The Stickman's Legacy

by Benjamin Appleby-Dean

  "The truth is," and this pause felt planned, "that this is a weakness in us. We want to be special, to feel singled out from others, and love to some of us is no more than a sign of that, nothing but a way to stand out."

  John Swales turned the page and went quiet. He gripped the side of the pulpit.

  "Jeremy Spindle was loved, by his wife and his daughter and others, but he rejected that love, perhaps because it seemed unconditional to him. He chased a dream instead, casting aside people who already accepted him, treating what he was and what he had as worthless. Because of this weakness, this need to prove something, he lost it all, and we mourn him today as much for this reason as for any other."

  The words were hurried, and when they were over John Swales shook himself and smiled apologetically. "Consider the parable of the Prodigal Son," he said, and Mary promptly lost interest.

  Eventually all the words were over and Mary was allowed to stand again. Her back ached from hard wood and thin cushions, but she fell into line with the others, following the coffin as it bumped its way into the sunlight.

  It was even hotter outside, making Mary's skin itch and her mouth go dry. The sun was dazzling, and the church a silhouette.

  The nameless man and woman were at the back of the procession. Each was walking along as if the other didn't exist - no glances were exchanged, and they stayed a good distance apart.

  A blue wreath had been laid beside the grave. It was made of dozens of little flowers, a splash of colour in the greys and greens of the churchyard. Mary bent down to check the tag, and found it printed with a capital F in the same colour.

  Faint creaks as the coffin was lowered. It settled on the soil at the bottom, and the priest opened his book and cleared his throat.

  "We have entrusted our brother Jeremy to God's mercy, and we now commit his body to the ground, earth to earth..."

  There was a small metal plate on the coffin-lid. Her father's name leaped up at her.

  Words rattled into the hole, and soil with them, and then the funeral was over. People shuffled their feet and formed into clusters. The two strangers left in different directions, still avoiding so much as looking at each other.

  Mary found herself in a clump of relatives. Diana had drifted away and was leaning against the churchyard's only tree, with Lucy and Timothy propping her up. She tried to join them, but Reverend Swales appeared in front of her.

  "It's been quite some time, Mary, hasn't it? I'm very sorry for your loss." His fingers picked at the hem of his cassock. Mary replied with a half-smile, willing him to move.

  John Swales looked past Mary to the others. "I don't believe we've met," he said, and his voice was flat. "You're Diana's younger brother, aren't you?"

  "Oldest," William rumbled.

  "Oh, I'm sorry." The priest moved his hands to illustrate. "Have you travelled far? I imagine the roads were busy."

  Mary took a step towards the vicar, trying to squeeze past, but he didn't seem to notice. The words buzzed back and forth over her, small questions pouring out that mouth like water. She could feel it rising to her neck. He stood there trapping her, droning on and flapping his arms about.

  Mary's body thought for her. Pushed forward. The vicar still didn't move and she crashed unmeaning into his shoulder, so he staggered sideways almost falling.

  "Hey! What the hell are you playing at?"

  Uncle William roared behind. His hand landed on her shoulder.

  Mary froze, twisted furious and lashed out. William flinched, and his hand released her and flew to protect his face. She pulled away and glared and he glared back.

  There was a sharp blood-smell in her nostrils. The two of them stood mirroring each other, and then a babble of sounds broke through, Mary's mother shouting above the others. William turned and strode out of the churchyard, sweeping his family with him.

  "Oh, dear. I mustn't have seen you," John Swales smiled nervously.

  "Mary!" Diana tried to sound angry, but her voice trembled, and she stayed leaning on her younger brother.

  "I'm - "

  Mary couldn't bring herself to say sorry.

  Blood was still pounding in her ears when they got home. There had been a chilly family meal, and Grandmother Lucy had left with her youngest son soon after. The other Martins had retreated to their hotel.

  Diana had a wan smile on her face. She seemed steadier on her feet, but the funeral had sucked everything vital out of her. She looked confused, as if she'd no idea what to do next.

