A cold sweat had come over me, and I realised my hands were shaking at my sides.
“H-how long did she lay with him?” I asked, my voice breaking as I stuttered. “How long had he – ”
“Weeks,” said Grace, finally meeting my eyes. “In warm weather.”
The heat would have made short work of him,and it would have been a gruesome, terrible thing for anyone to see, let alone for a loved one. Grace had to have been horrified to see her mother holding a bloated corpse, refusing to move from the spot, as if she might rot away with him.
“My poor darling,” I said, wanting to go to her and hold her, but feeling as though I was frozen to the spot.
“No, it’s all right,” said Grace, her mask moving as she smiled softly. My heart pounded in my chest. “Like you, when your brother died, I didn’t feel so bad at all. In fact – and it may sound heartless, sir, but it’s the truth – I liked it. I enjoyed his decay.”
I bowed my head, shivering, wishing I’d never asked. Moments stretched between us. Grace watched the body quite serenely while I pulled myself together.
“We’ll be doing our best for Mr Taylor, but it’ll be a closed casket. Restoration is out of the question in this highly advanced state of decomposition. I’m afraid even my skills couldn’t stretch to making any kind of viewing possible for him. To offer it could result in distress for the client. With all its legal ramifications, I would advise against it. We’ll be using a more concentrated solution to embalm where we can, but looking at the state he’s in now, I’m not hopeful. We’ll need to use our respirators.”
“Those heavy breathing masks?” Grace asked. “I’d wondered when we’d be using those.”
“It wouldn’t be safe to use anything else,” I said, grateful that we’d moved on to more technical matters. “Our main task will be to eradicate the insects and the smell, so that he’s in a pleasant state for the funeral and burial.”
We began the process, flowing easily into our rhythm, moving around one another with ease. The look of fascination never left Grace’s eyes, and I thought I could hear her muttering to herself behind her respirator, making private comments as we exposed more and more of Mr Taylor.
Grace was rarer, and more peculiar, than I could have ever known or guessed on our first meeting.
As my concern for her morbid interest grew, flames licked their way around the store-room door, my brother and his menaces creeping their way into my mind. I closed my eyes tight for a moment and willed them away, unwilling to deal with him now.
There came a thud at the short basement window above our heads, as if from someone’s boot. Hurried footsteps followed it. Grace and I turned abruptly, startled by the sudden noise. There came the rapid fluttering of wings as the crows dispersed, frightened away by something, or someone, who had been there moments ago.
“What if it’s him?” asked Grace, her voice trembling.
I watched the window, though nobody appeared, and noted that the footsteps hadn’t seemed hard enough to be a male. A sickness swelled inside my stomach, wondering if it could be who I feared it to be most of all...but no, it was impossible.
“Put it out of your mind,” I said softly, finally tearing my eyes from the window. “I heard a child’s footsteps, I’m sure. Not his. I’ll consult the security system later on.”
Chapter Thirteen
Grace
I knew Tom wouldn’t give up so easily. I was so certain that the noise and the footsteps had been caused by him, but when Nick looked around outside, he saw no sign of anybody. Worse than finding evidence of a trespasser, he’d found nothing, and nobody. Only our private fears answered the question, then, and haunted us in our sleep.
Nick tossed and turned during the night, though I tried to soothe him by stroking his forehead, smoothing away his hair. When I finally drifted to sleep myself, I saw my mother. She was laying down by the tall windows of my bedroom in Crowthorne House, not our house in the Dales, looking just as she had in her own bed. Her long, straggly white hair fell over the pillow, and her skin was sallow against her grey nightgown.
On a low moan, she turned her head to face me, though I could clearly see she was dead. She groaned, the way the dead do, with the release of built up gases. Her mouth opened, dark and fleshy, like the inside of...no, it couldn’t be. But it was. It was the rotten flesh inside a fig. And from it, in a shock of terrible yellow and black, crawled a vicious-looking wasp. It mounted her lip and flew from her lower jaw, its buzzing alarming and loud, increasing in volume until it drowned out my screams.
“Grace, Grace, darling – it’s all right.”
Nick was above me, holding my face in his hands.
“You’re all right now. It was just a horrible dream.”
“I can still hear it –” I gazed about the room, adjusting to the half-light of the early morning.
Nick held his breath, as if anticipating something.
“Were you dreaming of your father?” he asked, his voice tight, as if he was afraid of the answer.
“My mother,” I said softly, peering about as I still detected that awful humming noise from my dream, only much fainter. Finally, I found it. “There!”
I pointed toward the terrace windows.
