by Jack Lewis
Somewhere in the house water dripped with the regularity of a ticking clock. Though the window, in the distance, he could see the cylinder of the lighthouse stretching into the sky. When was the last time he’d seen a light coming from it? Not since he was a kid, probably. Long after it had fallen out of use, he and James used to sneak up there and smoke poorly rolled cigarettes from the tobacco they’d stolen from dad’s stash. Ed hated the feeling in his lungs as he breathed it in, hated the rank smell that clung to his clothes, but he didn’t dare tell James. He was scared that with the declaration his brother would withdraw, and the time they spent together would be taken away.
The wind screamed and the rain banged on the window like hands begging to come in. From somewhere outside his house he heard the sound of a crash.
He got up and went out into the cold night. The storm was something from a disaster movie, a brooding sky building up a cataclysm to destroy the earth. Something whizzed toward him, propelled by the wind. He ducked to his side, and his heart skipped as it narrowly missed his head, blew passed his house and over the cliff.
He walked over to the cliff and saw the tide washing over the beach. The sea looked wild, with twenty foot high waves rising and crashing, the spray and foam splattering in the air. It was an endless sheet of darkness except for the distance, where he swore he could see a shape.
It can’t be, he thought. Miles away, battling against the waves, he was sure he could see a boat. He knew this couldn’t really be the case. Ever since the outbreak not a single boat had visited Golgoth, and they hadn’t heard from the mainland in years. Was there anyone alive there anymore? Was there a government? Was there anything except the monsters that walked in human skin?
Something screamed behind him, but this time it wasn’t the wind. He turned and saw a figure running straight at him, cloaked in darkness. As it got closer, he realised it was Bethelyn.
“What the hell, Ed?” she shouted, struggling to talk over the wind. She wore a raincoat that she had fastened so hastily that she had missed a button.
“What?” he said.
She stopped a foot away from him, grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the cliff edge with a strength he didn’t expect. He shrugged her away.
“What’s your problem?”
“I don’t trust you around cliff edges,” she said.
He pointed out to the sea. “I saw a ship out there.”
“Bullshit. There’s no way a ship would sail in this.”
“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “You need something?”
The wind swept a wild curl over her face. She tucked it back with a gloved hand.
“I was taping up my windows like you said, but I decided that wasn’t going to cut it. I’m going to board them up instead. I have spare wood and nails if you want some?”
“I’ll be okay.”
“It’s getting really bad.”
“Trust me, I’ll be fine. But thanks.”
They walked away from the cliff and toward their houses. Despite himself, Ed felt warmth for Bethelyn. He’d spurned any sort of company for so long that a small part of him appreciated the interest she took in him. As quickly as that feeling rose he smashed it down and reminded himself that people come, but they always go. Another thing that was as predictable as the tide.
“You know,” Bethelyn said, “When the outbreak started, the council had loads of long meetings. We decided we were remote enough to stay unaffected, but that we’d prepare in case it hit. There’s a room under the town hall. You should see it, Ed. Wall to wall of preserves, fuel, weapons. We could last a hundred outbreaks, but we never prepared for the weather. This storm is going to destroy us.”
“There’s nothing we can do about it.”
“I guess. We just need to try and weather it,” she said, her face deadpan.
He shook his head. Her joke reminded him of the kind his dad always used to make. Ones that were so unfunny that it wasn’t even right to call them jokes. He used to shake his head and tell himself what a loser his dad was, but now he found himself wishing he could hear another awful pun.
“That was so bad you just took a year off my life,” he said.
“They wanted you to join the council, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“It would be good for you. I joined it out of boredom, but it’s good to have a say in things.”
“Sometimes it’s good to say nothing.”
As they got nearer their houses Ed decided to walk past his own and make sure Bethelyn got safely to her cottage, despite knowing he probably needed her help more than she needed his.
Ivy climbed the stonework of her house and strained under the gust of the wind. Her window frames and doorway were yellow and stood out against the slate roof and brown walls as though Bethelyn was making a statement against the night. The stonework outside was covered in wooden beams which were coated in rain and warped in the middle. A knee-high plant pot was next to the door but there were no plants inside, and instead rain water had collected halfway up the ceramic.
“Well thanks Ed,” she said. “I couldn’t have walked these extra fifty yards without you.”
He looked through her window and saw her front room where candles glowed, and April was stretched out on the sofa with a book covering her face. Once again he found the idea of a warm house inviting, but he buried the feeling.
“Just be careful,” he said. “You never know what can happen in this weather.”
