smelt the ash of what it had become, and under that I could smell what had once been. It was all still here. I made myself remember. I felt the first of the tears roll down my cheeks and they fell, plink, plink, one after the other into the ash, and were instantly absorbed into it. I raised my fingertips to my cheeks to follow the tracks my tears had made. Two dark lines down each cheek, tears coming uncontrollably now. My grief was mixed with the Earths.
And then, the voices were gone. Just like that. They all died away with the wind. I could no longer see the red glow. The air was now still. Even the sky above looked peaceful.
In the new silence everyone just stared at me. They seemed awestruck. I wasn’t looking at them though. I looked over at Doctor Orlov. He was staring straight ahead, his eyes glazed over. A single tear ran down his cheek.
Slowly he looked over at me. “I did it,” he whispered. “It was me. I built all those bombs.”
I just stared at him. I had no idea what to say.
“I killed your home. I killed all your homes. All of the things I designed. Came crashing down on us…” he buried his face in his hands. Slowly I went forward, and put my hand on his shoulder. I didn’t know what else to do. It all seemed so huge, and distant. There seemed no point anymore in holding anyone to blame. I knelt down and took a handful of ash. I then reached up and touched a finger to his both his cheeks and left two dark streaks.
He looked at me in surprise. “Thank you,” he said finally.
“Now go,” I said. Without another word he walked away.
Sarah came up to me and handed me my mask. “You need to put it on,” she said in a small voice.
I was escorted back inside the camp. All the time Sarah asked me how I felt, over and over. I could not answer her. There were no words at that moment, for what I was feeling.
I had received a trivial level of radiation exposure in the minute or so I was exposed. But I would never work anywhere like this ever again. Having broken the most fundamental of the security protocols I was summarily discharged from the project. They agreed to put it down to ‘emotional distress caused by long term grief’ and said no more about it. The incidents with the ghostly cries and the apparitions were not mentioned on any report.
Orlov returned to the university and immediately resigned. He never thought another class on nuclear physics. Later on he became a leading figure in the disarmament movement.
It has been many years now. The city was never completely rebuilt. Very few people wanted to live there. It was decided it should be left as it was, as a memorial. I never did go back again. I never needed to. I have never heard of any other occurrences. Whatever had been there, clearly it was at rest now.
I did pay one visit, with my family, to the mass grave that had been set up on the outskirts. And for the first time we mourned together, and it was good.
The Haunting in the Ruins Page 6