The Risen ( Part 2): The Risen, Part 2

by Smith, Adam J.

  The Risen

  Part II

  By

  Adam J Smith

  Copyright © 2020 Adam J Smith

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the author.

  Prologue

  I first menstruated when I was nine years old; waking in bed to a small puddle of dampness, the morning light warming through the heavy curtains. When I felt the wetness there was shame, making itself known in the tears that came. It had been years since I wet the bed. I sat up slowly, and it felt as though I’d tipped something over, such was the gushing. The emptying. I squeezed as hard as I could and finally it stopped coming. It was too cold in the winter air and too warm beneath the layer of blankets to get up, so I guessed it was still real early, and figured it would dry. Two hours later and the day at full bloom was pressing into my bedroom, up the peeled wallpaper and the cracks of plaster, black mould spots in the corners of the ceiling. I wriggled my hips. It felt sticky. It would smell bad, I thought, wary of lifting the blanket. Mother would not be happy. I tentatively put a hand down there, feeling for the damp. Instead it was tacky, like wet cornbread dough, and when I brought my fingers to the light they were the colour of the mould.

  I’m mouldy! It was a silly thought, but I was a child. I let in the ice of the air and there was the meconium stain on my faded-blue pyjama bottoms, black-red and the size of a newborn kitten. Shuffling backwards, the stain on the sheet was much larger, as black and as wide as Rhodri’s well. It looked like blood! I stifled a scream but the creaking springs of the mattress betrayed my consciousness and Father came in to make sure I was quick with the chores, as he always did. He took one look at the sheets, then back to me, and said; “So you are a girl, after all. Mother!”

  I made myself as small as I could, backing up against the wall, while Father left to get Mother to deal with my problem. That he hadn’t acted much surprised settled what frightened nerves were needling in my stomach. It couldn’t be that bad. Quiet, I listened to the footsteps of the house; my brothers showed their heads around the edge of the door and laughed when they saw the blood on the bed. I quickly reached forward and covered it over, but it was too late. They ran off giggling, screaming “Raggedy Anne, raggedy Anne!” as though I was meant to know what that meant.

  Mother finally entered, shutting the door behind her. She was the only woman in the house, and, I guess, after today I became the second, though it would be another five years until I menstruated again. She pulled the bedcover away and then sat on the bed, asking if I was scared. I told her there was nothing to be scared about, and she nodded in agreement, going on to tell me about the way of things with that resigned sadness she had about her, as though she was constantly experiencing something in the past. She told me to get up and then she pulled the cover from the bed. “Go to the bathroom,” she said, locking my bedroom door. I had my own bathroom, you see.

  There, she told me to strip and poured some freezing water into the plugged sink. I sometimes made wee in the bathtub, which was green and black with dirt, so I didn’t much want to stand in it, but I did as I was told. The pyjama bottoms peeled away with some difficulty, much redder than the sheets, and stuck to my thick, matted hair. My skin was already hard with goosebumps by then, the lighter hair across my body prickled to attention, so the water made little difference. It stung a little over my nub, as sensitive as the end was, but I was used to that by now. Mother lathered soap into the hair on my inner thighs and up to my belly button and cleaned away as much blood as she could. I couldn’t help but notice how she averted her gaze from it, and wouldn’t touch it. “There you go,” she said, “you can do the rest yourself. I’ll leave a towel on your bed, and get you clean sheets.”

  Alone, I finished washing and then dried and clothed, while my belly ached, hammering blows bouncing around my abdomen. A little cramp. I always wore long trouser legs and sleeves in those days, to cover all the hair. Even then little wisps crept beyond the hem of my sleeves, so I wore gloves whenever we left the farm, just in case we bumped into anyone. And a scarf for my neck.

