by Mauro, Laura
DARK MINDS PRESS
NAMING THE BONES
Published by
Dark Minds Press
31 Gristmill Close
Cheltenham
Glos.
GL51 0PZ
www.darkmindspress.com
[email protected]
This Kindle Edition – July 2017
Cover Image © 77studios
www.77studios.blogspot.com
The copyright of this story
remains the property of the author.
Interior layout by Anthony Watson
ISBN-13: 978-1544177748
ISBN-10: 1544177747
DARK MINDS
NOVELLAS
5
NAMING THE BONES
A novella
by
Laura Mauro
For Grandad Pat,
Who always said London was the best city in the world.
ONE
F irst, there was darkness.
There were other things too: burning, and frantic motion, and people crying somewhere very far away. But the darkness came first. A profound, abrupt blackness, depthless as the abyss and thick, the airless texture of oil in the back of the throat. For a long, still moment Alessa thought she might have gone suddenly blind, that something deep inside her brain had irrevocably short-circuited.
Then the emergency lights finally came on, bathing the carriage in weak yellow. And only then did Alessa rise from her seat - slowly, because some distant part of her seemed to hurt very much - and survey the chaos around her. With a terrible lack of urgency she picked her way through thick debris; gnarled fingers of metal hung from the ceiling, the remains of handrails clutched by gloved hands only five minutes earlier. It seemed that Alessa was moving in a near-silent dream: the only sound was a murky static fuzz, the only motion the occasional flicker of the lights overhead and her shambling progress, sleepwalker-slow. Scattered piles of upholstery cluttered the floor like discarded laundry; a blizzard of broken glass lay atop them, yellow as old teeth in the pale light. Her feet caught in the snarls of fabric as she progressed, conspiring to trip her over; she tugged her foot away irritably, surrendering one high-heel.
There was only one other person in the carriage, though she was sure there had been others just minutes before. A woman sat at the far end with her hands folded in her lap, staring serenely out of the ruined window opposite; her gaze was fixed so thoroughly on the empty windowframe that she did not notice Alessa approach.
Alessa pushed forward. The air itself seemed solid, an invisible mass meeting her progress with unlikely resistance; it tasted of dust, and of copper, a thick glut pushing down into her lungs, pooling slowly in the thickets of bronchioli.
Alessa reached out a hand. Her fingers brushed the woman’s shoulder; the fur trim of her parka was damp beneath Alessa’s fingers. She tugged lightly, seeking the woman’s attention, but she kept on staring, dark eyes wide and unblinking. Her lips were slightly parted, as if she’d been about to speak before the darkness enveloped them both and had forgotten what she was going to say.
“Excuse me,” Alessa said hesitantly.
The woman moved slowly, pale moon-face turning up to meet Alessa’s. It was only then that Alessa noticed the constellation of glass fragments embedded in her cheek, glittering studs travelling in a slow arc upwards, and the dark crater of blood welling up beneath each individual shard. One unsteady hand moved up, seeking Alessa’s hand, grasping her fingers; her skin was slick with gore.
“You’re bleeding,” the woman said, in wide-eyed wonderment.
Alessa looked down then, at the dark stain blossoming on the front of her skirt, and some part of her recognised it as the source of that distant pain. A ragged glass tooth emerged from her left thigh, a shard the size of her palm, and she let out a high, breathless laugh; how had she not realised? Still, the pain seemed a long way away; even in her befuddled state Alessa knew she was in some kind of shock, and that this might be equally as dangerous as the window-shard buried in the meat of her thigh.
Breathe, she told herself.
Alessa exhaled, and the world finally came into sharp, awful focus.
That was when the crying began.
It was as if someone had suddenly turned up the volume. Behind her, in front of her, beneath her, a cacophony of voices pleading and crying and whimpering. Somewhere outside the carriage, one voice carried higher and louder than the rest, a howl so prolonged it seemed it might never end; an animal scream, torn from the throat of something horribly wounded. Alessa snatched her hand from the other woman’s grasp, clutching at her own coat with trembling fingers. One bare foot scraped the ground. There was something wet beneath her toes. She drew her foot up, staring in dumb horror as one of the piles of upholstery lining the carriage began to move; slowly, hands and a face appearing in the dark, smeared black with blood. They were people, she realised: people clutching desperately at her ankles as she walked over them, praying that she might save them.
