The Candle Man Read Online Free PDF

’eads in, is what we do!’
    A mewling wail spun through the air and ended with a soft thud against the wooden floor. Polly clasped her hands over her face and whimpered at the sound of impact. She heard a second, softer
smack against the floorboards.
    Outside, the muted clatter and bang of the businesses opposite filtered through the grimy window, filling the silence of the room. Polly heard the rustle of Annie’s clothing, her letting
out a breath of long-held air. More than just a sigh.
    ‘It’s done.’
    Polly opened her eyes and immediately shot them away from the pale little body on the floor.
    ‘ You can bag it,’ said Annie dryly, ‘since it was me ’ad to do the thing.’
    Polly could only nod as she opened the canvas grocery bag she’d brought along for the job and knelt down beside the small corpse. She touched a bare foot, still warm, pebble-stone toes
still flexing and curling post-mortem.
    How many times had she and Annie done this before? Too many times to count. Baby farming , that’s what the papers called their business, wasn’t it? All your troubles and
worries gone, for a one-off payment. An assurance to the tearful and frightened young lady that their baby would be found a home, loving parents eager to adopt an’ all that. That’s what
they were told. What they heard her and Annie say. Lip service. Polly suspected half the young women they’d saved from shame or a life of drudgery knew their assurances were an empty
promise.
    The papers liked to portray women like her and Annie as wicked witches, monsters who no doubt cooked and ate the freshly born babies they spirited away into the backstreets of the East End. But
as Annie quite rightly said, although what they did was for money, it was a service to the community. A good thing. The streets were choked enough with abandoned or orphaned children. Many starving
to death. A slow and horrible way for a life to end. What they offered, to her mind, was a service not so far removed from the many backstreet abortionists she knew operated from grubby front rooms
they deigned to call ‘surgeries’. All that differed was the matter of timing: a week, a day, an hour even, was all that separated her and Annie from those sorts.
    In or just out of the womb, that’s the only difference. They’re still unwanted.
    She lifted its foot, no longer than her index finger, and cradled its small lifeless body in her other hand. Its head, misshapen now, lolled on a shattered neck as she lifted it into the grocery
bag.
    But this one, this little life, had been around for some time, maybe even several months. Long enough to have a name, perhaps. She glanced at the tin rattle in the cot. Long enough to have a few
possessions of his own, even.
    Not ‘he’. ‘It.’ She chided herself. It. It.
    ‘Come on,’ snapped Annie. ‘We’re done here.’ She grabbed Polly’s arm and pulled her to her feet. They made their way out of the small bare room, the grocery
bag swinging by its handles as they clumped noisily down the stairs to the hallway.
    ‘Bill? You there?’
    ‘I’m in ’ere,’ came his voice, muffled from behind a door off the hallway. Annie stepped towards the door and began to push it open.
    ‘Hoy! Don’t come in! I’m busy in ’ere!’
    ‘What you doin’?’
    ‘Finishin’ up. You done your business?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Then off yer go with it. I’ll see yer tonight with yer share.’
    ‘Right. And dontcha be late with it. I mean it, Bill!’ Annie said.
    There was no answer through the closed door, just the shuffling, bump and slide of movement. ‘Bill? I said don’t—’
    ‘I ’eard! Now fuck off! I’ll see you two later!’
    Annie turned to Polly and nodded toward the front door. ‘Let’s go.’
    Bill heard the front door close and watched them through the net curtains, stepping out through the garden gate and walking back down Cathcart Street with their grocery bag
swinging casually between them as if contained