The Dead Boy

by Saunders, Craig

  'If you say so,' said the man.

  He still held the gun out for her. She moved as fast as she could and snatched it, expecting the man to whip it up and away and simply kill them both. But he didn't flinch.

  Now Francis had a gun in each hand.

  'Finish the job, then,' said the old man.

  'I have no fucking idea what you're talking about,' she said.

  The grinning man's eyes seemed to drift into her. A moment later blood gushed from Francis nose, but her ears, too. She cried out and fell to her knees.

  'Now you know what to do,' said O'Dell.

  Francis did. She knew exactly what she needed to know. All she had to do was point and pull the trigger.

  O'Dell turned away as if she merely held water pistols and it was a hot day anyway.

  Shoot him, for fuck's sake!

  But the guns were heavy. She could barely hold them, let alone lift one. The one in her left hand dropped with a heavy thud to the floor. The one in her right fist hurt her fingers, pulled at her shoulder.

  God...it's so heavy. I can't hold it. I can't...

  But Francis fought. It was something deep inside, a core truth. While some give in, Francis would always, always fight.

  'Fuck you!' she roared it out, dragged the gun up. She squeezed her eyes shut against at the sudden fire and the deafening sound of the shot and found the man was gone and that she'd shot Ben North through the heart instead.

  *

  Ben's slumped sideway to the floor. Francis threw the gun down and rushed to his side.

  Instantly dead, no doubt, no mistake.

  'Bastard! Bastard! Fucking bastard!'

  She thumped at Ben's bloodied chest, but of course, nothing happened. She swore at the grinning man, not herself, not Ben.

  She rose to follow the man who did this.

  Was it him, though? Or was it me?

  She didn't know. She just wanted to put a gun against the old fucker's chest and pull the trigger until it all just went...away.

  But George was back, inside her head and he wouldn't let her.

  Francis. Let him go.

  Get out of my head! she told the kid. I'm done.

  When he replied she had no choice but to listen. It was a child's voice, but something more than that. It had power.

  If you chase that man down...we both die. Then he wins.

  'Please leave me alone,' she said as she slide to the floor outside the boy's cell, Ben North's cooling body right beside her.

  The boy's reply was simple.

  No, Francis. Save us. Live, instead.

  For a second, she stared at Ben's dead eyes.

  I wonder what he sees, she thought.

  But the kid was right. She closed Ben's eyes and stood.

  Whatever he saw, she didn't need to know just yet.

  'I'm sorry,' said Francis. She left the man.

  She'd hardly known him, after all.

  The key was already in the lock. She turned it all the way and opened the cell.

  *

  The kid lived in mind alone and he didn't know because the man with fire in his eyes, that devil with the grin, had told him it was so.

  George was strapped in a wheelchair. His neck had been broken, and angry, badly stitched wounds crossed his shaven head where parts of his brain had been cut free.

  The kid was the best part of dead. A mind without a body.

  Francis cried for him, and placed a hand on George's cheek, like people might show love, or say goodbye. His cheek was cold. He didn't flinch, or smile. How could he.

  She cried and placed her fingers against the side of his neck and held them there and felt nothing, just as he would.

  The veil the man had put over the child was lifted and George, at last, saw himself through Francis' eyes. Francis' mind, her thoughts, were his for the taking. He saw what she saw, thought what she thought.

  Kid's fucked up. Drool, shit, blood. He's a fucking mess. I can't take him. I can't. He's practically fucking dead. Jesus, he's just a little kid. What have they done to him? Poor kid. You poor, poor bastard. Those fucking bastards.

  He felt, too, what she felt. He felt that absence...his own death. No heartbeat. No breath.

  Take me, he pleaded, because he couldn't take her thoughts any longer. Take me.

  I can't, she thought. I can't. You're already dead. George...are you...are you ghost? Am I mad, too? I'm so sorry.

  She couldn't take him. Why would she?

