Blood Fugue (24 page)

‘That’s it? Oatmeal and raisin?’

‘Uh huh, and a little cinnamon and sugar, of course. Do they meet with your satisfaction?’

‘They taste great, if that’s what you mean.’

Maggie took the dessert slice and placed a different kind of cookie on Kath’s not quite empty plate. Dingbat sat up and stared at the coffee table between the women, making meaningful glances to Kath who ignored him.

‘Would the gentleman care for a little delicacy?’ asked Maggie. ‘We did promise you one, I believe.’

Kath was astounded to see that Maggie took a third china side-plate and used the dessert slice to place one of her oatmeal and raisin creations on it before placing the whole thing in front of Dingbat with a:

‘I do hope that this will be to sir’s liking.’

Dingbat wolfed the cookie in a couple of hasty snaps of the jaw, after which he licked his lips over and over. Kath began to think either that Maggie was having a bit of a joke with her or that she was losing a fundamental screw. Maybe it was so long since the woman had had company that she really didn’t remember the appropriate way to behave.

The coffee was good and the cookies were great. Kath decided to let it all slide in favour of a little sociability. She tried the new cookie that Maggie had placed on her plate and found it to be as good, if not better, than the first.

‘You’re going to have to give me the recipe for these if you want to avoid me moving in here, Maggie.’

‘Oh, I’m so pleased you like them. That one was oatmeal with chocolate and peanut butter chips. I’m saving the best for last, though. I’ll let you have a few moments to clear you palate before I serve them.’

Kath shook her head and sat back in the armchair to relax. The company wasn’t as good as the baking but hell, who cared? Dingbat sniffed the air and looked distracted. After a while he stood up and snuffled his nose into the carpet and along the furniture. Kath kept an eye on him and when it looked like he was following his nose out of the room she spoke up.

‘You stay here, boy.’

He stopped and looked back at her.

‘Oh, he’s okay,’ said Maggie. ‘Nothing he can get himself into out there. You should let him wander and kind of get used to the place. He might want to come up and visit on his own sometime. He’s welcome to.’

The strangeness of the suggestion only hit Kath as Maggie scooped up the third cookie and dropped it onto her plate. She frowned. Was Maggie suggesting that when she died she would take Dingbat for herself? What the hell was the woman trying to say? She was about to challenge Maggie on it but she was pre-empted.

‘Now don’t take it the wrong way. All I’m saying is he can have a change of scene and you don’t have to come over if you don’t want to. I know I’m kind of an odd bird these days, but animals never notice do they?’ She smiled broadly as if it was the most natural suggestion she could make and before Kath could protest or question it, she handed back the newly laden plate. ‘This is the one I was saving ‘til last. My great experiment.’ She flapped her hands beside her face. ‘Hoo, I’m nervous. I sure hope you like them.’

Kath was tight lipped. Maggie was further gone than she’d thought. She was leaving after this cookie and taking Dingbat with her. The last cookie turned out to be the one with the savoury smell but there was still an aroma of sweet spice to it like nutmeg or cinnamon. She tried to pick the cookie up but it was so moist it fell apart and she ended up holding only a tiny piece.

‘Darn it,’ said Maggie. ‘Haven’t perfected the texture yet. Going to need more practise.’

Kath put the morsel into her moth and chewed, her tongue unable to discern the flavours. The dough was warm and chewy, more like stiff, dark porridge than a cookie. But the flavour was intriguing; she finished the cookie and took another.

Dingbat appeared in the doorway of the living room with something in his mouth. Clearly he’d been rummaging through the trash and stolen something. After all his good behaviour, now he’d let her down.

‘Dingbat, you fool hound, put that down right now. You can’t steal from friends.’ She turned to Maggie ‘Maggie, I am so sorry. I really thought he was going to behave himself. I don’t know what to say.’