  Mary guided her mother into the sitting room and sat her down, putting her book on the sofa beside her. This earned another sad smile, and Diana picked the book up and turned it over in her hands like a child's toy.

  After a few long moments of that, she looked up into Mary's eyes. "I'll put myself to bed." Mary managed to smile back, and had no choice but to leave her mother there and head upstairs.

  It was early evening, and Mary was heavy with exhaustion but hopelessly awake. Her body was jangling all over, and when she blinked images flashed behind her eyelids. William's hand had brought back the violence of yesterday, fresh as if she were still fighting.

  Blood and bark and water. Two days her body had moved without her, and the thought of that hurt. Something wasn't right. It had tasted familiar - the movements were her not the hand of another - but Mary hadn't thought them. She'd remembered them.

  Remembered from when? It kept hiding from her until even thinking made her tired.

  She sat on the bed and closed her eyes, just for a little while.

  Once again, Mary dreamed.

  ***

  The Life Within The Stones

  Hob was a thin horse, and if Mary stood him on one end he was taller than she was. He was made of polished wood, with a red head and yellow silk mane, and Mary loved him more than anything.

  He had been a Christmas present from Dad. The last present Dad had given her was a book of rhymes about someone called Sippian Shee, and the poems had scared Mary so badly that she lost them down the back of the bookcase.

  This made Hob special, even before he began to talk.

  They were watching the rain one day when Mary yawned, and said to Hob, "What should we do?"

  His head didn't move and his mouth kept smiling, but she heard a voice from somewhere. "I must admit I don't know, Mary. What do you want to do?"

  Hob's voice was muffled, as if he were hiding under a blanket.

  "No-one can hear me but you," Hob said, as if he were reading her mind. "Now, what do you fancy doing today?"

  Mary looked at the silver streaks running down the window. "I want to go out." She kicked her shoes on the carpet. "Mum said she'd take us to the ruins today."

  Hob shook his cloth head. "It's a damp and drizzly world out there. You'd catch something."

  "You sound like you've got a cold already," Mary pointed out. "You're all snuffly."

  "That's just how I happen to talk," Hob said. "Now, can we think of something you'd like to do indoors?"

  Mary pressed her nose against the cold glass. She could see the trees at the top of the hill and wanted to run among them, to bury herself in thick branches.

  "You sound like a grown-up," she said. "You're no fun."

  "I'm only trying to keep you safe." Hob sounded upset.

  Mary didn't want to offend him in case he stopped talking again. "Let's hide," she suggested. "We can see how long it takes Mum to find us."

  "Excellent idea." Hob sounded keen. "Where would be best, do you think? In the cupboard? Under the bed?"

  "No," said Mary, "we should hide in the basement! She'll never find us there." She picked Hob up by the neck, dragging his bottom end along the carpet.

  "I've never been in the basement," Hob said as they hurried downstairs. "What's it like down there? Is it safe?"

  "Ssshhh." Mary put her hand over his mouth. "I can't tell you now or she'll hear."

  Hob stayed quiet after that. Mary made sure her mother wasn't in the hallway or the kitchen
, then slowly opened the door under the stairs, trying as hard as she could to stop it creaking.

  "I can't see a thing," Hob said. "Turn the light on, Mary."

  "No, then she'll know we're hiding." Mary leaned Hob against the door. "Wait here, and keep watch."

  She ran back to her bedroom, and found her torch at the bottom of her cupboard. She brought it back to show to him.

  "See, Hob? This should do."

  "I suppose," Hob agreed, "but take care on the stairs."

  Mary turned the little torch on and tucked Hob under her spare arm. "Why do you keep telling me to be careful? Stop being so boring."

  She closed the door behind them. The stairs were much darker without the light from the hall, but Mary wasn't even a little bit nervous.

  "It's what I'm here for," Hob said.

