setting rabbit snares. And as teenagers, they’d got drunk and stoned and popped their cherries in its secret gloom.

Julian’s heart fell again when he saw the police cars at the entrance to the Five Springs picnic area — a favourite spot for local teens to gather on a weekend. Drivers were slowing down, rubbernecking. There was nothing to see, except a few policemen and bored-looking journalists.

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