A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better

by Benjamin Wood

  This is where I tell you something I have never let escape my mind before. There aren’t many people who have heard my explanation of what happened at the farm that day: five or six police officers, three social workers, ten different psychiatrists, a close friend and a partner I’ve kept near enough to broach my past with. They’ve all asked me the same question: Did I ever think that he was going to kill me there, too? I’ve grown used to saying no. I’ve always said that if he’d planned to do me harm, he would’ve done it earlier, in the lay-by where he ended Chloe. But I think I’ve only remained steadfast to this answer for so long because the police inspector seemed so satisfied when I uttered it the first time. There’s never a good reason to expose more avenues of your mind to scrutiny than necessary.

  But if you want the truth, I thought that he was going to kill me in that hay barn. I had a premonition of it. When he said, ‘See that big conveyor belt on wheels? You’re going to switch that on for me,’ I saw that old hay elevator and thought it was my doom. I imagined he was going to send me up the slatted chute of it until I dropped and hit the concrete twenty feet below, then make me do it again and again until I couldn’t get up any more. That a well-raised boy could conceive of such a thing at such an age is what has kept me from admitting it all these years. I hope you will appreciate exactly what I mean. Where does a forecast of violence like this come from if it isn’t from some natural capacity I have within me to envision it, something intrinsic to my make-up? It’s important that you contemplate this, when the time comes.

  ‘Don’t look at me that way, you’ve got it easy,’ he said. ‘Used to have to start it like a lawnmower. Now there’s a proper motor on it.’ He instructed me to carry the dusty lariat of cable to the mains and turn it on. Nothing happened. ‘All right. Flick that green switch. And cover your ears.’

  Every night, the hum and clatter of that old machine invades my sleep. Have you ever stood beside a generator on a building site and felt the tremor of it in your eardrums, that deep protracted rumble? Have you waited at a platform and listened to the scrape of train wheels as they brake upon the rails? It is both those sounds at once, forever. I often hear it faintly clamouring throughout the night. Chugga chugga clank. As though someone is still working that machine ahead of me, just out of view. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. In the kitchen, my granddad’s head was hanging slack. There was a syrupy track of blood on the front of his jumper. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. ‘This is where you get off, Dan. I’ve things to sort out on my own.’ Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Fran Hardesty planted a strong hand upon my shoulder and steered me past the sink. ‘There’s a bucket in there you can use if you need. And plenty to eat on the shelves. There’s even a few cans of Coke—drink them all at once, why not? No one’ll know.’ I was guided to the open pantry. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. ‘Sit down there.’ He shunted me onto a box of tinned tomatoes. Removed the step-stool. ‘Back in a minute.’ A pull of the cord and the light clicked off. He shut the door. ‘Dad, where are you going?’ I said. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. ‘Where are you going?’ He clattered the key in the lock, and I heard the bright thump of it latching. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. I waited in the near-perfect dark.

  ‘You’ll be all right in there, lad . . . Keep your head down,’ my granddad called to me, slurring. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank.

  ‘What about you?’ I called back.

  Chugga chugga clank.

  ‘Don’t you worry about me . . . I’m not afraid of him . . . I’ve seen a lot worse.’

  Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. I shouted for him, but he didn’t answer. Then the blackness thickened as the key slid back inside the hole. The door creaked open. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. My father stood in the waning daylight with my holdall. He delivered it into my arms as though laying a wreath. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. ‘You can switch the light back on, you know,’ he said, simpering. ‘The cord’s right there, look.’ Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank.

  I held that bag like a friend. ‘I thought you were taking me home.’