She’d seen all this before, in snippets of grainy smartphone footage posted to YouTube and removed almost as quickly: the London Bridge tube bombings, five years ago. Two bombs in tandem, reducing the Northern Line tunnel to a scorched black mouth choked with rubble and dead bodies. The sour tang of charred electrics burnt in the back of her mouth. She swallowed it down. Two bombs. Alessa could not recall the exact moment of the explosion, but she knew there had only been one. So far.
“We need to get off the train,” Alessa said. She didn’t wait for the other woman’s response. The doors either side of the carriage were jammed shut, windows blown out by the explosion; coronas of broken glass jutted from their steel frames. The door linking the carriages hung limp from its hinges. Alessa approached the empty space with trepidation.
The next carriage was pitch black, but the dark outlines of objects slumped on the floor were horribly visible. A wave of dizziness hit her like a punch to the gut. Her legs buckled suddenly beneath her. She grabbed the doorframe for support, bracing both hands against it. Just breathe, she told herself, squeezing her eyes shut. She drew in a deep, shuddering breath and tried not to think about the way the air tasted.
When she opened her eyes, the disembodied light of a mobile phone danced in the space to her left, down in the tunnel, a cold blue firefly in the black.
“Are you alone?” a voice called out.
“There’s one other,” Alessa said. “I think. There are…I think there are a lot of injured people in here.” She hated how casual she sounded, as if the people in the aisle were items on an inventory. The enormity of it all hadn’t struck her yet – that would come later, in the back of an ambulance, clinging to a grim-faced paramedic’s hand just to feel the pulse of another living person. Despite the ache in her leg and the dust on her tongue it still felt as though all of this was nothing more substantial than an extraordinarily vivid hallucination.
There came the sound of two voices conferring, lost beneath the tinny ring in Alessa’s ears. “It’s safe to come down here, the power is out. Can you walk?” the first voice asked. Male, lightly accented – Polish, maybe, Alessa had never been good at placing accents. The blue-lit profile of a man’s face came briefly into focus. His forehead was dark with blood.
“I think so,” Alessa said. Cautiously, she clambered down, broken glass crunching beneath her bare feet. She barely felt it. The shard lodged in her leg shot a flare of pain up through the muscles of her thigh, twisting into the small of her back. Someone held out an arm and she took it, grateful for the stability.
“I’m going to check the carriage,” a second voice said. “I can hear someone in there.”
Alessa could too. A low keening, ghostly in the dark. “There was another wom
an,” she told the man beside her, as he guided her down the tracks, away from the train. She didn’t look back. She couldn’t. “She was hurt, I…she wouldn’t come with me.” Guilt seized her like a sudden chill. “I should go back for her,” she said, turning away. “I have first aid training. I should be helping.”
“You’re wounded,” the man said, eyeing her with some scepticism. “It’s no good for you to help anyone. You’re bleeding.”
“But...”
“That man, Gareth, he’s a nurse. He’ll help her.”
“Are you staff?”
She heard him laugh, a bitter sound. “No. I haven’t seen any staff. The emergency lights haven’t even come on. Just us for now.”
As they made their way to the back of the train, she saw others climbing down from the carriages. The damage wasn’t quite as bad this far down, although that same rank, acrid smell seemed to permeate the air. It was colder here; Alessa was suddenly conscious of her bare foot, and the sting of the chill air against her lacerated skin.
A hundred questions swirled in the haze of her confusion. She opened her mouth to ask the man what had happened, but stopped short. How would he know? He was fumbling through the dark, same as her. And the probable answer was obvious. Terrorist attack. Wasn’t it always?