  Whenever I think back to my early childhood, I always come back to this day, for so much seemed to change for me from here on out. Father had it right: I was a girl. Not long after, I began to malt, waking up in the mornings not to blood, or urine, but body hair. A little later and my breasts began to grow sore, my nipples turning from pennies to old tuppences. I grew my hair long, because that was what girls did. My brothers stopped mocking and Mother even began to take me between her knees with a comb, and brush and brush for minutes at a time. She’d always wanted a daughter, and I was close enough, I guess. I don’t blame her, how do you treat an orphan baby covered head to toe in hair and with seemingly both sets of genitals? It can’t have been easy.

  They named me Ffion, and Father’s surname was Adie, as in A-D, so that was how the locals knew me. Not that there were many locals to be had up here on the hill. Us Adies liked to keep to ourselves most of the time, anyway, tending to our farm and keeping the borders secure. If my family were muntjacs, then I was a vole, or perhaps a mole, my own sect within a sect, the outsider within.

  Father and Jack did the heaviest work; they both had the arms to show for it too. Up early to count the sheep and pigs and chickens, while Dylan and I fed them, and then it was the hour-long walk, checking that the perimeter was secure. Where the wind – for it blew a gale up here in the hills just north of Aberffrwd – had dislodged one of the giant tree trunks or bent a section of barbed wire, they were on it, fixing it in a jiffy. Aled was the youngest, though still older than me, and his morning routine was to collect all the water for the day from the nearby stream. When I was done feeding the animals, sometimes I might help Mother in the kitchen, but most often I went off by myself, and always had, ever since I was little. They never stopped me; if anything ever happened to me then I would be a mouth less to feed. Chances were slim – mostly – because that perimeter wall was sturdy.

  Sometimes I wished we’d never left the farm. Provisions enough for lengthy emergencies: snow, heavy rainfall, attacks. And it was isolated enough that it was rare that mutate or human found themselves passing by, at least accidentally. Sometimes the mutates smelled the livestock and tried their luck, catching on the barbs or finding shot blasted at them from Father’s shotgun; turning away to lick their wounds. Sometimes people came by our posters down in the valley and paid a visit. Paying with their lives.

  Temporary shelter in exchange for provisions. Follow the signs for Cerwyn Farm. No time wasters. Absolutely no shelter without trade.

  They’d show up sometimes with deer over horseback, or a saddle of dead little rabbits, or ears of wild corn. Or saddlebags of wild potatoes. Wild garlic warding off chance infections and the fantasies of vampiric mutates. But that’s all it was – mutates were no more afraid of garlic than the actors playing at Dracula in old films. And wild… everything was wild now. Even here, at the farm, the bulk of our fruit and vegetables grew outside the perimeter, playing to luck that the Bramleys would tend themselves. That the carrots, turnips and swedes left unharvested would turn to mush and nourish the next season’s crop. Year after year.

  Father with his shotgun keeping watch while we dug them up, or climbed the trees.

  We had it so good.

  And they had to ruin it.

  Feb
ruary 2029

  “I don’t like the way she looks at me,” said Aled. He was a grown man now, turned eighteen a few weeks ago, becoming more and more a young version of Father as his beard grew out, from thin wisps to thicker curls. Patches that would soon fill in. His birthday made me two years younger than him again. There’d been a flat sweetbread cake smeared with cream and strawberry jam, topped with roasted chestnuts. And the juiciest mutton, bloody as I liked it.

  “Then don’t look at her,” said Father. The cake and the mutton was ancient history now, making do with strips of dried beef and pan-roasted potatoes. It was too hot by the hearth, so I sat cross-legged on my mat near the door – where the cold hilltop wind blew through the jamb – chewing. And staring, it must be said. The family were huddled by the fire, the old oak table pushed closer; all five of them in woollens and Aled still even had his hat on.

  I’d been watching him closely of late, often from the comfort of the deck while he chopped the day’s firewood, arms sprouting veins. Maybe glaring from above whatever book I was reading. I gave him a smile as he mouthed a potato, and he opened up grotesquely, tongue covered in mush. “One of us will wake up dead, one of these days. Probably come at me as I sleep.”