A second after the words left his mouth a groaning sound came from Bethelyn’s house, and then there was a crash. The slate roof of the cottage collapsed under the strength of the wind. Slates span off and fell to the ground, and Bethelyn stared with shocked eyes as once smashed next to her foot. April sprang off the sofa and let her book fall to the floor.
Ed rushed inside. Bethelyn followed and ran straight to her daughter, but Ed went upstairs. In the master bedroom everything seemed okay. The same couldn’t be said for the second bedroom, which was missing a ceiling. There was a wide hole where there had once been a roof, and an angry night sky sat above it. It took ten minutes for the warmth of the house to be shattered and replaced with a freezing channel of wind. Water poured through the hole in the roof and soaked into the carpet, ruined the bedding and made a sopping mess of everything it touched. He was too late to do anything.
Downstairs, Bethelyn paced the living room and ran her hands through her wild hair. She turned to look at Ed as he walked into the room.
“What the hell are we going to do?” she said.
April stared at her mother with glum eyes and sagging shoulders.
Ed knew what he had to do., He didn’t savour it, but there was no escaping it.
“You can stay at mine,” he said.
Bethelyn looked at him strangely as though she hadn’t expected the offer.
“What about Rex?” said April.
“Rex?”
“It’s her bear,” Bethelyn told him. She put a hand on her daughter’s shoulders and scooped her toward her. “No honey, Rex is going to stay home and guard the house.”
Bethelyn looked at Ed and covered her mouth with her hand so that April couldn’t see. She mimed words at him, but Ed couldn’t understand.
“Rex is upstairs,” she whispered.
Now Ed understood. That meant the girl’s bear was ruined.
“I’m not stupid mum,” said April. “The house is flooded. Rex will get wet.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“But mum.”
Bethelyn’s voice became sharp. “April, stop it.”
The girl pushed away from her mother and started to cry. Ed couldn’t stand it, but not because the girl’s tears upset him. He just found crying children really annoying. Then thing that annoyed him most was that he knew most of them faked it. Still, he’d been a kid once, so there was no use being a hypocrite about it. Anyone can grow out of their childish ways. It was the adults that refused to who were the real problem.
“Hang on a sec,” said Ed. “Which room is yours?”
The girl looked up at him. As he suspected, her tears had dried the second it seemed she might get what she wanted. Despite that, he could tell she was genuinely upset about her bear. Maybe the dramatics was just habit she’d picked up to get what she wanted with her mother.
“You can’t go up there,” said Bethelyn.
“Is Rex in your room?”
April stood up and nodded. “My room’s the one next to the bathroom.”
The house was already cold from the wind that rushed through the broken roof. As he passed the living room he saw that without the glow of the candles it looked just as lonely and empty as his own. Darkness had a way of making everything seem that much worse, even things that in the light were a source of joy. Ed had spent so long in the darkness that his whole life view was covered by it, and he realised this was partly to blame for how glum he was.
Upstairs was even colder, and a pattering sound came from the bedroom. April’s room was the one which had suffered the damage, and the red carpet was already turning darker from where rain poured in. Her bed was covered in broken slates and plaster from where the ceiling had exploded inwards. Even before the outbreak this would have been a hell of a repair job, but it was probably going to be impossible now.
Rex, lucky bear that he was, sat on the bedside table that hadn’t suffered any damage. Ed picked him up and walked out onto the hallway and toward the stairs. As he put his foot on the top step there was creaking sound that seemed to spread through the ceiling above him. He saw that a crack was cutting into the plaster like someone was drawing it on in marker, and the ceiling grew the bulge of a pregnant belly. It was going to fall apart.
He started down the stairs just as the plaster gave way. There was a loud crash and Ed felt the ceiling spill out onto the landing behind him. A spray of dust and debris covered his shoulders. He sucked some of it in and felt it scratch his throat. An involuntary cough rose from his chest as his lungs tried to expel the dust, and without being able to stop himself he let go of the bannister and tumbled down the staircase, feeling stabs of pain as he banged against the floor.
“Jesus Christ, Ed”.
He lay on at the bottom of the hallway and stared at Bethelyn’s chalky face. She reached out for his hand.
“Can you move?”
His shoulders ached and he already felt a lump start to swell out from the back of his head. He slowly shifted his leg, and satisfied that it wasn’t broken, he moved more deliberately.
“You better be careful.”
Bethelyn helped him to his feet. He could stand, but his whole upper body felt as if it had been crushed by rocks.
“Let’s get back to your house,” said Bethelyn, and supported him out into the cold.
***
“Don’t you have any candles?” she said.
He looked around his living room. Maybe his dad had put some somewhere for emergencies, but he and his father had never talked about that kind of stuff. Their conversations were always about what Ed was doing at school and how he needed to make sure he was better than all the other kids so he could get a job on the mainland someday.
