Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings

Part One: Insemination

Chapter one

David looked at the address the doctor had given him. He was certain this was it, but still he felt slightly nervous. What if he had got it wrong? He didn’t feel up to such an awkward encounter. So he waited. The street was empty, and eerily silent. The thick fog gave everything a hollow yellow glow. He looked up at the blank featureless excuse for a sky above him. It was strangely comforting. He no longer had to be scared of catching a glimpse of the stars anymore, and the abomination which lurked beyond the moon.

The fog beat relentlessly down upon me, David’s mind repeated to itself over and over, desperately hoping that by providing narration it would transform his mundane existence into something interesting and worthwhile. The fog beat relentlessly down upon me. The track seemed to be stuck, or maybe it was just waiting for some external stimulus before it could continue. But the street was empty of interest and David’s stunted imagination seemed devoid of inspiration.

He looked at the address one last time, and then knocked on the door. He couldn’t wait all day. The front door half opened, a hand holding it in place. Smoke curled up from the cigarette the hand held, mingling eventually with the fog outside. A face loomed out of the darkness within.

She looked him up and down, her face registering neither disgust nor apprehension, to David’s surprise and relief.

“You must be the new donor, then?”

“Yes. I’m David.”

He held out his hand. She didn’t even look at it.

“Well, come in then. I haven’t got all day. It’s been two weeks since the last one left us. I dread to think what they’ll be like this time.”

She stood aside, and David stepped into the gloom.

*****

“Have you done this before?”

David shook his head.

“I didn’t think so.”

She took his coat from him and hung it over the banister at the bottom of the stairs.

“Did they explain it all to you? At the clinic?”

David shook his head again.

“They said you’d have a contract for me to sign, though.”

“Did they even tell you the pay?”

“No,” he said, as he shook his head once more.

She tutted. “They get more useless every year.”

She turned and walked away, leaving David bobbing uselessly in the hall like a lost buoy.

Moments later she came back and fished him out of the hall, placing him by the fire in the living room. She sat down opposite him and put some papers on the coffee table between them.

“Now, the terms are, you get a room, here, and three meals a day, if you want them, and ten pounds spending money a week.”

“Ten pounds a week?”

“If you want more you’ll have to get a job.”

“No, no. It’ll be fine.”

“I thought as much.” Now there was a hint of disgust on her face. It didn’t take long. It never took long. “In return, you’ll provide us with some blood, once a week, from tonight. The money will be paid to you after we take our donation at the start of each week.”

David nodded his agreement. She handed him a pen. David made a show of reading the contract, without actually making any attempt to look at it. He let his eyes skim over the page while he counted to twenty, and then signed his name at the bottom, nodding thoughtfully as he did.

“Thank you,” she said, as he handed her back her pen, and pushed the contract towards her across the table. “Did they tell you anything about the procedure?”

Chapter 2

David sat alone at the kitchen table, naked except for his pants. Before him his landlady had set out her instruments: a large metal bowl (empty); a large metal bowl (filled with ice and water); a barber’s razor; two towels (white); a corkscrew; a bottle of wine (red).

As he waited for her to come back he looked down at his bare feet. They left imprints of condensation on the cold kitchen tiles whenever he lifted them. He stopped lifting them. He found something disquieting about ghostly impressions, and the quickness with which they faded. It felt like a metaphor for most of his life.

She placed her hand roughly on his shoulder. He flinched. He hadn’t heard her come back in.

“Don’t be scared,” she said, a tenderness in her voice that wasn’t in her fingers.

She leant over him and put her half-smoked cigarette on the table, next to the bottle of wine. She pulled the empty bowl towards them, and pushed David’s head forward so it hung above it.

“Will it hurt?”

She picked up the razor, her body pushed against his bare back, her face next to his, their cheeks briefly touching. She turned her head slightly and whispered “Yes” in his ear. A pause, then, before she touched the cold metal blade to his face.

She sliced the skin from his neck and cheeks in long strips, the blade pushing in deep at the top of his cheeks and then being slowly pulled down to the middle of his neck. At the end of each long stroke she dropped the long strips of flesh into the bowl, then quickly washed the blade in the icy water. Blood dripped from his face in great lumps, barely diluted by his tears.

When she’d finished shaving both sides, she put the razor in the bowl of water, then held his head in place, hands gripping the top of his skull, keeping him still despite his screams and his attempts to thrash around in horror. His hands grasped the edge of the kitchen table, the skin on his fingers pushed bone white by the pressure.

Eventually his screams subsided to sobs, and the flow of blood slowed as his face began to clot.
When it was finished she gave him a towel. She wiped the razor and her hands clean with the other.

“How do you feel?”

David fainted, his descent to the floor halted halfway down by his hands that still gripped the table’s edge. Then even that slipped from his grasp and he crashed down as far as gravity would take him.

Chapter 3

David was woken by his landlady opening the curtains and letting the murky daylight in. He was lying in a bed in a small room. Along the opposite wall was a desk, with a window behind it. A bookcase stood in the corner, which was mostly empty except for an incomplete set of encyclopaedias. His bags sat in the middle of the floor, taking up most of the space that lay between the bed and the desk. The door to the room was just past the foot of his bed, and the hallway beyond looked dark and uninviting.

