The Tapestry

by Wigmore, Paul

  As Gavin stabbed his fork into the yoke of the rancid egg he felt a change in the atmosphere around the table. It was like the feeling you get when you run up the stairs thinking that someone is following you, but then you turn around and you already knew that nobody was there but still turned around to look. And you still ran up those stairs even though you knew you were being foolish. It was like that, he felt a presence in the room. And for once, it wasn’t the man although he was still there. He had come in to the room to check on the progress of the three children and make sure they hadn’t thrown any of their food in to the bin. Gavin turned to look at him and as he did so he spotted his brother David and his sister Lala. David had a disgusted look on his face as he was mid mouthful of stew and Lala was actually throwing up. He could see the vomit from her mouth about to splash on to her plate. But it had stopped mid gush like a frozen torrent of vomit and she was no longer moving. He looked back and forth between the two of them and they were not moving? David still had that disgusted look on his face and he hadn’t taken another mouthful or even chewed what was in his mouth. They seemed to be frozen. As he turned to look at the man who seemed not to have been affected by whatever was going on with his brother and sister he heard a voice in his head. It just said... now is the time to be the man. And as soon as those words were uttered in his head, it felt to Gavin like a spell had been broken. He was back to being himself. The little boy inside of him was forgotten, although he was still inside a six year olds body. He now had the mind of an adult. An adult that wasn’t going to take any more shit off this pathetic excuse of a man that preyed on little children. He now remembered going into little Gavin and “becoming the boy” but he had never realised that it would have enveloped him so totally that he would have forgotten all about the man he had grown up to be since then...for the past few minutes he really had been the boy and nothing else, with all the boy’s hopes, dreams and memories... and fears. But now he could hear the voice which seemed to be echoing from the deepest corners of his mind. Over and over, time to be the man, it repeated... time to be the man.

  He knew at once whose voice it was and a wicked grin appeared on the little boys face as he recalled who he now was and why he was here.

  The man looked to be perplexed and terror-stricken at the same time as he poked a jittery finger at David. The boy seemed to be frozen and didn't budge an inch, his face still contorted in a disgusted fashion at the food in his mouth. ‘What sort of joke is this?’ He was looking between the two of them and the confusion was plain to see on his face.

  ‘They’re not real’ Gavin said, still with that wicked grin on his face. All fear of the man had now washed away and Gavin could see it was evident on his own face as he nervously asked what he meant. He leant forward and placed his hands under his chin while resting his elbows on the table.

  ‘Did I stutter?’ asked Gavin. ‘I said they’re not real you fucking retard’. The man looked to have been slapped in the face and then seemed to physically shrug himself.

  ‘What did you say?’ he asked showing an incredulous smile. He could not believe the boy had spoken to him in this manner.

  ‘You heard me...retard.’ Gavin didn't move and kept his eyes fixed on him. His face looked like one big red zit that was about to pop

  ‘Oh I’m gonna enjoy this you little shit. You don’t ever think you can talk to me like that and get away with it.’ The gleam was back in his eyes now, no doubt thinking of how he would punish the boy for his foul mouth as he wiped the plates of leftover crap and knocked them onto the floor. Gavin still not moving.

  ‘Go and fetch my belt’ he spat.

  ‘Why? So that you can bend me over your knee while you get your kicks from beating my little naked bottom till it’s nice and rosy red. Or so that you can hear me begging you... please Daddy stop. Please Daddy no’. He brought his hands up to his face in a comical fashion as if he were rubbing away the tears ‘Yes don’t think I haven’t noticed how much heavier your breathing gets when I beg you to stop...It’s because you like it isn’t it?’ The man had come round the table and was about to grab hold of Gavin but then stopped dead in his tracks resting his hand on the table as if to balance himself. Little boys can’t know things like that.

  ‘You... you don't know what you’re talking about’ he said nervously but didn't move any closer.

  ‘Oh but I do... lets test the theory then shall we?’ he sneered. The man suddenly had a black leather belt in his hand which Gavin had thought into existence. The little boy turned and bent over the seat of the dining chair and pulled down his pants exposing his bum cheeks to the fresh air. He looked back over his shoulder.

  ‘Well come on then, or would you prefer me over your knee?’

  The man was stood stock still. His authority had been challenged by the boy and it felt like there was now a shift in power. The belt in his hand felt useless.

  ‘Cant do it can you?’ Gavin laughed as he pulled his pants up and faced his childhood tormentor but still having to crane his neck to catch the beasts’ eyes. ‘So BIG and yet now so small’, he teased. The man was scared; it was evident in his eyes and his trembling hands. He dropped the belt onto the kitchen floor and backed away from the little boy.

  ‘What are you?’ he whimpered.

  ‘I am what you made me’ the boy declared. The man was confused, the voice had not changed and yet this was not the little boy he had dragged into the kitchen. He didn't talk with the words of a little boy at all. Gavin climbed onto the kitchen table and gestured towards his frozen siblings and as he did so they faded into nothingness.

