Dust by Sunlight

Hunger left him, the way it always did, when he reached her cottage door. It was a beautiful sunny day and her garden was picture book perfect, with flowers marching all the way up the path to the shiny red door, and a pond that winked back up to the sky. But sunlight could play tricks with your eyes. He knew it was no fairytale cottage. It was a witch’s lair.
+++++Was it too late to pretend to be ill? He would not have to pretend too hard.
+++++Sometimes, when he was sick, mum would bring him a bag of comics and a bowl of tangerines, and he would hug his chimp Jacko as he ate them, cuddle him close and stain his plastic face, bleach it with kisses. He wished he had Jacko with him now, but dad said it was babyish. Dad didn’t understand. It was the smell of the toy that was so comforting. Part of him sensed that smell would return to him in later life and break his heart.
+++++‘I want you on your Sunday school best behaviour,’ said mum, wetting her fingers and attempting to plaster down his unruly hair for the umpteenth time. ‘Do you hear me Alan? Remember your yes, please and thank yous.’
+++++‘Please don’t make me kiss her mum,’ said Alan, hating the whine in his voice but unable to help it. ‘I’ll be good, just don’t make me have to kiss her.’ Please don’t make me kiss that horrible old bitch.
+++++She slapped him hard across the back of his legs as if she had read his mind. ‘Don’t you dare talk about your aunt like that!’
+++++‘Judy,’ said dad, ‘go easy. The kid does have a point after all.’
+++++She glared at her husband coldly. ‘Maybe you’d like to take his place then?’
+++++He looked at his watch as she arched her eyebrows. ‘Love to,’ he said, ‘but you know I have to pick Tony up at three. He’s expecting me.’
+++++‘It’s funny,’ she said, returning her attention to her son’s fringe, ‘how your little golf trips always coincide with my visits to my sister.’
+++++‘You know I’d rather be with you. It’s just the way it is. See you later honey.’ He gave Alan a sympathetic look, one reserved for males in their dealings with women, then tousled his hair, ruining all her previous endeavours.
+++++Alan sighed as he watched him climb into the car and drive away without a wave. He felt like crying. It was Saturday. He should be down the pool with Goose and Andy, or playing football, or spying on Weaver Wright’s big sister, anything but standing here outside his aunt Gabriella’s.
+++++Outside the lair of the Dust Witch.
+++++‘You be nice now,’ whispered mum. ‘You say hello when she speaks to you, and you look her in the eyes…’ A moment of hesitation as she realised her mistake. ‘You look at her when you do, and not a tear or a blubber or I’ll give you something to cry about, you hear me? It’s a pity of that poor soul, shame and disgrace.’
+++++But mum was a hypocrite. As the years passed he could see the sympathy etched on her face losing out to revulsion. She hated her as much as he did.
+++++She rang the bell and the door opened slowly, releasing a strong waft of lilac and urine. His heart began to race. She stood half hidden in the doorway where the sunlight barely licked her. He tried to back away but his mother’s arm acted as a barrier.
+++++‘Hello Judy love.’ Her voice crackled like an old radio. He supposed she meant to sound pleasant, but tender words would shrivel and die in that arid throat. He had heard mum tell dad that a voice coach was working with her, but to Alan it sounded as if her voice coach had been hijacked and burnt out.
+++++He had told them a million times in school that her name was Durst but they never listened, she was always just Scabby Gabby Dust, Scabriella Dust, the Dust Witch and, cruellest of all, Queen Frogspawn. The Dust Witch was always with him, feeding on his shame. He wished from the bottom of his heart that she would just die and free him from the endless taunts. I hate her, he thought, I hate her very bones.
+++++‘Hello Gabriella,’ said mum, but her jollity was as forced as her smile.
+++++She pushed him in, his aunt looming up before him, a nightmare made awful flesh. Her face was covered in warts, it looked like a bulging sack of tapioca. A single hideous eye protruded from her frogspawn skin, bulging out so far its lid could not lube it properly; tears stained her face like slug trails. She was breathing like a bumble bee. If she stopped breathing you would be able to hear that flimsy lid scrape over the jelly surface. He prayed she would never breathe again.
+++++The bombsite of the other empty socket was scarred, folded over into the sickening pink petals of some carnivorous plant. Looking at her it was easy to believe she was a witch, one who had cheated the stake and escaped with her face half cooked.
+++++He hurried past her, listening to his mum covering up his rudeness with small talk, and went straight to the kitchen. The table had already been set, and something was steaming on the cooker. The clock on the wall ticked rapidly, a sprinter’s heartbeat, keeping time with his distress.
