Blackthorn

by Terry Tyler

  Vic says, "Not as good as the first shag."

  Ryder laughs at that along with everyone else. He doesn't seem nervous or shocked now; he's relaxed. The old Ryder. He pushes his drink away, like he doesn't need it any more, and says, "Have you ever had a reunion with a great friend who you thought you'd never see again? It's the best thing ever, isn't it? Standing in that clearing―it was better than a warm bed and a fire when you've been walking in the cold and dark for hours―"

  "Okay, we've got the picture," says Darius. "You was happy-clappy and away with the fucking fairies." Vic and Lake snigger. "Are you sure you hadn't come across someone's old stash of Joy?"

  Ryder smiles at him, kindly, like he doesn't feel a twat for being cut short. "No. It was real. Every bit of it."

  "So how come?"

  "That's what I'm getting to." He pauses. "After a while, I realised I wasn't alone."

  "Eh? Who else was there, then? A naked bird with huge bazookas and a magic wand?"

  "Much better than that." He reaches for the drink again. "Seriously, you're going to think I've totally lost it. But I haven't. At first I thought it was him." He points upwards. "The one they used to call God, but―well, it kind of was, but it also wasn't―"

  "You fucking what?" Darius throws back his head and laughs; others join in, but Ryder doesn't seem to mind. He just waits for them to stop.

  "I get why you're laughing. I would, too, if someone told me this. But it's the truth. He was there, in that clearing, with me."

  It's like everyone gasps at once. Yeah, some are taking the piss, but most are gazing at him, like, in wonder. 'Cause he's our Ryder. Our lucky star, who makes everything right. Laurel's got her daft gob hanging open. One of Mum's friends has a tear rolling down her cheek. A couple of people have their hands clutched to their chests.

  Not the loggers, though.

  Darius folds his arms across his chest. "You're shitting me."

  Vic says, "You must think we're a bit simple, mate."

  "I'm not, and I don't. I swear. This person―no, this being, he was with me, like he was part of the sunlight―I could hardly see him, he was so bright, but he had the shape and presence of a man."

  Vic laughs. "So what did he look like? White hair an' a long white dress?"

  "No." He shuts his eyes tight. "I don't know. That's what was so strange."

  "Sure you hadn't been on the 'shrooms? There's loads of 'em out the west side this time o' year!"

  Ryder smiles. "It's okay. I get it. I know how mad this sounds, and, yeah, I knew some of you wouldn't believe me, and I know if someone walked in here with this story, I'd be pretty damn sceptical, too." His face goes dead serious again. "But it's not a story. It's true."

  Silence.

  I break it. "What happened? When you saw him?"

  "I staggered back. I was scared. Thought I was going out of my mind. It's hard to remember everything, exactly, but I'll do my best." He shuts his eyes. "He reached out and touched my shoulder, and he said, 'Are you happy here, Ryder?' And I said that I was―I thought I wouldn't be able to speak because I was so overcome, but when I opened my mouth it was easy, everything I felt just tumbled out, and when I'd finished, he said, 'You are in my world. The one of which humanity has lost sight.' I asked him who he was, and he said, 'I am the Light. I am the way out of the darkness'."

  Even Darius and Vic are quiet now.

  He stops for a moment, and frowns. "Then that perfect happiness―it just evaporated. I was still standing in that beautiful clearing, with the sun shining through the trees, but the feeling of absolute peace was gone, and I knew I had lost something so precious―and all I could think about was how to get it back. I needed to know, but I wasn't scared this time. I felt respectful towards him, but I wasn't afraid. I felt safe. So I asked him. If he was God."

  I hear myself gasp this time, along with everyone else.

  "I could feel him smile, rather than see it, like the smile was flooding through me, and it was wonderful―but he said the word 'god' was not relevant to this new era of life on earth." He stops. "Let me think. I'm trying to remember what he said, because it's so important."

  Everyone waits; no one moves.

  When he speaks again, his eyes are shut.

