Алия Уайтли: The Beauty

‘Here,’ Ted says. He stops and shines the torchlight on the bracken and blackberry bushes. I see mushrooms: squatting, swollen balloons with soft downy caps. They seem to squirm in the beam of the torch. ‘It’s gone.’

‘What?’

He points. ‘There was a large one. Shaped like a head.’

‘A human head?’

There’s no sign of it – no ragged stalk, no space on the ground where it might have grown. There’s no point in asking him if he’s sure we’re in the right place. He knows the woods better than anyone. I have to trust his judgement. Part of me is glad this thing is gone, this head growing in the dark.

‘Somebody must have taken it,’ says Uncle Ted, and that thought is worse.

‘Who?’

‘I thought nobody was close. Not within days.’

‘There are men within a few days of here?’

‘Of course,’ he says, so easily. Of course there are others left over, living out their last days. So why do we never see them? I look at Uncle Ted and wonder what else he does in this wood other than gather sticks and hunt rabbits. He meets my gaze and raises his eyebrows.

‘Listen,’ he says. He switches off the torch and my choice to see is taken away from me. Into my blindness comes the soft, slow, distinct sound of feet in mud. But no, it’s too gentle for that, the rhythmic sucking is too liquid. I’ve never heard it before, and it is getting closer.

‘Uncle Ted?’

He does not reply. I remain in blackness. I reach out my arms and take tiny steps forward. Under my feet the mushrooms pop and splatter.

The sucking noise is upon me, loud in my left ear. I turn from it, but it turns with me and softens further to a hum, like a breathing voice, bringing back memories of something like Mother; yes, a mother-sound, humming under her breath, and I cannot run from it. It is my unfamiliar and ancient home and I belong within it.

I sink down to the ground amid the spattered mushrooms and let the mother-hum take me away.

Pinprick light through a sieve, a scattering of beams inside which the aimless meanderings of motes are illuminated. Beautiful. I watch them. There is no urgency. I feel calm, cosseted. I lie, curled up on my side, my eyes fixed to the ceiling.

Must I move? The feeling of contentment is wearing thin. Yes, I must move. I must get up. I am in a large warm chamber with earthen walls. The dirt bears the marks of rough digging, as if with claws. High above there is the light, coming through what appears to be holes in a woven grass mat. There is no door, but there is a ragged hole in the floor. I move to it, unsure if this is a dream, and find it plunges straight down into an absolute darkness that makes me shudder, recoil.

I am under the earth. Is this my burial? How then can I be calm? I fold back into myself and close my eyes. The ground is yielding. I wish it would swallow me and be done.

The smell of food cuts through me. Now, somehow, there is food. Three apples and a honeycomb are on the floor next to me. They are a gift, a song of autumn, and I cram the comb into my mouth.

As I eat, the humming returns, pleasant and disjointed. It has no rhythm or tune I can place. Did my mother sing it to me once? Is she coming for me? I want to call out her name. The air is dead here. There is no wind. I can’t think.

I eat and listen to the humming, and when the last mouthful of apple is gone, the core and pips inside me, I think of how to tell this story when I get free. Every word I use, every turn of phrase I fit together in my head, is wrong. Am I captured? Can I describe myself as a prisoner? Is this solitary confinement? I have read these terms in the books Miriam kept in the school library, but none of them fit. I feel no desire to go, that’s what’s missing. This is not against my will. I have no will, except to listen to the hum.

The ground shudders and from the hole climbs a thing. A woman. A thing. It is yellow and spongy and limbed, with a smooth round ball for a head. It is without eyes, without ears. I press myself against the rough wall as it emerges and stands like a human, like a woman. It has breasts, globes of yellow, and rounded hips that speak to me of woman, of want, and that disgusts me beyond words.

I am sick on myself. I soil myself. Everything is beyond my control. My terror is sharp and pungent. The thing stops moving towards me.

I can’t take my eyes from it. It is alive; I feel it, alive like a person. Not an animal. It watches me. Without eyes it stares, the smooth yellow flesh stretched over its head.

I try to speak to it but no words come out of my mouth.

A minute passes. Two. Ten. It does not move.

The terror recedes, enough for me to feel the discomfort of my wet shit-and-puke covered clothes. I smell terrible. Everything hurts. My head is banging and my heart won’t stop thumping in my chest.

It stays static. I focus on the fingers of the creature. The fingernails are long, curved like talons on a hunting bird. They look delicate, decorative. They are not hands hardened by work. To look at them makes me feel jealous, desirous and protective, all at the same time. Such little hands. If I look only at the hands I feel warmth spreading through me. They are feminine. I haven’t seen anything that fits that word for such a long time. These are feminine hands. I feel the urge to touch them.

Revulsion at my own thoughts overcomes me – I am shivering, both cold and hot, and the pain in my head is growing, growing. The thing moves backwards, taking small steps, then drops into the hole and is gone.

Left to my own stench, I curl up and fall, once more, into sleep.

There follow days and nights with the thing. It comes without warning. Sometimes I awake and find it close. At other times it raises its head from the hole and moves no further. It stays so very still. I think that it is waiting for something. I think it wants me to name it.

It provides me with water and food. It took away my stained clothes and cleaned up after me. I find I can control myself and my thoughts around it if I concentrate on some small part of it. Terror, hatred, panic and those stranger, softer feelings: they are there, but they do not crowd me or make me their puppet. If I want to touch it, I would be able to do so with a clear mind. I think I would like to touch it.

It is sunset. The sieved light has taken on a dusky, pinkish cast and I can picture the others waiting at the fireside, ears attuned to the pops and crackles of the flames, hoping for a story that will not come. Or is someone else telling them tales of the dead? I try to picture Thomas conjuring the peachy skin and red lips of women for their listening enjoyment, and it makes me smile. He would do a grander job of describing an onion and goat’s cheese tart.

The ground shudders and the thing emerges. It comes to me, walking with a sway of its soft yellow hips, and stops within touching distance. I repress everything I feel, the horror and the longing. I reach out.

Its own hand stretches out and meets me halfway. Palm to palm.

Cool, almost damp. Smooth and spongy. It is a shock to feel its lack of warmth, but it is not unpleasant. Just different.

The smoothness changes. I feel a raised surface, like gooseflesh, and then the bumps become larger, prickly. The thing hums, high, in pulses; the sound comes from inside it. I’m certain that it’s very, very excited. We are excited.

I pull my hand back. The sense of urgency, of delight, that emanated from it vanishes. To touch it – this plant’s thoughts, emotions, in my mind. I can’t separate its desires from my own.

It keeps its hand still and makes no other move, so I return my hand to it and let it speak to me of longing, of satisfaction, of a long long wait in the dark. At first everything is a rush, but I begin to discern more particular, delicate thoughts, like butterflies dipping to flowers. They brush my mind and I feel hope, that most ethereal of entities. The thing has hope. Or maybe it is my hope, amplified and appreciated; hopes for a world where we have a place, a meaning, a future. Where we all fit. Tessellate.