by Nick Gifford
It was a small bottle, with a printed label. The kind prescriptions come in.
It was lying on its side with its cap off, and it was empty. His grandfather’s words suddenly made sense: Ever wanted to do something you’re almost too scared to do? But it’s your only real choice?
Gramps had taken an overdose.
Matt’s eyes moved from the empty pill bottle to Gramps, then back again.
Then he leapt to his feet and dashed across the room to the landing. He had to get help, if it wasn’t already too late.
“Mum!” he called, the first time he had tried to speak to her since this afternoon. “Mum! It’s Gramps! He needs help!”
7 Waiting
Aunt Carol appeared at the foot of the stairs, her face pale – clearly alerted by the tone of Matt’s voice.
“What...?” She only had to look at him to be galvanised into action. She rushed up the stairs, footsteps thudding in rapid, staccato succession, like a boxer striking a punchbag.
“He’s taken some pills,” Matt said, as she hurried past him across the landing. “He’s taken some pills.”
Downstairs, his mother had appeared, followed by Uncle Mike. Matt looked at them, then at Carol’s retreating back. He felt helpless. He felt responsible.
He hurried back into Gramps’ room, as more steps sounded on the stairs.
Carol was by her father’s side. “Dad? Dad? What have you done? Dad?”
Gramps was staring blankly across the room, a half-smile on his face. Slowly, he turned his eyes on his daughter. “Carol?” he said, in little more than a whisper. “Don’t worry, Carol. I’ll look for your mother, I will.”
She looked up at Matt. “What’s he taken?” she asked.
Matt pointed at the chest of drawers, the evidence of Gramps’ actions.
“I came up a few minutes ago,” he said. He knew it was important to get the facts straight. He struggled to think. “He seemed okay – very calm. He’s been drinking and he must have taken those pills.”
His mother appeared in the doorway followed by Mike, Vince and the girls.
“The bottle’s empty,” Matt added. “He’s been writing letters, too.”
Carol took the pills from the chest and studied the label, then she glanced down at the letters on the chair at the foot of the bed. “Call an ambulance,” she said. She looked up, and saw everyone in the doorway. “Jill, call an ambulance,” she said. “And everyone else can just get downstairs! Mike – what are you doing, bringing the girls up here?”
Mike looked around, as if surprised that he had been followed. He put his arms around his daughters and shepherded them away. Matt’s mother was already downstairs, tapping out 999 on the telephone.
As Matt backed out of the room, he saw Carol sweep up the letters and then return to crouch before her father, hanging desperately onto his hand, as if that would make any difference.
Matt joined Vince on the landing.
Vince shook his head. “The old goat certainly knows how to liven things up, doesn’t he?” his cousin said, in a conversational tone. He turned to head down the stairs. “Fancy a drink?” he asked Matt. “There’s some cans in the fridge.”
~
They retreated to the living room where Kirsty was crying into her sister’s shoulder. Over Kirsty’s head, Tina glowered accusingly at Matt, as if it was all his fault.
Matt’s mother appeared a few seconds later. “They’re on their way,” she said. She went over to Kirsty and Tina and gave them a little hug. “He’ll be okay,” she said.
Tina glared at her, stiffening at her touch.
Just then, Vince came into the room, carrying a six pack of Heineken. He broke one away from its plastic binding and tossed it to Matt.
Matt’s mother looked at the beer, but said nothing. Vince held the remaining cans towards her, but she shook her head. Instead, he broke another one away and handed it to Mike, then sat on the sofa with what was left.
Matt opened his can, and took a long, cool drink, as his mother left the room and hurried back upstairs.
His hand started to shake and he put the can down on the coffee table.
He couldn’t get his grandfather’s glazed, contented look out of his head. Why had he taken so long to realise what had happened? He had seen the bottle and the empty pill jar as soon as he had entered the room, yet it had taken him several long minutes to understand what they meant.
He had another drink, and forced his hands to stop shaking. Delayed reaction, he supposed. Shock. It’s not every day you talk to somebody who’s in the process of killing himself.
~
The ambulance came, and the paramedics carried Gramps downstairs, strapped onto a stretcher. Carol and her sister went with him to the hospital, leaving Matt and the others to wait at home.
A short time after the ambulance had gone, Mike tried to persuade Tina and Kirsty that they should go to bed. They refused to go. “We’re hardly going to be able to sleep, are we?” said Tina, quite sensibly. “And it’s not even Kirsty’s bedtime yet.” They settled down in a corner of the living room to look at a large, colourful book about coral reefs, Tina explaining everything to her sister in great detail.
She was showing off, Matt realised: this was a chance for her to show how grown up she could be, reassuring and distracting her young sister.
Matt sat on the sofa, working his way steadily down the can of lager and leafing through a mail order catalogue. After about half an hour, he had chosen the best video, hi-fi, TV and computer, and he had just moved on to the tents, when the telephone rang.
Mike grabbed the receiver, snapped, “Yes,” and then listened for several seconds. Everyone watched him as he took the call, looking for any sign that would tell them what was happening.
