Animal Magic

Trying vainly to appear as if he knew what he was doing, Guy inspected the beam while Tony fetched the sander. It was twice the width of his hand, and someone had gouged two crude V’s into the wood...

This is the first story I posted on Substack. However I have since given it a tough edit and this version is shorter, tighter, and hopefully better. There is a little light gore towards the end. Let me know what you think!

Fran

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Beth saw the sign first.

'Look, there’s a house for sale.'

She spoke through a mouthful of blackberries that had stained her lips an unflattering shade of purple. They’d passed a farm ten minutes ago, a dismal affair with a broken-down barn and a farmyard littered with nameless mechanical junk. Now there were only fields and this track vanishing ominously into a dripping tunnel of trees.

‘I can’t see anything,’ Guy said glancing around. ‘Perhaps someone dumped the sign there.’

‘Don’t be silly. Why would anyone do that?’

Beth set off at a clip and he followed her with his head down. This wasn’t what he’d envisioned when she suggested a weekend away. He wanted to chill. To relax in the resident’s lounge at the hotel with an overpriced cappuccino and a copy of the Guardian, not trudge up a muddy lane in the drizzle. The track was steep and slippery and by the time he caught up with her; he was out of breath and on the verge of mutiny.

‘Look.’ Beth pointed towards a low stone building that was almost obscured by ivy. ‘I told you it was up here. Do you think it’s occupied?’

‘I doubt it.’ Guy rubbed his arm where a livid patch of nettle rash was blooming. ‘Can we go now? I need a coffee.’

The gate to the cottage hung lopsidedly on its hinges and Beth shoved it open.

‘We should at least check it out. I mean, it’s exactly the kind of doer- upper we’ve been looking for, and the location is stunning.’

We? Beth had spoken of buying a second home before, a bucolic fantasy he’d indulged with no intention of making it a reality. Now, with his bonus sitting in their joint account, he was conscious of his vulnerability. Beth was already half way up the path and he shouted after her in an attempt to suggest he had a say in the matter.

‘Fine, but just to be clear, we’re not buying it.’

***

They exchanged contracts four weeks later and the next day, Guy’s boss called him into his office and said they were letting him go.

‘Maybe it’s a good thing,’ Beth observed as he drowned his sorrows in a bottle of expensive burgundy. ‘You can do the cottage up and then look for another job.’

‘Great.’ He stared miserably into his glass. ‘Or we could just sell it.’

He hadn’t intended to do the work himself. The idea was to get a man in or, better still, several men.

‘No one will want it in the state it’s in.’

‘We did.’

‘Yes, but that’s different. We have a vision.’

To realise Beth’s vision, Guy found himself sleeping on a blow-up mattress in a derelict cottage in the middle of nowhere. He hated DIY and made little progress until the attractive barmaid at the Dog and Gun recommended Tony, the local handyman.

Tony never stopped talking, but he seemed to know what he was doing. Soon, he’d ripped up the battered parquet floor and dismantled the kitchen units. Guy snapped a picture of the empty kitchen before sending it to Beth, who replied with a thumbs up. He didn’t mention Tony.

‘What’s next Guvnor?’

Tony looked at him expectantly. Guy hated being called Guvnor like some decrepit army major, but his requests to be called Guy weren’t getting through.

‘Not sure. What do you think?’

‘We could sand that beam and make it nice for your missus.’ Tony pointed at the blackened beam over the fireplace.

Once, when he managed to get a word in, Guy mentioned Beth was obsessed with the Inglenook fireplace, an enormous stone edifice dominating the lounge.

‘You could actually sit in here,’ she’d said when the estate agent was showing them around. ‘Imagine how cosy it would be on a winter night with the fire roaring.’

Tony was right, the beam was an easy win.

Trying vainly to appear as if he knew what he was doing, Guy inspected the beam while Tony fetched the sander. It was twice the width of his hand, and someone had gouged two crude V’s into the wood. He pointed them out to Tony when he returned.

‘They’re witch marks,’ Tony said. ‘They made them to keep witches away.’

‘Should we keep them?’ Guy said doubtfully.

Beth was particular about preserving what she called the original features, which might or might not include this ancient act of vandalism.

