by Simon Clark
There was no need to run now.
At their feet lay the body of Maximilian Hart; his eyes were closed as if in sleep. Probably the man would never have a headstone, David thought; but if there was any justice in this sometimes lonely and often unfair world, Maximilian Hart would have his headstone: a huge one carved from granite that stood higher than all the rest. And beneath the name MAXIMILIAN HART should be a word so deeply carved that it would never be faded by time, nor cracked by frost, nor worn away by storms. And that word should be:
HERO
Then, tightly gripping Bernice’s hand, David walked away.
IT ENDS IN DARKNESS
One Year Later
A year to the day after George Leppington’s funeral, the three of them — Bernice Mochardi, David Leppington, Electra Charnwood — gathered for dinner at the Station Hotel.
Spring had already pushed winter into its northward retreat for another few seasons. The leaves of hawthorn and willow on the river banking were unfurling with a fresh, newborn greenery. There were starling chicks, speckled and somehow scintillatingly fresh-looking, chirruping noisily in their nests. A big mother cat padded across the hotel courtyard followed by four kittens that were a plump and fluffy ginger.
The sun had slipped down to rest on the hilltop; it turned the mackerel sky a golden colour; the air grew still. A sense of peace and tranquillity was settling over the old town of Leppington as it wound down after another day. In the market square men in fluorescent yellow nylon waistcoats swept up the debris — knots of string, cabbage leaves, paper bags, newspapers. One sweeper noticed a camcorder tape lying in the bottom of a bin. The tape had been pulled so it had unspooled in a long tangle of shiny black. Whistling cheerfully, he tossed it into a skip with the rest of the rubbish. There was a label on the tape that bore the handwritten words: VIDEO DIARY-ROUGH EDIT.
Song For A Dead Hero
No one knows Jack Black’s real name. No one knows where he came from, or who his mother and father were. And, with the exception of three people, no one knows that, like Maximilian Hart, Black died a hero.
Or that he died vampiric.
But now, with the two halves of his head buried separately from the two halves of the body, the remains are mortal enough; they rot in the earth like any man’s. Although it should be said that those mortal remains don’t lie in hallowed ground. Instead, the body lies on a windy hillside far away from town.
The head lies on the river bank, downstream from the Station Hotel, beneath a clump of weeping willow.
Sometimes Electra Charnwood visits the spot on the river bank where the head is buried. She watches the water foaming white around the boulders, feels the wind tug at her blue-black hair and envelop her body, and she wonders if this is nature’s way of reaching out to embrace her.
Later, she’ll sit on a fallen tree and gaze at the patch of soil that holds Jack’s head. She cries freely now. Once in a while she’ll scatter a handful of white petals on the river bank there. For in some parts of the world white flowers are a symbol of mourning.
Electra still wakes in the middle of the night, with the moonlight streaming in through the windows; often she senses a presence moving through the hotel. It moves with great speed, fluidly sweeping up the stairs to race along the corridor to her room. Then she’ll sense it pacing beyond her locked door. Back and forth, back and forth, bare feet pressing down on that old red carpet.
She pretends that the presence is Jack Black. And that like an angel — a dark and somehow monstrous angel — he watches protectively over her, keeping her safe.
What she imagines may be an illusion; yet she holds the image of that dark and powerful guardian angel close to her and will never let it go.
And with that image in her head, of the presence walking back and forth for evermore beyond her bedroom door, she’ll go contentedly to sleep, to dream, perhaps, of a night-borne lover who will never abandon her.
Unfinished Business
Bernice, Electra and David dined alone in the restaurant as they had done a year before. Then one of the kitchen staff had interrupted the meal to tell them there was a stranger at the back door. That stranger had been the tattooed and shaven-headed Jack Black.
This time they ate uninterrupted.
Electra sipped mineral water. When David offered her wine she shook her head and smiled. ‘No, thank you. The specialist at the hospital tells me that, against all odds, my liver is really in good shape.’ Her smile broadened. ‘I’m trying hard to be virtuous now.’ She poured a little more mineral water into the glass. ‘So, Bernice. You’re not tempted to return to our blessed leech farm? I hear there’s a vacancy.’
Bernice shook her head; she smiled but there was a hint of sadness. ‘No, the job in London’s permanent. I’m going to start looking for a flat of my own.’
‘A flat in London?’ Electra gave a quiet laugh. ‘They must be paying you too much.’ She raised her glass. ‘Anyway, my dear. Here’s to you. You deserve it.’ She turned to look at David. ‘And Dr David Leppington. What about that post of general practitioner in our town? You will take it, won’t you? Then you can come into the bar, recklessly disregard doctor-patient confidentiality and tell me all the really juicy gossip.’
He smiled, then shook his head. ‘No. I’m taking a leaf from Bernice’s book. I’m being lured away to the bright lights of London. There’s a teaching post at the university hospital that really caught my eye.’
She sighed. ‘It would have been nice to have the pair of you around. You know, last year, I’d grown accustomed to your faces.’ She paused, then the smile broadened. ‘Now, now…both of you working in London? Have I missed something of significance here? David? Bernice?’
