Marc Chadbourn - The Queen of sinister

Grant, holding her hand when the tiny, warm bundle of life was placed on her sweat-streaked chest, saying, 'We're in this together. You never have to stand alone again.' Holding her on New Year's Eve, watching the fireworks light the sky.

And when she had finished one hole, she started on the next, a smaller one. Liam, three years old, at Christmas, putting out a mince pie for Santa. Waking her up on her birthday with a present he'd wrapped himself and a home-made card. Kissing her cheek when he caught her crying… Three hours later, the job was done. She returned to the house in a dream, where nothing could touch her, and was content with that state. But the moment she attempted to lift Grant from the bed, she realised it was only transitory. His skin was cold and he didn't respond when she said his name; he would never answer. It looked like Grant, but it didn't feel like him, not warm, not loving, not laughing any more; it made no sense, and that only made things worse.

The tears came again, this time squeezing out silently to run into the corners of her mouth, where the saltiness made her feel sick. He was too heavy for her to carry. She fell twice, smashing his head against the bedside cabinet. His arms and legs wouldn't go where she wanted. With a tremendous effort, she managed to get him half on to her back, and then she dragged him from the room, crying out every time some part of him cracked against a door jamb or piece of furniture, as if he could still feel.

Outside, she slipped and dropped him on the wet lawn. After all her struggling, it was the last straw. She knelt down and sobbed as if it were the end of the world. But once those tears had gone, she began again, struggling to get him up, slipping and sliding in the mud of the churned-up turf, falling again, twisting her ankle. At one point his cheek rested gently against hers, and the rain running down his face made it feel as if he was crying, too. Her mind began to fracture into unconnected fragments of thoughts, so that it seemed as if time was no longer running correctly. She was on the grass with him, staring up at the clouds. She was at the end of the lawn with Grant hanging from her back. She was standing at the edge of the grave. She was looking down at Grant's jumbled body at the bottom of the hole, thinking, 'Why doesn't he get up? I'll never get the clay out of that shirt.'

And then she went back for Liam, and he was easier to carry. But at the grave, she couldn't bear to drop him in. She hugged him to her breast, kissing him repeatedly, and she would have stayed there for ever if the universe hadn't told her what needed to be done.

The edge of the grave crumbled and they tumbled into the hole together, crashing into the pool of muddy water at the bottom with a great splash that filled her mouth and nostrils. The clay covered her from head to foot so that she resembled some wild prehistoric woman. And still she held Liam, his body so small, his clothes soaked, and she prayed that she would feel some warmth, that the world would turn back, that everything would fall apart and drift away.

She stayed there, while water puddled in the bottom and slowly worked its way up her legs, as the barely light day faded and darkness crept in from the east. Her thoughts continued to shred. Nothing was worse than what she had endured. The rest of the human race could all die, scythed down by the plague; she didn't care. Nothing was important any more. It should all come to a stop. Fragments… At some point, when the night was riven by lightning, she crawled out and found the spade. Every time she thought she'd endured the worst, something even more terrible would rise up. Seeing the first shovelful fall on them broke her into even smaller pieces. It was her husband and son and she was sealing them beneath the earth. The soil landed with a hollow thud on an unmoving chest. She waited for a complaint — 'Mummy, what are you doing?' — but none came. Lying on the wet, packed mud, the rain splattering over her, taking everything away. Another crack of lightning, dragging her from the nothing. A strange sensation: weight on her chest. Opening her eyes so that the rain sloughed off from where it had settled in the hollows. A large hooded crow, oddly familiar, sat on her breastbone, its beady black eyes glimmering only inches from her face. Talons dug into her skin. The blue- black beak was long and cruel. Did it think she was dead? Was it searching for carrion? It only had to lean forward to peck out her eyes.

But instead of attacking, it only watched. Was she dreaming?

It shuffled back and pecked her chest, not so hard that it hurt, or perhaps she was just too numb to feel. Only it didn't stop; the pecks continued rhythmically, as if it were trying to crack her open. It was so large, that the weight of it was making it difficult for her to breathe. She should wave it away, only there was no point.

She closed her eyes, drifting into the rainfall once again. Mary had a bad feeling. For three days, the cards had hinted at something dark: an ending, or a new beginning — both the same as far as the universe was concerned. She wished she could get whatever powers she was tapping into to see things from the low-down human perspective once or twice: they might look the same, but they certainly didn't feel the same.

She'd tried scrying, but had found it difficult to reach the trance state, and for some reason her thoughts kept coming back to Caitlin. On edge and unable to settle, Mary swigged back the whiskey with blatant disregard for its rarity in the new world, but she knew she wouldn't be able to rest until she'd been to see her friend. She threw another log on the fire to keep it going until she returned, and then put on her anorak. She was sick of the damp weather; it felt as if it had been raining for months.

The weather affected her mood badly. She had always been prone to depression, Churchill's black dog following her wherever she went, but in the dark, dismal days it was worse. She couldn't stop her mind turning to the past, what was and what might have been. Would things have been different if she'd settled down with someone? Or would she still have disliked herself so much, and in doing so made her partner's life a misery too? She'd always thought she was best on her own — save wrecking another life — but she missed a touch, a word on awakening, the warmth of another mind, little comforts as much as the big ones.

She still marvelled at how life can pivot on one simple event. How arrogance could turn to guilt, youthful optimism to self-loathing, all in the blink of an eye. Sometimes she liked to blame her childhood religion for programming her to carry her suffering with her, but her inability to get over who she had been didn't have one source; it was an accretion of tiny failures. A life, to all intents and purposes, wasted. Her first religion had told her everyone had a reason for being. She was the example that gave the lie to that little fantasy.

As she searched for the old miner's Davy lamp that had belonged to her father, she heard a noise outside. It could have been the wind gusting at the shed door or the broom falling over at the back of the house, but her spine tingled nonetheless. Any visitors — and she had many, wanting advice and help at all hours of the day — would come straight to the front door. The sound had come from the side of the house.

Her nerves went on edge. With the breakdown in law and order, there were plenty of threats that wouldn't think twice about attacking a woman on her own. The village had its own Neighbourhood Watch patrolling during the night, but it had been devastated by the plague, might even have gone completely.

From next to the door, she grabbed the brush handle with the carving knife strapped to the end. One she could probably see off; any more and she would have to run. Cautiously, she approached the side window.