  'George...whatever you are...don't you understand? You're dead. I...'

  My name is George. And I'm not dead. I'm not. I'm NOT!

  Francis screamed at the full power of the boy's voice in her mind. The pain was the most intense she ever felt.

  Please, don't shout anymore... don't shout.

  Francis fell away from the body in the chair, terrified, confused, aching. Her mind ached. Her heart, too.

  'You poor boy. I don't know how we're talking...if we even are. But you're a ghost...don't you understand? You're a memory...I'm sorry. Can't you see, feel? You're dead...please. Please just let me go.'

  You'll take me.

  How can I? she thought, but he heard that, too.

  You'll take me.

  She rose, shook her head.

  The dead boy was silent for a second, and sanity seemed to settle over Francis.

  You'll take me.

  She walked to the door.

  My neck. Francis. Touch my neck.

  She shook her head again.

  I AM NOT DEAD.

  She tried, really tried. But it was like pushing and pulling against a riptide.

  Against her will, compelled by his, she knelt once more and laid her fingers against his neck.

  God help me, she thought.

  His heart had been still. Now it wasn't.

  Maybe he wasn't as powerful as the man who did this. But Francis found she was just as afraid of George as she was of O'Dell.

  'You were dead.'

  He's very strong. He fools people. He tricks and pushes them...like he tricked me. And you.

  The man lied, without a doubt.

  She took the handles of the wheelchair, but she didn't push.

  'You lied, George. You lied, and you pushed.'

  I...

  'Don't lie to me again. Don't push me.'

  Something inside The Mill exploded.

  O'Dell's burning it, said George. Oh...oh...

  She heard the same things George heard - but for George, it was inside his mind. Their feelings. Their fear. All their tortured voices crying out together.

  HE IS KILLING US.

  KILLING US.

  Switch off, George, Francis thought. You don't need this.

  But perhaps he did.

  The key code to the exit was someplace in Francis' memory - placed there by O'Dell, for whatever an insane man's reasons could be. She opened the door and pulled the wheelchair through behind her. The door closed. The Mill burned, behind the door. The door, the fire, everything final.

  Francis turned around with the chair and looked.

  She expected gunfire, or madness, or a blue sun, maybe.

  But the world was calm. It was evening and there was just a black road before them, far away from everywhere, it seemed, or maybe close to nowhere. Nowhere sounded pretty good to Francis.

  Behind, the screams were muted by doors and walls to her ears, but loud in her mind. George was silent.

  Maybe for those ruined children, she imagined, fire was better.

  'God rest them,' she said. 'And fuck the rest.'

  She pushed George along the road. It didn't matter where it led, or didn't lead, as long as they didn't go back. No going back, she knew, for either of them. The life she had before the Mill, and George, and insane soldiers or crazy old ladies with false teeth, before saving Ben, before killing him...all that was done.

  'George? We're on the road. Can you see? Through my eyes?'

  Still he didn't say anything. She could fe
el him there, though. A presence somewhere inside, watching everything.

  Francis...are you crying, too?

  Everything she had before O'Dell was done. No husband, no friends. No home. Now a life on the run with a boy who'd willed himself back to life.

  Francis?

  She smiled and wiped at her eyes.

  'Don't worry, George,' she said. 'I'm not tired of living yet. You?'

  No, he said, and for the first time she felt something of the boy he should have been - one who smiled.

  In her mind, though, she could still hear the echoes of the dying, because George could. Gradually, their cries faded away, until all Francis and George could understand was the last word.

  'US,' they said, but it was no more than a whisper.

  *

  Many years ago a man had shot O'Dell in the head with a .22 calibre revolver. That man's name was Kurt William O'Dell. He didn't remember why he'd shot himself in the head. He forgot many other things besides.

  While the past was a mystery to O'Dell, the future was an open, his path clear and bright, because his remarkable, scarred, enhanced mind showed him the way.

  Perhaps he'd never know why he shot himself. Did it matter?

