Windfall

     Lulled by storm winds and the scuttling of rain against the tiles, Lachlan had been drifting in and out of uneasy dreams. At half past one, the rain stopped. He rolled onto his side, mattress springs twanging back into position. The gable end window cast a pale mauve diamond of moonlight onto the attic floorboards. With the rain gone, the house felt strangely exposed. He wrinkled his nose, closed his eyes. He tried to sleep. For a time, all was silent, save for a steady tap, tap, tap in one of the pipes.
     At two o’clock, something hit the roof with a tremendous thump and the clatter of smashed tiles. Lachlan’s eyes shot open. He lay on his side, tensed up like a fist, and waited for the sequel. Tap, tap, tap went the pipe. He allowed himself to exhale.
     The next morning, he went outside in his galoshes and found something wet and dead the size of a cello in the back garden. It was sprawled amongst the potato plants, face down in the glistening soil. The wings were sodden and rumpled. They clung to its flanks and chalk-white hips like damp grey leaves. Vertebrae described a tortuous column of ridges beneath taut alabaster skin. At the base of russet legs, black talons were closed and curled inward over the hind claws.
     Lachlan crouched down. The ground was strewn with feathers. Droplets trembled in the hollows of potato plant leaves. He cradled a leaf in his palm, gently gripping the stem between middle and ring finger. Its surface was patterned with grey and brown lines like a mosaic. The leaf felt brittle. He closed his hand and it crumbled.
     He rolled up his sleeve and thrust his fingers into the moist earth. The potato’s roots made a ripping sound as he pulled it out of the dirt. It had a good weight to it. It was a Pentland Crown. He always grew Pentland Crown. Its skin was covered with blue-black welts. He squeezed it. It burst like a gourd filled with porridge.

     The next day, the phone rang five times. Lachlan stood in the doorway at the edge of the hall each time and waited until it stopped. After the fifth instance, he pulled the cable out of the socket.
     Outside, the clouds were loose and fibrous, tufts of wool snagged on barbed wire. He spent half an hour picking shards of glass from the soil inside the cold frame. It held hybrid chilli plants; Habanero cross-bred with Scotch Bonnet. Twelve individual pots nestled in the earth. Twelve chilli plants, black, withered, dead.
     The dead thing lay there still, a skein of knotty bladderwrack hair concealing the head. Lachlan passed it on his way to the dustbin, gardening gloves cupped under a mound of dirt and broken glass. When he went indoors, he moved from room to room and closed all the drapes. Swaddled in gloom, he sat in a cracked leather armchair with a stack of cracked leather albums. There was a knock at the door. He ignored it. He took a craft knife from his pocket and began excising photographs.

     The lacerations across its back had begun to suppurate. Lachlan stood by the backdoor with a white handkerchief over his nose and mouth. The stench of mouldering flesh caught in his sinuses and throat and made his eyes water. There was scarcely any wind.
     The crab apple tree was covered in swollen nodules and blisters. Where the bark had split, the tree wept sap. A raven pecked at insects feeding on the brown and rotten remnants of the tree’s fallen produce. It cocked its head at Lachlan, maw half-open. Lachlan turned away and went inside.
     He went into the cellar to get something to eat but the smell was there too. Fluid pooled on the floor. The freezer door was ajar. With the handkerchief to his face again, he eased it open. The freezer’s innards were writhing with ants. Like little black follicles they swarmed over breast, thigh, rump, shank; beef, turkey, pork, chicken, veal. Vanilla ice cream dribbled from its tub, leaving creamy splotches across the rims of the lower shelves. A bag had torn, spilling something clear and gelatinous.
     He went upstairs and locked the cellar door behind him, then he wrapped the key in his handkerchief and stuffed it into the pedal bin in the kitchen, pushing past tissues and teabags and tampons until it was right at the bottom. He washed his hands under the tap, poured himself a glass of water. When he peered through a gap in the drapes, he could see the raven. It was perched on the dead thing’s back, worrying at the wounds with its beak. Lachlan went upstairs and pulled down the ladder for the attic.

