“This is the Department of Agricultural Sciences; I’m sorry, but our offices are now closed. Our opening times are…” Panicking, Patrick suddenly remembered the key code to which would enable him to bypass the automated response. He keyed in the number, and the phone began to ring.
“Hello?” came a tired voice. “Department of Agri—”
“Yeah, yeah…” interrupted Patrick, “I know, I know. Look, I’ve got a bit of a situation here, and I was told that I should call this number if anything seems strange or out of place.”
“And does it?” came the bored reply.
“Yeah, you could say that. I tend to Wadworth Cemetery, Buckinghamshire, and I came to work this morning to find… well…”
“Go on,” instructed the voice, suddenly interested.
“Well, it looks like the area was hit by a comet or something! All the graves, everything, they’ve disappeared into a huge crater. Everything is gone!”
“How many graves exactly?” asked the voice, now very much alert.
“Approximately 400,” replied Patrick.
“Stay there, don’t let anyone near the site. I’ll have a team with you in about 40 minutes.”
***
Within the hour, the entire site was blanketed by a large white canopy which prevented anyone from seeing the chaos that was developing beneath. Swarms of people dressed in breathing apparatus and white plastic overalls busied themselves taking readings and samples from the edge of the crater. Patrick was ordered to remain on site and was repeatedly questioned about his day to day activities. The masked men enquired into soil acidity levels in the area, asked whether he adhered to the strict depth limits enforced by the parish and also if he had witnessed anything similar happen within the grounds before. When he mentioned that he had reported a missing coffin to his supervisor, attention turned to him. He was removed to a side room within the hastily erected portable office that sat at the lip of the crater. Patrick heard raised voices but could not make out what was said, suffice to say his supervisor received an almighty telling off. The scene around him reminded him of a disaster movie, the type in which there’d been a biological outbreak. Whatever they were testing the place for, they took it slow, and an air of tension hung thick in the air.
***
It was late when Patrick finally got the all-clear to return home. He was under strict instructions not to discuss what had occurred to anyone. He was fed a cover story about forensic tests needing to be carried out on one of the recently deceased if pushed for an explanation. Patrick knew that nobody would ask him about his day. Nobody ever did. He returned home that night feeling confused and unfulfilled. His craft had been called into question by a bunch of faceless nobodies who had taken the land that he’d tended away from him and relegated him to an outsider. An outsider on the only thing that he knew, an outsider on the only thing that gave his life meaning! Patrick was not about to slink back to his cottage and remain there until instructed. Wadworth Cemetery was his baby, and his baby was sick. He had to find out what had caused the ground to open.
***
It was easy for Patrick to gain access to the site without alerting the small security team that patrolled the grounds. He knew this place better than he knew his home and within seconds he was safely under the canopy and perched on the lip of the crater. Though floodlights illuminated large parts of the area, there were pockets of darkness that he could exploit. After getting a length of rope and securing it to one of the few tombstones that survived the collapse, he began to lower himself into the ground.
He was quickly swallowed by the murk, and he felt his heartbeat quicken. The chatter of the security team sounded small and distant as the silence of the depths consumed him.
Soon, the outside world was but a pinprick of light yet there was still no sign of solid ground beneath him. It was warm, and getting warmer, a fact that Patrick knew to be impossible. He pushed the idea to one side, insisting that superstition was meddling with his senses. However, the smell of sulphur was proving harder to ignore.
Countless minutes passed in a silence that seemed greasy and black. The hole had begun to narrow gradually around him, and Patrick could see the earth that surrounded him on all sides for the first time. The walls of earth were smooth, ashen and scorched. Looking down he noticed a faint orange haze far below him. He was sweating hard now yet he couldn’t be sure if it was due to the exertion of the descent or the steadily rising temperature.
Down.
Down into the orange haze that cooked the air and singed the hairs upon his body. The rope began to smoulder in his hands. The earth above him was out of sight and out of reach. Patrick knew that the heat and the climb had all but sapped his strength. There was to be no up, only further down.
He emerged into a brightly lit antechamber and hung there, helpless in the haze. The limit of the rope was reached, and the only answers he had found as to the plight of his beloved graveyard yielded yet more questions. Patrick suddenly felt foolish. This was clearly no place for a gravedigger to be; this was no place for man at all.
***
Hark—a speck above lost and frightened. It had never seen one alive before, and its scent teased and tantalised. Feasting on the dead was sustenance enough, this it knew but could it pass on the opportunity to claim a live soul and nourish oneself upon flesh that bled?
***
Patrick was tired, and it was a struggle to think, let alone hang on. The rope was alight now. Orange flames licked and danced their way towards the surface, in a few seconds the line would snap, and he would plummet into the unknown. He knew that he had made a grievous error of judgement and was ready to face death, yet the need for an answer tore at his soul. To come so far only to die, never knowing what became of the four hundred graves that he had tended all of those years, it crushed him, and he cried out in anguish.
The rope snapped, and Patrick fell.
Down.
Down into the light. The light that blinded him, the light that set his hair and clothes on fire. The light that would consume him.
