The Wanderer

by Timothy J. Jarvis

  Possibly these were left there to intimidate me, though I think it more likely it was mere chance the spot had been chosen to shelter from the storm and have a smoke; I doubt, otherwise, I’d have been let escape. Afraid, I packed my few things and set out, pushing my cart before me, walking east. I chose the heading pretty much on a whim; the rising sun seemed to betoken sanctuary is all.

  (Reader, you may be wondering why I, whose life hangs heavy about my neck (in truth, I’m unsure the condition that’s my lot should be termed life: my state’s nebulous, liminal, like that of the fabled undead), fled the beast who means to kill me. Well, though I’d gratefully yield to almost any death, I want to put off the remorseless torture of a death at his hands as long as I can, and won’t stop running, even if it means toting my burden further.)

  It was full day by the time I’d left the city’s outerlying regions behind. Cresting a rise I came upon the Thames meandering sedately through meadowland studded with poppies and buttercups and decided to follow its course.

  As evening came on, sore weary, feet blistered, I realized, from the broadening of the channel and the salt tang in the air, I’d come to the sea reach. A vast tenebrous mass loomed out of the mist and the dusk on the other side of the river. It was a hulk, this battered vessel on whose deck I now sit, writing. I was shocked by its size; it was far too large a vessel for these waters. Drawing closer, I saw, stencilled on its transom, in paint somehow hardy enough to have survived the weathering of millennia, and still a deep red, ‘Ark’. Why this name was written in Latin characters, though it would have been chosen, I think, after that script was dead, who chose it, and whether or not they knew the significance of their choice, I’ve no idea. Whatever, it seemed auspicious; I felt it a sign this was the place to await the coming end of things.

  So I decided to swim across the broad estuary and assess whether the wreck would make a fit dwelling place. At first I worried about getting my things across, but then found, luckily, that, even laden, my barrow floated.

  The crossing further exhausted me, and, on reaching the far bank, I had to rest a while to get my strength back. Then, looking for a way to gain the Ark’s deck, I made a circuit. I came across no sign of how the vessel came to its pass: whether, caught in rough seas, its crew sought shelter in the calmer river mouth, without a pilot aboard who knew the shallows; or, for some reason, was purposefully sunk, at a time when the area was all underwater (from time to time, when the Earth’s balance has been clouted awry by folk’s ransack, the sea levels have risen cataclysmically; this has happened again and again, for, though memories of such floods have been held in the minds of descendants of survivors, they’ve always been shifted into myth (as I’ve mentioned, I’m sure all legends are buried folk memories of such turmoils), recalled as the vengeance of wrathful gods, not the result of overweening greed). Whatever, the anchor had been dropped before wreck or scuttling; half sunk in sludge, a little aft of the ship, it looked the skull of one of the massive beasts that walked abroad during the Earth’s infancy (and haven’t, for some reason, again). I clambered up its massy chain. Moss grew in the hollows of the links, making climbing treacherous, and several times I nearly slipped and fell; I’d not have taken the risk as a mortal.

  Reaching the hawsehole, I stretched up, seized the gunwale, hauled myself on board. I slumped down, sat leaning against the bulwarks, looked about. Scavengers (perhaps aided by the elements) had stripped the aft-deck; it was marked with brownish-red mottles, rust stains about the corroded stubs of bolts that once secured fittings; the only things that remained were a few metal containers for the stowage of freight, scattered haphazard. I went to each in turn. The doors had been forced; they were empty, save webs swagged in corners, and, underfoot, the muddled bones of small creatures, that, seen but dimly in the halflight, looked dainty ploughs, harrows, scythes, sickles, and flails, the tools of faerie tillers, reapers, and threshers.

  There was a cabin of riveted steel plate amidships. I crossed to it. It had windows fore and aft, but, salt-rimed, grimy, they could no longer be seen through. Trying the door and finding it unlocked, I went inside, prodded the gloom with my torch. In one corner was what looked a clumped heap of polished nautili shells, a machine of some kind, probably the helm controls. It had been set about; a wreck made of its nacred whorls.