  He stood there, nodding at the floor. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. ‘You’re better off here, son, believe me.’ This was his petition right to the end: believe me, believe me, believe me, believe me. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. He sniffed. ‘I wish I had more for you, Dan. I never meant all this to happen.’ Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. And he stepped away, locking me in. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Through the hairline gap under the door, I watched the conformation of his feet dissolve to nothing. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. ‘I was born in this kitchen.’ Chugga chugga clank. ‘You think I don’t know that?’ Chugga chugga clank. ‘Just something that crossed my mind.’ Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. ‘Do it, then, if you’re going to.’ Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. ‘What are you waiting for? Finish us off. Pretend I’m a dog, if it helps you.’ Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. ‘Not as easy as you reckoned, uh? Typical.’ ‘Shut up. I’m thinking, that’s all.’ Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. ‘What’s so funny?’ Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. ‘What the fuck—?’ Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. ‘I said, what the fuck are you laughing at?’ Chugga chugga clank. ‘Nothing. You’re just . . . Oh, I don’t know, Francis. It’s a bit late for thinking.’ Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. ‘You can’t even do this right, can you?’ Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. ‘Well, I tell you what. I’m done with thinking now. I’m done with listening as well.’ Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. ‘Thanks for nothing, Dad. Thanks for absolutely nothing.’ Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. ‘Open your mouth. I said open your mouth. Bite my fingers and I’ll make it ten times worse for you.’ Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank. Chugga chugga clank . . .

  The locals had become accustomed to the din of the old man’s elevator in the summer and were used to hearing backfire from his tractor’s engine now and then. My granddad also had a reputation for impatience when it came to foxes roving on his in-byes—he’d been known to shoot the air to scram them on occasion. In fact, sudden cracks of shotgun fire were not unusual in farming country, where lambs sometimes went lame with scald or foot-rot and needed to be euthanised humanely: most farmers in Wasdale Head preferred the firearm method to the stunbolt or injection, and kept guns mostly for that reason. So the shots that killed my granddad and QC raised no alarm. They might as well have been two rocks cascading on the fellside.

  If I was the only one who noticed them, it was because I had my ear pressed to the keyhole of the pantry door in expectation. When they came, they sounded far away—two brisk smacks without echoes, ten seconds apart, contained within the chugga chugga clank of the machine. I remember sinking to my knees after I heard them. A feeling of certainty coursed through me: he had done it. My guess was that he’d shot them both front on, through the forehead: first QC and then my granddad. This was as much as I could picture—the lead-up to the act. The fluttering strip lights, the thrust of the barrel in my father’s hands, the kiss of the steel against their pleated brows, his finger on the trigger, but nothing else, nothing that came ne
xt. Because I had no precedent by which to imagine such brutality. I had boys’ adventure novels. I had barely watched a film above a PG rating. I didn’t know the mess a shotgun makes of the human skull at close range, how it explodes the planes of bone into so many uneven pieces—particles so small they’d have to tweeze them out of hay bales at the opposite end of the barn. I didn’t know the blast was strong enough to send a man careering backwards in a chair five yards. Details like these would reach me afterwards, and cling.

  Of course, I looked for ways, but the pantry was not easily escaped. It was roughly five feet square, with shelves on three sides starting at the level of my nose, running up to meet the render and the farmhouse beams. Below them, wholesale goods: drums of cooking oil, crates of wine, enormous paper bags of dog kibble and potatoes, cartons of orange juice, giant plastic bottles of blackcurrant cordial and malt vinegar, packets of salt and sugar, rice, lentils, barley, pasta, a vat of lard, boxes of tinned fruit and vegetables, nets of red onions. Sundries from the kitchen packed the space: aluminium foil and baking sheets, a tray of cutlery, food mixers, Tupperware, unbranded breakfast cereals, jars of pickled cucumbers and mayonnaise and piccalilli, stacks of plates and dishes, bowls, vases, and baskets. I tried to smash the doorknob with a can of skinned tomatoes, thinking it might improve my chances with the lock, but the tin buckled and punctured, trailing juice all over me. I jammed a fish knife, then a skewer, then a dessert spoon handle into the doorjamb and jimmied them for so long they left my hands welted and calloused, and I succeeded in displacing the bolt inside the latch by not one centimetre.

