“What are you doing?” she asks, her throat dry.
“Making the pain go away, little thing. I’m sorry you had to suffer it but it was… necessary. From this moment forwards you carry the Crowman’s mark and he is always with you.”
He takes his hand from her chest.
“Now, let’s have a look at the progress.”
He peels away a green, muddy poultice from her sternum and lays it beside him on the matting.
“Ah, yes! Perfect! Have a look, little thing.”
He holds a mirror so that she can see the place where the tool touched her. Already healing into a pink scar is a perfect symbol, forever part of her skin. Three claws pointing upwards to her face, one pointing down to her stomach. The footprint of a crow. There is no pain. She smiles and then cries.
“Can you sit up?” asks Mr Keeper.
She tries and finds it easy. He passes her more tea and she drinks it quickly, her thirst desperate.
“Dress yourself then, little thing, and we’ll go out. There is much to be done.”
February 7th, ’14
My eyes only
I’ve had dreams of terrible things happening for as long as I can remember. When the news is on and I see the most recent earthquake or flood, or when some new disease starts to spread, I get this cramp in my stomach like it’s in a vice. And I get that feeling, when you know you’ve seen something before.
I feel guilty too.
I know it sounds really pathetic and that’s why I’m writing it down instead of telling anyone – I couldn’t even tell Jude about this – but I feel like there’s this huge blackness coming across the whole of the world. I imagine it’s like the blackness on the dark side of the moon but it’s a living, intelligent thing.
Crops are failing around the world and people are dying of hunger. Dad says that only used to happen in Africa. Now it’s everywhere. I’ve heard stories about crowds of starving people in America storming corn fields or breaking into supermarkets and clearing the shelves. American police are allowed to kill those people. Sometimes they call in the army to do it.
All the terrible things I’ve always dreamed about are happening now. For real. I feel responsible. The worst one was the tsunami. I’d been having this nightmare about a huge wave. It’s like the wave is made up of pure anger, like it wants to smash humanity when it hits. As it nears the shores, it rises up higher and higher. I’m on the land, high up on a hillside somewhere and looking down. Where the beach is, the water has all gone and I know what it means. I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time and that’s why, in the dream, I live at the top of this big hill. All kinds of ocean animals are flopping around on the exposed wet sand and then, far out on the horizon, I can see a movement, some kind of distortion and I feel this terrible clenching in my stomach because I know that, even up here on my hill, I’m not safe from what’s coming. The wave is impossibly huge and I always wake up before it strikes the land. The fear is too much to sleep through.
Last week there was an eruption in the Mediterranean. It was an underwater volcano but that didn’t stop it blowing dust and smoke miles into the atmosphere. Within a couple of hours a tsunami hit every shore from Tunisia to Syria. In some places the tsunami arrived as a swell of a few feet that swept inland on low ground for miles. In other places, the wave was a giant wall. Footage from mobiles and handheld camcorders showed waves of up to seventy metres high racing into the land. Hundreds of thousands of people died in a few moments.
Did I predict it or is it just a coincidence? Do I tell Jude? She knows I have nightmares and she knows people die in them. But I’ve never told her about them coming true. That’s only started to happen recently.
April 29th ’14
My eyes only
Sometimes I feel like someone’s here, watching me. I can’t see them. I can’t even hear them. I’ll be standing somewhere, in the garden or looking out of the window in my room and it’s like someone’s right behind me. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve spun around thinking I’ll catch someone creeping up on me.
There’s something else. I’ve had it all my life, at least as long as I can remember, but it’s only now that
How do I even write it? No one can ever read this.
I hear voices. There. I said it.
I’ll be dropping off to sleep at night and I’ll hear my name clear as anything. “Gordon.” That’s it. One word. I always thought it was just my brain going into that doze where your dreams begin. Recently, though, the things I’ve heard are like little proverbs or something. Really embarrassing. I cringe just thinking about them.
We are all stronger than we believe we can be
Shit, I hated to even write that down. I’ve never thought anything like that. I never would. Where does it come from? It’s such an up itself way of saying something. Here’s another.
Everything you need will come to hand in the very moment of its requirement
In the very moment of its requirement? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I hate it. But I’m on a roll now. Check this one.
The Crowman is in all of us
I know. That’s a step too far, right? The others could just be my subconscious bubbling up when I’m half asleep. But the Crowman. That’s just too messed up. Who is the Crowman? Where does this stuff come from? It takes me back to the fear. That I’m responsible for bad things happening. Worse, that I’m going schizo.
Maybe I feel guilty that we’re still doing OK up here on the hill. We’ve still got food – most people are on rationing now. We’ve got our own well water. And we don’t get the crime and violence like they do in the cities. But we work hard to keep well stocked and we’ve been preparing for a long time. Mum and Dad were smart and they taught us to be smart too. Do I feel guilty about that? I don’t think so.
Who or what is the Crowman and why do I hear voices telling me his name? Telling me he’s inside me? Is he the one who’s watching me?
12
When Gordon heard the crunch of tyres on gravel, he ran out to see what his father had brought back from the latest “supply mission”.