“Breakfast’ll be ready in a minute.”

David felt desiccated and hollow. His voice came out in a dry rasp.

“What time is it?”

“Almost 8.”

“I feel awful.”

His face ached. The congealed mass of scab that covered the lower half of his face had ossified into a fragile and misplaced carapace. It threatened to crack open every time he spoke.

“It’s just the after-effects. Lack of iron, mild dehydration. You’ll feel better after you’ve eaten something.”

“Does it… Will it always hurt like that?”

“You’ll get used to it. It’ll get easier.”

David sat up in bed, swung his legs to the floor.

“How do you know?”

The landlady left without reply. He hurriedly got dressed, or at least as hurriedly as his dried-out brain would allow, and followed her out into the hall.

Stairs led both up and down. Doors lined the walls, all of them closed except his. There were no windows, the only light in the corridor having followed him in from his room. He heard children shouting downstairs. He made his way towards their calls.

In the kitchen, David’s landlady was making toast for her children. She had three of them: two sons and a daughter. The elder boy, eight or maybe nine years old, had a truncated tongue, the end of it slowly weeping blood, staining his teeth red. He was sat at the table eating, shouting at his sister who sat opposite him. A fine mist of blood sprayed from his mouth toward her as he spoke.

The younger boy was just a child, and his mother held him at her side as she buttered their toast with her spare hand. From the size of him he looked like he wasn’t yet a year old, but as his face was skinless, just a gleaming hollow skull, it was hard to tell. With his eyeless sockets he peered at David as he entered, or at least he seemed to. The harrowing voids certainly gave the appearance that they were following him across the room, but the truth could probably never be ascertained. The baby’s jaw clacked magically up and down, despite there being no visible ligament or sinew connecting jawbone to skull. From his mouth no sound emerged.

The girl was the eldest, thirteen or so. She looked exactly like her mother, just taller and thinner and paler. Her left arm was missing, and her sleeveless t-shirt showed a hole at the shoulder. The hole revealed not bone or flesh, but an infinite void of nothing.

David awkwardly said “Hello” and everyone turned to look at him.

“This is that new donor I was telling you about,” his landlady said to her two elder children. Turning to David she waved her arm in an all encompassing gesture across the table. “These are my children.” That was all the introductions she gave. He sat at the table and ate his toast dry.

*****

Eventually the two elder children left the room. The landlady clattered plates around in the sink. David still slowly chewed his toast. The baby had been placed on the table. He might have been staring at David, or perhaps he was asleep. Either way he was still and quiet, his toothless jawbone no longer clacking excitedly up and down.

The landlady finished the washing up, and turned to David. She searched in her pockets for a moment, then pulled out a note from one and a key from the other.

“Here’s your money, and a key to the front door. You can come and go as you like, but make sure your here every Friday afternoon. That’s when we…”

She tailed off, one of her hands half-heartedly miming a shaving motion on her cheek. David nodded and pocketed what was now his.

“Have you ever been to the city before?”

“No. Actually, maybe, when I was a child.”

“Before the quarantine, I suppose? Before the infection.”

“Maybe. It’d have to have been, I suppose… Maybe it was another city, anyway. I can’t remember, really.”

From outside, David could hear the two children playing in the garden. The boy was screaming at his sister again, but now he was begging her to stop whatever it was she was doing to him.

“Do you have a phone? I should call my father. Tell him I got here alright.”

“We do. It’s in the hall, by the stairs. You shouldn’t use it, though.”

“What? Why?”

“You just shouldn’t.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing’s wrong with the phone. It’s the line. It’s all of the lines. They’re haunted.”

David laughed. “Haunted?” Almost a sneer.

“Everyone says so. We only use them when we have to.”

“But you can still use them?”

“Yes. But you won’t like what you hear.”

“I should probably still call him.”

She sat down, and sighed. She lit a cigarette and breathed deep on it while she watched David leave the room. With her other hand, she stroked her baby’s skull.

*****

The phone was an old rotary telephone. He dialled his father’s number. The mesmerising rotation of the dial after each digit almost brought him to nostalgic tears, but he managed to compose himself by the time his call was answered.

“Hello?”

“Hello. It’s David.”

“What?”

“It’s David. Dad, is that you?” The line was terrible. Even here the fog prevailed.

“Who is this?”

“It’s David.”

“I don’t know any Davids. Well, I suppose I know one.”

“I’m your son.”

“I don’t have a son.”

“Dad?”

“Look, I’m in a rush, David. I have to go.”

“Oh, okay. I just wanted to tell you I got here alright.”

The line was dead before he had even finished talking.

“Dad? Dad?”

In the silence, David strained to hear the ghosts she’d talked about, but they’d already gone.

Chapter 4

David hurried out of the house, buttoning up his coat as he walked down the road toward the city. Somehow, he couldn’t think of this dreary street as actually being part of the chaotic whole. It was a calm space apart. Already he had begun to think of it as home. The city was still some nebulous other.

He’d not yet had a chance to look around the city, not beyond the short walk from the processing centre at the east gate to the bus-stop, and then later the two street stroll from another bus-stop to the landlady’s house.

