Lucretia

The wind coming off the Humber didn’t only bite; it gnawed. It carried the stench of dead cockles. Chemical runoff from the refineries down the coast, and the cold, grey rot of the mudflats.

John Finch pulled the collar of his wax jacket higher. Cursing the impulse that had dragged him out of his terrace in Skelfleet. Skelfleet was a town that felt like it forgotten by life and then spat on by the tide. 

Narrow rows of Victorian brick slumped against the encroaching silt. Populated by sour-faced men who drank until their livers hardened. And women whose eyes held only exhaustion. John hated them all. Most of all, he hated that he couldn’t ever tell what they were plotting behind those dead, blank stares. His boss at the fish packing plant. His unfaithful ex-wife, the smirking youths outside the off-licence. He lived under a suffocating shroud of paranoia.

The salt marsh sucked at the soles of his boots with wet, obscene smacks. A bank of fog, thick as grease, rolled in from the estuary. Turning the twilight into a greasy smear of purple and brown.

That was when he saw her.

She wasn’t wearing oilskins or wellingtons. She wore a slip of crimson silk that clung to curves so sharp and flawless they seemed carved out of alabaster. Her hair fell around her bare shoulders in cascades of raven-black sheen. Undisturbed by the gale. Skin like fresh cream, lips the colour of arterial spray.

John froze, his breath hitching in his throat. His pulse gave a violent, sledgehammer kick. A woman like this didn’t belong in North Lincolnshire. She belonged on a billboard, or in a fever dream.

—Lost, John?

Her voice was liquid velvet laced with arsenic. It bypassed his ears but resonated straight against the base of his skull.

—Who are you? John stammered, stepping back. The mud clung to his heels like cold fingers. —How do you know my name?

She smiled. Her teeth were too white, too even, glinting like the teeth of a bone saw. 

—Names are trivial things. But you may call me Lucretia. Lucretia Raven.

—You’re barmy, John muttered. 

He wiped freezing spit from his lips. Though his eyes crawled over the swell of her breasts. The intoxicating impossibility of her warmth in this freezing wasteland. 

—You’ll catch your death out here dressed like that.

Lucretia laughed, a sound like dry bones rattling in a velvet pouch. 

—Death came for me six centuries ago, darling. I sent him away hungry.

She took a step toward him. Her bare feet drifted across the black, sucking mire. They left no impression at all. 

—I know what eats at you, John Finch. The fear. The ignorance. You walk among the cattle of Skelfleet, wondering which butcher holds the knife. You want to see behind their eyes. You want their thoughts laid bare.

A sick thrill shot through John’s gut. The paranoia that had curdled his life flared into hot greed. 

—Mind reading? What is this, a bloody magic trick?

—No tricks, she purred, stopping inches from him. 

Her scent hit him—myrrh, copper, and something sweet and rancid, like rotting lilies. 

—A gift. Total clarity. Every secret, every petty malice, every hidden filth in their pathetic brains. All laid open to you like an autopsy.

—Nothing’s free, he croaked, his mouth dry.

—Clever boy. She raised a pale hand, tracing the line of his jaw.

She had painted fingernails, the colour of a dried scab. And her touch sent an icy electrical shock tearing down his spine. 

—A trade. A sliver of your soul. A small scrap. Enough to patch the wear and tear of centuries upon my own.

—My soul? A nervous, ugly bark of laughter broke from his throat. 

—I don’t even believe in that rubbish.

—Then you won’t miss it.

Lucretia didn’t wait. John didn’t get chance to draw another breath. Her fingers hooked into the back of his neck with inhuman, vice-like strength. She pulled his face down to hers and crushed her lips against his.

There was no romance in the kiss. It was an assault.

Pain exploded behind John’s eyes. A jagged, blinding agony. It felt like a rusty wire threaded up through his palate and straight into his frontal lobe. He tried to scream, but her tongue forced its way past his teeth, cold and slick as an eel. He felt a deep, sickening vacuum in the centre of his chest. A wet tearing sensation, as if an invisible fist had reached between his ribs and ripped out a chunk of warm meat.

Beneath the velvet facade of her face, his watering eyes caught a glimpse of reality. Her skin shrivelling into parchment. Her eyes sunk. Deep into blackened sockets, centuries of rot and maggot-ridden hunger gaping wide.

Then she tore away.

John collapsed into the freezing sludge, coughing with violent force. Bitter bile and black flecks of vomit spattered the mud. His ribs throbbed with an icy, cavernous ache. He curled into a ball, whimpering, his vision swimming with sparks.

—The pact is real now, little man, her voice drifted from above. 

It sounded mocking, echoing into the salt fog. When he forced his stinging eyes open, she was gone. Only the wind remained, whistling through the dead reeds.

Slow and shivering until his teeth cracked against each other. John dragged himself upright. The void in his chest felt like a hole packed with crushed ice. But as he stumbled off the marsh and hit the cracked tarmac of the sea wall, the silence of the night cracked open.

He heard whispers.

At first, it was a rustle, like dry leaves skittering along gutters. By the time he reached the dim lights of the high street of Skelfleet, the rustle had become a roar.

He passed a man walking a terrier. The man nodded, polite and human. But in John’s skull, a jagged, oily voice shrieked. 

Kick the dog kick it till it bleeds I hate the bloody thing I hate my wife I want to take a hammer to her head while she sleeps.

John stumbled back, clapping his hands over his ears. It did nothing. The thoughts were inside him.

He staggered into the local pub, desperate for light, for a drink, for something human. The door slammed behind him, and the cacophony descended like a swarm of meat flies.

Look at that scruffy bastard Finch. I bet he still touches himself to his sister’s photograph.

I’ve got the cancer it’s spreading. I can feel it chewing my lungs. God let it kill me.

Poured bleach in the old woman’s tea so she won’t wake up tomorrow.

Filth. Rot. Gore. Hate.

There was no refinement. No intellect or profound secrets. It was sewage. A boiling, septic wave. It consisted of envy, sexual deviance, blinding rage. And raw, animal terror poured straight into John’s consciousness. There was no filter. No volume control. Hundreds of sick, twisted fantasies. Along with rancid neuroses drilled into his brain like industrial augers.

He screamed, tearing at his hair. Blood ran warm from his nostrils. He saw their faces. Blank, ordinary neighbours staring at him in mild surprise. While beneath the surface of their skin, their thoughts flayed him alive.

He’s mad. Kill him. Smash his face in with a pint glass. Strip him. Hate him.

John burst through the doors and ran out into the night, weeping, shrieking, tearing his coat to shreds. He ran past the terrace houses. Past the shuttered shops, back toward the black, uncaring expanse of the estuary. The thoughts of every miserable wretch in Skelfleet chased him. Clawing at his mind. Screaming their putrid truths until his eardrums ruptured from within.

He hit the mudflats again. Throwing himself into the freezing brine, clawing at the black silt, trying to drown the noise.

Far out over the water. Floating amidst the fog, he heard one last voice cutting through the horrific din. Lucretia’s laughter. Pure, beautiful, and devoid of mercy.

He had asked to hear what they thought. And turning it off was no longer an option.