All nightmare long, p.34
All Nightmare Long, page 34
“Gareth?” she breathed. He seemed taller than he’d ever been, more gaunt, and his rich hair had mostly fallen away, those few fine strands remaining grey as the landscape around them.
He smiled. It should have illuminated his face, but somehow it avoided his eyes.
“It’s so good to see you,” he said.
“It’s been...”
“Over thirty years.” His smile faded a little, still touching his lips. “Thirty-five? You’re looking good.”
“For my age,” she said, berating herself. Was she really slipping into flirt mode? Here, now? She’d always held a torch for Gareth, even though they’d never been more than teenaged friends. She had often wondered how different her life might have been if she’d tried to turn that torch into a blaze.
“It’s strange being back,” he said. He walked closer, limping slightly. She was shocked that this slight weakness in him upset her. “Especially as it all looks so familiar.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Well . . .”He looked around some more, never focussing on one thing for more than a second or two. Even her. “Well, after so long away I can still see things...still remember...”
“I found where we built the treehouse.”
“Oh, that old thing.” Gareth’s gaze flickered left and right, and every now and then he looked down at his empty hands.
“Why did you come?” Ruth asked. It suddenly seemed like a very important question.
“I’m looking for something.”
“Me too,” she said. They stood in silence for a while, surrounded by the washed-out remains of the place they’d both once called home. They had a shared history, and in this ruined village where time was blurred it felt so recent. He’d been tall and effortlessly graceful, a twinkle in his eye that all the village girls liked, imbued with a deep-set kindness that Ruth’s mother had once called beautiful.
“Well . . .”this older version of Gareth said. “I’ll keep looking. Others will be here soon, so they reckon. People digging. I want to find it before them.”
“Me too,” she whispered. She was going to ask what he sought, and why, and what he’d been doing for all those years. But suddenly three decades felt like nothing. It was their time in the village that mattered, back then where they were mere kids, and now, when she was here to protect the memory of her past and however much future she had left.
He smiled, turned, started walking away. But she called him back.
“Gareth!” He turned around again. “This evening, will you sit on the hillside with me? We can watch the sun go down on the village, reminisce. I have wine and some food in my car, and I was going to camp. Just like the old days. Will you?”
“Of course,” he said.
She watched him disappear eventually behind hills of dried mud and tumbled walls, and when she started digging again, she no longer felt eyes on her.
It must have been him.
Evening fell quickly in the valley. She was deep, but not deep enough. Her husband and children thought she was in Nottingham at a conference, and what would they think of her now? Digging in filth, seeking a corpse, moving herself closer to a secret that was hers alone? She was sweating, uncomfortable, hungry and thirsty, and knew that she needed to rest. There was a heavy sleeping bag in her rucksack, and the green hillside had never been so inviting.
She was covered in dust, as grey and timeless as the village she had returned to.
But she decided to keep digging. With every three spadefuls she removed from the hole, two more slipped back in when the sides collapsed. The fine, dusty silt was still damp this far down, but also fragile and wont to slump at the slightest disturbance.
They’ll dig, she thought. They’ll come to see what they can find, tourists and historians and old residents of the village. While she was living there, no one had reason to go excavating her garden. Under fifty feet of water, her secret should always have been safe. But now the novelty hunters would come, and the history seekers. She could not risk them finding Gerald down there after all this time, did not want to consider the uproar and the gossip that would ensue. It had been hanging over her forever.
She’d told everyone that Gerald had run away with a student from Cardiff. Those that knew him well had no trouble believing that of him, and those who did not—some of her family, friends, people from other villages—only felt sorry for her. Ruth played the part of the betrayed wife for a while, but then the plans to abandon the village and flood the valley came, and everyone had more important things to think about. Not at all sure she’d got away with it, she shovelled coal, but never let it get so low that she saw the compacted earth floor of the bunker, beneath which lay his shallow grave.
And sometimes she had those dreams.
His foul mouth that had kissed and bitten her, rotten teeth, peeling skin over mummified flesh, the flow of water somewhere deep beneath him, and the soft, susurrant shhhh as he pushed up from below and grit slipped away from his face, his nose, his open eyes...and they had always been open, even in his grave. Open, and searching for her.
“Damn it.” She kicked a pile of soil and watch it disintegrate, hearing no whispers.
One more time she pressed the spade in, moving soil, searching for her murdered husband before anyone else came and found him. But she went no deeper.
The lush green hillsides called to her. She went, crying, trying to convince herself it was because she had grit in her eye.
She walked back uphill to where she’d parked her car, taking a head torch from her rucksack for the last scramble up the steep slope.
The back seat of the BMW was tempting, but something about sleeping out under the stars attracted her.
There was Gareth, too. She didn’t like the idea of him sitting down there waiting for her. She didn’t want to disappoint. Hopefully by this time tomorrow she would be on her way home to her normal, safe, secure life, but for now he was her link to a past she enjoyed remembering. A past before Gerald.
