Bone Orchard

by Doug Johnson

  BONE ORCHARD

  Written by

  Doug Johnson

  Based on a screenplay by

  Lizz-Ayn Shaarawi

  Bone Orchard is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, are entirely coincidental.

  FRONT MATTER

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright 2013 by Chaos Publishing

  Cover design by Doug Johnson

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  ISBN-0988822067

  ISBN-978-0-9888220-6-1

  Published by

  Chaos Publishing

  PO Box 1571

  Annandale, VA 22003

  USA

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  We want to thank Lizz-Ayn Shaarawi for working with Chaos Publishing in adapting her original screenplay, Bone Orchard, into this novella, and for so graciously allowing us to take creative liberties in the adaptation process.

  We owe a special thanks to Debra Swan for her valuable input in the formative stages of this project, and for the many other projects in which she has been involved; and to the many others who have given their time and effort.

  We would like to thank the members of Trigger Street Labs for their amazing willingness to review and give feedback on screenplays and related projects both on the site and the boards; and to Kevin Spacey and Dana Brunetti for creating such a wonderful community.

  We want to thank Doug Johnson for his professionalism, dedication, and unflinching willingness to do whatever is necessary to bring the project to completion.

  We owe our greatest thanks to our families and friends, who provided encouragement and lent a hand of support.

  BONE ORCHARD

  PROLOGUE

  By the sweat of your face you will earn your food, until you return to the ground, as you were taken from it.

  -- Genesis 3:19

  CHAPTER 1

  The great, gnarled Worcester Pearmain was by far the oldest in the orchard, and Lazarus Walker would be damned if he’d outlive it.

  He’d nursed the ugly thing back from the brink several years ago when he’d bought the crumbling Victorian manor house, and it was just now starting to regain its proud posture as the bearer of one of England’s most beloved heirloom apples. It had been scarcely more than a harsh winter away from firewood, but now each autumn its branches groaned with a heavy crop of rosy-cheeked fruit, small by commercial standards, but beaming with the intense, crimson flush of their skin and trademark strawberry flavor of their pink-blushed flesh.

  Truth be told, the Permain was not his favorite variety. He far preferred the sweetness and understated complexity of Laxton’s Superb or its legendary forebear, Cox’s Orange Pippin, but there was no denying that the tree itself demanded his loyalty, and its care had most certainly been a labor of love.

  Lazarus never resorted to chemicals in the orchard. No pesticides, herbicides or synthetic fertilizers. Period. Experience had taught him that chemicals offered no lasting solutions. They merely set in motion a vicious cycle of dependency and escalating need. Considering his own past, he’d once found incredible irony in that newly adopted philosophy, but now simply saw it as an awakening. The proof was in the bounty. Lazarus was certain his orchard produced the best apples in all of Yorkshire, if not all of England.

  The Worcester Pearmain stood at the far end of the formal garden. More jester’s cap than crown, its endearingly flawed and weeping branches formed a fountain-esque backdrop against the elegant symmetry of pea stone walks hedged by boxwood and bordered by masses of lavender, antique roses and terraced perennial beddings.

  Several weeks had passed since the tree was in its full-bloom glory, and thousands of decomposing pink flowers now littered the garden paths. The air, once dizzyingly thick with their perfume, was now laced with a sweet, earthy scent of decay that Lazarus found no less pleasant. In fact, there was something comforting and immensely satisfying in it. Something grounding that brought him peace. He’d never admitted it, but during his first visit to the manor house, it was the sight of that tree in bloom that had made his decision for him. For all intents and purposes, he’d bought the place before ever setting foot inside.

  The spine of the garden was a wide path flanked on either side by vigorously healthy young trees. Two rows of strikingly asymmetric cultivars of differing sizes and species. Lazarus had planted them all, and took great pleasure in their careful, though sporadic selection. In stark contrast to the rest of the garden, the trees brought an air of whimsy and rebirth. There were apples, of course, but also cherry and damson, lilac and serviceberry, Japanese maple and Chinese ginkgo. Defying all logic, the juxtaposition somehow worked. In fact, it was quite beautiful.

  Face shaded by the frayed brim of the straw cowboy hat perched on his head, sinewy thirty-nine year-old Lazarus Walker climbed a squat wooden ladder and hoisted up a pair of pruning loppers to a thick branch scarred by a cancerous looking blight. Unlike many of the garden tools that hung from the potting shed’s hand-hewn chestnut beams, the pruners weren’t antiques. They were well-oiled, razor sharp and generated enough double-geared torque to cleanly slice through limbs like a katana through warm butter.

  Lazarus often thought the hooked blades resembled the beak of some great, steel bird of prey. He squeezed the fiberglass handles and the loppers effortlessly severed the branch with a faint squeak. The sound was not altogether different from the crisp bite of an apple.

  He stepped back down the bowed rungs of the ladder and repositioned it. The day was unseasonably warm for Northern England, and Lazarus welcomed the cleansing sweat that made the twill of his shirt cling to his arms and back. Looking out beyond one of the estate’s many weathered, drystone walls, the British countryside stretched out as far as the eye could see. The fields were now a patchwork of vibrant spring green and frothy gold, dotted with lowland sheep and crisscrossed by miles of border stone and hedgerow. This was why he was here. This seclusion. This isolation. Just as cleanly as he severed that diseased branch from the Worcester Pearmain, Lazarus Walker had severed his link with the outside world.

