The Man Who Built the World

by Chris Ward

  It was also interesting that Gabrielle hadn’t appeared to see her son. Or even her daughter’s funeral, though Liana strongly suspected Bethany was with her mother now, and probably a lot happier. Perhaps it had something to do with the other one. His presence had grown stronger, and Liana could feel the danger in him. The circumstances and shortcomings of living in this world were different for men and women, of course, but hopefully the time was close when they could be sent back. Then, Liana hoped, a lot of suffering would end.

  A light was on in the living room as she pulled into the small turning circle at the bottom of their drive. No doubt Elaina was waiting inside for her, ready to tear strips off her for going up the house and taking little Jack with her. Elaina knew Liana would use her trickery to keep the baby quiet, turn faces away if necessary, but even so, one slip up could cost them.

  Elaina didn’t understand that Liana only wanted the best for all of them. Liana didn’t expect her sister to understand, after all, it wasn’t in her nature, and that was the whole point of everything.

  4

  ‘We came up here to scatter Bethany’s ashes,’ Ian said, picking pieces of the broken urn up off the ground and putting them into the bag. ‘What’s done now is done. We have to say a short prayer for her, say goodbye.’

  ‘I can’t believe what he did –’

  ‘There’s no point in questioning it. Matt has issues with Bethany’s death. You and I have had more time to come to terms with it. We owe it to her to show our last respects, whether Matt wants to or not. If you loved her –’

  Red’s eyes filled with sorrow. He almost staggered, putting a hand on Ian’s shoulder to support himself.

  ‘Of course I loved her. How could you possibly doubt that?’

  Ian nodded slowly, understanding. ‘Then let’s say a prayer for her, put her to rest. She would have wanted this. To be with her mother.’

  Red nodded. His eyes suddenly steeled, as hard as Arctic winter. Ian knew he couldn’t let go of his anger, that it held him still, enslaved him.

  ‘But what about him? Where the hell does he think he’s going? Christ, Ian, I told you not to invite him back. He’s tried to ruin our lives before.’

  ‘That’s not fair, Red.’

  ‘You don’t think so? He left you for dead, Ian. Your own son.’

  Ian shook his head. ‘He idolised his mother, and rightly so. Even when she began to . . . get sick, he only ever saw her beauty, her kindness. As far as he’s concerned, I took that away from him.’

  ‘Then tell him! Tell him what happened! Tell him why you did it!’

  Ian sighed. ‘He would only accuse me of lying. Such a fanciful story would be wasted on Matthew’s reasoning.’

  ‘I thought you said he wrote books? Surely he’s inclined to believe anything? The truth can’t be more fanciful than whatever he writes about.’

  Ian didn’t answer. He picked up a handful of ashes from the ground and scattered them evenly over the earth directly in front of the grave.

  Red came to kneel beside him. Ian closed his eyes and began to recite a short prayer, hands pressed together. Beside him, he heard Red sniff.

  ‘I miss you,’ Red whispered, barely keeping the sorrow from his voice. ‘I miss you so much. One day . . . one day I’ll come and find you.’

  Ian placed one hand on his friend’s shoulder, hesitantly at first, then with more authority. It had been a difficult thing for him to get used to, Red and Bethany. His closest friend and his daughter.

  Lovers.

  At first the idea had seemed absurd. His mute daughter and his enigmatic friend. But after a time he had became accustomed to the idea, began to realise that if anyone could take care of her, his best friend could. Bethany had not been like other children. Locked within her world of silence she had become a stranger to them all, barring perhaps Red, who had found a way to communicate with her in the absence of words.

  Love.

  For the first time in years he had seen her smile, seen her leave the house, wander the garden picking flowers, sitting on the grass and cupping insects in her hands, marveling at the world outside her four barren walls, and he had hoped, he had so desperately hoped, she might finally break her silence.

  Looking down at the sobbing figure of his friend, Ian realised he had done wrong by her. He had done wrong by both of them. Whatever he had done, he had failed, and what had happened to Gabrielle, his dear, sweet wife, was only the ice on the lake’s surface. But he had only done what he had to; to protect them, and to save them.

  Matthew had failed to recognise it and had taken off, while Bethany had withdrawn further into the imaginary world that surrounded her, until she reached womanhood. He had dreamed that his daughter might open up, might finally talk to him, hoped Red could bring words from her silent lungs.

  Red had made her happy. Although their relationship had barely extended beyond the house grounds, Ian knew she had been happy. He had seen it in her face, and thought it only a matter of time before she started to speak.

  It was losing the baby that had broken her.

  She had written his name down on paper – the only word she had ever written for anyone else.

  Jack.

  Ian shivered, remembering Matt’s words. How had Matthew known about him?

  The Meredith sisters had come to deliver the child. They had delivered many children in the village over the years, saved several difficult births with ways no doctor or midwife ever could. But not this time; they emerged with words of terrible sorrow and regret, while through the door into the bedroom, Bethany’s silence was far worse than the tears or screams of any hysterical mother whose child had been stillborn. As though Bethany accepted it, accepted the child’s fate as belonging to her own.