  Mary flicked him on the nose. "I'll leave you up here if you say it again."

  The light from the torch was a bright yellowy-white, and it threw up all kinds of shadows. The concrete steps were cracked and old, but clean and free of dust.

  Mary stopped at the bottom of the stairs, and flashed her torch around the basement. It was just one room, with a bare floor and old furniture piled up in the corners. A thin shadow ran from corner to corner across the floor, as if someone had spilled black paint.

  "Come on, where should we hide?" Hob asked her.

  "Ssshhh." Mary forgot that other people couldn't hear him. "What's that in the middle of the floor?"

  "It's just a crack," Hob said. He was right: the shadow was a crack in the floor, but a deep, jagged one that ran most of the way across the room. Mary tried shining the torch straight down it, but she couldn't see the bottom, just more shadows.

  Something caught the torchlight in the middle of the crack. Mary ran her fingers along it and felt a point of stone sticking up. It didn't feel like concrete at all - this stone was much rougher and grainier.

  "There's something stuck in here," she told Hob. "I can't get it out."

  "It's probably part of the floor," Hob said.

  Mary looked around them at the broken furniture and the strange shapes it sent dancing around the walls. She felt very small.

  "I don't want to hide down here anymore."

  The next day was dry, so Mum took them to the Roman fort as she'd promised. Mary had been to the fort before, but Hob hadn't, so she showed him everything around the site.

  The placard at the entrance said the fort's name was Infercastium (which Mary had trouble pronouncing) and told how it had been a garrison for for the Wall nearby, so that the soldiers could keep out the invading Picts.

  There was a ditch around the fort, slopes all covered with grass. Mary liked to lie on the sides and roll all the way to the bottom, until Mum told her to stop before she got her clothes dirty.

  There was also the gatehouse, which had two arched gates with square towers on either side. There were crumbling bits of wall at the ends, running down to the ground, and it was the only bit of the fort that was still all there. The part that fascinated Mary was the lettering - thin angular words written above each of the gates, in a language she didn't understand. You could go upstairs and look at models of the fort and how the Romans had lived their lives, but there was nothing to explain what the letters said, and that meant they could be saying anything.

  The rest of the fort was flat, with squares of low stone where there had once been walls and buildings. The ground inside them was at different heights, with little placards saying what each building had been.

  Mary liked to duck behind these and peer at the distant line of the Wall. "That's where they're coming from," she told Hob, "The Picts. We have to keep watch for them."

  Hob looked to the Wall and flattened his ears. "What are they like, these Picts?"

  Mary thought back to the pictures in the gatehouse, and the book they'd read at school last year. "They were small," she said, "much shorter than the Romans, and they wore paint on their skin instead of clothes. They only had stone weapons and arrows, none made of metal, and that meant the Romans always beat them."

  "We don't have any weapons, stone or metal," Hob pointed out.

  "We're just keeping watch," Mary reassured him. "If any Picts come we'll run and warn people first, and then find something to fight them with."

  She looked down. There were pieces of rubbish scattered across the gravel: a paper bag, a plastic cup, bits of chewing gum and an old rusty nail. Mary picked the nail up and showed it to Hob. "See? We've found something already."

  "Were the Picts really so small?" Hob said, looking at the nail. It was made of dark metal under the rust, and Mary thought it might be iron.

  Mum was calling, telling her it was time for lunch.

  Uncle William and Aunt Sarah were visiting that afternoon, but Mary wanted to go to the basement again. "Maybe the crack's gone," she told Hob.

  "Of course it won't have." Hob made a snorting sound. "It's a split in the concrete, nothing more."

  Mary picked him up and went to see anyway, this time putting the light on at the top of the stairs. The shadows were smaller but thicker, piling up in the corners and leaving each step half-dark.

  "See? Still there," Hob said smugly.

  "It's not just still there," Mary pointed out, running her fingers along the edge. "It's wider."

  "Wider?" Hob leaned forwards to see. "It shouldn't be wider."