“Where were you going?” It felt like a terribly inane question, but the agonised cries of the unseen wounded ricocheted inside her aching skull, and if she had to listen to it any longer she thought she might scream.
“Home.” The lights were still on in the far carriages, illuminating the tunnel somewhat, and she could see him more clearly now. Tall, clean-shaven, profile like a boxer’s; flat, broad nose and sloping Neanderthal forehead. He was dressed in a black jacket and a crisp white shirt, though the collar was soaked through with blood. His, or someone else’s, Alessa wasn’t certain. “I was working the late shift. I left twenty minutes early.” He let out another sharp bark of laughter. “I have never left work early in my whole life. Maybe God is trying to tell me something.”
“I was at a party.” Alessa said. She was limping badly now, her head buzzing with the effort. She wanted more than anything just to lie down and rest. “I...I don’t usually go to parties. I lost track of time. I should be back home already.”
A small cluster of walking wounded had assembled at the end of the train. Further down the tunnel was Elephant and Castle station, where the train had been due to terminate. If help was coming, it was likely coming from that direction. Like her, the other people were in various states of injury. One woman had her arm wrapped in a blue silk scarf; blood had already seeped through the fabric, staining it dark and glossy. Another sat on the tracks, legs drawn to her chest, trembling violently; what little Alessa could see of her face was terribly swollen, the tissue raw and shining in the glow of the man’s mobile phone.
“Nobody’s coming,” said an elderly man, leaning heavily on the wall. His torn trousers hung like limp streamers around his calves.
“They will.” A young man with a ponytail clutching a cello case, once white but smeared now with substances Alessa didn’t want to think about. “They have to.”
“I should go back,” Alessa said, turning to the man who’d walked her down. “I can help.”
The man shook his head. “You stay,” he said. “You can’t even stand up properly.”
He was right. Alessa’s leg was a stiff, useless thing, driving daggers up into her spine each time she took a step. There were major arteries down there, and the damp stickiness of her skin made her wonder exactly what had been damaged.
“There’s a light.” The man slid his mobile into his pocket, shutting off the ambient glow. Alessa squinted off into the tunnel. Somewhere further down, there was a pinprick of yellowish light, disembodied in the black. A torch, perhaps. It seemed a very long way off, but the dark was deceptive.
“Could be help arriving,” the man said. “I’m going down to meet them. Will you be okay here, just for a few minutes?”
Alessa wasn’t certain if he was addressing her. She wasn’t certain of anything much. She gave a vague nod. “We’ll be fine,” she said. It seemed to be all the assurance the man needed, because he set off immediately. The sound of his feet crunching on the gravel grew fainter, his silhouette eventually fading seamlessly into the shadows.
The woman with the burnt face began to cry, then, and Alessa struggled to crouch beside her. She touched a hand to the woman’s wrist, feeling the reassuring solidity of her skin, her bones. “What’s your name?” Alessa asked.
“Deborah.” Her mouth strained to form the syllables, skin pulled tight across her teeth. Alessa regretted asking her. She squeezed the woman’s shoulder and felt her answer, a trembling hand seeking Alessa’s own.
“Okay, Deborah,” Alessa said gently, lacing their fingers together tightly. “We’re safe now. You’re going to be fine.” It was a lie; even in the dark the damage to her skin was obvious, and the last thing Deborah was going to be, when she got out of here and saw the raw mess of her face, was fine.
There came a shout from behind them. Alessa turned, and raised a hand to her eyes as a small army of bright torches came out of the gloom. “Everyone okay down there?” someone shouted.
“Some of us are hurt,” the silk scarf woman replied. She’d joined Alessa in the middle of the tracks. The torch-bearers approached, bringing with them more walking wounded – ghastly, soot-smeared people shambling like zombies. Some supported others, moving in slow tandem, talking amongst themselves in low voices. One woman had a scarf tied tight around a sleeve which seemed horribly empty below the elbow.
“Ambulances are on their way. How many of you are there?” A torch swept over them, so obtrusively bright it made Alessa’s eyes water.
