Everything is Fine
by Matthew Stott
‘Please, try not to be late home,’ said Amy.
Jack Blake couldn’t decide what jumper to wear over his shirt. The light blue with the round neck or the dark green with the v-neck. He liked both. The light blue one he’d bought himself, the dark green one had been a present from Amy.
‘What’s that?’ replied Jack.
‘Don’t be late, we’re having guests over, remember?’ said Amy from somewhere downstairs.
Dark green. He picked it up out of the drawer and wiggled his head and arms into it.
Jack was almost tall. He had the unruly hair of a nine year old boy and large, vulnerable, hazel eyes.
‘You look like a toddler wandering wide-eyed through the world,’ Amy had said to him more than once. Sometimes it made her worry about him. Worried that someone might take advantage of him. Other times it was one of the main reasons she loved him.
‘How does this look?’ asked Jack, finding Amy sitting at the breakfast counter in the kitchen, holding a book in one hand whilst spooning cereal into her mouth with the other.
‘Which bit?’ she asked, placing the book on the counter. Jack saw it was her almost threadbare copy of Wuthering Heights, a book she seemed to read three times a year.
‘Sort of, all of it really. Well, mostly the jumper and the shirt. Do they go together?’
Amy smiled and stood, making a grand show of appraising his outfit choice as she walked towards him.
‘And this is your choice for a meeting with a potential big, new client?’
‘I was going for casual but neat. Don’t want to look too try-hard. I think. Or do I? Oh dear.’
Amy wrapped her arms around his neck and looked up into his eyes. ‘I think you look awfully handsome, Mr. Blake.’
Jack relaxed. He leaned down and pressed his lips against hers. He had known he would fall in love with Amy Collier on their third date. On their first date he’d been too befuddled by her smile to know if he liked her or not. On their second date they’d gone ice skating and he’d fallen over three times before limping to the sidelines, his rear end throbbing from the repeated sudden impacts. They’d given up skating and retired to a pub, where they’d talked and they’d drank and they’d found everything funny.
And then there was date number three.
‘Hi, Jack, you haven’t been waiting long in the cold, have you?’
He’d looked at her, enveloped in a warm coat, a long scarf wrapped twice around her neck, her eyes shining, her cheeks glowing, and he’d just known he had to kiss her. So he did.
‘I was wondering when we might get around to that,’ Amy had said when their lips had parted.
‘Was it…okay?’
Amy had smiled, taken his hand, and led him into the cinema, his heart jitterbugging.
‘I think you look professional,’ said Amy, kissing his chin then turning her attention back to her bowl of cereal. She scooped a spoonful of milk and bran flakes into her mouth as she leaned against the counter.
‘Professional?’
‘Very. But not too much.’
Jack smiled and stood a little straighter.
‘Why wasn’t I to be late again?’
‘Because Gail and Alisha are dropping by for food tonight, remember?’
‘Oh right. I remember you telling me now.’
‘Do you?’
‘Of course.’
Jack was pretty sure he had gotten away with that white lie.
Amy could tell by the way he wrung his hands together that he was lying.
She smiled and wondered if it was possible to love him any more than she already did.
‘Any special occasion?’ asked Jack, searching for his car keys.
‘Honeymoon pictures.’
Jack straightened sharply, brow creased, ‘Oh no, how many?’
‘Stacks.’
‘Right.’ Jack got back to searching for his car keys. ‘And you’re quite sure I can’t be late?’
‘Turn up late and you’re a dead man.’
‘Roger Wilco.’
Jack found his keys on the key hook fixed to the wall, exactly where he always left them. He twirled them around his index finger as he pondered the night’s coming attraction. Did the pleasure of their company over food and wine outweigh the tedium of oohing and ahhing at hundreds of honeymoon pictures? He was pretty sure it didn’t.
‘Looking forward to it,’ he said.
‘Me neither, but what can you do?’
‘Pretend there was a fire during the night and the place is completely gutted?’
Amy raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips.
‘Then tonight it is.’
Jack kissed her and then Jack said goodbye and then Jack was gone.
***
He could have sworn it was the next right, then the next left, then on until the roundabout, but now here he was, driving down a road he didn’t recognise and the sky looked all wrong. It had a strange sepia tint to it, like an old photograph.
‘Bugger.’
Jack’s meeting two towns over had dragged on and he was now in a rush to get home. He thought he’d driven back the same way he’d travelled earlier, but found himself driving up and down country lanes he didn’t recognise and of course the sat-nav had decided to go on the fritz.
