Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

see if there were any puncture marks where a needle might have entered the skin, particularly on the neck – perhaps focal pooling of blood at the site. She knew some of them had been given sedatives by the vets themselves; but what of the others?

She laid the pieces of skin on boards, marking where she found lesions and abrasions that might turn out to be significant at a later point. She labelled each with a paper note; she took photographs – hair side and underside – from different angles; she logged them on her tablet.

Autolysis was underway. The digestion of the self had begun.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

When Alec had first moved to Ilmarsh, he had seen his neighbours only briefly. It had surprised him, how much these people kept to themselves, how few said ‘hello’ as he passed them by.

He could only imagine what went on behind the curtains and blinds of each adjoining home. They stood in a curve all around, a crescent grin of bricks and electricity. One light was red, another blue, another almost white. It was just the curtain fabric that made them so.

He began to unzip his coat as he approached his house. It was going to be warm tomorrow, he’d heard. Almost twenty degrees Celsius, somehow, anyhow. It terrified him. George had been going on about trying to have a barbecue if he could, a final fire for dark November.

He reached his front door.

It hung loose, already open.

Someone was inside.

He thought Simon was already home – he assumed the muddy footprints on the stairs belonged to his boy, that his son had forgotten to shut the door, that maybe he’d just got home himself.

The possibility of anything else would not occur to Alec for one minute and forty-three seconds.

He locked the front door behind him and went to the kitchen to make some coffee.

He shouted into the hallway, asking if Simon would like anything.

Nothing.

Alec heard a key turning in the front door as the rumbling of the kettle came to an end, soft steam clouds moistening the blue ceramic wall tiles.

He came out to find Simon coming in, his backpack already dropping to the hallway floor, his brown hair speckled with rain. People had said they looked alike, but all Alec could see was the ghost of his wife. Her bright eyes, her nose – her features were all different in the eighteen-year-old, but still, all were there if you knew what to look for.

‘You got mud all over the stairs,’ Alec said, frowning.

‘What?’

‘When you came in before – you left the door open, you—’

‘I just got back,’ Simon said.

‘You were home,’ Alec repeated.

‘What?’ His son seemed confused.

‘The mud.’ Alec felt incredibly angry all of a sudden, and tried to hide it.

Again, Simon seemed confused, even more so as his eyes lit upon the dark stairs. ‘That wasn’t me. I just got back.’

The footprints were still wet. They led above. No second set led down.

The father told his son to wait there.

He searched each and every room, his frame trembling, his eyes blinking. He found no one and nothing. The footprints ended on the landing after doubling round slightly near the light-switch – maybe the intruder had realized they were making things muddy? Beyond the dirt, all lay apparently undisturbed, no lights on, nothing missing, no windows left ajar.

When he came downstairs, his heart beating fast, he found Simon watching television.

‘You weren’t home, then? That wasn’t you on the stairs?’

His son shook his head, not turning round.

‘You’d tell me if you were lying?’

‘You saw me come in,’ the boy said. ‘I don’t know what you want from me.’

Alec shook as he boiled the kettle again. Something in him felt like it was ending, like it was breaking. He’d left notes in his home, photos from the scene, from others, too. He’d left his laptop. He didn’t know if someone had been on it, if they could have accessed the files within.

He saw more and more as he walked through the house.

He saw all he’d left for anyone to see.

Half-filled reports from the station.

The note on the table, the phone number of the farm’s absent mother scrawled down upon it. He still had to phone her.

He wondered what Simon would say if he saw it. If Alec had written the name Grace next to the digits, which, thank God, he had not. Would a woman’s name make his son think his father was dating again? How would that make the boy feel, if that were true?

In the kitchen that photo still stood, right next to the calendar.

His boy, twelve years ago, only six. His wife.

Love was terrifying. What you lost to other people. What parts they held of you, and you of—

He’d – he’d had this thought before. Lately. He didn’t know when.

He felt like he was losing his mind.

He sat at his computer in the almost-dark, waiting for a locksmith to come. He didn’t know if it was too much, even as he tried to put these events out of his head, to live in wilful ignorance of all that might have happened, all that still could.

He took the hallway mirror down, its surface cracked. That, at least, had been his fault. He’d kept meaning to do something about it.

He wrapped each fragment in old newspaper so they could hurt no one. He put them in the rubbish bin out back, but he was careless in the final moments of the task. He cut one of his knuckles as he pushed the glass down.

He went back inside.

There was just a shadow on the wall where the frame had once stood.

He looked up a number on the internet.

He wanted to find out what it could mean, even if it was crazy, even if it turned out to be useless.

He tried to find the meaning of sixteen.

One Month Ago

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Miles on from the bay, where the sea had begun to take the