The Berserker

Bruce Walker opened the rear door of his cottage and sniffed the fresh morning air, closing his eyes as the coldness gave him a sense of happiness. He had always loved the winter months, so much more than summer ones, as the late morning and late afternoon darkness had made his days shorter, and shorter days when you're a widower was less time to grieve.

His wife Sophia, whom he had met on his days as a cruise ship chef, had passed away three winters previous to the crippling cancer that started from her liver and ended in her lungs. Every day he would miss her more.

“49 is no age to die,” he would say to her picture on the mantel above the open fire, that he would sit in front of and smooth her Irish Setter that she had named Max.

He would tell her how he had wished that he had met her before his wild years of late night drinking and early morning taxi’s home from houses that he would never see again, at least then he would have had more time to enjoy the woman he would always call the love of his life.

“Max,” he called out into the early light. “Max, come on boy.”

He looked around the sparsely planted garden with a frown. The dog had its own flap in the back door of the cottage, so he was free to roam in or out as he pleased, but rarely would he be out this early in the morning.

Bruce whistled loudly, by placing his thumb and forefinger in between his lips, but still there was no sign of Sophia’s dog.

Max was well known around the village of Blaise, so it was a familiar sight to see him being fed by Lester Stoney, who ran the butchers, or Elizabeth Trott, outside of her bakery, or even Janice Sprintler as she hung her washing on the line. The red dog would get around to most of them before he would head home for supper.

“Must be doing the rounds,” Bruce said as he closed the back door and settled down to a bowl of muesli and a glass of freshly squeezed orange and mango.

The healthy stuff was Sophia’s idea when she found out about the cancer, and it was a habit that he had been unable to break after she passed.

He swilled the bowl under the running water and placed it upside down on the draining board, and then repeated the process with the tall glass that was stained a subtle orange colour after months of the same contents filling it.

He moved to the hallway, grabbed his wax coat from under the stairs, and then picked the rubber gardening gloves that he had tucked into the Wellington boots, to stop the spiders and insects from climbing in so Sophia used to say, sliding one on and flexing his finger to ensure they had a nice tight fit. He followed the same whistling routine when he opened the back door, and he had the same result with Max.

Bruce continued to look around as he walked across the garden to the shed, pulling the other glove on, but everything seemed to be as everything should, except that Max wasn’t jumping and barking, and he opened the shed to grab the pruning shears from above the door.

He stopped and stood still after he closed the door. Something wasn’t right.

Max wasn’t jumping and barking was one thing, but there was definitely something missing that he had not realised before.

He looked to the Sycamore trees that stood 30 feet from his fence, staring at them, considering his suspicions.

The branches were bare, as you would expect for the middle of wintertime, but they were also bare of birds. Those incessant Rooks that would flock high in the trees for hours on end, chirping and arguing at one another, were nowhere within earshot, and the Starlings that would be fighting over the remnants of last night’s fish and chips that he had thrown onto the bird feeding table, were not around either.

“How strange?” he said as he walked to the overgrown apple tree that he had planted in the middle of his garden 20 years previous.

He had built a square planter box that surrounded the base of the tree, high enough so that he and Sophia could sit under it and have afternoon tea, and he walked towards it with the pruning shears extended to full length.

The shears went to work meticulously as Bruce chopped the high branches, even though he knew it was too early in the horticultural year to be doing it, and he whistled softly as the branches tumbled from the tree.

He cut a branch and it somersaulted towards him, so he instinctively ducked to avoid it catching him in the face.

The sight that greeted him within the walls of the planter box as he ducked took around a minute to sink in.

Bruce stood up and dropped the pruning shears, causing them to bounce on the grass, and he fell onto his backside as the shock invaded him.

The mass of red fur was spread out like you would see a prize tiger fur sprawled out on the floor in front of a raging open fire in a mansion, and the insides of the dog, or what was left of them, were shredded to pieces within the box. Its head was still attached to the fur, as was its tail, and Bruce reached a shaking hand out to stroke it down its back.

The tears that fell from his eyes were dropping onto the bloodied fur of Max, and Bruce thought they sizzled on contact. He tried to speak a name as he stroked the fur, but his throat had swollen with the emotion that was stuck in it.

Behind the planter box, out of his view, was a pile of pristine white bones that were stacked neatly.

Down the road from Bruce Walker, Audrey Bond opened her own back door onto the clear morning. She slipped her black shoes on and then stood on the top step of three that led down to her garden path, looking out across the garden fences, sure that she heard loud sobbing as though a man was crying.

She shook her head to clear her doubt, and then took the two remaining steps that joined the garden path, swinging the wicker basket that she was carrying to and fro as she skipped down the paving slabs.

Audrey was in good shape for a woman in her 50’s, and she liked to show it off by wearing dangerously low cut dresses when she visited the Duck and Goose on a Friday and Saturday night; much to the bemusement of Mr Bond, who had learned to ignore the stares and whispers from the non-regulars that wasn’t used to seeing someone so old dressed in something so young.