  The sisters. They had saved Ian’s life once, of course, with something more than medicine. Magic? He didn’t like to think about it, but Matthew had left him closer to death than he would ever let his son know. Matt had beaten him beyond saving. Ian should have died, but they had come to him and brought him back from the edge.

  But Jack’s tiny life had been beyond even them. Perhaps Gabrielle . . . once. He shook his head. It was not worth thinking about it now.

  He still owed the sisters. He had their terrible life debt hanging over his head like a bleak thunder cloud forever waiting to burst. Sometimes, he wished they had left him to die, but he knew, for Bethany’s sake alone, they had brought him back.

  Their motivation existed in complexities he would never understand now Gabrielle was gone.

  He looked up at Gabrielle’s grave, the blank headstone that told no one who she was, kept her existence a secret, the way it had to be. He frowned. Something Matthew had said stuck out in his mind. Something that wasn’t quite right.

  A woman upstairs, holding a child.

  Who had Matthew seen? Who had he seen with the child?

  Who was the child?

  . . . oh . . .

  (No)

  Ian could almost feel those blows raining down again as realization hit him so hard he almost pitched forward into the gravestone. The truth was more terrifying than he could ever have imagined.

  Matthew hadn’t seen Bethany at all. Not a ghost, not a dream, not the real her. Of course not. Bethany was dead.

  Ian pulled his hand off Red’s shoulder so quickly the other man gasped in surprise. Recovering his composure Ian jumped to his feet, a rough swipe of his arm brushing away tears as alarm flashed across his face.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘An eye for an eye,’ Ian muttered, staring at Gabrielle’s grave. ‘A favour for a favour.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I think we need to find my son.’

  Red snorted. ‘Well that’s easy, he’ll be slumped next to your liquor cabinet. Why?’

  ‘I need to know who he saw.’

  ‘He was just drunk.’

  ‘Red, he knows about Jack, about your baby. He said he saw a woman with a baby, a wo
man he thinks was Bethany. Now, I haven’t said anything to him, have you?’

  ‘Of course not! But that doesn’t mean someone else hasn’t.’

  Ian shook his head. ‘Like who? Who has he come into contact with? Who could have told him?’

  Red frowned. ‘I don’t know, someone in the pub? Someone at the B&B?’

  ‘You told me yourself he was sat alone in the pub. And it’s hardly breakfast table conversation, is it?’

  Red shook his head.

  Ian frowned. ‘What if he really did see someone upstairs with a baby? There were no women with babies at the house earlier that I remember.’

  Red’s hands bunched into fists, his anger directed at a new, as yet unidentified foe. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

  Ian nodded. ‘Yes. That we seriously need to find my son. We’ll take it from there. But first, we need to know who he saw.’

  ###

  Bethany’s Diary, June 15th, 1990

  A terrible thing happened last night. Dad came into my room, and started to hunt through my things as I lay in bed. He shouted at me, and I could smell alcohol on his breath. I was too scared to move. He went straight over to my dressing table, and I knew he was looking for something. When I saw what it was, though, I wanted to scream at him, tell him to stop, but I couldn’t. I just sat still, the bedclothes wrapped over my knees, and watched.

  He found them. He found my diaries.

  In the secret place under the floorboard in the corner, tucked under the hot water pipes that keep them warm in winter. He must have known they were there, must have found them already, for he went straight to the dresser, hauled it back, and pulled up the loose board underneath.

  I shook my head at him to stop, but he ignored me. He scooped them all up in his arms and marched out of my room.

  I waited for him to go and then followed him down into the kitchen. An empty bottle stood on the table, and I knew he was drunk. He would never do it otherwise, I know he wouldn’t. Well, he took them all down into the kitchen, opened up the stove and tossed them in, then stood there for some time, watching them burn. I watched him from the doorway, and don’t think he saw me, otherwise he looked crazy enough that he might throw me in there too. After a while, I went back up to my room.

  I cried under the sheets for a while, sad that so many books – there must have been ten or twelve – had been stolen and burnt. I don’t know what got into Dad, but from now on I’ll have to be careful.

  So many memories taken from me.

  After a while I plucked up the courage to sneak over to the hole in the floor, lift the board, look in, look around. There, at the back, I found one book he had missed, the oldest one, dating back five or six years.

  From now on I’ll find another place to hide them, another place where no one will find them. I know a few places; I’ll decide tomorrow.

  Terribly sad, I flicked over the pages of the book, worn and with corners all dog–eared, reading my awful handwriting – at least it’s got better since then! The book dates back to when Mummy first died, 1984. Of course, I didn’t realise at the time, and it seems strange reading about how I used to see her at the window, watching me, how I’d follow her footprints in the snow. Funny how I thought she was still alive, and living out there, when all the time, according to Dad, she’s been buried in the ground.

  Even stranger, though, that I keep seeing her.

  Watching me through my window, waiting for me out in the snow. She seems so real even now I know that’s not really her, that’s just something else. Perhaps she’s not really dead, or only a little bit dead, and a bit of her has been left behind. Whatever, I know she wants me to go with her, go out to her in the snow and be with her forever.

  After tonight I don’t think Dad can really love me, so one day, maybe, I will.