She looked back at Dingbat trying to make sense of what was in his mouth. It looked like a length of stiff black rope. One end was pink and shiny. Her hand flew to her mouth in the next instant as everything came together. Kath stood up to run from the room knowing she wasn’t going to make it to wherever the bathroom was. Maybe it would be better to vomit outside the front door so that she could keep walking and get home to call the sheriff.

Dingbat followed her, the cat tail still in his mouth. In the hallway Kath unloaded her stomach, far from either the bathroom or the front door. The spasms stopped her from walking and though she hated herself for getting sick on someone else’s carpet she felt she had every justification. As the cookies wormed back out of her mouth she made the connection between the savoury smell and the flesh of cats and the retching worsened, hurting her stomach and chest. Dingbat began to whine.

Maggie followed her out to the hallway and stood watching with her arms folded.

‘Kathleen Kerrigan, no one has ever been so rude or disgusting in this house. Those were the best cookies I ever made. I’ve eaten twenty already this afternoon.’

Kath stopped retching and fell to her knees, her hands clutched over her chest. Maggie stepped past her and stared.

‘My God, Kath, are you having a heart attack?’

Kath fell against the wall, slipping down until she came to rest in an awkward position in her own pile of sickness. She lay back in the warm dampness managing to push one leg out from under herself. Maggie put her hands on her hips and shook her head.

‘Well, I shouldn’t do this when you’ve been so ungrateful. Just think of all the favours I’ve already done for you, and here I am about to do another. No one could ever call me uncharitable.’

She knelt beside Kath, whose eyes were starting to close, and rolled up her sleeves.

‘I know CPR,’ she said.

The last thing Kath saw was Maggie’s tongue, as it turned from pink to purple and split into several flailing tips. The tips squirmed into her mouth, forcing her clenched teeth apart. They flexed and twisted their way down her throat.

Chapter 27

It hurt to run again at first but after a few minutes the pain passed and in its place Kerrigan felt a surge of euphoria akin to intense sexual arousal. He was Lethean now: invincible. His pack seemed weightless as he sprinted along the path. Where he felt the load was on his conscience; he’d wasted too much time. If he’d left the previous morning, he might have been able to prevent Carla from wandering off alone. He’d already failed to keep the family from harm.

Something else bothered him. They seemed to have found the tree that was marked on their old map. How was it possible that he didn’t know about such a tree? The closer Kerrigan came to the place where José was waiting for Carla, the greater the sense that he was being played; like he was one crucial step behind in everything he set out to do. How that could be possible, he didn’t know. The only person who could be directing things was the writer of the letter; now a Fugue or something worse. The same person who was preparing for his arrival. Perhaps he’d been preparing for years.

Up ahead, the trail had been hacked through another obstruction of plant growth. On the other side of the opening Kerrigan saw a different kind of ground; leaf covered and dead. As he ran through the mouth-like opening and into what he would come to know as the arbour, several things happened at once. He tried to make sense of what he was seeing:

The tree was indeed huge and he stopped dead when he saw it. But there wasn’t time for him to think about its size or wonder how it had become such a monster. The tree reacted to his arrival as if it had been stung. Even from fifty yards away he saw the trunk of the tree buckle, ripple and contract. Its grey, elastic bark shuddered and the entire giant shook. He heard the branches above him rustle and leaves, thousands of broad fleshy leaves, rained to the earth all around.

Not a single one touched him.

Those drifting close on their way down blew away as though repelled. He heard a low rumbling under the ground and the forest floor shook. Where the trunk met the ground, there was a tightening; the roots thickened and shortened as they contracted, drawing the tree even more tightly into the earth.

Above Kerrigan the branches shrank away, allowing sunlight to make a pool of brightness where he stood. There was no question that the tree feared him. The rumbling in the ground receded, the soil settling around the new position of the roots.