For the last few weeks Louis Black had taken weekly trips as far as Bristol and Gloucester to buy goods of all kinds. The cellar was already stacked with bottled water, candles, torches and batteries, dynamo-powered radios, medical kits, ropes and bungees, tarpaulins, tents, waterproofs and other spare outdoor clothes. There was even an inflatable dinghy. The shed was full of timber, all manner of tools, vast coils of hosepipe and several car batteries.
This trip had yielded a more precious bounty. More precious to Gordon, at least. He could barely stand still when he saw the entire pickup burdened with all kinds of food.
“Wow. We’ll be stuffed!”
“That’s hardly the point, Gordon,” said his father. “The idea is to eat a little bit for a very long time. When this lot is unloaded and put away, we all need to sit down and have a talk. Come on, grab some stuff.” Louis shouted into the house. “Girls, you come and help too. Quickly now.”
Sophie Black moved slowly and quietly, her face pale and blank. Gordon lifted what he was able to: a few cans in both arms or some bags of flour or sugar. Angela was last to arrive and did the least to help, as usual. Their larder, well supplied even at the worst of times, soon looked like a canteen storage room. Gordon helped to line up the tinned goods in rows: beans of all kinds – including baked beans with sausages, he was pleased to note – sweetcorn, chopped tomatoes, chickpeas, potatoes, mushrooms, spaghetti, and even tinned sponges, rice pudding and custard. Gordon could just about drag along the sacks of rice, oats and other dried goods, each in ten-kilo bags, but it was Louis who hoisted them to the top shelves away from rodents. Various kinds of flour and sugar were stacked in bags eight deep on the next shelf down. Long-life milk, powdered milk, condensed milk and all kinds of seeds and nuts were ranked beside them. As the larder filled and everything in it was arranged into order, Gordon realised he was the only one excited
about the latest “haul”.
Sophie Black put the kettle on, and when a pot of tea was sitting under a woolly bobble hat in the middle of the kitchen table and rounds of hot buttered toast lay piled on a plate beside it, Louis Black called everyone to sit down with him while they snacked and slurped hot milky tea. Sophie sat down last, reluctant, it seemed. Gordon watched his parents carefully, noting that his dad only started to speak when he’d received some silent eye-signal from his mum.
Louis took a deep breath and cleared his throat. Gordon thought his dad looked… embarrassed and, for the first time ever, unsure of himself. He’d never known anything other than strength in his father. Seeing him like this was like losing his protection against the world. Only for a moment, but it was a terrible moment. He scooted nearer to Jude on the refectory bench and reached for her hand under the table. On the other side of it, next to their father, Angela shook her head in minute disgust.
“It seems that things have changed in the world. Even in this country,” Louis began. “It looks like the Ward are here to stay. You’ve all seen the news.”
They had. The Ward were the only party that looked capable of steering the country back to stability. In the previous election, their MPs had swept to victory in constituencies across the entire country. People were frightened. They wanted order restored. The Ward looked like an answer to their prayers.
Recession had been biting for years. Businesses folded every day and several banks had collapsed. Unemployment was soaring to record highs. The health service was now so badly funded it could only provide emergency care. Following the floods of the previous two years, the UK had a refugee population of close to a million and no way to look after them other than charity. Many of the homeless now wandered the country trying to stay alive. Crime was commonplace, the police ill-equipped or ill-disposed to do anything about it. Countries the UK had previously relied on for supplies of food were no longer exporting; they needed the food for their own people. Forgotten diseases had reappeared and spread, tuberculosis, diphtheria and rickets among them. Successive flu epidemics had wiped out tens of thousands of people in Europe and steady rises in temperature had seen malaria cases being treated in Cornwall, Wales and the west coast of Scotland. Glasgow, Newcastle, Birmingham and parts of London had suffered riots when water, electricity or gas had been cut off, sometimes for days at a time. Fuel prices were rising daily. Hauliers were the worst hit by this and most people couldn’t afford to use their cars any more. An increase in solar activity had affected satellites, phone networks and even the internet. On two occasions, the world wide web had been inaccessible for several hours. People were calling it a new dark age: the Black Dawn.
Only the Ward, representatives of which had appeared in many countries when things began to look irretrievably bleak, promised solutions to all of these problems. The multinational corporations, threatened by economic collapse in every market, began to invest in influence rather than simple profit. Somehow they needed to secure their positions for the future. Lobbying and then infiltrating government wasn’t enough. They bought their way into the police and the army and their management structure and organisational skills began to look like a practical solution to many of society’s problems. People saw real passion in the Ward, the ability to answer questions with a simple yes or no and the gumption to follow through on things they promised. Their Expulsion Bill of the previous year, returning millions of migrant workers and their families to their countries of origin, was the most radical political act in living memory. After that, support for the Ward grew exponentially.
To Gordon all this had been no more than pictures on a screen. They were stories about other people and nothing to do with him. Now, before his father said another word, he knew the stories had reached Hamblaen House, that the Blacks had become part of the news.