I don’t know him anymore, she thought, thinking of Gareth’s thinning, grey hair and the limp. But though that was true, their old friendship still hung between them. Besides, she could look after herself.
By the time she walked downhill again it was dark, the landscape lit by star and moonlight, her torch splashing her route. She paused several times and turned it off, and the reflection of moonlight from the vast expanse of dried reservoir bed was eerie. It was a silvery colour, dusty, dead. She imagined shapes walking there at night, and she was suddenly pleased that she would have some company.
Gareth called her over when he saw the torch, and she found him standing close to the copse of trees she had visited earlier. He was smiling.
“I found it too,” he said, pointing up into the canopy.
“You hammered your thumb,” she said. “It might have been the only time I heard you swear.”
“Fucking hurt.” He sounded so sad.
“I have a bottle of wine,” she said. “No tent, but you can have my sleeping mat, I’ll just use the sleeping bag. That okay?”
“If that’s okay with you, Ruth.”
They sat close together, and Gareth spent half an hour building a small fire. They chatted about old times—friends they’d had, incidents, people from the village. Never once did their questions and comments involve anything later than the day Gareth and his family had left the village. They didn’t even talk about the compulsory purchase of houses and businesses and the construction of the reservoir. There was no need, because it was not part of a history that linked them.
They passed the bottle back and forth. It grew cold, and they both slipped on warmer clothing. At last their talk brought them closer to the present.
“I hear you married Gerald?”
“Huh. Yeah.”
“Nice bloke.”
“He was a prick.”
“Oh. So what happened?”
“He ran off with a student from Cardiff.” It sounded so false, so ridiculous, that she thought Gareth would laugh in her face. But he said nothing. He stared out over the silvery valley. Something seemed to haunt him, shadowing his features and stealing the life from his eyes.
“What is it?” Ruth asked. “What’s bothering you so much?”
“This place,” he said. “It’s just...weird. When we left I never thought I’d see it again. And when I heard about the reservoir drying up and the old place resurfacing, I thought it’d be an opportunity. But I wish I hadn’t come back.”
“Why?”
“It’s not the place it used to be.” He shrugged. He was stating the obvious.
But later, as Ruth huddled in the sleeping bag and tried to get to sleep, she began to think that he spoke a much deeper truth.
She knew that she was dreaming . . .
Gerald stalked from beneath the trees, laughing, cursing, spitting soil from his mouth. He was wearing the clothes she’d buried him in, his body withered and leathery, eyes rolling in their sockets.
“Stupid bitch,” he said, the words he’s spewed on her time and again. “Look at you. Look at you!” He raised his hand and pointed the knife at her. She’d left it buried in his gut, but now it was in his hand, blade still keen after all these years.
She was trapped in her slapping bag, unable to move, stand, run. She rolled like a butterfly constrained inside its chrysalis. Perhaps with the knife Gerald would free her.
She screamed, because it was so unfair.
It was the first time she had dreamed of him out of the ground. She knew that she was dreaming.
But still . . .
She snapped awake, breathing hard, listening for her screams echoing across the landscape. Birds sang. A gentle breeze muttered between the trees.
She struggled quickly from the sleeping bag and looked around, but she was alone on the hillside. Gareth was gone. He’d left her a note rolled in the neck of the empty wine bottle, written on an envelope.
Ruth
I’m going home. I realise I won’t find what I’m looking for here. Maybe you won’t either. Think about it before you go back down there, won’t you? I don’t like that place anymore. It’s not where we used to live and had those great times.
Thanks for remembering them with me. Take care.
Gareth x
She felt sad. She did as Gareth had suggested and thought about it.
Then she packed her stuff and walked back down towards the old village.
She saw them from far away. They were the only splash of colour on the landscape. Dread filled her as she approached, but her feet took her rapidly closer, puffing up clouds of dust as she drew nearer to her old, fallen home.
There were maybe eight or nine people gathered there. Others were walking around the rest of the village, and Ruth wished that she’d finished her work yesterday. It would be so much harder today. Digging, retrieving, hiding the remains . . .
Some of them turned to watch her approach. One shape lifted a hand and waved, and for a moment she thought it was Gareth. But this man was much older, shorter, and his other hand clasped an old woman’s arm. She seemed ready to drop.
They were gathered around the dangerously leaning wall at the back of her old house. They were looking up.
Her heart hammered. Turn and go, she thought. Get the hell out. Get away.
Twenty metres from them she circled around, not wishing to approach the house.
“What is it?” she asked. But none of them answered, because moments later she saw.
The shape was huddled on top of the wall, exposed for the world to see. The skeleton sat—clothes rotted to scraps, dark hide visible here and there, shreds of dirty hair stuck to its browned skull—as if it had just finished watching the sunrise. It was hunched down, but not so low that she could not see both of its arms bent inwards, both hands resting around the wood-handled knife protruding from its belly.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “My God.”
“Quite,” the old man said.
The slope of silt dried against the wall showed a mess of thin scratch marks, trails perhaps put there by loose skeletal digits. No shoe or footprints. No sign that anyone alive had placed the remains on view.
