‘Croeso, Mr Williams, what can I get for you, good sir?’ asks Mr Davies. He has a blue and white striped apron on, stained pink in places, a butcher’s hat and a see-through plastic wrap around his greying beard.
Graham hasn’t realised he’s reached the front of the line and Mr Davies is waiting for his order. ‘Six of those apple and mint sausages please, and … a pig heart.’
Mr Davies stops as he reaches out his hand, using a piece of plastic wrap, to pick up the sausages in a clump. He only pauses for a moment, but it’s enough for Graham to notice. He watches Mr Davies as he attempts to brush off the awkwardness and places the sausages on the scales.
‘A pig heart, Mr Williams?’ He places the sausages into a bag and prints out a price label, slapping it on the side where it attaches at a wonky angle.
‘Do you not have any in today?’
‘I’m afraid not, but what use would you have in buying one? Pig hearts aren’t a common request for most customers, not on the whole. They mainly get used to make offal and faggots.’
‘I fancy attempting to make some faggots.’
‘I see.’
‘Do you get many requests for pig hearts?’
‘Couple times a month, I suppose. Mostly from Diane Bevan. She feeds them to her dogs. She provides me with all the pork products, you see, so I give her all the leftover parts of the animals, considering they were raised on her farm.’
Mr Davies hands the bag of sausages to Graham who takes it with a slight head nod. The men lock eyes. The whole butcher’s shop has elapsed into silence. Graham looks aroundat the array of customers, all of whom have clearly been eavesdropping on their conversation, but then it is a small shop, and Graham hadn’t been making an effort to lower his voice. Sometimes, it’s worth speaking a little louder. You never know who might be listening.
‘Can I get you anything else, Mr Williams?’ asks Mr Davies, a fresh smile across his face.
‘No, thank you, Mr Davies. You’ve been most helpful.’
‘I’m sorry about the lack of pig hearts, but I’ll be sure to let you know the next time I have some in. However, I do have some fresh faggots today, if you fancied trying some?’
Graham nods his thanks. ‘Maybe another time. Thank you,’ he says just before turning around to leave. Several of the customers behind him give him odd looks, but don’t say anything.
‘Diwrnod da,’ says Mr Davies.
Graham leaves, feeling many eyes boring into the back of his head as he allows the door to swing closed behind him.
Chapter 25
STEPHEN
His headache is getting worse by the minute. It’s unrelenting, like a sharp needle is piercing his brain, unlike anything he’s experienced before. It isn’t only his head either, but his neck and shoulders too. Even his eyeballs pulse in his skull, like they have their own heartbeat. Painkillers aren’t touching it, about as useful as a grain of rice to hold off starvation, but he takes more anyway. He can’t remember the last time he took some. It’s more than four hours ago, though, the safe time frame to take more of the same type of painkiller. He thinks …
The stench of raw meat and blood makes him feel worse. Even standing outside the butcher's shop isn’t far enough away for the odour not to claw at the back of his nose. Hell, he can practically taste it on his tongue.
The headaches started several months ago, seemingly overnight. One morning he woke up with one and it stuck around for five days before it finally went. Then, another. And another. Until he got fed up with them, so he visited the GP who asked him so many questions, he lost track of what he was even there for. Headaches. Yes, headaches. Mind-numbing, debilitating headaches. Not migraines. They were something else entirely.
His doctor told him it could be stress related, especially as he knew what had occurred in Stephen’s life lately, but Stephen knew it wasn’t stress or anything else like that. He wasn’t being stubborn about it either, the way most men were these days when it came to their ailments, but he made it perfectly clear the headaches were not caused by stress, so the doctor booked him in for an MRI scan.
And that was the beginning of the end.
Now, he finds himself staring into the distance, seemingly waking up several minutes later, having no recollection of where he is. It happened earlier as well, back at the detective’s cottage. He’d stared up the hill towards the tree.
He had seen something, and hadn't been strong enough to pull his eyes away from the thick branches, no matter how hard he tried. Something was sucking him into the tree. Pulling. Drawing him closer, like it wanted a piece of his soul. Perhaps it was calling to him the way the ravine and the fallen tree had called to him back in Cherry Hollow.
Trees are living things after all.
They have life flowing through their veins, just like humans do. But a tree’s veins were called vascular bundles, responsible for transporting water, nutrients and sugar to the tree itself. Not dissimilar to blood. Trees absorb nutrients from the earth, using whatever life source is around them to grow.
Perhaps…
No, it isn’t possible. Even Stephen knows that a person’s soul can’t live inside anything else other than its host's body.