There were no signposts, no other cars in sight, so he decided the very best thing to do would be to turn around and retrace his steps. Sixteen minutes later he realised with a heavy heart that he was as lost as he had ever been.
He pulled to a stop and checked his phone again but found it still had a stubborn lack of signal. Jack swore and struck the steering wheel with the palms of his hands. He was late. He’d promised he’d be back home in time and now he was late and getting later.
It was then he saw the house.
Jack had not noticed the house until that moment, which seemed altogether impossible as it was so large and situated directly in front him. How had he not seen it? There were no other buildings along this road that he could see; indeed he didn’t believe he’d passed so much as a garage or a bus stop ever since he’d found himself where he didn’t want to be.
Jack got out of his car and strode toward the front door. The house looked very old. Withered vegetation clung to much of the crumbling brick frontage, and several of the upstairs windows sported jagged cracks. If this had been a movie, then it would be exactly the kind of house the main character should definitely not approach, but always would.
‘Probably abandoned,’ said Jack to himself as he knock-knock-knocked the front door and disturbed a tsunami of dust. He waited, but there was no response. Jack gave it one last knock and then, just as he was about to turn and make his way back to his car, the door opened and revealed a man in a rabbit mask.
‘Oh,’ said Jack, which was a reasonable response.
The mask encased the man’s head and had two large ears stretching upward. The mask was not plastic or rubber, it seemed solid and was covered with real (if tatty and aged) fur. Strange rabbit mask aside, the man wore an old suit of the sort that might have been fashionable when his great, great, grandfather was young.
‘Hello,’ said the man in the rabbit mask.
‘Hello,’ said Jack.
‘Do you like my mask?’
‘Yes, it’s….nice?’ he replied, even though the mask did not look ‘nice’ at all. It looked ratty and as though it very probably smelled. The man smiled and stroked his large ears. Jack did not know how he knew that the man had smiled, but he did.
‘It was my mothers, fathers, mothers once upon a time, when the mountains were small and the seas were song, or so the story goes. For a time it was lost to us, but I found it where I thought I would, in the forest, under a tree, and I dug, dug, dug it up.’
As the man spoke, Jack felt a strange upside-down sensation in his stomach, which he put down to his worry at being so lost.
‘Now Jack, how may I help?’ asked the man.
‘I wondered if….wait, how do you know my name?’
‘You do look a lot like a Jack.’
‘Do I?’
‘Yes, and I look just how you’d expect a Mr. Cotton to look.’
‘Well, yes…I suppose you do. Are you going to a fancy dress party?’
‘Oh, at some stage, it’s more than likely,’ replied Mr. Cotton, and his large ears twitched. Jack ignored that because of course the ears were just part of a tatty old mask and so could not have twitched at all.
‘I’m sorry to bother you, it’s just I don’t seem to know where I am and my phone isn’t getting a signal. D’you think you could direct me back to the main road? I’m sure I could find my way again from there.’
‘You would like to be put on the correct path?’ asked Mr. Cotton.
‘Yes please, I’m running late and haven’t a clue as to where I’ve got to. Daft of me really, I don’t know what happened, must have been daydreaming and taken a wrong turn or something.’
‘So many wrong turns lurk where the right turn might be,’ said Mr. Cotton, nodding.
‘Yeah, I suppose that’s…so those directions…?’
‘Directions, yes. Turning right from wrong and on till bedtime.’ Mr. Cotton clapped his white-gloved hands together and dust exploded, like a teacher slapping their chalk duster against the wall. ‘I believe I would like to help, and I believe I will. My brother would also like to help.’
‘Great! That’d be really very nice of you.’
‘Good. Do you accept our help?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Jack, do you accept mine and my brothers’ help?’
Jack wondered who Mr. Cotton’s brother was. ‘Oh. Sure. Thanks.’
‘Good. Then we shall set you upon the path and what will be must be.’ Mr Cotton’s ears twitched once more, though of course they did not as it was just a mask.
***
Jack knew he must have been a long way from home after he drove away from Mr Cotton’s house, but he found himself pulling up in front of his own house in less than ten minutes anyway.
‘Amy? Amy, are you home?’ asked Jack as he stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind him.
‘Yes,’ replied Amy, her voice creeping through from the other side of the house.
‘Oh God, I know I’m late, I’m sorry, and my bloody phone wouldn’t get a bloody signal so I couldn’t even bloody send you a message or anything!’ Jack plopped his coat onto the couch and stretched out a shoulder kink.
‘That’s fine,’ said Amy.
‘I’m just glad to be home at last. Listen, d’you mind if we cancel this thing with Gail and Alisha? I’m feeling a bit wonky, just want to flop in front of the telly all night.’
