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Authors: Gary McMahon
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the bed.
They were shadow and half-light, lines and slashes, more thought than
substance. Their features were vague, like stolen shards of daylight trapped in
sealed rooms, and their limbs were many and sharp-clawed.
Lana suddenly realised why Hayley
never wanted to undress in front of her – it was not, as she had thought, a
simple case of teenage modesty, but an attempt to hide her saggy little belly,
engorged breasts and long, red-leaking nipples…to conceal the fact of her
recent motherhood. The baggy clothes, the moodiness, the increasing secrecy –
it all made sense now, at last, in terms of this virgin birth.
The Slitten crawled up onto the bed,
swarming over her daughter and obscuring her lower torso. They reached up and
began to suckle, taking it in turns to slake a thirst born in darkness. Lana
watched in awe; her daughter was a mother to monsters, and for some reason the thought
did not fill her with terror. Instead, she felt a sense of purpose.
Soon the Slitten were satisfied;
they rolled off Hayley and gathered around Lana, their movements slow and
heavy.
“Ask them,” said a voice from the
bed, in the shadows. “Ask them again.”
Lana reached out her hands, and
began to speak.
****
Sometime in the early
hours, not long before the blood-red wash of dawn, Lana once again left the
relative safety of the flat. Hayley was sleeping, worn out by the night’s
demands on her young body. Lana’s wounds ached, but she was tough enough to
ignore the pain.
Beneath Lana’s long winter coat, the
Slitten – her grandchildren – had attached themselves to her body, pumping
resolve into her system while supping the life from her veins. She was a being
of contrasts: guardian and wet nurse, victim and criminal; strength and
fragility, darkness and light.
Crossing the road, she allowed
herself the brief indulgence of imagining Bright’s face when he saw her, his
look of horror when she opened her coat to show him what he and his perversions
had helped sire.
This time she would not succumb to
his distasteful demands.
This time, as requested, a debt
would be paid in full.
WHY GHOSTS WAIL: A BRIEF MEMOIR
It was a dry, overcast
Tuesday evening in the cold mid winter when I came back from the dead. Night
was falling in slow shades from a sky that looked flat and grey as old slate.
I hauled myself from the river in
which I’d drowned over a year ago – losing control of my car on an invisible
sheet of black ice and plummeting to a watery demise – and stood on the muddy
bank. Dripping.
The moon was heavy and bloated,
drooping through the thin clouds like a pregnant woman’s belly and birthing a
cold, hard light that did little to illuminate the way. I stared at the
surrounding countryside, noting how much it had changed in my absence. Trees
were bent and crippled, sporting layers of powdery mould from some ferocious blight;
grass was brown and spiky, starved of moisture and sunlight; even the water
from which I’d risen ran thick and black as crude oil.
Everything seemed tainted, polluted.
I walked in the direction of my old
house, planning to look in on Molly and the kids. I didn’t plan to haunt them;
that would only cause them alarm. No, I just wanted to check that they were
surviving their grief, and that their lives were back on track since my small,
ill-attended funeral. I wanted to see that they were okay.
I passed O’Malley’s place and saw
old Tom crawling around in the mud outside the empty ruins of his family farm.
He was down on all fours, like one of the animals he’d bred back when he was
still among the living, and stuffing great handfuls of mud into his mouth.
Tom’s face was drawn and elongated, his mouth stretched open like a grain sack.
It made him look like that old painting, The Scream.
The clumped dirt just poured through
him, returning to the ground where it had originated, leaving no trace on his
transparent form. Tom had been dead for five years.
Tom’s wife
They were shadow and half-light, lines and slashes, more thought than
substance. Their features were vague, like stolen shards of daylight trapped in
sealed rooms, and their limbs were many and sharp-clawed.
Lana suddenly realised why Hayley
never wanted to undress in front of her – it was not, as she had thought, a
simple case of teenage modesty, but an attempt to hide her saggy little belly,
engorged breasts and long, red-leaking nipples…to conceal the fact of her
recent motherhood. The baggy clothes, the moodiness, the increasing secrecy –
it all made sense now, at last, in terms of this virgin birth.
The Slitten crawled up onto the bed,
swarming over her daughter and obscuring her lower torso. They reached up and
began to suckle, taking it in turns to slake a thirst born in darkness. Lana
watched in awe; her daughter was a mother to monsters, and for some reason the thought
did not fill her with terror. Instead, she felt a sense of purpose.
Soon the Slitten were satisfied;
they rolled off Hayley and gathered around Lana, their movements slow and
heavy.
“Ask them,” said a voice from the
bed, in the shadows. “Ask them again.”
Lana reached out her hands, and
began to speak.
****
Sometime in the early
hours, not long before the blood-red wash of dawn, Lana once again left the
relative safety of the flat. Hayley was sleeping, worn out by the night’s
demands on her young body. Lana’s wounds ached, but she was tough enough to
ignore the pain.
Beneath Lana’s long winter coat, the
Slitten – her grandchildren – had attached themselves to her body, pumping
resolve into her system while supping the life from her veins. She was a being
of contrasts: guardian and wet nurse, victim and criminal; strength and
fragility, darkness and light.
Crossing the road, she allowed
herself the brief indulgence of imagining Bright’s face when he saw her, his
look of horror when she opened her coat to show him what he and his perversions
had helped sire.
This time she would not succumb to
his distasteful demands.
This time, as requested, a debt
would be paid in full.
WHY GHOSTS WAIL: A BRIEF MEMOIR
It was a dry, overcast
Tuesday evening in the cold mid winter when I came back from the dead. Night
was falling in slow shades from a sky that looked flat and grey as old slate.
I hauled myself from the river in
which I’d drowned over a year ago – losing control of my car on an invisible
sheet of black ice and plummeting to a watery demise – and stood on the muddy
bank. Dripping.
The moon was heavy and bloated,
drooping through the thin clouds like a pregnant woman’s belly and birthing a
cold, hard light that did little to illuminate the way. I stared at the
surrounding countryside, noting how much it had changed in my absence. Trees
were bent and crippled, sporting layers of powdery mould from some ferocious blight;
grass was brown and spiky, starved of moisture and sunlight; even the water
from which I’d risen ran thick and black as crude oil.
Everything seemed tainted, polluted.
I walked in the direction of my old
house, planning to look in on Molly and the kids. I didn’t plan to haunt them;
that would only cause them alarm. No, I just wanted to check that they were
surviving their grief, and that their lives were back on track since my small,
ill-attended funeral. I wanted to see that they were okay.
I passed O’Malley’s place and saw
old Tom crawling around in the mud outside the empty ruins of his family farm.
He was down on all fours, like one of the animals he’d bred back when he was
still among the living, and stuffing great handfuls of mud into his mouth.
Tom’s face was drawn and elongated, his mouth stretched open like a grain sack.
It made him look like that old painting, The Scream.
The clumped dirt just poured through
him, returning to the ground where it had originated, leaving no trace on his
transparent form. Tom had been dead for five years.
Tom’s wife
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