by Tim Lebbon
“Mandy?” Jack said, and in that word was everything: Mandy what are you doing? Is he hurting you? What should I do? “Mandy?”
Mandy turned and stared at him red-faced, and then her mouth fell open and she shouted: “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Jack turned and ran along the hallway, forgetting his shoes, feet slapping on quarry tiles. He sprinted across the lawn, stumbling a couple of times. And then he heard Mandy call after him. He did not turn around. He did not want to see her standing at the door with the baker bouncing at her from behind. And he didn’t want her to swear at him again, when he had only come home because he felt sick.
All he wished for was to un-see what he had seen.
Jack spent that night lost in the woods. He could never remember any of it, and when he was found and taken home the next day he started to whoop, coughing up clots of mucus and struggling to breathe. He was ill for two weeks, and Mandy sat with him for a couple of hours every evening to read him the fantastic tales of Narnia, or sometimes just to talk. She would always kiss him goodnight and tell him she was sorry, and Jack would tell her it was okay, he sometimes said fuck too, but only when he was on his own.
It seemed that as Jack got better everything else in their family got worse.
It was a little over two miles to the nearest village, Tall Stennington. Jack once asked his father why they lived where they did, why didn’t they live in a village or a town where there were other people, and shops, and gas in pipes under the ground instead of oil in a big green tank. His dad’s reply had confused him at the time, and it still did to an extent.
You’ve got to go a long way nowadays before you can’t hear anything of Man.
Jack thought of that now as they twisted and turned through lanes that still had grass clumps along their spines. There was no radio, his mum had said, and he wondered exactly what they would hear outside were they to stop the car now. He would talk if they did, sing, shout, just to make sure there was a sound other than the silence of last night.
The deathly silence.
“Whose watch was that in the garden, Dad?”
“I expect it belonged to one of the robbers.”
Jack thought about this for a while, staring from his window at the hedges rolling by. He glanced up at the trees forming a green tunnel over the road, and he knew they were only minutes from the village. “So, what was the other stuff lying around it? The dried stuff, like meat you’ve left in the fridge too long?”
His dad was driving so he had an excuse, but his mum didn’t turn around either. It was she who spoke, however.
“There’s been some stuff on the news—”
“Janey!” his dad cut in. “Don’t be so bloody stupid!”
“Gray, if it’s really happening he has to know… he will know. We’ll see them, lots of them, and—”
“All the trees are pale,” Jack said, the watch and dried meat suddenly forgotten. He was looking from the back window at the avenue of trees they had just passed, and he had figured out what had been nagging him about the hedges and the fields since they’d left the cottage: their color; or rather, their lack of it. The springtime flush of growth had been flowering across the valley for the last several weeks, great explosions of rich greens, electric blues and splashes of colors which, as his dad was fond of saying, would put a Monet to shame. Jack didn’t know what a Monet was, but he was sure there was no chance in a billion it could ever match the slow-burning fireworks display nature put on at the beginning of every year. Spring was his favorite season, followed by autumn. They were both times of change, beautiful in their own way, and Jack loved to watch stuff happen.
Now, something had happened. It was as though autumn had crept up without anyone or anything noticing, casting its pastel influence secretly across the landscape.
“See?” he said. “Mum? You see?”
His mum turned in her seat and stared past Jack. She was trying to hide the fact she had been crying; she looked embarrassed and uncertain.
“Maybe they’re dusty,” she said.
He knew she was lying; she didn’t really think that at all. “So what was on the news?” he asked.
“We’re at the village.” His dad slowed the car at the hump-back bridge, which marked the outskirts of Tall Stennington.
Jack leaned on the backs of his parents’ seats and strained forward to see through the windscreen. The place looked as it always had: The church dominated with a recently sand-blasted tower; stone cottages stood huddled beneath centuries-old trees; a few birds flitted here and there. A fat old Alsation trundled along the street and raised its leg in front of the Dog and Whistle, but it seemed unable to piss.
