Henry, the Gaoler

by A. W. Exley

  "There!" She pointed to the orchard and the shadows moving amongst the blossoming fruit trees.

  We ran to find them amongst the apples and pears. Mrs Morris batted at a vermin with her walking stick while Mr Morris wielded his rifle like a baseball bat and thumped at another.

  Hazel drew her weapon but her hand shook. "I can't, I don't want to hit mother or father."

  That left me and the pitchfork. I held it up to Hazel and shook it. More? Hopefully she got the hint.

  "Help them," she pleaded and then ran off into the gathering dark.

  I left Mr Morris to fend for himself and jumped to aid the fallen Mrs Morris. These vermin were in a worse state than Phelps and the other. Briefly I wondered if they died early in the flu pandemic. Their clothing was torn and ragged and the flesh peeled from their limbs. In every way it was like battling a walking nightmare, one you couldn't wake up from.

  One loomed over Mrs Morris but she kept it at bay with one hand at its throat and the other on its chest. I thrust with the pitchfork and caught the vermin in the side and pushed it off Mrs Morris. The creature spun, giving the fragile Mrs Morris time to roll to the side. The vermin grabbed hold of the implement and we tussled for a bit, but with a mighty shove, I threw it off balance. Plus it tripped over a chicken that decided to run through the middle of the fracas. While it scrabbled on the ground trying to regain its footing, I thrust hard with the pitchfork. It squealed as the prongs went through its side and into the roots of the apple tree, fixing it to the spot.

  The pigs snuffled over, roused by the squealing so similar to their own. I bet Ella didn't have to put up with chickens and curious livestock when she was called out to do her work.

  Hazel reappeared with a hoe. It would have to do. Mr Morris attacked his vermin as though it was a lump of metal and he was a ship worker. Each blow dented it, but didn't stop its unrelenting advance. I marvelled that he hadn't figured out he battled one of the undead yet and adjusted his approach to combat it.

  I swung the hoe and struck its kneecaps. Bone splintered with a crack like a broken windowpane and the creature dropped to one leg. Mr Morris' next blow made it stagger back against a pear tree. Its arms splayed as it caught at the branches to hold itself upright on the useless leg.

  Taking the opportunity, I shoved the hoe through the branches, wedging its body hard against the tree. It couldn't drop down unless it removed its head first and the curved end of the hoe stopped it trying to pull the gardening tool all the way through.

  Mr Morris wiped his sweaty brow and nodded at me. Hazel rushed to help her mother. As she helped her mother stand, something on her leg glistened in the receding light. The creatures had torn the fabric of her stockings and a trio of bloody lines were scratched down her calf.

  Judgement had been passed on Mrs Morris in the form of a vermin mark.

  19

  Hazel followed my line of sight and glanced down at her mother's leg. Then she looked up to meet my horrified gaze. She shook her head, silencing me, not that there was anything to say, assuming I could say anything. My vocal cords had managed only two words in the past two years, and that rusty sound was only for Hazel's ears.

  I gestured to the trapped creatures and drew a line across my throat and then mimed lifting the head off. The vermin would keep struggling to free themselves and we needed to deal with them while they were still trapped.

  "Father, Henry says you must remove the heads of these things to silence them forever." Hazel placed the fallen walking stick in her mother's hand, but kept an arm around the woman's shoulders.

  Mr Morris' eyes widened as he looked from the vermin stuck in a tree, one pinned to the roots through the side, and another back by the front door. That one was still trying to swim across the grass. I had a strong urge to go check on Phelps; with my luck he had probably reattached his head and ridden off on Cossimo.

  Mr Morris stood in front of the impaled vermin held upright like a scarecrow. "You cannot murder these unfortunates. To do so would make you a minion of Satan."

  I'm pretty sure dispatching the one that attacked Phelps and then the man himself already signed my Satan recruitment papers. I rolled my eyes. What was his plan; let them go with a stern lecture ringing in their rotten ears? Strange he threatened to tear me apart for visiting his daughter, but he seemed to want leniency for the vermin who attacked his wife. Or could he be all talk in defence of his family and not action?

  Hazel put a hand on my arm. "Go fetch Ella."

