by Terry Kitto
Sam raced through the tunnels with Will and the last four dasfurvya.
The dasfurvya uncovered TNT left deep beneath the lighthouse by the witnesses who’d dug the tunnels. Somehow they knew it’d be there. With Will’s knowledge of Pendeen and Sam’s tendency for destruction, they plotted TNT into various positions throughout the mineshafts against frequency-rich tin ore. The entire plan was just mad to Sam, of course –
‘No more spikes,’ Will exclaimed. ‘No more power for a gywandras to exist.’
Dynamite planted, they scarpered back toward ground level. In the main cavern, Rasha and James lay comatose, both still strapped to the receptors, their imprints in the ombrederi. Sam lifted Rasha’s limp body over his shoulder. He gestured for Will to tend to James.
‘He isn’t coming back, Sam,’ Will said. ‘He’s with his girls.’
Sam nodded, certain there were more casualties to come. He stumbled through the network of tunnels with Rasha’s body, climbed the ladder with her on his shoulder, and fled the lighthouse into the new morning.
Will ushered Sam and the dasfurvya on, beyond the lighthouse yard, up the road away from Pendeen. Half a mile from the lighthouse, Will stopped, closed his eyes, and nodded.
The ground shook as if a giant heart palpitated beneath them. Dislodged stone and gravel rustled around them. Fissures splintered the tarmac. Cracks veined the side of the lighthouse.
The frequency energy surged. A whirl of images and emotions penetrated Sam’s mind. Thousands of people and lives overloaded his senses. As quickly as it had come, it went. There was calm, and the world settled once more.
‘Sam . . .’ came Will’s voice.
Sam turned. Will didn’t look well: eyes bloodshot, skin clammy. A few of the dasfurvya collapsed, lifeless. Sam rushed to him.
‘Didn’t it work?’ he said, panicked.
Will smiled through his discomfort.
‘It did,’ he said. ‘Without the frequency energy, we cannot sustain life within these forms. We’ve run our course.’
The remainder of the dasfurvya slumped to the ground. Will’s knees buckled out from under him. Sam caught him and lowered his body to the split tarmac.
‘I’ve just got you back,’ Sam said.
‘I’m always closer than you think.’
‘I tried,’ Sam wailed. ‘I didn’t know how to love you, but I tried.’
‘I know,’ Will said. The body had his eyes now, deep and wondrous and sad. ‘In your own way. Your sharp edges were a consequence of feeling too much.’
‘Come back,’ Sam said. ‘Another body.’
‘This is my time,’ Will said. ‘It’s written. Sam, don’t be sad. Two are returning to you. You’re not alone. Learn to see the people around you.’
Will fell limp in Sam’s arms. Sam howled. Tears flowed; his cynicism and pride didn’t put a stopper to them. Seagulls filled the brisk wind with the tune of their despair.
A sharp intake of breath broke the moment. Amongst the lifeless bodies in the yard, Rasha sat up and gulped down air. She caught eye of the first body, staggered to her feet, spun in a circle, and absorbed the scene. Her eyes found Sam.
‘It’s done,’ she said sadly. ‘James . . .’
Sam staggered to his feet and gave Rasha a hug. ‘There were meant to be two of you?’
Rasha thought a moment and mumbled, ‘Trish.’
Sam didn’t hesitate. He let Rasha go and sprinted up the road, his injuries pushed to the back of his mind.
‘Ring for help!’ he yelled back to Rasha. ‘There’s a phone in the lighthouse. Ambulance, coast guard, all of it!’
His lungs burned from exertion, and his right hip seared with pain. Up ahead, crushed steel glinted amongst the trees.
‘Trish!’ he yelled.
Into the woods he scarpered, tripping over roots like some sort of cheap horror. The Reliant lay in a clearing, twisted and bent in half. Glass littered the ground. Petrol seeped from the tank. A fire threatened to burst out from beneath what was left of the bonnet. Trish hung upside down, still in the passenger seat. The Reliant’s warped innards kept her in place where the seat belt failed. Dark blood trickled from her mouth and ears. Her shoulders were off-kilter; her chest bone had punctured her skin. Her right arm was twisted, and her hand faced the wrong way.
