John Halkin: Squelch

The shrill squealing stopped, leaving behind a deathlike silence, tense with unspoken threat.

Nervously she stared out through the window but nothing was visible, only the dark silhouettes of tall trees against the dusk sky. She could swear they were still in the garden: yet where?

Moving as quietly as she could, she crept up the narrow, creaking staircase to her bedroom, where she leaned out. Beneath the trees everything seemed to be in deep shadow. Then from all sides of the cottage came a faint sighing on the air, like someone breathing, and the shadows began to change shape as a dense swarm of giant moths rose from the garden and appeared to hover for a time before heading south over the tree-tops.

Disembodied souls? The idea came back to her insistently. Hadn’t she once read in a book somewhere of a peasant community which believed just that? That night moths were nothing other than the dead returning to keep an eye on the living?

Or to warn of impending disaster.

That first moth she’d saved from the flame: might it not, in reality, have been the restless soul of the old woman who had died in the cottage not many weeks earlier? The woman whose death she’d so callously welcomed because it meant the cottage was available at last. Freehold. With vacant possession.

The mere thought set her flesh tingling. She clattered down the bare wooden stairs, deliberately making as much noise as she could. Lighting both oil lamps, she searched the living room and the lean-to kitchen to satisfy herself that the last moth had left. Visitation from the ‘other side’ or not, she did not want them fluttering around her in the night.

But there was no sign of them anywhere. They might never have been there at all.

Through the open window came the busy murmur of other insects, grating on her nerves. To blot out the sound, she switched on her radio and filled the cottage with the jungle beat of the week’s new Number One which she hated. At least it chased the ghosts away.

Jack found driving that van more cumbersome than he had anticipated when hiring it. For one thing, the gears were not arranged in the familiar order of his own red Ferrari; for another, the steering was heavy, slow to respond, while the turning circle was so cramping, it was practically arthritic. As for acceleration, that word had been erased from the instruction manual, and with reason.

All this added up to a slow drive back, as he realised only too well before he left the cottage. It probably also saved his life.

Thinking it over as he turned into the main road which led through the village, he felt pleased Ginny had at least accepted his help with the move. She’d been in an odd mood all year. Post-termination depression syndrome, their platinum blonde doctor had called it when Jack — behind Ginny’s back — had decided to consult her. As a diagnosis it stank. Ginny had been behaving that way since long before the abortion; since before they knew she was pregnant, in fact. But before he had a chance to argue the point, the doctor was already conveying him to the door.

Jack hadn’t approved of the abortion either, which naturally led to a quarrel. He’d pleaded with her that a baby needn’t mess up anyone’s career if they were sensible about it. As an actor, he frequently spent long weeks at home waiting for the phone to ring, so most of the time he could look after it. Having at least one parent available all day long was more than many babies enjoyed.

‘I’d be tied to you!’ she’d objected vehemently. ‘I don’t intend being tied to anyone. I want to be free. I must be.’

He remembered it as clearly as if it were yesterday — a straight-from-the-shoulder, brutal declaration, muffled by the towel as she dried herself after washing her hair. She probably did not even realise the effect it had on him. Water trickled down over her breasts, gleaming in the yellow light of their dingy bathroom, and he’d wanted her more than ever. His whole body yearned for her.

Oh shit!

Pulling off the road into a service station on the far edge of the village, he bought petrol, checked the oil and tyres, and spent some minutes testing the plugs, suspecting he might have been driving on three cylinders only, though he found nothing obviously wrong. The lad behind the counter was reading New Musical Express . He didn’t even look up when Jack went to pay.

Once he’d left the village, the A-road became a simple, twisting tarmac strip with an intermittent white line painted down the centre and high hedges on either side blocking the view. He drove slowly; not that he had much choice with the van in the state it was.

Ginny had gone, he told himself, though his mind seemed too dull to take it in. After more than three years together with eyes for no one else, resenting every minute they had to be apart, after all that they had split up. Of course the real break had happened weeks earlier, but until today at least she’d stayed on in the flat; now even that was over.

He could almost pinpoint the day. It was soon after she started work on that big drama production. It all followed from that, he thought bitterly, working at the wheel as the road took an unexpected sharp turn. She had plunged into it so wholeheartedly, she’d never come back. Location shooting, outside rehearsal, long days in the studio: he might have been living with a stranger during those weeks. The quickie abortion was slipped in between recording and editing; only she’d been kept in hospital a few days longer than she’d reckoned, which messed up her timetable.

Then she blew it.

Her own fault too. She’d been too intense over the whole thing, and he’d told her as much. All right, so her TV bosses had wanted to cut a scene! Don’t they always? Of course she was furious, understandably, but that was no reason to throw up her job. Work wasn’t that easy to come by. Ask any actor.

Another bend in the road and suddenly the trees were higher, blocking out much of the remaining daylight. The gloom matched his mood so exactly, he switched on his headlights only reluctantly. Something touched his cheek. Just a slight irritation: a midge perhaps, or a hair, even. He brushed it away with the side of his hand, hardly thinking.

It fluttered close to his ear, then settled on his neck.

‘Oh hell!’ he exclaimed, annoyed. ‘Bloody insect!’

He slapped his hand over it, merely wanting to get rid of the thing, whatever it was. It was only when he felt it struggle to get free that he realised the size of it. A bird — was it?

No, it couldn’t be. His fingers closed over its wafer-thin wings: no feathers there. No bones. Just a thin, pulsating membrane which left dust on his fingertips.

A moth?

He almost laughed, relieved that at least it wasn’t dangerous. In the next second he saw the swarm in the headlights; so many, they obscured the road ahead. They massed over the van, bouncing and skimming against the windscreen, dropping back on to the short bonnet, and some — a dozen at least — penetrating the cab itself to flutter crazily about his head as they persistently attempted to settle on his face.

Over his eyes, even.

Swearing, he tried to brush them aside with his left hand while steering with his right, bullying the reluctant accelerator in the hope of driving straight through the swarm. Suddenly he was blinded when a moth on his face succeeded in blotting out everything with its spreading wings. And squealing in triumph.

In a panic he seized it, crumpling it up in his fist and throwing it aside. Straight ahead was another of those unexpected bends. He jammed his foot on the brake.

The van went into a skid. He could sense how the tyres were crunching the life juice out of those moths’ fat, slug-like bodies. It was like waltzing on thick slime until — jolting — it mounted the soft verge and embraced the nearest tree. His head hit the side of the door.