  Back outside, I explored the foredeck. It had also been plundered; the only features that remained were a winch and a hatch cover. This latter, I surmised, gave access to the companionway. I examined it closely. The seal was filth crusted. In the centre was a keypad, keys marked with strange sigils. I pressed a few at random. Nothing happened. I tried a few more combinations, then gave up. I doubted the ancient mechanism still worked, but, even if it did, it would probably take an age to find the correct combination. Besides, the air below decks was almost certainly fetid and unwholesome, and the wheelhouse was a good-enough hiding place.

  Then I crossed to the winch. Turning the handle on an idle whim, I found it extended a primitive gangway from just below the level of the deck on the landward side of the ship; a mechanical backup, I supposed. I kept cranking till the ramp’s far end settled on the estuary mud.

  After fetching the barrow, I set about cleaning the cabin, making it habitable.

  While writing the foregoing account, I saw the sun set and rise ten times; composition took much longer than I thought it would, for early on the day after my wounding, the portended storm broke. Its violence kept the tribeswoman and me to the cabin for two days. A welter of thunderheads choked the sky, the wind raged, the rain welted down. The waters of the estuary were roiled and knouted. The wheelhouse was battered; I feared the wind might blow in the windows. We had, laid in, provisions enough to ward against hunger, but, still, it was a fretful time; the storms at the end of days are brutal, and the whole time I fear it’s the last, the final cataclysm. So, though I was able to do a bit of writing, I could not fully concentrate: it was too noisy, and I, too anxious.

  At noon, on the third day, calm came. I went out on deck, stood at the taffrail looking out over the river. The Thames was turbid, swollen. Green wood, stout fallen branches, even trees felled entire, and bloated carrion, rats, boars, sheep, cats, and dogs, drifted by. After a while, I saw the body of a child, a little boy, amid the flotsam; he floated past, so close I could see the sulky look on his face. I abandoned my watch then.

  Since the storm abated, it’s remained still. A light drizzle has persisted, though, and, so I might have somewhere to work while the tribeswoman sleeps, I spent the best part of a morning building a lean-to shelter, of driftwood with a thatched roof of rushes, beside the cabin.

  It’s now time to tell of the events of the afternoon my forehead was laid open. After lunch that day, I left the Ark, went hunting, spent a while stalking a herd of the reddish, hairy swine that forage round about, but the mugginess sapped me, I wasn’t quick enough, a kill eluded me. Returning to the boat, weary, filthy, dishevelled, I heard a scream, broke into a run. I flew through a brake of bulrushes, brittle stems slashing at my face, reached the edge of the flats, and saw, at the Ark’s taffrail, the tribeswoman, looking down, agape, at a pack on the mud, some of her old tribe, hostile, armed with slings, cudgels, and large knives, brandished blades’ burnish blazing. As I watched, the tribeswoman snatched up several branches from a pile of firewood I’d collected, hurled them, one by one, at the natives. Cringing from these missiles, they took cover behind two steel lobes that jutted from the ooze like a sounding leviathan’s flukes from the brine, blades of the Ark’s massive propeller. They launched stones at the young woman with their slings, but she was far above, and their shots went awry, some striking the plate-steel bluff of the ship’s transom, sounding cracked knells. Then the tribeswoman, having strewed the pile of firewood, had to crouch, scrabble on the deck for sticks of the right heft, and a burly man ran out from behind the propeller blades, neared the ship, threw up a rope and grapnel, tried to hook the bulwarks. Sighting this, I saw the
tribeswoman had had the foresight to winch in the gangway at the posse’s approach.

  Wielding my flimsy spear, I charged. Several stones were slung at me as I ran, one hitting me in the chest, cracking a rib, but though I bellowed, I didn’t slow, and the tribespeople scattered as I closed. Then, realizing the weapon I was armed with was a pitiful improvisation, they crowded, set upon me. I tried to block, but a blow shattered the haft of my spear, and I was clubbed to the ground. My assailants backed away a few paces. Lying in the mud, too weak to stand, I groped in the silt, laid hold of my knife, my makeshift spearhead, still lashed to a short section of splintered pole. Then a tribeswomen approached me, knife held over her head. Her air of authority, and the rich purple cotton shift she wore, which stood out from the plain linen robes of the others, marked her out as a leader of some kind. She hacked at me, her blade struck my brow, a fierce blow, and though the edge was dull, I felt it bite bone. Up above, the tribeswoman wailed, her shriek echoed by the cry of a seagull circling overhead, perhaps the same bird I’d seen that morning. The richly arrayed tribeswoman raised her face to the sky, crowed. Slashing blind – blood poured into my eyes – with my carver, I opened her belly. Her guts slithered forth, slopped over me. Keening low, she crumpled to her haunches, shook, then keeled over. I stabbed her in the heart to stop her mewling.