***
It saw the speck fall. It saw the speck alight. The thing that would be christened Daemon by those above opened its jaws and prepared to accept the offering bestowed from the surface. Though tiny in comparison, the mortal soul provided adequate sustenance, and the daemon roared in delight.
***
The ground began to shake, and the security team fled inside the church. Behind them, the sound of the Earth tearing itself apart thundered into the night sky and beneath it came the howl of a thousand banshees. The crater began to widen and fall in upon itself, stifling the terrible cry until all was silent, and the ground was still.
When the science teams arrived the following morning, they found the security team cowering in the back of the chapel and the crater filled with rocks that had been fused together under the duress of extreme heat.
Nobody missed Patrick. Those few that knew him assumed he had taken the event as a sign to retire. The case was swiftly closed and story was issued by the Department of Agricultural Sciences citing that this was the only incident of a volcanic eruption ever to occur on the British Isles and that such an event was unlikely to occur in the near future.
***
Far beneath the chapel, content and satiated, the daemon having sensed that his source of nourishment was spent, sought out a new place upon which to feast
She who Casts no Shadow
Thinking back on that day, I was more than a little naïve. My heart beat with the certainty of youth and my head was awash with the fantastical ideals of a future not yet set. The world was open and ripe for picking to a girl as quixotic as I. Would life have blessed me with happiness had I fled from the gypsy woman that day? If not for my artlessness, would she have spared my misery?
The year was 1845. Funny now, I remember that day with an extraordinary clarity when the occurrences of yesterday are lost in the fog that ha
s taken residence within my mind. My family and I took a short holiday to the nearby resort of Brighton. We had elected to stay at The Bedford, which was the most prestigious hotel in the town. I was nineteen at the time. My cousin Margaret had joined us on our journey. Mother insisted that I have a chaperone of sorts (though she would be loath to name her such), so that I may experience the sights and sounds of Brighton away from my parents. Margy was a boisterous girl, always one for mischief and adventure and we spent many a night dining on the attention that was lavished upon us by assorted male guests.
Our days were spent exploring the seaside town, wandering the cobbled alleys and resting upon the beach. I would gaze at the sea for hours as Margy chatted idly next to me. A combination of the crashing of waves and the teasing breeze elicited a sense of serenity that I have long since yearned for.
It was Margy who initially struck up a conversation with the gypsy. Set back from the seafront was a narrow, winding alley that contained a small, sheltered alcove. It was here that the gypsy had set her stall. She sat at a small crooked table, a red veil covered her face, her black hair ran long and free, falling in waves that cascaded over her shoulders. She spoke with a voice that was young and alluring. Margy insisted that she had her fortune told and duly paid the gypsy. Of what she was told, I have no recollection.
When she had finished speaking with Margy, the gipsy’s eyes fell upon me, and a chord of unease struck within. She looked at me with amusement, though that realisation only came to me many years later. I was nervous and did not wish to hear my fortune, yet Margy persisted in her persuasion. I resisted and was about to leave my cousin with her queer new friend when I heard the sound of coins tumbling upon wood—Margy had paid for my reading. Reluctantly I took my seat before the gypsy woman. It was a long time before she spoke yet I shall never forget her words.
“You should not be.”
Confused (and more than a little afraid), I dismissed her and attempted to take my leave. She took hold of my wrist and turned my palm upwards, forcing it open against my will.
“You should not be,” she repeated. “You have no face to me; you have no palm. You are a shadow, a mistake. Death does not have his eyes on you. Lady, you have my pity.”
Upon hearing this, I admit that I fled. Fear and confusion had taken a hold of my senses, and I ran teary-eyed back to my room. Margy followed quickly behind and seemed just as shocked at the gypsy’s words as I! She spent several hours at my door trying to talk me into forgetting the experience and forget I quickly did.
***
Many years passed. I grew older, wiser and ever more bitter. The joys that I witnessed those around me experience, friendship, marriage, the birth of children, all of those things I was forced to observe, a bystander to the happiness of others. Aside from my own blood, no one took an interest in me. Pretty though I was, I never caught the eye of a suitor. How I longed to be loved! To wake the next morn with someone by my side! My parents expressed their sympathies towards me, yet I could see the concern behind their smiles. When illness took them (both within weeks of one another), it was then that I came to understand the true meaning of loneliness.
Margy had married many years previous and had settled somewhere far to the west. She sent her condolences and informed me that she would be unable to attend the funeral. I struggle now to remember the last time that I’d seen her… I think it would be shortly after her wedding day, perhaps that following Christmas. I remember how radiant she looked, and selfishly, I would have done anything to switch places with her then. Envy ate at me, and I spent that Christmas the way that I spent most, acrimonious and alone.
***
Margy passed away in the spring of 1886. Looking back, she was the closest thing I’d ever had to a friend. I watched them lower her into the ground, and still I envied her.
***
It was 1929 when I truly understood the weight of the gypsy's words. I was 103. I had suffered through the death of everyone that I once knew, yet still I remained. My body boasted the ravages of time. I was frail and almost entirely bedridden. Margy’s children once of age had made provisions for my care, and it was their children who attended to my daily needs.