     Lachlan did not feel very well. He had stomach cramps and, earlier that morning, he had thrown up in the sink. As he sat on the toilet, massaging his forehead with the flat of his palm, someone knocked on the front door. He waited with his eyes closed. The person knocked again. He opened his eyes. The carpet in the bathroom was mint green. There was a crescent shaped mat with tassels that fitted around the base of the toilet. He rubbed the callused soles of his feet back and forth across it.
     The person knocked a third time, much harder. Lachlan used the edge of the basin to lift himself up onto his feet. He tore six or seven sheets of paper from the dispenser, screwed them up into a ball and wiped himself. The squeak of the letterbox being lifted. Gingerly, he pulled up his pants and trousers.
     “Sarah?” A woman’s voice calling into the hall. Lachlan did up his belt. “Sarah?” He lowered the seat of the toilet, but did not flush. “Sarah? Are you home?” The letterbox clunking shut. Lachlan ran his fingertips along the snout of the cold tap as he listened. Silence. The restless, barely audible clicking sound of a key struggling to impregnate a lock. The scrape of unopened post sighing back across the mat.
     Lachlan teetered then unlocked the toilet door and stepped out onto the landing. There was a woman in a beige overcoat standing in the hall. She had auburn hair cut in a bob and carried a black umbrella and a handbag. “Who are you?” she said.
     “I am the gardener,” said Lachlan. He started walking down the stairs. The woman took a step back.
     “Where’s Sarah?” she said. He stopped.
     “She said she had to go away,” he said. “She said she would be back in a few days.” The woman frowned. Lachlan continued to walk down the stairs. She took another step back. Lachlan stopped again.
     “She didn’t mention that to me,” she said. “She hasn’t mentioned that to anybody. I’ve been trying to phone her, but…” Her words trailed off as she caught sight of the unplugged phone. She looked up at him and her mouth looked as if something were tugging at one corner.
     “It’s broken,” he said. He walked to the bottom of the stairs.
     “Did she leave a number I can contact her on?” asked the woman.
     “No,” said Lachlan. “I have some work I have to do.” He started to walk towards the kitchen.
     “Are you sure she didn’t leave a note for me somewhere?” Lachlan stopped in the doorway. He turned around.
     “Yes,” he said.
     “You’ve checked?” she said.
     “Yes,” he said. He scratched his nose. There was a picture of a galleon on the wall. It was made out of wire stretched between nails. The woman’s face tightened. She looked down towards her feet, poked at the floor with the tip of her umbrella.
     “How long have you been working for her?” she said.
     “Not very long,” said Lachlan.
     “Oh. It’s just Sarah hadn’t mentioned to me that she… perhaps you’d better go home now. I ought to have a look round the house myself. The note might have fallen down the back of the dresser or something.”
     “I have work to do.” The woman took a deep breath.
     “All the same, I think you ought to…” She hesitated. “I think you ought to go.”
     “I have work I have to do.”
     “Well, you can do it when she gets back. Now, could you leave, please?” She stared down into the floor. Lachlan watched her for a few moments.
     “I have some things to finish off,” he said. The woman looked up. Her eyes were hard, but she was shaking.
     “I’m going to ask you one last time,” she said. “Could you please leave.” She stepped over to the door and held it open, keeping her eyes fixed on him. Lachlan stood and watched her. Seconds went by, and a dreadful quietude passed through the hallway. Dead leaves swirled and rustled in the breeze outside. The day was overcast. “If you don’t leave now, I’m going to call the police,” she said.
     Lachlan stepped forward and hit her. She crumpled and fell back into the gap between the door and the wall. He pushed the door closed and knelt down and punched her again and again in the face until it was soft. His knuckles were wet and red. She let out a long, low moan and slumped into the unopened envelopes. Lachlan went to get his galoshes from next to the fireplace.
     After putting them on, he parted the drapes with his fingertips and gazed out into the back garden. A raven’s carcass was attracting bluebottles. Gnats thrummed above the yellowing hedge. In the middle of what had once been a potato patch, the rents in the dead thing’s flesh had grown wider. Through the smudged glass, they seemed to pulsate.
     Lachlan allowed the drapes to close. There would be a storm before nightfall. Ignoring the cramps in his pelvis, he slid an iron poker from a hook next to the grate and trudged out of the room.
     When he returned to the hall, there was something not yet dead slumped amongst the unopened envelopes. It was beige and it lay face down. As Lachlan watched, the hump of its back rose and fell. He lifted the poker high above his head. Outside, the rain began to fall.