‘It’s not listed, is it?’ Tony removed the sander from its box and plugged it in.

‘No.’

‘Then you can do what you want, unless you’re frightened of witches, of course.’

Guy got the impression Tony was challenging him, the namby-pamby Londoner who couldn’t tell one end of the hammer from another.

‘Go for it.’

The following day, when he returned home for the weekend, he found Beth setting the dining room table for four.

‘Pete and Maggie are coming for dinner.’

‘Seriously?’

He’d been looking forward to a quiet night in with a takeaway and a bottle of wine. He didn’t mind Pete, but Maggie set his teeth on edge with her braying laugh and dull anecdotes about her children.

Beth made a face. ‘I thought you’d be pleased after spending all week by yourself.’

‘I wasn’t by myself; I went to the pub.’

‘Well, that’s hardly the same, is it?’

She gave him a perfunctory kiss and swept into the kitchen to start on the food. The evening was as bad as he’d feared. Maggie wittered on about pre-school and finger-painting and, whenever he spoke, Beth talked over him or changed the subject. ‘No one wants to hear about that,’ she said when he mentioned the cordless drill he’d bought in the B&Q sale. They didn’t have sex because Beth was too tired and, when Monday came, he was almost pleased to be leaving.

Tony arrived in the afternoon, and they finished the fireplace. Guy sent Beth a picture, and she replied saying she was in a meeting and would look at it later.

He ate dinner in the pub. Tina was wearing a low-cut top and her breasts were even more voluptuous than he remembered.

‘Good weekend?’

‘Not really.’ Guy told her about the dinner party.

‘If my bloke came home after a week away, I wouldn’t be pissing about with a dinner party,’ Tina said. ‘I’d be ripping his clothes off.’

‘Exactly.’ Guy downed his pint and Tina poured him another. ‘My thoughts exactly.’

He must have invited her back to the cottage because, when he woke, she was lying beside him. Fuck. His head was pounding, and he eased himself out of bed and pulled on his jeans and T-shirt. It was coming back to him, the stumbling walk along the lane with Tina propping him up, the whisky chasers. She’d straddled him and when she came, she let out a yowl that sounded more animal than human. He hadn’t had sex like that for years and never with Beth, whose idea of love making involved scented candles, soft music, and plenty of foreplay.

In the kitchen, he downed two painkillers while staring out of the window at the moonlit garden. At the edge of what had once been the lawn, something moved, and he realised it was a badger. It was the size of with a large spaniel, only shorter and wider, with black stripes running from nose to ear. It stopped a few feet from the window and stared at him malevolently, with beady yellow eyes.

‘Are you OK?’

He jumped at the sound of Tina’s voice behind him.

‘There’s a badger in the garden.’

He gestured towards the window, but the creature had vanished.

‘There are loads around here and foxes. The farmers hate them.’ Tina was wearing his fleece, and she pulled it around her more tightly. ‘Don’t you find it creepy being here on your own?’

‘Not really.’

‘They say a witch lived in this cottage, back in sixteen hundred and something.’

Guy massaged his temples. The whisky had been a mistake ‘Ah, well, that explains it.’

‘Explains what?’ She looked at him curiously and he told her about the witch marks.

‘And you got rid of them?’ Her eyes widened and Guy saw that, despite living in an age of driverless cars and quantum computing, she really believed an old wives’ tale about witches and witch marks. ‘Wasn’t that a bit stupid?’

‘Only if you believe in witches.’ He resented being called stupid by a woman who thought witches were a thing.

Tina surveyed the eviscerated kitchen warily, as if a witch might be hiding there. ‘But they must have made the marks for a reason, right?’

‘They probably believed in dragons too, but no one worries about them.’

‘Actually, I should probably go.’

‘What now? It’s the middle of the night.’

‘I’ll sleep better in my own bed.’

He offered to walk her home, but she refused and after she’d gone, he typed ‘Roper’s Cottage’ and ‘witch’ into his phone. What came up was mostly stuff about Harry Potter, but a paragraph in a Wikipedia article about the history of the village caught his attention.