  Almost.

  The crush of heavy tires on gravel drew his attention back to the manor house and he checked the clunky watch on his wrist.

  An ancient Leyland flatbed barreled up the driveway trailing a khaki dust cloud behind it like a cape. The time-ravaged lettering on its doors was utterly indecipherable, though Lazarus knew it belonged to Arthur McGregor. Everybody did.

  He rounded the corner of the house gripping the wooden handles of a battered wheelbarrow and set it down at the edge of the circular drive. The tired front façade of the manor house rather resembled a damaged photograph of itself. Its former grandeur wasn’t easily visualized at first look, though if one squinted, its sheer size and symmetry could steer the imagination.

  Lazarus walked out to meet the snout-nosed truck as it slid to a stop. He carried himself with that slightly preposterous brand of arrogant grace that only royalty and rock stars can get away with.

  Lazarus Walker was the latter.

  Almost unnecessarily, he was good-looking too. Not perfect, and perhaps that made him all the more attractive. The long, angular features of his face had the same muscle-carved look as the rest of him, weathered in a way that hinted at a life of debauchery and adventure without regret; the kind of fantasy life that inspired adoration and j
ealousy in equal numbers.

  Lazarus waited patiently as The Damned’s punk anthem “Smash It Up” blared from the lorry’s cab over its lone, badly distorting speaker until the driver cut the engine and flung open the door. Dylan Daly hopped out, clipboard in hand and wearing a soiled “McGregor Nursery” shirt that clung to his thickening belly a little too intimately.

  “Hiya!”

  “Hello,” Lazarus offered back. It was a fine line that needed to be navigated in maintaining a tone that remained cordial but didn’t invite conversation.

  Dylan flipped through the invoices on his clipboard.

  “So… just the shrubbery then?”

  No, I thought maybe I’d invite you in for tea.

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  Dylan wiped his nose with the back of his hand, leaving a dirt moustache on his upper lip. He fished a pen from his pocket and handed it to Lazarus along with the clipboard. Lazarus grimaced, but reluctantly took them in the name of expediency.

  While he waited, Dylan glanced around the courtyard. Empty fountains and unkempt topiaries. Tufts of grass popping up through the driveway gravel and missing slates on the roof. He returned his gaze to Lazarus with a skeptical eye.

  The look was ignored. Lazarus signed the invoice and handed back the pen and clipboard.

  “Want me to drive ‘round back?” Dylan asked.

  Lazarus assessed the truck and quickly decided it was better suited to Omaha Beach than an English garden.

  “Nah, those tires will tear up the sod. Just leave it here. I’ll take care of it.”

  Dylan squinted at him, but spun around and headed for the back of the truck. He vaulted up onto the flatbed with surprising agility and snatched up a shrub by its burlap-clad root ball. Lazarus followed, mildly impressed. He pulled the straw hat from his head, revealing a scruffy black mat of short, uncombed hair. He wiped the sweat from his face with his shirttail and Dylan’s eyes flared.

  “Hey! Hey, you’re that fella!”

  Lazarus sighed with resignation. “I was.”

  “I loved your band. And that song… oh, man!” Dylan flipped the shrub and held it like a guitar. “You know, dun-nan-duh-dun!”

  “Yes, I know it well.”

  Dylan handed the shrub down, winded by his performance. Lazarus turned and set it into the wheelbarrow.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?”

  Lazarus grinned. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  Dylan smiled back without a shred of understanding.

  “Getting away from it all.”

  “Aye. It’s the place to do it alright.”

  Dylan gawked at Lazarus, both of them experiencing the same odd sensation when you can actually feel the muscles in your face as you hold a smile. Just for different reasons.

  “Well, thanks for bringing the shrubs by.”

  “Yeah, man. Sure.” The smile lingered.

  “I suppose I’ll just plant them then…”

  Dylan finally caught the drift.

  “Right. Cool.”

  He hopped down from the flatbed and hurried to the Leyland’s cab. He climbed up, but not without pausing to look back.

  “Can’t wait to tell the girlfriend that I met the Lazarus Walker. And here of all places!”

  “Who’d believe it?”

  Dylan simultaneously blinked and smiled, then ducked into the cab and wrenched the door shut behind him. The engine wheezed and growled to life. The Damned resumed their musical “fuck you” to the world. He rolled down the window, crazily spinning the crank like an overtaxed whirligig. He thrust his arm out the window and pumped his fist into the air.

  “Rock on, mate!”

  Lazarus waved as Dylan executed a sloppy three-point turn.

  In a circular driveway.

  He tore off in a cloud of exhaust and gravel dust while Lazarus turned to his wheelbarrow and muscled his new Blackthorn to the garden.

  CHAPTER 2

  In a decade where heavy metal had nearly been sucked down into the whirlpool of oblivion along with spandex-clad hair bands like Trixter and Skid Row, the Black Ryders had risen from the flannel-charred ashes of grunge and carved out a musical legacy for themselves that could arguably be eclipsed only by Metallica.