“Golgoth’s not a place you come to live,” said his dad in one of his depressed moods. “It’s a place you come to die.”
“What about you?” said Ed. “You came here with mum.”
“We came here because she loves the sea. I thought it was a fad.”
Ed’s dad had been stubborn, but the one thing he always gave way to without question was the will of Ed’s mum. She was the kind of woman who could sweet talk even the gruffest of people, and it was rare the person who wouldn’t go out of their way to please her.
In his living room, in the dark, Ed suddenly wished he’d had those sorts of conversations with his dad. That they hadn’t just had the same old talks in which his dad asked him questions and Ed put the bare minimum of thought into his answer. He wished he’d appreciated the guy while he was still here, that he’d thought for a damn second how the old man probably wanted more out of his son than someone who just took without thinking to give.
“Don’t think we have any candles,” said Ed. “Sorry.”
“Okay, Dracula,” said Bethelyn. She held a roll of tape in her hand. “I’m going to have to do this in the dark.”
“I’ll help.”
Ed tried to get to his feet. His legs were willing but as he shifted his upper body, his muscles groaned with pain. The feeling must have shown on his face because Bethelyn stepped over to him and gently pushed him back.
“No way pal. You sit back.”
As Bethelyn walked from window to window and covered the glass with duct tape, April perched on the arm of Ed’s chair. She put her hand on his arm and squeezed. Ed felt his muscles burn.
“Not so hard,” he said.
“Sorry,” said the girl.
He felt a wave of annoyance crash through his mind, but he let it go as quick as it came. It wasn’t the girl’s fault. It was his own for breaking a lifelong habit and trying to play the hero.
Bethelyn stretched the tape across the window in a lop-sided line and bit off the end. Outside, Golgoth resembled the surface of a hostile alien planet. The storm intensified to a level Ed had thought it impossible to achieve, especially for an island like Golgoth which, although never warm, lived in a meteorological twilight zone where extreme weather seemed to escape it.
The girl stared at him.
“Thanks, Ed,” she said.
He could tell from the look in her eyes and the way she held her bear close to her that she really meant it. He wasn’t going to admit it, but it felt good. Despite the agony in his arms and shoulders, the feeling of getting gratitude was a pleasant one.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Bethelyn walked back into the room and threw the duct tape down onto the coffee table in the centre. Her sleeves were rolled up despite the refrigerator-level of chill in the house. She huffed and blew a stray lock of her hair out of her face.
“I see your theme is consistent in the rest of the place,” she said. “You’re going for the depressed-alcoholic-recluse kind of vibe.”
He shifted in his seat, careful not to move any of his muscles too quickly.
“I’m not much of a homebody.”
“But you never seemed to leave it.”
Ed looked away.
“Look,” said Bethelyn. “I can tell you’re hoping I’ll shut the hell up. So I will, about that. But I just wanted to say that I’m grateful for your help. You didn’t have to let us stay at your place.”
“I’m sorry about your house.”
Bethelyn paused for a second in thought. “My attitude towards crap like this is that what’s done is done. It isn’t going to help anyone if I show how totally fuc-“
She stopped talking, aware that her daughter listened to every word. She thought of a better word to say and corrected herself.
“…how bloody annoyed I am. I could punch a wall and break my hand, and that would show how angry I am, or I could try and think things through and actually do something. And that’s what I’m gonna do. Big displays of emotion are for soap operas. Getting down on your knees and screaming ‘noooooooooo’ into the sky. People don’t do that in real life.”
“You’re a better person than me then.”
“No, I’m not. I’m a better people-person, but not a better person.”
“You hate us being here,” said April, staring at Ed.
“No I don’t,” he said.
Bethelyn took a seat on the spare chair.
“Come on, Ed. You’ve barely spoken to me before and I’ve lived next to you for years. Not even the end of the world forced you to knock on my door. I’m grateful for what you’re doing, but you don’t have to pretend around me. I’m not easily offended.”
“I know.”
“Well thanks, anyway. That’s all I wanted to say. You’re a better guy than you think.
”
The pounding in Ed’s shoulders spread through his neck, over his face and settled in his head. It felt like something was squeezing his brain, and the pain grew until all the blood in his body had rushed to his skull and started to swell against it. A particularly bad wave rushed through him, and he closed his eyes and tried to ride it out.
“What’s wrong?” said Bethelyn.
He put his fingers to his temple. “My head’s throbbing” he said.
Another wave of pain crashed through him, and he saw fuzzy dots in front of him. He held tight onto the arms of his chair, scared he was going to pass out.