‘There’s no fucking way . . .’ Sam breathed. He failed to conclude the sentence out loud: that she’s still alive.
He put a cold hand to her forehead. Frequency energy fizzed beneath her skin. He closed his eyes, and the ombrederi came to him, though not quite as strongly as it had before the destruction of Pendeen. Trish’s imprint was there: Teagues’ Lighting Shop. She had not detached from her body entirely. There were other imprints within her. They kept her body alive.
Relief washed over him. His body shook, his stomach heaved. Rasha appeared by his side and yelled things that he could not make sense of. Alarms reverberated in his eardrums. Red and blue lights reflected off tree bark. He was wrapped in tin foil and escorted to an ambulance, then later a hospital, a private room in which police asked him questions he could not hear because the only sound in his head was the roar of explosions and the belt of sirens, and all his mind could conjure was Will’s face.
‘You were helping me with my English,’ Rasha said. She and Sam sat on the fence outside the caravan park, looking out over the sea, cups of tea in hand. ‘We decided an early morning stroll across the beach would be a good time to go over all things nautical. Trish just dropped us off. Then the explosion happened, the landslide, the bodies outside the lighthouse. They think Trish crashed as the result of the mines collapsing.’
Sam gave a little smile. He’d grown fond of Rasha over the six days since the events of Pendeen. He’d been wary of her, for she had transcended to kill Will and succeeded in ending Shauna’s life. But he’d learnt of Will’s sacrifice and heard of the nightmares she’d had of the ombrederi ever since. He knew there was little to forgive. She was just a pawn whose two choices were to move between two evils. Trish was no different. He’d realised that the odd green eye and tuft of red hair found on Will’s body the day in Tredraes’ Funeral Directors had been Trish’s. They’d been remnants of her imprint after she’d occupied Will the night of his death. Wherever Edward Penrose’s imprint resided – the ombrederi or otherwise – he had a lot to answer for.
After a tumultuous row with Haya, Rasha got permission for Sam to stay in caravan forty-five for a little while. Of course, Haya didn’t give him accommodation for free; soon he had taken on most of the housework and tutored her English – to the best of his ability – so Haya prolonged his stay by days at a time. He’d been there six days.
‘I can barely feel it now,’ Rasha said and offered him a bourbon. She clucked as he took two. ‘The frequency energy, like it’s not there.’
‘It’s how it was before the spikes happened.’ Sam munched his way through the first biscuit. ‘This is only the southwest. Who knows what else is out there.’
‘We know so much, and we can do so little.’ Rasha pocketed the rest of the bourbons from Sam’s prying hands.
‘Then little we do. If we’ve learnt anything, the ombrederi is not to be interfered with. We do all we can here. Trust Abidemi and Will to look after that side of things.’
‘You haven’t had contact, have you? From either of them.’
‘No,’ Sam said, ‘but it’s fine.’
That was the truth.
Rasha checked her watch.
‘You’d better head out,’ she said.
The moped broke down twice on the way over: the first on the dual carriage way and the second at Morrison’s petrol station. Sam arrived at the collieries. The witnesses had gathered outside the engine house. Sam walked over, helmet under arm. The group was smaller without the board.
Whilst Trish was in the ombrederi, she had, by ways unknown to Sam, infiltrated the witnesses’ minds with a warning. Fire, destruction, and bloodied horizons: the outcome if trans
cendence was utilised. Individuals had contacted Sam privately, and in the days spent maintaining the Abadis’ caravan and visiting Trish in hospital, he’d contacted each and every last witness with one text: a time and a date. They should all be there at the end of the Network.
Sam looked out over them – the chubby guy who always finished the communal milk first, the woman with a nervous stutter. He had learnt them by trait but had never cared to know them by name. What could have been if he’d tried?
‘This site never existed,’ he bellowed over the wind. ‘You’ve never heard of it, you never came here. We didn’t work together; we don’t even know one another. We never have, and never will, practice anything beyond engagement.’
The witnesses nodded. They were grave and sombre: Trish’s warning still plagued them.