  All attempts to reach the ceiling hatch were useless: my fingertips fell short of the panel by several feet, and when I tried to boost myself by standing on a shelf, it collapsed under my weight—I dropped and cracked my elbow on the tiles. (Later, in the hospital, a doctor would explain to me about the olecranon, the bony protrusion I had chipped, and it gave a brief distraction from the pain to hear him speak of it.) I spent what seemed like hours kicking at the door to see if I could weaken it, disturb it from its hinges, punch through the face of it, but made no progress. I resolved to keep on going but was too exhausted to continue. My frustration withered me. And it was when I leaned back against the crates and boxes to catch my breath that I realised the chugga chugga clank had finally stopped. There was no sound any more beyond the keyhole. I only heard the scratch of my own cheek against the wood, incidental noises from within my own body. He wasn’t coming back for me—I understood that much—but I didn’t know what he expected me to do. Wait to be discovered? Keep myself alive with canned produce and Coke? Pacify my quaking guts by defecating in a bucket—until when, exactly? It seemed as though the only option was to hunker down.

  When I turned the light off, there was unremitting darkness, not even a faint glow from the moon beneath the door. For the first time in my life, I felt entirely alone—it wasn’t just the kind of loneliness that I’d become attuned to as a boy, when Saturdays came around and I had no other prospects for companionship besides my mother and the sporty, rough-playing neighbourhood kids; this was a comprehensive separation from everyone and anything I loved. It was getting colder and colder in the room, and I was growing nauseated by my hunger. So I yanked the light back on, unzipped my holdall, rummaged for a sweatshirt and a cleaner pair of jeans. I pulled at the sleeve of something woollen, and Karen’s walkman dropped out with it. The headphones were still attached but anchored deep within the chaos of the bag. I found the box of tapes right at the bottom, all four cassettes inside, out of sequence. And while I ate my way through a whole pack of stale cornflakes, one dry handful at a time, and washed it down with orange juice, I realised that Maxine Laidlaw’s voice was my protection—she could help me through it. I tried to calculate how long the batteries would last, if I should ration my listening over time, or if I should listen in one clear stretch until they drained. The sugar satisfied my insides and upset them all at once. I would need the bucket soon. My elbow hurt. I didn’t like the silence, didn’t like the bright light or the dark, didn’t like the cold, didn’t want to think about my father, what he’d done, where he was going next. The tapes, the walkman, my World’s Best Aeroplanes Top Trumps, a camera without film, three books from the Joe Durango series, and a collection of six moulded plastic war figurines that I’d collected through subscription to a partwork magazine named Men of Glory—these were my connections to the world, the life I wanted to get back to. I decided I would listen to one section of the story and then stop, preserve the batteries. But as soon as the headphones were on and I pushed play, I felt that I was in the company of friends and didn’t want to leave them.

  [. . .] A carpet of wild garlic had grown over the conducer site since they had been there last. Cryck had axed a path through all the scrub and hawthorn in the night, but it seemed that not one flower had been trodden on the way between the outer edges of the forest to the clearing where he found her. She had been working there for twelve straight hours. ‘When you have the chance to leave a place like this,’ she had told him, heading out of camp, ‘what good is sleeping?’ After all this time, he still found it hard to tell when she was tired—exertion was not something that impaired her. The closest thing to weariness that he had seen in Cryck was the occasion he had made a bowl of what he thought was goade for her without first washing it; hours later, her guts had started rumbling and her skin had turned a milky shade. ‘I have a feeling,’ she had said, rubbing her belly, ‘that most of the goade you cooked was what your people call dog’s mercury—enough of that could kill a horse. I can see how you’d mistake it for a herb—brooklime, say—which at least has the advantage of being harmless, even if it’s foul to eat. But confusing it for goade? That’s an awful blunder. Sometimes, I think you aren’t a malagh after all.’