Bernice didn’t answer. Her hands were shaking as she laid her knife and fork down across the uneaten food. ‘I came back here today for two reasons. One: did that thing really happen last year? Because sometimes I wake up and think I imagined it. And, two; is it really all over? Will they come back?’
David set his own fork down and looked back at her, his face serious. ‘Yes. It really did happen. I came into town yesterday and found I had to go back down into the tunnels. There’s nothing down there, at least no trace of those things. And, no, I’m sure they never will come back.’ Bernice relaxed with a sigh. ‘I just needed to find out. It had begun to prey on my mind. You know, sometimes I thought that we made this happen; that by coming together we created a kind of conjunction of personalities that somehow caused a shift in the status quo.’
Electra nodded. ‘I’ll go along with that. But I think it was our destiny. There was no escaping that the four of us would come together, and that those events would be played out; now I sense an inevitability —’ she smiled ‘— a cosmic inevitability, if that doesn’t sound too New Age, that we would become part of the drama; perhaps we are only chess pieces of the Gods after all. More wine, David?’
She refilled his glass. ‘So, if you’re not taking that job as country doctor here, why have you returned to Leppington?’
He smiled. ‘Because you asked me, Electra.’
‘True; in my best copperplate writing, too, if I recall. But I think there was another reason for you coming. Apart from satisfying yourself that the tunnels under the town are deserted now.’
‘A recurring dream.’ He wiped his mouth on the napkin. ‘That’s what brought me back here.’
‘A dream?’
‘In this dream I saw myself taking the sword my uncle had made. I stood on the river bank and threw the sword into the water.’
‘And?’
David shrugged. ‘And what, Electra?’
She smiled. ‘No arm emerged from the water clad in white samite to catch the sword?’
He smiled back. ‘No. Nothing like that. Perhaps it’s just a stupid dream after all.’
Electra looked at him, her face becoming serious. ‘No, David. No dreams are stupid or ridiculous. What was it that Freud said? Dreams are the royal road to th
e unconscious? Clearly your unconscious is telling you that you’ve unfinished business here, David.’
‘Perhaps. I really don’t know.’
‘Bernice,’ Electra said dabbing her lips on the napkin. ‘The sword is on the top shelf in the Dead Box. Would you show David where it is, please?’ Then, standing, she added, ‘And I just need to find something of my own.’
Envoi
The sun was slipping towards the horizon when they gathered on the river bank behind the hotel. Already the crescent of the moon gleamed nickel-bright in the sky.
A large black bird, possibly a rook or a crow, circled high above them, as if watching what the three people down there by the river would do next.
David unwrapped the sword from the bed sheet. It was clean now. Electra must have washed it after he’d left on the day of his uncle’s funeral.
Electra gazed down at the water as it cascaded over the boulders. ‘I’m a great believer in ceremonies, too.’ She held up a white envelope. ‘These were my return train tickets to London all those years ago. I never used them. But I kept them safe. They were my talisman to reassure me that one day I’d leave that big old pile.’ She glanced back at the hotel with its four solid towers standing against the sky. ‘That I’d go back to work in television.’ She gave a little smile. ‘I know that’ll never happen now. I know my future lies here. That I’ll grow old and die in Leppington.’ With that she threw the envelope into the water.
The current caught it and quickly bore it away in the direction of the sea that lay twenty or more miles from here.
David gazed at the sword. Although he told himself it must be the speed of his pulse in his thumb and wrist carrying the vibrations to the tip of the blade, it seemed to hum in his hand.
‘Well…’ he said, not sure whether or not he should make a speech. ‘I guess, for me anyway, this wraps it up.’
With that he flung the sword into the middle of the river.
It seemed to hang there for a moment, as if suspended by an invisible thread above the water, the sharp tip of the sword pointing straight downward, so that the weapon formed an elongated cross. The blade reflected the dying rays of the sun.
Then, at last, the sword fell straight down into the water.
The splash must have disturbed a fish, a big fish at that, because David saw something long and silver dart just below the surface of the river. It sped upstream like a torpedo.
For a moment he allowed himself the illusion it was really the sword. And that, just below the surface of the water, the sword would fly along the course of the river, up through the town, up the hillside, smoothly weaving around rocks with the speed and grace of a salmon.
Eventually, the sword would slip silently up through the stream in his dead uncle’s garden where it would vanish into the cave from where the waters of the source of the River Lepping tumbled. From there, the sword would speed down into darkness, into the very heart of the mountain.
And after that, it would pass from this world and into eternal mystery.
The black bird called out across the town, a long echoing cry that seemed to shimmer on the evening air. Then it wheeled high above them and glided across the hills and out of sight.
Electra stood on his left, Bernice on his right. With an unspoken harmony of feeling they linked arms with him.
There they stood and watched the sun slip down between a cleft in the mountain. For all the world it looked as if it was being swallowed by the jaws of a great wolf.
With the vanishing of the sun, the night, at long last, came to rest softly upon Leppington town.
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