  Mother slammed her hand on the table. “Don’t be so stupid.”

  “Look at her.”

  “Just how exactly do you wake up dead?” asked Jack, the eldest. “Moron.”

  “Shut up,” said Aled.

  I said nothing, just carried on eating. That was how it was, around the time of the moon; an emptiness that gnawed inside waiting to be sated. I ate and ate and it was never enough.

  “Maybe she wants to eat you,” said Dylan, who would have been the one to eat if I’d been so inclined; round-faced and soft of belly. All the Adie men shared a look; thick jaw and eyebrows, a nose already too large of face, and that was without age. Father’s grew more red and bulbous by the year, aided by scotch and piercing hilltop winds. “She could eat any of you alive,” he grunted. “Quiet.”

  The room fell into silence; a log crackled, windows shook in their frames from the wind outside. With every mouthful I became hungrier, but this was something I had lived with my whole life. I used to look at the others, often with tears in my eyes, amazed that they could walk away from plates with food remaining on them. Plates I emptied. Like so many things, it began at puberty, circling around and waiting for my blood.

  Mother saw me pining and mumbled, “There’s more in the pan.”

  There was always more. Mother made sure of that. They ate in silence as I emptied the pan onto my plate. I carried it through to my room just off the downstairs hallway – the others all slept upstairs – and perched on the bed, eating. The only space at the farm I could call mine, this was; and hardly anyone else ever set foot inside, not even Mother. She’d ask for the bedsheets and dirty clothes, rather than enter. It was my nest, you see. Stuffed with trinkets and treasures; things I’d found scavenging and rummaging through the houses of the long dead. I stank the whole downstairs out, said my brothers, but it was far better than the smell that came from their rooms as far as I was concerned – all that armpit sweat, tangy saltiness. My room smelled nice. From an old cottage down Shepherd’s End I had found a sewing box full of dried flowers, and when searching the pantry – which had been near-bare and ransacked – I’d come across pages of compressed flowers and bottles of lavender oil, elderberry essence and oil of rosehip. I’d mix these with water and urine in my bathroom and make my own bottled sprays to mist the dried flowers with. Down the end of Shepherd’s End was old Mrs Yeats’ cottage, who died when I was still a toddler of a bite; she had a store cupboard of candles with all sorts of scents, the labels removed. Sometimes I just left the lids off and that was enough. Other times I let them burn for a few minutes, but never for very long. I wanted them to last a long time. I had these all up on shelves erected around my bed, dried lavender pinned and hanging down. In the spring and summer the shelves overflowed with wildflowers gathered from the meadow and up the hill, my room so filled with scent it drove me a little wild. I could lie there for hours with my eyes closed imagining bees humming over nectar heads, dandelions caught on whispers, sticky willies barbed into mutate hair. Perhaps a distant tone of their faeces if the mutate had marked its territory in the meadow or up the hill. My territory – not theirs. My scent. I made sure to always pollute their piss and shit and sweat. It kept them away for the most part, and Father was grateful for that, if not much else. I could flip from useful to a burden on the toss of a coin or the press of rotten apples in the cider still, it was all no matter to me.

  My other shelves were stacked with yellowed books taken from decrepit caravans at Ty Cam Farm nearby, where I’m lead to believe the owners stocked them with the old classics for rainy days. Penguin Classics along their spines, lightning sparks of tears running up them breaking such titles as Oliver Twist and other Dickens, Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. Not all the wear and tear was down to me, but much of it was. Not many readers in this area, it seemed, for nearby cottages only had magazines like Women’s Own and Woollen. Occasionally I had stolen books from passing groups; with the family not much interested in trading for books, I had my pick. Other names like George Orwell and Stephen King sat on the shelves; inside, the years of their publication, meaningless numbers. I knew what year it was, but if a book was published in 1818 or 2018, it was still new to me. Mother said there were more out there – thousands, millions – so many I could barely imagine it. I’d seen libraries in some of the old TV shows and got them to pause the show so I could try and see the books on the shelves, but the books were always too small, and the shelves too numerous. The nearest one was in Aberystwyth but Father said it was too dangerous to go there. “Go. If you want to. We can’t stop you. You’ll die, though. Even you. Ripe young thing like you. Even if you don’t, you’ll not find anyone else who’ll take you in.”

