Chapter Four

Summer wrapped the garden like a straight jacket, smothering comfort and rational thought. They would have stayed inside if it weren’t so obscenely humid. The air was opaque and heavy with sour sunshine. Bees hopped busily from flower to flower, butterflies flapped in lazy flight across the sun-drenched landscape, and Polly Grey sat cross-legged in the sandpit her father had made at the beginning of the season. She was making sand castles with her bucket and spade. The damp sand was cool against her skin; such a contrast to the heat which beat down on the earth and coated Polly in a sticky layer of sweat. She filled her bucket and patted the sand in tight, then tipped it onto the sandpit and hit the bottom of the bucket with her spade to dislodge any lingering grains which dared spoil her architecture. Polly unveiled her fifth castle with such precision that her milky teeth drew blood from her bottom lip; a habit she would carry into adulthood, along with many other idiosyncrasies time would assist her in developing. Proud of her row of sandcastles, Polly clapped her hands and released sweet giggles, which drifted on the air and made it sweet.

The next moment Polly’s pa was beside her. Leaning over his wooden creation, Frank marvelled at his little daughter’s smiling face. Innocent eyes looked up to their creator with awe and wonder. This man was clearing beautiful; you could see it in his mahogany eyes. His beauty was the kind which caresses the heart and hugs the soul of it’s witness, it was a beauty that radiated from the depths and swathed his physical form in a warm shimmer, and offered itself to those in need of it. His beauty was a shield against the ugliness festering upon the earth. It protected those around him and encased him in a harmony rarely seen in the man-sculpted world.

Warmed to the core by the pleasure of seeing his daughter happy, Frank reached to touch her baby-soft hair. The hair was thin, so fragile and new that he feared it might fall out at the slightest stroke of his fingers. The gentle touch moved down to feel skin so smooth that it could be new born. Polly’s face was bone-bright white and flawless, but neither dull nor pale. She had been breathing and seeing only a handful of years but still her beauty was astounding. It seemed as thought she soaked up happiness and made it nourishing and life-giving – like photosynthesis. Her beauty was not unlike her father’s, although on a smaller scale and not so well evolved. People often noticed how Polly’s appearance echoed her fathers. This turned Vivianne’s eyes green with shameful jealousy.

Vivianne was a loving mother, but she couldn’t help feeling envy towards her husband; he was the one Polly ran to, the one she gave her sweetest kisses to. This envy was buried inside Viviane; she wouldn’t allow it to surface, although sometimes it manages to leak into her conscious mind and she found herself feeling inadequate. Through the short period of time that Polly had been outside her rich-red womb, Vivianne had learnt to mask this jealousy with pride for having such a beautiful family.

Polly felt a sharp, tingling sensation urging her to shift her vision over to the patio which held a set of forest-green garden furniture: four chairs, and a table with its holey parasol stabbed through the centre like a death-dealing spear. Like everything material in Mr. and Mrs. Grey’s possession, their garden furniture was worn and time-honoured. The woman sitting in the furthest chair was Polly’s mother. Polly knew this but the woman resembled nothing of her cheery, bright-eyed Ma. Cocooned in black this woman sat straight-backed and hard as ice, a veil of sheer dark covered her face, which seemed featureless and expressionless – a blank canvas. A blouse of vortex-black hid the belly and breast which had once nourished and held Polly. The heart beneath the darkness was still. A frozen heart.

The small muscle in Polly’s chest throbbed with fear, her lungs sucked at the air as though it were mother’s milk. What was that monstrosity… surely not her mother? Frank’s heavy hand touched Polly’s shoulder with concern, she flinched and looked up at him. Confusion took the form of blades and slashed deep into Frank’s face, the cuts healed smoothly and disappeared just as fast. He turned his head to look across the garden.

“She’s sad. Let’s play hide and seek”. He stood and ran into the woodland behind them.

Polly entered the wood, pushing back limp branches and stepping on twigs. Crunch, click, snap. Roots seemed to erupt from the ground and threatened to trip Polly as she searched for her pa. It was cold in this dim jungle world. A cruel breeze whipped the tops of trees and pulled goose pimples from Polly’s skin. A man-shaped figure rushed past her.

“Pa! Pa! I found you”. He ran further, taking the fresh air with him. Polly coughed then choked and fell to the dusty ground. Specks of dirt buried themselves into her eyeballs, pushing fluids and visions out, turning this strange, dim world horror-black. She sat in the crotch of a tree and gulped down mouthfuls of stale air.

Tucked neatly between the tree’s legs, Polly rubbed the fierce little terrorists out of her eyes and held them in her hands. They sparkled like dirty glitter then began biting into her flesh like little teeth. Blood bobbed up from the new holes and pooled serenely in her palm. She threw the dirt to the ground and wiped the blood on her cotton dress.

“Pa? Pa, where are you? I’m scared”.

“I’m here Polly-Dolly, I’m always here. Come and find me…” The voice was carried on wind which whipped Polly’s hair about her head, smashing into her face. Like a china doll dropped on concrete, her face was breaking. Like a little egg fallen from its nest, the skin was splitting from the tissue and bone beneath. Polly’s hair was razorwire and the wind was a hurricane.

She lifted her hands to her face and felt the white skin peeling back from her pink muscles. There was no pain, just a dull, bruise-like ache. The skin disjointed from her face and flopped onto to ground, where dirt swamped like miniature vultures around the clumps of fresh flesh and gobbled it down. The ache grew stronger and gushed through Polly’s fragile body until she fell amongst the dirt. Her face was falling to pieces; the tender, pink muscles peeled from her skull like bandages, to expose a woman’s face.

Polly couldn’t see her new face but she could feel it: plump lips protruded dreadfully beneath a small, hooked nose, eyeball like blood clot plopped from their sockets with a sickly suck. Her new eyes made her vision sharper, and turned colours vicious against the blackness. The destructive wind had calmed but Polly could hear its chaotic noise gushing in the distance. Then came the shriek. It swept closer and closer, gathering energy to make it stronger, hunting Polly as she stood on weak legs with an unfamiliar head.

Sharp notes knived the air, waking terror within Polly, pushing the bulging eyeballs further out of her face. Then Polly realised that the wind sounds weren’t that at all; they were the noise of ruffling fabric. In the direction of the chaos Polly saw the monster who had stolen her mother’s skin charging towards her, skirts billowing backwards as the air split to let it through. The veil still hid the face but Polly could see zombie-green eyes glowing beneath it. She was now experiencing something beyond fear, or terror or recognisable emotion. Barbed roots snaked out of Polly’s legs and sank deep into the earth. Her razorwire hair slipped out of place, cutting her arms as it slithered to the ground. The blood-smeared dress she wore was ripped from her body and fed to the scavenging dirt. The monster stood not an inch from Polly, towering over her. Its rotten breath smothered the oxygen causing Polly to choke and gasp. The beast knelt before the trembling girl in her mother’s form, panting like the wolf who caught the rabbit. The eyes were bright and sloppy under the mesh. Hands pulled it away to reveal a mutation of Vivianne’s face. The lips were thin and blade-like, the nose resembled Polly’s new one although larger, the eyes as horrible as they had looked shielded - almost fluorescent against the darkness. The skin was dry as autumn leaves, and scar-like wrinkles distorted any youth that may have been there.

Polly would have run if she weren’t submerged in hungry dirt, she would have screamed if her lungs held enough air. A gnarled finger touched Polly’s lips and the monster’s own puckered into a shushing sound.

“No need to be afraid darling, it’s only me”. It was Vivianne’s voice.