  ‘See...’ he said ‘they’re not real, just like you. You do not exist but in my memories now’ the man saw what had happened but he couldn’t bring himself to admit it was true. He was on the floor backing away from the evil child until he could go no further. He looked towards the kitchen door to his right as a possible means of escape but as he did so the door disappeared. It was replaced by nothing but bricks. He let out a sob as he asked the question again,

  ‘What are you? Who... I don't understand, please let me go? He pleaded as he cowered in the corner and began muttering to himself. This isn’t real...this isn’t real...this isn’t real over and over. He was sobbing into his hands rocking back and forth. Although his body was that of a child, Gavin could feel the power inside of him growing. The energy inside of him was building up. The mans fear was feeding him like coal to a furnace. He was shedding the restraints that the memories of his childhood had put upon him; he really was becoming a man now. He jumped off the table and picked up a plate off the floor. He then piled the remains of the fallen stew onto the plate and offered it to the gibbering wreck in the corner.

  ‘Eat it.’ was all he said as he placed the plate on the floor in front of him. ‘I’m going now and you will torment me no more’. The man would do anything for his tormentor to leave so began the arduous job of shovelling the fetid stew down his gullet with his sweaty hands. Still not knowing what had just happened but glad it would be over soon. When he next dared look up from the floor, the little boy had gone, he was all alone again but he kept shovelling... just in case.

  And the boy became the man, the tormentor became the tormented etc etc. You will have to excuse my apathy at this little scene but I’ve “been around the block” a few times you could say and I’ve seen it all before... boring. But this isn’t the only door that was opened for Gavin and the next one is much more to my taste. Oh no there was one more, so delectable were the sights inside... such a twisted mind he had. I know you want to peek but we’ll leave that till the very end of our story.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  One came from the East and the other from the West and they were the most wondrous creatures Clara had ever seen. At first, they looked like billowing clouds of smoke, snaking their way across the treetops towards her, but as they got closer their bodies appeared to become more solid. As if they were fading into view. She knew right away that these were the creatu
res from her tapestry, and at once she felt safe somehow knowing that they were not here to harm her.

  The dragons swam in the currents of the air and their bodies were writhing all about and the awesome creatures themselves were weaving up and down, in and out as she still slowly spinned above the tranquil hill. Only now there was a sweet smell of lavender encompassing her and she began to feel slightly lightheaded.

  They flew over the tree tops towards her and were such a majestic sight to behold but also very fearsome.

  They circled around Clara a number of times before one of them spoke and while they did she took in their amazing beauty. They were both covered in green scales with a red underbelly and such bright yellow manes that she had to squint her eyes to look upon the amazing creatures. They had tendril like whiskers protruding from their faces which seemed to Clara to be very similar to a camels face just a little elongated and the horns of a deer protruding from the top of their strange heads. They had four tiny legs (at least in comparison to the rest of their body they were tiny) with eagle like claws which looked as if they could rip a cow in half without a second thought and their teeth seemed to be at least a foot high with the largest at the back of their mouths. This looked as if it were impossible for the dragons to close their mouths without hurting themselves. They also both seemed to have large pearl like balls under their chins, (she would know later that these were the pearls of wisdom which we often refer to but know not of their origin) and...they were beautiful. The pearls of wisdom each had a writhing mass of pink and blue clouds inside them that turned and twisted like a thunderstorm in a ball.

  The voice, to Clara sounded like the jingling of copper pans. It was neither sweet nor smooth sounding, nor was it jarring and unpleasant.

  ‘Do not be afraid Clara for we are here to guide you. A war has raged since before you were born which you know nothing of but now it is your duty to bring it to an end... we are here to help you’

  The dragons still seemed to be swimming in the air as they had no wings to talk of and yet they were flying. Clara didn't know what to say or what to do. Had a dragon just spoken to her? These were creatures of myths and legends.

  ‘You have no time for your disbelief Clara’ one of the dragons said as if it had read her thoughts. The dragons were still writhing around her in all their splendour, encircling her as if she were their prey, but she was not and she knew that. For some reason she knew that. ‘What am I to do?’ she asked, and then one of the dragons stopped right before her eyes and its face was larger than Clara herself.

  ‘You must defeat the diseased mind of the one they call the freak or otherwise he will bring hell upon this earth. He has a job to do which if he succeeds will open the gates of darkness on this planet forevermore’.

  And with that the other dragon came round from behind and flew by her. Clara felt the wind rush against her as the beast went by, it seemed to go on forever as it just kept going. She thought it would strike her at some point. The tail of the dragon was flapping to and fro as it went by. Such tremendous girth in the middle which tapered off to what looked to be a very sharp tail, as it finally whizzed past her eye and turned around above a clump of trees before finally settling on them. Although it could never really settle on them as it was roughly half a mile long, head to tail. They were massive, gargantuan she would even say. Clara had seen pictures before and always thought of them to be the stuff of legends or decorative pieces above the restaurants in china town but in her head they had always been about the size of four or five buses.