  Not anymore, he thought.

  He'd caught up with himself, at last. A new world was coming, and with it, fire like never seen before.

  The phone set in his car's dashboard rang, loud in the speakers. O'Dell answered.

  'What is it?' he said. His words were short, but he felt rather cheerful.

  'Mr. O'Dell. The Farnham woman? The boy's mother?'

  'Yes. The one your colleague kindly shot. I remember.'

  'Sir. Jess and I...we made a slight mistake. We neglected to remove all identification. Left her wedding ring. Jess thought of it. Just in case...some people have names or whatever engraved...'

  'Get to the point. If you just called to let me know you fucked up, just go ahead and shoot yourself and save me the bother.'

  'Ah...she showed signs of animation. Sir. Two hours post-mortem.'

  'Well...' O'Dell wondered whether he should make the man eat a bullet anyway.

  Maybe not yet.

  'Forego the bullet and bring her in, then. Well done.'

  'Sir. On route to The Mill as we speak.'

  'Go to the bunker instead. Things move on, do they not?' he said. He almost suggested they put the mother next to her son.

  But I let him go, didn't I?

  He had no idea why.

  I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason...a man can't micromanage everything. Instead, he turned his mind to the future, and fire to come.

  He cut the call and drove on and while his left hand shook wildly against the steering wheel, he smiled.

  Grinned.

  *

  Part Two

  Indian Summer

  VI.

  The Cold Hand

  September passed, gave way to October and a heat wave. Old people always say they've never know it so hot, or so cold. Young people know better, but both young and old agree the weather's always too hot, or too cold, or too wet. The weather is never just right. The English are never satisfied, not even when they grumble.

  The truth is, it's often hot in October, and sometimes warm right to the end of the month. People called these late hot days an Indian Summer. Young or old, it's the last they'll know. Winter will be the coldest in living memory, and they'll be right about that, at least.

  Things move on, don't they?

  O'Dell moved pieces on a vast board that stretched into the futures. George healed. Kids heal faster than grown-ups. Not usually the dead ones.

  Things move on, even in a small town at the heart of England where the air shimmered over sticky roads and dirt on playing fields and weedy back paths dried and hardened. Shops and stores ran their air conditioning high enough for sweat to chill and damp shirts stick to backs. Polite signs on shop windows begged men to keep their shirts on. People with dry throats drank warm lager while they sat on rotten benches in pub beer gardens beside slow stinking rivers, or by busy stinking city streets.

  In that small heartland town, a man named Edgar Burroughs passed wilted fruit and vegetables on market day. His head pointed from somewhere between his narrow shoulder blades. A stick man, and one who'd snapped. The spoiled fruit and vegetables were both sweet and putrid and the smell sparked memories he didn't want.

  The cloying stench of lilies dying in a green vase. Something brown and wet and rotten in the bottom of a fridge. Last summer's grass cuttings, mouldering in the grass box. Blue-green steaks ripe with flies on a barbeque that was never lit.

  These smells reminded Edgar Burroughs of his wife and the way she was dying. A human shouldn't wilt until there was nothing but a lingering corpse, even though she breathed, still.

  He kept his head down and walked slowly, deep and low in his thoughts, and Francis Sutton followed right behind.

  *

  Mrs. Burroughs - Sarah - had known something was wrong with her as early as spring that year. Maybe she'd worried she wasn't right in the winter, but by April, she knew. She didn't have to tell Edgar. She wasn't obliged to share. She didn't, either.

  Sarah went to the doctor's surgery alone. She took the news well as could be expected, hands folded around her handbag, sitting in the uncomfortable chair in Doctor Darpec's office.

  'Lymphatic Cancer. Nodes. Spreading. Blah blah Edgar's going to be alone blah blah. Stage Four. I'm so terribly sorry. Can I get you a tissue?'

  Something along those lines. People don't really listen, when they're told they're terminal. Darpec saw her glaze over, but there's a rhythm to these kind of things. He finished his spiel.

