Trollheart

Marked

What the hell was she doing here, I wondered? I couldn't even remember letting her in to the house. This early-stage Alzheimer's is a bitch. Forget your own name.

I mentally shook myself and tried to look more closely at her, without seeming to.

There was something almost doll-like about her, now I thought about it: her skin was like porcelain, her cheeks just a little too perfectly-made up, the exact amount of rouge on the sweet apple curves, the lipstick carefully applied; she had never once gone outside the line of her lips, nor had she got the merest spot on her straight white teeth, which showed only as she daintily nibbled at the biscuit on the plate in front of her.

Dainty,
Doll-like.
Perfect make-up.

She was like some sort of ideal of a woman – a girl, really – someone's perfect fantasy, every line and curve perfect, every hair in place.

But then there was the smell.

I tried to identify it but could not, and I certainly did not want to remark upon it. Maybe she just liked to wear an unusual perfume, and who was I to challenge that? But the smell was odd, and it certainly did not smell like any perfume I've ever sniffed. Oh, I would know: in my youth I was quite the ladies' man. Don't remember dating anyone as young as her though. Couldn't be over, what, sixteen? I mean, I used to like 'em young, but not that young!

The problem of the aroma coming from my charming visitor took a back seat as anger began to simmer in me, and my thoughts drifted back to my usual hobby horse. Who the hell was this bastard anyway? Who had it in for me so badly that he was tracking down my former girlfriends and killing them? My own hand began to shake. I balled it into a fist, hoping she would not see.

Why did I care if she saw? What did it matter?
Who was she?
I couldn't remember.
But somehow I felt I should.

Lots I should remember. Couldn't tell you what I did yesterday.
Was that important?
Something told me it was.

My thoughts went back to the killer.

How the hell had he got into my house?

He had though; for ten years I had received a photograph – pictures I took of my lovers, pictures he had stolen – with a red X across the face. Every year, on the exact anniversary of the death of the only woman I had ever truly loved.

How the fuck did he know?

For years the mystery had occupied me, till I could think of nothing else. I felt I was missing something, something important. Something obvious. It was like those times – and we've all experienced them – when you search everywhere for the car keys and they turn out to be in your pocket all along.

But the solution to this dilemma would not be found in my pocket.
It haunted every waking moment, and stalked my dreams.

Sometimes I forgot, of course. This disease will do that to you. I suppose they were the merciful times. But they never lasted.

Nights, I could see the bastard. Oh, not his face, of course; that was always shrouded, or turned away from me, or blurred, or not in shot. But his hand. I could see his hand. Not a young man's hand; quite meaty, no distinguishing tattoos or scars. That kind of thing only happens on TV.

I would watch him take that damn red Sharpie, slowly and with what seemed to me like sexual excitement put the soft nib on the right-hand corner of one of the photos, draw it almost lovingly down to the opposite, bottom corner, then repeat the process on the other side till he had marked a thick red x across a face I had once loved.

And then, it just stopped. No more waking up on that day, that awful day, and dreading the clack of the letterbox. No more staggering downstairs, half-asleep, knowing what would be waiting for me on the mat. No more hands shaking as I opened the envelope, wondering which one of them it would be this year.

Again the question, the feeling of some crisis having been reached, some vital part of the jigsaw fitting into place.

I realised my visitor was looking at a picture on the sideboard, the one I'd kept from the funeral. The only one he hadn't got his rotten hands on. He couldn't deface this with his nasty red marker.

But there was something in her eyes. What was it? A flicker of... recognition? Impossible. Lana was in the ground before this kid was even a twinkle in her father's eye, never mind born.

Why did she look so familiar, this girl?

I looked again, my eyes drawn towards the faded photograph. Silently, I cursed the cancer that had taken her. I realised suddenly how seldom I had looked at that picture, really looked. Maybe it was just too painful. I turned my eyes back to the girl sitting across from me.

And then I saw it.
The resemblance.
The same eyes, the same half-bitter smile, the way she held her cup with the little finger poised just so.
It was like looking at my wife.

But... but that was impossible. She couldn't look like... she couldn't be...

My brain seemed to squirm in my head, like a trapped animal. Something was trying to surface, something in the back of my mind, shrouded now by time and by the Alzheimer's, something I did not want to face.

What the hell was it?
And hard on the heels of that question, another.
What was that smell?
Glue? Was it glue? Disinfectant?
Furniture polish?

Yeah, right, I thought. A divorced guy of sixty-six using furniture polish. Next I'll be carrying a feather duster and wearing an apron!

That smell again.
So sharp, so acrid.
Air freshener?