“It makes me feel good,” she would tell anyone who asked, which was no-one in particular.

Every morning she would fetch the freshly laid eggs from the chicken run that Cyril had put together when she had come home with a chick from the farmers market 2 summers ago, and every morning she would prepare soft boiled eggs and toasted soldiers for their breakfast.

The chicken run had started out as a four feet by four feet square, made up of two stakes and a roll of chicken wire, but by the start of winter of that year it was a purpose built, 8 feet wide deluxe coop that housed the 10 chickens that she had brought home from her second, and last (as Cyril made certain), farmers market. It was attached to the side of the shed to give it cover from the direct Sunlight, and also to drown out the noise of the constant clucking that could start as early as 4.30am and finish as late as 11pm in the summertime.

As she reached the shed she slowed her skipping step down when the hole that had been torn into the side of the run came into view. The white feathers that were stuck to the wire didn’t register in Audrey’s brain until the whole run was in front of her.

The wicker basket hit the grass and bounced a couple of times, coming to rest on its side with the white tea towel fallen from it.

The run had a hole in the top as well as the side, and there were feathers attached to the jagged edges of the holes, that looked precisely cut.

Audrey did not speak as she walked around the run to the coop, but as she opened the hatching box, where she would normally pick up 4 or 5 freshly laid eggs, her breath caught at the back of her throat, and she screamed as loud as she could.

The shrill scream alerted Cyril Bond, who burst through the door and jumped the 3 steps with no shoes on, sprinting up the garden path to the back of the shed where his wife was looking into the coop with a deathly white tinge to her face. He walked around to join her, and froze still when he saw what she had screamed at.

The inside of the coop was dripping with blood. There were parts of thicker mucus that was hanging from the sides and the ceiling, with feathers stuck to the thick red fluid as though a pillow filled with them had been shaken vigorously around.

In the nesting boxes were chicken bones that were neatly stacked in a pile and were a pristine white as though they had been licked clean.

Cyril Bond caught his wife as her legs buckled.

Linda Hallsall looked up from her morning paper as the scream from one of the neighbour’s garden broke through the morning air. She lowered the copy of the Blaise Herald and stared at Gary Hallsall, who was sat opposite.

“What was that?” She asked him.

Gary lowered his tablet and stared back at his wife.

“What?” he replied sternly, annoyed she had disturbed him from his game of Candy Crush.

“That scream, did you not hear that scream? It sounded as though it came from Audrey’s.”

Gary lifted the tablet up and double clicked a green piece of candy, smiling as it caused a chain reaction of explosions.

He had been patiently waiting for the lease to come through on the flat above the 8til12 in the village, which would mean he could finally leave his more than demanding wife and her trio of cats that she cared more about than anything else in the world, especially him.

Their marriage had become a sham after he had strayed away from his vows with Claudia Mallow on Christmas Eve last year.

“Are you not going to check?” she asked him abruptly, surprised at his lack of empathy.

He stood up and slammed the tablet on the table, causing the salt and pepper cellars to jump, and also for a large crack to appear along the screen.

“Terrific,” he shouted at her. “Absolutely brilliant. Are you happy now?”

He stormed out of the kitchen and ripped the door open that led to the back garden, stopping at the threshold as the coldness hit him, and he grabbed his coat from the hook on the door before he walked out into the morning air in his house slippers.

Gary didn’t see the fluid that was covering the top step as he stood out onto it, and his slippered foot slid out from under him, ripping his thigh muscle with the sudden strain.

His legs split wide apart as he straddled the top step, one foot inside the house and the other on the second step down, and his face was resting on the top step, making the fluid seep into his mouth, so he lifted his head and spat out the thick blood repeatedly as he struggled to get up.

Linda had heard the slap of Gary hitting the step, so she placed her newspaper onto the table and made her way to the back door, stopping in the hallway and staring at her husband as he attempted to get up from the slimy step. She would have laughed on a different day, as she thought he looked like a baby deer attempting to stand for the first time, but seeing Tinkerbelle, her white female cat, with her stomach ripped open and her insides missing, stopped her in mid smile.

She walked toward the doorway as the gagging started from the pit of her stomach, but she stopped again when the head of Bonnie, her female Siamese cat, was placed on the step, looking as though the rest of her was concreted within it.

The scream that she forced from herself was as silent as a whisper, and she ran the few of strides to the doorway to attack her husband.

“You bastard,” she screamed at him. “You killed my babies you bastard.”

As she reached the doorframe she skidded in her socks and hit the threshold bar that secured the door, falling headfirst out of the house and landing on top of Gary, knocking him out cold on the steps in the process. Her face landed in a soft pile of fur that was the remnants of her ginger tom called Rees, and she lifted her face to see the dull, milky coloured cat’s eyes staring at her.

The last thing she saw before she passed out was a strange red lipstick mark around the bite on the white fur of the cat that used to be Tinkerbelle.