  Baring my teeth, I snarled, spat, and writhed on the ground. I was gore-and shit-slathered, tangled in loops of intestine. The natives ran wailing. I managed, crawling, to make it to the water’s edge, before passing out.

  When I came to, I dragged myself into the river, allowed the brackish water to wash over me, wash me. Then I groaned to my feet and stood tottering a moment, before staggering back towards the Ark, calling for the tribeswoman. It was a short while before she heard me and came, snivelling, chary, to the railing. Seeing me alive and the natives gone, she cried out in relief, extended the gangplank once more, ran down it, ran to me, flung her arms around me. Then, seeing the extent of my injuries, she backed away and, smiling, wan, took my hand, led me up the ramp, to the bed in the wheelhouse, gestured for me to lie down. I did, slept for hours.

  On waking, I found the woman had torn some rags into strips for bandages, left them on the deck by a pan of water simmering over a small fire. I stood up, a bit unsteady, to look about for her, saw her swimming in the river, a short way out from shore. As I watched, she pulled herself up onto a sandbank, and seeing she was naked, I craned, gawked – my carnality may be jaded, but I still have a cool eye for a nude. Water glistened on her skin, dazzled as a ray of sunlight thrust through the clouds. Then I saw her turning towards me and averted my gaze – I’d no wish to appear sleazy. My gaze fell on my typewriter. I saw it had been used while I slumbered; there was a sheaf of paper, fluttering in the breeze, held in its carriage. Crossing over, I saw my scrawled amendments to William’s tale had been typed up. I looked briefly over the transcribed sections, thought them faithful. I was puzzled, but too weary and in too much pain to ponder long, so sat down to tend to my wounds, to cleanse and swathe them.

  The tribespeople have not returned in the time it has taken me to narrate the forgoing accounts of my journey and the afternoon they attacked, perhaps daunted by my strange resistance, or simply deterred by the violent weather. I’m thankful for this: I’m still weak and would have had difficulty running them off. Other than work on this typescript, I’ve done little. On the morning of the second day after the storm had blown itself out I scented a foul stench; it was the corpse of the tribeswoman I’d killed, begun to rot. The tribeswoman and I constructed a bier from driftwood, sent the body floating down the Thames, out to sea, on the ebb tide. After we’d conducted these mute obsequies, I saw, lying on the mud, a rope and grappling iron, left behind by the tribe in their flight. I picked them up, took them back on board the Ark.

  Today I’ve corrected the drafts of everything I’ve written since completing William’s tale, and passed them to the young woman. It seems she is able, and happy, to type up my changes. I’m glad to have discovered this aptitude of hers, she’ll act as my amanuensis, make my task easier, and, moreover, the work seems to please her, she hands me finished pages with a proud grin. She seems kind, good-natured, so it comes as no surprise she wishes to help, but that she is able to in this way puzzles me. All I can think is that she has some faint inborn memory of my tongue, that spoken, albeit a long, long time ago, by her forebears. However, I’ve since tried communicating with her, both verbally, and in writing, and it is clear she comprehends nothing, is able only to copy out the characters before her, I suppose the hereditary knowledge of English, watered with each successive generation, is weak in her.

  This morning there was another rain shower, but afterwards the rack broke up, and, for the first time in days, the sun shone. It’s now night. Occasionally, from overhead I hear a strangled screech; the gull has once more returned, looking up, from time to time, I glimpse a bird-shaped void wheeling in the star-spattered sky.

  I feel I should now press on with my account of the evening in the Nightingale pub; I’ve neglected that strand of my story too long.

  VI

  After unfolding the grisly end to his tale, which, though I’d seen it coming, as had most round the table, still shocked deeply, William broke down, and, shoulders hunched, head in hands, began to weep. The rest of us, harrowed, stupefied, sat gawping while he weathered his distress.

