The Monster's Wife(72)

“Don’t it have a look of…?”

“They laid her in a wood box six feet down…” Roy picked up a stone. Jamie did the same.

Oona held out her hand. “Jamie.” It was her voice, as always, except she heard the sound of the wind moaning under it, the same sound that seemed to come with all her words.

Roy held his stone over his head. “Away with you!” The hatred burning in his eyes told her he meant what he said. They’d hurt her if she stayed.

She turned around and walked back over the sand, her chest a furious fist. There was a horrible picture of white sheets and black hair before her eyes. That was something she’d seen and forgotten, someone she had loved. When the first stone hit her back, it felt like God punishing her, almost a relief from what was inside.

The boys were following a few steps behind, talking low to each other. The next stone stung her haunch. She broke into a run. Granny. Toby. Jamie and Roy. They all wanted to hurt her. Slate skimmed her shoulder. She heard a triumphant laugh. They were enjoying it. She ran through the dune grass and over the burn. Just past a stand of dwarfed trees was a white building circled by stones. Its roof had orange spots like rust. The door was open. She ran inside and thrust it shut and leaned on it.





63


Inside the white building, the room with benches was hardly bigger than the stook Oona had huddled in. A tall wooden box stood near the end of the room. With her back to the door, she stood stunned, chafing her arms and listening for the sound of stones striking the wood behind her. None came. Maybe the boys had gone.

Above the wooden box, a square of light dazzled her. In the light, she saw Victor working, his skilled hands creating and destroying, heard his voice telling her to kill. She closed her eyes. She saw people crowding in here week after week, grovelling on their knees on the floor. She’d done that, fallen on the hard ground, her lips moving silently.

She wove between the dark wood benches that were empty now. She’d walked down here once before, to see a woman in a white dress carrying a posy of pink flowers. She never came though everyone waited. Instead, she became a woman wrapped in white sheets with dark hair tangled over the pillow like seaweed. She seemed so peaceful and then the sudden lurch of the body under the sheets and the empty eyes staring.

Jesus died for our sins.

He died with his hands nailed and Mary Magdalene washing his beautiful feet with her tangle of dark hair. Blood everywhere and dark hair growing out of it, a hand hanging down - she’d held it, kissed it. She should have ripped it off.

She reached the wooden box and fell down on her knees. She pounded at her heart, forcing the images out. She clawed her face, trying to tear off the skin that made everyone scream, get back what once was. Her cries echoed through the church like some wild hymn and her tears pooled on the floor beneath the box. She tore at her hair, tugging out wispy curls, then pressed her hands together, lacing the fingers tightly, pressing them to her wet lashes.

“Please.” When she moved her hands from her face, they were covered in blood.

“Are you in need of help?”

She turned around. An old man was walking across the room to her, his knotted hand leaning on the backs of benches as he passed them. His skin was sun-reddened and his thick black brows made him look fierce, but she felt in her heart that he was like a father to her and loved her. She opened her arms. His mouth twisted and he stepped back, fumbling in his black coat. She crawled closer to him.

“Father.”

Biting his lip, the man pulled out a metal cross and held it up the same way Roy had held the stone before he threw it. “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels!”

Oona stopped crawling and sat back on her haunches. His voice was weak and white foam flecked his mouth. His hands shook on the cross and he kept on whispering, “They shall be stoned with stones. Their blood shall be upon them. This is the second death. This is the lake of fire.” His eyes were blank, like the body under the sheets.

She scrambled to her feet and edged past him, her back pressed to the benches. “Father, it is Oona.”

He followed her movements with watery eyes narrowed under wild brows. “I buried Oona Scollay with my own hands. She was stone cold. I sent her soul to heaven.”

“I am warm. Feel.” She held out her hand.

He shrank from her. “You must be lost here. You need to find the light again and rest. You do not belong here with the living, not in the kirk, not anywhere in this world. Go!”

She stumbled towards the door, wrenched it open and ran out into the light. It slammed shut behind her. She stood in the green place with its half-buried stones, blinking. The boys were gone and the clouds were grey and furrowed as the man’s brows. Through the doors, she heard him. “Jesus lived among the tombs and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he cried out and cut himself with stones.”

She could listen no more. She drifted between graves looking for a place to sit. Each had a name, half hidden under its moss wrapper. She glimpsed letters and dates as she passed by. The grass became a strip of earth, freshly dug over and bordered with stones. She sat down on the edge of it and raked her fingers through the soil. At the far end sat a wooden board with a name carved into it.

Oona Scollay.

Her chest grew heavy and she was very tired. Deep underground was a box. She should be inside it, lying with her arms crossed and her eyes closed. She had been down there and now she was here again, walking around. The man in the white building had seen her dead body. He’d laid her to rest here and sent her to Heaven, a peaceful place. She’d been resting and everyone here had bid her farewell. And then for some reason she’d clawed her way up, climbed into this white light, this Hell.