‘Okay,’ said Amy.
Jack couldn’t believe his luck. He grabbed the remote control and flicked on the TV set; static greeted him. ‘Balls,’ Jack pressed another channel, more static. ‘Amy, is the telly broken?’
‘No,’ said Amy. ‘Everything is fine, fine, fine.’
Jack felt prickles race across his skin as he went from channel to channel. Finally he discovered a channel that was working. On screen was a close-up of what looked like a hedgehog mask.
‘Oh,’ said Jack. ‘That’s weird.’
‘Is it? I’m sure it’s not. I’m sure everything is fine, fine, fine.’
Jack got down onto his knees on the carpet and shuffled forward, peering closer at the hedgehog mask. It seemed to him that its wearer was watching him back, which, of course, was impossible.
Jack could hear the person breathing.
In and out
In and out
Raspy harsh against the mask. Just like the rabbit mask, it seemed old and ragged. Jack had the strange fear that if he were to move any closer toward the screen, the hedgehog man would reach out and take hold of him.
‘You shouldn’t sit so close you know, you’ll get square eyes,’ said Amy, who had entered the room behind him.
‘Amy, I don’t think I like this TV channel,’ said Jack.
‘No, it’s fine. It’s really fine, fine, fine.’
Jack turned from the screen to look up at his girlfriend, who smiled down at him. It was an odd sort of smile, Jack thought, more like she was showing off her teeth than a true smile. But that wasn’t the oddest thing about Amy. No, the oddest thing was that she didn’t have any eyes, and birds had taken up home inside her head, their small, sharp beaks poking out of Amy’s empty sockets.
Jack was not the sort of man who screamed at scary sights or ghoulish frights, but even so, as he looked up at his eyeless girlfriend with her head full of birds, he found himself unleashing a small groan of horror.
‘Oh, I enjoy this show,’ said Amy, pointing to the hedgehog masked stranger on screen. ‘Do I? I think I do. I’m sure I’ve seen it before and before and before.’
As he listened to Amy talk, Jack realised she didn’t sound much like his girlfriend at all. The voice was too flat, empty of any colour or nuance. It was like someone had hollowed out her voice, and if he were to poke one of the words with his finger as she spoke them, it would collapse in on itself.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘Jack? I am Amy. Amy your girlfriend. We have dated for years and years and rent this house at a reasonable cost, all things considered. Shall we kiss?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Okay,’ said Amy, and she dug into her pocket, retrieving a fist of soil full of fat, wiggling worms. ‘Everything is fine, fine, fine.’ She began to pull worms from the soil clump and held them before her eye sockets, the beaks snapping hungrily, until one found its target and pulled the worm from her fingers and into her head.
Jack wondered how she could see him with her eye sockets full of beaks. How could she think at all with a skull stuffed with feathers and claws and sharp, hungry squawks. He stood and began to edge away from Other Amy, as he now thought of her. Other Amy with her dead voice and starving beak eyes.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Other Amy, feeding fat worm after fat worm to the snapping beaks.
‘Nowhere, I’m not going anywhere,’ he replied, still edging around the room, shuffling slowly towards the door. Other Amy gazed once more at the TV set.
‘Ah yes, I do remember this show, I knew I did. This is the Mr. Spike Show. Mr. Spike is funny, you know. Or terrifying. Or silly. Something along those lines.‘
Jack found himself three steps from the door, his eyes never leaving Other Amy as she stood transfixed by the person in the mouldy hedgehog mask.
‘Once I met Mr. Spike on a road that didn’t exist. He took off his mask and I pulled out my eyes so as not to see what was shown. I can laugh about it now, you know. Everything is funny, given enough time.’
Jack reached out a hand and wrapped his fingers around the door handle, turning it slowly in the hope of silencing its rusty squeak.
‘You going out then?’ said Other Amy without turning to him.
‘Yes, I…I think I left something in my car.’
‘Oh yes? I expect it’ll be there. It’ll be right there where you expect, everything always is you see, because everything is fine, fine, fine.’
A beak pierced the back of Other Amy’s skull and wiggled and fought until the bird’s entire head poked through, slick with gore, and stared at Jack with black, glass eyes.
***
‘Still no word on Jack?’ asked Sonya.
Still thought Amy.
Still no word.
There had been no word—
No word at all—
And there still hadn’t been.
Still wouldn’t be.
Still couldn’t be.
The world had opened up and Jack was still gone—
And gone—
And gone—
‘No. Nothing new,’ replied Amy.