  "He said, 'I am the Light that must enter this world, the hope that was lost during the 20th and 21st centuries, the most terrible of all times, when man used his knowledge and strength to destroy instead of nurture, and did his best to lay waste the whole of this precious earth. When greed triumphed over care for humanity. When actions taken in the name of good were motivated by the Dark. But I am here now, to show you the way back'."

  His eyes spring open. "What I just said. I didn't know I could remember his words. But that―that was exactly what he said to me. Word for word." He touches his throat. "Fuck."

  "So is he the old god or isn't he?" asks Jay. "Does he want us to read the Bible and start saying prayers again?"

  "I don't think so; the Bible was written by men, after all, years after the person called Jesus was supposed to have lived." Ryder looks around. "He said that the joy I'd experienced in that brief moment was what we used to call 'heaven', though other races and creeds had different names for it. He showed me what could still be, and promised that it's not too late, because we can find it right here on earth if we turn to him―and when our bodies are old and worn out, we can live in that place with him, forever."

  Laurel is standing close to him; he takes her hand, and smiles at us all.

  "I felt it. For a moment, maybe no more than fifteen seconds, standing in that clearing, I knew what it was to be there."

  I hear mutters behind me. "I still say it was 'shrooms." Vic. "That, or he's lying his socks off."

  Jay twizzles round, giving him a right old Stinky Bottom glare. "Why would he lie? What would he get out of it?"

  Vic shrugs. "I dunno. Attention. Admiration. Like, making out he's summat special."

  "He is, though." It's Star; she steps forward, and reaches out to touch him. "He's always been special. Perhaps the Light knows this."

  Everyone falls silent; some nod, but Ryder holds out his other hand to take hers.

  "I'm not, Star. I'm just some guy. I'm your friend and you're mine, and to me you are someone special, too, as is everyone who has made me so welcome here, but―"

  He looks at me, at Dad, and then at Darius. "I wonder if the Light showed himself to me simply because I'm an ordinary guy; it could have been any one of us."

  "Yeah, but it weren't, though, was it?" says Vic. "So, what we gotta do, then? Start worshipping this Light geezer, and then we'll get to your magic clearing when we snuff it?"

  His mates chuckle; Ryder waits for them to stop, then he clears his throat, and says, "He wants me to lead you to him. All of you. Not physically, but by the way in which we live."

  The loggers piss themselves laughing, and Vic shouts out, "What, you going to start preaching at us? Fuck that!"

  Ryder shrugs. "I don't know."

  "What do you mean, you don't know?"

  "I don't know how I'm to do it." Ryder drops Star and Laurel's hands and holds his out, like he's asking for our help. "Maybe it will come to me. Maybe he'll show me the way. I just don't know."

  "So you got the job, but you didn't get no training?" asked Darius, which amuses a lot of people, even Ryder.

  "No, but he showed me the alternative." He stands up, leaning against the bar. "The other way."

  "Eh?"

  "He showed me the other place. What will happen to us if humanity carries on down the path we've been on for the past two hundred years."

  Darius grins, but a bit, like, nervously. "What, Hell?"

  Ryder nods. "Kind of. He called it Despair."

  I feel a shiver run down my back.

  He looks down, and bites his lip. "Those of you who think I'm making this up will probably walk out when I tell you what happened next, but I'm going to, anyway. He told me to look down to my left. Down at the g
round. So I did, and it was so fucking weird, a bit like a dream, except it wasn't, it felt as real as I'm standing here―the ground had fallen away, and I was on a hill, looking down into one of the old world towns. It was black, grey, colourless―you've seen what they're like. He told me to keep looking, so I did, and after a while I saw movement. People. At first I thought they'd just been camouflaged by the scenery, but they seemed to be breaking loose from the buildings, like they were a part of them. Part of the ruins. As they came into my line of vision, I could see that they were starving. Filthy. Diseased, in rags, with sores and growths on their faces." He shudders. "It was horrendous, but he wouldn't let me look away. Those poor people, they were angry, in pain, using their paltry reserves of energy to shout at each other, hit out, attack. I could feel their misery, their resentment, jealousy, loss, heartbreak, loneliness; I knew they hadn't known a moment of peace. And the Light said to me, 'This represents all that man can become, if he continues to serve only himself. Live with me in your heart, and when you leave this earth you will dwell in my land, not that which belongs to the Dark. For this is Despair'."

