Vale of Blood Roses

by Tim Lebbon

  Blane walked alongside the boy, hand on his shoulder, listening and looking around at the same time. He steered towards the people by the pond who, although in a group, did not seem to be together. He wondered whom he could tell about the dead boy, wondered also whether any of them would even listen. This morning, it seemed, grief was endemic.

  “So I got back under the covers, but the book began to scare me after I’d heard the sounds. I thought there was something in the room with me, waiting to make the same noises. I’m not usually afraid, you know, but last night seemed … pregnant with danger.”

  Pregnant with danger, thought Blane, the lad should have been a poet.

  “That’s from the book I was reading,” the boy said, with an oddly flat pride. “Mum and Dad were both snoring in the next room. They always did, Mum said it’s how they stayed together so long, not being able to hear everything they both said in their sleep. She was only joking.”

  Slates was panting now, almost spitting the words out, forcing his fears into the open, perhaps thinking that if he kept talking he could keep the reality of what had happened at bay.

  As they approached the pond some of the milling people noticed them. They looked up with red-rimmed eyes, stared straight through the man and boy, looked down again at their hands or the mess of blood on their clothes. One of them, a middle-aged man, was lying with his face pressed into the grass, mouth opening and closing, chewing the turf like a dog trying to make itself sick.

  “So when I heard the bang from next door, I really jumped, threw back the covers. I went into Mum and Dad’s room, because I thought one of them had fallen out of bed, or something. But when I saw them … when I saw them …”

  Blane and the boy stopped beside the pond. Reeds reached for their knees. Ducks paddled in quiet disregard of the human tragedy unfolding around them.

  “There was blood. And bits. Other bits. And Dad’s face was …” Slates could not finish. He fell to his knees, shuffled across the damp grass to the nearest person and flung himself into her lap. She did not seem to notice. She began absently stroking the back of his head, murmuring, rocking back and forth, her eyes seeing something far different from this early morning scene.

  The sun had risen behind the church and now sprayed golden dawn across the village, shimmering separately in a billion drops of dew and a thousand shed tears. The sky turned red. Shepherd’s warning.

  “There’s a dead boy in the churchyard,” Blane said quietly.

  “Everyone’s dead, why should he be different?” The man who had been chewing the grass turned and sat up, chin and teeth stained green and brown by the sod. “My Janice … she’s gone. Dead. I don’t know … her back’s broken.” He frowned in amazement.

  “Has anyone phoned for ambulances? Police?”

  “I have,” a woman said from across the pond. She was standing near the water’s edge, letting soft black mud ooze up between her bare toes. “I heard a noise from next door, where Mr and Mrs James live. I knocked, but there was nothing. So I rang for the police and an ambulance. They’re quite old, you know.” She looked at the people gathered around the pond, frowning as if she did not recognise any of them. “Then I saw everyone out here … the car, burning … blood. And I came out. What the hell is going on?”

  “There are dead people everywhere,” Blane said. He was going to mention the shape he had seen in the churchyard, but the memory felt suddenly personal, like an undisclosed sin. The laughter and singing birds made it so, perhaps. His own unknown memory.

  “Dead how?” the woman asked, taking a long drag on a cigarette. She had cropped ginger hair, dangling earrings, adult echoes of a teenaged punk. The short hair revealed ears large enough to attract a second glance, and it seemed that the haircut and earrings dared anyone mention them. Her eyes held a sparkling intelligence, where once there may only have been rebellion. Her pale expression seemed soft and vulnerable, even though her voice held a certain note of control. Nobody answered her question, so she asked again: “How? What happened? It’ll help when the ambulances get here, you know, if the paramedics have some kind of idea what they’re having to deal with.” She stared at Blane, meeting his gaze. He did not recognise her as a villager. Perhaps that was why she treated him as an equal rather than an oddball.

  “How did the boy in the graveyard die?” Her voice demanded an answer.

  Blane thought it unwise to supply it. “The same way as everyone else, I guess.” He did not mention the bite marks in the flesh. Nor did he hint at the dead animals, arranged around the body of the boy like ancient spiritual guides into the next world.