  I snorted. After all I had done this evening, I was seen as inferior to her. Not to mention it rankled that she expected Ella to dispatch them. Mr Morris took his wife from Hazel and swung her up into his arms. The bloody scratch had congealed but I wondered how long it would take. How long before Mr Morris was a widower?

  "She has a sword, Henry. It doesn't matter if she wields it or you. I will tend to mother while we wait for you to return." Hazel shook my arm and broke my train of thought.

  I didn't like leaving them with three thrashing monsters. What if one got loose? I crossed my arms and narrowed my gaze.

  Hazel laughed, a soft gentle tone at odds with the horror around us. "Don't you dare try and pull that with me, Henry Evans."

  I never could order her around. A sword would be handy, as I didn't fancy trying the rope trick again on these three.

  She reached up and kissed my cheek. "Get going. The sooner this is done, the sooner we can talk of more pleasant things."

  Well, those were words to light a fire under my feet, and just the thing to give a man hope. It took less than an hour to ride hard back to our farm and return with Ella on the Triumph motorbike. We had cantered into the yard and I threw the reins at a startled Stewart and ran into the kitchen. Ella didn't say a word when I grabbed her sword from its spot by the door and thrust it at her. My actions and pallor told her everything she needed to know.

  We left the motorbike by the wall. Phelps had stopped twitching and I pulled the bayonet free of his slumped remains. As terrible as it sounds, I was rather chuffed when Ella was impressed when I mimed how I used the rope to deal to him. Perhaps it showed I was a minion of Satan to delight in such a ghoulish thing, or perhaps it was simply relief flowing through my body that one nightmare had finally ended.

  Within the enclosure I tried to take the sword from Ella, but she busied me making an impromptu bonfire outside the wall. Soon acrid smoke spiralled up to the sky and the garden was peaceful once more.

  "I need to talk to Mr Morris," Ella said and she left Hazel and me alone.

  We sat on the bench at the edge of the orchard. Light from the house and the overhead moon provided illumination. Only now did I remember the original reason for my visit. Diving a hand into my pocket, I withdrew the small package and pressed it into her hands.

  Happy birthday, I mouthed.

  "You shouldn't have," Hazel said and she sat with the gift resting on the palm of her hand.

  When she opened it, she might prefer I hadn't given her anything at all.

  Wiping a tear from her cheek, she pulled the end of the pink ribbon. Carefully, as though it were some expensive item and not a trinket from the local store, she peeled back the paper. Inside lay a pair of jewelled hairpins. The crystals sparkled in the moonlight.

  I felt silly. Such tiny things. Ella and Alice said they were all the rage for some new hairstyle that involved women doing something that was all over the top of my head and made no sense.

  Hazel stroked one with a fingertip. "They're beautiful, Henry. Now I can make Marcel waves."

  Waves? What did swimming or the ocean have to do with hairpins? Then I lost the thought when she kissed me.

  Other people touching me made me uncomfortable, as though I were a ghost that had been spotted by the living. Holding Hazel in my arms grounded me and brought me back to this world. I could hold her forever, assuming her father didn't do to me what he was too scared to do to vermin.

  A question pounded in my mind as fast as my he
art raced in my chest. I broke the kiss to rest my forehead against hers. I had to ask, stupid as it seemed.

  Pulling out my notebook and pencil I wrote, Do you really care for me? It's not like you had much choice.

  She could have her pick of fellows now she was free to live her life. For so long I had been her gaoler, her only friend. It wasn't much of a choice.

  "Oh, Henry. You can't force love. It's not a matter of having one or a hundred men to pick from. You know when you find it."

  Her words didn't reassure me. The tiny insecure part feared I would lose her now. But did I really think her so shallow that she would fall for the first fresh face she saw? No. Not Hazel. The woman knew her mind.

  She nestled closer to me. "You were always different to the other boys."

  Weakling? Runt? The one who got winded running across the field? I struggled to see how being different was good.

  She stroked my face with her hand and then it dropped to tap my chest. "In here. You see the world differently. You're a dreamer and a creator, not a soldier. You have an artist's soul."

  Was that why the shadow of death clung to me when I first saw it on the battlefield? Did I perceive the world a different way than the other soldiers? At least now I could breathe free, for it had ridden Phelps back to wherever it came from.