His bus journey yesterday had been a disappointed. He had sat upstairs so as to get a good view, but the fog outside and the condensation on the windows inside meant he had barely seen a thing. Occasionally unknowable shapes loomed out of the thick yellow haze, before receding into the distance as the bus trundled grudgingly onwards with its journey.

Walking revealed a little more, if only by degrees. As he turned into the main street at the end of his road, the pavements were swamped with people, everyone shuffling along together, a lazy river that swept David slowly along with the tide. The streets themselves were thick with vehicles. Buses and cars trudging lifelessly on their journeys, slower and sadder than even the people on foot.

The fog was just as endless and thick as yesterday, as it was every day, as it would be for every day forever more. The yellow glow of daylight cast a sickly pallor across everything. The atmosphere was claustrophobic and despairing, and in that David found comfort.

He was eventually deposited on the promenade by the south bank of the river. Across the water the fog seemed thinner, and he could just about see the boats at the dockyards on the northern bank, unloading their cargo of whale corpses in an endless cycle. Once unloaded the ships would turn and sail back toward the east gate, there to pick up more carcasses that were waiting for them at the quarantine lines. Nothing was allowed out of the city. Anything could come in.

David had seen the complex machinery at the gate when he’d queued there for entry the day before. Cranes swung back and force in a delicate ballet, transporting the leviathans across the division between the city and the rest of the world. The trawlers, once divested of their loads, would turn and return to the oceans. The whales, hanging from a hook, hung there silhouetted before the swollen bank of fog for a moment, and then the crane would start to turn, and they were lost to the murk and the haze of the city forever.

*****

He bought a book from one of the market stalls that lurked under the bridge, and a bottle of wine from a nearby corner shop, and sat among the pigeons on a bench by the river.

The book was about astronomy. It’d been written in the 1950s, before satellites and probes had told us all so much of what we know, before everything had started to go wrong, before the horrors of the night sky had caused David to flee his home and hurl himself into this black hole at the heart of the world for refuge.
He drank his wine and wallowed in the comforting nostalgia of a time of fixed constellations and seasonal stars, of knowable orbits and the Metonic cycle, of a speed of light that didn’t keep accelerating impossibly away until everything was closer than it should be.

It began to get dark early in the evening. The streetlights lit up the fog with their pale orange glow. The sickly pallor of day gave way, and now everything had the appearance of being warmed by a nearby fire. David put his book away in his coat pocket, and threw the empty wine bottle away. With the last of his money he bought some slabs of unidentified grilled meat from a street vendor, and slightly drunk, he began to meander his way home.

Chapter 5

Having used up all of his money, David spent as much of the rest of the week as possible in his room, emerging only to eat or to use the bathroom. He finished reading his book on astronomy and moved on to the encyclopaedias on his shelf, starting with the first volume that they had, Volume 11: Livingstone to Metalwork. It was slow going. Halfway through the entry on Logic (Formal) he fell asleep in his chair.

*****

He awoke slumped forward across his desk, his left cheek pressed firmly against the open encyclopaedia. He sat up, slowly rubbing some life back into his eyes. The book was covered in fragments of scabs that had broken off from his face. He poured them onto the, then tried to dispose of them in the gaps between the slats of the floor by pushing them around with his sock-covered feet.

It was still light outside. Due to the fog obscuring the sun David couldn’t tell if it was later that same afternoon or early the next morning. He could hear noises from outside: shouting, laughing, the hints of furtive whispers in the spaces between.

By sidling somewhat awkwardly between the edge of the desk and the bookcase David could look out of the window at the necessary angle to see down into the alleyway below, which ran between this house and the next. David could see the landlady’s daughter down there, talking to a boy that he did not recognise. The boy looked about the same age as her, maybe a bit older. It was hard to tell precisely. His face was mostly mandibles, and he leant in close and pestered her neck with these chittering jaws. She laughed.

There was lichen growing in the void between the panes of the double-glazed glass, David noticed. The soft translucent white mold traced complex geometric patterns within the window, thin wisping veins filled with moisture instead of blood.

Below, the girl moved the boy’s hand toward her bare and armless shoulder. His fingers touched the edges of the hole. She flinched, and his hand jerked back in surprise. He touched her again, held his fingers to her wound. They were silent now, serious. He let his fingers slip into it, then pushed in deeper, his hand disappearing up to the wrist. She said something to him, and he thrust his arm in further until they stood awkwardly shoulder to shoulder, his insectoid face turned towards her tender lips.

“What are doing all the way up there?”

David jumped at the sound of his landlady’s voice, and turned guiltily toward her. His face flushed red.

“Nothing. Nothing.”

She didn’t reply. He rushed in to fill the uncomfortable silence.

“I was looking at the windows. At the view. Well, at the fog. I’m still not used to the fog.”

“Well, whatever, your breakfast’s almost ready.” She began to go, then turned back at the doorway. “Come down whenever you’re done.”

When she left, David looked back out of the window, but the alley below was empty now. He went downstairs still dressed in yesterday’s clothes.

Chapter 6

The rest of the week passed David by without incident. The scabs on his face had just about healed, his skin as smooth as scars, when it was Friday once more.

He sat at the kitchen table, naked again except for his pants, while his landlady laid out her instruments before him.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I’ll try to not faint this time.”

“I’ll be as gentle as I can.”

