Ben Cheetham - The Society of Dirty Hearts

“Anyway, why are you so interested in a pair of no-marks like Joanne Butcher and Mia Bradshaw?” asked Kyle.

“I’m not. Doesn’t it freak you out though? I mean, you expect this kind of thing to happen in a city, but not around here.”

“Jules, man, you crack me up,” Kyle laughed, shaking his head. “You really don’t know shit about this town, do you?”

Julian crept through the house to the kitchen. As he made a sandwich, Henry padded across to snuffle at his hand. He took the snack to his bedroom and lay with Henry curled at his feet, looking out into the darkness beyond the window. He wondered if Jake Bradshaw was really hiding in the forest. He imagined himself in Jake’s situation, sleeping under the stars, living off the land, moving camp every few days to avoid detection. The idea appealed to something within him that longed for a secret place, away from the reality of daily life, away from the pressure to study and achieve.

He closed his eyes, hoping he was stoned enough to fall straight into a blank sleep. He wasn’t. Bright, almost luminous images quivered behind his eyelids. He saw Mia Bradshaw, Joanne Butcher and Susan Carter. They separated and merged like colours in a kaleidoscope, until he couldn’t tell where one finished and the other began. He tried meditating, but it made no difference, so he got up and went to the living-room. His dad was there, too, sat in his dressing-gown, staring at the black walls of glass, sipping whisky. There was no light in the room except that of the moon. Even so, Julian could see that the bags under his dad’s eyes were heavier than usual, the lines on his forehead more pronounced.

“Can’t sleep?” Robert asked. When Julian shook his head, he added, “Me neither.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

“Not particularly. What about you?”

Julian shook his head again. That was the way it was with them. The way it always had been. They’d speak to each other, exchange a few words about this and that, but they never really talked about themselves, their hopes, their plans, their fears. Not when it was just the two of them. There was a kind of distance there, a deadness. Christine was their conduit, the only person who could make them connect. The current of her emotion conducted life between them. In her presence they laughed and joked, argued and cried. They were a family. Without her, they were like two halves of a severed wire.

“Where are you going?” Robert asked, as Julian pulled his trainers on.

“Out for a walk.”

“It’s past midnight. You’ll get yourself into trouble one of these nights going out walking at this time.”

“I’ll be fine. What’s going to happen to me around here?”

“Things can happen, even around here. Just look at this Butcher girl business.”

“Yeah, but I’m not a fifteen-year old girl.”

Robert clicked his tongue against his palate, the way he always did when he was irritated. “Oh, do what you bloody want, Julian. You always do anyway.” He shifted his gaze back to the darkness.

Julian continued to look at him a moment, frowning. Then he went into the kitchen and picked up a torch and a key from a shelf on his way out the backdoor. Henry raced ahead of him as he made his way to a locked door in a thorny hedge at the rear of the garden. Beyond the door, a narrow path rose up a wooded slope. The moon shone dimly through the trees. He didn’t switch on the torch, though. His feet knew the way without light, and they led him forward, anticipating every dip, rise, twist and turn. He couldn’t see Henry, but he could hear him crashing along through the undergrowth. At the top of the rise, beyond a grassy clearing, the path forked into three. Henry was waiting for him there. Julian took the fork that led straight on, which, he knew, wound down into a valley, where it merged with an old cart track that led to a derelict sawmill. Many of the area’s residents had tried to get the sawmill demolished because used needles had been found there once or twice. As he walked, he lit a joint. By the time he reached the cart track, the hot smoke had soothed away the lingering irritation he felt from his encounter with his dad. He hesitated, listening to Henry snuffling after a rabbit or whatever. Usually, he’d have continued on to the sawmill and beyond, but he suddenly found himself reluctant to go any further. It wasn’t the thought of maybe bumping into Jake Bradshaw or some junkie that stopped him. Neither was it his dad’s warning or dope-induced paranoia. It was something else, something in the air. A smell, faint but unpleasant. A smell that didn’t belong amongst the thick pine groves.

Julian flinched as Henry began to bark. He turned on the torch and directed it towards the noise, but he couldn’t see Henry amongst the rows of closely-spaced trees. “Here boy,” he shouted. The barking stopped, but Henry didn’t respond to his call. He stepped off the path, his feet sinking softly into a deep bed of pine needles. Stooping to avoid the lowermost branches of the trees, he followed the beam of his torch. With every step, the smell got stronger. It was like dustbins on a hot day, only much, much worse. He could taste it in his mouth, as if his tongue was rotting. It gripped his lungs, twisted his stomach, dragged him on. He heard the dog growling low in its throat. “Henry,” he hissed. The growling intensified. His torch found a yellow flash of fur. Henry was jerking his head, tearing at something on the ground. It looked like a bulging black bin liner, but some instinct told Julian that wasn’t what it was. His heart stuttered as he made out the shape of a leg, a boot. He rushed forward, kicked Henry. The dog yelped, skittering away. He looked down. His mouth filled with saliva like he was going to puke.

Joanne Butcher didn’t look like her photo. Her livid face was bloated and blistered. The eye sockets appeared empty, but peering closer Julian saw dozens of milk-white maggots squirming in them. Her lips were drawn back in a grotesque parody of a smile and a black tongue protruded through them as if blowing a raspberry. Something that might’ve been dried vomit or blood was crusted over her chin. Watery pus oozed from teeth marks that Henry had inflicted on her throat and face — at least, Julian assumed Henry had inflicted them. If it hadn’t been for her reddish-purple hair, which lay so lankly against her skull that it looked painted on, he wouldn’t have been able to identify her. She was wearing much the same outfit as Mia Bradshaw had done in The Cut — leather jacket, red plaid miniskirt, ripped fishnets, military boots. Her skin showed green with a marbling of purple-black veins through her tights. There were things crawling all over her, not only maggots, but also fat blood-sucking flies, beetles and mites. They moved like groping fingers under her clothes.

Julian stood staring at the corpse as if it was something beautiful, mesmerising. A dribble of vomit escaped his mouth and dropped onto it. Automatically, he swiped the back of his hand across his chin. A sound gradually seeped into his shocked senses — a gnawing sound. He shone the torch at Henry, who was hunkered down chewing on something that was maybe a stick, or maybe something else, something ripped from Joanne Butcher’s corpse. More vomit came up. He spat it out and snapped, “Drop that. Drop it!”

Henry jumped up and retreated a little, the thing dangling out of his mouth like a withered tongue. “Stay,” Julian said, in a voice of warning. He moved towards the dog. The dog turned and ran in the direction from which they’d come. He gave chase, stumbling over roots, blinking as branches lashed his face. He quickly lost sight of Henry, but he didn’t stop running. He ran all the way back to the house as if he was being chased by a ghost. His dad was still up.