  A frown crossed her face. "You should go to art school. We need to look into it."

  I suspected I wouldn't have much choice in that, but my heart swelled to think she saw something more than a farm hand or footman inside me. I could imagine devoting my life to art, painting what I saw in the world around me, while the rich threw money at my feet. There was a dream to hold close.

  "I'll not stay another night here." She looked back at the tower, the light at the top now extinguished and the shape blurred into the surrounding night. "My tower was more easily breached than yours. You're not alone in your battle, Henry. We'll escape together."

  I kept my arm around her as we watched the stars overhead. I'm not alone. Three simple words echoed through me. The castle in my mind still hid the many scattered pieces of me that would need to be found and glued back together. But for the first time in years, a wall cracked.

  And I saw the light.

  About A. W. Exley

  Books and writing have always been an enormous part of my life. I survived school by hiding out in the library, with several thousand fictional characters for company. At university, I overcame the boredom of studying accountancy by squeezing in Egyptology papers and learning to read hieroglyphics.

  Today, I write historical fantasy novels with heart, from my home is rural New Zealand.

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  Web http://www.awexley.com/

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  Ella, The Slayer

  Serenity House Book 1

  The flu pandemic of 1918 took millions of souls within a few short weeks.

  Except it wasn't flu and death gave them back.

  Seventeen-year-old Ella copes the best she can; caring for her war injured father, scrubbing the floors and slaying the undead that attack the locals. Vermin they're called, like rats, spreading pestilence with their bite. Ella's world collides with another when she nearly decapitates a handsome stranger, who is very much alive.

  Seth deMage, the new Duke of Leithfield, has returned to his ancestral home with a mission from the War Office - to control the plague of vermin in rural Somerset. He needs help, he just didn't expect to find it in a katana wielding scullery maid.

  Working alongside Seth blurs the line between their positions and Ella glimpses a future she never dreamed was possible. But in overstepping society's boundaries, Ella could lose everything – home, head and her heart…

  Alice, The Player

  Serenity House Book 3

  Alice has tumbled down a rabbit hole, but this is no wonderland…

  Ella and Alice are two women trying to forge a path with the men they love in a world reeling from the effects of the Great War, and the Influenza pandemic that left the countryside crawling with the undead.

  Then Alice goes missing without a trace, until the new queen of the vermin sends an invitation—Ella is welcome to try and rescue her friend before Elizabeth lets her subjects tear her apart.

  To save Alice, Ella must venture into a subterranean world ruled by her former step-mother. But does Elizabeth play to merely torment Ella, or is there a more sinister purpose? One tied to the endless wave of vermin spreading across Europe?

  Someone is going to lose this game and forfeit their head but will it be Ella or Elizabeth?

  Alice, The Player is the direct sequel to Ella, The Slayer

  Rory, the Sleeper

  Serenity House book 4

  By A. W. Exley

  * * *

  Who will awaken the sleeper…?

  * * *

  Ella wants the sleeper to stay undisturbed. Especially when it's Millicent deMage, the first Duchess of Leithfield and a supposed witch who died three hundred years ago. As Ella learns about the history of Serenity House, she begins to realise the long dead duchess could be the key to understanding the pandemic of vermin.

  For the final battle Ella needs a new ally, one forged from an old adversary—Charlotte her step-sister. Ever since Ella shattered her world and destroyed her family, the young woman has been trying to figure out how to survive. Now, Charlotte is the one woman who can anchor Ella in this world as she does battle in another.

  Sometimes the fiercest battles are the ones we fight in our minds. But this might be one fight Ella can't win and she will be the one trapped and put to sleep forever…

  Also by A. W. Exley

  Serenity House

  Serenity House: Ella's Journey

  Ella, The Slayer

  Henry, The Gaoler

  Alice, the Player

  Rory, the Sleeper

  Vincent the Tailor: A Serenity House short story

  Silent Wings

  Dawn's Promise

  Day's Patience

  Tales from Darjee

  Heart of the Kraken

  The Artifact Hunters

  Nefertiti's Heart

  Hatshepsut's Collar

  The Unicorn's Tail

  Nero's Fiddle

  Paniha's Taniwha

  Moseh's Staff

  The Artifact Hunters Boxed Set