'I wanted to die. I tried to die!'
'Everything evolves, Mr. O'Dell, and that which does not is left behind.'
O'Dell put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
George and US watched. They would remember for him.
*
XXIII.
When Dead Wings Beat Again
O'Dell didn't create US, or those like George, and Eleanor. He simply cleared the road.
Things last until they wear thin, or are thrown out when something that might be better comes along. Better or worse, though, some things were always worth holding onto.
That, George knew when he was just a boy of nine.
*
In the years that followed, George often fell quiet. Sometimes when he stood outside the house they'd taken for their own, there by the sea, he would drift away as though he was listening to a distant conversation that none could hear.
His speech returned, but he used it rarely.
Eleanor and Francis were his parents, and they understood George where George did not understand himself, like parents often do.
But the older George understood just fine.
'Talking to yourself again?' said Francis one day. They were inside, playing cards at a round table. It was a rare day when snow did not fall. George was nineteen.
'No. Listening.'
By the time George was twenty-five years old, days with no snow became more common.
When he reached thirty, the ultraviolet summer nudged aside nuclear winter and he began to laugh again.
'I forgot I was funny,' he said. 'As a kid.'
'You weren't that funny,' said his mother. Francis shrugged, apologetically. 'I don't remember many laughs, either.'
George wondered, just for an instant, if he could change that right now. Tell eight year old George something to make them laugh, and then ask now if they remembered.
Only for an instant, because thirty year old George spoke to his younger self and he was wiser, but because thirty year old George listened to a different, much older self, and that George was wiser still.
*
'She won't last forever, George. She's human...us? We're something different.'
Whenever his parents used the word 'us', George remembered those that came before, the people who were like Francis. In a way, he wished he and his mother were just like her. The idea of leaving a parent behind hurt, still.
'I know, mum.'
Eleanor and George stood in the open, a hard sun beating down that would kill and mutate. It couldn't hurt them. Francis remained indoors, now. She was weaker, and older, and this light could kill.
'You think there are many others, mum? Like us?'
'I think there might be, George. One day, maybe we'll meet. Until then, we have Francis. Some things, I think, should never be rushed.'
Eleanor kissed her son on his cheek, bearded now but still youthful, and went inside to help Francis out of bed.
*
Francis and George sat on a porch he built with scavenged wood and watched the late sunset. Seasons, months, weeks, days; they didn't seem important anymore. It was warm, and Francis was too old for the nights and the dark. She wanted to sleep earlier as she grew older.
Francis smiled, watching the sun set. When it was full dark, George asked if she would like to go back into the house.
The house was lit by candles. They had fire when they needed it, jumpers when they did not. Once, people had too much. Now they scavenged, people only took what they needed. Francis thought maybe it was better this way.
'Not tonight, George. I think I want to sit out tonight. Sit with me?'
'Shall I call mum?'
'We've already said goodbye, George. Don't be thick.'
The older Francis got, the more brusque she became. George enjoyed it - Francis, who never seemed to give a damn, giving less of a damn. And just as bad at covering how she really felt.
'Is this it?'
'I'm ready, George. I've been ready for a long time. How many years, now?'
'Forty-five.'
'Jesus,' she said. 'That long?'
'I think. I might have missed the count by a few.'
'You don't look more than thirty.'
'You don't look a day more than...'
'Shut up,' she said, but she smiled and they held hands, sitting on faded garden chairs on the porch with just candlelight behind them.
They sat hand in hand like that for two or maybe three hours. Eleanor brought them tea, boiled in a metal pot on the old wood stove.
Francis raised an eyebrow at Eleanor. Eleanor shook her head. 'Really?'
'Don't be tight. Tea?'
As the years passed, Eleanor and Francis became less like sisters and more like a daughter and a mother. A daughter who loved her mother, despite that the elder woman was blunt and liked a drink now and then.
Eleanor went away, and when she came back, she put her arms round Francis and kissed her on the forehead, like young people do when they love their elders.
Eleanor left a packet of cigarettes, a box of matches and a quarter bottle of vodka there in Francis' lap.
'Survivors,' said Francis after watching Eleanor go inside. Eleanor, hunched and hiding her face.
Francis thought mourning wasn't such a bad thing at all. Nothing wrong with being sad when only memories remained, and entirely human to know it. People should remember their dead, she thought, and as always with this came images of the dead she'd left behind. Men she'd killed, and people she'd left behind, too. Her mind was still sharp enough, and those images always ended with Edgar's face, but as he was the last time she saw him - in a dream. The two of them at a cold window, staring at the world beneath a coat of ice.
'Sadness,' he said.
Humans were sad, weren't they? Did George and Eleanor feel that? Would others, like them, understand what it meant to know how short, how fleeting life was, and mourn at the same time as holding onto it? Would life be dear, or cheap for the ones who owned a world where the old had been swept away?