  Bloody hell. That makes me shudder, big time.

  "Oh, give it a fucking rest," says Vic. "You've been reading too many horror stories, mate."

  People turn round and tell him to shush up.

  "What was his voice like?" whispers Laurel.

  Ryder stares at her as though he's not sure how to answer the question. "That was the funny thing. I could hear him, but it wasn't like you standing in front of me talking. It was more like I was aware of his presence, and his voice was flowing into my head."

  "And there we have it," says Vic. "That's exactly what happened to me last time I was on the 'shrooms―I could've sworn I heard my old ma calling me to come in for my tea!"

  I think Ryder likes how this lightens things up, 'cause all that other stuff was getting pretty heavy, and he smiles. "Vic, I was on patrol; I hadn't had so much as a beer for two days! It was like a dream, but in other ways I've never felt anything so real. I wasn't scared. It felt right, all of it. As if being with him―the Light―was where I should be, and where I should always have been."

  This is so weird. Shit, I don't know. Ryder wouldn't lie, though. That's the thing. Ryder wouldn't lie to us.

  "So what do we do?" asks Vic. "How do we make sure we don't end up in the fighty place with a load of them warty folk for next door neighbours?"

  Ryder gives us that helpless look again. "All he said was that he would show me. And that was that."

  "What, he disappeared?"

  "Yes. And I found myself back in the woodland, alone."

  "You mean you woke up. From y'dream."

  "It wasn't. I didn't―"

  "Prove it."

  Ryder runs his hands through his hair. "I can't. And I knew some wouldn't believe me and others would mock. All I can do is tell you that this is what happened. That the Light wants us to follow him, or our whole world will end up like that wasteland. Like Despair."

  Darius says, "Yeah, but the old religions, they were all about the same thing, weren't they? Follow me, they said, and you'll be in clover, but they couldn't stop everyone dying from that bat fever. And they promised all the good shit after death, 'n' all, as long as you did what they said."

  "That’s right," says Vic. "Ain't no different."

  Darius sees that he's got the floor now. "You want to enjoy being alive, don't you? Not give up all your fun for the promise of eternal happiness when you're dead, which is probably a bloody fairy tale anyway. You'd be a bit bloody pissed off if you gave up drinking, shagging, fighting and owt else you like doing, then you died and discovered it was all bollocks."

  He's got a point; lots of people are nodding.

  Ryder, too.

  "Darius, that's pretty much what I said to him. But the Light―he said joy can be ours now, if we let him in. That it's here, for all of us, if we live with peace and love, in this life, right now."

  "Works for me," says Mum's friend, Iris. "It'd be better than all this angst all the time, wouldn't it?"

  Ryder nods. "It would. Look, religions were always built on faith alone. I know what happened to me today. You can say that I dreamt it, or that I'm lying, or you can believe that it really happened. Because it did. I don't know why he appeared to me, and not you, or Vic, or Laurel, or anyone else. Perhaps he's appeared to others, in other places, now that the time is right. I just know what I saw. How I felt when he showed me what could be."

  Then he looks at me.

  Shit. I don't have owt to say.

  "Evie, we were only talking about it last Sunday, weren't we? About whether some other world really existed. I wasn't sure. Now I am. I know it's real; if it wasn't, what would be the point of us being here at all?"

  "Maybe there is no point." My dad speaks; everyone turns to look at him. "Maybe it just is."

  "That's what I used to think," says Ryder. "I wondered if I was looking for something that doesn't exist. I know differently now."

  Then Star steps up. "I've got something to say, if that's okay?" No one tries to stop her. "A few years ago I was talking to a traveller who'd worked as a guard at Central. When she was there she read this booklet written by one of the first Fall survivors, who thought that old god actually let the plague happen because of what Ryder's Light said―that in the hundred years before the Fall our greed destroyed everything the earth could have been. You know some people thought that bat fever was made by humans? Well, maybe the old god was happy for us to destroy ourselves so we could start again, and this time get it right."

