Cabal's Stone by Chris Thorndycroft

Author:Chris Thorndycroft [Thorndycroft, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Horror, upload
Published: 2018-10-01T06:00:00+00:00

Jan sat on the sofa, her head in her hands as the police constables – a man and a woman – came down the stairs, their faces grave. The paramedics were sliding the gurney into the back of the yellow van marked ‘ambiwlans’.

“We’ll have to wait for the coroner’s report but they seem to think it was heart failure,” said the constable. “Was he on any medication?”

“No,” said Jan. Her own voice felt distant to her as if she wasn’t entirely present, only a member of the audience while some actor played out her part on stage.

They had come back from the pub at around midnight. They had stayed for last orders and lingered a while afterwards, taking their time with the dregs in their glasses. Jan had no inclination to rush back to face Ollie. If she had, would he still be alive?

She forced herself not to start thinking like that. Even if she had been here there was nothing she could have done. She didn’t even know what had happened anyway. Heart failure? She had really let him have it – not that she blamed herself in that way (no man died from a bollocking from his girlfriend, surely?) – but he had reacted so defensively it hadn’t seemed like him at all. He had never shown such spirit before. Why now? He had undoubtedly been going through some sort of breakdown. That must have been it.

“He had been under a lot of stress lately,” she told the constables uncertainly. “We thought this weekend would give him a break. Be good for him.” This is where the widow in all the police procedurals breaks down and dabs at her face with a balled-up tissue, she thought. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. It was all still too unreal.

The police left and the ambulance took Ollie away. Away. Gone forever. Jonathan hung around for a bit, trying to console her before retreating to bed. Jan slept on the sofa, unable to bear sleeping in that bed upstairs.

He had just been lying there with the sheets tangled up around his middle, his pale, thin body starfish-like in the middle of the bed as if he was exhausted after some almighty struggle. And his face, God his face! Is that what heart attacks do to you?

They packed up the next day. Jan would drive back to Oxford, alone, and Jonathan planned to head down to Cardiff and stay with friends. He couldn’t, he said, stay in that cottage alone after what had happened and Jan didn’t blame him.

She had to force herself to climb the stairs and open the door to the room Ollie had died in. It still hadn’t registered that he was gone for good. She packed up her own things and, after several minutes of deliberation, packed up Ollie’s. She supposed she would have to take them back with her to their Oxford flat, to be stowed in some cupboard until she could bring herself to deal with it all.

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