Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

Eddie shrugged and seemed to relax. “I’ll tell you what, Ross. How about, after this wall, I start on the upstairs. I’m way ahead of you now anyway, since you’ve got those windows to tackle.”

“So no Cherie, then?”

“She wouldn’t like it here. She doesn’t care for trees.”

“No?”

“Insects, mosquitoes, things like that. She’s a woman, after all.”

“Are you serious about her?”

Eddie laughed, and stooped down to move his painting gear further along the wall. “I can see where this is going, Ross. D’you think I’m an idiot?”

I turned my back on him and stepped up to the window. The wood was of course no closer than it had been before we stumbled upon those women, but now it was omnipresent in my mind.

“It was gritty stuff,” Eddie said suddenly. “It came in little balls.”

“What?” I turned about again.

“I don’t know what it was. And then we had fruit of some kind… sour.”

“Sour?”

“Like gooseberries or something. They grow their own stuff behind the house; they’ve even got a stand of corn. They’d like to see you too, Ross. Why don’t you come with me?”

“Look, Eddie… they gave me the creeps.”

“You should open your mind to them.”

“Fuck off!”

“You’re so closed. They thought you looked like a mean and sad person. Are you a mean and sad person, Ross?”

“What the hell would they know? They’re freaks, Eddie. How long have they been living there?”

“The family has been there for some generations. People in town know about them, but no one bothers them. And that’s as it should be. Free country, you know.”

“Fuck!”

We left it on that note; he’d taken my breath away. I had no idea what to say to him. He took his stuff upstairs in the early afternoon, and from time to time, I could hear him whistling.

I moved Mum’s old radio into the living room and listened to whatever jumble came out of it and worked on. I’d stripped all the outer frames, and the paint was coming off well with my tungsten blade, before I became aware of the quietness upstairs.

I knew even before I pushed the door open that he wouldn’t be there, and sure enough, he wasn’t. Eddie must have climbed out of the window, slid down the little tiled roof below, and jumped to the ground, just as we both used to do as children.

I didn’t know how long he’d been gone for, and although I was sure I could find my way to the house in the wood again if I wanted to, I didn’t fancy the idea of turning up there unexpectedly. I was really angry with him; he was beginning to fuck up our work plan. So I sat on the step of the veranda and stared down the lane, and it was exactly then that I discovered we had woodworm. When I understood the extent of it all along the veranda on the east side of the house, I knew we had to get it treated immediately, or we’d have a lot of trouble selling up. So while Eddie hung out with the hairy forest women, as they had become in my mind, I went into town to see what could be done about the house.

He turned up late-afternoon shortly after I’d arrived back.

“What the hell?” I said.

“She called me,” he replied, “and I went.”

He looked peaceful—slightly disengaged. I shook my head slowly at him. “We’ve got woodworm in the veranda, and no one can get here to treat it for two months,” I told him, as if it was his fault.

He didn’t laugh, but I could see some sly calculation on his face about it. “Oh!” he said. “Now, that’s a shame. How much will it cost us?”

I shrugged. “We have no option, we can’t sell the place untreated, so it doesn’t matter what it’s going to cost. So, what have you been up to?”

“I was helping Domescia and Carboh turn some earth over.”

“No kidding; so our work just becomes nothing because of those women?”

“I’ve asked you before, Ross, not to call them those women.”

“What did you say their names were?”

“Domescia and Carboh.”

I realised I was trembling, but I didn’t think Eddie could see it. He was standing some fifteen yards away. “God damn it, Eddie, what’s going on with you?”

“No. What’s going on with you, more like. Carboh says you’re haunted by your own meanness.”

“Which one was that, Eddie?”

“The smaller one.”

“I thought so. The one you kept staring at.”

“The one I’m going to be joined with, Ross.”

“God damn , Eddie, God damn ! What the hell has gotten into you?”

I could not speak further. I stared at my brother, and if I’d thought all along that I never really knew him, I could not have wanted a heavier, more sinister conviction of that fact now. I turned and went inside. It was getting towards early evening and I set to lighting the kitchen stove with shaking hands, when a thought struck me. Eddie had come in and was looking in the fridge for something to eat.

“What d’you mean she called you?” I asked. “You don’t have a mobile and the house phone is disconnected.”

“Hard to explain, Ross.”

“Try me,” I replied.

“I don’t think you’d get it, and I don’t want to make you madder than you already are with me.”

“Damn right, I’m mad with you. What about Cherie?” I asked.

“Well, now you bring her up. But really, you’ve always been dismissive of her in the past.”

I could feel my face heating up and I rubbed my hands over it to control the redness; he was right. “Yeah, that was mean of me,” I murmured.

“There you are you see —mean.”

“Hey now, look here, Eddie, have you gone crazy or something, you’ve only met those women a couple of times, you can’t be thinking of marrying one of them. You hate the idea of marriage, you’ve always said that.”

Eddie looked at me evenly and I could tell he was enjoying my dishevelment. “Come and dine with us tomorrow night, Ross. Domescia is going to prepare a grand feast, the five other sisters will be there, and their mother will be joining us for a short while too.”

“Dine with us?” I repeated, “come and dine with us?” I could do nothing but laugh.

“You’ve been invited, and the other sisters really want you to come; they want to see you,” Eddie explained.

So far I’d understood there were a whole bunch of women in that scratchy old house and somehow living off the land. Who the hell lived like that in the twenty-first century? “The others—have you met them?” I asked, trying for all I was worth to stay calm.

“Yes, Carboh took me to them. They were in one of the upper rooms.”

“And?”

“And nothing, Ross. They were engaging. Really engaging.”

“Engaging, Eddie? Where are these weird words coming from all of a sudden?”

“Well, are you coming or not? I mean where’s the harm?”

“Where’s the harm, you say?”

“Loosen up, big brother, why don’t you?”

Domescia and Carboh were to meet us on the bend of the main track, by the plaited path at around nine. We found Dad’s old heavy duty torch and set out in good time. I was frightened and angry, and could not bring myself to look at Eddie or talk to him. I was intent on examining these curious women and looking for evidence of cultism, so I had some ammunition to lob at the stupid jerk who was my brother.

When we reached the stopping place, I really did not see the two of them standing there although I’d shone the torch all around slowly. But they were there all right. I think their hair must have made them resemble the trunks of trees. As we approached, they turned abruptly and made their way down the plaited path, with us in the rear. I kept the light from the torch on the ground, not wanting to shine it on all that swaying hair. Nobody spoke, and it wasn’t until we stepped into the hall of the house that the atmosphere between us all changed. Domescia and Carboh turned to face us and bobbed a neat little curtsy, and Eddie inclined his head gravely in return. I stared at them and then at my brother and I must have been frowning hard, as finally Carboh said: “Ross, you will frighten my sisters if you look that way at them, it is not friendly; it is mean.”