Neil Gaiman - Trigger Warning - Short Fictions and Disturbances

They went into the house. Moira went to put something away, and returned looking shaken.

‘Oliver’s locked himself in the bathroom,’ she said.

Shadow was not certain what to say.

‘You know what I wish?’ she continued.

‘I don’t.’

‘I wish you would talk to him. I wish he would open the door. I wish he’d talk to me. I can hear him in there. I can hear him.’

And then, ‘I hope he isn’t cutting himself again.’

Shadow walked back into the hall, stood by the bathroom door, called Oliver’s name. ‘Can you hear me? Are you okay?’

Nothing. No sound from inside.

Shadow looked at the door. It was solid wood. The house was old, and they built them strong and well back then. When Shadow had used the bathroom that morning he’d learned the lock was a hook and eye. He leaned on the handle of the door, pushing it down, then rammed his shoulder against the door. It opened with a noise of splintering wood.

He had watched a man die in prison, stabbed in a pointless argument. He remembered the way that the blood had puddled about the man’s body, lying in the back corner of the exercise yard. The sight had troubled Shadow, but he had forced himself to look, and to keep looking. To look away would somehow have felt disrespectful.

Oliver was naked on the floor of the bathroom. His body was pale, and his chest and groin were covered with thick, dark hair. He held the blade from an ancient safety razor in his hands. He had sliced his arms with it, his chest above the nipples, his inner thighs and his penis. Blood was smeared on his body, on the black-and-white linoleum floor, on the white enamel of the bathtub. Oliver’s eyes were round and wide, like the eyes of a bird. He was looking directly at Shadow, but Shadow was not certain that he was being seen.

‘Ollie?’ said Moira’s voice, from the hall. Shadow realised that he was blocking the doorway and he hesitated, unsure whether to let her see what was on the floor or not.

Shadow took a pink towel from the towel rail and wrapped it around Oliver. That got the little man’s attention. He blinked, as if seeing Shadow for the first time, and said, ‘The dog. It’s for the dog. It must be fed, you see. We’re making friends.’

Moira said, ‘Oh my dear sweet god.’

‘I’ll call the emergency services.’

‘Please don’t,’ she said. ‘He’ll be fine at home with me. I don’t know what I’ll . . . please?’

Shadow picked up Oliver, swaddled in the towel, carried him into the bedroom as if he were a child, and then placed him on the bed. Moira followed. She picked up an iPad by the bed, touched the screen, and music began to play. ‘Breathe, Ollie,’ she said. ‘Remember. Breathe. It’s going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.’

‘I can’t really breathe,’ said Oliver, in a small voice. ‘Not really. I can feel my heart, though. I can feel my heart beating.’

Moira squeezed his hand and sat down on the bed, and Shadow left them alone.

When Moira entered the kitchen, her sleeves rolled up, and her hands smelling of antiseptic cream, Shadow was sitting on the sofa, reading a guide to local walks.

‘How’s he doing?’

She shrugged.

‘You have to get him help.’

‘Yes.’ She stood in the middle of the kitchen and looked about her, as if unable to decide which way to turn. ‘Do you . . . I mean, do you have to leave today? Are you on a schedule?’

‘Nobody’s waiting for me. Anywhere.’

She looked at him with a face that had grown haggard in an hour. ‘When this happened before, it took a few days, but then he was right as rain. The depression doesn’t stay long. So, just wondering, would you just, well, stick around? I phoned my sister but she’s in the middle of moving. And I can’t cope on my own. I really can’t. Not again. But I can’t ask you to stay, not if anyone is waiting for you.’

‘Nobody’s waiting,’ repeated Shadow. ‘And I’ll stick around. But I think Oliver needs specialist help.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Moira. ‘He does.’ Dr Scathelocke came over late that afternoon. He was a friend of Oliver and Moira’s. Shadow was not entirely certain whether rural British doctors still made house calls, or whether this was a socially justified visit. The doctor went into the bedroom, and came out twenty minutes later.

He sat at the kitchen table with Moira, and he said, ‘It’s all very shallow. Cry-for-help stuff. Honestly, there’s not a lot we can do for him in hospital that you can’t do for him here, what with the cuts. We used to have a dozen nurses in that wing. Now they are trying to close it down completely. Get it all back to the community.’ Dr Scathelocke had sandy hair, was as tall as Shadow but lankier. He reminded Shadow of the landlord in the pub, and he wondered idly if the two men were related. The doctor scribbled several prescriptions, and Moira handed them to Shadow, along with the keys to an old white Range Rover.

Shadow drove to the next village, found the little chemists’ and waited for the prescriptions to be filled. He stood awkwardly in the overlit aisle, staring at a display of suntan lotions and creams, sadly redundant in this cold wet summer.

‘You’re Mr American,’ said a woman’s voice from behind him. He turned. She had short dark hair and was wearing the same olive-green sweater she had been wearing in the pub.

‘I guess I am,’ he said.

‘Local gossip says that you are helping out while Ollie’s under the weather.’

‘That was fast.’

‘Local gossip travels faster than light. I’m Cassie Burglass.’

‘Shadow Moon.’

‘Good name,’ she said. ‘Gives me chills.’ She smiled. ‘If you’re still rambling while you’re here, I suggest you check out the hill just past the village. Follow the track up until it forks, and then go left. It takes you up Wod’s Hill. Spectacular views. Public right of way. Just keep going left and up, you can’t miss it.’

She smiled at him. Perhaps she was just being friendly to a stranger.

‘I’m not surprised you’re still here though,’ Cassie continued. ‘It’s hard to leave this place once it gets its claws into you.’ She smiled again, a warm smile, and she looked directly into his eyes, as if trying to make up her mind. ‘I think Mrs Patel has your prescriptions ready. Nice talking to you, Mr American.’

IV

The Kiss

Shadow helped Moira. He walked down to the village shop and bought the items on her shopping list while she stayed in the house, writing at the kitchen table or hovering in the hallway outside the bedroom door. Moira barely talked. He ran errands in the white Range Rover, and saw Oliver mostly in the hall, shuffling to the bathroom and back. The man did not speak to him.

Everything was quiet in the house: Shadow imagined the black dog squatting on the roof, cutting out all sunlight, all emotion, all feeling and truth. Something had turned down the volume in that house, pushed all the colours into black and white. He wished he was somewhere else, but could not run out on them. He sat on his bed, and stared out of the window at the rain puddling its way down the windowpane, and felt the seconds of his life counting off, never to come back.

It had been wet and cold, but on the third day the sun came out. The world did not warm up, but Shadow tried to pull himself out of the grey haze, and decided to see some of the local sights. He walked to the next village, through fields, up paths and along the side of a long drystone wall. There was a bridge over a narrow stream that was little more than a plank, and Shadow jumped the water in one easy bound. Up the hill: there were trees, oak and hawthorn, sycamore and beech at the bottom of the hill, and then the trees became sparser. He followed the winding trail, sometimes obvious, sometimes not, until he reached a natural resting place, like a tiny meadow, high on the hill, and there he turned away from the hill and saw the valleys and the peaks arranged all about him in greens and greys like illustrations from a children’s book.