“Five,” the silk scarf woman said.
“Six,” Alessa corrected. “There was another man. He saw someone with a torch coming this way. He went up to Elephant and Castle to meet them.”
“Nobody’s coming from Elephant and Castle, love,” said the man holding the torch. “Not that I’ve heard of. The train’s closer to Lambeth North. So, five here and a sixth further down. Don’t go anywhere. Paramedics are on their way, okay?”
Two other men in hi-vis vests corralled the new group of walking wounded forward, forming a large, hushed mass of people too shocked and afraid to look one another properly in the eye. Alessa stroked the burnt woman’s shoulder and stared up at the other survivors. A tall, bearded man whose soot-stained turban had begun to unravel; another beside him braced against the sloping tunnel wall, staring with unblinking eyes at the back of the train. “What happened?” someone asked. “Was it a bomb?”
“Had to be,” another woman replied. She was haggard-looking but seemed otherwise unhurt, crouching over a barely-conscious man stretched out on the tracks. “Did you see how bad it was at the front?”
Deborah’s sobs were loud in Alessa’s ears as she peered down into the far reaches of the tunnel. The shadows seemed to ebb before her eyes, shifting like black water in an ocean abyss, but perhaps that was only the blood loss; everything seemed a little indistinct, a little fuzzy at the edges. There was no sign of the man, though; it was as though he’d never been there at all. He’ll come back, Alessa thought. Once he realises nobody’s coming that way. He’ll come back and find us.
Later – after weeping uncontrollably in the back of an ambulance, prompting a shot of mild sedative, after the wound in her leg had been cleaned and assessed and stitched neatly up, after her sister came to see her, all red eyes and streaming nose, and insisted Alessa stay with her because she couldn’t possibly be alone tonight, not after this – only then, laying sleepless in her sister’s foldout bed, did Alessa realise that the man never had come back.
*
“W e can stop there, if you like.”
Alessa hadn’t realised she’d been crying until the counsellor passed her a box of Kleenex. She tugged a handful of tissues, pressing them to her eyes.
They came back black with smudged mascara. Makeup had been a mistake.
“I appreciate how hard this must be for you,” Moira said. It seemed to Alessa that Moira always tried very hard to appear as though she understood how Alessa felt. She would sit there with her immaculate blonde bob and neatly-applied pink lipstick, tasteful jewellery and heels just a little too high to be practical, nodding intently as Alessa talked about finding herself surrounded by horrifically wounded human beings like she had any idea what that might feel like.
A framed portrait of Moira’s three children sat proudly on the desk, each child dressed in improbably clean white clothing. Her office was filled with ‘quirky’ trinkets – a set of ceramic jars shaped like cupcakes, cushions printed with artsy black-and-white French bulldogs. Moira’s idea of a traumatic experience was probably scrubbing red wine stains out of her cream carpet.
“I’m not sure that you do,” Alessa said, balling up the black-smeared tissue in her hands. She knew she was being unfair; Moira’s concern was probably genuine, but Alessa found it hard to trust a person so emphatically professing empathy where none could truly exist.
Moira smiled. “Try to explain it to me,” she said, folding her hands neatly in her lap.
Alessa chewed the inside of her cheek. What was the proper way to express to someone that, a month on from the explosion, the mere thought of setting foot on a tube train made her chest constrict so tightly she could barely breathe? That although she had seen and heard things no person should ever have to witness, it wasn’t Deborah’s pink, churned flesh or the glass embedded in a woman’s face or even the hand clutching desperately at her discarded shoe that she saw when she closed her eyes at night?
They’d all shown up at some time or another, these visions, stuttering like an old showreel. But almost every night of Alessa’s life since the bomb, she dreamed of the man who’d disappeared. Always seen in profile, that flat boxer’s nose and the ribbons of blood streaming from his scalp. She tried, mute and frustrated, to call out to him: to tell him not to go, that help was coming from the other direction. Every time, he walked off alone into the shifting darkness, towards that pinprick of torchlight. Not once did he return.