+++++‘Say hello to your auntie, Alan.’ His mum’s voice betrayed none of the anger that flashed in her eyes.
+++++‘Ah, don’t worry pet, I know what young ones are like nowadays, no time for anything,’ croaked Gabby laughing; it sounded like a drunk trying to blow out birthday candles. ’Sit down Alan love, dinner’s nearly ready.’
+++++He sat down, fidgeting with his hands and with his eyes. Don’t touch anything, he thought, if you touch something you’ll catch her disease. That’s what they said at school. Your face will swell up and pimple over and -
+++++His eyes rested on the kitchen bin, the skin bin, where she threw out her flesh after she shed it. He looked away quickly. Above the sink the old net curtain was stained (by her breath, she breathed on it and it turned) yellow by countless cigarettes.
+++++‘Alan! Your auntie’s talking to you!’
+++++‘Huh?’
+++++Gabby was smiling at him. She looked as if she might eat him. ’Ah, you’re in a wee world of your own pet. I asked if you’d like a sweetie before dinner?’
+++++He nodded reluctantly to cover his embarrassment and she produced a mint from her apron pocket; mints weren’t sweets; aunt Tina always gave him Merry Maids.
+++++‘Go on, give us a smile.’
+++++I’ll smile when you die, he thought. He stretched his mouth wide in rough approximation of appreciation, and Gabby cackled contentedly.
+++++‘Look at his little wrinkled forehead Judy,’ she said. ‘He must have some humdinger problems to make it crease like that. I think I’ll have to call him my little walnut.’
+++++Alan just prayed that whatever she was cooking up in her cauldron was dry enough to slip into his trouser pockets when no-one was looking. He watched her amble to the cooker, ready to dish up whatever vile contagious muck she had concocted.
+++++She put on a hat over her tinder hair, then leaned over the steaming pot. Her Cooking Hat she called it, but dad said she was bald and that she only wore it to stop her wig from frizzing. He imagined her in a nylon coffin, her hair sparking a blaze; the hag was scared of cremation. He smiled for real as she settled the hat on her head. She had chopped the pom-pom off and it looked limp and tired. It lay on her misshapen dome like a sullen rag. Someday soon it would become a dishcloth, its final, complete humiliation.
+++++His mother’s eyes warned him, her mouth a knife slash, as Gabby turned on the radio and barked along. Under the cover of Country and Western the radio watched him continuously, the dials on its face a permanent wicked grin. It was her familiar, her techno-cat. Even the songs it played were in code so that you were constantly monitored; if you sang along you were only reporting on yourself. His smile faded. He would have to be careful here.
+++++‘Are you sure you don’t need a hand Gabriella?’
+++++‘No Judy dear. You know me, always fissling about. It’ll be ready in two ticks of a lamb’s tail.’ She carried a mug of tea over to her sister, and sat a large glass of Coke down beside Alan. ‘There you go little walnut. That’ll clean the dirty pennies in your belly.’
+++++Then came two bowls, and Alan thought he might cry or vomit or both.
+++++Only a vampire could eat this blood stew. He watched her wolf it down, her solitary eye scanning for the merest hint that someone might try to take it away from her; they would lose an arm if they did, and that arm would go straight into the pot too. Anyone who wants something that bad, dad says, wants it to patch over a hole in their soul.
+++++‘Eat up,’ said Gabby in between gulps. ’Many’s the one would be glad of it.’
+++++‘Eat up son,’ said mum, the order implicit.
+++++But he could not take his eyes off his aunt. She was an angry red, peeling in the bright sunlight that fell through the kitchen window. She was shedding her skin, transforming into something else, a creature of unknowable pain. Only her empty socket remained dark, impenetrable. He felt he could stare through it like a cheap telescope, stare straight into another world.
+++++He took a mouthful of stew and somehow managed to swallow. It actually didn’t taste too bad, but that was only because she had cast some sort of charm over it.
+++++He needed to escape; the food, the stilted chat, the awful bulging eye.
+++++‘Can I go to the toilet mum?’
+++++‘Of course, but don’t touch anything.’ As if. ‘And don’t be too long, we have to be going soon.’
+++++‘Oh, he’s a lucky one that his bowels are working,’ said Gabby. ‘There’s nothing as bad as constipation.’
+++++‘You still bunged up?’ asked mum. ‘Is it your irritable bowel?’
+++++‘Oh, true as turnips! I’m apple bound Judy, you can blame eggs all you like, but it’s apples that’ll do for me.’
+++++He felt sick again. Why did women always discuss these things? He did not need the toilet, but now he wondered if he would make it in time. Leaving the kitchen he ran upstairs, making sure not to touch the greasy banister.