George watched her, and she saw how he felt clearly there, even though the light was at his back and his face to the dark.
She thought maybe they would hold the important things close.
She sighed and looked down at the cigarettes, still in their cellophane wrapper. She didn't smoke, but it seemed like a good time to take it up.
'You mean us? We're the survivors?' said George, the word still resonating, after so many years.
'No. Actually, I was talking about the vodka and the cigarettes. But we did it, eh? Animals will come back, George. You'll see. When they do, your people will follow. You'll see.'
They shared the vodka for a while. George took a cigarette.
'George?' she said later.
'Yes?'
'Did you ever wonder?'
'What?'
'Why they helped the three of us? Why they got us from The Mill, and your mum? Did you ever wonder...'
'If they could do all the things they did, why they didn't stop O'Dell?'
'Yes,' she said. 'Yes. I wonder. I often wonder.'
'I wonder, too, Francis. I don't have the answer.'
'But you have an idea, don't you? Did he tell you? The older you?'
'No. He doesn't talk about things like that. Doesn't tell me things I don't need to know. I think that's the point. O'Dell knew the future. But that's not what life is. It shouldn't be. It's not supposed to work like that. I think I knew that back then, when I was eight. Maybe I told myself. Maybe I just worked it out.'
'You think we're just not supposed to know everything, George?'
'I think maybe US did the best they could. Or, maybe they wanted things this way. Saw this was how things had to be. Most of all? I think we should just take it for what it is.'
Francis fell silent for a while longer, sipping the vodka and smoking.
Dawn wasn't far away.
'George?'
'Francis?'
'Will you w
atch over me? One last time?'
He moved his chair closer and put his arm around her.
I will, he said.
The End
7th October 2012 - 23rd April 2015
Final Draft: 13th July 2015
About the Author:
Craig Saunders is the author of over thirty novels and novellas, including 'Masters of Blood and Bone', 'RAIN' and 'Deadlift'. He writes across many genres, but horror, humour (the 'Spiggot' series) and fantasy (the 'Rythe' tales) are his favourites.
Craig lives in Norfolk, England, with his wife and children, likes nice people and good coffee. Find out more on Amazon, or visit:
www.craigrsaunders.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/craigrsaundersauthor
@Grumblesprout
Also by Craig Saunders:
Novels
The Dead Boy
Left to Darkness
Masters of Blood and Bone
Damned to Cold Fire (previously published as 'The Estate')
A Home by the Sea
RAIN
Vigil
The Noose and Gibbet
A Stranger's Grave
The Love of the Dead
Spiggot
Spiggot, Too
The Gold Ring
Novellas
Death by a Mother's Hand
Days of Christmas
Flesh and Coin
Bloodeye
Deadlift
A Scarecrow to Watch over Her
The Walls of Madness
Insulation
Short Story Collections
Dead in the Trunk
Angels in Black and White
Dark Words
Writing as Craig R. Saunders:
The Outlaw King (The Line of Kings Trilogy Book One)
The Thief King (The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Two)
The Queen of Thieves (The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Three)
Rythe Awakes (The Rythe Quadrilogy Book One)
The Tides of Rythe (The Rythe Quadrilogy Book Two)
Rythe Falls (The Rythe Quadrilogy Book Three)
Coming Soon:
Unit 731
Bonus Novel Sample
A Stranger's Grave
by
Craig Saunders
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
- From ‘And Death Shall Have no Dominion’ - Dylan Thomas
In Prison Still
There’s a cemetery in a small Norfolk market town. It’s a peaceful place, a haven for the dead and the bereaved. There is birdsong in the trees no matter the time of year. Surrounded by hedgerow, the cemetery is hemmed in with roads running east and west to either side. The roads were there before cars, when people travelled in carriages, and before.
It’s an old place. The earliest headstone dates back to the year 1756. The trees are much, much older.
Nobody knows how far the trees go back, but in 1956 a great oak that overhung the small chapel was cut down, and should any have had a mind to look there were a hundred and seven circles around that stump, that fat stump that wasn’t anywhere near the fattest grown among the dead.
The chapel is old, too. The stone, brick and flint and granite, is long tarnished, occasionally cleaned, but not often enough.
The shine has gone from the marble headstones. The sandstone, the granite, the limestone, long illegible.
Trees grow from forgotten graves and roots crack the pathways and tunnel through the old dead.
But something older than all of this came in 2007. A trio of angels carved from basalt and polished to a black sheen.
The evil those angels brought was the oldest of all.
*
1.
The big gates shut behind Elton Burlock and for the first time in twenty-six years he breathed free air under a free sun.