As soon as he put the phone down, Kirsty said, “What’s happened, Dad? Where have they taken Gramps?”
Mike gathered his youngest daughter onto his lap. “They’ve taken him to the General Hospital,” he said. “The doctors are trying to make him better now.” He looked over Kirsty’s head at the others and added, “She’ll call again when she knows any more.”
So they sat and waited as before, playing video games, reading, watching TV. Occasionally, one of them tried to make conversation – the weather, the new road they wanted to build to the south-west of Bathside, Vince’s prospects for finding something better than the casual labouring work he had at the moment. “What are you going to do now?” Vince asked Matt, changing the subject swiftly away from the last of these topics.
“I don’t know,” said Matt. “Mum’s going to find work, and somewhere to live. I might stay with her or I might go back to Norwich to stay with Dad. I don’t know.”
Turning to her sister, Tina said, “Matthew was saying only the other day how much he liked living in Norwich. Wouldn’t it be nice if he could live with Uncle Nigel?” Kirsty looked from her sister to Matt and back and smiled uncertainly.
Then, more quietly, Tina added, “Uncle Nigel and Aunty Jill are going to get a divorce. They don’t like each other any more.”
“Washing up,” interrupted Mike, realising too late what his daughter was saying. “Come on, girls. I’ll wash and you two can dry. Okay?”
At that moment the telephone rang again. Matt looked at his watch with a start: it was well past eleven o’clock. They had been waiting for over two hours since Carol had first called from the hospital.
Mike answered and listened to what his wife had to say. “Okay,” he said. “See you soon.” And, “Yes, they’ll be in bed.”
He put the receiver down and Matt saw that his uncle was looking relieved. “He’s okay,” he said. “They got to him in time. He’s going to survive.”
Part Three
Alternity
8 The Waredens of Crooked Elms
About fifteen minutes later, Matt heard the sound of a car pulling up at the front of the house. Mike was still upstairs with Tina and Kirsty, making sure they were settled for the nigh
t, and Vince had gone off to his room, losing interest as soon as Carol had called to say things were okay.
Matt looked out of the window and saw his aunt passing some money through the window of a taxi. He went to open the door. Carol and his mother looked terrible: pale faced, heavy shadows under their tired-looking eyes.
“Thanks,” said Carol, brushing past him. Then she paused and turned half back towards him. “You were just in time,” she said. “If you hadn’t looked in on him when you did...”
Matt didn’t know what to say. All evening, his thoughts had kept returning to what had happened. In particular, he kept asking himself, What’s Gramps going to think when they’ve pumped the medicine out of his stomach? Will he be grateful? Will he praise Matt for being ‘just in time’?
His mother took him by surprise and hugged him as he stood back to let her in. He stood awkwardly until she let go. He still hadn’t got things straight in his mind, but he was still angry with her for trying to keep him in the dark – she had only admitted what was happening when there had been no alternative. He wasn’t going to forget that in a hurry.
~
A short time later, he shut the box room door behind him and leaned with his back against it. He was shaking again, still reacting to the events of the evening – the shock, the fear, the anger.
He stripped, and pulled on some pyjama trousers. Then he turned off the light and slipped under the striped cotton sheets, the camp bed’s springs groaning beneath him.
He lay for some time with his hands behind his head.
He didn’t want to sleep. He wasn’t even remotely tired.
He remembered the letter. The suicide note. Was it right to read it, now that Gramps’ suicide had been prevented?
He sighed. He knew that no matter how much he reasoned with himself, his curiosity was certain to win in the end.
He got up again, turned on the light, found the letter in one of the back pockets of his jeans. He climbed back into bed and slid a finger along under the flap.
August 10
My dear Matthew,
I will be dead when you read this. Please do not blame me for taking this option: it is not without some deliberation that I decided to end things now. I have gone to the same place as your grandmother, wherever that might be. Life has not been endurable since she was killed.
Matt paused at this point, puzzled at his grandfather’s choice of words: ‘since she was killed’ not ‘since she died’ or ‘since she passed away’. What had happened on that day in the house at Crooked Elms, he wondered?
He returned to the letter:
However, I am not writing to justify my own cowardly actions. This is the last letter I will write; I have already made my excuses in my letters to Carol and Jill.
I am writing to you, especially, Matt. The others are more familiar with the ways of our strange family, but you have grown up apart: what you are experiencing, and what you are to learn, will transform your life. I think you are mature enough to cope. Indeed, I hope that you are, for you must either learn properly now or by accident at some later date.
To the point, I hear you demanding, quite rightly! To the point.
You are gifted, Matt, just as many in our family have been gifted over the years. But with that gift comes a heavy responsibility, one that I have struggled to bear for my own 88 years.
I will explain the responsibility, and the dangers, but first I must explain the gift.
There is a peculiar, and special talent that runs through our family, inherited by roughly half of each generation: Kirsty and you have it, but not, I think, Tina – much to her chagrin! Neither Carol nor Jill have shown any indication of the gift, either.
At this point, Vince’s words about the family madness, the special sensitivity, came rushing back: the family curse that only Vince and Mike, not being direct descendants in the Wareden line, could be sure of avoiding.