‘Good,’ Sam said. ‘Please open Anascribe.’
His soon-to-be-ex-colleagues rifled through pockets and satchels for their smartphones and tablets. Sam, who’d never recovered his own phone from James, had taken Trish’s over for the time being. He opened the app on her phone, screen cracked and pixelated in places from the events in Pendeen. He scrolled through the settings menu and located the option, ‘End Network.’ It required majority member verdict to activate, so when Sam tapped the option, a notification jingle rang sixty-seven times across the collieries’ yard. On their screens, details of the function were briefly outlined, and it asked them either to agree or to abort. On Sam’s screen, the question, ‘Are you sure?’ popped up, to which he clicked yes. A counter appeared with the number one in red: his vote.
Witnesses either jabbed at their chosen answer or idled their index finger over their screen as they worked through internal debates behind pasty faces. The counter climbed, hit thirty-five, and turned green – majority vote. All sixty-eight agreed. The Anascribe app went blank.
The witnesses looked amongst themselves. The ground quivered underfoot. The application set off fail-safes and burst waterlogged caverns. Research, equipment, and any trace the Network had existed was sent into a watery grave to rust and rot.
No one said goodbye. One by one, the witnesses pocketed their devices and went in their own directions, not one handshake or glance back. The yard emptied as cars and bikes sped through the gate. Only Sam was left. He deleted the Anascribe app from Trish’s phone. When the last brake lights were out of sight, he climbed back onto his moped and drove from the collieries’ yard.
He was as carefree as he’d ever been.
When he returned to the caravan site to collect his clothes, Haya bribed him to stay with rose cake – a tempting offer – but he politely declined at least a dozen times before he set back off on the moped.
For tomorrow was Will’s funeral.
He thought of Will, as was often the case. Will still stole the quiet moments, but Sam was no longer resentful of it; memories brought him more happiness than grief. It only registered he was home when he unlocked the front door and the putrid smell of the unkept flat filled his nostrils. He dropped the bag of Network equipment onto the sofa and got to work in the kitchen. He washed the dishes and vacuumed the carpets and mopped the lino and scrubbed the bathroom tiles and emptied the bins, and as the sun wilted for the day, the flat was the most pristine it had been in months.
While stripping the sheets from his bed he kicked a shoebox. He upturned it, and out flooded photographs of him and Will: a bonfire night surrounded by Trish, James, and Network colleagues, an ill-focused selfie before the Parthenon temple, a sweaty hike in the Lake District one foggy weekend. Sam always questioned Will’s need to have photographs printed. ‘It’s a waste of money, and we’ve got that electronic frame now,’ Sam would say. Will had said they should be treated for the precious commodity they were. All along, he had been right.
Now the funeral would be another memory.
When Sam arrived at the church – on time, a rare achievement – he didn’t dare join in on the procession with Will’s close friends and family. He hung back by an arthritic tree that parted the church path from the graveyard. Phil carried the oak coffin, even thinner than the last time Sam saw him. With sharp noses, thick eyebrows, and wild hair, the rest of the pallbearers were Will’s cousins and uncles. The ladies of the family followed and outwardly showed their distress as if they compensated for their bearing partners. Margaret was the only one with a dry face. Eyes wide, mouth pursed, she reminded Sam of the shock Rose had endured after his grandfather passed. The poor woman; grief still riddled her.
After a few minutes, Sam slipped through the doors and was directed by Eddie, the funeral director (as red and sweaty as ever) to a pew at the back. The bearers settled the coffin onto its stand with a creak. The group took their rightful places on the front pews. The organ music – a rather tone-deaf performance of ‘Amazing Grace’ – ended abruptly. In the front pew, Marge turned in her seat and glared at Sam. He went to wave, but she rose to her feet and strode up the aisle.
Not here, Sam thought. Not here on his day.
Sam was surprised to see her offer him a hand.
‘What are you doing, sitting back here?’ she hissed. She pulled him from the pew and stormed him down the aisle. All the Reeves squeezed themselves up on the front bench, and Margaret sat Sam between herself and Phil. Phil squeezed Sam’s hand with his signature wink and smile. A fresh-faced bishop sprung up to the altar.
