The Devils Harvest: The End of All Flesh. (13 page)

I looked down at the silver tray I had just hit. I looked up and around at my collection of artefacts from every continent – from many ancient civilizations. All the money I had spent. All the time and energy I had used collecting it all, and not one piece could help me now. Not one piece would bring my nephew back – bring me solace. It was all just material things. And when my time came, I wouldn’t be able to take any of it with me. Papa Roach hit the nail on the head with their song title:
Born With Nothing, Die With Everything.

I was going to return to my seat, but first I snatched the vodka bottle up in my hand, taking it with me, clutching it close to my heaving chest.

“Was it painful?” I asked keeping my eyes cast down so I wouldn’t have to look at his face.

“Well… let’s see. First the body goes into shock, hard jolting spasms rocking the whole body, and then comes the gut rendering pain, blanking the person out. While he’s unconscious his organs go into shock, the heart starts missing beats, the kidneys having already packed up from all the drugs. Then comes the–”

”SHUT UP!” I screamed, kicking a footstall in the process. “I get your point,” I said more subdued this time. I gave him a long hard stare before finally saying, “Couldn’t you have just lied?”

“Ah yes, the father of the First Lie. That’s me.” He coughed, waving the cigarette in an elaborate pattern. “Didn’t feel a thing. Like falling into a deep peaceful sleep, while listening to Pendulums album –
Immersion
. He finally slipped away during track nine, the
Island, pt. 2 – Dusk
.” He gave me a look. “Better? Oh, and on a personal note, it’s also my favourite track on the album. A sound which The Prodigy have been lacking for a while now.”

I didn’t bother to answer. I stood up, having to rock a few times to get back out of the chair.

“Where are you going?” he asked, realizing he might have gone a little too far. “So you liked
pt. 1
best?” he asked with a smirk on his face.

“I’m going to bed,” I tossed over my shoulder.

“What? What about the story? It’s going to be good tonight, all about Nimrod, and–”

“Let yourself out,” I said almost whispering, but I knew he could hear me, even if I just said it in my head he would have heard.

“I don’t care where you go, but I don’t want the body of my nephew anywhere near my house. Understand? If he’s slumped in that seat in the morning, then don’t bother coming back here again.” With that I took my leave, not caring what he done to me.

I had an after thought; I turned while making my way up the stairs, one hand clutching the bottle the other grasping the banister rail, not trusting my unsteady shaking body.

“Take him back to his house. Make it look like he died in his sleep. I want to find out he died at home. I know you have it in your power to be able to do that. That can be my gift. UNDERSTAND?” I shouted the last bit, spittle flecking from my mouth.

I climbed the stairs on my shaking legs and crawled under the thick sheets of my bed, curling up into the fetal position, my knees tight against my chest, after I had emptied the bottle of vodka down my throat in one long – painful burning – swig.

I didn’t hear him leave.

I can’t remember anything about the next few days. I slept mostly.

Several times I had to get up, to either empty my bladder or return downstairs to retrieve a new bottle of alcohol, not caring what it was so long as it done its job of making me forget.

Two days passed like this, with me in a drunken stupor. Unwashed and uncaring, laid out in my own filth.

I think I heard the door banging on a few occasions, but I ignored it; too drunk and sad to care.

Everything blurred into one long painful event. Days and night all merged. I continually saw images of my nephew, which sent me into a harder drinking binge. I lay among my own waste, vomit and empty bottles.

Time heals all things I’m told.

Time heals all wounds. Wounds all time, more like it.

And one morning, when the sun woke me through the drawn curtains, I realized this was doing no one any good. It wouldn’t bring Paul, my young nephew, back. And he would hate to have seen me like this. So on the third day after he had brought my nephew to me, I got up, with a monumental hangover, to get back on with my life, and the story. Also a lot of digging.

Splintered Trail

M
y head ached like nothing I had ever experienced before. Yes, I had been drunk on numerous occasions (more than my fare share to be honest) but never for a couple of days straight. My body was now protesting loudly against the way I had been treating it. My liver was probably shrivelling up.

