The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

Martha laid the carcass back on the crate. She shook her head in disbelief. Sickened by this small, crushed life, her headache was suddenly much worse. She’d never experienced a full-blown migraine but recognised the signs. Lights danced at the periphery of her vision. Strange patterns hovered in the air. It interfered with coherent thought. She tried to reassert herself.

“This is no ordinary prison, is it, Greg? All these voices cry out but no-one comes. No-one keeps the peace.”

“Samuel Greenwood said the inmates ran the place. The authorities didn’t get in their way.”

Martha tasted bile rising in her throat. I’ll not be sick. I’ll not be sick. Not a mantra but a command. She’d last vomited in childhood. Its associations were too painful to encounter. Not like this. Not here. Martha fought it back.

“There’s uncontrolled rage within these walls. Frenzy. Violation.” She turned on Greg as if he were to blame. “Men, women, children, all mixed in together.”

“Yes,” Greg’s voice was serious and low. “Murderers and thieves,” he savoured the words, “cheats and fraudsters.”

Martha wasn’t listening. The lingering odour of decay she’d noted was getting worse. It was rotting flowers, fungi and burnt sugar. The pain in her head was punctuated by explosions. Monstrous white blooms contracted and expanded before her eyes. She clutched the wall with one hand, bent double, and threw her stomach contents upon the floor.

The sensation of muscles moving in her throat, of acid burning in her nose, evoked the shock and grief of that distant summer her father died. Passed over was the term they used at home. Martha despised this euphemism, even though it was part of her work’s vocabulary. Not long after her father’s sudden death, she had been burnt up by a fever. She’d vomited without relief. She had the same sensations now as then, like she’d died and was floating out of reach.

“Where’s Daddy?” Hot and hallucinating, Martha was emphatic. She wanted her father, not her mother’s comforts.

“Daddy’s here,” Iris replied. “He’s in the room. He’s telling you he loves you. Can’t you hear?”

“No,” Martha whimpered. Had there been a time when the world was full of voices? She couldn’t recall.

“Oh, my sweetheart,” and under her breath, Iris spoke the damaging, damning words that separated Martha from her tribe, “you used to be like us. You used to see but now you’re blind.”

So Martha was left in darkness, Iris and Suki in the light.

Martha dabbed her mouth, vomit dripping on her coat. Greg motioned for the filming to continue. Pippa ladled on concern.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry. It’s the smell.”

“It’s bad, isn’t it? Maybe there’s a dead bird or rat that’s rotting.” Then, because Martha’s pallor couldn’t be feigned, “Do you want us to stop?”

Martha clutched a crumpled tissue to her mouth to stem the swelling tide. She recognised the smell now. It was death. Bedridden Iris, nursed by her girls in the front parlour, had been rank with it. Devoured by a cancer in her breast that had ulcerated and wept pus throughout her long slide towards a terrible demise.

People still came, even at the end. To see her. Just for a minute. Just to ask advice. Women whose daughters followed Suki and Martha home from school. Hair pullers, name callers, shin kickers who loved to plague the pair of witches. These same mothers would sit and wait, watching the girls no older than their own, move around the unclean kitchen, washing their mother’s soiled sheet in the sink. Not a single one offered aid.

Suki started reading to give Iris peace. So this wall-eyed girl who was clumsy at PE and hated school inherited her mother’s mantle and the regulars. She stayed at home and read the cards, while Martha passed her exams and got into fights with anyone who looked at her askew.

“I’m dying, a little more each day. There’s no need to be afraid.” Iris had beckoned Martha over. “They’re waiting for me on the other side. Suki will be just fine. She has the gift but what will become of you, Martha? What will you do?”

Yes, Martha was familiar with the smell. It was enough to make her turn and vomit once again before the floor rose up to meet her. She felt her bones crunch with the impact.

“Martha, can you hear me?”

She was shaken back to consciousness by rough, frightened hands. The pain had gone and left her empty headed, her brain replaced by cotton wool, her mouth with acid and sand.

“Thank God. What happened?” Greg motioned for the crew to stand back and give her air. She tried to sit.

“Just a faint.”