  I just don’t know how yet.

  5

  Matt stumbled several times, falling over completely twice, the second time landing face down in the shallow waters of the stream, the icy water like a sharp wake up call at boot camp.

  He pushed himself to his feet. He was soaked through, and his fingers found a cut had opened above his left eye. He must have struck his face on the smooth pebbles at the bottom of the stream, but his face felt so numb he couldn’t tell for sure, the only certainty being the blood that stained his vision red.

  He wiped it away with a damp sleeve and stumbled on up towards the house. He glanced behind him for signs of pursuit, expecting any moment to feel Red’s rough hands on his shoulders pulling him backwards, a huge fist slamming into his face.

  What cruel trick were they playing on him? Their innocent ignorance, their stubborn denial of his claims. Sick, unfair.

  They knew. And Matt knew they knew. About the girl. About the baby.

  The way Red had struck him, he may as well have held up a neon sign admitting his guilt. And his father, what could he possibly gain from all this?

  Matt barely considered that his own conclusions might be wrong. He wasn’t seeing things, surely? He had lost a lot of his sanity over the last few hours, but even blind drunk he wasn’t that crazy.

  He cried out with relief when the house finally loomed up before him, rising up from beyond the garden, a grey, antiquarian monolith filled with secrets. The ascent out of the valley had exhausted him and the sight of any building would have been welcome, even one which held the shadows of his little sister’s face in every window.

  Still unsure of what he was looking for, Matt headed into the house.

  An eerie silence filled the rooms and corridors, and he stood still a while, listening for the sound of movement upstairs.

  He heard nothing but a thick, almost tangible silence.

  She must be here somewhere, he thought. Where else would she go? She lives here after all.

  He climbed the stairs to the second floor, moving past his own rooms and heading for Bethany’s. He winced when a floorboard creaked just outside the door and froze, grimacing. But nothing, no sound of movement came from inside. Where was she?

  He reached the door and tried the handle. It was locked, but age had made these thick pine doors brittle. To hell with being quiet, he thought, stepped back and aimed a kick squarely below the lock. His aim was poor, and his foot struck the lower edge of the door handle, but it was enough to cause a sharp cracking sound, and after a second kick the door burst inwards, banging against the wall behind.

  Matthew stepped inside, bracing himself for confrontation.

  Empty. Not even old furniture, the kind you always saw in horror movies, covered over with sheets. The bed had gone, her cupboards, dresser, bookshelves, always so distressingly empty of books. As though Bethany’s life was a slate now wiped clean.

  Something about the starkness of her room horrified Matt. They had tried to erase her presence, as though he had never had a sister at all.

  He remembered his own room, untouched after all these years.

  He walked across to the window and peered out at the back garden of the house. There was no sign of his father or Red, but it would only be a matter of time before they came after him. He looked towards the break in the back hedge where the path began, and thought he noticed a movement in the undergrowth, a shifting of foliage that was too irregular to have been caused by wind. He stepped back quickly, not wanting to be seen, and drunkenly stumbled a few extra steps. Something creaked underfoot, making him gasp.

  He looked down and saw a loose board. He tapped it with his foot, saw how it wasn’t even fixed down. He remembered the layout of her room well enough, and knew her dresser would have once covered this area, keeping this loose board away from uncertain feet and prying eyes. He dropped to his knees. His fingers found a grip and he lifted the board up.

  He discovered a small space beneath, cross beams from the ceiling below and the hot water pipes leaving a cubby hole a couple of feet wide. Bethany had never had many possessions, never shown more than a passing interest in any presents they g
ave her. What she did have had been piled into a box in another corner, a random assortment of what had become junk. But this, this tiny under floor space, struck him as odd. Space for a few keepsakes, perhaps.

  He heard a sound from downstairs, someone shouting his name.

  Panic filled him. Damn it, they were in the house. He had let himself get preoccupied again.

  He stood up, kicked the board back into place, and turned back toward the door. There had to be some way out, some way past them. A back staircase, a fire escape?

  None that he remembered. He could always hide. But where?

  The house was full of closets and walk–in cupboards, cubby holes and cluttered storerooms. There were perhaps twenty rooms he had only been in once or twice in his whole childhood. He could hide just about anywhere.

  He slipped out into the corridor, aware that Bethany’s room would be among the first places they would look. A stairwell rose to his right, up towards his parents’ old rooms. A chill wind seemed to ghost through his bones at the thought of being up there again, near to where his mother - before what happened - had spent a large part of her life.

  He didn’t like to think about her. It hurt too much.

  In fact, for the last ten years he had hardly thought about her at all. He had cut her memory and those of the rest of his childhood off like a log on a chopping block. He no longer needed those memories; they could do nothing but hurt him.

  Matt took the stairs two at a time, hurrying to get some distance between himself and them, but at the same time terrified his unsteady feet would bring him clattering back to earth where he would open his eyes to find Red standing over him. The stairwell was separate from the main staircase that rose through the centre of the house, a small spiral that connected only the third and fourth floors. Each floor had two smaller stairwells, alternating up and down at either end of the house, while the main staircase connecting all the floors rose up through the middle like a central nervous system.