  They had outlasted a slew of embarrassing pop-music phenomena, from the Backstreet Boys and Hootie and the Blowfish to nu-metal pan flashes like Limp Bizkit. In a musical wasteland where bands were covering George Michael songs and the world was calling it “metal,” the new millennium could not come soon enough.

  In the beginning, they had ascended in the ranks based on the unflinching caliber of their talent and the matchless energy of their live shows. Lazarus had pushed the band hard, and years of relentless touring had earned them legions of diehard fans. No one ever walked out of a Black Ryder show without feeling like they’d just gotten their ass kicked by the music and asking when they could have it kicked again. But they also had “vinyl energy.” Those diehard fans bought records, and when you sell records you survive the industry. In the end, however, what they hadn’t been able to survive was themselves.

  Lazarus collected the pruned branches he’d cut earlier and began tossing them into the wheelbarrow as well. When he bent to pick up a limb that lay near the stone wall, a shadow fell across his arm.

  He spoke without looking up.

  “You’re trespassing.”

  A thick-soled, tar black pair of size six Doc Martens boots swung down over the edge of the wall like pendulums.

  Lazarus rubbed his back as he straightened. His eyes followed the stomp-worthy boots up to fishnet-clad thighs, a zip-front, pleated black mini-skirt and a ripped t-shirt. There was a lot of skin on display before him, and he knew damn well he was looking at trouble.

  Christ, this one’s a chime away from jailbait.

  The girl rummaged through an enormous bag and thrust a CD out at Lazarus. His own face, albeit a much younger version, sneered back from the cover along with four others. The name “Black Ryders” floated over them in gothic script.

  “Four minutes,” Lazarus said matter-of-factly.

  “Aww, come on. Do you know how hard it was to find you?”

  Lazarus took the CD from her. Yes, in fact, he did know. She smiled dangerously and held out a Sharpie for him. He didn’t take it.

  “The accent… American?”

  “Canadian”

  He handed back the CD.

  “Do your parents know where you are?”

  The girl scoffed. “They think I’m backpacking across Belgium right now.”

  “Then perhaps that’s where you should be.”

  He picked up the last branch, turned his back to her and walked away.

  “Can I at least have your autograph?”

  Lazarus ignored the request. He dropped the limb on top of the others in the wheelbarrow, the diseased canker staring back at him like the eye of a corpse.

  “Can I use your bathroom? I gotta pee!”

  He didn’t bat an eye. “Plenty of bushes on the way to the main road,” he said, heading off toward the house. She wasn’t the first and would hardly be the last. “Watch for the sinkhole.”

  Lazarus pushed through the double-swinging butler’s pantry door into the upstairs kitchen carrying an egg and cress sandwich on a plate. He set it down on the counter, drew a chef’s knife from the block there and neatly sliced the sandwich into triangles. Lazarus didn’t cook often, but having a good set of German cutlery was less a luxury than a necessity in his mind. He could hardly be considered a spendthrift, but when he did spend, he entertained no shyness about it.

  Leaning over the sink, he ate his sandwich and stared out the windows at the property. They offered no garden vantage here. The view instead was of a large, overgrown patch of croquet lawn and a wisteria-choked carriage house. Beyond that, the blue sky was beginning to bruise over with storm clouds, and Lazarus briefly contemplated waiting to see if a good downpour might save him the trouble of watering the new s
hrubbery.

  In the end he thought better of it. He finished his sandwich, slotted the knife back into the block and headed for the garden, wondering how far the fan-girl and her Courtney Love boots would make it on the main road before the rains moved in and made her wish she’d never heard the name, “Lazarus Walker.”

  The loppers found their peg in the potting shed, carbon-steel beak closed for the time being. Hanging among the other tools on the wall, they lost much of their menace and simply looked new. There were relatively modern spades and shovels, mattocks and forks alongside complex looking, turn-of-the-century tools with no discernable purpose other than to cultivate the nightmares of children.

  Lazarus tipped the wheelbarrow and propped it in a corner near the axes, their blades dusted in fine rust. He rarely needed them, having never taken a single tree down on the property. Instead, he grabbed a shovel and went to dig.

  Where most people went wrong was digging too much. Backfilling a deep hole with loose soil only encouraged the roots to grow down. Digging a wide, shallow hole encouraged them to spread outward.

  Lazarus had located the new hole just beyond the ginkgo, a semi-dwarf variety that, unlike most of the other trees in the double row, hadn’t been selected for its flowers or fruit, but purely for its foliage. The fan-shaped, emerald green leaves brought an elegant texture to the garden in spring and summer, then ripened to a brilliant gold in autumn. He’d heard that catching a ginkgo leaf as it fell to earth was good luck, but had been stunned the previous fall when he’d come out to the garden one afternoon and found its branches completely bare. The tree had dropped every last one of it leaves over the course of a single two-hour span. Ginkgo rain, it was called. So much for good luck.

  Winded and thirsty from the excavation, Lazarus dragged his shovel toward the shed, but the guttural, piping call of a bird summoned his attention back to the house.