She put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. He stared forward blindly, his glasses removed and placed carefully by the bottle of wine near the centre of the table. She took the razor in her hand and sank it into his skin, scraping the metal blade slowly across his cheekbone.

*****

He put his glasses back on with one hand, while holding a towel to his half-clotted face with the other.

“Do you feel okay?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think so.”

She stood opposite him, on the far side of the table. She held the razor up to the light and examined the blade. She gave it one last wipe with her towel and then placed them both down in front of her. She reached over the table and pulled the bowl of blood towards her, giving it a shake as she did so the gore and flesh swirled around thickly inside.

“Do you want to see how it works?” she asked him. “See what we do with it?”

David nodded. He felt like he was always nodding.

“Good,” she said. “Although you’ll probably want to go and get dressed first. It takes awhile.”

*****

When David came back into the kitchen his landlady was mixing a bottle of wine into the bowl. She saw him looking at her, and his puzzlement must have been apparent on his face.

“It stops it clotting,” she said in explanation. “It’s less pleasant if it clots.”

Satisfied with the mixing, she began to pour the blend of blood, wine and flesh into smaller bowls, the first three portions all of roughly equal size, and then a half-sized serving last. She set them round the table, putting a soup spoon next to each, and by the smallest bowl a thick plastic child’s spoon. She quickly cleared the clutter leftover from the preparation of the dish from the table, and then went to the kitchen door and bellowed into the hall to her children.

David was still standing awkwardly in the corner when the children walked in and took their seats. The girl came in carrying the baby, and placed him into his chair. Their mother motioned to David to take a seat. He sat down and watched them all hungrily spoon his blood into their mouths.

When they had finished, and the table had been cleared, the children sat back in their seats. Their mother searched around behind them, rifling through the contents of one of the cutlery drawers. Finding what she was looking for, she turned towards the table, knocking the drawer closed with a barely perceptible movement of her hips.

She went to her daughter first and knelt down beside her. The girl turned to face her mother, holding out her arm. Her mother grasped her wrist firmly with one hand, bending the hand back so that the vein was exposed. In her other hand she held a fishhook, and she worked into her daughter’s artery.

“What are you doing?”

The girl looked at David, condescendingly shaking her head. Her mother just ignored him, concentrating intently on her task. The boy laughed, a fine spray of blood bursting from his lips. The baby sat there grinning with possible glee.

“What are you doing?”

As if in answer, his landlady pulled the fishhook out of her daughter’s arm. A creature dangled from it, hooked through its jaws. Its long thin body emerging endlessly from the girl’s vein. The landlady wound it round the hook, pulling it further out from within, until, after what seemed to David like forever, it finally came free. Its tail whipped back and forth in the air. The landlady stood up, cupping her hand under it so the drops of blood that fell from it didn’t end up on the kitchen floor. She dropped it into a cup and then doused it with boiled water from the kettle.

The girl got up and ran her wrist under the tap, washing the blood into the sink. Her mother came over and put a plaster over her daughter’s wound. Next she knelt down next to her elder son, another fishhook appearing between her fingers like magic.

After she had finished removing the symptoms of infection from her two boys she left the room, taking the youngest to bed. David was still sat at the table. The colour had run from the few parts of his face that still allowed it to. He hadn’t enjoyed what he had seen. He had barely even understood it. The worst had been watching her exorcise the baby. The silent screams on its bony face evoking a sense of horror deeper than any David had ever experienced.

They hadn’t told him any of this at the processing centre. They said he was immune, that he would be useful as a donor, especially considering his lack of other skills. They said if he didn’t mind parting with some of his barely-needed blood and donating it to some more needful recipients it would be an act of great selfless heroism, and he had believed him. The money, food and board had helped, too, of course.

His landlady came back, closing the kitchen door behind her. She sat down next to him, closer than she needed to. Closer than he liked. He felt nervous, He always felt nervous close to other people. Even now he felt uncomfortable, despite her having touched his bare skin. His back, his shoulders, his face. Somehow he felt more vulnerable before her clothed than he had near-naked and bleeding.

She handed him a fishhook and held out her wrist and he thought he might cry.

Chapter 7

She talked him through it, told him how to turn the hook, how to search with it in the flesh for that parasitic eel’s head. She told him how to remove it once it was caught, showed him the slow but steady winding that would ensure it wouldn’t snap in half, leaving it bleeding inside her arm, its blood poisoning hers. When he was done he killed it with boiling water, unsure whether the screams he heard in his head were the creature’s or echoes of his own.

They finished the bottle of wine together at the table. He looked at her through the cloud of smoke that hung around her head. She couldn’t be much older than he was, yet she seemed so much more complete than him: purposeful, important. Necessary. He felt diminished in front of her, reminded of what he was in comparison, a half-formed creature neither child nor whatever was supposed to come after.

“They grow within us, those things,” she said. “One at a time. They stretch out from the heart.” She stubbed her cigarette out. “Your blood pacifies them.” She lit another. “Their jaws unlock and they wash down to…” She sucked on her cigarette, making it burn bright. “…to where we can catch them.”

“What are they? How did they get inside? How do they get so long?”