The grocer’s was closed. It opened at six every morning, without fail, even Sundays. In fact, Jack could hardly recall ever seeing it closed, as if old Mrs. Haswell had nothing else to do but stock shelves, serve locals and natter away about the terrible cost of running a village business.
“The shop’s shut,” he said.
His dad nodded. “And there’s no one about.”
“Yes there is,” his mum burst out. “Look, over there, isn’t that Gerald?”
“Gerald the Geriatric!” Jack giggled because that’s what they called him at school. He’d usually be told off for that, he knew, on any normal day. After the first couple of seconds he no longer found it all that funny himself. There was something wrong with Gerald the Geriatric.
He leaned against a wall, dragging his left shoulder along the stonework with jerky, infrequent movements of his legs. He was too far away to see his expression in full, but his jowls and the saggy bags beneath his eyes seemed that much larger and darker this morning. He also seemed to have mislaid his trademark walking stick. There were legends that he had once beaten a rat to death with that stick in the kitchen of the Dog and Whistle, and the fact that he had not frequented that pub for a decade seemed to hint at its truth. Jack used to imagine him striking out at the darting rodent with the knotted length of oak, spittle flying from his mouth, false teeth chattering with each impact. Now, the image seemed grotesque rather than comical.
His mother reached for the door handle.
“Wait, Mum!” Jack said.
“But he’s hurt!”
“Jack’s right. Wait.” His dad rested his hand on the stock of the shotgun wedged beneath their seats.
Gerald paused and stood shakily away from the wall, turning his head to stare at them. He raised his hands, his mouth falling open into a toothless grin or grimace. Jack could not even begin to tell which.
“He’s in pain!” Jack’s mum said, and this time she actually clicked the handle and pushed her shoulder to the door, letting in cool morning air.
“Janey, remember what they said—”
“What’s that?” Jack said quietly. It was the sound a big spider’s legs made on his posters in the middle of the night. The fear was the same, too—unseen things.
His mum had heard it as well, and she snicked the door shut.
There was something under the car. Jack felt the subtle tickle of soft impacts beneath him, insistent scrapings and pickings, reminiscent of the window fumblers of last night.
“Maybe it’s a dog,” his mum said.
His dad slammed the car into reverse and burnt rubber. The skid was tremendous, the stench and reverberation overpowering. As soon as the tires caught Jack knew that they were out of control. The car leapt back, throwing Jack forward so that he banged his head on his mother’s headrest. As he looked up he saw what had been beneath the car… Mrs. Haswell, still flipping and rolling where the chassis had scraped her along the road, her hair wild, her skirts torn to reveal pasty, pitted thighs…
His father swore as the brakes failed and the car dipped sickeningly into the ditch. Jack fell back, cracking his head on the rear window and tasting the sudden salty tang of blood as he bit his tongue. His mum screeched, his dad shouted and cursed again, the engine rose and sang and screamed until, finally, it cut o
ut.
The sudden silence was huge. The wrecked engine ticked and dripped, Jack groaned, and through the tilted windscreen he could see Mrs. Haswell hauling herself to her feet.
Steadying her tattered limbs.
Setting out for their car with slow, broken steps.
“Okay, Jackie?” his mum said. She twisted in her seat and reached back, the look in her eyes betraying her thoughts: My son, my son!
Jack opened his mouth to speak, but only blood came out. He shuddered a huge breath and realized he’d been winded, things had receded, and only the blood on his chin felt and smelled real.
“What’s wrong with her?” his dad said, holding the steering wheel and staring through the windscreen.
“That’s Mrs. Haswell. Under our car. Did I run her over? I didn’t hit her, did you see me hit her?”
“Gray, Jackie’s bleeding.”
Jack tried to talk again, to say he was all right, but everything went fluid. He felt queasy and sleepy, as if he’d woken up suddenly in the middle of the night.