I stumbled into the shower, letting the water play over my head and shoulders and down my aching body. It took a lot of effort to wash myself all over; my body was tender when I tried to overstretch. My stomach also grumbled from being so empty, twisting and turning, acid bubbling up into my throat, alcohol being its only content for the last few days.

Twenty minutes later I was sat on my bed, with my head banging like a bass drum. I reached into my bedside draw and pulled out a bottle of aspirin. I had reached for it subconsciously. I looked at the small white bottle held in my shaking grasp, then in one movement I tossed them against the far wall. The plastic bottle was unaffected; it simply fell to the carpeted floor and rolled back towards me, disappearing under the bed.

I noticed the half empty bottle of whatever I had been drinking resting on the bedside dresser. I snatched it up and was about to dash that against the wall as well. But in hindsight I walked to the toilet and poured it down, and then I dropped the bottle loudly into the bin. There’s no point taking my anger out on something so pointless, and besides, if I had thrown it against the wall I would only have to clean it up after.

After continually trying to focus on my bedside clock and eventually succeeding, I noticed in now read 11:26 A.M. It was the earliest I had been up in over a week. But hadn’t my body had enough rest over the last few days? Not that I would know because my mind was a complete blank.

I stood in one of my small bedrooms, which had been converted into a kind of walk-in wardrobe, and pulled on some clothes, not caring what they were. Jumper, jeans, socks and some old Adidas trainers. Then I slowly made my way downstairs, one hand rubbing my eyes the other creeping down the banister rail, guiding the way.

The first thing I noticed was the fire still burning steadily in the hearth. I blanked the sight of it out of my mind, simply not caring.

The sun was also streaming through all the windows, dust motes filling all the rooms. Standing beside the main bay front room window, I noticed the snow had almost completely gone there was just a weak gleam resting on the ground, with a few small piles up against the hedge. The sky was clear and crisp. All cleared up while I lay drunk in bed.

That’s when I had got my first shock of the day.

I needed to go around the back and do something about the bodies there. I couldn’t get out my back door because during the winter months the door swelled up, making it impossible to open without a crowbar. I could have planed the door down, but as I had already found out a few years ago, it shrunk back to its normal size, leaving large gaps around the sides and bottom. Best to leave it as it is and simply use the front door instead.

I put a thick coat on and changed my trainers for a pair of green Wellington boots. Also removing the key for the old dilapidated shed, where my spade lived most of the year. I would need it today, if it hadn’t rusted away.

As I opened the front door to make my way around the back, and I almost tripped over the bodies piled up there. I knew he had come during my alcoholic binge, and he had obviously left the corpses here as a payment for me ignoring him.

I went light-headed, imagining what would have happened if someone had come to my house, now the snow had dispersed. Not that I was expecting anyone. But that’s how so many serial killers and murders were caught – by freak accidents. A guy pulled over for having a failed tail light, and the police discovering he has a hacked up body in the boot. A neighbour complaining about a smell and the landlord discovers a body wedged in a freezer, which had switched off due to a blown fuse.

I was taken back when I realised I had likened myself to a serial killer! “It wasn’t me!” didn’t seem like it would hold up to much in a court of law.

But in some sick way I was glad after I looked down at the twisted bodies, because my nephew wasn’t among them. At least he had done what I had asked in that respect.

The smell was gut-wrenching, having been left out in the sun for a few days, with scavenging animals taking their share. Foxes most probably. With all the snow they were probably hungry and welcomed the change.
Did foxes hibernate?
I had no idea.

The first body was that of a middle aged woman. She was wearing only a see-through nightgown that was all ripped, and only covering so much of her greyish-green body. Either it had been ripped during whatever had killed her, or the foxes had torn it while trying to get at the meat beneath. She lay sprayed out upon another person, left in a grotesque display, her head lying on the crotch of the other. One of his sick jokes no doubt.