Still nothing new.
That persistent lack of Jack sat heavy in her chest and her stomach and her everything; day after day after hour after minute after second.
Should the pressure of it have lessened even a little by now?
Days had gone by—
—a week in fact, she suddenly realised, and then had to dig her nails into her palms to stop a horrid sort of wailing noise from seeping out of her mouth, slithering around the room, and scaring Sonya away.
No. That weight, that pressure, that ravenous consuming fuzzy bleak was still there. She wondered if it was just part of her now. If she’d traded Jack for this. This void. This empty that wasn’t empty at all because if you reached your hand into the ‘empty’ you’d feel all the screaming and the terror and the anger and the 2 a.m. tears.
‘How are you coping? Are you coping? Daft question. Sorry. It’s the kind of question you ask though, isn’t it? I mean, in a situation like this?’
‘A situation like this?’
‘Yeah. Well. Not like this. Not exactly like this because we don’t know if he’s… I mean… They haven’t found a… ’ Sonya trailed off and picked at the skin around her nails. ‘Have you got any biscuits?’
‘Yeah,’ replied Amy. ‘I think so. Let me have a look.’
She got up and went into the kitchen. She didn’t actually look for biscuits, instead she bent over, rested her head in the sink, and listened to the tears drip-drip-dripping down the plughole.
‘I’d best be off,’ said Sonya.
‘Okay then,’ said Amy, her voice bouncing around her metal sink cocoon. ‘Thanks so much for coming. Mind how you go. I’ll call you in a few days. Might be cold out. Or hot. You never can tell. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.’
***
It was dark, so a few hours must have slipped past unnoticed.
‘We found a car.’ That’s what the police had said.
‘Is it his? Is it Jack’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where is he?’
‘The car was found abandoned at the side of the road, several miles out of town on a country lane, the front end partially within an overgrown bush.’
‘Jack? Where is he?’
‘Well, he was not within the car. We checked. And he was not in or around the bush. Our best working theory is that he had an accident and perhaps bashed his skull against the steering wheel.’
‘Though there is no physical evidence of that,’ said the second officer.
‘May I continue?’ asked the first. The second gestured with one hand and the first nodded. ‘So. Perhaps he did or didn’t knock his head after coming to an unexpected halt, upon and after which, in a daze, perhaps with his senses and knowledge of himself knocked clean out of him, he left the car and took off on foot, to areas and places currently mysterious.’
‘Was he a drinker,’ asked the second.
‘No. Well, yes. He drank.’
‘I see,’ said the first, and the officers exchanged glances.
‘But he didn’t drink and drive, if that’s what you think.’
‘We think nothing.’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘Not our place to think.’
‘He was very careful about that sort of thing,’ said Amy. ‘He’d never drink and then get behind the wheel.’
The officers nodded.
‘He may also have been forcibly abducted and or murdered.’
‘Always a possibility.’
‘Can’t rule it out.’
‘Won’t rule it out.’
‘Strange things can happen, outside the walls of a city.’
‘It’s an odd place out there.’
‘Odd people.’
‘All that grass and wide open spaces.’
‘Well, it’s not natural, is it?’
Maybe he’d just left her. You heard about that sort of thing. About someone just dropping out of their life. Ghosting. Hidden stresses and strains that one day just become too heavy to bear, so off they go, and never a word is heard.
But that didn’t seem like Jack to Amy.
Jack loved her.
And she loved him.
He never would.
Wouldn’t run away without a word.
Something had taken him from her and she knew it could be nothing good.
***
Amy sat at the bottom of the stairs and wondered how long it had been since she’d cleaned the bathroom.
Sometimes exhaustion overtook her and she’d sleep for hours and hours. Sometimes she felt so alert she walked the rooms of her house for days, yelling. The night was long and fearsome when your eyes refused to stay closed. It pressed in at you until you thought your head might split open from the pressure.
She had to get out.
So she put on her shoes, and she put on her coat, and she left the house.
As she drove, Amy felt as though she was dreaming. Like the world had gone soft and she was trapped inside one of her nightmares. Maybe that’s all this was after all and she just had to find a way to wake up. She’d open her eyes and find Jack beside her, drooling on the pillow.
Or perhaps she’d gone mad.
It was all very strange and unreal and it made Amy feel wonky, as though her organs were bashing into each other like pinballs. Going mad had always been one of her greatest fears. Some yelped at spiders scuttling, others trembled deep down at the very idea of travelling by aeroplane, but the worry that snuggled Amy in her darker moments was the fear of losing her marbles.