No, I'm allergic to most brands and I don't use them. Sets me off sneezing for hours. Fucking things. And it was a cinch she hadn't come in wearing a Magic Tree around that slim, pretty neck.
Not air freshener then.

It was as if she had read my mind.

“Formaldehyde.” She spoke the word without a trace of inflection, a hint of emotion, almost as if it meant nothing to her, or she didn't know what it meant.

“Excuse me?”

“Formaldehyde,” she repeated, just the barest hint of sharpness in her tone. I realised her voice was familiar too, but I couldn't place it. “That smell you're wondering about. It's formaldehyde.”

I stared. What the hell...?

“They use it,” she told me, her eyes never once leaving mine, and I felt trapped by her penetrating gaze, “to preserve bodies. Dead bodies.”

I still couldn't speak. That dreaded, terrible thing I had pushed to the dustiest corners of my mind was stirring, stretching, like a cat waking up.
I could feel its sharp claws reaching for me.

“Do you know what it's like,” she asked, a world of hurt in her eyes, “to be embalmed?”

A howling, roaring noise was in my ears. It felt like my head was about to explode. The room was spinning.

Her voice was sad, full of pity, but also bitter recrimination.

“All so that you wouldn't have to remember what you had done.”

I made no reply. Off somewhere in the distance, seemingly miles away, I could hear a loud knocking. I wondered if it was my heart.
But I knew, deep down, it was not.
Somehow, I found my voice.

“She – she was in such pain... I... I couldn't ... I couldn't...”

I realised I was babbling. She wasn't looking at me, her eyes fixed on the picture, as if communing with it.

“You've believed that for so long you've convinced yourself it's true.” Her voice was hard, sharp.

“It is true.” Mine was sulky, pettish.

She indicated the photo.

“Look at it,” she said, all but a command. “Look at the back. You remember speaking those words?”

I did. I thought. They sounded like mine. Inscribed in flowing black ink across the white/yellow card, her eulogy, or part of it.

Lana was such a beautiful person, and so forgiving. I know she's even forgiven her killer.

Her killer.

“I – I didn't mean to...”

The words sounded hollow, even to me. An empty excuse. A lie?

“And then... when you came in and... and saw... and I tried... oh god I tried to push you out of the room... I forgot how close the stairs were... oh god! Oh god!”

I hung my head. The words continued to tumble out of me in a torrent.

“You were so.. I couldn't ... not like that... I asked them... I told them.. make her... make her like she was. Make her...” I breathed the last word. “Perfect.”

“Perfect.” She repeated the word. Still she refused to look at me. Her voice was calm, dead, cold.
“Your perfect little doll.”

And now, her head swivelled, as if on a pivot, and she stared directly at me. For the barest fraction of a moment, there was something soft in her eyes. Then it was gone.

“They suspected you, but they could never prove it. Smothering doesn't leave a mark, does it? You'd know, of course. You got so much practice at it afterwards. Ten years, a new attempt at a substitute for her every year. But none of them could ever replace her, could they?”

Slitted, yellow eyes blinked open, oriented on me.
A sharp hiss.

“So you had to kill them.”

And the cat sprang, and it was no longer a cat but a tiger, slavering mouth full of sharp fangs, huge talons reaching to rend and tear my soul, rip the truth from me.

“And then, as some sort of sick anniversary present I suppose,” she went on, still not looking at me, “you sent those pictures to her, as if that proved you still loved her.”

As the Alzheimer's receded for a moment, everything was clear. Horribly clear.

I was standing in the hall, looking at one of the envelopes which had just popped through the door and plopped almost soundlessly onto the mat.
Reading the address.

Lana Maxford, 12 Oakely Gardens, London SW12.
Lana.
Not Brian.

“You've been sick for a long time,” she told me. “ Even before the Alzheimer's.” She paused, looking out the window. “Do you remember yesterday?” she asked. “How you went to the police to confess? They're out there now,” she told me, as I realised what the sound I had been hearing was. “They're digging up the garden. They're going to find her, and all those other women.”

She reached out and touched me. An electric jolt coursed through my body, as if I had grasped live wire. I found myself flung across the room, hit the wall hard.

“Daddy...”


When I opened my eyes she was gone.
As I lay on my back, I was dimly aware that something had fallen out of my pocket.
I reached for it, closed my fingers around it, drew it to me.
The door exploded inwards, armed officers were dragging me to my feet.
The red Sharpie dropped from my hand, clattering on the hardwood floor.

A blue-gloved hand snapped it up. I heard the whisper of an evidence bag being popped open.

“Brian Maxford,” a voice was saying, “you are under arrest for the murder of Lara and Amy Maxford, and ten other women. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may be taken down and used in evidence. Do you understand?”

I nodded dumbly. I understood all right.

Finally, I understood.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018