“Gray!”
“Jack? You okay, son? Come on, out of the car. Janey, grab the binoculars. And the shells. Wait on your side. I’ll get Jack out.” He paused and looked along the road again. Mrs. Haswell was sauntering between the fresh skidmarks, and now Gerald the Geriatric was moving their way as well. “Let’s hurry up.”
Jack took deep, heavy breaths, feeling blood bubble in his throat. The door beside him opened and his dad lifted him out, and as the sun touched his face he began to feel better. His mum wiped at his bloody chin with the sleeve of her jumper.
There was a sound now, a long, slow scraping, and Jack realized it was Mrs. Haswell dragging her feet. She’d never done that before. She was eighty, but she’d always been active and forceful, like a wind-up toy that never ran out. She hurried through the village at lunchtime, darted around her shop as if she had wheels for feet… she had never, in all the times Jack had seen her or spoken to her, been slow.
Her arms were draped by her sides, not exactly swinging as she walked, but moving as if they were really no part of her at all. Her mouth hung open, but she did not drool.
“What’s wrong with her, Dad?”
“She’s got the disease,” his dad said quickly, dismissively, and Jack felt a pang of annoyance.
“Dad,” he said, “I think I’m old enough for you to tell me the truth.” It was a childish thing to say, Jack understood that straightaway at some deeper level; petulant and prideful, unmindful of the panic his parents so obviously felt. But Jack was nearly a teenager— he felt he deserved some trust. “Anyway,” he said, “she looks like she’s dead.” He’d seen lots of films where people died, but hardly any of them looked like the old woman. She seemed lessened somehow, shrunken into herself, drained. She had lost what little color she once possessed. In his mind’s eye, this was how a true, real-life dead person should look.
His dad aimed the shotgun at Mrs. Haswell.
Jack gasped. For the second time in as many minutes, he found himself unable to talk.
“Gray,” his mother said cautiously, quietly, hands raised in a warding-off gesture, “we should go across the fields.”
Jack saw his dad’s face then—tears stinging the corners of his eyes; lips pressed together tight and bloodless, the way they’d been on the day Mandy left home for the last time—and he realized what a dire situation they were in.
His dad had no idea what to do.
“Across the fields to the motorway,” his mum continued. “If there’s any help, we may find it there. And I’m sure they couldn’t drive.” She nodded at Mrs. Haswell as she spoke. “Could they? You don’t think they could, do you?”
His dad was breathing heavily, just as Jack did whenever he was trying not to cry. He grabbed Jack’s hand.
Jack felt the cool sweat of his father’s palms… like touching a hunk of raw meat before it was cooked.
They walked quickly back the way they had come, then hopped over a stile into the field.
Jack glanced back at their car, canted at a crazy angle in the ditch, and saw that the two old people had stopped in their tracks. They stood as still as statues, and just as lifeless. This was more disturbing than ever—at least before, they had seemed to possess some purpose.
She was under our car, Jack thought. What purpose in that?
And then his own words sprang back at him: She looks like she’s dead.
“You know what an open mind is, Jack?” Mandy said. She had crept into his room in the middle of the night after hearing him whooping and crying. Sometimes she would sit on the edge of the bed until daybreak, just talking. Much of what she said confused him—she read all the time, and occasionally she even confused their mum and dad—but he remembered it all… and later, some of it began to make sense.
Jack had a grotesque vision of someone with a trapdoor in their skull, their brain pulsing and glowing underneath. He smiled uncertainly at this bloody train of thought.
“It’s the ability to believe in the unbelievable,” she continued, apparently unconcerned at his silence. “It’s a free mind. Imagination. Growing up closes off so many doors. The modern world doesn’t allow for miracles, so we don’t see them. It’s a very precious gift, an open mind, but it’s not passive. You’ve got to nurture it like a bed of roses; otherwise it will wither and die. Make sure you don’t close off your mind to things you find strange, Jack. Sometimes they may be the only truth.”