‘Who are you, then?’ Granddad Thomas would say when she went to visit him in those final few years.
‘It’s me Granddad, Amy, your granddaughter,’ she would reply, softly.
‘Oh? Oh no. No, I don’t think so, love. I’m only twenty-two, I haven’t even had kids yet,’ and he would look down at his wrinkled, brown-speckled hands in confusion.
‘You’re not mad, I’m sorry to say,’ said a man sitting in the back seat of the car. ‘You’re quite sane, which is much, much worse.’
The man who was speaking wore a faded old suit.
Dusty white gloves.
And a rabbit mask.
A rabbit mask that began to stretch as a smile spread impossibly across it.
The wheel turned sharply and the car tyres screamed in complaint as the world lurched round and round, until things came to a sudden stop. Amy bashed her head and things turned to fuzz and sparks. She fumbled at the seat belt with rubber fingers, pushed open the door, and stumbled out of the car. Her hands scuffed the ground as she made her escape, painting the tarmac red.
Amy had felt scared many times in her life.
There was the time when she was six at the local swimming pool. She thought she knew what she was doing, but soon enough she’d walked too far and under she went, and there was no way she’d be able to get above the water again to catch her breath—
There were the times in class when the teacher was going from pupil to pupil and she knew she was going to have to stand and speak in front of everyone and her mouth was so, so dry and her heart was fluttering—
There was the time she climbed over a fence to retrieve a ball, and just as she’d found it and picked it up she’d heard a low growl and turned to see the biggest dog that had ever been, and the fence was too far away and there was no way she was going to make it but she turned to run anyway—
But this wasn’t like that, this was a deep-down terror, primal and old and undeniable. It was other and it was wrong and it was inevitable.
Amy felt like curling up into a ball and crying.
Instead, she ran.
Ran down empty midnight streets, ran with eyes unblinking, ran until she had to stop because her body couldn’t manage another step. Half crouching, half falling, she reached out to cushion the blow as she dropped to the ground and tore at the air with great, ragged breaths.
‘There you are. I’ve been waiting for you.’
She looked up to see the man in the rabbit mask standing before her.
‘My name is Mr. Cotton, and this is my dear brother, Mr. Spike.’
A second man stepped out of nothing. He wore a tatty hedgehog mask. His shoulders shuddered and a noise like twisting metal escaped from behind the mask. Amy believed it was the sound of his laughter.
‘Now, do not be rude, Amy. Say hello to my brother, won’t you?’
Amy tried not to. She tried to close her eyes tight. Tried to curl up and cover her head with her arms.
‘Hello, Mr Spike.’
‘There, now isn’t that better?’ replied Mr Cotton.
Amy thought about the first time she met Jack. About his eyes and his smile.
And then Mr Spike removed his mask.
***
Someone was knocking at the front door.
Amy looked around in confusion. She was sitting at the foot of the stairs. She was alone.
She’d been dreaming.
Must have been.
She had her shoes on, her coat, too, and in one hand she held her car keys.
Her hands were raw; dirt and dried blood. She decided to ignore that, because she’d just been dreaming after all.
Amy stood and shuffled forward, stopping by the mirror on the wall. The woman she saw looking back had wide, mad eyes and insane hair. Was that what she looked like now? She smiled and the reflection smiled back. It was a loon’s smile that she’d never seen herself make before.
Oh yes, someone was knocking at the door.
Maybe it was the police. They’d found Jack’s body. He’d been taken to an abandoned caravan and tortured for days. A passing rambler had been alerted by the reek of his corpse seeping out into the field.
Amy opened the door.
Jack was waiting.
He smiled and his eyes were big and vulnerable and hazel, just like she remembered.
‘Hello, Jack,’ she said.
‘Hello, Amy,’ he replied. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
She threw her arms around him.
She kissed his neck, his cheek, his shoulder.
She hugged him so tight it was a wonder that his ribs didn’t crack.
That his eyes didn’t bulge from their sockets.
That his heart didn’t pop like a water balloon.
‘I knew you’d come back,’ she said. ‘I love you so much.’
‘I love you, too,’ replied Jack.
‘I think I’ve been having the most terrible of nightmares.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘But now I’m awake and you’re here and everything is going to be okay.’
Jack did not reply.
‘It is going to be okay, isn’t it?’
‘Of course,’ said Jack. ‘Everything is fine, fine, fine.’
AUTHOR BIO: Matthew Stott is an author, publisher, and screenwriter who once wrote for a BBC kids show about a talking dog. Yes, he’s very impressive.
TWITTER: MattStottWrites
talesfrombetween.com 