“Most people are in favour of the Ward and it’s dangerous to say you don’t agree with what they’re doing. But your mother and I don’t agree with it. We oppose the Ward and everything they stand for.”
Angela rolled her eyes at what she took for melodrama.
“I’m not joking, Angela Black. This is the future we’re talking about. Yours too. If someone doesn’t stand up to these people, they’re going to turn the UK into a wasteland. The Ward have only one desire: to enslave us while we’re on our knees.”
Louis looked at Sophie and extended his hand to her across the table. She offered hers and he squeezed it hard.
“I’ve seen what the Ward are capable of. They’ve opened a branch in Monmouth – a substation, they call it. People go in there and they don’t come back. Amelia Porter… she–”
Sophie shook her head.
“Don’t, Louis.”
He dropped his head for a moment, stared into his now lukewarm tea.
“What is it, Dad?” asked Judith. “What happened to Amelia?”
Louis looked up, stared into Judith’s eyes until she looked away.
“It doesn’t matter. What I’m trying to tell you is to stay away from the Ward. Far away. Don’t even let them see you if you can help it.”
Angela made a face of disbelief.
“I’m absolutely serious, Angela. If you see them, you hide. Understand?”
Everyone nodded. Angela started to get up from the bench.
“Sit down, Lella. There’s something else.”
For a moment, Gordon thought Angela would ignore their father and go to her room. Finally, she gave in.
“The thing is, I’ve…”
Louis looked from face to face around the table, unable to speak. Then he laughed.
“Oh, Christ. Look, I’ve shut the business. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. It was either that or go bankrupt. I thought it was better just to stop trading. Ha, what a joke. There’s no trade out there anymore.”
He ran his hands through his hair, a manic gesture he rarely displayed. His voice dropped to just above a whisper.
“We’ve all had good lives up here. But things are going to change. We won’t starve and we won’t end up like the people you see on the news every day, but from now on pretty much everything we do will be geared towards surviving what I suspect will be some very unpleasant times. If we work together, we’ll do fine. I want you all to promise now that you’ll commit yourselves to keeping this family afloat. Not just with getting food and water but with keeping each other’s spirits up. If we pull hard, make a team effort, we’ll be OK. I know we will.”
The silence around the table was dour. Much of what Louis said that afternoon didn’t really sink in for any of them until the changes he was talking about hit home. But Gordon hated the silence because it meant people were thinking about their answers rather than doing what they should have done.
“I promise I will keep this family floating,” he said.
Louis smiled in a kind way but Angela laughed and would have followed up with words if her father hadn’t silenced her with a vicious sideways glance.
“Me too,” said Jude.
“Me too,” said Angela without any sincerity at all.
Louis looked at his wife. Everyone did.
“Sophie?”
She didn’t speak. She merely went on looking into her tea mug as though she had other things on her mind.
“Sophie, you have to say it. We all do.”
She looked up, unable to hide that she would rather be anywhere else but here, in any other time.
“I promise to keep this family afloat.”
Louis nodded, but Gordon guessed he would have more to say to Mum when no one was around.
“I promise, too,” said Louis. “And not only that, I promise to protect you all.”
13
In her bed that night, Megan touches her scar, tracing its edges with a fingertip. She is exhausted by her day with Mr Keeper and has come to bed straight after her meal, barely saying a word to her parents about what has happened. She knows they are worried but she’s too tired and too full of new t
hings to talk about it. What she needs is the comfort and warmth of her bed and the time alone it will give her.
Mr Keeper kept her busy all day. Together they wandered across the borders of the community searching in the hedgerows for various plants and herbs. Some of them she recognised and others she’d never seen before. It had been like searching for secrets and she loved it. He had talked only a little about what lay ahead. Perhaps he felt her branding had been enough for one day. And yet, she had the feeling that somehow the routes they took and flora they collected had a purpose, even though it was one she could not define. Often Mr Keeper would stop and look up. She would follow his gaze to a tree or fence post or a patch of meadow and there she would see magpies, flicking their tails and chattering out their raucous calls. And each time this happened, Mr Keeper would smile and then return to whatever his business had been.
Before she left the clearing that evening, he said:
“The magpies know about you. Did you see them?”
She’d nodded.
“You’ll walk in the night country tonight, Megan. Mark it well. I’ll want to know all in the morning.”
He’d called her Megan ever since she’d woken from the faint caused by her scarring. He’d handed her a small sheaf of blank onion-skin pages, bound with twine.
“When you wake, light a candle and capture it all in here before you forget. Bring it tomorrow.” He’d touched her on the shoulder. “Safe home, Megan. Safe home.”
Then he’d turned, letting her go.
She touches the mark of the Crowman now, his footprint on her heart, and sleep comes so very easily.
August 3rd ’14
My eyes only
Should I tell you about the shoebox in my wardrobe?
When I was ten, I caught flu. My body ached so much I couldn’t get out of bed to go to the toilet and Mum had to bring me a bottle to pee into. The fever went on for three days and I was delirious with it.
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