  “You need us as much as we need you,” Jack said once. “There’s nothing out there but death. Where would you go? What would you do?”

  “The library.”

  “You think that’ll still be there? They bombed the cities.”

  I’d given that some thought since then. Aberystwyth wasn’t a city. And some of the people who came by spoke of buildings still standing, islands with rivers of bones in the streets. So it may still be there. My future nest. I put the plate on the floor and lay back on the mattress, fingering the dried lavender, teasing out its scent. With eyes closed, I began inventorying everything I wanted to take with me to the library; imagining setting it up between two rows of shelving full of books, the words of multiple worlds and the scent of multiple touches all around me. I’d need multiple suitcases – so many even I may struggle to carry them or pull them along. Father spoke of horses but they hadn’t seen one for years, eaten by the mutates. And I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to resist myself, truth be told. Fresh meat. It was something of a rarity. We had vehicles locked up in the shed but the diesel no longer worked. Father said there were electric vehicles we could charge with our solar panels, “But not here, in the ass-crack of Wales. Some of us didn’t keep up with those sorts of things.”

  There were footsteps outside then a knock on my door. “Visitors,” came Dylan’s voice. I’d been daydreaming so much I missed the bell. At the window, I parted the heavy drapes and smeared my hand across the glass to clean it; outside was dark, past nine. These visitors – they were late. Done well to find us, though we ensured our signposts were clear. But still. Father and the boys would want me out there with them – if I was good for anything it was protection.

  I dressed for the outside, throwing on my customised leather jacket. Hoops, pockets and loops inside held assorted blades and tools; a utility jacket rather than belt.

  In the kitchen, Mother said; “Too late for food. You be sure to tell ‘em that.” As I shut the door behind me, she yelled out; “You hear?” But I ignored her and ducked into the cooling wind rushing o
ff the hilltop. The yard reflected silver in the dim moonlight, despite the cloud-cover. Frozen footprints indented the mud up to the inner wooden fence, with the various outhouses and barn encircling it. It was a map of a hundred little lakes after rain, which I liked to imagine was a replica of the Lake District up north that I’d seen on maps of the UK.

  Across the yard, the spotlight powered by the solar generator was already on, with the dark silhouettes of Father, Jack, Aled and Dylan heading out to the fence perimeter. Four burly men with farm-worked shoulders; they didn’t really need me. But it made Mother feel better to know I was there, watching over their shoulders.

  At the barn, I crept up to the side and then reached up for the ladder that lead to the second storey. No animals in here, just tools and the bedding for the dogs. Fat use they were. They’d learned quickly to fear the mutates and stay far away – I knew how they could hear rustling or smell them from fields away by the way they slunk into their bedding, shivering. It got so bad they couldn’t be trusted – take tonight for instance. Likely human visitors and not a single bark.

  I crept along the rafters, above the dogs and the smell of damp hay and waste, until reaching the loft hatch with the arm and pulley outside it. Rain misted through, landing on my face. There I sat, hunched, watching as Father approached the large scaffold that housed the gate; chainlink woven with barbed wire, so thick it was barely transparent. Three chained padlocks kept it locked, while the scaffold arched across with a platform nestled on top. It was from there that my brothers all glanced down, flashing torchlight. Receiving torchlight. Beams broke through the drizzle and died at the halos of their heads.

  “Cold night out tonight, isn’t it?” Father tapped the gate with his shotgun. Sound like metallic leaves rustling in wind.