  The morning of departure she was standing at the face of the conducer with the slats of her old khav held to one eye. The sky was causing her great consternation. He assumed that she was simply calibrating to the exit frame position. But, as he got closer, she said gloomily: ‘Something’s wrong here, something’s out of sync. The paraxials are running evenly and all the readings are within the normal range, but I’m not getting any permanence from the quorhs. I think perhaps those last two aren’t as stable as I hoped. We might need more.’

  ‘Where from?’ They had already walked most of the country, or so it seemed to him. Though he would gladly walk as many miles with her as she required, he was starting to lose faith that she could engineer a way back to Aoxi through their salvages alone. If the materials they had left on Earth were not enough, then Cryck would be marooned. She would die in her compartment like a prisoner, and he would never get to see Aoxi, as she promised. How could he ever make his father understand his need to reach Aoxi without Cryck? There would be too much to explain. He would be better off living in the woods.

  ‘We might have to risk a boat and go further afield,’ Cryck said, sounding resigned. ‘But that would be a last resort. Too many people. Too much interference. Not to mention that I loathe your seawater. Your people even ruin oceans. Oceans!’ She passed him the khav and encouraged him to judge the status of the exit frame himself. ‘I can’t be sure how visible you’ll be among those crowds. Lately, I’ve been getting the impression your humanity is showing. It would slow me down. I have enough to fret about.’

  This worried him, too. He did not feel any more human than before, except he still had difficulty telling goade from brooklime and dog’s mercury. ‘I’m a malagh,’ he insisted. ‘You know I am.’

  ‘Yes, well, we might have to run another test before we even think of going to port. Just to make sure.’

  ‘And I’ll pass it,’ he said. ‘Easy.’

  ‘I hope so. Or I’ll have to leave you here.’

  ‘But then—’ He trapped the sun inside the viewfinder and drew down in an arc to find the perfect liminal, as she’d taught him: a cluster of fuzzy green hexagons. ‘How will I know if you’ve made it
home?’

  ‘I’d send you a message. Something only you would notice.’ She leaned on the conducer shell, examining the ground. ‘Not as clear as it was yesterday. The exit frame, I mean.’

  ‘It looks the same to me.’

  ‘Your eye is untrained.’ She took the khav and pushed it into her pocket. ‘Do you really think it’s holding, or are you just doing that thing you often do?’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘Ingratiating.’

  ‘No.’ He repeated what he thought: if everything she’d taught him was correct, the condition of her exit frame was sound.

  She looked happier after this. ‘I suppose there’s one more diagnostic process I could try,’ she said. ‘And perhaps if I replate the overedges of the ingots from scratch, we might get better yield—it’s been a good few weeks since I last coated them. But after that we’re out of options. You and I are back on salvage duty, little one. That frame won’t hold forever.’

  —————

  It was summer everywhere except the kitchen pantry. The tiles absorbed the cold and spread it through my bones. I had to stop the tape and put on every layer of clothing I could find in my holdall. By the time I’d finished I was padded like a mattress but I felt no warmer. I unfurled a cardboard box and laid it on the floor as insulation. I braved two sips of supermarket brandy, recalling what my grandmother used to say it did for cockles, and the point of trivia she liked to amuse me with at Christmas time about the barrels on the collars of St Bernard rescue dogs. But nothing took the chill away. The coldness was too deep to remedy. It was a draught in my marrow. It was all the grief lying in wait for me, frozen in the pipes. I climbed up on a crate and caged the lightbulb in my hands so I could feel the heat close to my skin; and I suppose this is what kept me going. The warmth in my fingertips travelled to my heart, gave me the sensation back, enough to believe that if I stayed patient, occupied, I would be found. But the only thing that stopped my mind from shutting down was The Artifex Appears. If I hadn’t had those tapes and the ability to play them, I think I would’ve lost what matters most: the facility to remember who I was before my father left me there.