Gianfranco Mancini’s Reviews > ITCH! > Status Update

Old Jacob wagged a crooked finger at the women. ‘We’ll do it properly, this time. You’ll follow my instructions, to the letter. We’ll make amends with the Devil.’ And make amends, Josie did. She put herself completely at Jacob’s disposal. She set herself to the task of fashioning the Queen of the March.

‘Explain it to me like I’m an idiot, one more time,’ Wilkes slurred. ‘Me too,’ Angela pleaded from her bar stool. ‘Help me understand.’ Josie heard herself speak but could not connect the voice to her own self. ‘He abducts them,’ she said, matter of fact. ‘He drugs them, does unspeakable things to them, then he puts them inside the straw queen. Still paralysed. Still alive, you understand?’

Josie had secrets still buried inside her, secrets that the colony were unearthing slowly, one by one. She might not get to the bottom of them all, as some of the memories had been placed in a box and sealed shut. But the colony demanded retribution for every last one.

There were maggots in the corpse’s eye sockets, and in her mouth. And ants, obviously, flowing through and around her, busy as ever with the industry of death. Behind her, gouged into the thick moss coating on the wall of the cave, three jagged, deep gashes in the stone. The Devil’s claw marks. This time, Josie didn’t even bother to scream. She simply rested her forehead to the cold, unforgiving earth, and wept.

Josie wondered what was wrong. She’d never seen the detective drunk, before. ‘Don’t you have anything better to do than harass me?’ she asked lightly. ‘I’m sure those dead girls won’t solve their own murders.’ Josie made herself a coffee from the machine. ‘That they won’t,’ Wilkes replied, depressed.

Angela immediately called an ambulance. The paramedics arrived just as Josie, having decided ripping up the floorboards was futile, inserted the screwdriver into her ear, intent on hitting the end of it with the hammer so she could pierce the crackling ball of limbs and carapaces that had become her brain.

She didn’t move much from her bed during those days, wrapping herself in a thick duvet and poring over Laurel’s sketchbook and the cylinder Old Jacob had given her, which turned out to be a map. When Josie finally had time to unfurl it, holding down the edges with books so it didn’t spring back into place, she gasped. It wasn’t just a map. It was a history of six unsolved crimes, meticulously plotted.

A thought occurred to Mrs Howell. Her sobs subsided. ‘Was there any . . . any . . . sexual stuff?’ she asked flatly. Josie’s stomach sank. Wilkes cleared her throat again. ‘There is some indication that sex took place not long before she died, yes.’ Mrs Howell let out a long, ragged breath. Josie’s insides crawled.

Already thoroughly exhausted, though it was not yet midday, she wondered what else might happen to her in the minutes, hours ahead, what new dread she would encounter before she could finally call it a day, lay her head on a pillow and dream of dead things, without interruption or judgement.

Perhaps, Josie told herself, this was just how people processed the bad stuff. Endless replays, until one day, the mind was suddenly free. Maybe the ants would just up and leave without warning, too, if she was patient enough. Trauma had a timeline. At least that was what she’d been told when her ex had thrown a brick at her head.