+++++At the top he found a little car but he resisted the temptation to lift it up. The sight of it made him hate her even more, for he remembered the trap she had set for him before.
+++++Once he had found a toy soldier in her living room. The room was so tidy he had been scared to move, and the soldier looked so out of place, like it had crawled over enemy lines and died. He pointed it out to mum but she had whispered harshly in his ear, ’Put it down.’ Later he heard her say to dad, ’Gabby’s no kids, she must have left it there to see if he would steal it.’
+++++He kicked the car out of his way and, holding his breath, passed her bedroom door. Did he have the nerve to go in there? Would he dare go in and take something? At school the only way to beat them was to join them, and exaggerate. His stories of Scabriella always drew a crowd at break time, and because he was her nephew they were always taken as gospel. If he could just get one of her wigs or, best of all, a glass eye, that would really gross everyone out.
+++++He put his hand on the clammy handle and opened the door. It was dark in there, heavy drapes blocking out all the light. Nothing felt real. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he felt he had walked into a shop window. There was a palpable sense of emptiness here, a sense that he was the first to have ever breathed here.
+++++There was a small luminous stain of light, like a ghost’s thumbprint, just above the mirror; she was so ugly, she must have to sneak up on that, he thought. Making his way toward the window he almost tripped over. The floor was filled with boxes of all shapes and sizes, laid out in no seeming order.
+++++He pulled back the thick curtains, letting in a single shaft of light. Blurred outlines became sharper, soft hints of colour pushed and pleaded with the darkness for recognition. The stain by the mirror revealed itself to be a doll’s eye.
+++++He hated dolls, and now he could see her room was filled with their rigid bodies, their silence, their unnatural stillness. Behind those pursed plastic lips was barely suppressed laughter, sly and dry. Their eyes would snap into focus as soon as you turned your back; he had seen enough movies to know what they were capable of. He wasn’t fooled by their flowing dresses and pretty hair. He was surrounded by murderers.
+++++As his eyes grew more accustomed to the light, he realised that what he had thought were boxes were actually little model houses, with fancy windows and painted doors. Some were shops, there was even a church, and the dolls were everywhere, hanging out at street corners, idling in miniature cars.
+++++He almost laughed. He was in Toytown.
+++++He stooped to look through the window of a barber shop, with its red and white matchstick pole, and stifled a scream. The bakers too, and the Post Office.
+++++This was Gabby’s town. These were her children.
+++++All the little dolls had been horribly scarred, their hair burnt down to their shiny scalps. They stared back passively at the giant in their midst, stared back with one unblinking bauble eye.
+++++By the mirror, overlooking the town, was the largest doll of all, its single eye the flash of light he had seen as he entered her domain. As the sunlight spilled its guts into the room he saw her, Queen Frogspawn on her wicker throne gazing benignly down on her subjects, and he understood.
+++++This was her world. Her family. Her friends.
+++++They would talk to her, they would listen. They would never, ever judge. Shame crushed his eggshell heart.
+++++He heard his mum calling him and he ran back downstairs, his hand on the banister; it wasn’t greasy at all.
+++++‘Where have you been?’ she asked. ’It’s time for us to go. You know your father’s waiting for us.’ He heard the lie in her voice and reddened for her.
+++++‘Bye Judy love, I enjoyed the wee gabble,’ said Gabby. ‘If I don’t see you through the week, I’ll see you through the window.’
+++++‘Say goodbye to your auntie, Alan.’ She was in as much of a hurry to leave as he had been.
+++++He walked toward the Dust Witch, and with each step she shed her awful skin, transforming into a human being, into his aunt Gabriella. He kissed her on the lips.
+++++‘Bye aunt Gabby. Thank you.’ In the surprised silence that followed, he saw a fresh tear fall from her eye.
+++++Outside his mother gripped his hand, gripped it tightly as if she were scared to speak and break the spell he was under.
+++++‘Are you crying?’ she asked as they reached the bottom of the path.
+++++He turned his back to her, fiddling with the awkward latch on the gate. ‘It’s just the light in my eyes.’ The day was very bright, he thought he would get away with it.
+++++‘You shouldn’t stare at the sun,’ said his mother. ‘You can go blind.’
+++++He thought about that the whole way home.
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Stephen McQuiggan is from Northern Ireland and works the nightshift in a factory, passing the time by making up stories in his head. Over the last few months he decided to start writing them down as his head was starting to hurt. ‘Dust By Sunlight’ is based on a strange woman he used to see by the school gates when he was a boy, a disfigured woman who horrified him until she spoke to him one day and he realised he had a lot of growing up to do.