“These weren’t so long. Sometimes… Towards the end, the last donor… His blood… They get used to it. The infection gets used to it. It has less and less effect. They come back so thick, then. So strong.” She paused to drink some of her wine. “And last week, your first time. You didn’t see them then… The clinic had made us wait so long.”

“Can’t you…” David tailed off. Hesitancy seemed to be contagious. “Isn’t there a cure?”

She shook her head.

“And everyone has this? This infection? These…”

She nodded.

“What happens if they’re left untreated?”

She got up and left the room.

*****

Later, David sat at his desk upstairs. He opened the encyclopaedia, taking out his bookmark and placing it on the side. He read the last few paragraphs of the article on Measurement (Theory of) to remind himself as to whether he had already read it, and then, satisfied that he had, he moved onto Meat and Meat-Packing.

Chapter 8

The next day David woke to find the house empty. A ten pound note waited for him on the kitchen table. He took it and went out into the city.

It was raining outside. David looked up at the sky, hoping it would wash the fog away and scour the air momentarily clean, but all it did was push weeks of filth that had floated slowly up from the city back down toward it. The crowds of people on the pavements were not diminished by it either. Instead now they moved slower, their umbrellas providing a roof above their huddled heads. David pushed his way into their mass, the spokes of the umbrellas scratching away at his face.

He took the bridge over the river and ate his lunch by the docks, watching the workers there process the whales as they were delivered. The flesh stripped from their bones, the fat pouring down through sluices to unseen vats below, bones piled high in the corner like a feast for Cerberus. In the corner of the yard near where David lurked a discarded jawbone rotted in neglect, the flesh on it seeming to boil as the maggots writhed their way through it.

The modern city was built upon whales. It burnt their oil, ate their flesh, built bridges and spires from their bones. Without them everything within the borders would collapse in on itself and afterwards who knew what would be left.

The poor beasts were a victim of the celestial uncertainty that David had fled here from, of the wavering of the moon. With the tides disrupted, the currents scattered, all they could do in response was flounder to the surface in confusion. The depths had hidden more of them than could ever have been imagined. A solid bridge formed across the ocean that the whalers’ boats broke like ice. The whales sang out in desperation, for salvation, but there was none. Instead they were ensnared in the city’s insatiable pull, and dragged screaming and dying to its shores.

Whales were not the only victims of the city’s siren song, although others were more willing. People poured in every day, draining the surrounding lands drier and drier. It had already taken their resources, now it took all that was left. The swollen city threatened to burst at the seams, but it never did. The containment ditch that encircled the city held firm, helped forced a compression within. As the city’s mass grew its pull increased, and the world fell into it quicker than ever.

The workers began to leave as night fell. It was November, and the bridges across the river were being set alight in celebration. Sparks flew up into the fog, swimming through the air like fiery sperm searching for a home before their eventual failure and fall.

David thought of the night sky and its corruption. As the speed of light had begun to increase toward infinity the stars moved from their predestined paths. Sluggishly at first but with increasing urgency they traced out patterns that defied understanding. As infinity approached and space contracted and everything became so close, their destination began to emerge. A deep red scar, a slice cut out from the dark, it was this that they pushed their way towards. Towards it, into it, and out of sight. Only the moon appeared repelled by it and it ran as far as it could, lurking behind the Earth, and letting us hide this abomination from its view. David followed its lead and ran to hide beneath the fog.

The bridge nearest David collapsed into the river. The great roar of noise as the weight of it hit the water woke him from his reverie. Great clouds of steam hissed their way up towards the clouds. He found his way to the nearest tunnel and began his long walk home.

Bloodbeard will return in “Blood Madness” later this year.

Dead blood welled up at the point of incision, no longer being pumped in but still as eager as ever to escape. I pulled the knife along the course of the vein, opening up the forearm from wrist to elbow. I peeled the skin open, pinning it on either side to the table. I wiped the blood away from the bones with a tea-towel that was still damp from dinner.

The etchings on the ulna were even more beautiful than I’d hoped. I started to remove it, sawing through the bone first just below the wrist, then just above the elbow. The breadknife was barely up to the job but it struggled through. Once I’d finished I put the knife aside, and then pulled this internal scrimshaw free from its pit.

I wiped it clean. I rotated it before me. The picture extended all the way round. It was more than a picture, it was a story told in delicate lines, circular and unending, no beginning or end, a constant loop of unsettling depravity. Consumption and expulsion, death and birth and re-death, all that the universe holds reduced to so little, implying so much. It was hard to let go, but I forced myself to set it aside.

At the bottom of the valley of my hollowed arm, in the clotted blood and the seeping marrow, my children were beginning to stir, unfurling in the light. Their translucent skin and formless faces turned towards the heat of the lamp. I picked them out as delicately as I could, my fingertips twice the size of their skulls. One of them popped beneath my fingers, but the other two survived. I placed them together on a saucer, and baptised them with milk.

I took the blackbird from its cage. It froze in my hand, shock and fear stilling its wings, its heart beating so hard against my palm it felt like it might burst forth from its chest. I placed it in the cavity in my arm and left it to form.

I pulled the pins from the desk and folded the skin back together, sealing the wound with masking tape, one piece along the line of the cut, then several looped around my arm. I let the blood flow back into it. As I rolled my sleeve back down I could feel the beat of her wings inside.