And time marched on.
It is now 2015, and I am 189 years of age. My skin is transparent and has withdrawn completely in places. I have lost my hair, my teeth and one eye, (upon losing an eyelid the eye dried out and eventually solidified into my eye socket). I am unable to move and have dictated this memoir via a long and tedious process that involves selecting each letter with a double blink of my one, remaining eyelid. It has taken my cousin (of which she is many generations ahead of me), six weeks of work to document. My heart ceased to beat in 1939, my lungs hardened soon after. I need not breathe nor eat. I lie here and exist. This is who I am.
I have lived through countless wars, seen nations rise and fall. I have witnessed events that my aged mind cannot even begin to comprehend. Time flows quickly around me, capturing all but me in its tide. I have left no mark upon history, no dynasty to call my own for I was never part of the plan of life. I know that death will not come for me ever, for I was never intended to be born into this world. I have no fate, no path. I shall linger here for eternity. When my bones become dust, my soul shall remain earthbound, yet I know where I shall go. I long for the call of the gull and the wash of the water upon my bare feet. Once free of this rotting prison, I shall head back there once more, for I am still at heart the young girl who dreamed of a life of fancy while sitting upon the sands of Brighton Beach.
Soul, Ugly
Let’s admit it right here an’ now, I never had a chance did I? When you are surrounded by sin on a daily basis, it sorta becomes the norm. You don’t know no better an’ I guess you pick up those bad habits thinking nothin’ more about it. I’ll wager you’d be the same.
My parents were jailed when I was aged six. I’d be lying if I said I don’t remember much about it ‘cuz I see it all in my head as plain as day. Even if I wanted them pictures to stop, I doubt that they would. Some things are just burned into you, shape you into the person you become, least that’s the way I see it.
Mom an’ Dad used to rape and murder—course they called it killin’ n fuckin’, I dunno, made it sound less of a sin I guess. It was just the way they were. You came across someone you wanted to fuck, you fucked ‘em! If things would be better with ‘em dead, you killed ‘em! Seems a simple way to live to me, none of the bullshit y’all has to contend with every day. I never said it was pretty though.
Anyway, the police caught up with ‘em; they were tried for eight counts of murder—there were more, way more—but they wanted a solid conviction. Needed them wrapped up real quick before things got slowed up. Dad got the chair and Mom—she could still be waiting for the needle, I’m not sure… she was last time I checked anyway.
So me an’ Alfie, we get taken away from one hellish childhood and land straight into another. I’m telling y’all now, drop the word care from the system ‘cuz I sure as shit didn’t see any such thing in my time with the Hoakers’.
Eight years I endured their torment. ‘Course I knew no better. Going from an environment of murder and rape to one of abuse, how was I to know what was normal? What was to be expected? Least Mom and Dad never hurt me; they had their faults sure but they left the kiddies alone.
Alfie hung himself at fifteen. I found him swinging from the balcony above the stairway, pants round his ankles, cock pointing to the heavens. Misadventure they called it. Pa Hoaker sure had a sheepish look on his face when the cops came to question him, I know that son of a bitch had messed up my brother good so if you are gonna ask me if I feel any regret for taking a hatchet to him before I hit the road, well you’ll be wasting your breath.
The streets weren’t that bad, not for someone like me. I knew how to handle myself, and I had an air of danger that kept most of the freaks away from me. Most anyways. Way I figured it, I had it better getting paid to e
ntertain their perversions rather than letting someone take them from me for nothing. Tricks came and went, I got paid, and it all seemed to work out in a shitty kind of way. Wasn’t enough, though. It was never enough.
I knew I didn’t have the prettiest face. I saw how it worked early on. With beauty on your side, the world is yours for the taking, or so it seemed to me. I wouldn’t say I was jealous of those girls, they had it and made it work for them. I guess I just wanted the same.
Of course I couldn’t do what I do now, on the streets. It had to be online. I saw the popularity of those sex-cam channels, and I wanted in. I needed an angle and the faces, well let's just say that they fit.
Why did it take off so quickly? ’Cuz there’s some sick fucks out there, that’s why! We had something unique going on, and they all came crawling outta the woodwork to get a piece. There was a certain amount of allure too. I mean the fact that we were all a part of something happening beyond the reach and understanding of most, that was exclusive and exciting—a commodity I revelled in. Not anyone can just look me up, it doesn’t work like that. You have to know where to look, how to get access and even then it’s not so straightforward. I have people safeguarding my anonymity, looking out for me so that I won’t get caught, won’t get stopped.
It was a tough learn at first, as I got practised the kills and the harvests came easy. At first I worried, I mean I didn’t even know if there would be an audience for my work. That fear was soon put to bed.
I’ve a cast of dozens now, and I even adhere to a performance schedule! Can you believe that? Crazy isn’t it, but it needs to be treated like a business because I have an army of paying customers who have expectations… expectations I work hard to exceed.
Neverlight Page 11