The sun that shone back in 1985 was the same sun. The air he breathed back then, the same. The clouds drifting through the sky were no different.
But time brings subtle changes. The sun didn’t seem as bright. The air didn’t smell as clear.
This road, before the gate, was only twenty-six years old. Probably once fresh and wet when he’d left the world, it was now potted and cracked and repaired time and time again.
Clouds drifted across the sun and the air was instantly chilled.
When he’d gone into prison he’d brought a coat and a bag with the things he might need again on the outside. He hadn’t planned on staying so long, though. It wasn’t that his coat wasn’t warm enough for a mild spring day – though it seemed out of fashion now – nor was it that the day was especially chilly.
He shivered because prison was always warm. Now he was sixty-one and he was cold because age had somehow caught him out, too.
Elton turned his face up to the sun, taking what warmth he could. It felt good, his skin tightening, his eyes burning behind his eyelids.
Was the memory of the sun worth it?
He was still a powerful man, still strong enough when it mattered. His hair might be grey, a little thinner, and his stomach a little thicker. Maybe his skin was paler, too. He’d missed sunshine. You didn’t see a lot of the sun in prison.
He stroked his stubble, thick and rough. He saw his face most days in jail, but somehow it felt new, puckered and tight, even though he’d only stood in the glare of the sun for a few minutes at best.
Hard time done, then soft time. Once he’d hit fifty and transferred to Wayland prison it seemed like he was set, all hope of freedom gone, an educated man with no other purpose in life than to live.
Now, shifting his weight on feet that were once spry, once used to a boxer’s stance, shifting his bag in strong scarred knuckles, he set out on the road into town to meet the bus.
He wasn’t the same man out that went in. Back then, at thirty-five, he’d done what he thought was his share of fighting, in the ring and out. Maybe he’d have been wary, then, walking down the street on his own in the night, past pubs kicking out piss heads and druggies and punks.
Thirty-five, he’d been married. Settled. Comfortable. His first degree earned, a teaching position, and his baby...
Thirty-five years old with a wife and a child on the way he might have been worried by these young people passing, wearing hoods and walking like hard men, even though they looked like they were made of twigs. Once, back when. Now?
He wouldn’t even touch them. He’d been down that road. Twenty-six years worth of it.
Prison didn’t take your pride. It didn’t take your strength. It didn’t take your will.
The thing of prison was...
The thing of prison...
He stopped walking. The bus pulled up in town and he watched people get off, get on while he thought about what it was that was niggling away at him.
What had prison given him? A second degree that would never get him a job. Eyes in the back of his head. A stomach like cast iron from eating shit food and arms like steel from curls and bench presses for the last twenty years. A broken hand, a once broken knee that ached all day long and a shit shoulder since he took a wild stab with a sharpened toothbrush for his trouble.
But what had prison taken?
He’d been fed. He’d been happy enough, late on.
Maybe not back in the early days, when he’d fought it, railed against it, but late on, when he’d all but given up on getting out? Yeah, he’d been happy then.
Soon enough now he’d be on a state pension, living out an empty life, somewhere he didn’t know with strange people all around him. Nothing to
do all day. Food he didn’t recognise.
He blinked at the receding bus, unable to make out the number.
He looked at the directions to the doss house on the print-out he’d been given. Hoped it wasn’t his bus he’d just missed.
It wasn’t dying he was worried about, either. Prison didn’t make you afraid of dying, not at all.
He was afraid of living.
Prison didn’t hurt you when you were in. It was when you got out. It was only then that you knew you were in prison still, and you always would be.
He pulled his coat tighter as he sat at the bus stop and stared at the sun for a while, until it hurt his eyes. It felt good - like it was worth the wait.
*
2.
Two fat policemen sucked their lips and looked down at the grave. Dirt was thrown up on one side, grassy clods still wet with spring dew. That alone and it would have been down to the gravekeeper, or maybe the council, at best, but whoever desecrated the child’s grave had also sprayed a swastika on the headstone and kicked it over.
That was why two fat policemen stood beside the grave.
‘Was he a Jewish kid?’
‘Don’t know for sure. Not, like, a hundred percent,’ said his partner.
Local policemen didn’t really have partners. Mostly it was just plodding, keeping the old ladies happy. PC James didn’t like the cemetery, though, so he’d persuaded his mate to come with him. ‘Don’t think so, though.’
‘Samuel. That’s Jewish, right?’
‘Biblical, maybe. Jewish? Don’t know,’ said PC James, biting his tongue.
‘What about Smith?’
‘Samuel Smith.’
‘Yeah. Samuel Smith,’ said PC Davis.
‘Sam Smith,’ said PC James.
‘Could be.’
‘Sam Smith, Ewan? Sam fucking Smith?’
‘What?’
The Dead Boy Page 24