It is often tempting for outside observers to judge a society or community solely by its traditions, rituals and festivals, to bestow a significance and seriousness onto events that is not there for the participants, to see superstition and fear in theatre and frivolity. Equally, the reverse can often be true for those involved.

The ritual of the crow tree is one of the community’s least talked about rituals, and consequently can be assumed to be among its most serious. Indeed, there appears to be no written record of the ritual at all, although there are verified accounts of the tree itself dating back to the 15th Century. While the community’s folklore suggests the ritual has always taken place, nothing about its origins are recorded, and no speculations about its meaning would be offered to me.

The ritual takes place on February the 29th, during the second leap year after the birth of a man’s eldest daughter. The distinction of it being the father’s eldest daughter is an important one, as it means no man can participate in the ritual more than once, whereas a woman might well be required to participate both as a child and as a mother, and on multiple occasions if the conditions allow. For example, a mother’s first daughter might not be the father’s first daughter, and in this case the ritual would not be needed. However, this mother’s second daughter might be fathered by a different man, one who has not fathered a daughter before, and so it would be this birth that would necessitate the ritual. Indeed, in convoluted circumstances it is possible for a mother to have to participate in the ritual with each of her daughters. A different mother might never have to participate, no matter how many girls she gives birth to.

Due to the fixed timing of the event combined with the unfixed timing of a child’s birth, the daughter can be anywhere between the age of 4 and exactly 8 when it is time for her to perform the ritual. A child born on February the 29th would be the eldest possible participant, and a child born on February the 28th during a leap year would be the youngest. If the child, the father or the mother have died before the ritual has taken place a lament is sung by the surviving members of the family at the edge of the field where the crow tree resides. In these circumstances it is not permitted for them to approach the tree during the day.

In recent years, due to the decline in births within the community, it has been rare for there to be more than one family needing to perform the ritual in any given leap year, and indeed in some years the ritual has not taken place at all. In times of a more populous community, however, when multiple rituals were to be carried out during the same day, the participating families were ordered by the age of the daughter, with the eldest girl first and the youngest last, a reflection of the length of time they had been waiting to perform. On busy days it was said that, despite there being no apparent communication between families, each group would arrive in the correct order, equally spaced apart, and that all the rituals would be finished in good time, well before the sun set.

The ritual itself is one of the most sombre events in the community’s convoluted calendar. It is traditional for everyone who is not directly involved to stay inside their own houses, although this is not compulsory. No costumes are worn, and the tools used are not ceremonial objects in any way, instead being everyday household or workplace items.

The ceremony starts with the father leaving his house at dawn. He makes his way to the edge of the crow tree’s field and waits by the gate. The mother and daughter do not hurry, although usually they will arrive before noon, and always before dusk. The mother carries with her a pail filled with breadcrumbs, offal, fish guts, bones. The daughter carries a length of rope and a knife. When they arrive at the gate to the field, the father wordlessly leads the way in and they walk together to the centre of the field and stand by the crow tree.

The crow tree is a long dead oak, its trunk and branches bleached bone white by the sun. Other dead oak trees dot the field but the crow tree is the only one that remains completely bare of ivy and lichen. It is believed that the trees were killed by the sea hundreds of years ago, although the field is many miles inland. The trees themselves are so cold and solid it is tempting to believe that they have petrified somehow.

The father stands with his back to the tree. The rope is tied around his left wrist, looped round the tree, and then secured around his right wrist. The daughter pushes the knife into her father’s belly as deeply as she can.

“Speak,” she says, and her father speaks.

They listen. Eventually he stops. His words go unrecorded.

“Sleep,” says the mother, and, after removing the knife from his belly, she slits his throat.

His body is cut down from the tree and dragged a short way from the trunk. The food from the bucket is spread in a circle around him. The knife is placed in the pail, and the women leave.

Overnight the crows come down from the tree and feed. In the morning, as the crows return to their roosts, the father is reborn.

(This poem was originally submitted for publication in Issue #1 of Essex Terror! and is reproduced here with permission.)

Balthazar strode from the main entrance of Dagenham Motors and onto the forecourt, smiling. He twirled the brand new car keys around his finger as he approached his huddling family. “Da-da!” he said, a rakish smile playing around his handsome, bearded features.

His wife Kandi couldn’t help but applaud. She clapped and clapped until her hands started to bleed, whereupon she broke down in happy tears. “I’m just…you know, so happy!” she exclaimed, lips trembling as the blood trickled down her wrists. “This is everything I’ve always dreamed of!”

He put his manly arms around her. “I know dear,” he said. “Everything’s going to be fine, you’ll see.”

“Which one is ours, daddy?” said young Jake, a strapping eight years old and already showing signs of growing up to be a fine, handsome man.

“That one. Behind the Fiesta with the purple metallic paint.”

Jake looked. Slowly, his eyes widened and his mouth fell slack. “But…no! Not that one! Nooo!”

“What’s wrong, Jakey?”

His arms flailed and he began to turn a macabre shade of blue. “Nooooooooooooooooo!” he wailed. “Its eyes! Its horrible eyes!”

Jake died that evening.

CHAPTER 2: Death requests a detour

Autumn started late that year. A fine October had drifted into a moderate November, and only now did the evenings feel cold.

