The Monster's Wife(22)

The wind didn’t do that.

With her blanket pulled tighter around her, she hurried across the yard towards Toby’s snarls and the still-squawking hens. Her eyes were sharper now, growing used to the gloom even as it lifted and a whey-thin light showed her more - the trail of spilled seed near the byre door, milk trickling near it and pooling round grains.

The hen-house door was latched, clucks echoing within the cramped space. She bent low and unhooked the catch, pulled open the door. A pair of brown hens flung out at her and shot into the mud behind. Then Toby, fur prickling, tongue lolling, reddish dark round the muzzle and mouth.

Holding her breath, she peered into the rank-smelling coop and saw the pale smash of broken eggs, yolks yellow on the scratched earth and the dark, shining stream that reddened as it guttered into the light.

The hens, two, four, seven of them, wings splayed, bloody, necks awry. She’d killed her fair share of chickens, carried them to the block, wielded the axe, plucked them for meat and soup. But that was nothing like this.

There was blood everywhere and the stench of death thickened the air. She stumbled back out, dazed, and fell to her knees. Toby tugged at her skirt, but she couldn’t bear to pat him or even look down at the matted blood of his muzzle. He was such a gentle dog. She would never have thought he’d do this.

Her hand pushed into something warm and soft and wet.

She looked down and saw red and black feathers: Orpheus, her bedfellow. Her ribs, breastbone, belly crushed down, squeezing the air from her. For a moment her heart seemed to stop. It lurched into life again, painful, furious so that she almost wished it hadn’t. Bending low, she buried her face in the soft feathers.

When she came back yesterday, he’d strutted across the yard to peck at her legs. Then he’d curled up in her lap, his head tucked under his wing. It had been so comforting. She shuffled to her knees. Maybe he was only sleeping. Turning the body round, she peered close. At the end of his neck was a dark hole where the head had been torn off.

She retched, a string of glistening spit joining her to the damp earth.





18


“Toby won’t be frighted if he don’t expect it.” Hamish Yule’s brows beetled together when he peered through his spectacles at Toby, a smaller and scrappier version of the sinners he lectured in kirk. Toby, fur damp from splashing in the burn, wagged his tail at the sound of his name. He’d long since licked his muzzle clean. “I’m an old friend of his. I’ll take him out into the fields for the deed itself—”

“You’ll do no such thing.” Granny’s voice shook. “I’ve already lost my cockerel and my silly wee hens.” She bent and picked up the little dog as if Hamish might snatch him from her.

They turned to look at Oona, who stood apart from them, peering through wet lashes. She clasped her hands behind her back, not wanting them to see how every part of her shook. She couldn’t push away the picture of the dark neck-hole. When she’d looked at it more closely, the wound seemed clean. Not torn as a beast or dog might tear, but severed. She couldn’t shake the thought that somebody had come in the night and ripped the front door off its hinges and killed their cockerel with a knife: a good sharp one, such as Doctor Frankenstein kept.

Hamish walked to the front door and ran his hands over the splintered wood. “Yes well, dark things come upon us Mrs Scollay,” he sighed. “Even the gentlest beast of the field may run mad at a small provocation. As for your other calamities, the ill winds have brought everyone low.”

Granny pressed her lips to Toby’s head, kissing him in that fond way she saved for her dogs and her hens. “He’s always been a gentle creature and played with the other animals like a friend. Even when they were chicks he didn’t bother them.”

“Oona was the first to see the thing and found the henhouse shut.” Hamish took off his spectacles and gestured with them as he spoke, smiling (as he always did) at the reassuring turn of his logical mind. “Could a fox or a bonxie kill a whole roost and close the door behind itself after?”

Granny countered his self-satisfied gaze with a chill stare. “Could a dog close a door behind itself and shut the latch?” Her voice bristled with the harsh tone she was known for when the time came to stand her ground.

Hamish’s brows rose sharply. He looked at Oona. “You never said anything about it being latched.” He sounded disappointed.

“Oona?” Granny’s voice was sharp.

Truthfully, she’d hardly been listening. Her mind was on the knives in the music room, their blue gleam. Behind her back, her nails dug into her hand. She mumbled her answer, eyes down, hot with that uncomfortable shame she often felt during sermons and never quite understood. “I found it shut tight. And the churn in the byre was on its side, the heavy one. I don’t think even I could push it over—”

Granny’s eyes widened, as if she had just realised something, “You know, the day before yesterday, Janice said she found her yard in a ruin and thought the goat had done it, or the boys, but later on she noticed meat and grain were missing too—”

“Well, well, I don’t listen to gossip.” Hamish dusted his hands on his breeches, his whole face puckered in a frown. “You’ve hard work to do setting the place to rights - I’ll help you fix the door and the fence post and then I’ll have to make myself scarce. God, in his wisdom, has sent me on many an errand today.”