‘Roper’s cottage was the home of Mary Roper, who was convicted of witchcraft and hanged in 1653. She was alleged to have killed her husband after he had an affair with a village girl. Local people claimed they’d witnessed Mrs Roper transform herself into a variety of animals, including a fox and a cat.’

So, Tina was right and, for a moment, Guy wished he’d left the beam alone.

He woke to the sound of rain battering the window and a text from Tony saying he wouldn’t be able to make it. Relieved to have a day to himself, Guy turned his attention to painting the sitting room. By teatime, he’d successfully applied the first coat, and was microwaving a ready meal when Beth rang. She sounded upbeat.

'I thought I'd visit you tomorrow. I need to take some leave and we can have lunch at that pub you mentioned. Oh, and Mum said I can bring Bertie.’

Bertie was her mother’s cockapoo, an animal with boundless energy and no common sense that Beth had taken to borrowing. Guy scrabbled desperately for an excuse to put her off.

‘It’s been pissing down all day. I’m not sure the track is even passable.’

‘It’ll be fine. Don’t you want to see me?’

‘Of course I do, it’s just…’

In the bedroom, he held the duvet to his nose and wondered if Beth would sense what he’d been up to. It still smelt faintly of Tina’s perfume and he turned it inside out. If Beth asked him why it was like that, he would plead incompetence.

He ate the now tepid ready meal and must have fallen asleep because when he came to; the fire had gone out and there was a strange tapping noise coming from the window. Tap, tap, pause, tap, tap, pause. Annoyed, he struggled to his feet. After all the talk of witches, Tina must have returned, and this was her idea of a joke. He threw open the back door.

‘Tina.’ A dense fog had descended on the garden, making it impossible to see more than a few inches ahead. ‘Tina, I know it’s you.’ The noise moved again. Tap, tap, pause, tap, tap, pause. Guy stepped outside, and the door slammed behind him. ‘This isn’t funny.’

The tapping kept moving coaxing him away from the house. He paused somewhere near the old vegetable garden, and it stopped, but then he heard breathing. It was laboured and raspy, as if the person responsible had a cold. ‘Tina?’ It was getting closer and a bubble of panic formed in his chest. What if it wasn’t Tina? What if it was the badger he’d seen the previous night?

‘Shoo.’ He turned, waving his arms frantically. ‘Go away, get lost.’

He heard a low growl and, before he could move, a sharp pain radiated up his leg. To his horror he saw he was right, it was the badger and the creature was gripping his ankle. Bigger even than he remembered; it was worrying him like a dog. He retracted his wrist and punched it between the eyes, but the blow had no effect. It wasn’t merely attacking him; it was going to eat him. Looking down, he saw its bloodstained muzzle buried in the remnants of his trouser leg. He tried to pull away. His ears were buzzing, and he felt as if he was going to pass out.

The lower half of his leg was almost gone, a bloody mass of mangled flesh and sheared bone. He was screaming, but the sound was disembodied, as if it was coming from someone else. Guy slid to the ground. It was almost peaceful lying there with his face pressed into the wet earth and the fog swirling around him. He imagined worms and beetles burrowing purposefully through the soil, mice and voles snug in their burrows, and a fox silently watching, waiting for the badger to eat its fill. Only it wasn’t a badger. He realised that now. The thing gnawing at his thigh bone was something else entirely.

***

The dog leapt out of the car, ignoring the voice calling him back. All around there were unfamiliar smells and his senses were so overwhelmed that he hardly knew where to begin. He paused for a moment to sniff the air before bounding across the grass towards a particularly appealing scent. It was rich and meaty, like the chunks of raw steak he sometimes found in his bowl or the newly dead rabbit he’d once discovered in the herbaceous border.

He approached the smell’s source tentatively, half crouching, poised to spring away if danger threatened. The thing lay in the grass. It was meat but confusingly it smelt of human, a human he knew. He nudged it with his nose and saw it was a human paw, hairless and fleshy. When he licked it, it wasn’t like steak or rabbit, and he found it hard to separate the taste from the smell. A connection existed between the paw and the woman who’d brought him there and, sensing she would want to see it, he took it carefully in his mouth and trotted towards the house.

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