Have you ever felt the urge to do something you shouldn’t? Something you’re too frightened even to think about? Everybody has these impulses, but most of us are able to keep them under control. Battling inside our heads is a whole set of alternative selves – the people we might have been, if only things had turned out differently.
But it’s not as simple as that. The realm of the mind is every bit as real as what we call reality. Carl Jung was close to the mark when he talked of the collective unconscious. That shared mental realm is another world: a kind of hell, if you will. Its darker reaches surface in our dreams, and in the minds of the unstable.
Rare individuals among us are especially sensitive to this other realm, this Alternity. Such sensitivity runs in families, as it does in the Waredens. You have a connection with this other world, Matt: your mind forms a mental bridge. Many of our greatest leaders have shared this gift: indeed, I have studied the scriptures, and I believe that Jesus himself shared it.
But, as is so often the case, such gifts bring with them great dangers and responsibilities. I have told you about the special individuals, who can form a mental connection with what I have called ‘Alternity’.
There are also special places. These places are where the two realms come close together, where Reality and Alternity brush up against one another. These places, or ‘Ways’ as I call them, are the foci of great power. Often, churches and palaces have been built at or near to these places, as new religions unconsciously tap into the power of the ancient.
One such Way exists at Crooked Elms: no doubt that is why the church was built so close to the Waredens’ family house. That is how I know you are gifted, Matt: I sent you into the basement to test you, and you suffered – you know you suffered.
This is because of your mental affinity with Alternity. At a Way, that affinity becomes physical: that mental bridge becomes real. In your head, you carry the key that links Reality and Alternity – a key you must guard. Your talent must be mastered, for the realm of Alternity must never be allowed to spill into the real world: the very fabric of our existence would be destroyed.
Such a tragedy nearly happened a century ago, and again when I was a young man.
It is something that must always be guarded against, and this is where we come to the responsibility to which I referred. The Way is weak, unstable; all kinds of people are drawn to the powers that emanate from these places. Alternity reaches out into their minds and pulls them in. The weak-minded think they can use the powers of Alternity, but in truth it uses them, trying to break through into our world. The Way is a weak spot and it must be defended by those who understand. It must be kept shut.
The name Wareden comes from the Old English ‘Weardian’. It means guardian, or protector, and that is our role. We are sensitive and we are strong enough to keep the Way closed against those who would open it and let the powers of Alternity loose. Long ago, we were drawn to this Way and now we are bound to it. We are its protectors. This has been our role for generations, and, please, God, I hope it always will be.
My dear Matt, I hope you will be able to forgive me: both for my cowardly exit from this place, and for those gifts you have inherited from my line. Be strong, Matt. You have to be.
I am tired now. So very tired.
With love,
Gramps.
Matt lay back, his head spinning. He could see why Gramps had chosen to write all this down. Spoken aloud, the words would have appeared little more than the ramblings of a demented old man. Spoken aloud, they would have been distorted, misheard, remembered incorrectly.
He stared at the neat writing. It was either totally mad, or totally sane. It went against all he had ever understood of the world. He felt as if he was being smothered: everything piling in on top of him, until it was hard to breathe.
He recalled the strange enclosure in the Crooked Elms churchyard: six families, slaughtered in what the vicar had called “a night of quite horrific violence”. Matt looked at the letter again: “such a tragedy nearly happened a century ago...”
Nearly? If over twenty
deaths in a single night was “nearly”, what would happen if this Alternity was ever let loose for real, he wondered?
He thought of the few times he had visited Crooked Elms. As a child he had never been comfortable there: haunted by vivid, frightening dreams, calmed by Gramps’ old stories and poems. He remembered going into the basement – only yesterday! it seemed so long ago – for Gramps’ box of books. He remembered the feeling that his feet were stuck in concrete, that he couldn’t move.
The letter explained it all.
But as he thought about it, and read the letter again and again, he started to question that. How could such a strange phenomenon be explained by a mere letter? It raised so many questions, so many doubts... So many fears.
He struggled to stay awake, suddenly scared of his recurring nightmare. Was he dreaming of Alternity? Was the dream a sign of his ‘mental bridge’?
But eventually there was no resisting it, eventually he slept. And dreamt.
9 Kirsty
He’s out running, getting fit for the start of the new football season. Running along Bay Road, heading towards the war memorial and the sea. The sky is a heavy grey, clouds bulging downwards as if they are about to burst at any second.
There’s a metallic grey Volvo up ahead, slowing down, pulling up.
He can see the driver: tall, dark-haired, stooped over the wheel. Leaning over to one side, then straightening with a mobile phone held to his ear.
Matt raises a hand, tries to call, “Dad!” but he can’t, because suddenly his throat is too tight, too dry. As he approaches the car, the driver replaces the phone and glances into his mirror. His look meets Matt’s, then moves on. The car pulls out into the road again, and starts to accelerate.
Matt tries to run harder, but his feet are getting heavier, heavier. The pavement has turned to wet concrete and his feet are sticking, collecting concrete with every step. Getting heavier.