They sat silently for a while, Jack croaking as he breathed past the phlegm in his throat, Mandy twirling strands other long black hair between her fingers.
“It’s something you have,” she said suddenly, “and you always will. And that’s another secret, to keep and tend.”
“How do you know I have it?” he asked.
Mandy smiled at him and he saw a sadness behind her eyes. Maybe she still blamed herself for him being lost in the woods. Maybe she could already see how different their family was going to be.
“Hey,” she said, “you’re my brother.” As if that was an answer.
The farther they moved away, the more Tall Stennington appeared normal. Halfway across the field they lost sight of the shuffling shapes in the road, the empty streets beyond, the pigeons sitting silently on the church tower. Jack found himself wishing for any sign of life. He almost called out, wanting to see windows thrust open and people he knew by name or sight lean out, wave to him, comment on what a lovely brisk spring morning it was. But his tongue hurt from the car wreck. His dad had crashed because a busy old lady had cut or torn the brake cables. And she had done that because… because…
There was nothing normal this morning. Not with Tall Stennington, not with Mr. Jude, not with the fox at the edge of the woods. Not even with his parents because they were tense and worried and hurrying across a newly planted field, and his mum still had on her slippers. His dad carried a shotgun. His mum had her arms crossed, perhaps against the cold but more likely, Jack thought, against something else entirely.
No, nothing was normal today.
They followed the furrows plowed into the field, stepping on green shoots and crushing them back into the earth from whence they came. Jack glanced behind at his footprints, his identity stamped into the landscape only to be brushed away by the next storm. When he was younger he wanted to be an astronaut, purely for the excitement of zero-G, piloting experimental spacecraft and dodging asteroids on the way out of the solar system. The idea still appealed to him, but his main reason now would be to walk on the moon and leave his footprints behind. He’d heard that they would be there forever, or at least near enough. When he was dead—perhaps when everyone was dead—some aliens might land on the moon, and see his footprints, and think, Here was a guy willing to explore. Here was a guy with no closed doors in his head, with an open mind. Here was a guy who might have believed in us.
Jack looked up at the ghost of the moon where it still hung in the clear morning sky. He wondered if his exact cente
r line of sight were extended, would he be looking at Neil Armstrong’s footprints right now?
He looked down at his feet and one of those doors in his mind flapped wide open.
Falling to his knees, he plucked at a green shoot. It felt dry and brittle between his fingers, not cool and damp as it should have. He rubbed at it and it came apart, shedding its faded outer skin and exposing powdery insides.
He picked another shoot and it was the same. The third bled a smear of greenish fluid across his fingertips, but the next was as dry as the first, and the next.
“Jack, what’s up son? What are you doing?” His dad had stopped and turned, glancing nervously past Jack at the stile as if constantly expecting Mrs. Haswell and Gerald the Geriatric to come stumbling after them.
Jack shook his head, not unable to understand—he understood perfectly well, even for a twelve-year-old— but unwilling. The doors were open, but he was stubbornly grasping the frames, not wanting to enter the strange rooms presenting themselves to him now.
“This crop’s dead,” he said. “It looks fresh, Dad. Mum? Doesn’t it all look so fresh?” His mum nodded, cupping her elbows in her hands and shivering. Jack held up a palm full of crushed shoot. “But look. It’s all dead. It’s still green, but it’s not growing anymore.”
He looked back at the village. Their footprints stood out in the young crop, three wavering lines of bent and snapped shoots. And the hedge containing the stile they had hopped over… its colors like those of a faded photograph, not lush and vibrant with the new growth of spring… He’d once read a book called The Death of Grass. Now, he might be living it.
To his left the hillsides, speckled with sheep so still they looked like pustules on the face of the land.
To his right the edge of a stretch of woodland, at the other end of which stood their house, doors open, toast burnt in the grille, perhaps still burning.
“Everything’s dying.”