‘You join us here today to mourn the death of William Reeves.’ Her tone a tad cheerful, she corrected to a sombre one and continued. ‘But most importantly, to celebrate a life well lived. Born on February 1, 1980, to parents Margaret and Phil at the height of a blizzard, Will’s birth set the standard for the rest of his life: always early but always welcome. The loving boyfriend of Sam, Will was also a grandson, cousin, friend, and colleague, and he was loved by all. A gifted man, wise beyond his years . . .’
Sam’s tears rolled. His stomach writhed with bittersweet happiness. He hadn’t thought he’d be mentioned – in fact, he had planned to slink away at the end of the service, no more than an imprint, unseen by all there. Instead, Sam sat between Margaret and Phil, and he couldn’t take his eyes off of them. Their heads were bowed to read the order of service. Sam had spent so much of his adulthood longing for a complete family, and he’d had one all along, right underneath his own nose, if only he hadn’t been so bitter to not accept it.
‘Margaret and Phil have given me a poem which reminds them very much of Will.’ The bishop rearranged the papers on her altar and began to read.
‘I riptide, I surge,
Never sit long enough,
For fathomless depths of mystery await,
We must lose ourselves to be found,
Bermuda sunsets fill the horizon,
Every view has you in it,
You were my moon,
And I will always pull to you.’
Sam lost himself in thoughts of Will, the rugged face perfectly asymmetrical, his double blink, the way his laugh was a silent wheeze. He’d have those memories forever, and when he departed this life too and crossed into the ombrederi, they’d be eternal.
When the funeral ended and the procession milled outside, Marge hung back, and Sam decided to as well. She withdrew a cigarette from her handbag, lit it with cumbersome hands, and took a drag.
‘Didn’t know you smoked,’ Sam said.
‘From fourteen until I was pregnant with Will. Didn’t want him to set out on the wrong foot. Now he’s not here. Some sort of rite of passage in and out of motherhood.’
‘You’re still a mother,’ Sam said.
‘Collecting flowers, pruning a grave. It’s gardening now.’
‘It’s remembering him, and that’s good.’
‘Look at you, being the sentimental type. What changed?’
‘Will.’
Margaret tutted in disbelief.
‘And I regret it, not being sentimental,’ Sam continued. ‘After we got together, he spoke about you and Phil all the time. “Wait until
you meet my mum, you’ll love her, her pasties – best in the southwest, that’s a guarantee.” He adored you both. I liked you before I even met you.’
‘A fairy tale if there ever was one,’ Marge muttered.
Sam tapped the church wall with his heel. The end of Margaret’s cigarette burned to a slug of ash, but she didn’t notice. Her eyes wavered all over Sam’s face and never blinked.
‘I’m an addict, Margaret,’ Sam said. ‘Self-destruction, it’s in my DNA. Flay me and you’ll see it tattooed all over my organs. It was easier and less painful if I destroyed something good before I could believe it’d last.’
‘Four years. Four years of a relationship, three weeks of him being dead . . .’
Clearly she thought it was too little, too late. Sam rubbed the carrot-shaped scar on his arm.
‘I just want you to understand,’ Sam said. ‘Through all the shit I put him through, he never stopped believing in me. That’s the man he was. A testament to how you raised him. That’s why you’ll never stop being a mother. You can’t. You were too good at it.’
Margaret’s lips wrapped tighter around the filter of her cigarette. The sliver of ash fell to the ground. She stood rigidly, a mountain unmoving, yes, but one less imposing.
‘I don’t think I can do the wake,’ Sam said. ‘That’s a lot of people. But could I come over tonight?’
Marge flicked her cigarette to the ground, stomped it out with her heel, wrapped her arm around Sam’s, and walked him toward the graveyard.
Phil opened their front door that evening. Bleary-eyed and with a ruffled comb-over, Sam must have disturbed one of his post-dinner naps. His face split with joy, and he beckoned Sam into the kitchen. The kettle boiled when Marge came through from the hall. She saw Sam, wrapped the drapes of her cardigan around herself, and joined them at the table.