  “Which still tells us nothing.” The girl squatted on her haunches and flicked a fly from her sweatshirt. She glanced around at the others sitting or standing around the pool, examining each of them closely, eyes finally coming to rest back on Blane. Another pull on the cigarette. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “My name’s Blane. I live out on Pond Road.” He casually indicated the direction, waiting for the snide remarks, giving her ample opportunity to realise who he was, if she hadn’t already.

  “In the prefab?”

  Blane nodded.

  “You’re like me, then. Alone. I’ve only lost friends, today.” With that the woman stood, slipped on a pair of cheap trainers which had been dangling from her hand by their laces and walked around the pond. She threw her dog-end into the water as she went.

  Blane had a chance to observe without being observed. The woman was tall, at least three inches taller than him, probably nudging six feet. Her baggy clothes held a bulky body, but she was heavy boned rather than overweight. She walked with a steady grace, a confident step, arms swinging as if they were constantly seeking something to do.

  Blane glanced over at Slates, who was still being absently cuddled by the woman. Neither seemed to be aware of the other’s presence, but there was definitely a joint sharing of comfort that he was loathe to disturb. Instead, he moved off quietly to meet the woman.

  “Talk with you?” the woman said as they drew together. She indicated the bandstand with a nod of her head and the two of them moved away from the pond.

  Blane looked down at his feet as he walked, imagining that he was still in the woods. There were clearings in there where the grass grew up through last year’s blown leaves, and snowdrops and daffodils had already shown their tentative faces. Sprays of dew erupted from around his shoes, turning the light leather dark. If he concentrated – ignored the shadow of the woman where it clung to his feet; tried to forget the terrible sight of the dead boy surrounded by the mutilated creatures; thrust the fleeting, haunting shape in the churchyard from his mind – he could imagine himself safe within the secret arms of nature. Comforted. Protected. Shielded from petty human delusions of grandeur and the childish squabbles of politics and nations.

  A growl came from ahead, low and throaty. He looked up quickly, reminded of the sound he’d heard in the woods after the deer with the crushed neck had died before him. Another growl, then a flurry of barks and yaps from the bandstand as the two stray dogs fought. Between the slats in the side of the wooden structure Blane could see that they had something in their mouths, and were performing a canine tug of war.

  “Maybe this is far enough,” the woman said. “Shoo! Psshhhh! Out of it, go on!” She clapped her hands and stomped several paces towards the bandstand, until she was staring in through the slats. She paused, her big shoulders slumping slightly. “Oh Christ.” The dogs threw her a desultory stare and trotted slowly down the steps and away. They had stopped fighting; whatever had been the cause of their argument had apparently ripped in two.

  “Blane, there’s a dead person in there.”

  Blane nodded. “I think maybe it’s Saint.”

  “Saint?”

  “He lives around the village.”

  “I know Saint.” The woman walked back to Blane and stopped, staring down at the ground between them. “The dogs were eating him.”

  Blane said n
othing. There was nothing to say. The dogs were strays. They were opportunists, but he knew this was not the best wisdom to come out with right now.

  “Just what the fuck happened when the lights went out last night?” For the first time since he had seen her, the woman seemed touched by the circumstances. She did not appear as big as she had, grief and fear moulding her body into their own withering shapes. Her face had paled, and her fists were opening and closing at her side, trying to grab onto something solid to explain the tragedy they had all woken to.

  “I have no idea,” Blane began. “I was in the woods for most of the night.”

  She gave him a strange look, but said nothing.

  “I spend a lot of time in there. Living with nature. Keeping away from … human trivialities.”

  “This isn’t trivial. Have you noticed? No sirens yet. I rang over an hour ago.” She hugged herself, clasping her upper arms as if holding onto whatever sanity remained. “Maybe I should try again?”

  “Maybe they’re busy. What’s your name?”

  “Holly.”

  Together, Blane and Holly turned to look back at the people gathered around the pond. Blane glanced sadly at Slates.

  The boy’s body jerked once, hard, as if struck by a massive invisible weight. An arc of blood powered from his nose and mouth, soaking the woman who had been stroking his hair. He twitched briefly, limbs thumping a tattoo on the damp earth, forcing his head from the woman’s lap.

  Then he was still. Dead.

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