  When, at last, his tears spent, he lifted his head, he looked about the table, then put a cigarette in his mouth, went to light it. His hands shook badly, and he had to fight to hold the flame of his lighter still, but he got the tobacco smouldering in the end, pulled fiercely, and, leaving the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, wincing as smoke drifted into his eyes, smoked it to the filter, stubbed it. Then he was racked by coughs.

  ‘Never touched a cigarette before that night,’ he said, grimacing, once the fit had passed. ‘Now can’t do without them.’

  And he lit up another.

  Duncan, refilling his pipe, glanced up, mumbled something into his beard.

  Jane reached out, put her hand on William’s shoulder.

  ‘I’m so sorry. It must have been…’

  She trailed off, frowned, smiled sadly, shrugged.

  ‘Just dreadful, William,’ Elliot said. He shook his head.

  ‘Aye, right awful what happened,’ Duncan agreed, having got back his voice.

  Turning to me, William said, ‘I’m sorry about before. Nervous, not mocking laughter.’

  ‘I can see that now,’ I replied. ‘And I’m sorry I was so defensive.’

  He nodded. Then, with sudden savagery, crushed out his cigarette.

  ‘I truly loved her.’

  Sniffing, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

  Duncan then offered to buy another round. Only Jane, who’d moved to orange juice after her gin and tonic, declined. William in hollow frolic, suggested we get a drink for the empty chair, said the sixth person invited to the gathering had, in truth, turned up, was sat there, but had been turned to a wraith by what they’d gone through, was invisible, incorporeal.

  ‘Look,’ he said, gesturing at air. ‘They’re trying to attract our attention. Definitely thirsty!’

  There was a smattering of chuckles from all but Rashmi, who, narrowing her eyes, seemed about to say something, only choking it when Jane glared sharply.

  I went up to the bar with Duncan to help carry the drinks. It seemed he was, perhaps due to his accent, misheard, for he ended up with an additional lager. Weird, given William’s jest. Duncan queried it with the publican, who apologised, said we could have the extra drink, no charge, rather than he chuck it away.

  After taking his change, Duncan deftly picked up three pint glasses in his one hand. I’m ashamed to own I looked at him, stunned. He saw, grinned.

  ‘Takes a bit of practice, but it’s not really that tricky. I won’t be useless.’

  I stammered an apology.

&n
bsp; ‘Nae bother,’ he said, grinning.

  Then he flinched.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing. A twinge, that’s all. The arm I lost.’

  I looked at him, scratched the stubble on my chin. Guessing what I’d been on the brink of asking, he nodded.

  ‘You’ll find out what happened, soon enough.’

  He smiled, went back to our table. Scooping up the remaining glasses with both hands, I followed him over.

  We handed out the drinks, setting the spare pint down before the empty seat. William frowned at me, and I explained the landlord’s mistake. He paled.

  ‘Uncanny…’

  ‘These things happen,’ I said, making light.

  ‘They do,’ he said, pointedly.

  ‘Dead creepy,’ Rashmi put in.

  I felt bad, felt I should have left the pint, that it should have occurred to me it would upset William. So, hoping to dispel the disquiet, I attempted a witticism.

  ‘I’m not sure lager’s the first pick of drink for a wraith, but tough, boggarts can’t be choosers.’

  There were groans, not laughs, but the mood did turn less fraught.

  Rashmi then asked William about the investigation into his girlfriend’s death, how he’d avoided blame, why he wasn’t wasting in jail.

  ‘There was no investigation,’ he said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘There was no death,’ William replied. ‘At least, not till later.’

  We all peered at him. He described how he’d returned to his flat, in a daze, after the horrors of the night on the Heath, having left the beheaded corpse where it lay, to find Catherine waiting up for him, worried. While he fought to quell the shock of seeing her living, she stared, anxious, at his, stinking, gore-and ichor-smirched shirt. He’d been set on by a gang of youths on his way home, he lied. He’d not been badly hurt, the blood wasn’t his, he’d hit one of the thugs in the face with a wildly flailing elbow, started a nosebleed, they’d thrown him to the ground, pissed on him.