It seemed to be grinning at her. Staring right at her. Look at you! Ruth turned away. She was going to walk, but she started to stagger. She did not want to attract attention, but she started to run. Out of the village, up the slope to the point where grey turned to green, still she felt those hollowed eyes watching her go, and heard that hate-filled voice mocking her every step of the way.
She fled her past. But eventually it would catch up.
THE PROTECTOR
Even when the words took me away, part of me always remained in the real world. I was desperate to be all the way there, beyond. On the tropical island with pirates and vagabonds, in the dusty west with grizzled cowboys and trackers, stomping through deep Arctic snow with icicled explorers, climbing cliffs above a rainforest, existing in places I had never been or seen but which I could imagine so well. And I tried.
But I was alert to reality and all its terrible sounds, sights and promises.
True escape was a dream, and it was only in dreams that I found any shred of freedom.
I heard the front door open and close, and immediately I was ready for the first signs of sadness. It was always like this. There were things to listen for, like mumbling under his breath or doors and cupboards slamming. Closer, there would be something to smell, too; the tang of alcohol or the warmth of blood if he’d been in another fight. Merely looking for the possible confrontation and grief to come had become too unreliable, because he was good at hiding fury behind a smile.
Mum knew, too. But I think she was too far gone. I had places I could escape to, at least partially. But Mum always remained behind.
I’d once asked her if he’d always been like this. She’d smiled and said she couldn’t really remember.
I sat up in bed and glanced at the clock. It was almost midnight. I hadn’t heard Mum come upstairs to bed yet, and I wished she wouldn’t wait up for him. It was later than usual, so he’d had longer to keep drinking.
I heard my father’s first shout. Through my closed door and the old house’s heavy walls and floors, it was an incoherent roar, rising and falling like the swell preceding a tidal wave. Mum’s voice came next, high and soft and almost not there at all. He raged, she pleaded. In the five minutes before silence descended again, I did not make out one single word. It was as if they communicated in the language of hate and fear, a dialect still relatively unknown to me.
But that could not last. Fear grew richer as the hate grew heavier.
I tried to continue reading. I was a small, weak boy, short for my age and always the last chosen for team sports at school. I wasn’t bullied or hated there at all, and I had a few close friends. But when it came to kicking a ball around a field or proving myself physically, I was ignored. I sometimes wondered whether to be derided might be better. At least then they’d acknowledge that I was there.
It had never crossed my mind to confront him, at least not while I was awake.
I heard the stairs creaking. Behind and beneath them, a few heavy sniffs as my mother went about locking up the house.
My door opened.
“What shit you reading?”
“It’s called Wizard and Glass.”
“Wizards!” He almost spat the word, stumbling into my room and knocking the door wide. He stank of booze, sweat, cigarettes, the stench of mysterious adulthood. There was a small cut above his left eye and a graze on his chin. I’d learned long ago not to ask, he’d only say, You should see the other guy!, and his pride in violence made me feel sick. Sometimes I imagined him saying, You should see your mother!, and my growing hate for him fed on that image.
“It’s good, Dad. Part of a series. You should—”
“I should what? Fucking crap.” He sat on the end of my bed, sighing heavily as the springs creaked. He was a big, strong man, gone to fat in his middle age but still so powerful. Probably no more than six feet tall, in my eyes he was a giant. “You should be out with mates. Football. That sort of stuff. Girls.”
“I’ve got friends, Dad.”
“Girls. Your age, I was fucking them behind the village disco. Janey Dickson, she gave me a blowjob, all my mates watching. I tell you that? About Janey Dickson?”
“Yeah, Dad.”
“This...this . . .”He reached for the book and I held it protectively against my chest. He glared at me. His nostrils flared. He had never hit me. “Give,” he said.
I slowly lowered the book and slipped in the bookmark before closing it.
He grabbed the book and threw it across the room. “Get yourself a life. A life! Not bloody reading. Sitting in bed reading when you should be . . .”He waved a hand at my door, the window.
A ghost passed by the door and I looked up to see Mum’s nightdress passing out of sight.
“I need to go to sleep,” I said. “Got tests in school tomorrow.”
“Tests!” he said. Scoffing. I was never quite sure what he wanted of me. To be more like him, big and brash, a man with rough hands and rougher thoughts. Or, more likely, to be nothing like him at all. I’m not even sure he knew himself.
He staggered when he stood up, slammed my door, stomped into the bathroom. I heard him pissing. He always said a real man pisses into the middle of the water. I always peed on the side.
Laughing to himself, he stumbled across the landing to the bedroom he shared with my mother.
I buried my head beneath the pillow and tried to get to sleep before what came next.
I approach the top of the steep hill at last. It’s been a hard climb, made harder still by the weapons I’ve carried with me—the sword, forged in the deep Northern Caves of Drandor; the spear, once owned by Helgarth the Spite; the heavy spiked club, used to kill the Granmoorian Giant. But I know that they are necessary. Coming up here unarmed would be the same as throwing myself off the mountain.
