D. Mitchell - The King of Terrors

‘This way, Mrs Krodde,’ said the man.

He had a comb-over. Youngish but with a comb-over. She thought such things were dead and gone these days. Men preferred to shave their heads entirely. It was the fashion.

There was a horrible smell in the room. A sharp, chemical smell that prickled the nostrils and made her feel nauseous.

He was lovely till he was twelve years old, she thought. His mother could do no wrong. He worshipped her. He loved that. My William, she’d tell him, and he’d respond by kissing her on the cheek. Then all that fizzled away when he became a teenager and it never came back. One moment a sweet puppy; the next a snarling hound you couldn’t put your hand near. She could just about put up with the cold shoulder from her husband — there’d been no fire in that particular oven for years — but not from her William. It cut her up.

So she ate away the misery but that just made her fat and feel even more miserable. Eventually she turned off from the hateful William he’d become, drowned her long tiresome hours in long bouts of mindless TV and chocolates. One life swapped for another. You are what you eat, people say. What did that make her?

The man with the terrible comb-over took her to a table. A long form laid upon it, covered with a sheet. There was another similar mound on another similar table. She wanted to turn and run away, but folded her arms against the cool atmosphere and sucked in a breath.

His fingers gripped the edge of the sheet. He observed her closely, a tiny smudge of empathy in his eyes. She glanced at him, nodded quickly.

He peeled back the sheet. It crackled as if it were new and straight out of the polythene wrapper.

The face was so white, she thought, like that of a statue she’d seen in a park.

‘Is this your son, Mrs Krodde?’

She wanted to say no, because her son, her little William, had died a long time ago. But she nodded again, putting a hand to her mouth. ‘Yes, that’s my son William,’ she said. ‘You say he was found in the canal?’

He said yes, and explained that he was found by two young people out jogging. ‘Drowned, by all accounts,’ he said. ‘No sign of any other injuries. He had his wallet on him, and his watch, so not a mugging gone wrong, one presumes. You say he’d been out drinking?’

‘Yes, he was depressed because he’d lost his job at the supermarket. I told him drinking wasn’t the answer.’

‘Probably had one too many, took a walk, went too close to the canal and fell in.’

‘He couldn’t swim. I couldn’t afford for him to have swimming lessons when he was little. Maybe if I had he’d be alive today.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said clinically. ‘Perhaps not. Depressed, you say?’

She said yes. ‘You think that’s a reason? You think he drowned himself?’ The thought cut her up. She knew all about depression. She was drowning in chocolate.

‘Hard to say, but it could be a contributory factor.’

‘Oh,’ she said. She allowed herself to be led meekly to the door. ‘Do you think if I could have afforded swimming lessons for him, like other mothers did, he would be alive today?’

‘Difficult to say, Mrs Krodde. Difficult to say.’

A Prickling of Fear

December 2011

Christmas was fast approaching, a week or so away. The snow came down hard and relentless. But that was what winter could be like in Wales. Gareth Davies wasn’t complaining; it was part of the attraction, being cut off, isolated from everyone and everything. Isolation did have its drawbacks, namely the weather; he had risked the elements and driven out in his wheezy old Land Rover to stock up on exorbitantly expensive provisions from the Cavendish sisters’ store during one of the few windows of opportunity the weather presented. It had been a nightmare getting out, driving down the lanes and small single-track road; the council’s gritting trucks only concentrated on the major routes so when the blizzards came they experienced a total wipeout, with the small side road and neighbouring fields becoming one under the heavy drifts of snow.

He had loaded his carrier bags into the back of the Land Rover and was making his careful way back. Night had fallen and the snow came down again in Arctic proportions. He cursed. He didn’t want to be stuck out in the middle of nowhere. The final mile stretch down to his cottage was on quite a steep incline, the road giving way to a muddy track, heavily rutted and frozen solid. It was covered in a fresh blanket of fine snow. The old headlights didn’t do much to light up the track, and the windscreen wipers came from an era when slow and erratic represented British quality. He was concentrating hard, struggling to keep to the track and avoid letting the vehicle slide into one of the deep, snow-filled ditches.

He was, however, glad to be on the last leg of the uncomfortable journey home, and was looking forward to hunkering down in front of a log fire with a stiff drink. He’d even break into one of his recently bought sherry-filled mince pies as a minor salute to the season. And perhaps it was this warming thought that distracted him, because he did not see her till it was too late to do anything.

A woman, her face gleaming like a bright full moon in the glare of the headlights; a look of surprise that switched to horror as she burst from the hedge to his left and realised that a car was bearing down on her. She appeared to slip on the snow, crash down the steep bank.

He hit the brakes, more by instinct than anything. The wheels locked but the car kept moving, slewing madly from side to side. He heard the awful thud of impact; saw her head bouncing off the front of the Land Rover like a volleyball. She disappeared beneath the vehicle and Gareth closed his eyes as if somehow that might stop the inevitable from happening.

His heart was performing a loud and fast Lord of the Dance routine as he swung open the Land Rover’s door. ‘ OhJesusohJesusohJesus…!’ he said in a wild rush of air that spiralled into the sky like a cloud of cigarette smoke. He leapt from the cab, his feet plunging into deep snow. The rhythmic rumble of the engine was ominously loud in the snow-muffled lane, large flakes still falling from the sky, spinning around him and hitting him on the face. He saw her legs — bare legs — lying prone in the light from the headlamps.

He dashed around to the front, slipping in his haste and grabbing the wing mirror to steady himself. Her head was turned away from him, one arm draped protectively over the bridge of her nose, the other across the chest of her sweatshirt, an oversized, sodden raincoat wrapped loosely around her.

There was a carrier bag by her side and inside he saw a small cardboard box poking out. But he was more concerned that he’d killed her. Bending down he patted her face. ‘Hello,’ he said dumbly. ‘For God’s sake, answer me.’ He spotted blood on the snow and his insides crumpled. She remained motionless and he saw her face being leached of colour, growing dangerously paler by the second.

He reached into his coat for his cell phone — he needed to call an ambulance. After much fumbling from pocket to pocket he remembered he’d left the phone on the seat and ran madly back to the cab. He retrieved it, but there was no reception. He cursed, waving it around in the air, as if he could somehow snag a stray bit of signal. He failed.

Could she be in shock, he thought? He pocketed the phone for now and slipped off his coat to drape it around her body. Flakes of snow settled quickly and evenly on it.

‘Don’t you worry,’ he said worriedly. ‘We’ll soon get you taken care of.’

He tried the phone again. Nothing. He stood there with a hand to his head wondering what on earth he should do now. He could run back up the lane to see if the reception was any better, but he doubted it; he’d be cut off from a signal for quite a distance. Anyhow, she was unconscious, not a good sign, maybe even bleeding internally, broken bones, shock, and laid freezing in the snow. No one else would happen on them as few cars came this way, even in mid-summer, so on a night like this waiting around just wasn’t an option.