  Now there's an idea. I like that. A hum of conversation starts up.

  I look back at Ryder, who seems to have to caved in, like he's exhausted. He slides off the stool; he looks kind of shaky.

  "You okay, bro?" Jay asks.

  "Yes―I am, yes, thanks. I need to lie down, I think."

  "Yeah, well, don't forget you're back on guard tonight," calls out Darius. "That's if you're not too tied up on heavenly business!"

  Ryder smiles, like he's not offended, or angry. Star and Joe walk out with him; when he's gone, the place is buzzing.

  Laurel nudges me. "Do you believe him?"

  I can tell by her shining eyes that she does. I want to, but no way am I getting daft and emotional like some of them, and talking about letting the Light into my life.

  Dad comes over and puts his arm around my shoulders. "Let's just see how this plays out, shall we?" He nods over at Mum, who is clutching Iris's hands and talking about seeing Morning again, in the Light's world.

  I thought she was meant to be in her tree. That's what confuses me.

  Ryder is quiet for the next couple of days; Star says that when she's tried to talk to him, he just says he's got 'a lot to process'.

  "I think he's waiting for a sign," she tells Mum and me, in a hushed voice.

  We see Chase in the Beer Hut the night after the Big Sunday; he was on lookout with Ryder later that night, and says he hardly spoke for the whole shift.

  The next morning I'm on my way to the showers when I see him walking back. There are lots of people around, 'cause it's the time of the morning when everyone is showering, fetching water, visiting the crapper, etc. Normally everyone rushes up to Ryder to say hi, but today they just nod and smile, and carry on looking at him after he's walked on. It's like he's got a glow around him. More than usual, I mean.

  Tonight me and Laurel are sitting in our shack, not doing much; we've made a stew that was mostly old potatoes, washed our pans and plates, played cards, and we're wondering if we can be bothered to go up to the log store to get some more wood for the stove, or if we should just go to bed―we're both dead tired―when there's a knock on the door. An urgent one―bang, bang, bang.

  It's Jay, leaning over with his hands on his thighs, out of breath.

  "Someone's gotta get Ryder―he's at Clem's―she told me to get some of his friends."

  "What?" Must be something bad if she'
s sent for help―anything can and does go down in Clem's. But Ryder's not one to cause trouble. I'm already grabbing my jumper and shoving my boots on. "Has someone attacked him?"

  "No, but he's seriously drunk. He's thrown up outside but he carried on drinking and he's falling all over the place―Clem reckons he might have got alcohol poisoning, and you can die from that, can't you? 'Specially if you're not used to our shine, but she don't want to get the doctor 'cause she knows that stuff she's been brewing lately is stronger than she's supposed to make it."

  "Fuck." I don't want to bother Dad. "C'mon, Laurel."

  She doesn't even grumble; she normally whinges like a crotchety kid if you stop her getting her precious sleep.

  It's a cloudy night so there's no moon, and it's pitch dark apart from the little glow from the waylights that stand every six shacks; we hurry down the paved paths, crossing over the narrow road that separates Logside from Midshacks. The paving peters out as we get nearer Stinky Bottom; in a dry summer it's a dusty dirt track, but it rained for about two hours earlier, enough to make our boots muddy again.

  "Sod this," says Laurel. "Let's go round the outside." There's paving right round the whole of Shackers' End, but I say no. There's no time, not if Ryder's ill. I'm pissed off at Clem, too, for worrying more about getting shit off Lieutenant Ward than about our friend dying from alcohol poisoning.

  We smell Stinky Bottom before we get to it; a narrow mud road separates it from Midshacks, with a fence, which we climb over. Maybe I just think I can smell it, 'cause I know we're here. Or 'cause some of the worst stinkers don't bother to walk to the latrines, and just piss outside their shacks. One or two of them down the far end crap in buckets, and leave them outside their houses till the morning, then just chuck them over the wall into the waste ditch. Filthy bastards. The guards are supposed to stop them doing this, but they don't want to get near enough to sort it out; can't say I blame them.