  ‘We are Tien-lung, The Celestial Dragon’ it said, again with that voice of melodic pots and pans as its partner settled on the ground nearby Clara’s feet. Clara was beginning to feel very dizzy, not from the spinning as that had now stopped and she just seemed to be hanging in the breeze above the hill, but from the very events taking place and the lavender smell which seemed to be very intoxicating. It felt as if she were dreaming all this and she would have let herself believe that if she had not remembered that she had tried that one before and it hadn’t worked. The dragons were talking to her but now it was as if the voices were being sent straight to her telepathically and at first Clara couldn’t make out what was being said as if it were a bad signal. She tried to send a thought back to the dragons that she didn't understand, couldn’t quite hear, you’re breaking up on me. And to her amusement it must have worked. They must have changed frequency she thought as the voices began to come through loud and clear.

  ‘Clara, do not be afraid of us for we are Mother Natures divine power. The greatest divine power on Earth, we give you water from rain with which you drink from and warmth from the sunshine for you to bathe in, we bring the wind from the seas which carries your seeds all across the land and soil from the Earth for you to plant those seeds in......Do not be afraid of us.’

  Clara was still very aware that she was high above a hill top somewhere, where? She had no idea but she was above a hill somewhere and she was conversing with two dragons and her feet weren’t even touching the ground. Yes she did feel like she had taken some sort of drug, but she also knew that wasn’t true. She hadn’t taken any sort of drugs for about twenty years and not one of them had produced hallucinations of this quality, that's how she knew this was real and she now had to somehow interact with these dragons. This in itself was a comical thought to Clara.

  ‘Take a look at this lush, green land Clara’. It was the dragon that was sat above the trees which the voice appeared to be coming from again. ‘Take a good look around you. I want you to hear the birdsong and listen to the stream chasing after itself behind you. I want you to breathe it all in’ As he said this it was as if her senses had been somehow magnified or more finely tuned because as she looked around her she could actually hear the stream which she had not known was behind her before, she could hear the birds which she had not even noticed before and they were singing the most beautiful songs. She had never in her life heard birds that sounded so sweet. She then looked down at the sprawling countryside before her and it seemed to have been magically filled with life. There were rabbits running to and fro, jumping in and out of bushes, and little fieldmice scurrying away from predators above. There was a fox hidden in one of the bushes near the dragon which lay on the ground and it was watching the rabbits play waiting for his chance to strike. Not one of the animals seemed to have noticed the gargantuan dragons that had settled before them. Or if they had noticed them, they certainly didn't seem to be bothered in any way, as if they also knew that the dragons were benevolent creatures.

  In one of the fields beyond the line of trees there was a farmer in what appeared to be a ploughing machine or tractor of some sort, and she could actually hear him whistling his happy tune as he went about his work without a care in the world it seemed. (It didn't slip her mind that she shouldn’t have been able to hear anything from this far away, as he was about half a mile in the distance). She also noticed that to her left was one of those windy country roads that she always thought were a nightmare to drive down at night as there was no street lighting and you could only rely on your own headlights to light your way. Driving down those roads at night always made her nervous, especially when there was some idiot behind wanting her to speed up just because they had no fear for their own lives.

  A little further down the road to the left she could see an old country pub with a few benches outside and what looked like a car park to the other side of it. There was quite a large beer garden to the back, but what struck Clara most was the symbol or shape that was on the wall facing her. Usually an old English country pub would be called something like “The Red Dragon” which would have been more apt actually or “The Nags Head” or something similar but this had a very strange name according to the symbol and Clara couldn’t work out why in her dreamlike state but she felt this was important.

  The dragon spoke again as she was pondering the name of the pub,

  ‘You have a beautiful land Clara which is now in great p
eril’. The ball of light under its chin was glowing ever more radiantly as it spoke. Clara felt almost hypnotised as she watched the writhing mass inside the ball, the warmth from the sun was also making her feel a little drowsy and that sweet lavender smell was even more intoxicating the longer it lingered. She wanted her feet on the ground though. It was very dizzying to be up there high above the trees and before the words left her mouth the dragons had responded, this time they spoke as one voice, or had they always been speaking in one voice? Maybe she was still fine tuning her signal?

  ‘Yes Clara, Keeper of the Tapestry, Guardian of the dragon fire, we will release you to the soil but first you must see what will become of your world should you fail to become yourself.’

  As Clara was trying to determine what becoming herself meant she felt the warmth from the sun replaced with a coldness that permeated her very bones as if the sun had suddenly been blocked out. The daylight had turned into sudden night. She could barely see but she could hear howls and terrifying screams from across the fields. There were no longer little rabbits and foxes beneath her but there was some sort of animal down there. She could tell that by the snarling and the grunting. Clara knew these were the sounds of the beasts from the astral plane. The beasts that were in limbo just searching for prey.

  As she looked around and her eyes became more adjusted to the sudden lack of daylight she could make out that the trees no longer had leaves. They were just withered silhouettes of their former selves against the sky. She saw the little man in the tractor, only he was no longer in the tractor. There was some sort of beast driving the machine.

  It had the head of a dog and the body of a monkey and it was jumping up and down excitedly in the seat as it chased the farmer. The chase didn't last very long before the farmer was cut down with his own tractor driven by dog monkey.