Authors: Angela Slatter

Finnegan's Field (5 page)

Anne did not look away. She found neither regret nor sorrow, neither satisfaction nor disgust inside; she thought she might be empty now. She wondered if sensations, emotions, would return, but it didn't bother her, the idea of permanent lack.

With a bite, Jasper's muscular neck was torn open, exposing for a few seconds sinews and oesophagus, before the dark red welled and the creature took more mouthfuls, barely chewing before she swallowed. The shifting of her throat as the morsels moved down, down, down to her gullet for a long digestion was hypnotic. Soon, Jasper's head hung loosely by a few bloody threads and the child's tongue wound itself through the white vertebrae peeking above his shoulders, picking them clean of meat. Anne watched as her daughter subjected Jasper to the same kind of scavenging she had the drifter. Soon, there was nothing left of Anne's former lover, nothing left of Finnegan's Field's Mr Underhill.

“What now?” she dully asked the gore-covered child, who shrugged as she cleaned her face much as a cat would, with a licking of hands and a rubbing of cheeks and forehead.

“I go back beneath. Your child will let me be at last.”

“Release her,” said Anne quietly. Then louder, but more pleadingly. “Please give her to me.”

The creature shook its head. “There is not enough of her left. She would not fill this body, this brain. There has only been the desire for revenge and that is fulfilledÂ â¦ She will fade quickly. Nothing remains for a mother to hang her heart upon.”

In the years that Madrigal was gone, Anne had kept her daughter's voice in her mind, kept it clear and crystal as a bell, but nowÂ â¦ now she didn't think she could recall it. The sound of the many voices had replaced it; the old creaking tones, the echo of creeping roots and soughing boughs, of myriad timbres braided into one, had overwhelmed the last thing she'd retained of her child. Tears welled and broke.

The creature seemed nonplussed, then for a moment, just the tiniest moment, Anne's
true
daughter appeared; the vagueness the thing had worn was sharpened into something she recognised, and the girl-suit fit properly for the first time in months. Madrigal lifted her arms. Anne's knees gave way, and she collapsed into the hug; thin limbs wrapped around her neck and held her tight. She ignored the smell of blood and meat on Maddie's breath, of the mess that Jasper had left in his death throes, the lasting stink of shit and piss hanging in the air where he'd died, where he'd been disappeared.

When at last the little girl pulled away Anne saw that her daughter was gone, all trace of Madrigal eased, shrugged off as easily as an unwanted coat. The sense of a second being under the skin was stronger, the way the body's outline vibrated in time with a different rhythm. The not-daughter stepped back, nodded, and turned.

Anne saw the shovel Jasper had dropped. Its great pan of a head beckoned. The handle was smooth, mostly, but in some places, there were splinters; fragments pricked at her palms as she grasped the shaft, then dug in deep as she swung the tool, even deeper when it connected with the back of Madrigal's head.

The impact sounded like a melon on cement.

The hole Jasper had made in the Mount was the perfect size and shape, and Anne began to slide Maddie into it. When she was done, she thought, she would replace the piece of turf Jasper had carefully cut away; no one would know.

“Annie?” The voice behind her was familiar, and Anne's head snapped around so fast, she felt muscles pull.

Mrs Flynn looked strange in the light, so pale, almost lost but for the determined expression on her face. The woman didn't appear afraid or horrified. She just said, “Not together, Annie. Don't bury it intact.”

Understanding, Anne said, “
Just the small hurts
. That's what it said. Only the small hurts heal.”

“And are you willing to risk it?”

Ten minutes later, Anne had used the spade to separate head and body, and dug another hole deep enough to satisfy Mrs Flynn. The bloodied ball was gently interred and covered over, the corpse laid as if to sleep in the hollow space.

Together, they made their way to Jasper's car. On the back seat, another stolen child curled, deep in slumber. They peered at the little boy, their mothers' hearts aching but somehow not in the same way as before. They'd been broken too well, fractured too entirely. What now filled the cracks between the fragments, holding the pieces together and allowing the women to go on, was cold, hard iron.

“Do you recognise him, Annie? I don't.”

“No, can't say I do. Probably from a town further over, maybe a property somewhere.” Her hand hovered over his forehead, dark curls damp in the heat, but she didn't touch.

“He'll not wake for a while,” said Mrs Flynn, speaking low.

“Can you be sure?”

The older woman shrugged. “I've read a lot.”

The police radio squawked, the voices of two young constables blared across the paddock. “Got a GPS fix on the Inspector's car. He's parked by Deadman's Mount. Get out there, Robbo, and see why he's not responding.”

“Young Robertson's got a foot like lead; he'll be here in no time at all. He'll take care of the little one. We'd best get cracking; I'm parked not far from you. Grab a branch and wipe away your footprints as you go. Did you touch his car?” Mrs Flynn asked. Anne shook her head, but she raised the shovel. The old woman nodded. “Then take that with us. It'll be handy.”

*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *

When Anne finally crawled into bed beside Brian a few hours later and closed her eyes, all she could see was the blackness of a hole in the hillside of Deadman's Mount, of the inside of a pit where dead eyes tried to stare up to the sky that had once mirrored their colour. All she could think of was a small, headless body curled in an anonymous grave without the benefit of a coffin or the respect of final words.

Anne drifted back to the day Maddie had first gone, how she'd not come home from school, how panic had finally set in when none of her friends had seen her. Anne thought of the hours she'd spent, searching alongside the other men and women who couldn't simply sit around and wait, how they'd tramped across Hanrahan's paddocks and others like it, circled Deadman's Mount, and found nothing, seen nothing to say it was a doorway. A place where the missing had been laid to wait while they made passage through to under the hill. She wondered how Brian would react when they woke and found Maddie gone again. She didn't think he'd take it well. She didn't think he'd stay.

She began to make plans for the future. Plans for dissolution, for moving, for carrying on life elsewhere after the inevitable furore of Jasper's disappearance had died down. For hunting all the Mr Underhills there might be amongst the children of Eire.

About the Author

Specialising in dark fantasy and horror,
Angela Slatter
is the author of the Aurealis Award-winning
The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales
, the World Fantasy Award finalist
Sourdough and Other Stories
, Aurealis finalist
Midnight and Moonshine
(with Lisa L. Hannett), among others. She is the first Australian to win a British Fantasy Award, holds an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing, is a graduate of Clarion South and the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, and was an inaugural Queensland Writers Fellow. You can sign up for email updates
here
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