  'I'll give you the number of the MacMillan nurses, but they'll be in touch. They're a great help. I'll pass on your details...'

  'Thank you,' said Sarah Burroughs and rose, and left, and didn't even cry.

  She didn't need to tell Edgar, because Edgar knew things without being told.

  *

  A man over fifty grew to expect a certain amount of attrition among the people in his life. For most children, death didn't really exist. It was a distant, alien concept. In a man's middle years, it became a spectre, but one that was all too real.

  By old age, it was almost an acquaintance, a passer-by you might consider taking in for tea on a cold day.

  Edgar Burroughs wasn't quite on good enough terms to be taking tea with death. But he knew him well enough. A fifty-year old man, he was under no illusions about death's part in his future, or his wife's. Sarah Burroughs was forty-seven.

  Edgar had always known he would outlast her, but he loved her the instant they met and enough that he would bear the loss her for the chance to share the time they had. They loved well, and often. They never had children. It had always made Sarah sad, though with the heavy booted footsteps of her death march getting ever closer, Edgar was almost glad. He could bear her loss, perhaps, because in twenty-two years he had time to prepare. A child of theirs would be spared this tearing of the heart, and his was sundered with each pound she lost. Her face grew pale, then gaunt, then skeletal. She groaned and her breath rattled in her chest. Their bedroom smelled of death and shit and awful fetid breath which came with every gasp. Edgar fell asleep with the smell, and woke with it, because he slept on an armchair he had carried upstairs so he could watch Sarah and tend to her needs. He didn't want to do this, but he did. He stopped going to work to feed her watered soup until all she could couldn't take that. Then morphine and ice water, then just ice on her lips.

  She seemed so dry he watched her, he wondered if he opened the window on the summer heat, would she catch light in the warmth to float on the breeze like burning paper?

  He couldn't remember why he'd gone to town for a moment. He looked at his hands, strangers to him suddenly.

  Morphine, he remembered. He'd gone to collect her morphine, leaving her...thinking: If she dies alone, while I'm out, I won't have to watch.

 
; Had he really thought that?

  His hands were empty, because the chemist had been closed.

  Absent-mindedly, he'd wandered all the way back with nothing. He barely remembered getting to town, or getting back, or even where he'd put the house keys when he came in.

  Edgar stared at his wrecked wife for a moment. He felt like shit for having nothing for her pain and worse for hoping she would just...slip.

  'Sorry, honey,' he said, but as he spoke that last shudder racked her barren chest and he got half his wish. She slid away from him, but he still had to watch.

  A second, unexpected exhalation made him jump, but the MacMillan nurse told him this might happen. The nurse hadn't told him that his wife would grasp his throat in death and that her milk-eyes would open.

  *

  Edgar wasn't a weak man. Not strong, or fit, but probably somewhere around average. But shock stayed him, and the hand on his throat cut off his voice.

  His wide eyes stared into his wife's white gaze and saw nothing there. No flash of her; no soul, no life. An empty vessel strangling him slowly, her hands implacable and solid and her face nearer as she pulled him down toward her last embrace. She stank of death, her teeth bared and snarling and feral, breathlessly, just an expression and a hunger. His vision, rather than growing dim or dancing with air-starved white spots, grew sharp. Colours that had been black and white and shades between turned back, bled, at last, into the world. Her skin was pallid and yellowed, but for the first time in weeks Edgar saw the bright pale light of the sun in her grey hair, the slice of light that cut through the bedroom window and brought life to their floral bedspread. Green, and heavy red roses, carnations, like blood blooms from a wound into cloth.

  Unreasoning and almost unthinking, stunned the impossibility of her rising, but by the colours and smells and the sharpness of waking, too, he put his hands on hers. He pulled.

  She was taking him with her and he found he did not want to go.

  She would not give. The simple muscles of an ordinary man against...

  What? Death? His dead wife, rising?