Balthazar and Kandi had barely noticed the change, their grief overwhelming them as they struggled to come to terms with both the death of their younger son Jake and the untimely expiry of his Xbox Live Gold membership.

Their older son, Kevin, had apparently blanked it out completely. He never mentioned the terrible event, although sometimes, late at night, Kandi would hear Kevin creep into Jake’s old room and sob muffled little sobs. Other times he would bring his Xbox controller down to the breakfast table and stare blankly at the Aga.

One night, they had been to visit Grampa in Upminster, and had stayed longer than intended. It was nearly midnight when they set off back to their Wanstead semi, clutching their bags of Werthers.

The Mondeo was running well that night. It purred like a kitten as it turned onto the A124 and continued to offer a class-leading blend of performance and comfort. But Balthazar was frustrated. The sat nav’s prissy female voice was being particularly arch tonight and seemed to be accusing him of idle driving. The rage increased as they passed the junction at Grenfell Park. Suddenly, he snapped.

“Right, we’re going on a detour,” he screamed. “I’m sick of listening to that electronic bitch, I’m sick of driving past Oldchurch Hospital and I’m incredibly sick of St Edwards Way. Where is the apostrophe? Tell me that, darling. Where’s the fucking apostrophe?”

The car fell silent. Everyone was appalled by this outburst. Balthazar, defiance apparent in every gearchange, decided to go straight on at the Rom Valley Way junction onto Rush Green Road. A few moments later they continued west in grim silence.

But silence isn’t what they should have been exhibiting in the car that fateful night. For they were approaching Beacontree Heath, and the date was Friday 13th. Somewhere, an absolutely enormous clock struck midnight…

CHAPTER 3: Death knocks on the window

“Well, this is just great,” growled Kandi as the car spluttered to a halt. “Not only are we out of petrol but we are stuck in the middle of Beacontree Heath. Why did you have to take that dirt track anyway?”

“It looked quicker, okay?”

“Right. Screw this. I’m going to walk back to that petrol station. Kevin, come on.” Kandi grabbed Kevin by the arm and they marched off. They followed the dirt track, and followed, and followed.

The track was supposed to become tarmac just beyond the outcrop of willow trees, but for some reason she could not even seen the willows. Resolute, she continued, her son growing increasingly tearsome by the second. After fifteen minutes, her head swimming with confusion, an icy fear began to grip her. By now she should have easily left the heath, but the grass just kept on going. And the shadows were becoming darker.

Then the noise started. Faint at first, it soon rose like a banshee into an icy scream, which never ended.

Balthazar! Kandi broke into a run in the opposite direction. All she wanted was to feel the manly, hairy arms of her husband around her, his heartbeat next to hers, his manly buttocks tensed into a mighty ball of muscle, ready for action.

It didn’t take long to get back to the car, but something was horribly wrong. Balthazar lay on the ground, stiff as a board. The screaming was overwhelming by now, but it wasn’t her husband making the noise. A strangling fear gripped her, as her attention was suddenly grabbed by an hellish vision on the side of the car. There, on the passenger door, was an abomonation. A terrifying face, contorted into the perfect parody of a man screaming in terror, in pain, in tortuous sorrow.

And under the car, like a mockery of oil, was a glistening pool of blood. Bloody, horrible blood.

It was Kandi’s turn to scream. This set off the face even more, which screamed even louder. Kandi screamed back. The car screamed again. And again. It was truly an audible version of some kind of horrible vision of something hellish.

Suddenly, silence. A breeze circled, dislodging the last of the leaves on a nearby oak. A sickening feeling overcame her. She became aware of the silence like nothing else, and slowly turned.

Where was Kevin? She was completely and utterly alone, except for the prone Balthazar and the hellish car face, which was starting to weep tears of blood.

Where was Kevin? Where the hell was her only remaining child? Kandi fell to her knees, too shocked to make a sound.

CHAPTER 4: It’s about time

“Wake up, Balth!” shouted Kandi, slapping her husband repeatedly around the chops. She slapped and slapped and slapped, then weeped, then slapped some more.

Balthazar came to with a shudder. Immediately he glanced over at the horrible face, which had begun to scream again. “Kandi, I was trying to get in the car, but some unseen force hurled me away. Keep away from that dreadful…thing!”

“Kevin’s gone,” she sobbed. “I heard the screaming and ran back, but somehow Kevin disappeared.”

Balthazar said nothing. Grimly, he got to his feet. But as he did so the car stopped screaming. It was replaced by a new, familiar sound: the engine sprang to life, all on its own.

Balthazar leapt on the roof of the car. “Oh no you don’t,” he roared, as the engine engaged with a splutter. The car began to lurch forward. Before Balthazar could steady himself, he suddenly and inexplicably flew off the roof at an angle of 90 degrees and went 200 yards through the air until he hit a tree, head first.

The wheels span. The car had become stuck in the muddy earth, and the spinning wheels began to spray up a combination of dirt and blood until Kandi was covered head to foot. She screamed. The car screamed. Balthazar, lying in a heap nearby, groaned and then screamed. Kandi screamed some more. The car screamed again, then stopped. Then started again. Kandi screamed.