At the same time, he saw José Jimenez, who had been approaching the tree as Kerrigan arrived. It was the man’s tiny figure beside the unnatural hulk of the trunk that made the size of the tree so striking. Jimenez was thrown to the ground by the force of the tree’s movements. It must have felt like an earthquake to him. The Spaniard flew back from the tree long before he was close enough to touch it. He landed on his backside and kept going. He crawled frantically, kicking and scrabbling away from the tree, trying to stand and run all at the same time. When he gained his feet, he ran until he saw Kerrigan then changed direction, the look of gratitude on his face suggesting he was happier to know someone else had witnessed what he’d seen than he was to be still alive. He reached the edge of the arbour where Kerrigan looked on and stood panting beside him as the tree became quiescent once more.

A charged silence returned.

It was then that Kerrigan saw a woman crawl like an animal from the undergrowth far to their right. Mesmerised by the tree, she didn’t notice them at first. Her clothing was torn and shredded from where she’d caught herself on thorns and branches in the dense undergrowth.

It was only when the woman stood up that he realised who she was. Her ‘clothing’ was a ripped bathrobe. Her knees and the palms of her hands were gritty with blood and dirt. Her blonde hair was tangled and frizzy, the dryness of it all too obvious. It stuck out in random directions, restyled by the undergrowth as she’d passed through it on all fours. Dead leaves and twigs still clung there. Cuts and scratches crisscrossed her face.

Amy rose up slowly, all the time focussed on the tree, an expression of deep awe on her face. That, at least did not strike Kerrigan as inappropriate. Immediately she was upright she began to remove the rags that had once been her robe. She walked naked and unashamed towards the tree, her motherly breasts swaying a little as she went, her thigh flesh rippling with each step.

Kerrigan withdrew a binder from each wrist strap and sprinted towards her. Immediately, the tree responded with shudders and rustlings. From high above, over the centre of the trunk he heard the tree utter a scream like gas escaping under intense pressure; neither an animal nor human sound, but one that implied intelligence.

When he was in range he flicked a binder towards Amy. It flew in a slight arc, as true as if it was guided. It sang its own song as it sped into her, a whirring whistle like a single note from a wooden flute.

The tree bent a branch down towards her, moving with liquid grace. It encircled her waist and raised her high up over Kerrigan. The binder missed. She smiled as if the tree’s touch completed her. Other branches reached out to caress and stroke her naked form, exploring her the way a blind man’s fingers explore a face. They moved with supple fluidity like the tentacles of an octopus.

Kerrigan aimed a second binder at her, a difficult shot because she was almost directly overhead. The tree swung her out of the binder’s trajectory and it connected with a branch behind her. Where the binder touched the branch the sinuous grey wood tightened as though in pain, turning immediately black. A moment later the branch, only a small one, snapped at the point of contact and fell writhing to the earth. It twisted there for a few seconds and then lay still.

All the while the tree hooted and screamed and flailed its numberless limbs. It was a dubious victory to have severed and destroyed such a small part of it. Kerrigan knew he didn’t have enough binders to kill the tree even if he threw them for a month. Meanwhile, Amy was beyond his help.

He retreated to the old trail where José crouched watching. The tree called out a low whistle of triumph and was still once more, except for the branches that had taken Amy. Those limbs still stroked her as though she was a priceless talisman. She seemed to have fallen into a peaceful trance under the tree’s ministrations. When it had finished exploring and comforting her, the tree held her outwards to the forest — perhaps a shield or warning to anyone who saw her. As he looked on, Kerrigan felt a hand on his shoulder.

‘Please explain to me what I have just seen,’ said the Spaniard.

Kerrigan’s explanation was flat, matter of fact.

‘The tree is using the woman to protect itself,’ he said.

‘There are no trees that can do what you say.’

Kerrigan turned to see if Carla’s father really meant that after what he’d seen. It was clear he was in shock. The Spaniard mashed a fist against his lips and looked away.

‘I cannot leave my daughter to wander in such woods as these,’ he said.

‘I’ll find her.’

‘I will come with you.’