I pulled on a pair of thick rubber gardening gloves, and then proceeded to pull her along by her ankles. I dragged her around the back; her body riding over concrete slabs and the paved stepping-stones that ran around the house. But she didn’t care, her unseeing empty eyes sockets staring up towards the cloudless sky, the birds having already picked them out.

I couldn’t help but look down at her, sprayed out, arms dragged limply behind. How had she died? After what the foxes had done to her it was difficult to tell. She had had a nice body for her age, even after everything that had happened to her you could still tell that she used to look after herself. Her breasts were large and well shaped, still well pronounced – silicon. Her darkened purple nipples stood erect through the thin lining of her nightgown. Because of the silicon they hardly wobbled as she was dragged along, but looked the same as if she was standing. I felt repulsed at myself for looking.

Soon I was around the back. All the bodies laid out like a sick wartime black and white movie – all lined up. They were vile in colour and had also been dined on by animals, now the snow had melted. All their clothes were ripped and scattered around them. Their purple stinking intestines that looked like big bruised worms, were hanging at their sides. Arms and legs had been chewed on. Their faces chewed off. The cheeks and noses being the easiest to get at with their sharp teeth.

I placed the woman besides the round shape of the little old lady, who now looked like she had been ripped open and sprayed out by some twisted psychopath. It looked like Jack the Ripper had been playing in my garden. Her knitting was unravelled over two of the bodies, as if a cat had been playing with a ball of yarn.

Congealed blood was everywhere. Body fluids now stained the packed down, mushy grass, making walking around her slippery.

I laid the woman out upon the wet grass, her dark brown hair surrounding her head like a demonic halo. It looked horrific, as she lay there with her empty eye orbits gazing towards the heavens, cheeks and throat having being chewed at. The only thing being unaffected was the silicone resting under her decaying flesh, still giving shape to her lifeless breasts that would still be intact in hundreds of years.

I returned for the other body that was leant against my left door jamb.

He was a middle-aged man. Bolding and thin, wearing muddy jeans and a pink tee-shirt. I have never liked pink on men, it seemed too feminine. The foxes didn’t bother much with what lay under the tough jeans and had gone for the soft tissue around the face and neck. Both his shoes and socks were missing, enabling the animals to chew at his feet, down to the very bones. Some of his toes were also missing. I wouldn’t have recognized him even if he were my next-door neighbour. Surprisingly he was much lighter than the female, and it wasn’t long before I had dragged him around the back.

Fumbling with the keys I retrieved my spade from the shed. The ground was much harder than I would have given it credit for. Obviously the thaw had only reached down so far. It almost felt like I was digging into permafrost.

It took almost five hours to dig the six holes, plus a few others, for my other visitors who were yet to come. Digging not too deep, I just wanted to cover over the sight and smell. Once I had finished, six mounds of mud, rather than snow, now lined up along besides my shed. See if the foxes can get at them now. I just wished I had some lime with which to cover them with before I pilled up the mud, just to stop any smells from escaping. But why would I have a bag of powdered lime?

Sweating like I was sat inside a sauna I went to return inside, carrying my coat and jumper. Then, for the first time, I noticed a sprinkling of glass on the path. I had been too busy with dragging the bodies around to have noticed it before. It led to my garage. I call it a garage; it was simply four tall posts with galvanized iron sheets stretched across the top, to stop the worst of the English weather.

My chosen transport was a jet-black BMW X5 truck. Sleek and beautiful.

I followed the small scattering of glass fragments around to the side of the garage, following it like it was some secret modern day trail left down by Hansel and Gretel.

Approaching my truck I noticed it was covered in droplets of water.
Melted snow
, I thought,
that had blown under during the blizzards
. But I got a shock when I got round to the passenger side. The rear passenger window was shattered, with small rounded shapes sticking up, the remainder of the window looked like rounded teeth. Dried blood stained the side door, set in small rivulets. Looking in I noticed the back seat was saturated with brick-red blood patches all over it. It was hard to tell how much blood because it was everywhere. Luckily it was leather and hadn’t been able to penetrate; rather it was gathered in small congealed pools, and splattered on the side panel’s cloth upholstering, which would be a little harder to remove.