Just as Kandi was beginning to feel faint, there was a flash of light. The sky seemed to rent asunder, and there was a sudden presence. It was Kevin! Not only that, but there was a man with him, a muscular, toned man with pecs bulging beneath his white t-shirt.

The man drew his sword and charged at the car with a gutteral yell. He thrust the sword at the screaming face. Unexpectedly, instead of clanging off with a metallic yowl, the sword was swallowed up like a knife into margarine. The sickening sound of flesh and bone being torn reached Kandi’s ears, which were dripping bloody mud onto the virgin earth.

The engine died, the screaming stopped. Then, silence. Still, guilty silence.

Balthazar staggered over, clutching his head and wiping the sweat from his beard. “Who are you, mighty warrior?”

Kevin stepped forward. “This is Pauroth, Keeper of the Truth. He’s a time traveller from the future.”

“Wotcha,” said Pauroth, wiping and resheathing his sword. “I’m sorry about all this, but it’s all over now.”

“What is? Where did you take my son? How did you…?”

“There’ll be plenty of time for explanations later, but for now I’ll tell you that your son Jake was killed by a murderous higgs-boson particle that didn’t want him to grow up to design a time machine. But the death of Jake inspired Kevin to carry on his research in the future. If I hadn’t used the machine myself to rescue Kevin and convince him to drop the whole idea, he would also be dead now.”

“Hooray that solves everything!” said Balthazar. “But wait… what about the screaming car?”

They all looked over, but there was no car.

“There never was a car,” said the mysterious future man, before vanishing with a pop.

The family exchanged glances.

“Next time I’m buying a BMW,” said Balthazar, and everyone laughed uproariously as they wiped away the accumulated mud, sweat and blood.

THE END

Jamie Cullen is a Sheffield-derived poet, now to be found lingering in North London. His latest work, Zen Poetry: Millennial Vanity, is available.

Part One

“I’m not very good at running away,” she exhaled, “my legs don’t work properly.”

I rounded on her.

“What?”

“My legs. As soon as I start to run they just begin twirling at the knee. You know what I’m like. I’m almost worse than useless at running.”

“Well we can’t stay here. They’ve almost clawed their way through the planks over the windows and I’m fresh out of planks. We could ride those bikes Dave and Suze left out in the hallway.”

“Bikes?” More heavy breaths, ending in an exasperated sigh. “Why don’t we just take the car?”

“Cars run out of petrol. I’ve seen horror movies.”

“You have to pedal bikes. Think about my knees!”

I grasped her by the shoulders really quite roughly and looked her in the eye.

“Very well, the car it is.”

A rotting arm burst through the kitchen window, throwing pieces of glass all over the washing up.

“Where are the keys?”

“I thought you had them. You drove home last night.”

“Jeeeeesus. They’re in my other trousers. Wait there, I’ll be back in a second.”

“But they’re coming through!”

I handed her one of the larger of our Jamie Oliver saucepans and scampered off upstairs to find the car keys. I thought I heard another sigh as I exited the room, but it may have been a groan from one of the undead, it was becoming increasingly difficult to tell.

When I returned, the saucepan was hanging over a pair of grasping arms at the window. The planks I’d nailed up were still holding.

“Why is that zombie wearing our saucepan?” She didn’t look in the mood to provide an audible answer to that question. I snuck a peek through the blinds hanging over the backdoor window. There were a couple of them stumbling idiotically a few feet away, but the coast looked about as clear as could be hoped under the circumstances.

“Right. We’re leaving. Take my hand.”

“Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.”

“There’s no time for that now.”

“Hmm?”

“Never mind. Now, take my hand. Follow me closely and concentrate on my back, just between my shoulder blades. We’re going to run for the car.”

She did a sort of terrified squeal.

I curled my fingers around the door handle and tensed.

“Now… go!”

I swung open the door and glanced round. The two at the kitchen window turned their heads slowly and groaned. I started forward and ran straight into the lumpen, animated corpse of Marion, our seriously stuck-up next door neighbour. She just sort of bounced away from me with a confused look on her droopy face.

“Marion?”

“Shut up. Shoulder blades, remember? Don’t look up.”

“Marion?”

“That’s not Marion. Marion would have criticised something by now. Marion’s dead.”

I ran, trailing my sobbing wife behind me. The security light had flicked on as we left the house. I could see a few ghastly pale, once-human faces illuminated in the street, but none of them were particularly close. Of course, they had all noticed our flight and had begun to get closer. We reached the car and I zapped the locks. I dragged open the rear passenger door and flung Helen in through it. Next, I wrenched open the driver door and tried to slam it shut. It stopped short with a gristly crunch. An arm was flailing in from underneath the car. I must have run him over last night without noticing. I opened the door and pulled it back again and again. More groaning. Was it him or the wife moaning impatiently in the rear? Finally, the arm split off and fell into the footwell underneath me. Keys in. Ignition on. Tyre spin. We were off. I weaved the vehicle around the figures in the road as best I could as I cleverly tried to avoid damaging the windscreen unnecessarily. What was that playing on the radio? Keep on Running, Spencer Davis Group. Amazing. If I had the energy I would have laughed. Goodbye Perrywood Close. Hello our first night running for our lives.

“It’s a bit messy back here.”