  Mary had found she could reach further inside than before. She pushed her hand until it almost fit, but she still couldn't find the bottom. Her fingertips wiggled in empty space.

  "Look," Hob whispered.

  Mary turned and looked. There was something sticking up out of the middle of the floor. It looked like a rough lump of stone, and when Mary touched it she recognised the point she'd felt yesterday.

  "What's happening?" Her voice wobbled. "Is the house falling down?"

  Hob went quiet, and even when he spoke it didn't help. "I don't know. We should take ourselves upstairs, just in case."

  Mary got a lump in her throat when she tried to argue, so she nodded and ran for the steps, no longer minding the shadows.

  There was no-one upstairs but Uncle William, sitting in the kitchen and absorbed in his crossword. "Where is everyone?" Mary asked him.

  "They all went down to the shops. Won't be long." He didn't even look up.

  Mary hesitated, but Uncle William looked like he might be able to hold a whole building up by himself. "The floor is breaking."

  "Eh?" William's pen scribbled away.

  "The floor, downstairs. It's all cracked and breaking up and the house is falling down." Mary's voice ran away with itself and turned into a yell.

  Uncle William looked up sharply. "Now, don't be silly. There's nothing like that happening." He slapped a heavy hand on the table, as if to show her how solid it was.

  "But it is!" Mary made Hob nod along with her.

  William shook his head, smiled uncomfortably. "Tell your mother about it, hey?"

  Mary's head filled with pictures of the crack growing up the walls until it split the building in half. She felt like she was going to explode.

  Uncle William was back on the crossword, so Mary put her shaking hand on top of the paper. "Please! You have to come and see it."

  William took her wrist and moved her hand off again. "Stop that now."

  "But–" Mary ran out of words. This was important. She grabbed the paper off the table, and her uncle rose growling as she danced away from him, out into the hall beside the basement stairs.

  "Mary!"

  Uncle William hissed at her, lunging for his paper. She told him "Look!" one more time, and threw the paper through the doorway, sending it spinning to the bottom of the stairs.

  William staggered and grabbed the air, looking as though he might fall. His eyes were empty, and his great arm came round in a circle. Before Mary could react, his open hand caught the side of her head and knocked her stinging to the carpet.

  Mary stared up at him
, forgetting all thoughts of collapsing houses.

  "Go and bring it back."

  Uncle William's voice sucked the life from the words.

  He turned away, and went back into the kitchen.

  Mary curled up in bed that night. Hob was propped at the end, making a comforting outline against the curtains. She could hear a faint hissing noise, and realised he was snoring.

  She wriggled around under the sheets. The daylight faded until the room was nothing but shapes and silhouettes. Mary forced her eyes shut, seeing colours flare across her eyelids, and still couldn't get to sleep.

  She opened her eyes, and the room was even darker now. Hob was still there, and so were the furniture and the walls and the foot of her bed, but the window wasn't there any more.

  No curtains, no sill, no streetlight outside. There was only a blank surface, taking up the whole of the wall.

  Mary sat up and rubbed her eyes, and found it was still there.

  Not taking her eyes off it, she reached out and felt around her bedside table until she found the torch. The switch was stuck, and she struggled for a moment before it slid and clicked and lit up the room.

  There was a wall of grey stone at the end of her bed. It was made of large square blocks crudely mortared together, and looked like it had always been there.

  In the centre of the wall was a plaque, with thin angular letters on it. Mary leaned forward and peered at them, steadying the torch.

  "DON'T TURN AROUND."

  Mary stared at the words, then a picture began to form inside her mind. She could see what the room behind her ought to look like, the shelves and the wardrobe and the door to the landing.

  Mum always left the door open a crack to let the landing light through. Right now, there wasn't any light coming from behind Mary.

  Mary thought about looking over her shoulder. The torch danced in her hand and caught Hob, still leaning on the bed. His snoring had stopped.